Forgot to upload the Christmas lunch I had with the office last week. Didn’t choose the traditional turkey but my selection was still very yummy. Hot vegetable soup on a cold snowy day:
My first decent steak in 2 years. Still dreaming of a proper-meaty one though. Will have to cook it myself I think.
Well it’s coming up to 5 weeks after my LASEK surgery now. I’d have to say my left eye is almost perfect. My right eye still feels a little gritty at times as if I got an eye-lash in my eye. The vision with the right eye alone is a little fuzzy although I can easily read this screen as I type. I did pick up some more eye-drops from Ultralase Cambridge on the weekend. Was a nightmare trying to get to the clinic because of all the snow! Had to reverse back up the slip road on the A14 or face 2 or 3 hours in traffic. Got there in the end and managed to walk in on the staff’s lunch break but I didn’t mind waiting. When I called they did say I could come at any time though.
Every morning I wake up and put the lights on, I’m able to see all the patterns in the wallpaper my parents decided to put up in my room whilst I was working abroad. Thanks Mum and Dad, flowery patterns are something I always wanted in my room. Ah well, that’s life.
Garden’s all white:
About 4-5 inches of snow on our picnic table:
It’s cold with more snow forecast!
I hope road conditions improve on Monday!
I’ve been rearranging my finances recently. Two issues have been somewhat annoying.
1) Ryanair changes card charging policy – I literally applied for a new Visa Electron card the day before this was announced. I couldn’t believe it when I read that article. Everytime I hear some news from Ryanair, it’s always BAD news for the consumer. I really don’t want to fly with them but they do get you from A to B and overall they will still work out a bit cheaper than rivals if you know what you’re doing! Following that announcement that they will start charging fees on Visa Electron card holders, I looked at the range of prepaid Mastercards currently on offer but they’re all rather rubbish really (e.g. not free). I just hope some kind bank manager or rich businessman will launch a free prepaid Mastercard easily accessible to most people. Too bad O2′s free prepaid card is a Visa.
Anyway, I did receive my Visa Electorn card very promptly from Halifax. I might as well just keep a few hundred pounds on it in case I need to use another low cost airline that still accepts it. Though I hear the “Electron” brand will be obsolete in a year or so.
2) Santander. This banking giant, which has taken over a few UK high street banks and is the new sponsor of the Ferrari F1 team, has been a rather disappointing experience. I applied for their Santander Zero credit card because it looks like a very good card for travelling, especially since Nationwide started charging for some overseas usage. The Satander Zero credit card offers zero fees and commission on pretty much everything, hence the name. Again, I like free banking. I got the card, after 6 weeks of silence, despite the web page saying that I would hear from them within 5 days of submitting my application. Nevertheless, the card seems to work well but I’m having a huge amount of trouble using the online credit card service. The list of problems is endless including these which I wouldn’t expect from an organisation with profit figures in the multi-billions:
- Error pages are in Spanish for a UK customer base!
- The help buttons don’t work e.g. no help comes up when you are forced to change your security code so you don’t know what the restricted characters are.
- When you do get a help screen, it conflicts with information on the screen e.g. Screen says input 8 numbers. Help says input 5 numbers.
Basically, Santander and Abbey and co are making a hash of their system mergers. I’ve been sent 3 new security numbers and none of them have been much success in logging in. I’ve rung up technical support countless times already and last week they said they would call me on Monday which of course they didn’t. I think another one of their problems is that they’re incredibly slow in getting their snail mail out into the postal network. Letters are usually dated a week old which may mean I attempted to use a security number that’s already expired.
What I find insulting though is that their system makes me look like an idiot – as if I’ve input an 8 digit number wrong 50 times in a row. That’s simply not possible – I’ve been inputting user IDs and passwords 100′s of times a day, everyday of the week for the last 7 or more years and I say I make a mistake in less than 0.1% of all those attempts; Add the fact that I also work with banking systems and understand necessary security measures but Santander is OTT.
If you have patience, then I recommend the Santander Zero credit card because it’s good on paper but don’t expect much in terms of customer service or internet banking. If you can afford it, always set up a direct debit to pay off your full balance so you don’t need to worry about missed payments or rip-off interest charges!
Was quite worried this evening when I was driving home. Couldn’t see a thing!! But I quickly realised that I was just driving through immensely dense fog 
Overall, my eyesight has improved a lot over the past week. Things are generally very clear but it’s still not perfect. I would describe the quality right now as a “bad day when I had glasses”. I guess that’s the hard part over now. The next 1 or 2 months my vision should slowly sharpen up – hopefully!
On the train back to Cambridge now. Just had dinner with a friend at St Pancras.
The Japanese exam was alright overall. The first paper, reading and vocabulary was the hardest for me. I never spent much time learning any vocabulary, so if I didn’t know it I could only make a random guess. I probably guessed 60% of this paper. Was also quite annoyed that I changed a correct answer to a wrong one just before time was up. I checked the kanji in my text book during the break and found I lost 1 mark because of that last minute change. Listening wasn’t bad. I think I understood the dialogues at least. The grammer paper wasn’t difficult either. I was expecting there to be harder questions than they gave but I had completed it within 30 out of the allocated 70 minutes. Still, it’s a tough call to say whether I passed or not as there were several questions where I wasn’t sure between two answers. I’ll just have to wait until March 2010 to see if I got more than 60% correct.
It’s the 2009 JLPT tests tomorrow. Really not feeling ready for level 3 yet. The pass mark is 60% and my practice runs are really borderline. So depending on the difficulty of the questions tomorrow I may or may not pass.
I’ve done the best I could with the kanji – I’ve probably only memorised half of what I need to know so I’ll just have to guess any that I don’t! I think I’ve got a handle on all the grammer, I just need to remember to use the correct form. Anyway, I’ll just give it a go. Good luck to all those also taking the exam!
Had a check up today. My eye sight has improved but it’s still not 20/20. The optometrist said I had no prescription but it was just a matter of waiting for the eye to fully heal. My eyes are a bit dry so I should try to use the drops more often. She also said the reason why sometimes my eyes stung when I used the artificial tears was because my eyes were dry to start with.
I left work early today because I wasn’t feeling well and suddenly started feeling feverish. Had a short nap just before dinner and am now feeling a bit better. Still got a stuffy nose though.
Anyway, it’s 10 or 11 days post-op now (depending on how you count it). I’ve still got the fuzziness in my vision but I can definitely see it clearing up each day. I can read the computer screen quite alright now despite all the letters being a bit blurred. My right eye is still trailing my left eye in terms of vision quality but both do seem to be improving on a daily basis. I noticed that after some blinks my vision becomes incredibly clear and then it “resets” back to blurry when I blink again… Patients are told to wait 2 to 3 months before judging the final outcome of the surgery, so I am being patient and not worrying at all.
I have a check up on Thursday which they said they would try to measure if I still have any prescription. I guess it depends if my vision is still blurry or not but on the whole I’m able to do most things. My eyes also don’t feel “gritty” any more either.
On the aftercare regime itself, I’ve found that occassionally, when I put the eye drops in my eyes sting like mad. But it doesn’t happen all the time and it happens with different drops so not really sure what’s up there as there’s no real pattern. It’s nothing I can’t handle though so I’ll ask the eye expert on my checkup this Thursday.
