October 01, 2005

Back On-line


The server which hosts Themeless was shutdown back on the 15th and shipped across the pond. Everything finally arrived here on the 27th but I hadn’t time to do anything with it until Thursday evening. After unpacking and reassembly, I found I was a bit short on U.S. to U.K. power adapters. A trip to Maplin Electronics on Friday to pick up some local line cords made up for the deficiency.

The folks who did the packig and shipping back home did a fine job by and large but it looks like the system unit recieved quite a bonk at some point. Given the extent of the damage, all expansion cards knocked out of their slots and the case a bit bent, I find it hard to believe that it happend once the unit was bubble wrapped and double boxed. The most likely scenario is that the packers accidentially knocked it off the table while they were wrapping something else. The mistake was probably quickly wrapped and boxed in hopes that the trouble would be blamed on the shipper.

Amazingly, once everything was put back together, the system booted up without complaint. The role of the server is the home network is changing in our new location; it now sits behind a router firewall rather than acting as a router firewall. So, the following had to be adjusted on the server:

On the DSL modem/router, a few changes were required as well. The Voyager 2100 puts most of the stuff of interest to servers in the “Virtual Server” section. For now, I’ve set up a simple set of rules to forward ftp, http, https and ssh packets on to the server. Later I’ll probably set the server up as the DMZ host.

Everything now appears to be working pretty well. The graphic, above, shows all of our e-mail that’s been piling up at No-Ip.com steadily draining into the local server.

The exception to the otherwise smooth restoration of the server is the fact that the Voyager 2100 doesn’t handle local network DDNS so I can’t resolove local network names. The other odity is that internal references to the external face of the server are treated differently from incoming traffic which means I really can’t see the public face of my server, but this wasn’t altogether unexpected.

Filed under Relocating to London, , .

Posted by eric at 06:05 PM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2005

One More Form

Got hold of Fed Ex today and it doesn’t sound too bad. They need to know that the shipment is personal effects for somebody relocating to the UK. As that’s the case, all I apparently need to do is complete a form, called a C3, that they’re FAXing to the office and then FAX it back. Done promptly on Monday, they should be able to deliver on Tuesday morning. This would be well as it’ll very likely be difficult to find an afternoon out of the office this week awaiting delivery.

This is one of many times that the time difference with the US works in my favor. Half the people involved in next week’s meetings are in the US so early morning calls are out.

Just got back from picking up the post. Looks like Fed Ex can really move fast. Within minutes after I hung up the ‘phone, there was a packet from them waiting that contained a C3 and some explanatory material. Can they ship fast or what. OK, they probably put that in the post on Thursday the first time they failed to raise me on the ‘phone.

Posted in Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

Hung up in Customs

It apparently helps some if one checks one’s voice mail on occasion. Six or so boxes containing some 200lbs of my personal effects have been shipped across from the states. Apparently Fed Ex has made quite the effort as I didn’t expect them to arrive for another day or two. However, according to the two messages I picked up late this evening, they’ve been trying to contact me since yesterday afternoon to tell me that the shipment is on hand but some unspecified intervention on my part is required to clear it. It’s now late enough that it’s unlikely that anybody’s home at the Stansted Fed Ex facility.

Sure enough, no response from either number that was left on my voice mail. Odd, no roll over to a voice mail facility or automated call system of any kind. Not even a “Please call us back during normal business hours” recording. The numbers just ring and ring. I really hope that whatever is required to clear the shipment doesn’t require a personal visit. It looks like Stansted is quite a ways north of town and given how work is shaping up this week, I doubt I’ll have the half day required to run up there and jump through bureaucratic hoops.

Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2005

Opening a UK Bank Account

Hooray! I’ve finally managed to open a bank account in the UK. If you haven’t tried to do this, then you might not understand why I’m making such a big deal about it. Where US banks seem to have realized that they’re not selling stability and trust (nobody trusts them anyhow) and they’re not competing for deposits, that they are instead gathering customers to whom they sell all manner of services and to whom they charge all manner of fees, UK banks are still stuck in the first half of the last century. It almost seems as though they go out of their way to discourage new customers.

To open an account, I needed my passport, work permit and a letter confirming my position, standing as well as US and UK addresses, from the grand pooh bah of the UK side of the joint venture for which I work. As he’s been out on holiday these last two weeks, that has been the most difficult requirement to put in order. But with that document in hand and a visit to the Strand office of HSBC Bank plc, it was a matter of a mere hour and a half(!) to open the account.

After telling my life story to the bank’s computer system and numerous toings and frowings between sales representatives and managers, a small deciduous forest was fed through the printer, half of the resulting printed pages immediately torn up, then I was handed a bundle of documents describing my new, completely empty account. Now to get some funds transferred in but as we’re about to embark on a bank holiday weekend, it’ll no doubt be some more days before I have anything that I can actually draw on.

Filed under Life in London, , and .

Posted by eric at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2005

Six and a Half Hours to London

Baked TravelerThis will be one of the last entries under “Relocating to London” because as of now, I’m no longer relocating but relocated. Here I am parked at the company flat in downtown London — Holborn actually, just above Westminster — and yes, I’m looking pretty baked. I’ve now been up for some 28 hours and I plan to go for another three or so more before calling Saturday/Sunday a day.

Our flight finally left the gate at around 7:30 PM EDT (12:30 AM BST). We had a smooth take-off to the north which is where we wanted to go so we didn’t have to make one of those climbing corkscrew turns I find so disconcerting. Staying with EDT, we were down to a thin band of twilight by 8:30 PM and full dark shortly after than but the first signs of dawn started showing up at around 12:30 AM making for a very short night. I’d downloaded a bunch of movies from MovieLink, which seems to work fine on my laptop though I haven’t had the courage to try it out on my PC again yet, but for the most part I just read.

Some new things I’d not seen before when flying: Flat panel displays on each seat back. No longer do a few CRTs drop down from the overhead compartments when the one in-flight movie is available. Now ever seat, except those lucky folks at the bulkheads, has it’s own small flat panel and a selection of several movies on various channels. As it happened, today’s movie choices were pretty foul. The “Are We There Yet?” display. Shown on the large screen on the bulkhead and available on one of the channels is a rotating display that shows the plane’s progress along the flight path, altitude and ground speed, outside weather conditions, as well as the current time at the departure point, present location and destination. Then there are the arm rest remotes used to control your seat back display and audio selections. Loathsome creatures who’s greatest accomplishment is to make the arm rest useless for its designed purpose.

The flight was mostly uneventful but for occasional turbulence. The pilots’ typical reaction to rough air is to try to get permission to climb out of it. By the time we were over Ireland, we were at 41,000 feet. This fact may have contributed to the somewhat abrupt descent into Gatwick. To kill speed and altitude the pilot deployed the breaks, made a heck of a racket. We touched down about ten minutes early and would probably have been at the gate bang on time had there not been a plane still occupying it. We ended up sitting on the taxi way for about fifteen minutes loosing most of the time we’d gained back during the flight.

I was on the starboard side for this flight and even though we spent most of our flight hugging whatever coast was available, I wasn’t able to see much of interest out my side. I did see the lights of Halifax go by early in the flight. Saw nothing of Ireland or Lands End. As we manuvered for landing I still didn’t see very much as, here’s a surprise, a heavy cloud cover obscured the greater London area. Nothing much could be seen until we were below 2,500 feet.

And what was my first view of England? It wasn’t the river Thames set off by an expansive city. What unfolded below the cloud deck was a landscape of small farms bounded by hedges with an occasional cottage or manner house thrown in for variety. Gatwick is quite a ways south of London and, although there are signs of sprawl along the rail route to London, outside that corridor, things look much as they’ve done for quite some time I imagine.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2005

Returning to the Skies

Here I am at the airport having arrived dutifully two hours prior to scheduled departure. The wife dropped me off and I said farewell to the offspring though he’d fallen asleep on the way and didn’t notice. Off they drove and in I went.

For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I’ve loathed both flying and airlines since long before it was fashionable to do so, I haven’t been on a plane since before our world changed so abruptly nearly four years ago. The last time I was in the air was for a brief trip up to Ottawa in July of 2000. There are some things that have changed; some for the better and some… not so much for the worse as a bit less convenient.

First, there’s this matter of checking in. Five years ago you were still pretty much limited to desk or gate check in. Now, you can check in on-line, at an electronic kiosk, at the curb when you give your check luggage to the skycap, at the desk or at the gate. As I’ve an enormous pile of luggage, probably something close to the limit, I decided to stick to the old fashioned procedure and check in at the desk. Nothing much has changed there except perhaps that the lines are shorter.

Then there’s the issue of security. Yes, it’s tighter but most of the changes are behind the scenes I gather. About the only real differences I noticed is that I had to take off my shoes and that I did not have to turn my laptop on. (Tip if you’re traveling with a laptop, it will have to go through the X-ray — don’t worry, it won’t get hurt — so while you’re waiting in line, unzip your carrying case and be ready to plop it in one of the plastic trays and put it on the conveyer belt. Tip if you’re traveling with shoes, have your laces loose as you’ll probably have to take them off unless you’re wearing slippers.)

The other aspect of security that has changed is that you must have a boarding pass to go through security. This was a periodic measure five years ago but is permanent now. This means no greetings or goodbyes at the gate. In my case this is probably good as a drawn out goodbye with the offspring would probably do neither of us any good at all.

So now I’m at the gate and there’s at least an hour to go before we board. Our plane has been here at the gate but apparently it arrived late and they’re still cleaning and re-provisioning it so the’ve announced that boarding will begin at least twenty minutes late. That’s OK. I’m in no hurry. Fortunately there’s a coworker here who happens to be on the same flight so we can pass the time while we wait.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

Driving and Insurance in the U.K.

One issue I’ve thought about for a while but tried to avoid actually doing anything about that of driving and automotive insurance while across the pond. Here’s what little I’ve found out.

The U.K. government site indicates pretty clearly that my national (U.S. — that is NC) license is good for 12 months in the U.K. After that, a U.K. license will be required. But! Make sure that you take and pass the test prior to the expiration of that twelve month period. If you do not, you enter the system just like any 17 year old just about to get his license for the first time. Further, I’m told, that the U.K. driver’s license test is rather difficult compared to the usual U.S. equivalent and a number of common driving actions must be done just so in order to pass. A lifetime of contrary driving habits might not serve one terribly well here.

On the insurance front, I’ve as yet found out very little about what I’ll need to do by way of obtaining insurance over there. What I have found out is that unless one is planning to be over there a very long time indeed, one really should maintain some measure of insurance in the U.S. If you do not, when you return the insurers will simply assume the worst about why you haven’t had any insurance for the past n years. You ran over somebody or some such. They apparently will not be interested in any proofs you might offer to the contrary and will charge you usurious rates for the first year or two after you reestablish coverage if they offer to cover you at all. So it was reported here [I've lost that link I'm afraid. Post it later if I find it again.] and, given my experience with the insurance industry, I’ve no trouble believing it.

What we’ll probably end up doing is selling one car. Parking another, and dropping insurance down on the truck to minimal liability, theft and vandalism. Hopefully, that should reduce our U.S. auto insurance costs substantially.

Filed under Relocating to London

Posted by eric at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2005

Passports Stamped and Ready to Go

Impressive work from the U.K. visas team. The whole family’s documents arrived by courier at the house this morning just as I was setting out to work. Each of our passports now bears a hansom U.K. residency endorsement that covers an entire page and which includes a second photograph. Given that the package was sent up to the consulate in NY last Monday afternoon, the turn-around time adds up to less than a week. Say, we’ve got a pretty free market focused administration right now. I wonder if they’d take bids from the U.K. team to process U.S. passport applications, a process which presently takes every day of the promised six weeks.

I’ve passed copies of the endorsements along to HR, the firm assisting us with immigration issues wants to keep copies as well as a history of all entries in and departures from the U.K. so that they have an accurate record of our immigration status if it comes to extending our visas; something not presently planned.

Filed under Relocating to London

Posted by eric at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2005

US Prepaid Cell Service, Plan D

Verizon Logo
Still questing for some option aside from Cingular for prepaid GSM cellular telephone service for those occasions when I’m in the states, I looked into Verizon today. I’ve never been too awfully keen on Verizon because one of the local companies that got assimilated into that particular borg was the highly dysfunctional GTE. All my indirect experience with Verizon since then seems to indicate that whatever ailed GTE was contagious and has thoroughly infected its new host Verizon. (Some corporate cultures are just like that, just impossibly pernicious. For example, no matter how many good companies it buys and no matter how many times it changes its name, US Airways remains good old Agony (Alleghany) Airways.)

Poking through Verizon’s site I find that they do offer a pay-as-you-go plan. It compares fairly poorly to that offered by Cingular. First there’s a daily access charge of 99¢ “even on days you do not make or receive calls.” What if my ‘phone isn’t even on? Cingular’s $1 access fee associated with its 10¢/min prepaid plan may work similarly but it’s worded differently. Then there’s the expiration schedule for prepaid minutes. Since I’m likely to be out of the country for months at a time, I want to be able to get to the longest period prior to expiration with the least amount of dollars. For Cingular, this is $100 which yields 180 days to expiration. With Verizon, you’ve got to shell out $150 to get to the top of the schedule and even then the minutes will live for just 120 days. Next please.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2005

UK Prepaid Cell Service, Plan B

O2_Logo.gifI purchased a Virgin Mobile SIM from Telesital along with the tri-band ’phone because it’s the only brand they presently offer. However, I’m still on the look out for any better deals that I might be able to get once I’m on location. Just off the bat, O2 does not look like such. Many of the features of their pay-as-you-go plans look nice, like the extras you get for fairly minimal (£10) monthly top ups; 100 extra minutes or messages. However, one big down side comes when you step out of the O2 system. Calling mobile in, as we say, “another” network? Bad customer! Bad! Don’t do that again! That’ll be 40p/min.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2005

Light at the End of the Bureaucratic Tunnel!

I’ve spent much of this morning and afternoon filling out forms — 3 copies of the visa application to be specific — chasing down the spouse to collect a signature I should have gotten this morning before I left for the office and going to our HR people for clarification on how to answer abstruse questions (e.g., “How much money is available for your visit?”). However, after some perseverance, HR now has in their hands three complete signed forms with, we hope, all the right answers filled in. How odd to be filling out a government form that doesn’t ask for one’s social security number first thing.

The next step, I’m told, is that all of these applications, our new and expired passports, 2 additional passport photos each, official marriage registry copy, official birth certificate copy for the offspring, three months’ bank statements, and three months’ pay stubs all get bundled up and shipped off to the U.K. Consulate in New York for processing. The end result, in some two weeks time, should be a work permit endorsement in my passport and dependent endorsements in the spouse’s and offspring’s passports.

Update: Seems we took a wrong turn in filling out the olde fashioned paper forms sent to us by the firm assisting us with U.K. immigration issues. The preferred, indeed required method now is to complete the forms on line using the e-fastrack system and then ship up the supporting documentation via courier. Fortunately for me, as I’ve already provided HR with all of the required information in the paper forms, they’ve taken on the task of transcribing it to the electronic forms.

Update: Looks good. I’ve received three confirmation e-mails from the e-fastrack system reporting that the applications have been received.

Update (7/11): Received an e-mail update from the visa processing team that the package of supporting documents has been received and that the application should be processed within about five business days (their web site says that it takes ten but I’m not disposed to quibble about it).

Update (7/15): Received an e-mail update from the visa processing team informing me that the visas have been approved and the documents given over to the courier for shipment back down here. That’s four business days for turn-around. Compare this to Uncle Sam’s “that’ll be six weeks unless you slide me another half a C note”.

Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2005

Plans Delayed

Well, I had been planning a house hunting trip to London next week but recent events have put rather a bump in that road. Heard the news while I was driving into the office this morning. At first I wondered whether I was hearing anniversary coverage of some years old attack like the Canary Wharf bombing. But it wasn’t long before it was all too clear that this was a current, possibly ongoing attack.

While I’m not particularly worried from a safety standpoint – I imagine that there will be such a strong security presence that the tubes will seldom be safer – but after consulting with our people here, it was decided that the last thing London will need next week is yet another clueless Yank wobbling about the underground looking for the line to Richmond. The system will probably be under enough stress without me to help. Inconvenient in some ways but I don’t think that my convenience matters a whole lot in the context.

The knotty bit of the problem is that in order to move the work permit process forward, I need to ship my passport, along with the spouse’s and the offspring’s, up to the U.K. consulate in New York for a couple of weeks. Any small delay in my house hunting trip translates directly to a delay in the ultimate date that the permit is issued and I can actually start work. So, we’ve decided start the permit process now and push the scouting trip off until the permit is approved. This’ll mean about a three week delay.

If this all pans out, I’ll have the permit when I go over to look for a place to live so why not just stay at that point. It means getting all the crap I plan to take together in less time but since my concept has been to travel light for these two years, this shouldn’t be an issue.


Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2005

US Prepaid Cell Service, Plan C

Virgin Mobile USA LogoA third option in the US pay-as-you-go ’phone market is Virgin Mobile USA. The coverage maps below, just pulled from their site, show good coverage in most of our stateside stomping grounds. The downside of going with Virgin Mobile USA is that there does not seem to be any way that I can establish service without also purchasing a new handset that will immediately become a paper weight. What is it with U.S. service providers and selling just SIMs? Why do I have to by a #*%@$!! ’phone every time I want to change providers? Three years ago, we had not a single cellular ’phone in the house. Now we have three. Soon we may have five, three of them useless. I wonder if anybody collects old handsets? Hate to send perfectly good, if deliberately cripled, hardware to the dump.

Central NC D.C. Area Western NC South West VA

Update: Virgin Mobile USA apparently uses CDMA over the Sprint PCS network in the mid-Atlantic region so option C looks like a bust. At this point it seems I’m stuck with Cingular, how sad.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)

US Prepaid Cell Service, Plan B

Cingular Prepaide CoverageI’m not one of Cingular’s greatest fans, but they do have a pay-as-you-go plan and it does cover central North Carolina. It looks like the minutes might expire a tad too quickly; $100.00 top-up minutes expire in 180 days. It’s probable that we’ll be back in town more frequently than that and will most likely be heavy ’phone users when here so this may be an option. If Cingular can get behind the idea of converting the plan for my current number to a prepaid plan, then it might just be worth it if for no other reason than I won’t have to buy a redundant ’phone. My prediction is that there will be some stoopid reason why this just can’t be done.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

Pay-as-you-go... Somewhere Else

T-Mobile MaxLooks like I was a bit confused when I looked over the service coverage maps for the T-Mobile pay-as-you-go service. When I put my new T-Mobile SIM into the v180, all I get is “Emergency Only”. My fault. I muddled up the T-Mobile plan system map (see below left) with the T-Mobile prepaid system map (below right). Note the total lack of prepaid coverage in North Carolina. Well, the minutes on the account should be good for a year or so and there is coverage in the D.C. area where I’ll no doubt find myself before too long, but it is all rather frustrating. Guess I’ll have to fall back on Virgin Mobile USA or, shudder, Cingular. Really hope I don’t have to buy a useless handset just to get a prepaid SIM.

T-Mobile Service Map T-Mobile Prepaid Service Map

Filed under Relocating to London, .

Posted by eric at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2005

US Prepaid Cell Service, SIM Only

The T-Mobile SIM I ordered from Planet Omni (which is really Quantum Star) arrived today, right on time, shipped by yet another entity called buyundercost.com. What’s not obvious in the low resolution picture here — I’m too lazy at the moment to shuffle downstairs and dig out the Olympus so I’ve used the Logitech webcam instead — is that what we’ve got here is what might be called a refurbished SIM. It’s held in the card by two strips of scotch tape and the associated telephone number is scrawled in pen on the back of the card. Still, if it works it works.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2005

Does Anybody in the States Sell Just a SIM?

In my initial search for pay-as-you-go cellular ’phone plans in the US, the only provider I could find for whom I could purchase just a SIM — we neither want nor need another US ’phone &emdash; was T-Mobile. I ran across two vendors: Telestial, who claims to be out of US SIMs at the moment, and any of n subsidiaries of a Quantum Star. The later is a we’ll sell anything that makes money outfit with more doing business as names than might be best calculated to make me comfortable. Still, a search through BBB and other on-line references raises no flags so I’m placing an order for a T-Mobile Max prepaid SIM. This should give us adequate coverage through the mid-Atlantic region and the minutes should last the intervals we’ll be across the pond.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2005

Paperwork: End Round 1

The package of documents that comprise the result of only HR knows how much paper shuffling between the company, its English affiliate, the State Department, the Home Office, along with assorted embassies and consulates has arrived on my desk for review. I’m more than thankful that I’ve been able to rely on a group of professionals who have already navigated this bureaucratic thicket rather than having to hack my way through it myself.

The next step, I’m told, is to gather up the passports of myself and my possessions and forward them along with the afore mentioned packet of paperwork to the U.K. consulate so that the passports may be properly endorsed before we show up on the U.K.’s doorstep so-to-speak. The trouble is I’m planning on traveling to London shortly on a house hunting expedition and will kinda need my passport. Had we known when this packet of forms would arrive today, we could have scheduled appropriately. As it is, my earliest start date will have to be pushed back a couple of weeks. The wheels of government turn in their own time however and it’s no use getting too worked up about it.

Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

Start Now and Collect All Three

PassportAlso awaiting our return from our weekend trip was an envelope from the State Department containing the last of our required complement of passports, the offspringࢩs. So we now all three have our basic documentation. In each instance, the passport agency held to within a day or two of it’ promise that, without greasing their palms with a sixty buck sweetener, the process would take about six weeks. Co-workers have said that when you supply the appropriate emolument, the documents come back in about a week. Could be, it just seems gaulling to me that we’ve so lost touch with our finer feelings that it seems OK that the rich can supply a few more sheckles to receive special treatment from the government before which we are all, I was taught, supposed to stand in equality.

Semi-political rants aside, all I need now is for the paperwork to come through and we'll be able to set a date to head for the U.K.

Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2005

Tri-band Cell Phone Arrives

Motorola V180Waiting for us on our doorstep when we came home this evening (glad we live in a nice, quiet, safe neighborhood) was the first of two unlocked, international cellular ’phones I plan to order. This one, a Motorola v180, I ordered from Telestial (a site recommended in an article on The Travel Insider). It apparently arrived well on time and due to my sad miscalculation of our travel schedule, it landed on our doorstep a few hours after we took off for Washington D.C. This ’phone is a three band (900/1800/1900) model which should give us full coverage in Europe and most urban areas in the U.S. The recharger included is a European plug type with a U.S. adapter. It purports to be able to take in anything from 60Hz/110V to 50Hz/220V. We’ll see as I just plugged it into an outlet in our house to top off the battery. Ultimately, this will be the spouse’s handset but I’ll take it with me on my house hunting expedition to try it out.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2005

Holly Implant I've Been Tagged!

In addition to myself, my spouse, and the offspring; we’re eventually going to be bringing three cats across the pond. This was a worrisome prospect when looking at possible months in quarantine for three already neurotic animals. Recently however, the US and the UK have begun cooperating on a program by which pets can, if properly vaccinated and documented, be brought into the UK without quarantine. The program is called PETS and it involves a long process of ensuring that the animals are identifiable and disease free. You have to start this process about six months prior to planned departure and we’re getting a late start so we’ll have to have friends or relations look after the guys for a few months before they can follow us over.

In order for this whole system to work, the folks in the UK must be able to be certain that the animal that they’re looking at is the same one that the accompanying documentation refers to. So the first step is to have identity tags implanted in the cats. The implant is about the size and shape of a slightly oversized grain of basmati rice. It’s implanted under the skin between the shoulder blades. Here we have one of our three after getting his implant as well as rabies and distemper vaccines. He’s still looking just a bit put out about it.

So now all of the guys have their seekrit government implants (theirs are compatible with Annex A of ISO Standard 11785) and we're ready for step #2. This is a long wait until their vaccinations, as well as any diseases they might have, have time to percolate. Then they get a blood test and the’ll be almost ready to travel.

Filed under Relocating to London and .

Posted by eric at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2005

Learning to Speak the Local Frequency

GSM SIMWhile I’ll be living primarily in London for the next couple of years, I’ll no doubt be making occasional trips back to the states and hopefully elsewhere in Europe. I’m fairly sure my doddering old GSM ‘phone wouldn’t work in the UK or Europe; it probably only understands 1900MHz. What’s more Cingular has locked it and I’m fairly confident that I don’t want to pay their roaming rates across the pond.

While looking for the information I need to figure out a solution, I ran across a series of excellent articles that directly address my problem on The Travel Insider. In a very informative series of seven articles, the author presents all that I need to know about world cell ‘phone use. The articles contain just the right level of detail and are broadly enough targeted to cover both the wide traveler and someone like myself who will be in one country for extended periods of time. I found the first three articles to be the most informative and useful. Great reading.

As an extra benefit, the author points to an unlocked GSM ‘phone provider that might be a good place to start shopping for a quad-band handset. Should probably check eBay as well. (I like the look and feature list of the Motorola v600 and might be inclined to get one, but only if I can shutdown Bluetooth.)

My information hunt also turned up O2, a UK service provider that appears to offer SIM only pay-as-you-go solutions. Their rates don’t seem out of line (10-25p/min) so I’ll keep them in mind.

Ericsson_r300z.gifUpdate A little investigation inside our old handsets reveals that the make/model is Ericsson r300z. Sure enough, they only speak 1900MHz and so even if unlocked would be worth nothing in the UK. In fact, a quick check on eBay shows that they're worth pretty much nothing in the US by now.

Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.

Posted by eric at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

Finding a Survival Guide

The time is rapidly approaching, about a month away now, when I’ll have to up stakes and go house hunting in London. Having never touched foot to pavement in that city, or the country that contains, it in my life I feel that I could use a bit of a primer on how not to appear the complete fool while wobbling about town. So it was off to B&N last night to exploit a recently e-mailed coupon and my membership card to obtain a couple of current guide books. Yes, I know that doing so allows them to track and study my every purchasing move but I saved enough dollars for me to pocket my principles and besides, when I get to the UK I’ll probably defect to Blackwells anyway.

Ended up with two items from DK: a London guide and one for the UK in general. (We do plan to escape the city on occasions.) I also took the opportunity to relax with a cappuccino and a blueberry scone. Well, I got a couple of bites of the scone; the offspring consumed the bulk of it before I had much chance to get started.

Filed under Relocating to London.

Posted by eric at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

House Hunting Again

Having only just, or not quite, settled into our new used home, I'm already at the house hunt again. Now it's time to start a search for where we might live in London for the next couple of years. An agent my company contacted in London has come through with a couple of sites from which I might begin my search, Find a Property and Primelocation.com. I've clearly got a lot to learn about the London real estate market as most of my searches thus far have turned up nothing. I have picked up on the fact that "pw" means a weekly rental rate in pounds where "pcm" refers to a monthly rate. (So why isn't it something simple like "pcw" and "pcm" or "pw" and "pm"? Dunknow.

Filed under London: Preparation.

Posted by eric at 01:46 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

Some Minor Administrivia

Put together some of the information required for obtaining a work permit in the U.K. This apparently includes a copy of the main page of my spanking new passport, a list of dependents who will accompany me along with their basic vital statistics, and a current CV. I suppose that this last is required to be sure I'm qualified for the job I've already been offered. I would think that would be the lookout of whoever offered me the job but that's just me. I'm sure there's much more required but, very fortunately, our HR people are handling the bulk of this no doubt tedious process.

I'm also informed that it will probably serve me well to hang on to a few additional items such as a few months of current pay stubs, some extra passport photos (oops, back to Kinko's) and a few months worth of recent bank statements. My we are getting a bit nosy aren’t we?

Posted by eric at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2005

Passport, Mk II

Passport_small.gifI've just received my new, updated passport. It looks very like the old one except that the picture is worse, the type is smaller, the cover has a more cloth like feel and Spanish has been added to English and French for all of the quaint old flowery bits of language throughout. There have been a few changes in an apparent attempt to make it harder to tamper with passport photos or to fake a passport from scratch. Unfortunately, there are so many such measures on the photo page that it's difficult to get a good look at the image.

So, I am now -- at the request of Ms. Rice -- to be permitted "to pass without delay or hindrance". We'll see.

Posted by eric at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

A Pint Sized Passport?

As most have no doubt heard by now, you may be able to get out of the U.S. with a birth certificate or other some such low security documents, but you probably can't get back in without a passport. So the spouse and I had to get our lapsed documents in order, which can be done through the mail, and the offspring needs his first passport some years earlier than we might have thought. (OK, we were going to get passports all 'round but if I can blame current administration policies for costing me another $80 or so, I'll go right ahead and do it.)

We'd obtained new photos some weeks back from the Kinko's in Cary They did a nice job and the offspring was reasonably well behaved. On the one hand it helped that he really likes to have his picture taken. On the other hand, that slowed things down a bit as he kept trying to get closer to the camera and so mucked up the framing; the relative size of the head image must now fall within pretty narrow parameters for the picture to be acceptable.

This afternoon we packed up photos, offspring's birth certificate, multiple ID for Mom & Dad, documentation to explain why our permanent address no longer matches what's on our drivers' licenses and the offspring and headed out to the post office. (First passports must be applied for in person.) Everything went very smoothly. Whether working with the retail side or the bulk mail facility out back, I've never had anything but a good experience at the Westgate Post Office in Raleigh.

Despite the fact that we got there at lunch time, there was only one other party in front of us at the passport desk and it was quickly our turn. The sprout had fun running around the racks of stamps, shipping envelopes and multi-colored bubble wrap while we went through all of the documents. It took almost no time. About the only hitch was that I had prepared a single check to the U.S. State Department. In fact, two are required: one for the basic passport fee which goes to the State Department and a second processing fee to postmaster.

Anyway, we were all done in minutes and now we await the arrival of a tiny little passport that should be good for five years. The subject himself fell asleep halfway back home and proceeded to nap most of the remaining afternoon away.

Posted by eric at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)