Devinwatson's travel blogs:
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Tieing Up Loose Ends
Entry 13 of 17 | show all | print this entry |
Now that we have our place to live it's on to all the rest of the fun jazz that comes with a move. We still need to get all the utilities switched over into our name and figure out when to pay and where to pay for them all. Apparently utilities are quarterly so we only get our gas / water / electricity every 3 months. There is also what's called "Council Tax" out here which we asked the locals about and they said it basically empties your garbage's. Not too sure why they need £120 pcm (per calendar month) to empty garbage's but we are guessing it has something to do with property tax and what not too. Everything is direct withdrawal here too which we are not a huge fan of but must live with. We would rather get our bill and just pay it then have money magically pulling from our accounts but it's the only way. This will be easy though as it's just a few phone calls and writing down pay dates on the calendar.
The big things for us right now are getting our internet setup and bank accounts opened. But in order to get our internet setup we require a bank account, and in order to get a bank account we require a tenancy agreement. Just more of the step by step we have been dealing with constantly. Everything needs something and you have to follow this written in stone path in order to get everything setup. One step at a time we must tread and you can't ever skip steps nor do multiple things at once which are getting really annoying. I can't wait for the day where I come home and don't have anything to deal with as it's been two plus months of just non-stop dealing with issues and getting things ready and setup. Moving continents is not a lot of fun in ways but it will all come to an end soon and we can start enjoying ourselves again.
We are currently stealing our internet from a neighbour that left there network open (shhhhhh!), so at least we can still browse for jobs and send emails and update blogs and all that fun. We have a guy coming next Thursday (Aug 28) to setup our phone line. Apparently here you require a phone line in order to get internet or cable as it all runs down the same line. So even if you don't want the phone line if you want internet you have to get the phone line and you have to pay for it. Retarded ass system and the rules that come with it are even worse. Apparently they don't have regular phone lines here they simply use IP phones over the internet for there lan lines. So what this means is there are a bunch of dumb ass rules that go with using your phone that make it more like a cell phone than a lan line. We are required to pay £11.50 pcm for the line rental no matter what. But the best part of it is that that is a basic phone line. In Canada that would be free local calls anytime anywhere in the city. Not here, here that only gives you free weekends and evenings to UK local numbers. If you're calling a mobile you get charged, if you call during the day you get charged, and better yet if you talk for more than one hour you start getting charged even if it's in the evening or on the weekend. You actually have a talk time limit that is one hour and if you go over that you start paying by the minute so they say you're supposed to hang up and redial the person to avoid this. This has to be the stupidest thing I have ever heard of and it's an in house phone line. I can see why everyone just gets cell phones here as the local lines are dumb and more restricting than a cell phone. Luckily however they do have a really good international plan. For an extra £5 pcm we can get unlimited calls to Canada anytime. Now if you're thinking what I'm thinking this doesn't make sense. For £5 I can call Canada whenever I want and yet for £11 I can only call local numbers evenings and weekends. Not too sure how that one works. Regardless we plan to only really be calling numbers in Canada so it works out well for us. The one hour rule still applies to Canada calls though so if you get a call from us near one hour into the call we will have to temporary halt the call while I hang up and redial.
On the bright side we will be able to call home for pretty darn cheap and they said as long as we don't abuse it we have no minute limit to how much we call and we will only be paying the £5 a month which will be nice. The internet here is pretty standard although they like to put monthly limits on it and very low ones too. To get rid of the limit were looking at mid range packages for about £20 pcm. Otherwise you have an 8gb download limit in a month which is very low as you would use that up in no time just watching you tube videos. Unfortunately we can't get that setup until we have a bank account though so it won't be for a couple weeks. Luckily there is free internet in a corner of our house as we would be really hurting. We decided to go with BT internet service as well which comes with a really neat gimmick. For the package were getting we get unlimited WIFI minutes in all BT Hotspots. A Hotspot is internet in cafes and other locations scattered about around (cities, airports, train stations, cafes, parks, etc.). In Fact in Oxford alone there are probably 50 or more of these hotspots. So it means we will have internet at home and can wonder down to cafes whenever we feel like it and still get free internet instead of paying the outrageous price of £6 an hour that most cafes charge. BT is the largest provider here so it seemed to be a solid choice and having the ability to move around to these hotspots will be fun, and there's fresh coffee, score!
We had some fun today as we went downtown and finally picked up some month bus passes as we were getting sick of paying for day ones. We had to switch bus companies however as the one we were previously using is more the touristy line where as the one we switched to has more bus's and covers a lot more areas outside of the city center where all the tourist stuff is. However it means we have to relearn all the bus numbers and bus stops and routes again as we had just finished figuring out the other company and now we have to start from scratch again. It was £37 for a month pass so not to bad at all. I sat down and stared at the route maps and bus routes for a good hour trying to figure out the ones we will use. It's pretty stupid as the main map they give you only lists the main streets so you have to overlay the good map onto that map and start figuring out which streets are which and where you are. Not as easy as it sounds as the bus maps doesn't show anywhere near the number of streets that there are. They are very vague and confusing. I think we got it figured out now though on how to get to the main mall and back and downtown and back. We also figured out Scott's commute route to Bicester and back today as well. He's looking at about an hour commute but it's a pretty easy route and at least he won't be driving so he can work on stuff while he rides the bus.
We have finally stopped our community spending and are splitting into our own accounts again so I hit the bank to withdrawal some money and had a blast. I had already withdrawaled money once a week back for the community pot so I knew that it worked and we get nailed with a service fee of $10 Canadian for withdrawals over here which isn't too bad but it means you take out large clumps at a time. So we went up to the "hole in the wall" (I'll never get sick of that) and I threw my card in and punched in my pin and made it all the way to the screen where you pick your withdrawal amount. Then I get this message saying invalid pin number. I was very confused as it took my pin number and let me in up to that point, so I punch it in again and same message. I get my card back and go try another machine, this time it gives me a message saying cannot process transaction. I thought about it some more and knew I had money in there so I went up to the teller and talked to them. She was a moron and didn't understand what I was saying at all. After telling here I'm trying to withdrawal money from a Canadian account three times and then showing her my card she simply said "This card is not for this bank" and I just shook my head and laughed and walked away. I didn't think Canadian accents were so hard to understand but apparently they are because this has been a very common thing around here. We tend to have to repeat ourselves numerous times to people and talk v..e..r..y.....s..l..o..w..l..y for them to understand. It works in reverse as well, especially when you're talking on the phone, I find it very hard to understand the really heavy British accents here. The girl I talked to about getting our phone hooked up had to repeat herself numerous times before I could understand what she was saying. Anyway so very confused we walked across the street to try a different banks hole in the wall and when I pulled my card out of my wallet I actually looked at it closer and suddenly realized I was holding Scott's card and not mine. I burst out laughing and showed Scott the card and he burst out laughing and pulled out his wallet and had my card. Somehow we had swapped cards and I was trying to use my pin on his card which obviously wasn't going to work. So I threw my card in and money came out and I felt a lot better knowing that nothing was wrong and it was just our stupidity. We both use the same banks so the cards were identical aside from the name and I never really look at my card as I assume it's mine.
We also headed down to Staples (yes they have staples here, about the only store that is the same though) and picked up a cheap printer. We needed to be able to print off proof of address's and resumes for bank accounts and jobs so we figured it would be a good investment. So at least we can print now and don't have to hunt down internet cafes and pay their outrageous prices. It's an all in one also so it will give Scott the ability to scan and photocopy if he needs to for school. He will probably do it at his school but they were the same price as the basic printers as it was on sale so we just got it in case.
Yesterday we went for groceries which was pretty entertaining. You don't really think about what you're getting as you usually have a car to dump it into. I had to remind them that we have to walk a mile to get back to our house afterwards so we should keep this somewhat light. We still ended up with 9 heavy bags and had a blast trying to get them home. Couple of stops and breaks and a lot of pain later we made it home and at least have food and the basic cooking supplies for a while. I still can't get over how cheap beer is here. You can buy a case of 15 pint sized cans at the grocery store for £9.99. That's less than a buck a beer. Makes you feel like you're getting raped on beer back home with how cheap it is here. I see why there is a very large beer consumption rate over here with those prices. The pubs are still over priced as usual though ranging from £2.50 - £4.50 for a pint, figures. So when you come to visit Derek you can have lots of fun trying out beers as long as you don't buy it in pubs. They do have liquor boards here but there very small and scattered and you only real go to them if you want something special. Every single convenience store and grocery store sells most kinds of booze so you really never need to make a special trip as you can find it down every block. Just imagine if every gas station and grocery store and minimart in Canada sold booze and that is what you have here.
Yesterday we also had the gas and electricity inspector show up also to do the safety check which is mandatory for new renters. The letting agency pays for it so it was just a matter of us being home but I'm really glad he showed up as we had a lot of questions. Basically every single plug and appliance has a switch which gets really confusing and annoying. In our kitchen alone there's a wall of 5 plugs that do nothing but run the appliances. One is for the fridge, one for fume hood, one for stove, one for dishwasher, and one for laundry. Not sure why these require switches above the counters but that's just the way they do things here. They stay on all the time so it makes no sense but whatever. I guess I should also mention that the laundry machine is under the kitchen sink in the kitchen and it's like that everywhere. Little odd standing in your kitchen doing laundry but we will get used to it. We had him explain all the rads to us as well as they all have knobs on them which we didn't understand and there were about 5-6 switches about the house that we had no idea what they were for. He explained them all to us and they did make sense but like having a switch for the shower is just stupid. I mean who needs to turn off the ability to use your shower. We also have towel heater racks in our bathrooms which are pretty sweet. Nice warm towels for when you get out of the shower. I'm really annoyed with the showers here however as they have no pressure no matter where we stayed. Something to do with water conservation and it's the whole city but it sucks trying to shower with no pressure. So we got all the switches and knobs figured out now and pretty much have the dishwasher and laundry figured as they don't run anything like back in Canada and we actually had to pull out the manuals. The gas man was laughing pretty hard at us as we asked all these stupid questions about the house that would be common sense to any local, the joys of being a foreigner.
So at least we got our place to live now but still a long road ahead of us as we have to get everything hooked up and switched to our name. Not to mention find jobs and get some money already as we spent a lot more than expected getting set up. Hopefully most of the road blocks are gone now and we can finally get on to a normal life again after two months of none stop dealing and planning. Think I'm going to hit the net for a while tonight and start firing off some resumes and see if I can't get some interviews lined up as if all goes to plan we will have all the loose ends tied up shortly and then all that's left is to find jobs and get to working again. Going to a nice shock to the system after a three month holiday but it will feel good to get back on the work force and start making money again.
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