Mood: Irritable
Theme Song: “Break Stuff” - Limp Bizkit
Where to begin? Well, to start with, I’m still in my soon-to-become-epic war with Sky TV/British Telephone. Those morons messed up my order and are telling me they can’t install my telephone line until 23rd February. Apparently, they are so busy that they just can’t get around to it until then. I don’t know what they are so busy doing, but it sure isn’t installing my damn telephone. I can’t get my internet service until my telephone is activated. Once that happens, it will be 10 days for my “rooter” to be sent to me. And they won’t send it to my work, either. So I’ll probably be chasing it down in British post office hell for a good few days. Which means I won’t have internet at home until the 25th of Never. ARGH! The Mensa member I spoke to on the phone today actually told me that if I wasn’t home, they’d just leave my router with my neighbor. As my girl Whitney would say, “Oh hell-to-the-NO!”. Like I want my stuff left with some strangers?! I don’t care if they’re British or American, you don’t leave packages with random people on your street. Bizarre! But after stressing my extreme displeasure, I did get half off my line rental rate for a year, so that’s something.
On Tuesday night, I flew back into London-Gatwick (which really is much easier than London-Heathrow). After navigating immigration - where I had to provide my fingerprints (first time doing that!) - I then had to take the bus from the South Terminal to the North Terminal. I then had to take another bus from the North Terminal to the Long Term Parking Lot. Upon arriving at the lot, the bus driver kept asking me what bus stop I wanted. Hell, I didn’t know. I just knew I was parked in X3. So the driver came to the first sign that said “X” he could find and then stopped to let me out. Before I could ask a question, he was gone. So there I was, alone, in the dark British night, staring at rows and rows of cars. And my car was nowhere in sight. My rental car doesn’t have the alarm feature on the key ring so I was aimlessly wandering up and down the aisles trying to flash the lights and hoping that I wouldn’t get jumped in the meantime. After nearly breaking into tears, I finally found my car and began the laborious navigation back to the motorway.
I know I’ve commented before about the scariness of driving on British roads at night (or in the daytime, for that matter). Something I realized on my trips to and from the airport is that the highways aren’t well-lit either! For those of you in Cincinnati, its ALL like that one scary stretch of I-74 (coming from downtown on I-75) where there aren’t any streetlights. The lanes are smaller and the cars drive like bats out of hell, zipping and zooming and speeding all over - speed cameras be damned. (I later found out that only some of them are actually operational and that most people who drive those roads regularly know which ones to pay attention to). Thanks to my GPS system (sooo glad I sprung for the $100 to upgrade to the UK/Europe package before I left the US), I was able to make it home in one piece and with a minimum of confusion. I think a good sign of how rattled I was is that while flicking through the radio channels in an attempt to find something tolerable, I came across what I thought was Vanilla Ice - and started singing along. Only at the end of the song did I discover that I had been jammin’ to Jedward (can’t explain, just Google it). Oh, the horror. How low I have fallen…
Yesterday at work we had basically an all-day meeting that lasted until 7pm - going over our strategy with various countries and distributors. There was a dinner directly after that, and in typical British fashion it was in a restaurant that was hard to find. Every time I’ve been to a dinner since I’ve been over here, its like a scavenger hunt to find the place. This one, to be fair, was called “The Secret Garden”, so the fact that it wasn’t hard to find was kind of explained by the name. But seriously! I was longing for our well-lit easy to find shopping and dining areas in the U.S.
During dinner, I was talking to one of the VPs at my company and he asked me how I was finding living in England. I told him that I enjoyed it… except for:
- The dreaded washer/dryer
- Lack of streetlights
- Mayonnaise
- Crazy Britpop music (I miss KISS FM! there! I’ve said it! I miss the Clear Channel monstrosity)
- Sky TV
- British drivers
- Exorbitant cost of dry cleaning
And that I have been VERY VERY spoiled by the immediate availability of anything I wanted to buy, and by American customer service. I’m so used to raising a fuss if things aren’t acceptable and having people WANT to fix the problem. It’s just not the same over here. People are much more patient and accepting that not everything will go as planned and that the first thing on everyone’s mind isn’t convenience.
After dinner (I had a broccoli-cheese soup made from local cheeses which was good, but nothing like my Mom’s, and then the entree was sausage and leek with potatoes and lentils and it was surprisingly really good!), I used my GPS to navigate back to my house. Bad choice, as it took me the most “direct” way. Now, in the U.S. that would be just fine. In the UK, it meant taking the dreaded “B” road (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_road_numbering_scheme). The best analogy I have is that its kind of like State Routes in the U.S. - but even they are wider and well-lit.
B roads are numbered local routes, which have lower traffic densities than the main trunk roads, or A roads. They are typically short, not usually more than 15 miles. The classification has nothing to do with the width or quality of the physical road, and B roads can range from dual carriageways to single track roads with passing places. B roads follow the same numbering scheme as A roads, but almost always have 3- and 4-digit designations. Many 3-digit B roads outside the London area are former A roads which have been downgraded owing to new road construction; others may link smaller settlements to A roads.
I think I took B2098 or some such. Let me just say B roads are FREAKING SCARY. If my college friend Stacey K is reading this, she will understand when I say PISGAH FOREST!!! These B roads remind me of some scary serial-killer road you’d see in a horror film. Narrow, pitch-black, and windy. The few I took were out in the middle of nowhere (or at least it looked like that - blackness on either side of me) and I seemed to go uphill and downhill at random. Oh, and the posted speed limit? Usually 40mph or 50mph. These people are crazy!!!
I arrived at home, white-knucked and tense, only to get the heel of my shoe stuck in the pavement outside my house. And then I literally tripped on the heel and fell into my front hall. And this is why I don’t wear heels of any size. They may look good, but I’m a disaster moving around in them. I got home just in time for my 11pm conference call wtih our Japan office, after which I immediately went to bed. Well, okay I did watch about 15 minutes of X-Men 3.
I stopped at Staples on the way in to work today to buy some 4-hole punch binders (they don’t have 3-hole punch… which makes sense since A4 paper is longer than U.S. letter size paper), and the clerk commented on how all Americans say “Have a good day!” or “Have a nice day!”. I didn’t think anything of it until he handed me my purchases and I automatically replied “Thanks! Have a good one!”. Some stereotypes I guess are really true!!
I tried Walker’s Cheese & Onion crisps today - they are pretty good. I am going to be adventurous and try Prawn Cocktail soon. Although it will take me awhile to get to where I can safely eat Badger flavour. (Its not real badger.. don’t know why its called that). I’m off now to my local Waitrose (http://www.waitrose.com/) where I hear I can buy American food. We’ll see…
Counting down the hours until the LOST Season 6 premiere… for some reason, we get it a good few days after the U.S. - its been killing me not to Google it and get spoilers. SO DON’T TELL ME ANYTHING!!! :)
Ok, finally leaving work after a long day, during which all my travel plans for this month changed. No longer going to Canada, Mexico or Japan this month - everythings been moved to March or May. But I think Tokyo in May will be much better anyway, so I’m not upset. There is a chance I’ll be going to Cyprus next month, and that’s also not a bad thing. My life could indeed be worse!
Federman out.
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