The place where lost socks go...

Need I say more?

Of course, I am celebrating by leaving; I write this entry from Manchester Airport, en route to Japan.[*]

My, what a decade it has been! Ups and downs, to be sure... but mostly ups. In fact, I have described the year just ended[**] as my best so far!

Looking forward to the next decade, my beloved cheshcat and I are currently house hunting and putting down roots in Sheffield, whilst I am planning for my next triathlon and my first marathon, plus have grand schemes for both my research and teaching.

Here's to the next ten years!

---

[*] The pre-celebration happened Wednesday evening, when I repeated the same journey from O'Hare to Heathrow -- these days en route to Sheffield, not Oxford -- but still. Speaking of which, it was lovely seeing many of you at the birthday party on Monday!

[**] By which I mean February 2nd 2015 through February 1st 2016. Not exactly the conventional calendar year, but since when did I hew to convention? These dates bookend a year, but are not arbitrary. It starts with the job advertisement for my faculty post and ends with the news that the chemo was successful and my father's cancer is in remission. Much more in-between, but that is more fitting for a separate post than a footnote.

Just over ten years ago, I posted this entry, entitled "Grounded". It starts off by saying:

As of today, I no longer have a valid US passport. As alien as it feels to me, I can no longer leave the [United States].

Ten years on, the passport that I applied for at that time has recently expired. Once again, I no longer have a valid US passport. The weird part is that I can now go to just about any country in the world... except the United States.

My British passport is valid until 2023, and this is the primary passport that I use when travelling these days. However, US citizens are not permitted to enter the United States on a foreign passport. This is true even if they hold multiple citizenships and citizens of their other country (or countries) may travel to the United States without a visa.

The United States does not forbid dual nationalities (like, for instance, Japan), but they don't recognize them, either. To quote from the webpage of the United States Embassy in London:

Under U.S. regulations, dual nationals must enter and leave the United States on valid U.S. passports; they are not eligible to apply for visas or travel visa free under the Visa Waiver Program.

So I find myself in the strange situation of being able to go anywhere except for the country where I was born and lived most of my life. How odd.

Thankfully, I have no upcoming travel planned for the United States. Next trip, in three weeks, is to Japan, and the one after that will be to Spain.

Meanwhile, the passport renewal application was collected by courier today. I expect the current oddity will be cleared soon with the arrival of my next passport.

Yesterday afternoon, I participated in a citizenship ceremony at the Oxfordshire County Hall. Thus, since about 15:30 yesterday, your friendly neighbourhood Nomad is also your friendly British neighbourhood Nomad. Tis true, dear friends, I am now a Brit. Huzzah!

Some of you may recall this entry, from last November, in which we announced that my beloved cheshcat had been approved for British citizenship. Now I have followed in her footsteps.

There was a remarkable sense of déjà vu, given that my ceremony had the same Deputy Lieutenant representing the Queen. The venue was, of course, the same; the procedure was the same; all the speeches were the same. Excepting the fact that the Lieutenant's mobile phone stayed silent this time -- she had accidentally left it on at cheshcat's ceremony; it rang several times whilst she was speaking -- I could have been watching a 3D full-sensory replay of December, when cheshcat became British.

Here is a picture, taken by the professional photographer, of yours truly receiving my certificate of naturalisation:

Citizen Nomad

(click for full-sized version)

That piece of paper I am taking is the actual, honest-to-goodness legal document that proves I am now a British citizen. We are not supposed to do anything to it -- not even laminate for safekeeping. I am going to need that paper as-is when I apply for my UK passport.

In addition, new citizens get a "welcome pack" that includes a "Commemorative Certificate of Citizenship". No legal value whatsoever, but it is certainly prettier than the official paper! Much more suitable for framing and hanging. In fact, I have already put mine in a nice new frame; it shall soon reside on a wall in Chiron Beta Prime, next to where cheshcat's C.C.C. has been hanging since December.

Here is another photograph, taken by cheshcat after the ceremony had concluded, of everybody's favourite Nomad holding his pretty commemorative certificate:

"Rosebud..."

(click for full-sized version)

The most common comment I have received about all this (besides "congratulations", of course!) is that I now need to acquire a proper accent. The most common question is whether I have had to give up my US citizenship -- the answer to that is "no". Both the United States and the United Kingdom permit their citizens to hold more than one nationality[*] Thus, I am now a dual citizen, or what we like to call a "half-and-half".

Besides the psychological benefit of no longer being a foreigner, there are also practical legal benefits. I have already begun to take advantage of these -- this morning, I registered to vote in the United Kingdom and requested a registration form for voting in European Union elections. When I there is a six week gap where I will not be leaving the country (November?), I will also apply for my British passport. Indeed, once I am able to vote and have my UK passport, there will be absolutely no difference between my legal status in the US and my legal status in the UK.

This is the end of a long process that stretched on for more than seven years. I've certainly come a long way from where I was in Spring 2006, just arriving in a country where I knew no one and had difficulty with even simple tasks like getting a bank account (due to no prior credit history). It's nice to reach the end of this road and finally claim to be a citizen of my adopted home!

---

[*] There are countries that do not, like Japan. Likewise, Germany does not permit this except under some rather unusual circumstances (e.g., a child who was a dual citizen from birth).

In other news, I was late to work today because my beloved cheshcat and I had an appointment at the Oxfordshire County Council office. There, after being resident in the UK for nearly six and a half years, we submitted cheshcat's application to become a British citizen! Huzzah!

One becomes eligible after being a permanent resident for twelve months. I noted this last year when we received our Indefinite Leave to Remain in April 2011. Alas, I cannot apply yet, as a driving offense in April 2009 bars me from doing so for five years. In 2014, when my record is again clear, I will follow suit[*]... but, in the meantime, it will be most excellent to have one person in our household be British!

I have been asked several times what the practical differences are between being "settled" (i.e. a permanent resident, with indefinite leave to remain) and being a citizen. There are several advantages for the latter:

• One can vote!
  
• One can take the fast lanes at passport control,
  
• One can relocate to another European Union country without needing to apply for a visa in that country,
  
• Citizenship is permanent, whereas Indefinite Leave to Remain can be revoked if one is convicted of a crime or if one leaves the country for two years.

In addition to all this, my dearest cheshcat has a lovely write-up here about what becoming a British citizen means to her.

---

[*] To be clear, neither cheshcat nor I are planning to renounce our United States citizenship. Rather, she will be a dual citizen within the next few months... and I hope to achieve the same when I am able to in 2014.

On my way to work this morning, I encountered an entourage of royals in the park. At least I assume they were royals; all the pieces seem to fit:

• The park in question was Kensington Gardens, adjacent to Kensington Palace.
  
• The entourage was dressed in very posh clothing, riding in two extremely lavish horse-drawn carriages.
  
• Said party had an escort of four cops, two on horseback and two on motorcycle.

As they say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

I had to pause in my journey until they had passed and the path was clear to cross once again. I had to be careful in my crossing, however. When the royals had moved on, there was a pile of shit in the road, left behind as witness to their regal presence.

Need I say more?

Well helloooooooooo, March!

Daylight lasts eleven hours, the Spring Equinox is right around the corner, and the ever-excellent tawneypup will be here in eighteen days! Huzzah!

What else? Well, today is St. David's Day, the feast day in honour of the patron saint of Wales. Any Welsh people on my f-list? Happy St. Davidness to you!

In honour of St. David's Day -- or, perhaps, just by coincidence -- I launched an effort to remain indefinitely in the country that subjugated Wales nearly eight centuries ago. This morning, I mailed off the forms needed for my beloved cheshcat and I to apply for indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom.[*] Fingers crossed now![**]

What else what else? I am on Ye Olde Oxford Tube right now, heading to meet the lovely miss_amaranth for a date. It's been just over a week since I last saw her, but it is always wonderful when we can share a little along time together!

What else what else what else?? Let's see... I have been working closely with a new PhD student who is a very quick learner and off to a nice start. Despite the fact that he only began last week, he is already close to producing interesting work. We should have him presenting for the T2K-SK analysis group and the Neutrino Interaction Working Group (NIWG, pronounced neewg) soon!

What else else else else??? Ringing at St. Aldate's last night gave me lots of good practice! I had a couple of gos at ringing the #2 bell in Cambridge Surprise Minor. Still needs work, but it is coming along! I also rang a touch, albeit unaffected, of Stedman Doubles, which went very well, indeed! Stedman is such a beautiful method and my practice on it is really progressing well. The highlight of the practice for me, though, was ringing several methods, spliced together, for the first time. We rang Cambridge Minor spliced with Little Bob and Plain Bob. What fun!

Actually, my bell ringing has been making much progress of late, despite the fact that I have been too lazy busy to bore you write about it here. In recent weeks, I rang Little Bob Minor for the first time, conducted plain courses of Grandsire Triples and Plain Hunt, and more! Very exciting! I also hit a personal record last week by ringing seven days in a row, for a total of eight ringing sessions. Huzzah!

What else else ELSE else else???! Well, cheshcat had an excellent day out on Saturday, where we visited Windsor Castle and the surrounding areas, including a walk down what is officially the shortest street in Britain. That was loads of fun... and ticks off the fourteenth box on the "Top Fifteen Most Popular Destinations in England" list. Hard to believe that one of the places closest to me was visited second-to-last on the list! Methinks that only the Cotswolds are nearer! Still, fourteen down and one to go! That trip was much fun and really deserves a proper entry of its own. So that is precisely what it will get. Stay tuned, gentle readers!

---

[*] And it is a bloody good thing that I did this now, too! The applications get continually more expensive. Last year, when I applied for my current Tier 1 visa, the cost was £870. Now, it is £1150. In five weeks, it goes up to £1458. To think, fifteen years ago, the application cost nothing at all!

[**] Hopefully, our application will be approved -- and soon! Making the application involved sending the UK Border Agency both of our passports. Thus, we are effectively grounded until the application is processed. This could take as little as two weeks. It could also take six months or more. All their website says is that they aim to decide 95% of applications within six months. Hurm. As the name implies, the Nomad is not a fan of being grounded. cheshcat and I have plans for an eleven day road trip to the continent to avoid celebrate the Royal Wedding next month, and I have a trip to Japan for a T2K meeting and SK shift in May. Knock on wood that the Home Office is faster than they let on...

Astoundingly enough, I have found a phone company more inept, more incompetent, more irritating, and more irresponsible than BT. After the fiasco of July to September 2006, I would not have thought it possible. Yet it is true: TalkTalk takes the metaphoric cake for utter idiocy!

The way that the morons at TalkTalk have handled my request to set up a line in the new flat was shameful enough... and it is the reason why, more than one month after moving, we are still without a landline in our new home. I shall not bore you, gentle readers, with a long and detailed recap of our dealings with these nincompoops. Suffice to say that, after both my beloved cheshcat and I spent several fruitless hours on the phone with various departments, I finally gave up, cancelled my request, and shopped about for a new phone company. With any luck, we should have a landline again come on December 13^th, the morning after my return from Japan.

One could reasonably think that such would be the end of it, yes? One could... but, alas, one would be wrong. Adding the proverbial insult to injury, the person in TalkTalk's cancellations department failed to properly process my request and thus I was recently billed for a month of phone service that we did not receive. Oi! Not only have attempts to obtain a refund been futile, but even our efforts to switch off the account have proven to be beyond the meager capabilities of TalkTalk's staff. Indeed, it seems quite likely that they are all set to bill us again, later in December, for a second month of service not provided! To prevent this, I bypassed their people and had my bank remove their Direct Debit access to my account. I may not be able to procure a refund, but they shall certainly not pull that stunt again!

In the meantime, I find myself wondering if the United Kingdom has any good consumer watchdog organizations equivalent to, say, the Better Business Bureau. Although I hope that I have, at long last, seen the back of those incapable gits, methinks that this may be too much to expect.[*] As such, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst is a worthy paradigm, and I should assemble the requisite knowledge to arm myself if need be.

---

[*] My suspicion is that, after refusing to close the account, they will go after my impeccable credit rating when they find that I have prevented them from collecting monies to pay for service that we do not want and are not receiving.

This is not the birthday post you've been looking for, gentle readers... though it is the first post that I make in my thirty-sixth year on this planet. Although Nomad's Thirty-Fifth Birthday Weekend Extravaganza^TM was a phenomenal success -- and I'm sure that all my dear friends are gripping the edge of their collective seats waiting to hear all -- writing about it will have to wait. I'm currently preparing a proposal to obtain Super-Kamiokande neutrino and decay electron data... which I need to send off shortly in order to get to the final Oxford BiFest planning meeting on time!

Thus, my gathered friends, I have but one nugget from the Life of Nomad to share with you on this fine March evening. And that nugget is:

On checking the post this afternoon, I found a rather large package from the Home Office. In it, alongside a boatload of papers that were being returned to me, were passports for my beloved cheshcat and myself... complete with our new visas!!! We are now legal residents of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[*] until March 2013! Three more years!! Huzzah!!!!!

These are the third visas that we have had since moving to Merry Olde England nearly four years ago. The first set, from March 2006 to March 2008, were based on a Work Permit... and thus tied to my old job. The second set, from March 2008 to March 2010, were under the now-defunct Highly Skilled Migrant Programme... and thus tied only to me.[**] The current visas are valid for even longer, under the new Tier 1 (General) status... which basically is just HSMP under another name.

Sorry, folks! If you thought you were getting rid of me so soon -- or so easily -- you were mistaken! The Nomad is here to stay!

---

[*] Incidentally, the UK has the longest name of any country in the world!

[**] And my high skillz.

Three years ago today, I arrived in England to begin life here as an expatriate and a job at the University of Oxford.

Three years? Wow. As resourceress likes to say: "Time's fun when you're having flies!"

Really, though, three years? That's a fairly long time! More than half of this journal has been written since I moved to Oxford. Indeed, I have lived in seven places -- New York City, Amherst (MA), Long Island, Japan, Phoenix, Chicago, and Oxford... and, by now, I have been in Oxford for longer than I spent in half of those places! Longer than the two years that I spent in Japan and the two years that I spent in Arizona, longer than the two and a half that I spent in Chicago. Wow.

Indeed, in another year, I will surpass the four years that I spent in Amherst, Massachusetts... and if I am still here a year after that, I will have been here longer than the five years that I lived in Lawn Guyland... making Oxford second only to New York City in terms of how long I have lived in a given place. Growing up in NYC means that I spent nearly eighteen years there; I don't think it is in danger of losing the top spot any time soon.

One other item worth mentioning: Being here for three years now means that I am at the halfway point between my arrival and the point where I can apply for citizenship. Three years down, three more to go.

Almost at work now, so I'd best post this. Will try to update later tonight about what has been going on in this fairly productive week...

Friday / Saturday: Thanksgiving Party
Friday evening, cheshcat and I hopped into Peter, our trusty steed, and drove to SouthEast London to visit with our friends D&J. D&J are fellow Yanks -- brother and sister-in-law to the breathtakingly beautiful pomoloco -- who moved to London just three months before we moved to Oxford. Although we didn't know each other well when we all lived in Lawn Guyland, pomoloco wisely put the four of us in touch soon after we moved.

Since then, it has become tradition for D&J to host a Thanksgiving party each November, on one of the two Saturdays closest to the actual holiday[**], and to invite all of their expatriate friends. This year was the third in the tradition[***]. We went out on Friday to remove the stress of travelling out from Oxford on the day of the party... and also to get a little extra time with D&J, who we had not seen since their housewarming party back in September.

The party was good fun: We got to see people that we don't often spend time with, I have an invitation to go boating down the Thames next Spring with the St. Pancras harbormaster, and the food was excellent! In total, there were twelve of us there -- nine expatriated US-ians and three Brits who came along as partners of the expats. Given the demographics, D&J's flat became a temporarily extension of US soil. In particular, somebody decided to forbid the use of British English -- anyone using "top up" or "queue" or "zed" or "bloody" would be penalized by having to take a drink. It was an amusing suggestion... though I am not certain that it is directly responsible for most people ending the evening quite tipsy!


Sunday:
Sunday was a busy day, filled with a variety of activity -- some social, some productive, some fun! Just the sort of day that I like!

We stayed over at D&J's placeon Saturday night as well and had a nice lay in on Sunday. As if making an enormous Thanksgiving dinner wasn't enough, J prepared a lovely breakfast spread on Sunday at around noon -- fruit, pancakes (with real maple syrup), bacon (for the meat eaters), cheese, scrambled eggs, tea, juice! Yum!

After breakfast, cheshcat and I headed out. Before leaving London, we swung by Imperial College and I showed her the building and office where I now work. Then it was back into London traffic as we made our return to Oxford.

Upon returning to Oxford, I headed to St. Giles Church and rang bells for Sunday evening services. Nothing terribly noteworthy here.

When services ended, I met up with cheshcat at Skullcrusher Mountain. On Tuesday, we had moved the last of our belongings into the [as yet unnamed] new flat. However, before leaving SCM for good, we wanted to do a thorough cleaning and perform ritual to release any of our energy -- or that of our kitties -- that still lingered. It took a couple of hours, but we managed to accomplish this. When we left SCM, it was for the final time. Interestingly enough, I think that this is the first time cheshcat and I have moved house without any help from anyone else or a moving van! We did it all ourselves, using Peter as the only transport vehicle. Admittedly, we moved from a furnished flat to another furnished flat, but still...

Next, I dropped cheshcat (and our cleaning supplies) off at home, picked up my new ice skates, and made my way out to the evening session at the Oxford Ice Rink. There, I debuted my new skates. I learned two things: (1) The blades are so obviously superior to anything that I have previously skated on, and (2) The new skates hurt. A lot. My feet were killing me, and it was all I could do to do some basic forward skating all the way around the rink without stopping! I am not entirely surprised -- the lovely danaeris once warned me that new skates feel like that until you break them in. Still... ouch! It was a bit disappointing to not be able to do much on the ice; still the only way to break them in is to wear the things!

When I got home from the rink, cheshcat and I got takeaway Chinese food for dinner. I walked five minutes to pick it up -- I do enjoy living in a much more active area than we previously did!

Finally, it was getting late so I tucked cheshcat into bed, then wound down my own evening with a phone date with the adorable livetbd. It is always nice to hear her voice and it was good to catch up on each others' lives. We made plans to see each other when I am in the States next month; I am definitely looking forward to spending time with her again in the not too distant future! We also need to find a way to see a Broadway musical together, as we are both huge theatre geeks![****]

As I said -- the sort of active and varied Sunday that I like! When my head finally hit the pillow, I was thoroughly ready for it... and asleep almost immediately!

---

[*] One hundred points to the first person that identifies the source of my subject line!

[**] As none of us actually get Thanksgiving Day off here!

[***] Interestingly enough, each year they are living in a different flat from the previous November!

[****] Unless you compare to the spectacular squeektoy42, who is the Queen of Musical Theatre. Even if she cannot identify Into The Woods quotes.