status update
as of January 31st 2008 I am, technically speaking, an illegal immigrant. my student visa expired, and my passport had been surrendered three weeks earlier to the dubious clutches of the Royal Mail and the Home Office. as of today, 11 February 2008 my passport still has not been returned. it might be fun to be forcibly deported. I don't know. mostly it would be annoying, for ceteris paribus I am scheduled to depart on a whirlwind tour of Chicago, Illinois, New York, Ithaca, New Haven and possibly Washington D.C. from 4th of March onwards, and it would make me highly displeased to have to alter these plans due to bureaucratic ineptidude.
(so I shall be in America, hopefully, this March, and welcome all recommendations of bookshops, coffeeshops, museums, esoteric markets, mysterious alleyways, rooftops, harems, parks, climbable trees/rocks/monuments, libraries and secret gardens to be found in any of those places).