Speaking properly (or some nonsense like that)

Once people get to know you here the first thing they give you a hard time about is how you can’t speak properly. Don’t try to tell them how there isn’t a second ‘i’ in aluminum or that color doesn’t require a ‘u’. It won’t matter. The British will never believe that you’re speaking properly unless you pronounce every vowel in Hereford, or when you flatten every ‘a’.

Not that I mind the English accent. On the contrary I find it very interesting. When you’re here you can pick up more on the regional accents too. Picking out Welsh or Scottish from British is easy. The regional English accents are a little more difficult to distinguish. I haven’t quite figured out where they each come from, but I’m starting to hear them.

The scariest thing is that I’m picking up the manner of speech already. I haven’t been around long enough to get the accent, but it’s probably going to happen. Just the other day the American chick (don't yell at me, that's what she wanted to be called) in our office ended her phone conversation with a British accent. She’s only been here a year. Luckily, my spouse is American whereas hers is British. She gets the accent all the time where I hear the American accent every night.

I won’t even go into cursing, but I will say that there’s no English speaking accent that I’ve heard that can curse with more invective than the British. To my ear the accent gives cursing a measure of proper speech even while being as foul as an NFL coach’s halftime tirade after when his team is down three touchdowns.

But the absolute most entertaining thing about the British accent is hearing them try to speak with a Texas or Western accent. Flat a’s really make saying y’all difficult. It ends up sounding more like fowl than fall. Comedy of the highest form and they don’t understand why I find it funny. Maybe I’ll teach them how to conjugate y’all (yes, it can be done, ask any Texan).

As I end this post I’ll leave you with my favorite British saying: cheers.

Frog

It's Not England, It's Endor

Been a while since I posted. Went hiking a couple of weekends ago in the New Forest. Very pretty. I kept expecting to see an Ewok jump out.














Realized there wasn't a picture of Aaron and me, yet. Didn't take any of us on this hike, but here is one from another.

The Unwatchable Sport

I guess it’s been way too long since I wrote a post since I’ve got friends e-mailing me asking when the next update is coming. Well here it is, in all its lack of glory.

The big thing over the past couple of weeks has been the World Cup. Even though it has been over for a week, the talk is still about the head butt. There have even been articles about it on Page 2 on espn.com. It wasn’t quite Artest going into the stands, but it definitely made the game exciting.

That leads me to the title of my post. We went over to a friend of a friend’s place to watch the England quarterfinal match against Portugal. There hadn’t been an opportunity to watch a full match on a real TV (Internet viewing leaves a lot to be desired), so we were looking forward to it. Plus, there were going to be grilled hamburgers, so Wife was definitely excited.

Viewing conditions weren’t optimal since we wanted to enjoy the nice weather by sitting in the garden. This required the TV to be wheeled to the back door which caused the sun to wash out the picture a little, but it was still better than a 320x240 pixel internet feed.

I think it was about halfway through the first half when Wife and I realized that the first half wasn’t close to over and we were already bored. In the game’s defense our friends who actually know soccer said it was an awful game, but we were just completely bored. And this went on for 120 minutes plus some arbitrary number of extra time minutes that the referee decided they needed to play. Even after all that nobody had scored. The only thing interesting that had happened was a Portuguese player had gotten stepped on (in the groin) leading to the best English player shoving another Portuguese player and getting ejected.

In the end England lost because their players couldn’t kick a ball into the ocean from a boat when it comes to penalties.

Now I will be the first to admit that the subtlety of the game is completely lost on me, so I won’t claim to understand the game completely. But to me it seems like the game of close but not quite. So many times the players would break away from their defender only to make a pass that was just a little ahead of the player breaking to the goal.

I guess I could find myself watching soccer more often, but I think it will be similar to how the Sports Guy watches it: be doing something else and then look up when the announcers’ voices become agitated or excited. That way I can catch all the good bits and skip all the “action” around midfield.

Wife would like me to point out that she still likes it even if she couldn’t make it all the way through final without flipping through the channels occasionally. The drama of grown men (aka: the Italians) acting like they’ve been hit by a sledgehammer when anyone from the opposing side looks at them funny appeals to her soap opera appreciation side.

That should about cover soccer (football). I’d write about cricket but I don’t have a clue what the heck is going on in that sport. It’s incomprehensible.

Cheers,
Frog

Stir Crazy

Seem to have a lot more free time on my hands, which can be nice and boring. Come weekend I am ready to get out of town. Bought a new car (named Jack), so a road trip seemed in order. Went to Salisbury -- old catherdral, lots of shops, fun to walk around.

Here's a view of the cathedral from

the river walk below

Welcome to England!

We can say that now since we’ve finally been properly introduced to English weather. While our family and friends are roasting in the hot, Kansas June, we’re here in long sleeve shirts because it’s not even 60 degrees and it’s rained all day. Like a lady at work said it’s the first day of Wimbledon. It’s almost guaranteed to be crummy weather. I’m glad it’s summer. Getting thrown into months of this kind of weather could really depress a guy.

Since I’m not above stealing gimmicks from other people, I’m going to start doing a For and Against section in my posts. I got the idea from Michael Davies, who is writing a rather entertaining blog about the World Cup for ESPN’s Page 2. So here’s what I’m for and against today:

For: British weather (at least for now)

Against: Not taking a jacket to work

For: Finding the same orange juice that I like back home

Against: No kosher salt

For: English sausages

Against: Puddings that aren’t pudding (black, Yorkshire, etc.)

For: Our apartment kitchen

Against: British plumbing

For: Being within walking distance of restaurants and pubs

Against: Paying for parking anytime we drive somewhere

There are sure to be more in the future, but that’s the list for now. Wife and I are off for dinner at a friend’s place tonight.

Cheers,
Frog

Rick Steves is my Beatch

Or what Aaron wanted me to call my blog.

A couple of pics of the new apartment, including our new sofa.

The only place to sit for at least a month.


Evidence of the lack of seating.



The view from our apartment.

And so it begins...

Touring that is. Wife and I had our first taste of touring since we arrived. On Sunday we drove to Salisbury to see the cathedral and check out the town. It was a sleepy, overcast day and the town showed it. About half the shops close on Sunday, so nothing was busy. From the car park we wandered along the river walk for a short time, then down some shop-lined streets to the cathedral close.

When you approach the cathedral it really is an impressive site. It’s gothic in nature with a spire that stands out from all the surrounding landscape. In fact, as you drive into Salisbury from the south you can see the spire well before you can see the rest of the town. According to our guidebook the spire is so impressive that it is having a rather detrimental effect on the supporting structure.

It was proven to be an old church (built circa 1250 A.D.) by the scaffolding that covered the north side from the transept to the back of the church. As we approached we couldn’t believe how big it was. From the outside it looked comparable to the duomos in Florence and Milan. It was only when we went in that we saw that while impressive it really wasn’t as large as we had thought. With nothing around it to offer scale, the cathedral appears much larger. The only thing that can give any sense of scale are some chestnut trees that grow in the close, but these aren’t very large or very near either.

Unfortunately this cathedral has gone the way of supposedly so many others in England. There’s a donation box at every corner. Luckily we were there on a Sunday so without many tourists about there was no one present to hound people to make the donations. We were only able to stay in the cathedral for a bit as there was a service going on and we felt awkward walking around during it.

After leaving the cathedral we wandered to the market square which was rather disappointing. It is probably very nice on market day, but as there was no market on Sunday it was being utilized as a parking lot. A bit depressed by this we headed to find some lunch.

Having had a decent lunch in a pub we made for St. Thomas’ church, which was built shortly before the cathedral for the workers building the cathedral. There is an interesting mural of the Last Judgment here, though it is a bit faded. The church itself felt rather cozy and had the requisite number of memorial stones on the floor which had been worn down from centuries of people walking on them.

It was still fairly early in the afternoon when we finished at St. Thomas so we decided to follow the river walk along the Avon. This proved to be a very nice path with various water fowl on the river and water clear enough you could see the fish. After a decent distance we turned around and headed back for the car.

Overall we thought that Salisbury is definitely worth a visit, especially for some shopping. There seemed to be a good number of unique shops and some quality restaurants for lunch. Combine that with a trip to Stonehenge and you’ve got a good day of sightseeing.

Cheers,
Frog

Long overdue update

It’s been way too long since I gave an update, but I’m going to blame that on packing, travel, and sleeping on an air mattress with no pillows or blankets.

Wife and I arrived safely last Wednesday despite departing on 6 June 2006, which, if you were watching CNN, was sure to have been the apocalypse. At least they were prepared to cover it if it had happened and even more prepared to say “We told you so”.

After an uneventful flight we came down to my office to pick up the keys to our flat. Once we went in Wife was a little shocked at the size. Going from a three bedroom house in the US to a two bedroom flat in the UK is pretty shocking. I was more prepared for it as I had seen how much smaller some of the other places were.

We stayed in a hotel the first three nights hoping that our air shipment would arrive so we would have our air mattress and some other necessities, but as the week went on it became more and more obvious that wasn’t going to happen. A lady at work was nice enough to let us borrow her air mattress so we’ve been in the flat since Saturday. It’s nice being able to have some food around, but we still can’t cook anything and sleeping without sheets and pillows is getting a bit old. I’m hoping we’ll have our air shipment by Friday, which would only be 11 days later than it was supposed to be.

Over the weekend we found a great deal on a couch and we also found some patio furniture. The neighbors are probably thinking we’re the weird Americans who eat on their patio all the time. Having the couch is definitely nice since we have someplace to sit inside. I’m thinking Wife and I may have to trade off for it and the air mattress since it is so much more comfortable.

Last night we got another major hurdle out of the way. We were able to buy a car, or at least put a deposit down to hold a car. It’s a black VW Golf GTi Turbo, so even though it’s small, it’s fast. Now I’ve just got to complete Wife’s manual transmission lessons.

Overall everything is going pretty well. We’re getting settled and have arranged almost everything. We’re within walking distance of shopping, restaurants, pubs, and movie theaters in town. Everyone at work has been very helpful and nice. I don’t know if it actually feels like anything other than a vacation yet, but I’m sure that will change soon enough.

I almost forgot. The craziest thing we’ve seen so far happened the other night while we were on our balcony/patio playing cards after having dinner. The parking people had been called to put a clamp (boot in the US) on an unauthorized car in the parking lot. After the guy had the clamp put on, the person whose car he had clamped started talking to him on one side of his van. While they were talking, the person’s friends pulled a clamp out of their car and clamped the rear tire of the parking guy’s van. We felt so bad for the parking guy. He’s doing his job and ends up getting his van clamped. The irony of it was still amusing, though.

That’s all for now. I hope to have some pictures of the car and the view from the apartment for the next post.

Cheers,
Frog