Saturday, May 15, 2004
Foreign
Thursday the 13th was my blog's one-year anniversary. I knew about it, but was kind of distracted, as the 13th was also my plane trip to London. Where I am. Now.
Some thoughts on London. The exchange rate is terrible. I have always understood that a pound is $1.60. Somehow, that became $1.90. Which led to me dropping around $100 on a cab. Ouch. Ouch. All my frugality of the past several weeks, gone gone gone.
I almost had to come with absolutely no money. When I was in New York, the day I left, I went to an ATM. I tried to take out more than my bank allowed, and so I had to push my card back in. However, I didn't pull it out beforehand, so the machine kept telling me to take it out. As I was trying to get it back out (no fingernails, help!) the machine decided it would be easiest to just eat the card. Fortunately, it was attached to a bank and I could just walk in and ask them to retrieve the card.
Before I came to London, I stocked up on electrical plug converters so that I could use Prisstina, my dear laptop, here. Somehow, one of the plugs, the one that let me plug it into the wall here, disappeared. I'm not certain how this happened. I mean, I packed it. I didn't remove it from packing, that would be silly. But when I get here, it's gone gone gone. So I'm down to about 30 minutes of time on my laptop, though I have found an electronics store here, it's not open right now.
You ever learn about the Northwest Ordinance in school? It was the only thing of note you get taught about that the USA did under the Articles of Confederation, before the Constitution. What it did was divide up the undeveloped land that the US had, west of the Appalachians, into squares. Many eastern areas were developed under the same idea, I think. If you're taking off from a plane in the western US, you can see it, everything divided into squares, from big to small. It makes getting around cities easier, too. After all, everything is at a right angle from everything else.
London? Not like that. Oh dear god, not like that. All the streets are curved, and go off at slight angles from one another, and thankfully I have a book of maps, but otherwise......
Thursday the 13th was my blog's one-year anniversary. I knew about it, but was kind of distracted, as the 13th was also my plane trip to London. Where I am. Now.
Some thoughts on London. The exchange rate is terrible. I have always understood that a pound is $1.60. Somehow, that became $1.90. Which led to me dropping around $100 on a cab. Ouch. Ouch. All my frugality of the past several weeks, gone gone gone.
I almost had to come with absolutely no money. When I was in New York, the day I left, I went to an ATM. I tried to take out more than my bank allowed, and so I had to push my card back in. However, I didn't pull it out beforehand, so the machine kept telling me to take it out. As I was trying to get it back out (no fingernails, help!) the machine decided it would be easiest to just eat the card. Fortunately, it was attached to a bank and I could just walk in and ask them to retrieve the card.
Before I came to London, I stocked up on electrical plug converters so that I could use Prisstina, my dear laptop, here. Somehow, one of the plugs, the one that let me plug it into the wall here, disappeared. I'm not certain how this happened. I mean, I packed it. I didn't remove it from packing, that would be silly. But when I get here, it's gone gone gone. So I'm down to about 30 minutes of time on my laptop, though I have found an electronics store here, it's not open right now.
You ever learn about the Northwest Ordinance in school? It was the only thing of note you get taught about that the USA did under the Articles of Confederation, before the Constitution. What it did was divide up the undeveloped land that the US had, west of the Appalachians, into squares. Many eastern areas were developed under the same idea, I think. If you're taking off from a plane in the western US, you can see it, everything divided into squares, from big to small. It makes getting around cities easier, too. After all, everything is at a right angle from everything else.
London? Not like that. Oh dear god, not like that. All the streets are curved, and go off at slight angles from one another, and thankfully I have a book of maps, but otherwise......