I remember the first time I came to London, most of it at least. It was freshman year of college and I had taken an easy 2-credit course about English history that summated with a 10 day trip to London and the surrounding area. It was an honours class of about 20 or so students, I found a clique of friends made up of the least nerdly people on the course, basically the ones who were in the class for a free trip to London and not all that cultural studies and history crap. Because, let’s be honest, that was really just a cover to make the parents think it was a legitimate scholastic outing. To be fair, we did every touristy thing you could do in London, it was all good fun and in hindsight an incredibly well run and thorough tour. We had to wake up insanely early in the mornings; I remember being extremely hung over the day we took a bus to Stonehenge.
Ah, to be 18 and let loose on a foreign city, it was beautiful in its innocence simplicity and possibly stupidity. It was a trip filled with hormone and alcohol fuelled thoughts that consequences were not a concept that applied to me. Sure I’d been using my brother’s fake ID since I was 16 but in London, ready to show off my own legal status, I wasn’t even carded. I remember we went to Piccadilly Circus one night and tried to get into a club that someone in my group had decided was going to be the place to be that night. The doorman was a bit of a dick about tennis shoes (‘trainers’ they call ‘em over here); he didn’t want to let us in and it probably didn’t help that we stood out being the bloody American tourists we were, so we said fuck it and went to the place right next door. It seemed like a normal nightclub until the foam started coming down but by that time we were all so drunk we just went with it. We weren’t dressed appropriately for a foam party, and were probably the only ones there not expecting it but that didn’t matter, it was a blast, we played in the foam for what felt like hours.
Living here now, I find it quite interesting to see the sights I saw when I was here 8 years ago. It reminds me of a movie where aliens reset the world every time the humans went to sleep and I keep having déjà vu like the protagonist of the movie. I feel like the city was put in a blender, and all my memories of past and present have been scattered along side the multitude of historic landmarks. It’s just one of the ways the old intermingles with the new here. London was a great place to discover, and now I’m finding, a great place to re-discover too. I wonder if that foam club is still there…
One of the common questions I get from the locals is “How are you finding London so far?” and they’re not asking how good my navigation skills are but rather how am I doing adapting to my new surroundings. I’ve been asked the question so many time that I’ve come up with a canned answer that I think is both entertaining and true. My response is usually, “have you seen Pulp Fiction?” Because Quentin was spot on, for the most part all of the major aspects of life in this country are the same as in the US, in fact, I’m willing to bet that most first world countries start on the same common ground. And the UK and the US, for obvious reasons are built on more common ground than most countries. Oscar Wilde once said something to the effect that `England and America are two countries separated by the same language’ and to that point I thought I’d point out a number of the other differences between the UK and the US that have been a big part of my life since moving here:
Money – I’ll do this one first since it’s the most obvious difference any traveller will notice, but it’s not just the monopoly colours (UK spell check) and the different sizes to help you sort out the different values of each note, for me it’s all about the coins. In the states I used to give my change away at any opportunity I got. Most stores have a tip jar at the cash register and for the sake of light pockets; if I received change I’d do my best to give it right back. I might keep quarters if it was laundry time but otherwise I couldn’t be bothered to slosh around all day for the sake a 37 cents. But over here you can get 1 and 2 pound coins as change, worth $2 and $4 US, I’ll be damned if I’m going to give that kind of money away, especially in a place where no one tips. So I’ve become a slosher (seriously the other day this guy got in the elevator-called the lift over here-and I could tell he had about $20 in change whooshing around in his pocket). To combat this, some guys carry wallets with change purses built in, it’s an epidemic.
Laundry – I gotta bring this one up because after my first week here I almost put my first through the laundry machine. I’m living in a really nice flat right now, put up by the company to help give me a little time before I need to find a permanent residence. And after a couple of days I thought I’d try to do a load of laundry. The machine is tiny, about the size of a large microwave and it doubles as a dryer too. I think I’m golden, even though the machine only has pictures instead of words on it and I have no idea what setting I should be using there are only so many options and I know I’ve picked a wash and dry setting by the look of things. Three days later my clothes are still wet and I’ve washed them about 3-4 times before I figure out how to get the dry only setting to finish the job. Meanwhile I’ve only washed about 5 articles of clothes because the machine is so small.
Walking – I’m not talking about the amount of walking, New York is a walking city too, LA has made me lazy but I like the all the walking Londoners do. What I’m on about is the complete lack of field sense that Brits have. You’d think with all the tight spaces in this little island and all the soccer these people play they’d know how to move around each other without constantly bumping into one another. But try walking down a busy London street and you’ll soon learn that they have no idea how to walk. In the states we drive on the right side of the road, so when you start walking head on with someone else you veer right, everyone goes right, no one gets bumped. So logic would say that it would just be the reverse over here but for whatever reason people haven’t figured that shit out. And let’s say I’m walking down the street with my girlfriend and someone is coming straight at us in the opposite direction, we’d both move right and make enough space for that person to go around us instead of in-between us but Brits are so random that they’ll all individually go separate directions, I swear, people are constantly walking into each other over here. Someone should start some kind of children’s program similar to the stop-drop-and-roll thing we learned in elementary school. “Go Left you bloody bastards!” would be my suggestion for the name of the program.
Phone #s – Maybe I’m just brainwashed about this one; I’m willing to believe this is my issue and not theirs but I guess I’d like a little more standardization here. Country codes, extra zeros you’re not supposed to dial half the time, and no two people say or type their phone numbers the same. In the states it’s simple, area code-phone number (XXX) XXX-XXXX, here they’re throwing in plus signs, and everyone makes up their own format, not to mention the numbers are like 27 digits long. It takes half an hour to dial someone’s number; I had to take a memory course just to remember my own. To get back at the Brits, when someone needs my number I say it really really fast without any pauses; you pick a format but until you do I’m making up my own.
The Kebab vs. The Burrito – To be honest this was the difference that I was most looking forward to. In LA the late night snack of choice is the burrito. I love kebabs (pronounced Key-bobs), there’s just something wonderful about a giant hunk of unrecognisable meat that’s been slow roasted on a spit for 18 hours, being shaved off and dropped into a pita. I have the same rule about Kebabs as I do about burritos and that’s ‘anything goes after 2am’. In fact I don’t think I’ve had a kebob before midnight, ever. But the fun differences aren’t just in the food; it’s the kebob shop, the countless number of bums that ask you for change and all the dodgy un-licensed cabbies that know that no one eats a kebob sober. ‘Taxi, taxi?’ A kebob and a ride home, what could be better. This one you got right fellas.
Grocery shopping – This is where living abroad hits home. You expect the food in restaurants to be different, but they have KFC, McDonalds, Subway, etc., when you go grocery shopping you expect or hope to find the same name brands you know and love. But alas they’re not there. In fact, when they are there you’re so happy to see their familiar faces that it doesn’t matter that you never even bought them when you were in the states. But you adapt, find new favourites, new brands to learn to love. On my first trip to the grocery store here I decided to throw all that away and start fresh, and one of the first items I grabbed was Robinson’s Orange. It looked like orange juice and there were really no other options (there aren’t even multiple options in most cases, groceries are a take it or leave it proposition over here) so I thought, Robinson’s is their orange juice of choice, only to find out one really bad sip later that Robinson’s Orange is a concentrate, and although I know it’s not an orange juice concentrate I still have no idea what ‘barley water’ is. You and me Tropicana, best friends forever!
Food Service – basically, when it comes to service, don’t expect any. They don’t tip here so why bother, if you’re a server you’re going to make the same amount of money off of me no matter how bad the service. The Brits think they’ve got it all figured out because a meal costs what the menu says it costs but what they don’t get is that service is half the meal. How good are those chips (fries) when it takes half an hour to get ketchup? I went to a restaurant where they told me in advance that the food was going to come out at completely random times, that means mains before starters, my food gets cold before your food shows up, they just don’t care. There is one saving grace, the American accent. Most Americans don’t know that tipping is unnecessary or think that they should still leave a little something and the service industry over here knows it. The only way to get a check-back after the foods been served is to pretend you’re an American tourist and you don’t know that the tip is included.
Space – synonyms include: room, breathing space, legroom. It’s no secret that the UK is short on land but London is a really large city and dense as it may be it also covers a much larger area than Manhattan. So how come you can still find an apartment with a decent amount of space in New York? Because in Britain there is a limit on how high you can build a building. In New York they decided that since they couldn’t build out they would build up and the higher you go the more space you’ve got. But you’ll never find a Trump tower in London because they’re not allowed to build up here. So everything is smaller here because they don’t have any space for things to go. So no supermarkets, no Bestbuy’s, no Wal-Mart’s (not that it’s necessarily a bad thing), no big stores period. And when it comes to housing they’ve decided to completely forgo the closet. Seriously, there are no closets anywhere in London. I bet if you showed a Brit a walk-in closet they’d go nuts; that’s an extra bedroom in London.
International Rivalry – One of the lasting effects of Britain’s history is the international rivalry it’s created. There are a lot of British step-child nations around the world, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand being the most prominent and London is full of people from those places. And since most of them are still somewhat subject to British rules and reminders (the Queen is on their money) they usually have a chip on their shoulder about being the adopted kid in the family. But since none of them stood up to the Brits like we did they’ve chosen the sporting arena to sort out there national differences. America took a very American approach to sports and invented our own, formed our own leagues and then whoever wins we just declare the world champion despite the fact that there’s no international competition involved (Canada doesn’t count). But Britain and its kid nations all play cricket, rugby, soccer etc. against each other all the time; something is always in season and they’re always screaming drunk about how much better they are than each other. It’s a friendly rivalry while people are sober but it can get a bit hairy if you support the wrong team in the wrong pub. Luckily being an American I couldn’t care less, I’m already a world champ.
Sports – Along the same lines I don’t need to talk about sports much more than I already have but to say that it’s fucking hilarious how much singing they do over here, that’s right, singing. Every team has a song and I mean every team; imagine going to a single-A baseball game and everyone there knowing some sort of theme song to sing and constantly and without warning feeling the need to belt out a verse. That’s how sports are here and it’s great, you don’t even need to be at a game or watching a game to do a little singing, a pub full of drunken Englishman are bound break out in chorus at anytime for no reason whatsoever.
Vocabulary – Many other people have commented on the funny differences of vocabulary, fanny doesn’t mean butt over here, pants are not worn on the outside, and an Englishman in the States shouldn’t ask to borrow a rubber to complete the crossword puzzle. But I thought I’d share a funny story a British friend told me about a trip he made to Miami. The story was prompted because I asked what the appropriate response was to the popular greeting “you alright mate?” I thought it was a funny way to say ‘what’s up?’ and I my initial response is, “yeah I’m fine. Why? Don’t I look alright?” Well apparently the greeting confusion goes both ways, this Brit was walking down the street in Miami and coming the other direction is a huge jacked black guy walking with his little kid, as he walks by the Brit he nods his head up and says “What’s up?” to which the Brit, quite afraid for his life, steps aside and says “nothing Mate”. The reason he got scared is because in the UK, saying “what’s up?” is like saying “You got a problem?”, them there is fightin’ words you see, saying ‘what’s up?’ to another guy in the UK is a good way to start a fight. Well needless to say the black guy had no intentions of beating up my British friend but for a while he walked around Miami on eggshells thinking that people in the States were real touchy and a fight could break out at anytime, kids or no kids.
Time – I gotta say, this might be the hardest thing for me to get used to and you would think that it’s the tiniest detail but over here most clocks work on the 24hour military style clock. In fact, right now my computer says its 21:25. It’s no big deal when the math is easy, at 22:00 I’m golden, its 10 o’clock, but when it’s a high odd number it really throws me off. But that’s not the only difference, the date today is 31/1/08, they’ve switched the day and the month, which is fine on a day like today because it’s easy to realise (they spell that different here) that there is no 31st month, but tomorrow is 1/2/08, not January 2nd but February 1st. It gets really confusing trying to figure out when food expires or when an ad campaign is supposed to start.
TV – There are loads of differences between American TV and British TV, but I think the funniest one is the sign language. Oddly, really late at night (meaning really early in the morning, like 3am) they’ll replay shows from the week with someone standing in the lower right hand corner of the screen signing all the words to the show that’s on. It’s impossible to watch the regular show when they’re on, because your eye is inevitably drawn to the person signing and it’s so intriguing trying to figure out what sign goes with what word. I’m pretty sure that the sign language people can’t keep up with the show so they kind-of give the top-line details about what’s going on. I watched a stand-up comedy special the other night and the sign language guy was trying to do the facial expressions of the comedian and all that. I guess to keep the fidelity of the comedy you have to do more than just translate the words but it made me wonder, was the sign language guy being funny? He’s not a highly trained comedian (or maybe he is, a highly trained sign language comedian, what a job that must be to carve out for yourself). But he totally ruined it for me, it was like he was mocking the real comedian, mockingly laughing right after the comedian laughed, making all sorts of gestures and movements that weren’t really signs. And another question kept popping into my head, how many deaf people are up at 3am that they feel the need to do this? Because it’s not one or two channels, it’s half or more. Is there really a huge population of deaf insomniacs? Blind I could understand, because when you can’t tell the difference between light and dark you don’t sleep in a normal day and night cycle but if you’re blind you can’t read sign language so what are all these deaf people doing up so late? I don’t have an answer for that one yet, but I’m on a mission to find out.
Guns vs Knives – I visited my brother in Philadelphia recently and one of the craziest things about that city is the insane amount of gun crime, even the police are getting shot at on a daily basis. Well over here it’s a mandatory 10 years in prison if you’re caught with a gun and either because of the extent of punishment or the lack of availability no one including the police carry guns. So what do the thugs do? They carry knives. And I know that I shouldn’t make light of something that is a serious issue but it seems to be all teenagers in jumpsuits with kitchen knives in their elastic waistbands. I watched a TV program about it and all these hooligans were flashing their meat cleavers. It made me think; if the police just went house to house and looked at teenager’s kitchen knife sets they could take care of this pretty quickly, and if you’re a mom or dad of a hooligan you should know what your kid is up to when you go to make dinner. My guess is that the parents aren’t around enough to notice a small thing like a giant kitchen knife missing but still it’s ridiculous to think that kids are carrying these things around in their pants (trousers I should say). But I’m not too concerned, most days I carry around a umbrella because I’m certain that it’s going to rain the second I leave the house without one, so I plan on doing a little poking of my own if it ever gets down to the get down, plus my weapon doubles as a shield, so there you track suit hooligans!
Direct vs Polite – One of the biggest differences that the Brits notice about American’s, especially in the business environment, is the directness with which we speak to other people. If a Brit needs something done they’ll usually pose it in the form of a suggestion while an American has no problem dealing out and taking orders. In some ways I think that directness is a positive trait, it avoids confusion, gets the point across faster and more efficiently. But there is something missing in the dog-eat-dog world of the American and it’s the politeness that’s required of a Brit with a proper upbringing. If someone is going to the kitchen to make tea they’ll ask the whole team if anyone wants a cup. And it’s not just the little things. Recently my bank card information was stolen and my access to cash completely cut-off, since then nearly half of my co-workers have offered to lend me money and not just once, repeatedly offered to help me out, some of them won’t take ‘no thanks’ for an answer. There is something about the British politeness, that offer, that no matter how inconvenient it is for me, I’ll still go out of my way to help you out. It’s an area of society where I feel like America has lost its way. We’ve gotten so used to the ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ mentality that we’ve forgotten about the reason we entered into a social system in the first place, it’s about betterment of us all. Someone once said, ‘you make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give’, I think Britain has that sentiment at heart and it makes me glad to live in such a place. For all the differences that irk me there are things like this that remind me why I endeavoured to set out on this odyssey in the first place. I believe that America has a lot to share with the world and we’re not shy about sharing it because of how direct we all are, but we need to learn how to receive ideas too, because there’s something to be learned from everyone and everywhere.
The thing that’s so unique about jumping off a helicopter is the fact that there is no ‘jumping’ involved. Jumping up could have disastrous consequences because of the spinning blades; in fact pushing off in any way is discouraged because it could shake the helicopter and upset its balance. Also, jumping (or more accurately ‘falling’) from a helicopter is closer to B.A.S.E. jumping than skydiving because you have no forward or relative speed. When you jump from a plane your starting speed as you step out the door is equal to the forward speed of the plane. You never get the rollercoaster gut feeling because you don’t go from 0 MPH to 120 MPH; you start from 80 and accelerate to 120. That feeling is more like slamming on the gas pedal in a race car than rolling down that first rollercoaster dip.
Skydiving from a helicopter on the other hand affords you the ability to drop off a stationary object and experience the full range of acceleration, from zero to terminal. Because of that, the rules of physics would put B.A.S.E. jumping and helicopter jumping in the same category. But there’s still one big/fun difference between the helicopter and B.A.S.E., in helicopter skydiving there is no building, antenna, span or earth in your way. Once you’re free of the helicopter you’re in open space, and feeling like your floating because you’re going slower than normal. And I guess that’s the rub, that it’s not speed that makes jumping from a helicopter so amazing, its lack of speed. I’ve tried to sum up the feeling a couple of different ways, the two that came to mind first are: it’s like falling into a pool and sinking 2,000 feet into the calm soothing water, but there is no pool, and, It’s like falling into god’s lap.
And that’s what brings me back to my original point, it’s not the action of jumping off the helicopter that makes it so significant, it’s the lack of action. You don’t jump or dive; you just let go, release. That’s what’s so wonderful, the release; we hold on to everything we love so tightly, and I love life more than anyone I know, but the tighter you hold on to something, the weaker your grasp of it becomes. Letting myself fall off the side of that helicopter was like being baptized, I was submitting to the beauty of life, honoring it with my trust, faith even. I think I’ve just found god in a back-flop from 5,500 feet.
(I asked my friend Fred who jumped with me to try and describe his experience…)
A Gravitational Delight
Is one way I would describe the helicopter jump. You really do feel yourself being pulled away from the aircraft as opposed to jumping from a plane where you kind of just fly away from it with an already present momentum. That first four seconds is unlike any thing I’ve ever experienced before. For a moment it was as if we were being sucked into another dimension where time and space where unrecognizable. The fact that we fell away from the chopper on our backs only exaggerated this sensation.
The flight to altitude was absolutely ridiculous, too. The fact that we were able to unbuckle our seat belt in a helicopter, climb out onto the landing skids and just hang out there while still climbing another 1000 feet with propellers only one foot above our heads, blasting us with wind, really was like living out a child-like fantasy. The truth is everyone should be able to experience these types of things if it is what they desire, but one rarely does if it breaks the “norms” of conventional life. Standing on the landing skid, with a smile plastered on my face, looking across at you and seeing that same smile made me realize that the best way to live life is to be unCONVENTIONal and live the shit out of that bitch!
One of the common reasons people don’t want to go skydiving is because they’re afraid of heights. My usual response is “me too”. I think I can trace my fear of heights back to a specific moment actually. I don’t know how old I was but I believe I was in kindergarten at the time, my parents had gone out for dinner or something and I guess my oldest brother must have been put in charge because there wasn’t a babysitter, perhaps they knew they were coming home early that night, perhaps I was finally old enough to not get into any serious trouble or Aaron was old enough to watch over me. I remember tossing a ball to myself while sitting on the couch, funny how well I remember that couch, thick lines of wooly thread- grey and brown- around a thick yellow foam square. We used to stack up the cushions of the two matching couches into a fort structure, those couches are the place I executed my one good move in defense against my brothers, the “#1 squeeze”, basically a move where I locked a brother in between the arm of the couch and fully extended legs. I knew I was going to get a beating whenever I let go of the squeeze so I normally held it till my parents were around to save me. This night I was just tossing a ball, watching TV, but not really, my brother decided to play a game of keep-away and snatched the ball out of mid air. Being kids, the game became chase and my brother took off running for the kitchen. I chased after him and followed in hot pursuit after he made a sharp turn down the basement steps, Aaron was running with a mug of water in his hand, I remember the mug incredibly well too, it had a big “D”on it, or a “G” or whatever letters we had, old white porcelain mugs that looked like they were purchased at Disneyland or an airport years before. Call me crazy but I think the one Aaron was holding had a “D” on it. Of course as he ran the stairs his water spilled just a bit, about ten steps up from the bottom, when I hit that step it was over before it was over, I took flight, my first freefall you might say, 15 feet at a 45* angle. I tried to brace for the impact with my arm, funny enough I don’t really remember which one, if I had to bet I’d say right but that’s just a guess. Sure enough it was broken, of course I didn’t know that and my brother didn’t either, I was a decently tough kid, I took a million falls in my time, walked away from all of them. This time it was different, I was in it pretty bad, it wasn’t your normal hurt. My brother helped me back upstairs and back onto that couch I was sitting on before I had a broken arm. He gave me the ball back, got me a drink of my own, he begged me to stop crying, mom and dad we’re going to be home soon, but I couldn’t, as hard as I tried I couldn’t because it hurt so much. My chest was heaving when my parents walked through the door, they took me straight to the hospital to get my arm fixed. For years after that I would go down the basement stairs on my butt, on step at a time, certain they were the steepest and most treacherous stairs on the planet.
Cliffs, ledges, heights of any kind scared me for years and years. I think the public swimming pool was the first place I learned to use the fear for safe enjoyment, jumping off the high board, my heart racing as I climbed the innumerable steps, having to let go of the rail to walk all the way out to the end. There are a lot of things we’ve invented to get enjoyment out of being afraid, scary movies, rollercoasters; jumping into the pool was my way of making the fear of falling something fun. I know where you’re coming from people, I used to be just like you, in fact it wasn’t too long ago I finally lost that animal fear, now I can sit next to an open door while a plane climbs its first couple thousand feet without any fear in my heart. Skydiving gave that to me, and you might say that I lost something too, falling would never again scare me like a good rollercoaster, but when the fear left an amazing thing happened, love and respect took its place. I used to be afraid of heights too, now I embrace them, just don’t ask me to run down those basement stairs at 18 Florence street.
There are tons of terms in the basketball lexicon; “same team” is a handy one, especially in pickup games. You barely know who’s on your team when you’re staring right at them, so it helps to get a little outside help on figuring out who’s in that loose ball scramble with you. Woody’s problem was he didn’t know when to apply the term and when to hold back, I swear every time I was in a fight for the ball he’d call out “same team”. Regardless of what was happening, who was closest to the ball or any other variable that a normal player would check before yelling out a term that vastly changes the way a player plays. Nope, not Woody, Woody would just yell it out. I’ll admit, he fooled me at least twice, thinking I was going for the same ball as a teammate I’d pull up only to see a player from the other team zip towards my hoop with the ball they just picked up.
He’s an interesting character this Woody fella. In his late 50’s I would say, his goatee beard is long and grey and his oversized shirt and pants don’t flatter his obviously petite stature. He’s the kind of guy you’d expect to see rooting on his son at the high school basketball game, not running full court with a bunch of guys 20 years his junior. I guess I should mention that Woody is a terrible ball player, I mean horrible, he plays like an 11 year old girl. But that’s what makes Woody such an enigma, usually the worst player in a game will accept his limitations and just do his best to not make a negative impact on the game, but not Woody, he wants to stop the game by calling a foul on himself. He loves to argue over the score and if it was up to him he’d bring every ball up court. And best of all he’s always out there, no matter what time of day or what day of the week, Woody is at the court, our own Falstaff general of the public basketball court.
Needless to say, Woody doesn’t make basketball games better, that’s for sure. But you can’t get angry at a harmless fool, he obviously enjoys getting out and playing with the boys. I don’t know Woody’s real deal, maybe basketball is his escape from something, or maybe he’s retired and just bored. In the end Woody is right, just in a more abstract sense; we are all on the same team. You really have to enjoy the spirit of the game to play with someone who has no game. Same team Woody, same team.
