Health and Basic Mathematics
Jun. 24th, 2022 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinThe time has come ... (the walrus said)
I am hard at work putting together the supporting documents for my application for Indefinite Leave to Remain, i.e. permanent residency in the UK. The requirements are pretty straightforward – prove you are stable and self-sufficient financially, that you've had a continuous residence in the UK, that (in my case) you are still related to the people who qualified you for the visa you're on, and that you haven't been out of the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period.
The last couple of days, I've been working on the first: gathering bank statements, contracts, and invoices for the last few years, scanning what was on paper, naming and filing them in what I hope is an organised way. Today I collected and scanned boarding passes from the last few flights I've taken, where I haven't got a physical stamp in my passport, to back up my days of absence.* Since I was then in Travel Zone, I figured I might as well update the UK Absences chart I'd submitted with my 2018 visa extension application. With the pandemic between then and now, this is not an abundantly long document, but it does include my trip to Antarctica, which all told ended up being nearly two months out of the UK.
And that's when I started to get worried.
Because, you see, that was a Big Number. And not very far up the list there was another Big Number, from the first time I went to New Zealand, part of a Christmas voyage in 2017-18. Two big numbers so close to each other, and numbers between were not so big but were big enough to add up in a big way, and what had I done? How could I have miscalculated? I had been so careful not to be away too much but this seemed like a really, really big oversight. Starting to shake, I totted up the days of absence, and got 152. That was good, right? It was 180 days in a 12-month period, not 140 days, right? I checked. It was. Whew. Just under the wire. I should watch these things more closely, don't want another scare like that.
After I caught my breath a little, and looked back at the chart, I saw that I'd left for the first New Zealand trip in December 2017, and didn't leave on the Antarctic trip until October 2019, so the two trips were never in the same 12-month period at all. The 152 days had been over 24 months, not 12.
And this is why being bad with numbers is bad for the health: because basic innumeracy might possibly give one a heart attack someday.
*The e-Gates are supposed to file your entry in some sort of database where they're associated with your passport, but do we trust this database to be accurate and/or fully accessible when the Home Office might use it as grounds to expel us? No we do not. So we try to get a stamp. Border guards are getting increasingly tetchy about stamping one's passport when one is eligible to use the e-Gates, however. I got such a ticking off when I insisted on getting a stamp on my way back from teaching in Denmark this March. By contrast, both Denmark and Switzerland – very organised and technologically advanced countries – insist on stamping one's passport, almost as if they are aware of the fallibility of technology.
I am hard at work putting together the supporting documents for my application for Indefinite Leave to Remain, i.e. permanent residency in the UK. The requirements are pretty straightforward – prove you are stable and self-sufficient financially, that you've had a continuous residence in the UK, that (in my case) you are still related to the people who qualified you for the visa you're on, and that you haven't been out of the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period.
The last couple of days, I've been working on the first: gathering bank statements, contracts, and invoices for the last few years, scanning what was on paper, naming and filing them in what I hope is an organised way. Today I collected and scanned boarding passes from the last few flights I've taken, where I haven't got a physical stamp in my passport, to back up my days of absence.* Since I was then in Travel Zone, I figured I might as well update the UK Absences chart I'd submitted with my 2018 visa extension application. With the pandemic between then and now, this is not an abundantly long document, but it does include my trip to Antarctica, which all told ended up being nearly two months out of the UK.
And that's when I started to get worried.
Because, you see, that was a Big Number. And not very far up the list there was another Big Number, from the first time I went to New Zealand, part of a Christmas voyage in 2017-18. Two big numbers so close to each other, and numbers between were not so big but were big enough to add up in a big way, and what had I done? How could I have miscalculated? I had been so careful not to be away too much but this seemed like a really, really big oversight. Starting to shake, I totted up the days of absence, and got 152. That was good, right? It was 180 days in a 12-month period, not 140 days, right? I checked. It was. Whew. Just under the wire. I should watch these things more closely, don't want another scare like that.
After I caught my breath a little, and looked back at the chart, I saw that I'd left for the first New Zealand trip in December 2017, and didn't leave on the Antarctic trip until October 2019, so the two trips were never in the same 12-month period at all. The 152 days had been over 24 months, not 12.
And this is why being bad with numbers is bad for the health: because basic innumeracy might possibly give one a heart attack someday.
*The e-Gates are supposed to file your entry in some sort of database where they're associated with your passport, but do we trust this database to be accurate and/or fully accessible when the Home Office might use it as grounds to expel us? No we do not. So we try to get a stamp. Border guards are getting increasingly tetchy about stamping one's passport when one is eligible to use the e-Gates, however. I got such a ticking off when I insisted on getting a stamp on my way back from teaching in Denmark this March. By contrast, both Denmark and Switzerland – very organised and technologically advanced countries – insist on stamping one's passport, almost as if they are aware of the fallibility of technology.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-24 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-04 01:44 am (UTC)