Beneath the surface 5

Nov 2nd
As I thought… There was a catch. My new company kindly booked me a hotel in Miami. Which sounds very nice but I just read the booking form: No.1 guest Me. Additional Guest Marissa. Who is Marissa? And why did no-one tell me that I was going to be sharing a hotel room with a stranger? Oh God it was another one of their short cuts - lets save some money and treat our professional photographers like cattle. What was ironic about that was my friends were going on about my so called glamorous life. Truth: it is not glamorous. That is why I write this diary - evidence - the anti-thesis of glamour.

E-mail:
‘Dear Linda,
Who is Marissa?
So just to point out the obvious: I am staying in a hotel room and some stranger walks in. What do I do? I assume I am being robbed and take the appropriate action. I think you should be aware of that. Is there any chance I could have my own room?
Kind Regards
Felicity.’

Oh God did I really want to work for that company? They seemed to be making short cuts the whole time. If that was their attitude off the ship then what would it be like onboard - once I was trapped? I could understand if the hotel room was expensive but it cost about £100. A company that made two million profit a year spending £100 on a hotel room wasn’t that massive.
I had a bad feeling.



November 6th
Another trip to London. It took just over two hours from Bournemouth and cost around eighty pounds to reach the Vietnamese embassy during their limited opening times. When I arrived at the embassy I went to collect my passport. I quickly learned they had thrown all the documents away that supported my application. What’s more (and this made me particularly happy) one of the documents was a letter of immigration. Thank God I photocopied it!
‘Where are the documents with the passport?’ I asked.
‘You have them,’ he said
‘No you requested them for the visa,’ I said.
‘No my responsibility,’ he said.
‘So whose responsibility is it?’ I asked.
‘Yours,’ he said,
‘Oh I see… So it is my responsibility that you look after the documents that I give you to enable me to have a visa.’
‘Yes.’
There was nothing that could be done. There was no-one to complain to. You had to accept defeat.