WTF? Friday

So, I just used that I was pretty sure was an actual word until the person I sent it to asked me what it meant…I of course had to google it because I was pretty sure I didn’t make up the word and hate being wrong.

Anyhoo turns out it is a word (slang, but whatever) that is used everywhere in the world except North America….

How can a word be known everywhere on the entire planet except one (rather large) continent?

I’d love to end this post by teaching my North American friends an incredibly useful word but sadly the word was ‘yonks‘ meaning ‘ages’, derived from donkey years (somehow) i.e. I haven’t eaten peanut butter and fluff in yonks. Marginally useless and kinda of stupid sounding – maybe it’s better off that North America remains in the dark on this one.

There’s a roll on for that

These aren’t mutually exclusive – surely they can come up with an all in one giant roll-on that fixes all of these things can’t they?….please?….shortly?

WTF? Friday

So Mom keeps reminding me that I must get her a souvenir from the royal wedding however I haven’t really come across anything, until tonight… somehow I am not sure this is what she had in mind.

I do have to give them credit for being opportunistic, and coming up with a great name…

http://crownjewelscondoms.com

Kinda like these ones :

That’s a lot of tea…

Today marks 5 years of living in London – approximately 4 years longer than we had expected to stay and 5 years longer than my parents hoped I’d be away.  Talking numbers it also means

Over £5,000 in tube fares
3,650 cups of tea (2 per day at least)
1,300 Coronation Street Episodes
520 pints (give or take a 100 or so)
60+ Sunday Roasts
9 trips back to Canada
5 Annual TV licences
2 World Cups, and…
1 more year until the UK passport

As I celebrate by watching awesome British TV I’m also checking the news for the big ol’ snowstorm (or as they are referring it to as snowmageddon, snowpocalypse, snowcastrophe) that is heading towards Ontario …they are even calling for thundersnow, I didn’t even know there was such thing as thundersnow!!  Whilst I do love the mild winters here…I am a bit envious at the thought of a snow day cause we certainly haven’t had many of those.  Stay warm…

Previous Londonversaries:
Year 4
Year 3
Year 2

Hello Jell-O

Tonight I made UK Jell-O – or Jelly as they call it here (decidedly less appetising).  Anyhoo the major difference is that while ours starts off as a powder this starts off as a block of jelly which in the package kinda feels like a stress ball and is fun to squeeze.

Anyhoo you basically add water then stick it in the fridge but after 2 hours it hasn’t’ congealed and tastes like watered down fruit juice – next time I’m just going to eat the jelly block right out of the package.

WTF? Friday

There is something about this idea that makes me wonder what ideas got rejected – Fear Factor pizza with sheep testicles and real crickets?  Super Bowl pizza with tortilla chips and  guacamole filled crust?  Pizza with an egg and sweetcorn?…oh wait, they do that here.

I’m also kinda grossed out over the smell  – warm cookies smell great …warm cookies mixed with cheezy pizza?  Not so much.

WTF? Friday

Watch this….chances are you are smarter than me and will realise that there is no way that this is actually the person you think it is but I did feel the need to watch right to the end to figure out WTF was going on…you see what they did there??  kinda clever.

For those of you who give a sh*t, I passed the Life in UK test…it took 5 whole minutes and cost £35 – meaning I paid £7 per minute for the privilege of engaging the ‘useless trivia’ section of my brain – watch out pub quizzes, here I come.

When in doubt, choose C

I am currently reading the 8th best-selling politics book of all time…and not by choice.  The book is  ‘Life in the United Kingdom A Journey to Citizenship’ and  is a required read  in order to pass the Life in the UK test I must write as part of my ‘naturalisation’ process to become a British Citizen.  The test is 25 multiple choice questions covering Coronation Street facts, the difference between Ale, Lager and Stout, the scoring method in cricket the profile of the population in the UK, the governmental system, employment…blah blah.  Thankfully the other requirements include reading English and using a mouse which I do know how to do.  The best bit…there is an ‘app’ full of hundreds of practice questions which has shifted my study strategy from reading to app-ing.

I am a pretty crap studier and as per my many years of schooling I still tend to remember ridiculous useless information (like the definition of diffusion or how to spell taxidermist –   in this case, the proportion of the UK population that has tried illegal drugs) and can’t grasp the important ones (like the character’s names in Great Expectations, or the UK population and what percentage are from Wales).

So far some of my favourite useless random facts include:

• Women make up 51% of the population – It’s cause we rule
• Women in the UK generally have a baby in the hospital – it is common for the father to attend the birth, but only if the mother wants him there – Pretty sure this wont be on the test but I liked that they even bothered with the last bit.
• You can get the name of the dentist from your local library – Yeah, if all the internet connections in the world went down.
• There is actually a position in the government called Whips – they are a group of MP’s that are responsible for discipline in the party and making sure the MP’s attend the House of Commons to vote – riiight so is there really someone with a business card called Whip? I guess the title ‘Mom (or Mum)’ was already taken
• Legally blind people can claim a 50% reduction on their TV license – …ooooh generous

Anyhoo wish me luck…

 

WTF? Friday

Really?  Do you need a dry shampoo* flavour (for lack of a better word) that smells ‘quintessentially British’ – any guesses as to what that might be? ‘ Fish n’ Chip Fresh’,  ‘Misty Lager’?

*Dry shampoo is like a sprayable baby powder that soaks up the grease in your hair  if you don’t have time/facilities to wash it.  Its good if you ever find yourself out til 3am on a school night waking up  late for work with no time to shower but still need to look presentable – or for camping, whichever you prefer.

iscan and scan and scan..

A’ight so I admit it – I am a bit in love with my ipod touch – I still won’t go for an iphone because I am a devout Blackberry fan however I am enjoying the touch a lot more than I had thought.  The downfall is that it only works in wifi zones but the only way to get internet everywhere is to get an iphone and I can’t – its against my technological religion.

Anyhoo the touch lets me dabble in the app world which I have been happily doing (can’t stop playing Angry Birds) downloading everything from a sleep analyser to Starbucks finder to my newest love..the Tesco (big grocery store like Sobey’s) barcode scanner.

I do have a bit of a ‘thing’ for scanning stuff and tend to always head straight for the self check out even if I know that it will inevitably weigh something incorrectly or make someone verify that I am old enough to buy the bottles of wine I am buying but I love it.   Naturally, when I saw an ad for an app that lets you scan things I downloaded it…and it’s awesome – I feel like I have seen the future.

So basically with the app go around scanning your stuff and when it recognises the barcode, it brings up the price, size nutritional information etc – so theoretically if you had say, an iphone, you could stand in Sainsburys (like Loblaws)  and scan the products to find out if they were cheaper at Tesco!!  OR you could just go around the house scanning stuff just to hear it beep…Best. Thing. Ever!

Anyhoo here’s some pictures of my scanning spree

Lining up the barcode

Ta Da!

 

…and the advert – and yes the beep sounds just like that