Are you a stag? Are you a hen? Do you like to party? Then have I got news for you!
But I don’t now if I’m a stag or a hen!
A stag is what Anglo types call a bachelor; a hen is a bachelorette. A stag party is therefore the local term for a bachelor party, and a hen party is for the ladies.
Ah yes, I see now. And what do these engagements involve when not within a 2 hour flight of Las Vegas?
What an excellent question! My personal research on the topic (asking Mark and seeing people walking down the street) has taught me a number of key things. First of all, traveling to another city for a night on the town makes things fun and interesting, and where you choose to go would be a reflection of your personal standing in life. Once at your final destination, expect to go out to bars and clubs and consume alcohol. Lots of alcohol.
Let’s say your wardrobe consists of 90% ‘tracky Bs’ (track suit bottoms) and most of your sentences end with ‘innit’, or perhaps you’re 18 and pregnant with your third child and have finally decided to settle down. If this is the case, then I might recommend Blackpool as the destination for you. It’s cheesy and not known for being classy or sophisticated in any way, sort of like yourself!
At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps you’re a 32 year-old investment banker who likes to cruise up and down King’s Road in your Aston Martin on the weekends. Then you and your buds might jet off to a sophisticated European city known for either partying or cheap liquor, such as Ibiza or Prague. The possibilities are extensive, but do not generally include sophisticated cities: Paris and Venice are not common stag and hen party destinations!
Or let’s say you’re somewhere in between these two, like a 30 year-old engineer whose friends range in affluence and you don’t want to force them all to pay for airfare. You and your buds might choose to head to someplace local yet not classless, such as Edinburgh (as I learned over the weekend) or Brighton.
Who decides these things? When should I expect this all to occur?
Apparently you should have the best man or maid of honor to blame for these things. And expect this all to take place a month or two before the wedding.
Let’s say I’ve been invited to a stag or hen party in Edinburgh. What do I wear?
There’s good news and bad news in this regard. The good news is that you probably won’t have to put together your own outfit, the bad news is that you will quite possibly be donning ‘fancy dress’ (especially if you’re domestic!). Our observations of the weekend included a group of girls all dressed up as cops, with the bride to be dressed as a prisoner, a group of guys wearing pink cowboy hats with the lucky groom to be rocking a little pink dress advertising massages and some nice fishnets, school girls is a popular choice (for girls), and as we were in Scotland, perhaps some kilts with matching plaid hats with attached red hair. Aka, girls: be prepared to wear a short skirt. Men: be prepared to wear a silly hat. Of course, all this generally goes towards showing solidarity and support for your poor sucker of a friend who’s getting hitched. It’s sort of cute, really.
What if I don’t want to wear a short skirt or a silly hat?
Then you’re not a good friend! And it seems after a few drinks you won’t mind so much!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Mark Sees Scotland
My young person’s railcard expires forever on Thursday. This is sad as this means that a) I am no longer a younger person and b) I’m going to have to pay full fare for train tickets outside of the network railcard catchment area (I got a free network railcard as part of my annual travelcard for the tube). While the network railcard area is quite large, and includes basically all of south east England, it does not extend very far north. So, to say good-bye to my railcard in style, and as someone had never been, Mark and I went to Edinburgh for the weekend.
We caught the 5pm train Friday afternoon, requiring us to work through lunch and then make separate but equally frenzied mad dashes to Kings Cross from out workplaces. It was a so-called ‘fast’ train, stopping only at York, Doncaster (I’d never heard of it either), Newcastle and Edinburgh. It was 4 hours and 20 minutes. While this seems long, it’s really about even in total travel time with flying only much more relaxing! We took some food on with us as well as plenty of reading material and soon enough we were in another ‘country’.
As it was around 10 by the time we got to our hotel (via a pleasant walk through old town), we just slipped out for a couple of drinks. We were staying in Best Western a bit south west of the castle, near the University of Edinburgh. Thanks to some information hanging on the wall, we were able to discover that the building originally housed Edinburgh’s first custom built maternity hospital, opening in 1879. It was called Simpson Hospital after the obstetrician, local university man, and innovator of using chloroform for general anaesthesia, Dr., um, Simpson. His first name doesn’t matter. I just thought the history gave the building a good twist, and it was a nice old stone building.
On Saturday we got an early start. We are ruined career types now who wake up at 7am on the weekends, meaning we were out the door by 8:30. Nobody else is up this early in Edinburgh on the weekends, and the local Starbucks didn’t even open until 9am. Luckily we found a little café that was open and able to give us breakfast. We arrived at Edinburgh Castle about 5 minutes before it opened, bypassed the ticket line as we’d bought fast track tickets on the internet the day before, and were on the first (and therefore uncrowded!) guided tour of the day. Our next stop was the Scotch Whiskey, um, place, that was right next door. We were hesitant to go on a tour that involved alcohol tasting before noon, but it turns out they offer a 35% discount on admission in the mornings and so it was well worth it! I found the tour very interesting and I learned lots about scotch! There was a whiskey barrel ride advertised as part of the tour, which I thought sounded exciting. However, the ride moved at a speed of approximately 1 mile an hour and I can assure you this is too slow.
After a quick lunch we ended up spending a really long time at an antique map store chatting with the owner. Mark ended up with an old school replica map of Hampshire. Still being only early afternoon, we went down to stare inquisitively at the Scottish Parliament building and then hiked up Arthur’s Seat to induce sweat and of course to see the views! We then regrettable decided to go to Our Dynamic Earth, a museum detailing the history of the planet in a not good way. After a quick nap (we were pooped!) we went for bangers and mash for dinner, then went down to the Grassmarket (old market and site of the old public gallows!) for some drinks. While there we discovered that Edinburgh is densely populated by groups on ‘stag’ and ‘hen’ parties. I’ll have to discuss these in a separate entry, they’re really quite strange!
On Sunday morning we got a slightly later start, arrived at Starbucks during opening hours, and went to the Museum of Scotland. I’d like to say we went there to learn about the history of Scotland and its peoples, but really we were just motivated by the fact that they have costumes you can try on! I’ll have to get those pictures uploaded for general amusement! We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed for new town, quickly finding ourselves on a double decker bus tour of the city. While we had seen much of it already, we still learned quite a bit from the tour guide and it was a generally enjoyable experience! With our train time still a few hours off, we went and sat in a park and ended up doing a bit of shopping, then had to walk hurriedly to catch the train! Unlike the journey up, things didn’t go smoothly and we ended up arriving half an hour late into London.
This was my third trip to Edinburgh and I must admit it continues to grow on me! While still managing to be quite a compact city, it’s got the amazing old town, which is just a highly concentrated area of surprisingly tall stone buildings surrounding the castle (some are 8 or 9 floors!), and then just a few minutes away you have the cleanly laid out new town with open parks and plenty of shopping. While the new town seems to have been sadly damaged during WW2, the old town managed to remain relatively untouched, and you can tell the planning laws are extremely (and thankfully) very restrictive in the area. All in all, I would say that Edinburgh is definitely my second favorite city in the UK (behind London, of course!).
We caught the 5pm train Friday afternoon, requiring us to work through lunch and then make separate but equally frenzied mad dashes to Kings Cross from out workplaces. It was a so-called ‘fast’ train, stopping only at York, Doncaster (I’d never heard of it either), Newcastle and Edinburgh. It was 4 hours and 20 minutes. While this seems long, it’s really about even in total travel time with flying only much more relaxing! We took some food on with us as well as plenty of reading material and soon enough we were in another ‘country’.
As it was around 10 by the time we got to our hotel (via a pleasant walk through old town), we just slipped out for a couple of drinks. We were staying in Best Western a bit south west of the castle, near the University of Edinburgh. Thanks to some information hanging on the wall, we were able to discover that the building originally housed Edinburgh’s first custom built maternity hospital, opening in 1879. It was called Simpson Hospital after the obstetrician, local university man, and innovator of using chloroform for general anaesthesia, Dr., um, Simpson. His first name doesn’t matter. I just thought the history gave the building a good twist, and it was a nice old stone building.
On Saturday we got an early start. We are ruined career types now who wake up at 7am on the weekends, meaning we were out the door by 8:30. Nobody else is up this early in Edinburgh on the weekends, and the local Starbucks didn’t even open until 9am. Luckily we found a little café that was open and able to give us breakfast. We arrived at Edinburgh Castle about 5 minutes before it opened, bypassed the ticket line as we’d bought fast track tickets on the internet the day before, and were on the first (and therefore uncrowded!) guided tour of the day. Our next stop was the Scotch Whiskey, um, place, that was right next door. We were hesitant to go on a tour that involved alcohol tasting before noon, but it turns out they offer a 35% discount on admission in the mornings and so it was well worth it! I found the tour very interesting and I learned lots about scotch! There was a whiskey barrel ride advertised as part of the tour, which I thought sounded exciting. However, the ride moved at a speed of approximately 1 mile an hour and I can assure you this is too slow.
After a quick lunch we ended up spending a really long time at an antique map store chatting with the owner. Mark ended up with an old school replica map of Hampshire. Still being only early afternoon, we went down to stare inquisitively at the Scottish Parliament building and then hiked up Arthur’s Seat to induce sweat and of course to see the views! We then regrettable decided to go to Our Dynamic Earth, a museum detailing the history of the planet in a not good way. After a quick nap (we were pooped!) we went for bangers and mash for dinner, then went down to the Grassmarket (old market and site of the old public gallows!) for some drinks. While there we discovered that Edinburgh is densely populated by groups on ‘stag’ and ‘hen’ parties. I’ll have to discuss these in a separate entry, they’re really quite strange!
On Sunday morning we got a slightly later start, arrived at Starbucks during opening hours, and went to the Museum of Scotland. I’d like to say we went there to learn about the history of Scotland and its peoples, but really we were just motivated by the fact that they have costumes you can try on! I’ll have to get those pictures uploaded for general amusement! We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed for new town, quickly finding ourselves on a double decker bus tour of the city. While we had seen much of it already, we still learned quite a bit from the tour guide and it was a generally enjoyable experience! With our train time still a few hours off, we went and sat in a park and ended up doing a bit of shopping, then had to walk hurriedly to catch the train! Unlike the journey up, things didn’t go smoothly and we ended up arriving half an hour late into London.
This was my third trip to Edinburgh and I must admit it continues to grow on me! While still managing to be quite a compact city, it’s got the amazing old town, which is just a highly concentrated area of surprisingly tall stone buildings surrounding the castle (some are 8 or 9 floors!), and then just a few minutes away you have the cleanly laid out new town with open parks and plenty of shopping. While the new town seems to have been sadly damaged during WW2, the old town managed to remain relatively untouched, and you can tell the planning laws are extremely (and thankfully) very restrictive in the area. All in all, I would say that Edinburgh is definitely my second favorite city in the UK (behind London, of course!).
Thursday, July 24, 2008
'Glamour' Models
There is this enviable profession in this land called 'glamour modelling' (it's their thing, so I'll use their spelling). When I first heard the term I wasn't exactly how it differed from regular modeling or even if it was a different thing (as you never heard any talk of glamour-less models). After flipping through some of the free evening papers and watching some tv documentaries, I can safely tell you that glamour modeling does not involve modeling clothing, such as you would expect from a traditional model, nor does it involve catwalks or Vogue. You know how car magazines will often feature a random girl in a bikini thrown across the hood? She would be a glamour model.
In basic terms, glamour models often have had some 'work' done and are therefore qualified for walking around with lots of make-up and little clothing, and are then photographed doing, well, all sorts of random things. Quite frankly I'm not sure what exactly they do model.
Their unofficial queen is Jordan, real name Katie Price, who has really large, um, assets, that qualify her to be the author of many books, have her own reality television program with her significant other, have her own perfume, and of course, be photographed with little clothing on. Sort of like Pamela Anderson, only there's not even an attempt at acting (which is what these types tend to label themselves as stateside: actresses, only not the serious ones).
I think it's a rather sad thing for young girls to aspire to. You also see young women wanting to get, um, augmented so they can try and be glamour models. I think this is mainly as it seems to involve no actual work (not even walking up and down a catwalk!) but much admiration from the media. It might even be easier than being on Big Brother. Which I think is really saying something!
In basic terms, glamour models often have had some 'work' done and are therefore qualified for walking around with lots of make-up and little clothing, and are then photographed doing, well, all sorts of random things. Quite frankly I'm not sure what exactly they do model.
Their unofficial queen is Jordan, real name Katie Price, who has really large, um, assets, that qualify her to be the author of many books, have her own reality television program with her significant other, have her own perfume, and of course, be photographed with little clothing on. Sort of like Pamela Anderson, only there's not even an attempt at acting (which is what these types tend to label themselves as stateside: actresses, only not the serious ones).
I think it's a rather sad thing for young girls to aspire to. You also see young women wanting to get, um, augmented so they can try and be glamour models. I think this is mainly as it seems to involve no actual work (not even walking up and down a catwalk!) but much admiration from the media. It might even be easier than being on Big Brother. Which I think is really saying something!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Graduation Day
Yesterday was graduation day. Yes, I know, it took long enough for it to roll around. Now, whilst I didn’t attend myself, I had an inside source planted at the event who I then persuaded to reveal everything. To respect the privacy of this source they shall remain anonymous, but for the sake of clarity, I shall to refer to them as ‘Mark’.
Whilst I have commented on the graduation process before, I shall still do a brief recap. Okay, so instead of doing big giant catch-all graduations, the university does approximately 800 wee tiny little small ones spread out over around two weeks, but none of them are on the weekends. The first one is at about 9am, and the last one in the late afternoon sometime, so as to make sure that no one could possibly attend without taking time off work. If I had taken a day off of work and paid vast sums of money to attend, I would have partaken in a 3:30 pm ceremony involving other post-graduate students from the civil engineering department. Gowns are of course involved, but there are no hats due to health & safety restrictions. Something about throwing them up in the air and taking peoples’ eyes out on the way back down, I think.
Brief side note: I was looking at some websites for tourist venues in Edinburgh today. One site did not allow children under 5 for health & safety reasons; the other had a downloadable risk assessment form for groups to fill out. (Risk: water mains break and building instantly floods. Mitigating measures: all group members wear life jackets).
Each graduate walks across the stage, has an unnaturally long hand shake with some high-up important old man who thus feels obliged to mutter a few words to you, perhaps asking you what your favourite flavour Skittle is, and then you proceed across the stage. Phd students apparently take longer as they are required to kneel and offer a small sacrifice (such as a 2nd year physical therapy student) before they are allowed to proceed.
Afterwards, the department was so nice as to have a champagne reception, allowing graduates and their parents to mingle awkwardly with teachers they haven’t seen for a year. Little sandwiches were also provided. At some point in all of this, you of course also had to return your robe. So someone in one of today’s ceremonies could then reuse it.
The graduation ceremony was attended by a limited number of male full-time students who have parents who live in England. It was also attended by a number of part-time students, which surprised me as I wouldn’t think they would be particularly motivated or really care. Perhaps they just heard about the free little sandwiches?
With the graduation all over and done with, you can say that any remaining ties to the University have officially been severed. Finally!
Whilst I have commented on the graduation process before, I shall still do a brief recap. Okay, so instead of doing big giant catch-all graduations, the university does approximately 800 wee tiny little small ones spread out over around two weeks, but none of them are on the weekends. The first one is at about 9am, and the last one in the late afternoon sometime, so as to make sure that no one could possibly attend without taking time off work. If I had taken a day off of work and paid vast sums of money to attend, I would have partaken in a 3:30 pm ceremony involving other post-graduate students from the civil engineering department. Gowns are of course involved, but there are no hats due to health & safety restrictions. Something about throwing them up in the air and taking peoples’ eyes out on the way back down, I think.
Brief side note: I was looking at some websites for tourist venues in Edinburgh today. One site did not allow children under 5 for health & safety reasons; the other had a downloadable risk assessment form for groups to fill out. (Risk: water mains break and building instantly floods. Mitigating measures: all group members wear life jackets).
Each graduate walks across the stage, has an unnaturally long hand shake with some high-up important old man who thus feels obliged to mutter a few words to you, perhaps asking you what your favourite flavour Skittle is, and then you proceed across the stage. Phd students apparently take longer as they are required to kneel and offer a small sacrifice (such as a 2nd year physical therapy student) before they are allowed to proceed.
Afterwards, the department was so nice as to have a champagne reception, allowing graduates and their parents to mingle awkwardly with teachers they haven’t seen for a year. Little sandwiches were also provided. At some point in all of this, you of course also had to return your robe. So someone in one of today’s ceremonies could then reuse it.
The graduation ceremony was attended by a limited number of male full-time students who have parents who live in England. It was also attended by a number of part-time students, which surprised me as I wouldn’t think they would be particularly motivated or really care. Perhaps they just heard about the free little sandwiches?
With the graduation all over and done with, you can say that any remaining ties to the University have officially been severed. Finally!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Health & Safety
There’s a lurking shadow that follows you everywhere you go in the UK. It restricts your movements and theoretically keeps you from death. It’s your best friend. It’s your worst nightmare (okay, maybe not). It’s health & safety!
Not to be confused with health and/or safety.
Perhaps it’s just from growing up in a litigious society, but healthy & safety to me seems like an elaborate set of rules to keep corporations from being sued. In reality, it’s supposed to be a complex check on what will happen if (and when!) things go horribly wrong.
But what does that even mean? Good question. Here at work we have health & safety officers. I’m pretty sure they’re the last ones to leave the floor in case of a fire, and they probably have some sort of input in the health & safety manual, which tells you all sort of things (I’m just assuming, I haven’t actually looked through any). I imagine it involves advice such how to lift boxes and what types of fire extinguishers to use with different fires.
This is all well and good, perhaps familiar to non-health & safety workplaces. But wait, there’s more. Health & safety becomes particularly annoying when attempting to do out of the classroom university activities. When coming up with our proposal for data collection last year, we had to fill out a health & safety form. This involves a) listing risks we would face, b) formulating the level of possible harm from the risk, c) guessing the likelihood of it happening, d) calculating a death factor (not what it’s actually called), and e) coming up with things you can do to mitigate the risk. So, one could assume that while watching buses in Southampton, getting hit by a bus might be a risk. If this were to happen, you would be seriously harmed (3), but it may not be very likely (1). To minimize risk you might not stand in the street. And this is how it goes.
Now I’m not sure what sort of good lengthy health & safety procedure have brought about, but I can only assume that people were extremely prone to death before they came along. It’s destined to be mocked by some (me!) and taken very seriously by others. I can only assume that Gareth was the health & safety officer at Wernham Hogg (yes, I had to look up the name of the company...).
Not to be confused with health and/or safety.
Perhaps it’s just from growing up in a litigious society, but healthy & safety to me seems like an elaborate set of rules to keep corporations from being sued. In reality, it’s supposed to be a complex check on what will happen if (and when!) things go horribly wrong.
But what does that even mean? Good question. Here at work we have health & safety officers. I’m pretty sure they’re the last ones to leave the floor in case of a fire, and they probably have some sort of input in the health & safety manual, which tells you all sort of things (I’m just assuming, I haven’t actually looked through any). I imagine it involves advice such how to lift boxes and what types of fire extinguishers to use with different fires.
This is all well and good, perhaps familiar to non-health & safety workplaces. But wait, there’s more. Health & safety becomes particularly annoying when attempting to do out of the classroom university activities. When coming up with our proposal for data collection last year, we had to fill out a health & safety form. This involves a) listing risks we would face, b) formulating the level of possible harm from the risk, c) guessing the likelihood of it happening, d) calculating a death factor (not what it’s actually called), and e) coming up with things you can do to mitigate the risk. So, one could assume that while watching buses in Southampton, getting hit by a bus might be a risk. If this were to happen, you would be seriously harmed (3), but it may not be very likely (1). To minimize risk you might not stand in the street. And this is how it goes.
Now I’m not sure what sort of good lengthy health & safety procedure have brought about, but I can only assume that people were extremely prone to death before they came along. It’s destined to be mocked by some (me!) and taken very seriously by others. I can only assume that Gareth was the health & safety officer at Wernham Hogg (yes, I had to look up the name of the company...).
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
adding a little something....
As Margo has ventured north this afternoon for work and won't get home till later tonight I thought I’d write today’s blog entry!
This has something to do with a change I have noticed with Margo over the last 10 months since we started working after our masters. The topic is water or more exactly flavoured water!
Now when Margo and I first moved to London I can remember her questioning this substance that we put into our water to add taste. It’s often called cordial - I am not sure on its consumption in the States but here its very common. The two main kinds are Ribena (blackcurrant - about 93% of the blackcurrants grown in the UK are for ribena) and Robinsons (comes in a variety of flavours such as apple and blackcurrant, orange, summer fruits etc) there are also other kinds like supermarket own branded versions and Kia etc.
This substance is available at Margo’s work and I guess after 10 months she decided to give it a go - you put 9 parts water to 1 part cordial to make what I would term squash (not the sport). She for about a week after that sent me daily emails on how good it was and even complained when they had run out! Probably because of the increased demand!!!
Now this I only found this interesting because when she first moved over here she was very anti squash but now she even buys it for her pleasure at home!
I do like it though as it changes what is in essence a very boring drink but nevertheless it is a very important drink.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Status of the English Language
There were ‘minor’ delays on the District Line yet again this morning. In all, I had to wait 20 minutes for a train, and it was the 4th one that rolled past and I really only managed to squeeze in due to luck. Don’t get me started on the concept of crush capacity of trains!
Anyways, in that 20 minutes I was standing on a platform standing eerily close to both railroad tracks with the capacity to kill me and a lot of other people rather intent on getting on one of these trains to go to work. To my left was a sharply dressed Eastern European man speaking loudly on his cell phone, seemingly to his mother (he kept saying something that sounded like ‘mama’), and to my right was a couple from who knows where speaking yet another language I was unfamiliar with. Again, with all this time to think on my hands (I’m between books), I started to think about the relative prevalence levels of hearing English spoken in London and Portland/Seattle and I suppose the US in general.
In London, it seems sometimes that most conversations overheard in public are not in English. In the US, a much smaller portion of overheard conversations are in foreign languages, but for some reason this seems to cause a lot of worry amongst people. The only reason that I could think of for this is that while here we have the higher proportion of foreign conversations, they are in a very wide range of languages. In the US you primarily hear people speaking in Spanish. This thus leads to the general conclusion that the US is going to be overtaken by people speaking Spanish and no one will be able to speak English. Which I think is unlikely, but even so, not the end of the world in many respects.
That all being said, I should toss in the disclaimer that people do often complain about the lack of English-language skills amongst immigrants. It’s rather unlikely that you’ll ever have an English waiter or waitress, nor will you be ordering your coffee from a native. People generally complain that all of the builders and plumbers are Polish (Polish beer sales are threw the roof!). However, there are no apocalyptic worries about the demise of the English language in general terms!
Just something to think about, I suppose!
Anyways, in that 20 minutes I was standing on a platform standing eerily close to both railroad tracks with the capacity to kill me and a lot of other people rather intent on getting on one of these trains to go to work. To my left was a sharply dressed Eastern European man speaking loudly on his cell phone, seemingly to his mother (he kept saying something that sounded like ‘mama’), and to my right was a couple from who knows where speaking yet another language I was unfamiliar with. Again, with all this time to think on my hands (I’m between books), I started to think about the relative prevalence levels of hearing English spoken in London and Portland/Seattle and I suppose the US in general.
In London, it seems sometimes that most conversations overheard in public are not in English. In the US, a much smaller portion of overheard conversations are in foreign languages, but for some reason this seems to cause a lot of worry amongst people. The only reason that I could think of for this is that while here we have the higher proportion of foreign conversations, they are in a very wide range of languages. In the US you primarily hear people speaking in Spanish. This thus leads to the general conclusion that the US is going to be overtaken by people speaking Spanish and no one will be able to speak English. Which I think is unlikely, but even so, not the end of the world in many respects.
That all being said, I should toss in the disclaimer that people do often complain about the lack of English-language skills amongst immigrants. It’s rather unlikely that you’ll ever have an English waiter or waitress, nor will you be ordering your coffee from a native. People generally complain that all of the builders and plumbers are Polish (Polish beer sales are threw the roof!). However, there are no apocalyptic worries about the demise of the English language in general terms!
Just something to think about, I suppose!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
