"I was prepared to love you anyway."

A favourite recent quote from V* during a recent conversation wherein she expressed relief that I hadn't developed an affected British accent during my time here. But it's nice to know she woulda loved me anyway. :)

I'm over it.

I'm officially never eating chocolate again.

For the record, British chocolate is good. Really good. But this past weekend was Easter weekend, a.k.a. Four Days of Mandatory Chocolate Ingestion. Let's face it; when you're in a new country there is a temptation to do as the locals do, and the locals do swallow down a massive amount of cocoa and sugar products during this season. I have literally seen Easter eggs the size of human heads disappear rapidly, making all the British comments about the gargantuan sizes of American food portions um, ironic to say the least.

All this to say if I don't see another Cadbury egg or Lindt bunny until...well I guess until next Eater, I mean Easter, I'll be ok.

You haven't seen excitement...

until you've witnessed the hyper reaction of an entire office after the announcement: "Hot cross buns upstairs!"
For you Americans, I'll have to explain hot cross buns later as I'm at work.

Five Words for Britain.

Air conditioning. Look into it.

My New Hero

On a recent plane flight, in the rare few moments when I wasn't gripping the armrests in terror, I managed to start reading Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island, which a friend gave me a few years ago. I'd like to write like him when I grow up, though his hilarious observations about Britain basically render my blog superfluous. OK more superfluous.

If I had a band...

...I'd name it Various Artists.
Think of the repertoire I could claim.

Two recent occurences that prove I'm old.

1. I got seven kids evicted from the movies the other night because they were being rude...this after shhhhh-ing them several times.
2. Yesterday I described a donut from Krispy Kreme as being "too sweet."
Somebody help me.

THE CONGESTION CHARGE SUCKS!

That is all.

The customer is always....angry.

I'm taking a break from my regularly scheduled programming (which in this case is prepping for tomorrow's seminar on The Realm of the Dead in the Old Testament....so yeah, hard to tear myself away from that one) for a good old fashioned gripe session, and to issue an apology.
OK, first the apology. To all those incredibly obsequious, manic salespeople who have bent over backwards (not usually literally) to make sure I "had everything I need" or "was satisfied with my purchase"....you know who you are. Chances are I probably snubbed you or just barely grunted at you when you asked if I'd "found everything OK."
Well what I wouldn't give for a good dose of over-the-top-albeit-usually-insincere freakishly good customer service.
Allow me to briefly share an anecdote. One evening a friend of mine and I went to return something he'd purchased to the (ick) mall. He'd called up the store from whence this item came and asked how late they were open. "6:30" they told him. We arrived at the mall at 6:10, paid a quid to park and rushed inside only to see the store in question closed, metal gate pulled down and everything. We decided to call this store and inquire as to why they were closed when they said they'd be open. The oh-so-charming person who answered the phone and listened to our mystification at arriving at a store that was supposed to be open and wasn't put us on hold for a minute and then came back and said,"Well, nobody here would have told you we were open til 6:30. We close at 6."
My friend: "Yeah, I now understand you close at 6. But I'm not making it up; someone there told me 6:30 or else I wouldn't have driven out here."
Retail Monster: "Well, nobody here would have told you that."
My friend: "Well, seeing as you are there an all, could you lift the gate and take my return."
Retail Monster: "Nope, we're closed."
Note the absence of any "I'm sorry" or offer to compensate for our time, aggravation, or quid for parking. No, just an assumption that a) we had nothing better to do that fight through traffic and peruse an empty mall, b) were idiots who didn't know the difference between6 and 6:30 and c) we'd just take it and live with the idea that the customer in this case is always wrong.
Oh kiss-butt shopgirls of days gone by, where art thou?

I haven't flunked out yet!

Woohoo, just got the old essay results back from the first term. Will not divulge scores here but we can safely say that London will be kickin' my hiney for several more months.

The Metamorphosis

So my parents were just here for a week, so I got to watch them transform from excited tourists into tube zombies in just seven days.

This is fantastic...

Many thanks to C* from school, who sent me the following...

In Dr. Edward Pocoke's translation (Oxford,
1659) of The Nature of the Drink
Kauhi, or Coffee, and the Berry of which
it is Made, Described by an Arabian Phisitian,
we read:

That which makes for its coldnesse is its stipticknesse.
In summer it is by experience found
to conduce to the drying of rheumes, and flegmatick
coughes and distillations, and the opening
of obstructions, and the provocation of urin.
It is now known by the name of Kohwah. When
it is dried and thoroughly boyled, it allayes the
ebullition of the blood, is good against the small
poxe and measles, the bloudy pimples; yet
causeth vertiginous headheach, and maketh lean
much, occasioneth waking, and the Emrods, and
asswageth lust, and sometimes breeds melancholly.

He that would drink it for livelinesse sake,
and to discusse slothfulnesse, and the other
properties that we have mentioned, let him use
much sweat meates with it, and oyle of pistaccioes,
and butter. Some drink it with milk,
but it is an error, and such as may bring in
danger of the leprosy.

New Holiday Experiences

Thanks, London, for the following new holiday things that had heretofore gone un-experienced by me:

1. mince pies...yeah, you can keep those

2. actually seeing people eat and enjoy fruitcake...you know, in the States only people who don't like you very much give you fruitcake for Christmas...and nobody eats it. nobody. it's like a big paperweight that gets moldy.

3. getting kicked out of a church...well, more like standing in line in the freezing cold waiting to get into st. martin-in-the-fields carol service only to be told there's (insert obvious "no room at the inn" joke here). so you can't really get kicked out if you were never allowed in. hmmm wonder if there was a VIP list...

4. a complete, total, utter lack of candy canes...this was a shocker. y'all really should get you some candy canes...they are the business.

5. UK office christmas parties...see previous posts...boy are they a hoot and a half, just like in the movies!
(side note: speaking of movies...if you've never been to London, you may be shocked to learn that all those movies that portray a snow-clad London...are full of poop. it really doesn't snow here. that scene where bridget jones runs through the drifts to meet colin firth in her skivvies...totally false advertising.)

6. christmas crackers and those big balloony things that fly around the room when inflated...very very fun, especially when they land in other people's dinner. in my opinion they should pull those out much more often.

7. no tube service on christmas day...ok, that's just insane. what about all those people rushing off to christmas services they aren't allowed into??? or like, the i don't know, millions of people of other faiths who happen to live here and probably don't celebrate christmas? or what if you have to get to heathrow (that one was for you, DH).

8. boxing day. ok, that's brilliant. another day to recover from the previous day's gluttony and to be gluttonous all over again!?!? sign me up.

Picture Time!

That would be a lovely sunset seen from my school library window...mind you, that's probably at about 4:30 PM...
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That would be Buckingham Palace, Thanksgiving Day.
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"Grad school is hard," said Barbie.

Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the fact is that I'm snowed under with essays (as opposed to actual snow) at the moment so I'm being a somewhat unfaithful blogger.
Right now I'm sitting in the library at school with a few members of the "nerd herd" (MA students). It's close to 8 PM which means it's been dark for about six hours already. :) (Have I mentioned how early the sun sets here?)
Let's see...what can I update my faithful blog-readers (both of you) about?
Attended my first-ever UK office Christmas party with a friend and her boyfriend. Everything you hear about UK office Christmas parties is absolutely true. It was at a Greek restaurant so you know we got to break stuff. :) I leaned over and told my friend S* who is also Jewish, "Now ya see, that's the difference between our culture and theirs...there's no way my mother would ever let me smash perfectly good plates."
Recently got interviewed on BBC Radio, but that's a long story. :)
Saw Kevin Spacey and the Archbishop of Cantebury switch on the Christmas lights down the street from where I work. I tried to convince a co-worker to yell out, "Kaiser Sozey!" while Kevin was speaking, but he wouldn't. Chicken.
Have finally discovered the fantastic Indian food that everyone says is here but which had hitherto gone un-found by me. I was beginning to think it was just a myth, but oh, was I wrong. Speaking of which, you know what's kinda fun? Thinking up names of songs and twisting them with names of Indian dishes, i.e., "Korma Chameleon", "You Can't Curry Love", and well, you get the idea. OK, maybe that's more fun (not to mention more challenging) with a few glasses of wine. :)
OK, back to work for me.

Then again I don't have a clue about boxing day

so why should I expect England to do Thanksgiving right?
But the company was good. :) And all things considered I have much I'm grateful for
...even if there was no stuffing.

Thanksgiving: the Plan

In the absence of time to cook and several necessary ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal, a party of five of us have planned to go out tomorrow night for Thanksgiving. We're going to a restaurant near Buckingham Palace in London that is allegedly putting on a Thanksgivingesque feast for £19.50 a head.
It's important to note that since Thanksgiving isn't just about quality of food but quantity of food, it is of course a buffet.
Then will come the difficult task of finding a pub that's showing the Cowboys game.
Let the gluttony begin.
Will post and update after the event if I'm not still in a turkey-induced stupor.

No kidding

This email was actually circulated around the office where I work, though the names and places have been omitted:

If you left your socks (black) in room 3 please collect them before 12.00noon today when I will bin them. (Its not very pleasant entertaining guests in there with dirty socks sitting on the table!)

Wow.

p's and queues

So here's something that happens most mornings...

I get to the National Rail station, from where a train to central London leaves approximately every 15 minutes. I go to the counter to buy an off-peak travelcard (after 9:30 the price goes down by half and I take the 9:31 train). The teller informs me that the train that was supposed to come at 9:15 is late. I check the clock; it's about 9:25, which would ordinarily give me enough time to buy a ticket and get to the platform HOWEVER, since the 9:15 train still hasn't come, the teller can't sell me an off-peak train ticket, for fear that I might jump on the 9:15 train when it comes at like 9:25, thereby bilking London Transport out of six quid.

So all of us waiting for the 9:31 train and the coinciding cheaper fare, have to queue so that when the 9:15 train finally pulls in and out of the station at about 9:28 or so, we can all rush to the counter to get our off-peak tickets before the next train comes at 9:31.

Ah, efficiency.