My absence has not been for some glamourous beach holiday, or some soul searching meditations.
Instead it was carefully counting up all the facts, figures and hopes of the past two years and slipping them into carefully color-coordinated and labeled plastic sleeves.
I bundled them all up and carried them sleepy-eyed across a London sunrise to sit in a grey waiting room as an immigration officer and a computer took the story of my life and stripped it down to ticks off a checklist and a few easy sums.
An email, phone call and four cuticle-biting hours went by before "Application Number Thirty-Five please come to Window Twenty-Two" crackled over the loudspeaker, as my blue passport slipped through the extra-thick bulletproof safety drawer, complete with a shiny new crown-adorned sticker.
I am finally a permanent resident of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and one more step closer to my dreams.