Iris phone home?
After my application for job seeker's allowance got rejected, I called my mother in Austria and let her know about my money problems. She liquidated the last couple of gold coins that we had stashed away in a bank safe somewhere (and which were technically supposed to be "mine" anyway) and wired me the money she got from that. So now I still don't have any income, but at least I have enough money in my bank account again to pay for another couple of months worth of groceries.
However, I talked to Graham and he agreed that it might be prudent to also make a couple of investments to try to increase my chances of getting a job, specifically to buy a set of smarter clothes that I could wear to interviews and to buy a mobile phone, since a lot of employers these days seem to expect you to be reachable by phone at all times.
With today being a bank holiday, we went into town together to have a look around. The clothes shopping portion of it didn't last very long as I was quickly reminded of why I hate that kind of thing and said that I'd just do it on my own at some point in the future - way too much ugly crap to wade through. It was particularly bad with the shoes we looked at, everything seemed to either look like a piece of cardboard with some strings attached or it cost eighty quid; there didn't seem to be anything in-between. I hated shopping for clothes enough back in Austria, but at least I had an idea of which stores were more likely to have something for me than others. Here I just feel lost.
We did buy a mobile phone for me today however. It seems strange now to think that I've been living here for over eight months without one. I mean, I had my old one from Austria with me and used it on occasion, but generally I preferred to keep it turned off, and not just because it still spams me with the same couple of "welcome to the UK" texts every time I turn it on. Since it's pay as you go, I also wouldn't have been able to top it off again if it had run out, so I avoided using it.
Now, the last time I bought a mobile phone was eight years ago or so, and I was pleasantly surprised by how cheap you can get them these days. In the end I got a simple Samsung for only five pounds. (Though that made all the eighty quid shoes in the stores only look all the more stupid in comparison.) I was all happy and bouncy when we left the store, asking Graham why I had been putting this off for so long.
But of course it's never that easy. When I unpacked my phone and new SIM card at home, I realised to my unpleasant surprise that the paperwork appeared to be woefully incomplete compared to what I remember getting with my last phone: no PIN, no PUK, it didn't even say anywhere what my new number was supposed to be. I ended up having to call customer service several times in a row and even managed to get my new phone completely locked up at some point. I was so frustrated.
Graham tried to comfort me, saying that he's been there and he knows how frustrating that kind of thing can be, but I think the biggest problem for me personally is that when something like that happens to me here, I can never tell whether it was indeed some sort of negligence or mistake from the side of the service provider or if it's just one of those things that are different in England compared to what I'm used to and I'm just being stupid and not "getting" it. It's one thing to struggle with bad service and quite another to not even know what kind of service you can expect.
For what it's worth though, I have a UK mobile now.
However, I talked to Graham and he agreed that it might be prudent to also make a couple of investments to try to increase my chances of getting a job, specifically to buy a set of smarter clothes that I could wear to interviews and to buy a mobile phone, since a lot of employers these days seem to expect you to be reachable by phone at all times.
With today being a bank holiday, we went into town together to have a look around. The clothes shopping portion of it didn't last very long as I was quickly reminded of why I hate that kind of thing and said that I'd just do it on my own at some point in the future - way too much ugly crap to wade through. It was particularly bad with the shoes we looked at, everything seemed to either look like a piece of cardboard with some strings attached or it cost eighty quid; there didn't seem to be anything in-between. I hated shopping for clothes enough back in Austria, but at least I had an idea of which stores were more likely to have something for me than others. Here I just feel lost.
We did buy a mobile phone for me today however. It seems strange now to think that I've been living here for over eight months without one. I mean, I had my old one from Austria with me and used it on occasion, but generally I preferred to keep it turned off, and not just because it still spams me with the same couple of "welcome to the UK" texts every time I turn it on. Since it's pay as you go, I also wouldn't have been able to top it off again if it had run out, so I avoided using it.
Now, the last time I bought a mobile phone was eight years ago or so, and I was pleasantly surprised by how cheap you can get them these days. In the end I got a simple Samsung for only five pounds. (Though that made all the eighty quid shoes in the stores only look all the more stupid in comparison.) I was all happy and bouncy when we left the store, asking Graham why I had been putting this off for so long.
But of course it's never that easy. When I unpacked my phone and new SIM card at home, I realised to my unpleasant surprise that the paperwork appeared to be woefully incomplete compared to what I remember getting with my last phone: no PIN, no PUK, it didn't even say anywhere what my new number was supposed to be. I ended up having to call customer service several times in a row and even managed to get my new phone completely locked up at some point. I was so frustrated.
Graham tried to comfort me, saying that he's been there and he knows how frustrating that kind of thing can be, but I think the biggest problem for me personally is that when something like that happens to me here, I can never tell whether it was indeed some sort of negligence or mistake from the side of the service provider or if it's just one of those things that are different in England compared to what I'm used to and I'm just being stupid and not "getting" it. It's one thing to struggle with bad service and quite another to not even know what kind of service you can expect.
For what it's worth though, I have a UK mobile now.