Day 19: Lift-Off?

Today was the big day, the day to embark on our journey to London. Today was the to pierce the shroud of mystery and awe, to climb the holy mountain, to scale the walls of the techno-literati citadel. Today was the day Christmas break would truly begin, in true romantic Dickens-plus-modern-wonder style.

Today was the day…but today was the day we missed our bus.

It was my fault. Not completely, but mostly. It was certainly my fault that I left until this morning a few too many odds and ends to tie up, including failing to finish off my food and so making it into massive BLTs to take along. I tend to do that – leaving too many things until the last minute, I mean, although I do a fair share of massive BLT-making as well. Without fail, the final touches of any project take far longer than foreseen, at least for me, because I am that fatal combination of ambition, perfectionism, and optimism.

What wasn’t entirely my fault was that the Megabus ‘station’ (turning out to be an unmarked point on the side of the road) was waaay farther away than it looked like on Google Maps. We counted on fifteen, maybe thirty minutes to walk there from the uni. It ended up taking closer to an hour, and that was lugging our big bags, mine being an oversized carry-on with a bum wheel that would only degenerate over the duration of the trip – in several inches of snow. It was pretty yes, but the scenery didn’t do much to stop our hearts from sinking when we came to an intersection we figured to be about halfway and were faced with a massive hill.

At long last, and me starting to sweat under my ample clothing (including a newly purchased coat I was happy to find could double as an everyday winter coat and a snowboarding jacket, wasn’t too bulky, and came in my favourite colour), we arrive at the top of the hill only to find that we didn’t know which way to go. We’d expected to be at the bus stop by then, but after asking someone and walking on, actually had to walk fifteen more minutes down the road to a much larger intersection. It was at that intersection that we saw our Megabus pulling away. It had even been a few minutes late. It passed right in front of us.

Our slight worry turned to despair, even more so as we called and woke up a flatmate and got him to check the Megabus schedule online, only to find that there were no more buses that day. We began the long walk back.

Graciously, my fellow adventurer was still in good spirits, an attitude he continued to exhibit throughout the whole experience. I admire that. I have optimism, but the perfectionism can be pretty critical, especially when I know something is very much my fault. On the way back, knowing Bradford’s reputation and a story from our other flatmate that he’d heard what sounded like someone trying to break into the halls a few days previously, we joked about the chance of us getting back to find our rooms already burgled. Fortunately, these jokes did not materialise into a significant plot twist for this blog (sorry guys).

Also fortuitously, we were able to cancel our hostel reservations for that night, and purchase Megabus tickets for the next morning, same time. With nothing else to do, we crashed until that evening when we went out with some of the few students who were still in Bradford (well, I say that because that’s what it felt like, but what’s probably closer to the truth is that there were plenty of international students remaining, who might very well remain over the entire break, most of them being, for whatever reason, Chinese, but they kept to their own spaces so the campus felt deserted). I had a whiskey sour for the first time – nice. I had mulled wine for the first time – delicious. I finished some of the food I’d had nothing to do with.

Stark reality v. challenger’s spirit: one-nil.

Day 3: Shopping and Living Cheap

I went to York again today, 1) to see it decked out in its Christmas finery (got some pictures for you), and 2) to go Christmas shopping, not that I would’ve needed to go all that way just for shopping but I did get what I think are some good presents for my parents. Now I just need to figure out how to mail a box, oh, and get a box, too; all things I hate doing. Measuring and weighing and calculating and hauling are such a pain. They really need to make international shipping more convenient, just like they need to make sending money overseas easier. I hate those processes like I hate trying to get a job.

But I’m doing it again, jumping here and there, wherever my scattered brain takes me, failing to pay any heed to flow, continuity, and conciseness. Sorry. Sometimes I feel like a comedian swinging from joke to joke, earnestly trying to find something that makes the crowd laugh, and when such a line is found, he sticks with it, expounds (yes that is a real word) on it, repeats it, and generally ruins any humour the joke originally possessed. I’m tempted to go into a comparison of British and American stand-up, but I refrain – I do have a preconceived list of things to report on tonight, I promise.

Oh, I also went to York to be social, as I expected a sizeable group of my classmates to be going. That proved to be a faulty assumption. But it was still enjoyable.

The first bit of my London adventure prep is taken care of: I bought the bus ticket to get down there. As simple as that may sound, there were actually some temporarily-worrying complications, which I’ll get to right after I do a bit of plugging. A big part of this blog is to help you, after all; maybe not replicate my trip exactly but have adventures similar to it, should you be interested. That’s why I went into detail about Pandora and Hotspot Shield yesterday; I’m talking about Megabus and Couchsurfing today (and many other days, no doubt), and I’ll get into some ways to transfer money overseas cheaply within the next few weeks. World travellers gotta help each other out.

Yes, after being dismayed at hearing the exorbitant prices for taking trains or coaches down to London, I was overjoyed to find out about a service called Megabus. From what I’ve heard it definitely has students in mind – no frills but no extra costs, just getting you from point A to point B in a cheap and hopefully, hopefully (considering all this snow we’ve been getting) timely manner. I suspect that every country has something like it; during my year in Philadelphia I took the ‘Chinabus’ from the Chinatown there to the Chinatown in Washington D.C. for cheap. It was sketchy, yes, especially as I was arriving in the dark evening, as I seem to always do, but since I was surrounded by students for most of it I felt fairly safe.

We shall see just how plain the ‘no frills’ bit gets – I have heard some derision against Megabus – but I’m not particular. Oh yes, the complications. I was on the website, having finally decided on a day to go (leaving a day for a possible complete Star Wars marathon right after uni breaks up, that would be awesome), but when I went to put in the dates and get the times, the site decided to go on the fritz. The booking feature would not budge.

This isn’t actually as interesting a story as I thought it might be when I started telling it (don’t you hate it when that happens? What’s that? You don’t start telling stories you know won’t deliver? Ah.) but I did wonder if it was a sign that I shouldn’t be opting for Megabus. Let’s hope it wasn’t, because they got the website working again just in time for me to be late to meet my friends, and I bought one ticket for me and one for my flatmate.

So we have our way in. Whether we, once down there, will be staying on lush bedding in a wonderfully hospitable host’s home or sneaking Z’s in a gay bar somewhere (no, I’m not, I just heard that they’re safe places to spend a night – not sure I want to test that suspicious-sounding theory though) remains to be seen.

I’m not trusting that point to chance completely; I have been surfing the Couchsurfing archives for potential couchsurfees. I even got a message from a friendly-sounding guy which I will pursue to see if it’s an option. People, this isn’t as sketchy as it sounds! There’s a whole reference system and everyone who’s done it seems to love it. You’ll see. You’ll see.

I’m being too picky, though; like job applications I just need to send loads out there (personalised, of course) and see what’s even an option. I’m sure there’s loads of people CSing over the holidays, so places will be few, just like the hostels, which I foolishly continue to wait to reserve. Oh man oh man. Why do I do this to myself.

But it will all work out and pay off massive, it always does. I made it here, after all. And into a wonderful job last year. And a wonderful uni the year before that. There’s a precedent.

So that’s how things stand right now; I’ve done some Christmas shopping, I have a way into emerald city (poor choice of metaphor?), accommodation options are slowly availing themselves. I need to get money, I need to finish my essays on the UN in Cambodia and British citizenship, respectively, and I need to stop boring you guys, right?

And I need to publish this before the clock strikes twelve.

Bradford City Hall by night, and night-shot mode.

Day 2: Assembling The Christmas Components

My uni basically shut down yesterday and today due to the apparently excessive, and even record, amounts of snow. I love it. The snow, that is. Lectures, on the other hand, I quite enjoy. This year is assessed purely on essays, which are set pretty much from the start of each semester, so lectures don’t incur any more work and are quite interesting – why would I be studying this topic if I didn’t find it interesting? And yet there seem to be so many people in that leaky boat.

Plus, lectures are a chance to see people; without them I tend to stay in my room and do things like post mundane thoughts online for a severely limited number of people to read. Needless to say, today was an antisocial day. And with it being Christmas and me feeling the need to celebrate by constantly having things at hand to munch on, I haven’t had a proper meal since breakfast. These factors and one more, the fact that it practically gets dark at noon at this time of year in this part of the world, resulted in me spending today in a relatively changeless state of sitting in front of my computer alone in my room, munching, surfing, and feeling like I should be doing something better with my time.

But I’m boring you. This is my exciting Christmas series! So on to what I actually DID accomplish.

Like I’ve said, food is a big part of the Yule festivities for me, and remembering the delicious treats my mother used to make (and perhaps is even as I write this – no, probably not, it’s early morning in Japan) I recently asked her if she could email over some recipes. She graciously did. I’m ambitious, so I’ll be reporting back on my cooking achievements when they avail themselves. In the meantime, I went shopping yesterday and, in addition to making the terribly bad decision of downing an entire Yule log in just a few hours, purchased a bag of monkey nuts, some caramel biscuits, and a Quality Street box to keep me company. With the gym closed due to ‘adverse weather conditions’, as I trekked all the way over there (a whole five-minute walk!) this morning to find out, this is a very literal recipe for disaster. And the knowledge of that won’t stop me.

Yep, it's bad.

Another absolute necessity for Christmas cheer is music. Some people hate Christmas music, I happen to be a huge fan. Now that we’re completely into December there’s no reason for every radio station and store everywhere to not be playing carols, new and old. I’d even forgive them pushing a bit of November. It’s a staple of the spirit, and nowhere more so than in my room.

But I had a problem, I could not access the main source of my tunes, Pandora, here on campus. Pandora is the greatest kind of online radio I’ve found yet, with channels created around artists and songs you like that play similar material – positively cracking for finding good new music – but it’s only available in the United States. Now in Japan I was able to get around this with a VPN, Hotspot Shield, the best, as far as I know, of programs that disguise your IP address. If you don’t know what all that means: You can get all the region-restricted sites you couldn’t before, and what’s more, you can use it to get around Megavideo’s time limit. Download it. It’s the bomb. Unfortunately it doesn’t work here on campus for some reason.

Here’s where that hopefully useful tangent connects to Christmas; I was in need of a new source of BGM. I have some songs on iTunes but I knew those would get old quick, even Relient K’s fantastic stuff, so I went exploring, based on various recommendations I’d heard over time. Last.fm and Spotify came out as winners. Last.fm seems to be online radio in the classic sense, without as much control over the stations as Pandora, while Spotify is like the whole world’s iTunes in one window. I searched ‘Christmas’ and dumped every single result into a playlist, pressed play, and have been deleting and skipping the ones I’m keen on ever since. It’s lovely. Only thing is I may run into the alleged twenty-hour limit soon.

But I have my tunes back, that’s all that matters. Got the traditional crackly recording Frank Sinatra, and the hip syncopated David Archuleta. And some country rubbish in between. Oh, and Pokemon, which was quick to go (my sentimental attachment is to the Japanese, not American).

Food, check, music, check. We may not be snowed in with the power down, but with the toaster and microwave having simultaneously chosen to stop working and the uni being closed with no staff around to go crying too, it’s not too far a stretch to conjure up the cosy atmosphere of having nowhere to go and almost everything that matters inside. Except I still have two essays hanging over my head.

Thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far, and I hope all of you are equally well stocked in Christmas cheer. Tell me what you do to stoke up the spirit of the season. And tomorrow I’ll report on my planning for the headline event, going to London.

Cheers,

-Brad

I say this again and again, but I can't get over Britain's clouds.