With work taking up more and more of my time of late, I’m finding it exceedingly hard to concentrate on other things—including writing. However, being the brave soul that I am, I’ve decided to force myself to try this evening.
I have some good and some bad news to share, and I’m going to begin with the bad news.
Over the past week, I’ve been a victim of several counts of credit-card fraud, which has resulted in me losing around $1000 to the ether. What’s worse, this soon escalated to more of an identity-theft when random services I did not request for started showing up at my door—like that bright orange box with the Vonage phone registered to akgbc99dbq3 I stumbled over as I returned home from work yesterday. I am still in the midst of sorting out this crisis, though no one need worry; most of my money has been retrieved, and everybody I’ve spoken to has been very helpful.
I do have to deal with getting by without one of my cards for a few weeks though; it is being replaced with a newer—hopefully more secure—one.
Another scary happening—also stemming from cyber-space—was a serious-sounding letter I received from my ISP accusing me of some evil activity. I nearly cracked under the presumption that their stern notice was a precursor to some sort of lawsuit. You see, when you’re a poor student, whether or not you’re innocent won’t matter in court. You’re never going to be able to afford that fancy lawyer. Anyway, it’s been some time since this happened, and since nothing’s come of it, I’m going to assume it was some sort of cruel prank; and slowly step away.
Now, on to the good news.
After being ensured funding for a couple of years to pursue my post-doctoral research work at Cambridge, I went ahead and formally accepted the offer. I plan to finish-up my work here late Fall this year, and begin my life there early next year. I must say I am extremely excited, as the work promises to be fun and is right up my alley, and what little I’ve experienced of Cambridge in my travels has been wonderful. In general, the atmosphere is just so much more scholarly than here. And scholarly is good.
I think it will be a pleasant change to go somewhere else and do something different for the next few years of my life—before I have to pause and take stock of where my life is once more.
The prestigious nature of it all, the thought of being able to speak and write in real English again, the grand plans of using the U.K. as a base to launch many travels around Europe… everything excites me tremendously. But even so, amidst the goosebumpey skin, a part of me can’t help but wish for a completely different life path. One that’s firmly rooted in the familiarity of the same place for eternity. One where I’d never have to leave, abandoning love.
Yay Cambridge! Travel lots and take many pictures. :)
Boo, identity theft. Luckily it seems to be getting easier to deal with, from what I’ve read.
Travelling and picture taking is a big part of the plan!
And, from what I’ve experienced so far, all I’ve needed to do is to tell people “I did not authorise this transaction, it’s been carried out fraudulently,” and they’ve listened to me and helped me out. No one has (yet) forced me to go out of my way to actually prove the statement; something which I am not sure how I would effect even if asked for.
Hopefully these businesses realize that it is rather difficult to prove such a thing. I mean, all you can say is “Look, I’ve got a charge here for $5000 worth of Gucci products, please come search my hovel and you’ll find I haven’t got a bit of Gucci on me, not even a knock-off. Also? Check the security cameras in the stores that sell the Gucci, you won’t find me on them because I’ve never been there.” Kind of a pain in the butt.
I’m sure they are somehow able to write off fraudulent purchases so they don’t lose anything. I dunno.
My theory is that the financial institutions don’t bother harassing the customers because there is insurance against this sort of thing that they take advantage of.