British Television

Being raised on a steady diet of Mr. Bean and A Bit of Fry and Laurie as a child (thanks, Mom!), I was looking forward to fleeing American cable saturated with Jersey Shore for the comfort of quality programming this side of the pond.  (Or is it programme-ing?)

Before I even arrived in my flat, however, I was receiving threatening letters from the authorities making sure I immediately paid my TV tax.  Even though all TV channels are technically free (with the exception of Rupert Murdoch's channel SkyTV, God bless that capitalist), the BBC is financed via a stiff annual tax on anybody with a television.  Per television set.

Luckily for me, I'm a student, so I'm too poor for a set.  That didn't stop the letters, though.  They kept coming and coming, promising me every time that They Would Find Me and someone would Come To My House To Make Sure I'm Not Watching TV. The worst bit is, I think they actually would have. To avoid that bit of unpleasantry, I returned the letters assuring the sender I wouldn't watch live television, and now enjoy all the same shows on BBC iPlayer after the appropriate delay.  Don't tread on me!

Now.  British comedies.  Where do I begin.  Um?  I'm not so sure they could broadcast most of these comedies on American TV.  I won't go into details, but . . . Let's just say I can't get into details.

"So, you bleep out those words when it's actually broadcast on TV, right?" I asked an English friend.

She looked at me like I had ten heads.  "What words?"

The philosophy is, if it's after "watershed" or about 9 pm, parents should know to keep kids away from the telly because the humor becomes a bit, well, puerile.  It's so puerile, in fact, that on American television it would only be found on premium premium cable such as HBO.  Nope!  Here I can get it for free on the official YouTube channel.

Eventually, another ex-pat assuaged my concerns by reminding me: The Puritans did, after all, leave England.

Oh, well.  I can't complain.  Now I can watch back episodes of Top Gear to my heart's content, and not the cruddy American version either.  Jeremy Clarkson all the way.  Some things, after all, should stay as they are, unadapted across the pond.  God knows I didn't come here so I could watch Geordie Shore.

Moveable Feast

It's a symptom of how busy this year has been that, exactly one year after celebrating Republic Day in India, I am now celebrating Australia Day at an Oxford pub.

It's also a symptom of just how insane Indian driving is that, for the second year in a row my eyes boggled at a clip of the Army Signal Corps in the Republic Day parade.



I actually wish I had the video of what they did last year.  The first few daredevils on the route sat at the top of giant, thin poles, holding on with just their legs as they 'casually' read the paper twenty feet above the ground, at high speed.  Oh, by the way, they were facing backwards.

Wow.  All we're doing for Australia Day is eating lamingtons.

All Greek to Me

I spent last weekend in London celebrating my one-year anniversary of moving to Delhi by reuniting with my old flatmates from our Gautam Nagar guesthouse.  On the way, I did a wander through the British Museum with another friend who happened to be in from Boston.

It's a testament to London's cultural and historical wealth that this was the first time in many trips that I was retracing my steps through a tourist attraction.  Even if I had been to the British Museum hundreds of times, though, I would go back in a heartbeat.  As a philosophy major and a longtime student of Greek antiquity, the giant collection of statues and marbles makes my heart just pitter-patter.  I wandered through, my mouth agape, pointing out every artistic detail I could remember to my Boston friend.

She nodded along for a while, then wondered aloud, "I wonder how the British Museum got to keep all of this stuff.  Shouldn't it be in Greece?"

That is an excellent question, of course, although one I left for the pamphlets at the entrance to explain rather than go into the details of colonialism.  It reminded me of my own trip to Greece as a backpacking undergrad, just a few short months before the Athens Olympics were to kick off.  Even then, I was eager to see Greek history up close, and it was with a deep and profound awe that I looked forward to seeing the epitome of architectural mastery: the Parthenon in Athens.

Photo not mine -- original from linz_ellinas

When I approached the building however, I learned that a few key pieces were missing, or had been replaced by replicas.  It wasn't the real Parthenon, in other words.  The majority of the originals were in the city where I had just made my first, three-day visit, though, sadly, without stepping foot into any museums -- London.

Whoops!  There it is!

Yes, they were all kept in what is now my favorite room on the island of Britain: The Parthenon Room.

I felt a right idiot.

Of course, that wasn't the only odd part of my trip to Athens.  In preparation for the Olympics, the authorities were giving the entire Acropolis a little facelift.  Scaffolding propped up parts of the Parthenon and the Erechtheum.  Approaching the windy southwest corner of the rocky promontory, I noticed a jumble of stones where the Temple of Athena Nike was supposed to be . . . but no Temple of Athena Nike.

Well, readers, they had taken this gorgeous, ancient temple apart. To clean it.

Don't worry. They were going to put it back together when they were done.

So, if someone isn't putting it indoors in another country with the outside facing in, someone's quietly dismantling it for a week or two. Which, speaking of philosophy, begs an interesting question: if a temple has been rebuilt for the hundredth time last week, how ancient is it really?

Au Contraire

Mike Shatzkin posted an article this morning about the new trend of US and UK publishers muscling into a greater presence in foreign territories simply because publishers in other native languages haven't yet gone digital.  Paired with this week's Economist article about disappearing South African languages, and you start to see a pattern of creeping decay for everything but English.

Ironically, the digital revolution has brought me un peu plus de francais.  Before setting off for Malta, I downloaded the Merrill-Webster French-English Dictionary to my Kindle and, after a little research on Amazon, learned how to switch my default dictionary.  Now I'm zipping through The Comte de Monte Cristo in its original language, buffeted along by the ease in which I can look up unfamiliar words.  (Unfortunately, as my French hasn't been stretched since sophomore year of university, there are many.)  Reading a novel in French seemed a giant task when I started.  Now I've put down the Evelyn Waugh book I'd thought to balance out the project and am reading solely the Dumas until its completion.

My guess is no one will put this in the marketing materials, but it's a personal godsend.  With luck my April trip to Morocco to visit the sis will find me jabbering along with Casablanca locals beyond cab fare and groceries.  Maybe English is the lingua franca, but since that's the one I already know, j'en ai beaucoup plus à apprendre.

Maltese Morning

Having been in America only a short thirty-six hours beforehand, I woke up on my first morning in Malta a little earlier than normal.  I stumbled over to the heavy curtains and drew them open just in time to be greeted by this:

"Oh come on," I said out loud.  "This is just unnecessary."

Malta is just that, in two words: gratuitously beautiful.  The residents demurely apologized for the "chilly" weather as I pulled out my sunglasses for the first time in months and practically lobbed my fleece off the top level of an open-air bus.  Day one found me wandering around the medieval towns of Valletta, Mdina, and Vittoriosa admiring the gorgeous architecture and even more breaktaking scenery.

From Upper Barrakka Gardens, Valletta

St John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta

From Lower Barrakka Gardens, Valletta

From the waterfront, Vittoriosa

Sunset from Vittoriosa

Day two found me traveling to the neighboring island of Gozo for more natural beauty.

The Blue Lagoon, Comino Island, from the Gozo Island Ferry

View of the Mediterranean from Calypso's Cave, Gozo

Azure Window, Gozo

Fungus Rock, Gozo

The most telling feature of the trip, however, came slightly beforehand.  Being acquainted with a Maltese family now living in America and whom I used to both work for and go to school with, I got back in touch to ask their advice on my journey.  What I got in return was a long, thought-out, bullet-pointed list of things to do, restaurants to try, and family connections I should visit on the way.  Their advice led me to some of the best food I've ever eaten, and a ream of photos just as beautiful as the ones above. Afterwards, my classmate saw my photos on Facebook and discovered I had been standing under the balcony of yet another family member.  I was promptly scolded for not stopping by for a meal.

It was well above and beyond what I would have expected.  But, just like the rest of Malta, it was a most welcome surprise.

In-flight Entertainment

Seems like every time my plane encounters turbulence, I invariably find myself clutching the hand of some old woman of exotic nationality and trying to keep her from crying.  God knows I'm not a relaxed flyer myself, but in this kind of situation I find it's best to play your poker face  At any show of nerves, the foreign lady might scream, I might scream, and at that rate the plane would never get down.

(In case you're curious why I hate flying, I can trace it exactly down to when I took this video of our takeoff from Lukla, Nepal.  I literally spent this entire flight delivering my soul up to God.  This is also where my first encounter with a crying Nepalese mother took place.)

I arrived back in England this morning only to forget which side of the road cars drive on, an incident shortly followed by the bungling of a coffee order.  In other words, it's just as I remember.  After one look around, I'm packing my bag for Malta where I'll be for several days scoping out the Mediterranean Sea and . . . well, hopefully doing very little else.  In the meantime, keep watching the skies.

Dum de Dum-de-dum Dum-a-dum Day

Farewell once again to Boston.  And, in the immortal words of Jonathan Richman:

Dum de Dum-de-dum Dum-a-dum Day, I love New England
Dum de Dum-de-dum Dum-a-dum Day, oh New England

And now . . . back to Old England!