I've done it! A few months ago, I took the opportunity to make an exploratory trip to the University of Glasgow in Scotland to think about starting my PhD in the geosciences. After my first day here back in December, there really wasn't too much convincing that needed to be done. Even in the pouring rain and chilly temperatures, I thought Glasgow was the natural next step on my life's journey.
Fast forward two months, and after waiting weeks for my new passport, getting my student visa, selling my car, and making the painstaking decision to use 60,000 of my frequent flyer miles to buy a ticket, my bags were packed and I was on my way here, to Glasgow, where I am now writing this blog post from my bedroom in the city's West End.
I have to apologize for not writing anything sooner (I've been here for almost two weeks now), but there has been a lot going on. Not being one to live an unplanned and disorganized, I agonized about not being able to set up a bank account, or find an apartment, or get a mobile phone before coming over. Finding a flat before coming here was difficult, mainly because I will only be here for a few months before moving to Australia for a year for school, and no one really wants to agree on such a short-term lease agreement. And you can't do much else, like buy a phone or get a bank account without a mailing address, so on my first night in town, I met up with a nice guy, Craig, to view a room in an apartment he owned.
From photos I saw online, the room looked really nice, but walking over to it was sort of my first glimpse of my new city and I was unsure of how a room that looked nice could be in what seemed to be a dodgy part of town. It's just amazing the types of misconceptions and cozy perfect little worlds we become familiar with. Glasgow is not a neat and pristine city; after all, it got its start as an industrial merchant and maritime city that was second only to London in the British Empire. Like all industrial cities, Glasgow has fallen on hard times, but has been making a comeback in recent years. The people who live here love it and like in cities such as Detroit or New Orleans, that love for the city forces you to enjoy the personality and people of a city rather than its outward appearance. Back to me looking for an apartment, it was a great space and not wanting to wait and look for other places to live, I told Craig that I'd love to rent the room, so we negotiated and came to an agreement.
I didn't stay there that night, as all of my things were at another postgrad's and her husband's apartment - they were so hospitable to allow me to stay with them until I had some other living arrangement figured out. So the next day, my goal was to shop for a bank account and get a mobile phone. The bank situation really wasn't too difficult, and within a few hours my first morning in Glasgow, I was all set with a basic current account (aka a checking account).
I met with my advisor that morning to go over a few other details and he helped get me situated in my desk which is one of twelve in a communal office space in the Gregory Building on campus. The School of Geographical and Earth Sciences is fairly large at the University and comprised of human and physical geographers and earth scientists. The School's main offices are in the main University building, in the East Quad - built in 1860.
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| The central focus of the main University building is the tower overlooking the cloisters of the East and West Quads |
Unfortunately for me, historical preservation of the building required that no laboratory space requiring fume hoods could be put into the East Quad, so that's where all the physical and human geographers have their offices while the earth scientists' offices are in a much more boring (architecturally) building. But it's a good work space. When I need to get work done, I can; but it's not like a dead zone where no one talks. Very conducive to studying! I then finished registering with the University to make sure that they know I am here and that my living stipend will actually be deposited into my current account (which it did!).
Later that evening, I moved all of my things into my new flat, which really didn't take long. It's kind of amazing/sad to know that I was able to pack so little. On one hand, it's nice that I am not weighed down by tons of useless little knick-knacks. On the other hand, I did have to leave some things back in Michigan like photos of family and books. But most of the important photos are on my computer anyway, and once I get a more permanent place to stay either in Australia or when I return to Glasgow, I will be able to set up my life a little more.
Apartment? Check. Bank? Check. Office? Check. There was just one last item on my list of things I wanted to do: get my phone.
I love my iPhone. There is no getting around that. In fact, last February, after I had my iPhone pick-pocketed on my way to the Berlin airport, and even though I was feeling wretched from food poisoning on my return flight, I stopped at AT&T just to get a new one. But it's more than a phone to me; it's a camera, access to e-mails, iPod, and my mobile life-line back to my family and friends in the states. So I figured that since numerous cellular companies carry the iPhone, it would not be a problem getting a SIM card for it. Well, I think I was on one of the wildest goose chases of my life!
The problem with my phone is that it is "locked" - I can't use it to access the cellular networks over here unless I got it unlocked. But before a phone can be unlocked, it's internal computer code must be altered through a process called jailbreaking (which, by the way, is all perfectly legal if doing this for personal use). The first store I went to said he couldn't unlock my phone because it is a 4G and apparently he could only unlock 3Gs. I thought that was wrong, so I brought it to a mobile phone store and they said it was possible to have my phone unlocked, but that they could not legally do it. So feeling a little defeated, I went home that night and browsed Reddit for a while until I found what seemed to be the most reputable method of unlocking my phone. An hour later, it seemed like I was successful. Now I just needed to wait until the next day to buy a SIM card and plug it in.
The next day came around and I stopped back at the cell phone store and bought my SIM card, which the clerk advised may take anywhere from 2-24 hours to pick up the signal from the network. Needless to say, every hour for the next 24 hours, I was checking my phone and turning it on and off to see if my unlocking was successful. I was not in luck. I did a little more research online and found something that said that my network carrier back in the states were the only people who could successfully unlock my phone. So I bought some Skype credits and called AT&T, explained my new living situation, and asked if they had the capabilities to unlock my phone, to which they replied, "No, I'm sorry. We can't do that, but Apple can." Luckily for me, Glasgow has an Apple store downtown, so half an hour later, after buying an Underground ticket, I found myself at the Apple store being told, "No, I'm sorry. We can't do that, but your US network provider can."
I was outraged. Everyone kept telling me that it could be done, but that they could not do it for me! Furious and frustrated, the next day I went to the O2 store near campus (O2 is the network provider for the SIM card I bought). I asked the guy behind the counter if he knew anything about unlocking iPhones. The guy was very nice and took a look at my phone, tried using a different SIM card to see if the one I bought was faulty, but it was not. He then told me of a phone shop downtown (a hole-in-the-wall place where mobile phones and pay-as-you-go phone plans were sold). I was told that if the folks at the downtown phone store couldn't help me out, no one in Glasgow would be able to. And soon I found myself back on the Tube going downtown, trying to find this phone shop. Much to my chagrin, it turns out the phone shop I was looking for closed down about a month ago. Again, out of luck.
I turned back to the internet that night trying to find a solution to my problem. And then it came to me; the answer was as clear as day. Different iPhones, operating on different versions of the iOS operating system, are programmed with different "base codes." Hackers have found ways to unlock iPhone 4Gs with some base codes, but not others, and lo and behold, my phone's base code is one that has not yet been unlcocked. I would not be able to use my iPhone here in the UK. Still upset, I decided it would be best for me to trade in the phone I have for an earlier version with less memory, get that phone unlocked, and then put the SIM card I bought into the "new" phone. I found myself back at the mobile phone store, and was ready to pay another £150 for a downgraded version of my phone. I asked them, "When I go to Australia in a few months, will I be able to get a SIM card there and use their cell network?" And they told me, "No, as soon as you put a new SIM card in your phone here, it sets the base code and won't work down there." Dead end. Fine. End of Story. I realized it was just going to be too much of a hassle to continue this quest (not to mention expensive), and I was sick of not being able to get in touch with people I met because I didn't have a phone.
So really, what this all boils down to is that I spent a good three or four days trying to make the impossible happen and ended up just getting a cheap brick-of-a-phone that will have to suffice until hackers successfully unlock my phone's base code. Only then will I be able to use my beloved iPhone to keep in touch with the world.
Life has been a bit simpler since I ended that quest, and I'm learning to live back in the dark ages without a smartphone in my pocket all the time. As I near the first two week mark of my new life outside the US, routine is settling back into my life, and even though I've had to start from scratch, my life is slowly returning to a state of normalcy.
I haven't really taken too many photos yet, mostly because I haven't had the time to really go out and do anything worth photographing. But I promise, they'll come. Sooner or later, they will come. I have more stories from these first two weeks, too, but I'll update those in the next few days. Until then...
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