Black Mirror

I just saw the best commercial! For reference, SpecSavers is a store to buy glasses.
Watch it on YouTube here.

I wanted to talk about Black Mirror, the best TV series I've seen yet. This is a huge deal for me to name something the best I've seen. I love a lot of TV series. I mean, a lot. However this one exceeds anything I've seen before. It reminds me of The Twilight Zone in terms of genre, because all of the episodes (which don't correlate with each other so you can watch in any order) take place in the future. The brilliant Charlie Brooker is the creator of the series, which has a recurring theme of that hi-lights the downsides of future technology. In my favorite episode thus far, The Entire History of You, a new fad that quickly turns Facebook-like because everyone has one, everyone has a memory chip installed in the side of their head, recording everything they see and keeping it to replay it whenever they want. When they replay the memories they call it a re-do, which is creepy, yet genius at the same time. For example, one couple had one installed into their toddler, so after the nanny left, they were able to review what the nanny did while the parents were out with friends, a sort of nanny cam that is eerily built into a human. Without giving the entire plot away, it follows a couple that both have the memory chips built into their heads and how the pros and cons of recording everything can effect relationships.

Tomorrow is my last day in Wales and the next morning I'm en route to the US. I wish I had a direct flight, but unless I fly from London Heathrow that's impossible. Considering I don't want to take a train 6 hours and then a plane for 8.5, I'll have to just stick with the 3 hour train ride to the 1 hour plane ride, one hour layover and finally an 8 hour flight. I'm going to be exhausted on Friday!

I've packed my bag and it's all ready to go. I have Jaffa Cakes for my mom, StarBars for Brit and another candy that I will not name for Andi because I want it to be a surprise. My stomach is unfortunately in knots because I hate being away from Ollie- he's my best friend and it's hard being away from him. I was very glad when we ended our long distance because missing your partner is not fun at all. I feel bad because I will be going home while he has exams and I feel I should be there for him, but he will be studying all day and I'd have nothing to do but sit home and watch TV. However I'm looking forward to seeing my family and their puppies. Ooh I miss Carter and Sailor so much! I will post some photos of them on my facebook page while I'm home. If you're wondering the page is right here. Carter was rescued in Oakland, California. He's a Bichon Frise mix. My sister and her husband were riding their bikes and they found him on a busy road eating cheese off a cheeseburger wrapper. He was covered in fleas and was very skinny. They scooped him up, took him to the vet for a check up and shots and then took him home to give him a bath with shampoo to get rid of those pesky fleas! He's been apart of our family ever since. He's a very sweet boy, and when he first joined the family he would howl when my sister left the house and I was babysitting him. He does a dance when her or her husband get home, which I've named "the monkey dance." He gets up on his hind legs and he throws his front paws up, jumping up and down and wagging his tail. It's very cute. Oh here, I've found a picture I took of him doing it when she got home!

Then there's miss Sailor, who's just a baby! My dad and Wendy, his wife got her in late July this past summer. She's a Goldendoodle, which is a Poodle and Golden Retriever mix. Her and I are best buds because I took care of her over the summer when my dad and Wendy were at work. She's very sweet and outgoing and loves to run around! Here she is:

And finally, here's a photo of both of them together with my brother in law, Ouz

Well readers, I'm off to have dinner and watch another episode of Black Mirror. Until tomorrow!

Leah

Coffee refills and double deckers

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

Crazy Americans! A List of Things We Do (and they don't!)

Reddit has inspired me to make a list of things that non-Americans (and tons of Americans as well) find crazy about us. I will begin in no particular order.

1. TV commercials are roughly every 5 minutes. Yes, it gets annoying. I'm so used to it that I'll be watching TV here in the UK and think I'll go to the bathroom when the commercials come on! Only to be crossing my legs and thinking they're taking forever.

2. Speaking of the TV, you will often find commercials on daytime TV about prescription drugs.

3. Additionally, following the previous point, you will also see commercials regarding recalls on prescriptions and how to take legal action on the pharmaceutical companies.

4. Debt rules our culture and ruins many lives. Health bills (even with insurance?) cost a lot of money. Education costs even more and in some countries higher education is free!

5. Our depiction of politics in the media. It may be 2 days after an election and the news could be reporting already on the upcoming election in 2 years. Politics in America seem like a never-ending ebb and flow.

6. Here in the good ole U.S. of A you can be trusted to drive a giant hunk of metal around the country (a car) but heaven forbid if you want to have a beer with your dinner. Not for you, mister! Not until you're 21.

7. In relation to the previous post, you can fight for your country at war at age 18, but you can't drink.

8. Here's one I thought of just now: swearing on TV, no matter what time of day it is-completely prohibited. However, violence People being tortured and killed? No problem. Here in the UK swearing is fine on TV after a certain time. As an American I find this so novel. Everything is censored in the US on TV.

9. We make a huge deal out of the Super Bowl, and the non-Americans don't see what all the fuss is about! As a woman who isn't a fan of American football (or any football at all) it's more of an occasion for men and women all over America to get drunk while watching TV and eating extremely fattening yet delicious treats. Also, the commercials are amazing. However the cost of a commercial during the Super Bowl is really expensive. Mainly because everyone and their cousin will be watching TV so the companies advertising are getting a ton of exposure. Because of that, the commercials are always carefully crafted and typically genius.

10. Black Friday. Why would we all sacrifice our lives for a bargain? Especially on the day after a national holiday spent with family. To tell you the truth, this one still boggles me, even *I* find this American tradition outrageous. I'll stick to the cyber Monday sales, thank you. This year Black Friday was in the UK-the Brits were not impressed for this fad to come here.

Hope you enjoyed!

Leah

Accents, Health Care, Lions (lie-ins) and Tigers, Oh My!

When I first got to the UK, I had a hard time understanding accents. As a student, it's really very difficult when you have a hard time understanding what your peers in class are saying. Now, I have to admit, I only had a hard time understanding *some* accents of course, not all of them. Typically if people are prone to mumbling and they're from Northern England, that's a recipe disaster. Typically Southern English people have very easy to understand accents. It's just my personal experience. One of my peers is from Manchester and he mumbles a lot and most of the time when he speaks to me I'll just automatically nod along with whatever he's saying if I can't understand him. It's usually a word here or there that he says that I think "what??" but if you miss a few words here and there, the entire sentence becomes useless to decode. The hardest part was understanding British accents in old British films. Two of my lecturers kept showing British films from the 50s and 60s in the beginning of the term and the accents were even harder to understand then. In the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), the main character (Albert Finney) was from Nottingham and his accent is hard to grasp. Here's a clip of him, see if you can clearly understand him. Now, notice that you can clearly understand some words he's saying and other words just blend together. Well, that's how it is for me anyways. It has gotten easier as time has passed. Now I can understand the majority of accents, unless the person is far away. For example, earlier today a woman in a car was parked outside of our apartment. Now, that sounds totally normal, but the road outside our building doesn't allow cars. Typing that last sentence and then re-reading it, it sounds silly. A road that doesn't allow cars? I hadn't even thought about that until now-however the road is quite narrow and it leads to the caste ruins. Anyways, to get back to my point. The woman was in her car and had her window down, and a Welsh man came up to her asking why she was parked on a no parking road. She responded and they had a full blown conversation but I couldn't understand her because her accent was extremely Welsh and I couldn't see her mouth, which gives me a sort of context if I'm talking to someone. Enough of accents for now, readers.


Let's talk about healthcare. Now, I normally I leave politics to my sister, the politician. However, I thought it might be interesting for me to discuss the health care over here in the UK. To sign up, all I had to do was go to the closest clinic near my apartment, and luckily it's only a 5 minute walk. I filled in a form and all the sudden I was registered. No fees, no insurance. When I needed an appointment, I'd call and set one up.

I remember when I ran out of my thyroid medication back in November, previously believing that I brought enough for 6 months. I had brought enough for only 3.5. I panicked momentarily because I didn't yet understand how the National Health Services (NHS) worked here. I was in a different country, without a very important prescription (I can't live without it) and I was scared. Luckily, Ollie explained to me that we would call the DR.'s office, explain what was going on and I'd get my prescription that day or the next. So far, the NHS has treated me well. Although, getting an appointment here at the clinic I go to isn't so great. If you want an appointment, the wait time is anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 weeks. However, I've discovered a way around this if it is urgent. Although, the majority of the people that go to this clinic only go for urgent matters. The trick is, you call the clinic at 8:00 am and request a same day appointment-they set aside a few spots for people who need urgent appointments and you can get an appointment that day. So that's okay, but there's no happy medium. You have to either go in that day, or wait 2-4 weeks. Oh, and something else I love is that in Wales, prescriptions with the NHS are free. So I got my thyroid medication for free the last two times I've filled it! A big change from the US. However, this is only my experience with the NHS clinic I go to. I've heard horror stories from other people that are either chronically or terminally ill and can't get appointments at their clinic. Ah, clinic, that reminds me..

I woke up today at 2:00 pm. I slept in very late. You know what people call sleeping in here? They call it....wait for it... a "lie in." No, not like the animal a lion, although it's pronounced the same way. I have no idea how they came up with the term "lie in." It sounds morbid to me, that term. I much prefer the American way of saying sleeping in, or "let's sleep in tomorrow!" I mean, I won't "take the piss" (be unreasonable) I can see why they call it a lie in, sure. You've been lying in bed all morning, asleep. However when the phrase "lie in" is used, I honestly think of two people lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. *Shrug* maybe I'm just set in my (American) ways.

In a couple days I leave for the U.S. I'm excited to go, yet sad to leave Ollie. However, he has exams and it would be boring to sit here all day and do nothing while he studies. That's what I have been doing since we returned from London. I can't wait to see my family and my furry friends, Carter and Sailor. I think I'll go back to what I was doing before writing this blog...absolutely nothing.

Until tomorrow,

Leah

Crisps, Chips and Caramel

Caramel.

I love it. Mostly, I love caramel flavored coffee. However, there's a problem. See, I've always pronounced caramel like this- car-mull. This is how I've always said it. The Michigan pronunciation. Or at least, according to this neat survey, half of the US pronounce it the two syllable way, rather than the way British people do, 'care-uh-mell." So this is typically my experience at coffee shops lately.

Me: hi, can I get a small 'car-mull' latte?
Barista: a...what latte?
Me: *(oh right, I have to pronounce it differently)* 'care-a-mell'

Now, I've gotten a second opinion on this from Ollie. Apparently the different pronunciation of caramel is pretty much one of the only things that Brits aren't aware of. Almost every other phrase or pronunciation is known due to the mass media that comes from the US over to the UK-TV shows, films, Youtube videos, you name it.  Then there's the whole chips vs crisps debate. Us Americans call chips fries, and we call crisps, chips. I must say, the 'crisps' in this country are much better than those found on the shelves in the United States. Here there's prawn flavor, bacon, roast chicken, even ketchup flavor! I realize you can also get ketchup chips in Canada, but I don't go often. I don't think I've been in 10 years. For those of you who aren't familiar, Canada's border is 30 minutes from Detroit, Michigan, so a lot of people visit or have family in Canada. Recently, Michigan citizens could get into Canada without a passport, but a few years ago the rules were changed and now you need either a passport or an enhanced driver's license. The more you know!

When the sun was setting tonight, Ollie and I walked to the castle ruins by the beach. It was a lovely sight. I took a photo for you, readers- here it is:

After we got back from watching the sunset and taking a quick detour to the arcade for a quick round of Guitar Hero, we got home, took the trash out and I went upstairs to take a shower. It took me an hour and a half due to the new shower head. By the way, I took a photo of the layout of my bathroom so you can now see what I mean by it being absolutely..stupid. Here, let's look at this visual.

See that shower head? Yeah, it's attached at the side of the tub like my previous blog post stated, and now you can see what I mean by the ceilings are cottage style at some parts, slanted and if you're taller than 5'7" you can't stand up in the bath without hitting your head. So basically you can have the water out of the shower head spray at you, but it only hits your midsection and for whatever reason no matter what shower head we put on that hose, the water pressure is nothing, the water just drips. Can you tell I'm frustrated? Oh, and I forgot to mention. The water comes out either ice cold or scorching hot, so it took me about 45 minutes until it cooled down enough so it wasn't scorching, but it was luke warm at best. Enough of this bathroom, it's bumming me out.

For those readers who are in Europe or Asia, there's a meteor shower this weekend, and the peak is tonight. Don't want to go outside and get cold? No problem, there's a live broadcast at 11 pm. Find the link here.  Well, I think I'm off. Ollie and I are off to make some strawberry jell-o. Or as they call it in this country, jelly.

Talk to you tomorrow,
Leah

TGIF

I have been doing absolutely nothing today. I was just on reddit and I came across a thread that had a gallery of the world's toilets. It reminded me of when I was a Freshman in college and one of my roommates was from Jordan. Well, when I say roommate I mean suite-mate because we all had our own rooms that were connected by a hallway with two sinks and a bathroom. So all we shared was the communal area. Anyways, back to the story. Let's call my old roommate "Sarah" to keep her identity safe. Within the first few weeks of moving in, my other roommates and I started realizing that the bathroom began to smell. Like, really bad. We couldn't really figure out what would smell so bad, the college had a cleaner come weekly to clean the bathroom, so it really shouldn't smell. Then, a few days later, one of my roommates who was from Southern California (the other from Hawaii) pulled me aside. She had figured out why the bathroom stunk. It turns out that Sarah had been putting her used toilet paper in the small bathroom trash (I mean small-like, the size of a box of crayons). My other roommates, Southern California and Hawaii, couldn't figure out why she would do that, but I connected the dots. The sewage system where she's from most likely could not handle toilet paper in the drains, so she was putting her used toilet paper in our bathroom trash. My other two roommates asked that I spoke to Sarah about this. It was awkward, but it had to be done. Sarah had no idea that it was totally normal in our culture to flush toilet paper down the loo. I told her that if she could now flush her toilet paper down the toilet instead of stuffing it in the trash, all would be hunky-dory. I wonder, do British people know the meaning of the phrase "hunky-dory?" I love cultural differences! What's another American saying, or something I believe originates in America. Ooh! How about the phrase "close, but no cigar?" I feel that phrase is mostly said by an older generation in general.

This is the third episode of The Big Bang Theory that I've watched today, previously I watched the fantastic musical film The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews is so beautiful. She is so terrific in that film. It was a nice refreshing change to watch a film that had zero violence in it for once. Of course the nazis come in by the end of the film, but no actual violence is had. Compared to the film I watched last night, The Dark Knight, The Sound of Music was a nice breath of fresh air.

I've never seen the film Big Fish by Tim Burton, but I think that's the film I'll be watching tonight with Ollie. If I wasn't a film student I would feel kind of lazy watching film after film, but it's so relaxing and I love the escapism aspect of films. I just sit on the couch and I feel like the main character in the film and like everything happening in the plot is actually happening to me. Then you have to consider one thing, do films hinder one's imagination because the film narrative is shaping what we imagine? Or does the film help us to imagine further? There's technically no wrong answer, so consider away! Personally my belief is that books leave the most to imagination. For example, when reading the Harry Potter books I pictured Harry, Hermione and Ron a bit differently, but that is because my imagination took me somewhere different than that of the casting director. However, for people that did not read the books have their imagination limited due to the unnecessary need to imagine something that's in front of you: Dan Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are what Harry, Hermione and Ron look like.

Enough film student talk, today was a big day for my family. As some of you may already know, in November, one of my sisters Brianne was elected councilwoman of Ward 1 in Washington, D.C, which is the capital of the United States. Today, Brianne was officially sworn into office. It was on TV, and I'll provide an image. I also posted this same image on my Facebook page for this blog, which is here. I created the Facebook page to try and reach a bigger audience of readers. We shall see! Anyways, my mom was even right there in D.C. to support my sister and I'm so proud of her. If you're interested in checking out what my sister does, her website is BrianneForDC.com and it's pretty cool. Ooh I just thought of something! Brianne will most likely have a Wikipedia page in the near future! What an honor. I can brag and say I have a sister that has a Wikipedia page. Anyways, my point is that I'm really proud of my sister because she's always been so driven and career minded and it clearly has paid off. It must feel so good to have the career that she worked hard for. She is an awesome human being and I'm so very lucky to have her in my life.

So I haven't spoken of this publically-only to my friends and family, but the "shower situation" in my flat is kind of unconventional. So when we moved in, it was a tub with a hose connected to a shower head. A makeshift shower, if you will. Basically one hand holds the shower head and the other cleans your body. Why not just put the shower head on the wall, Leah? Then it'll be almost like a real shower! Well, we have a shower head holder attached to the wall, but it's on the side of the bathtub. Also, the reason we can't have an actual shower head that is normal installed is because the ceilings on our second floor are cottage style, so they're quite low in certain places. The original shower head broke 3 months ago and the hose wasn't a normal size. We bought a showerhead to replace the original but it wasn't the right size. Eventually we gave in and we started using a straight up shower hose to bathe. One hand holding the hose, another hand doing the soaping. Well today, the real estate had an engineer come by and install a new shower head. It works great, but its' still annoying that it's on the side of the bath and in its holder it only can spray half of my body at a time.

Ah, another big difference in the UK and in the US is the bathroom faucet(s), or as they call them here, the taps. Right, so here almost always there are two different faucets, one is cold one is hot. There aren't sinks here that are climate controlled, meaning you turn on the hot and cold at one time and the temperature of the water is a variant of the two-not too warm and not too cold, depending how much you turn the taps. However, since each faucet is different and one does hot water and the other cold, when I wash my hands it's either burning hot or ice cold. This is probably the most frustrating thing in the world. Can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night, cold because there's no central heating in your apartment (my first experience living without heating) and you sit down on the cold toilet at 4 AM and then you have to wash your hands in ice cold water because burning your hands is out of the question.

I've just realized that the overall theme of my blog today seems to be the bathroom. Oh well, no shame here. Have a good night

Thanks for tuning in,
Leah

Post NYE hangover and the origins of slang

I woke up this morning at 5 am and was able to wish some of my friends from the US a happy new year. However, I didn't intentionally wake up. I had the worst indigestion and a full bladder. It was my own fault. Last night I had 1.5 mimosas and high fat foods. My heartburn and stomach ache was all completely my own doing. So I sat up in my bed while I waited for the chewable antacid tablets to do their job. That's the last time I drink for a while. Well, at least until I get back from my trip to the states and my friends here go on a night out. Then I'll drink as well, but we purposely do it very rarely, because we find drinking exhausting and can't do it often. I've never been a drinker.

As a film student, I feel it is my duty to inform my readers about the fantastic film Ollie and I experienced last night. Its description on American Netflix (I have access to many versions of Netflix due to an add on called Hola) left out a ton of details and I'm glad it did. A user on r/NetflixBestOf on reddit recommended the film The One I Love (2014) with Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss. It's only an hour and 30 minutes, a refreshingly brief film. The advice on the reddit thread was to go into the film knowing nothing about it, and just trusting the recommender on watching the film. The film was brilliant. I really don't want to spoil anyone on the film, but I cannot reccommend the film enough. Readers, if you go on to watch this film please contact me on how you felt about it! There are several ways to contact me-Twitter, email, Facebook, Instagram. You name it. I just get really excited about films that have some form of cerebral stimulation.

Despicable Me is on TV right now and I've never seen it before. I knew the minions came from this film, and that Steve Carrell voices Gru, but that's it.  I just saw candy in the film and it made me hungry. I haven't eaten much today because of the heartburn I woke up with. I went to the fridge, saw a mini custard egg tart, wanted to eat it, but then thought about how horrible I felt this morning and went for strawberry yogurt instead.

I want to discuss the phrase "take the mick," or "take the mickey." This is a British English phrase that I have recently been exposed to. For whatever reason it took 5 months of me living here to come across people using this weird phrase. But before I try and explain what taking the mickey is, I must explain the phrase "taking the piss." You see, in the UK to "take the piss" means to be unreasonable. So, in conversation, let's say, Ollie comes home from a lecture and says that his professor assigned the class a 5,000 word essay due tomorrow, giving him less than 24 hours to complete it. He would say that his professor (actually Britons don't call them professors, but still) was taking the piss, or being unreasonable. Then we come to "take the mick." It's just another way of saying take the piss. However, taking the mick has a crazy backstory that we will explore. However before we do I need to explain another phenomenon in this country, Cockney rhyming slang. I'm going to enlist Wikipedia to help explain this one:

The construction involves replacing a common word with a rhyming phrase of two or three words and then, in almost all cases, omitting the secondary rhyming word (which is thereafter implied), in a process called hemiteleia, making the origin and meaning of the phrase elusive to listeners not in the know.^[3]

One example is replacing the word "stairs" with the rhyming phrase "apples and pears". Following the pattern of omission, "and pears" is dropped, thus the spoken phrase "I'm going up the apples" means "I'm going up the stairs".

Another example that I've heard Ollie say is he's going to use the dog and bone. Which means he is going to use the phone, because phone rhymes with dog and bone. It's mostly outdated because you will mostly hear older generations using this kind of slang. At this point English, at least British English, is no longer something Americans and Brits have in common. Since living here it has only highlighted more and more how different the two are. My intention here is to bridge the gaps that media has taught us about the UK. Now other Americans and people from other nations can get more of an understanding of the UK, since the media can only depict so much. I mean, of course I won't be able to tell you every single difference between the UK and US because some things just cannot be articulated. However I think it's fun decoding the UK culture.

I'm off to watch Despicable Me, the storyline seems to be picking up!

Happy 2015, readers

Leah