Bug-Man’s Blog

I trialed MobileMe when it came out and I didn’t find it useful. When the trial subscription was coming to a close I made sure that I jumped on to the Me.com website and cancelled the trial. “Your credit card will not be charged” says the website. Adam leaves happy.

Lo and behold I check my bank account details and I’ve been charged £59! I checked it out and sure enough, it’s a charge for “17 Nov APPLE COMPUTER INTL INTERNET GBR 59.00″.

I was able to log in to the service with my old details however, I had thought that it was cancelled, so shouldn’t my account and password no longer work anyway?

I checked on the Mobile Me help website and you are able to cancel your membership with a full refund within 45 days, so I logged in, went to account details and cancelled my subscription. Their website did say my credit card would be refunded. Unfortunately they don’t give you an opportunity to explain in words why you have cancelled your membership and I am still going to write to them to find out how this happened, as I am unimpressed!

I sent the following to Apple:

Hi Apple,

Sadly I have lost a little faith in Apple after my experience today.

I’ll wait and see how it goes!

So after a year of being away from little old Adelaide, Lindsay and I finally touched down on Friday night! How weird. We dropped off our bags at Mum’s place and headed out for coffee. I forgot my PIN for my ATM card, which finally came back to me. Handling currency was bizarre. Seeing all those little Aussie creatures on the coins again was quite surreal and getting back a big red $20 note and a bright blue $10 note was also really odd. I can see why it might even be weird for the tourists!

Since we’ve been back we have been seeing some friends and family as well as seeing all the Adelaide things we’ve not seen in ages. I’m driving Mum’s car, so that really helps. How easily I am reminded of the things I like and dislike about Adelaide.

My friend Adam, for instance, lives up in Mawson Lakes and while up there we had a couple of beers (yes Mum, light beer) and the pub we were in was a giant modern oaf of a pub with bright lighting and modern fixtures. It was quite unpleasant. Pubs in London are a treat in comparison because they are so cosy and ancient.

Wednesday was a particularly stressful day for us, as Lindsay and I flew to Canberra to process our Work Permits for the UK. While mine is approved on paper, I still have to go through this submission process and what’s worse is that Lindsay and I have to provide proof of our relationship akin to marriage and the likes, so that Lindsay can be approved as a dependent on my permit. This means that while my permit is basically approved and this is a formality only, Lindsay’s dependent permit is a complete grey area until we receive the permits back in the post. This means that if Lindsay’s is denied, then our plans are completely out the window.

Why might his be denied? Well, we have very little paperwork to establish our relationship from a over a year and a half ago, and we are supposed to prove a marriage-like relationship for a minimum of two years. Though we have been together longer than that, we have not lived together that entire time nor have we had combined assets or bank accounts together. We had a tenancy agreement in Adelaide on which we were both named and in the UK we are joint on most things so that’s OK. Hopefully the officer at the British High Commission can see the clues we’ve laid out.

After finishing up there, we walked through Canberra to the Old and New Parliament Houses. What a fascinating place, the old Parliament House is! It was turned into a museum during the Hawke Government and most things of the period were left, including the furniture, fixtures, House of Reps and Senate, etc. You can walk through almost the entire facility, even into Bob Hawke’s old office which is left pretty much the way it was when he left. Everything was so retro with big clicky buttons and things.

All of the rooms were much smaller as was the standard of construction for the day, so the only wide open spaces were the Senate/House of Reps and the main reception hall. Everything else was a rabbit warren.

Pictures will be on Flickr as soon as I’m able and I’ll stick some in here, too.

The current Parliament House building is not as interesting, as you can only go into the Senate and House of Reps balconies, main reception halls and on the roof. Everything else is in use for everyday governing and therefore closed!

Lindsay and I have just spent the entire day in the dark. We left London Heathrow bound for Adelaide on Friday night at around 10PM. Once aboard it was dark, and we set off for KL. Heathrow to KL is the long part of the flight. 12 hours! 12 hours and I only got up and walked around twice.

Last time we flew over, Lindsay and I had a seat along a row of three by the window, which is always preferable. Sadly, last time we ended up near the galley and had light thrown in our faces every time they opened the curtain. This time was better, again in a row of three. Unfortunately for us a guy came and sat down in the aisle seat on our row. On a 12 hour flight this isn’t ideal as it really, really doesn’t give you any room to spread out. Here’s our stranger:

I was quite annoyed, as our row was now full but the one in front of us was completely empty, and there was only one guy in the row behind. Oh why can’t they spread things out more nicely. We considered hijacking the row in front of us so we could spread out before anyone else did, but just before we were about to taxi to the runway a lady sat down and got the whole row to herself. Maddening!

But seriously, are those flights ever completely full? I don’t fly internationally all that often but on the two long-haul flights I’ve been on, not every seat is taken. What’s the average seat utilisation on these flights? If it’s 70%, that’s 30% extra room that they could be giving to economy! We want more leg room!

I don’t mind flying and I shouldn’t keep going on about the negative aspects! Oh, but surely I can at least finish on this note. When you are done with your 12 hours of flying you walk towards the front of the plane and you exit through business class and realise that they have all this nice leg room, no strangers sitting next to you and a whole lot more luxury. Then, if not just to rub your economy nose in it even more, you walk further forward and exit through a first class section, which you never really get a chance to see properly because you’re on the move but it’s full of funny looking pods and so much room. About six in an area of space that would usually fit about 30 economy class customers! So sad.

Here’s one of the pods. Compare it to Economy, somewhat illustrated in the picture above!

I am sitting in KL at a Starbucks, re-fueling both myself (with caffeine) and my laptop, with power, and my iPhone, with USB power! It ran out of batteries on the flight over and I need to escape into some music to pass the time!

I am going to go for a walk with Lindsay now… back later!

Tonight is the last night I’ll be in London for a little while, as tomorrow, Lindsay and I fly back to Australia! As I mentioned previously it’s been a reasonably stressful time for both of us and I am hoping that once this has all passed I’ll be back to my bouncing self. We fly out tomorrow evening, land in Adelaide at 7AM or so and then go through 3 days worth of stress flying to Canberra, doing the bioscans, dropping in the forms, then back to Adelaide to just wait it out.

As for the Bye, well, when I’m back in Adelaide I plan to collect nautilus’ hard disk and take it with me, effectively taking my website offline. This will be for at least a few weeks until I get things back online. I went down just recently, too, sorry. But this is just a quick message to let you know why I’ll be down

Cheerio, until next time!

And wish Lindsay and I luck with the permit…

It’s Movember already. Good luck Evan!

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