Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Craziness in America

Craziness in America item #1: flights to the Topcoder were going to require me to leave Heathrow at 8.30am. Subtract 3 hours that you need to be there before your flight: 5.30am. Subtract 1 hour on the train from Cambridge and 1 hour on the tube: 3.30am (assuming the tube runs that time of day, otherwise it's a bus). Subtract 15 minutes to get to the train station, 30 minutes to get ready at home, and another 15 minutes slack time, and it's not even worth going to bed.

The good news is that I've managed to get it changed to an 11.15am flight. That's still not great, but it's sane, and if I spend a night with a friend in London it starts to look downright decent.

Craziness in America item #2: NVIDIA are making sure they stay in touch and had one of their managers talk to me just to touch base. He said it took him ages to figure out how to dial my number because he never makes international calls. Somehow that's just so stereotypically American I had to laugh.

In more topical news: no plans to go away for Easter (unlike just about everyone else I know), but Mike is coming up from London to visit for a day, and then a cousin of mine from the US is coming to visit the following weekend as part of a business trip. And my shipping has arrived in a warehouse somewhere, but I can't get at it yet because I have to pay more money due to some weasel-words in the contract about currency fluctuations and the fact that the rand has lost about 15% of its value since I left.

No comments: