Getting Adjusted

“Change to spare for a chap out of luck, do ya?”
“No, sorry sir” although had I heard this in America I certainly would have dropped some coin. Affirmative action is present, even in me.

Saturday was a day much like my others… spent running from Churchill to the City Center to obtain the necessary items of everyday life. My first trip included a visit to Lloyds TSB, a bank, in order to set up an account and deposit the money I’ve had precariously laying around over the last couple days. Curiously, Gates set something up there and we get to have Silver Accounts for no charge which entitles us to quite a bunch of hefty benefits… including British AAA (which is AA), European Travel Insurance, Mobile Phone insurance, Lost Wallet Insurance, and international money transfer cards. Who knew Bill had a way with money…

After setting up my bank account, I managed to get some stationary for my courses and acquire a cell phone/phone plan. Upon first inspection, the plan seems to be pretty reasonable. I paid £10 for a new Nokia phone, albeit a basic model, and £20 as a startup fee. For this amount I get £20 of talk time at 20p/minute and 600 free text messages, which I plan on using a great deal more anyways. Each month I “top off” my plan by paying £10 to gain £10 more of talk time and 300 free texts. As a side note, receiving international calls from phone cards does not detract from my minutes… so if you plan on calling me, please do so using a phone card. For those interested, my phone number is 0753-205-3291. I’m not yet quite sure the protocol for making a call to England, but I’ll ask Jeongmin how she went about it and relay it in the next post.

So, for the most part I’m quite setup here. The last, and perhaps most vital things I need to get are a bike and an umbrella. Unfortunately, no luck yesterday in obtaining a bike… but I’ve been told I can get one in reasonable order for about £40-£60. This really segues well into my explaining, geographically, how far I am from the City Center. Churchill College, which is perhaps one of the farthest colleges from the center is located in the Northwest of Cambridge. The college’s front gate is about a 20 minute walk from the center of the city (about 2 km) away. Unfortuntaely, my apartment is about 1 km away from the front gate of the college, making my entire trip nearly a 30 minute walk. Needless to say, a bike is my next big purchase. In my next post I’ll begin to load up some photos of my accommodations, college, and the city of Cambridge. Until then… “Change to spare for a chap out of a bike, do ya?”