Washing up liquid or dish soap?

If you really miss the nice metal teeth, watch this video and you can see them tearing off a piece of foil! Heaven :) http://www.reynoldspkg.com/reynoldskitchens/en/product.asp?prod_id=1789

The other day I was on the American Expats in London Facebook page and saw a question asking if it was possible to buy Dawn dish soap (washing up liquid). I thought it was an interesting thing to want to buy over here, because in my opinion the dish soap you can get here is just as good. 


Further into the thread someone asked what was up with "What's up with the lousy 'zip' lock bags?" and then this of course led into a bit of back and forth about the superiority of Ziploc baggies and our tin foil (Renyolds Wrap) that comes in a box with nice sharp teeth so you can easily tear it. 


I was of coursed lured into the thread because I too stand behind the quality of American Ziploc baggies and whenever I go home I always buy a few boxes to bring back with me. 


Naturally the thread turned to helpful people mentioning you can get American things at Costco and then of course someone mentioned that they missed Girl Scout cookies.


I digress......


The point is after adding my comment about the baggies, I took a moment to reflect on the original post about wanting to know where you can buy Dawn dish soap. 


I thought to myself that of all the things to miss product wise a person feels that they need to have American dish soap? I also thought that it was pretty ridiculous and that they needed to toughen up and just get on with it. I thought this person isn't going to make it if they can't are so set in their ways about dish soap. I mean if Fairy liquid is good enough for the Queen, surely an expat can use it. 


There are of course things that I miss, food and product wise. Food especially. Things like Spaghettio's with meatballs (Hoops just aren't the same), Velveeta mac and cheese, frozen pizza, certain kinds of canned soup. I do agree that the foil here is rubbish. However, I've had to face facts and the make the best of it. 


After reading the thread I thought what an absolute waste of time to even be posting that question. Then 30 seconds later I felt that I had been a bit heartless and judgmental. Perhaps that dish soap had a special meaning to that person, or they just love washing dishes. I don't know and it doesn't matter. Although the fact that I felt so heartless and flippant about it signaled to me, that I was becoming more like a local and less like an expat. 


The point is this, all us expats go through adjusting to life in our new country in our own ways. 


The things I missed during my first two years here seem like a long time ago. You definitely get to the point where things just kind of click. You go to the grocery store and you don't wish you could buy certain America products. You'll find that one day you don't even notice everyone's accent and you find yourself getting the first round in. I'll bet there even comes a day when you don't even care what washing up liquid you use anymore....

You keep on knocking, but you can't come in

I wrote about my next door neighbor awhile ago. You might remember me mentioning her?She's the one who first introduced herself wearing nothing but a dressing gown and nothing underneath? Sound familiar? If not you can read all about here.


Well, since our fist encounter she's been taking to knocking on our door every so often. Once she came over to see if we could give her 3 quid, which Matthew did. Since then she's been asking for chocolates and peanuts. 


Now, I don't usually keep peanuts in the house. I do however keep chocolate. I decided to spoil Matthew by buying him 15 bars of Milka for Valentines Day, so we've got a few bars about. When she comes asking for chocolate she'll get a bar and I am happy to give it to her.


Because I am such a thoughtful neighbor I even  picked up some packets of peanuts and went over and gave them to her last weekend. She suffers from some kind of vicious pain in her knee....she told me how it happened, but I had a hard time understanding her on account that she has no upper teeth and speaks with a heavy Jamaican accent. The language barrier hasn't been much of an issue,her pronunciation of chocolate and peanuts is perfect.


Since last weekend, when I brought over the peanuts she's been taking to knocking on the door immediately when I get home from work around 7 p.m. and again at 10:30 and 11 p.m. Everyday!


Which is excessive. At first I was worried that she might need help, but the knock isn't really a I need help knock. It's quieter and less urgent and more annoying.


When I've told people about the fact that I am happy to be neighborly to an elderly woman who isn't very mobile, most people think I am nuts. They warn me that no good will come of it, they tell me stories about so called friendly neighbors who ended up robbing them blind when they were away on holiday, they tell me that I'll go broke if I keep suppling her with fine chocolate and nuts...you get the picture.


While all this might be true, it doesn't really bother me. What does bother me is this late night knocking. I only answer the door if I feel like it, I don't feel like I have to open it every time she comes round. There's got to be some kind of boundary. 


We'll see how things go this week with the knocking and hopefully she will have taken the hint that I won't answer the door everyday and we can go back to the bi-weekly chocolate and peanut exchange.

Puke in London

Puke isn't really a word that people use here in Britian. If someone is throwing up they are being sick. Sick is  what you call vomit. 


People don't say they are sick, they say they are ill. You wouldn't say that I am going to puke, you'd say that  you're going to be sick which means you're puking. 


Anyway. The point is that you see a lot of puke around London. I'd like to think that there would be areas distinctively lacking in it, like Chelsea or Kensington, but I am sure that a few cookies get tossed there too.


To be honest with you I am not used to seeing piles of vomit on the sidewalk, usually along side of a building. It's really nasty. It's usually the evidence of a really heavy Friday or Saturday night out, but you also get it during the week. 


Last weekend Matthew and I went out to our favourite cafe in Brixton for breakfast. The Duck Egg Cafe in Brixton does a mean eggs bennny and is a lovely little place to go. It's small and usually is full so you have to time it just right. Matthew and I arrived to find the cosy little cafe full up and there was a queue outside.


We decided to run a few errands and then come back. At this point we were both pretty hungry and it had started to rain. As I walked past one of the shops there was a very nasty pile of puke that I nearly stepped in. This did not improve my mood at all.  We hustled from shop to shop before heading back, getting drenched. As a side note, I can't stand getting wet in the rain or stepping in puke.


So we get back to the Duck Egg only to find that it's still full. This put me in an even worse mood, plus Matthew was really hungry and he needed to get home and do some work.With blood sugar dropping  we had to decide what we were going to do. The options at that point were to to go the Ritzy or to the store and buy stuff to make breakfast. 


I wasn't in the mood for walking back to the shop in the rain to buy things to make breakfast. I had wanted my beautiful eggs benny! Not scrambled eggs and beans that I'd have to cook myself and then do the washing up. 


We went to Ritzy and that was full as well. Matthew and I had nice argument there over what to do that ended with him saying he was going to walk home and I could do whatever I like. Only he didn't have the keys to the flat and it was still raining. 


I walked out of the Ritzy to see him standing under the awning obviously realising that his dramatic exit wasn't going to work out since he'd have to stand out in the rain waiting for me to get back home. I wish I could say that we ended up getting a table at the Ritzy or even calling a truce and walking back to the Duck Egg for a third time.....but we ended up going across the street to McDonalds. Not what I had in mind for my charming Sunday morning breakfast, but desperate situations call for desperate measures.


I went home after finishing my Big Mac brunch thinking about puke in London and how much I dislike seeing it. I was out for dinner with my friend Becky, who's from Birmingham, and this subject came up. Becky has lived in London for about a year now and is all too familiar with piles of puke. She lives in East London, just off of Shoreditch High Street. She reckons she has seen more of this in London than in Birmingham and even as a true Brit she finds it deplorable. Which in a way makes me feel better. 


Now I am not going to get into a big discussion about the British drinking culture and all that jazz, because that could be a really long post :) I just want to say that it's not very nice to see it on the street and I don't recall encountering it in Minneapolis. 


If anyone has any comments or insights they'd like to share about people ralphing in big cities please post them! 


Also I thought the following article from BrandRepublic, although a bit old, gave a bit more depth to this colourful issue :)

CAMPAIGNS: Westminster gets tough on West End filth - Public Sector

Every night at the weekend in London's West End, Westminster City Council has to clear its streets of six instances of human excreta, 600 pools of vomit and more than a gallon of urine.

After the council signed a £124m contract with Onyx, a private cleaning company, to cleanse the streets it decided West End users should also do their bit to keep the streets clean.

Objectives

To raise awareness about the filthy state of the streets among those who use the West End for entertainment. To change the behaviour of those who create the filth by warning them that it is a criminal offence, and informing them about the location of public conveniences. To build up support from local bars and pubs.

Strategy and Plan

In order to reach the perpetrators of the filth, which the council identified as mainly binge-drinking men aged 18 to 30, the council targeted bars and pubs in the West End that cater for this clientele.

To convince them that this was not just another authoritarian message from a council that's against people having a good time, the PR team approached the drinks industry's self-regulatory body, the Portman Group, and Environmental Campaigns, the charity behind the 'Keep Britain Tidy' initiative, to endorse the campaign.

Results from a focus group had convinced the PR team that a cynical, humorous approach would work best, so they sent posters to 35 pubs, as well as beer mats, postcards and T-shirts emblazoned with the campaign's icons and logos. These had straplines such as 'If you can't keep it down, don't down it'.

Since the West End is used by people from across greater London, the PR team approached regional TV, radio and press about the campaign.

The media was supplied with gruesome statistics about the filthy streets, campaign postcards were sent to environmental correspondents, and the PR team went out on the street in campaign T-shirts and cleared up mock vomit in front of the press.

The council cordoned off a section of Villiers Street with a pop-up toilet and held a party for the press to launch the campaign.

Measurement and Evaluation

The campaign generated national coverage in The Sunday Times and was broadcast on Sky Breakfast News. Five London radio stations - LBC, BBC London, Heart FM, Capital FM and Sky Radio, plus all four of Westminster's local newspapers, covered the campaign.

Results

While only 15 pubs signed up to take part in the campaign before the press coverage, a further 20 joined up afterwards. The council claims West End streets are now becoming cleaner. 'I thought the vomit cleanup was a good stunt,' said West End Extra reporter Amanda McGregor.

Back to work

I was excited to go back to work in the new year and so far it's been great to be back. My office closed on the 23rd of December and we returned back on Tuesday. I had a great holiday break and got lots of stuff done that I wanted to. I made a dress, finally went through my gigantic bag of unpaired socks and paired them, puttered around the house, spent time with my family, read some good books and spent a lot of time thinking about how to make 2011 one of the best years yet.

There are some changes happening at work, all good and exciting. Part of that excitement might include moving to another part of town. At the moment we have a very nice office in North London, near Caledonian Road. I love the office and the building, but I am not crazy about the area. Mainly because there's not much around there in the way of shops or places to grab a bite to eat. There's a few good places, but I like a bit of variety. I usually like taking a walk at lunch time and grabbing a good cup of coffee and maybe a pair of shoes :)

I used to work up in a part of London called Harrow and Wealdstone, the very last stop on the Bakerloo line. I have to say that I probably wouldn't ever work in that part of town again. The office was fantastic, really nice, but the surrounding area was less than inspiring. Your choices for lunch were either McDonalds or Tesco Express and the Tesco Express didn't arrive until I was three months in. There wasn't a good pub to go for drinks or much of anything. Although to be fair there was a library that I used to go to once a week.

So it will be pretty exciting to work in the heart of London. The commute will be nice as well. Just one tube and a 15 minute ride, can't beat that.

There's a great energy at work at the moment and it's inspiring and there are good projects on and interesting things on the horizon.

When it comes to work I've always lived by the mentality of I do what I love and I love what I do and when you follow your bliss work doesn't seem like work at all. I hope everyone has a great 2011!