miscellaneous observations

Frost: Yesterday, Canterbury was looking particularly attractive as frost covered most of the horizontal surfaces - from roofs to cars to my bicycle seat and handlebars. The poor old plants and grass were crisp and with each step on a lawn I snapped about 25 little leaves. But it did look Christmassy, as if there had just been a light dusting of snow, or goliath had just tripped and spilt icing sugar everywhere. Hmmm - it makes sense now, that icing sugar should look like ice. I had never quite connected that before, believe it or not.

Astonishing obedience & signage: Having just come from a city of partial chaos, I remain amazed after one week here each time I see someone stop on a quiet road, press the button to cross and wait til the lights have changed. In KL, zebra crossings were purely decorative and you quite sincerely took your life in your hands if you expected cars to stop while you were using it. Here, cars will stop to let you cross even when there is no zebra crossing. Of course, it does help that the lights will change in about 25seconds from pressing the button, and it is a small town of 30,000+, where the tallest building by far is Canterbury Cathedral. KL is a capital city where the lights will change a full 4 or 5 minutes after your wanting them to if, indeed, the button works.
The other thing that still surprises me is that I can always find a street sign in a logical place. Sometimes there are TWO of the same signs just a few feet from each other. In KL, you're lucky to a) find a sign, and b) find the correct sign. On one route I used to take, in order to get back to KL, I had to take the turn off to Ipoh. Frequently too, a turn-off-here-for- sign occurs at the turn-off before the one you're supposed to take or a few feet after it. I'm serious.

A regular pub: One of the few people I know here (who I will refer to, pseudonymously, as Prof Ouzo) in Canterbury took me to a pub quiz on Monday. We came last. More interestingly, he informed me that the pub was from the 1600s. I remarked that that makes it older than (colonial) Australia (!)

61 seconds: On the news this morning is that the final minute of 2008 will have 61 seconds. i.e. 58, 59, 60 --> 0, 1 . This is because the world is slowing down - spinning more slowly. The method, and I kid you not, for correcting Big Ben, will be to remove a penny from a small stack of pennies that casually sit on the pendulum part of Big Ben for a couple of days or so, and then replace it. Had I been on a tour of the inside of Big Ben, I may well have picked up this small stack of pennies, thinking them to be forgotten or dropped, and donated them in some charity box outside.

Champagne & Onions: People around here frequently go to Calais to stock-up on alcohol as it is cheaper there owing to the exchange rate. However, with the plummeting of the pound, the news showed how the alcohol warehouses in Calais were quite empty, with the British staying away owing to a lack of money generally and a lack of motivation owing to the less advantageous exchange rate. Predictably, champagne sales have weakened in the climate. Unexpectedly, onion sales have rocketed. The reason proffered was that people are now cooking at home a lot more and hence buying onions. I wonder how many other unexpected consequences there will be from the 'credit crunch'?
However, generally, each day brings the news of another major chain that's folding. The highest profile one was Woolworths here (which I don't know if is related to the Australian one).

Spitting: I have been surprised to see the amount of spit on the pavement and the number of people spitting. I observed this to Prof Ouzo who noted that this was an innovation in the last two years and is connected with boys - known as chads - wanting to emulate footballers who spit while playing. So, unusually, the streets of Canterbury are not so different in this respect to the streets of Shanghai (minus that water-rushing-down-the-plughole sound that precedes a Chinese emission.)

Two Photos

It is of course winter here and it is very chilly, even during midday, which occurs at about 11am here. Sundown is at 4.30 or so. I am at the moment liking this and the feeling one gets of having a long evening spent being amazed at the high quality of the tv advertisements here (especially after KL, but even compared to Melb). Furthermore, there is so much high-quality tv on the various BBCs, and good newspapers to browse.


The houses are all very quaint and appropriate and somehow or other reek of Englishness. But so far, its a pleasant aroma.

Generally, I'm feeling charmed by Canterbury and expect that I'll enjoy my year here. However, it may well be like the situation where the person who you recently have met and liked turns out to be someone you don't like so much, whereas the person you didn't take to at first turns out to be the person you take a shine to. Therefore, I provisionally very much.

Road made smooth

Several fortuitous events appeared to give my road to Canterbury a charmed feel.

1 - Good journey from KL to London) It began with what would appear to be misfortune. From my checked-in luggage on a flight from KL to Cape Town, my camera was stolen. As a consequence I was legitimately able to claim insurance for a new camera (which I had been thinking about) and I was able, through the good graces of my airline, to secure an upgrade on the flight I later from KL to London. Importantly, beyond the added comfort of spending half my journey in business class (in which the seats had a vibro-massage function), I had an increased luggage capacity (from 20 to 30kg). This extra capacity was crucial as my baggage weighed in at 31.1kg. I thus the thieves in KL/ Abu Dhabi/ J'burg or Cape Town to thank for saving me from paying significant excess baggage costs.

2 - Good journey from London to Canterbury) When I arrived in Heathrow, I was in good condition - not ragged or tired. I found my baggage in some disrepair, a fact which I will bring up with the airline to try to procure another upgrade (Thank-you again, baggage mishandlers). Meanwhile, I was to catch a tube-train to Victoria Station and then catch a train to Canterbury East. Happily, although I was traveling in peak hour and was dreading the crush, I thought the tube ride seemed very uncrowded. The keeper of the Inn in which I'm now staying observed that by arriving very shortly before Christmas, the tube was probably quiet with people having taken time off.

3 - Good weather) I arrived in Canterbury without any drama. The weather was very mild and still (i.e. no wind). I had been expecting and bracing myself for significant chilliness. I was told later on that day that Canterbury had suddenly hit a pleasant patch. It had been very chilly a few days back. [(Parenthetically) I'll just recall that during S & my's trip to China in 2007 in winter we had unheard of-ly good weather. We were there during the warmest winter on record and throughout the trip we were treated to clear blue skies. I had been expecting to be breathing murky gaseous cheesecake].

4 - Nifty new discounted computer) Shortly after arriving, my laptop - an old Toshiba which is the heaviest and back-breaking-est in its class - finally decided that the change in surrounds was all a bit too much and packed it in. Apparently a disaster as I was relying on it heavily for house hunting. However, after bearing the absence of a computer for a couple of days, I went to buy a netbook (a very small laptop/notebook). After significant deliberation, I decided on a cheaper netbook with just 8Gb memory. I went to the counter and asked for the Acer netbook please. The guy at Curry's (major chain) asked me whether I wanted the 8Gb one or the 120Gb one. I asked how much the 120Gb one was (it had not been on display and so I didn't know of it). It turned out to be just 25pounds more and so naturally I snapped it up at 200pounds. Hopefully I've reached the end of those days where I got a sore back from carrying my old Toshiba and heaving it out of my hand-luggage to send it through the airport x-ray. [During my deliberation period, I managed to set off the security gadget on one of the laptops in the store. Happily, some people thought this was funny (laughing with me, not at me). Unfortunately I looked very much like a thief in my ultra-puffy gangsta jacket. However, I got the impression that it happened frequently given the perfunctory manner in which the harried shop assistant turned off the alarm.]