Amazing Discoveries

As the title suggests, I have made several amazing discoveries over the past couple days.  Two of them are answers to questions that many Americans have wondered about for a very long time. 

Question One: Are English muffins still called English muffins in England?
Logically one might think the answer is "Yes" because after all, we in America still call it American cheese.  Alas, the answer is "No."  The correct term for an English muffin if you are, in fact, in England is apparently simply "white" muffin.  I don't think it's exceptionally creative, but there we have it.  On this side of the Atlantic, we have no English muffins, but white muffins.  And yes, I did go into a grocery store yesterday just to find that out.

Question Two: It is well known that bored kids/teenagers/college students/adults-who-won't-admit-it in America often imitate (usually badly) British accents just for fun ("Not bloody likely!").  It turns out that yes, Brits imitate American accents for fun as well.  I put this question to my classmate Juliet as we walked down the street yesterday; she laughed and said yes, and then remarked that most Americans end up sounding rather like Stewie from Family Guy, who doesn't have any kind of real British accent at all.  But it's so nice to know that we're not the only ones acting stupidly in trying to talk like the people living on the other side of the ocean.

I hope that you will all sleep better tonight knowing the answers to these burning questions that have long puzzled us.  However, there were even more discoveries made recently that I feel compelled to share with you.

Discovery: Guess which comedic god was born just a few short miles from here? (Hint - his name starts with "Stan" and ends with "Laurel")  Good guess!  Stan Laurel is correct . . . now, if anyone (except Dad, who should know it) can tell me his real name (without the help of Google or Wikipedia), I'll be very impressed.  But yes - it seems as though our beloved Stan was born in Ulverston, which is relatively close to Manchester and easily accessible by rail.  That will definitely be on my list of places to visit.  He was born at 3 Argyle St., so maybe they have a little plaque there or something.  If I could see the house in which he was born . . . wow.  That will certainly be a journey to look forward to.

Discovery: Creepy British guys are still creepy, but their accents make them sound so much more harmless and endearing than American creepy guys.  I found this out yesterday when I was walking to City Center to (finally!) get a yoga mat, since I now have money.  I was waiting at a crosswalk and a guy (who wasn't actually from the UK but spoke accented English with a British accent) approached me and asked me how to get to City Center.  Since I was going that way it was a little awkward to give him directions and then just keep walking in front of him, so we ended up going together.  However, if he'd been a little more slick, he would have neglected to mention later on in the conversation that he's lived here for five years.  And when we got to City Center he started pointing out all the landmarks . . . real smooth.  However, my favorite part of the conversation took place as follows:
Ali: So are you a student here?
Me: Yep.
Ali: Wow, that's great . . . um, yeah I'm actually a student too . . . um, I study, um, buisiness!  Yeah . . . that's it [I wish I were making this up].  I really like money . . . do you?
*a few minutes of unexciting small talk*
Ali: Do you have a boyfriend?
Me: Yeah.
Ali: Is he here with you.
Me: No, he's back home.
Ali: Do you miss him?
Me: Yes.
Ali: Really?
Me: Yes.
Ali: Are you sure?
Me: Yes!!!
*a few minutes later, as we arrive at City Center*
Me: Well, this is where I leave you; nice meeting you.
Ali: You too; hey, do you want my number, in case you wanna go out sometime?

After giving the lame excuse that I don't have a phone (not entirely untrue), he told me how wonderful it was to have met me, and then held out his hand for me to shake it.  I figured, well, there's really no way to get out of this gracefully, and a handshake I can probably deal with.  I took his hand, and then he proceeded to immediately reel me in and give me a kiss on the cheek.  Now, I know this is customary in many other parts of the world, but I'm positive those cheek kisses are not supposed to last for as long as he was attempting to make this one last.  I pried out of his grip and sprinted into the Aldi's as fast I could without making a scene.  Quite the experience, lemme tell ya.

Discovery: The buses here at night are not always as reliable as we've been told.  Kola and I found this out the other night when he asked me if I wanted to make an Asda run at about 8 pm via bus, so we went out there and go there just fine, but it turns out the 85 bus only comes every 30 minutes or so after a certain point, instead of every 10.  We were told that point was at about 10:30, not 9:15.  However, we did find our way back eventually, and I'm pretty sure now I could walk there (well I know I can; it's just a matter of doing it without getting lost), which will be good 'cause I'm not spending a pound each way every time I need to get supplies.

Discovery: I think I can actually do this graduate stuff.  Yesterday I had my Holocaust class (there are now only two of us in there, as Karl dropped it for whatever reason, so it's just Juliet and yours truly) and Dr. Dreyfus asked me to give the rundown of the Moishe Postone article I was assigned to prepare.  It wasn't supposed to be anything really formal; I just had to go over his main points and stuff, but it was a really dense, complicated, and highly theoretical article, which Dr. D. himself stated when he gave them out last week.  So I did my spiel and when I was done he looked at me for a minute, shook his head, and said, "Wow . . . that was really good."  Happy times :)  And what made the occasion even better was that he said it in his really strong French accent, and as everybody knows, accents always make everything better (later on he started talking about "the law" and he sounded just like Clouseau; it took all I had to keep from cracking up, which would have been double horrible because of the subject matter).  But that made me a little more confident that I can actually do this stuff, even though the British kids all sound so much smarter.

In other news, we finally have a sixth flatmate; she got here last night.  Apparently her visa was delayed or something and that's why she couldn't get here earlier.  Her name is Adah (the spelling is a very rough guess) and she's from Nigeria.  She seems shy but nice, although she might be a little shy 'cause the other five of us know each other already and everything (we all got to meet her this morning when our fire alarm went off; I'm becoming very concerned about this campus's definition of "Fire Safety," because if it had been a real fire we probably all would have been burned to a crisp).  But at any rate, it seems like she's a sweet girl, so we'll be able to continue being the most awesome flat in the building - modest, aren't we?  But we definitely have a good thing going; I got really lucky with the housing situation.

Regarding the fire safety issue, part of the problem is that the smoke detectors don't actually detect smoke, apparently.  They detect heat.  So if you're cooking something on the stove and it gets hot but there's no smoke and no fire, the alarm may go off.  Alternatively, if there is a real fire and it's just not burning hot enough yet, the detector may not go off.  It's also a zoned alarm, meaning that it just goes off in one flat at a time, unless the fire progresses to the hallway.  This is kind of a good thing because in a situation like this morning where there was no actual fire (they're particle detectors too, so mis-directed hairspray sets them off), the whole building doesn't have to evacuate.  The downside is that the fire has to get pretty big before the rest of the building is notified if there is a real situation.  Add that with the amount of time it took security to get there (no fire people ever seem to come when the alarm goes off; maybe if it were a full-building alarm that would change), our next-door neighbors would probably have been rather crispy.  Maybe this is why they apparently don't want us to use our laptops ever, and all the doors in the building are fire doors - they know their response system sucks, lol.  Something fun to think about when we're trying to go to sleep . . . but since the building hasn't ever burned down, probably it won't this year either.