Scot to Trot: What's I Been Doing?

Ahoy, me duckies! Long time no type!

I've been operating sans internet for the past few weeks (except for the few minutes I've been able to snag on my phone after work). But, Nyan Cat be praised, the world wide web drought has finally lifted! Two days ago cardboard boxes filled with plastic boxes were delivered to my flat. And guess what the plastic boxes had in them - the internet!!! After a short techno-struggle, they made everything better. Now I can happily return to ignoring the beautiful city around me by escaping into the warm blue glow of ye olde computere screene.

Not that I've had much free time for internetting in the past couple of weeks anyway. I took on some extra shifts at the bar for some coworkers who went on holiday - and unwittingly caused myself to work 7 days in a row. Then I was supposed to have one day off, work 3 more and then have a solid 3 straight days off. It was going to be heavenly. But two things happened to junk that up. First, the manager forgot that the three aforementioned colleagues were on holiday and scheduled them anyway. So there's a pile of shifts that had to be covered. Then a girl quit. By text. At midnight. The night before a shift. She was supposed to finish out the week, but she failed to materialize. Yet another scramble to cover shifts. Long story short, by the end of those 2 weeks, I was hecka tired. Buuuutttt that also means that I just got hecka paid! Aww yiss. The exchange of money for repetitive manual labour. This is the dream.

The team at work is fun. It's about 1/3 Scottish, 1/3 EU and 1/3 Commonwealth. And by Commonwealth, I mean Australia + Me. And, exciting news, I'm not even the work baby anymore! A new Scottish fella was just hired, so now I get the privilege of acting like I know how to do everything while someone else struggles to decipher the menu items on the till. Believe it or not, it is not initially self-evident to determine which menu items "Smkhse" "Qsdls" and "Meat" correspond to. Also, cigarettes are listed under the "desserts" tab. Most people smoke to satisfy their sweet tooth, right?

Things are slowly chugging along with my own personal administrative biz. Since I set up my bank account and started my NI (like a SIN number) application in London, my bank card, PIN # and NI forms were all sent to the wrong address. After a to-and-from communication bout, I finally got my bank card forwarded to me 3 days ago but until yesterday, when a CLASSIFIED envelope containing my PIN was delivered, it remained a useless plastic rectangle. It was very (okay, mildly) exciting to make my first purchases in Scotland with money I've earned in Scotland. The first purchase was food. The second was booze. Par for the course, really. Now, it actually doesn't really matter that I have this shiny new bank card seeing as I had an appointment the other day to switch to a Scottish bank. The bank I joined up with in London had recently pulled all of its branches out of Scotland and neglected to inform me, even thought they knew that I was going to be living in Edinburgh. Why you gotta play me like dat homies?

I'm a little more concerned about the delayed NI forms. When I finally received them (July 23) it was already past the due date to submit them (July 22). Sigh. The NI peeps are notoriously bureaucratic and lovers of deadlines. So they may make me re-start my app from the beginning. And they reputedly make you jump through more hoops the second time around. I don't wanna. The only hoop I want is of the hula variety (which I'm looking into, by the way). I wrote a note to the humans of NI (using only block capitals in black pen, of course) and now all that's left to do is hope that their great and good mercy shines upon me. I need dis numbah to get paid proper-like, yo. Less tax, more snax!

Before I wrap up here, I'll give you a li'l run-down on my flat (that's "apartment," for those of you not savvy on UK lingo). My roomie Rachel and I are in a really pleasant and convenient area. It's about a 15-minute walk to work, 5 to the gym and only 2 minutes to a lovely park called the Meadows. The best part about the location is that it still counts as being part of the Old Town but isn't smack in the middle of tourist central. No doubt that will prove to be an especially nice feature when the Festival starts. "The Festival" is actually a collection of several festivals that all happen at the exact same time in Edinburgh. The biggest of them is The Fringe, which is actually the largest arts festival in the world. Wow-ee! The Festival lasts for the whole month of August and people from around the world flock to Edinburgh to be entertained ("Of course I'll pay $1500 to fly halfway around the world to see 'The Lady-Boys of Bangkok' perform in Edinburgh! Who could pass up on that??"). Local lore holds that the population of the city actually triples during August. And team, Edinburgh is fab, but it ain't all that big. By foot I could cross the main bits of the New and Old Towns together in about 30 minutes. Most of the time that's one of the city's best features, but it's easy to imagine that things will get a little cramped here during Festival. Accommodation prices soar too - a lot of locals opt to get the hell out of Dodge and rent their flats to visitors for up to £1000/week (that's around $2000 in Canadian Loonies for those keeping score at home!) And a walk through town that would normally take 5 minutes could take 30 or more due to having to elbow your way through the crowd. These are all things that I've been told, of course. Haven't actually seen the Festival mayhem with my own eyes yet. But I have no reason to doubt my informants.

Okay, right. Back to my apartment. I'll just leave you with some photos of it so that you can experience it with your own li'l eyesies! Some of these pictures were taken when I first moved in, so if the place seems a little bland, it's just a-cause we hadn't splattered our personalities all over it yet.