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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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Semi-annual Eastward Migration: Complete

Monday, July 13, 2009

James and I have just returned from our vacation, visiting family in the eastern US.  We flew from Seattle to Washington, DC, where we rented a car and made a loop northward to PA, south to NC (via the Blueridge Parkway), east to the Outer Banks, and north again to DC.  Without further ado, a brief photo essay.

After a sleepless red-eye flight we arrived in DC looking for a place to stash our bags (thinking it would be easier to do that and return to the airport via the Metro, than to pick up the rental car first and find parking in the city).  It is not.  Let me tell you, the ONLY place in downtown DC that will take two small suitcases is the Amtrak station, and they want $8 an hour for it.  So we trundled them all over the Mall, and it was hot and uncomfortable.  Here is James looking hot and uncomfortable:

We quickly tired of the patriotism, the heat, and the lack of shade, and returned to the airport to collect our rental car and be on our way.

My mom’s family lives in and around York, PA, and we spent two days visiting various aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.  We also squeezed in a visit to Lititz, in Lancaster County.  I had been to Amish country before, but James had not.  I bought some apple butter and black raspberries from a chatty Amish lady, and some lemonade and rootbeer from a silent Amish man.  All tasty except the apple butter, which we regrettably were unable to keep due to some power-tripping guy in a TSA suit.  BAH!  Anyway, I became an expert in pretzel twisting:

Following our weekend of visits, fireworks, and family dinners, we set off on our road trip.  After a stop at The Mannings (the largest yarn store I have ever been in), we had lunch in, and a brief and bumbling self-guided tour of, Gettysburg.  I also lost my credit card there.  High five!  We continued on to Harpers Ferry, and found that the exact midpoint of the Appalachian Trail is on these stairs, which are carved right into the bedrock:

From there we set off towards Front Royal, which marks the beginning of Skyline Drive, and the last leg of our trip for the day.  Skyline Drive traces the top of a ridge through the Shenandoah National Park, with the eponymous valley to the west:

We made it to the end of Skyline Drive before sunset, and continued for a few miles on the Blueridge Parkway before turning off to find our B&B (The White Pig) and getting spectacularly lost in the process.  Spectacularly. We did find it though, just after 10 pm, and though everyone was asleep we found cupcakes, a decanter full of sherry, and a hot tub.  Made extensive use of each.
The next morning we set off for day two, which took us through Virginia and part of North Carolina, along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The BRP, if you’re not aware, was a make-work project started during the Depression which resulted in 700 miles of twisty roads on top of a ridge, with not a single billboard, stop sign, traffic light, or commercial vehicle.  This is the most photographed spot on the Parkway:
You keeners can figure out the location for yourselves, and meanwhile, this is my favourite picture:

We stayed the night at my uncle’s house in Banner Elk, NC (after getting quite lost again, though not quite as spectacularly lost as the previous evening), and in the morning started off again for BRP Day 3.  I won’t post any pictures since we failed to take any, but suffice to say we bungled the finding of two fibre farms in the Asheville area, though we did find a nice vegetarian restaurant.  Then we got stuck in a traffic jam, having decided to continue south on the interstate rather than follow the BRP to its end in Cherokee.

For the next three nights and two days we stayed with my dad’s aunt and uncle in Sapphire, NC, where they live in a giant house perched on the top of a mountain.

That’s the view from their back deck.  I think the number of people in the house approached 20, and it definitely was nice to see most of the family members, especially in one place.  No driving around to visit each faction!  We had a nice picnic with everyone on July 3.  James and I also enjoyed being able to do a bit of recreation; we went on a couple hikes in the area which was great after sitting in the car for three days.

Just for fun, here’s my mom, (who took the above picture!) and my dad:

Unfortunately James and I had to leave on the morning of July 4th, and so we set off right after breakfast.  No more scenic highways either, we spent the whole day on the interstate.  But there was precious little traffic, which was fine with us!  Our travels took us to Bath, NC - the oldest incorporated town in the state, nestled into one of the inlets off Pamlico Sound.

On an educational note, Bath was the sometime home of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, who was a friend of the governor at the time.  We stayed at the Bath Harbor Motel & Marina, and I think it was probably our favourite hotel of the trip.  They had a little kitchenette and a deck overlooking the marina, so we went to the Food Lion to get microwave dinners and beer, which we enjoyed on the deck while watching some amateur fireworks displays.

One of the reasons we travelled so far east was to visit the Outer Banks, if quite briefly.  Now linguists may be interested in, and Blackbeard may have spent time in, Ocracoke (it has a distinctive dialect; he was killed there) but we did not.  Instead we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial at Kill Devil Hills.  This memorial, for your information, is the only redeeming feature of Kill Devil Hills/Kitty Hawk.  The rest of it is comprised of thoroughly tacky strip malls and condos.  In any case, the first controlled, powered flight took off into 35 mph headwinds from this spot on December 17, 1903, and landed at that stone 120 feet and 12 seconds later:

Aside from a nice lunch with a friend in Norfolk, the rest of our trip was non-descript.  The entire population of the greater Washington DC area was returning from their long weekend in the Outer Banks, and we contended with a Serious Traffic Jam.  To wit: it took us 2 hours to get from Norfolk to Williamsport.  That’s 35 miles.  James and I rolled into the airport hotel just before 10 pm, having missed a dinner date with an old friend, and were at the airport before 6 the next morning.

It may have been cold and rainy in Vancouver, but it is always nice to be home.

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Ride a Painted Pony

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Cheesy I know.  Anyway, I’m learning to spin.  You know your friends are cycling nerds when you say, “I’m taking a spinning class!” and they give you dirty looks and say why don’t you just ride your bike?  YARN, guys.  Also, you know your husband’s friends are music nerds when he tells them you’re taking spinning lessons and they think DJing.  Anyway, on with the wooly goodness.

I’m taking lessons from Felicia at Sweet Georgia, and so far (I’ve had 3 out of 4 lessons) I really recommend it.  I happen to be the only person in the class this time, and private lessons are always nice.  It includes the use of the spinning wheel - you get to take it home between classes - and materials.  I’ve got a ton of fibre… Wensleydale, Corriedale, merino, some blends, all kinds of things.

At the first lesson, we started out just learning to make single plies using the short-draw or inchworm technique.  I started with this:

And finished with this:

You can see some underspun parts (the fat fluffy areas) and some overspun (where it’s twisted on itself) but overall quite nice, I think!  It’s dyed with onion skins.  And even though it’s pretty much the worst yarn I’ve ever used, I was so proud of it I had to knit something:

A little scratchy, but it does keep you warm.

I also had some merino/tencel blend that James gave me for Christmas two years ago, along with a drop spindle.  I spun more of that stuff in half an hour than I ever did in two years with the spindle.

Before:

After:

I’m pretty happy with that too, it’s super soft and I managed a more consistent thickness and twist.

For lesson number two, we tried spinning Wensleydale instead of Corriedale.  It has a longer staple (=fibre) length, and less crimp in each individual fiber.  It’s kind of like wavy hair.  Blue-green wavy hair in this case.  We also did some plying - it’s done in pretty much the same way as spinning, just the opposite direction.  So you take two single plies that you’ve spun clockwise, hold them together, and spin counterclockwise.  Or vice versa.  I made 2-plies out of both the corriedale and the merino/tencel, and then later at home, made a 3-ply out of the Wensleydale.  Behold:

Corriedale

Merino/Tencel

Wensleydale

Obviously the last one is the best.  If I bought yarn and it looked like that, I wouldn’t be upset.

The third lesson had some new fibres (some really squishy superwash merino) and some new techniques (long-draw) and the fourth will involve Navajo plying and something else, or so I’m told.  More about those later.

I’ve been really liking it so far, and much to James’ dismay I think I will probably have to buy a spinning wheel.  $600 should pay for itself with the savings from not having to buy as much yarn, right?

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My new favourite store

Monday, April 13, 2009

Well, it’s not that new; it’s been my favourite store since we moved into this house.  Behold:

Gourmet Warehouse

That’s Gourmet Warehouse, and it’s two blocks from my house.  Dangerous, I know.  They have all kinds of amazing stuff here… cookware, bakeware, glassware, knifeware and any other kind of -ware you can imagine plus some pretty cool gourmet foods.  I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.

Lodge Logic window

The Lodge Logic window

Spicy!

Hot sauce land

Oil

Olive oil shelf #1

More oil

Olive oil shelf #2, also with various other oils and vinegars

Bakeware

Part of the bakeware section

Chocolate

The Chocolate Aisle.  They have a few different brands and types of chocolate here, including Cote d’Azur and Valrhona, in dark, milk, bittersweet, white, etc. It comes in up to 10 lb. bars.  TEN POUND CHOCOLATE BARS.  Yeah.

Naturally you can spend a lot of money here, it’s not called Gourmet warehouse for nothing.  Their spice aisle, for one, is out of control, containing things I had never heard of, such as grains of paradise.  One of the staff actually opened a jar for me and let me try a few.  They’re a complex taste, bitter when you first take a crunch at them, but with a slightly citrus-y aroma (at least in my opinion), then as you chew you start to feel the heat - both the spicy and temperature varieties - but the aftertaste is almost… buttery?   One thing they have particularly good prices on is nuts.  Pine nuts especially.  I wrote a few weeks ago about my new love affair with pine nut rolled lasagna, and Gourmet Warehouse is keeping me in pine nuts without hurting my wallet too much.  Compare:

Pine nuts

On the right we have 100 g. no-name pine nuts from Super Valu (well, they were in there anyway), which I am embarrassed to say that I bought for $6.  On the left, 210 grams from Gourmet Warehouse for $5.  They have unsalted shelled pistachios (which can be quite hard to find) for quite a reasonable price as well.  And if you’re looking for cocoa butter, this is the only place in Vancouver I have ever seen it.

If you’re in the Vancouver area, definitely do yourself a favour and make a visit.

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