PonyOne
07-18-2005, 05:05 PM
Okay guys,
the Mrs. and I are splitting after 6 years (we've been together since we were 15, which is a damned long time especially at this age... almost a quarter of our lives). We started over in Boston and have somehow ended up 2000-something miles away in Los Angeles. I'm a travellin' man; I've lived all over the States, and the longest I've ever lived in one house/apt is 3 years.
I feel like making a change again soon. I'm not really sure why, it just seems to be pat of me, it's in my blood. I keep my books, drawing supplies etc all in neat little piles or in bags or boxes like I'm about to move... force of habit, I suppose. I never have bothered buying a big sound system or TV, for the same reason... basically if it's too big to throw in the trunk of my Jetta (Bora in the UK) I'd really rather not have it.
I went to the UK about nine years ago; almost half my life, again, since I'm still young... but I've never forgotten how much I loved the place. We stayed in London, Salisbury, Oxford, Stratford and Warwick and tooled around the country a bit. Everyone was nice, the entire country was nice... just a cool place. We didn't do as much of the tourist crap as other people do; it was my dad and I and some of his coworkers and students, and so we went to Stonehenge and some castles and the Avesbury Rings and all the crap you're obligated to do, but, my dad also would turn me loose on whatever town or city we were in to go have fun and explore.
A group of Scottish kids staying at the hostel taught me how to play rugby (they were on some team and were visiting Stratford for a match there), I exchanged regional profanity with a group of kids in London, I got tailed by a group of young football hooligans in Salisbury until I asked them why they were following me and they found out I was american, and then we got drunk together. My dad and I went to pubs and got tipsy (great bonding experience, I must say), there was so much cool crap... I was sadder than hell when we left.
I've always wnated to return; an enthusiasm my gf has never shared. She's the type of person who would rather visit a small, tropical country in south or cnetral america (she's been to Belize three times and Honduras and Guatemala 2 times) and be in awe of the amazing cultures that existed there, which is fine, and I wouldn't mind doing it myself. It wasn't that she never wanted to visit Europe, just that if the topic of vacations ever came up, she wanted to take me to Belize to show me how awesome it was.
Well, now I guess I have the self determination to go there, so, I'm thinking that after the fall semester ends I may go ahead and take a trip there. I also have been looking into crap on working and student visas recently, and found that they have a new category for "low skilled migrant workers" (ouch, that hurts... :( ) whereas it used to only be "high skilled migrant workers" i.e. people with a master's degree or above with above average grades. One of the categories in the low skilled migrant worker category is the Hospitality business, of which I am currently in. SCORE!!!! So when I go back to school, alongside the music courses, I'm gonig to take hospitality management to better plead my case.
The visa is only 12 months but the employer can extend it if you prove exemplary performance, which seems like a good deal. I can also apply for a student visa and take some courses there. This would all be at least two years off anyway; I need to pay down my car a bit and save up for the move, which is by no accounts cheap.
So these are some questions I have been mulling over that I was hoping some of you guys over there could help with.
1. VEGETARIAN FOODS/FAKE MEAT. When I was in the UK, I think that everything but the Coke had either beef, lamb or pork in it. I know that in the last 10 years there has been a big upsurgence in vegetarianism worldwide, leading to more readily available foods. Particularly, in the US we have veggie burgers, fake meat, etc. A lot of the stuff I cook I use fake meat. Wouldn't be that big a deal to not have it in my diet but it wouldn't hurt to have it there.
2. MEXICAN FOOD. I gathered from another thread here this is not very common in the UK. Just to reiterate, is this true? If so I'm going to waste lots and lots of $$$ buying stuff from mexgrocer.com
3. AMERICAN SENTIMENT. Most of the British people I meet here have no issue with the US whatsoever but then they also are travelling here. When I was in the UK, people seemed very interested in talking to my dad and I and asking about the US everywhere we went (at some points, like in line at a Burger King in Stratford, it was almost annoying), so I have always been under the impression that things are okay. But then I've spoken to increasing numbers of Americans who have travelled there who said they got treated poorly sometimes because of their nationality, and a few of the Germans who work at my hotel also said that when they worked in the UK there was a good deal of anti-US sentiment. Not that this would really stop me, but, I wanted to know how true it was.
4. PETS. Are parrots reasonably common in the UK? Because if I go, even if it's just for a year, my pet parrot Theo is comin' too. I want to make sure vets specialising in parrots are reasonably common.
5. CARS. Ideally, if I end up there for more than a year I'd like to ship out my Jetta; thankfully the UK is pretty lax on vehicle imports, unlike the US, where it's borderline impossible to ship over a foreign car. But, if that doesn't happen, I'll probably end up buying either a motorcycle or a small car of some sort; even if I'm in London I want to be able to check out the rest of the UK. I see ads for cars that say that "MOT" needs to be payed, and I gather that this is a bigger issue with older cars (which is what I'll probably get; I'm not forking over 10,000 pounds for a car i'll have to leave behind). What exactly is this, and in the US we have sites like cars.com and autotrader.com, is there something sililar in the UK where i can put in a postcode and go searching so I can get an idea for how much cars are going for?
6. APARTMENTS. Kind of like above, are there some websites out there that are good for finding a place to crash while I'm there? I'm thinking either London or Stratford, probably.
7. AMPS. I can bring over my guitar(s), but, it's kind of pointless to spend money shipping over my JC120 when the plug on it doesn't even work. How much are Vox's and AC30's over there?
thanks guys. and maybe we can get together while i'm there and hang out for a while, that'd be cool.
the Mrs. and I are splitting after 6 years (we've been together since we were 15, which is a damned long time especially at this age... almost a quarter of our lives). We started over in Boston and have somehow ended up 2000-something miles away in Los Angeles. I'm a travellin' man; I've lived all over the States, and the longest I've ever lived in one house/apt is 3 years.
I feel like making a change again soon. I'm not really sure why, it just seems to be pat of me, it's in my blood. I keep my books, drawing supplies etc all in neat little piles or in bags or boxes like I'm about to move... force of habit, I suppose. I never have bothered buying a big sound system or TV, for the same reason... basically if it's too big to throw in the trunk of my Jetta (Bora in the UK) I'd really rather not have it.
I went to the UK about nine years ago; almost half my life, again, since I'm still young... but I've never forgotten how much I loved the place. We stayed in London, Salisbury, Oxford, Stratford and Warwick and tooled around the country a bit. Everyone was nice, the entire country was nice... just a cool place. We didn't do as much of the tourist crap as other people do; it was my dad and I and some of his coworkers and students, and so we went to Stonehenge and some castles and the Avesbury Rings and all the crap you're obligated to do, but, my dad also would turn me loose on whatever town or city we were in to go have fun and explore.
A group of Scottish kids staying at the hostel taught me how to play rugby (they were on some team and were visiting Stratford for a match there), I exchanged regional profanity with a group of kids in London, I got tailed by a group of young football hooligans in Salisbury until I asked them why they were following me and they found out I was american, and then we got drunk together. My dad and I went to pubs and got tipsy (great bonding experience, I must say), there was so much cool crap... I was sadder than hell when we left.
I've always wnated to return; an enthusiasm my gf has never shared. She's the type of person who would rather visit a small, tropical country in south or cnetral america (she's been to Belize three times and Honduras and Guatemala 2 times) and be in awe of the amazing cultures that existed there, which is fine, and I wouldn't mind doing it myself. It wasn't that she never wanted to visit Europe, just that if the topic of vacations ever came up, she wanted to take me to Belize to show me how awesome it was.
Well, now I guess I have the self determination to go there, so, I'm thinking that after the fall semester ends I may go ahead and take a trip there. I also have been looking into crap on working and student visas recently, and found that they have a new category for "low skilled migrant workers" (ouch, that hurts... :( ) whereas it used to only be "high skilled migrant workers" i.e. people with a master's degree or above with above average grades. One of the categories in the low skilled migrant worker category is the Hospitality business, of which I am currently in. SCORE!!!! So when I go back to school, alongside the music courses, I'm gonig to take hospitality management to better plead my case.
The visa is only 12 months but the employer can extend it if you prove exemplary performance, which seems like a good deal. I can also apply for a student visa and take some courses there. This would all be at least two years off anyway; I need to pay down my car a bit and save up for the move, which is by no accounts cheap.
So these are some questions I have been mulling over that I was hoping some of you guys over there could help with.
1. VEGETARIAN FOODS/FAKE MEAT. When I was in the UK, I think that everything but the Coke had either beef, lamb or pork in it. I know that in the last 10 years there has been a big upsurgence in vegetarianism worldwide, leading to more readily available foods. Particularly, in the US we have veggie burgers, fake meat, etc. A lot of the stuff I cook I use fake meat. Wouldn't be that big a deal to not have it in my diet but it wouldn't hurt to have it there.
2. MEXICAN FOOD. I gathered from another thread here this is not very common in the UK. Just to reiterate, is this true? If so I'm going to waste lots and lots of $$$ buying stuff from mexgrocer.com
3. AMERICAN SENTIMENT. Most of the British people I meet here have no issue with the US whatsoever but then they also are travelling here. When I was in the UK, people seemed very interested in talking to my dad and I and asking about the US everywhere we went (at some points, like in line at a Burger King in Stratford, it was almost annoying), so I have always been under the impression that things are okay. But then I've spoken to increasing numbers of Americans who have travelled there who said they got treated poorly sometimes because of their nationality, and a few of the Germans who work at my hotel also said that when they worked in the UK there was a good deal of anti-US sentiment. Not that this would really stop me, but, I wanted to know how true it was.
4. PETS. Are parrots reasonably common in the UK? Because if I go, even if it's just for a year, my pet parrot Theo is comin' too. I want to make sure vets specialising in parrots are reasonably common.
5. CARS. Ideally, if I end up there for more than a year I'd like to ship out my Jetta; thankfully the UK is pretty lax on vehicle imports, unlike the US, where it's borderline impossible to ship over a foreign car. But, if that doesn't happen, I'll probably end up buying either a motorcycle or a small car of some sort; even if I'm in London I want to be able to check out the rest of the UK. I see ads for cars that say that "MOT" needs to be payed, and I gather that this is a bigger issue with older cars (which is what I'll probably get; I'm not forking over 10,000 pounds for a car i'll have to leave behind). What exactly is this, and in the US we have sites like cars.com and autotrader.com, is there something sililar in the UK where i can put in a postcode and go searching so I can get an idea for how much cars are going for?
6. APARTMENTS. Kind of like above, are there some websites out there that are good for finding a place to crash while I'm there? I'm thinking either London or Stratford, probably.
7. AMPS. I can bring over my guitar(s), but, it's kind of pointless to spend money shipping over my JC120 when the plug on it doesn't even work. How much are Vox's and AC30's over there?
thanks guys. and maybe we can get together while i'm there and hang out for a while, that'd be cool.