Moving Day II

The actual moving took less than 25 minutes. Trevor picked me up at 9AM. I was ready almost an hour before. I had the bags lined up waiting to be transported. I felt bad that the luggages were so heavy and we were going up one level from my garden flat to the street, and then my new flat is on the second floor, so we were up one level again. I gave him 10 pounds. That's a lot for UK standard because they don't tip. Here are some pictures of my flat.

Kitchen, the tall cabinet is actually a fridge. I also have a combo washer dryer in the kitchen.

No more living out of a suitcase! Nice big closet.

The other half of the closet. So big that my giant suitcases fit inside.

Self explanatory!

Living room. It echoes in this room. One sleeper sofa, that's it.

Bedroom and another closet besides it. I picked a bright color quilt from Ikea.

Fish and Chips Take Two courtesy of Ikea. Much better that the one in Brighton. Plus the fish is baked.

Talking about Ikea, I went there the day I moved because I had to buy a bed sheet, blanket, kitchen and bathroom stuff. I love Ikea but I went there by bus. It took me an hour and a half... One way. Never again. Unless I can find a faster way to go there.

The flat was so quiet but that didn't stay long because I found out soon that all doors in this building are like fire doors, they are heavy. It doesn't matter how soft you close the door. It needs to slam a bit to close. The first day I was in the flat, I heard my neighbor play a violin. That doesn't bother me. It's having a concert every night. On the weeken, people were up late and getting home late. I can hear them walking on the street. Since I had no TV, I watched the Voice from NBC app. I used my woke blackberry as hot spot. Apparently that blew up my data allowance. I got a call and two emails from Tech Support group. They thought my phone got stolen. Oops. So, I was without Internet at home for a couple of days. That's a torture. Much worse than having no TV. I started looking for a broadband service and found out that there was no phone jacks in the flat. I emailed the flat management company, and they said they would send a maintenance guy over. I have a feeling this is to see where they can install a socket. By law, each residence must have a phone jack for safety reason, a land line for an emergency call. I really hope I can get one, otherwise to get a mobile broadband is a lot more expensive. 

I caved in on Friday night and bought 5 one day passes for British Telecom wifi. I used one and it ended a couple of hours ago. I'm at Starbucks right now. I love the area that I live in. It's a half a block from Marylebone High Street. Very posh area. There's a farmer's market every Sunday from 10 until 2 right behind me. It's not too big. There are a few produce stalls, fish, cured meat, bread, baked goodies and so on, maybe around 15-20 stalls. 

Yesterday I opened a UK bank account at HSBC, the good thing is I also opened a US account with them also, so I can transfer money between accounts without getting too ripped off on the exchange rates. Talking about money, Sarah told me that I got a letter from UPS, she took a picture of it and holy cow, that's my paycheck. What happened to my direct deposit? I need to find out from payroll. The good thing is Geraldine is coming to visit me before she goes to see her mom in Northern Ireland in a couple of weeks. Sarah sent the check to her and I will deposit it from my iPhone. About bank accounts, when I log in to my UK bank account, I have to use a HSBC token, you don't key your password on the website. Once you key your passcode on the token, it gives you a serial number that you key on the website. I'm used to this because at work, we use tokens to log in, but I didn't know they also do this for personal accounts. I happened to tell the HSBC person who helped me open the account that we can deposit checks from phones and she was so surprised and said how come they couldn't do that in UK. I thought the same thing about the security tokens.