LINKing Sleeping Policemen and the Conservative Convention in Birmingham

I went to Birmingham, England for the LINK Rotary weekend. Essentially, this is a weekend where all of the Rotary Scholars for all over the UK come together to worship Rotary. It’s a collective guilt trip, really. All of the Rotarians stand up and say how amazing Rotary is and describe the philanthropic activities they do and how, for some ungodly reason, they have chosen to give us a tonne of money instead of using it to, say, cure AIDS.

They go through a long list of what the money could have been spent on: like they could have bought 500,000 mosquito nets, given an African village access to clean water, or inoculated 10,000 children against various diseases; but instead gave the money to me so that I can chill in Scotland and complain about the weather. Basically, they make you feel like a horrible human being who has literally taken food out of the mouths of starving children and eaten it in front of them. Fortunately, I am extremely self-centred and know that it was much better to have spent the money on me so that I can gallivant around the UK and complain about the Rotary Club rather than giving an African farmer 3 mules so that he could afford to feed his family. I did, however, meet several asses at the conference and it really would have made sense to have given them to an African farmer so he could use them feed his family than send them to be educated in Europe.*

While in Birmingham, where they all sound about as intelligent as people from Alabama, I strayed in the home of a woman from India. When I walked into her house I was almost knocked down by the overpowering smell of curry. It was as if the smell lodged itself in my nostrils and refused to leave; much like Welliott’s nasal hair. I can not begin to describe how powerful this smell was. There could have been four decaying human corpses in the living room and I would never have known. If Scott Perterson had packed Laci in a bathtub full of curry, no one ever would have found the body. They would have simply walked up to use the facilities and decided it was best to hold it, even at the expense of their kidneys exploding under the pressure, than be in a bathroom that reeked or yellow curry. It would have been the perfect crime.

Despite what seems to be the latent left-leaning undertones of this blog, I was in Birmingham during the Tory Convention. The Tory Convention is very much like the Republican convention except that it is a much more lavish affair where the conservative politicians make impossible promises and vow to lower taxes for the upper classes and abolish the inheritance tax, or what they call ‘the death tax’. Unlike the American Conservative Party, which is the party of maverick forward thinkers, the Tories get together to collectively morn the loss of their last great politician, Margaret Thatcher, and say how their current leaders are just like her and will revitalize her spirit. Unfortunately, Lady Thatcher was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years after leaving office in 1989. Oh, wait, no she is a member of the House of Lords. I don’t know who I was thinking of. Sorry, that’s weird.

Because of the convention, the police were on high alert; which is to say they were standing around without even trying to look busy. It is hard to really describe the police here in the UK. I would say that they look a bit like bioluminescent jellyfish because of the bright green vests they wear and their gelatinous appearance; but it is not really a true analogy and is slightly unfair to jellyfish because jellyfish have a means to adequately defend themselves whereas police in the UK only have little sticks which they use to fend off any small children that may seem threatening to them. In addition to their reflective green vests, the police have helmets that are precariously perched on their heads. There is not a strap to keep them fastened to them if they were to chase after someone; I can only imagine that they must be meant to throw the helmet at an escaping fugitive in the hope that it might cause a few second’s delay. Of course, this is not the primary job of a policeman. They are here, as I was told, for our protection. It is not the job of a policeman to catch criminals, that is really only inadvertent. Their primary task, and I am not making this up, is to be viable in order to provide assistance.

This is a true story. When I was in Birmingham I went up to a particularly useless-looking police officer, which I have been told to do, and asked for directions. The officer didn’t know how to get to where I was going so he used a lifeline and phoned a friend. He got on his police radio and asked if anyone know how to get to the street I needed. Another police officer, no doubt one working for my protection, responded and gave directions; but no sooner had he finished than another officer who had been listening to the conversation while walking his beat came on the radio and suggested an alternate route. With this kind of crack force, one always feels safe in the dangerous cities. The British version of Law and Order, called Law and Order: Special British Intent, consists of four police officers sitting around a table drinking Ice T** and complaining about the number of hours they have to work.

The word in British for speed bump is ‘sleeping policeman’. I thought this was a strange phrase for those little curbs in the middle of the road that make motorists slow down so I had my staff do a little research on the etymology of the phrase and found that it dates back to a Sergeant Lloyns, who, whist taking his afternoon nap became the first British police officer to pre-emptively stop a crime. Sergent Lloyns is remembered every November 23rd.



* Note: this is my second reference to cannibalism in this blog. I must be really hungry.
** Third.

Later days,

Sleeping Beauty

I think that the people I live with might be crazy. Please consider the following exchange:

Flatmate: You’re trip to Birmingham was good?
Me: Yeah, it was alright
Flatmate: It must have made you very tired.
Me: Not really.
Flatmate: Well, we knocked on your door last night to see if you wanted to have dinner. We knocked really loud; but you slept through it. Then we called the phone in your room and it rang very loud but you did not answer. You are very heavy sleeper.
Me: Oh, actually, I was not there last night. I went out to a pub.
Flatmate: Oh, really?

Now, my first thought was: why didn’t they realize that I was not there after banging on my door; but then I thought, what in the world is wrong with them? If they really thought I was asleep after coming back from England, what would possess them to continue to try and wake me up and call my phone to see if I wanted to have dinner? Did they think they would make me up and that I would stagger to the door and say, ‘oh great, I was asleep but what I really want to do is how dinner with you guys instead’. This does not bode well.

Later days,

SocialAir

In the United States we have this crazy idea that if you pay more for something, you get something better. Let’s just take a random example and say someone was trying to sell a blue 1999 Jeep Cherokee that made a heinous noise when the air-conditioning was left on and would only let the driver roll the windows down. This might be a perfectly good car; but a person, despite the celebrity of the Jeep’s previous owner, might not think it was worth as much money as a car that allowed the passengers to roll down their own windows. People can be picky about these sorts of things. A person could buy the perfectly good Jeep Cherokee with the celebrity status if having once belonged to one of the greatest provocateurs the world has ever seen, or they might spend a little more money and get a Lamborghini. While in this hypothetical example the 1999 Jeep Cherokee was greatly undervalued and sold for way less than it was worth given the prominence of the owner, the principal hold true: if you pay more for something, you get something better. This is the American way.

More money gets a person a better car. Logic follows that paying more into a national healthcare system through higher taxes gets the payer an additional liver or maybe a bigger heart. Additionally a person who buys a first class plane ticket gets a better seat than everyone else. In Europe it does not seem to work like that. In Europe everyone gets the same thing; even if they pay more. I believe there is a word for it; but I can’t seem to put my finger on it. No where is this point better illustrated than with the European aeroplane builder Airbus.

If you have ever flown on an Airbus surely you have noticed that the first class seats are cordoned off from the economy seats; as they should be. Rich people are better than the rest of us and they should be segregated so that they can enjoy their champagne in peace without having to worry about the rest of us asking for money. The first class seats on good old American planes are much more splendid than the regular plebian seats because the rich person’s ass is suppler so that it is not raw or chapped when it is kissed. On Airbus, however, the first class seats look exactly the same as the regular seats. It boggles the mind. Why would a person pay more money to sit in the front of the plane, where they will die sooner in the event of a crash, if their bum is not supported by the extra sweat and tears of Chinese labourers? This is why the tenants of Socialism elude me.

As you may have guessed I am leaving on an aeroplane tomorrow. I’m going to Birmingham for a Rotary thing and as you can guess I will be sitting in economy, and I will surly die seconds after the rich who sit in the same kind of seats that I do; but in the rows preceding me.

Later days,

Simon says

I am not making this up. The following conversation actually took place.

Me: Hi, I’m Evan
Simon: I’m Simon
Me: Nice to meet you, Simon.
Simon: It is pronounced “Sea-Mon”.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry.
Simon: All I want is for people from America to say my name correctly. “Sea-Mon”, can you just give me that?
Me: … I’ll try, but it’s kind of early in the morning.

For the record everyone says my name “Ēvān” and I don’t complain about it. Actually, I do. Sorry Simon.

I wouldn't tell a lie

I met with my Rotary Host counselor in person. I had spoken with him on the phone before I left – because he does not know how to use email – and this was the first time I actually met him face to face. I should clarify, when I say that I spoke with him earlier I mean that I spoke and he responded with a series of ambiguous grunts. I couldn’t understand a word that he said. It was so bad that I found myself unable to talk to him because I didn’t know what he was saying. I suggested that I just send him an email to spare us both the unpleasantness of speaking on the phone. I was worried that when I met him I would be unable to communicate with him, so I brought a notepad just incase.

He met me downstairs. He looked a bit like Pinocchio. I don’t mean to say that he was wearing a green vest and was made of wood - although he did have a vest and I think he would probably float – but that is not why I draw the comparison. You know how when Pinocchio tells a lie his nose grows and Jiminy Cricket stands on the tip? Yeah, he looked like that. I have never met a man who had more hair on the tip of his nose than Rosie O’Donnell has on her back; but there you go. Seriously, I didn’t know it was possible to grow hair on the outside of your nose. I know there are many men, and I’m sure some women too, who have issues with nose hair. Ward Elliott is an excellent example. I have often found myself distracted by the movement of his nasal hair as the wind slowly tussles through it; but even Welliott’s hair is contained in the charming chasm of his nose. This guy, however, has hair outside his nose and on the tip no less. It is a sad affliction.

The car ride over to his castle – yes, he appears to live in some kind of mini-castle – was parlous. As I am sure many of you know they drive on the other side of the road here in Olde Blighty. I knew this as well; but there is a difference between knowing something and understanding the full ramifications of that knowledge. For example, I know that drinking a gallon of milk will make me sick to my stomach; but it is a different kind of knowledge when I try to drink more milk than Charlie Mitchell in an hour and there is exorcist-style projectile vomit plastered against the walls. Keeping projectile vomit in mind, I will return us to the car where I was sitting in the passenger seat with my hands grasped tightly around my seatbelt. We were traveling about 70 kilometers an hour – which is about 143 miles per hour - and from my vantage point, we were doing so while careening down the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic with Pinoccio trying to talk to me whilst I was able to decipher every 8th word while clutching onto the sides of the car for dear life. Thankfully, we arrived at the castle in one piece; albeit a discombobulated piece.

Pinocchio took me inside to meet his wife, The Fairy with Turquoise Hair. We settled down for dinner where we ate some kind of food. I am not sure what the food was called exactly; but it looked a bit like penguin vomit. I felt a bit like a chick, eating partially digested food from my mother’s mouth except I was using a knife and fork and trying to make polite conversation. There was some kind of meat mixed in with the vomit and a fruit called a courgette. A courgette is a large green, penis shaped squash that was sliced, or circum-cut, into small squishy pieces. It was surprisingly delicious.

After dinner, Pinocchio drove me home and I learned that he the captain of not one but two curling teams. There will be more to follow on the curling front; just try not to double over in anticipation.

Later day,
E

The First Walk and a Way to Solve the Poverty Problem in Scotland

I left LA at 2:30 pm on Monday and arrived in Glasgow at 10:00 am on Tuesday. I skipped lunch and got settled into my flat (they say flat here, and I am going to try and stick to the vernacular so that you, my reader, can experience the kind of linguistic lunacy that I encounter everyday). I thought I would go out for a walk around 6:00 pm and get dinner. Now, keep in mind that when I came to my flat I was transported in a taxi with a driver who spoke like Sean Connery after having his vocal cords ripped out by an irate valosoraptor. I really had no idea where I was in relation to anything. If someone had shown me a map of the UK, I could have confidently pointed to Glasgow and said that I was in that general area. I decided to walk to the University, which was the only landmark I knew. Following the sage advice of any cartographer worth his quill, I decided to turn right down an arbitrary street. Surely this would lead to my castle-like school.

Now when I say that the school is castle-like, I should really be more specific: I go to school in a castle. Not like the metaphoric ‘America is a castle on a hill,’ I literally go to school in a castle which happens to be situated on a hill. I didn’t think it would be all that hard to find. After about an hour of meandering, I finally saw the steeple of my school and I walked towards it like Rosie O’Donnell to a buffet: with great reverence and anticipation. I was really excited as I ascended the stairs in order to walk about the grounds of my new university. I am not shamed to say that as I grew closer, the theme from Harry Potter started to play in my head. Just as John Williams was about to reach the great crescendo in the opening credits I realized that this was not my university; but a church that had been converted into an apartment building. I decided to break away from the sage wisdom of ancient geographers and try walking left down an arbitrary street.

I found myself walking over a garden terrace for about 45 minutes before finding a structure that had the potential to be my university. I walked down into a labyrinth of a park as the sun began to set behind me. I traversed the tar covered trails and found the sign I was looking for ‘University that way’. It was almost heavenly. Having come up the back end, like any good European man, I arrived at the castle. I was however, a bit hungry, having not eaten any real food for a good 17 hours. As it was pretty dark and I wanted to eat so I forwent the tour of the university and decided to walk back to my flat. Now, the logical thing to do would be to have turned around and gone back the way I came; but I am not a person known for my logic. I though that it much better idea to go back the way my taxi had gone when it took me originally. I don’t know why I thought I knew the way; but I was convinced that I knew how to get back.

It soon became apparent that I had no clue how to get back. I asked people for directions; but no one knew how to get there and even if they had, I probably would not have been able o understand them because I don’t speak Scotch. As I continued along my way, a woman with curly hair and a leather jacket approached me and asked for a cigarette. I told here I didn’t have one; but having done her a favor in answering her question, albeit in the negative, I seized upon the opportunity to ask her if she knew how to get to my accommodation. She said she did, which was terrific and she said she would tell me; but she wanted to talk to me first. Now, being the silly country boy that I am, that sounded fine and I agreed provided she told me how to get to my flat after she had said her piece. She then asked me to sit on a poorly lit staircase on the side of a building.

Now this might seem strange to you now, but at the time it seemed totally acceptable to sit in this scarcely lit alleyway with a woman I did not know and the man stooping behind the rubbish bins waiting to pounce, take my money and sodomize me in the butt with his bagpipes (perhaps not in that order). So I sat with the woman in the torn leather jacket and she explained her problems to me. Unfortunately, she seemed to be from Scotland which meant that I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. From what I could make out, she seemed to be in need of money because she had eaten her children. I had read an article written by Jonathan Swift about eating children in Ireland and I didn’t realize it was also done in Scotland. Not wanting to be culturally insensitive, I listened intently to her as she explained her need to be fed her children. She finished by asking me for money for the bus, perhaps she needed to buy a larger cooking pot. I told her that I could not help her. I had just changed my US money into pounds and the smallest denomination of currency I had was a 10 pound bill which, adjusted to the US exchange rate, is equal to approximately $154.74. I told her that I couldn’t help her and asked her to give me the directions she promised me. She told me that she didn’t know how to get there.

I found a police woman and asked her for directions. She told me to take the bus and ask the driver to drop me off. This seemed like a completely acceptable proposition; but the lady in the torn leather jacket was already at the bus stop. I did not want to be made out as a liar, having told her I did not have money for the bus, I continued o walk down the stree. After stopping in a pub to discover that they stopped serving food at 8:00, I was given directions to my flat where I went straight to bed. The next day, I bought a map.

Later days,
E

The First Post

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Evan and I am living in Glasgow, Scotland for the next year. If you didn’t know that, I don’t know why you are reading these words; of course, that also raises the crucial questions: why am I writing them?

I don’t know how many people will actually read this; but that does not seem to stop the good people at the Miami Harold, so a lack of readership shouldn’t be an excuse for me. That said I don’t really know if I will be able to maintain this blog because I am exceptionally lazy and easily distracted. We’ll see how it goes. If I get a good reaction, I will try to keep it up, if not, I will let it fall by the wayside like all of my other personal and professional hopes and dreams which have included, but were not limited to, geologist, astronaut, doctor, movie voice-over guy, host of the game show Up Stairs, Down Stairs (a show focused on curing cerebral palsy through laughter and lunacy), and finding a pill to cure shortsightedness.

So I will start off by writing a few of my stories from the last week. Tell me what you think and I will continue to write more. Or tell me what you really think and I will stop, abruptly.