Close Enough

I had to wait a day or so before making this post, firstly because I have negligible Net access outside work (I'm limited to piggybacking off the one unsecured and intermittent wireless access point I can find) and secondly because I wasn't sure whether I was amused, resigned, annoyed or despairing - who's doing what now? (Blinddrew, a challenge for you - which Simpsons episode is that a mangled misquote from?)

I have an arrival date for the stuff I'm having shipped over from the UK. It's due to arrive on 30/12/06 in Brisbane. Which is somewhere I don't live. And approximately 1000 miles (no, no, no, very naughty - 1600 km!) away from somewhere I do live.

They expect it will be another couple of weeks from then till when it arrives in Melbourne (assuming no further detours), but there are two caveats to that - it's entirely possible Pickfords are staffed by actuaries.

1. As my stuff is in a container with several other people's, under Customs laws, they can't remove it themselves, they have to wait till everyone else has collected their own gear.
2. There's a 2-week quarantine period from when the container arrives in Australia. Pickfords aren't yet sure whether Customs will want another one of these once it arrives in Melbourne.

So, in summary, I'm not expecting to see my stuff this side of the Aus Open finals. What's annoying, and the despairing bit too, about this is that I've told Pickfords 3 times already that they had Brisbane down incorrectly as the destination, and they've told me 3 times they've corrected their systems. They did not.

The amused and resigned bits are because it doesn't make all that much difference to me being without all my gear for three months rather than two. I'd already anticipated not seeing it this year, so it's just a small extra inconvenience on top of an already quite large one.

That aside, I think things are starting to go better for me. My phone will be fixed on Monday, and the Fat Free Fone company will be giving me a broadband account a day later. I'm out for meals 3 days next week with various different people from work (trying to broaden the social network), I'm off to purchase a wide range of solutions for modern living (film quote, anyone?) tomorrow, and I succeeded pretty well with a piece of work I was given as (I suspect) a bit of a test of how well I'd do with it.

All things considered, November wasn't such a bad month, but it isn't one I'd particularly want to go through again.