The Americanization of Emily

Who Watches the Watchmen?

2008-11-20T09:19:00.003-05:00

Well, I will, for a start.

Nooooooooooooo!

2008-11-02T19:55:00.011-05:00

I just found out that Billy Bragg played at Duke last night. He was practically on our doorstep and we didn't even know! I took a look at his website and it turns out that he's not back in the USA until March 2009. Even then, he's only going to Austin, Texas and New York City. Is there no justice in the world?

You can read about the gig on Akma's blog.

My attempt to cheer myself up (or does it just rub salt into the wound?) is to incessantly YouTube some of my favourites. Mark, unfortunately, is inconsolable. The first clip is one of Kate Nash singing Foundations that segues into her singing A New England with Billy Bragg. The second clip is an old video of Sexuality that includes Johnny Marr, Phill Jupitus and the late, great, Kirsty MacColl (who was excellent when I saw her live at The Junction in Cambridge (UK) all those years ago).

Miley Cyrus in Paris

2008-11-01T22:01:00.021-04:00

My sister, her family and my mother went to Paris for a short break earlier this week. My niece said that she saw Miley Cyrus on the Eurostar platform as they got off the train in Paris and were walking just behind her.

She said:

She walked along our platform with us when we got off the Eurostar in Paris. And no one noticed it was her, except me... And I kept staring cus I wasn't sure, so she smiled to me. And then when we got off the platform and all the paparazzi were taking photos and whatnot and my ma was stood RIGHT behind her and just went "Omg, who the hell IS she?!" Ahahahhaha. She just wanted to get out and got proppa annoyed. I was like "Ma, shes famous".

Emily did a quick bit of googling and found a good picture. My mum is the woman with the red scarf. You can also see a bit of my nephew (mainly his right ear). She also found a good video. If you know my mum, my sister or any of my sister's family, watch the video and see if you can spot them (it's quite easy because they are standing right behind Ms Cyrus).

And to think that we forked out $150 each to go and see her in Greensboro!

Killer Roadtrip

2008-11-01T15:51:00.014-04:00

The Killers are undertaking a US tour. They are coming to all the states that border NC, but are not coming to NC! The tour includes Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (about 3.5 hrs drive); Fairfax, Virginia (about 4.5 hrs drive); Atlanta, Georgia (6.5 hrs drive); Nashville, Tennessee (8.5 hrs drive). The problem is that the Myrtle Beach gig is on a Wednesday night, the Fairfax gig is on a Thursday night and the Atlanta gig is on a Friday night (and too far to drive to after school finishes).

This has narrowed down our options somewhat, so we bought our tickets for the Nashville venue. Even though it's the farthest away, it is on a Saturday night.

So here's the plan -- Emily and Lauren finish school at 3pm on Friday. We jump in the car and drive about 5.5 hours to a motel in the Smoky Mountains (about an hour past Asheville). On the Saturday, we drive through the Smoky Mountains National Park to Tennessee (something I'd like to do anyway), then on to Nashville. We see The Killers at the Grand Ole Opry, stay the night in a motel in Nashville, then head home on the Sunday.

It's a long way to drive, and a drive that we wouldn't have to do if The Killers had just thought to schedule their Myrtle Beach gig for the Saturday, but I think that the drive will be beautifully scenic and that it will be well worth it to see The Killers live.

We don't yet have their latest album, so we'll have to buy this and get up to speed before the gig. In the meantime, here's a few YouTubes to help us get excited:

Brittany 2008

2008-08-18T04:19:00.030-04:00

Le Cosquer

We stayed in a nice little complex called Le Cosquer near St. Connec that consisted of a farmhouse, a few gites, a swimming pool and a games room. We (minus Lauren) stayed in the farmhouse. My sister and her family (and Lauren) stayed in the neighbouring gite. I'd never before stayed anywhere like it because the property was bought and renovated by an English couple. They renovated it with Brits in mind, even to the extent of fitting British plug points. In addition, everyone staying there was British. One had to leave the property before one could feel that one was in France.

Pontivy

This is a small town where we visited the market and small chateau.

Lac de Guerlédan

We parked our cars at a picnic site just outside Mur de Bretagne and walked around the lake to Caurel. We were aiming for Beau Rivage, but didn't quite manage to make it. Four hours and one ankle-injury later we gave up and settled for a pint in a nice hotel bar in Caurel instead.

Josselin

This is a nice, picturesque town. I would have liked to have visited its large chateau, but we ran out of time. The chateau was closing by the time we got around to it. Ditto with the central church's tall tower from which one is reputed to be able to see for miles around.

Carnac

A great day out by the seaside. We had a seafood platter to die for -- it was so fresh that I had to battle one of my clams for the right to eat it. We had blazing sunshine all day, even though Le Cosquer had had non-stop rain that day.

Feast of the Assumption

This is a public holiday in France, so everyone had the day off work. The festivities involved a big fete at the lakeside (at the aforementioned picnic ground near Mur De Bretagne). I was hoping to catch some traditional Breton costumed dancing, but unfortunately I didn't manage to.

In the evening, we ate at a small restaurant where the staff were good natured enough to put up with our feeble attempts to speak French. Upon noticing that we were English (not difficult to do), they immediately offered us fish and chips. It took a little persuasion to get them to show us their menus so that we could order whatever we liked. I had some delicious seafood in cheese sauce and some escargots in garlic, herbs and olive oil.

Nantes

We spent a few hours in Nantes before heading back to Nantes Atlantique to catch our flight back to Old Blighty. It would have been nice to be able to visit the cathedral there, but we didn't have time (again).

The Olympics Thus Far

2008-08-17T13:27:00.018-04:00

Thus far, Great Britain (as an aside, if anyone knows why we're referred to as "Great Britain" instead of the "United Kingdom", even though the GB team includes Northern Ireland, I'd be interested to know?) are doing pretty well in the 2008 Olympics, as are the USA (our "home from home"). Today we finished in third place on the medals table, with the USA in second place and China taking the lead. Doing well in these games is all the more important this time around for Brits because it's a warm-up for when Britain hosts the games in 2012. It'd be nice if in 2012 we could have the added bonus of getting a fair number of medals too.

However, even with Team GB doing well, I still find myself asking the same questions that I often ask. How does the number of medals won relate to the population sizes or wealth of the participating countries? I also find myself wondering about how the types of events that a country is likely to compete in and/or do well in are affected by its wealth and/or cultural influences.

It seems that I'm not the only one to have wondered at the first question. A light-hearted Los Angeles Times article drops the USA's position from second to 40th and China to 73rd by taking into account the population size. For more analysis, you could start by taking a look at these articles:

Harder, better, faster, stronger
Economic Briefing Paper: Modelling Olympic Performance
Bill Mitchell's Alternative Olympic Games Medal Tally - 2008

Mamma Mia!: The Movie

2008-07-20T01:13:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we went to see the Mamma Mia! film and thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. I won't bother reviewing it, because Mark Kermode's review is spot on. Despite all it's flaws, it's the ultimate feel-good movie.

Mark's written a couple of Mamma Mia! posts too:
Pre Mamma Mia: An Abba fan's anxieties
Post Mamma Mia: An Abba Fan's Delight

Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose

2008-06-10T10:42:00.003-04:00

The Onion are running a War for the White House section during this presidential campaign. It's worth a look now and again. The latest "headline" is the laugh-out-loud article entitled Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose, which includes an interactive graphic that explains to us lay-people "The Science of Inspirational Poses". Very funny.

The Roommates

2008-06-01T15:42:00.003-04:00

They played this video about evangelism in church this morning -- very funny.

Eastern Fence Lizard

2008-05-02T16:36:00.004-04:00

Here's a shot of a small Eastern Fence Lizard that was basking on our front steps. The photo was taken by Emily, using her phone.

April Snow

2008-04-14T18:52:00.011-04:00

Normally we go to England twice a year -- once at Christmas and once in the Summer. This year, we went in April too. Mark had a conference in Oxford, so we decided that it would be nice for us to all go. We spent a few days with Mark's family, then visited friends in Birmingham. Mark then went off to his conference, while the rest of us visited some of my family. We met up at Heathrow at the end of the stay so that we could travel home together. There was quite a lot of snow for a few days. Snow in March/April is not unusual, but it doesn't usually fall in such copious amounts.

The vacation's Theme Song is Heartbeat, by Scouting for Girls. They've disabled embedding, so I'm afraid that you'll have to click the link to see/hear it.

I didn't take many pictures, but heres a few shots of the snow:

Snowfall at NightThe Morning After

Lauren Sweeps Snow off the Car

April Fools

2008-04-02T14:21:00.003-04:00

The media (at least in the UK) have a long-standing tradition of perpetrating April Fool jokes on the 1st of April every year.

This year's big hit on YouTube was the BBC's footage of a newly discovered species of flying penguins.

Here's the "making of" video:

As a bonus, here's an all-time classic -- the spaghetti harvest:

And for all you Yanks, here's a more recent US take on the spaghetti harvest:

Talent Show

2008-03-16T22:09:00.004-04:00

Here's Lauren dancing at her school's talent show last Thursday. It was a talent show, not contest and was a nice family night out with a very laid-back atmosphere. There were about 45 or so acts, of which Lauren was about act 15. She choreographed the dance herself and practised in her bedroom.

A Song for Europe

2008-03-02T00:39:00.010-05:00

It's that time of year again. Here's the song that will be representing the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest this year:

Will this song do well? I doubt it.

Politically, we don't stand a chance:

Many of the Eastern European countries just vote for each other
Some of the countries aren't even in Europe (I don't know what this has to do with it, but I'm just saying it anyway.)
Most of Europe still haven't forgiven us for siding with Bush over Iraq

To stand a chance of winning, the UK entry has to come up with a song that is able to gain people's votes in spite of these obstacles. I doubt that this song has what it takes. My prediction is that this is good enough to prevent the "nil points" humiliation. I reckon that this will come in at about 25-30 points.

The Passion Première

2008-02-27T21:57:00.010-05:00

Mark set off for London today. I drove him to the airport (RDU) and dropped him off at lunch time (about 1:30pm). From there he flies to Charlotte, then on to Gatwick. In London, he will just about have time to have lunch with an old friend, go to his hotel and freshen up, attend the Première of The Passion (a BBC/HBO mini-series that he's the historical consultant for) and get a night's sleep before getting back on a plane and returning home by Friday evening. The girls and I are going to pick him up.

I haven't watched it from beginning to end, but what I have seen has been really quite good. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but I don't think that I'm revealing too much if I say that it has what can be described as a rather Harry-Potter-esque ending ;-).

You can read about Mark's madcap flyby visit to London in his blog.
You can read about The Passion at its BBC website (Mark's article).

Primary Top Trumps

2008-02-12T22:02:00.016-05:00

Although we can't vote, we've been following the various Caucuses and Primaries the best we can. It's been quite educational as we have to keep googling/asking people to explain various aspects of US politics to us.

At the moment, it seems that McCain is now the runaway favourite for the Republicans. Huckabee (who apparently has a degree or some other qualification in "Miracles") is trailing behind. Even though he now can't win even with a clean sweep from now on, he's sticking with it. He probably reckons that McCain is so old that he could croak or have a major health scare that would put Huckabee in the lead. Paul is just wasting his money (unless he's waiting for McCain and Huckabee to kick the bucket).

On the Democrat side, although they seemed neck-and-neck on Super (Shrove) Tuesday, Obama seems to be taking the lead against Clinton, who at one stage had to supplement her campaign funds with $5 million of her own money. I don't think there's that much between them on the policy front, but Obama seems to be more charismatic. Obama's main cards seem to be the "I'm the embodiment of the American dream" card and the "I'll be the first black president" card. Clinton has the "I've been campaigning for improvements in health care etc. for years now and would really relish the opportunity to get something done" and the "first female president" cards.

But, which are the trump cards?

At present, it seems that Obama's effervescence and having risen up through the ranks from an non-privileged background have the edge. However, unless one of them starts to streak ahead, the decision for who is to be the Democratic Presidential candidate may have to go to the super-delegates.

Let me leave you with these YouTubes. The first is a Will-i-am video that puts some of Obama's words to music. The second is a minute and a half spoof of the first video that puts some of McCain's words to music. I first came across the latter video on Here's the Thing.

GreenCard Update

2008-02-10T16:48:00.000-05:00

Mark and I now have our greencards, but Emily and Lauren's birth certificates are not acceptable to the USCIS because they don't have their parents' names on them. We've got until the end of this month to produce adequate certificates, so I've had to order some especially from the UK's General Register Office at £26 (about $50) each (including p&p). Here's Mark's account.

SuperBowl

2008-02-05T00:20:00.001-05:00

Last Sunday was SuperBowl Sunday -- the day of the 42nd NFL Championship game (sort of the American equivalent to the FA Cup Final). For the first time ever, we were invited to a friend's house for a "SuperBowl Party". This involved watching the game, whilst eating chilli and tacos (very nice) and huge quantities of crisps (chips). The game was New England Patriots vs. New York Giants. Our hosts were supporting the Patriots, so, by default, we were too.

I dare say that the game was quite a good introduction to American football because it was very close. The title was up for grabs until the last minute or so. It was rather funny at the end when there was one second left on the clock and the field was flooded with reporters, photographers, fans etc..., but the officials were adamant that that the final second needed to be played before the Giants could be awarded the title. Great fun. Another highlight was when one of the players had to run off the pitch within a given time otherwise ... actually, even though our hosts explained it at the time, I really can't remember why he had to run off the pitch and find myself wondering whether I understood it in the first place. Anyway, it was questionable whether he'd managed it, so they had to refer to camera shots to determine the outcome. It was such a close call that there was even discussion about what the the rules had to say about if his foot had left the ground but was still over the pitch and whether or not this constituted having managed to leave the pitch. I think the upshot is that he just about made it.

Our team didn't win, but you can't have everything.

Groundhog Day

2008-02-05T00:18:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. This mau well be true up in Pennsylvania, but down here in NC, it's sunny, warm and very dry as we weather through the worst drought in 118 years. The photo of our reservoir shows how low the water levels are. Now that it's winter, we get the odd mild sprinkling of rain, but it's not nearly enough to replenish the supplies.

The Drought in NC
Our Local Reservoir

Sweets and Creeps

2008-01-24T18:17:00.000-05:00

You may notice that I've added to my sidebar a picture of The Jackpot Golden Boys' new EP, Sweets and Creeps. If you're in the US, you can click on the picture to listen to sample tracks, download MP3s and/or buy the CD from a US distributor. If you're in the UK, you can do all this from the Jackpots' own website.

Worth Watching

2008-01-20T21:51:00.000-05:00

Cloverfield

Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project. Good, but would be better if I didn't have to have my eyes closed through most of it for fear of puking. Go and see it, but take some travel sickness tablets first and take a sick-bag with you, just in case.

Cranford

Very good. Nice to see a period drama that isn't (as much as I like it) Pride and Prejudice yet again. It was nice to see Philip Glenister putting in an appearance (we're very much looking forward to trying Ashes to Ashes when it starts).

Lead Balloon

This can best be described as a British Curb Your Enthusiasm. It lacks all the Hollywood stars, but is just as cringe-worthy and funny. This second series was every bit as good as the first.

Moving Wallpaper & Echo Beach

One programme in two halves. The first half, Moving Wallpaper, is about the production crew behind a soap opera called Echo Beach, which is filmed at Watergate Bay, Cornwall. The second half is the soap opera itself. Very original, quite funny and thoroughly enjoyable. Of course, the theme song for the soap opera is Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins.

Primeval (Wikipedia; YouTube)

I liked the first series and, so far, this series is much better. Thus far, Hannah Spearritt has managed to keep her clothes on.

Spooks (MI5 in the USA)

You know when they're going to get rid of someone (kill them off or have them go into hiding) because they give the actor some acting to do and allow the viewer to get to know them a bit better first. All except Adam, who seems to be untouchable. This was good, with a very harrowing ending, but I liked the old days when anyone was expendable.

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

Includes yet another example (e.g. Hugh Laurie, Michelle Ryan) of a Brit (Lena Headey) putting on an American accent. So far this has been enjoyable, but makes the same mistake of many programmes (e.g. Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes) in that it seems to lack humour. The other problem with the aforementioned shows is that they can get so wrapped up in their own mythologies that it becomes easy to tire of them. However, it's nice to see Summer Glau from Firefly (which I was sad to see cancelled) as a goodie-terminator.

Torchwood

In the UK, they've now started broadcasting a family version before the watershed and an adult version after. It was a good start to the series and very nice to have James Marsters (an example of an American putting on a British accent). I'm not sure how much is cut from the family version because I haven't seen it yet. In the USA, the new series is being screened on BBCAmerica from the 26th of January.

Individual Communion -- An Oxymoron?

2008-01-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

"Celebration Cup"When I was a child, communion was served as little wafers and a sip of wine from a communal goblet. As I grew older, my family and I started to attend a church that instead used real bread and tiny, individual, stainless steel cups that were washed and reused each week. I have been to other churches that use tiny glass or clear plastic cups. These too tended to be washed and reused until they broke (although I suspect that some churches, with no environmental conscience, shamefully throw away the plastic ones after each communion service).

Today, however, I went to a church that practised the ultimate in throw-away communion. At communion time, they passed round baskets of little, individualized, vacuum sealed packs, each containing a single wafer and a small amount of communion wine (grape juice). The top of each pack is printed with "This is my body, which is broken for you. Take, eat. Do this in remembrance of me." One peels off the first layer and eats the wafer, then peels off the rest of the lid and drinks the grape juice. The plastic containers are then discarded.

For a moment I wasn't sure whether I was at church or in a cheap coffee shop.

With regard to the environmental concerns, I came across the idea for a liquid filled, wafer covered, edible communion cup. One eats the wafer, drinks the grape juice, then eats the cup too.

Doctor Who Christmas Special

2008-01-11T22:19:00.000-05:00

I just finished re-watching this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special, Voyage of the Damned with the family (the first viewing was on Christmas Day). We also watched the episode's Confidential and I have to say the Murray Gold has done it again. He seems to have a knack for writing songs that have the feeling of being old ones from yesteryear -- but one can't quite put one's finger on what they're called or who sang them originally. The first of his songs to have this effect on me was Song For Ten, then there was My Angel Put the Devil in Me and this time it was Stowaway.

And who can mention this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special without mentioning their managing to get Kylie. Here's a classic from a few years back (the Blue Monday mix of Can't Get You Out of My Head):

Dixville Notch

2008-01-08T14:22:00.001-05:00

Over the past few evenings, Mark and I have been enjoying the highlights of the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary. It's an educational experience and a lot of googling for definitions of US political terms is involved. For example, most Brits have heard the term "Primary", even if it's just because Jack Bauer's first really bad day was the day of the California Presidential Primary, but one still needs to ask "What on earth is a Caucus?" and "What is the difference between a Caucus and a Primary?" Follow some of the links below if you're really interested.

We were also fascinated by the elections in a small town in New Hampshire called Dixville Notch. We watched the entire thing from beginning to end. The town is small and has a tradition of opening the polls at midnight and being the first to get a result, so they can televise the casting of votes, the counting and the subsequent announcement in real time. This year, only 17 people voted. It rather reminded us of Blackadder the Third: Dish and Dishonesty, wherein Baldrick stands against Pitt the Younger's younger brother as the candidate for the rotten borough of Dunny-on-the-Wold, which has only one voter -- Edmund Blackadder.

(As an aside, Blackadder is very well known in Britain and many of its cast are household names. If you're not familiar with Blackadder, you may be interested to know that it was part-written by Richard Curtis. You may also be interested in seeing Hugh Laurie as the Prince Regent and Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder. In my opinion, Blackadder is a work of Genius.)

Update:

It seems that there is an episode of The West Wing wherein there is concern about a small town in New Hampshire called Hartsfield's Landing (fictional town, but based on Dixville Notch).

Links:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: A Caucus-Race
The Difference Between Primaries and Caucuses
The Party Caucus: A Study in History and Etymology
PhiloBiblos
The Grammarphobia Blog
Wikipedia -- Caucus
Wikipedia -- Primary
Wikipedia -- Presidential Primary
Wikipedia -- Super Tuesday

Christmas 2007

2008-01-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

As usual, we went to England this Christmas / New Year. Last year, the theme song was America, by Razorlight. This year it was About You Now, by the SugaBabes.

Since watching the Liverpool Nativity, I've also been rather prone to humming You Will You Won't, by The Zutons, which is a very catchy song.

This year, we visited Mark's parents, then spent Christmas with my family. It was great to bring in Christmas day with a traditional service at Peterborough Cathedral, singing "Yea, Lord, we greet thee, Born this happy morning" as the lights came on just after midnight. From there we returned to Mark's parents. We then attended a wedding in Salisbury Cathedral, with the reception in Salisbury's Guildhall, where our very own Q (close friend and frequent commenter) married M. Unfortunately, even though Salisbury is only a stone's throw from Stonehenge, we didn't have time to take a quick look. That'll have to wait until another time. We then popped up to Birmingham for a couple of nights, visiting friends before returning to my sister's house for her annual New Year party. Then it was back to Gatwick.

Wedding Photos

The Guard of Honour was provided by members of Q's regiment.

As always, if you see yourself on any of these pictures and would rather that your face were not plastered all over my blog, just let me know and I'll blur you out.

The End of the World Cult

2008-01-03T21:10:00.002-05:00

Warning: Some of the links lead to some really weird stuff that includes sexual content. If you are under-age or of an easily offended disposition, please don't click on them.

Mark and I recently watched the Channel 4 documentary "The End of the World Cult" that aired on the 12th December 2007. The documentary looks at a small cult in New Mexico, USA that are awaiting the end of the world. For some reason, the USA has more than its fair share of weird cults. Is this because the USA has more than its fair share of nutters, or is it just because the USA allows their nutters more space/freedom in which to thrive?

Normally speaking, apart from the odd documentary maker, everyone leaves these people to get on with it. However, one worrying thing about this documentary is that the resident nutter/con artist (you decide) admitted to the documentary makers that he has done things that I would have thought should warrant police/FBI investigation (for paedophilia). Googling around, I found that some blogs/discussions say that the FBI are indeed investigating the cult. I just hope that this is true.

Here's a few more links:
The Documentary Itself
The End of the World Cult
New Humanist
The Truth About Michael Travesser
Wayne's World
DigiGuide Forums

May 31, 2008

It seems that Mr Travesser was arrested towards the beginning of this month. Here's another good link: British documentary might have triggered New Mexico church’s battle with State. This event passed me by until now. I did, however, notice the Warren Jeffs story, which is a bit more high profile.

Catch-Up

2007-12-27T07:20:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged since April. Mark kept the ship afloat for a while, until he decided to start his own personal blog.

So, the question was, what should I do? Should I try and keep the blog going even though I no longer seem to be able to find the time and energy, or should I just quit while I'm ahead?

Realistically speaking, I don't think that I'm going to be able to write as regularly as I have done in the past. But, I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel. I think that I might try and keep it going, but perhaps on a more irregular footing.

If you would like to know whenever I write something, but can't be bothered returning here regularly to see if I've posted anything new, you can be notified of updates by subscribing to the feed.

"So, what have you been doing during your unsolicited absence?" you may well ask. Here's some highlights:

Disney World

About 9 years ago, back in November 1998 Mark had a conference in Disney World, Orlando. We decided to go as a family. Lauren was just over a year old and Emily had recently turned 4. Mark would go off to his conference and we would see him in the evenings. We decided then that we would like to take the girls again when they are old enough to remember it a bit more and when Mark can enjoy the holiday instead of having to work.

(Source)Now, here we are living in America, only about 630 miles from Disney World. We would not have to pay about $3000 in air fare, just to get there. In addition, this year Mark had a milestone birthday. So, this Spring Break we all jumped in the car and drove down to Orlando, Florida. We had a great time at SeaWorld, MGM Studio, Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom.

As an aside, I have to thank Mark's student's Dad who works at MGM Studio for getting us three days of Disney park hopper tickets.

Work Permit and SSN

My EAD came through at long last at the beginning of May, so I am now able to work (even though the SSA had to send my Social Security Number (SSN) application to Homeland Security, who didn't return it for about three months). I am self employed and working from home, but am contracted to TPF Software. At the moment I'm working on web-based stuff (mainly PHP) and some Delphi stuff as well.

Trips

We've taken a few trips over the past few months. These have mostly been covered by Mark, so you can read a bit more about them there if you like.

We went to:

Mark's New Blog

2007-07-28T17:38:00.000-04:00

I've decided to experiment with a personal blog for all the stuff that I can't write about on my professional blog. I have called it, rather unimaginatively, Mark Goodacre's Personal Blog. I look forward to see some of you there.

Are you enjoying Doctor Who as much as these two?

2007-06-26T19:33:00.000-04:00

Warning: major Doctor Who spoiler below!
Warning: contains some strong language.

Well, this third season of the new Doctor Who remains on an all-time high, and it was a special pleasure to be able to watch the most recent episode here in England, where we are taking a short break at the moment. I adore this little piece from Youtube, which shows that there are two fans who are enjoying the current series even more than we are. This is them at a particularly climactic moment in Episode 11, Utopia, featuring the wonderful Sir Derek Jacobi:

It seems that they uploaded this video (original here) from their own webcam, and then someone else added the split screen above, so that you can see which bits they are reacting to. My favourite line, "He's got the f***ing TARDIS!".

Trip to Seattle

2007-06-13T11:18:00.000-04:00

We are currently taking a couple of days of holiday in Seattle, WA. The occasion was a lecture I was giving for Logos Bible Software, and I have made a couple of posts over on the NT Gateway blog, Travel Diary: Bellingham, WA and Travel Diary: Bellingham to Seattle. The Seattle leg of our journey has been a lot of fun; it's a fabulous city, cosmopolitan with some reminders of Europe.

The first picture here was taken by Emily and is of the beginning of the underground tour of the city, where one spends 90 minutes walking through the original street level of the city, before it was raised by 8-35 feet following a fire in the late 19th century.

The second picture was taken by Viola and is at the Elephant and Castle, a British style pub. Emily had stuffed Yorkshire pudding, but was disappointed by the amount of mash and green beans and the relative lack of Yorkshire pudding. Vi and I both had bangers and mash and it was pretty good. Lauren had chicken curry. We are thinking of returning again to try some of their other dishes.

"Swim across the Atlantic Ocean"

2007-06-04T20:12:00.000-04:00

While using Google Maps recently, I accidentally typed the wrong country in the search box. I was looking for directions within the UK, but typed in my destination as "US". The instructions that came up guided me all the way from the UK to the USA, at one point instructing me to "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean, 3,462 miles, 29 days, 0 hours". Whoever programmed Google Maps clearly has a nice sense of humour. Try it with any UK to USA address, or USA to UK address and you'll get the same advice.

Doctor Who, Series 3

2007-05-31T11:23:00.000-04:00

(Source)Viola, the kids and I are loving the new series of Doctor Who, now the third since its renewal and transformation in 2005 under head writer Russell T. Davies. We are already fans of Freema Agyeman as Martha, although Emily and Lauren insist on how much better Billie Piper was as Rose. Watching it out here on a Saturday night is one of those enjoyable treats that keeps us connected with home. The latest episode, Human Nature, was one of my favourites so far, and I couldn't resist blogging on one of the theological issues it raises over on the NT Gateway Weblog yesterday, Doctor Who, Human Nature and Kenosis. I was delighted to wake up this morning and see a comment on that post from the writer of the episode (who also penned the earlier novel on which it is based), Paul Cornell!

Eurovision 2007

2007-05-15T10:14:00.000-04:00

Last year, Viola and I blogged on our first experiences of watching the Eurovision Song Contest in America (Eurovision and Eurovision: The Verdict). This year we were up for it again and tuned in on Saturday afternoon to watch the final from Helsinki. It is a very odd experience watching Eurovision here. First, no one in America has heard of it, so there is no one talking about it -- except, of course, online. Second, the only way to watch it is via the live streaming from Eurovision.tv. It's an amazing quality feed of 700kb/s, and as on all such occasions, we simply plug a laptop into the telly, put the big speakers on and enjoy. (And this year, we didn't try to download Doctor Who at the same time, not least because this year there was no episode on Saturday night, so the quality of the streaming was far better.) But I really missed the proper BBC packaging of the event, and especially Terry Wogan's ironic commentary. With the direct feed, all you get are the basics; when the phone-numbers to ring appear all over the rest of Europe, the live streaming gives you just a blank, black box. And third, it is very odd watching a night time event on a Saturday afternoon. It feels lazy and decadent to be watching Saturday night entertainment with daylight outside. In the UK, it begins at 8pm, so for us it was 3pm. And there was just enough of a delay on the streaming, something like 30-40 seconds, for our niece Bronwen to be instant messaging Emily about what was about to happen, as when the UK finally got awarded some points.

As for the event itself, it was not a great year. The UK's entry, by Scooch, was a perfectly fine novelty song, nothing spectacular, but lively and suitable for the occasion, and a darn sight better than a lot of the other instantly forgettable songs:

My favourite part of the contest is always the scoring, though it has become rather sad and predictable in recent years, with neighbours all voting for one another regardless of the quality of the song. And it has been a feature of the last few years that the UK is scraping the bottom of the barrel. This year, we had 0 points for a heck of a long time, until finally Ireland obliged us with 7 points, and Malta with 12.

Serbia won with a rather intense ballad, but the big debate in the Goodacre family was over the gender of the singer. The girls and I thought it was a man, but Viola thought it was a woman, and it turned out that Vi was right. If we'd have been in the UK and able to watch on BBC1, we'd not have been in doubt given Tezzer's useful intro:

Elsewhere, the debate is apparently turning to whether or not Serbia's song was stolen, which sounds uncannily like the plot of the Eurovision episode of Father Ted.

As usual, The Guardian has been a source of insightful and often witty comment, especially in this piece in today's paper:

Please let's retire from Eurovision. It's just embarrassing now, isn't it? Let's stick Eurovision alongside cricket and good manners on the list of things we used to be good at, but now can't quite seem to manage . . .

. . . . The problem is, we've got no mates. The UK turning up at Eurovision is like the unpopular teenager at the disco: "So you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home, and you cry and you want to die," as Morrissey put it - although I can't forgive the organisers for raising our hopes that he was going to represent us at Eurovision. I think we should enter a proper pop star, but one who everyone already dislikes, like poor James Blunt.

Most of our points came from Malta, the only nation in Europe that still likes us. And we know that's only because we gave them the George Cross. And that was in 1942. They're still saying thank you for something we did 65 years ago. That's going beyond touching loyalty and starting to become a bit creepy, if you ask me . . . 
If we're the greatest nation on earth, how come no one gives us any points at Eurovision? by Lucy Porter

If only we could somehow get America into Eurovision (well, Israel are in it, after all), then we might get some votes again, especially if we could find an act with Liverpool accents.

£1 = $2 ?!

2007-04-16T22:24:00.000-04:00

As of tonight, £1 is worth $1.99. Tomorrow it could reach $2 for the first time in many years. The BBC has the latest:

Pound touches 14 year dollar high

The pound has hit a 14-year high of $1.9938 against the dollar, with many experts believing it will rise above $2 in the next few days.
Sterling has been rising against the dollar as the UK's economic performance contrasts with fears of a US slowdown.
The trend has been good news for British visitors to the US but has made life more difficult for exporters.
The pound was last equal to $2 in 1992, the year the UK was forced to leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Unfortunately, it's not great news for non-resident aliens like us, drawing a US salary and wanting to travel regularly to the UK.

Update (Tuesday, 13.47): UK pound goes through $2 barrier for the first time since 1992.

Mark's and My Birthdays

2007-04-10T00:12:00.000-04:00

My Birthday

This year, my birthday was a fairly low key affair. Mark and I went out for lunch (Red Lobster). In the evening we all went out for ice cream (Marble Slab Creamery). I had cheesecake ice cream with cookie dough in a waffle cone (they make the waffle cones fresh on site). To circumvent a large proportion of the guilt that is normally associated with such indulgences so that we could all the more enjoy the treat, we gave the children a proper dinner, but Mark and I made the ice cream the dinner and ate nothing else that evening (although we did round the evening off nicely with some whiskey/sambuca).

Mark's Birthday

Mark's birthday was the big 40 and was a bit more eventful because the good ol' USCIS picked that day for our biometrics appointment in Charlotte.

For those who are not in the know -- once the USCIS have acknowledged receipt of one's greencard application, one has to travel to one's nearest USCIS office (which in our case is in Charlotte, which is about a three hour drive) to have fingerprints and photographs taken. Our appointment time was 9am, so rather than having to leave home at 6am to get there in time, we drove down the night before. We arrived for our appointment on time, but had to wait a couple of hours to be seen. The actual fingerprinting and photographing took a total of about 10 minutes.

After that, we sat on a grass bank so that Mark could open his presents. Then we went to the South Park Mall for some good old fashioned shop therapy before the three hour drive home. The video shows us having a little bit of fun in one of the department stores.

H1B Quota Filled in Just Three Days!

2007-04-08T23:26:00.000-04:00

The USCIS started accepting applications for H1B visas for the 2008 fiscal year on the 1st of April 2007. On the 3rd of April the USCIS announced that they had enough applications to reach the congressionally mandated cap of 65,000. They had received over 133,000 applications in the first three days. This means that on the first three days of accepting applications they had received more than double the number of applications than there are visas.

When I think about the likelihood of my being able to get an H1B, the term "snowflake's chance in hell" springs to mind.

The Doctor and Martha

2007-04-07T00:06:00.000-04:00

The intensive Freema Agyeman charm offensive has paid off as far as I'm concerned. She's been everywhere -- from breakfast TV to Blue Peter. And now, after the first episode has aired, we happily welcome her with open arms as The Doctor's new assistant. Long live Russell T. Davies.

As far as Billie Piper is concerned -- we've downloaded Mansfield Park and will be watching it with Mark's parents when they come to visit in about a week (they were on holiday when it aired in the UK).

Catherine Tate Meets...

2007-03-25T23:18:00.000-04:00

...The Doctor

...Tony Blair

(I bet you wouldn't get Bush doing something like this.)

Comic Relief

Red Nose Day is an annual event in the UK that raises money for Comic Relief. You can read more about it here.

Five-Lined Skink

2007-03-25T21:37:00.000-04:00

This lizard is a Five-Lined Skink. It is fairly common in these parts. One can sometimes see one quickly scurrying across the driveway to the cover of the grass, but it's not very often that they stand still for long enough to be photographed. I particularly like their bright blue tails. I took this photo on Lauren's friend's driveway at the friend's birthday party. Shortly after this picture was taken it scuttled off to find somewhere to hide.

Cricket World Cup

2007-03-19T20:48:00.000-04:00

Brian LaraLast year, both Viola and I blogged a good deal about the football (American: "soccer") World Cup 2006. That massive tournament, one of the biggest international sporting events, makes only a small dent on American consciousness. It is shown on mainstream channels like ESPN, and there are a million or so viewers, but it is very minor by way of comparison with American sporting events like the Super Bowl (an American Football event), which has a massive, multi-million audience. But while few Americans watch the football World Cup, at least one can say that many know about it. That is not the case with the Cricket World Cup which is currently under way in the West Indies. The U.S.A. is a completely cricket-free zone. I have yet to meet anyone in the US who is even aware that there is a cricket World Cup, let alone that it is happening now, that it is drawing big headlines in many other countries, and that it is happening nearby, in the Caribbean.

For those who are unfamiliar with the cricket World Cup, it has happened every four years since the first one in 1975. This year it is the first time that it is in the Caribbean. It always involves all the major cricket playing nations (currently England, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and West Indies) and adds an additional eight nations, a couple of whom are almost major cricketing nations (Zimbabwe, Bangladesh), and the rest of whom are disparagingly called "minnows" (this year Canada, Kenya, Bermuda, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands). It lasts for a month and like the football World Cup, there are group stages to begin with, four groups with four in each (two major, two minor in each). The top two in each of these groups goes forward to the "Super Eights", and the top four from the Super Eights go forward to semi-finals and final. The assumption is that the eight major nations will make up the "Super Eights", but one of the exciting things that can happen is that one or more of the minor nations can make it through the group stages, displacing one or more of the major ones.

The other thing you need to know about the cricket World Cup is that it is "one day" or "limited overs" cricket. This is the popular, fast paced version of the game that dates back to the early 1970s. Each side gets 50 overs to make the highest total they can; the highest total wins the game. So a one day match is a hasty six or seven hour affair, unlike the first class game which lasts several days. It would be impossible logistically to have a first class cricket world cup because it would take too long for each nation to play all their matches. Since the 1980s, the one day form of the game has also departed from the first class game by using coloured costumes, a white ball and black sight screens, rather than cricket whites, the traditional red ball and a white sight screen. The colourful appearance and the fast pace adds to the popular appeal of the one-day game, and the excitement of seeing sixteen nations all in the same place makes the World Cup the most thrilling arena for watching one-day cricket.

Given the absence of interest in cricket in America, it is not surprising (though it's disappointing) that it is not on mainstream television at all and it is not reported in any Sports bulletins. I suppose the one place where the American might hear about the World Cup is on BBC World Service, which is broadcast all night, where we live at least, on WUNC, North Carolina's portal for NPR (National Public Radio), which is a kind of American version of Radio 4. When I went to bed at 1.30 last night, the World Cup was the sports headline on World Service, which was being broadcast on WUNC/NPR.

So, to ask the question we have asked here before, How do you cope without British TV and Radio?. If you have Dish Network, you can pay $199.95 to get full World Cup coverage. But we can't get Dish at our house (details of the palaver here) so the only options are via the internet. Willow TV provides internet streaming of a reasonable (not brilliant) quality for a hefty $199.95 a month; the other option is to spend time searching for P2P options from around the world.

What I tend to miss, though, is the Test Match Special commentary from the BBC. TMS is a British Institution and while I was thrilled to find that I could get hold of it over the internet in the summer, they block access to international users for any cricket outside of the UK, including the World Cup. But all is not lost. The TMS Podcast is back again for this World Cup, two-three times a week, and it's a treat. Second on the podcasting front is The Guardian's Cricket World Cup Show, an excellent podcast out every two or three days. The other British papers are lagging way behind on this one. Nothing at The Independent, nothing at The Telegraph, one paltry Cricket World Cup Podcast so far from The Times.

"Freddie" FlintoffAll in all, the internet provides one with lots of ways of keeping in touch with what is going on, and podcasting is a particular pleasure this time round. What of the action so far? England's chances of winning the World Cup are vanishingly small. We began about as dismally as everyone expected, losing the first of our group stage matches, against New Zealand. We won our second, on Sunday, against Canada, one of the so-called "minnows", but we didn't win convincingly. The match was overshadowed by Andrew Flintoff's antics off the field. The English love "Freddie" Flintoff, and will forgive him, especially after his contrite performance at a press conference today, but he was reported to have got drunk on Friday night / Saturday morning, not long before the Canada match, and was seen out on a pedalo at 4am, and he allegedly had to be rescued. He was stripped of the Vice-Captaincy, dropped from the side for Sunday's match, and five other England players were fined. Now England have a few days to get it together before the match against Kenya on Saturday, which we have to win to go through.

Even that, though, was overshadowed by the sad death of Bob Woolmer on Sunday morning. Woolmer was a former England cricketer who was the current coach of Pakistan, and he was found unconscious in his hotel room on Sunday morning; he did not regain consciousness. The news came through as we were watching the England v. Canada match over our Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Woolmer's death has cast a shadow over the whole World Cup, and the cause of his death is not yet clear. It came the morning after one of the most remarkable cricketing results ever, on Saturday, when Ireland, another of the "minnows", beat Pakistan, one of the giants, and knocked them out of the World Cup. The fact that this remarkable result happened on St Patrick's Day made it an additional cause for celebration.

Other cricketing highlights include a remarkable performance by South Africa (major team) against the Netherlands ("minnows"), including six sixes in an over by Herschelle Gibbs, a fantastic achievement, already uploaded to YouTube. This was the first time this had ever happened in a World Cup.

And today, in between classes, I was pleased to be able to catch the last few overs of India's massive total of 413 against Bermuda, the first time any side has got over 400 in a World Cup game, and this after India were surprised by a defeat at the hands of Bangladesh on Saturday. Oh, and one other highlight, in what has been a fantastic first week, was the tied match between Ireland and Zimbabwe (a tie is very rare in cricket).

Who will win the World Cup? Certainly not England. I suppose you have to put your money on Australia. I fancy South Africa to reach the final. Dark horse bet: New Zealand.

New Dr Who

2007-03-15T08:47:00.000-04:00

The Doctor and MarthaThe new series of Dr. Who is due to air on BBC1 on the 31st of March, so in the Goodacre household the countdown has begun. It'll be interesting to see if the new companion can fill the shoes of Billie Piper. The air time has not yet been confirmed, but is likely to be at about 7pm.

How Nerdy are You?

2007-03-11T20:12:00.000-04:00

Viola:	Emily:	Lauren:

Mark scored about 17. So, it seems that I'm the only nerd in the family. I really ought to get out a bit more.

Would you like fries with your order?

2007-03-10T00:26:00.000-05:00

When I was a child, I remember when the first McDonald's restaurants or "Maccy Ds" (the vernacular) started to spring up in my home town. One would walk into a McDonalds to be greeted with a plastic grin. Upon asking for a big mac and coke, the person behind the counter would ask "Would you like fries with your order?". This was an attempted cultural crossover that failed.

These were the McDonalds Corporation's mistakes:

We Brits (or is it just me?) tend to not trust people who smile too much. It comes across as a bit shifty.
People didn't like being asked if they want fries. The attitude was (and is) "If I wanted fries I'd have asked for them."
Many customers who wanted "fries" would ask for "a big mac and chips", only to have the person serving them behind the counter correct them to the usage of the word "fries". Although the policy came from on high and we all knew that the person serving us had to say "fries", many still found it annoying.

These days, all McDonald's staff no longer ask us if we want fries (or, sometimes, apple pie), they no longer feel it essential to grin or be polite and they no longer insist that chips are called "fries". And most Brits are all the happier for it.

Since living here, someone once asked me how Americans are perceived in the UK. Although the answer to this question is multi-faceted and so difficult to answer, here's a Catherine Tate sketch of an American themed restaurant in the UK (don't you just love YouTube?). It goes a little way to answering this question, but it more illustrates how differences in culture do not always translate. It also reminds me of a restaurant near where we live called Spinner's Grill, with the tagline "The home of the dancing wait staff." The restaurant is a music themed diner, with disco balls and coloured lights hanging from the ceiling. Now and then (I've only been there once when this has happened), the lights go down, the disco lights and music come on and all the waiters/waitresses do a bit of a song and dance before they start serving again.

The Case of the Non-existent Blog Posts

2007-03-09T23:15:00.000-05:00

In the words of Toyah Wilcox, "It's a mystery."

Where have all my blog posts for the end of February and the beginning of March gone? Some were beginning to wonder whether I had dropped off the face of the earth.

Can I use the age old "The cat ate my computer" excuse? I think not. Even though Memory is partial to a nice pile of papers that she can rustle up a bit, I don't think that even she could be blamed for the lack of blog posts.

The truth of the matter is that I've just been rather busy lately. What have I been doing? The answer is (and I'm sorry that you've waited with baited breath just for this) -- not much. Sometimes I can be a bit of a geek. When I get a new computer programme or decide to play around with a new programming language or whatever, I sometimes get a bit carried away. This, plus general living have rather drowned out blogging for the past couple of weeks.

All things considered, it's not as good an excuse as blaming the cat would have been.

Girl Scout Cookies

2007-02-19T00:15:00.000-05:00

This is another "it's not just in films" moment. It actually happens in real life. A girl scout friend of Emily's came to the door and sold us some "Girl Scout Cookies". But that's not all. When I'd seen this sort of thing on TV, I'd always just assumed that it's girl scouts selling biscuits (cookies), but that there's nothing special about the bickies themselves. As it turns out, girl scouts don't sell any old cookies. They sell Girl Scouts Cookies. Not only are they packaged especially for the Girl Scouts, but each biscuit has written on it "Girl Scouting is all about...", then the sentence is finished with a word like "Caring" or "Values" or "Leadership" etc...

As I eat them, I say to myself "Yep. I'm definitely in America."

Family Fun Night II

2007-02-19T00:11:00.000-05:00

The elementary school's annual Family Fun Night came round again. Last year both Emily and Lauren were at elementary school, but this year Emily started middle school. The four of us went and took a couple of Emily's friends with us. Lauren met some friends there.

Mark and I chatted, while the children went off to the various bouncy castles and stalls. The highlights were a Tae Kwon Do demonstration and a man (I'm not sure what organization he was with) who'd brought several animals that the children could touch/pet, including a chimpanzee, a lemur and an alligator. The children would occasionally return to us for drinks, popcorn and pizza.

The Taylor-Thomas Picnic

2007-02-14T15:34:00.000-05:00

I haven't had much time to blog recently, so I thought I'd treat you to a Catherine Tate sketch. This sketch has caused the term "greedy-gobble-gannet" to enter my family's vocabulary whenever any of us -- well, whenever any of us is a greedy-gobble-gannet.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Here's one from before Fergus ingested the "infected dairy produce":

Green Card Application Filed

2007-02-08T10:33:00.000-05:00

Last week I took my Green Card application in to Duke International Office and walked back to my office with a spring in my step. This happy moment came after months of work on this application and a huge amount of time invested. The picture you see here is the application just before I took it in to the International Office. The amount of paperwork exceeded the size of my DPhil thesis. The days and weeks spent on this application were days and weeks sucked out of my research time, my family time, my sleep. I found the entire process unreasonably exhausting and sometimes depressing. So why did we go ahead with it?

At present, I am on an H1B visa. An H1B is employer-specific, i.e. your prospective employer sponsors you for this visa status so that you can work for them. An H1B holder can bring a family with him/her, all of whom will be H4 "dependants", a trailing spouse and children. Many who come to the USA to work remain in their H1B and H4 visa status until they return home. As an H1B or an H4, you are a "non-resident alien", which means that you are here for a temporary period only, and are not regarded as "resident", for immigration purposes at least. These visas give you three years from date of entry, and are renewable for a further three years, so you have six years in total. But you have the option of applying for "lawful permanent residence" (LPR, or more popularly "Green Card") at any point during that temporary stay, and this is what we have just filed. When granted, somewhere between six months and two years after filing, you become a "resident alien".

There are several advantages to filing for your Green Card. One of the most immediate is that it is possible for the H4 dependent, in this case Viola, to file at the same time for a temporary work permit. We have heard that the work permit is usually issued within two months of the Green Card application being filed, which means that Viola may be able to begin work in April. Apparently one has to take great care to make sure that the Green Card application is not what they call "frivolous" -- they only grant the work permit if they feel that you are taking the Green card application itself very seriously. A second advantage is that the Green card gives you much greater flexibility in the future. We are not bound to the USA for just that temporary period. A third advantage is that it will enable me to accept employment from others in the USA. At present, I can only receive payment from Duke, so when I give lectures elsewhere in the US, or read manuscripts, or write pieces for American publishers, or sit on PhD committees at other universities, I cannot accept payment. What I do at the moment in these circumstances is to ask the employer in question to donate my honorarium or fee to a charity of my choice, and so far they have always been happy to do that.

Those advantages made it pretty clear that we must go ahead and file for lawful permanent residency. The process, however, was so daunting that procrastination was often pretty tempting. I won't bore you with the details except to explain that there were two parts to the application, one our family's application and one the employer-sponsored part of the application. The latter was the most work. I am filing in category EB-1(B), which means that you have to demonstrate that you are what they call an "outstanding professor/researcher", and this involves the collection of piles and piles of paperwork of every kind imaginable. A couple of things made it bearable, though. Viola helped with a lot of the paperwork and so shared some of the frustration and anxiety. And Duke has an International Office that provided some fantastic support. One of the happiest of my several visits there was the first one where they took away at least half of the blank forms I was carrying and threw them into the recycling as forms I didn't need to worry about.

Oh, by the way, it also costs a fortune to do this. Including medical examinations, we have spent over $3,000 so far on filing. Here's hoping that it was all worth it.

US Health Care

2007-01-30T14:37:00.000-05:00

Further to my previous posts on the US health care system (Medical and Dental Insurance; Health Care Expenditure), here's a good article, entitled Caring for America's Health, that forms part of the 27th January 2007 edition of the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent. It articulates quite well what I see as the problems with US health care.

Here's some excerpts (square brackets are my comments):

Bo [an American friend of the authors who suffers with multiple sclerosis] is expensive and the insurers do not want him... and they make it obvious.

Every year Bo gets a letter asking him if he is still ill.

Someone has to fill in a form for him: "Yes, I am quadriplegic; no, no miracle appears to have happened."

...

The story of American healthcare is one of huge expenditure for little obvious benefit.

By head of population America spends twice the amount Britain does on health.

But life expectancy here is lower and infant mortality is higher, way higher in some ethnic groups.

Most of the money seems to go on overheads and on profits for the many private companies providing care, the hospital groups, the drug manufacturers, and above all the insurance companies which write letters to Bo inquiring about his MS and write incessantly to all their other customers as well... 
Caring for America's Health by Justin Webb

CBB 2007: The Outcome

2007-01-30T11:49:00.000-05:00

So, we've come to the end of the fifth Celebrity Big Brother in the UK. It started out looking to be rather boring, but then Leo Sayer lost the plot and things started to look up. This, along with the arguments between Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty made it a lot more interesting. The final week, after Jade's eviction was as dull as dishwater, though. This was the first time that a non-Brit has won and the first time that a non-white has won (BB or CBB). In fact, of the final three, two were American and one was Indian.

Shilpa Shetty won and the protagonists were all punished and are having to serve their time in tabloid-media-purgatory. I dare say that the "international incident" mountain that was made of this molehill will soon subside. I'm not sure I'll bother with BB next year.

Here's my other CBB-5 posts:
Battle of the Tribute Bands
Celebrity Big Brother 2007

Snow Day

2007-01-18T11:59:00.000-05:00

This morning we awoke to the first snow that this area has seen since we've been here. If you look closely at the pictures, you'll see that although the snow was enough to settle, it wasn't enough to cover the grass -- the green seeps through.

This light dusting of white that had disappeared by lunch time was enough for the county's public schools service to close all the public schools in the entire county for the day. The local news teams were also very excited and out in force -- analysing the highways and interstates and desperately hoping against hope that there would be something newsworthy to report.

I had a lovely day at home with the girls (Mark had to go to work). Unfortunately, though, they will have to make the missed school day up by going in on a non-school day. Unlike schools in England, the county allocates "make-up" days throughout the year. These are non-school days (holiday/vacation) which can become school days if for any reason school is cancelled. The county are yet to announce when the make-up day for today's "snow day" will be.

The Next Day

We woke up this morning to find that the entire county's schools have had the start of the day delayed by two hours, so the girls get to lounge about watching TV for most of the morning. I've never known such fuss over such little snow. Today is also pyjama day at Lauren's school.

Linville Caverns and Falls

2007-01-16T00:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and, like last year, we celebrated it by heading up to the mountains. Last year, we went to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. This year we decided to take a look at the Linville Caverns (the only caverns in NC that are open to the public) and Linville Falls. En route we stopped at a Crackerbarrel for lunch. Mark had been introduced to this chain (imagine a rustic American version of Little Chef) a couple of months ago by a friend of his and insisted that I would love their raspberry lemonade, which I have to admit is delicious.

(Source)If you're not familiar with NC, you may be interested to know that the Appalachian Mountains run through west NC. This range boasts the Blue Ridge Mountains, which includes the Black Mountains and the Smoky Mountains. There's a lot to explore in this area, but a long weekend entails one day to get there, one day exploring and one day getting back. Unfortunately, there's only so much that one can do in one day's worth of exploring.

We stayed in a small town called Marion, which turned out to be quite a good central location (if we had the time) for visiting Linville (Caverns, Waterfall, Gorge), Mount Mitchell (the highest mountain in the Appalachians) and Grandfather Mountain (has a mile-high swing-bridge that I'd just love to cross). We only had one day though, so we opted to go to the Linville Caverns and Falls.

The caverns are small and not really a lot to write home about, but I enjoyed looking around them anyway. To get to the Falls, we parked in a gravel car park and took a very nice 1.5 mile woodland walk to get to three different lookout points and back. It was particularly nice because although the temperature was a very mild (for mid-January) 74oF 23oC, yet with a lack of insects. By the time we got to the third lookout point it was starting to get dark, but we managed to get back to the car before it was completely dark.

Linville Caverns

Linville Falls

Battle of the Tribute Bands

2007-01-16T00:12:00.000-05:00

This is so good, it's worth blogging. It's the CBB Battle of the Tribute Bands -- The Jackson Five vs. Steps. I think Jermaine Jackson is finally starting to relax and enjoy himself in the Big Brother house.

The Jackson Five Tribute Band(left to right): Cleo, Dirk, Jermaine, Shilpa, Danielle
The Steps Tribute Band(left to right): Ian, Jade, Jo, Jack

Leo Sayer Leaves CBB

Warning: Video links in this section contain strong language.

Here's a YouTube video of Leo Sayer's dramatic exit from the house because BB wouldn't give him any clean underwear (every year BB provides contestants with a tub, washboard and mangle and all laundry is washed by hand, which Leo refused to do). If you want to watch the buildup to this, just type "Leo Sayer Loses the Plot" into the YouTube search and watch the videos in order (there are about six of them). If you don't mind some strong language, you may also like the footage of Leo Sayer giving BB the thumbs up.

The poor chap didn't know what he was letting himself in for. In his interview with Davina McCall, it was clear that he hadn't researched the programme or what it entailed before signing the contract. Perhaps after this he'll be getting himself another agent.

Separated by a Common Language

2007-01-10T14:29:00.000-05:00

When I first started this blog in November 2005, I published a post about the differences in the English language between the UK and the USA. If you like ruminating over the differences in our common language, you might enjoy the Separated by a Common Language blog, which Mark came across. It is written by an American linguist living in the UK.

Celebrity Big Brother 2007

2007-01-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

When Big Brother first started in the UK in 2000, I was above it. There was no way that I would be watching that rubbish. But Mark had different ideas and used to watch it on his own while I did my own thing. However, snippets while walking through the room gradually became longer and before I knew it "Nasty Nick" was accused of cheating, it all kicked off and Endemol had me hooked. Over the following years we watched Big Brother mainly because Mark loved it so much and because I so enjoyed watching Dermot O'Leary.

However, the last couple of Big Brothers have rather dragged (13 weeks is far too long) and I'm not sure that I can bother with the 2007 series. Although Celebrity Big Brother is shorter, so more bearable, I wasn't going to bother about this January's Celebrity Big Brother either, but we thought that we might as well download the launch show, just to see which D-list celebrities are going to be in the house.

This year the line-up's not bad -- at least I'd heard of most of them. I'm sorry to say that I'm hooked yet again.

This year's housemates are:

Jermaine Jackson: Former Jackson Five member: Thus far, Jermaine seems quite quiet and likeable, but gets rather irritated every time someone asks him to moonwalk and answers to the effect of "That's my brother's thing, I'm not my brother". There's something quite bizarre about watching Jade Goody asking him whether he bleaches his teeth and watching him try and explain why on earth he called one of his children "Jermajesty". There's also been some good conversations between Jade and Jermaine wherein she asks questions like "So, is Michael bankrupt now, after the court case?" and "So are you black then? Because Michael's skin has changed [etc...]". I think that in the next few weeks Jermaine is likely to spill a bit more.
Danielle Lloyd: A WAG (Wives & Girlfirends): I'd never heard of her before this, but apparently she's Teddy Sheringham's girlfriend. So far, she seems quite nice.
Dirk Benedict: Face, Starbuck: Need I say more? As Chantelle Houghton (or is she Chantelle Preston now?) says, "The man from the A-Team won't stop sweeping the floor."
Ken Russell: Film Director (notably Tommy): A crotchety old man who seems to have rather lost the plot. He snores loudly all night so that nobody can get a decent night's sleep. Unfortunately, though, a late night argument with Jackiey Budden was the last straw and he "walked".
Jo O'Meara: Former S Club member: Seems quite nice.
Ian Watkins: "H" from Steps: He just reminds me of a pastiche that Armstrong and Miller did.
Leo Sayer: Singer of Yesteryear: He's had a bit of an argument with Jackiey Budden, but hasn't done much else yet.
Shilpa Shetty: Bollywood star: She seems quite nice but is rather missing her entourage. She too has had altercations with Jackiey Budden.
Donny Tourette: Member of Towers of London: How did he get through the psychological profiling? Thankfully, he put us out of our misery early on by climbing over the wall.
Carole Malone: A Journalist: She's famous for having slated Big Brother (including Jade Goody) and footballer's WAGs. I suppose that the Big Brother production team thought that it would be fun to put her in a house with a WAG and an ex-BB contestant.
Cleo Rocos: Former Kenny Everett girl
Jade Goody: Former BB contestant: She's always worth watching.
Jack Tweedy: Jade's Boyfriend
Jackiey Budden: Jade's Mum: She's had several arguments with several people so far and is doing Jade's head in.

Here's a link to last year's CBB post: Celebrity Big Brother 4

Christmas & New Year

2007-01-04T20:27:00.000-05:00

My Newest Great Nephew
Carol Singing in the ParkEmily and Lauren finished school on the 21st of December. We went straight to the airport and before we knew it were half way across the Atlantic. In direct contrast to the debacle of the summer, the journey was the simplest possible -- we arrived in London only an hour later than planned, picked up the hire car and made it to my Mum's house by lunch-time on the 22nd.

Christmas Day morning we sat around the tree and opened presents at my younger sister's house before setting off to Mark's parents' to get there in time for Christmas lunch. Then, after The Queen's speech, it was time for another round of present opening.

New Year's Day
Footy in the ParkAfter a few days, it was a whistle-stop visit to Birmingham before returning to my Sister's house for the requisite New Year's party. In my experience, New Year parties consist of standing around waiting for the New Year all evening. Then, at just before midnight the telly goes on so that we can count in the New Year with the rest of the country and the champagne is drunk while we watch the fireworks in London. The TV is then switched off and, with the long wait over, the real party begins. This year was no exception, with even young Lauren managing to party through to about 3am (it's only one night a year, so we figure that it's OK to let the kids stay up). Lauren pointed out that even with such a late bedtime, it was still 2006 in NC (5 hours behind GMT).

Sometimes a particular holiday has a theme song (one which reminds you of the holiday whenever you hear it). I think that this holiday's theme song was America by Razorlight because we seemed to be hearing it wherever we went.

Here are some more pics:

Boxing Day

Afternoon Tea on the 27th

At My Sister's House

New Year's Party

By the way, if you see yourself on any of these pictures and would rather that your face were not plastered all over my blog, just let me know and I'll remove you from the pictures.

More on The Nativity Story

2006-12-21T14:33:00.002-05:00

Towards the beginning of December, we went to see The Nativity Story film and I linked to Mark's rolling blog post about it. Well, he's now tidied up his review and it has been published on the SBL Forum website.

A Guide to Grading Exams

2006-12-14T19:25:00.000-05:00

I found this on Mark's blog, who in turn picked it up from Feeble Mindings. It seems like quite a good methodology to me. If I were a teacher/lecturer I'd be able to learn a lot from it, especially the section that deals with the conundrum of when an A+ is or is not appropriate.

Christmas Lights

2006-12-14T14:17:00.000-05:00

Christmas LightsOne American tradition that, within the last decade or so, has really taken off in the UK is the tradition of decorating one's house with lights. This is especially true where Mark's parents live. Hopefully, I'll have a few good pictures to show you after our visit this Christmas. To whet your appetite, this is a picture of a house in North Raleigh.

National Lampoon's
Christmas VacationHowever, this cannot compare to the famous lights in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I've also embedded a Christmas light show that was on YouTube. It's not new, but it is good and very Christmassy.

What Kind of Reader are You?

2006-12-14T12:16:00.000-05:00

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

What kind of reader are you? Take the quiz yourself to find out.

Advent Calendars

2006-12-08T01:43:00.000-05:00

Mark writes:

Advent Calendar CakeI was listening to the Today programme podcast the other day and they mentioned their on-line Advent Calendar. It was the first time I'd heard mention of Advent Calendars this year and I realized that I hadn't seen any here anywhere. I don't remember seeing any last year either. A little bit of googling shows that in fact they do exist in America, and a Google Fight makes "Advent Calendars UK" only a narrow winner over "Advent Calendars USA". Perhaps it is just North Carolina, then, or just this corner of North Carolina, but I've not seen a single one.

So how are we coping without an advent calendar? Happily, recent years have seen the steady rise of on-line advent calendars, and this year there is a bumper crop. Wikipedia's article on the topic now makes "Online Advent Calendar" a separate section. The three I am enjoying this year are:

BBC Radio 4 Today Advent Calendar

Today is the news and politics programme that sets the agenda for the day. Millions wake up to it every day (and some of us in the US go to bed to it every night). This advent calendar provides short sound highlights from the last twelve months of the programme.

Doctor Who Advent Calendar

This appears on the front of the BBC's official Doctor Who website as part of its countdown to the eagerly awaited Christmas special episode called The Runaway Bride.

Mark Kermode Advent Calendar and Quiz

Viola and I have not missed a single Mark Kermode film review podcast in the last year, so it's lots of fun to hear some of his rants on this advent calendar.

Also worth a mention is the BBC Sport Advent Calendar.

And the great thing for those of us on a pre-Christmas diet is that none of the above have yet mastered the technology necessary to release a chocolate when we open each door.

Doctor Who at Christmas

2006-12-06T10:15:00.000-05:00

The Runaway Bride is airing on BBC1 at 7pm on Christmas Day and the countdown has begun (mouse over the website). The Doctor Who advent calendar activates a new link that contains a Doctor Who related snippet for each day of advent. So far, Day 2 contains a very silly "Secret Santa" game that provides a brief distraction. Day 4 is also good -- Song for Ten, which Mark and I really like and which was apparently written especially for that episode. Demand for the song has been great, but it has not been available for purchase until now. The song is included in a Doctor Who soundtrack album that was released in the UK on the 4th of December and is due to be released here on the 13th of February. Here's a video (one of many) that I pulled off YouTube:

In fact, what the heck -- here's another good one:

Last year's Christmas Invasion boasted an average viewing figure (in Britain) of 9.84 million and was the second most watched programme of Christmas Day (Eastenders was top with 10.6 million).

We're all looking forward the this year's Christmas special co-starring Catherine Tate. Let's see if it can top last year's ratings.

To get really excited for Christmas, take a look at this BBC Christmas teaser:

It includes Billie Piper in a dramatisation of Philip Pullman's The Ruby in the Smoke (BBC1, 27th Dec., 8:30pm), which we're also looking forward to.

In addition, there is a New Year's day special of The Sarah Jane Adventures airing on New Years Day (BBC1, 4:50pm). A series is set to follow later in the year.

Also look out for the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) in Heroes (currently one of my favourite US programmes).

Here's the BBC1 Christmas schedule. (If you're one of those unlucky people who happen to not be in the UK over the Christmas period, you have my condolences, but hopefully you'll find some almost-as-good entertainment elsewhere.)

The Nativity Story

2006-12-03T21:39:00.000-05:00

Three Wise MenYesterday we went to see The Nativity Story at our local cinema. Immediately it seemed familiar. Although it was faithful to the traditional Christmas story, it included a lot that was very similar to something that I'd seen before, in a documentary that Mark had been interviewed for, entitled The Virgin Mary (Mary the Mother of Jesus in the US).

It was filmed in Matera, Italy and in Ouarzazate, Morocco (Dune Films), both of which are locations that are often used to double-up as The Holy Land. The Virgin Mary was also filmed at Ouarzazate.
The Stable SceneMark recognised parts of the scenery from when he went out to Ouarzazate to be interviewed for another documentary, St Paul. Around that time, I also had an acquaintance who was German by birth but whose family came from the Ouarzazate area of Morocco and he often visited there. He said that film crews in that area are a familiar sight. It's fairly common for locals to be hired as extras (which one can see in The Nativity Story). Another good source of income for locals is to be paid to get anything vaguely modern out of sight or to not hang their washing out where it would get in the way of the shot setups on the day of filming.

Shohreh AghdashlooIt starred Keisha Castle-Hughes (The Whale Rider) as Mary and Shohreh Aghdashloo (24) as Elizabeth.

The film has received quite a few bad reviews, but you needn't believe them. I am flummoxed as to what these reviewers want and how a retelling of the nativity story could be done in a way that would satisfy them. Although the film was by no means perfect, I have to admit to have thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end and it made me feel extremely Christmassy just in time for the start of Advent. If you haven't yet done so, go and see it. Unless you're a smart-alec reviewer or prone to nit-picking, you'll probably enjoy it.

Here's Mark's take on it.

How to cope without British TV and Radio: Cricket Supplement Update II

2006-11-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

Mark writes:

See previous posts in this series, How to cope without British TV and Radio: Cricket Supplement and How to cope without British TV and Radio: Cricket Supplement Update.

The AshesAs all British readers will know, the Ashes is here again. "The Ashes" is the name given for any test series involving England and Australia, where "test series" means a series of Test Matches. A "test match" is a five day international cricket match. There was great excitement last time around, when England beat Australia in England in the summer 2005, the first time we had done so since 1987. And the series was thought by many to be one of the best test series ever. Now England are in Australia and Australia are all set to win the Ashes back. With one test down, Australia are already one-nil up. The second test begins on Friday and England are going to have to raise their game if they're to stand a chance.

Watching overseas tests in America presents some serious challenges, greater even than the home tests during the summer, although this time we have not had our lawn dug up or holes put in our roof. To watch this series on TV, you have to have the satellite service DirecTV. There is no other way of doing it. You can't pick it up on Dish Network, nor can you get it on your cable package, even for subscription. So if you don't have DirecTV, your only option is to go for the Broadband coverage on your PC via Willow TV. This costs $99.95 for the whole series. I've been reticent to make the purchase this time, especially as the fourth test and most of the fifth test will be on when we are in the UK for Christmas. Also, the direct streaming is pretty good but it is not brilliant, and for cricket you really do need a good picture. I may still succumb at a later point, especially if England start playing a bit better, but for the time being I am managing without.

So without any TV coverage, how does one cope? One of the most disappointing things is that there is no BBC Test Match Special coverage available to international users. It is only available to UK users. This is a real nuisance. To be honest, I miss TMS so much that I have looked around to find alternative, unofficial means of picking up the Radio 4 LW stream, or the FiveLive SportsExtra stream. Happily, there are ways of doing this if one is prepared to spend a bit of time messing about on the net. Unhappily, the Radio 4 LW stream is not always accessible. When that happens, I can usually get the ABC Australian commentary, which is not at all bad, and features Jonathan Agnew, who is good enough to say the score Aussie style (1 for, 2 for etc.).

One great new innovation this season, though, is the Test Match Special Podcast. This is 17 minutes or so of Jonathan Agnew and Geoffrey Boycott chatting about the day's play. If you are into downloading podcasts, this is a great new thing, and I hope it will appear again next season for the home tests.

Electrics and Electronics

2006-11-24T00:08:00.000-05:00

The Sitting RoomWhen one moves overseas, one faces the potentially expensive problem of what to do with one's electrical and electronic possessions. The problem is threefold:

The mains voltage supply in the UK is 230V and in the US it is 120V
The UK current alternates at a frequency of 50Hz, whereas the US frequency is 60Hz
The UK's video colour system is PAL, whereas the US uses NTSC

We were advised by some to sell/give away all our electrical/electronic items and buy new ones in the US. We partly decided to do this, but were reluctant to lose all our electrical possessions. There were some that were fairly new, some that were presents that we did not want to part with and some that we particularly liked. In addition, getting rid of everything and buying everything new was a potentially expensive option.

If you're thinking of moving to the US from the UK, or vice versa, you are bound to be faced with a similar dilemma, so, just in case it helps, here's how we approached the problem:

We took an inventory of all our electrical/electronic devices along with their voltage/wattage.

For the most part we ignored the frequencies because frequency converters are very expensive and we didn't think that the difference in frequency would adversely affect most of our devices because we were going from 50Hz to 60Hz. If you're moving from the US to the UK, however, you might need to consider this as this may affect some of your decisions.

Some devices, such as many computers (but not all), are built to accept dual voltages, so only needed plug adapters to work in the US. When using adapters, it is worth bearing in mind that some appliances need to be earthed and one would need an earthed adapter for these.

We decided which devices we really wanted to take. These included the TEAC HiFi system and Emily and Lauren's micro systems that were birthday presents and were quite new.

We decided which devices to give away (such as the washing machine, tumble drier, big TV and vacuum cleaner). We kept one TV and a multi-regional VCR because we have a lot of PAL videos that we wanted to be able to watch in the US, including the "Born in the UK" series of videos that the Everyday Eavesdropper regularly sends us. We also have a PAL PSOne that the children wanted to keep.

Of the items that we decided to keep, we thought generally about which devices are likely to occupy which rooms (e.g. the food processor would obviously go in the kitchen).

The Kitchen
(the transformer is hidden
in a cupboard)We also kept any extension strips (with rows of UK plug points) to take with us. This was because the plan was to buy a step transformer for each room in which we put UK devices, then plug all the devices for that room into a single transformer via the extension strips. We also had to buy a video converter for the VCR because it turned out that although the VCR was multi-regional in that it could play both UK and US videos, it could only output to a PAL TV. We also found that our TEAC DVD player was not multi-regional and could not be made so using a handset hack, so we would have to spend a fair amount of money to send it off and get it professionally altered. Our solution was to keep the TEAC DVD player boxed and buy a cheap one from Walmart. We then used a handset hack (one types a specific sequence into the remote control to set the region-encoding of the DVD player) to make it play both Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs. (NOTE: To get a handset hack, just google your DVD player's model reference and the words "handset hack".)

We also made sure that the TV we bought had a plug-point for a PC so that we could download or stream UK TV programmes through a laptop computer to the TV. This is much more enjoyable than having to gather around a small computer screen.

We used the wattages that we'd gathered in our inventory to work out the wattage needed for each of the transformers.

As a result, we now have transformers of varying wattages in the kitchen, dining room, sitting room, study and our three bedrooms as well as a number of plug adapters for those appliances that can work on the US voltage. We went for straight-forward transformers rather than the more expensive voltage regulators just to keep costs down, but you might choose to stabilize your voltage with a regulator.

The pictures show a couple of examples.

Here's a few useful links:
Electricity Around the World
PAL SECAM NTSC Conversion
Voltage Guide
World Import FAQs
Frequency: 50Hz vs. 60Hz
DVD Compatibility FAQ

The Butterfly Flutters By

2006-11-14T12:39:00.000-05:00

I'd like to introduce you to Lauren's new blog, The Butterfly Flutters By.

My philosophy is that the best way to learn is to do. What better way for her to learn about IT than to give it a try? She is already very good (for her age = 9) with MS PowerPoint and Word, IM and email. I introduced her to the basics of HTML and Dreamweaver and she seemed to be doing quite well. Emily started to teach herself HTML at a similar age too. So, when Lauren asked if she could write a blog, I agreed, as long as I have full administrative control.

The blog is administrated by me and I will be checking every post for appropriateness before publication. I will also control any settings and the template. Nevertheless, the content of the blog will be Lauren's (subject to my checks).

You may want to pop in now and again to read her take on life.

The Fall Find America

2006-11-12T22:30:00.000-05:00

Mark writes:

As Viola has mentioned before, one of my favourite bands is The Fall, a band you can't begin to explain or introduce to newcomers except to say that they are unique, bizarre, unpredictable and have been going for almost thirty years. I was sorry to miss them in the USA recently since North Carolina was not on their itinerary. Few in the UK have heard of the Fall, though almost everyone will be familiar with some aspect of their strange repertoire from some means or other, whether because they saw The Silence of the Lambs, which used the song Hip Priest as part of its soundtrack, or whether they are familiar with the Vauxhall Corsa advertisement that has been in cinemas and television for several years. That advert uses the Fall song Touch Sensitive.

Vauxhall Corsa: Touch Sensitive

Even fewer people in the US have heard of The Fall, but now they are heard daily on the TV because Mitsubishi have gone the same way as Vauxhall and have used a Fall track to advertise one of their cars. The track is a relatively recent one, Blindness, from their most recent album (2005), Fall Heads Roll, the first CD I bought when arriving in the US last year. The track is also, sadly, one of those recorded for the last ever of the many Fall Peel Sessions.

Mitsubishi Outlander: Blindness

Heralding the Return of the Everyday Eavesdropper

2006-11-12T13:41:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to announce the return of the Everyday Eavesdropper from a hiatus of nine months. He promises that there are a number of eavesdropping stories that have been gestating over this time. Looking forward to them.

Preying on a Mantis

2006-11-11T20:40:00.000-05:00

A Carolina MantisMark and I watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, then noticed that we hadn't seen the cats for a while, which is unusual because they usually follow us around the house. Then Mark remembered that just before BSG he'd seen them looking very interested in something, but he hadn't stopped to see what it was that they were interested in.

It was therefore not for another hour or more that we investigated the matter. What we found, was a female (I think, because it had quite short wings and a rather large abdomen) Carolina Mantis (the state insect of South Carolina). I recognised it immediately as a type of praying mantis that had managed to enter our house (probably while the back door was open). I had never seen one in real-life before (except in entomology departments of zoos), so I wasted no time in grabbing my camera. Unfortunately, the creature had already been chased and terrorised by the cats for about an hour, so it was much the worse for wear.

A Cat Toy
(A bit the worse for wear)It's final fate was a fitting end. Hungry female praying mantids have been known to bite the heads off and cannibalise the males during mating. While we were watching our next Friday night programme (Lead Balloon), Memory ran into the sitting room with an abdomen in her mouth. She put it down and tried to get it to move, but was quite disappointed to find that if something loses its head (and, in fact, the rest of the front half of its body) it likely to stop moving and becomes considerably less fun to play with. This is the stage at which Mark unceremoniously put the remainder of the mantis in the bin.

The lesson (if any) to be learnt from this incident is this:

If you're an insect and you want to keep your head -- keep out of the Goodacre house.

What Katydid

2006-11-08T01:39:00.000-05:00

A Katydid

What Katydid:: She flew into our house when Mark opened the back door the other evening.
What Katydid Next:: She was tortured and eventually eaten by two bored house cats.

Watch the video only if you love the macabre.

Halloween II

2006-11-08T00:36:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit late with this post, but nevertheless, here goes:

Last year at Halloween we had only recently moved to NC. We decided to go native, so I took Emily and Lauren trick-or-treating, while Mark stayed at home and handed out sweets. This year, Emily decided that she was too old to go around people's homes asking for sweets, so she decided to stay at home and hand out sweets with Mark.

I'm not sure that she would have felt too old if she had been out though. It seemed to be the older children and teenagers who had the most mercenary attitudes towards trick-or-treating. They hunted in packs, preferring to demand sweets with friends, unsupervised by adults. Each carried a huge white sack and they would push past any hapless toddler who got between them and their booty. They started early and kept trick-or-treating after the little ones had been taken home to bed.

While out with Lauren, I also met many a parent who seemed to be one step away from elevating trick-or-treating to a profession. Lauren gave up when her plastic pumpkin-shaped bucket was about half full mainly because she was fed up of having to carry it. The pro-parents carried carrier bags into which they would periodically empty the contents of their children's containers, keeping them lightweight for their children. The pros also made sure that their children wore sensible shoes. Some with very small children also thought to pull little trolleys behind them in which the little ones could sit and be pulled from house to house, so that they only needed to use their little feet to walk up each driveway in their cute little costumes and ask for sweets.

The night was full of goodwill. People wished each other "Happy Halloween" (although I have to admit to finding this a bit bizarre). Those houses with sweets to hand out, at their simplest, would put lighted pumpkins on their doorstep and leave the porch light on. Homes that were dark were bypassed by trick-or-treaters. Some homes went the extra mile and decorated their homes with witches on the lawns, ghosts on the trees, ghoulish lights, pumpkins, cobwebs and even dry ice. Scarecrows made out of old clothes were also common.

Often, those who stayed at home handing out sweets also dressed up and some even got into character. One that particularly springs to mind was a house where Darth Vader guarded the steps. Far from being scared, though, the kids seemed to love it. One lady had carefully raked all the leaves on her lawn into a maze. Children who went to her house were given sweets, then encouraged to find their way through the maze.

The next day (and sometimes even that night itself) the Halloween decorations were taken down, although "Fall" decorations sometimes remained. We have now entered the lull before Thanksgiving.

UK Celebrates a Foiled Terrorist Plot

2006-11-05T19:48:00.000-05:00

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Traditional

A BonfireNormally, every year we celebrate Guy Fawkes with friends, a barbecue and fireworks. This year we are celebrating it with absolutely zilch. Despite having recently had Halloween, it doesn't really make up for missing Guy Fawkes. I have to admit that Mark and I are feeling a bit bereft and homesick. We've had to watch the latest episode of Robin Hood to try and cheer ourselves up.

Carrying on the Dame Julie Theme . . .

2006-11-05T10:42:00.000-05:00

... and with the countdown to Christmas having started, who remembers the old Tribe of Toffs tribute?

(NOTE: The music file is .asf, so you may need to download the Voxware RT29 MetaSound (75) codec to be able to listen to it. If you need to, just download the codec and extract it to a temporary folder. Install the codec by right-clicking on the file voxacm.inf and selecting "Install".)

Christmas Eve I was feeling sick
Nothing on but the sound of music
But suddenly I could not choose
Between Linda Lusardi and Julie Andrews

Christmas Day bored out of my brain
But there's Julie singing in the mountains
Brown paper packages tied up with string
You are one of my favourite things

Oh yes, oh yes
I'm afraid it's true
Julie Andrews,
We love you

There she is singing Edelweiss
Julie Andrews is extremely nice
See her singing in the Alpine sun
With a guitar and she is dressed like a nun

Oh yes, oh yes
I'm afraid it's true
Julie Andrews,
We love you

She's Mary Poppins with Dick Van Dyke
Flying about or riding a bike
Supercalifragilisticexpialidotious
Christmas Day without you would be something quite atrocious

Oh yes, oh yes
I'm afraid it's true
Julie Andrews,
We love you
Festive Frolics From Four Fellows, A Tribe of Toffs

Julie Andrews, the Original Americanized Emily

2006-11-04T01:37:00.000-05:00

Julie AndrewsMark writes:

One of my daily pleasures is listening to the Daily Mayo podcast from BBC Radio FiveLive. I download it each day onto my MP3 player and then play it through the car stereo on the way to work, alongside other BBC podcast favourites like the Today programme, 606: The Football Phone-in, Start the Week and In Our Time. This week's highlight on was, without question, Monday's Daily Mayo featuring an interview with Dame Julie Andrews, whose starring role in The Americanization of Emily (1964) gives Viola's blog its name. Here is the FiveLive blurb:

Dame Julie Andrews has reinvented herself as a writer, co-authoring 15 books with her daughter. Here she talks to Simon Mayo about her latest publication, "A Great American Mousical".

The interview focused mainly on this new book, "A Great American Mousical". Apparently she has written lots of children's books in "The Julie Andrews Collection" and she authors with her daughter. She also talked briefly, of course, about Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music but the parts of the interview that I enjoyed most were those where she reflected on living life as a British citizen in America.

Although she only occasionally returns to the UK for public engagements, she said that she often comes back secretly to see family and friends. When Simon Mayo pointed out how well she had kept her British accent, she added that she had adapted to certain Americanisms for convenience, and one can hear them now in her voice, e.g. I picked up one or two "t"s as "d"s which are very common in the US. I was delighted to hear that she still drinks a lot of tea, and has PG Tips and Marks and Sparks stuff sent over specially. We do something similar, though our British tea of choice is Yorkshire Tea. She brings marmite and marmalade back with her too, also like us, and she said that her husband Blake Edwards could not understand what she saw in the marmite, a common American reaction in our experience too. She said that she loved and missed England, and especially the Spring, but that she found Americans very friendly -- and they love the British. One of the nicest elements in the interview was her explaining that although she lived in America, she did not see it as turning her back on Britain. On the contrary, she saw herself as a representative of Britain.

You should be able to download and listen to the interview again for a several more days.

Emily's Birthday

2006-10-29T20:46:00.000-05:00

Emily RidingEmily started her Birthday by opening all her cards and presents before school. The rest of the day was taken up with routine activities. After school she went horse riding and did her homework. Then we took her to the Marble Slab Creamery to try and make the day a little more special.

One of the Birthday CakesAt the weekend, she had some friends round for pizza and Birthday cake (fairy cakes (cup cakes), each with a single candle) in front of the TV (Doctor Who) and a sleepover. The next day, they went bowling.

Getting Ready to Saddle-Up
My Mum at the Stables

A Visit from My Mum

2006-10-27T16:08:00.000-04:00

The view from our front
porch (taken by my mum)My mum came to visit us for ten days recently. Mark was working most of the time and the girls were at school, so there were no big day trips to see the sights. Her experience was very much one of everyday living in the Goodacre household. Nevertheless, she didn't give the impression of being bored. Perhaps next time we can show her a bit more of NC.

Day 1

Lauren, Emily and I picked my mum up from the airport, then took her to Bojangles on the way home, so from the outset she was introduced to NC life.

Day 2

We started the hunt for Emily's Birthday present by visiting Target, Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods. If you're American and reading this, you may wonder why, when she's dragged herself nearly 4,000 miles, I'm dragging her to places like Target instead of showing her the sights. The answer is that:

My mum is very easy going, so she doesn't mind what we do.
Visiting quintessentially American places like Target and Walmart is part of the overall experience, so people who visit from the UK quite like doing this (we particularly like to point out the sale of guns in Walmart and things like "no concealed firearms" signs on doors -- this really freaks the average Brit out).
Whatever we did had to fit into the school day.
Emily's Birthday was drawing nigh and I had to buy her a present.

In the end, we bought her a pair of rollerblades from Dick's.

Day 3

We had lunch at school with Lauren. This is a must for visitors because this too is a very American experience because:

One cannot, in most (if not all) schools in the UK, waltz into the school to have lunch with one's child on any day of the week and without notice.
The school dining hall is full of American children (including Lauren's friends) talking in their little American accents. One also gets to hear Lauren talking to her friends in her American accent. You see, Lauren speaks in a fairly Southern American accent at school, but a Birmingham (UK) accent at home.

We rounded off the day with a lovely curry made by my mum.

Day 4: Emily's Birthday

While the girls were at school and Mark was at work, my mum and I went shopping. Emily celebrated her birthday by going horse riding. We rounded the day off with a calorie-intensive trip to the local Marble Slab Creamery (Mmmmm.... fat-ilicious).

Day 5

Today, it was sushi for lunch. In the evening, Emily had some friends over for pizza, cake and a Birthday sleepover.

Day 6

The plan for this day was for Lauren to attend a "cheer clinic" -- a one day cheerleading event held by the local high school to introduce children to cheerleading. Unfortunately, Lauren was ill (she'd been ill for a few days, but had got worse), so couldn't go (this was also $30 down the drain). Emily and her friends went bowling as part of her Birthday celebration. The idea was to drop them off at the bowling alley, then pick them up later. What actually happened was that Mark dropped them off, then sat in the car reading, in the bowling alley car park, until it was time to pick them up. My mum and I stayed at home to look after Lauren.

Day 7: Mum's Birthday

She started the day with the opening of her card and present. We then went to church, then out to Golden Corral for lunch. I know what you're thinking -- "Couldn't you have taken her somewhere nicer than Golden Corral?" Well, we had planned to go to a nice restaurant to treat her, but my mum wanted the full American experience of an all-you-can-eat feeding trough (a phenomenon that is still in its infancy in the UK). She asked if we could go to Golden Corral and after much persuading we relented.

Day 8

Occasionally, I help in Lauren's class at school. This morning was one such occasion, so I had to leave my mum to fend for herself. We spent the afternoon postcard and smoothie shopping.

Day 9

As I mentioned before, we've decided to apply for our greencards. Part of the application process involves a medical examination. This morning, we left my mum to fend for herself again while the four of us went for our medical examinations. In the afternoon we went for a walk by the lake. In the evening, Mark's friend Stephen, who happened to be in Raleigh came to see us. We had a lovely chicken carbonara and garlic bread dinner, cooked by Mark and all the requisite wine and liqueurs. Stephen stayed the night, then went home the following morning.

Day 10

One cannot come and see us without the obligatory trip to Duke. The trip included a walk through the chapel and smoothies in the Bryan Center while Mark was teaching, followed by lunch in the Divinity School Refectory and a walk through the beautiful Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

Day 11

The last day. Mum didn't get to say goodbye to Lauren before she set off for school because this is the day that Lauren has her Choral Ensemble practice before school. Instead, we had lunch with Lauren so that my mum could have a chance to say goodbye to her. In the afternoon I took my mum to the local Lifeway Christian Store, where she didn't find anything worth buying. Then Mark drove Emily to her horse riding lesson and my mum to the airport before going on to work.

On the bright side, it's not long until Christmas.

Joe Strummer Spins in His Grave

2006-10-24T21:07:00.000-04:00

Here's a fun video about whether or not Tony Blair should step down that was brought to my attention by a friend of Mark's:

Joe Strummer Spins in His Grave

An Update on the Job Situation

2006-10-24T11:53:00.000-04:00

Ren asked how my job search was going. I realised that back in November last year I mentioned the plan to get a job:

Before leaving the UK, the plan was to come over to the US on a non-working visa. I would then apply for jobs where the employer could sponsor my upgrade to a working visa.
Trailing Spouse, November 2005

The USCIS only award 65,000 H1B visas a year. A year begins in October and they start accepting applications for a given year at the beginning of the preceding April. As we only moved to the US at the end of September last year, I'd pretty much missed the boat.

I decided to aim for October 2006. With this in mind, I sent out my CV and covering letter to various companies, explaining my situation. I managed to get a company to sponsor me to upgrade my H4 (non-working) visa to an H1B (allows me to work). Unfortunately, the company were badly advised by the attorney that they had hired to guide us through the process. They were advised that we should start the procedure in about June/July 2006 so that I can start working for them in October 2006, so we twiddled our thumbs for a bit, then tried to re-contact the attorney at the start of June, just to find that he would not return our calls. As soon as we realised that something was amiss, we wasted no time in finding another attorney who informed us that applications start being accepted in April, but that all 65,000 H1B visas were fully allocated by the 26th of May.

Now, we are aiming for October 2007 (starting the application process in March, so that the application can be submitted at the beginning of April).

I've added another string to my bow in that we've decided to try applying for greencards. It turns out that I may be able to submit an application for a temporary work permit while my greencard application is being processed. We would have to apply for a greencard eventually anyway, so we may as well do it sooner rather than later.

We [Don't] Want Your Blood

2006-10-22T18:10:00.000-04:00

Nosferatu probably
wouldn't be so fussyWhen I was younger, I used to give blood. I lapsed when I got pregnant for Emily because they don't take blood from pregnant women. Several years later, I tried to start giving blood again but they had tightened up the regulations and they no longer wanted my blood because I did not meet all the regulations. One of the new rules was that if one had ever stayed outside the UK for a continuous period of six months or more, one could no longer give blood. As I was born in India and only moved to the UK when I was five years old, I was told that I could not give blood.

(Source)The other week, our local church had a blood drive. My hopes were not high, but I thought that I'd pop along on the rather slim offchance that I might be able to give blood. The regulations here said that if one has visited the UK for longer than three months between 1980 and 1996 one cannot give blood (because of a risk of vCJD).

Ah well, at least I tried. I can now not bother to give blood and not have to feel bad about it either. Let's just hope that my brain is not turning spongiform even as I am writing this.

Here's some links about donating blood in both countries:
UK's National Blood Service
America's Blood Centers

I Don't Exist

2006-10-20T00:16:00.000-04:00

HowManyOfMe.com

There are:
0
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

It also turns out that neither of my daughters exist either. At least it was a nice way to waste a few minutes. If I hadn't got married, though, I would exist. Statistically, there are nine Viola's in the US with my maiden name.

Move to Beta Blogger

2006-10-18T20:47:00.000-04:00

OK, I've decided to take the plunge and ditch my old template in favour of moving over completely to Beta Blogger. As it is a beta, it has a number of issues that need sorting out and a few things that do my head in, but hopefully you won't be too bothered by them.

If there are things about the new site that do your head in, let me know. If I can do something about it I will. Otherwise, our fate is in the hands of the Beta Blogger team.

Here's my previous post on the topic: Beta Blogger

Health Care Expenditure

2006-10-15T09:58:00.000-04:00

This blog post is built on my earlier post on Medical and Dental Insurance in the USA and on the comments that followed.

At about 26%, the US has one of the lowest Overall Tax Burdens in the whole OECD. The UK's is much higher than the US's (about 37%) and is about the same as the OECD average. I was interested in the question of how much the UK and US spend on health care so I thought that a fresh post on the topic was called for.

As you probably know by now, I am a bit of a google addict (a bit like the "Area Man" in this Onion article), so I decided to try and find out a bit more about health care expenditure in the UK and in the US. I took a look at the OECD website to see if I can find any international health care comparisons. I'm not an economist or a statistician, so if I've mis-interpreted anything that I've read, please feel free to enlighten me.

According to the OECD, the UK government spends nearly double (as percentage of GDP) what the US does on health care. This is pretty much stating the blindingly obvious because the US's health care is mostly privately owned, whereas the UK's is publicly owned. The US's overall expenditure on health is greater than the UK's, even after taking into account their high expenditure on pharmaceuticals. The US expenditure per capita is about three times what it is in the UK (about $2500 in the UK; about $6100 in the US).

One might say that one can see the fruits of the greater expenditure on health care in the US. For those who can afford it, private health care in the US offers better quality of service, access to more up-to-date drugs and treatments, greater empowerment of patients and a lack of waiting lists. I am, however, left wondering how good a net the safety net of Medicare/Medicaid is when people on lower incomes still have to face large bills when they have had medical attention and I doubt that those who rely on Medicare/Medicaid get the same quality of treatment as those who are not.

In Britain, some who can afford it prefer to "go private" to circumvent the queues, so I suppose that although all are equal, some are always going to be more equal than others. However, the NHS was founded on the principle that medical provision should be a human right for all, not a privilege for a few. Even if the average healthy UK tax payer is ploughing more into the health service than they are getting a return for, to those who are on low incomes or are non-tax payers the service is indeed free. I think that this is worth paying a bit more tax for if we need to. Another thing is that if I, as a healthy individual, am to pay for health care that I haven't needed, I would prefer to give the money to a scheme that provides free health care to those who do need it, rather than lining the pockets of an insurance company.

England Fiasco

2006-10-11T23:36:00.000-04:00

Gary Neville's Pass Goes PastI don't normally complain and I normally try to keep my blog posts civil. However, I would just like to express my loss of patience with the England football team. First it was 0-0 to Macedonia, then 2-0 to Croatia. Perhaps if Paul Robinson opened his eyes while standing in goal he'd be able to see if a ball happens to be coming in his direction!

These people get paid huge amounts of money. Perhaps they can put me on the England squad. I'd happily be paid a few million pounds to not be able to play football. I'm sure that I would be quite good at providing a lacklustre performance and hoofing the ball into the wrong net.

Year after year, tournament after tournament, good or bad, we get behind our team (after all, they're all we've got). Come Euro 2008 (if we qualify), I'll be singing the songs and flying the flags from my car window, but sometimes I lose patience and have to vent.

Here's a good blog post on the topic: Do I Not Like That

Medical and Dental Insurance

2006-10-09T15:03:00.000-04:00

One aspect of US life that is a stark contrast to UK life is the reliance on insurance policies for medical and dental treatment.

When we lived in the UK, our only insurance policies were building & contents insurance and car insurance. We knew that in the US we would have to pay medical and dental insurance, but thought that the cost would be mostly offset by no longer having to pay National Insurance. This turned out to be a false assumption because one has to pay for one's own medical and dental insurance policies as well as paying for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

(Source)Medicare/Medicaid is the nearest thing that the US has to the NHS. People pay an amount each month out of their wages (I suppose, a bit like people in the UK pay National Insurance). Medicare is an insurance policy to provide medical care for those over 65 years old and some disabled people. Medicaid is a policy that provides treatment for those who are below the federally-defined poverty level.

As far as treatment is concerned, the UK media has countless nightmare stories about how people are treated on the NHS and I myself have had a few bad experiences. However, I can also say that I have seen a doctor on countless occasions (which here in the US would cost me a $15 excess for each visit) and have had a few operations/stays in hospital without having to part with a penny. If I moved house, I could just sign up at the nearest doctor's surgery.

In short, the NHS provides treatment to anyone regardless of socioeconomic status for free or near-free. Medical and dental provision (including prescribed medicines) for children is always free and most provisions for most adults is also free. Adults who earn above a certain wage have to pay for prescriptions (about £6 or so per prescription). As far as dental charges are concerned, we would visit the dentist twice a year and all I would pay for was £13 to have my teeth checked and polished. The option is available, for those who have the means, to pay for private medical provision, and private medicine does have its advantages. However, this is voluntary. One does not have to subscribe to private medicine just because one is well-off. One can still be treated by the NHS.

(Source)When we first arrived in the US, we were handed a 3" thick lever-arch folder that explained the various insurance policy options that were available to us. We were (and to a large extent still are) flummoxed. The folder was mostly gobbledygook -- containing phrases like "...subject to the deductible, covered at 80% of coinsurance of plan allowance...". Translated into our level of understanding, this says "...@!*#$ !@ #$% *$&:^?@!$# etc..." After hours of reading through this tome we were very little wiser, so we just picked a plan and hoped for the best.

It's now a year later and we still don't have a doctor. Our medical insurance only pays out if we have a doctor from their approved list. Upon phoning around the local surgeries in our area that were on the list, we discovered that:

the list is out of date and many of the surgeries on the list do not take patients with our insurance policy and
those doctors that do not fall under (a) have a full quota of patients and are not taking any more on.

My next recourse is to try further afield, and see if we can get a doctor in the Durham area. It's true that for $150 or so extra a month, we can choose any doctor, not just one from a pre-approved list. However, as we've been here a year and haven't needed a doctor, $1,800 a year extra seem like rather a lot to pay.

As far as dentistry is concerned, we had our first visit to a US dentist recently. There were no treatments other than prophylaxis (fissure sealant for the kids' molars (charged per-tooth), polishing, x-rays), yet our bill exceeded our insurance payout by about $750. I dread to think what it would cost

without insurance
if we had to have any actual treatments

In the UK, all children's treatments are free and I've already mentioned the cost of an adult's check-up and polish. Last time I had an X-ray I didn't have to pay, but even if these days there is a small fee, it'd be nothing when compared to the cost here.

When one is living in the UK one can see the NHS's problems. No matter how much public money is ploughed into it, for various reasons it is always hungry for more. It's not until one leaves the UK that one begins to appreciate just how great an ideology and institution the NHS is and how much, despite its problems, it's worth fighting to keep.

Heroes

2006-10-05T10:08:00.000-04:00

If you like the new NBC series Heroes, you might be interested to know that there's an online graphic novel. Parts 1 and 2 are online at the moment, with more to come. Personally, thus far it is just my cup of tea (which probably means that it will get cancelled after about one and a half series), even though it falls in line with the usual American-TV-casting policy of not employing ugly people.

Bankers

2006-10-04T21:43:00.000-04:00

Whichever side of the pond you reside on, you'll still have to deal with bankers. Wherever one goes, one will always find a few bankers. However, not all bankers are the same. There are some differences with banking here, compared to banking in the UK.

Cheques are not "cheques", but "checks". A check must also be "endorsed". This means that in order to cash it, it has to be signed on the back by the person trying to cash it, using the exact name that the check is made out to.
There is no such thing as an arranged overdraft (at least, not as far as we know). In the UK, if one has the foresight to realise ahead of time that one's salary for the month is not going to last the month, one can phone the bank and agree an overdraft limit with them. An overdraft that has not been arranged leads to rapped knuckles, a good telling-off from the bank and penalty fines. In the US, one cannot arrange an overdraft. All overdrafts therefore come with the requisite rapped knuckles, telling-offs and fines.
There is no such thing as a check guarantee card. In the UK, when one writes a cheque, one can present one's cheque guarantee card and the recipient writes the number of the guarantee card on the back of the cheque. If a cheque is presented to the bank with a guarantee number, the bank has to honour that cheque. It is a way of the cheque recipient being able to confidently accept cheques without fear of losing revenue.
The UK does not have drive-through banks. The US has drive through fast-food, drive through pharmacies and even drive through banks. After all, why should customers need to be bothered with things like having to get out of a car?
US monetary notes are all the same size and colour, so it's quite easy to confuse (for example) a $1 bill with a $10. One has to look quite closely at them. In fact, in the UK, we would talk about notes, not bills. One would have a £10 note, not a £10 bill. In addition, if one has a purse (pocket-book) with both US and UK change, one has to look quite closely because a US penny and a UK penny look very similar. A UK 5p coin and a dime (10¢ coin) are also the same colour/shape/size.
Here, in our part of the USA, a handbag is a purse and a purse is a pocket-book.

Great British Grub

2006-09-28T14:51:00.000-04:00

As you know, we popped back across the pond for a month, straddling July and August. Although the US boasts some culinary delights of its own, we were nevertheless hankering after some good ol' British grub that is hard to find here. We used our month in Britain well -- to get a fix for as many of our cravings as possible. Here's Mark's take on it:

One of the real pleasures of returning to the UK over the summer was to taste again all sorts of food and drink that we had been missing while in the USA. In the weeks and months ahead of our summer trip, we would often discuss what British foods we were most looking forward to, making a mental list. Emily would often ask if we could get some McVities Digestives when we were shopping in Kroger (@ $3.00 a packet in the UK import section) and I would always have to say, "Wait till we get to England".

Black PuddingThere was no question about what I was most looking forward to -- black pudding. You cannot get hold of black pudding in the States for love or money. Actually we once had a bit in an Irish pub in Cary, but that's the only time, and it was not great black pudding. For those who have not tried it, black pudding is a large, thick black sausage, made in part from pig's blood and fat (not terribly kosher). Happily, we found ourselves in the black pudding capital of the world for one week of our stay, when we went on holiday to Bishop's Castle in Shropshire. There was a local black pudding there which was absolutely superb and I think we must have bought four or five during the week we were there. In fact there was a nice (but expensive) family butcher there too that made the best local back bacon one could imagine. It's not possible to get back bacon where we live -- there are shelves and shelves of streaky, some even in odd flavours like maple, but no back bacon in sight. And, of course, there were some first class British sausages, thick, meaty, tasty and not the diddy, salty and fatty things we get here.

Emily did get her digestive biscuits and we all enjoyed some good Cadbury's chocolate (which is available here, but licensed to Hersheys, or imported from England at four times the price). One surprise treat was British squash -- orange squash, blackcurrant squash etc. -- we hadn't realized how much we had missed those. [Explanation for Americans: squash is fruit-flavoured drink concentrates that one dilutes before drinking. We especially missed Robinson's Lemon Barley Water. (Ed.)] I don't think I had realized either just how much I had been missing a good English hand-pulled pint of real ale. One real highlight was sitting outside an old pub called The Tinner's Arms in Zennor during our week in Cornwall, and then in Shropshire to pick up regular pitchers of the locally brewed ales from the local pub in Bishop's Castle.

Steak & Kidney PieI should also mention, of course, fish and chips. We had it twice during our month's visit, and each time the key thing -- for us -- was the curry sauce -- tops it off wonderfully. [Although sea-food restaurants around here tend to deep-fry everything -- from white fish to oysters and serve them with some variety or other of fried potato, we craved proper batter and chip-shop style chips (Ed.)] We had a great Chinese takeaway too when in Peterborough, a great Indian takeaway in Shropshire, a nice Indian meal out in Birmingham, where Balti is the local dish, and a great meal at Pizza Express in London with my brother Jonathan on Lauren's birthday. Come to think of it, we also had three pub meals and on all three occasions I had steak and kidney pie, one of my favourite dishes. [In the UK, pie can be almost anything that involves pastry and an oven. This means that pies can be savoury (eg. steak and gravy) or sweet (eg. apple). Hence the Geico gecko's love of "pie and chips", which translated is savoury pie with fries (Ed.)] And in Cornwall we had a cream tea, which was even more delicious than I had remembered.

On top of these, we had many fantastic meals made for us while touring the country. Viola and I are lucky in both having Mums who are brilliant cooks, and family and friends who are also great cooks. And happily, everyone we know enjoys a glass of wine (or two) as much as we do. It's amazing that we did not put any weight on while in the UK, not least given the huge amount of cheese we consumed too (a new favourite: Haloumi; an old favourite: Blue Dovedale). [Good, reasonably priced cheese is scarce in our part of NC (Ed.)] What is less surprising is that I had some serious indigestion problems while in England!

BBQ, Rice & Hush PuppiesI do not, of course, want to suggest that there are not wonderful things to be had here. Now back in America, there are many American treats to enjoy. I love what is called "barbecue", which in North Carolina means a kind of pulled pork [pulled off the bone -- has a shredded texture (Ed.)] in some delicious spices, and not what Brits and Aussies mean by barbecue [Here, barbecue is pulled pork, to grill is to barbecue and broiling is grilling (Ed.)]. Viola recently posted on our growing love of sushi. And it is great that we can get fresh fish and seafood locally. We have a seafood market locally with the extraordinary name "Jezebel's Salty Fare" and on our wedding anniversary, I cooked a dish with some local squid and prawns (the latter always called "shrimp" here, even if enormous). We are also big fans of Bojangles, which is a southern "chicken 'n' biscuit" place, but we can't go there too often because it is very, very fattening.

New Favicon

2006-09-26T18:27:00.001-04:00

I've added a favicon to the blog, courtesy of Favicon.co.uk. I hope you like it.

Sushi

2006-09-24T13:58:00.000-04:00

Fish 'n' ChipsAsk nine out of ten British people (especially in Birmingham) and they will tell you how much they love their curry. Curry has become just as British as fish and chips or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Here in the US (or at least in our part of the US), Indian/Pakistani cuisine does not seem to have taken off to such an extent. What has taken off is Chinese and (understandably, due to the geographical proximity) Mexican cuisine. Eat as much as you like (or can?) Chinese buffets are everywhere. One seems to be pretty much the same as another in decor and dishes. Some also incorporate a Mongolian grill and a sushi bar.

In the UK, love of sushi has started to take off in recent years with it becoming available in supermarkets and with sushi bars opening up in shopping malls. Japanese restaurants are still few and far between, though, and rather expensive.

Here in the US, however, Japanese cuisine seems to be a staple. Many of Emily and Lauren's friends at school love their sushi. When we were living in England, Mark and I loved our sushi but didn't have it very often. Now that we are living in America, Mark and I are now massively into sushi, sashimi, tempura and any Japanese food that we've tried thus far. We haven't tried it on the children yet, but Lauren loves rice and seaweed so it shouldn't be too hard to convert her.

James BondWe even have a favourite Japanese restaurant -- Kuki (where we took Mark's aunt and cousin). Walking into it, one feels like one's walked onto the set of a James Bond film or an episode Dangerman (Secret Agent in the US).

We tend to go at lunchtime. This is because we once went in an evening and found that the prices are a bit steep. Add the cost of babysitting and it really piles up. They do, however, have a very reasonably priced lunch menu and we save on babysitting because the girls are at school.

On entry, a young lad greets us and we choose where we'd like to sit. It's always the same young lad and he always brings us our hot mugs of green tea without even asking us what we'd like (because we always have green tea). He's from South Korea, but has lived in the US for a number of years.
SashimiWhile he's bringing our food or topping up our green tea ("Harry hot ups" as Mark's Dad would say), he tells us a bit about South Korea and its culture. He also seems to have a huge passion for football (soccer), so often has a bit of a chat about that too. On our last visit, he and Mark discussed the addition of the South Korean striker, Seol Ki-Hyeon to the Reading squad and the waiter talked about the current state of South Korean football.

They also do the most delicious green tea ice-cream, but unfortunately I seldom have enough appetite for a sweet course.

A Year in America

2006-09-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

Today is our one-year anniversary. We have now been in the USA for an entire year. I didn't start my blog until the November, but Mark documented our move in his blog:

September 20, 2005: Travel diary 1: Leaving Birmingham
September 21, 2005: Travel Diary 2: At London Gatwick
September 22, 2005: Travel Diary 3: Arrival in North Carolina; Travel Diary 4: Waking up in America
September 23, 2005: Travel Diary 5: Finding my Office
September 26, 2005: Travel Diary 6: Supersize Me!
September 28, 2005: Another day, another hotel
Sunday, May 14, 2006: A Brit at Duke: Reflections of an Alien Professor
September 21, 2006: A Year in America

A year ago yesterday we were still in Birmingham (England). The removal men played tetris with all our earthly belongings so that they could fit them into a 20ft container. We gave or threw away anything that was not going with us (including a few items at the last minute because the container was not big enough for everything that we intended to take). Then we bundled ourselves into our hired car (as we no longer had our own car) and our neighbour waved goodbye as we drove to the airport. After a night in the travel lodge, we flew to America; the whole time with a feeling of excitement and adventure, but hoping that we were doing the right thing.

At first, although some things were uphill struggles, others were blessings. We had to move (extended-stay) hotels twice in one week, but then were able to settle on one that we could stay in for the next three weeks. After spending a month in hotels and sleeping on a fold-out couch because the children had the beds, we finally moved into the house that we were intending to buy. This was on the same day that our container arrived, so it could be delivered straight to the house and didn't need to go into storage (one of the blessings).

Here in the US (or at least in NC), when one buys a house, one sets a closing (=completion) date at the beginning of the process, when one makes the offer. If one cannot close on that date, one has to renegotiate a new date and/or can move into the property and pay rent to the sellers until closing. This means that the buyer can move house and the seller is relieved of the burden of having two mortgages to pay.

Unfortunately our mortgage application had been turned down several times because our international credit check turned out to not be worth the paper it was written on, never mind the amount that we'd paid for it. In addition, our house sale in England hadn't yet completed. By the time we moved into the house (to rent), we had already missed three closing dates. By this stage our sellers were irate and told us that they wanted us to vacate within two days.

That's when we said to one another that we had made a mistake and that perhaps we should cut our losses, rent a property for as long as it takes to organize moving back to England, then return home. We even found a property that was vacant and that we could move into for the interim. But in the end the sellers realized that they didn't have a leg to stand on (after we pointed out to them the wording of the contract), so backed off; the mortgage was underwritten; and cash-flow problems started to resolve themselves.

It doesn't seem that long ago that Mark and I stood in the kitchen of this house deliberating about whether we'd made the wrong decision, but here we are a year later with a house, two cars, good schools for the girls and a job for Mark that he enjoys; and we know that it was the right decision.

Emily's First (American) Football Match

2006-09-20T19:17:00.000-04:00

After school today, Emily went to watch her school's American football team play against another local middle school's team. The photos and video are all courtesy of Emily. The photos are all of the team, but the video is of the cheerleaders (although no matter how many times I watch it, I can't make out what they're saying).

Beta Blogger

2006-09-20T10:51:00.001-04:00

Recently, I decided to make the switch from Blogger to Beta Blogger. The lure was the ability to add labels to posts. This is a feature that I've been mimicking by having a drop-down menu in my sidebar called "Series Archive" but this has been far from ideal.

Unfortunately, once you've made the move to Beta Blogger, there's no going back.

To be able to use the labelling feature of Beta Blogger, one has to "customize" one's template (i.e. choose a template, then re-customize it to resemble what you had before). I don't mind doing this, but the problem was that the line height of the text varied between paragraphs for no reason that I could make out.

Here's what Blogger have to say about it:

There are general formatting issues in various places throughout the application. These are mostly just cosmetic and nothing to worry about in terms of functionality. — latest update on Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Blogger: Known Issues

I gather from this that "just cosmetic" issues are not top priority.

I resorted to reverting to my old template. (Although one can't revert to the tried and tested alpha version of blogger, one can upload the old template). Unfortunately, though, all of the old template's functionality is not available in Beta Blogger. The "Previous Posts" section only lists the twelve most recent posts. Previously, one could click on a post and the twelve "Previous Posts" listed would be relative to the post being viewed. The search box also fails to find older posts.

Now that I'm using my old template on Beta Blogger, the only way to access older posts is via the "Main Archive" drop-down menu. This only shows posts by month, without the option of viewing individual entries.

Beta Blogger does have better archiving options -- one can have a list, a drop-down box or a hierarchical structure. Although nice, it is not very customizable, so they need to work on that a bit more too.

So, if you're wondering what's wrong with my blog at the moment, it's teething problems with Beta Blogger. Hopefully, the problems will get ironed out eventually. I apologise for this and if I could go back, I would.

By the way, if you have any input into my Beta Blogger problems (i.e. if there's something I can do to sort out the text line spacing without having to wait for Blogger's support team), please let me know.

October 10.2006

I'm outlining the problem with the line spacing and possible solutions for posterity, in the hope that it may be of help to anyone else who has had this same problem. This problem and solution is specific to the various incarnations of the Minima template only.

The problem is that when one types one's post into blogger, carriage returns are interpreted as breaks, not paragraphs. This means that the entire post is treated by the browser as one big paragraph. My problem was that I had been using div tags to float images with their captions underneath. This use of div tags within the mega-paragraph that forms the post would break the mega-paragraph and the styles would no longer apply.

The style for the post body is defined by a div tag with "class='post-body'". The line spacing for the mega-paragraph is defined in the style sheet by "'post p'".

Solutions are:

Go to each div tag and change it to "span" (very time-consuming and boring)
Encase each paragraph in p tags (also very time-consuming and boring)
Make the "post p" style apply to "post-body" by changing the style sheet line ".post p {" to read something like ".post-body, .post p {".

There are also lots of things with beta blogger templates that do my head in, so I'll have to have a bit of a think before I decide to ditch my "classic" template.

More Things to See

2006-09-17T16:44:00.000-04:00

Jensen and GervaisWe watched the first episode in the new series of Extras last Thursday night. It has just started airing on BBC2, in the UK. It was very good and featured Orlando Bloom (who was very funny -- loving himself and jibing at Johnny Depp), Liza Tarbuck and Keith Chegwin. Still, it hasn't managed to knock my favourite episode (the Kate Winslett one) off its pedistal.

There are also a few well-reviewed films coming up that may be worth watching:

The Queen: A low budget dramatisation about the interactions between Buckingham Palace and Westminster in the aftermath of Princess Diana's untimely demise.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: Borat visits the US and goes in search of Pamela Anderson. I like Borat, but he can be a bit rude and the film has been rated R (18 in the UK), so I'm not sure about this one. My prediction is that it'll probably be good, but also rude, crude and very cringe-worthy.
An Inconvenient Truth: Mark Kermode describes this as "a powerpoint presentation", not a movie. It is a lecture on global warming given by Al Gore. The way I see it, if I start watching it expecting a glorified powerpoint presentation, not The Day After Tomorrow, then I'm not going to be disappointed. Mark Kermode also said that the film preaches to the converted, but, as I've said before, there's a whole gulf between knowing something and doing something about it, so perhaps this film will encourage those of us who are able to make lifestyle changes that help the environment to do so.

TransAmerica

2006-09-14T12:30:00.000-04:00

TransAmericaTransAmerica is another excellent film that we watched recently. It is a road-movie about a transexual whose operation is imminent discovering that she's a father and having to travel across America with her son.

The film stars Felicity Huffman. Even though I've seen her in other things (mainly Desperate Housewives) and even though I know full well that she's a woman, she plays the part so well that I am convinced that she is a pre-op transexual.

I thought that it was a good portrayal of a transexual waiting for an operation, but as I've only ever known one person who has changed sex, I wondered what the "transexual community" might have thought of the film, so I did a little googling. I couldn't find that many transexual people who had seen it or anything that was particularly quotable, but generally those who had seen it seemed to like it. Let me know if you think differently.

The Girl in the Cafe

2006-09-12T17:12:00.000-04:00

Mark and I recently watched the film, The Girl in the Cafe -- a 2005 Richard Curtis film. We loved the film right from the opening seconds right through to the end. It sported brilliant performances from both Bill Nighy and Kelly MacDonald.

Lost in TranslationThe backdrop of the story is a fictional G8 Summit hosted in Reykjavik, Iceland and the story is a romance between Nighy and MacDonald. On this level, the film does what Lost in Translation tried and failed to do -- be heartwarming and engaging from beginning to end and depicting a relationship between an older business man and younger woman without coming across as a bit sleazy. For the most part, I quite liked Lost in Translation, but this film is far its superior.

The Girl in the CafeThe real emphasis of the film is not the love story, but the Make Poverty History message -- that on average once every three seconds a child dies due to extreme poverty and that the leaders of the richest countries of the world have the power to do something about it.

I'd like to be able to say that this film has motivated me to try and get more involved with issues of social conscience; and that, as far as I'm concerned, Richard Curtis's mission is accomplished. I am, however, a realist. I realise that there is a huge gaping chasm between empathising with a cause and actually doing something about it and I don't want to speak too soon. However, I think that I will go as far as to say that I will investigate the matter further by looking into what may be going on in my area. Watch this space.

I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth

2006-09-09T18:06:00.000-04:00

Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
etc...
Pam Ayres

A Trip to the DentistIn the USA, almost everyone pays for almost everything and most people have a whole array of insurance policies to cover almost everything that one can think of. This includes medicine and dentistry. The UK has the NHS, which, despite its problems, makes me proud to be British. In the UK, we would pay about £13 each for a scale and polish for the adults and, as one would expect, it was always free for the children. The government payed the rest. The bill for our family trip to the dentist, for a similar amount of treament, in the USA was about $1500 plus an extra $500 or so of treatment that would most probably not have been prioritised by a UK dentist. Of this $2000, we had to part with $130 and the dental insurance policy covered the rest. The great thing about the NHS is that medical treatment is completely free and dental treatment is almost free for anyone regardless of socioeconomic status.

A Brit with Bad TeethHowever, my recent State-side trip to the dentist has highlighted something that one can see in this and in other aspects of American life that is rarer in British life. This is the relationship between service providers and their recipients: that if one is paying for something up-front, one is likely to demand and therefore to receive a better quality of service. This is great for those who can afford it or have an employer who can afford it, but is less great for those who are less fortunate.

The USA seems to run on this principle. At the dentist, our initial "oral evaluation" was far more thorough than anything that I have ever experienced in the UK, with an emphisis on prophylactic treatment. In addition, the dentists/hygenists themselves are more polite and friendly. They realise that one can always take one's custom elsewhere, which is less easy to do in the UK.

While we're on the topic of teeth, what is the going rate for teeth at the moment?

When in England, our tooth fairy always used to give £1 per tooth. On the odd occasion, he'd forget to do his job, so we would have to negotiate compensation for his lateness to the tune of a 100% per tooth markup. Since moving to the US, the rate has been $1 per tooth, with the same penalty for lateness. However, we recently found out that Emily's friend's tooth fairy pays $5 per tooth. In addition, we were recently
Larry Davidwatching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (one of the funniest programmes ever) wherein Susie's daughter, Sammi, has lost her last baby tooth and Susie is trying to put a $5 bill under her pillow (with disastrous consequences resulting from Larry using the upstairs loo very noisily whilst wearing very squeaky shoes). Is our tooth fairy particularly stingy? Should we be negotiating a better deal for our kids while they still have baby teeth to lose?

New Labour Implosion

2006-09-08T09:37:00.000-04:00

Tony BlairOver the past few days, it's all been kicking off in UK politics. Someone had pressed the self-destruct button on New Labour. Thankfully, they have a few years to try and recover a little dignity in time for the next General Election.

Let's settle the matter with a googlefight.

Gordon BrownWell, as of now, Gordon wins by a good 10,000,000 or so. So, I'm afraid Tony that your time has now come to move over.

Labor Day

2006-09-05T21:23:00.000-04:00

Labor Day FlagYesterday was Labor Day (labour to Brits). Labor Day is a public holiday that each year falls on the first Monday of September. Everyone in the country, except for Duke University staff and students, gets the day off work. Why? I hear you ask. What does Labor Day celebrate? Even Americans don't seem to know the answer to this question. When asked, the answer is simply that one gets the day off work -- 'nough said.

A quick google search later and I think that I may have the general gist, although it really was a quick google search. If you want to enlighten me further, or provide a better expanation of what Labor Day is, just drop in a comment.

It seems that Labor Day started with a parade in New York City, in 1882. The first parade was a protest march against the introduction of the eight hour working day. It was organised by the Central Labor Union, a trade union affiliated to a secret society that was an offshoot from the freemasons -- the Knights of Labor. Turnout to the march was in defiance of employers, who docked a day's pay from workers who attended. From there, the march became an annual event and spread to other areas. There was growing political pressure to designate this day a national holiday.

Then, in 1893, the American Railway Union called a strike over pay cuts and high rents that lasted through most of the following year as well. The strike and the union was crushed when President Cleveland declared the strike illegal and sent in 12,000 troops to break it up, resulting in two deaths. There was much criticism of President Cleveland's handling of the strike and 1894 was an election year. This gave those campaigning for a national holiday the fuel they needed and Labor Day was born. It was not enough to win Cleveland the election, though.

The lingering question is:

Is Labor Day a celebration of the working man; or is it an appeasement of the working man in the aftermath of a fatal blow to trade unionism in the USA; or third, has any such meaning been lost to its being relegated to just a celebration that marks the end of summer?

Here's a tongue-in-cheek brief history:

The first Labor Day Parade occurs in the United States. Organized by the Knights of Labor, the event has a loose affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. Hilarity ensues.

In an election year, Grover Cleveland makes Labor Day a national holiday. Surprisingly, the creation of a majority of the public cares little about fails to help re-elect the President.

Hallmark's Labor Day greeting cards fail to sell. Following this year, it is decided within the company that they will be better off creating holidays.

Jerry Lewis begins his annual telethon to battle Muscular Dystrophy, which recently celebrated forty years of mediocre programming and lack of a cure.

For the first time Labor Day is confused by a U.S. citizen as Memorial Day, a practice common for many to this day.

A teacher in Madison Wisconsin's play, "The First Labor Day," fails to inspire in its goal to teach "the true meaning" behind the holiday.

The first year Labor Day is looked at as less of a celebration of the working man and more of an excuse for the working man to get that much more intoxicated. 
Luke Allen Hackney, The Banana Peel

Sources:
First Labor Day Parade
The History of Labor Day
The Origins of Labor Day
Labor Day

The Doctor Returns to Sci-Fi

2006-09-05T10:58:00.000-04:00

DaleksThe second series of Dr Who is due to begin on the SciFi channel on the 29th of September, 8pm ET. And what an excellent series -- especially the final episode. Needless to say, we'll be watching the whole lot again.

The spin-off series Torchwood should be starting on BBC3 some time in October too. This is purportedly aimed at adults. There are also rumours of other spin-offs that are aimed at children -- Sarah Jane Investigates and another attempt at a K-9 spin-off.

I'm also looking forward to this year's Christmas special -- The Runaway Bride, mainly because it's starring the very talented and funny Catherine Tate.

September 15, 2006

The BBC have confirmed plans to air a one hour special of Sarah Jane Investigates in early 2007, followed by a series later in the year.

The Office & My Name is Earl

2006-08-31T22:24:00.000-04:00

An announcement for all interested parties:

NBC's The Office
BBC's The Office

The third series of The Office (aired in the UK as The Office: An American Workplace, to differentiate it from the original) is due to start on September the 21st (8:30-9p.m. ET) on NBC.

My Name is Earl

This is preceded by My Name is Earl (8-8:30p.m. ET). Both are well worth watching.

Here's a couple of NBC's The Office vs. BBC's The Office articles, just to whet your appetite:
The Office Heavyweight Bout: NBC vs. BBC
The Office (BBC) vs. The Office (NBC)