Ugh, it’s that time of year again – “big brother”. the british obsession with this noxious programme just boggles my mind. this show is on about 6 months out of the year, and spawns no fewer than 5 different offspring programmes, which are repeated ad nauseum throughout the day on various channels. my irritation with “big brother” comes not only from the show(s), but from the fact that it is nigh on impossible to escape. You can’t *not* see it, hear it, read about it. it’s so omnipresent that in spite of never actually watching it, i know almost as much about it as if i was a “BB” devotee. it’s insidious.

so they cycle “big brother” through. then, alternatively they have the “celebrity big brother” variant, where they take “celebrities” and stick them in the house for a month. i should, i suppose, explain straight off the bat that the term “celebrity” is played with very loose and fast around these parts. A british celebrity is, in fact, rarely ever known outside europe. It’s a small nation, but a powerful one, and quite honestly i am completely flummoxed as to why there are so few british celebrities of international stature. in comparison, u.s. celebrities are, as a rule, world renowned, and i suppose that says quite a lot about the predominance of american culture in general. still, the disparity between even b-list american celebs and u.k. media darlings is huge. i can probably list on one hand the number of british superstars who’s fame translates across the pond, and the vast majority of the rest of them, most americans would never have heard of.

i give you exhibit a – this year’s “celebrity big brother” line up:

Michael Barrymore
Traci Bingham
Rula Lenska
Samuel Preston
Pete Burns
Maggot
Jodie Marsh
Faria Alam
Dennis Rodman
George Galloway
Chantelle

if you only recognised 2 (or even 3) of those names, you’re not alone. see the pathetic bios here. i’m sure dennis is firing his agent even as we speak.

think this is an off year? check out the previous rosters here.

it’s going to be a very long month.

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big brother, reality television, dennis rodman

ugh, back to the grind. and really, grind is the most apt word for it. it is a singular chore to drag myself through the days, knowing that nothing more is going to get done, and the few things I would like to accomplish at this job are unlikely to see fruition before I leave. and believe it or not, that’s *not* a reflection on me. this is the only job i’ve ever held where i have achieved almost nothing concrete – the system is set up in such a way that it’s nearly impossible for anything to actually change, and where simply spending day after day slogging through the system is the only thing that keeps everything going, and is, in fact, seen as doing a “good job”. it’s running to stand still, and I was never a big fan of treadmills.

none of this was helped by the fact that the tube fare hikes threw the entire transoprtation system into a tizzy. as for me, I ended up spending £3 for my journey into work, because i didn’t have the 45 minutes to queue for the ticket line. they’re trying to forcibly move everyone onto the oyster card system (the RFID chipped passes), and so took away the option of paying for a single zone fare ticket with coins at the quickticket machine. up until now, I have avoided using the oyster card for a few reasons: a) the queue to top up the oystercard is always ridiculous b) it wouldn’t save me any money and i’m likely to lose it and c) my extreme distrust of the government. see, the oyster card is really just a tracking mechanism, as you can be followed throughout the tube system. if you want to get a season pass, you have to link the card with your personal information, and many people link it to their bank details as well. that’s an awful lot of information for the government (yes, the tube is still partly owned by the government as a public/private partnership) to have about the vast majority of perfectly law abiding tube riders. i trust the government with my information about as far as I can throw tony blair, and i am convinced that the push to get everyone on oyster cards is a direct result of the july bombings. i held on to the paper tickets for as long as humanly possible, but there is simply no way i’m paying £6 each day to get to and from work.

which leads me to my second gripe about this morning – they’ve effectively forced everyone to go to an oyster card, without making *a single extra provision* for it. suddenly, people who can no longer buy cheap paper tickets need an oyster card. yet at tooting broadway (a fairly busy station) there were still only 2 oyster card compatible machines, while the 4 quickticket machines stood useless. it was the same everywhere i saw, and the queues were out the door in many stations. further, after a full 2 years, the oyster card *still* cannot be used in many places, effectively forcing people to pay two fares when using the train and the tube, and pay-as-you-go customers also cannot use it on the overland train. not to mention, there are plenty of places where you are not able to “Touch in, touch out” in order to get the correct fare, and as a result, end up being charged the highest possible amount. the oyster card is a shining example of how the ancient city of london takes newfangled technology designed to make life easier, and just fucks it up with piss-poor implementation. and adding insult to injury, the tfl website didn’t even have fully up to date information – half the links were to the old fare info.

meanwhile, the tube workers were on strike over the new year holiday, and going on strike again in a week. what a fucking shambles of a scam.

the whole thing has become (you should pardon the pun) like a runaway train.

i know i’ve said this multiple, multiple times, but a public transportation system is judged on its convenience, reliability, and affordability. the tube is none of the above. what a shameful excuse for an infrastructure.

needless to say, i arrived at work grumpy and the day only went downhill from there.

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oyster card, london underground, tube strike, fare hikes

my face hurts this morning, because I’ve spent the past 12 hours grinning. you’ll have to forgive the obsequiously sycophantic tone of this post, but i feel like a kid who just got a bike for christmas.

kim, andy, j and i went to see the foo fighters play at earl’s court last night (the tickets were an incredibly thoughtful birthday present from k & a.) we met up at the tube station at 7:15ish. the show was to start at 7:30, but with two opening acts (the futureheads and eagles of death metal), it seemed reasonable to assume that the foos would not actually grace the stage until at least 9:00, so we popped into a pub for a few pre-show pints.

ambling back up the road after a couple of beers, we suddenly heard the recognisable strains of a foo song… we were missing them!! as i used to say in 8th grade, we booked it. flew through the gates and security, raced towards the floor, charged through the crowd as they broke into “my hero”. finally stopped to catch our breath.

and there he was. sweaty and goofy and gorgeous beyond belief. swoon.

i started jumping up and down screaming, and didn’t stop for the next two hours. they ripped into hit after hit as we sang along at the top of our lungs. j kept lifting me up so i could see above people’s heads. it was definitely amazing arena rock, with strobe lights, screens, and a blanket of lasers that sliced the place in half. the set list had all my personal favourites: “generator”, “the one”, “times like these”. better than i could have ever hoped. dave was disarming and affable with a crowd of nearly 20,000, at one point dedicating a song to “the 6,000 people 6,000 feet away from me”. he belched, he threw beer into the crowd, he tried to get a 45 year old virgin laid. is it any wonder i love him so? and then…

… in the middle of a guitar solo (during an extended version of “stacked actors” i think it was), people around me suddenly started shifting to the right. in a brief moment, i understood what was happening and ran. dave magically appeared at a podium in the middle of the arena floor, and there he was – about 4 meters away from me. i screamed. i jumped around. i actually shouted the words “i love you dave!” i finally understood how girls at concerts faint with excitement. he was right there. I could see his 3-day-growth beard. i practically got hit with the sweat flying off his drenched hair. it was incredible. i can die happy now.

the rest of the concert was a thrashing hazy blur. during the encore (”cold day in the sun”), dave and taylor swapped places and dave took up behind the drums – so good to see him back there. (incidentally, apparently he also made a surprise appearance for warmup band eagles of death metal, drumming as “diablo”, which we missed. guess the early bird does get the worm.)

the full set list was:

In Your Honor
No Way Back
My Hero
Best Of You
Up In Arms
Learn To Fly
Times Like These
The One
Stacked Actors
Big Me
Breakout
Generator
Have It All
Everlong
Monkeywrench

(encore)
This Is A Call
Cold Day In The Sun
All My Life

highlights included… well, everything. screaming myself into a throat hernia during “breakout”, acoustic “everlong”, and seeing dave up close.

sidenote: dave is apparently enamoured of coldplay, and wouldn’t shut up about them the whole night. towards the end of the show, kim pointed out a few vips on the podium dave appeared at and said they looked very familiar, particularly a ginger bloke in a hat. watching telly this morning, i realised it was, in fact, chris martin.

after the show, we unwound with a few more pints at a gay bar somewhere on brompton road. so in total, my alcohol intake was 4 pints over the course of the evening. felt absolutely fine going to bed. woke up this morning with the worst headache (a low-grade migraine which i have been staving off with copious quantities of ibuprofen and coffee). I am turning into an embarrassing lightweight in my old age.

here’s some pics I stole from someone else of last night’s show:

this calls for a tribute playlist. here’s a bunch of acoustic bits (”everlong” and “times like these”) along with some hilarious spoof stuff (for j – thanks for being so tall!) and a couple officially unreleased/bootleg songs (”butterflies” and “friend of a friend”) . the sound quality isn’t great on some of these, but still a fun listen.

MP3 playlist (M3U)

and here’s the podcast feed

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Dunno how I missed this, but thanks to the Vol abroad for picking it up.

tooting is famous on mars

“… Peter Mouginis-Mark, the Nasa scientist who named Tooting on Mars … grew up in south London, though he left in 1970 and now lives in Hawaii. He wanted, he says, to give his mum and brother a kick by putting their town’s name on the Red Planet. It’s an ambition that anyone can understand. Who hasn’t ever dreamed of putting Tooting into outer space?”

And according to the bbc:

“Tooting MP Sadiq Khan said: “This is getting a lot of attention, not only because of its twinning to our fantastic area, but also because this is probably the youngest large meteorite crater on Mars.”

Among Tooting’s other claims to fame is its status as the setting for the 1970s comedy Citizen Smith, and for former Tooting Bec Grammar pupil, now Conservative leadership contender, David Davis.”

how sad is that? its claim to fame is “the youngest large meteorite crater.” Damn – now if only it was the smallest old non-meteorite crater, then i could get excited about it. and can i just say, he lives in hawaii (paradise land of sun, sand, and surf), but named it after tooting (urban grotto of curryhouses and dingy pubs). that makes no kind of sense.

ah well, my sis will get a kick out of it – she still can’t say “tooting” without giggling.

and if you didn’t already know, this just confirms it: nothing of interest whatsoever happens in tooting.

(p.s. i give up already – blockquotes make everything slide off the bottom of the page in explorer, but I fucking give up already…)

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mi6, the “secret intelligence service” of the uk, now has an official website.

As Britain’s secret service, SIS provides the British Government with a global covert capability to promote and defend the national security and economic well-being of the United Kingdom.

SIS operates world-wide to collect secret foreign intelligence in support of the British Government’s policies and objectives.

ya know, secrecy just ain’t what it used to be.

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more tube travails today. this is certainly not the my first tube rant, and unlikely to be my last. the northern line was entirely shut down due to a strike, and is likely to stay closed through the weekend. which means that i had to walk an hour to work in the rain (something I *won’t* be able to do after we move office this weekend). the fun just never stops sometimes. (I hear what you’re thinking already – why didn’t i catch a bus? well, i would have… if even *one* stinking bus had come past in the hour long slog up the high street! if i’d waited for a bus, lemme tell ya, i’d still be waitin’)

i’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again: the tube is the most poorly run public service i’ve ever had the misfortune to use. it’s a lottery – you buy your ticket, and you take your chances. what kind of way is that for a city to operate, i ask? “Hmmm, I just spent £2.60… do I feel lucky today?” And don’t get me started on the cost, since they’re raising the fare yet again in the new year.

only 23 more weeks – this little countdown has become my daily mantra. i have been trying to convince myself that it will pass really really quickly. only 2 weeks until we go to visit my family in the states. once we come back, it’ll be the runup to the holiday season and christmas break. after new years it’s only a short while until easter. and after easter, it’ll be all downhill from there! these are the little games I play to get myself out of bed some mornings.

i wish i could think of something positive or witty to say about all this chaos, but i’m wet and my feet hurt. maybe tomorrow on my walk into work, i’ll have time to ponder it.

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Because I can’t leave well enough alone! I know when it comes to layout, cleaner is better. But at the same time, I don’t want my site to look like everyone else’s. Plus, the cross-browser discrepancy is really annoying me. So I am cheating (behind the scenes). You might see some of it over the weekend.

but, no one cares about that!

my office is moving at the end of the week, and I am rather sad about it. the building we are currently in is condemnable (really!) but it’s also located in a fun, hip part of the city, with lots of great shopping, restaurants for lovely lunches, funky pubs, along with a lot of conveniences like a good supermarket and post office. we are moving to a fab building in vauxhall, which is all shiny and flash (brad pitt has just bought a penthouse suite!) but has absolutely nothing in the way of amenities. It’s also a longer journey in the mornings. no more popping out to pick up a birthday gift at lunchtime, or buying some vegetables for dinner on the way home, or going to the pub for after-work drinks. it’s not far from home for me, but it’s different not being able to be there daily.

<*sigh*>

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so some family have enquired about where I live and what my flat is like, and I’ve decided to accomodate them by mentioning a little bit here.

i current live in tooting (tooting broadway to be exact) which is south west london. it’s a fairly multi-culti area, though heavily asian (which, here, means indian/pakistani/bangladeshi) and middle-eastern. the upside is there are a lot of curry houses, ethnic foods, and mosques. the downside is that we had a few suspected terrorists up the street from my house. all in all, i like it – it’s a lot less white-bread than other places.

here are a few photos of my flat (taken directly after cleaning; don’t be fooled into thinking it usually looks anything like this)

as you can see it is a) fairly spacious and b) not the least bit decorated by me (with the exception of the poster and duvet in the bedroom). basically, this is what passes for j’s bachelor sense of style, his main criteria being all furniture should be large enough for him to nap on comfortably, and purchasable from a catalogue. in other words, this is not my home – this is where I happen to live.

once upon a time, i used to have nice things. and a yard. and a dryer. and a bbq. i had a home that i enjoyed inviting people over to, and cleaning and decorating. seems like ages ago now. i have prints that I want to frame and put up, but since this is only a temporary stopover, it hardly makes sense. i have photos and art, currently sitting in a box in my sisters basement. someday i’ll live somewhere worth my while to invest my time and attention in again. for now, this’ll do.

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(advisory: completely biased, totally unobjective, thoroughly self-pitying rant ahead. you’ve been warned.)

okay, another failure.

I found black beans (not in a tin, mind you, but dried. i’d be praising jesus if I found a can of goya anywhere on this godforsaken little pissant island).

i was excited. i bought rice and tortillas and tomatoes and onions and peppers and yogurt for bean burritos. i even have adobo at the ready.

i rinsed the beans. I soaked them for 24 hours. i simmered them for two. i seasoned carefully. i stirred frequently. i practically sang lullabyes to the stupid little things.

they were just about ready. i left them for five more minutes.

and the motherfuckers *burned to cinders* on the bottom of the pan.

after listening to me rave like a lunatic for several minutes about the deficiencies of London, England and anything/everything British, jonno wisely went up the street to get some pizza. bless that man. may god shower blessings upon him for saving my sanity.

also – because they have no real holidays between now and the end of the year, (halloween celebrations being not much to speak of) there is already christmas chocolate in the supermarkets. but i *cannot believe* they put the fucking xmas decorations up on the high street already.

sometimes this country really bites.

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Summer is well and truly over here, which makes me more than a little sad. Two weeks ago I was wearing shorts and sandals, and now I am wearing cords and a turtleneck. It happens just that quickly here. The duvet is back on the bed, the space heater is at the ready.

I suppose i hate it so because it always happens without warning. in new england, you have several weeks of gradually cooling temperatures to get you used to the idea that the tan is going to be fading, and the flip flops are going to be put away. The leaves start changing, and the air gets crisp in the mornings. Kids start going back to school, apples are back in season, and the sailboats come out of the water. By Halloween you need a warm jacket over your costume.

But here, nothing seems to change. There are no turning leaves, no cider donuts and pumpkins. Nothing gets brisk – it just gets wet and cold and extremely windy. You don’t smell neighbours burning their rake piles, or lighting their woodburning stoves. There’s no real Halloween to speak of, so no candy corn or jack o’ lanterns.

I miss walks on the beach and spooky decorated houses and yellow school buses. I miss hot spiced cider and little trick-or-treaters and fall foliage and foggy mornings. I miss pumpkin bread and picking apples and that funny-coloured maize you hang on your door and frost on the grass and the smell of smoke in the air. I miss bracing hikes and acorns crunching underfoot and l.l. bean sweaters.

I miss fall. not autumn. i miss good ol’ new england fall.

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Lordy.

Garratt Terrace is a little side street around the corner from my house that we use to cut through to the High St and Tube station – walk up and down it a minimum of 2x a day, sometimes more. It’s not even a half a block away from my house.

This morning, on my way to the Tube, it was blocked off from end to end with police tape and about 40 police there… And then I read this. My work colleague confirmed that one of the arrests took place there, and another just around the corner.

This is getting really freaky now. It’s one thing when the terrorists are “somewhere else”, but when they’re right around the corner from my house…taking busses on my street… using my daily Tube station… when I am carrying my groceries past terrorist hideouts – well it’s all just a little surreal now.

walking home, there are all kinds of tv cameras up and down the street. it’s all very unnerving.

in other news, Senator rick santorum, the third ranking party republican and potential prez. nominee for 2008 – the same senator who equated homosexuality with man-on-child and man-on-dog sex, said that boston’s “liberal” atmosphere made priests molest children, and equated democratic blocking of judicial nominees with adolf hitler - has decided he’s sticking to his guns. no wishy-washy backpeddling for him, nosiree!

read what my journalist friend mike blanding has to say about the illustrious senator

i’m going to go hide under my bedcovers now…

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it just keeps coming, doesn’t it?

I had a meeting first thing this morning out in west norwood. i was definitely on edge getting back on the tube, but arrived at my meeting feeling much better. on my way back from the meeting, i am waiting, waiting, waiting for the overland train, and they keep saying “cancelled”, so i call the office and they tell me that a suspected suicide bomber was killed by police in a tube station, shutting down half the system, again.

Never thought I’d be relieved to heard about someone getting killed… Never though I’d be coming down on the side of “justifiable deadly force” by a police officer.

finally made it to the office by bus. then had to get home by bus. sitting at the top, i was impossible not to look around at my fellow travellers, eyeing them up.

it has been a long and tiring week, my nerves are frayed, and i am going to go have a tall stiff drink.

have a good weekend everyone. be safe.

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I can’t deal with any more panic stations…

Seriously, now. I’ve had enough. I’m tired of getting that sickening, sinking feeling in my stomach wondering what the fuck is happening to the world, who is trying to hurt people, and who is getting hurt.

I am tired, and angry that people can make me feel like this. I hate the fact they can pop my happy little bubble in an instant, and make me cry for no reason.

I am tired of having to make phone calls to ensure my loved ones are okay, and to ensure them that *I’m* okay.

I’m ranting here. But I was panicked, and then relieved, and now I’m furious and exhausted at the same time, and there is *nothing i can do about it********

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At work today, a few minutes to noon, several hundred people in my building filed outside and stood on the pavement. Shopkeepers, pedestrians, cyclists all came to a standstill out in the sun.

At twelve, a church bell tolled. Traffic halted. There was no speaking, no horns. It really was silent. Eveything stopped, and life was momentarily put on pause.

Two minutes is a long time when you’re really being observant. When you’re observing. Two minutes must seem a lifetime when you think you’re going to die.

When a crisis happens, and everything is chaos, people are dying, and you’re scared with no idea what the hell is going on as the world seems to be crumbling around you…it feels like life should just stop.

And today at noon, it did.

photo from guardian.co.uk

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observations:

the british stiff upper lip really comes in handy at a time like this. most of the reaction i’ve read can be summed up as “is that the best you can do? i fart in your general direction.”

cheers for getting the tube and buses running again. but most people I know want nothing to do with them today. myself included. My manager decided we could all work from home today, and even though it seems pathetic, that’s what I’m doing. i see no need to stress myself unnecessarily with trying to take the tube.

very strange how everything is supposedly “back to normal”. as if nothing of note happened. it’s almost a little *too* normal. i mean, jesus, we were bombed by terrorists, not sneezed on. I think that deserves some pause for thought.

the choice of targets seems a bit strange to me. while king’s cross, liverpool and the others are all big central stations, why nothing at victoria, waterloo, or clapham junction?

but i suppose life doesn’t stop for anything, so we might as well just get on with getting on.

so that’s what I’ll go do now.

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it’s such a strange feeling: to have something so big happen, and have so very little to say about it. in many ways, i feel very numb. i’ve expected something like this to happen since i moved here, and to find it finally happening before my very eyes feels almost anti-climactic. there’s a sense of “oh yeah, that’s what i thought.”

i’m not putting this very well.

instead, i think what i originally wrote about the madrid bombings is very poignant in hindsight, so i’ll just reprise it here:

I’m scared. I’m scared and so deeply deeply sad for the fathomless capacity of man’s inhumanity toward man. There no longer seem to be any limits to what we will do to each other, in a time when causing pervasive fear and random chaos has become the ultimate tool of any group with a political agenda or an axe to grind. In a climate where recognition and respect for an otherwise fringe cause is proportional to the size of the violence it can perpetrate.

it makes sense when you apply it to al qaida or eta or the ira. but try it on for size with bush and israel and zimbabwe, and see whether the shoe fits as well?

and I am so fcking *mad* with the u.s. we pay all sorts of lip service to wiping out global terrorism, and yet constantly, insistently perpetuate it through our actions, leaving people bewildered as to why our “war on terrorism” is so clearly *not working*, failing massively, in fact, and at a mind-numbing loss as for what other approach to take. we don’t know any other way of thinking about it.

i don’t know how to live in this kind of world. *no one* knows how to live in this kind of world. and that’s why the strategy of fear is so effective. that’s why walking down the street in a major metropolitan city feels like being at the center of a giant bullseye. that’s why daily goddamn news reports of suicide bombers and masses of civilians dying barely register a blip on our mental radar. that’s why it’s so hard to remember that we didn’t always have that small permanent gnawing knot at the pit of our collective stomach.

there’s got to be another way to live. it’s just a matter of how long it will take people to wake up and cry out for something more than *this*…

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london was bombed by terrorists today. it’s been a surreal and scary day, with overtones of deja vu. there was crying and sadness and fear and chaos and sirens everywhere. i don’t really know what else to say about it at the moment, because it’s hard to process. right now, i just want j to be home, but unfortunately with transport at a standstill, it looks like he’s going to have to walk the 8 miles so won’t get home until late.

i can’t wait to see him and hold him tight.

it’s a crazy fucked up world.

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well I haven’t blogged in about a week,but I have a really really good excuse this time: sun. It has been *almost* hot for one full week – this is british summer. blink and you’ll miss it. this is the only week I will get to wear my sandals and linen shirts. you might think, that because it’s only june, there’s probably still plenty of chance of warm weather ahead. but you would be wrong. i’ll never forget my first summer here. about the middle of july, there were ten sunny days of 30C weather in a row. i put away my duvet and scarfs, broke out the sunglasses, and tidied the bikini line in preparation. then, just as suddenly, it got chilly and wet again. after a week or so, i was complaining to a co-worker, asking when it was going to get warm again, and when summer would return. she said, deadpan, “that was it!” I was so sure she was joking, i laughed out loud.

two full summers and no tan later, i understand. my bathing suit is rotting in the back of a drawer.

the worst thing about british summer is how much people moan about it. you’d think the entire nation had just been transported in a blazing fireball to the middle of the saharan desert, for all the bitching they do. like the wicked witch of the west, “i’m melting, i’m melllllllltinngggggg!!!!” these are the same people who start wearing tanktops and flipflops before the crocuses even break snow cover. then they like to go on holiday to places like morrocco and the french riviera, and *still* complain about the weather. it’s completely illogical.

and of course, no place here has air-conditioning, *proper* air-conditioning. they have chillers, which are basically just window fans blowing lukewarm air on you. you might as well leave your fridge door open to cool the house down – you’d be hard pressed to raise a goosepimple. because there is pretty much no need to invest sums of money in a real appliance which would get one week’s worth of use a year. and the tube is an oven – about 10C warmer below ground, stuck in a tin can on rails, which they cant do anything about, because the whole system is so antiquated. but again, it’s not exactly a funding priority, since the rest of the year, who cares? these days, by the time my 15 minute journey is over, i need a fresh pair of underwear.

but i will say that personally, for the most part, i like being hot. i pointed out to jonno that this is the first week in a year where I haven’t complained about being chilly. i’d also like to point out that about 3 weeks ago, i still had the heating on. i was still keeping my cardigan at work.

so, if I love sun and warmth so much, why the hell am i electively living in london, of all the godforsaken wet and dreary places?

damned if i know.

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to all my culinary cake failures over the last two years…

apparently baking powder and soda in the uk are half the strength of what you buy in th u.s.

who knew? but finally I can stop wondering why everything i bake turns out so goddamn *flat*

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Been working at the council now for 2 years this week (umm, happy anniversary?) My building has about 400-500 people in it, 8 floors, 2 lifts and 17 toilets.

In the past two years:

– the building has been closed twice (once, no electricity, once flooding)
– the 4th and 3rd floors have been closed for a period of 4 weeks due to toilets flooding (separate incident. i know what you’re thinking, and no, our building is not, in fact, an ark)
– the phone system has gone out at least 6 times
– the computer network has gone down at least a dozen times
– one of the lifts has been out of order (for more than a day) at least 6 times (i work on the fifth floor and smoke. you do the stair math)
– 16 of the 17 toilets were not working until lunchtime one day (it’s like working in a camp with portaloos!)
– the windows in the entire building have had to be sealed due to threat of falling out (this should be fun, come about june, as the building heat only comes on when it exceeds at least 15 degrees outside)
– there is known asbestos in the walls
– there is a raging battle with mice
– there has been one documented case of tuberculosis
– there has been one genuine bomb scare (i was mostly annoyed that i couldn’t leave the building at my regular quitting time)

this is the pleasant and healthy environment that I so enjoy working in each day. aren’t you jealous?

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The one thing I cannot stand about life in London is the hidden expense of daily living – economically and socially.

Income taxes are usually a relatively moderate 22% on the average salary. This pays for your National Insurance (social security pension, which *I* will never have the luxury of collecting), and full health insurance. Not such bad things in and of themselves, and I admit it is refreshing to walk into a doctor’s surgery or hospital, and walk out without ever having to reach into my wallet.

however there are a million other insidious ways the government takes more then it’s fair share. there’s the council tax – a local government fee which is usually £400+ per year, depending on where you live. then there’s the congestion charge – £5 a pop anytime you want to drive into the city centre during working week hours. there’s the speed cameras – £60 fine for every offense, no matter how minimally over the speed limit. there’s the parking permits, and parking fines should your pay and display ticket run out whilst you are trapped in a post office queue. there’s mot (automobile inspection fee), and road tax (registration fee). there’s the insane price of petrol (equivalent to about $6 USD per gallon!), the insane price of tobacco (equivalent to about $10 USD per pack), the insane price of public transport (how about a $2 USD bus ride, or a $16 USD daily tube travelcard), the insane price of food ($2 for a dozen eggs).

it all adds up, little by little. in the states, you can easily get by on $20/day if you are frugal. here, £10 a day is a laughable ideal. and it’s spirit crushing. for all the talk about human rights, your life is invaded at every turn. you are constantly recorded, told what is good for you, what you can and cannot do. there are millions of “traffic calming measures” like speed humps and roundabouts and buildouts (narrowing the lanes to one car width). here you can go to jail for anti-social behaviour (rowdiness, excessive noise, hanging out on street corners, general nuisance behaviour) and hate speech (racial epithets or unpopular far-right political views). anything considered unsavoury or extreme has a law against it, and there’s one CCTV camera for every 29 people in the UK.

and for all the taxes and regulation, i find little evidence of a superior quality of life. Racism and poverty and benefit fraud exist here. Crime and public safety are still a major concern of day to day life. Utilities and services are often more poorly managed (witness my rants about the tube). The uk is not any sort of utopian society.

it’d be one thing if there were measurable improvement for all the restrictions we put up with, but instead all i feel is a deep sense of disheartening disillusionment and bone-weary tiredness.

it took seven years in nyc to feel this worn out, ground down, wrung out by minor trials of daily life. congratulations, london – you’ve achieved it in two.

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