I can’t remember how many times I was in a conversation like this:

A bunch of international friends sitting around the table and talk about summer plans, one goes “hey, shall we organise a trip to Europe, maybe to Spain or Germany”, the other goes “how about Japan or Korea?”, and another suggests another place. I sit there and listen to their discussion until the decision is made, then I speak “Ok, let’s go to ***, but it’s better to be about one month later because I need about two to three weeks to apply a visa to go there”.

Similarly, Megan replied to my post about my summer plan, she said “why don’t you come to Japan?”. I wanted to go, to be honest, but beside the expensive flight tickets, what stops me is the hassle of applying just a bloody tourist visa.

I know for most countries you need a visa if you want to stay for longer than certain number of days, but for Chinese people we need a visa to just enter and have a few days travelling. This bothers me a lot when I travel in Europe. Basically I need a visa to go every single country in Europe. There is one type of visa – schengen visa – that allows you to travel around Europe with just that one, but it depends on your luck that how long the period of travelling the embassy will give you. Some people apply for one month but they give them three months, whereas some apply for three months and they give them three weeks.

Normally for students, they will a give a visa as long as you can provide them required documents, but it’s really a hassle when applying. First of all, you need to call a embassy phone number which charge you one pound a minute to get some information about application or appointment (some you can download on their website), and if you are unlucky, the person you speak to may have a very strong accent and it cost you more pounds to hear them repeat. Then you need to get all the documents you need for application. This is the tricky part because most of them will require a flight ticket copy. Sometimes you bought the ticket but they don’t give you visa, there is nothing you can do about that. Then thirdly, apply. You can post your passport with all the documents to the embassy and normally it takes about three weeks to one months depends on how busy they are, or you can make an appointment to go to the embassy. There is always a long queue there so it’s better to leave home at mid-night and arrive at 6am if you are not living in London. Then once they give you a visa you need to go there again and collect, or you can ask them to post you but it would be very risky because you don’t when will it delivery back to you.

This is only a BRIEF description about how you apply one visa, and this repeat if you need to apply another one. From my experiences, normally it takes up to one month to apply and cost about £40 to £50 pounds include all the post fee, or even more if you travel to embassies in London.

Travelling is part of overseas students’ life, but for Chinese overseas students, applying visa is an extra lesson we need to learn. If you read about overseas Chinese students’ blogs about travelling, most of them will write a lot about how difficult to apply a visa and some of them just can’t go anywhere because they need to apply for a visa. And now, I am one of them here writing about this again.

When can we travel freely?

Here are two different part-time agency jobs I did in the last two weeks.

+++++ No.1
Location: a sports club in County Durham

It’s an 8 hours shift, four agency staffs (include me) were assigned to serve in a dinner of 30 customers. The manager was a young girl, I guess she is about 25 or something, obviously without any experience of management. She didn’t even give briefing before at the begging until I asked her what we should do.

We worked 8 hours straight without being given any breaks. Two staffs was told to have 20 minutes break before the dinner start, so me and another girl asked the manager for a break after the other two came back, she said the dinner was about to start and we could go for break after the dinner finish. At that time, it was 6 hours after we started, and we basically did nothing but standing for the first 6 hours, it was mentally destroying.

Then after the dinner all the guest left, that manager just didn’t have any intention of giving me and the other girl a break. It was almost finishing the shift so we didn’t bother to ask her, just hoped we could finish quicker and left that horrible place.

So for that 8 hours shift, I didn’t get any break. We guessed it’s because we two asked her too much for having a break and annoyed her a bit, she ended up exploiting us for 8 hours. We shouldn’t ask her for a break, it’s something they should give us. Also, it was from 3pm to 11pm, and we didn’t get any food neither.

+++++ No.2
Location: A college in Oxford University

It was a 4 hours shift, four staff. The person in charge was a young guy about looks like 30 something. When we arrived, he introduced himself with a friendly smile, and had a little chat about what we need to do. It was a college dinner and we need to serve 40 people between four of us. We need to do silver service for main course.

It was fairly easy job and I didn’t feel it was 4 hours long, because we can talked and chat when not serving, they prepare a few starter for us before started working, and what’s more, that manager gave each of us a glass of champagne or wine! I never had that before as most managers are afraid you got drunk and make some stupid mistakes, but come on, who will be stupid enough to get themselves drunk when working? What I want to say it’s not about a glass of champagne or wine, but how workers like us perceived the managers and working environment like that. That manager knew that, so he poured us a few drinks and asked us to relaxed, just work happily with a smile! Indeed, I enjoyed a lot working in that shift and I like to work with them even get lower pay!

In case one, clearly that’s illegal! We can suit them for such a terrible working condition, however most students workers like us will just complained and never return to that place again. Whereas in the second one, I would like to work there again even with lower pay, because it was a friendly environment and people treat you as people, not just a few temporary staffs from agency who you can exploit for a few hours and you will never see them again.

In my management class we did a lot about working under pressure and labor work. Although waitering is a bit higher than labor work, but it’ still in an environment involves a lot of physical work and under pressure. For this kind of works, employees’ expectations is relatively low, some of the time they just want a break, a few drink or sandwiches after working long hours. All these requirements are minimum, after all they are lawful requirements. However in most places I have worked before, they don’t give you these basic benefits. As far as I know, this is the reality of working in a lower class environments in UK. I would be lucky if I get some jobs that fulfill these requirements.

Just treat your staffs a little bit better, they would work harder, as simple as that!

Yesterday was another annual regular day of nightmare. I had to carry 60kg luggage by myself all the way from Durham to Oxford. But luckily my housemate Cate’s dad gave me a ride to the station and the train was on time, at least. When it comes to this time of the year, moving from a place to another is always a hard time!

Anyway, I am in Oxford now. I am staying in my previous landlord’s house. I lived with her family three years ago and luckily they have a room want to rent in summer, so I pick it. I know her family very well and they treat me like one of their families too. And my little friend (brother) Jiawei now had grown to a little guy now. We are going to have fun this summer!

It’s very hot here. The temperature today reached 30C according to the radio. It’s warm in Durham, but here is HOT. I stayed in the house all day just unpacking and watching TV. This was the first time in England I felt too hot to go outside. But even though it’s a bit too hot, weather like this will not last for long in England, got to enjoy it as much as I can.

Summer plan

About my summer plan, I will be staying in Oxford for most of the time. Try to get some work and earn some money for travelling. If I got enough then will go backpacking around Europe. But first of all, work! Also, need to start doing my reading for dissertation, as well as keeping my Japanese for next year.