My week (yep, that’s it. I’ve got nothing).

After getting stranded in London yesterday because Ryanair are a bunch of fascist, money-grubbing pigs, I’m sitting at Heathrow Airport – GBP155 later – waiting for my flight to Stockholm, via Copenhagen. And let me tell you something – despite the fact that I come from a land where free, ubiquitous WiFi may as well be some mythical creature from the magical land of Internettis, it really pisses me off that there’s no free WiFi connection in the departure lounge – especially seeing as I’ve only got about $5 free on my credit card at the moment, and I need to get on to the net to put some more money on there so I can buy a 60 minute connection – but I can’t. Because I can’t get on. So I have nothing. So I’m writing this post in TextEdit which is somehow quite fun to use because I never use it, and also I know it’s not just going to seize up on me and disappear like WordPress is often wan to do.

Anyway. It’s been a while. Let me tell you about my week.

I think the last time I posted it was early Friday evening, last week, and I was getting ready to go to Clare’s brother Pat’s house before going to Fabric. Well – go to Fabric I did. It’s….. well, insanely intense is the only way to really describe it, I think. Firstly, you’re underground. Being underground means you can’t get phone reception. Being underground with no phone reception in a nightclub in London isn’t brilliant, especially when you go line up to get some water and end up waiting half an hour for service because the guy next to you orders six triple scotch on the rocks’ individually, and when you return to your friends, they’re nowhere to be seen because (did I mention?), Fabric is the darkest club in the entire world. You seriously cannot see a thing inside, save for when the occasional coloured light or laser shines over the crowd.

It is very, very full on.

Needless to say, Saturday was a complete write off. I’d go so far as to say that Saturday last week was potentially the least productive day of my entire life ever. After catching a bus back to my hotel at 8am by myself (scary when you haven’t slept), I spent my day watching Top Gear and a documentary on BBC online, using the open wireless connection that I stole from someone in the area. Fools. Saturday was useless. I had plans – Clare and I were going to go to Borough markets and buy lots of yummy food and eat it on the grass near the Tate Modern. The only thing I ate in the end was half a chicken sandwich from Burger King, and about three chips (they tasted like poo).

Sunday, I can’t actually remember what I did with my day, but I caught a bus to Oxford for the conference (i.e. the reason I am in Europe to begin with) in the afternoon. Due to a late arrival time, Sunday night was spent catching up on some much needed sleep, but little else.

Monday to Wednesday was the conference. It was fun; I’ll be making an effort to go to more (although I just remembered that I forgot to send off an abstract that was due this time last week, for a conference to be held at Curtin… so I guess I won’t be attending that). It was also a bit intimidating; I’m the first to admit that I haven’t exactly been that diligent with reading over the past year, and perhaps, just maybe, I’m a bit behind where I should be. I’d go as far as to admit that this is certain. My mission for the rest of the year is to really catch up on all the stuff that I should have read since beginning my PhD, as well as all the new stuff I should read. Oh, and do some writing. I need to write. I have a brilliant idea for a paper/article/chapter, and I’m excited to start writing that when I get home, so that’s a start. A lot of the delegates at the conference were people who’ve either finished their PhD, or been teaching for a while on the back of a Master’s etc, so it’s not that surprising that I felt a little out of my depth at times. It will be okay. I learned a lot either way, and I guess that was the point.

Which brings me to Thursday. I was supposed to fly out of Stansted to Stockholm on Ripoff Merchant Airlines (aka Ryanair) on Thursday morning, so I spent AU$40 on a bus ticket from Oxford to Stansted and AU$80 on a hotel at Stansted as my flight was due to leave at 06:05am on Thursday morning. I spent $25 on getting from the airport on the Wednesday night (where my bus dropped me off) and back the next morning. What I didn’t do, however, was spend the AU$80 they were demanding off me to print off my ticket at the airport. Why didn’t I print my own ticket? I had no internet access. I had no printer. I read online that a re-issue of an online ticket would cost me nothing, so I assumed this meant I could go up to the desk at the airport and have them print me a ticket.

I was wrong. And I haven’t even mentioned the AU$120 of excess baggage, yet, that they wanted me to pay. So it was going to cost me AU$200 ON TOP OF the AU$120 I’d already paid for my ticket (which, by the way, included AU$20 to sit at my own computer and check in, and the AU$40 it would cost me to take my bag on the plane – that’s before excess baggage, because Ryanair are shit and only let you take 15kg on the flight). So I told the snooty princess at the counter to keep her f***ing ticket, and stormed off like the angry shithead passenger that I am.

I was totally not overreacting. I really wanted to shout “I will never fly Ryanair again!”, but unfortunately that’s not true as I still need to get home somehow (although if I can get a cheap ticket from Umea to London that’s not with a budget airline, I will be taking it!). So after some tears and some expensive phone calls to Australia, I would up with a ticket to Stockholm for this afternoon instead of yesterday, and an extra day to spend in London. I messed up though, because Carla arrived in Stockholm yesterday… but it actually worked out perfectly because I hadn’t booked her a room for last night, so she was able to take my room instead.

Oh, the dramas!

Yesterday, on my extra day in London, Clare and I caught the tourist bus around the city and saw some of the sights. By far the best part of the trip, though, was the hour and a half long journey up the Thames to Greenwich on the ferry… although the sunburn I acquired during said trip is not so crash hot (and it hurts). I’m the only person in the world who can manage to get sunburned on a cloudy day in London. Even worse is the fact that I had a tube of suncream in my bag…. but come on!  I spent the entire day complaining about how cold I was. Getting sunburned was just unfair, in light of the actual temperature outside. I’m going to write a letter of complaint to the weather department. And then last night, we went with Pat to Brick Lane for a bloody good curry and some fantastic Spanish red wine at Aladin curry house. Sterling curry! Lime pickle became my new mission in life (I like challenging myself to eat foods that are actually quite gross, but which I feel like I should at least have an appreciation for), and saag (spinach) has become my curry base of choice, though it lacks the heat that I prefer in my Indian food.

I had a surprisingly comfortable sleep on the floor at Pat’s place last night, and after some major train delays and a snooty South African woman who insisted on speaking to me like I’m retarded, I finally made it to the airport and am awaiting the boarding of my plane. I think my flights are both quite short – I’d really like to get on to the Net and find out just how short, but my aforementioned gripe with the lack of free WiFi is getting in the way of that – so I’ll be in Stockholm before I know it. I’m sitting in row 6 too! So close to the front! Hoping for a window seat on such a short flight; I’m normally an aisle person, but I could really do with a couple of short rests.

By the time I actually post this, I will either be in Copenhagen, Stockholm, or Umea. Maybe I’ll get around to posting all the other blog drafts that are sitting on my desktop right now. Until next time…