The US: The Good and The Bad

I'm just waiting for my flight back to London for Christmas (delayed due to chronic fog at Heathrow apparently - hurrah), and I think the time has come for me to take stock and figure out just what's good and bad about this behemoth of a country. The last couple of months have been exciting but frustrating, purely because I've been too damn busy at work to really build a proper life out here. I got off to a flying start when I arrived, but things have stagnated somewhat over the last few weeks with all the travelling around I've been doing. I must have spent about 6 days in Boston out of the last 30 - not really the way to settle in. That said, here goes - the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good

The Weather
Typical of an Englishman to hone in on the elements I know, but the weather really is great here. None of your drab London greyness here - in Boston it's been crisp, bright and sunny. In the Carolinas and California it's proper autumn right now, and in the Midwest it's bone-chillingly freezing. There don't seem to be any half-measures - it's either raining/snowing (HARD) or it's bright and chilly. Interesting, if you will. Over the course of the Boston winter I may be forced to revise this opinion - apparently it's been unseasonably mild so far.

The Food
Generally not the stuff you get in restaurants. While I've had the best steaks of my life here (yes, including in France) the portions in restaurants are almost always too big, and overly endowed with some sort of American cheese that's utterly tasteless and superfluous to proceedings. The supermarkets though (particularly in Cambridge) are wonderful. I have two near to me, a Co-op and the Whole Foods Market, and they're like being in your favourite farmer's market in London, all the time, but everything's half price! Gorgeous deli counters abound - the branch of Whole Foods in Union Square in New York is truly a thing to behold. The variety far surpasses anything Europe can offer as well. In the Co-op the other day I counted no less than fifteen different varieties of houmous - that's fifteen different ways to present chickpeas, garlic and oil! My particular favourite is "Garlic-lover's Houmous" - garlic-y dip with extra garlic. Mmmm.

Flights
They know how to make them convenient here - people really do use them like buses. None of this turning up at the airport 3 hours in advance malarkey - you just turn up, check in at the machine, stroll through security (somehow, there's rarely a queue) and board your plane. Simple. Usually.

The Bad

Taxi Drivers
By Jove, taxi drivers in the States are awful. New York is the worst, but anywhere you can guarantee that they will be pretty dodgy drivers, coupled with almost no knowledge of their environs. I've lost count of the times I've been asked how to get somewhere (as if I would know!) and had to get my laptop out and call on Google Maps for assistance. The grumpy London cabbie who would sell his mother before clarifying your destination seems a long-forgotten memory. The best example of American cabbie's cack-handedness was when I was in New York once. In New York destinations should be pretty simple to find - you just say "33rd Street and 5th" or some such, and anyone with a rudimentary grasp of numbers should be able to find their way. Not this guy - I had to guide him at every turn. Admittedly, he'd brought be all the way from Long Island, but still...

Is anyone out there?
It's a cliche I know, but America really doesn't care much about the rest of the world (except when her soldiers are there). It's partly this that gives the country an air of smug middle-class, nuclear-family satisfaction. An alternative ideal never enters into anyone's heads, because that's all that's ever portrayed in the media. The BBC website has been a lifeline to goings on elsewhere, and despite concerted efforts I couldn't find a single place in Boston (the most English city in America) that could show me the cricket. Thank God for www.willow.tv.

Just a little backward
I'm still getting my head around that there are so many live issues out here are signed, sealed and buried back home. Abortion, race, employment law, you name it and the US is probably less progressive than Europe in most people's thinking. The cherry on the cake was an article in the paper today, declaring in a shrill voice that "9 out of 10 20-year-olds have had premarital sex". No shit.

Team America
No matter how "liberal" or well-travelled the individual that you meet over here, there seems to be an underlying current of patriotism, that the US is generally in the right. Perhaps this is what Britons were like back in the imperialistic days, and we'll see a new kind of American guilt/humility in the 22nd century. Right now though it has the air of righteousness and defiance against the rest of the world which is a little disconcerting compared to someone from England, where displays of patriotism almost always come with jingoistic overtones.

West Coast Cricket

I'm sitting in San Francisco airport waiting to get the red-eye (as they perplexingly call an overnight flight here) back to Boston. And I'm watching cricket. I found this great website (www.willow.tv) which streams the British and Aussie cricket coverage, for a mere 70 bucks for the whole Ashes series! My devotion is being tested rather though, with another patented England batting collapse well under way. And I'm getting some odd looks from the other people in the bar who are intent on the football that's going on. I tried to explain how it all works to a chap who was sitting next to me, but he soon lost interest when San Francisco scored a touchdown.

I'm praying that I get upgraded for this flight (I stuck myself on the waiting list, and I'm flying enough with these guys that you'd think they'd pay me some special attention by now...). Five hours to Boston in an economy seat doesn't sound too appealing just now, with a full day of meetings tomorrow. Urgh....

Useless midwest snow

Sorry, it's been a little while since I posted anything up here. Partly that's been because I was in London last week, and it seemed silly to write a "blog from america" while I was there. Partly it's been because I've been dreadfully busy at work, and what free time I've had has been spent diddling on my new guiter (a cherryburst Gibson... mmm) and sleeping.

I was part of one of those nightmare travel stories earlier this week, flying from Raleigh (in North Carolina - no, I'd never heard of it either...) to Chicago. It's supposed to be a one-and-a-half hour flight, but in the end the trip took us about 11 hours because of some sort of srew-up with Chicago air traffic control. Firstly the flight was delayed for 2 hours in Raleigh, then we had to wait on the tarmac for half an hour while they negotiated whether we could leave or not. Then we tried to take off but bailed out halfway along the runway - apparently some sort of fuel pump wasn't responding properly, or someting equally worrying. So they checked that, and then we got off again.

(Phew. I'm flying back to Boston at the moment, and the turbulence is really quite bad. Makiiing it hrd to typee..)

We got about halfway to Chicago, and the captain came on over the barely-audible intercom to say that there wasn't room for us at Chicago and not enough fuel to fly around to wait for a slot, so back to Raleigh we went. Back at the gate, about half the passengers decided to get off, and about half stayed on in the hope we would get going again soon. The passengers that remained fell into 3 camps - the irate ones who took it out on the gnome-like steward, the ones who took it in their stride with a very British gallows-type humour (much rolling of eyeballs and "dear oh dear what a right royal palaver this is!" type stuff), and those who decided to sleep through it. Anyway, we took off again after an hour and made it to Chicago this time, a mere 6 hours later than planned. Not bad, considering. At least all the nonsense meant I finished by book - On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I'd highly recommend it - it's about a mixed-race, mixed nationality (American and English) family who live in the college town of Wellington, MA.

I spent the last day or so in Milwaukee, which is in Wisconsin a couple of hours north of Chicago. It's desolate up there - bollock-chillingly, eye-wateringly, astoundingly cold. It certinly stopped me smoking though - I could only take 3 or 4 drags before heading back inside, and had to keep passing the fag from hand to hand so I could thaw the other one. There was an awful lot of snow there which was something of a novelty, but I couldn't really see the point of it without mountains and something to slide down them on. Just cold wetness without the fun...

Anyway, I can't discern any reason why someone would possibly want to live in Wisconsin, so don't make a special trip there. Apparently it's famous for its cheese (the nickname on the car number plates is "The Dairy State") but I doubt it's particularly good. The fantastically names Mars Cheese Castle just over the border didn't look particularly appetizing, anyway:


Also for fireworks - apparently their laws about these (whatever they are!) are more lax than most , and the border with Illinois is lined with firework megastores, like the booze-cruise places in Calais. Very odd.