dissonance

This post could have ended better

There were some omissions in my last post.

I forgot two other Scotland trips.  That last list should be updated to read France in March, Scotland in April (Easter), Boston in May, Scotland in June (Craig's Mom's birthday), some other wanderings with parents maybe around this time, Scotland in July (T in the Park), Ireland in August. 

Basically, I go to Scotland and a few other places.

The other glaring omission was, of course, Craig. Now I'll be the first to admit that he's made living in England considerably better than it would be otherwise.  But (brace yourself, here comes the sappy) he just makes everything better, not just England.  Seriously, he's one of the best things to happen in my life.*

Ok, now before you either start rolling your eyes or go "Awwwww", stop.  It's in all honesty when I say that I wrote that more for myself than for making you hurl or squee.  I think in the last couple of years I've been in some less than nice (ok, fucked up) relationships.  The result being I think I got some wacked ideas making camp in my head.  Most of the time I don't even think it's a messed up way to think.

That is, until Craig started un-messing me up.  I won't say he's "fixing" anything because he's doing this by just being him.  Just last night when we were on the phone talking about coordinating evening plans I was debating different travel combinations, all with the goal of minimizing him just sitting around my flat with me.  He cut me off saying, "Hey you know I actually do like spending time with you? So I don't mind hanging about.  Consider it part of, you know, the whole liking you a lot thing."

That made me burst out laughing.  How in the world did I get to the point where I think hanging out with me is too much trouble for my boyfriend?  How do I become so messed up that I think not being with me would make him happiest?  I mean, I know how I got here, but holy shit, this should not be revolutionary stuff folks. He's with me because he likes me!  Not! That! Profound!

And that's just one of many little ways he un-messes me up.  I won't go into more of them because although you can always close this window when it gets to be too much, I'd like you to want to come back when it's less googly eyed (not Google eyed) around here. 

Anyway, because of him I'm developing something that actually resembles a healthy relationship and although it's disturbing that this experience is new to me, it's still pretty cool dammit.

*Could be that he's actually the best, but it's in competition with when I was conceived and that's more of a question of semantics. I'm still deciding if life begins at birth or at conception.  In the first case then he wins hands down. In the latter case, I'd have to imagine my conception which involves parents being naked... Oh gross I can't even go there.  Ok he wins for being the best thing to happen to my life but only because I don't want to imagine my parents doing it.

So you think you can move?

I've had several people ask me what it's like since moving to England because they've been thinking about doing a similar move.  At first, I was always hesitant because I didn't think I had spent enough time here yet to come up with a really good description but now that I'm approaching the 6 month mark (March 9 will be 6 months) I think I could give a general idea for you curious friends back in the states.

Firstly, I'm really glad I moved here.  It hasn't been perfect by any means, quite inconvenient in fact (I'll get into that a bit later) but all in all, a wonderful experience I wish I had taken advantage of sooner.  In 6 months I've found these things to make the move more than worthwhile:

- A great group of friends.  They've taught me the ways of British culture with both their sense of pride and their sense of humour.

- The UK is wonderfully diverse.  I'd even go so far as to say more diverse than when I lived in California.  In San Diego, sure there were lots of races and what not but in the end they were all "San Diegan" (which is like Californian with a bit of guacamole on the side) but here, there's a ton of people from all over the world and people hold onto their backgrounds a little firmer, so that's pretty cool.  I should say though that this is more true the closer you get to London.  As you go west and north it dips down quite a bit in diversity.

- Awesome music scene.  Hollywood churns out movies faster and they take forever to get here, but I think the UK is currently leading in music (except for Hiphop/RnB, oh woe is me).

- Easy access for travel.  Scotland was great, France in 3  weeks, Scotland again in April, Boston in May, and I think Ireland in August.  Plus a little more travelling if my parents visit in July.  I can't say I traveled that much my whole time living in San Diego and even then it was mostly to Vegas or Mexico.

- This one is stupid but I love that you get to pick your seat at the movie theater and pre-booking online is quite normal. No more waiting 3 hours sitting on a stinky floor at a movie premiere.  Although that can be fun for movies like LOTR and Harry Potter, it's just dumb for the newest comedy.  You can walk in during previews and know your prime seat is waiting for you. No wonder they don't have The Twenty here.  You can spend those twenty minutes getting another pint.  BTW, I recommend Hot Fuzz if you enjoyed Shaun of the Dead at all.

- Fashion is fun here.  Being so close to London and the rest of Europe makes the retail stores quicker to get fashion trends and experiments and it shows on people.  I suppose it's similar to New York but I always thought the Californian lifestyle was really too casual and warm to take up 75% of the fun things clothes can be.

- I like that prawn crackers are a staple of Chinese take away. Much better than the fortune cookie, which I haven't seen once here.

That said, there's still a number of factors I think people need to consider before taking the plunge in what seems like a fun adventure.

- Are you a positive person?  No, really, are you?  Because you need to have as much positive energy as you can muster when all you want to do is buy food on a Sunday but you can't because of some ridiculous law that makes the grocery store close at 4pm.  And the banks open from 9-4 only.  And when they give you 8 hour delivery times so you can't even so much as take a shower while you wait for your package (which is ultimately not even delivered after you wait 10 hours, fuck you Argos!)

- Do you like meeting new people?  Especially with accents that can be hard to understand even if they're speaking English and they look at you 'cause YOU'RE the one with the funny accent?  Can you take a joke when they make fun of you for it and know that taking the piss is really a sign of affection?

- Can you give up football and take up football?  Because you know how much they play football on tv in the states? Well, it pales in comparison to how much football is on here. And rugby. And cricket.  I've taken a liking to football, although I don't think I could watch more than 3 games a week.  But I'm definitely still not into rugby and I have yet to be exposed to cricket (thank God).  There's almost no basketball (saw 2 minutes of the all star game) and no baseball at all.

- That last one can be expanded to just about everything that's different here than in the states.  Can you give up instant noodles? Because they are RUBBISH here.  Can you give up clothes dryers? They are rare here and usually quite small.  Can you give up having your hair dryer, electric toothbrush, electric shaver, etc. being in the bathroom? Because there are no electric sockets in the bathrooms.  I know, it's weird and it's inconvenient but there you go.  Can you give up the familiarity of something as little as a lightswitch?  Because they go the opposite direction here and on top of that every electric socket has its own on/off switch.  Can you give up Tar-jay? Because they do have Tesco but believe me, it's not the same nor nearly as cute.

- Can you give up your love of money and a good deal?  Because the dollar is very weak and everything is just more expensive here. Everything. So if you go through life converting back to dollars you're going make yourself and everyone around you miserable just because you can't stand the fact that the double cheeseburger at McDonald's here is actually $2 and therefore, not a value.  Just accept that dinner is normally going to cost you $14 (£7) (without drinks) and just concentrate on having a good time with your friends who are kind enough to make fun of your trendy shirt that looks awful on you.

Keep in mind, all this is mainly applicable for England (South England to be even clearer) so your mileage may vary. But even given all this, if you're still interested, and it's not something that can be satiated by a long extravagant vacation, go for it!  Like I said, I have no regrets.  I look forward to sharing a Cornish pasty with you.

You coulda wrote about Scotland (twice) by now

Scotland pics are up (with commentary!) but alas no descriptive post highlighting the trip.  Work has been swamping me and then there's The Move which has been occupying my off work hours.

I'm about to aquire my 4th address (in two different countries) in the last 12 months.  Starting when I moved out of my parent's place when I was 18, this brings me to a total of 12 "homes" in the last 9 years.  I'm starting to wonder if this is due to a deep rooted personality trait or if as a life experience it will affect my outlook on things.

I do think that I would love to "settle down" somewhere, grow some roots, meet the neighbors, etc… But on the other hand, not right now.  Soon, but not now and I don't know where.

Anyway, I'm moving on Monday to a town called Guildford.  It's in a 7 bedroom Victorian-ish house and the coolest thing is that my room has chandeliers.  Two of them!  And pretty curtains that match my bulletin board.  The other two places I looked at in Guildford didn't stand a chance.  One of the other choices was the size of a closet (the ceiling almost touched my head!) and the other one… well the guy who showed me around definitely farted in my presence and for me, that's pretty much a dealbreaker in the room hunting process.  It almost didn't matter that the rest of the house was a literal shithole, it could have been the honeymoon suite at the W and there would still be nae chance of me living with fartman.

Yup, nae chance.  If you think it means "no chance but in a scottish accent" then you would be correct.

Since I'm moving and I'm obviously going to want to write about the new pad possibly with chandelier-ish pictures I don't know when I'm going to be able to write about the Scotland trip, which is almost turning into a very fond memory.  It's too bad because it was a great trip, so great that I'm going back up there Easter weekend!

So maybe I'll save my Scotland writeup for then and then there's just one Super Scotland Synopsis. You can wait two months right?

Distraction from the lazy

I've made some progress on the Scotland pictures thing.  They've been transferred from the cameras to the computer. Now I just need to parse through the good stuff, upload them to the blog, and think of witty comments.  I dunno if I can come up with witty comments but you can't complain about 2 out of 3 right?

In the meantime, yo, check out the mad skillz of my soccer swoon Thierry Henry.  Why is he my swoon?  Well not only is he a fucking genius at football, but the guy can dance! 

Here's another clip with more football stars doing some other crazy tricks.  Kind of puts those Harlem Globetrotters a run for their money.

Scotland Part Twa

Uploaded some pictures from my phone. These aren't very good and so I don't consider them as part of my real pictures (which are pending... effort). 

More Reasons to Heart the Scotland:

I get to go to a really cool venue and get THIS close to the band:

Scottish people are really nice. Look at how excited I am to take a picture with them!

Weee! (that's Craig's sister on the left)

It could also be that I am excited about how they draw little clovers on the pints of Guinness:

And you know we loves the Guinness:

And finally, this pub we walked by in Edinburgh is probably enough to rank Scotland in at least the Top 3 Awesomest Place Ever:

People, they have a pub named Filthy McNasty's.  FILTHY MCNASTY'S!

Scotland Part Yin

Greetings!  Fresh back from Scotland and I've got lots to share.  Unfortch, no pics quite yet, so first I'll share with you some general impressions and stories about my week.

New favorite foreign saying: Getting fou and unco happy
Not only is it fun to say, but it has a brilliant meaning - basically getting happily falling down drunk and really, who am I to argue with that?  I also had fun saying "monakillie!" (Come on Kilmarnock!) at the football game on Tuesday and it must have worked because they beat Falkirk 3-0.

Scotland isn't about kilts and bagpipes
Well it is, but it's also very much about William Wallace and Robert Burns. Now, some of you more testosterone-ly inclined readers may recall William Wallace aka Mel Gibson a la Braveheart, but I'd be willing to bet that very very few (aka none) of you have heard of Robert Burns.   Poet, philosopher, farmer, womanizer, the man is a revered icon of Scotland.  There's statues of him in the smallest of squares and kids learn his verses at the tenderest of ages.  They even celebrate his birthday at around this time of year with a Burns Supper, where they eat haggis, drink pints, and recite poetry. And yes, this is all supposed to be a awesome time and I'm sure it is.

So. Pretty.
Scotland is one of the greenest, prettiest places I've ever visited... and this is dead in the middle of winter!  It has been one of the mildest winters ever, and I did see lots of bare trees, but still I can't remember how many times I said, "ooooh greeeeeeen!"  I can't wait to show you pictures but I'm sure they can't do justice to it.  I've also heard that northern Scotland offers even more fantastic scenery but that will have to be postponed for another week (perhaps in Spring?)

Where everybody knows your name
Scotland only has a population of 5 million and Craig grew up in a town of about 33,000 but even I was impressed when we couldn't go anywhere without him running into someone he knew.  There was the convenience store where we picked up some sandwiches (the guy at the counter grilled him about me the whole time we waited), the pub where he used to work (talked to about half the people there), the Clap Your Hands concert (old uni friend), at the one of two clubs in Irvine (his cousin) and I think there was a point where someone yelled out his name at a mall in Glasgow.  Popular fella.

Sheep sheep sheep sheep sheep and nary a wool in sight
I didn't count exactly but I must have seen about 300 sheep last week and this did not stop me from exclaiming "sheep!" everytime we passed a field.  And yet, I visited two yarn stores that had the most pitiful stock I've ever faced, even compared to Michaels in the states! Monascotland get your woolly act together!  And before y'all get on my case about visiting yarn stores while on holiday, I'll have you know that one of them just so happened to be next door to some friends' office we were visiting and the other was when I was mildly looking while walking around town and Craig was the one who spotted a street sign pointing to one in the alley so the guy was just earning some (well-earned) points from me.  It wasn't like I was "looking-looking", you know?