The painted bathroom

Do you remember, last year I mentioned about painting the kitchen with my Germany couch surfer? I had done the bathroom also around that time, but still the ceiling remained. And then, the mirror finally went up and the new one was smaller than the fitting holes left on the wall, so those were finally filled in and painted. So then I may as well do a general touch up of the walls again, so I did. ;-)

And now it is finally finished:

Heated towel rack on the right. I have a 'modern' UK bathroom (=tile rather than carpeted bathroom floor!)

In the mirror you can see the reflection of the world map shower curtain. The male visitors usually comment positively upon the sink upon seeing it, no idea why:

The sink is tiny like the rest of the bathroom...and the rest of the flat. Although I do have a bath/shower, as opposed to the 'shower only' that many new flats in this area offer. The bathroom is on a sharp triangle angle; it doesn't actually feel small because of that.

Here's a close of of 'surf's up duck', behind him is the painted wall. The little tiles were pre-existing.

The newly painted ceiling is 'milky white', so not much to see there. :-)
One thing done, a few hundred more to go...

Back to school

Over the weekend I sent in my acceptance to start a part-time masters in law in the fall. Remember the law class from last fall? It ended up going really well so I'd like to continue with it in the fall. Ironically, my local college had their funding cut so they won't offer the second year of this national course, so I had to look elsewhere. As well, while the course was interesting and practical, I have no plans to work in a law office or change careers at all, so something more academic would be a better fit now that I'm past all the intro coursework.

When I looked elsewhere, I began to get a little stuck; my local college made no differentiation on foreign vs. local tuition. Somehow, they accepted my 5+ years in the EU as authorizing me for local tuition. Not so on all of the bigger universities I was looking at, all of them were expecting to charge me as a foreign student as I have no permanent residency in the UK. But what about my documented time in DE? Not worth EU rates without an EU passport apparently. It became the difference between paying 3500 GBP and 9500 GBP which is too much when it's not work endorsed, i.e. paid, merely my personal interest. If I could have held on a few years, I could have qualified for residency and then started, but that would have pushed completion out to 10 years. Time is not on my side here... ;-)

Scholarship money? It became a catch 22 as sall of the cholarships from the US I had seen had residency requirements or that one is applying from the US, so I no longer qualified for those, even though I am still a proud US tax paying citizen.

In my quest to not pay 10k GBP, I started to look at distance learning programs, where location does not matter. In addition, I work from home most of the time, so I may as well do this from home as well. I found a few programs which really aligned with what I do professionally, so that it will supplement my current activities.

Therefore I put the envelope into the post this weekend to start a part-time two year's distance learning masters in law from a very nice university in southern england. The ironic thing is that this program is dead on with my interest area, so a perfect match. Had the local options not been so expensive, I probably would have missed it. :-)

Update from the rooftop garden - caterpillars

The great thing about this being only my second summer in the UK is that I can continue to learn what works well on the rooftop and what does not. Brussels sprouts, well, perhaps not so much the winner:


Not sure if they had those 'spot the hiding object' pictures in other places like they did in the US when I was growing up, but this one is a fine one with the nice blend of greens.

And if anyone in Essex wants to feed approximately 15 or so live caterpillars to some sort of pet like a bird, lizard, or whatever else would eat them, please let me know. I imagine they'll taste like brussel sprout leaves since they've basically demolished the two plants.



Of course, I imagine that this veritable siege of locusts, er caterpillars, is due to the fact that their natural predators, the rooftop birds stay well away, due to the every vigilant presence of Slocombe the mightly attack cat.

Good thing I still have one plant out on the back terrace. Now...how to dispose of the caterpillars, beyond throwing them in the rubbish bin. Hmm...

The delicate ecosystem that is my roof terrace

How in the heck did that make its way up four flights of stairs?
Apparently it survived the recent heat wave better than much of my garden while I was away in the US.
Obviously he is enjoying the compost pile. :-)

187 weeks

That is the amount of time until I can apply for permanent residency in the UK. Immediately after I can start the process of applying for citizenship and then a UK passport so I no longer have to stand in the mega long customs line when flying into the UK--as long as the government does not change the current rules. That would be in 3 years, 7 months, and 3 days, but who is counting?

Sunday morning at Heathrow, returning from the US:
amount of time my UK travel partner spent in the queue: 0 minutes. They had a few booths open and no UK or EU people coming through.

amount of time Heather spent in the queue: 52 minutes. They had 9 booths open for hundreds of people, many of whom had exotic passports and were subject to many minutes of questioning and having to retrive paperwork from backpacks and who were sometimes sent to the 'visitor holding pen' a little fenced in area with seats to await further immigration questioning.

My irritation is that with my work permit I usually get questioned for less than a minute. I've started to come to the desk saying 'same job, same address, left on x date from the UK' in order to save them the effort.

On that point, 1 year, 7 months, 3 days or 83 weeks until my current work permit needs to go in for renewal. The current coalition government is already seeking to change the rules to limit non-EU migration into the UK, so if you're thinking of applying for a UK work permit, time to get cracking. Migration limits are expected to by introduced from April 2011. As is currently stands, migration limits are only expected to impact new applications, meaning that currently approved migrants are excluded. They are, however, increasing the points required for renewal it appears. Fortunately I'm still in the game.

If you're bored, the consultation paperwork is here.