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03
Sunday,
April 22, 2001
 Outside
of a $75 cab ride from the airport, things have been going pretty
good. The apartment is very nice and is just down the street
from the company. The flat is on the fourth floor and is fully
furnished, with a skyline view, hardwood floors and front desk
security. I'm only a block away from a sushi restaurant called
Yo!Sushi, a market and the tube station.
There are six other American Flutter.com people who are staying
in the same building so I have already made some new friends.
I went out with them to an Indian restaurant (I was having
flashbacks the whole time of barfing right at the table, but
I made it through without any problems). The next morning
my roommate Jeff and I went down the street to see part of
the London Marathon. There were lots of people and everyone
was getting into the spirit of it cheering on the runners.
I then spent the rest of the day taking care of business and
got the necessary stuff to make my computer UK compatible
as well as I got a mobile phone- and of all the places, at
the Virgin Megastore. So I have a Virgin Phone never used!
I included a video of me but there isn't any sound cuz I didn't
bring my monitor which has the microphone built in (It was
too big to fit in my box that I brought with me on the plane).
The video shows the room so you have a little better idea
where I'm staying. I miss you all terribly and will let you
know how my first day goes.
Wednesday,
April 25, 2001
Well I like my job so far and all is going pretty well.
There is a pub on every corner and always is named using any
combination of nouns. For example "the cock & bull", "the
slug and lettuce" (not making it up), or "the Boar Head". There
apparently is no such thing as a restaurant without a full bar
attached. Which would explain why people drink all the time,
including at business lunches, breakfast snacks, and with every
conclusion of every day.
Another weird thing is the odd pronunciations of or spellings
of normal stuff like "tyres" (as in brakes and), or saying "shedshewel"
for schedule. I have to ask repeat themselves for three or four
tries sometimes to understand what they are saying. Another
is the incredible word "cheers". It's equivalent to Shalom for
the most part because they say it for thank you, greetings,
regards, goodbye, much appreciated, to toast, and sometimes
you can even use it to replace the word, yes.
The worst is definitely their attempt at mimicking American
food. I went to a market where they had a big sign that said
"Real American Biscuits" (meaning cookies) and it tasted like
sugar dough. A friend at work ordered a burrito from "the El
Paso Tex-Mexican Pub and Restaurant" (word for word) and got
a burrito that was stewed chicken wrapped in a tortilla topped
with tomato paste and served with Hormel chilli and Asian white
rice with sour cream on the side. I couldn't stop laughing and
felt like an obnoxious American but I just couldn't help it.
I have much to learn, including always looking down when walking
because I almost stepped in poop like five times so far.
Tuesday,
May 2, 2001
Work by the way, is going great. I spent about an hour each
with a dozen or so different people within the company to learn
more about the dynamics. From that, I presented a list of objectives
to my boss and she agreed to all of them and is giving her support
for them. The people that work for me are great and I made some
points with them today by going shopping and adding a little
flair to our office area. I have been so busy with work that
it really hasn't hit me yet how far away I am.
Saturday,
May 8, 2001
I'm settled back into my flat. The flight was good and I got
a decent amount of sleep thankfully. It's now going on 6 months
that I have been living out of a suitcase and cannot wait to
have my own place again!
The last hoorah in the US was lots of fun. I got to see a whole
day's worth of NBA games, the Magic Castle, Disneyland, Leyhsa,
and of course the family! It was so great seeing everyone and
it certainly made it easier this time going away because at
least now I know what lies ahead. It was pretty scary coming
over here last time without any idea what the job would be like,
the people, whether I would like London, if I could find my
way around, and with nobody I knew to help out.
So I attached some pictures that I took on the new digital camera
for you guys to check out. They came out great!
Saturday
May 12, 2001
 Things
have been moving along nicely here in the UK. I've been keeping
busy and seeing lots of the city. We had an actual, real, warm
and sunny day and it was like a national holiday. Every person
in London goes out. The pub goers emptied out onto the street
in front so you will see fifty or sixty people carrying
on on the sidewalks. At first I thought something was wrong
like a fire or a fight or something until I realized that all
the pubs were like that. They all stand outside the pubs with
the actual pub having maybe one or two people in them. The parks
are full of people in lounge chairs laying about. The people
everywhere are all excited and gitty talking about the wonderful
weather. It's a completely different city when it's sunny. It
was warm but overcast today, so everyone retreated back to wherever
they came from.
I stayed up all night to watch an NBA game at an American Bar.
It was really loud and they were playing obnoxious music, plus
they make you pay a cover to get in but is was worth it to see
the game. It was pretty funny because everyone was cheering
for both sides so it wasn't even if they came to cheer on a
particular home team because they were so damn excited just
to see an American sport. The best part of the game was during
the commercial breaks. The station was coming in from a satellite
feed from Lebanon so all of the commercials were in Farcee with
guys in tunics and stuff. It was really funny.
 Yesterday
I went to Brighton Beach with a friend of mine. It's small coastal
town with lots of shops, restaurants and a pier with carnival
rides. The weather was beautiful and it made a great day to
go to the beach. We went out onto one of the break waters and
saw a bunch of kids diving. The weird part was that they were
all wearing their shoes as they jumped in. It wasn't until later
that day when I went onto the beach itself did I realize the
whole coast is nothing but half-dollar sized pebbles. It looked
so strange to see people laying on it. We hung out and went
on the go carts and a roller coaster. The roller coaster wasn't
any kiddie thing either. It went around 70 miles per hour and
had a loop. Roller coasters normally don't scare me anymore
but this one was all rusty and creaky so I was very nervous
on it.
See
Brighton Pictures
PS: More Pub Names:
Pun & Hand
The Bung Hole
The Square Pig
Friday,
May 25, 2001
It's been a while since I've had a moment to write because we
are spending quite a bit of time at work strategising how to
implement the changes we want to do in the timeframe we want
to do them in. The people are great and we are making some good
progress though I have to admit that the hard stuff of actually
building it hasn't begun yet.
I went to see a movie and learned a few lessons to pass on:
Don't buy tickets at the theater. They do the stupidest thing
by letting people select there seats for the bigger screens
making a line of five people take a half hour! I now know to
only order them over the phone and pick them up at an automated
kiosk.
 I
went to my first British Football match with my company and
it was a lot of fun. It was like being at a very big dinner
table with everyone getting a joke but me. I just couldn't get
was so exciting about seeing people kicking a ball back and
forth for an hour with the score 0-0. Then all of a sudden everybody
just starts chanting all these different songs. And they
also don't play any music or make any announcements over the
loudspeakers so everything is impromptu. One sounded like the
nursery rhyme "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands"
and another was chanting semen several times. The semen part
turned out to be the home team's goalie, Seaman, which was a
big relief. They certainly don't take advantage of the captive
audiences at games because they don't have anyone selling things
in the bleachers and they only have 2 food stands. The home
team, Arsenal, ended up losing to Barcelona 2-0.
 I
keep getting teased for how I pronounce things so I'm trying
to get better. Glasgow is "glauzgo", Leicester is "Lester" and
the letter is Z is "zed". I took a few pictures for you to see
what it was like at the game. We had great seats about four
rows back. I also took a couple pictures of this cool
16th century gate that I walk under every day to get to
work. The strangest thing is that it's attached to a cheesy
70's style office building on one side of it. That's it for
now, I'm off to a picnic and fireworks show. I also included
a picture of people drinking out in front of a pub.
So, new pub name findings:
The Rat and Parrot
The Good Samaritan
Star and Garter
Grave Maurice
Monday, May 28, 2001
I just finished my work day and had another marathon of meetings.
The people are just smashing (uk term; watch Austin
Powers to catch up ) I had a great weekend. On Saturday,
a bunch of us got tickets to a gothic vaudeville evil-dead kind
of opera / play that was a spoof on old children's cautionary
tales called Shockheaded
Peter. They depicted these freakish stories where children
died from doing bad things like playing outdoors in bad weather
and being whisked away or playing with matches and nothing being
left of them but ashes in boots. It had these wild sets clever
puppetry and freaky makeup. We then got free tickets to a club
which I have heard is the biggest one in all of London called
Fabric.
It was three floors and two rooms. After being in L.A. and seeing
that scene the people and the attire at Fabric were very low-key
and nothing at all nearing bizarre. The DJs though were awesome.
The music was like this pulsing crazy chamber of horrors meets
ABBA kind of thing. It was great! And no- I didn't get into
any trouble.
More UK weirdness: Restaurant culture: It is not a meal unless
it is accompanied by alcohol or the waiter will look at you
weird like you asked spit on him or something. You can get hot
tea at every establishment, McDonald's inclusive. You will long
since have achieved death from old age before receiving the
check unless you specifically ask for the "bill".
In my wonderings on Sunday, I went to the British
National Gallery and saw some great stuff. They had many
of the more famous pieces that Leyhsa and I learned about in
our Art History class from the likes of Michelangelo, Davinci,
Titian, Monet, etc. including one of my favourite (UK spelling)
colourful (another) works by Van Eyck depicting a newly
wed couple because it is so surreal without attempting to
be you might make out a mirror behind them that is a reflection
of someone coming into the room). When I was leaving I went
out the back side and saw that they had closed off the main
square and had a stage set up. I asked the guard and he said
that there was a concert to be held that night to celebrate
the 7th anniversary of South Africa's democracy. Once he said
that R.E.M.
was playing as the finale, I was sold. So I called up my roommate
and he met me at the square and we bought some tix from a scalper.
Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair actually spoke at it which was
incredible. There were about 20,000 people packed at this square
which is overlooked by the Canadian and S. African Embassies
to commemorate where the protests against apartheid began 20
years ago. R.E.M. by the way was just incredible with everybody
jumping up and down singing (http://europe.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/UK/04/29/mandela.concert/index.html).
Needless to say it was a full weekend and I had a great time.
I
also added below some more pubs on my Great UK Multiple Noun
Search:
The Hoop and Grape
The Hound & Duck
The Hand & Racquet
The Bear and Staff
Please fill me in about this very bisarre (UK spelling, caught
ya) occurrence.
Tuesday,
June 5, 2001
Well
I know where I want to live. It's this very exclusive area just
outside Central London called Hampstead. The rent is a little
bit less and the sizes of the places are little bit bigger.
It has these charming shops and restaurants that surround it
and a huge beautiful park in the center of it called Hampstead
Heath. There are mansions and big houses in the area and I heard
that this is where Madonna lives. I spent the afternoon in the
park after I finished looking at places and I took some pictures
so you could see what it's like. I took pictures of it for you
to take a look; it really is an amazing and tranquil place.
I plan on looking at more but so far, there are two that look
very interesting. One is a stone's throw from the park and it
has a balcony view of the city. It has all modern amenities
(which is a big deal in this city) and super clean. It's open
and has lots of windows and roomy though not big. The drawbacks
are that the front is kind of an eyesore compared to the neighborhood
places around it because it's this odd brick seventies style
thing and the other is that it is a hundred feet or so above
train tracks. A train went by while I was there and I could
barely hear it but I was told that the occasional freight train
is much noisier.
The
other one was this turn of the century Georgian style a half
mile or so from the park. It had really tall ceilings and
a neat Victorian styling to it. The second bedroom was more
of a glorified walk-in closet but the other bedroom was pretty
big and it had a renovated and re-tiled kitchen and bathroom.
The big plus to this place is the 2 and a half acre shared
garden that's behind the house.
Wednesday,
June 6, 2001
I
set an alarm for 2 in the morning to listen to the NBA Finals
game over the internet and stayed up until 5am just to go through
the pains of Kobe not coming through. What a pisser! (UK term)
That overtime sounded like they gave the game away. I wish I
could have seen it. This country could care less about basketball.
You ask them if they know Jordan and they say, "isn't he that
American in that cartoon movie?" All they talk about is freaking
soccer- a game with an average score of 0-0! Nobody will score
a single point for 3 hours and they are all excited. It's just
wrong.
Wednesday,
June 13, 2001
I am very sorry to not write lately or respond to your e-mails,
I have been extremely busy of late. I have been trying to obtain
a flat (more of that in a moment) and get a prototype ready
to be reviewed at work. Thank you all for your votes on the
place to get, and just like in the 2001 election, they ended
up meaning nothing. There was a strong majority of votes for
the Victorian and I called them up to take it, and sure enough,
it was already claimed by someone else.
To go off on a tangent here, I need to explain exactly how the
British way of renting works. In two words- it sucks. There
are approximately 11,000 flats available to rent at any given
time within London. 98% of those are controlled by something
equivalent to our used car salesmen called 'estate agents'.
Most owners will have three or so of them working at a time
on trying to rent a flat. They are very rude, do not return
phone calls, give bad instructions, are usually late to appointments
and worst of all, you have to pay for them. Yes, pay. They get
a finders fee that the renter pays for as well as a 5% to 15%
of the monthly rent. To give you an idea how evil these thieves
really are, I looked at a place with one agent and I told him
I wanted it and he said that it was going for 350 pounds a week.
A
tangent within a tangent: places are never listed for their
monthly rent and are rather listed in a weekly price though
you pay monthly. So I tell him that my max was 325 and he
tells me how that the owner would take £330. Ofcourse, it
ended up being taken by the time I got my bid in. So the next
day I met with a different 'estate agent' who tells me about
a place that the owner is asking for at £325. Low and behold,
it's the same place! So the first guy was trying to pocket
an extra £115 a month off of me! The best part of this is
that places rent within hours (seriously) of them going on
the market. Needless to say, it made finding a place very
difficult with an 8 hour time delay to have Leyhsa review
the flats that I found. So I went and got a different flat
that was in the spirit of the Victorian (pictures attached).
It's a mansion conversion with wood floors, a balcony, high
ceilings and lots of windows. It's in a less ritzy of a block,
but it has more conveniences near it and it's bigger. See
the pics
 So
I moved in Tuesday and Leyhsa arrived the next day. She originally
didn't like the place from the pictures but now she likes
it very much. It was great to be reunited again and its like
no time has passed since we last saw each other 2 months ago.
The presentation by the way, went extremely well and I made
several points within the company. So all is well in Brittville.
So
before I go I have only one more pub to add to my search.
This is only because I neglected to write any others down
and not because they are in short supply: The Fiddler's Elbow.
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