Cars!

I've talked about roads but I don't seem to recall actually discussing much about what the English use to get around. Of course there is the fact that so many of the cars are French, but I was quite expecting that. Your Renaults, Citreons. Maybe the Vauxhall's. I don't know what their deal is, really. And you have your Ford cars, your Rovers (not Land Rovers, but Rovers), a very occasional Honda, and a very occasional Toyota, plus your Volkswagons and BMWs. What surprises me the most is that so many of the cars are hatchbacks. Like, a freakishly high percentage. I think you can kind of see this in the photo on the right, which is the road I walk down to get to campus, nicely lined with hatchbacks. I don't think the English have anything against the sedan, well, aside from the fact they dont' call it a sedan, but that's not the point. Oh, and the hatchbacks are both two and four doors (three and five doors, if you prefer). Yet for some reason I have only seen one Subaru Outback, which is the most frequently seen car with a hatchback in the Pacific Northwest.

There also aren't many trucks. Sometimes I would try to explain the idea of the unnaturally large pick-up truck to the English and I don't think they really understood. Luckily as we were driving through Wroughton on the way to that science museum, we passed what I'm sure must be the only F-350 extended cab on this side of the Atlantic. And I sat up, gasped, and yelled 'F-350 extended cab!!', at which point I'm pretty sure everyone just thought I was crazy. You do see some SUVs around, but pick-ups are not frequent sights (I see maybe one a week or so). Maybe it's just that they can't say the word truck for fear of sounding too American. Entirely understandable. Apparently we talk funny.

Tomorrow is class with stat rab, port field trip, another class with stat rab. I know, I know. It's almost too exciting.

Thunder!

There were two giant thunderstorms accompanied by torrential downpours this weekend. Who would have thought? But both Saturday and Sunday morning, whoosh. It was like Florida in the middle of the afternoon. Only instead of clearing up right aftwerwards it was cloudy and kind of rainy all day long. Being the easily amused person that I am, I found it quite entertaining.

And now for something totally random. Sometimes in my learning/essay writing I can't help but think of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, more specifically the portion in which he discusses the fact that he has a test that day on European facism. I want to say 'I'm not English, I don't plan on becoming English, so who's cares if their bus system is deregulated?' That's sad on many levels, I realize. And for all of you considering making such a move, it's best to keep those buses regulated. Or you will end up with a stinky man from the Isle of Wight telling you over the course of about 6 hours what a bad idea it was from the get go. That guy earned the nick-name BO Dereg. For obvious reasons.

Everyone's favorite prof is Dr. Cherrett. He makes freight and home delivery interesting. And that's not easy. We call him chesty because he tends to rub his hand on his chest when he's lecturing. We've also got the Stat Rab, who teaches statistics and has a crazy beard reminiscent of a rabbi. Then there's one we call proto-chesty, who is a younger guy who seems to try and be like chesty but is more along the lines of a simpler, unperfected version. We're still working on coming up for a name for this other guy who always has an unnatural amount of stuff in his pant's pockets. This is sad, I realize, but it gives us something to do in the ten minute breaks we sometimes get in the middle of two hour lectures. And they make good group names for pub quizes. We've had the most luck with chesty.

LeisureWorld

I went to Leisure World!! No, really, I did. It just so happens that the cheesy restaurantss and nightclubs are face-to-face with a movie theater. Luckily, there was an unnaturally long line for tickets to said theater, which allowed plenty of time to check out the people going to the cheesy restaurants and nightclubs. Leisure World as a whole could be described as 'quite chavy', which means people watching is good fun. My personal favorite was the girl who looked about 18, was about 7 months pregnant, and was standing outside one of the clubs smoking. The other highlight was seeing a middle aged man in line wearing a Columbia Sportswear fleece. Apparently you can get Columbia over here, it's just rather expensive and a little hard to come by, but considering the brand's relative obscurity in Seattle compared to Portland, this is still quite impressive.

Being Saturday, today I'll be making yet again another trek down to the city center. Ever since it's become what they consider Christmas season, it's a very scary place. Like you can't even move it's so crowded. You're somewhat wary of getting trampled. The things I'm willing to put up with to buy a toothbrush...

Thanksgiving?

And so has passed a major holiday that nobody seemed to notice. Not only did I not have any turkey, but I actually had to learn...both a Thanksgiving first. But on the other hand, you don't really notice that you're missing a holiday when it's just a completely normal day. Every once in a while you just sort of recall that it is a holiday, but with the time difference there's not much of a 'what would I be doing now?' bit, because for most of the day the answer is just 'sleeping'. Mind you, I did make the English go around the table and say what they were thankful for, but I don't know if that's saying much.

Besides learning, yesterday was another pub quiz night. After placing in the top three the last three weeks, we figured we were due for a bad night. The quiz was quite a bit harder this week for some reason, but we did all right, we just didn't know the final answer in the killer round and therefore did not get the high score we needed. Too bad, too, the winners got 77 pounds this week.

If yesterday was just a normal day, then so is today. In lieu of shopping I'm going to go work on some essays in the library. When it comes right down to it, they're pretty much the same, right?

Transit

I know I keep saying it, but yet another thing that throws me off is that a bus here is not considered transit, it's public transport. They only really use the word transit to describe those little white windowless vans.

On the right here is a photo of part of the intersection of Burgess Road and Glen Eyre Road. Anyone who comes to visit will pass through this intersection at least ten times. It is indeed a signalized intersection, they just put the signals on short little poles, generally on the near side of the intersection. You can see one that is on the far side in the picture, and it is for the right turn lane, which has to yield to oncoming traffic, and then gets a designated green arrow at the end of the cycle if cars are still waiting, so there are people in the middle of the intersection, which is why they get a far side signal. You don't see any pavement markings on the closest leg (Glen Eyre Rd) because they are set back a little. There happens to be a bike ('cycle') lane along the road there, and the bikes get to pile up in front of the first cars to wait for the green. You can also see an unsignalized pedestrian crossing, with a small refuge in the middle of the road. On the other side there is a fully signalized pedestrian crossing, which I take every day to get over to campus, and you know, civilization.

No, I'm not that obsessed with an intersection. We just happen to be redesigning this intersection for my engineering class at the moment, so it's always on the mind. Plus, those little signal heads freak me out. I'm pretty sure I just wouldn't notice them if I was driving along. Oh, and those little squiggly lines you see on the road mean no parking or waiting.

Bond

I went and saw the new James Bond this weekend. Not so much because I really wanted to see it, but because the English seemed so unnaturally excited about it, I just wanted to see what went on.

But first let me back track. Southampton has, I believe, 3 movie theaters, 2 of which are right next to each other. The process for going to one of these movies is basically the same as an American theater, only instead of giving your ticket to an usher as soon as you walk inside, you don't do so until you actually get to the theater door. Interesting concept. Keeps you from sneaking in to extra movies, but may require considerable extra man power. The concept of the pre-movie commercials and previews is apparently nowadays universal, and there's not much that can vary with the actual showing of a movie.

The real point of interest is indeed the role of James Bond in British society. Much as I am the token American of the transport planning and engineering course, James Bond is the token Brit of the serial movie hero circuit. And from that point of view, their quasi-obsession seems somewhat understandable. I just found it shocking that Bond didn't care if his martini was shaken or stirred. What is happening to society??

Please enjoy above photo of the Hartley Library. It is the most classically collegiate looking building on campus.

Mexican and Chavs

Please enjoy this photo of the Stile. There's not much I can say about it.

I had my first experience with the English take on the Mexican restaurant yesterday. It was, um, interesting. First of all, nobody working there was Mexican. Secondly, the menu was only about 1/5 Mexican. There were nachos, burritos, chimichangas, and fajitas, and then there was a long section consisting of wraps, some burgers, and some various meaty entrees. In my attempt to keep it authentic, I got a chicken burrito, which came with 'rice and salad' and guacamole. It was indeed a chicken burrito, in the sense that it was chicken in a burrito, but there was nothing besides chicken in the burrito. I was pleasantly surprised that there was a small container of refried beans included on the plate despite not being listed on the menu, and they actually tasted like decent refried beans. My final take: close, but not quite there.

And now we can move back to the real English culture: the Chav. This is a word that I have been familiar with for an entire week now and feel like I am now able to discuss it. A chav is a slang term that has entered into popular culture to describe what is essentially the urban white trash teenage sect. They are quite noticeable in parts of Southampton and apparently in the nation as a whole. These would be your groups of teenagers dressed in a slightly hip-hop fashion who seem to feel disconnected to society and tend to annoy people. Wikipedia has a nice entry on the term for additional information, but I think I can suffice it to say that these are the sorts of people that most citizens seem to fear and seem to keep the cops busy, not because they are breaking the law, but because they tend to be pushing it a bit. They are generally associated with council estates and low levels of education. But I'm sure deep down inside they're all lovely people.