July 2004 Archives

Although the general focus of this website is the life of an American living abroad, occasionally events in my native land are so compelling that they simply demand comment. As anybody who has read a newspaper recently must surely know, an event of remarkable significance is currently taking place in Boston, Massachusetts, and I would be remiss in my duty as a citizen if I did not comment on it.

I am referring, of course, to the fact that a recent graduate of MIT is getting ready to enter the Miss America competition.

I mentioned in a previous entry that I miss that sense of strangeness that I first felt when I moved to London. I have found a way of recapturing it: by looking through the eyes of another foreign visitor.

I recently read The Silent Traveller In London, by Chiang Yee. A Chinese artists living in the UK in the 1930's, Yee published a number of illustrated books giving Englishmen the opportunity to see their own country through Yee's paintings and prose, both of which are simple, elegant, and clean. Yee's book about London has now been reprinted by Signal Press, and it's well worth a read.

Not surprisingly, Yee finds his new home city to be a strange land. "Had I not come to London," he writes, "I should never have known there was a special time for tea."

I am standing in the Marks & Spencer food store when something catches my eye: the package of bananas has a sticker on it that says "Ideal for the BBQ!" I am amused at what is clearly a labeling error until I look at the other packages of bananas. Every one of them has the exact same sticker.

Bananas? For the barbecue? This is the most baffling British food-label mystery since the jar of soup stock that suggested adding "one small swede, finely chopped."

I've always suffered from a tendency to get songs stuck in my head. It's never been as bad as some people's, but it's there nonetheless. My particular condition might be called Geographic Onset Stuck Song Syndrome, since it seems to be place names in particular that set it off.

Astute readers will notice a subtle change: I'm now promising something interesting every Tuesday, instead of every Monday. Aside from the fact that it will give me one extra day this week to write my entry, for a variety of reasons that are too Not Interesting to go into, I think it will be an easier day for me to post things. So: henceforth, check back in every Tuesday (including tomorrow) for Something Interesting.

I will now attempt to distract you from the fact that the percentage of Yankee Fog posts dealing with the fact that I am falling behind in my posting is rapidly approaching 99.9% via the following diversion: Hey! Look over there! It's a photograph of the Odd Erection guy from last week's entry!