The New Flat Continues...

The combination of Christmas and moving into a completely empty new flat makes for rather busy times. However, it also means you have a legitimate excuse to go to a lot of after Christmas sales!

Perhaps I best back up a little. So Mark and I got the keys to our new place on December 19th, which was a Friday. The next day we went and got some paint, and got cracking on what we viewed as the vital personalization process. We painted the living room a yellowy beige, and the bedroom is a greeny blue. Or a bluey green, depending on which way you look at it. After then taking a week off for Christmas, we hit the sales down in Southampton (of all places) the day after Boxing Day. Mark's brother tagged along to provide valuable assistance! We went to John Lewis, sort of accidentally ended up buying a couch (with sofabed), a bed, two accent pillows for the new couch, a cute door stop, a coat rack, some scented candles and some tights. Well, the tights have nothing to do with the house situation. On Sunday we went to Homebase and managed to procur a table and chairs and attempted to purchase a coffee table and tv stand but the deals were so good they had run out, but we have our fingers crossed that more will become available! Oh, and we also got some wall art.

Yesterday I braved Oxford Street at lunch time and picked up some curtains for the living room. We have thus far been able to find curtains we like for the bedroom! But we have some old ones that we can use until we find ones we like. After a stop at the new place to lay out the new curtains and do some more measuring, we then placed an order for a washing machine and a fridge/freezer. The main items we still need are a dresser and some pendent lights to cover up our dangling (energy efficient!) light bulbs, that require special lights because they are so big and energy efficient that normal lamp shades are incompatible. I'm making a jaunt to Habitat on High St Kensington at lunch in a few minutes to see what I can find.

We haven't really done any moving yet, but the bed and couch are being delivered to Mark's parent's house on Friday and we're going down with a van on Saturday to pick up those and a few other items. We have the van from Friday night so we might try and do a bit of moving then as well. Moving on a Friday night, I know, we're so cool.

Anyways, that's pretty much where we are in the moving process! We will probably move once the new fridge gets delivered, which will hopefully be a week from this Saturday!

The Christmas Dinner

As I'm sure most (if not all) of you know, it's that time of year. Being a recent group transplant, this means two 'group' holiday dinners and one company Christmas party in 8 days. Now the development group dinner and the company party are on successive Fridays, which I personally find a bold scheduling move, but nobody seems to be complaining. And then squeezed in the middle on Tuesday there was my 'new' group dinner. Having been in the public sector in the US, I never was able to actually experience an American company party, but I did attend a few dinners involving the female types from my floor and some group lunches.

So here is a run down on what is involved in a group Christmas dinner: everyone leaves work and goes to the pub, have a pint or two and then continue towards dinner. The development dinner was a booked 'Christmas' meal at a soul food restaurant called Harlem. Such a 'Christmas' meal generally means you make your selections for a fixed price menu and there are poppers for everyone. This, as in the film 'About a Boy', results in everyone sitting around wearing a tissue paper crown for at least 15 minutes. My second group dinner was not a 'Christmas' meal and was at an Italian restaurant, so we were allowed to choose from the entire menu. It was a bit overwhelming.

Now, the real gusto behind these 'meals' seems to be to drink copious amounts of alcohol. At Tuesday's meal, between 24 people, estimates of the amount of wine consumed have reached 25 bottles. Sadly, I was limited to two glasses as my wine glass disappeared when I got up from the table after we had eaten. Alas, it was probably for the best, I was the first person in the office the next morning (at 9:30!). Both of these meals were followed up by dancing, both meals conveniently taking place at venues with dance floors and DJs. And of course the dancing was followed by people trying to figure out where to find a night bus (or if you're me, you leave when the trains are still running).

Now tomorrow is the company party. It really is along the same lines, with trip to the pub followed by dinner and dancing. Only as there are so many folks, we have a conference facility booked at a nearby hotel. And by nearby, I mean nearby. It's at the end Paddington Hilton at the end of our street. We secretly think they want to people to work as late as possible, as the party doesn't start until 6:30!

Additional notes: people all go to these events by themselves. Outsiders don't dine, but a few might drift in afterwards. The company contributes towards the cost of group dinners (apparently £12 per head), and higher ups usually pay considerable amounts out of their own pockets. The development dinner cost me £10 and the other one cost me £12. The holiday party is free, but they limit the amount of alcohol and then start charging for it after dinner is over!

For your enjoyment, and in what I have come to believe to be in the fine English spirit of making yourself look silly as often as possible at this time of year, I have included a picture of myself dancing with a train taken at Tuesday's dinner. And as a note - everyone had to dance with the train at some point! Oh, and yes, I got some salad dressing on my skirt.

Euro-toilet

First of all, my apologies for neglecting blog. It's the busy holiday season, something clearly had to give. And next I feel obliged to apologize for returning to do a blog entry on toilets, which is not only not the cleanest of topics, but one I've touched on before.

Here is a recap of what I've previously covered: the lack of toilet seat covers in UK toilets (where, to the best of my knowledge, there are no outbreaks of 'bum on toilet' disease or whatever might happen if you don't use a toilet seat cover) and the general preference for hand dryers over paper towels (although my work place has paper towels).

Okay, now my next discovery: stall differences.

The difference in general stall design didn't really hit me until I was using the bathroom off the casino at the Paris in Las Vegas. And I'm not sure if this made sense, but I'll give it a whirl and then come back to the bathroom at the Paris.

A typical large restroom will, as per in the US, feature a number of stalls. In the US, the stalls are somewhat 'open', that is to say that there is a good foot tall gap between the bottom of the stall door and walls and the tops of the stalls often linger at about 6 feet off the ground (perhaps it's higher in men's rooms to account for the differences in heights?). Efforts have been made to move bag hooks away from the middle of the stall door to combat the easy theft of reaching over a stall door and grabbing a bag while the owner is in no position to come running after them. So sometimes you find hooks on the sides, or those little levered shelves that I can never actually get my bag to stay on.

Now the anglo stall. Stalls tend to be actual rooms, with walls extending from floor to ceiling and doors that do the same. As a result, bag hooks have remained on the back of the door and thieves are at a loss.

So what was so odd about the Paris Las Vegas bathroom stalls? Well, I walked in, saw a wall with a row of stall doors and thought, ooh, how Euro of them. So I step into a stall, and what do I see? Behind the facade there was just a long row of typical American stall walls, barely clearing my head. Although I must admit that I did not make a mental note of where the bag hooks were located...

Back from Vacation

After two work-free weeks, I'm back at Paddington today. And might I add, there are very few people in my area to eat all the candy I hauled back across the pond! Anyways, instead of going over the entire trip, I'm going to do a brief summary of my time in Vegas by providing you with my top 5 Vegas Experiences of Randomness.

5. National Finals Rodeo
Mark and I realized that something was a bit funny when upon landing in Las Vegas last Wednesday, we were suddenly joined by a random mob with a heavy cowboy concentration on the tram to the main terminal. We just assumed it was a flight just in from Texas. Then at baggage claim we were right across from a fresh arrival from Bismark. This proved to be an extremely entertaining site. And I learned that North Dakota cowboys prefer black cowboy hats.

The cowboy phenomenon continued at the hotel, where we ended up in a big check-in line behind a very large number of, yes, cowboys. It was seemingly around this time that we learned that the National Finals Rodeo (sponsored by Wrangler, of course) were in town, and would be for the next few days. Fun times for everyone! And of course, that meant we got to watch some enjoyable rodeo action on TVs in the bars in the evening time.

4. The Deuce
There is a double decker bus that runs up and down the strip and also to downtown. It's called 'The Deuce' but is essentially a city bus. It's reasonable priced ($2 for a single trip, $5 for a 24-hour pass), and comes regularly. However, it's in many ways the slow boat to China. During peak times it spends longer at the stops with people loading and unloading, then crawls along in gridlock conditions. If you have time on your hands, it's probably the best way to get around. We took three trips on The Deuce in a 24-hour period, going from the MGM Grand to Treasure Island (well, it stops at the Venetian going that way), then from the Venetian to Fremont Street and back.

3. Fremont Street
It's safe to say that downtown Vegas is a very different place than the strip. Well, not so different in the scope of things. Both are lined with casinos and glittering lights and have hoards of tourists walking up and down. But different in more subtle ways. For example, the restaurants weren't owned by celebrity chefs. We dined at Tony Roma's. There was a 40-minute wait. And whilst I didn't think it was humanly possible, there's an even higher density of cowboys down there. During the Fremont Street Experience (Queen-themed) light show, I had to resist the urge to take a picture of 3 cowboys lined up in a row, heads tilted extra far back (those hats block some of the view) all with really really big cigarettes in their mouths. It was something. Oh, and it's rather seedy.

2. Free entry!
One of the benefits of being in Vegas on a non-weekend night is that there are no waits anywhere and places offer plenty of deals to get you to come on in. Because we were on vacation, and had obliged the Kahunaville bar with their buy-one-get-one-free cocktail offer 3 times (before watching their flair bartenders show, very impressive!), Mark and I decided we might as well go to the Christian Audigier nightclub after getting vouchers for free entry. It was an interesting experience. We left before midnight, so things quite possibly picked up a bit later, but it was small, you had to pay a lot extra if you wanted to use a table and have a scantily clad woman be your waitress, and you couldn't go out the door you came in. I feel like it must not be cool to have people visibly leaving your club. Mark and I dazzled everyone with our amazing dance moves.

1. Free show!
Our first night in Vegas, we were leaving a bar in the Venetian right outside the Blue Man Group theater. Before we could get 50 feet we were greeted by some hurried Japanese tourists who gave us two tickets to the show starting that very minute. So not wanting to hurt their feelings, we turned around and went in. We would never have actually picked to go to the show, so we didn't really have high expectations. Let's just say there was some cool musical stuff mixed in with some random not funny comedic skits (no talking!). It was a 10 pm show, and having been up since 5:30 in the morning, we both sort of drifted off to sleep intermittently. But a free show still ain't bad! We made plans to start hanging out outside the 'O' theater at the Bellagio but I think we must have forgotten!

We're Playing Outside Today

I realized the other day that, despite being internationally known for its bad weather and being farther north that the bit of Canada that people actually live in, the Brits seem to enjoy playing outdoor sports all year round. You would think that getting dark at 3:30 for a good part of the winter would make people go 'hmm, maybe I'll play a sport in pleasant lit environment with temperature controls', but alas, this does not seem to be the case.

The two major sports that span all the winter months in the US are basketball and hockey. This seems to make sense, why make people play/watch sports outside when they could stay dry and warm inside? Although I guess with hockey, warm is a relative term. Baseball is reserved for the warmest months of the year, where people might not mind spending their time outdoors and its less likely to rain. Football is played in the fall and into winter, and while the weather may not be entirely ideal, it's at the very least hit and miss, and they only play once a week, usually in the afternoon, so it's not that big of a deal.

Now the UK. The most popular sport here is obviously 'football'. Being an outdoor sport where contestants run around in little shorts and flimsy tops, you'd maybe think summer sport. Alas, no. The only time they don't have soccer is during the peak summer months, with the season lasting from approximately September to May. Teams play once or twice a week, and while parts of the stadium may be covered, they're always outdoors. Mid-week games are almost exclusively played in the evenings, but weekend games will range throughout the day. Might I also add, my work has a soccer team. I think it's open to everyone, but only boys play. They play throughout the winter, with games after work one day a week, and practice another evening. They're crazy.

Rugby (league and union) are played in the winter as well. Luckily rugby players are so overloaded with muscles I don't think they are capable of feeling cold. However, they do tend to play only on weekend afternoons.

Cricket rounds out the big three, and is played in the summer. The fact that cricket players are sometimes spotted in sweater vests again implies that this is not the land of warm weather.

So that's the big three, all outdoors. But English likes other sports too, perhaps they are played indoors? No. Formula 1 racing - outdoors. Tennis - outdoors. Track and field - outdoors. Come to think of it, the only indoor sporting event I recall seeing on tv is the chariot horse racing in a ring.

Where is the basketball, people? Or even the hockey (and I don't mean the 27th rate random teams they have scattered about in mid-size UK cities, I mean as a sport that people actually play or watch)? Netball doesn't count, as it's clearly imaginary and dumbed down from basketball to try and get girls to play sports!

Anglo Digits

One of the things that continues to baffle me is the complete lack of consistency in the clustering and pronunciation (not really the right word, but more how they are cluster when being audible relayed) of phone numbers.

Believe it or not, but just this morning I had to do a check to see how many digits are in an English phone number. The answer, surprisingly enough, is 10, just like American numbers. However, the English make it eternally difficult for people like me to remember phone numbers by displaying them in essentially any such way. Here at work I'm working on organizing some interviews with some local authorities, and as part of this list I have copied and pasted in the phone numbers of the people attending the meetings as listed in their emails, and then I have my own phone number as listed in my emails. This small combo of phone numbers results in three different clusterings of digits, as follows:

012 3456 7890
0123 456 7890
01234 567890

You also often see phone numbers simpled denoted as 01234567890.

At this point I should probably add that all phone numbers start with a zero, as technically you find long distance calls in the US starting with a 1.

English phone numbers never have dashes, implying how to easily cluster them together. The other day when I made an appointment for a haircut, I clustered my phone number in typical American fashion (0123-456-7890), only to have it repeated back to me in a totally different way (01234-567-890), and I was like, yeah, I think that is my number. What all this inconsistency has made me realize is how much I rely on the 'beat', so to speak, of a phone number to help me remember it. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what my cell phone number is, and I have to make sure I write it down to have on hand when I make an appointment by phone.

Here are some additional points on what makes up an English phone number...
Like with American numbers, the beginning technically forms an area code. A full area code is four digits, for example, Southampton numbers start with 02380. As can be expected, cities are often too large to be able to encompass everyone with a four-digit area code. Unlike in the US, where they would then just assume another random area code, they will keep the first three digits and then the 4th digit will come to denote a certain area within the city. For example, Manchester phone numbers start with 0161.

Being especially big and massive, London can't even cope with a three-digit area code. A London phone number is instead simply denoted as starting with 020. Central London is generally 0207, but then when you get down to Croydon or something similar, you move over to 0208.

Phone numbers get even more specific than that, my home phone number shares something like 6 digits with the phone number of some of the local businesses. Much like an English post code, it seems my phone number ropes me into a much smaller area than its American counterpart (FYI, a full English post code only applies to a few houses on a particular street).

The place where this breaks down is cell phones. Cell phone numbers in the UK start with 07, and from there on out it seems the possibilities are expanding as the number of cell phones increases. Typically a cell phone would start with 0786, 0787, or 0788. How these things get decided, I don't really know. And of course, I again must admit that I don't even know how mine starts...

What's the deal with prefixes

Those crazy Anglos like to mix and match when they use the word 'the' in a way that generally seems to contradict my personal favored use of the word. As can be expected, this breaks down into two groups: times when they don't use the word 'the' and I think they should, and times they use it when it doesn't seem needed.

Perhaps the two most common words that don't go the 'the' love that I think should are hospital and university. People here 'go to hospital' or 'were in hospital'. The university situation is slightly more complex, but I've noticed that people don't say 'I went to the University of Washington', but as the names of universities are slightly more flexible here, they might say 'I went to uni in Washington', (but their schools aren't states, they are generally city names). To avoid having to use the word 'uni', which to me still seems like it should by short for uniform, I opt to state where I got certain degrees, so I say 'I got my masters at Southampton'. It's a bit sly, I know, but I often find myself in situations where I need to slightly rephrase things to uphold my dignity as a speaker of the dominant form of English.

Then there's the opposite side of things. Banks having been mentioned frequently in the news recently (okay, constantly), I couldn't help but notice how banks are referred to. Halifax is called 'the Halifax', Nationwide 'the Nationwide'. So in a sentence 'the Halifax are cutting jobs' or 'people at the Nationwide are having a bad day'. What I find odd is not so much the word 'the', but the omission of the word bank at the end. They never call it 'the Halifax bank' or 'the Nationwide Building Society', like we would say 'the Bank of America'. But thinking more about it, we would never call something 'the Safeway', it's still just 'Safeway'. Hmm. I just don't know. Perhaps I'm just being a bit nit-picky and not making any sense...

Toffee v Caramel

What is the difference between toffee and caramel? For some reason I have stumbled into a land that likes toffee. But sometimes they have caramel. Let's dicuss.

As far as I can tell, toffee and caramel have the same make-up, just a different consistency, with toffee being thicker than caramel. For example, if you get a Cadbury caramel or Galaxy carmel, you'll be greated by running insides. There's a candy bar called Toffee Crisp, but as I've never actually had one I can't really tell you what it contains, but I imagine it's less gooey.

Right now on the desk behind me there is a tin of Quality Street chocolates leftover from some surveys some people were doing at a local college. That is to say, there is a tin of individually wrapped chocolates of slightly varying flavor. This includes 1 caramel flavor and 3 toffee flavors. But I say, isn't that just really 3 flavors of caramel?

You see, I think the English just like to use the word toffee because either they don't know how to pronounce caramel or don't like the idea of a word whose pronunciation is varied. I mean, chocolate comes in different levels of thickness but we still only use one word to describe it! I just say come on people, how can you have both a toffee nut and a caramal latte on other at Starbucks! Are there separate vats of toffee and caramel syrup? I somehow doubt this. Anyways, just needed to get that off my chest!

The Full Name Store

I've probably just been spending too much time on buses in Kensington and Chelsea, but I have of late become overwhelmed at the number of stores simply named after what I can only assume to be the owner. For example, 'Birgit Israel' and 'Frederick Aston'. They never include anything else in the title (not even an 's at the end) or give you a clue as to what they sell. Here are a few things I have learned about the phenomenon:

1. Full name stores sell pretentious things
They generally sell antiques, rugs, home furnishings you can't afford and wouldn't belong in your house anyway, and lights that wouldn't actually fit in rooms with normal height ceilings, and of course things like life-size zebra statues.

2. Full name stores come in clusters
Particularly, the east end of Fulham Road, near South Kensington tube station, the west end of New Kings Road, out of reach of people wanting to do normal shopping, and on Kensington Church Street, where they all sell antiques.

3. Nobody shops at full name shops
I pass these places all the time on foot and in buses. Not only is no one ever in them, but they are never actually open. I'm starting to think that people with such names are independently wealthy and their palatial townhomes are so full of stuff they rent a semi-prominent store front to store their excess bling, naming it after themselves so their friends will know who to be envious of. However, this theory has not been tested.

4. Not just anyone can give their name to a shop
These stores don't just sell ridiculous items, but they don't have the names of mortals. For example, there's not going to be a store called 'Katie Smith'. Oh, no. They have names like Christopher Whitefield, Alistair Jefferies, and Georgina Matthews. Essentially, the names are a bit of a mouthful, relatively common (but not too common) and somehow better sounding than your own. I'm not quite sure if this is a reflection on the people who own these shops or if people just make the names up if they want to open such a store. In the case of Birgit Israel (which actually sells clothes, but is in the thick of full name stores on Fulham Road), I'm pretty sure it's a tweaked name. Like no one is named Birgit Israel, so I assume her name is really Bridget, um, let's just say Jones!

Now, my name would not lend itself well to such a store. My first name doesn't have nearly enough syllables and as I don't want to sell drug related items, the last name will definitely have to go. I will therefore have to resort to my middle name, Elizabeth, and will have to revert to my mother's much less hippie sounding maiden name, Sanders. Only I want to pretentious it up a bit so I'm sticking in a U. So if you see an Elizabeth Saunders store on one of the aforementioned streets, please slow down to gaze in the windows with jealousy. But you can't come in, because I'll be on my yacht or otherwise detained.

Additional note: I have just realized I work for a full name company... they're clearly taking over...

Election Day

In the off-chance that you haven't noticed, Tuesday was election day. And as I've previously mentioned, this is a topic of some interest for people in these parts. Here's a brief recap of what went on!

On Tuesday evening I tried turning on the news at around 9 pm, with hopes of constant news on the election. Instead, believe it or not, they had the audacity (and they being BBC and Sky News) to show non-election news! I was like, what is this crap?? So being sleepy (I had to get up early to go to a meeting in Brighton!), I went to bed.

Then at around 3:30 am I woke up and checked the time. Fell back asleep. At 4:04 woke up again, knowing that I couldn't possibly just go back to sleep knowing that the California polls had just closed and the winner likely declare! So I got out of bed and turned on the BBC. Being half asleep (or perhaps more), I was admittedly quite confused to see some random man talking while standing in front of a bunch of African villagers dancing around and waving chairs in the air. It took a little longer than necessary to connect me to an Obama victory, but I made it there eventually. At this point I promptly turned the tv off and went back to bed.

When I got up for real, I again turned on the news, which by now was covering the election almost exclusively. All of the newspapers I saw (which in London, is a lot of newspapers) had Obama on the front cover. I was able to randomly discuss my feelings with random people at a conference I was attending for the day. The evening papers again were all plastered with Obama. There was a special on BBC 2 last night during prime time (8 pm?) on Obama. Basically this is as big as things get in these parts. I don't think they would have non-stop all night coverage of their local elections (of course, they would be during the day anyways). So let's just say that the UK is for once proud of our ability to elect a president!

One thing that I find slightly odd is that they concentrate so much on the one national election we have, and are somewhat oblivious to the number of things that are actually up in the air on election day. I mentioned to a few people that Gregoire was able to sneak in another victory, not because I thought they would care, but just so I could make a point that we voted on other things as a people. Personally, I think the Anglos are a bit jealous of our ability to vote for so many things! Remember, they don't even get to directly elect their leader! They just vote for their local dude and then the party selects the leader! It's silly, but that's for another time. What's important is that we've quickly manage to regain some much needed international street cred! Like the Europeans might start to concede that we're capable of rational thought now... or at least one can hope...

My (Potential) New Flat

This past Saturday, Mark and myself went and saw what may soon be our new flat. After sneaking around the complex as if we were doing something illicit, we finally asked the lady in the office if we could go see it, and she handed over the keys as if she knew we were coming. So we went back into the building (this time less sneakily as we were carrying keys), up the stairs to the 4th (3rd if you're Anglo!) floor and opened up the door. It was an exciting moment!

To spare you a drawn-out mental walk-through, let's just say there's a couple closets, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a living room with a kitchen off of it. Oh, and a big balcony! We spent quite a bit of time walking around and closely examining things. The kitchen is quite big, as is the living room. The bedroom isn't the biggest, but doing the 'lie down on the floor to pretend it's a bed test' (as learned on Location, Location, Location), I determined that it's a bit bigger than I had imagined.

Then there's the view. While the first thing you notice is the large number of tracks down below, if you look straight out, being all up on the 4th floor, you're higher than all of the old townhouses in the area. At the time I termed it 'quite Mary Poppins', only at the time I didn't see anyone dancing around on the roofs. Alas, I'll have to keep eyes peeled.

Of course, one thing I couldn't help but notice how much work will be required and how many things will need to be purchased to get the place up so snuff. For example, a light bulb hanging on a cord above my imaginary future dining table just won't do. Nor will having plain white walls everywhere. And I'm going to require some sort of device to cover the windows. Needless to say, yesterday afternoon Mark and I went into every home store on King's Road and spent over an hour in John Lewis, then picked up some home magazines on the way back. I then continued to rip out pictures from said magazines and the John Lewis catalogue so I could start putting my look together. While I'm pretty sure whatever I attempt will just end up looking like a bit of an unorganized mess, I assure you I'm at least making an effort to make the place look nice and homely, yet with the edge or urban chic. And perhaps most importantly, trying to ensure it doesn't look too girly. Girly, sure, too girly, no. So yes, I've quickly become one of those people who walks around the lighting section at stores with the confused look on their face going 'who on earth buys this stuff?' before finding the one little tiny area where they sell normal looking light fixtures...

So if you have any ideas or things I should be looking at (and no, there's no Pottery Barn in England, sad, I know), please let me know!

What to Wear to Work

Having recently moved desks (and groups, coincidentally) at the new office, I'm now on the long arm of the L, which is readily populated by a decent proportion of other females, and from my desk I can see people going to and from the kitchen. This means I am now qualified to let you all know what the professional London female is wearing this fall!

Let's start at the top and work our way down!
So tops. The conservative choice is certainly the blouse, and most days I wear one myself. In fact, I'm wearing a blouse today. It's dark blue. Anyways, the blouses I see around vary widely in color and somewhat in style, certainly more so than the male counterpart of 'should I wear a blue shirt or a white shirt today'. Oh, and the blouse is tucked in. The popular alternative to the blouse is the solid-color sweater, sometimes over blouses or as a layering piece, but often on their own. They can be v-neck or scoop neck (you don't tend to see crew neck outside of cardigans), and are conservatively cut. You do not see t-shirts.

Bottoms! The younger people tend to be, the more likely they are to wear skirts (from my estimation!). Personally, aside from a couple days where I wore jeans for site visit purposes, I haven't worn pants to work since around July. Nice pants are also a popular choice, I've just decided they're a bit boring! The range of skirts is quite considerable, but the staple is still the knee-length black skirt. Most skirts tend to be solid-colored, but you do find some with prints amongst the slightly flower child crowd. Somewhere in between the top and the bottom falls the dress. While you see a few very conservative suit-type dresses around, it's more common to see somewhat less formal dresses, often accompanied by a sweater. They tend to be less formal than other work outfits, so I tend to wear them on Fridays. We don't have a casual day, but in my mind it's just a bit less formal.

Lower still...In my estimation the primary advantage of wearing skirts instead of pants is that you get to wear tights! Now sometimes tights drive me slightly insane, like when you're walking outside and they're slowly slipping down and there's no PC way to address the problem. However, popular yet again this year in London is the opaque tight. While black is again the staple, you are seeing more range in color this year. Also back in lesser esteem is the fashion tight, which are typically black and patterned in some way. My new acquisitions for the year include heather grey tights and some eggplanty-purple tights (and I got shoes in the same color, go me!). In the office, I've seen a lot of brown tights being worn with brown skirts, which is something I'm secretly aspiring to.

Shoes! Boot season has most certainly arrived! They come in black or brown and are generally either flat or have a very low heel. In pumps, thick heels are in! And they tend to be black as well. As with my eggplant shoe/tight situation (which I have worn together once!) you do see some tight/shoe matching. In addition to black, brown and eggplant, this is perhaps most commonly seen in shades of grey.

So there you have it, what to wear to work this fall. As for men, same standards apply: blue or white shirt, grey pants, black shoes. Perhaps a sweater if it's cold!

Silly Americans!

To continue somewhere around where I left off last week (my apologies for the delay), let's discuss what these crazy English think about us on our own turf. Last night there were two things on television (well 3, but I only watched 2 of them) directly relating to this topic. One was another episode of Stephen Fry's America show, last week he visited the deep south, and this week he traveled up the entire length of the Mississippi. The other was what seems to be the second annual NFL game in London.

First we'll address Mr Fry. While it seems the Mississippi wasn't quite as exciting as his visit to the deep south, I couldn't help but get the impression that he ends up emphasizing the exact same thing in the US that an American show would try and point out in the UK. Basically, he goes around and finds weird people and weird places and then gawks and stares a bit. Like going to a voo-doo ceremony in New Orleans and ice fishing in Minnesota. Kind of like we might go to a Morris dancing festival and a 'football' game. But there are a few other things the show taps into as well: first off, that Americans are very friendly folk, secondly, they drive around in big cars, and thirdly, it's surprisingly rich in culture that vary per region.

While people do often enjoy giving us Americans a bit of crap for many things, it's generally admitted that none of these things are to be taken too seriously. People seem to think that Americans are a decent batch of people, unfortunately led by a bit of a, um, 'twat'.

So that brings us to football. Like, real football. The Chargers played the Saints at Wembley yesterday evening. Quite frankly, I'm genuinely surprised how many people are quite intrigued by it. I've already discussed it with two work colleagues today, both of which had attended the game. Both found the game to be good fun (the high score was much appreciated, and provided a nice contrast to this soccer business). I was also surprised to hear positive feedback on the number of pauses in the game, as apparently it allows you to go and get beer at regular intervals without missing much of the game. I was like, duh, of course. At soccer games everyone runs out at half time and then misses a good chunk of the second half because the lines are so huge as everyone goes at once!

I was also asked if we have chants at American sporting events. Now, I've been on the tube enough prior to Chelsea games to know that European teams tend to have little songs that their fans like to sing while, you know, walking along the platform to get out of Fulham Broadway tube station (and other places too, I'm sure). My response was that we did not sing songs, but fans tend to have established chants of a few words with coordinated arm movements, for example the arm chop for kick-offs at Washington games and the 'O-S-U' situation at Beaver games. Personally I think these are much better than songs as I'm not a good singer! Plus they're easy to catch on to, and even if it's your first game, you'll have the hang of things by the end! So there you have it, positive reviews of football by English people. Although I still don't understand their strange fascination with cheerleaders...

The third show, that I didn't watch, was about the influence of religion in the US. Now don't get me started on that...

The American Stereotype: Tourists

To further what Mark mentioned in the previous blog, I think it's time we address some stereotypes commonly associated with Americans and speculate whether or not they are deserved. These stereotypes can be easily split into two categories: stereotypes of Americans in the US, and stereotypes of American tourists in the UK. To keep this blog within manageable length, I'm going to split these into separate blogs. First, my personal favorite: American tourists.

All of you who have been to London or watched enough movies taking place in London, are probably aware of the steady stream of announcements and warnings and general updates on life that come with riding on the underground system. Many of these have been previously recorded by one particular voice-over lady. While these recordings are still played incessantly, the voice-over lady has been fired. Amongst other discretions, she had made some mock underground voice overs and posted them on her internet site. One of them was something along the lines of: "To our American friends, yes, we can hear you. Could you please keep your voices down". And so there you have stereotype #1: American tourists are annoyingly loud.

Is this deserved? Not really. See, whilst it may seem American tourists talk loudly on the tube, they have good reason. Unlike many of the local tube users going to and from work, most often by themselves and therefore with no one to talk to, and who are most likely bitter about that the fact that they are constantly commuting on over-crowded trains and therefore have no cheery inputs, American tourists are often traveling in sizable groups and are happy and chatty because they're on vacation. Enough said. The only reason Americans get the bad wrap in this, as opposed to Spaniards or Italians and such, is that as they are speaking in English, the ear is naturally going to pay more attention to speech that it can comprehend, making the English stand out above other languages. It may be obvious that I've put a lot of thought into this, but I think it makes sense!

Furthermore, given the distance required to travel to London from the US, as opposed to say, from France, Americans often visit in larger groups. Again, perfectly understandable! Personally I think it's kind of cute seeing groups of retired people pottering around trying to figure out what train to take and pronouncing place names phonetically (but there's no excuse for you lot, I've given ample instructions on these topics for you to blend right in!). I assure you that all tourists get lost, but those without the best English are likely just less willing to ask for directions. And while Americans may travel in groups, they generally do so without guides. Don't get me started on those Japanese tour groups and their guide-following tunnel vision!

In general, perhaps American tourists tend to be noticeable because they didn't get the memo that the goal of English-kind is to blend in public and generally avoid being singled out in any way. Unless you know, you're wearing a funky outfit or really, really attractive. Americans, on the other hand, are happy people who don't think it offense to talk on trains or otherwise appear to be having fun while sober, and they generally don't see the harm in asking for directions, as in the reverse situation they would generally be more than happy to help a distressed lost visitor to their own town (and would probably invite them over for dinner as well).

historical knowledge + america

Over the past few weekends i think my or should i say our knowledge of the world has significantly increased. this mainly occurred when one morning Margo, over breakfast, went through the succession of the british monarchy from memory- i was quite impressed! i think i was quite shocked at how unrelated some of them were! anyways i think her knowledge comes from lunch time wikipedia reading / trips to london when she first came over the pond...

we consequently decided to hit the national portrait gallery the next day where we leaned even more...i was quite shocked i genuinely found it very interesting! and learned quite a bit - enough to bring it up at work and test other peoples knowledge! anyways the museum also had a modern section which was not so good and actually quite random!

the museum also touched on american history this has been recently supported by a TV show that is running at the moment showing how the united states was born i guess- using modern day pictures of the current presidential candidates - its quite interesting! actually very interesting like in my complete lack of all things historical - in complete opposite to my brother! (i gave up history when i was 14 because the schools curriculum studied american history!) i didnt realise that the civil war was only like 60 years before WW1!

This was followed by a famous presenter in a different show traveling round the states in a london taxi! he is quite pompous! as you can imagine they find the weird and wonderful (they have the same show for the UK) anyways one of the things they showed was thanksgiving southern style with fried turkey (which scared me a little well a lot!) and their 'civil war game' which he described as "wonderful and only in america"!

Stairs

Through no fault of my own, I have become a frequent stair climber. Mind you, I don't walk around looking for stairs to climb, nor do I climb the equivalent of the Empire State Building everyday. I just find myself constantly confronted with short flights of steps that stand in between myself and my destination. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is simply go through a typical day. Let's say, hmm, today (with some forecasting over what is yet to come). And for clarity, I will be expressing floor levels in American terms, not English terms. So the first floor is you know, the first one, not the one above ground level.

In similar terms, I have also found myself in a position where I am constantly pressing cards against readers to gain access to different places.

I started out this morning on the 2nd floor. Leaving the house, I went down one small flight of stairs. Arriving at the train station, scanned my oyster card, and I climbed one flight of steps to get to the platform. However, the magical powers that be meant that when I arrived at Paddington, I had to climb another flight of stairs to get to street level. Sneaky, I know. Scanned oyster card again to get out. Climbed half a flight of stairs to reach the street.

Arriving at my place of work, scanned work ID card to get through initial barriers. Walked up two flights of stairs to third floor office, scanned ID card again to get through the door. Forward to lunch time, I walked down two flights of stairs, scanned work ID to get out of the building. Crossed the street to the station, walked down one flight of stairs to the level of the taxi rank (for some reason much lower than street level). Acquired Diet Coke, then went back up short flight of steps, scanned work ID, up two flights, scanned again. That brings us up to present. Now we must speculate.

Eventually I'm going to want to leave the office. This will involve walking down two flights, scanning my work ID, walking to the tube, down half a flight, scan oyster card, down big flight to the train station. I'm signed up for spin class tonight, so I'll get off at Fulham Broadway, walk up one flight, scan oyster again. I'll then casually coast up to the third floor via escalators (these don't count as stairs, for obvious mechanical reasons). I'll then scan my gym card to gain access to the facilities. After changing I will climb one flight of stairs to the main workout area, where the spin room is located. After much energy is expired, I'll climb back down the steps, coast down a few escalators, walk home, where I will hopefully climb my last flight of stairs for the day.

Truth be told, that's not really a lot of stair climbing, but you have to agree that it's frequent. And sometimes I want to see the little chart big brother surely has that keeps track of all of my movements. Of course they might think I spend all of my time at the gym as we don't have to scan to get out...

Little Venice

One of the many joys of moving to a new office is having a new surrounding area to explore. And as my initial enthusiasm for exploration waned long ago, the move has provided a much-needed boost in this department. So far I have spent 2, yes, 2! entire lunch times exploring my surrounding area, as well as another lunch time spent tasting local Thai pub cuisines. Sadly, all this exploration got in the way of my updating blog last week, but as it was in the interesting of possible new blog topics, I hope I'm at least somewhat forgiven.

The first exploratory period involved walking to Paddington Basin and Little Venice. Both sound, exciting, I know. First of all, I had hard much talk of this Paddington Basin but had no earthly clue what it entailed or where it was. Now I can tell you that it's a massive development just north of the train station (I'm just west of it) involving office space, some commercial space, and I think some residential. In the middle there was a bit of a circular hole in the ground with some grassy seating, some food options and a gym. Around this hole there were more food options, primarily involving sit-down restaurants, and a pub. All-in-all, handy but perhaps not exciting.

Stop 2 was Little Venice. Believe it or not, but the UK has an intricate canal system that was developed shortly before the arrival of the railroads. Many of these canals still exist, at least in parts, including one just north of Paddington Station. Two canals meet, resulting in a large pond-like open area, and this serves as the heart of Little Venice. Now I was expecting a happening landscape, but instead things were relatively quiet, with one boat serving as a small cafe, but other than that it was really just a pleasant place for a stroll, and was surrounding by what I can only assume to be extremely expensive houses. There is also an architectural-type pedestrian bridge crossing the canal, connecting me to this little urban oasis.

My other journey out last week took me towards Edgware Road (not to be confused with Edgware!). I typically think of Edgware Road as an annoying tube station, as I take Edgware Road branch District Line trains to get to work. But low and behold, there is actually an existence outside the station! I know, crazy. We happened to come across a random market, mainly involving cheap wares, vegetables and kebabs. Not that exciting really, but it's interesting to know what goes on! We were attempting to find Lord's cricket ground, the 'home' of cricket in London or something silly like that, but without a map we sort of ran out of time and had to turn back. It turns out we were about two blocks away.

Luckily I still have many directions to discover. Like to the west towards Westbourne Grove, and to the south towards Lancaster Gate and Hyde Park. We'll see how long it takes for me to get around to those! Oh, and the Thai food was not the best!

Petworth House

I visited another stately home! This time it was Petworth House, located in, um, Petworth, West Sussex. As Mark and I had gone down to his parent's place for the weekend, we thought we might best take advantage of having access to a car/having annual memberships to the National Trust by visiting one of their local properties. We decided on Petworth House mainly because it was relatively nearby, was open on Saturdays, looked big, and was supposed to have a renowned art collection. So on Saturday morning, we hopped into the car, and pealed out.

To provide some context, Petworth House was built in the late 1600s (and revised over time, as is generally the case with these things) as the country seat of the Dukes of Somerset. It was 'blinged' out, so speak, thanks to one of these said dukes marrying the rich heiress of the Percy family (I don't know who they are, but I remembered the name so thought I'd toss it in there). The family collected vast quantities of art over the years, and England's favorite landscaper, J.M.W. Turner, was a frequent visitor of the house in the 1820s, and painted a number of interior and exterior views of the house. It was given to the National Trust in 1947, who have thus opened it the public, while the family still lives in one of the, um, areas (it was a rectangle, so it doesn't have wings). The house features extensive grounds, laid out by Capability Brown, to look conveniently natural. The grounds are currently home to the largest herd of fallow deer, um, let's say in England. You can see a few of them in the photo (sorry it's slightly askew, I was in a rush to get the running deer!). Watch out for deer droppings!

So there were intermittent rain showers on Saturday, this being England and all. But that doesn't generally have much impact on the inside of a house, so we ventured forth. I must say, the art collection in the house is very impressive, with a mix of portraits and landscapes, some by the aforementioned Turner. It seemed a lot of portraits were by van Dyck. The big ground floor rooms were all open, with handy little books available in each room telling you about each of the paintings and the furniture.

The two most impressive rooms (and by this I mean jaw-dropping) were the grand staircase and what was described as the carved drawing room. The grand staircase had a very interesting wall-decor. The walls were essentially murals, with the giant ceiling covered in one of those Greek god-like situations where everyone is wearing a toga and sitting on a cloud. The walls were what I found especially intriguing, as they were painted to give the impression of being 3D marble with insets (I hope that makes sense, not sure how else to desribe it!). I must say I have never seen anything quite like the carved room. The walls were dark wood panels, and were covered with extremely intricately carved lighter wood designs, primarily in the shapes of floral bouquests and fruits and other little bits of nature. The picture frames were also carved and formed part of the paneling, instead of being laid on top. To say the least, every inch of that room gave off the appearance of a piece of art. And it was really neat!

Once we'd seen the interior of the house, we popped across the courtyard to hit the restaurant, where we got some tea, scones, jam and clotted cream. We totally had our pinkies up the entire time. We likewise went through the old kitchens and checked out the gift shop. Despite a fierce wind and a light mist, we decided to check out some of the grounds. We soon regretted this decision as the rain just got heavier and heavier, while we stood under a big tree next to a 'natural-looking but too conveniently located to ever actually be natural pond'. We saw some serious walkers, the types with special hats and a walking stick in each hand, who probably enjoy walking in the rain best of all as it keeps the pretenders away. Once the rain let up a little we walked back to the car, as the overhead skies guaranteed that there was more rain on the way.

So that was Petworth House! I would definitely recommend a visit! However, it's of course conveniently located nowhere near a train station so you'll have to drive...

Paddington Station

Welcome to October! And boy, am I feeling it! From a nice sunny, warm weekend temperatures have plummeted into the 'gee, I really wish I had gloves and a scarf' realm very quickly. I'm not impressed!

Anyways, this picture is clearly not of me wearing gloves. It's a shot of the inside of Paddington Station! More specifically, trains. Paddington Station is my new work 'neighbour', filling in the across the street void filled by ugly 1960s buildings at my former work site. It is also my best bet for lunchtime entertainment. What you can't see in this picture is that behind me there are about 8000 shops and food places. However, there are also about a million people trying to make purchases in each one and a considerable proportion of these people are lugging large suitcases, making it quite difficult to get around.

So what exactly goes on then? Okay, so I leave my building, cross the street and negotiate to separate lanes of taxis (aka, I walk through the taxi rank) to get into a side entrance to the station. At this point trains are in front of me, and on the right there is a large open area with food spots on the right (including McDonalds and a pasty place). If you continue towards the right you pass into what is essentially a food court, separated from the main station by a big glass wall. It seems to actually be temperature controlled, today it feeling noticeable warmer on the other side. In this little area, spread over multiple floors, you have a small Sainsburys, a Starbucks (plus two other coffee places), an Eat (thank goodness), a Boots (I went there today), Marks & Spencer Simply Food, a Krispy Kreme, Yo-Sushi, a pub, and some other temptations. Oh, plus if you go outside the glass walled area back into the main station, you get a number of stalls, including a smoothie stand, the standard train station baguette option, a Burger King, a cookie place, a bagel place, a Sweet Factory cart (not factory so much), and, of course, the Paddington Bear at Paddington Station stall.

Sadly the station is really as far as my neighborhood exploration has taken me this week, thanks to the weather and a site visit yesterday! Apparently we are near 'Little Venice', so I'm hoping to check it out soon!

The Office Move, Part 2

The move has taken place. Whilst on Friday I wrote blog from Notting Hill, today I am writing from Paddington.

I must say, the move has gone remarkably smoothly. Not only did I manage to find the building, I also managed to use my little card to get into the building, through the door onto my floor, and then found my desk. My computer was all set up, and the network was even set up. Oh, and my little packed crate was waiting for me as well. However, I feel obliged to add that the network has not hooked up for 2 of the 4 people in my little desk cluster. But overall, I think IT did an admirable job of pulling everything off.

To back track a little, I was quite nervous during my commute this morning. I paid extra mental attention to stay on the train at Notting Hill Gate, and took the exit from the tube straight onto the street, so as not to have to go through the station. After taking about two steps in the wrong direction, I turned around and headed up Eastbourne Terrace. The new building is at the opposite end of the street as the intersection with the station street, so it's a considerably longer walk than I had at Notting Hill Gate. I was rather nervous on the walk over, not really knowing what was going on.

After the initial shock of finding my desk, we were informed that there were pastries and orange juice on the first floor, so we all scuttled downstairs where the 1st floor people sort of gave us weird looks. It was in the 'break out room', which is a bit of a misnomer as it isn't actually a room, there's only a row of plants separating it from the surveys department. And there's no tv or anything. However, there is a tv constantly showing the news in the new reception area. So at least the receptionist will be entertained!

The new office is a bit closed off, considering how open plan it is. The building is shaped like an L, all of development is located in the short side of the L, and my group is somewhat isolated on the inside portion of that side. In the middle of the floors there are offices and printer areas and such. To make things extra exciting, fluorescent green has been used with little restraint as an accent color. There are green walls, green floors, and green chairs. Not sure how well those are going to age!

The bathroom is farther away, being located on the other side of the L, near reception, so really in the bend of the L, but the elevators and stairs are placed so that there's a long walk to get around.

In general, I'm not too sure what I make of the new office set-up. It'll be a little while until everything gets packed up (including the mugs everyone uses for tea, they've been left unpacked at the old office!), and so perhaps after a while it will feel a bit more like home. Well not home, but you know, a place I frequently go without finding it foreign.

The Office Move, Part 1

Today is my last day of working in Notting Hill. Starting Monday morning, I will officially work in Paddington. And while Paddington is associated with a soft cuddly, marmalade-loving bear, it has no romantic comedy associated with it, so therefore I'm afraid it must be a down-grade. That and my commute will be longer.

Anyways, chaos has been mildly building up over the past few weeks, erupting into something of a frenzy today. Believe it or not, a lot of things go into an office move! The aim seems to be to make things as easy as seamless as possible. Everyone has been issues (and by issued, I mean had to hunt down) a rented crate for taking our personal belongings. We have also been issued stickers on which we must write our new floor number, our group, our initials, and our new desk number. We must affix one of these stickers to our crate and each piece of our computers (including the mouse, which I think seems silly), and everything should reappear at our new desks on Monday morning. I'm afraid that the IT guys will be very busy this weekend...

It seems the greatest disaster of the move will be the changing of all of our phone numbers. We're supposed to leave new messages on our phones before leaving saying our new phone numbers but nobody has told us what our new individual phone numbers will be, so in my mind this presents a bit of a problem. Luckily not that many people call me so I'm not too concerned!

So indeed I'm a little sad to be leaving Notting Hill the area, but I'm eager to enjoy the fruits of working in a brand new building with all the modern conveniences. For example, I'm assuming the climate control system will work. And the elevator buttons will work. And I won't be located eerily close to a random gap in the wall. And water won't accumulate on the windowsills when it rains. For the most part we'll have all new desks, new chairs and new phones. We've been issued new security cards (but no instructions on how to use them or what to do when we actually get to the new office on Monday morning). Everyone is slightly displeased that the pictures on these new cards are rather squashed so everyone appears to have a very square head.

At this point I'm predicting that the network will not be working first thing Monday morning. In fact I'll be impressed if all of the computers are at the right desks. I'll be impressed if I'm even able to find my assigned desk...

Tune in Monday to see how this all turns out...

Anglo-versary

Today is my two-year Anglo-versary. I know, it's hard to believe, but it's been two years exactly since I arrived in Southampton, only slightly terrified and completely exhausted. Of the last 24 months, I spent approximately 11 and a half living in Southampton, and 12 and a half living in London. Yesterday marked my one-year work-aversary (sadly my planned blog on the occasion never came to fruition as I was stuck in a meeting), so I suppose that means my time so far has been evenly split between being a student and a worker bee. What I perhaps find most bizarre is that of those 24 months, I've been going out with that Mark character now for a little more than 16 of them. That boy deserves a medal!

This milestone provides a nice opportunity to look back and reflect on what I've learned since my arrival. So here we go, some things I've learned:

1. English people are a lot like Americans. Only they use a slightly different set of funny words and drink lots of tea.
2. People from continental Europe really are a different breed. This point was proved most effectively when I watched a stream of people getting of a plane from Milan. Also reinforced by my daily sighting of people wearing strange pants on the tube, often followed by hearing them speak in Romance languages.
3. Listening to English accents constantly over a two-year period only makes you partially immune to their charm and little sayings. Ask Mark, I tend to laugh when ever he proclaims he'd like some water... Oh, and when I hear someone say 'bloody hell' I can't help but giggle a bit on the inside.
4. English people do not lump Americans into one group, and will often generally judgement of you until they've determined your region of origin. Nobody has any beef with people from Oregon or Washington. They are like the Canadian States of America. Oh, and if anyone asks, you didn't vote for any Bush for president, ever.
5. I've developed two distinct forms of dialogue, one for talking to Americans and one for talking to English people. I don't quite understand all of the distinctions between the two, but I'm pretty sure one involves an increased frequency of the word 'dude'. I imagine the English people dialogue has developed as part of my desire to a) fit in a little and b) not be laughed at for over-using American-isms, even if I would over use them normally, like with the word dude. I don't notice the difference, but it seems to sort of freak Mark out a bit. Likewise, he's gotten some crap from people for using occasional American terms (like trash), so I guess it goes both ways.
6. For pretty much everything you give up, there is something here to replace it. For example, I miss peanut butter m&ms, but the presence of Galaxy caramel makes up for this short-coming. Likewise, the lack of happy hour is balanced out by the social acceptability of sitting at a pub for the better part of a Sunday afternoon.
7. Some things are very deeply ingrained. Although I see it everyday, when I try and visualize traffic on a road (which I have to do on a near daily basis for work) I see people driving on the right, and it takes me much longer than it should to figure out how things would work on those roads if people are driving on the left. Additionally, pants are not underwear. Nor will they ever be. Nor should they be.
8. Living far away makes you kind of a bad American. I keep realizing that I know less and less of what is going on (luckily I can watch the Daily Show to keep me somewhat informed), but things that don't make international news generally don't seep into my conscious. This knowledge hole is becoming kind of alarming to me.

So that is just a small snippit of what I've learned in time in the old UK. Oh, and as an end point, I'm still not entirely clear on what exactly is included in the UK and what is in Great Britain. But nobody else seems to know this either, so I seem to have the popular view!

The Davis Cup

On Saturday, which was a very warm and sunny day, Mark and I went to watch some tennis at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, aka, Wimbledon. As mentioned previously, the tennis club is located nearest Southfields tube station, which is three stations south of Parsons Green, rather convenient for us! The Davis Cup - which I was previously ignorant of - seems to be somewhat similar to the Ryder Cup in golf. It's essentially country's playing against each other in teams. Saturday's match was Great Britain versus Austria in men's doubles.

The 'other' Murray was playing - Jaimie - as well as some other dude that I decided to call 'headband'. Wimbledon consists, of course, of lots of courts, with the main two being Centre Court and Court No. 1. Centre Court, where the really big games get played at Wimbledon, is currently a bit of a no-go zone as it's getting a roof added, so the match was in Court No. 1, which seats about 11,000 people and is relatively new. It was very hot in the sun, so I quickly realized that by crouching down a bit I could hide in Mark's shade, which was a bit of a life saver!

I didn't really know what to expect, not being a person who really watches professional tennis, and I must say it was rather intriguing. For one thing, there's a lot of down time, a lot of botched serves and only so much action. Personally, my favorite component of the match were the Austrian fans, which formed a very small, but vocal and patriotically dressed group immediately behind the non-playing members of the Austrian team. The first time they had reason to cheer - and boy did they cheer - it amused the rest of the crowd to the point that there was a very audible laugh. However, those Austrian fans had the last laugh - winning the match in 3 straight sets. Alas. Not the best day for other Murray and headband - but overall a very interesting experience that I'm happy to have under my belt!

Bond is Back... AGAIN

As much of the world is aware, there is a new James Bond movie due out at the end of next month. In addition to having a discussion-inducing name, this new Bonds episode gives me an excuse to try and figure out why these Anglos love that 007 oh so much.

James Bond is essentially a super hero. Like Batman or Superman. They all, you know, fight against bad people and look cool while doing it, often with some sort of internal struggle (thanks, Mr Welty, for making that so clear). Struggle aside, the general role of the superhero is to embody the unattainable desires of the average joe. So how does Bond differ from his leather and latex clad American cousins? And what do these differences tell us about your average Anglo? Hmm. Let's delve.

1. James Bond has a gun.
Hand guns are illegal in Britain! Like, nobody has them! But apparently they might look cooler if they did...

2. James Bond is good looking.
Interesting, this implies that English men want to be good looking. That's find, I suppose.

3. James Bond goes to black tie parties attended by lots of beautiful women
English men tend to go to the pub, most likely wearing whatever was required for their prior activity, likely either work or sitting around and watching tv. Although I'm pretty sure they don't aspire to attend such parties on a regular basis, so I'm not so sure about this one...

4. James Bond drinks martinis.
Everyone else drinks beer. But it just looks classier when you down a martini in two sips. The ladies in general aren't impressed by men downing a pint in two sips. Things could get messy.

5. James Bond has an Aston Martin.
Even if they make fun of the drivers of such cars, I think it's safe to say that if they just happened to come across one, they would drive it around. Perhaps once or twice at an unsafe speed. But maybe not while wearing the tux...

6. James Bond is named James
As previously established, this allows the 8,000,000 James in England to relate to the guy. Perhaps it was ingrained in the minds of their fathers that James is a name for cool, dapper guys who can still kick some booty.

So what does that tell us about English types that is different from American types? Well, unlike American superheroes, James Bond is from a book and not a comic strip. Implying that his fans are slightly more sophisticated. He's an ordinary person, instead of essentially some mutant. And he doesn't fly.

There you have it. Americans want to be mutants with the ability to fly. Englishmen want to drive around in an Aston while packing heat. Make of that what you will...

Part Buy, Part Rent

Social housing in the UK takes on many forms. In its most basic form, the Government provides free (or low-cost) housing to people who can't afford it. This sort of housing has received a generally bad image for a number of reasons, but we won't go into them here. Additionally, the Government has also introduced part-buy, part-rent schemes for key workers and first-time buyers. While first-time buyers are easy enough to understand, the term key worker could do with some clarification. A key worker is essentially a blue-collar worker doing essential jobs, such as police officers, firemen, nurses, bus drivers, etc.

Then there is the concept of part-buy, part-rent. It's essentially just as it sounds. The local council sells a portion of a property and retains ownership of the remaining portion, charging the tennant/part-owner rent on the remaining, un-owned value of the property. Owners can then by additional portions of the property, up to 100%, or can move at any time, selling the portion they share while the council will most likely retain ownership of their portion. The partial-owner is also free to do as they wish with the property, for example, put in a new kitchen, but it a) must have the council's okay, b) they must foot the entire cost, and c) any resulting increase in property value would benefit bith you and the council, so the extra work may not be worthwhile if doing it strictly to increase the property value. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but in reality the whole concept is quit simple.

There are also restrictions within the categories of key workers and first-time buyers. The two primary concerns are that you only can apply for schemes in the area you are currently living or working, with long term residents getting priority over new arrrivals, and that your income must fall within a specific bracket. If you earn too little, you won't be able to afford the payments and if you earn too much you should be able to buy a property on the open market.

As some people already know, Mark and myself have been attempting to secure such a place in a new development next to Parsons Green tube station. After much delay and worry, we've been assigned a flat and are currently in the process of trying to buy a 30% (or 35%, we're not actually sure) stake. We have just found out that we've been able to secure a mortgage and are currently set to exchange contracts next week. Mind you, we don't move next week, but the deal should be relatively sealed. We can't really leave our current place, which we will surely be sad to leave, until mid-December, so we're hoping the development is well-behind schedule!

Giant Umbrellas

Yes, that's right, another blog about a newly acquired pet peeve!

Now that the weather has turned for the worse, bringing with it plenty of rain, people have been using their umbrellas a lot more frequently. Most people simply use your regular single person umbrella, most often in black, that folds up nicely when not in use. However, some people insist on using giant golf umbrellas capable of harboring the entire Brady Bunch. This is bad for two reasons!

Reason 1: They hog the sidewalk.
In my neighborhood in particular, the sidewalks are not particularly wide and there are lots of sign posts, lamp posts and trees making the sidewalks just a little bit narrower. When everyone is carrying regular sized umbrellas it can be difficult to pass, when someone has an umbrella twice as big as everyone else's, it's near impossible. Around Notting Hill sidewalks get quite busy during lunch times, and then it's even more noticeable when people take up more space with their umbrellas out, and let's just say chaos would ensue if everyone had the giant breed.

The general carrier of the giant umbrella tends to be male. The easiest explanation for this is that women tend to carry umbrellas that fit into their purses when not in use, but men are less likely to have bags, thus increasing the likelihood that they would carry something larger. And the carriers of these umbrellas also tend to be males tending towards the 'dandy' side of things - think pin-striped suits and slightly longer hair with a bit of a wave, carefully gelled in place who perhaps see their umbrella as an important fashion accessory and therefore think bigger ones must be better. With this particular breed comes that self-important strut. People with self-important struts do not tend to get out of the way of others when walking down the sidewalk, instead others must get out of their way, which is even more annoying when they are ten times their normal dandy size thanks to their ego-sized umbrellas.

Reason 2: They are dangerous weapons
As if things weren't bad enough when people chose to unleash their giant umbrellas in the face of a downpour, things seem to me to be even more treacherous when no rain is involved. You see, instead of carrying their giant umbrellas by the carefully provided curved wooden handle, perhaps for fear of looking as if they are walking with a cane, people seem to prefer to hold on to the middle of their giant umbrella so it rests in the horizontal position. This is how many people carry their umbrellas, but then their umbrellas aren't over two feet long with an elongated, sharpened metal point at one end, swinging slightly from side to side with each self-important saunter. The possibility of impalement leaps even higher at the tube station, while people show some rational thought in placing the impaling tip on the floor while inside the train, they are still quite likely to hold it horizontally on the platform, then constantly twisting about to check how long until the next train and to perhaps have a chat with their friends. It's beyond me how people don't end up pushed onto the tracks by one of these flailing instruments of destruction, or at least just with one impaled into their thigh. Quite frankly I want some news-worthy umbrella incident to occur as to bring to light the dangers of these umbrellas.

I say unless you are indeed the Brady Brunch traveling down the sidewalk in a happy little cluster, there is absolutely no reason for people to use these obscenely sized umbrellas. Their use by individuals, in my mind, is like people using the carpool lane when by themselves but just figure it's their right to use them as their time is more important than others and they have somewhere else to be. And you know, their windows are all blacked out so you can't see what's going on inside anyways.

Okay, I'm done ranting now.

Mew

After admittedly never having thought about it before, I learned what a mew is last night. In addition to being a noise often made by kittens and some adult cats, the word mews refers to an old stable block. Like with horses. Of course, Anglos flock to conversion properties like Southerners flock to fried chicken, so today mews serve as very desirable urban streets.

Those of you that have been to London may have come across a mew or two. They are generally named - like the Margo Mews or Fulham Mews - but are also recognizable as being narrow cobbled streets, generally dead ends, lined with two story flat-fronted buildings. In the movie Love Actually, Keira Knightley's character lived in a mew house. As they were built to house the horses for the nearby stately manors, there should be larger terraced houses within the same block fronting the main street.

Converted mews are, as mentioned above, quite desirably addresses. A show on property prices in London showed a newly converted mews property in Kensington that was expected to go for £6 million. It apparently had a lot of 'bespoke' features.... Anyways, I think some of this attraction (aside from the pure and utter joy of living in a converted property) comes from the layout of mews, which are essentially the much cuter, quainter, cobbled cousin of 'home zones', with no definition between space for pedestrians and space for vehicles.

The relevation of the original intent of the mews shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, as the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace serve as a year-round tourist attraction. Items on view include fancy outfits worn by coaches (those who drive carriages, not those who lead sports teams) and royal carriages. Personally I think perhaps it's time the Queen upgrade to motor vehicles, not only are they faster, but it would also then open the royal mew for residential conversion...

And finally, let's discuss the other sorts of properties that the Anglos like to convert (as seen on UK property shows): barns (including dairies), churches, windmills, and lighthouses. In the future people will live in converted Tescos.

The Cyclone of Notting Hill Gate

An atmospheric anomaly occurs outside the front of my workplace on a constant basis. The architecture of my building being tall and set back slightly from the sidewalk, next to lower buildings closer to the sidewalk, and I'm sure an endless number of special angles and such, creates a mini-tornado at the bottom of the stairs.

The mini-tornado remains within a few feet of the ground and whirls in a clockwise direction. It would just be an annoying little windy area, as much of the front of the building is (which again you don't' fully realize unless you're wearing a fluffy skirt or dress), except the little whirling dervish manages to regularly acquire an array of dried leaves and wrappers to whip around, making the shape and continual swirling quite clear to see. Mind you, I don't know where the wind manages to find so many dead leaves this time of year, especially considering that the sidewalk sweeper seems in constant action and there aren't really many trees in the area, but it seems to manage just fine.

Today it's raining and so the cyclone is currently absent due to lack of dry leaves to whip about, but when I was leaving yesterday the whirl was such that passers by were slowing to gawk and laugh. While I suppose I see this particular oddity on a regular basis, it really is quite a bizarre situation. So much so that I can't think of another example. I'll therefore have to enjoy my daily tornado as much as I can before the big office move at the end of the month, as the chances of another cyclone seem low.

Garage Sale

You just dont' seem to find garage sales in these parts. From what I can decipher, there are many reasons for this. In London, for example, nobody has a garage. This is in face true for a much larger proportion of UK households than US households. Perhaps one would refer to them by the grassier term 'yard sale'? Again, while terraced houses do have front yards, they a) tend not to be that large and b) are called gardens.

In areas such as mine, people still have options for getting rid of items (some of which are also popular in areas such as the U-District). You can put something out on the sidewalk in front of your residence and hope it disappears, or give stuff to charity. But instead of you finding your nearest Salvation Army truck, you are perhaps more likely to donate your items (of small size) to a local charity shop, conveniently located EVERYWHERE. You can pick the charity you deem the worthiest and walk away with more space at home and a nice warm fuzzy feeling in your heart. Aaaahhhh. Charities with shops include the standard Oxfam, charities for taking care of old people (Age Concern), blind people, people with cancer, children, animals, and the Notting Hill Housing Trust (I don't know about that one either...).

But what about those who like to come face to face with the source of their bargains? My inside source, who I shall call 'Kram', has alerted me to the concept of the car boot sale. This allegedly involves the gathering of the people in a flea market like fashion, selling things out of their 'boots' (being trunks, I wouldn't buy anything that I had to pick out of someone's footwear). These are the places I'm assuming you would flock to if you were going for that whole shabby chic thing as glamorized on the E! channel on the weekends. I'm not sure if these sorts of these extend to serve as church fund-raisers.

Change of Season

It seems it's officially fall now. Aside from a gorgeous, hot sunny Saturday, the weather has definitely turned for the worse, with the rain coming in torrential downpours and a chill in the air. It's no deal. Some of my work skirts are really only appropriate in the summer so my wardrobe is going to effectively shrink!

That aside, I must say that one of the things that I still find kind of odd and unexpected about these parts is the ability to not just rain, as I expect it to rain, but rain vigorously. And to rain vigorously whilst accompanied by massive thunderstorms. Let's take the last three days. On Sunday morning I awoke to a very loud downpour that was soon accompanied by flashes of lightening and the distant roar of thunder. The rain continued most of the day, taking a nice break in the afternoon while I was thankfully out and about. Our house was so muggy that day that you could barely pick up a cold glass as they all got so slipper from condensation (the fact that we were doing lots of laundry did not help...). Yesterday was a dry day, but then for some reason the Circle Line was suspended during the evening commute because one of the stations was flooded (it was Baker Street, don't worry, they called in Sherlock Holmes to solve the case). And then this morning I again awoke to some very, very angry rain. As per usual, this translated into extra crowded, wet, muggy slightly delayed morning train times and a muggy office.

This lovely weather has been accompanied by news of the August weather (it seems strange to have news on past weather, but what are you gonna do, these are a weather obsessed people). It seems August had less sunshine than any other August since records began in 1929. This is really just a fancy way of saying that the weather was crap. To be honest, I thought May, June and July were so nice that would just be a bit greedy to want a nice August and September as well!

Malahide

After two days in Dublin, Kari and I were ready for a slight change in scenery. Luckily my Frommer's Guide was kind enough to recommend a few day trip itineraries. We opted to go to Malahide, partly because it has a cool name and partly because it has a castle. While we had learned already that sometimes Frommer lies, the whopper was that trains to Malahide ran every half hour on Sundays. They only run one per hour, and so we got to chill at Tara Street station breathing in passing train exhaust for about 50 minutes.

Once in Malahide, we just followed everyone else from the train as we didn't really know where we were going. Luckily everyone was headed towards the castle, which was our intended destination as well. After walking for what seemed like days through a thick forest, we finally came across the castle, as seen above. The castle was the home to the Talbot family for about 800 years until 1975, starting as a Norman keep and gradually expanding into the castle you see today. We waited for the guided tour to start, then we were let through to go up stairs with about 8 other people. After many minutes of waiting at the top of the stairs, someone went back down to ask what was going on. The guy at the bottom of the stairs seemed confused by our presence and told us that the next tour wouldn't start for five more minutes, so we had to go back out and wait. It was all very odd.

Anyways, the tour actually involved walking through a number of rooms while listening to recorded audio commentary about the history of the room, the decorations, and bits about the family. You go through a number of sitting/drawing rooms, some bedrooms, a hallway/staircase and then the big dining room that's all Tudor in its stylings. All in all it was pleasant enough and not too crowded. I'd place it above Ham House but below Blenheim Palace in terms of coolness.

After hiking back through the woods, we walked down to the village, which is cute and little and near the sea. We therefore continued down to the water and did some walking and some sitting (it's good to balance these things, otherwise you get too worn out!). Frommer recommended a pub in town called Gibney's, so opted to check it out before heading back to Dublin and ultimately the airport. The pub was deceptively large, just room after room of pub, plus a beer garden. What was interesting was that the rooms managed to be quite different; there were a couple traditional pub rooms, a brightly lit room for the old folks (I say this as there were about 4 people in there and they all looked over 70), and the room at the back had a bit of a sports bar vibe with a bunch of tv screens. As it was a nice day, we loitered for two hours standing in the beer garden. All of our attempts at getting seats were foiled by those faster than ourselves. It was extremely good people watching and I think we were both quite sad to leave! All in all, I quite liked Malahide, it was a nice contrast to Dublin and big cities in general, with what I thought was a nice balance of castle, village, waterfront, and pub!

Dublin!

I went to Dublin this weekend with Kari. Mark didn’t go. He’d been twice and therefore had seen it all before. Before delving into the details of my weekend itinerary, I shall sum up my general impression of the city. Dublin is an odd little city with little discernable division between residential, commercial and industrial areas. While parts of the city centre are lively and full of people, there are plenty of other areas on the tourist path where very little seems to be going on. The pubs have plenty of beer on tap, and not all of it is Guinness (thank goodness!). While I had limited interaction with locals, for the most part servers were friendly, there was just a limited incident in which a passing chav randomly yelled in Kari’s ear.

We flew to Dublin on Friday morning. After hearing how Dublin had essentially been given up for gone after being inundated with English stag and hen parties, I found it somewhat amusing that there were two hen parties on our not too full flight. One had matching t-shirts with individual nicknames on the back, the others just had matching headbands with glittery clovers on springs (the bride had a giant leprechaun hat). Throughout the weekend we relied on matching shirts, sashes and the presence of blow-up dolls to spot other hen parties (we spotted a total of 14). Oddly enough, we saw no stag parties. One can only conclude that Dublin has been given up to the ladies.

So once in Dublin, my navigational skills immediately failed us and so it took a little longer than necessary to find our hotel. We then began the two-day of ordeal of seeing what the fine people of Frommer’s recommended we see, more or less in the order they advised we see it. On day one this meant wandering across the river, going to Trinity College (home of the book of Kells, I have no idea what this is but apparently it’s in demand), the National Library, the archaeological branch of the National Museum (I recommend giving the bog bodies a miss), then there was a highly recommended ‘moment’ involving having a coffee and a scone on the 3rd floor of an old café on the main shopping street (this involved spending a considerable amount of time watching the winged wizard, an elaborately costumed human statue type). At this point it was getting a little late to complete the day one itinerary, as many things apparently closed around 5pm, so we borrowed something from day two and went to the Guinness Storehouse at St James Gate.

Now I’m pretty sure that the Guinness Storehouse is in the top two for most visited sites in Dublin, along with Trinity College. You could tell it was set up for the receiving of vast quantities of people, luckily when you show up at 5:15 there are no lines and you have your choice of people from which to buy your ticket. I found this odd as this seems like the ideal time to transition from day-time activities that generally don’t involve beer to evening activities that generally do involve beer. Alas, apparently this only makes sense to me. Anyways, you can tell by the smell on the surrounding streets that they still actually make Guinness at this facility. It’s an interesting set up, where you learn about the brewing process, the history of the company, and see old ads while slowly moving upwards in the building. It’s all very architectural and a neat building in general terms. At the very top you get to enjoy your free pint of Guinness in the Sky Bar, which has panoramic views of pretty much all of Dublin. We didn’t finish our pints, free or not, it’s still Guinness.

After this we were desperate for food, which generally ensures you will never find any. Alas, we ended up dining at a bar called Toddy’s attached to a hotel. The highlight came when they only charged us for one of our drinks. We then hit the bar near our hotel for a nightcap. This was a vast improvement on Toddy’s as there was a lively ambience, centering on the live Irish music.

Day two started with a trip to see the statue of Oscar Wilde. Dublin has more than it’s fair share of life-size statues, but this one was by far the highlight. Not only was it reclining on a rock ‘gazing wistfully’ (according to my guide book) towards his childhood home, but he was also in color. Oooh. Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband was being put on at a theatre in town and was being heavily advertised, so Oscar was on the mind. This was followed by the National Gallery, a nice park, lunch at a place called Lemon that served crepes and waffles, Dublin Castle (which didn’t open until 2!), the Chester Beatty Library (where we saw really old books and learned about different religious traditions, and as it’s free, earns my recommendation), St Patrick’s Cathedral, and another deviation from the schedule in the form of a trip to the Jamesson Distillery.

I must say the Distillery was overall a more enjoyable experience than the Guinness Storehouse. While they no longer make Irish whiskey at the Distillery, they did up until 1971. Which I think is a long time ago, but whatever. Your tour starts out with a video on the history of the company, and you then get a guided tour where you learn how the whiskey is made, and how this process differs from American whiskey (aka, Jack Daniels) and Scotch whiskey. Apparently the primary different is the triple distilling, versus only single or double for the other folk. The tour ended with a tasting in the bar for a few select volunteers (including me!) of the three different types of whiskey, and a free drink (with mixer, thank goodness). For taking part, I was given my very own certificate with my name on it. And a tube to safely take it home in. Again, we had kept the alcohol portion of the tourist day to the late afternoon. Good call, us!

For dinner we made a late reservation at what seemed to be the only Boxty restaurant in town, located in the midst of Temple Bar, Dublin’s most infamous street. It’s basically just lined with bars and a few restaurants, and everything becomes packed once the evening rolls around. We were glad to be observing from the boxty restaurant instead of being stuck in the midst of it all! After dinner we again had a quick nightcap at the local. The next day we opted to head out of town and go to the alluringly named Malahide, but that will have to be another entry!