My first thoughts

Hey everyone,
Here are some excerpts from my journal from a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

Toaster story: As in any college provided kitchen, there’s a motley crew of random appliances and kitchen tools in my kitchen at the dorm. Yet the most crucial missing tool, in my opinion, is a pair of toaster tongs. You know, those wooden tongs you can use to get your toast out of the toaster so you don’t burn/electrocute yourself? Today I was toasting my pop tarts, which was a great idea until they were done, and they got stuck just below the top of the slots. Since I couldn’t stick my fingers in without burning them, and I couldn’t stick a fork in there to fish the pop tarts out without electrocuting myself, I decided the best rout would be to simply dump the toaster upside-down. Well, my pop tarts did come out, along with approximately eight years worth of breadcrumbs and burnt carbon cinders. Mmm. Moral of the story: If you want to toast something, make sure you can get it out of the toaster BEFORE you toast it. Unless you like a good moldy carbon crumb in the morning.

Scouts: At Oxford they employ a staff of, for the lack of a better word, housekeepers that keep the dorms and meeting places clean. These people are called “scouts,” and so far, they have all been very friendly, middle aged women. The thing I find weird is that when I say clean the dorms, I mean they clean our individual rooms along with places like our shared kitchen and bathroom. My scout, Pat, is extremely nice, but it threw me for a loop when she first came to collect my trash and told me that she’d be in the next day to clean my room. Can you believe that? In America, colleges are more than happy to let you live under a foot or two of your own filth, just as long as you clean it up when you move out. As a ridiculously OCD person, I’ve never had that particular problem, but I do tend to let some things go, like cleaning out the sink. In comparison to dorms back in the states, this place is like a posh hotel. Well, a cold posh hotel, but more on that later. I supposed the thing I find both comforting and disconcerting is the fact that someone is paid to clean up after me. At one level, it feels nice to know there’s someone taking care of me. But at the same time the scout system has this lingering sense of classiest society. One that places me, the jobless, half-educated student, on a level above the hardworking housekeeper. I don’t know if that’s something I’ll ever be comfortable with. But I’ve got to go, Pat’s come to collect my trash.

Heaters: England is a cold, damp, and generally dreary place. I don’t say that because I’ve been homesick. I say that because honestly I think I’ve seen grey skies almost everyday since my arrival. There also just seems to be an excess of water in the air all the time. Nearly everything feels just a bit damp. When I opened my suitcases, I thought, “Oh jeez, did something spill in here?” Yeah, England did. That said, you would think the English would be on the forefront of heating technology. I mean no one really likes to be cold and wet all the time, right? Wrong, because the English suck at heating their buildings. I’m not sure any building is equipped with central heating. All the buildings I’ve been into have space heaters/radiators on a wall of each room. My dorm has one such heater per room. To work it, you have to crank it up to the maximum temperature, a balmy 21º C (that’s 69.8º F), flip all the switches, and then press this little red button for “One Hour of Comfort Temperature.” That’s right, one hour. Then you have to manually turn the freaking thing back on. But if you hit the button before the full hour has passed (because it usually doesn’t actually stay on for the full hour), the system shuts down and you can’t turn it back on for a good 30 minutes. If you’re lucky, the heater might warm up the wall that it’s on, but there’s no way it’s going to actually heat the full room. If by some miracle, you could use the provided heater to heat the whole room during the day, it won’t keep running at night when you could use it the most. I purchased a halogen lamp heater almost immediately and that thing is worth its weight in gold. The only draw back is that it’s really bright, so I still can’t run it at night. I compensate by cranking it super high before I go to bed and I aim it right at my pillows, so when I do go to bed, I’m nice and toasty. The person who invents a system where you could heat or cool an entire house with the touch of a button will make a FORTUNE! Oh wait…