Well, it’s been more than a week, which I believe is the longest I’ve been blog-silent since I moved to London. A touch of writers block. I’ve been busy, but there’s plenty to write about. So let’s write.

Last week consisted of a lot of work and a lot of going out and being social. One of my favourite people in the world, Jess, was around for many days and it meant that I got to see her multiple times for what may have been three years. She’s on a grand work tour which included Australia, New Zealand and London. It ends with her going on her honeymoon (congrats Jess and Amit!). But, before she could relax in Italy with Amit, she was stuck hanging out with me.

Last Monday, she wanted to come up and see my neighbourhood a little bit and see my cute kitties who had arrived three days earlier (clearly I’ve been bad about writing in the blog — there’s no cat entry!). Before that, I decided she needed to try the Marquess Tavern. It’s a pub about 15 minutes from me that has a nifty little niche in the pub-food world. They have some sort of room in the back where they store racks of beef. They keep a running list of what they’ve got in back on a chalkboard. The sizes range from about 2.5lbs to about 10lbs of beef (I’m planning a big trip with many people to tackle one of those larger pieces of meat). If you pick one of them, they take it off the board since they only have one and the meal is something of a roast with gravy, potatoes, yorkshire pudding and some sort of vegetables. It’s very tasty. And the beef is right off the bone. Look!

It also has a nice selection of ales and a friendly atmosphere inside. The surrounding area is a fancy part of Islington called Canonbury, with lots of beautiful homes and greenery. The exterior of the pub is nothing to be ashamed of either. I believe it’s Listed (some sort of British distinction to preserve things of historical interest).  Look:

(bad picture — but it’s beautiful).

Anyway, that was one evening of Jess. The following days were fun as well and even included one night of Dina! But I lack photos of most of it. I’ve been a bad travelling Matt.

Sorry I haven’t written anything lately. I now have a nice build-up of things to write, so let me start catching up with a current event. As I’m sure you’re aware, there was some sort of actual attempt to do some harm to people night-clubbing and tourists. First things first, Haymarket/Trafalgar Square are about 2 miles from my office and 4 miles from my flat. All good. Anyway, I’m sitting at work, the day is winding down and my coworker mentions that there’s a cubs game later. From what he’d heard two places in the city were going to be actually televising it. Alas, the better choice to watch the game near the Haymarket site. He and his wife are big Cubs fans and this was against the Brewers who are ahead on them in the standings. So, instead of just listening to the game, they wanted to watch it. With no other plans on a Friday, I decided to tag along.

Alas, our first choice (the one NOT on Haymarket) wasn’t really conducive to baseball watching. It was more of a cafeteria style place where, after an hour, we might feel awkward. So we decided to at least check out the other place. Well, we got near Piccadilly Circus and the place is teaming with people out and enjoying themselves. I don’t know for certain, but if something like this had happened in the US, I feel like people would be hiding in their houses. In London, people acknowledged it and then moved on. Easy enough.

Finally, we try cutting over to Haymarket and it’s totally cordoned off. Granted, it’s cordoned off by a single cop and the Polices catering services vehicle, but it’s closed off. We cut around hoping that the lower part of the street isn’t closed and lo and behold, there’s our bar, about 200 feet into the closed part of the street. Doh!

For those of you curious what a failed terrorist attack looks like here ya go:

A few reporters and some police tape (there were two cops to the right as well).

Anyway, after a large fiasco of trying to find food, we left the area entirely and went to Brick Lane for some Indian and beigels (i swear, I’ve seen it spelled that way!). Before some people start freaking out that I actually went smack into the center of this shit, in my defense, we made a very conscious effort not to do this, but we wanted to watch an American baseball game and drink MGD. In the end, not only did we not watch the game, but the Cubs won a thrilling come from behind victory. Doh!

If you want my theory, I’m putting my money on a right-wing hate crime kind of motive. In 1999, guy named David Copeland set off a number of nail bombs, one at a gay bar short distance away from where the first car was found. And, today (June 30) is the London Pride parade. Just a thought, though right-wing nutjobs and religious fanatics aren’t exactly that far apart in what they hate.
Coming up, more entertaining things like visitors from out of town and a comedy burlesque show. (Ooops! I was wrong! Hence I’m no pundit! 🙂 )

Not really something to gloat about, but it appears as though London is the second most expensive city in the world (link courtesy of Anne). Those of you New York City lovin’ readers who bitch about the cost of living there, this article claims that London is 25% more expensive than life in NYC. Personally, I would love to know how they came to these conclusions. NYC is pretty damn expensive, particularly if you want to live in Manhattan. At the same time, while I know there are places in NYC where it’s possible to live a little less absurdly expensive lifestyle, if you want to actually live in London (or one of it’s central boroughs), there are very few cheap options unless you live 1.5 hours from the center.

Looking on the bright side, at least it’s not Moscow (how the hell is it so expensive to live there???).

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 🙂

I’ve been a bad boy in terms of posting. My boss was in town for the week and we’re reaching the climax of the project I’ve been working on, so it’s been busy. At least the map has a few more additions. Anyway, time to go back a couple of weeks and catch up.

The weekend Mac and Jen were in town (gastro!!!) was a bank holiday weekend, I was sick and it was pretty rainy. Well, after a few days of being in the house a lot trying to recover, I decided to spend my Monday off outdoors, rain and cold be damned. It probably wasn’t the brightest idea, but it was worth it because I saw Highgate Cemetery. A little background: in Victorian England, people liked to be buried. If they could afford a big-ass grave, even better. Basically, the demand for more cemeteries was very high. As a result, the government allowed a number of private entities to set up shop ringing what was at the point the outskirts of London with some cemeteries to deal with the fact that all the burial sites within London were full. Highgate cemetery was one of them. In it’s heyday, 25 people a day were being buried here. However, I guess less people started dying or more people started wanting cremations and business (remember, this was private company) went sour. The company that owned the cemetery closed the gates and locked it for good. Some locals got worried about vandalism and the future of the cemetery and they bought it and created a trust so it would remain protected. The cemetery closed in the 1970s and was picked up by the locals shortly thereafter. However, the last fulltime maintenance staff had been laid off in the 1950s and, as a result, the cemetery became amazingly over-grown. While they try to do some work on the grounds, the actual grave sites are owned by the people buried in them (or there families) many of whom don’t seem to take an active interest and the cemetery trust doesn’t appear to have authority to do much more than make sure the paths are cleared (they don’t own the actual grave site land). As a result, Highgate cemetery has a beautiful, lush, green and wild feel to it.

Like I said, it was a cold and rainy day, but 15 of us showed up to take a guided tour. It was guided by a local funeral director who had a friendly, morbid sense to him which made the tour all the more entertaining. Allow me to show you a bunch of pictures:

This is the entrance to the West Cemetery which is the older part.

A beautiful grave marker overgrown

Look how deep they are inside what is now a forest

Oooooo…spooky path!

This is the grave of some famous bare knuckles boxer. That’s a sculpture of his dog

This is part of the “Egyptian” section of the cemetery. It was laid out in a big circle and used to be decorated in an Egyptian theme.

A sleeping angel. Look how close each grave is and how the tree has just inserted itself into one of them.

There are many angel sculptures for grave markers here. Apparently, each one has the same face (from a time before mass production)

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.

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?