UK Curios Fact #2 - On/Off Switches on Outlets

Again not sure why this is, but seems related to the British overall safety consciousness, but literally ever single outlet has an on/off switch. Initially I thought this had to do with being more environmentally conscious, but in my opinion the English are only more 'green' in principle/ambition, but not in reality. We haven't even had the option to recycle cans, glass, etc in any of the places we've lived or at my office.




Anyway, if anyone has any idea why they have on/off switches on their outlets, please let us know!

Huey House

Okay while this post is not technically about the UK, perhaps its an omen to the next Huey adventure......

Many of you heard about Greg sending a letter last year to the owners of a house in our neighborhood that he loved. It turned out the house was built, owned and occupied by an architect couple who were delighted to receive Greg's letter. We ended up meeting up with them and having a very preliminary conversation as to "the possibilities". Heather shared with us that they were building two homes near by that might be to our liking.

Fast forward six months, and Greg is on their website only to find this.

To be honest, it freaked me out a little at first, but now that I've had a bit more time to process it I can appreciate it (especially as a marketer or as they say in the UK a marketeer...I think of mousekateer every time I hear them say it :0) ).

UK Curious Fact #1 - No outlets in bathrooms

There are a number of things here in UK that are "different" that we thought we'd share. If any of you know why some of these things are the way they are, please let us know.

As you know from various posts, we have lived in about 4 different places since arriving here in London. On top of that we've probably stayed in at least 5 hotels for various work and personal trips. In every single case, there has never been an outlet in the bathroom. I know, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but it makes getting ready in the morning kind of tricky...especially if you are a woman. Go ahead, try getting ready in the morning without using any outlets and see how it goes.

Usually in hotels, the hairdryer is permanently plugged into an outlet in the closet with about a three foot cord that doesn't reach close to any mirror. In the various flat we've lived in, I often find myself drying my hair in the hallway or other random spots.

I am sure this has something to do with the British obsession with safety, but really, can they not trust themselves to avoid blow drying their hair in the bathtub?

An Unconventional 4th of July

As Greg mentioned I spent my 4th of July cleaning out my flooded office. The day before, at about 5pm it got very dark outside and then we had about twenty minutes of hail the size of marbles. It was so loud we could barely hear each other talk as we all stood at the widows looking at this Biblical type of occurrence. It was all very exciting until it got a little too exciting and the water started pouring in from the roof and the ceiling tiles started coming down and the lights started burning out.

We quickly sumized that electricity and water are not a good mix and started to evacuate only to realize there was no place to go...it was dangerous outside too - not only the falling hail, but there was now about 2" of hail on the street making it very slippery - it looked like it had snowed.

After it finally slowed I rolled up my white pants and headed for home in my heels - the Underground would be a mess. A small miracle occurred when I was able to hail a cab and we headed out into the ice covered pond that made up the streets near the office. I've heard it took others as much as 4 hours to get home, but most of my co-workers headed to the local pub to wait it out.

The building interior is in bad shape. We had about 4" of water inside. We all assembled the next morning to determine a game plan. After a few hours throwing away tons of wet, dirty everything (cd's, coffee, tons of paper) I headed back to the flat and we are all working remotely until the building is fit to return. Never a dull moment here in London!

James Street Flat

Been a hectic week. After two months, we finally moved into our flat. Really, it wouldn't have been this soon but the corporate apartment was already rented starting July 11, so we really had no choice. My guess is the work on our flat won't be finished for 2-3 weeks more (I'm loosely defining 'finished'). The shower works at about 50%, the WC - it's literally a closet with a toilet - doesn't have a working light (so we're using a candle) and one room is filled with stuff that needs to be thrown out (or "binned" - see Tiff's prior post).

The first night was difficult. We live on a small street called James Street, a half block off of Oxford Street. When empty James Street looks like a quaint little street lined with restaurants and for those of you unfamiliar with London, Oxford Street is probably the busiest shopping street in London. We knew it would be a busy area, but expected things to slow down after the shops close (which is early here - around 6 or 7pm at the latest). Wrong. I don't get it yet, but our little street is very popular late into the evening. I'm curious to see if the crowds are here once summer ends. Anyway, we were so happy to not have to worry about hearing the tube trains starting at 5am that we left the windows open. We could still hear faint sounds of the buses on Oxford Street, but that wasn't too bad. Here's the problem. We live above a Starbucks store. A Starbucks store that has its supplies delivered throughout the night. I think the milk is delivered at 3 or 4am. Pretty sure it comes in glass bottles. Glass bottles that make a lot of noise when they hit each other. The pastries are then delivered at 5am. Sandwiches at 6am. You get the picture. Not much sleep that first night. We'll see if we learn to adapt or if closing the windows helps. To top it off, we were woken up by the work crew at 7:30am. At that point, it was just funny. To me at least. Not so much to Tiff. The good news is we get WiFi reception from the store. So, 40 pounds later we have 30 days of reliable Internet.







Prior to moving into the flat, we did enjoy the weekend. For the first time, the Tour de France started in London. It was a big weekend for the city with the Wimbledon finals and the Tour. It also turned out to be nice weather finally, which may explain the turnout for the Tour. We went to watch the first time trial in Hyde Park and it was packed. It lasted 3 hours so were able to get a spot along the railing after hour 2. We also took a boat along the Thames to Greenwich (as in Greenwich Mean Time). Cool to see London from the river and we went to a great restaurant in Greenwich called Inside. Highly recommend it. Make sure you get the Meantime Pilsner. A couple of these photos need some explanation. One shows Tiff simultaneously standing in the eastern and western hemispheres and the other is a photo of a garbage ship. Turns out all the garbage is taken out of London from this dock in these containers. I think the guy said that they take 14 shiploads a day and just dump it in Essex - which I guess is to London what Tacoma is to Seattle.

While I can promise you neither of us have an English accent yet, we are starting to use a few of their words. I thought I would share a few of them with you. Some of these seem so stereotypical that I often find myself giggling when I hear them used.

Bin it = Throw it in the trash
Rubbish = Trash (used both literally and figuratively)
A Dog's Dinner = Used to say something is ugly
Chalk & Cheese = Used like we use "night and day"
Blokes = Guys
Cheekey (as in Cheekey Monkey) = Sneaky
Pull = Hook up
Blimey = Yikes
Jumper = Sweater
Dear Me = Oh no
Gob Smacked = Shocked
Dodgey = Sketchy
Top up = Refill
Squash = Juice
Lemon aide = 7up or Sprite
Bacon = Ham
Diary = Calendar
Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet = On the Same Page
Nackered = Exhausted


Another surprise is they swear here like crazy - in the office, on tv, in front of kids, etc. Basically, swear words are used not differently than regular words.

Smoke Free

First, we had more Internet problems (yes more) so my Manchester post was delayed, but it's on the site now. Scroll down to view.

A few other random things:

- London went smoke-free on July 1. No more smoking in pubs, bars, restaurants, offices (I guess they used to smoke in the workplace here), etc. Anyway, a fair amount of backlash/complaining here. A lot of pubs had smoke parties on June 30. We went out with Tiffany's U.S. boss' sister - Heather who is moving back to Seattle after a dozen years in Europe. She introduced us to a great place in Chelsea called Sophie's Steak House. We now have a Sophie's ashtray because they were giving them away. We actually had really good wait service here. Of course, the waiter was from the U.S. - Pasadena. On the way to the restaurant I saw a guy coming out of a flat with his wife and baby. Instantly recognized him. Turns out he went to GU with me - Rick Che - we actually went on a recruiting trip to Charlotte for NationsBank. He took the offer and ended up staying for a whopping 7 months down South. Did I mention he's Asian?



- I really wanted to go to Wimbledon this week. Someone told us that you can go around 5-5:30pm and people who have been there all day turn their tickets back in and you can get them for 15-20 pounds. Unfortunately, the weather has been pretty bad, especially in the afternoons. One of Nadal's matches took 5 days to complete due to rain delays. So, I've been watching on TV.

- Speaking of the weather...we had a big storm blow through this week. It started hailing and raining. It only lasted 10 minutes or so, but it was enough to cause the roof on Tiff's office building to collapse/leak. So, she spent the next day cleaning out wet cardboard from the office. Sounds like fun eh? This whole episode will likely cause our apartment refurb to be delayed because the SBUX office manager now has other priorities, but we've gotta get out of this corporate apartment.

- The Tour de France starts in London this year. I'm gonna drag Tiff to go watch. I'll see if I can get some good photos.

Fun with accents

We are laying pretty low this weekend trying to avoid the rain and the bombs :-)

Thought you might enjoy this video on UK accents to lighten the mood...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH_kOjsXakM