Well, I got a letter today from The Hon. Gary Hardgrave, MP, Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Parliament House, Canberra (Canberra, for those not familiar with Australia’s cities, is the nation’s capital.)

Apparently, The Hon. Gary Hardgrave is pleased to tell me that my application for the grant of Australian citizenship has been approved. Among othe things, he congratulated me on my decision to become an Australian citizen, and he welcomed me on behalf of the Government and all Australians (so the next time some Australian is rude to me, I’ll just tell them that The Hon. Gary Hardgrave spoke on their behalf and they’re supposed to be welcoming, dammit!).

There was more in the letter, including making it clear that I’m not legally a citizen until I take the oath of citizenship, and that has yet to be arranged.
This, of course, is all very nice, and was quicker than I expected. I went for the interview on Tuesday, got the letter on Friday. And considering that the letter had to come from Canberra, that makes it even more impressive. I didn’t know government offices could do ANYthing that quickly.

There is one distressing bit. I’m hoping that this is just a typo on the part of the office of The Hon. Gary Hardgrave. I know for sure that all my official paperwork, the photocopies of my drivers’ license and the papers I had to file, etc., all have my name spelled correctly. The letter from The Hon. Gary Hardgrave, however, greets me as Ms. Bonnie Elizabeth Hall. I don’t know anyone of that name, and there’s certainly no one of that name living here, so I presume they mean me, but errr, there’s one too many vowels in there…

Monday, I’ll call the Immigration office and check to make sure that they do, indeed, have my name spelled correctly, and that they’ll have it spelled correctly on the forms for my citizenship. I think it should be all right, and normally I don’t make a fuss when someone spells my name wrong (I’m used to it), but on official paperwork, I think it’s important to get it right. As Shakespeare wrote and I’m about to paraphrase, happy is she whose name is well spelt.

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