My inner perfectionist is soooo happy that all these info fit exactly into one (1) page. 🤩
Bullet Journal | Fountain Pens & Inks | K-1 Visa | Love, Relationship and Marriage
2020 BuJo: K-1 Visa Journey Page
By Nathalie on December 27, 2019
Because even the *planner* must be planned. 😅😂
K-1 Visa | Love, Relationship and Marriage | Reality
Approved, finally!
By Nathalie on December 22, 2019
Can I just say that this news makes us soooo happy? It took 107 days of waiting, but here it is now. *cue happy dance* Our journey is far from over, but this is a definite milestone.
There’s another bout of waiting for USCIS to send our case to NVC, and from there to the local embassy/consulate, before I can schedule my medical and interview. I have already started gathering documents needed for the interview though. Because, you know, excited. 🤩
K-1 Visa | Love, Relationship and Marriage | Reality
This Interminable Wait
By Nathalie on December 11, 2019As I posted before, my fiancé and I applied for a K-1 visa during the last week of August. We got the receipt notice on the first week of September, and have been waiting since for the approval of our case. It has now been 97 days (US time) and the work day has ended with no update on our case yet.
To be fair, we’re still in the early stages of waiting since according to USCIS, the processing times for K-1 visas in the California Service Center (CSC) is 5.5 to 7.5 months:
However, basing on info from VisaJourney and posts from various FB visa groups, the recent waiting period for approval is around 3-4 months. Right now we’re at a little past the 3-month mark. I have so far seen others with the same timeline get approved in the last coupla days, so I’m really hoping ours would get approved soon as well. The waiting is killing me; patience never was one of my strong points.
Randomness | Reality
What do you blog about when you live a boring life?
By Nathalie on September 8, 2019Because yes, technically I’m a blogger, but yes, I also live a damn boring life. I am your average person working during the day, and doing other errands while trying to live a little before I sleep. So what do I write about?
K-1 Visa | Love, Relationship and Marriage | Reality
First Step towards a Life Together
By Nathalie on August 31, 2019So, yeah. Finally we got around to officially starting our K-1 visa journey. Yey! He just sent in our I129-F packet yesterday via USPS. We initially planned to file sometime during the first quarter of the year, but life happened and several things came up hence the delay. Anywho. The important thing is we’ve started the ball rolling. We should hear from USCIS by next week once they receive our packet. Excited! 🤩
Money | Reality | Technology | Tutorial / How to:
Calling Credit Card Hotlines from the Province on the Cheap!
By Nathalie on June 7, 2019
This post serves as a guide for fellow promdis like me who use credit cards and need to occasionally call their hotlines for one matter or another (and not rack up huge mobile phone bills in the process).
To give you a brief background, I grew up in the city with a PLDT landline (telebabad was life back then) but then later moved to a sorta rural municipality with no telephones. Cellphones were starting to be a thing then, so most households opted for cellphones instead and never bothered to get old-school landline telephones. 🤷🏽♀️
Fast forward to today, and I have several credit cards which I use for #adulting and all that shizz. There are times when I need to call the credit card company, like when a card was not delivered or when I need to inquire or clarify something. And while calling from my mobile is feasible, it pains me to rack up a huge phone bill while going through the automated menu and waiting to talk to a human operator. 😭 This is especially annoying when the waiting time turns out to be much longer than the actual conversation itself. 😫
I am no stranger to online shopping. Aside from groceries, most of my other purchases are online. For one thing, it’s usually cheaper than buying at the malls. Also, because of my provincial location, most of the stuff I like can only be found online.
Locally, my usual “haunts” are Shopee and Lazada. Occasionally, I buy from international shops as well, mostly from the US. Shipping from the US to the Philippines could cost more than the purchase itself, so I rely on cargo forwarders to save on shipping costs. In the past, I have used (LBC) Shipping Cart and My Shopping Box. The latter’s rates are cheaper, but Shipping Cart provides a more comprehensive tracking. To their credit, they both delivered on time.
Recently, I had the chance to use another cargo forwarder, HopShopGo. It’s tied up with Paypal (which I use and deem pretty legit) so I figured they oughtta be decent as well. Their rates are higher than both Shipping Cart and MSB’s but they had a pretty sweet deal at the time of $1 shipping for the first half kilo. I had an Amazon voucher so I used that to buy a Roku Express, which is pretty small and light, and had it delivered to my HopShopGo address in Portland, Oregon.
