I'm at Limmud. It's the best (Jewish) fun you can have with your clothes on.

Tales From the London Underground Customer Service Heartland

So the marketing speaks very highly of it, so I decide to get an Oystercard. Apparently, there's no fumbling for change, and you can pay 2003 rates all year. Who writes this guff? I can't find my photocard, so I go and get a crap photo taken in Kilburne tube, fill out my card, queue for like ever, get to the front, get my new photocard, ask for a Daily Tikcets Oystercard, and get told "dey told sell dem. Read the poster."

Now the poster says buy it here, but I know more than to argue with an LT CSR. So I take my ugly new photocard, and go off and hole myself up in the British Library (you wouldn't believe what I don't currently know about optoelectronics. Clients, eh?).

Get home, tidy my house, find my old photocard with attractive photo, and go online. Also, I made more chilli and carrot and dill soup. We have a lot of vegetables. It's the worst website I've ever seen: looks cute and navigatable at first glance, but not actually copywritten, so you only understand it if you spent two months on the marketing brief. If you're just a punter, it doesn't make sense. Gah.

So I eventually I find the - stupid popup - bit that says:
"Get an Oyster card now and with Pre Pay, you’ll make great savings on single journeys from 4th January 2004. That’s because prices are set at 2003 prices for the whole of 2004. Take a look at the table below to see how much you can save."

I start buying it - fill out a stupid registration form, give them my photcard number... and get to the payment but and it's NOT SECURE. Unbelievable. I'm on IE6 like the rest of the office-stylee world, and I'm not prepared to do it, all kinds of security-scary pop-ups.

By now it's well past 8pm, so I can't call them. 8am, I call 0845 330 9876, where they're on-hold message says (a) we're so buys phone back tomorrow, and (b) Daily Tickets are not available here, yet. Eventually, I get through to a Kylie, and I check that they are available - yeah, they just didn't update the message. Oh, fine.

I check that I can get 2003 rates all year by just putting £10 on my card now. "Oh no," says Kylie, after checking with a colleague, "just for the money you put on." She can't verify anything, and tells me to call the Oyster Helpdesk on 0845 330 9876. "That's the number I just called you on," I said. Oh. So she gave me another number, that was a fax number, and then I called back and chose the "Help option" and spoke to someone who said I could get the 2003 prices all year. Which is actually not true - if a single ticket is £2 now, and likely to go up in 2004, you pay £1.60 on your Oystercard. It probably is good value if you can bear buying one.

So after a couple of goes this Kylie got the switch card machine to work - halleluyah - and the card's in the post. No, I can't buy daily travelcards till March 2004. No, no buses either. No, she says, it's not a great system. Wonder who it's outsourced too? I'm not sitting by my letterbox anytime soon.

You know I have that Excel thing going on? Well, so it turns out, does Jason.

[via Plasticbag]

Last night, I'm walking down to Kilburn tube, on my way to meet J for a movie, and I'm wearing my current favourite outfit (black velvet trousers, black leather long coat, pink cordoroy seventies-stylee loose cap, pink cordoroy stilletto boots), and as I walk down the High Road, a youngish guy listening to loud R&B leans out of his window and shouts "smokin' outfit. The hat, the boots, fabulous."

No, really.

I don't usually do this. No, really, I don't usually do this, but I took this quiz, yeah, and it was so right:

You are 38% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Finally saw Spirited Away. And cried.

You probably don't remember, but round about this time last year, I went to A&D's party, and literally ran into Glenn, chief Raelian UK, although we spent all our time talking about hair care products, and it was only when the cloning story broke a couple of weeks later, that I realised it was him. What a wasted opportunity - we talked at length about Potion9, and never got to talk about "The Raelian Revolution, the world's largest UFO related, non-profit organisation - over 60,000 members in 90 countries - working towards the first embassy to welcome people from space... sweeping the world with the most politically incorrect and fearlessly individualistic philosophy of non-conformism ". But then, he probably doesn't like to discuss work on the weekends.

Went to A&D's party at the weekend, had a slightly more child-friendly flavour - though still with the drumming - and I met all manner of interesting folk ranging from a surf-dude to a woman setting up an art studio party venue.

Of course I'm sure I'm not the first person to comment that all the world-domination stress has clearly (fnah fnah) got to Saddam's skin. I mean, while he was huddled away in a bunker with $750,000, he didn't keep up his personal care regime, did he? He looks like the after pictures in a bizarre before-and-after fashio setup. If I was going into hiding, I'd be sure to take both my hairstylist and my manicurist. Possibly, even a facialist.

Man, even Google is moving some tech/R&D to India.

Getting into that New York Gotham thing - tiny t-shirts - in readiness for my NY trip.

Jonathan Lethem and Fortress of Solitude. The Observer likes it.

Anyone, er, read persian? I'm getting a lot of hits from this persian blog, and I have no idea what they are saying about me. Probably, "she could do with losing a little weight," although, less so in a middle-eastern context.

It's About Time
The TIME magazine 100 most/important people of the century.

Jonathan Ross gets a British Comedy Award for Friday Night With. About bloody time.

And do you know, he lives down the road from G's parents by the heath extension, and the interior of his house is painted a far-too-vibrant pink. For a moment, walking past, I thought I was in Vanessa Feltz territory.

Getting a cab home from Camden during the week, the cabbie told me that Ken Livingston lives in Cricklewood, in a street opposite the Galtymore. Which means, he probably uses the number 16 bus. Which means he really ought to have replied to my letter. Perhaps I should invite him round for Friday night dinner, give him a bit of local colour?

Saw/heard Nicky Hornby tonight - the last of the Orange Word - what's great about him is honesty. It's like reading a book that's like sitting in the pub with a really good mate. That's what I aspire to. Then onto X's work drinks, which included Cherie and a host of other well-dressed people. We finished the evening with a meal at Cafe Delancey in Camden. I don't always pack this much in an evening, honest.

Timothy McSweeny's Internet Tendency and The Believer. Must get subscriptions. Lather, rinse, repeat.

After a crazy slanging match with a Sony senior customer service miner (because, let's face it, being a CSR is the twenty-first century version of working down the mines - commoditised, badly paid, and herded into pens), who basically said I'd imagined the whole wrong-postcode-no-delivery scenario, even though I have documentary evidence, I got home from a great evening to find it delivered when it's not allegedly arriving till tomorrow.

Slightly surreal moment - I'm half-watching Jonathan Sacks on TV talking earnestly about the "big questions" in that superfluously earnest voice he has. He can't imagine anything worse than rule by religious rulers. He just said that in Ancient Israel there were kings with power and prophets with no power, but who remembers the names of the kings? He for one doesn't, but the words of the prophets go on forever. But that's not true, because I remember kings David and Saul, and a host of others. You're just wrong, Jonathan.

Ruben Gonzalez - of Buena Vista Social Club fame - died.

 
So, with UPS, you can track your delivery online right down the the exact moment it goes out to you, but not if Sony take your order wrong and try and deliver it to the wrong f***ing postcode. Gah. It's a week I've been waiting for my "shinning fabric neoprene cover" and it's still out there, in the ether, trying to deliver itself to NW3.

See, the web's wonderful blah blah blah, you can get anything, but it's the old fashioned infrastructure stuff that makes or breaks it. It's great that I can get 47 flavours of chilli vodka, but if I'm not home to take delivery, and have to drive out to Harrow to collect it with my passport, it's not that convenient, is it?