chilling out

I've been well stressed out since I got back. Dealing with jetlag would be OK, I'm pretty flexible with time shifts, but doing that on top of house moving, with no chance to take a day off work to cushion the sleep, plus having to get up at 8:30 for the first time in years... ouch!

I've been slipping badly behind with work as a result. Today, I didn't do anything to do with house moving and just focussed on my job - and had my first fully productive day all week. So it looks very much like I shall be staying in and catching up this week, then cleaning the old place this weekend.

The new house is going well, though :)

I have enough space, just not necessarily the right shape for all my stuff, so the dance-of-the-furniture has been going on.

My housemates are all Polish, and really nice. Although there's the language barrier and people tend to live in their rooms (there isn't a communal lounge, it's used as a rentable room), when I've seen people around, they've all been friendly and welcoming :)

There's even a couple, with two kids living in one of the rooms downstairs - I think I would have thought "oh no!" before I had Corben, but since I don't live with him anymore, I like to hear the sound of kids in the house, even if they're crying. I can see how empty it must feel for people when their kids grow up and leave.

I've not quite learnt everyone's names yet... I know Patrick (who I'm renting from) and Mike, who's my direct neighbour and runs the house network... one of the kids downstairs is called Simon... and there's a girl in the room next to me who I've only seen once!

The girl downstairs said her kids were really excited to have a new child visiting the house every day, and asked if I would mind stopping here with Corben one of the daytimes, so they can play together - I don't mind, I'm over the moon! So, I think i'll chill here for a few hours tomorrow, grab a cup of coffee with the neighbours and let Corben meet everyone properly.

It's pretty cool that the people here have become used to the presence of kids - though they're quite quiet, frankly - I was worried that Corben would annoy everyone when he cries as his mom leaves each morning, but it doesn't seem to be a big problem.

Roight. I'm going to get a snack, drink a beer, play a little Fallout3 then get a decent night's sleep.

Passive Aggressive Note

Hahahahahahahaahhah!

Some of my ex-neighbours are clearly lovely people!

Whenever our bins went out in that house, they would get attacked by animals - so you only put them out the night before, as late as you can, to prevent this, then there's still a mess to clean up the next day.

Since we have moved out of that house, there can have been at most two sets of rubbish that were not cleaned up afterwards. Once when Liz moved out and left some bins out, once for me, on monday night.

Things that I find hilarious:

* This is the first we've heard of it - if you don't mention it, how am I going to notice / fix it? Way to be adult about that!

* Nice use of underlining! Really conveys the tone of voice and lends gravitas!

* I particularly like the use of "us" "your neighbours" and "we all"... followed by leaving the note anonymous and unsigned.

* We just talked to our nicest neighbours, and they were sweetness and light. So it's nobody we care about.

* We've already moved out, you cocks.

* In fact, we were already kicked out - because the landlady wanted her house back. HAHAHA!

I'm tempted to write a reply in a poster and leave it in the front door, but instead I have just submitted it to Passive Aggressive Notes.

Nice!

Moving

Having just gone through four different phone systems to move my bank and credit cards, I had the following experiences:

Barclays Bank:

I called the Barclaycard number by mistake. It asked me to enter my card number, noticed it was a debit not credit card and re-routed my call. Good! Where I then had to enter my 16 digit number again. Annoying! (but predictable, and my initial mistake).

Spoke to a scouser who asked me tonnes of authentication questions, then was asked a 5-digit phone-banking PIN which I've never set or requested, so didn't know.

Result: Have to go to a branch in person with my passport. FAIL. Plus, the Scouser will surely rob me now.


Barclaycard:

Robot guided me through the authentication process, then I spoke to an Indian guy via a crappy line. He didn't recognise my data very well, but repeated and confirmed at the appropriate times, got the job done, then asked in the most wonderfully disinterested tone if he'd done all I wanted and ended the call.

Result: Success! I don't mind if the phone manner's crap or where they happen to be outsourced to if they can do their job without too many repeats.


Egg Card:

EXCITING! A robot asked me for ALL VERBAL information, which I seemed to get through completely fine! Because I wanted to do something off-menu, after authenticating, it passed me to a human in an English call centre...

... who apologised and asked me to go through the whole authentication process again as there had been a hiccup between the mega-brain and his computer. *groan*

Which also started to update itself (read: was becoming self-aware) mid-call, and caused a 2-minute pause in which the guy didn't bother to say "sorry, we're still waiting", so I was forced to check if he was still there.

Eventually, we got it all done, though, and his phone manner improved as he noticed an oddity of my post-code and we shared a crap joke.

Result: Success! But my hopes of doing business with Wintermute were dashed.


MINT Card:

Badly voiced female robot (interspersed with amusingly different female robot doing the number-entry / confirmation) asked me to please ENTER my PASS-word NOW. THANKyou...

Eventually get through to another English call-centre, where a guy gets me through the process in a minimal of hassle.

Result: BORING. OK, boring success.


Overall result: 3/4

* The least exciting and least customer-friendly-feeling service made no mistakes and did the job quickest.

* Robots still don't rule the world via wires into our minds.

* I still have to go into a fucking bank to move my address, even though three questions a chimp could guess were sufficient to re-instate my card last time they erroneously blocked it because I bought pizza on the internets.

Banks: Still not very impressive, are they?