This is a little random thing about beer. I enjoy beer and have, over the years, become something of a beer snob. England has a nice tradition of making good (and bad) ales. Unlike most other beer, it’s supposed to be stored in a cask and pumped down a line that does not inject carbonation into it or chill it (like all beer in the US). In the UK, you can tell if a pub has ales by the distinctive handles/pumping mechanism for an ale. There was a period in the 1970s when people were really concerned about these beers disappearing entirely which led to the creation of CAMRA (campaign for real ale) and led to a resurgence of ales served in this traditional method.

Also, while there’s plenty of binge drinking in the UK, part of that is due to the role of the pub (at least in my opinion) in English society. The US has, at least recently, established the pattern of hanging out in coffee shops. You’ll meet friends there to catch up or maybe you just feel like sitting around and reading while nursing a cup of coffee. Here, friends meet up in a pub over a pint instead of a coffee.
My point of all this is to get to the concept of the local. It seems like a rule of thumb that, if you live in England, the first thing you’re supposed to do is find a pub near your place that you feel comfortable in and make it your local pub. In my case, I’ve made the Nobody Inn that place for me. They serve good beers, the staff is friendly, the people in the pub come from all walks of life and, when there’s a football match, it get nice and lively. That, and they serve decent burgers 🙂

I’ll usually go there once a week for a couple of pints and, if it’s the right time of day, a burger and chips. They always have one standard ale (London Pride — you find this ale everywhere), a cider and one guest ale (aka. a beer that changes weekly). They’ve also got the usual complement of lagers and Guinness. Now to the reason why I like this place.

I walked in yesterday afternoon with a book in hand and looked over the selection and found that it was the same beer as the previous week. I ordered a pint and someone was off. It smelled wrong and, after two tastes, it was clear it tasted wrong as well. In the US, since all the beer is heavily preserved and pasteurized, it would take a looooong time before a beer on tap went bad. With an ale, that doesn’t have lots of preservatives and isn’t chilled as much as a US lager, it’s definitely possible. So, after thinking for a minute if it’s appropriate to return a beer, I walked up and replaced it with a Guinness.

Now, this should sound like a bad story for a pub I like. But what happened next is the fun part. I sat there and watched as they cleaned the line out on BOTH of their ales (flushing it through a few times with water) and replace the beer. So I went up and found the standard London Pride and some beer I’d never heard of. I ordered it and they offered me a sample so I could make sure that I’d be satisfied this time around. So they listened to my suggestion that the beer had been bad and replaced what was left with another beer and let me try it before hand. Just kind of cool to experience this. Nice place, nice people, good beer and food. That’s my local.

I have a few ear piercings (6 to be exact). I tend to just fill them with the same style hoop earring and then, every few years or so, buy a new set of them. As I’ve found, the places which usually have the type I like are to found in areas with head shops and other vaguely (faux) alternative themes. Since the car accident, when a number of the earrings I had at the time were knocked out of my ears, I’ve just been sort of coasting along. However, I recently decided it was time to restock. So I headed to the best place I could think of in London which is Camden Town.

Camden Town is the sort of alternative center of the city. In the area around it, there are a number of huge open air markets all of which seem to sell the same goth/punk style goods. In the last 30 years, it’s exploded and, on weekends, it can be a little chaotic. The most interesting of these markets is called Camden Locks because it’s right near the Camden Lock in the canal nearby. It’s set up almost like a catacomb, winding all around the elevated rail tracks nearby. As long as you can handle the hoards of people, it’s definitely worth checking out for the variety of people trying to look alternative. For me, it mostly made me feel old, since it was overrun by teenagers with dyed hair and piercings. But I got what I needed. Anyway, here’s a little of what I saw:

This is the Camden Lock market. It’s vaguely covered and winds for a pretty good ways and, aside from lots of shops, it has a ton of Chinese and Indian fast food with pushy people behind the counters hawking their food.

Here’s a sign at the entrance. On either side of the “L” are two painted people apparently white-washing over the sign. Cute.

Here is the eponymous Camden Lock. It is part of the big ass canal system that traverses north London. There’s a foot/bike path along it and, in this particular section, a shit load of homeless folk hanging around.

So, many people reading this blog know me better than just some guy spewing crap onto a computer screen. If this is the case, you might know that, during my time in Chicago, I was not exactly a gourmet cook. It’s not that I’m a bad cook. But, with the ability to eat out cheaply in Chicago, I didn’t spend a lot of time cooking. Now that I’d moved to a place which was a tad (ok, a shitload) more expensive, I vowed to try my hand at cooking again. It’s been a mixed bag so far. I lack some basic implements to cook that I’m holding out for when I move my things over and I’ve been working very hard so I’ve not cooked as much or as well as I’d hoped. This isn’t to say I’ve made vast improvements in my eating compared to Chicago though.

Anyway, this being a foreign country, things are set up a little differently here. While it’s possible and not unheard of to be near the UK equivalent of a Wal-mart or Dominicks, I have the good fortune to be near no such thing. So I’ve decided to make the most of it. I have a Fruit and Veg shop about 2 minutes from my flat. They literally only sell fruit and vegetables. I’m surrounded by small grocery/liquor stores which is where I can get the basics (in my case, things like juice, crackers, cheese, chocolate, beer, coffee, ETC).

Which just leaves things like meat and poultry. Alas, this appears to be a little harder as there’s no butcher around (there is a fish monger, but I’m not a big fish person). Fortunately, the UK seems to have a much better tradition of healthy foods and supporting the small farmers (even the big stores like Tesco and Sainsbury have large amounts of organic — and not the crap they try to pass off as organic in the big US stores — foods. So I decided to discover my local famer’s market. A quick search online showed that not only was there one nearby, it was only 10 minutes away and occurred every Sunday. It was really nicely attended and there where multiple stalls selling fruit and veg as well as poultry, meats, eggs and breads. Of course, with any of these smaller scale operations, you’ll pay more. I’ll certainly be making a Sunday trip there, however, as it’s some really good tasting stuff. I had some bacon, eggs, chicken and tomatoes from there and I was not disappointed. Anyhoo, here’s a shot from the market:

Hopefully, with this and my other local resources (and a great cookbook courtesy of Carolyn), I’ll be eating nice and healthy for the near future 🙂

Living abroad can be a little lonely. While trying to adjust to living in a new country, I don’t know that many people outside of work. So a nice thing about living in a city like London is that people tend to stop by for a little visit. Last month, it was Dave and Melissa. This month, Mac and Jen made a weekend trip from their travels in Ireland to check out London. Which means I got to hang out with them. Unfortunately, I had just come down with a nasty little cold that’s still sort of hanging around, but I soldiered on :). They arrived on Friday and, because Mac went to high school with Dina, she came up for the day to say hello. Since it was my city (sort of), I somehow got the choice of where to meet up for dinner and drinks and whatnot. I went the kind of lazy route: since I know North London the best (as evidenced by my map) and I was feeling shitty, I decided to show Mac and Jen a side of London that is not the West End or Westminster and had them come up to Islington. This way, they got to see the longest elevator in England (the Angel tube stop has that one) and I would know for sure that the place we went for dinner was tasty. I took them to a gastropub called the Charles Lamb. For those of you unaware of the concept of a gastropub, it’s basically a pub that decides to sell quality, non-bar food. Usually, the food is kind of French in style. They become very expensive, but this one has always had good food, good beer, a relaxed vibe and reasonable prices. They did not disappoint this time around either. And, we had the added plus of having a visitor sitting next to us. This was Mascha the pub dog. While the signs clearly say not to feed her, by her lack of energy and slightly overweight look, this sweet dog was definitely being secretly fed 🙂

After dinner, I showed them the canals and made them wander through one of those sketchy alleys all over London until we arrived at the Wenlock Arms. I’ll devote a post to this pub another time, but this time was entertaining as always. An impressively wide selection of beer and locals and the jazz band of old musicians was playing as well.

We said our goodbyes and I went home to sleep sleep sleep and planned to meet up the next day. Alas, Saturday was a nasty rainy day. I spent most of it nursing myself back to health and we agreed to meet up for dinner (don’t worry, Mac and Jen did a good deal of sightseeing). At this point, I learned one lesson: when your mobile phone is low on minutes and Mac and Jen’s mobile service is spotty, saying “let’s just meet in Picadilly Circus” on a Saturday is a bad idea. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but we spent a little time wandering to find each other. Once we did, we headed over to Chinatown, which I hadn’t been to since I went on a trip with my family when i was 15. We found a place which had a nice meal deal thing with many courses. It was quite tasty. Since the conversation was good and the night young, we went in search of pubs. A little lesson of warning: Brewer St has no pubs (gay and straight sex shops and hookers, but no pubs). Since the pickings around there were slim and I’d dragged them to my ‘hood the previous day, we went close their hotel in search of a pub. We were getting worried when all we found were pricey clothing stores, but we stumbled upon a nice pub called The Hour Glass. It was laid back and they had a good guest ale on tap which allowed us to just sit back and chat for a while. After a few pints of beer, we headed back towards the tube and went our own ways. Once again, it was nice to see some friends!

I’ll wrap this post up with a picture of Mac and Jen in the pub (my picture taking this weekend was non-existent with all the rain and not feeling well):

Maybe you’ve seen some websites which use google maps to have a little more interactive feel to it. Well, I got an idea to jump on the bandwagon last night and whipped together a page that takes some of the places I’ve been and puts it into a map that you can click on and see pictures related to the location. It’s a work in progress and is only for a fraction of the places I’ve been (no restaurants yet and some sights haven’t been added either) and it’s only for London, but I think, as I add entries to this, I’ll also add it to the map to get some perspective of where I’ve been. Check it out and give me some feedback:

Matt’s Interactive Map

Enjoy!

I was going to post about my trip to Leed’s Castle yesterday, but then there’s newz we can usez today. This morning, probably shortly before I passed through Greenwich on my way to work (well, North Greenwich at least), a piece of British history went up in flames. The Cutty Sark, while sitting around being restored, caught on fire. It is one of the only remaining boats intact from the era before steam-engines took over the waters and this particular boat was one of the fastest ships from that era. This article from the BBC goes into good detail and has some pictures and diagrams of what happened. They’re investigating arson at the moment. Hopefully, the parts that caught on fire will be salvageable. The photos I’ve seen show a horrible fire.

Anyway, part of the reason I’m writing about it is that Morningstar recently bought the Funds division of Standard and Poor’s and, my first assignment in London is to get those newly bought people and technology out of their existing office. This is a multi-month affair which means i’m essentially doing a double-commute between offices. The plus side is that the S&P office is in one of those snazzy buildings in Canary Wharf (they took part of the run-down London docklands and created another financial center in London out of nothing). I don’t particularly like it down there (it’s like living in glass or underground), but the views are nice. So, while the Cutty Sark burned 2 miles from my office, here would be a typical view:

Greenwich would be to the right. It looks pretty. But it’s doubtful I’ll ever get to see the Cutty Sark while living in London.

This being the middle of a work week and all (no bank holidays this time around!), I thought I’d just throw a couple of pictures of things that are in my daily life.

Here’s the bus that took me home from the office today. I like riding on top of the doubledecker buses. It provides a nice perspective to take things in.

This is my local pub. Nice people behind the bar, the crowd seems nice enough, they have real ales and they even serve burgers. Never fear, I don’t live there, but it’s nice to go in fo a pint once in a while.

This is Newington Green. Believe it or not, it’s actually just a big ass traffic circle. But there’s this nice park in the middle.

Anyway, just a little something to show you what I see everyday. This is all within about 3 steps of my bus stop.

PS – I’m trying so hard not to make any comments on Jerry Falwells death. I’m trying to be a good boy, I swear!

I’ve wanted to show you my nice flat, but any pictures I take don’t seem to do it justice. So, here’s my flat in its current sparse layout. I have some decorations that nice people have sent/given me (thanks Dina and Anne!), but they are not framed, so there are these lovely, tall white walls.

FYI, as a geek, I decided to try my hand at setting up and hosting my own flash video player, so this isn’t youtube. It allows me to not have to deal with youtube and I can post higher quality video. If it’s running poorly or feels clunky, let me know. I’ve tested all the way from London and it seemed to load quick.

Brighton, while also known as the home of Dina and Adrian, also had a thriving arts community. As a result, every year they put on a month-long festival called the Brighton Festival (how original!). It has evolved into a world-class place for plays, musicals, dance and all sorts of art to be shown. While this festival consists of a lot of high-brow type of art, a crazy cousin has shown up, calling itself the Brighton Fringe Festival. It consist of more of the alternative and experimental art and theater that England and the world have to offer. They co-exist at this point and just serve different audiences and tastes, thus expanding all that the month of May has to offer in Brighton.

Dina and Adrian are big fans of this festival. I believe Adrian has tickets to see 15 shows during the month of May (he’s got his own page of easy-to-digest reviews). Since I had a place to crash and some people with a lot of knowledge about the fun goings on down there, I’m trying to make a trip or two down there in May to see some shows. This weekend is a bank holiday (no work tomorrow!!), so I headed down on Saturday to see two shows. In this case, they were both Fringe Festival shows.

Now, the Fringe Festival has a mainstage in the middle of a square in Brighton. It’s called the UdderBelly:

It’s a lovely shade of purple and is actually in the form of a cow lying on its back, complete with udders (hence the pun). Here would be the head of the cow (you can enter through head or the ass — insert infantile jokes here):

Now, the UdderBelly, being the center of the Fringe Festival, has a sort of lively little center around it. There’s a pavilion that serves milkshakes, beer and a variety of food. As a result, it’s not just a big cow in the middle of a square. They’ve taken some pains to follow a theme. See if you can guess what it is:

(I totally nailed Dina about to attack the cow!)

Just in case you think it’s all about purple cows, note the beautiful fountain behind those two beautiful people:

They’ve got hippos and penguins and various other animals too. Never fear, they’ve only got a mild cow fetish.

OK, enough of the random remarks about the festival. Allow me to talk a little bit about the first show I saw: Bill Hicks: Slight Return. For those of you unaware of Bill Hicks, he was a comedian who died just as he was rising from cult status. His work had a anti-establishment slant and also had themes that focused on what might be considered vulgar to some people (ok, a lot of people). Anyway, he died in 1994 of cancer (as a heavy smoker, he managed not to die of lung cancer, but of pancreatic cancer). I first heard of him through a band I very much enjoy (Tool) and, more recently, found that Adrian loves him. As a result, I’ve also heard some of his old routines. Now, even in death, he’s achieved a heavy cult following. And a few years ago, a couple of people decided to write a play in which Bill Hicks came back from the dead to comment on all the fun things that have transpired since his death. The format is basically someone channeling Bill Hicks and giving one last stand-up performance. The actor playing him had his voice and mannerisms down very well. His material was quite good and alternatively funny and cringe-worthy, which was apt for Bill Hicks’ style. It was a little weird that someone had basically put together a show pretending to do someone else’s material but, if you got past that, it was quite enjoyable. One person in the audience, I believe with the help of quite a bit of beer, was not able to get past the premise, started heckling “Bill” and was escorted out. It actually made for a very funny ad-libbed moment (unless, of course, it was staged which would be a little odd). There were also a few other people in the audience who were not-quite-sober and that just added to the mood.

After the show, I experienced something that seems to be common in England. In the US, most bars serve some sort of food on top of their array of alcoholic beverages. In the UK, it seems as though tradition dictated that you ate food before going out binge drinking (so I’ve been told), so the need to serve food was not there. On the weekends, this tradition continues. On a Friday or Saturday, you pretty much expect to not find any food in any pub you enter. So we had to scour the area we were at for food before we hit the pubs. We hit one of two pubs, not really enjoying the vibe (mostly just too crowded with a few unpleasant folk) and stumbled into a pub that was also a time-warp. While all the other pubs consisted of 20 or 30 somethings, this pub, only block off the main strip we were on, had no one under 40 (well, maybe one or two). We opened the door and people sort of turned and stared. Meanwhile, a man with a guitar (which he played in only one song) was performing some version of karaoke and the decor was frozen in some long-forgotten time. We pondered leaving for a moment and then decided to at least have a pint. It was a good move. The people were a little odd, but pretty nice and it had the feel that everyone there had been coming to this pub every Saturday for years. Basically, it was a country pub in the middle of Brighton. Out of place, but fun to soak in. Oh yeah, Bass poured from a cask is much better than the US crap in a bottle.

Anyway, back to the culture. The next day (today actually!) dawned cold and overcast. But, we walked the sleep away by taking a stroll to a lovely little market that happens once a month around the corner from Dina and Adrian’s flat. It had a great variety of local produce, breads, juices, coffee, nuts, cheeses, beer and so on. I picked up some eggs and bread for the week (Carolyn got me a pasta maker for my birthday. Hopefully one of those eggs will go into my first batch!). After that it was on to our next show.

While the Bill Hicks show took place in the mainstage, there were venues all over the city hosting performances. Our next show was in a much more intimate setting, the Theatre Cella. It was basically a basement performance space that could hold 40-50 people under a nice cafe:

This performance was called Bite-Size: Short & Sweet. It’s basically a collection of 10 minute plays on a random array of themes and subjects. I believed it originates in Australia where the select/write/develop the plays and send it around to many arts festivals. It ranged from a romantic comedy to a sci-fi thriller with a whole lot of other ones in between. I found all 8 of the mini-shows to be excellent. They asked us to vote for our three favorite and I had trouble picking just three. It was also nice to see that, while I picked three, Dina and Adrian had their own three with almost no overlap. The writing was solid and the actors were very good (we were all impressed by the lead in the romantic comedy — it could have gone the way of a sappy Hollywood film, but he gave it a sense of believability that could be tough in a small venue). And, while it was a very minimal set, they did a lot with the space and lighting.

After my second helping of theatre, I headed back on a train to London. I have tomorrow off, which is very nice and I’m hoping to keep chipping away at the whole “I own nothing in London right now” problem. 🙂

Soooo, my lack of free time and internet connectivity means that I got a little behind on some posting here. So let’s take a step back to the time that man forgot — April. A time when I was born and, on some years, a time when some guy might have been nailed to a cross, thus proving something or other. Anyhoo, in England, it means a 4 day weekend. And, in my case, it meant moving day. For those of you who have been keeping up, I was supposed to move in a few days before Easter weekend, but forces beyond my control meant I moved in that Saturday. Thankfully, what I moved into was a small, but lovely flat that I’ve been enjoying ever since. So let me begin with some flat related photos:

This would be the kitchen on moving day. It is also the 4th wall of the living room. All the appliances are in good shape and behind one of those doors is even a washing machine (everyone owns a washing machine, few own dryers. I’ve learned the joys of a drying rack).

This is the view out my bedroom window. A nice British-like scene.

I spent a day getting adjusted to my new surroundings and woke up that easter to take a trip down to Brighton. This would be the home of Dina and Adrian and they’d been kind enough to invite me to join Adrian’s family for Easter celebrations. After arriving in Brighton and realizing that Adrian didn’t quite know where his aunt and uncle lived (despite going there on a regular basis for 35 years), we arrived at his aunt and uncles nice house in the suburbs of Brighton. I got to meet the entire Spottiswoode clan and drink beer and eat good food with them, as is their custom. I also used this time to prep myself for an event planned for the next day. Somehow, I’d been finding myself exposed to people who knew about the quaint English game known as cricket. And, the day after Easter was a friendly match between Sussex (the county where Brighton is) and Surrey (closer to London) and Dina and Adrian wanted to expose me to this sport. Since it was the Cricket World Cup (since then Australia has won, yet again), people were very into following the ups and downs and murders of the sport. England was playing Australia on Easter. Now, since I was about to go to a match, I decided to plop myself down and ask the people watching as many questions as possible since I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Thankfully, Adrian’s family seemed more than entertained to teach a silly Yank a thing or two about the game (all the while cursing at how the English National team sucked as usual). I was able to pick enough up so that, the next day, I wouldn’t be clueless. Again, thank you to the Spottiswoodes for being so kind and putting up with a stranger in their midst on a lovely Easter Sunday.
The following day dawned nice and sunny (in fact, it’s been a little bit too nice and sunny for rainy England — they’re in the middle of a drought). We made our way to the cricket grounds. I could try to explain the game, but it would take a while. It’s got a lot of interesting similarities to baseball (here I go again doing compare and contrasts), but plenty of strange differences. i want to say that the rules have an almost loose feel to it (you have a playing field but the area where the batter and bowlers stand shifts depending on the condition of the playing field, the positions apparently change name every few years and there are three or four different versions of an actual match — some last one day, others last 4 days). Now, while some might think 3-4 hours of baseball is a lot of sport for a day, cricket beats that by a long shot. A ‘short’ game will last a full day (8 hours, plus a break in between the teams batting). One team gets up and bats until it’s out of turn, they take a break and then the other team gets up and has a go at it. Whoever scores the mosts runs in the end of their turn wins. Technically, a turn could consist of only two of the players batting the whole time. Like I said, I could go into detail, but it’s complicated. The watching of the sport has a nice relaxing feel to it. At least for this exhibition match, you could roam the stands, taking in different viewpoints of the game and, at the halfway point, hit the nearby pub for a pint and some food. And, since you’re sitting in the midst of a large green space, it has the feel of a day at the park with something to watch. Here is my attempt at a sports action shot:

This is a more an attempt to get the whole field into the camera.

Anyway, all long weekends must come to an end and mine came to a close loaded down with lots of nice household needs that Dina kindly snuck off and bought me a housewarming/birthday gift and have proven to be most useful. I’ll be seeing them again this weekend for the annual Brighton festival. I’ll take lots of pictures and post about it much quicker than I did about Easter!

After Carolyn took those excellent videos of our Napoli football match (see here, here or here), I realized I wanted to try to capture some of the spirit of my English football experience as well after going to an Arsenal vs Fulham match (Arsenal won 3-1). Alas, my camera isn’t as good, but here’s my attempt. This is right after Arsenal scored the second goal. After my initial celebration, I realized it was a great chance to get some of the fun going on so I managed to capture the tail end of the celebrating — at least in the stands. There’s a guy to my right who was really into it.



Hope you enjoy!

I have piping hot internet (4X what you slackers can get in the US) so it’s time for some blogging! For those of you with short attention spans, the photos are at the bottom 🙂

As I mentioned earlier, a coworker of mine was extraordinarily generous and gave me his season ticket to see a football match (yes, I’m going to call it football. When in Rome…), in this case Arsenal vs Fulham (Arsenal won 3-1). Now, the tricky part was getting the ticket. He was supposed to bring to work on Friday and events made that impossible. The eventual method of delivering me the ticket was through his brother-in-law, Gary. I was given a phone number and a time and place to meet him. So, at the appointed time, I was there and gave him a ring and had the season ticket (which is actually a smart-card that you just scan as you enter for each match). I was going to be sitting next to two people, one of whom I believe was Gary’s son, but they weren’t very chatty.

So, when describing an event like this, I can come at it from a number of ways. I can just report it straight up, but that’s boring. Or I can go the compare and contrast route. Those of you who read my sabbatical blog might recall some posts about a match Carolyn and i saw in Naples. So, I will end up doing some comparisons to that match as well. I can also try to compare it something my two readers will know more about and that’s an American sporting event. In the end, I would put a premier league match somewhere in between. All the elements of the second division Italian match were there, but in a more refined and genteel manner. However, this being a Big Business meant that the heavily corporate aspects of an American sporting event were there as well. And, the most important part of all, it was some very good football. All in all, I really enjoyed myself and really appreciate an opportunity to see something like this.

Now, to step back, I live in Highbur. This has been the home to Arsenal forever (1913-2006). Until this year, however, they played in a much smaller stadium. This season is their first season in Emirates Stadium (if you think corporate sponsorship is bad in the US, take a look at Europe). This increased the stadium capacity from 35,000 to 60,000(!). It also gives a different feel to the whole event. It had a feeling of an NFL game in a many ways, but all the wonderful elements of a football match (the chanting and the crazed fans are still there, they’re just more of them and they’re still figuring out the whole lay of the new land). The point is that there is a very large stadium about 15-20 minutes walking distance from me.

While I can walk to this gigantic stadium, when I left my house, the only indicator that there might be a football match nearby was the fact that every other person was wearing their Arsenal shirt. They might not be going to the match, but they still wore the team colors on game day. Even as I got nearby, there was never a sense of 60,000 people trying to enter the stadium. While I had some time to kill before I got my ticket, I decided to join in the local custom of drinking a beer in public before the match. This felt a little odd because I sitting out in the open with an open beer and drinking it, yet the heavy police presence could care less (it’s legal to do this in England and I’ve seen a lot of it in my month here).

Anyway, on to the game. Emirate stadium is a huge, very nice stadium. The seats are nice and comfortable and it’s very pleasing on the eye. But I don’t think anyone really cares about that. Like an American sporting event, they actually have things like jumbo-tron screens and concessions. This is in stark contrast to Italian matches which had minimal concessions and not even a scoreboard, let alone a huge screen to show select replays and the time elapsed. However, since football is a sport prone to inciting riots, the crowd control aspects were still there. Even though the area around the stadium had lots of open space to wander and explore, as you got near the stadium, there were tasteful concrete barriers to make people do a little zig-zag (and not in a big mass) before rushing the stadium. Then, to enter the actual stadium, you went through the most claustrophobic turnstiles (floor to ceiling) I’ve even been through. No way will hooligans rush the stadium in a drunken mass.

How about the crowd? Just as in Italian football, there’s a visitor section (look at the picture below–Fulham’s colors are black and white. Tell me if you can see the Fulham section). Unlike Italy, they are separated by a little buffer and not a whole lot else. It must be hard to be the visiting team when you’re outnumbered 5:1. But they tried to make up for it in a shitload of noise.
Now onto the match. First of all, the playing was a lot of fun to watch. These guys are all so good at what they do. Arsenal had a very quick goal. This was good because it meant the fans were happy. And Arsenal dominated in the first half. However, the second half was tough. They seemed to be holding out and hoping to just get the 1-0 win and Fulham started to take advantage of this. Finally, they scored a tying goal. Now, can you imagine 50,000 being completely silenced? It went absolutely dead on the Arsenal side of things and you could have heard a pin drop if now for the 10,000 Fulham fans going crazy. Finally Arsenal woke up and scored another 2 goals (one on a penalty shot on a very well-called tripping penalty). If you appreciate football, it’d be hard to have a bad time watching a English premier league match.

Let me close with a little bit about the chanting. When Dave and Melissa were here, we went through this nice British ‘phrasebook’. In it, there was something about a football chant that went “You’re going to get your fucking heads kicked in!”. Alas, that one was not used in the match. In general, they are pretty simple so anyone can pick them up and are based off a tune someone might already know. But here are a couple of choice ones:

• Fuck you Fulham — used to drown out “Let’s go Fulham”
• “You don’t know what you’re doing” — in response to the ref screwing something up. He was not a popular man today. He definitely missed a few calls.
• Something ending “…and your mother’s a whore”. I wish I caught the rest of it. 🙂

So there’s a very long post going into rambling detail about my English football experience. I’ll have to check out a lower level match to see if I can’t find some drunken hooligans to mess with. In the meantime, here are a few photos:

The Arsenal logo with the new stadium’s name.

Here’s a very of the exterior of the stadium. Look at all the open space! It gets tighter once you try to get inside

The interior of the stadium. Looks almost like the Bears could be playing in here. Can you spot where the Fulham fans were sitting?

Those of you might know that soccer is big in the UK. They have multiple divisions and the top division is the Premier league with Russian Oligarchs buying teams and lavishing tons of money on them (and still only getting second place). I’m not sure how it compares to the prices spent on professional sports in the US, but it’s damn close.

Anyhoo, with these crazy prices paid for players and 80,000 seat stadiums, come crazy ticket prices. And yet somehow, the demand is still absurd. The point is, it’s hard to get tickets to these games and, if you have the opportunity, it’ll cost you. Now, I live about 15 minutes from one of the top teams in the Premier League, Arsenal (they’re in 4th in the league at the moment). They recently moved into a gigantic new stadium which is very imposing when you stumble upon it. Now, I had no illusions that I would ever see a Premier league match. But luck threw me a very generous bone. One of the employees from the company I’m migrated got to talking to me and, when he found out I lived in Highbury (home of Arsenal), he commented on how that’s the home of the best team in the world and that he had season tickets. And he said that if he had a match he couldn’t attend, he would happily give me a ticket. I thought that was very generous but, with the season almost over, wasn’t expecting too much.

Well, this week he comes by and says ‘are you free this weekend’? I say sure and he offers me a ticket for the match this Sunday! Pretty cool. Alas, he was supposed to bring the ticket to work today and forgot, so we’re hopgully going to meet up sometime on Sunday and make a ticket exchange. So hopefully I’ll have an Arsenal ticket pretty soon. If so, expect pictures and stories. I plan on head-butting some hooligans (Mom, I swear I won’t). If not, I’ll bitch and moan about not being able to see a football match this season. 🙂

So here I am in a foreign country. One thing I always love is internet access. I have been internet-less for a month now when I’m not at work. In and of itself, it’s not deadly. I can do what I need when I’m in the office. But, there are things I like to use the internet for: skyp-ing loved ones, posting pics to this blog, watching my class and not having to lug my laptop to work and then download the whole thing which lend itself to having a network connection at home. Plus, as an IT person, I have times where I need to get back into my office during odd hours (like tonight, for example). I can’t do that from home which means I have to come into the office.

Anyways, Britain has deregulated the telco world here. In a nutshell, it means, instead of one company gouging you for crappy service, there are multiple. Doing my research, I found the most freedom I would have would having a BT phone line. It was an hour long ordeal of being on hold waaaaay to much to get a freaking phone number.

Once I had that, I thought I’d have a million choices for internet (if I’d kept my Virgin media line, I’d have been stuck with their internet as well and not have any other options). Well, one company didn’t have my telco exchange set up for internet (I live in a middle of freaking London!). Another one insisting on hijacking my phone service when I’d just set up new service. A third would be hooked up in my exchange, but not until the end of May. So I left for Stockholm all pissed off, assuming I’d be stuck with BT and their 12 month contracts and still without internet.

I was then turned on to this nice site, The Broadband Resource. They allow you to look up your local exchange and get all sorts of cool geeky info. I looked at my exchange today, and saw this note:

Be Unlimited has enabled the Canonbury exchange for their service

Well I’ll be damned. These were the people who claimed that they wouldn’t be ready for me until the end of May! So I checked their site and now I can have internet from them if I want. I do believe i’ll be signing up tomorrow!

So the internets showed me info that is publicly available but in a useable format and, hopefully, I’ll have internet — in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I just set myself up with cheap ass international calling (again, through the internets). Let’s see if it’s as cheap as they claim and make some calls 🙂