500 more words and then I'm free.
Instead of having exams for my Film Studies classes, I have papers and presentations. I finished the presentations during the semester, well I should say I gave the presentations. One was on the depiction of women in Indian Cinema and the other was on cultural and audience perspectives. After finishing the presentations I had 5 papers, each at 3000 words. I've finished all of them except this last one, my research proposal for my dissertation. It's technically not due until the 20th of January, but I'm going home to the US this weekend for a couple weeks and don't want to have to deal with it then. Plus, I need to take my laptop into the Apple store-I've got a "service battery" warning. Don't worry, it's covered under Apple care.
I made a list of things I wanted to talk about here today. I didn't make a post yesterday because I didn't do anything "blogworthy". I like that term, blogworthy. It may be made up, but it's still awesome. First on my list is the word "fine." In the US, fine has a negative connotation. Fine, for women, is the calm before the storm. If you're in a relationship and you ask your partner if she's okay and she retorts with "fine" you'd better buckle up, because it's going to be a rough one. For women, fine means I'm not good, and I won't be until you figure out why I'm mad at you. Well, at least in what I've observed. We seem to think our partner is responsible to figure out why we're mad and then when they can't figure out if they've done anything wrong, we say we're fine. But really, we aren't. We're mad!
In The UK, from what I've gathered, there are two terms used here that are seen as good, but Americans only use to describe themselves as bad. Here, if someone in the UK says they're "not bad" after asking how they are, it really means they're great! If asked how someone likes food you've just cooked and they reply with not bad it is a positive. However, in the US that would be an insult because not bad really means there's a lot of room for improvement. It's the same with the word fine. In the UK fine is good. I remember going to a restaurant here and I was telling the waitress what I wanted and this is how it went:
Me: Can I have the chicken club without the onions?
Waitress: fine
You can imagine my deer in the headlights look when I got sass from a waitress about the removal of mere onions on my sandwich!!! However, lots of waiters and waitresses say fine. It's like saying okay. However if a waiter or waitress said that in the US, there would be no tips for them! Ah, but that leads me to another cultural difference. See, in the US, waiters and waitresses rely on tips for their salary, whereas in the UK they get paid an hourly. You can imagine the difference in customer service! However, UK vs US customer service is a discussion for another day, since I have a lot to say about it.
Okay, *one* story, but that's it. It was the first time Ollie ever came to the US-actually the first time he ever went on an airplane was when he came to meet me in person for the first time. By the time we were hungry for dinner it was 11:30 pm at night and the only thing open was a Ram's Horn, which is a chain of restaurants in the US that are open 24 hours and have typical American food that is very affordable. Ollie ordered a coffee because he was exhausted from flying 8.5 hours and understandably needed the caffeine. He had finished off most of the coffee-about 1/4 of it was gone and all of the sudden he is looking at me with a big smile, and begins applauding because the waitress had refilled his cup without a word. To him, it was magical. It was so novel to Ollie that every few minutes she would come around to make sure everyone had their coffee filled up. This sort of thing doesn't happen over in the UK. Refills of anything but water are not a thing. What a funny story and reaction!
I got to ride on my first double decker bus today. Okay, well I've been on a few but never went on the second level before. Ollie told me it was like riding a tame roller coaster. I have to disagree. When I worked at Cedar Point I got to ride roller coasters all the time, either on my midday breaks or for test rides as part of my job. I do miss the thrill of a good roller coaster. It's been almost 5 years since I've been on one. Anyways, there is a significant difference that I've found in UK busses and the only other public transit system I've used (with busses). In San Francisco, if you want to get off the bus at a certain stop, you have to push the button and wait by the door and when it stops you jump out. Otherwise, if you're in the back of the bus or not anywhere near a door and the stop arrives, you're screwed. No getting off for you! However here people don't arrange themselves according to bus stop. The bus gets to the stop and you could be behind a herd of people and the bus driver still waits as you take your sweet time getting off the bus. It actually drives me insane. Because with that way, you collide into the people getting onto the bus since I've yet to see a bus with a back door. In San Francisco the front door is mainly for people who want to get on that need to buy a bus transfer and the back door is for getting on with a bus pass or getting off. I prefer the SF method, personally. I get anxious here in the UK thinking the bus is going to drive off if I take my time. Old habits die hard, I guess.
Thanks for tuning in,
Leah
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