Image Surgery

I’ve recently moved to London for work. So far, overall, things are going pretty well. I’m still living without the internet except on my phone, so updates from me are few and far between at the moment.

Now how things are going decidedly depends on whether you ask me yesterday or today. Yesterday I awoke for the first time in new sheets, a comfy bed, and to a fox sleeping on the roof of a shed outside my window, who was just waking up as well. I then got to work in little time due to the bank holiday, was very productive, and found a foldy bike on craigslist to boot.

The downside of the day was discovering that my oyster card wasn’t valid on south west trains, and that I would need to purchase a separate ticket. But the train was empty, comfortable, and very fast (though not TGV fast). I bought a bike for only £95 from a nice white haired old man with a cute northern accent who looked like he should be a professor at some quaint uni.

And of course, as soon as I had my grubby little paws on a bike, I decided to head off at random (unlimited data+gps+google maps=no more planning), and shortly found myself trundling through a park, first with a fox, then with about 8 deer, followed shortly by about ten thousand rabbits, with cute White tails. (the phone _really_ wants to capitalize White).

As it was getting dark and I took a wrong turn in the park that must have added 5km to my ride, I ducked in to a little pub in the middle of nowhere that I just happened upon, and had a tasty meal and a pint.

That was yesterday. Not too shabby. Then came today, as if to make up for the bunnies.

After my shower, where I forgot to bring my towel into the bathroom and had to dry off with a hand towel, I was already running late for work. The busses were so crowded, I could only manage to cram on to the third one that came. The morning saw me worrying a lot about the £95 I had just spent yesterday, not because I didn’t get a good deal or didn’t need a bike, but because I now had only £80 left.

This was even more troubling because I still have no bank account, and without a bank account, I can’t turn those two ‘for deposit only’ cheques I have into cash. Which I need to buy ale. And food. But mostly ale. So shortly after lunch today, I set off to bang my head against a brick wall, or as Canadians would say, try to open a bank account.

For comparison’s sake, to open my bank account in Australia, as someone who was technically not a resident, I needed to show up at a branch with my passport and declare my intention to hold an account with them. No further proof was needed, and shortly afterwards, I received all my goodies in the post and I was (and still am) a full-fledged customer. Or as you could also view it, allowed to give my money to them.

The British system, alas, is not nearly as simple. For certain people, it might be. If you are a UK citizen, for example, have good credit and haven’t moved in 3 years, I’m pretty sure it would be a piece of cake. But those people don’t _need_ bank accounts, because they probably already have them. I, however, hold the quite dodgy ‘Canadian’ passport, have no credit history in the UK, and because I rent a room, have no utility bills coming to me. All I have is my passport and a letter provided by my employer, one that proved decidedly useless today.

The first bank I tried was adamant that I could only apply for their ‘starter basic untrustworthy immigrant’ account or some such nonesense, where I would me given the great privelege of a bank card to access my money from a machine. And it would take 9 business days to open and a few more for your counterfeit fraudulent copy cheque to clear, and no you can’t have five quid for an ale.

So I returned to work, asked at HR for a recommendation, and was given the name of someone that ‘lots of our employees’ used to open their accounts in as little as one day, no hassles asked. So up there I went, only to be told that 1) he no longer worked there, 2) I didn’t have sufficient documentation for even their ‘thieving bastard’ account, and that when I did return with this documentation, 3) I could open the account on a 12 month contract at a cost of only £6 per month. Hearing which I promptly gathered my papers and walked out.

My day finished with me staying late and getting nothing done, because I was so steaming mad at the banks, and I knew I’d have to do it all again tomorrow. Which it already is.

And I still have only £80…

Last night I became incredibly thankful for the retroreflective properties of the retina, quality German engineering, and my firm belief that one must be highly focused during the task of driving.

Ahhh, the beautiful sounds of a soft bossa nova to help lull you quietly to a restful doze, João Gilberto lazily singing and strumming on his guitar. The subtleties of the picking of the strings, the quiet noises the audience makes, all add to make the recording full of life and very relaxing.

The really amazing part, however, is that I’m listening to this on an aeroplane. The volume is at normal levels, and the background noises are subdued enough not to interfere. A few weeks ago, I thought myself crazy for spending what I did on yet another pair of headphones. Today, as I settle into almost 24 hours of air travel, I wonder why I haven’t done this sooner.

So, to anyone who may be in a situation where noise would do better to not be heard, I strongly urge you to consider a pair of quality, noise cancelling headphones. I highly doubt you’ll regret it.

Also, having 3 seats to stretch out across doesn’t hurt either.

Today, my monitor died. Well, one of my many monitors died, but it seems the most significant because it was my main monitor, a lumbering behemoth and part-time bed for my cat.

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As a person who spends (too) much of his day trapped behind a monitor, I tend to want to have the largest amount of real estate available to me. It was with this in mind, and after years of using dual monitors at various workplaces that I decided to take the plunge and get this 21” used beauty. It was cheap, as all good technology hopefully is as well as rarely is. I bought it on eBay and hauled it across provincial borders, and even managed to mark up my desk trying to lift it up.

Now I have a hole on my desk. Given that I’m moving soon, I’m not too sad to see that much space cleared up. Even if I wasn’t moving, at an almost perfect 53cm cubed and a back breaking 32 kg, it’d clear up some major desk space. I’ll probably pay 10 times what I paid for it and get an LCD with a few extra inches in my new home, but part of me will miss the misfiring guns, the plethora of inputs of which only one is useful to me, and the 4 minute waits for it to warm up before the image appeared.

Nostalgia is a weird beast, attaching us to something that has so many drawbacks, making us feel a loss when all signs point to an improvement.

\* sigh *

When I was learning to drive, I went to the government office in my home town a few months before my 16th birthday and picked up a copy of the rules of the road. When I moved to Québec, some years later, I was already a well established driver, had a good idea of the rules of the road, and didn’t need to re-learn the rules in Québec. Which was fine because there didn’t appear to be any anyway. Getting my license exchanged required an appointment (for what exactly, I’ve never been sure), but aside from producing immigration papers from my fifth cousin on my mother’s side to prove my identity, I didn’t have to do anything.

However, I’m now teaching a friend how to drive. I though it might be a good idea for me to have a copy of the guide, so that I could give her correct information and be reminded myself of exactly how this stuff worked (at least on paper). So my first instinct was to head on down to my local website, and download a PDF copy of the guide. It must exist, right?