My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

I’ve been called a lot of things, but perfect is not one of them . . . until recently. And, to be honest, they weren’t referring to me. Just my urine.

Like all British residents, I’m eligible for the National Health Service, the free single-payer government run health service. So I selected and registered with a local GP (equivalent to family medicine), and after the annoyance of trying to register at two doctors’ offices that were either closer or prettier, I had to select between just two, which were a shocking half-mile away. I’ll survive.

When I signed up, they told me to come back next week for a checkup, which I did. The attendant took my blood pressure, weight, height, and checked my urine. My PH was balanced, i had no Nitrates, and a few other wonderful things.

The most surprising thing about this is the comparison with the American system. I can’t think of the last time a Doctor volunteered to investigate me to this level. They just aren’t interested (unless you are dating one who demands you get tested for Tuberculosis after a trip to Turkey, but that’s another story).

The whole process was, go in with proof of address, sign up using half of a single page, and voila, that’s it. No more paperwork, no multipage forms, and amazingly, no waiting around for hours in the waiting room. I didn’t wait either time I went for my checkup or when I went back a few days later to see the Doctor.

All this talk in America about how awful socialized medicine is? Let me tell you - I’ll take it any day over the shouting matches with insurance companies and doctors who diagnosed me without entering the room (he was busy in the corridor, but did stick his head in). I’d rather trust a disinterested bureaucrat than a determined insurance rep (determined not to spend a dime, that is).

But mostly, I like the British system because of all the flattery - let’s remember, I have perfect pee.

Anybody who has ever moved to Britain knows the frustration of trying to prove your identity and residence. Getting anything, such as a cell phone contract, library card, car rental, or registering with a physician, requires you to bring a recent copy of a utility bill or bank statement.

This gets really frustrating when you want to open a bank account, because you often need a bank account statement to open a bank account. That would be the Catch-22.

Today I faced the ultimate in idiocy and irony. I opened a business bank account at HSBC (our business is registered and incorporated as of two days ago). To prove my residence, HSBC requires a utility bill (I have none as I’m a tenant) or a bank statement (the bank I have my personal account with is HSBC). So the only statement I can bring to HSBC is what they mailed to me. And they still insist on it!

Rather than just looking in their computer, and seeing that I indeed live where I claim, they need a piece of paper. The lady smiled apologetically, acknoledging this was a bit ludicrus, but rules are rules, so Friday I will be bringing HSBC the very statement they’ve mailed to me so they can photocopy it and file it. That would be the Catch-23.

Last night I went to a West End play - my first in London - watching the uber-famous Waiting for Godot. I really have no idea why in the world it was so famous and well respected - as an English major who supposedly grasps literature, I just didn’t get it.

But it was great nonetheless. I was sitting in the front row, close enough to be almost spat on by the actors. And they did a lot of spitting. The light really caught it all.

Best, we had famous actors! It would have been a Trekkies dream - getting spat on by Patrick Stewart (who played John-Luc Picard, commander of the USS Enterprise, on Star Trek). The whole play I kept expecting him to say something to Lt. Crusher, or fight Klingons. Sadly not. Waiting for the Wrath of Kahn would have been soooo much more captivating.

After the play finished, they left the boots, a prop central to the play, on the front of the stage. Perhaps I’m too goody-two-shoes nowadays, but I resisted the urge to just take them. What a tourist souvenir! The authentic shoes from a famous production! I settled for taking a picture on the sly instead, (both photography and shoe-theft were forbidden). One shoe, one hat, and the stage are in the background.

Update, June 10, 2009: According to my learned friend Diana Pittet, this play about essentially nothing could be seen as an influence on shows like Seinfeld or even the opening scene of Pulp Fiction, in which the two characters discuss apparently trivial matters like french friend, Royal with Cheeses, and taking a proper glass, not-no-dixie-cup, of beer into the movie theatre.

I was surprised and joyously amused to learn this, as I had discussed this very scene to my fellow theatre-goer when trying to re-enter the theatre after intermission with a glass of wine. While Quentin Tarantino might have been influence by Waiting for Godot, the staff at the theatre were clearly not influenced by Quentin Tarantino. I and my wine could enter, but only in a dixie cup.

Somehow, hearing the play explained through pop culture and container restrictions, it all began to make sense. Kindof.

I spent last week at my step-brother’s in Germany, and had a wonderful time. One of the things I like about Germany is how incredibly well run it is. Like an Apple Macintosh, things ‘just work’. The trains are a friggin work of art. You know what platform your train will arrive on months in advance, not a few minutes before (like in NJ). Most amazing was the little screen that told you how fast the train was going. I shot it at 211 km/h, it later reached 224 km/h, which is 140 mp/h.

Why can’t the US get it’s act together? American’s really shouldn’t drive across interstate bridges only to find them collapsing without warning (see Minnesota I-35W, 2007). Why is it the US can send a man to the moon but not build a fast train network?

Tonight, in the Göttingen, Germany, I went to the local community theatre’s all-German-cast English speaking production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, set in 1950’s Rock & Roll, USA. And to top it off, the lead female looked like a JAP. What a strange, strange world we live in.

It was pretty good. And, being Germany, they sold beer to drink during the performance. I had a Pils.

I had an amazing walk along the Thames with Diana Pittet and her friend Inkeri (not an Eskimo). We had about 5-6 separate stops for food and drink, including a mind-boggling good Jamaican Vegetarian Curry out of Greenwich Market. But, silly me, I didn’t take my camera, so the only photographic evidence I have from the trip is of my new hair-do.

I fly tomorrow to Germany to see relatives!

I went to Tunisia a few months ago. I was living like a vagabond at the time, and staying at different friend’s places while they were abroad, but had a nine-day window of homelessness. So I looked around for cheap flights and hopped on one to Tunisia.

It was my first trip to Africa, and was also the setting for some of my favorite movies, including Star Wars and The English Patient. And while we think of Tunisia as North Africa, it is incredibly close to Sicily and Italy geographically, and at one time culturually. I visited the amphitheatre of El Djem (also called El Jem), an amazing structure that seated 35,000, double the town’s current population. Perhaps the most impressive thing there was the cleanest public bathroom I have ever seen in my travels, and a necessary one at the time, but I digress. Here are a few photos:

The amphitheatre rises up out of a painfully ordinary small town, amazingly incongruous with its local surroundings.

The amphitheatre was largely intact until the 17th century, when the it was disasembled for building materials in local projects. You can see the back here, and in the other image the town in the background.

If you remember watching the movie Gladiator, the slaves and gladiators alike were in underground passages directly below the amphitheatre until their 15 minutes of fame. In the Roman Collosieum, you can’t get down to those passages and rooms where the animals lived, but you can in El Jem. Here’s the corridor, with rooms along the side. The light above comes from a metal grate, but originally it would have been a wooden platform, with a rudimentary elavator on each side.

What little I know of photography I learned by reading KenRockwell.com. He speaks highly about shooting at night, or at dusk or dawn, and the difference in results is amazing. Here are two of essentially the same shot, but one at 5 pm, and one at 8 pm. The colors of the sky and the stone are so different! I’ve uploaded about a dozen photos, see them here.

I’ve been spending more and more time with a particular female dentist-friend in London, and am only now realizing the full range of oral services she can perform - but they come with a price.

For instance, my teeth have always been more yellow than the average person, and I don’t even smoke or drink tea or coffee–the usual culprits. So she offered to make me a set of bleaching trays, which I thought was a great idea.

And then when it came time to sit in the chair (upholstered dinging room chair) she switched into business mode, pulled my head back, and pushed in a dental plate wadded high with that solidifying goo they use, which squirted deeper into my throat and started a gag-reflex. I kicked and fought like a dog being given a pill, broke free from her grasp, and ran into the kitchen spitting dental mold stuff into the sink. Which is a bit of a feat, as it had begun to solidify around my teeth.

She was laughing and scolding, and told me that I was her most difficult patient ever, with her family members a close second. Why is that family members (or anyone who gets your service for free) thinks they know as much as you? I’ve been in the same situation myself, on the other end. In 10+ years of providing IT consulting, who was the one and only person who actually argued with me about something? My mother, when I was hired to give computer training in her school. She’s a lovely woman and a wonderful mother, but when you don’t know how to cut and paste, don’t argue with the IT guy!

Anyway, a few ruined molds later, some arguing about who was going to put the mold in and how much goo to put on it (turns out she does know more than me about dentistry), and one more neck-lock wrestle session, I had a beautiful dental impression made. And, a self-portrait picture, just after the last struggle.

I also became really interested in this dental goo. It starts as powder, turns into a pudding consistency when you add water, and then solidifies into something rubbery 30 seconds later. Why hasn’t anyone given this to me yet? The possibilities are amazing! I hope my cousins’ kids aren’t reading this, cause they’re getting some for Christmas. It rocks!

London’s TimeOut magazine suggested, and I obeyed, a free tour of the Victorian Nunhead cemetery.

Lots of headstones and monuments burried under vines and overgrowth, with a crypt full of disintegrating coffins. Very cool.

I’ve spent a lot of time in cars recently, at least 500 miles in the last week. That’s a lot for someone living in England. To explain an Englishman’s attitude towards driving, perhaps I should reference the infamous Bill Bryson, who wrote in his book Notes from a Small Island

If you mention in the pub that you intend to drive from, say, Surrey to Cornwall, a distance that most Americans would happily go to get a taco, your companions will puff their cheeks, look knowingly at each other, and blow out air as if to say, “Well, now that’s a bit of a tall order…”

I’ve had particular problems at roundabouts, where everyone else seems to know what to do and I’m just happy I don’t hit anyone. Yes, I know the theory, but when entering a roundabout with 5 exits and 3 entrance lanes, WTF do you do? (old people may look up WTF in the Urban Dictionary, the same thing I used to look up a Hot Richard after hearing it on 30 Rock)

As I have no car, I’ve been driving various ZipCars, including a Mini, and rented a Ford Fiesta Hatchback manual diesel for the big trip. Try walking into an American Ford dealership and asking for a Diesel Fiesta, and those sales-men with 70’s haircuts will assure you no such thing exists.

The UK Fiesta, for the record, has the worst turning circle of all the cars I’ve ever driven in my life. There’s also a certain Fiesta at my local Enterprise with a badly dented alloy rim. I don’t know how that happened, no sir, certainly didn’t happen in a country lane in Surrey last weekend.

But with all this driving, what about the famous green mini-mini-van I drove for years? The thing I got from my mom? Sigh, I sold it after it broke down the 6th time in 4 months about a year ago. Here’s the second to last photo I have of it:

Yes, it’s on a tow-truck. And here’s the last photo I have of it. Note my face, expressing the exquisite pain of having to get my ass and car towed once more. I took this picture while sitting in the tow-truck passenger seat, holding the camera in my outstretched arm. I think I’m registering existential angst on my face. Or something like that.

I remember one guy I knew from the crew team thought I was a secret trust fund kid. Hello? Do trust fund kinds drive mom’s green mini-van with 180 thousand miles and a penchant for buggary breaking?