Tuesday, February 27, 2007

London, part three: mind the gap between America and Britain



There is a woman who comes over the PA while waiting for public transportation in London. She says, "Mind the gap between the train and the platform." While there isn't a huge gap, I kinda wish I would've had that woman tell me about the gap between america and the uk before I went.

Here is a pictoral representation of some things I experienced:



We have been trained to look left, THEN right when crossing the street. It is natural. It is the way the rest of the non-formarly Bristish occupied countries in the world work. The huge signs on the street helped, but it is almost impossible to not look left also. I tried. I would try only looking right when crossing a one-way street and it was like there was a gigantic magnet hovering over my left shoulder and a equally huge piece of metal attached to my forehead. My head was compelled to look left even though the traffic was only coming from the right. Every time I crossed the street and didn't look left also, I felt as if I was going to get drilled by a car.



As we travelled around London on the Tube we found that the Brits are ultra-creative in the naming of their stops. We were compelled to go to this one. I mean, come on, who doesn't long to see elephants? We sure did. And when we thought that we could throw in one free castle as well...we were sold. So we travelled all the way to the end of the Brown line to this stop.

The stop should be called "Light Balls and Fruit Stands, because this is all we found:





I love sports...I have played or watched sports my whole life and feel like I have an excellent knowledge of all that is going on out there. But the UK has some crazy sports. Cricket and Rugby being two of them. When I saw this sign I thought, "Is there cheating going on there, because if there is, I have no idea what it is. Can Red Guy not put the ball on the ground? Can Blue Guy not grab his mate's (yeah, British English) shorts. I know grabbing your friends shorts is inappropriate, but is it cheating? Really, who is cheating here? I have no idea!



Finally, the bathrooms. Come on...girl in a dress, boy in pants...it should be easy...oh, wait, I make that mistake here...uh...never mind.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dutch blitz champ, huh?

You better bring it!

(Pls everyone else excuse that my comment is not directly related to this post)
:-)

Anonymous said...

N,

All i can say is you make me laugh and your NUTS! Maybe the rugby guys were grabbing the other guys....nuts...thats why they were cheating....

Love you (even though i am not coming to CZ this year) :(

Graeme said...

OK the guy is cheating because he is touching the other guys ball, and he can't do that when there are other guys over him protecting the ball.

Can't believe you don't get rugby. I suppose if you like a girls game called Football in your country... what's with all the protection and stopping all the time and only playing for 60 minutes???

Take off the padding, stay on the pitch and play 40 mins each half!!