Shanghai Bob

Today I read Kate Fox’s book Watching the English.  It’s an anthropological investigation of English cultural “rules” that I should have read before arriving, but couldn’t get through amazon.com in the US.

I read this passage yesterday:

Port must always travel round the table clockwise…so you must always pass the bottle or decanter to your left.

…

No-one has the slightest idea why clockwise port-passing is so important.  The rule serves no discernible purpose, other than to cause embarrassment to those who are not aware of it, and, presumably, a peculiarly English sense of smug self-satisfaction among those who are.

I loved this book, and wish I had found a copy much earlier than my penultimate day in London.  But the last paragraph stuck in my head as “wrong”, and while I was packing the reason came to me:  port means “left” in naval jargon.  I think the rule of passing port clockwise/to the left is likely in deference to all the party-going naval officers waiting to make a joke about how unnatural it is to pass something called “port” to starboard.

I did a google search to test this theory.  I didn’t find direct evidence, but found the phrase “port to port”, which suggests it is a reasonable assumption.

Here are a few questions that keep coming up; they probably give an indication of where I’ve been spending my time.  (For the record, I generally opt for the gelateria.)  All these explanations are three sentences or less, and I will add new questions as they arise.

What is the difference between ice cream and gelato?

Ice cream is made with cream (no surprise there), while gelato is made with (high fat) milk and has less air whipped in.  Ice cream freezers are colder than gelato freezers.  All these things contribute to the difference in texture that is the most notable macro-level distinction between ice cream and gelato.

What is the difference between lager/pilsener and ale/bitter/porter/stout?

The difference is in the type of yeast used: lagers use “bottom-fermenting” yeast and are fermented at colder temperatures. Top-fermenting yeast and higher temperatures produce ales and the ale subclasses of bitter, porter, stout, etc.       

Since yeast is the agent for ester and alcohol production, higher temperatures and ale yeast generally produce more complex flavors and more alcohol by volume.

What is the difference between a cathedral and a minster?

A minster (as in Westminster Abbey) is a kind of cathedral, one that was originally attached to a monastery.

What is the difference between a nickname and a moniker?

A nickname is a name that other people give you (Bobby Dazzler).  A moniker is a name you choose for yourself (Shanghai Bob).

I got a two-entry visa good for six months.  It cost £85.00.  They don’t tell you they only take cash until you are already in line, I was lucky I had just gone to the cash machine.  They also asked for my old passport since my current one is brand new — more luck that I brought it with me just in case.  I got around the invitation problem by booking a hotel room that I can now cancel.  A lot of bureaucracy and three trips to the consulate, but now I can go to Shanghai!

If you are going to China to visit a friend, you need a letter of invitation and copies of your friend’s passport and Chinese visa.  I waited three weeks for an appointment at the Chinese consulate and that’s what they told me when I went there today.  I have been invited back tomorrow since my flight to Germany is Monday.

I’m lucky I get a chance to practice dealing with Chinese bureaucracy even before I arrive!

I was flipping through my London A-Z to check my knowledge of Covent Garden’s topography, and King Street, Great Queen Street, and Maiden Lane started to seem like the beginning of a fairy tale.  I looked through the index to see what other stories might be hiding there, and found a Groom Crescent and a full page of Princes for the Maiden.

My old address Minerva Street has a Hera Court, an Ares Court, and a Bacchus Walk to keep her company.  I particularly like Bacchus Walk:  I imagine the god of wine stumbling home after a night out, doing the Bacchus Walk.

I found a Fish Yard, Chip Street, and Vinegar Street, but what to wash them down with?  The abstinent can choose from Tea Trade Wharf or Water Gardens.  And the rest?  The index goes from “Bee Passage” to “Beeston Close”:  No Beer.  No Lager, Stout, or Bitter.  No Pint.  Not to despair:  for the impatient tippler there is a Wine Close.

The guy on Garrick Street who calls out, “If you are lost or require information” is working for tips. There are plenty of potential customers (i.e., lost people) there, but I don’t know how many are happy to be asked to pay to become unlost.

I have spent a day or two drawing maps of Covent Garden from memory. I originally pictured Covent Garden as a pennant on the mast of Monmouth Street, but after playing with a few drawings, it seems more appropriate to think of it as a hat, specifically a witch’s hat: its shape is more irregular than the perfect triangle of a pennant, and the “Covent” of Covent Garden is perfectly balanced between convent (a residence for religious brothers or especially sisters) and coven (a congregation of witches).

Both come from the same Latin word convenire, to come together or convene.  The double rectangle of the garden and the Opera House makes a perfect buckle, and imagining a Union Jack patch at the western edge of Shelton Street makes it easy to reconstruct Seven Dials from memory.

Here’s the outline in the correct north-south orientation.  I left out most of the internal streets to make the witch hat shape clear.  This drawing fits exactly over the mini A-Z:  I took no artistic license!

I’ve been keeping track of my expenses (i.e., recording everything I spend) so I can produce an accurate account at the end of my trip.  I’m planning to spend money as I normally would for the first month, then categorize my expenditures and see what I can reduce (taxi fares!) and what I should increase (books, excursions).

Two things are becoming clear:  I spend a lot of money on sweets, and I get shortchanged a lot.  When I say I’m being shortchanged, I mean I’m getting the wrong change from purchases, and that it’s never in my favor.  When I say “a lot”, I meant it has happened three times in the past week (I just started keeping track this month).

Yesterday I didn’t get shortchanged, but I got an incorrect bill.  I went to the fish and chips shop around the corner on Endell Street and had cod and chips and a coke.  The bill came back as £25 ($50).  I asked if it was correct, the server said Yes.  I asked him to check again, he said, Oh, I’m sorry, crossed out £25 and wrote £21.  I said, What’s 11+3.  He said Sorry again and gave me the revised bill for £14 (the correct amount).  I think it was a genuine mistake, but I never would have noticed if I hadn’t been writing my expenses down in my notebook.

[Update: June 2009]

I originally had a list of bullet points on this page highlighting the cultural insight or potential economic benefits learning Chinese can bring. But after being in Shanghai for about half a year now, I realize that the main reason I like studying Chinese is that it is so different from any language I already know. Even Japanese has many, many English (and Portuguese, and German) loan words. If you don’t know the Japanese word for something, you can quite often just say the English word with a Japanese accent and you will be right. This applies for simple words like “door” and “service” and to specialized terminology from the domains of finance and computer science.

Chinese doesn’t really offer any clues to a native English speaker, so everything you come to understand without having explicitly learned it is a kind of pure revelation. I think that’s what I really like about learning this language. Now that I have a foundation, I am looking forward to some more travel to see how much I can build on it.

One of my goals for this sabbatical was to absorb some of the pop culture I missed out on while living in Tokyo for so long.  I had planned on renting Heroes, watching the Sopranos through to the finale, and playing some video games.  Manny’s pad in Covent Garden has all the important mod cons:  42″ plasma TV, Xbox, Wii and PS3. Why wait?

We bought Grand Theft Auto IV on Wednesday and it took until just after midnight to learn to drive, fight, shoot and take the Michelle character out on dates.  On Thursday I played from about 2:00p until I had acquired a set of body armor, a knife, a pistol, a shotgun and a police car about six hours later.  Then we were ready to really start playing.

Most days we’ve been up until around 1:00a playing, and that was exercising real discipline.  I’m not sure that playing a violent game like GTA makes you more likely to commit violent acts in real life, but I know that after playing for three solid days it does affect your perception.  In the game, if you beat up or run over a character, any cash he has falls out of his pockets and glows green.  I was walking down Neal Street on Friday and saw a fluorescent green plastic spoon from the local gelato place glowing in the sun on the cobblestones.  My first thought was, “Ooh, money.”

I expect to add to this list as time goes on.

• Andrew called the day after I resigned and told me he had quit and was moving to Shanghai to study Chinese (strange coincidence!).
• My landlord asked to break my lease early, saving me a month’s rent. He also purchased the furniture I wanted to leave behind.
• Manny put me up at his place for most of August while I was homeless.
• Manny gave me the new Nokia phone he got as a “loaner” when his iPhone was stolen.
• Imme hosted me in Freiburg and Meli took me around.
• Stefan gave me his lanyard to carry my flash drive.
• A stranger wrote me out of the blue wanting to buy a domain I wasn’t using.  The price he paid covered the cost of all 12 of my other domains three times over.
• The IRS decided to refund over $12,000 of tax I had already paid.
• My sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew took care of me for a month over Christmas.
• Andrew helped me find a great apartment the first week I was in Shanghai.