The GirlAlive Blog

Okay, so I've gotten used to a lot of British stuff. Raisins in every dessert seem normal now. I've gotten used to men drinking tea. I've even gotten used to just automatically expecting every British male under thirty to be an asshole (and to being pleasantly surprised when I encounter the rare ones who aren't). But the one thing I cannot get used to is the post office.

If you're American, you have a certain idea of what a post office does. It is a place you go to mail things. When I go to the USPS web site, I'm greeted with headings like "plan a shipment", "find a zip code". Under "products and services" there are headings like, "mailing & shipping", "postage & options" and "receiving mail". They do a few other things, like selective service registration and passport renewal. But getting letters and packages from one place to another is the main thing. When you go there, there are things for sale, like stamps and packing supplies, and sometimes they get fancy and sell postcards.

By contrast, if you go to the British Post Office web site, the heading of the page is, "Savings, Life Insurance, Foreign Currency". The headings on that page are "Money & Insurance", "Broadband & Phone", "Travel", and then as almost an afterthought, "Letters and Parcels". The post office does everything. If you want foreign currency, go to the post office. If you want insurance, go to the post office. If you want to pay your gas bill or top up your mobile phone, go to the post office. And on top of all that, they sell all manner of crap there. There are the usual post office things like packing supplies, but there are also greeting cards, wrapping paper, toys, knitting and sewing supplies, costume jewelry, handbags, and calendars.

On the surface, you might be thinking, "That's great, being able to do all those things in one place." But keep in mind that you have to stand in line with everyone who is doing any of those things. I've had to go to the post office two days in a row and the line stretches out the door every time you go there. Yesterday I was in line between a man who was paying his gas bill and buying socks, and a woman who was collecting her pension payment and shopping for birthday cards. I was the only one there who was actually mailing something.

I have really come to hate and dread the post office here, because I know from living in America that going to the post office doesn't have to be that horrible. It can be a clean and efficient process involving sending and recieving of packages only. I think I miss American post offices almost as much as I miss American peanut butter. (And by the way, thanks for the jars of Skippy for my birthday David and Nikki and Kris.)

Alana

Posted by Alana at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As I've mentioned before, I live in the town of Penicuik, which is about 10 miles outside Edinburgh, normally 45 minutes to the city by bus. My usual commute is considerably shorter. I catch the bus outside my house and it takes five minutes to go to the town center, then five more minutes back to the area where I live. (About a 10-minute walk from my house. When I've missed the bus, I've been able to walk around to the main road and meet the bus on its way out of town.) Then it's another 5 minutes down the road to where I get off to walk to my office. Not so much this morning.

I got on my usual bus at 7:40. It took the usual five minutes to get to the town center. Then it stopped. There was an accident or something because of the two inches of snow on the ground. There is really only one road from Penicuik to Edinburgh. There is noplace to re-direct the traffic until you get out to where I usually get off the bus. I stayed on the bus for two hours. That got me to where the bus was still in Penicuik, and a ten minute walk from my house. Two hours, to get a ten minute walk from home. A distance that should have taken five minutes on the bus. If I stayed on the bus, at that rate I wouldn't get to work until noon. And I had to pee. It there were only four people on the bus, so it was freezing cold. My toes were going numb.

So I got off and went home. I called in and took a day of unpaid leave because it is just not worth it today. It seemed like a "know when to fold 'em" kind of start to the day. I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I'll just walk to work.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, so I've had this blog for a good many years, and I have occasionally used it to vent my frustrations with the country I live in. My main complaint has been that the people are rude and nasty. In my experience, I've been mocked and picked taunted by complete strangers on the bus, who treat the whole world like their own little junior high school. My former co-workers treated me like crap just because I was American. (The alpha female in the office had a son who was marrying an American, and no one is good enough for her little boy, so she turned the whole office against all Americans.) My house has been broken into. I've seen more public puddles of vomit here in three years than I did in over 20 years in the US. I've seen people fly into violent rages against strangers for virtually no reason. In short, I've seen a lot of assholes.

Unfortunately, some of these assholes have figured out how to use a computer and have found this blog. What I find interesting is that the initial gut reaction from these people is to email me or post in the comments about what a horrible stupid bitch I am, and how I should go f*** myself, and basically dump streams of profanity and insults on me. So to refute my claim that British people are nasty racist assholes, they email and comment, with nasty racist asshole remarks. How does this do anything but prove my point?

It reminds me of those cartoons from Denmark a few years ago. They made a political statement about the Muslims being violent and reactionary. In response, the Islamic community had violent riots and burning of effigies. They basically said to the world, "If you call me violent, I'll kill you!"

I don't have a good summary or punchline for this post. I've got a nasty cold involving a waterfall of snot. I can't say I hate the British. Cause I don't. I just hate assholes, and a lot of them seem to live here.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Okay, so I keep getting whiny emails from British people complaining that I'm too negative about this country. So this post is to address some of the things that the British do better than Americans. (I could easily come up with a list going the other direction, but I'll save that for another day.)

Cash

The British have much better money than Americans. It took some getting used to at first when I moved here, but it is very well-designed currency. With the bills, the smaller denominations are printed on smaller paper than the larger denominations. So the blind and elderly can easily figure out what money they've got. The coins have two things above American coins. First, they have the amount printed on them. Look at your American coinage. None of them tell you in plain numerals how much they're worth. The dime says "one dime" instead of "10 cents". It is unfriendly and illogical. The second thing the British have done with their coins is the one pound coin. Seriously, Americans, ditch the one dollar bill. Dump them all in a giant shredder and switch to dollar coins. It makes bus fare and vending machines and everything so much easier. Plus, coins last longer in circulation, so in the long run they cost the government less to produce.

Dates

Why, America, are you the only country that writes your dates in the format of MM/DD/YY? The rest of the world uses the DD/MM/YY format, which is more logical. The day is the most specific part of the date, then the month is slightly less specific and the year is the most general part. So putting the day, then the month, then the year is the most logical format. Throwing the day in between the month and the year is just confusing.

Healthcare

The National Health Service in the UK is incompetent and slow. But it is available to everyone. On the other hand, health insurance companies in the US are both incompetent and malicious. I have worked for the NHS and US insurance companies, and after experiencing both, the main reason I won't live in the US is the health care system. Profiting from the sick and injured just seems barbaric to me.

Potato Chips

The British insist on calling them "crisps", but if you ignore that irritating terminology, they do them right. They come in a million flavors and they are always sold in little single-serving packets, so you don't end up pigging out and eating an entire family size bag by yourself.

Chocolate

British chocolate is just better. It's creamier and much nicer than most American chocolate. If I ever moved back to the US, I'd be ordering Galaxy chocolate from an importer.

Political Campaigns

They tell you what the candidate stands for, without insulting the opposition or generally being obnoxious. I've been through several elections in the UK, and never felt as manipulated and dirty as I did visiting the US during election season for two weeks.

Working Conditions

Fair amounts of sick leave, shorter hours, more vacation time and a full year (with partial pay) maternity leave. It leads to a less stressed and healthier and happier workforce. By comparison, some of the places I worked in the US seem like slavery.

Mass Transit

In some larger cities there is good transit, but in most of the US, you can't get anywhere without a car. I lived just outside Duluth back in the states, and there was one bus an hour. I live much further outside Edinburgh, in what is termed as "rural Midlothian", and there are four buses an hour outside my house, and if I walk 10 minutes to the main road there are more like 12 an hour.

So there. I'm not all against the British. They do some stuff right. But don't get me started on their inability to celebrate a holiday, or their complete ignorance regarding cinnamon...

Alana

Posted by Alana at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

With my shiny new job and nice coworkers I was finally starting to think that maybe the people of Scotland aren't all drunken amoral idiots.  I was wrong. 

Last night someone broke into my house and stole my laptop.  Out of all the stuff in our living room, all they took was my laptop and my favorite mouse.  The PS2 is worth more than my 4-year-old computer.  But they didn't take the PS2.  Didn't take my husband's computer or either of the digital cameras.  You see, we wouldn't care if they took cameras or the game console.  But my computer, as worthless as it is on the resale market, was the preferred thing to take because it leaves me without most of my important stuff.  

I lost the address books for my family and friends, other than the few addresses I stored in Yahoo.  I lost most of the pictures of my guinea pigs, including the pictures of Homer and Binky, who are dead, and therefore unable to pose for anymore pictures.

I think I still have a cd of wedding photos here somewhere.  Most of my music is gone.  I have a few favorites stored on a flash drive, but I'll have to dig through boxes to find cd's to replace the rest.

I don't know how much longer I can stand to live in this amoral hellhole of a country.  I lived in the US for 29 years, and the only thing I ever had stolen was a lunch from my locker in 11th grade.  I'm here less than three years and someone steals my computer.  I hate this fucking country full of drunken theiving bastards.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The common perception of the British in America is that they all have stained brown crooked teeth.  Living here, a lot of it is true.  But here's the weird part: it isn't their fault.

I underwent years of orthodontia as a kid and when I moved here my teeth were relatively straight and white.  Since I moved here, they've been slowly changing.  I still brush my teeth twice a day, with the same toothpaste I used in the US (Colgate Total Plus Whitening).  I still floss.  I still use mouthwash.  And my teeth are turning brown and I'm getting a gap between my front teeth again.

The water here has no floride added.  That's part of the problem.  There is a lot of tea consumed here.  That may be part of it (though even the people who don't drink tea or smoke or anything like that still have brown teeth).  

I don't know what I'd have to do to keep my teeth white and straight to American standards, but it doesn't even seem possible here.  I don't know if it's just the water here or what, but my teeth are turning brown no matter what I do.

It isn't that the British don't brush their teeth.  It isn't that they don't go to the dentist.  They have oral hygiene equal with most Americans.  But something in this country is working against them.  I have no answers for why this is.  I just wanted you to know that you shouldn't view the British as ignorant of dental hygiene.  They do their best, but there's something in the water (or lacking from the water) or something.  The UK is not good for your teeth.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been complaining to my husband a lot lately about how there are no mid-range restaurants here.  So we found some. 

Generally in the UK, there are two categories of restaurants.  There's the fancy Gordon Ramsay-type three course meal that costs a fortune kind of places.  Then there's the take-out places.  And not much in between.  Now, let me be clear that this isn't necessarily a bad thing.  In the US, it's easy to find a place to have an affordable dinner for four, but that place will inevitably be a franchise like Applebees or Perkins.  It's all very homogenized and frankly mediocre.  When restaurants cost a lot, you tend to cook your own food more and that is healthier.  But sometimes I want someone else to cook a meal for me and bring it to a table where I can sit and eat at my leisure.

So we've found some cafes.  They don't serve dinner.  You have to make it lunch or breakfast.  But it is food that someone else cooked.  And it's cheap and good.  

The first place we tried was called Joyce's Cafe, and it is in the Penicuik town center just between Farmfoods and the newsagent.  It's the perfect place to get a full fried breakfast, with an egg, sausage and toast and beans and black pudding (which I shift to my husband's plate).  And all of that for about 3 pounds.  And that includes tea.  We've been there twice, and it's been great both times.  It's brightly-lit and the people who work there are friendly and nice.  But nothing there is healthy, so it's just kind of a treat every once in a while.

The other place we tried was the Gallery Cafe, which is just off the high street, next to the inexplicable Belgian consulate in the Penicuik town center.  It's run by the Penicuik Community Arts Association and there is a vegetarian cafe downstairs with a craft shop upstairs.  It's lovely.  I had a toasted cheese sandwich and my husband had the soup of the day (a very good split pea and pepper soup, according to him).  The shop upstairs had knitted stuff, jewellery and pottery by local artists.  And lunch for both of us cost less than 5 pounds.  Much healthier than the fried breakfast place too.

So we've found two nice little cafes less than ten minutes away.  I'd highly recommend either of them, depending on whether you are in a carnivorous mood or not.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those that don't know, the exchange rate is about two dollars for every pound right now.  So for a dollar, you'd be lucky to be able to buy a Milky Way here.  That's why I think it's so silly that there are still dollar bills. 

There are one pound bills here (in Scotland only, not England) but I've only seen about three of them in the time I've lived here.  There are one and two pound coins.  So with a two pound coin, that's almost the equivalent of a US $5 bill.  And that's still worth too little to warrant paper money in these parts.  

I love pound coins.  At my favorite charity shop you can buy a book with a single coin, and still get some change back.  You never have to feed a dollar bill into an unwilling slot in a vending machine.  Yes, it makes the change section of your wallet a little bloated, but it's worth it.  

I think America needs to ditch dollar bills.  There was nothing wrong with the Sacajawea dollars except that no one was forced to use them.  They were great for bus fare and vending machines.  But if you bought anything, all you got in change was dollar bills, except at the post office.  I would have loved to have used dollar coins, but I could never find them.  They need to be pushier about dollar coins.  Stop printing bills.  Stop giving bills to banks.  Make people use the coins.  They'll learn to like them.

The one problem I can see with dollar coins is with strippers.  How does one tip a stripper in the UK?  Do you stuff a five pound note in their waistband, and ask for change?  Do you shove coins into their panties?  That seems a bit weird.  I guess for all the advantages of coinage, it's probably the strippers that suffer.  Unless they strap a piggy bank to their butts, there's just no good way to tip a stripper with change.

Alana 

P.S.  Make sure to check out this guy from Britain's Got Talent, who may or may not be related to my husband.  He's one of my favorites.  But I have about 6 favorites so far.

Posted by Alana at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had to go grocery shopping.  I hate that.  The walking to the store and buying crap and walking back home is all pretty tedious.  When I was working all the time, I had to go after work and it was always crowded.  But lately I haven't been working so I have to work out the best time to go to Tesco to get soup and toilet paper.

Morning is out.  I'm not so good at getting out of bed.  Noon is no good because that's when the kids from the high school down the street are off for lunch, and allowed to run wild in the streets.  (Apparently no one ever thought of closed high school campuses here.  The streets are lousy with make-up caked 14-year-olds every day at noon.)  One o'clock is no good.  Kids are still at lunch and Buffy is on.  It's one of my favorite seasons, with evil Willow.  If you wait until 2:30 or 3:00, the primary school kids are out for the day, and the place is crowded with mothers ineffectually trying to corral 7-year-olds who are running wild.  

So I have a small safe window for shopping.  If I get out of the house the minute Buffy ends I can get to the store just after 2:00.  It's pretty dead right then, other than staff trying to quickly clean up after the high schoolers.  There are a few mothers with pre-school kids trying to get the shopping done before the other kids get out of school.  But if you can navigate the aisles with military precision, you can get everything, pay for it, and get out of the parking lot by 2:30, thus avoiding all the children around here.  It's not that I dislike children.  I just dislike the undisciplined rabid zombie beasts that pass for children in this country.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 02:28 PM | Permalink

I shop at the 99p store a lot.  The one in my small town is not bad and sometimes has good deals, and it's a good place to get caulking guns and coloring books and hamster food at the same time.  I've even found pregnancy tests there.  But I wouldn't trust the 99p condoms.  There's a line.

Anyway, a while back my husband and I were just browsing the 99p store and looking for intersting stuff (and craft supplies for me) when we found some disturbing/funny items in the food section.  We found the following marked 3 for 99p.

I wouldn't have been so amused if it had been called Pot O' Fruit, or even if it had followed the lead of the British food item Pot Noodle and called itself Pot Fruit.  But by calling it FruityPot, the main thing they are selling you is pot, which happens to be fruity.   Not fruit in a pot, or fruit with some pot, but pot that is fruity.  I have eaten the pineapple in a sweet and sour dish, but the mandarin remains in my cupboard.

Then we found on the "2 for 99p" shelf, this brilliant little item:

In case you couldn't extrapolate, it is called "Celebrity" with the description "Danish Pork Luncheon Meat."  It is imitation Spam.  It may be made from pork.  It may be made from blonde Danish girls.  But it certainly isn't actually Danish.  Further proof of its lack of Danishness:

My Asian language skills aren't great, but that looks a whole lot like Chinese or Japanese to me.  Last time I checked, that's not the alphabet they use in Denmark.  If the fact that it is bargain priced meat of questionable origins isn't bad enough, it is also going to stay fresh until 2012.  I could hang onto this can and eat it while watching the London Olympics.  Or not.

In fact, I did eat the can of Celebrity.  I can't swear that it was actual pork, and I'm 100% convinced that it was not Danish.  It tasted like Spam, but not quite as good.  I had it with sweet and sour sauce and the pineapple FruityPot.  And I survived to tell the tale. 

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 11:59 AM | Permalink

Yesterday was my third wedding anniversary.  My husband and I have been married for three years and we have lived together for two and a half years.  (Marriage?  Fine.  Living together?  Don't want to rush these things.)

Yesterday we spent our anniversary bathing guinea pigs and running tedious errands.  But today, we went out for dinner.

We got on the bus to the town center to get the bus to the restaurant.  There was a group of people who were either going to a rave or were insane.  Neon colors and big hair and fishnet stockings and furry legwarmers all over the place.  I was happy that they were not on my bus.

We went to the neighborhood of the restaurant early to go to Lupe Pinto's to get American food.  Root beer and graham crackers and Nutter Butters.  Hooray!  Then we had time to kill before our reservations, so we went into a pub to get out of the rain.  I kept looking at the bar and thinking about my favorite game, Drunken Masters.  I had diet Coke.

Then we went to the restaurant, a little tiny place called Katie's Diner.  There are about a dozen tables and you absolutely must make reservations because they're very popular.  It is advertised as an American style diner, and I've never had the Scottish interpretation of American food, so I was looking forward to it.  It's a small place run by a married couple.  Geoff takes the orders and Kate is the chef.

It would be funnier if I could go down a list of how they got American food wrong.  But in this case I totally can't do that.  We started out by sharing an order of jalapeno poppers.  They were exactly like what I remember from home, but bigger, fresher, and presented better.  For a main course I had the Mexiburger.  It was a thick slab of top quality Scottish beef, topped with cheese, salsa, sour cream, and jalapenos.  It was quite simply the best thing I've eaten in a long time.  The burger was grilled to perfection.  The fries were fresh and hot and perfect.  I had been craving a proper thick hamburger, and the one I had at Katie's Diner could stand up next to (or even above) any of the top quality burgers in the US.

Then there was dessert.  I ordered double chocolate brownies.  It was a beautiful arrangement of little bites of brownie topped with ice cream.  The brownies were perfect.  Slightly crisp on the outside and warm and soft in the middle, with rich fudge sauce.  The ice cream was good proper rich ice cream, not the fluffy stuff you get so many places here.  

My husband loved it as much as I did.  In fact, he insisted on booking another reservation before we left.  So it looks like we've found a new favorite restaurant.  It takes two buses to get there, but it's entirely worth it.  It's a perfect cure for homesick Americans in Edinburgh. 

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 07:24 PM | Permalink

I'm a little anal-retentive about geography.  I minored (almost a second major) in geography in college.  I have learned that the British are mildly retarded when it comes to geography outside their little island.  Especially regarding the United States.  I'm pretty sure they don't teach any geography in schools here outside of Europe and a few select Commonwealth countries.  

I saw an episode of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" where they asked a man "Which of these US states is located on the East Coast?" with choices of California, Oregon, Washington or Maryland.  He didn't know.  He asked the audience.  Less than 35% of the audience got it right.  30% of them thought California was on the East Coast.

Last night I was watching the Discovery Channel show "Ink Wars".  The Discovery Channel re-narrates all American shows with a British narrator, so they can say patronizing things about our measurement system.  This British narrator was talking about the Seattle tattoo convention on the "Eastern Seaboard of the United States."  He said that at least 3 times.  They must have moved Seattle in the last couple of years because when I lived there it was on the West coast.  (And they weren't talking about a different Seattle because they wouldn't stop showing the Space Needle.)

Maybe British schools teach that there is a West Pole in the middle of the Atlantic, and coasts closest to that pole are west coasts and the coasts furthest away are east.  Or maybe they're all dumbasses.

For the benefit of the British, a few corrections for errors I've heard while I've lived here:

The "zip code for New York" is not NY.  That is the state abbreviation.  Zip codes are 9-digit hyphenated numbers, and there are several hundred thousand of them in New York.  

Washington is not the capitol of the United States.  Washington is a state on the West Coast.  The capitol of the United States is Washington D.C.  The D.C. stands for District of Columbia.  The District of Columbia (or "D.C.") is our capitol, and the Washington part is just a modifier.

You cannot refer to a city as, for instance, "Chicago, America" or "Chicago, USA".  It is "Chicago, Illinois."  There could be as many as 50 different Chicagos in the US.  You must use the state name in order to tell them apart properly.  Do you prefer us to call it "Edinburgh, Scotland" or "Edinburgh, UK"?  It's the same deal.

Iowa, Idaho, and Ohio are 3 different places.  They don't even border each other.  Ohio is on the Great Lakes.  Iowa is in the middle of the country on the Mississippi.  Idaho is in the Northern Rocky Mountains.  You get annoyed when Americans get England and Scotland mixed up.  They at least border each other.  Iowa, Idaho and Ohio aren't even close.

The country is called "the US" or "the States" or "the United States" or "the United States of America".  It is not "America".   "America" is a pair of continents, not a country.  The proper name of the country is "The United States", and the "of America" is only a modifier to distinguish it from any other countries made of a group of states, such as Mexico or the former Soviet Union.   Canadians are from North America.  Mexicans are from North America.  Uruguayans are from South America.  You may identify me as American because I am also from North America.  But the country I am from is the United States.

I always hear statistics about how 18-year-olds in the US can't find Canada on a map.  I'm pretty sure 18-year-olds in the UK would have trouble figuring out which side of the paper the map was printed on.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A few years ago when I was living in Seattle, one of my best friends, Kat, told me all about when she lived in the UK and how much she loved it.  After I moved here, I pretty much thought she was maybe a little crazy.  But I think I've changed my mind.  You see, she didn't live in Edinburgh.  She lived in Manchester.

After spending a long weekend in Liverpool, I can see how in a lot of ways, the northwest of England is much different from Scotland.  The people seemed to pretty much mind their own business.  There were cool artsy and gothy type people all over, with no one staring at them.  And the cost of living is lower than Edinburgh.  A kebab that would easily cost 6 pounds in Edinburgh cost only 3 in Liverpool.  

There has been talk in my house the last few days about maybe moving elsewhere.  Edinburgh is surly, grumpy and overpriced.  I think I'd be happier elsewhere.  Maybe Liverpool.  Maybe not.  There are a few other cities, like Cardiff, under debate.  We'll see what happens.

In other news, the women in my office have been outright shunning me.  Since I got back from my long weekend of immigration crap, no one other than my boss has spoken to me in the office.  I don't know what happened there when I was gone.  I don't know what their deal is or what they suddenly have against me.  I also don't know if I care, since I have practically nothing in common with any of them, and I've already been looking for a new job.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 08:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had to go to Liverpool to go for an interview with immigration because my spouse visa expired October 12th.  Normally I could just go to Glasgow, but they were booked up, partly because the royal mail has been striking every few days and no one can trust them with a postal application.

So, Thursday morning we piled food into the guinea pig cages, and gave them giant water bottles and topped up Binky's  food and water and then got on a bus at 7:30 to go to the train station.  Halfway there, an idiot in a van parked in the bus lane and refused to move.  The bus driver had to call the cops, and meanwhile we were stuck there.  After about 10 minutes, Neil was starting to panic about catching our train, and I told him, "You are large and intimidating.  We can use this."  So Neil started walking, or actually more like storming, to the front of the bus.  The driver looked up the aisle and saw him coming, and suddenly let us all get off and catch other buses.  We got to the train station on time.

We bought ourselves some sandwiches for lunch and got on the train.  It was pretty uneventful.  We had to switch trains at Wigan, and they had appalingly bad bathrooms at that station.  I wanted to have lunch on the train from Wigan to Liverpool but I couldn't because the train smelled weird.  So we ate in the Liverpool train station.

We found our hotel (a Travelodge in the center of Liverpool) and then went on to the interview place because it was too early to check in.

We had to go through a lot of searches at the door of the building because we still had all our luggage with us.  It was a big pain in the butt.  Then we went up to the interview room, which had glass booths with the interviewer people in them.  We waited for our number to be called.  It didn't take too long.  They pretty much just took our piles of documents and sent us back to wait.

They called us back and told us that they might have to refer our case to London because I didn't have enough documentation from October 2005 to May of 2006.  But he said he'd ask his manager if maybe they could put it through here.  So we waited and started quietly freaking out.  My visa expired the next day.  I didn't know if I would even be able to go home or if I would have to leave the country. 

About 8000 years later (or maybe 5 minutes) the guy came back and said, "We're going to do it for you."  I didn't quite immediately believe him.  But he said that there was no question in his mind that we were a legitimate couple and I had good reason for why I didn't have documentation for that time peroid (I didn't get any mail).  So since it was 3:30 in the afternoon and they didn't want that kind of extra paperwork, they put it through.  I just had to wait another 20 minutes or so for the visa to be attached to my passport, and we were done. 

The rest of that day was just kind of a shell-shocked recovery from that meeting.  The only great revelations after checking into the hotel were that a) Travelodge is not a particularly good hotel and b) takeaway food in Liverpool is very cheap, but does not come with forks.

The next day we had breakfast at a little cafe next to the hotel that was cheap and really good.  Then we went to the World Museum of Liverpool, which was free and pretty nice.  Then we went to the Boots (drug store) in the train station to buy the hairbrushes Neil and I both forgot to pack.  Then back to the hotel to order more takeaway food and relax for the night.  (4 kebabs and 4 cans of pop for 12 pounds)

Saturday did not start off well, as it started at 1:15 in the morning with the fire alarm going off.  We stood outside in the cold for a long time.  Neil says ten minutes, but I think it was a long time.  Then the firemen came and decided that the building was not on fire and let us go back to bed.  I hadn't really been sleeping anyway because the bed was very bouncy.  Like sleeping on a trampoline.  Or possibly a bouncy castle.

We got up later that morning and checked out of the hotel after finishing the rest of our kebabs for breakfast.  We went to the Cavern Club, where the Beatles were discovered.  Then we found a very nice shopping area.  I bought a snoopy scarf and a blue stuffed monkey that I have named MonkeyPuppy.

After that, we met my husband's parents in the train station (since they live not too far away in Wigan) and had a nice conversation and coffee with them for a few hours.   Then we all got on trains heading home.  We went from Liverpool to Preston than on to Edinburgh.  There were a lot of Girl Guides on our train.  Then we just barely caught a bus home. 

The hamster was happy to see me, especially since I gave him banana chips.  The guinea pigs were annoyed with us.  Fudgie bit Neil when he was sweeping out their cage.  But Neil is getting back at him by giving the piggies baths right now.

By the way, if you could all maybe keep our piggy Spike in your prayers, that would be appreciated.  He's always been a bit sickly, and lately he's losing some fur on his belly.  We're going to try to get him to a vet soon, but we probably won't be able to get him in any earlier than Friday.

Oop.  Sounds like I need to dry a guinea pig.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I figured out one of the things that irks me about this country.  It's crazy.  Literally.  Like the whole country is bi-polar.  When you meet someone here, you don't know if you're meeting the meek little "mustn't grumble" British person, or if you're meeting a raging violent drunk who will punch strangers in the head for little or no reason.

Actually, it reminds me of my favorite movie, Serenity.  (Spoilers follow, but the movie came out 2 years ago, so you should have seen it by now.)  In that movie, there is a planet called Miranda where there is a gas pumped into the atmosphere to make people calm and peaceful, but it made 10% of them become cannibal rapist monsters.  That's what living here is like.

Most British people automatically, without thinking, do whatever they're asked.  I've heard stories of British muggers being foiled because their victim asks them to "please give me the knife", and they do.   They can't help it.  Most of them are meek little sheep who have never asked the question "why" in their entire life.

"That's not true!" a bunch of you are yelling.  In my office, they have told us that we have to have everything done within 6 weeks.  Who made this rule?  Why 6 weeks?  To what end?  No one has ever asked.  Except me.  And when I did, people looked at me like the building might blow up if I asked one more "why".  I asked for special leave for my immigration stuff, and I was told that I'd have to use vacation time instead.  When I asked why I couldn't have special leave, the reaction was like I had just opened fire with an AK-47 in the file library.  No one asks why!  You just do what you're told, and adopt the proper British "mustn't grumble" attitude.

Then there's the other 10%.  They're nutbags.  I was standing at the bus stop yesterday and some idiot on a cell phone rear-ended a #8 bus.  I'm not sure how he possibly could have missed the bright red double decker bus right in front of him, but he managed to.  There is no doubt that he was an idiot and an awful driver.  He got out, and so did the bus driver and they calmly exchanged information like normal people.  Then the Raging Lunatic showed up.  A skinny woman from the top deck of the bus ran into the street and started screaming at the driver of the car about how she had 2 kids on that bus and where did he get off endangering them.  She has to be subdued and dragged back onto the bus.  Let's think about this logically a moment.  This guy's tiny French car hits a DOUBLE DECKER BUS and she's worried about him hurting anyone in the bus.  She even had to ask the driver if the car behind had hit them before she went on her tirade, that's how little damage he did.  It wasn't her bus.  It wasn't her car.  Yet she felt a need to attack a complete stranger with a big screaming hissy fit.  She is one of the 10% for whom the chemical in the British atmosphere has had the opposite effect, and now she's a raging lunatic Reaver.

I don't think I'll ever get the British.  And I'm not sure I want to.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 06:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, by the last few posts you can probably tell I'm not thrilled with living in Scotland at the moment.  The 5 things keeping me here right now are my husband and my 4 guinea pigs.

I decided I needed at least something short-term to keep me here.  So I bought tickets for a few shows in the Fringe Festival in August.  I'm going to see some guy named Owen that I've never heard of and Lucy Porter and Rich Hall.  All in one night.  The plan is to get burned out on the festival before it even officially starts.   I'm looking forward to it because I've never seen a comedy show before, and now I'm gonna see 3 in one day.

And there are always the guinea pigs.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to the charity showing of Serenity this morning.  The movie was just as good as I remembered from the other two times I saw it in the theater.  I bought a bunch of raffle tickets, and I won a book that isn't out yet, so I just got a voucher for now.  It was good.  But then the typical rude obnoxious people here had to start a conversation right in front of me, making fun of fat Americans.  The longer I live here, the more I am convinced that the people here are mostly soulless and evil.  Even gawky ugly nerds at a sci-fi movie think that they have a right to be rude to strangers.

Needless to say, I didn't go to the after-movie hang-out at the bar.  

I keep asking my husband if we can move to Canada.  Halifax looks nice.  I'm getting sicker and sicker of the people here.  Even the adults here act like obnoxious junior high students, and I hate even contemplating how horrible the children are.  70% of the people in this country claim to be Christians, but so far I have not experienced a single instance of Christian kindness, or even basic humanity from most of them.  

I'm tired of being here.  Being a fat American in the UK is roughly equivalent to being a Jew in Germany in 1940, or being a black person in Mississippi in the 1950's.  The way I'm treated by complete strangers saddens and enrages me.  It's probably for the best that guns are illegal here.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 09:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I figured out the main cultural difference between here and "home" that bothers me.  The people here completely lack cool.  This is not unique to Scotland.  It is a problem in Duluth, where I grew up.  It is a problem in Iowa, where my closest cousins grew up.  The only place I've lived that had plenty of cool was Seattle.

What do I mean by cool?  I don't mean leather jackets and sunglasses.  It's all about attitude.  Imagine that someone over six feet tall with a curly purple mohawk just walked into the room.  How do you react, and how to the people around you react?  Here, people would flat-out stare at him with an expression that brings to mind Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel.  In the Midwestern US, people might not stare, but they would definitely whisper to each other about him.  In Seattle, he wouldn't get a second look.  People in Seattle are too cool to be phased by mere size and hair.

If you are cool, you are not surprised by anything.  No clothing, no hair, and no human body can surprise you enough to warrant even a second look, much less a point or stare,  because you have seen it all before.  Nothing bothers you.  When your co-worker shaves her head, you just say, "Good morning" as if nothing has changed.  You are not bothered by cross-dressers, punks, goths or even the occasional furry.  You've seen everything.

Why is cool important?  As much as cool is actually a form of arrogance, it is a useful arrogance.  It is arrogance that accepts everyone, and never makes anyone feel excluded.  Whether you look like Brad Pitt or Drew Carey, you are treated the same by people who are cool.  The world as a whole could use more cool.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Alana at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Alana at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I was supposed to be going to the bank to open an account.
If you'll recall, on the day that I bought Binky, I had set out to do
the same thing. I still do not have a bank account.

In Seattle, I needed to set up a bank account. So I walked in with my
paycheck from work, and a utility bill and my Minnesota ID card. It
was 6:30 at night, and I stopped in after work. I didn't have to go to
the main Washington Mutual building downtown or anything. The small
storefront branch next to the grocery store could do it. In 15 minutes, I
had an account and some temporary checks.

Here, you can't open an account at small branch offices. You have to
make an appointment with a customer service rep, and they don't make
appointments after 4pm. So you have to take time off work to get to one
of the big branches in the city center in order to do something as
simple as open an account. And then, we found out last night, there are
only 2 people in the whole bank who can do that. And both of them were
out sick, so we had to reschedule again. I'm supposed to go back on
Thursday.

By the time I get an account, I will have had to take time off work
twice, and my husband will have had to take time off three times.
Assuming I get it sorted on the next trip, which is seeming unlikely.

I really think they need to legalize firearms here. If you gave that
kind of service in the US, you risk pissing off some psycho with a gun
and triggering a shooting spree. The lack of firearms here means that
you can be as discourteous and inefficient as you want to, without fear
of your brains decorating the walls behind you. The Scottish service
industry needs to be a little more afraid of its customers. As it is,
they sit comfortably behind a non-bulletproof glass wall, knowing that
they only have to step back a few feet to avoid the worst weapon the
British can manage: a knife.

The whole experience left me wanting to go back home and join the NRA.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 05:00 PM | Permalink

This week I had my first experience with The Eurovision Song Contest, which I have heard references to since arriving here in Scotland.  It is a contest where all the countries of Europe enter a song into the contest and they perform and people vote on it.  In theory, the best song wins.

In actual practice, it seems quite different.  First of all, one of the competing countries is Israel.  Since when is Israel part of Europe?  Israel isn't even Europe-adjacent like Turkey.  Second, each country isn't allowed to vote for themselves, so they all vote for their neighboring countries.  Especially Eastern Europe.  All the former communist states vote for each other, and they out-number the non-former-communist countries, so they always get more votes.

The song that won was crap.  The song won because the whole band was dressed like extras from Lord of the Rings, but in actual reality, they were just a really cheesy pop version of a Kiss tribute band.   But the fact that a sucky song won is no surprise, since most of the songs sucked.  (Ireland wasn't too bad, but it wasn't the best music I've heard from Ireland by far.)

My husband was telling me that the winner of the song contest's country has to host it next year, and it is expensive and kind of a bad deal as a prize.  So here's what I think it really is: no one wants to host the contest, so they all purposely enter the worst song they can find so that they don't have to host it.  The winner is actually the country that most clearly succeeds in finding a song that sucks so bad that they know they won't have to fork out millions to host the thing the following year.  So Finland, with their Kiss tribute band really only succeeded in having the suckiest national song that failed to suck more than the others.  The real winner was Malta, with only one point.

Good for you, Malta.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is an email message I just got from my husband:

One of the British national daily newspapers is asking readers "what
It means to be British?". Some of the emails are hilarious but this is One
from a chap in Switzerland ...
 
"Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a
Belgian beer, then traveling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a
Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows
on a Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything
foreign."

Given some of the obnoxious comments I've deleted from this blog lately, that sounds about right.

I got a message from my brother the other day that he has a business trip to England, and he's going to try to come to Scotland for a visit for a couple days.  I've told him that he can stay at our house, and the usual fee for Americans staying with us is a jar of Jif peanut butter and a big handful of Kool-Aid packets.

I'm also considering buying a hamster.  I've never had one, but they seem very cute.

Alana

Posted by Alana at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of my favorite things here in the UK is giggling at their commercials.  You see, in the UK, some words mean very different things.  They use the phrase "going potty" to mean "going crazy".  And a fag here is a cigarette.  So I giggle uncontrollably everytime the guy in the commercial says, "Can I nick a fag?"  Here that means, "Can I borrow a cigarette?"  In the US, that would mean, "Can I cut a small notch in a gay man?"  And there's another one about how people are, "going potty over our mattress deals."  So to my ears, they're literally wetting themselves.

Here, you may theoretically hear someone say, "I'm going potty because I haven't had a fag in hours."  To my ears they are saying, "I'm crapping all over because I haven't had gay sex for hours."  And "going potty over a fag" means that they are pooping on a gay man.  When you're an American in the UK, you get to have a lot of little private jokes that the British people don't understand.

The guy who does the voice of Homer Simpson once said, "Here in Great Britain you would say, 'Would you like a lift in my lorry,' but in America we would say, 'Would you like an elevator in my truck.'"

Anyway, over here it is perfectly acceptable to "go outside and light up a fag."  In America, we call that a "hate crime."

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every conversation I have with a Scottish person I have just met goes like this:

• Scottish Person: (asks some question, like the time or when the bus is due)
• Me: (answer question - SP notices I have an American accent)
• SP: So are you here on holiday?
• Me: No.  I married a guy here.
• SP: So how do you like it here?
• Me: It's nice.  I like it.  (Despite my issues with Scotland, that is the truth, and even if it wasn't I don't like to start conversations dissing someone's country.)
• SP: Except for the weather, right?
• Me: It's not so bad.  I'm from Minnesota.  That's like the Siberia of the US.

 And then the Scottish person smiles or whatever and we continue from there.

Okay, so today I got to experience first hand the true weirdness of Scottish weather.  I went to Tesco (the grocery store near our house).  It is about half a mile away.  When I walked to the store, it was sunny and pretty nice.  I went in and bought mustard and crackers and some food to review later.  I also got a mango that was very tasty because it was on the clearance rack because it was on the edge of overripe.

Anyway, I finished my shopping and paid my money and put the heavy stuff in my backpack and headed out.  As I stepped out the door, it was pouring rain.  And not just normal rain.  Freezing rain.  Half the sky was dark and cloudy, and the other half was still bright and sunny.  And the cloudy half was peeing on me.

I walked across the parking lot, towards the road I take to start home.  By the time I got across the lot and around the corner and onto the road, the rain was starting to let up.  By the time I got halfway down that road, it was downright warm.  At least on my right side, facing the sun.  On the left it was still a bit chilly.  I was starting to think I would need to unzip my coat when I rounded the corner onto the street that leads to my house.  

The sun was to my back and I could still feel the warmth on the back of my neck.  The front of my head, however, was suddenly being pelted with tapioca-sized hail.  I was nearing home so I continued on.  The further I went, the bigger the hail got.  When I finally reached home, it was pea-sized and starting to really sting.  I finally got in the house.  I ate my mango and watched part of Mythbusters. 

And now it looks like it's getting sunny again.

As a completely unrelated side note, I have job interviews tomorrow and next wednesday.  I don't even want to go to the interview tomorrow, but I'd really like the job I'm interviewing for next week.  It's to do data gathering and processing for neurology research with the University of Edinburgh.  I think it would be good.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

diaryland entry 8:50 a.m. - 2005-12-16

Yesterday I figured out why Penicuik doesn't quite feel like home.

I grew up in Duluth. It is on Lake Superior. Anytime you go any distance in Duluth, there is The Lake. After college, I lived in Seattle. Seattle is right on Puget Sound. Whenever I left my apartment and looked down the hill, there was Puget Sound. Now here in Penicuik, I'm land-locked.

Don't get me wrong. Penicuik is lovely. We're surrounded by rolling hills and fields full of fluffy white sheep. But to me, it feels foreign. And not just because it is a foreign country. I'd have the same feeling in central Illinois, Iowa, or Colorado. I am used to living next to large bodies of water. When I'm not, I feel disoriented. When you have an enourmous lake or bay or sea next to your town, you always know right where you are. When I'm land-locked, it just feels wrong.

I figured this out because yesterday Husband and I had to go to Musselburgh in order to apply for my national insurance number. Musselburgh and the nearby Edinburgh neighborhood of Portobello are both on the south shore of the mouth of the Forth River. It feels like home. The sea reminds me of Lake Superior.

For now, I am pretty much stuck in Penicuik. But maybe after I have a good job we will be able to afford a place in Musselburgh or Portobello. If I lived there, Scotland would feel a lot more like home to me.

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

diaryland entry 4:00 p.m. - 2005-10-16

Hello.

I'm in Scotland. I've moved here because this is where my husband lives. I like Scotland, but I am not sure I'll ever feel like I belong here.

I don't understand paying for a tv license. It's like they put a gun to your head and make you support PBS.

I don't understand the British need to make a cutesey nickname for everything. They are too lazy to say the entire word "vegetable", so they shorten it to "veg". Then they decide that isn't cutesey enough, so they come up with some rhyming slang and call it "uncle reg". Which is no shorter or easier than calling it by its proper name in the first place.

There is no Velveeta. There is no root beer. This is very wrong. How am I supposed to make my favorite nacho dip without Velveeta and RoTel?

I guess I should go and see if my husband is awake. Jet lag is a bitch.

Alana
www.girlalive.com

Posted by Alana at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)