Colonial Activities
For those of you who didn't know, I'm currently in the land in which
tea is iced, lemonade is pink, biscuits are leavened and have butter spread in them, and
"route" sounds like an unfashionable military manouvre.
Yes, I'm back in the colonies. Though only for a week this time.
It dawns on me that I didn't write down many observations on the culture last time, so I felt I should do something more worthwhile this time.
I actually flew over on a BA flight. BA have upgraded their seats quite dramatically: the club class seats now fan out in a rather weird manner whereby the window and middle seats are actually looking towards the back of the plane, and you lounge in such a way that you can end up having a face-to-face conversation with the person next to you without moving your head. More importantly, in World Traveller (a.k.a cattle) class, they've modified the headrests so that they pull up and down and will fit both my and my mother's heads. They also have some funky bits on the side that pull down and rest on your shoulders and double as a cunning travel pillow without you needing to bring these silly-looking inflatable U-shaped things. The legroom leaves a lot to be desired, I had more on the flight from Madrid to London than from London to San Francisco, but it's a good effort otherwise.
Anyway, jetlag has been harder to shake off this time. Three days in and I'm still feeling cranky and sleepy after 6pm. I dunno why.
We flew in on the 3rd, the day before the Big Party. We settled in to the Best Western Hotel, which offers complimentary continental (i.e. crap) breakfast, and complimentary wired internet (what? no wireless yet?), and went on to spend the afternoon with our hosts and reason for the stay, my great-aunt and great-uncle. Eventually we made it to the much wished-for bed.
On the day of the Big Celebration, we actually went off to watch the parade at Danville. One thing I hadn't realised was how much of a celebration of local values it was. American towns are all about community. It starts off with your kids at school, who get their parents involved in things. Then they join the cub scouts, little leagues, and so on, and by that time there's no turning back, as a parent you're now expected to join in with the charity fundraisers, and helping out with those in need and so on. Eventually you end up voluntarily joining a number of organisations in which you help out in the community as a whole, with maybe only one thing in common to keep you all together. A number of these community aid organisations were in evidence in the Parade.
There was also a large military overtone to the event. The local police, fire, and ambulance services were there. There were a few national guardsmen in evidence, and then you had the World War veterans driving around in restored WWII vehicles, and the Vietnam (sic) veterans after them ("We Proudly Served"). Danville has a large Scottish (read: "Of Scottish Ancestry") population, and so a pipes and drums marching band was around. There is no sound more terrifying than Star Spangled Banner being played on two score of scottish bagpipes.
Finally, this being a celebration of All-American values there was plenty of advertising in evidence. The various sponsors of the parade were shown in banners in the front, and a number of them had floats in the parade. The Longs Drugs lot were the most amusing by far, pushing trolleys along and stopping every few feet and doing stunts with the trolleys, such as synchronised toppling of them, jumping over, running round and then catching up with their original one. The most impressive was the local Kung Fu club, whose adepts were showing off theirs skills to the full. The guy with the nunchucks deserves special mention. And things like local surgeries and big restaurants and even TV stations had their floats in the parade.
I actually had a chance to talk to some of the locals there, including a number of the kids. I asked the kids what they were celebrating, and the answer invariably came back as "July fourth". On further questioning it turned out they didn't even know what it was they were celebrating that say, so I quickly set them to rights. All this weeks these kids are going to be telling their friends how they have been celebrating the bankrupting of a Great Nation, and the driving of its king into utter insanity.
OK, so I may have embellished the facts a little bit, but I never claimed not to be a revisionist.
We spent some time that afternoon with our hosts, had an all-American 4th of July steak Bar-B-Q, and managed to miss the fireworks due to extreme tiredness. I fell asleep about half way through them.
Today we went shopping at a small mall. This was fun, as I do like shopping, and especially as we spent a large amount of time at a Nordstroms, a shop which I had only previously heard about in an erotic story I've read, and which has me grinning to myself every now and then, especially when I went past the fitting rooms.
What follows is a general braindump of observations about the my experiences so far:
Yes, I'm back in the colonies. Though only for a week this time.
It dawns on me that I didn't write down many observations on the culture last time, so I felt I should do something more worthwhile this time.
I actually flew over on a BA flight. BA have upgraded their seats quite dramatically: the club class seats now fan out in a rather weird manner whereby the window and middle seats are actually looking towards the back of the plane, and you lounge in such a way that you can end up having a face-to-face conversation with the person next to you without moving your head. More importantly, in World Traveller (a.k.a cattle) class, they've modified the headrests so that they pull up and down and will fit both my and my mother's heads. They also have some funky bits on the side that pull down and rest on your shoulders and double as a cunning travel pillow without you needing to bring these silly-looking inflatable U-shaped things. The legroom leaves a lot to be desired, I had more on the flight from Madrid to London than from London to San Francisco, but it's a good effort otherwise.
Anyway, jetlag has been harder to shake off this time. Three days in and I'm still feeling cranky and sleepy after 6pm. I dunno why.
We flew in on the 3rd, the day before the Big Party. We settled in to the Best Western Hotel, which offers complimentary continental (i.e. crap) breakfast, and complimentary wired internet (what? no wireless yet?), and went on to spend the afternoon with our hosts and reason for the stay, my great-aunt and great-uncle. Eventually we made it to the much wished-for bed.
On the day of the Big Celebration, we actually went off to watch the parade at Danville. One thing I hadn't realised was how much of a celebration of local values it was. American towns are all about community. It starts off with your kids at school, who get their parents involved in things. Then they join the cub scouts, little leagues, and so on, and by that time there's no turning back, as a parent you're now expected to join in with the charity fundraisers, and helping out with those in need and so on. Eventually you end up voluntarily joining a number of organisations in which you help out in the community as a whole, with maybe only one thing in common to keep you all together. A number of these community aid organisations were in evidence in the Parade.
There was also a large military overtone to the event. The local police, fire, and ambulance services were there. There were a few national guardsmen in evidence, and then you had the World War veterans driving around in restored WWII vehicles, and the Vietnam (sic) veterans after them ("We Proudly Served"). Danville has a large Scottish (read: "Of Scottish Ancestry") population, and so a pipes and drums marching band was around. There is no sound more terrifying than Star Spangled Banner being played on two score of scottish bagpipes.
Finally, this being a celebration of All-American values there was plenty of advertising in evidence. The various sponsors of the parade were shown in banners in the front, and a number of them had floats in the parade. The Longs Drugs lot were the most amusing by far, pushing trolleys along and stopping every few feet and doing stunts with the trolleys, such as synchronised toppling of them, jumping over, running round and then catching up with their original one. The most impressive was the local Kung Fu club, whose adepts were showing off theirs skills to the full. The guy with the nunchucks deserves special mention. And things like local surgeries and big restaurants and even TV stations had their floats in the parade.
I actually had a chance to talk to some of the locals there, including a number of the kids. I asked the kids what they were celebrating, and the answer invariably came back as "July fourth". On further questioning it turned out they didn't even know what it was they were celebrating that say, so I quickly set them to rights. All this weeks these kids are going to be telling their friends how they have been celebrating the bankrupting of a Great Nation, and the driving of its king into utter insanity.
OK, so I may have embellished the facts a little bit, but I never claimed not to be a revisionist.
We spent some time that afternoon with our hosts, had an all-American 4th of July steak Bar-B-Q, and managed to miss the fireworks due to extreme tiredness. I fell asleep about half way through them.
Today we went shopping at a small mall. This was fun, as I do like shopping, and especially as we spent a large amount of time at a Nordstroms, a shop which I had only previously heard about in an erotic story I've read, and which has me grinning to myself every now and then, especially when I went past the fitting rooms.
What follows is a general braindump of observations about the my experiences so far:
- There is a refreshing lack of grocer's apostrophe's. This should be something that the British should feel ashamed about.
- California is a state renowned for the car-happiness of its citizens, yet the roads, and especially Freeways were very badly surfaced compared to the sort of thing I'm used to seeing in Europe.
- I've decided that american road signs are crap. I reckon it must be impossible to drive around the country without knowing any English. In a lot of places where nice, informative signs have been developed in European countries, their american equivalents are written out in english, which makes them harder to take in at a glance, and many of which are in difficult-to-read ALL CAPS
- Most worrying road signs: "Stop here on red light" seen in places which you would naturally assume are stopping points, and the ubiquitously scary "Wrong Way".
- These guys don't do things by halves. Everything is big. It's impossible to convey the change in scale of everything til you have experienced it for yourself.
- Everyone is incredibly friendly, willing to help out, and willing to just chat and/or explain some of the rarities of their culture. They do seem surprised to work out how much they take for granted as commonly understtod by all, though.