Internet Junkies

Our dependence on the Internet in this day and age is incredible! I need it even more than I need a telephone: I need to access my e-mail more than I need to talk to anyone. I need to look up information online that I would never be able to find in books. For heaven’s sake, I need the internet to put up this blog post. It’s incredible how dependent we’ve become.

Without internet, I would be sending my scholarship application back to the states in hard copy via Royal Mail. I would not be corresponding with anybody at home about how to fix up my essay or resume; I would either ask someone here to give them a read, or else mail copies to someone back home and try telephone conferencing in order make improvements. Without internet, my friends would be forced to write me letters, buy a calling card, or simply lose contact with me while I am overseas. Without internet, I would have to use the list of birthdays I store in my address book to remember when to send cards to my friends rather than relying on Facebook for reminders. Without internet, librarians would have to be friendlier, because many more students would ask them questions, considering the number of books and magazines that would be used for research.

Without internet….

Substandard Living

Written February 23, 2007, 1 am GMT:

I have been trying to connect to the internet in my Holland House residence for the past five hours. At 21:35 EST, 2/24/2007, my response to a Write-On submission for the UR Writing Program is due. I must e-mail this response, and in order to do this, I need the internet to work. My integrity as a Writing Fellow depends upon this tentative connection. I have no way to tell anyone at the University of Rochester that I may not be able to complete this assignment in time, because all means of communication between me and anyone at that institution require the internet.

Have I mentioned that the English seem quite content to settle for less than they pay for? I find this to be overwhelmingly true with athletic facilities, but I have now found residential services to fir that trend, as well. Not only is there no internet provided in the dorm rooms (you have to go to the basement to get wireless access), but suddenly, even that internet access is temperamental—only occasionally available at best. Furthermore, I have only one electrical outlet in my room (into which, conveniently enough, the one lamp with which they provided me was plugged when I arrived), and the steam heater at one end of my closet-sized room is so ineffective that I had to request a small space heater from the porter (which, ironically enough, only fits underneath my desk and receives power only because I purchased a fifteen-quid power strip soon after discovering my room’s lack of outlets). Is this sub-standard living, or are Americans just spoiled?

Lost in Translation

We might all speak English here, but some meaning of words still gets lost in translation. I already explained this once, in the jumper/sweater conversation I had with Fluf (see the Little Things: clothing post). However, I come across more and more important ones. Take, for instance, the several nights ago when a bunch of us were hanging out in Fluf’s room, playing Psychiatrist (an exciting game involving a person dubbed “psychiatrist” questioning everyone in order to determine the “condition” of all the “patients” in the room). During this game, I kept having to describe what I was wearing. My response would be “gray pants and a gray T-shirt.” Every time I spoke, all the Brits in the room seemed to get a little smile on their faces. This remained a total mystery to me until finally, the other day, Fluf explained to me that I wear “trousers,” not pants. Now, my initial reaction to calling my jeans or sweatpants “trousers” was one of resistance, particularly because that terms seems so formal and old-fashioned. However, when he proceeded to inform me that “pants” means “underpants,” I quickly revised my mental vocabulary.

This is kind of similar to when I was first told to always call a “fannypack” a “bumbag.” Doesn’t “bumbag” sound like a silly term? It only sounds silly until you find out that “fanny,” in England, means vagina. That discovery gave a whole new meaning to my reading of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. As for “bumbags,” I now just avoid using the term at all.

The same night we played Psychiatrist in Fluf’s room, he offered us all dessert. “Ice cream and jelly,” was what he offered to go get from the kitchen. This sounded a bit odd, but I figured that the jelly must just be a substitute for other toppings like chocolate or caramel sauce, so I accepted the offer. Plus, Sophie and Urvi were terribly excited over eating this concoction, so I assumed it must be a really yummy combination. Then, Fluf brings in a container of ice cream and . . . a bowl of Jello.

Note to self: never ask for jelly for your toast at any restaurant. Weird looks will follow.

Fluf was appalled that we call “jelly” by its commercial name. Meanwhile, I had never noticed. Yet, I do take great pains not to refer to “tissues” as “Kleenex.” Another name-brand label I caught was Band-Aid. They’re called “plasters” here. If you ask for a Band-Aid, as I did at basketball practice one Friday, no one will admit to having one. However, say “plaster,” and all of a sudden, every girl starts rooting around in her bag. It was like magic.

This is not to accuse Americans of being the only ones to use name brands to label common products. Brits actually have their very own verb, generated from a name brand. They do not vaccuum their rooms; they “Hoover” them.

Sweets Uncovered

During my weekend in London, I experienced another first: Cadbury chocolate. Let me tell you, as a person who does not even like chocolate very much, this is one of the most delicious substances I have ever tasted. From now on, I’m boycotting Hershey’s; it would just be a disappointment. The best way to describe the “Cadbury difference” is that it is so much creamier. I never realized now much American chocolate tastes like wax until I ate this stuff. You just take a little square on your tongue and let it melt into velvety goodness inside the heat of your mouth. Mmmm. Chewing it would be like sacrilege.

This brings me to a Big Question. While the four of us—Flannery and Kate (the London flatmates) and Grace (the visitor from Nahant)—indulged ourselves in Cadbury decadence, we began to discuss other “British sweets.” Surprisingly, all of us agreed upon one we absolutely had to try: Turkish delight. Why? Because after reading/seeing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, all of us had a burning desire to taste the sweet that was so good that Edmund would betray all of his siblings for it.

C.S. Lewis may have written the novel to promote Christianity, but the four of us decided that he also must have also been paid off by a candy company. Because after reading that book, you know there was only one question on every child’s mind: “What is Turkish delight?”

Tate Britain

I went to London this past weekend to visit some my friends from University of Rochester who are studying there (and one who flew in from France to visit for the week). The Saturday I arrived, we ate breakfast at the Victoria train station (despite the fact that I arrived by coach—my friend Flannery got a bit confused) and spent the afternoon exploring the Tate Britain. Ordinarily, I am not a fan of museums, nor do I consider myself much of an art aficionado. I like art well enough, but I usually only enjoy looking at it on display at art festivals, where A) there is the prospect (or fantasy) of my buying it and B) the artist is alive and usually sitting right there amidst all of his/her artwork. Alternatively, staring at paintings deemed “great” by some abstract entity, just because they were created by dead historical guys, in big white-walled rooms usually is not my idea of a good time. This time, though—whether it was due to my “maturing” nature or just the nature of the Tate Britain itself—I actually appreciated the experience of walking an art museum.

This is not to say that everything impressed me. I will never understand those paintings that look as though the artist just smeared some colors together and never got around to painting his subject, nor will I appreciate how a circle on a big white canvas is “modern art.” Nevertheless, I did see several paintings which did impress me. Particularly, I enjoyed looking at those whose subject was inspired by some piece of literature or Greek mythology. Actually, I preferred any painting that was accompanied by a story-like description. I guess I’m just a sucker for a good story after all. Send me to a library—forget the paintings.

Here are some paintings and artists that especially impressed me:

Harvest Home, Sunset: The Last Load—John Linnell

Cain and Abel and Communication of Hate—Keith Vaughan

Study of a Dead Child, the Artist’s Son—William Lindsay Windsus

Mariana and Ophelia—John Everett Millias

The Eve Trilogy—George Fredric Watts

Thursday—Walter Dendy Sadler

A Hopeless Dream—Frank Bramley

I considered buying postcards of some of these images, but looking at them in the giftshop, I just was not affected by the image in the same way as when I viewed the original painting. I don’t know what that says about artwork and facsimile, but I do know that I didn’t buy the cards.