What happens in the American Consulate, Perth:

Step One: Arrive at building, take elevator to fourth floor. Feel a bit confused.

Step Two: Have a guard let you through very heavy doors.

Step Three: have all your possession, and your shoes, removed and scanned to make sure you are not a terrorist. These are locked up, and you are allowed only the highly important documents to take with you.

Step Four: Be accompanied out of the security room by a guard. Said guard will ride with you in the elevator up to the 13th floor so you don't try any funny business with your passport and a few A4 sheets of paper. You are always a threat.

Step Five: Be scanned through security again. Trip over a step and take five minutes to open another heavy door.

Step Six: Take a number.

Step Seven: Wait.

Step Eight: See that it is half an hour after your scheduled appointment.

Step Nine: Keep Waiting.

Step Ten: Finally be called up to the visa counter. It takes approximately seven seconds for the counter lady to look at your documents, tell you off for forgetting your Express Post envelope, scan your fingerprints and tell you to sit down again.

Step Eleven: Keeeeeeep on waiting. Pretend everyone around you are zoo animals and work out which is most appropriate. This is a good way to keep yourself occupied.

Step Twelve: Get called up to the 'interview', which is very privately conducted in the silent room in front of all the other people staring absent-mindedly at the visa appointment window and drooling a little as they wait about two extra hours for their turn. The interviewer checks it's definitely you by scanning your thumbprint, looking in passport, saying 'no worries it all looks great' and telling you to pay $128 on your way out.

Step Thirteen: Look on sadly as you overdraw your account to pay your 4th visa-related fee.

Step Fourteen: Your personal guard accompanies you back through the heavy doors, over the trip step, down the elevator, where you are rewarded with your stuff. And the book you really should have taken up the overly-secure elevator so you had something to do rather than watch the second-hands on the seven clocks in the room.

Step Fifteen: Feel oddly naked leaving a building without your passport. And desperately hope you didn't accidentally book your flight to arrive in LA a day before your visa will actually let you.