This last week saw the start of the Edinburgh Festival 2008. It's hard to explain the incredible size and excitement of it. The festival completely takes over the entire city for all of August, whilst the population of the city grows to literally 3 times it's size. The buses are busier, the pubs are busier, the streets are busier, and you right off the fact that a trip through central will ever be a quick experience during this time. It's extremely festive. People flock from all over the world which means that every time you walk along the streets you hear another language being spoken. In fact, just yesterday I was walking along George Street (the most prestigious street in Edinburgh - all business like and commercial) and I heard a group of woman speaking Zulu. It was pretty wicked. So here are the photos from the opening parade that runs all through the main streets of the city, as well as an embedded video of the starting lines of the parade - bag pipes, of course. It's a great time to be living in Edinburgh. Photos here.

Edinburgh Festival Parade 2008 from Ducklight Travels on Vimeo.

We took a weekend trip to the Czech Republic and spent a few days in Prague. What an incredible city with unparalleled architecture as we as beer prices! The photos just can never do such a beautiful city justice. Next time you're planning a trip make sure that Prague is one of the destinations - a real pearler. Check out the photos here.

Three months worth of digging around for information to prove Jen and my relationship and it all came down to one day. Last week Friday, 20th June 2008, was the set date for the application to be submitted by my lawyer, on my behalf. He gets to explain all the goods and bads about the application to the officer rather than myself and that's definitely a good thing because of all his experience with applications such as these. The paperwork was finalised last week when the last steps were taken to send through our passports to him in Glasgow, Royal Mail, special delivery. £5.05 later and I was given a tracking slip that would ensure my package was on his doorstep by 9am the following morning. Would I have trusted two passports and a 10-thick pile of legal documents in South African post? Most definitely not. Was I still unsure of the safety of it even with the Royal Mail special delivery stamp? For sure. It worked out okay though and just as promised the passports were with him the following day, just 24 hours prior to the application. Nail biting stuff.

Of course it was nail biting. Though the repercussions were never completely life or death, there were many parts to our lives that would be greatly affected by the outcomes of this application. If it was denied we would almost definitely be heading back to SA on a plane in August due to my inability to continue working in the UK on my working holidaymaker visa. It meant the loss of many thousands of pounds of potential earnings and savings. Not to mention our six month lease that we just signed in our new awesome penthouse flat, and my mobile, broadband and many other service contracts needing to be cut short. Knowing Britain, ending those contracts short would have been quite a costly exercise, coupled with the fact that... I'm just not ready to leave yet.

I'm not ready to leave it behind. As many posts before this have said, my views on the life that we have made over here have almost always been positive. We have established ourselves in a completely foreign country and we've built up comfortable lives over here even when faced against many difficult struggles. And it didn't just happen. We worked for it. I'm not the type of person who talks of fate, nor luck, very often. Just as I don't believe in our paths being out of our control, I don't believe that things just "happen for a reason". I damn well fought for this. I worked my butt off to make sure that I reached a stable position over here, I never accepted failure and I certainly didn't accept a half-ass effort. The position in life that I am currently in was worked for and wouldn't have been achieved by just sitting and waiting for it to fall on my lap. Our jobs, our flat, our friends, our trips away, our car, our gadgets, our lives... didn't just happen. We made them happen and just as we can take the credit for them, we can also take the blame.

That is why this application meant so much... it was the ability to continue on this path and keep up what we have worked so hard for. To have it declined and sent packing would've been to lose all that we had worked so hard for and just like all the adversity we've come up against so far, I wasn't going to fail. We called in favours, we had to use snail-mail (many many times), we dug through our personal lives, we got other people to dig through our personal lives, we were thorough and I didn't want to think for one second that I didn't do everything I could have possibly done to ensure it's success.

And just like our previous successes. My residency permit was approved. Within half an hour at the home office Richard called me and told me the good news - "We're about half way through the process now, they've just taken your passport and documentation away. It's all been approved." Can I explain the feeling when he uttered those words? Not a chance. For lack of a better saying, it was oodles of weight off my shoulders. Months of stress all bundled in to one package that fell from my shoulders and down the stairs I was standing next to as he told me that my permit was approved. A huge sigh of relief and the start of yet another chapter in our lives together. Another story to tell people about - another box ticked. After all, we worked for it and we succeeded.

(I was going to post a picture of the actual passport but then I decided that it may be a pretty controversial thing to have publicly available. Not to mention that I suddenly realised I would become one of those people who gave all their privacy data away just for a blog post.)

Muppet and Chicken met up for a man-weekend in the city of Amsterdam. They hired bikes and spoke Dutch. It was an epic time and whilst these were the documented images from my camera, Muppets "manual" cam hopefully captured some equally impressive shots. We must've ridden like 30 miles at least that weekend and drank our weight in beer. Amsterdam ftw.

Check out the pics here.

I awoke to Jen lying smiling next to me. She was softly telling me to wake up and get out of bed. It was far earlier than I usually wake up - my puffy face showed this. 7am. Rolling out of bed is still slightly disorientating – we have only been in our new flat for 3 nights now. Though it's strange not having Jack and Isje around anymore, the incredible flat always makes an attempt to make up for it. Breakfasting on your 4th floor penthouse balcony with views of all of Edinburgh including the famous centuries old Castle, can do that to you.

So, out of bed and into the shower. Jen leaves for work just minutes after my eyes have fully adjusted to the light. How strange that human beings wake up so early. My mind ponders early wake ups for a second whilst the water heats up to steamy. I don't think about it too long because my mind is packed full with all the logistics necessary over the forthcoming hour. The early wake up call was because of a meeting in Glasgow at 9:30am with Richard, an immigration lawyer. Richard will be the one who will solve all of my permit issues and will be instrumental in my not far off now application for an unmarried partner visa for the UK. He's tight with the home office and his services are almost mandatory when lodging an application such as this.

I make my way out of our new ensuite bathroom and, after I choose my clothes for the day, head straight to the cupboards which have been storing all of Jen and my “paper lives” for the last few days. The stack is intimidating. Three folders full of bank, mobile phone, and internet provider statements; pay slips, personal letters, photos together, cards and ticket stubs from previous travels. It's comprehensive. It's invasive. It tells a story - A story about us.

As I flick through each paper-separated month, I stumble upon nuggets of our personal paper trail – boarding passes from one of our trips to Italy; a stub from the Edinburgh Beltane fire festival; photos of us from Rhodes graduation; the card Jen gave me for my 21st birthday. It's been tough gathering all of this information and anyone who's been involved in that, and is reading this, I'd like to thank you again.

I'm running out of time so I stuff all the folders into my backpack, throw my Eee PC in the bag for good measure and dash downstairs to get my bike. I have only 20 minutes to cycle to the train station – there's no way I'll make the 8:31. I push myself – months of cycling has made me quite agile on my bike and I've learnt just how hard I can push myself and what my capabilities are. I ride up the large Edinburgh hills, sharing lanes with buses, cars and other cyclists. Skip the Leith walk turning circle – it will take too long. Almost there, just one hill to go. I know I've missed it when my cellphone alarm starts going off in my pocket – 8:30, my usual time to wake up. As it blurts out an irritating song, too tightly stuffed into my jeans to be able to be switched off whilst riding at the same time, I think about how much I sound like an ice cream truck driving, though cycling in my case, and wonder how feasible it would be to run an ice cream service on a bicycle. My mind wanders...

Once I lock up my bike and purchase my day return ticket to Glasgow, I grab a roll from the Upper Crust. £1.25 for a bottle of water – oh how they take advantage of the worker on the move. I make sure to be at the platform when the train arrives to ensure I get two seats for myself – I'll need the second one for the document sifting that will need to take place for the 45 minute duration of the journey. The train sets off and I text Richard to let him know which train I'm on.

I dig in straight away and amongst the sifting and sorting, I pause to take bites from my “Breakfast Bacon” roll. The journey progresses. By now I'm elbow deep in documentation ranging from personal bank statements to the invite I gave Jen for my 21st party. The British sitting around me seem to glance every so often at the piles of paper work surrounding me. I stop and think about whether they vaguely realise that all this paperwork is some (hopefully all) of the evidence necessary to grant me working rights in the UK. They most probably see the South African passport pop up every once in a while and curse under their breaths that it's “yet another immigrant. If it's not the Poles, it's the South Africans.” I chuckle to myself as I pass over the photo of our circle of friends at our Rhodes graduation as well as one of our hall balls. I ignore the people around me because they are not the people in the photos. I carry on sorting.

The meeting with Richard goes well – we chat for 2 hours about multiple scenarios which may arise from the outcomes of this application. Backup plans, forward plans, Stockholm in the Summer and Iceland in the winter. We move off from the Costa we'd sat down in and I head towards the train station to board the next service to Edinburgh Waverley. Now parted with all my documentation – so that Richard could look over it – the burden that the application has placed on myself, and Jen, is physically and metaphorically off my shoulders. The train ride back will be fruitful – with the Eee PC in my backpack I'll most certainly get enough time to write a story about the happenings of today and post it on Ducklight. And here it ends.

Possibly the best band in the world, live in concert at one of their most recent gigs. They published it all live over a webcast. They're incredible. This concert is *just* like the one we went to in Glasgow. Sweden, we'll see you again soon.

Another great trip to Italy in the bag. Heather was over here visiting us and Jenbug and I decided to take her on a trip to Milan, Verona and Venice. Though our flights were cancelled on the Friday due to the Italian air controllers strike, we got on to the Saturday flight and still got to spend 3 nights inbetween Venice and Milan, unfortunately skipping Verona. Either way, it was warm and beautiful. Kudos to the slim Italians, they really are an interesting bunch. Check the photos here.

The fifth installment of what some magazines have called "ground-breaking" is up for viewing. This episode sees Jen and Kyle's journeys through Tour Scotland 07 continue, with a night stop-over in Loch Ness, Jen tries to summon the monster and Kyle races around hairpin corners as they scoot along the banks of the lochs.

Ducklight Episode 5 from DucklightTravels on Vimeo.


Remember, as always, to click play, then pause straight away, and wait a couple minutes whilst it buffers the video (the little gray bar at the bottom will slowly move along showing you how much is ready for viewing). It may take a while, depending on what type of internet line you're trying to watch it off, but if you do it that way then it won't stop and start the whole time. It should take, on an average aDSL line, about 10 minutes to buffer.

Cowabunga!