May 2006 Archives

Thanks to a work colleague, Shasta and Carlos who both offered, no longer need to ship me Oreo cookies from the US. Sainsbury's the grocery store I shop at, does indeed carry them, its just that the one in Wimbledon doesn't for some reason.

Either way, despite the fact that they have been in my possession for 8 hours, I have yet to have a single cookie. I decided to save them as a treat to be eaten in a months time, when I’ll be well on my way to loosing the weight I’ve gained since moving over here.

As you may recall, I joined a gym and have been doing quite a bit of Nordic walking. However, I sort of fell off the wagon when I got sick with acute bronchitis. Now having the cookies on hand which will remain in the bottom on my work desk (I couldn’t think of taking them home), gives me an incentive to get back on track because when I eat them, I don't want to feel one bit of guilt!

I love my cat Choo-Choo dearly, but dear God, let me never reach the point where I'd consider him to be a husband or a soul mate. A child maybe, but nothing more, nothing less.

From the 'Dog Whisperer,' a Howl of Triumph
New York Times, By EDWARD WYATT, Published: May 23, 2006

Working with Americans and their dogs, he said, "I was surprised and a little confused by what I saw." Where he grew up, in Culiacan, Sinaloa, in Northwest Mexico, "everybody walks dogs," Mr. Millan said during a recent visit to New York. "But where I am from, the dog is always behind. Here the dog is always in front. I thought maybe you guys were doing it right and we were doing it wrong. Because to me America is the country where everybody is always doing it right. I thought you knew and we were wrong."

He quickly discovered: no. Americans were letting the dogs, rather than the humans, be the pack leaders, in almost every respect. "Americans work against Mother Nature, and that's why dogs don't listen to the general population of America," he said. "Why are dogs growing up on a farm much happier than a dog living in the city? Because on a farm, it gets to be a dog. And in the city they become a child, they become a husband, they become a soul mate. They become something the human wants before they are willing to do what is best for them."

Btw, do check the latest pictures of Choo-Choo on the right. He's pictured running around (really smelling flowers and eating grass) in my very overgrown front garden.

According to a small town in Germany that is getting ready for World Cup mania which starts next month, the smell most identified with the English is After Eight mint. I'm sure this is news to most English people. Same for the smell that's associated with America -- that being Coca-Cola. Btw, does Coca-Cola even have a smell? If it does, it must be pretty faint as I've never really noticed one. Then again, maybe my smell sense isn't as sharp as it should be, plus I really don't drink that much coke.

Why England's team is in mint condition By Telegraph, Kate Connolly in Berlin, Filed: 20/05/2006

...A small town in northern Germany claims to have come up with the "smell" of the World Cup by gathering together the "scents" of the football teams to compete in next month's tournament.

Holzminden, home to one of the world's leading industrial producers of smells since 1874, has erected World Cup smelling posts throughout the town and is inviting visitors to "Follow your nose".

"We were going to give England the smell of tea," said Ernst-Adolf Hinrichs, a retired perfume maker who has created the smells tour. "But then we assigned green tea to Japan, and so England got the After Eight, a cult symbol of Englishness for Germans."

The after dinner mint, which has actually been Swiss produced since 1988, is very popular in Germany where it is marketed as "England's finest mint".

The television advert for it is set at a posh English dinner party with the slogan, "In fine English style".

Holzminden's olfactory celebration includes everything from mangoes (Mexico), saffron (Iran) and Chanel No 5 (France) to vodka (Poland) and beef steak (Argentina).

Less unlikely candidates include oak moss, a species of lichen favoured in perfumery as a fixative base and widely found in Serbia and Montenegro, and vetiver, a tropical grass from Angola, which produces an aromatherapy oil. Brazil, the favourites to win the tournament, are represented by the pina colada, while Germany are embodied in the smell of freshly-baked bread. "We wanted to have sauerkraut, but realised that when it's warm it starts to smell very bad," Mr Hinrichs said. Italy smells of pizza, Holland of cheese, the United States of Coca-Cola and Sweden of pine and flat-pack furniture.

So it has been exactly 10 days since my last blog post. I have thought about posting something many a day, but I just couldn't get around to it. My body, my mind, my whole being is somewhat preoccupied. What with you ask? Well, I don't really want to talk about it right now. Oh, it’s nothing serious! So why haven’t I written then? It's just that when you use your real name in your blog and its not just strangers reading anymore, you start to think twice about what you write. I know, I know...we've had this conversation before.

In any event, I'm in the middle of reading Man and Wife by Tony Parsons which is a follow up his blockbuster, Man and Boy. Below is a passage in the book that at first enraged me for its simplistic characterization of women, but then upon further reflection, I sort of agree with.

Eamon: Women change, Harry...What you have to understand is that at different times in her life, a woman is like the world.

Harry: How's that?

Eamon: Well, from thirteen to eighteen, she's like Africa - virgin territory. From eighteen to thirty, she's like Asia - hot and exotic. From thirty to forty-five, she's like America - fully explored but generous with her resources. From forty-five to fifty-five, she's like Europe - a bit exhausted, a bit knackered, but still with many place of interest. And from fifty-five onwards, she's like Australia - everybody knows it’s down there somewhere, but very few will make the effort to find it.

Goodness! Only a man could come up with this stuff and only one who has experienced a whole lot of hurt!

If you are interested in reading blogs by other expats across the globe, check out the links at: Expat Travels:From Switzerland to Canada.

Just thought I'd make you my dear readers aware that today, 9th May is orgasm day in Santolia, Brazil.

For a month now, I've been craving Oreo Cookies. Why? I have no idea since I didn't particularly eat that many when I was back in the US. However, the cravings came on strong shortly before I got sick with acute bronchitis and ever since then; I've been on a search to find them. Unfortunately, none of the major grocery stores in my area carry the cookies. So I broke down and emailed Nabisco, thinking surely the British import everything else that is good from America, so Oreo cookies have got to be in the mix. Below is the timely response from one of their Consumer Services Directors.

Thank you for visiting http://www.nabiscoworld.com.

Kraft Foods International consists of independent operations outside the United States. Each company manufactures and markets products that appeal to their particular markets, so that many products which are available in one country are not available in others. Our products manufactured and marketed in the United States are not exported to countries where a Kraft Foods company is located or where Kraft products are distributed by one of our foreign operations.

While we never like to miss the opportunity to sell our products, we can only sell our products through retail outlets such as supermarkets, convenience stores, food marts, etc. Currently, we aren't set up for direct sale to individuals. We're sorry you won't be able to purchase this product while you're out of the United States. However, we hope you'll look for other KRAFT products which may be available to you.

Please add our site to your bookmarks, and visit us again soon!

It was great hearing from you, and remember we're always updating our site so visit us again soon!

I am most devastated by the news. And so, thinking of resorting to buying the cookies via ebay. However, buying food via an auction site takes me into unchartered territory that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with. So the search continues. Colleagues tell me they have seen the product in stores. However none can tell me exactly where. In the interim, I'm going to email Kraft Foods UK to see if I start a one woman campaign to bring Oreo cookies to the British public. I just know they'd love it!

Reading the article below reminds me that I need to invest some time into finding a good dentist in London. Having spent a small fortune on my mouth in the last couple of years, I really can't afford to let my dental care slide.

Btw, if you are in Chicago and looking for a dentist, consider: Kenneth C. Szurgot, D.D.S.
@ Lincoln Park Columbus Dental Associates, 2551 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60614, (773) 348-7008.
He does fabulous work!

While I'm in the dental referral mindframe, would also recommend, Dr. Robert M Perrie, 2835 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago, IL 60657, (773) 281-1010. He is a brilliant Orthodontist. It should be noted that he does braces for both children and adults.

Be sure to tell both that I made the referral. Beyond family and friends back in Chicago, I really miss my healthcare professionals the most. With that, I'm also tempted to provide the name of my Chicago Internist, but she's not accepting new patients. Which is such a shame as she is perhaps one of the best doctors in Chicago.

In a Dentist Shortage, British (Ouch) Do It Themselves
May 2nd 2006, Chris Loufte for The New York Times

William Kelly, 43, extracted part of his own tooth, leaving a black stump. He plans to pull one more.
Now it is a jagged black stump, and the pain gnawing at Mr. Kelly's mouth has transferred itself to a different tooth, mottled and rickety, on the other side of his mouth. "I'm in the middle of pulling that one out, too," he said.

It is easy to be mean about British teeth. Mike Myers's mouth is a joke in itself in the "Austin Powers" movies. In a "Simpsons" episode, dentalphobic children are shown "The Big Book of British Smiles," cautionary photographs of hideously snaggletoothed Britons. In Mexico, protruding, discolored and generally unfortunate teeth are known as "dientes de ingles."

But the problem is serious. Mr. Kelly's predicament is not just a result of cigarettes and possibly indifferent oral hygiene; he is careful to brush once a day, he said. Instead, it is due in large part to the deficiencies in Britain's state-financed dental service, which, stretched beyond its limit, no longer serves everyone and no longer even pretends to try.

Mr. Kelly, interviewed in a health clinic here as he waited for his son to see a doctor, last visited a dentist six years ago, in Sussex.

Since moving to Rochdale, a working-class suburb of Manchester, he has been unable to find a National Health Service dentist willing to take him on.

Every time he has tried to sign up, lining up with hundreds of others from the ranks of the desperate and the hurting — "I've seen people with bleeding gums where they've ripped their teeth out," he said grimly — he has arrived too late and missed the cutoff.

"You could argue that Britain has not seen lines like this since World War II," said Mark Pritchard, a member of Parliament who represents part of Shropshire, where the situation is just as grim. "Churchill once said that the British are great queuers, but I don't think he meant that in connection to dental care."

Britain has too few public dentists for too many people. At the beginning of the year, just 49 percent of the adults and 63 percent of the children in England and Wales were registered with public dentists.

And now, discouraged by what they say is the assembly-line nature of the job and by a new contract that pays them to perform a set number of "units of dental activity" per year, even more dentists are abandoning the health service and going into private practice — some 2,000 in April alone, the British Dental Association says.

When I read statements like the one below by actor James Ellis, I get really homesick for Chicago.

Take Manhattan, glam it up, give it better shops and friendlier people, and you've got chit-town.

Btw, for those of you still in Chicago, did you know the following?

Chicago is not known as the windy city thanks to a daily hurricane blowing through its streets. The phrase was actually coined to describe the city's notoriously corrupt politicians and the amount of bull they spouted. Though it has to be said, it does get bloody cold in winter.

I had no idea that the nickname for the city had a political reference. I really thought that Chicago was referred to as the Windy City because of the "lake effect" of Lake Michigan.

$95Million for a painting? Picasso or not, clearly this person -- the purchaser, whoever he is, has lost perspective. I mean, no painting, no matter how brilliant should be worth that much.

Mystery Bidder Spends $95 Million on a Picasso
By CAROL VOGEL, New York Times, Published: May 4, 2006

A man appearing to be in his mid-40's, wearing a blue blazer and a cream-colored shirt, persistently waved paddle No. 1340 from far back in Sotheby's salesroom last night to spend $95.2 million on a Picasso portrait of his mistress Dora Maar. It became the second highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction, after "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)," a 1905 painting from Picasso's Rose Period, which brought $104.1 million at Sotheby's in May 2004.

The buyer, unrecognized by the crowds who kept craning their necks to get a glimpse of him bidding, was said by those who sat near him to sound Russian. Refusing to identify himself, he was escorted out a side door by a Sotheby's staff member after the sale to avoid the throngs of television cameras and reporters.

He was obviously new to both Sotheby's executives, who would never have seated him in such a remote spot had they realized what a big spender he would be, and to the auction process, as evidenced by the relentless and unsophisticated manner in which he waved his paddle. (More seasoned buyers would have been more discreet and wily.)

And he did not come just to buy the Picasso. Earlier he snapped up an 1883 Monet seascape for $5 million and later a 1978 Chagall biblical scene, "Paradise," for $2.5 million, spending a total of $102.7 million.

The anonymous buyer ended up supplying nearly half the revenue of the entire evening in a sale that totaled $207.5 million, above its high estimate of $190.8 million. Of the 55 lots, only 7 failed to sell.

So let me see if I get this right, an American jury was willing to put to death Timothy McVay a home-grown terrorist over the Oklahoma City Bombing, but another American jury was not willing to do the same to confessed foreign born al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui in the 9/11 case. That doesn’t make sense to me. 168 people died in Oklahoma City as a result of the terrorist attack on April 19, 1995. Nearly 3,000 died when four commercial passenger jet airliners were hijacked and then crashed on September 11, 2001. And we won't even talk about the financial devestations that it cause to so many families, companies, never mind the City of New York and the rest of the nation.

Now look, I am not an advocate of the death penalty, but when someone has so much hate in their heart that they would choose to take part in a plan that cause thousands of death, never mind destroy the livelihood of so many people, they deserve death. Definitely not life at the tax payers’ expense. Particularly, as the evidence clearly stacked up against him and yes – even at the risk of him becoming a martyr.

One of the first questions people ask me when they find out that I moved over from America, is how long do I intend to stay in London? At first I was really put off by this question but I soon grew to understand that it's only asked because a large percentage of the population here in London is very transient. Expats from America and other parts of the world or even people from other parts of the UK come for a few years and then move on.

The how long question is almost immediately followed up by asking me where I live. Initially, I use to tell people that I live in Wimbledon (which is where I actually live), but after awhile, I started saying Raynes Park. This is one neighborhood away, and slightly less posh. I also started fibbing and told people that I live in a one bedroom when really by British standards; I live in a two bedroom apartment. When I was completely honest, people were making certain assumptions about my lifestyle, how much money I earn, etc that I'd really prefer not to be out there. Heck, some even when so far as to ask how much I pay in rent which I thought was a little too forward.

So the modest person that I am, being a foreigner and all, I try and downplay these matters. Particularly since my apartment is smaller than the one I had in Chicago. Plus, while where I live in a "nice area," it is not exactly close to many retail stores or restaurants. I need to take a 5/10 minute bus ride to get to Wimbledon High Street. Plus London's famous West End is a good 45 minute train ride away. I know, such a hardship! But hey, I'm a lot less central than I was in Chicago -- in fact, sometimes I feel like I live in surburbia which is not exactly what I had in mind when I moved over here.

In any event, most other Londoners are going in the opposite area -- they are lying and saying that they live in a better neighborhood than they apparently do. Apparently, a recent poll conducted found that "address affected people's sense of self worth." So where I am trading down in my neighborhood, others are trading up. In fact, people in Raynes Park, say they live in West Wimbledon. Go figure!

Slough or Windsor? How postcode snobs are pushing the boundaries
By Sally Pook, Filed: 03/05/2006, Telegraph

What hideous snobs we British are. So dismal is our sense of self-worth, we lie, lie and lie again about where we live. According to a survey published today, 56 per cent of us are prepared to tell substantial fibs about our address to make ourselves sound more "upmarket".

As if our worth and that of others could be measured by the location of the bricks that surround us.

Yet everyone knows a London-dweller who has made the ultimately humiliating mistake of telling a friend that they live in leafy Maida Vale (spacious mansions and the Regent's Canal at Little Venice) when in fact they live in the hideous hinterland of the Harrow Road (take-away shops, traffic, thieves).

Or those who have pretensions to residing in W11 (Notting Hill) when in reality they live in the distinctly less salubrious precinct of W12 (Shepherd's Bush).

It is akin to saying they own an apartment in the heart of Paris when all they have is a grotty bungalow a few miles outside Calais.

It can only lead to humiliation. When our deceived friend pops round unexpectedly to say "hi", we have to hide behind the door and hope they don't hear us breathing.

"We do lie to make ourselves look better," said Jon Gowlland, a psychologist. "People make assumptions about who we are because of where we live.

"If someone says they live somewhere desirable we automatically infer positive personality traits about that person."

Postcode shame, as it has become known, does not limit itself to London. It is a nationwide disease.

In the middle of recovering from acute bronchitis, I turned off the heat in my apartment. Why? Well it wasn't because I was trying to cut back on the household expenses. It had more to do with the fact that it was the middle of April and with the temperature getting warmer outside, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.

Now, here it is a few weeks later and I've decided to turn the heat back on. Why? Well its frigging cold and it was getting ridiculous -- particularly since I had to relegate myself to the bedroom to keep warm. This meant that I wasn’t really enjoying my apartment while home, plus I was neglecting my chores.

With this in mind, I'm really going to have to carefully inspect a property when I eventually buy. These older homes have lots of character but if the windows are not properly insulated, you end up wasting a lot of money as you need to crank up the heat to compensate for all that is escaping out the windows/doors.

The best thing about British television, is that any good American television show will evenutally make its way over here. So I'm most pleased that I can now what Chris Rock's show: Everybody Hates Chris.

Back in Chicago, I loved going to yard and estates sales. I particularly liked estate sales as the possession of the deceased were like findings at an archeological dig. They offered great insight into the persons life and history. More importantly, I liked going as there was always the possibility of finding that rare first edition book, antique lamp, furniture, etc.

Now since arriving in London, I've resisted the urge to go to the UK equivalent, the car boot sale. Mainly because I'm a hoarder and with space at a premium, I do not want to start cluttering up the apartment again. But with spring in the air, I ended up going to two this weekend as I was on the hunt for a wooden coat stand. Most of the stuff there was reminiscent of what you would find at a yard sale and really should be trashed. But you know the saying, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

I didn't find a coat stand, but I did manage to find a lovely faux tiffany style lamp and a few DVDs. So in future weekends, I'm going to have to seek out the better car boot sales in London. However, I'm really going to have to resist the urge to puchase something just because it might be a good bargain. Particularly since I have no space for junk or new collections.

Andrew Sullivan, A British expat living in America, offers confirmation on what Americans in London have long since thought -- London is more American than they care to admit. Yet, anti-Americanism in London is on the rise.

The Sunday Times April 30, 2006
Hey Brits, you’re more American than you know
Andrew Sullivan

It’s a strange personal history I have — 21 years continuously in Britain, followed by 21 years and a bit continuously in the US. It can be a distorting lens, but also at times a clarifying one. When I come back to England after long stretches in America, and visit my old friends and family, I see them move on, age, or mature perhaps, more clearly than if I were here all the time. And that goes for the country too.

After a brief visit, the one thing I can say for sure is that being in London today is far more like being in America than it was two decades ago. From Starbucks to WiFi, much of Londonland — and I include the vast expanse of England that is essentially a satellite of the capital — is indistinguishable from an American blue (Democrat-voting) state city.

Thatcher’s reforms, and Blair’s co-optation of them, have created, from a distance, a pseudo-American society. The energy in Londonland, its vibrant labour markets, its consumerism, its media, its multiculturalism, its unabashed capitalism, have a distinctively American feel. Even the new wave of eastern European immigrants is strikingly like New York in another era.

This is not to say that modern Britain doesn’t have its own cultural roots, or isn’t still distinctly British. Global capitalism was invented by the Brits, after all. And it isn’t to conflate Britain outside Londonland with the capital complex. But the tone and tenor are strikingly more American than they used to be.

Class has clearly diminished in the Londonland mind. People tip bartenders more than they used to. They own shares, make their own retirement arrangements, live near people with different religions and colours, and have turned urban American hip-hop into a strange English hybrid. What else are chavs but some kind of English fusion of “white trash” and “ghetto”, complete with bling? Brits today can even look at someone like David Cameron and be less interested in his class background than in what, if anything, he has to say. How, er, American.

There’s only one flaw in this analysis: how to explain the paradox of rising anti-Americanism. A fascinating new book by the pollster Andrew Kohut and the analyst Bruce Stokes lays out the empirical terrain. It’s called America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked. And its data are sobering if you are in the Bush administration.

America now has a lower favourability rating among Britons than China does. At the dawn of the millennium, 83% of Brits had a favourable view of the US. That’s now 55%. Only Germany and largely Muslim countries have seen a sharper decline in views of America.

Even more troubling is that for the first time this negative view of a country has translated into growing hostility to Americans as people. In 2002, 83% of Britons had good things to say about Americans. Last year that had slumped to 70%. The numbers are worst among the young. One in 10 Brits under the age of 30 disliked Americans in 2002. One in five disliked them last year. It seems they have not yet quite forgiven Americans for re-electing George Bush.