Am in visa purgatory – not quite yet hell because there is an annoying limbo till Monday when I have to make another crucial phone call to determine the extent of the disaster. Pretty shaken. May need to leave here at the end of January when the current visa expires, if all goes pear-shaped. :(

The utter panic of yesterday (when I embarrassingly broke down in front of pretty much everyone in the office, tears and all) has passed, but there’s a slow, dull, throbbing feeling of gloom that isn’t much better. I hate having to wait till Monday. And could this have happened at a worse time than Christmas, when everything in this country shuts down to a standstill and I won’t be able to sort any of this bureaucracy out in a timely manner?

The lights on Sloane Square were beautiful today. I thought I’d become jaded towards London after nearly two months, but as I turned a corner on King’s Road this evening, Christmas shopping bags in hand and feeling completely exhausted from what has been a very, very tiring week at work (plus an all-nighter looming tomorrow – don’t think I’ll leave before 11pm), this ethereal, otherworldly blue mist of lights suddenly unfolded before me. I felt the old enchantment rushing back, I found myself putting everything down and whipping out my camera like a tourist all over again.

London still has its magical pockets, after all.

There are a HORDE of annoying, chattering schoolkids on my bus! Why don’t teachers take kids on school coaches for excursions?? >:O

NEW LAYOUT, handily linked for everyone reading this from an RSS feed. I demand you come revel in its colourful awesomeness.

…seriously this layout was very difficult. It’s like I splashed paint willy-nilly all over the previously harmonious monochrome; you can count at least 4 or 5 colours which figure prominently, which is really odd but I wanted to experiment. The link hovers are really odd too (they are, however, growing on me in a strange way). There was lots of playing around with CSS and getting to know the 3-column liquid layout better. I am particularly fond of the yellow dot comments!

I am still not 100% happy with the header image (the red is weird) but, having worked on this layout since morning, I am too lazy to tweak it any more for now. I was also too lazy to restyle the comments section and probably won’t be restyling it as it looks adequate to me, at least (unlike the header).

And and, tangentially, I love the changes in Wordpress 2.7! The admin panel is now a thing of beauty and a joy to use.

“We know you are waiting. Please continue to hold.”

- the weirdness of this hold message cannot be conveyed in words without emphasising the petulance of the “we know!” part.

“I took a taxi from the airport. The others drove the rental car and got lost. This may have been due to V’s navigational skills.”

- from the feedback form for one of the tour hotels last year, under “Ease to find”

“Disconcerted by sight of PVC clad ♀ outside venue, although sight of fit runner ♀ in morning was calming! Grapefruit a bit tinny. Air not fresh. But we all slept well!”

- funniest hotel feedback form ever.

“Please note that to help us give you a better service, we may ask for certain details including your age, gender, race, marital status and religious beliefs.”

- why the @£$%! does a London borough town council telephone information service require these details under any circumstances?

“I don’t have 5 single rooms! Who gave you my number?”

- the most bizarrely accusational guest house owner I have ever spoken to. Lady, if you can’t accommodate 5 of us in separate rooms, you could just say so… also, your number is on the internet.

K (on phone): “Hi, could I speak to Mr M. Fox please? …Fox. …FOX. …F-O-X. Like, small, red animal. Yes… Fox. Thank you.“

- either the receptionist was profoundly deaf, or… I don’t know. I reckon even very stupid people should be able to hear to word “Fox”. But hey I may be wrong…

i think i should try and use twitter more for micro-updates when i’m too lazy to blog :)

(over the phone) “Forgive me for being personal, but are you South African?”

- a bizarre stage door receptionist chap from Leeds. I didn’t even know what to say.

D: I can’t make the scanner work! How does it work?
P: Okay you need to put your document here, then press…
D: (interrupting) Oh, it’s scanned already, but where has it gone?!

- somehow this cracked everyone in the office up.

(phone rings and I answer) “Good afternoon, XYZ*, how can I help?”
(voice coming simultaneously from phone and behind me) “Oh god, I’ve dialled the wrong number!”

- I turn around to see one of my managers on her mobile. We both die laughing.

* where XYZ represents my company name, withheld to protect the innocent

M, while labelling envelopes: Well this isn’t going to get anywhere… “N.B., Plymouth College, Plymouth College, Plymouth”.

Me: So is our budget for hotels higher since N is sorting out his own accommodation most nights?
Y: No because we still have to pay him that ridiculous allowance nonsense… -looks at boss- I mean, the very sensible allowance nonsense.

“The only potential problem with this room is that there are some pillars in the middle of it. Of course, since you’re holding auditions there, anyone who bumps into pillars can just be cut there and then…”

- a very perspicacious venue manager in London who rented us a dance hall

and my personal favourite:

Me (on phone with a dance school): Hi, I’m just calling to find out if we can send you some leaflets for your students, about auditions that we have coming up?
Admin guy: I don’t think you should, because the students do their own performances every summer…
Me: Oh okay, that’s fine then, thanks! -about to hang up-
Admin guy: …and they’re not very good.

- in D’s words, when I recounted this to her: “You don’t want our students, they’re shit.”

Final marks – released today – for posterity’s sake, as they’re likely the final marks I’m ever going to get in my life (unless I decide to take up Japanese again, which I’m considering, and do the JLPT):

71, 73, 78, 70.

It is ironic that the module I did best at ultimately was Romantic, not Victorian – and a part of me can’t help but feel mildly annoyed that my dissertation literally just hit the mark I needed for a distinction grade – but… I made it! After all this time. Unreal.