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Posted via email from Big Apple Brits - British Expats, Anglophiles and Brit Culture Lovers New York City
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
How to get a free drink in New York
Monday, January 25, 2010
Just fix it
| Posted: January 25, 2010 -
As soon as the man from Time Warner Cable arrives to make the Internet work again I explain that I know nothing about computers and wireless connections. I tell him that I don't know the difference between a router and a modem and that my life is happy that way.
"I love your accent." which makes me dig my nails into my arm until a bit of blood comes out. "Ok! I'm going to leave you to it!" I say with a faux cheerfulness and disappear into the kitchen and do some dishes loudly so it's clear I am occupied and he won't bother me. "What is your network key?'' he shouts 3 minutes later above the banging of plates. "I don't know anything about computers." I say defensively So I leave him to find the key, even though I don't know of any keys that came with the Internet stuff. Where does it fit? What does it lock? Maybe I lost them? I make crashy washing up sounds so it will be clear I'm busy and not bother me again. Doesn't work. "I think you may have a problem with your router, but I am going to replace the modem anyway." he shouts at me.
I breathe deeply when he starts mentioning routers again and I allow myself to drift away into a happy place where technical things are fixed by a twinkly fairy who never dares speak of the reasons that things are broken. ''So you gotta problem with your proxy server Miss.' What language is he speaking? ''I'm ringing my husband."
He keeps speaking but all I hear is ''Na noo nam nam blah blah blim blim internet wah wah." "I'm ringing my husband" He says no again, but this time I'm not listening because I know that The American is expecting me to fail at this whole getting the Internet fixed thing and therefore actually <span style="font-style: italic;">wants</span> me to fail, so he can swoop in riding a white Macbook and declare me unfit to deal with blue jobs in his absence. So I dial him and pass the phone over to Time Warner Cable man and they speak to each other in perfect harmony like Navi flying the magical forest. <span style="font-style: italic;">Blue</span> Navi. "It was a mainline ploxim issue with the mighty plexy server widget connecting with the blunket torch fixator?" The Time Warner Cable man says. Possibly. I check the internet 5 times before I set him free and then bake some cakes. If you enjoyed this blog you can sign up to follow Welsh Alien at: http://www.welshalien.blogspot.com/ or follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/WelshAlienNYC |
Posted via email from Big Apple Brits - British Expats, Anglophiles and Brit Culture Lovers New York City
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Raging Bull...a Christmas Blog in January
| Posted: January 16, 2010 -
The full force of my special sparkly festive edition wrath came down on the scary spiky haired woman at the counter who threw my credit card back at me. Really threw. She threw it so hard it bounced back over the counter at 20 MPH before narrowly missing a suicidal dive off the edge. The reason for this? Because I had earlier refused to go to the back of the 20 minute line. The reason I refused? Because I did not accept that filling in the wrong size of custom form was reason enough to do this. So I stubbornly stayed at her counter and filled in the correct form, while enjoying the tropical setting of the post office central heating system. All the time she bitched and moaned about me as she served other customers.
''You are very rude!'' I say in my poshest British accent. I narrow my eyes to show my distrust, although Jamie could be her name, being as it's kind of unisex and because she has lesbian hair. My wrath seems somewhat wasted on this woman. My voice may be loud in Cardiff, but in New York it's normal level. The woman continues to yell 'NEXT!' shrugs her shoulders, flicks her lesbian hair and brushes off my wrath. She is wrathed out. Customer service is for those who may actually live in some fear of loosing their jobs. American Post Office employees at Christmas are not those people. This is not my first blow up since arriving. If you are already a fairly passionate person then New York has the ability to turn you aggressive. If you are already aggressive then it can turn you into a sociopath. If you are already sociopathic, you're fucked. On a good day I fall into the second category, therefore I spend a lot of my days fighting people in the service industry. There are too many blow ups to account- they include, but are not limited to:
1) Yelling ''I JUST WANT TO BUY TAMPAX!'' in Duane Reade when I was told I couldn't switch queues to get served faster. Rudeness is rampant here. The streets are mean in more ways than one way. New Yorkers can be abrupt, cold and couldn't care less. They can also funny and talkative, helpful and exceptionally kind. New Yorkers are a bit like the city they live in, contradictory at best, schizophrenic at worst.
If you like this blog you can check out more and follow me at: http://www.welshalien.blogspot.com/ Even more musings on Twitter http://twitter.com/WelshAlienNYC |
Arctic Flunky
| Posted: January 16, 2010 -
The American used to drone on about the temperature for years while I listened via SKYPE from the comfort of my centrally heated thermostat controlled house in Cardiff. "Honneeee it is 22 degrees here in New York! 22 degrees!" I am still not really sure now. All I know is that when it hits '70' in the summer it's hot. And '0' in the winter is really cold. Freezing in fact. It's not my fault I was taught metric in school but suffered parents who still talked imperial. Therefore I am a hybrid of both. How wide is that? About 2 metres and 5 inches I'd say... So when it came to the NY winter I just thought The American was being a drama queen because he spent the previous decade of his life in California, bathed in year long sunshine. Now I see he had something of a point. Every day he tortures himself by checking the forecast on the West coast: "Honneeee. It is 70 degrees in LA today." Not having a car is the kicker. Back in the UK I would go several metres from my front door to my car and then several more from the car to work, preferably by parking illegally somewhere near a BBC entrance. Admittedly my W reg Fiesta would take a while to heat up, in fact it would usually only kick in by the time I was pulling up to Broadcasting House. Here you walk everywhere. And it's way colder. When the headwind hits you is face palsy freezing. It makes me want to wear a balaclava. As a fashionable substitute I often leave the the house with headphones and sunglasses and hat and scarf- looking something like a rapper about to explore the Arctic.
So I found myself playing with the idea in my head. Could I? Should I? I watched other duvet coat wearers and scanned them for signs of style. Could It be that even the fashionable were donning these too? In secret I logged onto some department stores and browsed the duvet coats. The models seemed happy enough, they didn't look like anyone was forcing them to wear duvet coats under duress. Then on a snowy January 2nd The Teenager, The Boy and me are shivering in Madison Square Park waiting for a famous Shake Shack burger. In front of us are two stylish looking girls wearing duvets. They are cool and warm. ''I want a duvet coat." says The Teenager So we find ourselves in Macys coat department and there's a whole sub section of duvet coats and everyone is buying them and it all seems quite reasonable and normal and what's this? Betsey Johnson does duvet? And Calvin Klein? Oh. They can't be that bad then. The Teenager has the Betsey on and it's not hideous. In fact I might go as far to say it looks funky. I tell her I'll buy it for her as duvet-coat-by-proxy seems like a less painful way to initiate myself. She makes an 'I'm not sure' face and says she needs more time. And then I am trying one on and it actually looks ok on me too. Then I am trying lots on and t I find a navy one which is more sort of horsey that council estate chav and the duvet pattern is quilted, like a Chanel bag. And it's $80 down from $240. This excites me even though I know the full price is a con in the perma-sale world of Macys. It's by Tommy Hillfiger, which just makes me think of pretty blond preppy girls in navy polo shirts frolicking in sunny parks with frisbees. Which seems like a nice image in the depths of the bleak mid winter. I am ignoring the other half of me says Tommy Hilfiger? Tommy frigging Hilfiger? Have you lost your mind woman? Next you'll be hanging out in malls.
So I remove myself from Macys and go home to stroke some vintage clothes and forget the duvet coat ever happened. But the coat has got to me. I toss and turn that night and stare at the Macys extra 20 extra percent of sale voucher on my bedside table. Sleep comes in the early hours but it is disturbed, peppered by dreams of duck feathers chasing me. Then the next morning I find myself back in Macys and a woman is packing up the Tommy Hilfiger duvet thing and I am handing over cold hard cash that could have paid for something far more beautiful and far less practical yet I feel strangely excited and compelled to leave the store wearing the coat like I am six again. So I bundle my vintage velvet number into the carrier bag and I put on the Tommy and I step onto 34th street and I feel no cold. I catch sight of others and realise that no one looks slim in a duvet coat, so there's a kind of great democracy in duck feathers. I was warned about the New York winter but I didn't really listen. Next time I'll remember the city is the boss of things, not me. Either that or I'll do as my friend suggested and get a fur burka. |
Posted via email from Big Apple Brits - British Expats, Anglophiles and Brit Culture Lovers New York City
Wellington Roots
| Posted: January 16, 2010 - While on my way to buy rainboots this week I pondered a memory: Many years ago when my fabulous new life in New York was just a twinkle in a social networking site's eye I imagined how life here would be. And naturally, the reality is quite different. But the biggest shock is that I would have been pretty certain that I would do it all in heels. And here I am off to buy wellies. And not in an Alexa Chung 'partying it up at the VIP tent of a festival' way. Just in an everyday wearing way. Scary. It doesn't take a genius to work out what was responsible for the fantasy of skipping around New York in 6 inch stilletos. A certain TV show that we never dare speak it's name after they sold out and made that appallingly saccharin big screen version. When I first started coming to New York in 2006 I figured that I couldn't do the smoking (gave up in 2005) or the dating (had met The American by then) or the Jimmy Choos (skint single mother) but I could do stuff in heels. Ya for heels! I love them, spent my whole life staggering around in them. 'Car to Bar' heels as my mother calls them. Only good for going from the car to the bar. I also found them good for the car to the supermarket, the car to the office and the car to a friend's house for dinn Problem is now I don't have a car to go to the bar, unless I get a taxi-which is reasonable for a night out but not so much for a food shop. Come to think of it, I don't have a supermarket either, just 'gourmet markets' and I no longer have an office. I have only just started to get some friends so you can see how the 'car to bar' shoes start to become redundant. But I stubbornly stuck with those heels in 2006, wearing them to sightsee and shop and I simply ended up with feet that looked like they belonged to 90 year old Grandma. New Yorkers wear flats and rainboots are an acceptable part of an outfit in the snow or wet. I resisted of course, but it was futile. Since I arrived in September my heels have not moved from their place in the shoe rack and my flat boots all need reheeling. And now I find myself buying rainboots. And callling them rainboots. Wellies Emma, they are fucking wellies. ''What is this 'Wellie' you're taking about?" asks The American. ''Wellies?" ''Yeah, what is a 'Wellie?' We don't know that name in America." When the American says Wellie it sounds like Willy so I giggle. ''Galoshes do you call them?" "Rainboots?" "Yeah I want Hunters." ''What is this Hunter? We don't know that name in America." "Yes you do. They sell them in bloody Bloomingdales." Which is where I am heading now. And while I am there I will stroke pairs of heels with a great nostalgia and I will say: ''I will never forget you. I will always love you." Because flats might be what I need right now, but heels will always be my solemates.
If you like this blog you can check out more and follow me at: http://www.welshalien.blogspot.com/ Even more musings on Twitter http://twitter.com/WelshAlienNYC |
