What does this button do?

On the day we moved into our flat (and by moved I mean brought our 2 hockey bags and6 suit cases from our hotel to the flat),  our landlord was still there doing a final ‘hoover’ (aka vacuum) of the flat so she gave us a quick tour around and pointed a few things out.  Not wanting to look too new into the country we smiled and nodded when she showed us things like our drying closet? (another blog for another day) and the dishwasher we didn’t know we had (it along with the fridge, freezer and washing machine are all panelled as if they are cupboards – sneaky!)   Once we got to the bedroom she pointed out bed, closet, panic alarm, then handed me a toy key for said panic alarm –  I let out a nervous laugh smiling and nodding a bit more aggressively –  right, toy key and panic alarms – of course!

 

Apparently these ‘panic’ alarms are pretty common and are essentially quick access to your house alarm and are located in bedrooms or hallways for convenience – push the big red button on the top when you are in a panic and it will set off your alarm, when you have calmed down and feel safe again stick the little key in the key shaped hole and it will turn it off (haven’t tried it yet but am sooo tempted – what if it isn’t a panic alarm, what if it opens a secret room with money and diamonds?!)

Now that we know what a panic alarm is can anyone tell me what this outlet in our bedroom for?? 

It’s the one beside the electrical outlet…it has three round holes in a triangle formation however I have yet to find come across a gadget or appliance with such configuration – oooh maybe there is a toy key that fits in here and unlocks the money filled diamond room!!??  Anyone??

Some posh milk with your tea perhaps?

Just when I thought I was aware of the most advanced technologies where milk pouring is concerned I saw this in a fairly upscale organic store around the corner from my office (when I came out there were two fancy cars with blacked out windows parked in front with drivers standing outside waiting for their customers inside to give you an idea).  

 

This has to be the loveliest bag of milk I have ever seen it and is a far cry from the tacky plastic or glass milk bag holders I have seen over the years.  Once you clip the end off the end you have this bag like milk pitcher which stands on its own and even has a handle like a real jug! 

On top of the fact that the package is so visually appealing and the milk is organic, according to their website the package is actually made out of calcium carbonate (?) and over time biodegrades into carbon dioxide, water and chalk….now that’s swanky milk!!  I will have to get my driver to swing by after work so I can pick some up, wonder if they have a matching tea pot and sugar bowl?

 

I love a good giggle

Don’t think about the fact that it is Sunday afternoon and that your 2 work free days are over and 5 work filled days are on the way. Think back to when none of that was important, when you didn’t need a TV, Internet or Facebook to keep you occupied, when the simple act of ripping paper could put you in hysterics.

Okay maybe that never did it for you (or me, if it didn’t plug in or have batteries I was generally not interested) but it did for this adorable kid in the video (must have made shopping for Christmas gifts easy), if this won’t lighten your Sunday afternoon or Monday morning I don’t know what will.

My favourite bits are the first few seconds when he topples over and hits his head twice and isn’t phased….amazing!!

Bleeping funny

Okay so I may or may not like to use 4 letter words every once and a while to get my point across. And, I may or may not have been given a swear jar as a secret Santa gift this year from a colleague.

Irregardless of my overuse of 4 letter words, i think this commercial is great – as long as you substitute the Bud Light for a real beer or Magners cider perhaps…mmmm

You ready? its f***ing hilarious (see now you can’t wait to watch the commercial! you might not have been as excited if i had merely said ‘watch it, its hilarious’…point taken?)

You have got to be joking

If this was written on April fools day, I wouldn’t believe a word of it.

Apparently, Burger King is going to offer an £85 burger ($169 CDN) in select restaurants in upmarket London locations in an effort to show that they are more premium than McDonald’s.  Okay, I am fan of McDonald’s so not sure there is anything Burger King can do to completely wow me enough to choose it over McDonald’s but come on…. fast food is fast food, it is not meant to be premium, posh or expensive.

My favourite part of the article is this:
Burger King came up with the idea after Selfridges ditched an £85 sandwich it had served, containing black truffles and rare brie cheese. It plans to match or exceed this price.

Yes read that Selfridges DITCHED an £85 sandwich…if people who shop at Selfridges (£££££) won’t purchase an £85 sandwich, what the hell makes them think someone eating at Burger King will (other than a few members of the Royal family whom rock in after Mahiki perhaps)??

I am beginning to think this is a farce and that they did this just to get people to talk about it…kinda like I am doing right now…crap, it worked.  I still won’t buy one though.

Old school catalogue shopping

Its funny when you come to one country and find a concept that works quite well but realise the same concept failed miserably somewhere else.  One specific instance is the Consumers Distributing retail model….save money by not having expensive retail space replace it with a smaller storefront with catalogue stands, golf pencils and little pads of paper and a huge warehouse at the back for the merchandise.   That retail concept has been gone for quite a few years now in Canada (I am showing my age, I did I mention I turn 30 this year?  please send gifts) with no one trying to resurrect it which surprises me a bit as it is alive and well in the UK.

I still fondly remember going to Consumers Distributing to get whatever toy was hot at the time (Cabbage Patch Kids, Care Bears, Super Mario Bros, 2 or 3).  With the catalogue page number memorised we would grab the little order slip, desperately search for a pencil (which they always ran out of) then stand in line terrified that they would sell out of my new toy by the time I got to the front of the line.

In the UK, the store is called Argos and is set up exactly like Consumers Distributing with the rows of catalogues, papers and pens (Yes, they have upgraded from golf pencils to little blue pens – but they still tend to run out of them).   However the concept has evolved a bit and now there are little ’stock checker’ boxes located beside the catalogues allowing you to key in the item number and see if it is in stock (allowing kids to the ‘it’s out of stock’ hissy fit beside the catalogues versus in front of the cashier – probably better for employee morale). 

My favourite bit is when you are waiting in store with your reciept with your order number in hand as it always feels like you am in some huge game of bingo.  You look around and it seems everyone is clutching their receipt starring at the TV screens willing their number to come up to complete a line and shout BINGO.   When your number is finally called, it blinks on the TV screen and is accompanied by this lovely English voice telling you to go to your pick up point.  I always feel like I have won something when my number comes up and I go bounding to my pick up point only to be handed some wooden hangers and plastic storage buckets….oh well maybe next time they will mix up my order and I’ll get a BBQ or new TV. 

Anyway not too sure why it didn’t work so well in Canada but I do enjoy the simplicity of it all and still enjoy getting the new quarterly catalogue to see what new toys the kids will throw their out of stock hissy fits over.

I clearly need one of these….

My lovely friend Emma just brought this gadget to my attention in light of my spider experience a few weeks back. 

Keep Your Distance Bug Vacuum

Check it out…not only does it have a 2 foot reach but the pesky insects (or tarantulas in my case) will be sucked up by a 22,400 rpm motor (oooh sounds fast) which sucks them through a one way valve (no escaping – yay) and…into (get this) an ELECTRIC GRID in the handle killing the bugs instantly!

Enough said, where do I get one?

You can’t be what??

One of the things I have had to learn to do while speaking to my English counterparts is to try and quickly process what I think they might mean when they throw a new word, phrase or concept at me.  Most of the time I can piece together bits of the conversation an get the gist of what they must have been saying without asking a terribly daft question to further remind them that I am clearly not from around here.

One of the best examples of that is with one of my favourite sayings here which is ‘I can’t be arsed’ this essentially means that you can’t muster up the effort/be bothered to do something, whether that something is making dinner, replying to an email or going to work, it’s a great saying.   Aaah its Friday I can’t be arsed to work, let’s go to the pub. 

 

Anyway when said with a proper English accent, to me, it sounds like they were saying ‘I can’t be asked’.  Which makes sense doesn’t it?  You are so tired/lazy/hungover that even if someone ASKED you to do something, you still couldn’t be bothered…makes sense right?  During one of my attemptsto fit in with the English folk, I emailed a colleague around lunchtime and said something like ‘oh I can’t be asked to go out for lunch as its raining too hard….to which I got a reply “…asked??? Don’t you mean arsed?”  ….. “Oh wait, oops clearly I did mean arsed must have been a typo..hehe”.

At which point I realized I had this fancy new saying all wrong –  but how much more sense does arsed make? What does arsed mean? The past tense of your butt?  Hmm anyway I still can’t bring myself to say it as with an ‘American’ accent “I can’t be arsed” just sounds stupid.  I think that is one saying I will keep to my email communications only…at least until my full English accent kicks in, which should be any day now.

A runaway favourite

This has to be on the top of my ‘gadgets I own and not just lust after list’. Its the Nike+ gadget which tracks your running statistics via a sensor in your running shoes that communicates to a thingie you attach to your ipod – they sync and keep track of your distance, time, pace and calories burned during a run. You can also set goals in terms of time and distance and a voice comes on to tell you your progress and encourages you on. So, with said gadget in tow, I went for a run last night and decided it is sooo my new thing (and by thing I mean I have run once with it but that is one more time than I have ran in the past 10 years so I think that constitutes ‘a thing’).

To say I don’t run is an understatement and previously I could really only picture myself doing so in the event of a fire or if someone had stolen my blackberry….but this gadget has gotten me off the couch by combining two things I love, gadgetty goodness and pure old competition.

I am the first to admit that I do love a good competition (usually only when I am winning mind you) but this thing allows you to compete against yourself by having an online portal where your data gets downloaded then it tracks your runs against each other and the goals you set for yourself. You can also then compare your results against others all over the world however I might leave that for now as my 11 minute run might not compare to the 35,000-odd people who just finished the London Marathon this past weekend.

Anyhoo I tip my gadget hat to both Nike and Apple for creating such a great little tool as last night, for the first time in my life I actually enjoyed running mainly cause I loved having my fancy Nike + strapped to my arm and my fab playlists from 2001 blaring in my ear – come on, who wouldn’t love running to Shaggy’s “It wasn’t me” or Nelly Furtado’s “I’m like a bird”…..run on gadget friends, run on.

Gin’s got talent!

This is just too cute not to post.  This clip is from this season’s Britain’s got talent which I think might actually be broadcast in Canada as some point.  For those of you not familiar with the show, it’s a reality TV show looking for someone to perform in front of the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance which is an annual gala evening which showcases a variety of performers (mainly if not all British) and raises money for the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund. 

The reason why I like this show is that there is a fairly specific criteria they are looking to fill at the end of the show i.e. playing in front of the Queen which teds to mean the acts that make it through are pretty spectacular and focus on some amazing jaw dropping talent (ie last year they found Paul Potts the opera singer whom eventually won it and Connie Talbot the 6 year old runner up to Paul Potts who could melt your heart with her rendition of Somewhere over the Rainbow).

Anyway not surprisingly after seeing a few entrants from this year’s first episode I am sure I will be glued to my TV to see what other great acts are on their way.  So far though it looks like it will be a good year for the Queen!