Longer pub hours go into effect tonight!!! Hurrah! I'll be out after work having a sneaky pint (as they say here) to celebrate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4461888.stm
Also, Tristan sent me a new (or new to me) web site that searches lots of airlines. Haven't looked at it much, but seems pretty good from what I can tell. Add it to your list!
https://www.air-gorilla.com
Cheers!
Dan
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Bizzaro Skiing
This weekend I had the pleasure of heading down to Esher (pronounced E-sher) and paying £10 to go "dry skiing." This unbelievably bizarre experience lead to many bruises, but was actually pretty entertaining. A good thing to do to get back into the game or to get started for cheap though.
Basically, dry skiing involves a small hill, a huge pipe-cleaner like mesh, a bunch of dumb Brits, and one dumb American. I was originally told we were going to the indoor slope with real snow, but that costs a lot more and I lost the vote. So there we were, going down on real skis and trying to turn on this crazy mesh thing. I fell a lot! So my knee did ok, but now my hip hurts. Quite an experience.
Here's a zoom in of what the floor looked like:
It was pretty hard! Reminds me of skiing on ice back home. :-)
Here's my flatmat Natalie on her first run. She was pretty good at the snowplow by the end of the day.
Here's the rest of the pics:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZMnLlm1atGRZ¬ag=1
Anyway, we had a good time and I feel better about my trip to Austria next week. I imagine I'll get some better pictures there.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I've been trying not to think about the fact that it is actually tomorrow because I'm having a few friends over on Saturday and trying to cook. Everyone will be bringing wine, so even if the food is bad we will have something nice to wash it down. And Tristan will be here! Nice to have a fellow expat to share missing Thanksgiving with.
Ok, I hope all you Americans eat a lot and have a great time this week. Fall asleep in front of a football game for me.
Cheers,
Dan
Basically, dry skiing involves a small hill, a huge pipe-cleaner like mesh, a bunch of dumb Brits, and one dumb American. I was originally told we were going to the indoor slope with real snow, but that costs a lot more and I lost the vote. So there we were, going down on real skis and trying to turn on this crazy mesh thing. I fell a lot! So my knee did ok, but now my hip hurts. Quite an experience.
Here's a zoom in of what the floor looked like:
It was pretty hard! Reminds me of skiing on ice back home. :-)
Here's my flatmat Natalie on her first run. She was pretty good at the snowplow by the end of the day.
Here's the rest of the pics:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZMnLlm1atGRZ¬ag=1
Anyway, we had a good time and I feel better about my trip to Austria next week. I imagine I'll get some better pictures there.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I've been trying not to think about the fact that it is actually tomorrow because I'm having a few friends over on Saturday and trying to cook. Everyone will be bringing wine, so even if the food is bad we will have something nice to wash it down. And Tristan will be here! Nice to have a fellow expat to share missing Thanksgiving with.
Ok, I hope all you Americans eat a lot and have a great time this week. Fall asleep in front of a football game for me.
Cheers,
Dan
Friday, November 18, 2005
Candy Confusion
This week my lovely Mother mailed me a care package and, amongst other things, it contained some of the leftover Halloween candy. Being the generous guy that I am, I decided to bring a lot of it in to share with my colleagues. They, of course, appreciated it greatly. However, an unexpected piece of British trivia came out of all this.
It turns out that in the UK there are a lot of the same chocolate bar names that we know, but what the bar actually contains is all switched around. We had a nice time picking through each type and figuring out what's what. Here's the list we've determined so far:
American --> British
Three Musketeers --> Milky Way
Milky Way --> Mars Bar
Mars Bar --> Topic
M&Ms --> Treets (now also M&Ms though)
Snickers --> Snickers (they aren't all different!)
There are also a few more generic terms which I thought were interesting:
candy --> sweets
chocolate chips --> chocolate drops
cotton candy --> candy floss
There are a load of other foods called different and amusing names that perhaps I'll go through some other time.
Cheers!
Dan
It turns out that in the UK there are a lot of the same chocolate bar names that we know, but what the bar actually contains is all switched around. We had a nice time picking through each type and figuring out what's what. Here's the list we've determined so far:
American --> British
Three Musketeers --> Milky Way
Milky Way --> Mars Bar
Mars Bar --> Topic
M&Ms --> Treets (now also M&Ms though)
Snickers --> Snickers (they aren't all different!)
There are also a few more generic terms which I thought were interesting:
candy --> sweets
chocolate chips --> chocolate drops
cotton candy --> candy floss
There are a load of other foods called different and amusing names that perhaps I'll go through some other time.
Cheers!
Dan
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Reverse Culture Shock?
As you know, I was home a few weeks ago. The truth is my biggest concern was reverse culture shock (seems it should have been the flight home). Anyway, you may be thinking, "you idiot....that only happens when you go to Africa and live with no indoor plumbing." But the "culture training" I took when I first moved here told me that it can be serious stuff. They had me all worried that when I returned tight roll jeans would be back in fashion and everyone would laugh at me because I still wore mine normally.
Fortunately (obviously), it wasn't that bad. I did find that I had a hard time figuring out the right balance of talking normal (gossip) and about talking about my experiences in London and throughout Europe. For example, I quickly found that explaining my struggle to figure out what is REALLY in American cheese caused a my friend's eyes to glaze over as if I was talking about computer science. This was at one point very important to me because I had to figure out what kind of cheese to buy instead of American. But clearly it isn't important to anyone else.
And that's the point. Most of my days are spent in a city very similar to NYC doing a job extremely similar to my old job, but the small differences had nearly consumed my life. I was just starting to get over my obsession with these differences when I flew back to the States and noticed these things all over again.
People were walking on the right instead of the left. There were 25 cent coins. It sounded stupid if I said "cheers" when someone held the door for me. I had to tip bartenders again, but couldn't remember if I'm supposed to tip a private bus driver (I didn't).
Clearly none of these things are as bad as when my friend Rob came back from Afghanistan and marveled at the efficiency of trains and the informed conversations people were having about politics.
However, on the other side was the fact that I could hang out with people who actually knew me and that I was truly comfortable with. One of my other worries was that I would be back with my real friends and family and not want to leave again. This also turned out to not be as bad as I feared, though there are definitely days when I wish I could just call up a few of my friends and meet up somewhere to chat about old times.
I will be seeing everyone soon though. Tristan is coming to London for Thanksgiving weekend to enjoy my delicious cooking. I'll be back home in Dec for 3 weeks over Christmas/New Years. Tom is coming skiing with me and friends in France in late January. And I think my brothers are visiting in Feb! Phew!
Anyway, just something I've been thinking about since my trip. I'm still nervous that when I move back to the US I'll have all kinds of culture shock issues, but nothing that a few glasses of wine won't sort out.
Cheers,
Dan
Fortunately (obviously), it wasn't that bad. I did find that I had a hard time figuring out the right balance of talking normal (gossip) and about talking about my experiences in London and throughout Europe. For example, I quickly found that explaining my struggle to figure out what is REALLY in American cheese caused a my friend's eyes to glaze over as if I was talking about computer science. This was at one point very important to me because I had to figure out what kind of cheese to buy instead of American. But clearly it isn't important to anyone else.
And that's the point. Most of my days are spent in a city very similar to NYC doing a job extremely similar to my old job, but the small differences had nearly consumed my life. I was just starting to get over my obsession with these differences when I flew back to the States and noticed these things all over again.
People were walking on the right instead of the left. There were 25 cent coins. It sounded stupid if I said "cheers" when someone held the door for me. I had to tip bartenders again, but couldn't remember if I'm supposed to tip a private bus driver (I didn't).
Clearly none of these things are as bad as when my friend Rob came back from Afghanistan and marveled at the efficiency of trains and the informed conversations people were having about politics.
However, on the other side was the fact that I could hang out with people who actually knew me and that I was truly comfortable with. One of my other worries was that I would be back with my real friends and family and not want to leave again. This also turned out to not be as bad as I feared, though there are definitely days when I wish I could just call up a few of my friends and meet up somewhere to chat about old times.
I will be seeing everyone soon though. Tristan is coming to London for Thanksgiving weekend to enjoy my delicious cooking. I'll be back home in Dec for 3 weeks over Christmas/New Years. Tom is coming skiing with me and friends in France in late January. And I think my brothers are visiting in Feb! Phew!
Anyway, just something I've been thinking about since my trip. I'm still nervous that when I move back to the US I'll have all kinds of culture shock issues, but nothing that a few glasses of wine won't sort out.
Cheers,
Dan
Monday, November 07, 2005
Guy Fawkes Night
Hi there,
This weekend I went with some friends to a huge fireworks display at Clapham Common near my neighborhood for some crazy thing called Guy Fawkes Night. I forgot my camera (again!), so was looking around online for some pics that might make this more interesting and I came across something very disturbing. Some Aussie dude (Darren) is living my life. Only it was 1 year ago. He writes this blog called "In the UK" and went to Clapham Common last year for the same night and totally wrote a summary about it! Freaky! And he even has good pictures! I think my title is better than his though.
Anyway, in the spirit of blog-niceness (and laziness), I decided to simply pass you on to Darren to explain my weekend. Please read it because he hits all the points I was going to write and has a few good links there too. Arg!
http://darrenking.com/uk/archives/000240.html
Cheers!
Dan
This weekend I went with some friends to a huge fireworks display at Clapham Common near my neighborhood for some crazy thing called Guy Fawkes Night. I forgot my camera (again!), so was looking around online for some pics that might make this more interesting and I came across something very disturbing. Some Aussie dude (Darren) is living my life. Only it was 1 year ago. He writes this blog called "In the UK" and went to Clapham Common last year for the same night and totally wrote a summary about it! Freaky! And he even has good pictures! I think my title is better than his though.
Anyway, in the spirit of blog-niceness (and laziness), I decided to simply pass you on to Darren to explain my weekend. Please read it because he hits all the points I was going to write and has a few good links there too. Arg!
http://darrenking.com/uk/archives/000240.html
Cheers!
Dan
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