Category Archive

I have this half-written post somewhere about how I am not numbering my posts anymore, but clearly I have not gotten around to posting it–or anything else for that matter–in the past month. Perhaps I should have some sort of “at least once a month” guarantee which, if broken, gives you the right to come bang down my door and pummel me with whatever you’ve got to hand. However, it might not translate into practice very well because my door has an uncanny tendency to be on one side of the Atlantic half the time and on the other side for the rest. Odds are that it’s the people who are in America when I’m in the UK who actually want updates and who would likewise want to beat my door down with spatulas.

Well lucky for you, I am in the US right this very minute!

It was a trying process to get here though, and because we all know how fervidly I believe in the power of positivity, I am going to recount it to you. In agonizing detail. So you’ll feel like you were there.

My day started at the sunny hour of 4:30am GMT, when I showered, finished packing, and called a taxi. The taxi picked me up at 7 and dropped me at the delightfully classy St. Margaret’s Coach Station, where I waited until about 8:10 for my coach to deign to arrive. It turned out they actually only had about 10 seats on the coach to Heathrow and about 40 people with tickets, so they had to put most of us on a coach bound for Gatwick. This had to detour to drop us off, much to the delight of the Gatwick-bound passengers I’m sure. Being as parannoid as I am about time I had planned to arrive at the airport very early, so the fact that the coach took an extra hour to arrive wasn’t too bad for me. At about 11am we got to Heathrow and had to get on another coach to go to Terminal 4. Sheesh, I had no idea how far away from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 it was! It took us about 15 minutes! That’s practically in another county!

An hour in the check-in queue, an hour in the security queue (which wrapped around the outside of the terminal), and several vows to never fly at Christmas ever ever again later and I was standing around unbuttoning my fly for the nice security people. While they were touching me rather thoroughly I of course I apologized profusely for causing trouble by setting off their metal detectors for no discernable reason, which I think is proof positive that I wasn’t leaving the UK a minute too soon! I also apologized quite a bit to the woman who came up to me when I was pulling my boots back on to inform me that they were going to perform an explosives test on my toiletries. Apparently I was very suspicious looking yesterday. She took me off to the side where they have this little makeshift lab on a cart, and she squeezed bits of my toiletries out onto some paper strips. I guess they were supposed to change colors if I was packing radioactive material? Or something? I thought bomb components could be quite innocuous things when not combined, so I’m not sure how useful this testing is, but I guess it’s cool that they’re able to do it.

I then proceeded to kill a lot of time in the duty free shops. My flight was supposed to be at 2:45, but at around 2:30 they came out to tell us that it was canceled and we’d better go to the customer service desk to reschedule. We made a mad dash to the desk and when we got there were informed by the alarmed looking lady that our flight was delayed until 4pm, not canceled. Wherever could we have gotten such a silly idea? 3:30 rolls around and we go to board our flight, walk down the gangplank (what do you call the aeronautical equivalent? I don’t know) and into our awaiting…buses.

No one said anything, we were just loaded into buses like little, sheep-like sardines. We were then driven away from Terminal 4 and brought to British Airways shipping and freight area, where we boarded our plane.

And then the plane didn’t have sound on the entertainment system, so half our viewing options were only available in Spanish. Yo amo Hairspray!

And then there were about 10 immigration lines open for non-US citizens and only 4 for US citizens. This is an exact reversal of what it’s like in Europe, where EU people breeze through and non-EU people have to wait forever. Which, if you have to make some people wait forever, is as it should be. WTF America? Of course I got in the line for the VERY slow immigration officer, who wanted to chat with everybody and got nasty when people didn’t want to chat back and just wanted to get the fuck out of there. He moved 4 people in the time it took every other line (all 3 of them) to move 12+ each.

8pm EST (1am GMT) and I was finally home!

I think I might be substitute teaching or something to make a buck while I’m home, but for now I’m just delighting in my new mattress, spending US dollars and eating good food.

I was going to elaborate more, but I have to pack up this computer now and send it off to be fixed.

I’m going to start off by apologizing to any Leicester people who read this, since I’ve set these entries to upload as Facebook notes when I make them. I know I’ve probably complained to you about the vast majority of this already! Also I’m sorry for my gratuitous use of British cussing in the title. Except that I’m not. How could I resist? The title I wanted to opt for, “The Latest Outrage,” is probably my most-used blogging title of all time. It’s time for a change!

So what’s bothering me today? Much like Andy Rooney, I am quite eager to tell you.

I haven’t slept properly in days.

My bedroom is directly next to the toilet for my flat. This has actually been fine as the toilets themselves aren’t particularly noisy. The fans, however, have been a nightmare. On Monday one of them (because as near as I can tell there are two, and one is much louder than the other!) began running non-stop for hours on end. I put in a maintenance request and included an aside that one of my flatmates had put a sign on one of the toilets saying it didn’t work.

The next morning the nature of the fan problem changed. Instead of whirring constantly, which at least provided white noise, it switched to a pattern of whirring for a few seconds and then going silent, then whirring again and so on. I was in my room when the folks from maintenance came in to look at the toilet and it was doing this on and off whirring when they were there. I assumed they would do something, rejoiced and went on my way to class. Of course, Tuesday night was a night of continuous interruption. I sent an email to the Accommodation Office because I figured my problem hadn’t been attended to yet and I didn’t want to file another request form while one was still outstanding. I let them know that the fan was no longer running continuously and was instead going in spurts.

Wednesday I get a note under the door (because that is the way maintenance communicates with you. Heaven forfend we use email or anything so people have a way to respond) saying that no fault had been found. So Wednesday night = again no sleep. And then some clown decided to pull the fire alarm at 3am, causing everyone in Blocks A&B to have to rush outside in the freezing cold. I had just managed to fall asleep at 2. I was Very Unamused.

I sent in another maintenance request today stating that yes, there is a fault!  And could they at least please try to find it? And if they aren’t going to do that at least have the courtesy to tell me as much so I can request a housing transfer? Because they have a policy of “We’ll get to it when we get to it, unless it’s an immediate threat to health and safety” I also mentioned how this was quickly becoming a health issue as I grew more and more sleep deprived.

And lo! Someone responded to me! An actual email, giving the general outline of what they plan to do! It seems that a contractor installed some new fans this summer and they’re faulty. They’ve turned off the fan for the time being because they have to wait until this contractor comes in to replace them. Hey, I’ll take it. I’d rather share my air freshener than listen to that all day and night…

< / pushy American >

Another letter I got under my door last night was the bank letter I’d requested 2 weeks ago from the Graduate Office. They were really backed up because it was the start of term, which is why it took so long. As an international student I need one of these to prove to the bank that I am, in fact, a full-time student and that I really do live where I say I live.

I got to the bank today and the letter was all wrong. It didn’t have the bank name on it, my home (US) address or the dates of my course. I now have to wait for the graduate office to process another letter. Fingers crossed that they put the correct info on it this time!

I promise I’ll try to start doing interesting and blog-worthy (or at least photo-worthy) things very soon! I have a 4-day weekend coming up and I’m trying to recruit people to go someplace fantastic with me.

So, what’s new in your life?