Happy New Year, peeps! I hope this email finds you and yours fat, happy and well.
So, uh. Oops. It looks like my irregular dispatches have become more irregular. It's been two haircuts (both for me) since my last dispatch. (Does anyone else measure the passage of time by haircuts?) I really did start this email two other times but both products were boring and uninspired. This one's not much better, but I'm throwing perfection out the window in order to appease our fan masses. Truth be told, so many of you wrote to tell me that you thought my last email was so funny, I've been suffering from Elizabeth Gilbert-style sequel anxiety. Another truth: I'm funnier when I'm angsty. Since things here on the un-frontier have been improving, I'm less angsty and, therefore, not as funny. Lucky for me, not so lucky for your reading pleasure.
Plus we've been busy. Somehow, despite not knowing many people here, we've managed to book ourselves up over the past weeks. On the happy side of this, it means that life in London has been less Wall-E and a little more Weekend at Bernie's (minus the amazingly portable dead guy). We've had a steady stream of visitors and work, as always, has kept me busy.
I squeezed in a couple of business trips to Paris and Peter tagged along. He actually took three trips, taking full advantage of his unemployed freedom. And we just got back from Shanghai to visit my mom for the holidays. That place is crazy for so many reasons: growth, pollution, cost (or lack of, from a Western point of view), intersection of controlled capitalism and communism.
We've also had a steady stream of visitors: PK's family, my friend Halee and then Jon/Anna/Lilli. The Kappi came from Michigan for Thanksgiving, and PK's mom made us a full Thanksgiving dinner, which we shared with a couple of my American coworkers. It was a delicious and fun little dinner party, and we were so glad to have the company. My friend, Halee, who moved to Helsinki in October to work on the same account as I do, came to London for a week of business meetings in December and then stayed on for a couple more days to be a tourist. So I celebrated my birthday with Halee, PK and a couple of new friends at our local pub (one of whom is a German-Chilean grad student gal l I picked up at a restaurant in Covent Garden). Nice and low key by American standards, though we managed to attract attention by playing British drinking games like The Minister's Cat and something else that didn't have a name but similarly involved being clever with words (particularly celebrity names).
Since a play-by-play of the last three months would be overkill, here's a summary of how we're doing in terms of adjusting to life in London.
Some things we've adjusted to but still confound us
* The showers - Why are English (or European, for that matter) showers only partially enclosed? And by partially, I mean there is a stupid little glass wall that runs along only 1/4 of the long, exposed side of your tub. Visualize this as if you're standing in the shower and you will understand why I have never studied in such great detail the grout (off white) in my shower or the placement of the fixtures (almost perfectly centered) as I have while living in London.
* English plumbing, in general - We had sensitive eco-friendly toilets at our home in Seattle that sometimes needed to be flushed multiple times. But the toilet in our flat is neither sensitive nor eco-friendly. It's just plain dumb and never seems to flush properly. As such, we've devised a nifty unspoken signal that the toilet might need another flush. We leave the lid closed and if there's a little metal Nordstrom shoe horn on it, then flush before opening. Future visitors, you've been forewarned.
* The British greeting "You alright?" - Instead of saying Hi, how are you?, the typical greeting is You alright? or You alright then? which, to my American ears, suggests that we've either had a previous conversation about my not-alright state or something unsaid had to have just happened to suggest that I am not alright, like tripping on my shoelaces, getting tangled in my iPod wires or nearly getting smashed by the elevator doors. It took me several weeks to figure out that I do not necessarily look befuddled, overwhelmed or pitiful every morning as I walk into work and that this is the native way of greeting you. Or maybe I do look this way but the locals are politely ignoring this by asking me if I'm alright because not asking me would be indirectly acknowledging that I am not looking alright. I'll go into the layers of British style communication some other time. I'm still too confused by it to even explain to you how I am confused.
* Speaking of getting smashed by elevators - Elevators here are aggro in a steroid-rage-meets-British-understatement kind of way. You would never, ever stick your arm or leg into closing elevator doors here because you won't get them back. The only non-aggro ones I've come across are the ones in the tubes. But they come with an annoying constant narration of the elevator's next activity and how not to be rude to the elevator: "Doors closing. Please do not obstruct the doors."
* Talking elevators - Their narratives are a lot like the Tower Bridge tweets. "Doors opening." "Doors closing." "Lift going up." And they're as constant as they are unhelpful, though I do enjoy their fabricated British accents (would be even better if they were made to sound like Madonna!). BTW, if you want a funny tweep to follow, check out ImLondonBridge, which was set up in response to Tower Bridge's super boring and repetitive tweets.
* Half-assed adoption of the metric system - Some things come in ounces. Others come in kilograms. Since I'm losing my memory about ounces and haven't the foggiest about kilograms, I'm thinking about carrying a stupid cheat sheet, like one of those tip calculators (which are by far stupider). On the upside, I have no idea how much I weigh because they measure that in stones (So medieval!).
* Prices - OK, this is only half true. The trick is to not convert everything from pounds to USD and just compare pound for pound (HA HA ha...aaa...ahem). We were just ceasing the constant currency conversions on everything, as recommended by our fellow Seattle expat friends Jim and Kim, which resulted in less daily shock for us. Then we went to Shanghai for Christmas and New Year's to see my mom. Naturally, we did 3-way conversions from RMB to USD to pounds. It was exhilarating to calculate how much we were saving by traveling to China and then depressing to be reminded what our USD gets us in the US versus its pound equivalent in the UK. And then it was made worse by actually returning to the UK and going back to paying British prices. Oh, those damn Chinese and their cheap ass stuff!
* Snow - It's been snowing for pretty much the last month. Not normal for the UK, but we're enjoying it. We had a white Christmas and that was lovely to wake up to. Right now everything is snow-covered thanks to a big dump we got earlier this week. Unfortunately, the sidewalks and a lot of roads are sheer ice as result as well.
* Our flat! In London! - I know that seems like an odd thing to list, but really! We've begun to feel *at home* in our flat and the constant comparisons to what we left behind are so 2009.
* The oven in our flat - Another odd thing, but I've become accustomed to its less than accurate temperatures coupled with the fact that I'm never really sure if I converted Fahrenheit top Celsius correctly. And the size! It's about as big as an Easy-Bake oven. Every oven-made meal is a haphazard experiment. Don't worry, if it goes wrong, our local pub is literally 3 doors down. But we should probably buy a fire extinguisher.
* Limescale in the water - I have never, ever had a problem with drinking tap water in the US (my water palate just isn't that refined). Likewise, I had no problem with the taste of the tap water here. But the limescale leaves nasty tea stains in your mugs, so we bought a Brita pitcher...and now the water tastes funny to me.
* An abundance of free entertainment every time we turn around - London makes up for its high cost of living:lower quality of life by providing a wealth of interesting stuff to do for free. There's plenty of interesting stuff that'll cost you, but the city is so dense and so varied that there's never a lack of free, entertaining things. But one of the things I love to do on weekends is go to the movies. The regular-ass movie theater. Go figure.
Some things we haven't gotten used to and stubbornly vow not to
* Crunchy, air-dried towels - As long as we're living around the corner from a launderette we will be a crunchy towel-free zone. We tried it once and it was harsher than a chemical peel followed by sandblasting. Bad news bears.
* The aforementioned showers and plumbing - Yes, we know how to manage. No, we will never stop grousing about them.
* The food - It is as bad as they say it is. You can find pockets of good food if you look hard, but we were spoiled to be living in Seattle where there's an abundance of good eateries and access to good ingredients.
* There are probably more things, but I can't remember any of them right now.
Some things we'll do differently in the future
* More Skype and phone calls with friends back home! BTW, you can initiate these, too. *cough, cough*
* We'll get a Christmas tree, no matter how small, to make it feel more holiday-like
* Buy some household items that we were holding off on because we were thinking of our situation as temporary. This doesn't mean we've decided to stay indefinitely, but we have decided to actually LIVE here while we're living here. So we'll be purchasing some small kitchen appliances (didn't bring any of ours because of the different plugs/voltages) and furnishings to make our flat more home-y.
* More travel! I'll be headed to Paris every month for work so we've got plans to explore more of the outlying areas of Paris in the spring. We'll also be taking advantage of the cheapie airlines and heading off on long weekend trips. Some priority trips for 2009: some place sunny and warmer for PK's birthday, Helsinki to visit Halee in her winter wonderland, and trips to visit friends living in Norway, Germany and Sweden.
Notice that I didn't mention anything about more regular, less irregular dispatches.
We're getting more settled, and it feels good. Peter registered with our local GP (general practitioner - you go to a doctor based on where you live or work), though he has to provide a urine sample (not sure what that's all about). Looks like I'll be registering soon, too, because I keep having allergic reactions to something I'm eating and we need to figure out what it is (please don't let it be corn). I found a pudgy, semi-Goth, gay Aussie man to cut my hair.
BTW, I'll be posting these dispatches to my mostly-neglected and quite-lame blog. I might even try to post shorter dispatches there more regularly. Emphasis on might. You'll just have to check and see.
Cheers,
Leslie
P.S. If you have not received previous dispatches, it's not because you were excluded. It's because I'm not organized enough to create a distribution list. Likewise, if you do not receive future dispatches. **PANTIMUS, UNBUNCHITUS!** (said Harry Potter spell-casting style)
P.P.S. My first hair cut I liked. My second, which I just got this week, not so much. I'd post a picture but that would be 1) vain and 2) you wouldn't know the difference because you haven't seen me in at least 4 (going on 5!) months. Cray-zay how time is flying by.
No comments:
Post a Comment