HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Not a particularly original title, given the date, but I'm sleepy today and couldn't come up with anything more creative.

Yesterday was very hectic; in the morning Ray and I had to cycle madly across town for my appointment with the National Insurance people (sort of like Social Insurance combined with EI in Canada) so that I could be assigned a National Insurance Number. Everyone who works in the UK needs a NIN, but one doesn't get assigned until you can prove that you are actively looking for work (i.e., you have letters from prospective employers acknowledging that you have applied for a position with their company) or until you are actually employed. As I now meet both of those requirements, I had my interview (mainly to ascertain my identity and right to work in the UK) and was told that my number would be assigned in "about 10 weeks". It does appear that our brief brush with the health care system may be our only glimpse of efficiency in this country. At least when we come back home to Canada I'll no longer complain about waiting a couple of weeks for the wheels of beauracracy (did I spell that correctly?) to turn.

After my appointment, Ray gamely went shopping with me for a more comfortable pair of shoes (shopping in Cambridge on a Saturday is not for the faint of heart) and then it was time for me to go to work. Fast foward to early evening when I returned home to a Halloween party at our flat, featuring lots of candy and pumpkins - just the stuff that all good Halloween parties are made of. We wimped out on costumes but have vowed to be more enthusiastic next year. In any case, I think everyone enjoyed themselves and it was fun to teach our European guests how to carve pumpkins and toast the seeds. As a group, we have decided to hold another party soon and since our new friends come from so many different countries it is relatively easy to come up with a holiday that one or the other of us is celebrating; this coming week is of course the US presidential election and while not a holiday it is definitely an occassion to get together with like-minded folk and either toast or rant about the results.