Month: June 2008

A Definite Distraction

Lee Hausman
 
One of my favorite local bar/restaurants is Zero Degrees, a brew pub that makes its delicious Black Lager on site. The food and service are excellent as well. I should also mention that they have a rather remarkably decorated men’s loo (bathroom), and I thought I’d share the details with you:
 
   
 
In case the photo details are not too clear, the women in the pictures feature a cell phone camera, a measuring tape, amused looks, a medical chart, and a cleaver!
 
In case you’re wondering if the womens’ loo is decorated with similar creativity, during their visit my step-daughters reported that it’s not. Shameful discrimination!
 
 

They’re Just Crazy About It

Lee Hausman

I thought I’d expend a few bytes discussing the popularity of football (soccer) here. To the non-native observer (me), it’s stupendous. There’s just no way to overstate it. I’m not sure Americans can appreciate it, though, simply because there is no analogous sports structure in the US.

In American football, the NFL basically divides itself into the AFC and NFC for the purpose of faux regional conflict and 32 teams play each other for one season, culminating in the hype-filled Super Bowl. The schedule is set, the teams are known, and the only mystery is who will be invited to the Pro Bowl. The owners collude with each other in a cozy, $7bn club, granted anti-trust immunity by a bought-and-paid-for Congress. Money comes first, sport second.

Here it’s quite different. The team owners don’t look like the Board of Directors of Soccer, Inc. The Brits and Europeans have many different professional leagues and competitions, seemingly lasting year-round, and crossing international borders.

For example, in the UK there’s the Football League, Premiership League, Champions League, League One, and League Two. In Europe, there’s UEFA EURO 2008, UEFA Champions League, and the UEFA Cup. Each European country has its own leagues and then there’s the FIFA World Cup every four years. Talk about rich and diverse competition! It makes the NFL seem down right inbred.

In addition, in the UK (and probably in Europe) there are several lower tiers of semi-pro football leagues. These have a status, history, serious facilities, and local following that’s unlike anything in the American football scheme. It’s a bit like the minor leagues in US baseball, actually. Altogether there are 485 pro and semi-pro teams in the UK alone.

In the UK, as in many sports leagues around the world (but not the US), promotion and relegation is a process that takes place at the end of each season in which teams are transferred between divisions. The best-ranked teams in each division are promoted to the next-highest division, and at the same time the worst-ranked teams in the higher division are relegated (or demoted) to the lower division. Now there’s incentive for you! A local semi-pro team was recently relegated to a lower division and they announced a drop in season ticket prices as a result. Imagine the Redskins doing that after a bad season.

This all breeds a huge interest in football (soccer) here. It often dominates the media, the TVs in every pub and restaurant, and the news. It’s not unusual for an issue of the London Times to devote 12-15 full pages exclusively to football. In the US, the NFL keeps a legal death-grip on the rights to broadcast anything about US football; here, stations frequently broadcast independent coverage of local and national teams. And matches are shown live, in prime time, all the time.

UK acquaintances here have asked why Americans call the Super Bowl the "world championship" of American football, when teams from only one country compete. Good question.

 

Golf in England

Lee Hausman
 
I finally got to play some golf here; it was definitely a case of “be careful what you wish for”!
 
Background: my colleague and I were invited by a customer to join him at his golf club for their Pro-Am Tournament. Sounded like fun. The customer is an older gent, so I envisioned us riding in power carts, having fun, not taking the golf too seriously, and being treated to a nice, private club course. 
 
Two days before the date, our host called in sick due to gout (!) but said he’d arranged for another member to join us.
 
We when arrived, the course turned out to be “one of the longest in England”, designed by Harry Vardin himself in 1922. Left-to-right sloping narrow fairways, bunkers galore, knee-high rough on all sides, and greens as hard and slick as Masonite. Uh-oh…
 
The tournament works like this: the one Pro in each foursome was competing against the other Pros for the 1,000 Pound prize (serious money). We three amateurs were a team, each playing our own ball but recording the lowest of our scores per hole, competing against the amateurs in other foursomes. This team arrangement, however, means if you lose a ball in the wicked rough or hit it out of bounds, you are done playing for that hole. In regular play, you can add a penalty stroke (or two) to your score then drop a new ball and play on, but this tournament rule made you a spectator for the rest of the hole, which is no fun.
 
Our Pro was a 32-year old (did I mention he was a scratch golfer?) and our substitute host was a 34-year old who carried his bag and plays there twice weekly. Both very nice guys. However, merely asking about the availability of power carts was met with the disdain reserved for WWI veterans, “Nancy-boys”, and the French. So, no power cart for us; my colleague and I pulled our bags on trolleys (pull-carts). We all teed off from the rear-most tees, which were so far back that, literally, in every tee box, you could not stand two feet behind the markers and still be in the tee box!
 
The weather was perfectly English: completely overcast, about 55-degrees, and looking all day like hard rain at any minute (though it never did). There was also a nearly-constant 20mph wind, with hat-removing gusts.
 
Our very late tee time, 2:20pm, in a tourney that started at 8:00am, ensured there were no refreshments left by the time we got to the hospitality tents along the course and the snack cart was also cleaned out.
 
Now, do I really need to go into how badly I played, after 6 months off? How much time I spent fruitlessly looking in the rough for my ball? My best hole: a double-bogey. By Hole #5, I was thinking “Bataan Death March” and wondering if I would make it through all 18 holes. We didn’t finish until 8:00pm!
 
We were not in any danger of being competitive, as our host member had a bad day, too. And, our Pro didn’t do so well, either, so everyone was happy. 
 
The following day, I felt like I’ve been massaged all over with a baseball bat. Muscles I didn’t know I had were hurting and I was so exhausted that night that I couldn’t get to sleep.
 
Golf in England: it can only get better next time.
 
 

It’s So Very French

Lee Hausman
I recently switched cars, from a rented Vauxhall Astra to a leased brand new Peugeot 207. The former is an English brand, the latter French. There’s some confusion about it but “Peugeot” appears to be pronounced either “pah-joe” (U.K.) or “pooh-zhoe” (U.S.). Peugeot doesn’t have the best reputation but this year’s model got stellar marks on the car review web sites.
 
The Vauxhall is a medium-sized car, which I got used to despite its size in this country’s small lanes and parking spaces, while the Peugeot is in the somewhat smaller class called “super-mini”. The idea that the back seat of the Peugeot “seats three”, as the advertising says, might be feasible if they mean three 8-year olds. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of room behind the wheel for someone my size and the Peugeot’s a good fit.
 
The pictures above show the Vauxhall, left, and the Peugeot, right.
 
The Vauxhall was an automatic (unusual in England and primarily found on rental cars) and it was very helpful not to have to deal with shifting while getting acclimated to driving here. The Peugeot is a 5-speed manual shift and, so far, I’ve had no problems driving it now that I’m used to English traffic.
 
You may remember that I had hoped to lease a Mercedes A150 but, alas, they were not available for short-term leases.
 
My Peugeot, which is the standard (not luxury) model, does have some interesting features:
  • With an eye again to tight parking quarters, the side mirrors automatically fold in when you lock the car.
  • There’s a dial on the dash to adjust the headlight focus up or down. Imagine how that would be abused in the U.S!
  • The front doors have fancy, automatic up/down power windows; the rear doors have hand cranks.
  • The doors do not have individual door lock plungers or buttons. A button on the dash locks/unlocks all doors.
  • Tire pressures and the engine oil level are electronically-monitored and displayed on the dash.
  • The RDS (Radio Data System) digital radio is the European equivalent of XM Radio in the U.S.
  • Gas consumption averages a delightful 45 mpg. Why can’t they do that in the US?
I’ll be taking a four-hour drive up to Liverpool for The British Open in July and I’m looking forward to the road trip in the Peugeot.
 

Concerning My Apartment

Lee Hausman
Some of you have asked for a few more details about my living arrangements. I live in a “serviced apartment”, which is part hotel, part apartment. That is, I have a fully-furnished two-bedroom, two-bath apartment, including kitchen and washer/dryer, with maid service and linens once a week. The “front desk” is not quite like a hotel’s, though, as it’s only staffed 8-2 and 5-7 daily and not at all on Sundays. The staff is very helpful and pleasant.
 
Most other tenants are here for a week-end or a week, some for a month. I’m unique in being a 12-month tenant. My monthly rent, paid by my company, is more than 3 times my monthly mortgage payment in the US (after making the Pounds-to-Dollars conversion).
 
I’m on the 1st floor (in the UK street level is “Ground”, and the 1st floor is the next one up) of a five-story building, overlooking a fairly busy one-way street, facing Southeast (gets good sun). There’s a hospital nearby, so ambulance sirens are a pretty common occurrence, although I’ve gotten quite used to them and they don’t wake me at night. The building geography is such that there’s no apartment beside or below mine and I rarely hear anything from the apartment above.
 
I’m quite near the city center, the major mall, and a university, so parking is an issue. My building has only nine parking spaces in back. Luckily for me, my year-round status has resulted in one of them being sign-posted as reserved for me (and, some of the time, people heed the sign). The building faces away from the city center so it’s convenient for me to go out the back and through a little warren of alleys and streets on my five-minute walk to the office or mall. I find it interesting that law offices, the local branch of the Quakers, and other businesses are tucked away in the tiny streets out back.
 
The neighborhood is a mixed bag of newly renovated offices and apartments, run-down row houses, and a few abandoned buildings, the old and new freely mixed. I had my doubts about it prior to moving in but it seems fine to me now, and it seems to be quite safe, even very late at night. It’s kind of cool walking in places on cobbles or paving stones and thinking they’ve been here for 100-200 years.
 
Directly across the street is an undeveloped lot with tall bushes – a pleasant green sight each morning – and beyond that, row houses. To the left and down the block: a “news agent” (7-Eleven), takeaway (carry-out) Chinese and Indian restaurants, and The Turks pub. To the right: Sea Spray Fish ‘n’ Chips and The Red Cow pub. So it’s not too commercial along our stretch of road and there’s no curbside parking at all.
 
This is definitely “city living”, very unlike suburban Falls Church, Virginia. There are few trees and the streets are dirty. There’s a fair amount of trash and litter strewn about, pavements (sidewalks) are often littered with cigarette butts near doorways, and it’s rare not to see a discarded beer can or three when walking to work. Some of this stuff shocked me at first but I’ve gotten quite used to it by now. On the other hand, there’s surprisingly little graffiti and few rogue advertising signs (the kind Robert diligently polices).
 
For a country that focuses heavily on “green” issues (you almost feel guilty asking for anything to be put into a plastic bag, and you do have to ask), there doesn’t seem to be any personal recycling in Reading. I’ve noticed an occasional recycling bin outside the backs of retail businesses but it doesn’t appear mandatory and we don’t have it in my apartment or office building.
 

Tales from the Other Side of the Road

Lee Hausman
 
As you may know, I’ve been driving here for the last month and I thought I’d share some of the highlights of the English driving experience with you. That driving on the other (I don’t say "wrong") side of the road is an experience in itself goes without saying, so I’ll proceed to other points:
 
  • The steering wheel is on the left side of the car and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked up to the car on the right side out of habit; once I even opened the door before noticing there was no steering wheel there.
  • There is no "right turn on red" in England.
  • To stop traffic, the traffic lights turn from green to yellow then to red. To start traffic, they go from red to red + yellow to green. Many drivers hit the gas when the red + yellow appears.
  • Outside of downtown areas where blocks meet at right angles, round-abouts, or traffic circles, are far more common than standard intersections. There’s one, for example, beneath almost every major highway interchange. The traffic in the circle has the right-of-way but there’s also a specific etiquette with regard to the use of turn signals when in the circle to let everyone know where you’re going. They’re quite a bit of fun, but on a long trip, negotiating dozens and dozens of round-abouts does get a bit tiring.
  • Speed limits, when they are posted, are often posted on signs the size of a dinner plate, so they’re easy to miss. The rule of thumb is that, if a street has lamp posts, the speed limit is 30 mph. Yes, it’s miles per hour, not kilometers per hour here. Speed cameras, fixed and mobile, are everywhere. I know this because my GPS satellite navigation system comes with a database of them and I can’t believe how often it warns me.
  • The National Speed Limit for motorways (interstates) is 70 mph but people frequently drive 85 and 90. Mix this in with trucks that have governors that limit them to 55 and little old ladies (and me) doing 60, and you have a volatile mix.
  • Dual carriageways (four-lane divided highways) have speed limits of 60 and 70 mph but are frequently bisected by streets at stop lights or round-abouts. Add the speeders and you have people doing 85-90 mph on roads that are not limited access, like a motorway is. Scary indeed.
  • Other drivers are very generous here about letting you change lanes or merge in, which is very commendable. The "zipper merge" is practically a national pastime.
  • I honestly think a lot of drivers here drive slowly to conserve fuel. Yes, there are speed cameras but my observation is that drivers on city streets stick to the speed limit or less. Even on the motorways, I bet those folks driving 60 are counting their fuel savings. It doesn’t take too many $140 fill-ups to get the message. I wonder how soon this will catch on in the U.S.?
  • In a country with very old towns never designed for cars, parking is a national sport. Commercial areas like city centers have multi-story car parks (garages) but when it comes to parking the car at home in the urban setting, well, let’s just say I’ve seen a lot of "imaginative use of space". I’m very lucky that I have a reserved parking space at my apartment building (though that doesn’t always keep it open for me).
  • Pedestrians do not have the right of way by law as they do in the U.S. Crossing the street at a crosswalk means waiting until all the traffic has passed, traffic stops because the light up ahead has them backed up, or very occasionally encountering someone who stops for you. There are multiple types of crosswalks (Pelican, Toucan, Zebra) denoted by road markings and special lights. Only one, the Zebra, requires drivers to stop for pedestrians. My driving instructor frowned on slowing for pedestrians as it "just encourages them to cross". If you come to visit, consider yourself warned!

That’s it for now. More gleanings from my driving escapades will appear later.