For your TV viewing pleasure…

To say television is different here is a bit of an understatement. Not only are their standards different in terms of censorship i.e. swearing seems allowed just about any time of day as is topless-ness and naked bums but the content is also different.  Most programmes are based much more around a reality/documentary style (which isn’t surprising as the US has based the majority of reality show formats from the UK  – Apprentice, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars etc).  But there are also a series of ones that don’t require audience input but are based on ‘real’ life which the titles alone cause me to laugh out loud or scratch my head, for example;

Baby Borrowers – a show focused around ‘lending’ teens a baby for a set amount of time to see if they can really cope with parenting.  The description from the BBC website is perfect, I won’t even try to paraphrase it…..Britain’s teenagers are breeding like rabbits – can they be convinced to wait? 

Can fat teens hunt? - a show following overweight teens who have been sent to Borneo to adopt a hunter/gatherer lifestyle to break their unhealthy relationship with food. A bit extreme but I guess sending them to Weight Watchers wouldn’t make for good TV.

Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses- pretty much as the title says, allegedly 75% of Britons have an embarrassing illness that they won’t discuss with their doctor….right, so its much easier and more therapeutic to discuss it with the entire UK viewing audience, got it.

Autopsy- yes, they literally perform an autopsy on TV!  I was flicking through the channels and did a double take when I saw a guy in a white lab coat pulling organs out of a dead body in front of a studio audience who looked thoroughly intrigued versus grossed out.

Kill it, cook it, eat it - I found this one on Tuesday night and watched while they hung a lamb carcass up and sliced it apart to explain what bits you actually eat.  This concept isn’t actually that new over here as for the past few years Gordon Ramsey has reared an animal on his show only to kill it and eat it in the final episode to support the believe that if we eat it, we should know how it actually gets to our table.

This is just a sample I could go on and on.  To be honest, I do find some of these documentary style shows (okay maybe not the ones listed above, there are some less outrageous ones) are quite interesting and are a nice break from the perfect-ness of Wysteria lane.

You went where exactly?

We are back from the hubby’s birthday trip and for those of you just dying to know where we ended up…it was Malta.  If you aren’t sure where that is (like my brother in law).  It is a very small island just south of Sicily; it is the smallest of the EU countries in population and size (316km²). 

They are currently in the final days of switching from the Maltese Lira to the Euro however it seemed as though a lot of the shopkeepers were waiting to the last minute to get familiar with this new currency. On a number of occasions when we were given change they repeatedly flip the coins over then hand to see the value then hand us a bunch of change as if to say…’aaah that should be about right’. It also seems that they have all adopted a standard exchange rate (as I am sure with all EU countries who made the currency switch) and for now, all businesses are using the same rate…which is fair however you do end up some odd prices including bus fares which equated to 47 euro cents and meant that the bus drivers had to painstakingly hand back 3 euro cents to every passenger handing them 50 cents.

 

 

 

Anyway we really enjoyed the trip as the island has a lovely Mediterranean / Italian feel.  The food definitely had Italian influences but always included a number of fresh fish options which were absolutely delicious.   We travelled easily around on the city busses and got to see tons of museums and some of the most impressive cathedrals and ancient architecture we’ve ever seen. 

The only hiccup was getting dragged into an hour long timeshare presentation for an all inclusive spa hotel.  Interestingly enough when they say all inclusive they are not only talking about food, they have a deal with one of the local hospital and you can get everything done from  a nose job to  a new hip or a heart valve replacement! Incidentally it was only £2800 for a nose job and 8 nights hotel stay!  Luckily we left the property meeting with our own noses and 2 harbour cruise tickets which was the initial reason for sitting through the presentation…I blame the hubby, he will do just about anything to get out on a boat on a sunny day.

All in all we would definitely go back…probably next time in the summer, and maybe for a little cosmetic surgery….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leaving on a jet plane..

As the hubby turns 30 this weekend I am taking advantage of London’s close proximity to Europe and taking him away to an undisclosed location.  He does know that we are going away and even made a request that it be warm (cheeky).  Anyway I checked the forecast and am happy to report that the weather looks quite nice…. for the end of January anyway.

I will blog when we get back with a full travel report….

On my way to work

Nothing really to rant about today…thought I would share a picture of some of the houses I pass on my way to work every day…..look pretty impressive today against the beautiful blue backdrop!  I am sure I will be back to ranting tomorrow but for today I will enjoy the sunshine and nice weather.

See, I’m not the only one

I am not afraid to hide it…I am a Coronation Street fan.  It started before we moved as Canada does get the show (it’s almost a year behind though) and I have continued to watch it as it is conveniently on during the dinner which suits me as its far easier to eat dinner in front of the TV than clear the clutter off our kitchen table and eat there. 

In Canada people seem to be hesitant in admitting to watching the show but once you admit to watching ‘Corrie’ to another fan, you are bonded for life.  Here it seems that admitting to watching the show is a bit more taboo and people look at you a bit funny and carry on pretending they didn’t hear you….I truly believe they are all closet fans…wanna see the evidence ??

WARNING NOT SUITABLE FOR CANADIAN VIEWERS- Clicking on this link will tell you which cast member has recently left the show which wont’ be aired until 2009 in Canada

More than 12 million see XXXXX’s Corrie exit

Either I just haven’t run into one of those 12 million people or its the country’s favourite secret past time.

Not exactly correct…

I have always heard that the tube map is not geographically correct…it is laid out the way it is to make it look nice and simple to use…and I agree that it is but sometimes you forget and think its an actual map and the pretty lines are streets.  It works for some places ie the stops on the Central line (red line) are quite accurate as in the center of town they are all on the same street (unfortunately the street is not painted red – that might be fun though).  It wasn’t until I started working in a new area that realised you can’t use it as a street map.  I work near Bayswater/Queensway tube stations.  Now when you look at the map they look far apart and it looks like if I want to walk between them I have to walk through lovely Notting Hill…that is not the case. Check out the actual map to see where they are (Green dot is Bayswater, Red dot is Queensway)…… 

They are on the exact same street and if you stand at Queensway, you can actually see Bayswater, its about a 1 minute walk (1 minute 30 seconds including rush hour pedestrian traffic).  

As a result, I would suggest that anyone visiting the city, should not rely on your tube map to get you around…get an A to Z map and you will fit in just perfectly (the A to Z a proper street map that Londoners use to prove they aren’t tourists).

Have a seat…

I just love the logic in this….you book a ticket for a movie (either online or in person) and you get to choose a specific seat!!  How brilliant is that, there is no need to show up an hour before the movie to make sure you get your favourite spot…middle for the good view, aisle for easy access to the toilet.  You don’t have to throw your coat over the seat beside you to ’save’ it while your other half goes for the popcorn…its genius…but again its not.  All the theatres in Canada need are some sticky numbers to affix to the seats and a computer programme which obviously their Cineplex counterparts in the UK and every proper theatre show in the world already have and going to the movies is instantly less stressful!

Just in case you were wondering, we saw PS I love You and I cried through the whole thing, forget the theater for this one,  rent it and sit with a box of tissues!

Adding to the ol’ vocabulary

I find this happens on a weekly occurrence…I read or hear a word and have to rush to a computer to google or wikipedia it.  The word I found today is ’publican’.  To put it in context, I was reading about a man who was a publican. Any guesses??  A publican is a keeper of a public house or tavern….okay, so what does that make a republican?

There’s a gadget for everything

Another adjustment we had to make when moving here was to stop using our dryer…I would like to blame it on ecological reasons – wanting to use less energy and be greener but its mainly cause the dryers here suck. 

The dryer in our flat was hard to find at first…turns out…its the washer!  Once the wash is finished the dry starts however it is the worst dryer I have ever used, the clothes come out smoking hot – not joking there was proper steam on them.  But they are also still soaking wet.  Anyway as a result we almost always have clothes scattered around the flat in various stages of dry-ness.  I have gotten used to this but the issue i had was with socks.  By the time we did a sock load we usually had 50 pairs of socks scattered between the tv room, bedroom, balcony so pairing them up was a pain in the butt.  I figured I wasn’t the only one with this problem so I googled ’sock clips’ hoping there was such a product and stumbled on these…the Cyclops sock clips.

When you are finished wearing your socks, you clip them together and throw them in the laundry bin, they go in the washer clipped together and come out and can be hung up on a drying rack or clothes line via the little hook on the back….a brilliant solution for a lazy, gadget freak like me!

Mc Modernisation

Twice now I have been walking around London (in different areas) and walked past a window of a restaurant and stopped to peek inside at the dark wood finishings, modern chairs, flowers on the table and in tall pots around the store……  

 

and twice I have been taken aback when I realised they were both new renovated McDonalds restaurants!!  I never thought I would be sitting devouring a Quarter Pounder with a tulip in a vase on the table…love it!