almost witty

Random anecdotes and a little thought

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Only in America…

Mar 2

Posted in Current Affairs

would they want to charge overseas tourists $10 to register for the privilege of visiting America. So they can fund a travel tourism promotion group aimed at … getting overseas tourists to come to America. And explain to tourists why they have to be fingerprinted and give away lots of their personal details.

Nothing like being scanned for fingerprints and asked if I was involved in a Canadian drink-driving incident in 1994 to make one feel welcome when entering the land of liberty and freedom. Looks like I’ll have to pay an extra $10 for the privilege soon…

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Eating in America…

Apr 16

Posted in Funny, Life, Weird, adayinthelife

I’ve been in Ohio for ten days now, give or take, and aside from the aforementioned so-called Asian doughnuts, I have been introduced to such culinary delights as:

- country fried steak for breakfast. This would be a pork steak covered in breadcrumbs, and then deep-fried – for breakfast. Even the Scottish with their deep-fried Mars bars wouldn’t cover it in breadcrumbs first. In the interests of research, I had to try this as part of a three-plate breakfast buffet.

Of course, if only I hadn’t then had to go on a Easter egg hunt looking for candy-filled Easter eggs for kids (with a side-trip to Arbys for a roast beef sandwich and a malted milkshake), and then onto a sumptuous evening dinner with some wonderful potato concoction that turned out to be twice-baked potato or something…

- In the UK, it’s called a Welsh rarebit and often the butt of national jokes about Welsh cuisine. But in Ohio, melted cheese sandwiches are revered at Melts, a rather cool bar’n'grill where the menu comes on the back of old vinyl covers. Shame that a melted cheese sandwich apparently takes an hour from ordering to arrival.

- After that came a dessert course of hot fudge ice cream at Malleys. The Americans, they like their ice cream. Even at 1pm on a wet Wednesday afternoon.

However, there are side-effects that come from eating out in America.
Read the rest of this entry »

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One image to represent America…

Oct 2

Posted in Current Affairs

Imagine you’re quintessential Englishman Stephen Fry – who, naturally, is a geek of Jewish Hungarian stock. He’s spent the last few months travelling the land of the United States, and naturally, has written a book and TV programme about it.

Now you have to publicise said book in a book launch. What’s the one image of America you need to sell the book to a British press? Find out.

This – no doubt hilarious – book joins other ones on the shelves dedicated to explaining America to a European readership. Although given the huge amount of press coverage the American elections get in the UK, I’m not sure anything needs explaining.

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Bloody Americans and their optimistic outlook…

Jul 11

Posted in adayinthelife

I’ve only been back in the States for a week, and despite my failure to indulge in things that I normally do in America (Best Buy and buffets), I get the feeling that their infectious sense of optimism has started to hit me. Which is amazing, given half of America is panicing over rising gas prices, a credit crunch – oh and global warming.

One of the guys in the place I’m currently staying at asked what I do for a living. I made the fatal mistake of revealing that I build websites – which isn’t technically true, but usually does for civilians. He immediately started pitching me a website idea he had – don’t they all, but despite my constant “No, but ….” refrains – mostly around small little things like financing, selling and the current state of the advertising market – he kept persisting with the idea. Even though the website part of it was an important part of the whole idea, there was so much more work to do with it than just building a website and having them come.

Then the conversation did a left-turn and became about ways of getting his brother into an American university. Now I thought it all came down to how much you could afford to pay for tuition, but apparently it’s also about finding the right person, and badgering him/her to get you a teaching assistant position or something. I’d assume, in my “No, but … ” British way that such places would be overfilled to bursting with applicants, but apparently it’s actually a very viable prospect of getting in in some areas.

Consequentally, this afternoon has been mostly spent mentally going over my old ideas, and wondering just how feasible they are to do or not do. Sure, they’re not going to be Facebook v3, but is it better to spend ages trying to craft an idea and watch it fail in terms of commercial success, or decide that the idea is not going to work, and go back to working for Da Man? (just when I find a job too!)

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Two random moments from American television…

Jul 10

Posted in Television, adayinthelife

Taken by Midnight Digital Last night, we were at a sports bar grabbing a bite to eat. A sports bar with about sixty thousand LCD screens showing various moments from American TV – including coverage of the Ultimate Fighting Championships – which just about has to be the most homoerotic thing to be screened on American television.

Well, how else would you describe something which mostly seems to involve one muscular topless man sitting or squatting on another, grunting and generally thrusting various bits of his body on the other, while the other one lies there helpless or is grunting and thrusting away himself? All while the male observers in the sports bar were whooping and hollering, encouraging every movement – and then trying to chat up the young nubile college students nearby?

Then this morning, I was flicking through the various TV stations, and came across some kind of US equivalent of This Morning, where the hosts were comparing water options to go with your food. And the caption that ran along the bottom of the screen said:

Tap Water: Good for hydration

I shall never complain about British daytime TV again.

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America – you need more windows!

Jul 9

Posted in Me me me me me, adayinthelife

Taken by ChrisLB If I was designing a nation that sat under never-ending huge amounts of summer sunshine, then I’d think I’d make better design choices than:

- making all the buildings brown or dark (Florida is probably the honorary exception to this rule)
- ensuring a relative lack of windows, to make the interiors seem surprisingly dark
- because it’s all dark, then having to use electric light fittings to give more light. At 2pm on a sunny afternoon
- because of a lack of opening windows, aritficial a/c has to be used instead. Thus raking up the electricity bills, which is never a good idea.

Granted, the sun must wreak havoc on all sorts of things – like my body for instance. But at least bigger windows would enable you to use sunlight for its good stuff.

Never mind the differences between blue and red America, the differences between outdoors America, street America and inside America are vastly huge. Inside, it’s quiet, dark and rather cold thanks to excessive a/c. Outside, it’s quiet, bright and blisteringly hot. And people are still walking around in business suits, dark trousers and not sweating. I also note that the weather in Cleveland today is 82 F/28 C.

Oh, I have finally realised that American daytime television is terrible. Either that, or I need my fix of Dave and daytime Top Gear. Stat.

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Two countries seperated by a consonant

Jul 8

Posted in Life, Me me me me me, adayinthelife

I’ve spent the last few days in Cleveland, Ohio visiting Shalene – and even though I’ve been in America for the odd week for quite a few years, it’s the first time I’ve been over here since 2005, and I’m not sure if I’ve changed, or if America has changed.

Certainly, the temperatures seem worse. But this is probably more how I’ve changed – it was about 24 Celsius in London before I left. Right now it’s apparently 30 degrees Celsius outside – a fact that prompts Shalene to gloat about how it’s going to get hotter and hotter before I leave. But then the buildings have got their air conditioning turned up to maximum – so here I am, in the veritable British tourist uniform of T-shirts, shorts and sandals, while everyone else is wearing jeans and shirts. How they don’t sweat when they walk outside, I don’t know – I took a short stroll to a nearby Starbucks (I needed the wi-fi!) and I was getting close to sweating by the time I stumbled in. Having nearly caused three traffic accidents – don’t they have pedestrian crossings over here ?!

Another change seems to be how the bargains in American shops just aren’t as compelling to me as they used to be – but then I did indulge in a mini-orgy of shopping at amazon.com before I left. Heaven knows how I’m going to fit Rock Band: Special Edition into my suitcase though.

The biggest difference seems to be how nobody understands me here. Especially when I ask for water. The conversation in restaurants seems to go thusly:

Me: “I’ll have some water, please.”
Waiter: “Sir?”
Me: “Water?”
Waiter: “Erm…”
Me: “Warrrr-terrrrr” (trying to speak slowly)
Waiter: “Erm…”
Me: “Warrrrrrrrrrr terrrrrrrr” (going Ice-Age speed at this point)
Waiter: “I’m sorry, sir”
Me: “Wader!” (in a cod-American accent)
Waiter: “Ahhh, wadderrr!”

*bangs head*

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If this is how America treats its friends…

Jun 14

Posted in Current Affairs

So the UK stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the US against pretty much everyone else in launching a doomed war against Iraq, which sends Tony Blair out of office, potentially Gordon Brown with him and ushering in the Tories at the next general election … and what does the UK get in return?

All European visitors to be forced to register with the Department of Homeland Security 72 hours before entering the United States on a visa-waiver system.

Erm… surely, the whole POINT of a visa-waiver system is so that you don’t have to do bureaucratic things like registration, retinal scans, fingerprint IDs and all that?

I’d like to think Obama would change this when he gets into office. But he won’t.

Ever wonder why we get the feeling that Bush/NASA’s plans for a Mars colony aren’t about exploration, but about setting up Planet America? ;)

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Two nations seperated by a common light bulb

Feb 3

Posted in Life, Weird

Over here in the antiquated sometimes-backward UK, we have a simple system for lighting up a room. In the middle of a room lies a lightbulb fitting, to which you fit your lightbulb. Connected to said fitting is a switch by the door – so that when you go in the room in the dark, you can flick the switch, and lo, there is light. Simple. Easy. It works.

It was obviously engineered to ensure you could walk into a room with light. So why do all the American apartments I’ve walked into seem to flout this basic piece of design common-sense? I can’t count how many times I’ve walked into a room in an American apartment, thoughtlessly flicked the switch on the door, and instead the tv / video / stereo / computer has flicked off, leaving a rather angry person in the room just when I’m trying to ingratiate myself on the people who have offered to show me their house.

Instead, there’s usually only one light source. Some tiny tiny lamp to the side of the room. And tiny tiny windows, so you can’t take advantage of the huge sunlight opportunities by being in a vast open space.

The only conclusion I can come to is that American eyes are just incredibly sensitive to light. Nothing else explains the sometimes pathological determination to minimize the amount of light in a room. Either that or it’s a huge design flaw that has escaped the attention of the best minds in America over the last 50-100 years.

Scary thought: do a search for lightbulbs UK in Google, and see how many small adverts for light bulbs pop up. It’s almost enough to make you think you need to start a blog on lightbulbs to get all that Google Ads traffic…

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Random observations on flying…

Mar 18

Posted in Life

I love going to the airport. I love flying on a plane. I’m not sure why – but it’s a great way to observe how some people live, and the weird stuff that goes down. Especially on American air carriers. To whit, on my recent transAtlantic flight:

- the foolish foolish couple, who proposed to each other halfway through an eight-hour flight. Thankfully, she said Yes – but can you imagine if she’d declined? Stuck sitting next to someone who’d rejected your overtures of love for the next four hours, inside a hollow tube and unable to get out. Very French.

It’s not even particularly romantic. In the first-class cabin of a Concorde jet, that’s one thing. But in cattle class amongst the hoi polloi and a family of seven chavtastic Brits going to Florida?

Having said that, you do get free champagne out of it. I need to find a female partner in crime, get a diamond ring, and swindle restaurants across the world out of free champagne. It worked once.

- The SkyMall catalogue which seems to be endemic to all American aeroplanes is a hilarious hoot. All these utterly useless frivolous items on sale – like stairs for your pet so your obnoxious little cat/dog can climb up onto the sofa. Ion purifiers. Tranquil sound machines. No wonder the end of Western civilisation is nigh. Mind you, I imagine half the reason I want to live in the United States is so that I can purchase and use these projects, and live the quasi-Ikea lifestyle.

- the warning from the cabin crew not to congregate near toilets, as per anti-terrorist regulations. I couldn’t believe it when this policy was announced a year or so ago, so to see them doing it was just insane. Fortunately, it was never actually policed as far as I could tell.

- I got finger-printed and photo-ID’d when I arrived at US immigration. To be fair, the process was painless, quick and easy (hurrah for digital technology) but it still felt a little degrading. Plus, of course, the computer told the immigration agent exactly how long I’d spent in the US the last time.

- There was one elderly woman who’d booked two seats so she could have a seat all to herself. This strikes me as a tad expensive – wouldn’t it be cheaper to book a first-class seat?

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