Skip to main content

English Journey in Jeopardy?

UPDATED!


It seems almost certain that Sophie will be getting laid off at the beginning of next month. As such, my trip to the UK is nixed, unless I get some sort of windfall of cash.


Layoff plans


In order to cover expenses, and possibly have some money left over for the trip, I’ll be looking at getting a part-time job. With my constant headaches and the possibility of depression, I’d have to get something pretty stress free, and not in a noisy environment. I’m not entirely confident in my ability to show up to work every day.


Our income would be significantly reduced, so a lot of what I make from a part-time job would go to bills and such. Part-time is definitely about the limit I could handle.


Implications


There will be no trip, as it stands.


The primary implication is that I might not be able to buy my plane ticket. I think that’ll be the single biggest expense of my trip. Food is probably next, and I *was* a university student on a budget, so I know how to keep from overspending there. Then it’s lodging. I can’t go any less expensive than hostels, unless I sleep in a cardboard box or on a park bench. Yeah, that’s not happening. Train and bus fare shouldn’t be much, and I’ll walk whenever I can.


Where does this leave me?


I’m hoping this wont leave me in a situation where I can’t make the trip. My dad needs dates so he can start booking air travel for himself to and from Belgium, and my return ticket from there. If I get a part-time job, I should be all set with respect to money. If I can’t hold it, well, we’ll have to see from there.


I don’t want to let my tweeples down, the ones I’ve told about the trip. I want to see you guys and I’ll do everything in my power to get there. If you can find me info on how much it costs in London, Liverpool and Edinburgh to eat modestly per day, that’d help quite a bit.

Labels:

Comments

Angie Jackson said…
You absolutely CAN go cheaper than hostels. ThinkAtheist has an atheist couch-surfing exchange program. Make friends with UK atheists there & on Twitter and sleep for free. Also, you'll meet cool atheist peeps along the way!

but yeah, if it's not financially possible, that sucks. I'm in a financial shitstorm myself right now. We'll make it through though :)

are you able to get disability benefits?
January 7, 2010 at 5:36 PM
skwirl42 said…
The airfare is the big part. That's what's killed the idea.
January 7, 2010 at 5:38 PM
Angie Jackson said…
Yeah, I've never traveled abroad. Hell, almost all of my traveling was done with a backpack & my thumb (and a bag of weed lol)
January 7, 2010 at 6:05 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Am I Jonesing for the Internet?

I’m feeling a little agitated and jittery today. My internet access is down due to some nasty snow and wind. Are the two related? They might be. I know I’m certainly missing my twitter friends and feeling less in touch with the world. How long is this weather going to hold? I can’t look that up. Sure, I could pull out a radio and listen in, if I had one. I might somewhere, but I’m at the mercy of the broadcaster to decide when to report the weather and how much of it to report. Some argue that internet access should be a basic human right. Does this point of view hold water? I suppose it could be argued that since the internet allows us to draw together into a larger community that it is an essential part of improving the human condition. Its use in political organizing and to connect dissidents in repressive regimes can certainly help make the case for it as a basic human right. Is the jitteriness really from not having the internet? My doctor did just increase my dose of modafi
1 comment
Read more

What Kind of Games?

I started programming when I was young, with the hopes of writing video games. I think a lot of kids start that way. When you like something, or someone, you try to emulate what you’re seeing. But how has that early dream turned out? They tell writers to write what they know. It’s good advice. How can you write about life in the Serengeti without have someone to give you a first hand account or having been there yourself? You can always use your imagination, and that’s all you can really do when writing fantasy or science fiction. It works for writing video games. How can you expect to write a genre you don’t immerse yourself in? These days I spend most of my gaming time playing casual games. I’m busy doing other things, and don’t want to spend long stretches just sitting at the console or computer. Recently I read an article about the kind of video games the most people tend to flock to. Typically they’re games that are relatively simple and involve sorting things in some way. It
Post a Comment
Read more

Piet - an esoteric programming language

There’s a certain group of programmers out there that like to come up with programming languages just for the fun of it. Some of them have profanity as their names , and some are based on internet memes . Whatever the case may be, some individual out there enjoyed thinking up the language, and many of these languages are actually useable. One esoteric language that stands out, for me, at least, is Piet , created by David Morgan-Mar. Based on the idea of making programs that look like abstract art, Piet allows the programmer to express their software in the form of coloured blocks. Numbers are represented by blocks of pixels containing a pixel count equal to the number itself. Operations are performed by changes in hue or darkness. As an example, here is a Piet program I wrote to output the string “Hello World”. This image is in fact the entirety of the program, and can be run in any of the Piet interpreters out there. Other examples of Hello World programs are available on David’s si
Post a Comment
Read more