Monkey Dust
I was talking to some of my coworkers about Monkey Dust the other day, and what a great freaking show it was. One of the BBC 3 gems that aren't quite mainstream material but are fabulous anyway. The show takes kind of a Robot Chicken format, animated, but is not quite so laugh-out-loud funny. It's more dark commentary on British society and popular culture funny. After living in the UK for six years, there were still some bits of the show that Jamie had to explain to me, as they were so British-centric. Some of the show was a bit more universal.
I have the first season on DVD (region 2). I don't think they released the second or third due to licensing problems with the music, from what I heard. It's a shame because it's really brilliant. Here's a clip, though, marketing agency-themed - appropriate to the discussion we had the other night. :)
Rebranding God
WWO?
World Without Oil :: Document Your Life In The New Reality
I think this is a really interesting project. I believe that most Americans take our low low gas prices for granted and could really benefit from a shift in perception that something like this might bring. I think it's wonderful that something like this has been set up and I think it's even better that they seem to have a lot of participation... including some of my friends! Woo!
Now, I know that in the course of this project the 'price' of oil will rise. This is like, what, week 1? Week 2?
But.
I can't help it. I haven't driven at all since we moved here, so I'm still calibrated to UK gas prices. And I look at $4.25 per gallon and I think: Shit that's cheap!! :>
For comparison, because I haven't done this in a while and just to continue the raising awareness thing:
0.942 pounds/litre * 3.785 litres/gallon * 2.0046 dollars/pound (sweet JESUS when did that happen???) = $7.15 per gallon
Here's a list of what we're all paying (on average) around the United States
So for all of you taking part in this WWO project, I ask you to pause when the price gets up near $7.00. These oil crisis prices are what some people pay everyday. Just a thought.
Six months on
This morning as I was getting ready for work, I realized that Monday marked our six-month anniversary of living in New York. I couldn't really believe it. This time last year, James had already had a month of gardening leave. In a few days, we would leave for Australia. When we came home, the waiting for the visa would begin.
So what has happened in six months?
- We got the visa
- We flew to NYC
- We moved into the Marriott ExecuStay in Chelsea
- James started working
- My brother got married
- We found our flat here in Battery Park City
- We moved into said flat
- I got my first real job in a very long time
- James has taken four trips to India: October, November, January, March
- Somewhere along the way, I picked up about ten pounds of comfort weight :)
It's been... eventful. Stressful. Crazy stressful. Our lives were put on hold for six months while we waited, then within a period of three weeks, we prepared to move, packed up, got all sorts of grief about the move, then finally did it. It was insane, as you all know, because I bored you to tears with it for months.
We're only finally coming down from all of that. Things are only finally normalizing. We're getting into our routines, getting into the swing of this city. Yesterday, for the first time since we moved, I came out of a shop and was disoriented about which way I was supposed to be walking. A testimony to how easy New York is to navigate.
People keep saying to me: Oh it must be so good to finally be home. It always strikes me as a funny thing to say. I'm not home. I'm in a new city I've never lived in, thousands of miles from home. London was the only place I had ever lived as an adult. People will say: How does London compare to Chicago? I have no idea.
That doesn't mean there aren't things about the States I'm loving, though. To name a few:
- Delivery food
- Cheap cabs
- A healthcare system that works (if you have insurance)
- Our gorgeous amazing beautiful apartment
- Living on the river
- Having family close
- A proper office job
- A husband that I actually see in the evenings... more than before, at least
And things I'm missing about the UK:
- The Eagle
- Knowledgeable cabbies
- Hoxton
- All of my awesome friends
- Having a routine
- Oodles of free time
- My niece
- Everything
Okay maybe not everything, but sometimes it feels that way. Even after six months. I don't really have any profound conclusion to this rambling. I just wanted to sort of take a moment to mark this little anniversary. I guess, to sum it all up:
Do I love it here? No.
Will I love it here? Yes, I can see that I almost certainly will.
These things just take time, y'know?
Homesick :(
Today, for some inexplicable reason, I am homesick.
It started last night, when I our spring Australia trip hit me all over again and I realized how fantastic it was. It made me want to go back to Sydney, to the sun, to the water, to the diving. I suggested to Jamie that we go this winter. Obviously that was mostly a joke. :)
But then this morning, I realized I was really wanting to go back to London. I was getting dressed and realized that my outfit was from Jigsaw (a London store) and I really like that store and need to go shopping anyway. Also, I can't find the style of jeans I like here, but I can find them in London. ALSO, Oxford Street. With Esther. And Regent Street. With Esther. And Islington. With Esther. And Borough Market with Gareth and and and.
This is all very shopping-motivated, I know. But eugh I just want to go back.
The amusing thing is that the London I'm envisioning is sunny and bright and warm. Like this summer when I was in jewelry class with Sara (who I MUST email).
London = Home to me, still. :(
I wasn't expecting that
We get our second phone bill. It's over $400.
Included in the calls? A 30 minute ($108) call to a UK cell phone. A 43 minute ($129) call to a UK land line.
WTF?!?!?!
So. Obviously AT&T is appalling for international long distance. Does anyone have any suggestions for an add-on service that will not cost us our souls to say hello to James's family? I knew American long distance wasn't as good as other countries' services but this is INSANE. I am completely stunned.
In the UK, our international long distance bill was around £20 a month... and that included the 45 minute calls I made to my mother every other day.
Update:
I called AT&T and spent 48 minutes on a phone with a woman who barely spoke English. Frustrating. I explained my problem - I was supposed to pay $40 a month for unlimited calls to the UK - and after a long time on hold, she fixed it. And refunded certain expensive calls on my bill.
This would have been a hell of a lot more satisfying if we hadn't had people arriving at the time. I guess that's my problem, for having chosen that time to call, but I really didn't expect it to take that long.
Thanks for all of the suggestions, guys. Believe me when I say that I'm investigating all of them. AT&T can suck it, for all I care.
Duh
Note to self:
When going out in New York (or anywhere in the United States, really), bring photo ID.
TV License
I need to cancel my TV license.
Amusingly, there is No Way to do this. They do not have the concept that one might move out of the United Kingdom and to another country. This amuses me.
Automated Prompt: Please say your new post code.
Me: 10011
AP: Please say your new street name.
Me: 24th Street
AP: Sorry I didn't catch that. Please say your new street name.
Me: 24th Street
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I figured if I did it wrong enough, it would put me through to an actual person. I was wrong. I think it actually changed my address and post code. Duh. I think I'll just cancel the direct debit and call it a day.
Beth & James's First Class Adventure
Yesterday seems a bit like a blur to me, mostly because it went by so fast. I'm very sick with a cold right now and I was all doped up on cold meds most of the day... which started very early. I had to be at the flat at 7AM so I could wait for both the Homechoice guy and the Telewest guy to pick up the cable boxes. We really should've only had one box to worry about, but they'd forgotten to pick up the other ages ago when we cancelled it, so there were two.
James relieved me at around 8:30 and we went to Starbucks before he came back to let the cleaner in and I went to the hotel to rest and shower and stuff. We had to call the guy who was supposed to pick up our keys at 12:45 (he was supposed to be there at 12:30) and ask him where he was. He reckoned he could get to Shoreditch from Baker Street in 15 minutes by tube. We laughed and ended up leaving the keys with the cleaner.
The car (a Merc people carrier to deal with all of our luggage) came to take us to the airport at 1:00.
Packing for six weeks is difficult. Packing for six weeks and making sure your suitcases don't weigh more than 27kg is even more difficult. We didn't quite succeed there. Our heaviest bag was 27.7kg, but the lady was nice and didn't charge us the $25 extra she was supposed to. When we were checking in (remember, James upgraded us to 1st class) they told us they'd overbooked 1st class and did we did we want to blah blah blah... We weren't appalled but we were a little upset at the prospect of not being able to enjoy our big treat. That said, we didn't get bumped, which is very good.
The first class lounge was nice. :) Quiet. With good wine. And internet. Mmmm.
American is upgrading their first class cabins on trans-continental flights. We got one of these new planes - bonus! Not only did the seats flatten into beds, AND the armrests dropped all the way down so you had more space, the chairs swivelled so you could face the person next to you when you ate and such.
Of course... James didn't get a seat next to me. He got a seat on the other side of the plane. The nice man beside us didn't have a problem with moving, though, so that was good. And we did get to eat facing each other! It was cool!
First class food is different from business class food. They have a salad cart they come around with, so you can make your own salad. And a cheese cart. And a desert cart. Yum! Also, they give you little video tapes so you can watch what you want when you want and pause it and such.
James saw An Inconvenient Truth and I saw Poseidon. I was going to see the former, but they'd run out of that one by the time they got around to me, and when James had finished watching his, I was sleepy. So I slept.
I think the Night Nurse helped with that. Also, the seat/beds were comfortable! We landed and got to the gate and such and as we were getting off of the plane, I felt awful. We got to immigration and queued in the citizen/resident queue (which our lawyers told us to do) for a while, then they told us we had to go to the immigrant queue to get James's visa processed. Fucking lawyers.
By that time I was barely able to stand up, sweating, looked like death warmed over. So we had to take a time-out while I forcibly got over that. Much better.
The second time around, we did get processed. The immigration officer was lovely and nice and joked with us that it wasn't too late for us to go back to England or me to dump James before he finished the paperwork. James had to be fingerprinted and his paperwork was all scrutinized, and then that was it. All done.
The immigration officer was packing heat. This surprised me.
We found our towncar without too much trouble and were ferried to our ExecuStay where we will be living for the next six weeks. There's a Whole Foods on one corner and a Starbucks a block away, so I'm pleased. We haven't gotten our internet working yet, but someone in a room around us has unprotected wifi so we're stealing for now.
This afternoon: apartment hunting. I'm superexcited as one of the places I really liked (not the Verdesian, but another one) is still on the market and has come down in price! And it's 1270 sq ft! We may have a winner....
Anyway, let me know if you need my contact details. They are readily availabe. :)
Various Bits
Photos of our leaving party have surfaced on flickr. Some are fantastic, some just amusing. Check them out for yourself:
www.flickr.com
|
We're moved out - last night we stayed at a hotel. This morning I'm back at the flat waiting for the Homechoice person to come pick up the cable box and also the cleaners to come and clean the place. We get checked out at 12:30. Our car comes at 1:00. It was amusing checking into the hotel with four bulging suitcases and two carryons... for one night. I'm sure they thought we were nuts.
There was broadband in the hotel room, but via Ethernet. Because we are packed for six weeks in a corporate apartment, and we are two people with two laptops that both need the net, we have our AirPort in our plane luggage. So we set the AirPort up in the hotel room and shared the net that way. It amused me to no end. Bring your own WiFi! Is there no end to our nerdiness?
I think the Diet Coke machine at McDonald's is hooked up to regular Coke. BLECH.
Last Stretch
Our flat is more than half empty. Somehow, we managed to finish sorting stuff out last night and the movers came this morning to finish up the job. They're disassembling the big stuff now. The little stuff is already in the container, ready to be shipped.
We left pretty early, to get out of their way and also to use the internet at our local Starbucks. We were there for a few hours, then came back to see how the movers were doing (wow - they'd already started loading the container, by then).
After that, we went to The Shepherdess for lunch. It's a cute little cafe on the corner, run by a South African woman who's been here long enough that you can now hear the Hackney in her accent. She was very friendly (as always), and surprised we were moving away. She shook our hands and told us it was nice knowing us. And it reminded me of how much I'll miss our neighborhood.
It's a completely wretched day. Gloomy and rainy and very dark. Quite Londony, when you get right down to it. The last couple days have been punctuated by visits from friends. Some last visits, some meant to be last visits, but not actually turning out to be. I'm so sad to leave everybody, more than anything else, and it makes me feel very loved that my friends are sad to see us leave, as well.
We've finished the most tedious part of the move: the customs and insurance paperwork. We had to fill out two forms: one for air freight, one for sea freight, and list out everything we owned and how much it was all worth, should we have to replace it. The figure was surprising. It's mostly electronics. Our projector TV. The computers.
The movers think they'll be finished around 3:00. We need to check into our hotel at some point, and I should continue calling utilities and such and canceling things.
Then, tomorrow, we go.
