You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2007.
It’s been quite awhile now and I’m actually currently settling into my university accommodation, but I’m going to attempt to do this all somewhat chronologically!
On Thursday I left from Newark Liberty International in New Jersey for a relatively uneventful flight to London Heathrow. The plane was nowhere near full, so essentially all of the middle seats were empty. At this point in the journey I was actually taking copious notes about events and my feelings and impressions, but I’ve since stopped. By that token I’ve also had enough time to both revise some of my initial opinions and simply decide to withhold others. I suppose I’ve always been rather keen on internal internal monologues. Especially when they’re about stupid things like OMG sandwich with butter!11!!!1!
Going through Passport Control was a breeze and I thought I might get to my hotel earlier than the anticipated 10pm because I decided to take the Heathrow Connect instead of the Tube. I had two giant, unwieldy bags with me, one of which should have been charged massive overweight fees for nearing 70lbs but for some reason wasn’t. I could hardly move it at all and certainly couldn’t heft it up stairs or over huge platform gaps. I can swing a 65lb child on my hip with ease, but I can’t move a 70lb bag. I guess it’s true about dead weight being/seeming heavier.
The Heathrow Connect is the slower, cheaper version of the Heathrow Express. It’s still ostensibly faster than the Tube, costs a bit less than a Zone 1-4 ticket, and leaves you off in Zone 1 at London Paddington station. From there I only had a few stops to my hotel on the Tube. Because it was for people coming to or going from the airport I figured there would be ample luggage space. On paper it was a brilliant idea. In practice the Heathrow Connect only came once an hour, every station I changed at had about 23909823 steps to schlep my suitcases up and down, and the Tube station was about a mile away from my hotel. Without the kindness of complete strangers who helped me carry my bags, to say nothing of the people who directed me to my hotel (and in some cases misdirected, but they were well-intentioned), I would have collapsed in a London gutter and died. Of course I would have been robbed of all my belongings first, but collapsing, gutters and death would have followed closely behind. As it is it was something of a miracle that I arrived at my hotel whole and with my luggage merely stylishly distressed.
I almost cried with happiness when I finally got to the Langland Hotel. The man behind the front desk explained to me that the toilet was in the basement and the shower was upstairs and I exclaimed “wonderful!” I was then shown into a room approximately the size of the bed it contained, which left me with very few options about where to put my luggage. There was free WiFi and a free breakfast every morning, so all-in-all it was fine. I’m really not a snob when it comes to hotels. The only reason I sprang for a budget hotel instead of a hostel was because I needed a secure place to leave my bags! The walls were paper-thin though, so I didn’t get much sleep. I spent most nights banging on my wall and shouting at the people in the next room that I could hear every word they were saying, so surely they could shut up at 3am? They were Americans, so don’t worry I wasn’t contributing to our poor international reputation.
I genuinely intended to wake up in time for breakfast on Friday, but I was tired enough to sleep right through it. I then went to get a mobile since I felt a bit naked without one. This is sad because I really hated them until about a year ago. I got a cute enough phone with decently cheap service, and thus far very good network coverage. My SIM card is Mobile World, which is sold by Carphone Warehouse and meant specifically for international calls, and it’s carried by T-Mobile. Considering how spotty their coverage is at home, I was amazed at the clarity of my calls. Even with the crap exchange rate my phone here, which is nicer, cost less than my phone at home and calling and texting prices are similar.
I spent the rest of the day on Friday at the British Museum, which featured such gems as a necklace made of bird heads, the Elgin Marbles and my favorite gallery in any museum anywhere, the Enlightenment Room. It’s an exhibit explaining the origin of the British Museum AND the thought processes behind Enlightenment era collecting aka wunderkammer and pseudo-science! It’s wonderful. (On a somewhat related note, I didn’t get to the Sir John Soane Museum. I was carrying my laptop around that day, so my bag was too large. Next time…)
Dear 18th Century-
I missed you. Let’s have babies.
Love, Kirsten
On Saturday I went to Westminster Abbey, as I’d never been. It was beautiful! I enjoy old graveyards normally, but this was simply exquisite. A lot of famous dead people, and some fairly hilarious memorials. My favorites were the 16th and 17th century ones where the statues of the deceased are reclined on their pillows, but not lying down as dead people ought to. Instead they are lying rather coquettishly on their sides, with their elbows resting on a pillow and their head supported by their hand. I wish I had been allowed to take pictures inside the Abbey proper so that I could demonstrate. Alas I could only take pictures of:
The oldest door in Britain! Don’t ask why that picture is so large. I re-sized it, but it seems that the oldest door in Britain is having none of it. You might be able to read the sign at this size.
The cloisters. Pretty!
There was loads more and I do have pictures, but I got sick of uploading and re-sizing them. You know how I know this? I wrote everything prior to this paragraph two days ago!
Without further ado…
After Westminster Abbey I went to St Pancras station to buy my rail ticket for the following day. I was also casing the route there to see if I would be able to make it on the Tube with my giant bags. There were too many stairs and there was construction, so the verdict was no. This meant the painful decision to pay for a London taxi the next day. I had originally planned on going to the Tate Modern on Saturday afternoon, but upon seeing the Tube ads about a Millais exhibit at the Tate Britain I decided to try that instead.
If anyone has ever managed to locate the Tate Britain from the Pimlico station stop, I’d love to hear from you. Not only did I wander in every conceivable direction, but I also saw many others doing the same. The signs for the museum just pointed sort of vaguely away from the Tube station so they were no help. Several of my fellow wanderers asked for directions and then struck off towards a variety of compass points. I’m sure some of them must have found the museum since I didn’t see them again, but at least one weary soul joined me on the Tube about a half-hour later.
All-in-all it was a very uneventful, even dull, trip to London. Parts of it were fun or interesting, but it was lonely traveling alone plus I was wildly jet-lagged the entire time.
Next up: The East Midlands
Here I sit at Newark Liberty International Airport, awaiting my 8:05am flight to London Heathrow. Annoyingly, the network here (which cost a pretty penny to get on) won’t let me access either gmail or LJ. Alas. I was going to take a picture with my web-cam to show you how very exciting the airport lounge is, but I looked like such crap that I nixed that option. You will just have to take my word for it that blue plastic seats and a tiny duty-free = gorgeous. Or at least as gorgeous as I look following my 2 hours of sleep last night.
I just exchanged $653 for 290GBP. This made me want to sob. I could have sworn the exchange rate wasn’t quite that bad…. In fact, I just checked online. It’s not, it’s just those stupid bureaux de change I guess. Well, I suppose it’s the credit card for me from now on!
I don’t know what else to say. I’m still not sure how moving my bags through the Tube is going to work, but I guess we’ll find out. Of course by then I will no longer have this Wi-Fi access, so you might have to wait a few days to hear about it. Hopefully there will be pictures next time.
To all my dear friends and family, I love you and will miss you fiercely. I don’t always show it and I almost never say it, but you’re all very important to me and I love you. Three months isn’t such a terribly long time, and the Atlantic is called “the pond” for a reason. Never mind that the reason is ironic understatement… Thank you for allowing me to go and have this experience of a lifetime and, in many cases, aiding and abetting me! I hope it turns out to be everything we hope it will.
My tuition payments worked out. All I had to do was call and authorize the charge before I made it. Apparently generally authorizing charges from abroad is not enough; specific charges have to be verified separately. That’s not going to get annoying at all.
There’s also an update in the financial aid situation. Leicester never received any of the documents I sent to them, including the Student Aid Report that it takes the government over 15 days to mail. I’m not exactly going to be home in 15 days to forward that on to Leicester. Luckily the lady I spoke with was extremely helpful and–provided Uncle Sam doesn’t mess up–the SAR should be shipping directly to her.
This brings me to my rant. I did plan for this blog to be narrative, but I’m going to take a moment to rail against the U.S. Postal Service.
It sucks.
That’s the short version. The long version is that this is certainly not the first mail of mine that the Postal Service has lost, though it is the first containing sensitive financial information. If you don’t pay extra to insure and track your package I’m convinced they just throw it on the trash heap because they know you can’t go after them. Even without tracking and insurance I paid $28 to send my financial aid documents to Leicester, and somehow they never got there. I partially attribute this to the fact that my post office is staffed by the single most incompetent man on the planet. I wanted to overnight everything, but I was told that Global Priority Shipping was not actually global. I would have to send everything via another method (can’t recall the name) and it would take 5 days. It still cost $28. And, let me repeat, it never got there. This was before I discovered FedEx, which I never would have explored had mail arrived at my house on time. I’m almost positive the delay in my mail occurs once it reaches the US, since everything has been sent to me via Air Mail.
In short, write by W.A.S.T.E. Or e-mail. Or spring for the $40 package that you know will arrive, as opposed to the $28 for nothing.
Also I’m sick, which will be a joy as I go through customs and try to explain that my hacking cough isn’t actually TB.
Today I tried to give the University of Leicester many thousands of dollars and they didn’t want it.
Hopefully tomorrow they will recognize my American credit card.
When I said that there was a more clever entry to follow I’m sure you didn’t think I meant in a week. I’d also bet that you figured it would be a whole lot more clever than this.
————————————————————-
Visa - It’s Everywhere You Want to Be
ACT II
SCENE 1
KIRSTEN: Panic, panic, panic, there is no way that I have all the financial information I need. Alas, for tomorrow morning I will be unceremoniously kicked out on my rear and into the middle of 3rd Ave. But the humiliation will not end there! I will forevermore have to list my rejected visa application on all future visa applications.
The screen fades dramatically to black, while ominous music plays. Perhaps there is a Hitchcock walk-on, if the budget allows and the neighborhood necromancer has a bit of spare time.
SCENE 2
KIRSTEN: I will take a taxi so as to not tempt fate into making me late.
CABBIE: You’re from Staten Island? So am I!
KIRSTEN: How lovely. However, I’m too nervous to talk to you right now. I need to focus all my attention on deep breathing.
SCENE 3
CONSULATE SECURITY: You’re 45 minutes early…
KIRSTEN: Go me!
CONSULATE SECURITY: …so I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to line up outside the building until your appointment time.
KIRSTEN: Line up? Surely you meant to say queue.
CONSULATE SECURITY: No, I’m pretty sure I meant line up.
KIRSTEN: How disappointing.
CONSULATE SECURITY: I’m an American. So are you, in case you’ve had a brief lapse. We line up.
KIRSTEN: I appear to have gone momentarily deaf.
SCENE 4
LADY PILOT: Hi, I’ve been trying to book an appointment for weeks now but the online form has been giving me trouble. I’m a pilot and I can’t send my passport away for any length of time so I really need to get this done in person.
MAN: Oh. my. Gosh! I’m having the exact same problem! TWINS!
CONSULATE SECURITY: I’m not really sure this is my jurisdiction.
KIRSTEN: (aside) And to think, the situation could have been much more dramatic! I could be coming here without an appointment because the website hates me.
45 minutes later, our heroine is walking through security and LADY PILOT and MAN are being allowed to book an appointment in person. Justice prevails, thanks to CONSULATE SECURITY!
SCENE 5
KIRSTEN’S HEART: I’m actually on the verge of going into arrhythmia, so maybe you could do me a teensy favor and calm down a bit?
KIRSTEN’S ADRENAL GLANDS: NOT BLOODY LIKELY!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!1!
PHOTO-BOOTH: I am a cleverly placed courtesy to the forgetful amongst you, and I speak in a soothing British accent.
OTHER PEOPLE: are nervously silent
SCENE 6
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Next!
KIRSTEN: Crap.
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Hello! And what can I do for you today? A student visa? Wonderful! What school?
KIRSTEN: The University of Leicester.
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Excellent! I’ll just take your passport and your acceptance letter from you for a moment so I can make copies.
A moment passes. It is a very tense moment.
VISA WINDOW DUDE: Well that seems to be in order! I’ll just hold on to your passport so we can put the visa in, and you can collect it in an hour. Cheers!
In stunned silence, Kirsten puts her financial documentation away.
KIRSTEN’S HEART: Well thank God that’s over.
THE END
————————————————————-
So, you see, the whole thing was a bit anti-climactic. I don’t know why they didn’t check my financial documentation, though of course I like to think it was because I look independently wealthy. (It was probably more along the lines of “Well she’s not wearing a potato sack at any rate, plus this queue is rather long. Let’s hurry it up, then!”)
Once I picked up my visa I scurried home to make my travel arrangements because at long last I could. How liberating to finally be able to drop hundreds of dollars on airfare! I leave next Thursday, September 20th. I’ll be in London until the 23rd, then I go to Nottingham to meet up with my friend and old flatmate Rebecca who is just finishing up her MA there. On the 25th I am able to check into my housing at Leicester.
Oh yes, I am staying in campus housing. I didn’t plan on it initially because I didn’t want to be locked into a 42-week contract at extortionate rates, but in the end I was too chicken to just arrive and risk homelessness. Plus the rates and contract lengths were essentially the same, so I opted for a bit of security. Of course I opted at the last possible minute and had to send my application via FedEx to nip in under the deadline.
I finally got my housing assignment Wednesday night. I had just stumbled in from the bar (which is not really as debauched as all that, since Wednesday was my last day of work) so I didn’t get much of a look at it beyond the fact that I had someplace to live. On Thursday morning I checked my email and there was a message stating that because I hadn’t responded to my housing offer by the 11th (Tuesday) it was being rescinded! How long does the USPS hold mail at customs? I’m thinking it must be at least a week, because the speed of service between Leicester and New York has been atrocious.
Luckily, several phone calls and emails later, I was able to send in scans of my housing contract and I will no longer be homeless. Unfortunately for me, neither will I have hot water nor be anywhere near the Department of Museum Studies, but such are the rewards of flying by the seat of one’s pants. Additionally, my cold-water flat is on the ground floor and there’s a clause in my housing contract that I’m liable for any damage thieves do to my window when they smash it in to steal all of my belongings. Fan-frigging-tastic.
This entry might not do a good job of conveying it, but I’m actually really excited. Less than a week!
Originally uploaded by nerdgasms
One thing that I really hate about flickr is that I appear to have to compose my entries here rather than over at WordPress.
Alas, for it is late(-ish… I’m kind of an old lady) and I have been drinking, so this crap entry will have to do for now anyway.
Tomorrow I go to the British consulate to officially apply for my student visa. I am scared shitless.
I am noticeably lacking in the financial documentation area of my application, and because this is a drama that predates the creation of this blog I will relate it to you now. In play form. Because it is dramatic.
————————
Visa - It’s Everywhere You Want to Be
ACT I
SCENE 1
FAFSA: Leave your email address off of me, and Uncle Sam will send you your Student Aid Report in 15 days.
20 days later…
KIRSTEN: It’s odd that I haven’t gotten my SAR yet. I thought Uncle Sam couldn’t tell a lie? Or was that little Georgie Washington?
UNCLE SAM: Surprise! You actually have to call and request your SAR.
KIRSTEN: It would have been nice if you’d told me that from the start.
UNCLE SAM: But that would spoil the surprise! Your SAR will arrive in 15 days.
SCENE 2
KIRSTEN: Well crap. This delay guarantees that my financial aid stuff won’t be processed by the time I apply for my visa. How am I going to prove to John Bull* that I have at least $34,000 to burn? Wangst, wangst, wangst…
*John Bull = the cartoon Uncle Sam was modeled off of. On the off-chance that you didn’t know.
DAD: I will generously loan you an exceedingly large sum, so that you can produce bank statements showing the necessary funds.
KIRSTEN: Sweet! All my problems are solved!
DAD: Actually, now that you mention it, you might still have one problem.
KIRSTEN: Crap.
DAD: The exceedingly large sum is hiding out in a secure location and won’t be reachable (or transferable) until we’ve returned from vacation a week hence.
KIRSTEN: Crap. Now my bank statement is going to be issued without the large sum on it.
DAD: Life’s a bitch. Go to the bank and get them to print something out.
KIRSTEN: Hmmm, this plan seems viable but I remain wary.
SCENE 3
BANK LADY: You want me to print something out showing all the funds in your accounts? No problem! Here you go!
KIRSTEN: Wow, that was easy.
PRINTOUT: Hello, I am the most unofficial looking piece of paper you have ever held in your hands. The Citibank logo in my upper left-hand corner is actually pixelated! Could you have cooked me up on your home computer? Why, certainly! In fact you might have been able to do better.
KIRSTEN: Crap.
SCENE 4
KIRSTEN: Hi, I got this printout here? And it looks like a 12 year old made it? And I need it to look really, really official so that I can get a visa. Is there possibly something you can do to help me?
BANK LADY #2: I think what you should do is come back on or after the 8th of the month, because that’s when your statement period begins and ends. The exceedingly large sum won’t show up on anything official until then.
KIRSTEN: That would be really fantastic except for the part where my appointment at the consulate is on the 7th. You might have mentioned this when I was in here earlier.
BANK LADY #2: Oh, you didn’t speak to me before. That was another lady. Here, I will give you her card on the off-chance that that she actually remembers helping you AND that the consulate is in the habit of making phone calls to verify fake-looking printouts.
KIRSTEN: Brilliant. This seems like a completely fool-proof solution and my mind is now totally at ease.
SCENE 5
KIRSTEN: Crap.
DAD: I think you might need to expand your vocabulary a bit.
KIRSTEN: Fucking bugger ass-shit.
DAD: I think we might be having communication problems.
fin
Stay tuned for Act II.
|
10:57 AM | Delivered |
Apparently sending packages around in really a counter-productive manner is just a side-effect of the holiday weekend.
Now it would be nice if I could hear back from someone at Leicester with those reassurances that I will actually be able to register… and that I requested days ago.
It would seem that FedEx has marked my package as having arrived. Where has it arrived? Newark, NJ. This was, incidentally, its point of origin. It left out of Newark, was routed through Memphis, TN, and has now “arrived” at its destination. Of Newark.
FedEx is closed tomorrow, so they won’t realize their mistake until Tuesday. Which means my package will not arrive at its real destination until 4 days late. And I paid $43.04 for the privilege.
Seriously folks, one outrage after another.
Today I received a packet of information from the University of Leicester, including a 38-pg brochure for international students that I had already received over 2 months ago from all the universities that I am not planning on attending. I had found this brochure online a week ago and was a little perturbed that Leicester didn’t seem to be in the habit of actually mailing things to people, or alerting them to the availability of information. (I had also discovered a bunch of information on applying for your visa. This was not linked through either the Graduate Office or the International Office, my two main points of contact, but via the Student Support and Development Service. I found it by chance after an hour of perusing the vast unconnected wasteland of the University of Leicester’s website. Their offices are so discrete as to not even refer to one another even when their information overlaps. They are desperately in need of a reorganization, and this is not even current bitterness speaking.)
While looking at the website I also discovered the fact that you have to register for classes twice. First you have to pay your tuition, then on 17 September you have to register online. On 1 October you have to register in person.
Nowhere, nowhere on the website was Pre-Registration mentioned. That, however, was the second part of the mailing I got today. It is due to the University by 3 September. I don’t have a blessed idea as to why this mailing reached me at such an absurdly late date. So far I have had to confirm my acceptance of Leicester’s offer of place 3 times. This Pre-Registration amounts to nothing more than a 4th confirmation and an enclosed photo for my ID. I have always returned these superfluous confirmations the day or the day after I received them, so they should have been processed long ago. Yet it somehow appears that I am so low on the mailing-list priority that they figure, heck, America’s not that far. Let’s send it to her really obscenely late and see if she can still get it back to us in two days.
T0 be fair, it might not be the University’s fault. It might be Royal Mail. It might be the US Postal Service. It might be Customs. It might be a combination of all potential culprits. I don’t know yet, because I haven’t had a reply to my email (which is a shorter and more accusatory version of the exceedingly polite letter I enclosed with my forms) and Royal Mail appears to be anti-postmark so I have no idea when my package was sent.
I went to FedEx to overnight it, but apparently US companies take US holidays off even when they’re in other countries. So Monday 3 September? The date Leicester expects to receive my registration by? Labor Day. Even $43.04 will not expedite my package to arrive any earlier than the 4th.
If this impedes my ability to register for classes this year I will scream so loudly that you’ll be able to hear it.
