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The Insite heating payment system is fundamentally flawed. I moved in, so needed to register with them to change the “ownership” of the flat to my name — for which they charged me GBP30, to be deducted from my future payments at a rate of 30% per top-up. That happened 25 days ago. I haven’t topped up ever since the account got transferred to my name.

I got back home 5 minutes ago and found they’d just deducted the GBP30 from my meter, leaving me disconnceted from heating and hot water.

Topped up online, and it may take 6 hours to activate.

Imbeciles.

Card issues from last night resolved, but too late (we cancelled all the cards just to be safe):

It seems HSBC HK are dismally slow in sending these texts about charges to cards. Those texts referring to “transactions on the 26th” actually happened up to 2 weeks ago. Some for little amounts that I can’t remember spending but very probably did, some for rather large amounts.

So of course when dad got 10 texts about charges to both credit cards all on the same day, I thought something had gone horribly wrong. In reality, I’ve used both cards a few times these past few weeks.

So now I have no working bank cards at all. HSBC Edinburgh is still working on sending that new card to me (not sure how this is so complicated — going to the branch after lunch to ask what the hell’s going on) — and the HK cards will take 5 working days from today to be reissued.

Like being back in a time before I was born. Damn.

The MBA keyboard is really annoying me today. Can't stand these flimsy keyboards at the best of times, and I'm particularly tired this morning…

@matigo You grew up with raccoons?

// @phoneboy

@larand In any case, I didn’t talk to him enough to really be able to form an opinion — he seemed more interested in impressing the other people in the group with his wealth/collection/achievements — and I’d love a chance to talk to him alone to disprove my initial impressions.
// @hazardwarning

@larand That’s true, and I certainly felt that way about my last dissertation, but he expressed zero intreest in it, whereas, in my experience, people doing master’s or PhDs hate the process but are hugely passionate about the area of study in general and wouldn’t have it any other way. The topic being “transportation of wine” (6000 words), I’m not surprised. Maybe it’s just the way he phrased his sentences, or he was “dumbing it down”, but I almost got the impression that this was some sort of competition for status for him.
// @hazardwarning

@hazardwarning It does seem that way. It’s an interesting lifestyle which I appreciate from a distance; I’m not sure I’d ever (be able to) have a real conversation with him though.

I told him I’d done my WSET 2 before leaving Paris — without mentioning that I only did 2 because I couldn’t find a level 3 course — and his response was “oh, cute” before moving the topic back to his dissertation. And by the sound of it, he hates his dissertation…which begs the question: why did he choose the topic in the first place?

So many things contributed to my thinking that he was doing it more in the name of elitism than love for wine, though nothing makes me doubt his love for wine — just his priorities, if that makes sense.

He also complained about his wine society team not supporting him “properly”, but if the way he carries a conversation is any reflection on his leadership, I can’t say I’m overly surprised…

Met the president of this uni’s wine society tonight, and actually had a few snippets of conversation with him.

…to put it diplomatically, I’m sure his passion is in the right place, but the way he communicates it — and the impressions that certain wine merchants present at tonight’s event shared with me — was that he puts far more energy into image, and impressing people, than he does his true passion for wines and building relationships with potentially important people.

That said, he is great at what he does — impressing people who don’t know a lot — but for “the youngest guy in the world doing WSET 4” (so he claims), he was spouting an awful lot of fluff clearly crafted to impress the uninitiated and probably not bassed on his true knowledge of wines.

Also, I found his boasting about his “85-bottle cellar” with a few St Émilion Grand Crus and “a couple of Gevrey-Chambertins” rather amusing. One would even think that he’d forgotten about the appellations that rank even higher than what he boasts about.

Undiplomatic tldr: I’m sure he means well, but the way he talks makes him look like he’s full of shit.

@hybotics Oh my.

Dad just texted me saying 2 purchases — GBP819 and GBP119 — were made today on one of my HK credit cards.

But I only charged GBP35 to the card today…and 800 isn’t a purchase I’d forget.

Asked him to call the bank and ask for payee details; if that doesn’t jog my memory, I guess I’ll have to ask them to mark the card as stolen…