fox | ALL WE HEAR IS RADIO GAGA

am, in fact, still alive. moved in, installed, etc. have been keeping you all updated since even before the plane landed, only you haven't been able to hear me until now. read on:

Friday morning, 7 am Greenwich Summer Time

Managed to get everything I intended to bring into four bags -- one super-giant hockey bag, one enormous rolling duffel, one rollaboard suitcase, and one backpack. Met baggage allowances! Despite these not being designed for people moving. And have left nothing to be shipped by the 'rents. Not to say there aren't things I'll be (a) living without or (b) buying when I get there, but still. Carrying it all on my back. Rock on.

Checked in @ 5:30 pm EDT and spent a few minutes with the parents determining that there was nowhere to hang out for a bit before I went through security -- so off I went. Waiting in line approx. 20 minutes -- not bad, actually -- and reached the gate in time to hear the first of a series of announcements that we needed to check in again at the podium so they could double-check our "documentations". Confirmed that the only place in the airport to have a cigarette was out on the curb, i.e. I'd have to do the whole security thing again. I had time -- about 40 minutes, said perky-Jason the gate agent -- but I didn't want to deal with all that. Wandered about instead, bought a book and an ice cream, and made it back to the gate about five minutes before boarding began.

I had spoken to perky-Jason about moving my seat assignment as close to the front as possible. ("Window is more important than forward, but as far to the front as possible is good. But bulkhead is bad. -- Not that I'm, like, picky or anything." The thing is this: I know the back is technically safer in a crash, but I try to plan for not being in a crash, and the less time I can spend on the plane, the better. When the rows go from 7 to 34, and I can be in row 10? Outstanding, as

flt would say. Window: I almost never get up, so I save getting climbed over. Plus I get less claustrophobic if I'm not in the middle of the plane -- aisle seats make me a little tense. Bulkhead: I prefer having my bag at my feet, rather than overhead -- see "almost never get up" -- and I'm short enough that the extra room is never an issue, so I leave the bulkhead seats for longer-legged people.) Anyway -- so I was in the last group to board, behind "business first" and elite-club members, people in wheelchairs and with small children, rows 30-34, 25-34, 20-34, and 15-34. Save my life, man, not making me get on the plane first and sit there going stir crazy for half an hour.

Put the roll-on in the overhead and got installed. Middle seat was empty, which made both me and my row-mate on the aisle v. happy. (Especially once the woman in front of me leaned her seat back. Rar.) Read my book (About A Boy, which I'd neither read nor seen the movie) in about three hours, and then busted out the iPod.

iPod = work of God.

Leaned against the wall and managed to doze for about three hours. Impressed with this -- it's a strange thing, but on short flights I tend to fall soundly asleep while on long overnight flights I have trouble getting to sleep at all. With the result, of course, that any time I get off a plane, I'm quite groggy.

Have been having moments of happy realization for several hours that I'm getting closer and closer to Britain, where I was so happy (and healthy!) last time I was a student there. Really good tea! That sort of thing. Plus I'm older and about a hundred times wiser now. I'm sorry for everything I've left behind, but I'm not a bit sorry for what's ahead of me.

The descent into London has begun, but we're still over the clouds and the sunrise is lovely. Soon they'll come with cards for me to fill out in order to land, and then we will land and there I'll be! Plus I'll be able to have a smoke. And then I'll get on the bus and go ... home. :-)

Further bulletins as news occurs.

Friday morning, 9:15 GST

OH MY GOD and how I needed that cigarette.

Immigration officer: How long will you be here?
Me: Two years.
IO: [flips through passport] Where's your visa?
Me: ... visa?

The last time I was a student in the UK, see, all you needed for leave to enter and return was a letter from the university saying you'd been accepted and had sufficient funds. This apparently changed last November and the first I heard of it was right before the IO said "You stand to be refused entry to the UK and sent back to the US on the first available flight."

Beats per minute approx. 120.

Gave all documents to Mark-the-IO so he could speak to the Chief Immigration Officer. Very nice lady named Bobby came to get my stuff from baggage claim (called "reclaim") and look through my bags. Sat with hands clenched in apparent attitude of prayer for another eternity or so (total time actually @ 1 hour) before Mark-the-IO-in-the-pink-shirt reappeared and said "Today is your lucky day."

Because I'm going home for Christmas. When I'm back in the US I'm to visit some British consular office (fortunately I know exactly where the embassy is in DC -- I've been trick-or-treating there, for god's sake) and get the appropriate permissions. The next time I appear in the UK without an Entry Clearance, I will be bounced.

Why, yes, I have been clenching my teeth.

But for now I'm through, found the ~~bus~~ coach, am safely on my way to the big O. There's a W in my passport (warning! warning! danger, ~~Will Robinson~~ Fox! danger!), but that's okay. Sure would not be telling story with happy ending if had been British student arriving without visa in US. Trying not to imagine what disaster may befall me when I get to Oxford and try to pick up my keys.

Friday night/Saturday morning, 12:30 GST

Only slight trouble on arrival. Cab driver ("Have you been away?" "Actually I just got here." "Ah. You sound ... Australian, or New Zealand." "United States. I must just be tired." either that, or it's a thing where I'm subconsciously trying to minimize the difference between my accent and the local one.) had no knowledge of the building I'm living in, so he let me off at a similarly-named building half a block away. No problem, except I have four bags weighing a total of over 100 lbs to carry. I left three of them by the bike racks and brought my backpack (containing purse, passport, computer, etc.) with me as I wandered around trying to find the right place.

Finally did. Got keys, went back for stuff, was offered help by a very nice Austrian couple studying economics. Left all the crap in the room and hit the pavement.

Oxford is a small city -- I'm not sure it's possible to get lost the way I did my first day in Edinburgh. I walked for about ten minutes and found the main college site, where I got a "welcome pack" including about nine thousand forms and a book of exam regulations that could be used as a blunt weapon. Went and registered for e-mail, possibly unnecessarily as I'd apparently already been registered, but I registered for a remote access account, anyway. Trudged to police station, where I learned that the rule about Americans staying longer than six months having to register with the police has been changed. (I'm skeptical about this, though. When I come back with the stamp in my passport that says I can stay longer than six months, I'm going again.) Bought air mail paper and stamps (not self-adhesive, yet, here), pillows, shampoo etc., ethernet cable (though I still haven't figured out how to set up the computer in my room), alarm clock.

Got back to the room around 4:45, and couldn't remain standing anymore. I intended to take a nap for a couple of hours, then get up, shower, change, call my parents, and head back to the college for a meet-new-students thing they were having at 9pm in the college bar. No dice -- alarm went off, I hit snooze a couple of times and then shut it off entirely. Woke up at about 11:30 with the realization that I'd never taken out my contacts.

Tried to call my parents, but the 800 number for this phone card says it's temporarily unavailable due to central maintenance. They won't like not having heard from me at all on Friday, but what can you do?

I ache differently than I did from moving. Feet and ankles, obviously, because of walking and walking. I'll get used to that (and I cleverly brought ankle braces with me). But my hips and back and shoulders -- from the carrying. Different than the short bursts of lifting and carrying last week. Also, bruises ... that giant hockey bag was not designed to be carried as a backpack, and lemme tell you, 58 lbs on unpadded straps over your shoulders? Yeah, you're going to feel it. There's a bruise just above my elbow where I kept the thing from falling off my back, but mainly it's the stuff on my shoulders that looks like a rash but is in fact subcutaneous. It'll go away in a couple of days, but for now, nothing sleeveless for me. :-) Not that the weather would permit that for much longer anyway.

I also bought academic robes. There's a hanger in my closet in my parents' house on which the regalia is just accumulating. (I've never had the choice not to buy. My brother could only rent his robe for his BA, but not me.) And it gets sillier every time. I can't wait for the Ph.D. stuff.

I failed, though, to buy tissues. Must fix that tomorrow.

I've got the hang of looking to the right, rather than the left, before crossing the street. That took me a while in Edinburgh, but I never really lost it; there was no readjustment period necessary. It came back just like saying "I've got _____" instead of "I have _____". (Or "I've got _____" instead of "I've gotten _____". That too.) What I haven't yet (re-)mastered is keeping to the left. This was drummed into our little heads when I was at school in England as a kid, and I remember that training kicking in and causing me to step to the left when meeting someone coming the other way on a path in Edinburgh -- where they quite often stepped to the right. So I lost the habit. Which is a shame, because now I'm stuck with the US-bred instinct to move to the right (ha, ha), and annoying people a lot of the time.

I'm going to have to stop thinking about how badly the dollar is doing. The pound has a little less purchasing power to start with, so where I think of, say, an ordinary bottle of shampoo costing between two and four dollars, here I'm looking at two to four pounds for an ordinary bottle, which is slightly smaller. (Commie metric system. [g]) But besides the issue of each pound not going as far as each dollar, there's the fact that each pound is worth, to me, A DOLLAR NINETY-FIVE. Dear whoever makes currency exchange rates happen: HELP! Kthxbye.

Saturday evening, 6:30 GST

Went back to bed around 3am and got up about 10. I think I'm successfully on Greenwich time, now, and just tired (rather than still functioning on Eastern time, I mean). Went out for another walk around; had a very tasty chicken samosa, but I now realize that's all I've eaten today. Still can't get the computer set up. There's also a tiny computer room with a printer in it downstairs here, but I can't use that either until I've activated this account -- I know how to do that, but can't actually do it until Monday. (Ah, yes, the weekend ...) Getting this computer configured for the network is going to take the resident computer volunteer person, for whom I've left a note but from whom I haven't heard back yet. (May not be arriving until Monday, in fact. Or later.)

So it wasn't the most useful walk around I've ever had, but I again didn't get lost, and that's something. Tried to call my parents again, but the number still gave me the central-maintenance excuse, and for another card I didn't have the access number for the UK (only for the Netherlands, left over from when my mother went to The Hague). I finally sucked it up and called them with coins long enough to tell them the number of the pay phone I was standing at. So they called me back and we talked for a bit and they gave me the number for the second card. All good.

Have been intending to unpack this afternoon, but I took a nap instead, and now I'm starving. I shall go out and get some dinner, and possibly a grocery or two, so I don't have to keep going out. (Hungry enough to feel lethargic. Bad sign.)

(Memo to Britain: screens on the windows would keep the bugs out. I'm just sayin'.)

Saturday night, 10:00 GST

Shouldn't it be too cold here for mosquitos?

Sunday afternoon, 1:00 GST

I knew the weather would be different, but jesus god. Reminder to self: this is what's normal for the beginning of October -- not the crazy summer-until-Thanksgiving craziness they have in Washington.

Speaking of which, the college social director (also the LGB rep -- coincidence? doubt it) has a Thanksgiving thing on the schedule, huzzah, and also an election-night "extravaganza", so I won't have to fight people for the TV on November 2. Of course I'm not even close to the only American student in the building/college/city, so I shouldn't have worried that I'd be alone in that. (The year I was in Edinburgh, my Cleveland Indians were in the World Series, and I was approximately the only person who gave a damn. I did have company for Game 7, being a guy from downstairs who used to be a batboy.)

Sunday, 5:45 pm GST

Have successfully survived Tea And Coffee event for Freshers' Week -- fortunately my college is graduate students only, because I don't know if I could handle another Freshers' Week with legions of eighteen-year-olds. (This was a thing when I was at Edinburgh -- I was new, but I was a junior rather than a freshman, and it felt weird.) As it is, everyone was very friendly and also twenty-two years old. This matters less to me now than it did when I was twenty and everyone around me was eighteen, but it's still easy to spot who has Life Experience Outside College (or University) and who doesn't. One guy graduated in 2000 and worked for a bit (I assume) and did a master's degree before coming here -- but mostly people just graduated four or five months ago and are here now not really thinking of themselves as grad students. Which is normal for first-year grad students, I guess, and they're the ones whose attitudes will change -- they'll stop thinking of grad students as Them, for a start. :-) It will bother them less and less not to be included in undergrad activities. That sort of thing.

Off in another few minutes for a Group Dinner Out. Trying to be proactive about meeting people, you see. I'm not actually very good at that, so this is me making an effort. Helpful thing to keep in mind: Nobody else knows anybody, either. They're all just as at sea as I am. (And doesn't that sound like something someone's mother would say? Mine, for instance?) (Mostly other Americans, as well, which is a bit of a drag -- but that won't be true once I meet people in the department, I suppose.)

P-the-social-director-and-LGB-rep, incidentally, really is a wee baby queen -- plus, in fact, a Hoya. Class of '03, so we were never there at the same time.

esti626, ~~have you slept with~~ do you know him?

Tomorrow I will finally be able to post all this. I hope you all haven't missed me too much. I will say now, though, that not having looked at LJ since ... what, Thursday morning EDT?, I'm going to be at skip=6 billion, which means I'm not going to even try to catch up. If I missed anything important, you can comment here or shoot me an e-mail at either fox @ empiredc . com or agent.reynard @ gmail . com .

Heading out soon. One of the people I met is a neighbor, not just in the same building but actually in the same suite as me, which is cool. My dad would be pleased that I have a little friend and walking-to-frosh-week-events companion. :-) Must decide whether to wear a sweater or not. [ponder]

Sunday, 11:00 pm GST

People are awesome! Many of Americans, couple of Canadians, at least one Brit, and a guy from Greece. AND, from the Small World file, the husband of a girl in my college is -- wait for it -- a kid who was four years behind me in my high school back home. A year behind my brother. We worked on a show together when I was a senior and he was in EIGHTH GRADE, holy crap, he was a thirteen-year-old kid running a follow spot and I was the fly master. HE LOOKS THE SAME. Only taller, and with stubble. (He explained that most of his stuff is in storage because their place isn't available until Tuesday, but in the meantime, he's not going to spend the equivalent of ten US dollars on a razor when in 48 hours he'll be able to shave.) THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. MARRIED NOW! I knew he looked like someone I knew. As I told the people who'd been at my end of the table at dinner: I'm glad to discover I wasn't, like, high. When I finally said, I mean, You look familiar -- who are you?

Tomorrow is Monday, so I may actually be able to Accomplish Things. Won't that be a nice change!

monday, 10:30 am GST

yeah, so. here i am. further update on the visa situation: every american student i spoke to last night had the same experience at the airport. not sure how to look at it where it's not at least a little bit the college or university's fault for not telling people they might need a visa. further update on the computer situation: i activated the school e-mail account, but then when i tried to log in to a networked computer it still didn't like it. may not have left enough time for the password to take effect. am at the moment on a public e-mail terminal at the Computer Services Help ~~Center~~ Centre. (double quotes are shift-2. and other strangenesses.) i'm going to ask this nice young man at the desk if i should be concerned that i still can't log in to the network, and then i'm going to go see if i can't find my department and ask them if there's something i should be doing with regard to, i don't know, classes or something.

will, hopefully, be back again soon.

ALL WE HEAR IS RADIO GAGA

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