so yesterday i took my “Life in the UK” test – 20 minutes of my life that i’ll never get back. 24 questions that took me under 3 minutes to complete (and that was reading the questions twice!) what kind of questions could they ask me to prove i was sufficiently british and assimiliated, one might ask?

gems such as:

1. In Britain, how many children are there under the age of 19?
2. Who replaced Neville Chamberlain in 1940 as prime minister?
3. What year did women get the right to vote?
4. How many young people move on to higher education?
5. Where were bus crews recruited from in the 1950’s?

(answers below, if anyone cares)

I mean this is stuff lots of Brits don’t even know – what is the point? After living here for at least 3 years (the earliest you can get citizenship) either you can function in society or you can’t – but memorizing facts from the census won’t change that one way or another.

still, it was a hoop… so i had to jump. the lady at the test centre last night said, “You’re my first American – why do you want a British passport?” and I said, “Because I live *here* now.” people used to ask me all the time why i was here – i suppose the grass is always greener.

and now the last component is my application appointment on sunday. they take my application, make sure it’s complete, copy my passport, (rob me blind) etc. then it’ll take anywhere from 10 days (J’s turnaround time) to 6 months for them to decide. then I have to do the ceremony, swear allegiance to the queen, yadda yadda yadda – which takes another few weeks. *then* (and only then) i get to apply for the passport (and hope I don’t get selected for the new personal interview process, which takes even longer – right now they’re doing a phased implementation on this over the next year, with every new passport application requiring interview [including credit check, police check, etc] by next April).

blech.

on an entirely different note, here are some photos from my lunch hour walk the other day. can’t believe i’ve lived here all this time and never taken photos of this stuff.

answers are: 1. 15 million, 2. Winston Churchill, 3. 1918, 4. 1-in-3, 5. West Indies

husker du – something i learned today

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