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Better living through poverty

Sunday, October 18, 2009

James and I typically like to keep things pretty tidy, have discovered a new way to keep things ship shape.

Now I already subscribe to the minimalist school, having less stuff means having less stuff lying all over the place making it untidy. But certain things you might have considered essentials?

Take a dish rack, for instance. They’re fairly cheap, you can get a crappy one at the pound store. But we figured that was one pound we could spend on beer instead. As a result, we have to dry and put away all our dishes just as soon as they’ve been washed. And our counters are always tidy as a result.

Or a laundry hamper. These cannot be had for less than £15, actually. Not if you want a decent looking one anyway, instead of a POS from Ikea. So all our dirty clothes go straight into the washing machine instead. And when they’re done, they go straight onto the drying rack. And when they’re dry, they go straight back into the drawers. Presto! Never any dirty clothes lying about.

Poverty’s not all bad.

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Settling into a routine

Friday, October 9, 2009

Classes started this week for me, and James starts his new job Monday morning, so we’ve begun to settle into our routine.  My schedule is fairly good, except for the Friday thing.  I have classes Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays – would much rather have Fridays off.  But as long as I’m diligent enough to keep Wednesdays and Thursdays for my reading and writing, I should generally be able to have weekends.

Speaking of reading – oof!  I’ve had one lecture for each of my three classes (well four, but I’m auditing one) and have already gone through 8 books.  I returned 5 of them this morning (and yes, I did read at least one chapter from each) and I’ve got 4 more beside me to check out.  Plus the study packs of course.  The good news is there are no required texts and the study packs are all under £20.

All of my classes have one hour of lecture per week, plus two hours tutorial.  We’re expected to discuss the readings during the tutorial; the course outline lists some discussion questions to think of as well as one or two possible essay topics.  Each class is assessed by one essay (3,000-5,000 words) and one final exam, and one course has a 2,000 word book review as well.  Not too much work actually, but it is expected to be of excellent quality.

I’m feeling quite on top of things, even though it’s only the first week.  As long as I can maintain that position, things should work out very well for us.

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I need a bike!

Monday, September 28, 2009

I left my house early this morning to go to school – not that classes have started or anything, in fact I’m not supposed to enrol until tomorrow – but there were free yoga classes at the Institute of Education, so I decided to go to the 9 am one.  My commute – 4.8 miles – took just over an hour on the bus.  The 73 if you want to know.  The bus was constantly being passed by cyclists and I wished I was out riding instead of being sat on the stupid bus.

Yoga was pretty good, I’d never done kundalini before, only hatha, so it was a little different and I was a bit out of practice, so some of the postures were actually pretty hard for me.  I did enjoy it though and I always like morning yoga.

I’m at the British Library again, it’s quite close to the school and has free wireless, plus I took the opportunity to look around some of their Treasures collection.  It includes the original handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Codices Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus among many other things.

It’s Orientation Week, so there are all kinds of events scheduled – this afternoon I’m planning on going to a scavenger hunt type thing at 1 and there’s an afternoon tea put on by the Christian Union at 3.  There’s also a foam party at some nightclub but the odds of me making an appearance there are extremely low.

On the husband front, James is pretty much done packing, will spend today cleaning, leave tomorrow, and arrive Wednesday!  I’m extremely happy about that.

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Flat hunting success! and coping strategies

Friday, September 25, 2009

This’ll be a brief post, since I’m internetless and reliant on the library for the moment. Anyway, I found a nice flat in Stoke Newington and moved in on Tuesday. A few thins that still need to be taken care of are all the utilities, and a good chunk of the furnishing. Utilities are almost never included in the rent here, and the tenant generally deals with the utility company himself rather than through the landlord. Electric is easy, it’s often pay as you go – out in the hall there’s a little slot with a key card, and when I run out I take it down to the shop and top it up. I haven’t worked out gas, water, or internet yet. Internet will, unfortunately, take a while. And free wireless is hard to find. In any case, I’ve got a home.

Something that is a bit hard about it though is loneliness. For the first two weeks when I was couch-surfing I always had a friend around, but not anymore. A few things I’ve been doing to help cope with the alone time, homesicknss, and husbandlessness: first, knitting. I started a sock in the airport waiting for my flight here, and finished it a few days ago. Then when I moved in I started the second sock. Every time I start getting upset about whatever’s happening – missing James or whatever – I work on my sock. Sounds cheesy, but it helps.

I’ve also been taking lots of walks around the neighbourhood. I really like it a lot, and the weather has been rather helpful. Today was a gorgeous warm sunny autumn day, and I took a nice walk around Clissold Park. It was beautiful, and really helped me feel a lot better.

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Lost in London

Sunday, September 13, 2009

I arrived in London on Wednesday the 9th, and have been pretty busy since then.

One dilemma that newcomers can face is finding a flat and a bank account.  A lot of people may find they need one to get the other.  I popped into HSBC and found it fairly easy to get an account there – they have a Passport account for newcomers to the country.  Now I don’t know how good this account actually is, it costs £8 a month and I don’t know if the account benefits in themselves are worth that, but the main benefit is that I can get one of these accounts without a UK address, and thus I can actually get a flat here.

I also have a cell phone for the first time in my life.  So far I’ve managed not to turn into a zombie, we’ll see how long that lasts.  It was fairly easy, a SIM card with a phone number was £3, having it unlocked cost £6, and I got a £15 pay-as-you-go plan which I think gives me 200 minutes and 100 texts and unlimited airtime to other phones on the same network.  Not too shabby I guess.

So I’m back to my old nemesis, flat hunting.  It’s nerve wracking for me really, balancing proximity to school, budget, size, and how nice the flat/neighbourhood is.  Our budget is fairly rigid, I don’t think we can go much higher than £800 a month.  Proximity is the next most rigid, staying within 5 miles or zone 2 would be really really ideal.  As for attractiveness we’re more flexible, we don’t mind sketchy areas as long as they’re not actually dangerous.  We decided size is most flexible, to a point.  As long as there actually is a bit of living space, you know.  Given the same rent we’d take a smaller flat in a nicer neighbourhood.

So that’s our most pressing issue at the moment, I’ve looked at two flats and have walked around several different neighbourhoods to get a feel for them.  One of the flats was fairly decent but I hesitate to pick one of the first few, since I just don’t have any frame of reference.  Tomorrow I’ll be heading out to a couple more and stopping in at a few estate agents.  Wish me luck!

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A week of lasts

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Good news, the visas have landed! I got an email last Tuesday saying that they’d been issued, and they were delivered two days later. Very happy news.

So that kicked off a week of frantic activity – booking flights, packing, getting rid of more things, putting more things in storage, and so on.

It’s also been an emotional week for me. I finished up with work, my first proper job out of university. My last run of the gauntlet that is Dunsmuir Street at 8:45 on a weekday morning. My last visit to the bike shop. My last Main St. hill bomb (and it was an excellent bomb). Last stroll down Commercial Drive, last visit to the beach, last time seeing my friends. Last paycheque… eek!

Tonight’s my last night at this house, and I’m really emotional about that too since it is indisputably the best apartment in the world. I made some excellent potato leek soup (from potatoes and leeks we grew in our own garden!) and had our last dinner on the porch, which has become one of our favourite summer traditions.

I’m kind of wondering if I’ll wake up in London on Wednesday going “Oh NO, what the shit have I DONE!?” I don’t know what exactly is in store for me but I know it’s going to be exciting and it’s going to be fun.

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UK Student Visa, aka PBS Tier 4, aka The Devil’s Work

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Applying for a UK student visa is a process fraught with bureaucracy and idiocy.  I mailed mine today (99% sure everything is correct) and so I’m going to write a little bit about the process.

First, if you live in Canada or the US (and possibly other countries, I don’t know) you have to go through their commercial partner, which is WorldBridge.  Their site really offers no information at all, and if you try to email them for any answers you will get only a ridiculous form letter.  I don’t think they actually read the emails at all.

They do have a phone number you can call – two actually, a 900 number which charges $3.20 US per minute, or one based in Montreal which is a $12 flat rate.  I recommend the latter.  While you’re going through the application and the policy guidance, write down any questions you have and save them up.

This is important: When you call WorldBridge, before you get a human on the line,  pay attention.  Right after you put in your credit card details they’ll give you a PIN which you can supposedly use to make more calls later and not have to pay again.  But the robot voice doesn’t tell you she’s about to give you a number and to make sure you have paper and pen handy, she just launches right into it.  I didn’t get it written down correctly, so I wasn’t able to try calling back.

The WorldBridge call centre people are very nice and helpful but the man with whom I spoke made at least one mistake; he told me that my husband would only be able to work part time.  I’ve got a few acquaintances in the UK on student or student-dependent (i.e. spouse) visas, and they assured me that student spouses are definitely allowed to work full time.  If you’re not sure of something that the operator tells you, ask him or her to check with a supervisor.

Most of the questions I had for WorldBridge were just to confirm things that I wasn’t entirely sure about from reading various online documentation, and in almost every case the answer was the sensible one that I thought it was.

There was one exception regarding maintenance funds.  I wanted to know if I needed to have all the money for my living expenses in my account, or if my husband could have some or all of it in his account.  After all we’ll be living together, right, so does it matter who pays for what?  Apparently it does.  I learned that since my husband is technically classed as my dependent (even though he will be working and I will not), I need to have all the living expenses for both of us in an account in my name.  What we ended up doing was opening a joint account in both of our names, with enough in it for both of our prescribed living expenses.

Another thing I found out about partway into the application process:  If you had to send original transcripts to your school when you applied, then you need to send original transcripts with your visa application as well.  Save yourself some time and order them as soon as you get an acceptance letter.

Something that’s not very well marked in the documentation:  You need to fill out Appendix 8, which is a self-assessment form.  It also mentions the Personal Details form, which is almost exactly the same as the application form you fill out on the visa4uk website.  The WorldBridge guy didn’t think I needed both the application and the Personal Details form, but I included both just to be safe.  You definitely DO need Appendix 8.

Finally, start things as soon as possible.   I received an email with my acceptance letter on July 15, and was only able to mail my application today.  A few things that slowed me down:

  1. My first offer of acceptance was conditional; I had to order official transcripts since I’d used unofficial ones when I applied.  I thought I’d be saving myself $45 if I wasn’t accepted.  Just get the original ones.  Waiting for the school to receive them and send me an unconditional offer/visa letter took two weeks.
  2. Getting a letter or statement from your bank showing all your balances can take a while, especially if you use an online bank with no branches.  For me, getting a statement takes until the end of the month; getting a letter takes 5-10 days.
  3. Try to avoid planning any international travel requiring a passport.  After we had the application complete, we had to postpone sending it for another 4 days since we were making a weekend trip to the US.
  4. Being dicked around wastes time as well, but good luck trying to avoid that.

Hope that clarifies things a bit!  Some helpful links:

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Important item: shelter

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The thing that has been occupying my mind the most is housing.  It’s really not the first priority (that would be getting visas) but I’ve started spending ridiculous amounts of time combing through housing ads.  Here are some things British housing ads feature that Canadian ones generally do not:

  • rents are generally listed weekly; the monthly rent may or may not be 4 times that figure
  • it seems the vast majority of rentals are furnished, a major plus for us
  • ridiculous overuse of the word “stunning”
  • they have these things called bedsits, it means a room barely big enough for a twin bed, a sink, and a microwave.  If you insist on living in a posh neighbourhood you can get one for £150 a week.

Now I don’t know why I’ve become so obsessed with housing ads, since I’m looking for something available mid to late September, and there aren’t many of those up yet.  Nevertheless that is my current preoccupation.  I’m aware that I’m at a significant disadvantage, having no sense of where the “too good to be true” threshold lies, but trying to get over it.

As for housing on this side of the pond, it looks like things will be sorted out just fine.  Ideally I’d like to leave near the beginning of September and crash with a friend in London for a couple weeks while I find a place, but that leaves James on the hook all of September’s rent here.  Fortunately it turns out one of our friend is looking for a place in September and will need a roommate, so either he moves in with James for September and takes over the lease, giving him an extra month to find another roomie, or he moves in for September only and the lease expires and the landlady finds a new tenant herself, giving James some financial respite, and our friend another month to find his own apartment.  Win all around.

Finally, regarding visas:  there are two conditions for me getting one.  First, a letter from the university confirming that I have been accepted there, and my getting that letter has been contingent on THEM receiving my official certified transcripts; and second, us having enough money.  As for the first they’ve received the transcripts and are sending my visa letter, and as for the second James has acquired one since he has a better credit rating.  So we’re pretty well set now.

That’s two positive things out of three for this post, and on that note I’m going to try going to sleep again.

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First order of business: Money.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

As you may or may not know, studying and/or working in another country involves getting a visa. I need a student visa, and my husband comes along as my dependent – odd, since *I* won’t be making any money, and his official job description is now Sugar Daddy. In any case, the British immigration office wants to make sure that we won’t be going on welfare, and so they prescribe a certain amount of money that we’ll need. That amount is:

My tuition: £12,000
Living expenses for me: £800 per month, for 9 months
Living expenses for my “dependent spouse”: £533 per month, for 9 months. Living expenses are for London of course, they’re significantly less if you’re studying elsewhere.

Total: £23,997. Or in Canadian, $43,352.72 according to today’s exchange rate.

This is the amount we need to have IN OUR BANK ACCOUNTS (or actually, if we have a line of credit for that amount, that also suffices) before we can apply for our visa. And of course applying for visas needs to be done, like, yesterday, since I would like to be showing up in the UK in about 6-7 weeks.

Excuse me while let my mind go boggle for a little bit.

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Abrupt change of subject

Monday, July 20, 2009

As of now, this blog is gonna be about going back to school and being an expat. Why? Because I’ve been accepted to the MA Social Anthropology of Development program, at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

In other words: Moving to London. In two months. I’m gonna be BUSY.

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