100 Days, 100 Things: Days 81-100

Wow. At the time this post is published, I should be in Iceland. It seems both ages and no time at all since I started planning this and it still doesn't quite seem real. I managed to freak myself out towards the end of last week wondering if maybe I was just imagining the whole thing and come Monday it'd be back to work as normal. Don't ask - I was half asleep at the time.

Anyway, here are the last 20 of my 100 sometimes interesting, but more often mundane things.

81. Tuesday 24th May - envelope stuffing
Yes. That's how thrilling my day got. I spent the day stuffing envelopes with our apprentice. Fun fun fun.

82. Wednesday 25th May - venison sausages
Because once again, food is the most interesting thing in my life. Seriously, though, venison sausages are delicious.

83. Thursday 26th May - invigilating
Which lead to me being overly amused that it's a decade since I took my GCSEs. Aww. Also, I finally managed to offload the Chomp bar that's been sitting on my desk for the last seven months onto Molly. FINALLY.

84. Friday 27th May - ESTA
Following the successful application for my Canadian eTA last week, I tackled the USA's equivalent. It asked me whether I was planning on engaging in terrorism and I was oh so tempted to click yes just to see what happened. Don't worry, I resisted the temptation.

85. Saturday 28th May - Shakespeare overload
My sister and I took a weekend trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, home of the Bard. Two plays in a day - Cymbeline and Hamlet, plus the first time I've eaten Thai food at a restaurant. Very nice. Also, Stratford is pretty.

86. Sunday 29th May - sunshine
Second day of our trip to Stratford mostly consisted of me buying a few bits for my trip (mosquito net, finally!) and then enjoying the sunshine outside the theatre. Amy got sunburned.

87. Monday 30th May - surprise surprise...
Family farewell lunch which my dad had intended to be a surprise until my mum, not knowing this, accidentally gave the game away. Nice though, especially the amazing cake from Patisserie Valerie.

88. Tuesday 31st May - tech support
My grandad is finally attempting to join the internet age. Unfortunately for him, his router isn't behaving and my mum volunteered me to have a look at it. My usual ability to fix basic tech things failed completely, but I'm going to blame the old line he has instead of my inability to work out what was wrong with the damn thing...

89. Wednesday 1st June - lunch with Wendy
Wendy effectively managed me in my previous office and since she's away at the moment, we thought we'd best meet up before I left. That is all... see how my life is thrilling right now?

90. Thursday 2nd June - minor freak out time!
Today I realised that I will be in Canada in three weeks' time. Oh good god. I also discovered my phone is not unlocked. Fuck.

91. Friday 3rd June - "smells like weed"
Molly tried my oolong tea. I love oolong. It's lovely, but it does have a slightly unusual taste and smell. As demonstrated by Molly casually stating, in the middle of the office, that it smells like weed. I hadn't really noticed the similarity before but thinking about it... maybe.

92. Saturday 4th June - even more Shakespeare
Toddled over to Manchester to see my mum and catch yet another play - this time King Lear. Very good. In other shocking news, I bought clothes. Not just any clothes. I bought shorts. It is a well-established fact that my legs are not just white, they are blindingly pale, so this may turn out to be a bad decision.

93. Sunday 5th June - Nandos and puppies
I'd never understood the appeal of Nandos but I've been a few times now and I think I'm falling in love. Yummy chicken. The afternoon was spent lounging in the sun, attempting to get some sort of colour onto my aforementioned blinding legs and watching the dogs pretending to be hot dog sausages because it was just so warm.

94. Monday 6th June - umm...
It looks like nothing interesting happened on this day. Second to last day at work? Uh... nothing booked. Nothing interesting cooked... yup. Supremely normal day.

95. Tuesday 7th June - last day
My final day at work, most of which was spent either in a minibus or at work's Skegness site invigilating another GCSE exam. 3 and a bit years I worked there and that's the first time I've been to the Skegness site. Hm.

96. Wednesday 8th June - WASH ALL THE THINGS!
Yeah... I probably didn't need to wash everything, but I did. Because... oh, I don't know. The washing frenzy was followed by a lovely evening with the folks from my previous office, eating tapas and then toddling on down to the pub for a pint and a quiz.

97. Thursday 9th June - towel of doom
Ah yes. The fabled towel of doom has made a reappearance in my life. It looks like it's had a body wrapped in it, courtesy of 3 years of red hair dye stains. I found 3 bottles of the aforementioned dye in the top of my wardrobe and figured, what the hell, I'm going to dye my hair again. Took all three bottles because either a) I missed quite a bit or b) the dye's that old it wasn't taking properly, but I think it's sorted now...

98. Friday 10th June - I drank how much?
Actually, I didn't drink that much. I went out with the most recent set of work colleagues and had a couple of pints of cider (not a problem). Unfortunately, I also had a JD & coke and a shot of sambuca and that was enough to make my stomach hate me.

99. Saturday 11th June - WHERE TRAIN?!
Even with the slight hangover from the above night out, I managed to drag myself out of bed early on Saturday morning to go and see Flying Scotsman with my dad. Unfortunately for us, the timings given last week turned out to be no longer accurate and as we were walking up to the track we saw steam billow up above the houses. No glimpse of the fabled Scotsman. Most pissed off. Somewhat made up for this with cheap but yummy breakfast at Tesco's cafe...

In other news, my phone is now unlocked. I think. Huzzah.

100. Sunday 12th June - DON'T PANIC!
AAAAAAARGH. Actually, I haven't done much panicking. Which is nice. Dad had to drive me to Doncaster, but aside from that my trains all ran on time and I got to spend a lovely afternoon in London with Claire. Claire, who has gifted me this lovely little koala called Harold, crocheted by her own fair hands.

Someone pinch me?

Oh good god. What am I doing?

The Grand Tour: The Final Countdown

Wow. Just 10 days from now I'll be getting on a plane to Iceland to start my round-the-world trip. Time to get the last few bits of preparation sorted.

Visas

Technically, I don't need to apply for a visa proper until I get towards the Australian leg of my trip. I say technically because while I don't have visas to apply for yet, I have had to apply for an eTA for Canada and an ESTA for the USA. The perks of being a British citizen! Surprisingly, both applications were pretty straightforward although I had to laugh at some of the questions on the US one.

"Are you coming to the USA with the intent to engage in terrorism, espionage or genocide?"

... because, yes, of course, if I was planning on doing any of those things, I would declare them on my ESTA application in the interests of honesty. Umm...

Vaccinations

A few weeks ago I got stuck full of needles. Hep B, Hep A, Typhoid, Yellow Fever... nice. Fortunately, I managed not to have any serious reactions to any of them and they came in a lot cheaper than I had expected. I'd rather have to pay a bit and face my dislike of needles than catch some sort of nasty while I'm away.

I also have a nearly two month supply of anti-malarials. Also much cheaper than anticipated and again, I'd rather have them and not need them than not have them and catch malaria.

On a similar note, my mum has kindly donated her diarrheoa management kit, so I'm fully stocked on rehydration sachets and the like.

Basically, I'm turning into the walking chemist I so disdained before I went to New Zealand...

Communication

In addition to the aforementioned diarrheoa kit (isn't diarrheoa a funny word?), my mum has also given me her old tablet, so I can keep up with the sporadic blogging and more importantly I can book hostels and flights and all the other things I'll need to book while I'm away.

My mobile phone is also going with me. I plan on using local SIMs in it if I'm in a country for more than a couple of weeks (looking at you, Canada). Good plan, yes? Should save me some money, yes?

Yeah...

Naively/stupidly, having read all the bumpf I could find online about whether Virgin Mobile lock their handsets, I came to the conclusion that my phone was more than likely unlocked and I could just pootle over to Canada and slot a nice cheap Canadian SIM in it. No worries.

Which means I left it until yesterday and 11 days until departure to actually test this theory. Take a guess at what happened when I put my sister's SIM into my phone?

Ooops.

This should be pretty easy to sort out, thinks yesterday's me. I'll just go to the shop in town and ask them to unlock it. They say, no, you have to ring customer services and kindly put me on to them. Customer services man goes "uh..." a bit and does some tapping on his keyboard for good measure and then tells me that while the number belongs to me, the phone is still registered to my parents' account and that therefore they'll have to ring Virgin to get my phone unlocked.

My parents. Have to ring Virgin. To get MY PHONE unlocked.

This is ridiculous. Whoever came up with this system is a fucking genius.

So I might just be without a phone for the first couple of weeks in Canada. I'm sure I'll cope - I barely use the thing anyway aside from for tinterwebz.

Other bits and bobs

I have currency. Hurray. Actually, I'm planning on using my cards as much as possible, but there's always going to be times I need physical cash. So I've got a small stash of Icelandic krona and Canadian dollars to keep me going. I fear the dollars will mostly be spent on Tim Hortons... you'll probably hear more about that in a future post.

Shopping has been done. I am now the proud owner of a very compact mosquito net, travel wash (yeah) and a new pair of shoes which I am frantically trying to wear in so they don't eat my feet while I'm away. Woop.

Anything else? Had a farewell lunch with the family. Plans are in place for work leaving do (both current and former offices). And then... well, then next Sunday I get on a train to London and from there...

Adventure awaits.

The Grand Tour: 6 Months To Go

First off, Happy New Year and all that jazz.

Second, apologies for the recent lack of posts. Let's hope I can make up for that (unlikely...).

Third, it's now less than 6 months until my planned departure date for the Grand Tour, my hopefully epic trip round the world. Thanks to lovely presents from family, I'm starting to gather together all the bits and bobs I'm going to need. Little things like a head torch, first aid kit and a compact sleeping bag.

Perhaps more importantly, I'm pretty sure I'll be booking my first flight and hostels in the next few weeks. I've been warned that accommodation in Iceland books up pretty quick in the summer months and as that's my first stop and possibly the most expensive stop (based on per day costs), I want to get that sorted out soon.

I had originally planned to make my way round the entire island on buses, but looking at accommodation costs I think I'll actually base myself out of Reykjavik and Akureyri and explore from there - accommodation is marginally cheaper there. No worries - the buses are still going to come in handy.

So that's Iceland. But what else do I need to sort out in the next 6 months?

 

Vaccinations

Ugh. How delightful. Thing is, I'm planning on going a few places where I have to have jabs. For example, I'm going to Peru and while Peru has no vaccination requirements, because I'm stopping there, future stops like Cambodia and South Africa require me to have been vaccinated against Yellow Fever. Fun.

Aside from that though, it looks like I might be able to avoid getting too many others. I've had jabs previously for rabies and Hepatitis B in the last 5 years, which are (Doctor Google says) long-lasting. My typhoid jab will probably need redoing and possibly my Hep A. But everything else... looks like I'm getting off light.Yay.

Visas

This is going to be fun. Good job I've included these in my budget because they're soon adding up. Currently I need to sort out visas (or visa waiver details) for Canada, the US and Australia, plus making sure I add in the cost of visas or other approvals on arrival in Chile and Cambodia. All the fun.


Right at this moment though, I'm going to crack out the world map my sister gave me for Christmas. It has magnets and marker pens so I can mark my route. It will be awesome. I'm a small child at heart.

On with the planning. Planning, planning, always planning. Ah, the joys of a round the world trip!