(Please see the message "First Five Weeks - Part I" for the first half of this topic.)
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Feb 5:
First some old business from the last group update:
- The oven has been fixed. All it took was a soldering iron -- but that's way later in the story. About three weeks ago, I was redeemed when the handyman at the rental office came by the apartment to show me how the heating system worked and spent the last twenty minutes of his thirty minute visit on the kitchen floor, manual on his lap, and head a third of the way into the oven ... sound familiar? Last week, I took a half day off of work, and the electrician came by. For about a half hour, I heard him muttering "sh*t" and throwing metal against metal. However, the end result was that we can now bake.
* When I first moved to DC, a friend clued me in the nicknames for the different Safeways around town. The one that was most amusing to me was the one dubbed the "Soviet Safeway" -- not named this because of the population that shopped there, but rather because of the fact there was never anything on the shelves. When I got here, New Year's weekend, the supermarkets were very bare -- but I chalked that up to the fact that it was a long weekend ... and sure enough, came Monday evening, all the shelves were back to their full splendor. Fast-forward to today. We are trying to buy a TV. Any 25+ inch would do -- with a major brand name. Well, let's just say, that no one will take our money. Sure, we can buy TV's that have the brand "Bush" or "Thomson" or "Beko" ... but the minute that we point to any of the Philips, Panasonic, or Toshibas on display, the response is "Oh, yeah, we are out of those." My favorite reply today was, "Well, we can sell you that one, but it won't come in a box, nor can we give you the manual. We can give you bubble wrap, though." Very 'quaint', as I have been taught to say ... -- read on below.
* One of the guys in the office is an American who has been in Europe for a year or two. He has given me pointers on adjusting to British life, as well as words to use and their 'proper' pronunciation, clothes to not wear (solid colors are good, nothing flashy), etc. One of the things that has truly helped me, though, however, is a word choice trick that he taught me. Whenever I see something that I should consider dumb, archaic, or backwards, I should just term it "quaint." As in, "Oh, you mean that I want to buy a car so I don't have to spend fifteen pounds (USD$27) a day on a rental car and it won't be here for a month? Oh, how quaint." It normally works better if I am biting my lower lip and a little blood is coming down my cheek.
* Tony Blair is having a real rough month. First, he has some domestic problems with university students, as he is submitting a proposal that calls for students to pay a greater share of their education. Then, there is the issue with Bush hanging him out to dry, with all of the talk about the Brits providing faulty intelligence to the U.S. But, with all of this going on, he still has time to host a mid-morning call-in show on the local London radio station. I don't think it's a weekly thing, but one day, I turned on the radio, and here is a conversation going on on the radio between a voice on the phone and what sounds to be Tony Blair. It took me about two minutes to confirm this, and then I was captivated for thirty or so minutes. No moderator, just PM Blair and the callers. And the people that would call in would start their calls with, "Hi, Tony, this is .." 'Tony?' And, if he couldn't answer something, he would say, "Let me take your email, and I will answer you sometime this week." WHA?
It was so campy ...
* Set of signs at restrooms in a downtown London pub: in front of the women's bathroom door: "Ballerinas", in front of the men's: "Builders". Yep, political correctness is pretty much dead in the UK.
* Now the interactive part of the update. Guess how much it costs me to fill up my 11 gallon gas tank? a. USD$30; b. USD$43; c. USD$ 57. The correct answer: C, as in "Crying every time I fill up."
