The long weekend in Wales

We recently spent a long weekend in Hay-on-Wye, the Town of books. No really, it's a town of books!

If you're into secondhand bookstores, it's a great long weekend destination. Here is the view from the castle steps:

You're seeing the outdoor shelves next to the castle walls. Lower cost/low interest books are often kept outside with 'honesty boxes' for the 1 pound or 50 p payment for them. (They do get locked up at night.)

And, because it's Wales, we went walking in the hills and saw many sheep:

So how great was the damage to the bank account due to all the books? I tried to keep it minimal, but did manage to find a few. I'll try to do up some photos of them in the coming weeks...

More peppers!

Warm weather, 21C/70F degree highs for the daytime continues. Here is the current state of the hot & spicy part of the garden:

And here are those Scotch bonnets/habeneros. Aren't they just coming along wickedly?

From the rooftop garden - peppers!

This year was a trial year for the new garden location. I didn't get into the place until June 5th, so everything I had started earlier had to survive the car ride and being schlepped up the four flights of stairs, and the change in climate from a shady patio to a sunny rooftop.

In addition, when I started seeds in March, I didn't know where I'd be in the summer, so it was a bit of guesswork. However, my bumper crop this year turned out to be the peppers. I went through a picked a bunch of them:


Everything below comes from my rooftop:

As I'm not really fond of peppers (except for the hot ones--the scotch bonnet peppers are the two little light green ones in the middle row, 2nd from the right, next to the tomatoes), I made up a batch of stuffed peppers, froze them, and gave them to someone.

We're having an Indian summer still in the UK so I have more peppers still to come. I've moved them to a sunnier local, now that the sun has moved, so they're getting morning sun until 2 PM. The remaining scotch bonnets are now turning red, as are the chilli peppers. The lettuce is happy with the cooler temps and the remaining tomatoes are turning red. So gardening is on wind down mode, but surprisingly to me, still continuing. In Germany I would usually be down to only one or two hardy tomato plants at this point, with the final containers getting emptied out and put away on the Oct 3rd holiday. Although the UK does have a later start than Germany as nothing really grew much for me in May/June.

The Angry Royale

Do you remember a while back...the Angry Whopper was an ad campaign in Germany.

On the way to Wales we stopped off halfway, prior to getting to the Welsh border. What should we see but The Angry Royale:

'Angry Onions' doesn't seem to make any more sense in English than it did in German.

There's also a Double Angry Whopper. It's not enough to be angry, but it's double angry. ;)

Check out the nutritional info link on that page...there are 5 grams of fat in 'angry onions'. On a regular whopper, the onions are not angry and only contain traces of fat. Go figure.

I'm still waiting for the 'Angry Veggie burger'. :)

my newest adventure->the electricity bill

When you're an expat, you often fall into a trap of not knowing what you don't know. So take what you don't know in your home country, then double or triple it for your new country. There's only so much one can pick up from work colleagues or google. As long as I learn something from an experience and don't lose my life savings or end up in jail, I'll chalk it up as a new adventure. (In case you're wondering--I ended up in immigration detention for a few hours a few years ago--that's the closest I ever came to jail.)

I returned from Portugal to receive a bill from the local electric/gas company for 973.76 GBP (that's 1,565.39 USD or 1.069,42 EUR-->how do you like that dual comma/dot usage?) for a period from June 6-Sept 14. That rounds out to roughly 3 GBP (3.30 EUR/4.80USD) a day if we want to round it.

Yeah, holy crap. I thought the same, but slightly stronger. I called up some UK colleagues to ask, 'how much do you spend on gas/electricity in this country?'

A colleague who lives in a detached house and works from home (thereby using more electricity/gas) spends 110 GBP a month. As I'm looking at 300+ GBP a month for a tiny flat, something seems off.

With much trepidation, I called the provider. In America, I found the utility companies to be more infallible than the pope. You'll pay what we say you'll pay, even if it makes no sense! That's based on my limited experience of having phone, electric, etc. in DC and California a few years back. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to get a human, who upon looking up the account says, 'oh my'.

That was Karl. He was very nice and explained that either the last read (provided by the outgoing owner upon their departure--Heather's mistake #1 here, in retrospect) was wrong, or the recent read by the meter reading people was wrong. His instructions were to go down and read the meter to see if the mistake was the latter, and to look at the house contract I received, to see what meter reading they put in there, as maybe the mistake was instead the former.

'I do like the internet, a lot'.
No--this is like 1.5 year's worth of power--like if you had a roller coaster or maybe a jacuzzi on all the time.
(My power extravagence is limited to leaving the BBC on overnight on a radio in the hallway for Slocombe.)

I called up the property management company, to get access to the communal closet where the electric and gas meters are held. This was on Tuesday before 9 AM, but they could not get here until 10.30 Thursday, go figure. (The use of property management companies on UK owned flats is probably a different post.)

Here comes the amusing part....
We looked at the one marked 'Flat 11' (that's me). It has roughly 4700 on the dial, so that corresponds to the 4500 reading the outgoing owners left. BUT, that serial number does not match the one on my bill, so that isn't right.
We looked for the meter matching my serial number, sure enough, it has the 11k reading which matches the one they are billing me for. So I see their logic--I went from 4500-11k, wowie!

For fun, we turned off the 11k one, to be sure that it is the right one, then I would only need to get the inital read adjusted.

Back up four flights of stairs I run. Nope--lights still shining brilliantly.
Downstairs again. OK--then the serial number on the 11k is wrong, you do have the one marked flat 11.
Upstairs again. Nope!
Downstairs again. It dawns on us that this will not be easy at all. Armed with a mobile phone, we try again.
The property agent systematically turned off the power of each and every flat in this building until I say 'Yes! the power is now off!'

That was, of course, the last meter, the one marked Flat 10. It only has 6700 used, so closer, but not my miserly power usage at all.

So I now have a starting meter reading and an ending one, neither of which applies. (Duh, not only should I have read the meter I thought was mine, I should have turned off the power to confirm, mistake #2.)

Back on the phone with the power people. I try through the direct extension of Karl, but he's busy so it goes to Helen who tries to transfer me to the cross-meter department, but after 10 minutes the hold music ends so I think they lost me.

I call back. Amazingly, I get someone who looks in the notes to see who I was on with, and stays on hold with me until that person is free, popping back every three minutes to tell me he's still waiting. Oki doki, Matt.

I get back to the person who has finally sorted out that this is an already reported issue (perhaps through the other people?) and that Hunan is already looking into this and will call me back.

Um, I've never spoken with Punan? Hunan?

That's ok, she's already researching this serial number, she'll call you back on Monday. She's on holiday.

Um, this bill is due then?

How much is that for?

Almost a thousand pounds.

Yes, I'll get them to put that on hold for you until we can sort this out.

So I can honestly say that I prefer the German flats that I've had, where the meters are located within your flat so that you never have this odd issue. However, I was amazed that the electricity people here (and the call centers are in the UK in case you're wondering--the one I was dealing with today was in Leicester--because I'm so noisy that I ask) were so pleasant and actually able to think, and not just pure call center personnel. That was an interesting cultural thing for me today.

So for now, stay tuned. I can't wait to see what Hunan/Punan has to say when she calls on Monday! Off to investigate solar options now...

While I'm sitting in class tonight

Slocombe is sitting at home napping I suspect. A brief pre-post while I'm out. Here she was as I was packing up for Portugal a little over a week ago. Yes, that's the Kermit-colored backpack which I carry everywhere, the one with the passport, camera, wallet, etc. She's mighty smart.

While I was away, she stayed with Uncle Dean on the other side of town in my corner of Essex. This was an exciting adventure as he lives on the ground floor with children playing in the courtyard at window level.

She spent the week being spoiled ridiculously, including getting chopped up roast chicken on two nights, getting to sleep in the bedroom at night and discovering lots of new hiding places in a flat bigger than mine.

Recycling in Portugal

I was pleasantly surprised to find recycle bins on the beach in Portugal.
Yellow = plastic
Brown = brown glass
Green = green glass
Blue = normal trash
(There were other blue bins located elsewhere along the beach too.)


In the residential and hotel area there were more bins for paper, plastic, glass and trash along the streets at various intervals. Here new friend Ian is trying to follow the picture diagram which identifies what can be put into the Yellow bin.

Recycling in Portugal almost resembles the German standards, which was a little surprising to me.

From Portugal

Here's where I spent the past week:

Notice in the photo, the large white column? It's an elevator to the beach.

The EU built the elevator:

On the way to part 2 of the holiday, off to Wales!

On the way to Portugal

I missed summer holidays a bit this year. Instead it's a September holiday to Faro, Portugal,or more specifically, to the beachs of Albufeira. I am happy that in moving to the UK it changed my destination possibilities. I had done so many of the cheap Cologne and D'dorf options, having a new airport (Stansted), opens up so many possibilities.

The dream, it moves

A few months back, I wrote about getting into LSE for the fall, and finally deciding to attend. A few months later, I'm writing about passing up on my chance to go. A few things have changed in the meantime...

-there's been some internal changes at benevolent company J. At the end of the day they are the ones footing the awfully expensive tuition bill and I wasn't ready to mortgage my soul for five years (the full repayment time).
-It would have been a career limiting move under the new company direction.
-as i look at the big picture, this is a very indirect route to where I want to be. It would probably get me there, but slowly. Having put in my time in Germany to get to the UK, maybe I don't have so much patience anymore for due paying.

Someone's comment to me, 'that's a shame you pulled out'
-in the grand scheme of things, I disagree. I consider myself lucky to have figured out now instead of a year or two down the line. Principally:
-I don't really need another Master's degree at the end of the day. I require a Master's degree to be able to renew my work permit in 2012 and I already have that, and it's been UK certified and all that jazz for my intial permit.
-I have cobbled together a background that is appreciated by admissions people, recruiters and the like. If I change my mind or decide to do anything similar, I have faith that I'll be able to get into LSE or a similar level program.

So now what instead?
I've had a long-time itch to do law. It ties loosely into my career goals in a niche fashion. When I scrapped the LSE idea and started to look around, I figured out:
-one really needs to have done undergraduate pre-law in the UK (different from in the US where law school entrants have done pre-law or maybe English, history, or anything else under the sun).
-or to take a one year conversion course on an existing degree and then a two year traineeship, in order to get into law school.
-or one can muddle through this four year part-time program which will allow one to take the one year conversion without the traineeship, and then to bumble through to law school--a certified, centrally administered program which is aimed toward working people, many of whom start at the bottom rung of law office jobs like secretaries or clerks and slowly work their way up.

So why?
-It's just sort of an occupational interest. Law training will definitely enhance my current skillset, but I like what I do, I'm not looking for a career change.
-I've considered being a lawyer since a very long time.

• At my 8th grade graduation, when I mentioned this was my long-term career goal, the cranky pants priest suggest that I become a nun and then become a nurse or a teacher because, 'nurses and teachers help people and we have too many lawyers in the world.' (My grandfather used to refer to this particular priest as 'Father Cranky Pants')
• As I graduated high school, the dream still simmered. I received a $100 scholarship toward my college education from a local law office. (I was working one of my three jobs that summer, so I missed the photo op in the local paper).
• In my university years, I organized my scheduled to make a double major and a minor, so I wasn't able to p*ss around with taking random courses which didn't count, or double count. The one only I did take was 'Business Law'. (OK, so it counted toward my business minor).

-This gives me a very soft part-time entrance into law. Each of the four part-time years is independent; I can stop at any time, any of them will improve my CV.
-Locally, I found an offering of this course in my town in Essex, which makes things a lot easier than trekking into London.
-Socially, it could be interesting to me to meet people locally.
-The cost is on par with a US community colleage course, but the test is adminstered centrally. So as long as I pass the test, that is the certification at the end of the day, not where I took the lectures.

I've registered and paid on Saturday. Classes start two weeks from today for year one.

Riddle me this science people - platelet donation

I was dinking around online, the UK version of the bloodmobile is in my corner of Essex next week. In the US I was a regular blood donor. In Germany I donated three times through the on-site company bloodmobile visit, but found the officious brute of a bloodmobile doctor to be obnoxious on the third visit and thereby stopped. (She chewed me out that I did not have fluent German and she did not have time to talk slow German and on and on.) As it is an American company with many nationalities who do not speak German, I pointed out that they shouldn't put the posters up in English then. (The rest of the staff was very nice as they find her pompous as well, but I really didn't have the energy for such events in Germany after a while.)

So onward...I was looking online at the UK blood donation rules, having previously been a UK blood donor when I last lived here. I was specifically interested in donating platelets. I had looked into this one of my home visits to Philly after the above Germany debacle, but having lived in the UK during the Mad Cow years, I was ineligible to even be a blood donor anymore. I was interviewed by the platelet people by phone and then invited in but my travel history then disqualified me.

I was looking at the UK platelet donation site, apparently I'm already disqualified from the get go, due to being female. Really now. Off I went to google to figure this one out. I stumbled across platelet donation in Singapore which seems to shed some light on this mystery to me, although they only 'prefer' males as oppose to 'require' males like the UK. Funny the US doesn't set gender or size requirements for platelets, (although they do set male/female height/weight requirements for double red cell donation.)

I find it funny--for relatively similar cultures (OK, perhaps theoretically different in their means of providing healthcare) that one would allow females and one not. If we were comparing a country with a more conservative viewpoint of women (say, Sudan) and the UK or the US I wouldn't be so surprised. But this difference between the UK and the US surprises me.

Enlighten me please, science minded people.

keeping it moving

Now that I've been in the new flat for almost three months, I'm starting to get some ideas of how I want it to look. I've been living with the very minimal included furnishings (bed and sofa), and slowly putting together the rest during the evenings and weekends (a new mirror, a shoe rack etc.) while I try to figure out logically how the space should function based on how I'm using it each day.

One of the 'missing' things has been bookshelves. I couldn't bring myself to battle the crowds at the nearest Ikea (45 min away), and nothing at nearby Homebase really appealed. I've been keeping an eye on ebay, but a critical limitation is that 1. it needs to be a few shelves tall to maximize space here in the tiny flat, but it would need to then fit into my car so it cannot be so tall--a catch 22.

Until I happened to see some Habitat stackable cube shelves, gently used, on ebay. I managed to get lucky and win it so off I went to disassemble the shelves, fit everything into the car, bring it back, carry it up four flights of stairs and New friend Ian and I spent the afternoon resassembling it. I'm pleased as they are only very slightly used and as they were habitat they were hella expensive new and seem to be of good quality. In addition, the stackable function gives me a lot of flexibility to completely change up my tiny living room on a whim. :-)

Finally, my books which I started to pack up in December in Germany, which stayed boxed since my arrival here in February are getting to come out and play. I've missed them terribly, but didn't want to create a further mess of clutter here with uncontrollable books out and about, so thus they were kept boxed up. The camera cord is currently on vacation, but when it returns I'll get a photo up...

My new nickname

Growing up, 'Heather' doesn't really lend itself well to nicknames as to shorten it ends on a soft 'th' sound; it just doesn't work. I do, however, love a good nickname. As I've worked with the same people for years, most of them somehow have picked one up along the way, cute short versions of their name, English names for Germans, names which started from a funny incident on a night out, and on and on. I don't directly have one, although there may be a few I don't know about. ;-)

So I found it so terribly endearing then, that my parking spot owner found it fit to bestow one upon me. I sent her an email to make sure that she knew when I was coming to pick up the car (as I don't move it much, I have the spot behind the gate blocked by other cars). Her response:

no problem poppet. See you later xxx

Strange--I don't see in the definition 'cranky person who wears too black too much and tends to be too focused and serious' next to this one in the dictionary... :-)

Influencing consumer behavior and marketing to me

One area in the UK which reminds me more of the US than Germany is the ability and willingness of vendors to modify prices to change consumer behavior to meet their business goals.


Specific examples in the past week:

1. Asda - As mentioned, I'm a big fan of online grocery shopping to avoid the queue and hassle of carrying everything down the street and up four flights of stairs. As I don't buy fresh things online but rather heavy/bulky things (cat litter, paper towels, fizzy water, wine, etc), I have a good deal of flexibity in my ordering and am gearing up to do a big order once per month.

I was looking online and starting to put together my order last week, for this week. Asda (for whatever business reason they had--numbers to make, knowledge of consumer spending during school holidays, whatever), dropped the delivery change down to 2.50 GBP per order for a few days in the last week of August.

As it is, I'm already on the low end of the online delivery food chain. Prices from the big supermarkets generally go anywhere between 3.50 and 6.50. Tuesday/Wednesday from Asda tends to be the rock bottom 3.50 rate. Drop me down a pound further and I'm influenced to order a week earlier. I never felt that Germany was able to vary in their prices so much, or to be overly responsive to the market. Strawberries are cheap in July as they're in season, my favorite fizzy water would be sold 2 crates for 6.66 once per quarter (yeah, that one was easy to remember), but everything always seemed very planned in relation to prices or sales, or maybe that was just my small area with limited competition or choices...

2. Papa John's pizza - no better way to celebrate the end of vegan month than a discount pizza. I ordered online from them once, and now I get an SMS once a week with a special offer which isn't available online. It's specifically from my local outlet, so I guess they can be clever and anticipate what they want to move (if anything) during a particular week. Tonight it was 'any pizza 9.99 tonight or Wednesday'. In Germany I always went with the local pizza places but none of them 1. had online ordering or 2. did any sort of midweek special. The price was the price which was the price, be it Tuesday afternoon or Friday night. Although carryout did get you a 10% discount. Here these offers tend to come during slow times. Usually they would be Mon, Tues or Wed pizza at a special price, but with yesterday's bank holiday their offer came out today for today and tomorrow.

Speaking of UK pizza delivery--another thing I'm a big fan about here is ordering online. I hate to call and be on hold or not understand the UK accent. Even better, let me order and pay online--then, send me an email that the order is received and then an SMS when the delivery guy is on his way out the door. I'm a big fan of technology when used well.