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...