Yesterday there was a really big lottery jackpot, so I played the lottery. I won, but not the jackpot or anything big. Just 8 pounds 90, but I am happy. But I still made a profit, since my two tickets cost 3 pounds. In the end no one won the jackpot, so it will be even larger next week. As Victoria said though, why does having such a large jackpot make more people want to play? After all, for most people 1 million and 10 million would have the same effect on their lives. I suppose some of it is just hype and excitement. After all, I wouldn't normally play the lottery.

It seems like Britain is in love with privatization. I gather there used to be huge state monopolies that didn't offer good value to consumers (the trains, British telecom, and British gas for example). However, I think the privatization has been successful only in some areas. Mostly, those where there is direct competition. For instance, the phones, internet, and utilities have lots of competition, and the prices seem reasonable. Other things, such as the trains, are not. There are some 20 train companies throughout the country, but they each seem to have one area that they cover. This means there is little competition about who you can take to get to the same place. In fact, if there are two companies that run between the same two cities, the standard fare is the same regardless of which company you travel with. Sometimes you can get discount tickets, but that is mostly for long haul trains. Somehow the benefits of privatization got lost in the transition from public to private.

Oink-choo, our new leather pig, with Sarah Toney

The James Bond Aston Martin

The Terminator 2 hand

Some monkeys at the zoo

More presents! From left: Hannah, David, Sienna, Fiona, and Isobel

Close-up of dinner

This is the dinner table. From the left: Alan, Joyce, Gillian, Hannah, Richard, and Fiona

From the left, Isobel, Sienna, and David

Here's me with a singing reindeer pin Victoria gave me.

Here's the table all set before the big meal. The crackers are on the plates.

Playing with some new presents. From the left is Victoria, one of her nieces, Richard, Joyce, and Alan

Today I accidentally got to see Prince Charles up close. This morning Victoria told me he was scheduled to come to Sheffield to see an Islamic art exhibition at the Millenium Galleries. Victoria had actually mentioned the exhibition to me last weekend, as she wanted to see it. We'll probably go this weekend.

When I was coming back to my campus from the other campus where I had some meetings, I noticed police motorcycles barracading the street. Just then the Prince's motorcade drove right by me and I caught a glimpse of him. He then got out of the cars a little further on and shook hands with the Lord Mayor and Mayoress (who I met at the opening of one of the university building) and other important people. I didn't stick around to oogle or anything, but it was interesting to see. When he drove by, he was only about 5 feet from me (though in a car obviously).

Finally it appears my backpay issues have been sorted. I received the balance of the money owed today. Yay! Now on to the incorrect vacation days issue. I just can't believe that in the US, something like this would still be going on for so long. Mistakes happen but they should be able to be fixed in a timely fashion.

Last week I found out that I passed the first semester course I took at the university. It is just pass/fail, so I don't know my grade, but I did well on most of the assignments, so I think it was a high pass. On to semester two. After this semester I will have earned a postgraduate certificate, but I will probably go on to do the diploma (year 2) and the masters (year 3).

Here's the bigger tree with tons of presents (though some were already gone when I took this)

This is the small tree with few presents

The other problem I have been having recently has been at work. I was supposed to have been paid some backpay in November, but I never got it. I was also supposed to have started on a pension scheme when I got my new post, as well as different vacation hours. None of this has been taken care of by now. I send repeated emails and made numerous phone calls in December about it, but nothing happened. Finally the corrections will be made this week, but it has been a nightmare trying to get it sorted (about 5 emails and 8 phone calls). One time I called the guy, he said he would look into it and get back to me. I called the next week and he had forgotten all about it. I had to explain it again. Then I called the next day to see what the status was. He said he couldn't read his hand writing from the day before, so I had to explain it for a third time again. I found out from my boss that this guy has a reputation for being incompetent, so the university has just decided to contract out all payroll in the future. I still need to get my vacation time sorted, as this hasn't been fixed yet. I did get my employment contract in the post on Friday, though. This is only 4 months after I started in my new role. The best part of the story is that at the university awards for 2005, Sheffield Hallam University got one award, that of "Employer of the Year." No one in my office could believe it.

Our other outstanding issue with HR has finally been resolved as well. We tried to hire two student employees to start in September. The advert didn't go out until November, so we've just interviewed and hired them this past week. We've got two great guys, so that will really help me with my workload and free up some time for research, etc. I'll be their line manager, so that gives me some management experience for the future as well.

Recently I had a big scare, courtesy of the post office. After I returned from Jersey, I sent off my passport to the visa office. Before Christmas I was approved for an extension to my work permit (5 years) which is due to expire in April. Since I had to send in your passport to get the visa extension which goes with the work permit extension, I had to wait until after Jersey. I sent my passport to the office via recorded delivery, which allows signature confirmation of delivery. However, over the next week, the tracking system said it hadn't been delivered. It should've only taken one day. However, Victoria checked her bank account and the check she wrote to pay for it was cashed, so I felt that it probably was delivered after all. Then a week later I got a confirmation from the immigration department that the payment had cleared, and processing would begin.

This was obviously a source of relief to me. The process for an extension is supposed to take 4-9 weeks, and I will be going to Japan April 9, so I needed it to happen on time. Applying for a new passport would've taken too long. I'm going to Japan in April because my younger brother Paul is getting married there to Keiko, his Japanese (now) fiancee. I got a call about this in Jersey, which I forgot to mention in my account of the trip. Despite the process estimating a 4-9 week processing time, I got my passport back this week, less than one week after I got the confirmation of payment. I suppose things were more straightforward for me as I am from the U.S., not from Iraq or someplace more dangerous. The application for the visa extension mostly asks if you have committed genocide or terrorism, that sort of thing. Luckily I was able to put "no" for both of those. However, the definition of genocide was a bit open-ended. I think it defined genocide as trying to destroy a culture or group. It seems like this could include trying to shut down something like the Nazi party.

Of course, since nothing is simple with work permit stuff, I got a letter with my passport telling me I have been approved to work in the postion of "Assistant HR Adviser." I assumed that someone in the university HR department had made a mistake in writing down their job instead of my job. I was imaging a doomsday scenario where the university had to reapply for the work permit, then I would have to get another visa, etc. in a process taking many months. Thankfully, I called the immigration office, and the error was a clerical one that they were responsible for, not us. This means they just need to reissue the letter to me. Now I am all set to go to Japan. However, my passport expires next March, so I need to find out what to do then. From something I read on a website, I think I don't need to pay for a new visa stamp transfer as long as I carry both the old and the new passports with me whenever I travel.

I've checked the post office website, and according to them, the letter still hasn't been delivered. What great service that is.

Christmas in Jersey went well, I thought. We flew out of Doncaster airport, which is about an hour away from Sheffield when you take the train and then a bus. I think it is less than 30 minutes by car. We left Thursday night, and arrived about 30 minutes early to Jersey. For those who don't know, Jersey is part of the channel islands, a group of islands south of Britain and off the coast of France. Jersey has its own independent government, money, and tax system, but it is part of the British crown. Victoria's parents were scheduled to arrive much earlier in the morning, but their flight ended up being delayed about 7 hours due to technical difficulties, so they actually arrived after us. The Jersey airport is quite small, and we ended up waiting about 45 minutes for our luggage to come out. I don't know what happened though, because another plane that landed 15 minutes after us got their luggage way before we did. Victoria's eldest sister Fiona came to pick us up at the airport. She got to play airport shuttle three times in two days. Luckily, they are only 20 minutes from the airport.

On the Friday the men decided to go play golf. I was the only one who had never played before. The course was only nine holes long, but it was in a really nice spot on a cliff overlooking the beach, and next to the airport. I did okay, getting some really high scores on many holes, but playing two pretty well. My biggest problem was relaxing. I always hit the ball better when I didn't try as hard, but I kept tensing up and trying too hard. After golf, we went to a bowling alley to play a round of bowling. Richard, Victoria's brother arrived during the day, so David, Fiona's husband, went to go pick him up so he wouldn't be stuck as the lone male. We finished off our triathalon of modern recreation with a short game of pool. David ended up winning all three games we played, which led to a challenge to a game of darts by other people eager to beat him in something. They had a dart board at the house, so they played when we got back. I'm horrible at darts, so I didn't even bother. I think David won again in the end.

Saturday (Christmas Eve), Victoria and I went into St. Helier, the only city on the island. We bought some stocking stuffers for Gillian, the middle sister, because Victoria had found out she wanted a stocking but Nigel hadn't gotten her anything. When we got home I prepared sauce for lasagna for dinner that night. I volunteered to cook on Christmas Eve since Fiona was cooking all of the food for Christmas Day. In my family it is traditional to eat the big meal with turkey, etc. on Christmas Eve. In Britain everyone eats the big meal on Christmas Day. So we ended up having lasagna on Christmas Eve. Before dinner we went out to a barn that was holding a special Christmas service. They reenacted the story of the birth of Jesus, including actors in costumes and live animals. It was their first year doing it and it proved immensely popular (more so than they expected, I think). I guessed about 400 people were in the barn, and the parking was overflowing. After dinner, I talked to my family on the phone, as they were going to have a big meal that evening so everyone was gathered together in one place.

On Christmas Day I was woken very early by Victoria's three nieces, Hannah, Sienna, and Isobel. They were very excited about opening their stockings. Isobel got a bit carried away and started opening all of Gillian's stocking as well. She's a cute enough little girl that she can get away with that though. Victoria and I decided to open our stockings a bit later, as most of the presents we got each other were in the stockings. Since we didn't have "official" Christmas stockings, we used regular socks instead. I think the normal thing in my family might be to open all of the presents at one time. Victoria's family did it slowly: throughout the day there would be another spurt of present opening. The adults had all decided to just buy for one other adult to avoid shopping overload. I got David a webcam, and he got me a bathrobe. I also got a small globe puzzle from the girls that has me beat already. Victoria's biggest present for me was a cell phone, so now I can fit in with all the Brits.

Around 2 or so we had a huge Christmas meal, which was delicious. They bought a really nice local free-range turkey that tasted wonderful. There were a lot of parts of the meal that were new to me. For instance, they cooked sausages and bacon with the turkey. There were three different kinds of stuffing, two kinds of cranberry sauce, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts (a Christmas tradition apparently), carrots, bread sauce (sort of a creamy sauce with bread in it), roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, parsnips, peas, and yorkshire puddings (pot-shaped bread things). So as you can see there was a lot of variety!

With the dinner we shot off champagne poppers, and opened two different types of Christmas crackers, which are wrapped mini-presents, that make a bang when you open them. One of the sets of Christmas crackers contained musical whistles. We had eight different whistles, each of which played a different sound. David was most successful in leading us as a conductor. We played several different Christmas songs with a variable amount of success.

After dinner I installed the webcam on David and Fiona's computer and talked to my dad. It turned out everyone else had already gone to see a movie. We set a time to chat longer the next evening though.

We had a huge amount of dessert on Christmas as well. There was traditional Christmas pudding, which is a dark pudding with dates, figs, etc. There was also a chocolate log, and a christmas cake, which was a bit like iced fruitcake. I think there was tiramisu as well.

Monday was Boxing Day, and we did the traditional British thing of going to a pantomime. When I heard we were going to a pantomime for two hours, I imagined it might be very dull after awhile, watching mimes act out Snow White and the 7 Dwarves. As it turned out, the British use of the word "pantomime" does not refer to miming. It is basically a Christmas farce, where normally the main male character is a woman, and there is a large female clown (who is actually a man) called the dame. I gather there is normally another joker male clown as well. The pantomime is full of audience participation. For instance, when Snow White was about to eat the apple, she asked if we thought it was okay, so everyone yelled "No!". Of course she ate it anyway, being a stupid girl. The pantomime is entertaining for the kids, but it also contained some fairly raunchy jokes for the adults. They were generally jokes that kids wouldn't understand, or a rhyme where the last word is left unsaid, leaving the adults to know what would go there. After the pantomime we went home and I did the webcam for a bit. Everyone stuck their head in to see how it worked. I think it was the first time that Victoria's parents and mine have met, albeit virtually. After the webcam all the adults played Scattergories, which was a source of much amusement.

Tuesday we managed to get in another quick 9 holes of golf before Nigel and Gillian had to leave from the airport. After lunch we went into town to look at the post-Christmas sales. Jersey doesn't have sales tax, so the prices in the chain stores were lower than in Britain. I thought about buying some DVDs, but the line was about 50 people long at the store, so I decided not to. I tried to buy some stamps for my dad, but the lone stamp store was closed until after New Year's. In the end I didn't buy anything. I also made dinner on Tuesday night. I made a mexican chicken casserole. However, since Victoria's father, Alan, has trouble with spicy foods, I left out most of the mexican-ness of it.

Wednesday we went to the Jersey zoo and saw all of the gibbons, chimps, and lemurs again. They were mostly hiding indoors this time as a result of the colder weather. After the zoo we went to the Jersey Goldsmith to sort out some jewelry. Victoria and Gillian were given silver charm bracelets by their grandmother when they were younger. They were overloaded with charms though, so Victoria chose the ones she wanted and gave the rest to her nieces. The jeweler cleaned the old bracelets and made new ones for the girls. Now it looks much better. While others were taking care of the bracelet, I asked one of the sales people lots of questions about diamonds. It was very interesting, because they had uncut diamonds for you to look at as well. They also had some movies props there, including the hand from Terminator 2, and one of James Bond's sports cars. There was also a glass box containing gold bars built into a house for a tarantula. It was sort of a strange assortment of stuff for the store (which was very large).

Thursday we saw Victoria's parents off at the airport and then had our own flight later that night. The last train left at 11:30, which would've meant waiting about an hour at the cold train station in Doncaster. We ended up talking to another guy who wanted the train and we agreed to split a taxi three ways. It was about 10 pounds each, so that wasn't too bad. We got home before the train would've even left Doncaster.

All in all, Christmas was a lot of fun and generally relaxing. The food was delicious as well, because Fiona and Joyce, Victoria's mom, are both great cooks.

We arrived home to a second Christmas, with a leather pig we got from Paul and Keiko, and a whole box of presents from the states. Thanks everyone!