Life in the City

Everything is bigger in America apart from spoons and plugs.

Spoons seem to all be downgraded one size - breakfast is usually eaten with a tiny utensil that I would call a teaspoon, and tablespoons are just breakfast-spoon sized rather than the gigantic things that we use to serve out the recommended daily allowance of neeps and tatties that Scottish people eat. It was suggested to me that British people have bigger mouths to match their spoons, but looking at the competition here, it's highly doubtful.

Plugs are another thing - the sockets don't take up more than about two inches square, unlike the British kind which spread their pins over what seems like half the wall. It's embarrassing seeing my shaver hanging on to one of these sockets through two huge and unwieldy convertors. The size of plugs is certainly one thing that America has right. The advantages are even more apparent when you look at extension cords - with no surge protector, a four-way American splitter can be fitted neatly in to a pocket (you could get about four in if you've got big trousers), but the equivalent in Britain would be difficult to fit on to a reasonably sized snooker table.

I accompanied Whitney to the bus stop on her way to work today, because I was going in to town with the intention of buying some music. Despite going to two large and well-known music stores, it seems that European metal is even less appreciated here than it is on the other side of the Atlantic. In total I found one album from Stratovarius's early days before they tried to become classical, which I should probably have taken the opportunity to buy, but it felt like buying for the sake of it.

While searching for the stores, though, I found the Bearcade again by blindly walking in the wrong direction, so I spent a while there and was narrowly beaten at Tekken 5. The DDR Extreme machine seems to be a Japanese-specific one, because now that I look at it, it certainly has more songs than the American one I played in Dundee, and most of them have titles like [Katakana that I can't read] Extreme. I tried Speed Over Beethoven, a dance version of Beethoven songs by the same people as Hot "We Drink Ritalin" Limit, and failed miserably. I'm out of practice.

After coming out of there I looked around for the bus stop to be taken back. There wasn't one. Further, I noticed that all the parked cars were pointed in the same direction. I was on a one-way street and had no idea where the bus routes went. I decided that the solution was to walk back to Shattuck, another main road, and wait at a bus stop there. Blocks and blocks later, I finally got there and sat down at the bus stop, fishing in my pocket for the transfer card to get me back. It was then that I noticed it had expired ten minutes ago - it was only valid for one and a half hours, and I'm sure that they allowed two hours last year. Having no change and no inclination to get any, I decided just to walk all the way back.

It was about twenty minutes later that I remembered just how far the distance back to the house was, especially as the last half of it is uphill, and because of the heat from the sun, and the fact I had a leather jacket with me. I entertained myself by reading the various things scrawled on the pavement as I walked. "CHRIST", said one. "SAVIOR", said another a block further along. The third one, curiously, read "SECOND OMELETTE". It seems that the writer must have got distracted by hunger in the middle of his cryptic graffiti artistry.

I did eventually make it back thanks to remembering the route with gr33bo last year along with a fair bit of luck and a reasonable sense of direction (as long as the direction is "forwards"). I think I'll print out a map now, because life needs a map, and if you can't get that, it's at least helpful to have one of your immediate area.