Ali Sanaei’s Personal Blog

It’s a disaster for me to not being able to blog anything in my weblog almost since my return to Tehran. It’s not like me to start something and leave it after a short while.

I’ve been very busy with some personal issues, few classes, my Australia visa request, my ex-business, etc and etc.

The Australia visa story is that I’ve received an offer from “Swinburne University of Technology” in Melbourne to study my course (BSc in “Entrepreneurship in Technology, IT and Business”) for a year as a guest student as part of the “Student Exchange Programme” between them and my current university -University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. The programme’s aim is to give students a chance of challenging themselves and gaining more experience abroad. The interesting point is that this programme is dedicated to British home-students and I’m the first International student of our university who has been accepted for it.

I lodged my visa request application to the Australian embassy at 12th June 07 and my classes starts at 23rd July 07 in Melbourne. The problem is that Iran is a level 3 country in Australia’s visa policy, so it takes 90 days to issue a student visa; while 12 June to 23 July is only 51 days!! I’m trying hard to shorten this period.

In the other hand, if I succeed on going to Melbourne, I’ll receive a 75% discount on my second annual tuition fee which means I shall pay only £2,525 instead of £10,500. And if I don’t go to Australia; there will be no discounts!

The Aussie university has let me to show up in my classes maximum until 10th August which is 17 days more time. I’m very optimistic, let’s see what happens …

It’s interesting to know that this process takes 14 to 21 days for level 1 and 2 countries. More interesting than that is that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar, Oman and Egypt are in level 2 and UAE and Bahrain are in level 1; I guess it means Iranians are more dangerous than them in Australia’s point of view!

Update 1 (11/08/07): I got the visa!