All posts tagged moving

Today I got my replacement iPhone (1st gen) from the Apple Store. The earphone speaker had broken down, rending it rather less useful as an iPhone. Apple service was outstanding, I booked in, they ordered a replacement (going out of their way to find acceptable evidence for my returning the iPhone outside of the warranty period which expired a month ago). The replacement came within 48 hours, despite the Christmas holiday.

Going in again today, things went less smoothly. The new handset needed to be ‘activated’ — the process of enabling the handset through iTunes and linking it to the mobile contract you have for the SIM. That requires you to log in to your Apple account. Upon doing so, I get an error: ‘This account is not registered in the UK’. And so, I run into the pain of geographic migration again.

To activate a UK model iPhone, you need a UK Apple account. I moved mine from the UK to US a few months ago when I got US billing details. It’s the same account. The only way to activate it was to move my account back to the UK again.

Moving exposes a lot of interesting engineering edge cases like this. They’re not impossible to overcome, but generally cause a bit of inconvenience. The number of people you run into this is likely rather few, but clearly some paths don’t get tested quite as thoroughly.

Trying to get a handle on one of the reasons for my mood having dipped this week.

I’m feeling isolated, which is nuts because I’m surrounded by people. Except, I feel diluted. It’s not that anyone around me is a bad person - I’m yet to meet a bad person in San Francisco at all - it’s just that I have no close friend here. I very much dislike spending evenings on my own in my apartment, and when choosing to live alone vowed that I’d be social. But while staring at the walls makes for a dismal evening, it’s less uncomfortable than forcing myself around people that I don’t know so well. It’s moments like this that the absence of a great flatmate is emphasised.

I left behind a set of friends who even though I only knew most of them for a year, I could be completely comfortable with. It’s intimidating to think how long it will be until I have that same depth here.

In the mean time I’m up late, Skyping to Dot and my family, clinging on to the closest people I have, some 6000 miles away.

This is the part of moving where it all slows down. The part where you actually have to settle.

I really wish I had some furniture to sit on.

I’ve lived in my new apartment for 7 days so far. I just put in an order for a dining table and six chairs to go with it. Not sure they’re going to match quite right, but the table shape is worth it and could always be stained later.

More importantly, this means that all the major pieces of furniture required for this place are covered. A sofa will arrive in about a month, a bed frame some time before that, dining table and chairs should come this week and television stand is already in place.

I’ve got a bean bag on order, which should tide me over until the real sofa comes.

With the basics covered, I’m feeling good that the essentials are done, and I can start focusing on less vital accessories.