Living Without the Bunnies

While I was putting away utensils and dishes this morning, I discovered an odd implement in my drawer. It was approximately the size of a spoon, but it had four long pointy things at the end. Yes, it took me a whole second to recognize a fork.

Sandwiches are really common in the UK. I mean, really, really common. I remember one person from Singapore asking me if I really ate bread for every meal [in Canada], and I replied that I generally had it for lunch, but ate potatoes or rice for dinner. Over here? Nothing but bread. And, if one stretches the definition of "sandwich" slightly to include burgers... actually, I can't think of a sensible definition of "sandwich" which doesn't include hamburgers... then I can lay claim to eating nothing but sandwiches for a whole week!

For the past number of days, I've had sliced cheese (it was on sale) between two slices of white bread (also on sale), microwaved for a minute. When I go for lunch, my professor always gets a sandwich. When I'm alone, so far I've gone to Subway because I don't like going to unfamiliar eateries by myself. I never know whether to order and wait for the food, order and sit down, or just sit down! And the one time when I went with a labmate, I wanted a burger anyway.

I started expanding my diet last night, though. Tesco's was selling pizza at half price, so of course I bought a few. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to turn on the oven -- and even now I'm not completely certain how it's done -- but I had a wonderful dinner for £1.74. (not counting the fraction of a bottle of diet coke)

But that still didn't re-aquaint myself with a fork. So for lunch, I tried the "cheesey [sic] pasta". It's still made by Kraft, but it comes in a red box. The pasta is thinner and slightly longer than regular macaroni, and there's less of it. That's not a bad thing; there's too much in a normal packet for one person. The cheese mixture is much sharper, and lumps together much more than the North American variant. Next time, I might try adding a bit of butter and/or milk.

All in all, I seem to have adjusted well. I have a bank account, I've done clothes washing twice, and I'm now waking up at 6am. My first full week wasn't as productive as I had hoped; I was working on some lilypond stuff but didn't get it finished. Oh well; such is life.

There's only three remaining chores: getting a keycard for the building (since there's terrawatt lasers and deadly gasses and whatnot, I need to have a safety lecture), officially registering as a student (my assigned day is the 24th), and getting a cell phone. I mean, a mobile phone. I'm quite reluctant to do the latter, but then again, I suppose that they can't be any worse than Canadian mobile phone companies.

I used to have "buy a keyring" on my list, since I forgot to bring one from home. But I don't have a clue where to buy them -- at home, we just seem to accumilate them. However, when I was just about to throw a twist-tie away, I realized that I could use this as an improvised keyring. What an engineer I am!

PS: since Tesco's was having a "meal deal" -- £2 for a sandwich, drink, and chips -- I'll be eating a mostly-fresh sandwich for dinner.