Visas and workshop updates

Our visas have been confirmed to be being processed (wow, look how convoluted a sentence can get if you remove all the agent NPs!), so any day now we'll be able to get our tickets! So we have person numbers, and Luce has paid his health insurance, while my work pays mine (gee, does Iceland have any ties with America I wonder).

Also, for the workshop, I have scoured my thesis for the 3 most cited folks, after those already in Reykjavik, and suggested their names as guests. Fingers crossed one of them can make it!

Oh yeah, our package arrived (obviously). It made for a happy little L for a few hours there :) .

Houston, we have a contract!

My contract finally arrived stupendously late on Thursday night - a single A4 Word document with half a dozen of a dozen fields filled in. And that took 5 months to produce. We filled in and sent off 9 different forms, including contract, residency & work permit applications, health insurance forms and I don't even remember what the others were. Start date set for 26/11/2007, and apparently they expect me to work a 40 hour week. Actually, make that 48 40 hour weeks. Omg.

Sent off all the forms yesterday, and have been happily tracking the package online - it departed from the DHL facility in Singapore at 7:28 this morning, on its way to Reykjavik!

This is Australia calling...

so, L actually *called up* Iceland last night! (He's on Skype, and he's not afraid to use it...) He tried to put a stick of dynamite up them with regards to getting the contract done, so we can apply for visas, etc, and the words he got back sounded positive. Apparently I'll be getting paid a bit more than what they thought earlier :), and they're just organising my contract now in English. So, any moment now, it should arrive!

I also found out that both of my requested people can probably come to my workshop (yay!), and that if I feel like inviting someone from outside of NORMS, that is also possible. Ie, the people I want to speak to aren't important enough - aim higher!! (And... choose a topic!)

everything but the visa...

So, add Denmark to my list of places I might be able to collect data from :D "...West Jutland (Denmark) in February - and we'll try to get you there if you want to ;-)" Aaaaand, my name's down on the grant application for data collection in the Pharoe Islands (that spelling looks strange). "I took the liberty of putting your name in as somebody who would be able to and be interested in using this opportunity to collect (and make use of) some new data on Faroese reflexives. Hope that was OK." Ah, the liberties being taken... actually... I think I could get used to such liberties being taken... ;)