Clueless in the UK

Here’s what I’ve noticed about the way we’re talking. We’re all pronouncing our T’s a lot more than we used to. Is that what being BriTish means? Sometimes Sue asks me to do something for her and I happily agree, but then later I wonder if I would be so agreeable if she hadn’t used her new British accent on me. Things that make me go, Hmmm (in a decidedly British way, that is).

Today was the lighting of the Hampstead Christmas Tree. Today when I told Jason I said, “Hahmpstead” not “Hampstead”. How very British of me! Could it be that it’s creeping up on me, even? Well I guess I already mentioned the T’s earlier. Speaking of tea, I had some mint tea the other day and I liked it quite well. With sugar, even!

I’ve decided to take a tour of Hampstead with my camera. I am going to take a picture of all the establishments I like, the ones I dislike, and the ones I wish would just close their doors forever. Hint: the one with the logo FCUK must go.

But back to the Christmas tree. Here it is:

Not that much of a Christmas tree, actually, but there’s more.

See, every year they have a celebrity come perform the ceremony, and here she is:

Here are Madeline and Jason right next to her:

just finishing doing the count-down from 10:

Anyway, Emma Thompson looks better in person than she does in the movies. That might be because in the movies she is just quite good looking, whereas out in the real world she is way above average. She said she grew up in Hampstead but I don’t think she lives here any more. I certainly have not seen her walking around High Street in my 4 months here.

My espresso machine is still broken. They might give me the new one in a week or two, since the first one broke. It’s a very popular machine nowadays because it’s (1) very good and (2) very cheap for how good it is. Still I am surprised it’s so popular because it’s hard to use it without making a mess. Whatever. £3.60 every morning for our 1 latte and 1 cappuccino for the past month: £100. I paid £130 for the machine. It’s costing me a fortune to be without it! But I am getting to know the people at Gail’s, my favorite spot for cappuccinos and fresh baked treats. The blew our pumpkin pie order for Thanksgiving, unfortunately, and they made it up to me by giving me my money back, giving me a pecan pie anyway, and giving me a free loaf of bread.

Um, speaking of cappuccinos and lattes, here’s what I now know about them (from Gail’s). A latte is really just steamed milk and espresso. Foam on top … well maybe, but not much. Cappuccinos are espresso and foamed milk, not to be confused with this idea of 1/3 each of espresso, milk, foam. No, see the steamed and foamed milk must be mixed back together to have even consistency throughout. Oh - and I have discovered the joys of a little sugar resting on the foam, as opposed to mixed into the coffee. Coffee and sugar are a no-no, but a little sugar on top of the foam is a yes-yes. Kinda like the salt on a margarita only not … disgusting.

And finally, I should have gone to bed 2 hours ago at 9pm to catch up on my sleep. Sue did, I think. Instead I am up trying to whip out another entry, after having installed Windows XP into the Parallels virtual machine on my MacBook Pro and having played with that in utter amazement all afternoon. The video experience in IE running in Parallels on the msn website was better than the Yahoo experience I get running on the Mac. Parallels is a truly amazing product. It’s time to buy Apple stock, between the pending ho-hum release of Windows Vista and the bomb of a release of Zune, both meant to address Apple’s clear superiority in both areas. There’s no reason not to buy a mac these days. It’s going to make a difference.

Check out this screen shot. The video was running in Windows XP while I was running Aperture and about 10 other apps on the Mac, and I had just executed Expose’s All Windows command so you can see it all at once, scaled down to fit. Is that sweet or what!? I know - people have been using Parallels for months but … not me!

Good night!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Clueless in the UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.