Introducing....OckleShow Season Two: The Monday Mission

You know this pesky little recession thing we've all been hearing about? Up until now, I have been employing good old-fashioned denial as my coping mechanism. Despite the tenuous nature of my job and the ever-plummeting value of my house in Baltimore, I have done little to curb spending, travel, meals out, etc. I realize this might seem stupid to many of you, but I like to think of it as doing my part for the economy.

Anyway, recently I've had a bit of a rude awakening. Without going in to too much detail, the big ugly recession monster has finally found me under my shroud of defiance and has slapped me with a reprucussion amounting to a cutback in my working hours. In other words, I will be no longer working on Mondays. Initially I panicked, but gradually (with visions of a nice tan and TV on DVD in my head) I came around to the idea. I thought, "What does a childless 31-year-old part-timer do with this extra time?" And then I got excited. This could be an opportunity for me to do something new and different! To pursue dreams I previously had no time for! To start a second career!

So here we are. A new opportunity and consequently, a new idea for the second season of my blog. This happens to coincide nicely with the connection of my internet at home (which happened this morning), and the fact that you all have stopped bugging me about posting and seem to have given up. Well do not despair, dear readers!

Premeiring this Monday, 13 July...Season 2 of The OckleShow, affectionately titled The Monday Mission. How will Alice change her life, one Monday at a time? Don't forget to tune in.

Commercial break

Patience, my pets. I don't have internet in my new flat yet. Soon....

Coming soon: The OckleShow Season 2

You hate me, don’t you. Don’t try to deny it. I had one of those weekends where everyone’s all up in my grill about how I’m the worst blogger ever (okay, but that’s what they meant), because I tease and tease with promises of more posts and they never come.

Well. I admit it. I’m bad, and I don’t even know the cause of my apathy. It’s like once upon a time, my blog and I were well, maybe not friends, but at least, like casual acquaintances, but now he/she is a looming, judgy stranger.

Or an estranged ex-boyfriend. I know he/the blog exists out there somewhere in the ether and 99.9% of the time, I could care less. Then one day, someone mentions him/it to me in some purposefully offhand way, and them I’m like, “Oh, wonder what happened to him/it?” and also, “Wait a second, is that residual guilt I detect in my cold black heart?” and then I spend the rest of the day stressing about how huge of a hosebeast I was for dumping him/it even though it a lifetime/week ago and he’s already married with like 20 million bambinos.

Anyway, my point is: what I need is motivation. Or reinvention. Maybe if my blog had a babies, then I’d have reason to take interest in it again (or at least engage in some third-degree Facebook stalking). Or, I don’t know, maybe if you guys paid me per word? Just a few cents/pence for my efforts? Yeah, okay, okay. Just throwing out ideas here. Settle down. No but seriously, let me know if you need to know where to send the check.

The thing is, I know I owe you. Big time. How are you supposed to procrastinate at work without some semi-regular postings on the O’Show? Fear not: I would never deign to assume that I take precedence over Perez or anything mad like that, but if the publishers are even to come calling, I’d best get cracking again.

At a week shy of my first year here, it is becoming increasingly clear…

Now is the time.

Give me a few days to sort myself out, then look forward to the new and improved OckleShow Season 2.

DYJCMF: End of week 6: THE END

I never quite bought the plateau. It seemed unfair, like I couldn't possibly be eating SO WELL and SO MINIMALLY and see so little result.

Well, clearly my body thought so too. It just (typically) took a little bit longer to realize it:

Alice's weight as of the 1st Monday: 0 lbs
Alice's weight as of the 2nd Monday: -5 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 3rd Monday: -12 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 4th Monday: -14 lbs.
Alice weight as of the 5th Monday: -15 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 6th Monday: -15 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the final Monday: -18 lbs.

So there we have it. After two weeks with a single pound lost, my body pulled out an unexpected bone-throwing 3-lb loss at the end. I even weighed myself this morning (because last night's was around dinner time and not exactly representative) and it was actually -19. But for the purposes of this competition, the rules say Monday was the cut-off day. Not bad, eh? I'll wait for Blake's announcement later on today, but I'm hopeful I am the victor.

To celebrate, I will write a real post today or tomorrow. For real this time. I think it will be a Q&A with myself. Do you think you can handle it??? Stay tuned.

DYJCMP: End of Week 5 (and then some)

Yeah, so I'm a few days late. I have been at Alex's this week and he does not have a scale. So, alas, I forced to wait until last night to do the deed. It was all for naught, however, since my bod seems to really like the -15 lb mark. To wit:

Alice's weight as of the 1st Monday: 0 lbs
Alice's weight as of the 2nd Monday: -5 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 3rd Monday: -12 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 4th Monday: -14 lbs.
Alice weight as of the 5th Monday: -15 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 6th Monday: -15 lbs.

Tragic. However, it is only serving to spur me on more for the final weigh-in on Monday. Blake is currently at a tenuous -8, so right now, it's all about pulling out a final surprising drop to seal the deal. Hmm....

In other news, there has been a lot going on, and there are many blog posts stored up in this here brain. I have to fill you all in on a) my decision to put off the driving lessons due to an evil instructor rapidly and systematically annihilating all of the spirit, joy and optimism within me b) the process of looking for a flat in London c) the (yay!) results of said search and d) my forays into the world of Eastern Medicine. Stay tuned...

DYJCMF: End of Week 4

I know, I know. My word is worthless. Life is abuzz with visitors and flat hunting. More news soon...

In the meantime....

Alice's weight as of the 1st Monday: 0 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 2nd Monday: -5 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 3rd Monday: -12 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 4th Monday: -14 lbs.
Alice weight as of the 5th Monday: -15 lbs.

Hmm....we seem to have encountered some sort of plateau. I'd like to lose 4 more in 2 weeks. Plus, I need to stay ahead of Blake. Can it be done???

DYJCMF: End of Week 3

I'm tired of talking about weight. So I'll just say this....

Alice's weight as of the 1st Monday: 0 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 2nd Monday: -5 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 3rd Monday: -12 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 4th Monday: -14 lbs.

Tomorrow, I will write a read post about something substantive. You have my word.

DYJCMF: End of Week 2

I have no idea how this happened.

I have been eating enough -- fruit for breakfast, soup or salad for lunch, and chicken/fish and veggies for dinner. I consume far more handfuls of nuts and raisins than are recommended by dieticians. I have cut out alcohol, but apart from that, I haven't removed anything in its entirety from my diet. I've even had a bite here and there of bread, pasta and chocolate. I haven't run an inch, or done any exercise apart from walking, since the half marathon.

Despite all of this, somehow, my scale told me on yesterday's weekly weigh-in...
THAT I HAVE LOST 7 MORE LBS!

WTF? Is my scale broken? Has there been some strange seismic shift in gravitational pull over the past week? Has one of my limbs fallen off without me noticing? I don't get it. It's a complete and utter mystery to me how this has happened. I was aiming, realistically for 2, 3 if I was lucky. But 7?

Not that I'm complaining. First of all, let's face it--I'm kicking Blake's ass and homeboy better step it up a notch if he doesn't want to foot my fine dining bill come mid-May's trip to Chicago.

Secondly, suddenly I can go shopping in my closet, trying on things I haven't worn in a while and marvelling at the fact that doggonit, they fit.

Thirdly, I've finally shed those pesky 10 lbs that I gained on my move over here that really had NO BUSINESS being on my body in the first place.

And fourth, and most importantly, I have arrived at THE TIPPING POINT...you know that number on your scale that counts as the low end of your average, and you feel generally okay there, but if you push past it and continue to lose, then suddenly you feel light, and fancy and free!

So in other words, the next 5-10 should be a doozy.

Update:
Alice's weight as of the 1st Monday: 0 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 2nd Monday: -5 lbs.
Alice's weight as of the 3rd Monday: -12 lbs.

DYJCMF: Day 10. The weight of the weight on my shoulders.

My mom left this morning. After a week of trekking all over the capital in my wake, of seeing the sights, and of gamely fine dining with a dieter, she bid me farewell to fend for myself on the mean and lonely streets of big scary London. Boo hoo.

Not only am I sad that I have lost my walking companion and the only person within a 30 mile radius who has known me longer than a New York minute, but I’m also bummed that I no longer have a major distraction from the DYJCMF diet. When my parents were here, I only thought about food 40% of the time. Now, it’s more like 80% (apologies to my employer).

That said, I have to admit that it’s getting slightly easier. The whole stomach shrinking thing, while probably a myth, seems to ring true in this case, and I also have boatloads of energy now that I’m over the initial telltale sugar detox period. At the same time, however, this week I’m also working harder than ever at cutting the fat, so despite feeling slightly more full from less food, I’m still dangerously close to gnawing on my arm. (In my defence, Alex gave me this perfume for Easter and it smells really good and vaguely of vanilla, so my arm is slightly more appetizing than usual.)

So now, as I progress into week 2 without my parents, life is becoming all about distractions. After all, it’s really just a mind game, right? My solutions are (in no particular order): taking lots of walks; writing painfully redundant blog posts; drinking gallons of tea and pretending it's cookies; and torturing Alex with pointless discussions about nothing. Any other suggestions are welcome.

DYJCMF: The End of Week 1

As you might recall, Blake and I have agreed, in the interest of being fair and relatively un-humiliated, we are both assigning our respetive starting weights a symbolic 0 and going from there. Weigh ins are on Mondays, and so, without further ado......

Alice's weight as of last Monday: 0 lbs.

Alice's weight as of this Monday: -5 lbs.

Hell yeah.

Granted, they are five lbs that never should have been on my body in the first place, but still. Considering I spent the whole week in a restaurant, I'm feeling pretty damn good about that.

DYJCMF: Day 7. The Peeps War

Tis Easter today, which of course means that the Easter Bunny, the good folks at Cadbury, and Jesus (not necessarily in that order) want me to eat some candy. And not just regular old candy, but the kind that vaguely resembles egg yolks, rabbits in day suits, and fluffy neon chicks.

I am a woman on a mission, however, and no amount of pastel food coloring, creme injecting, or resurrecting from the dead (not necessarily in that order) will sway me from my end game--to beat Blake at the DYJCMF Challenge.

With my parents in town this week, I have schlepped from one London fine dining establishment to the next, facing each formidable culinary opponent with staunch determination to merely consume a quarter of the plate, to order the lowest-cal thing on the menu, to reject all offers of alcoholic beverage. I have prevailed thus far; the Easter candy is merely the latest foe to be defeated by my steely resolve.

Fortunately, I have also been distracted from food by today's celeb sightings---Kim Cattrall dining with two friends several tables away from me at lunch and afterwards, Dame Judi Dench dressed in her French Revolution finest in a performance of Madame de Sade. In the absense of real candy, the "eye" variety can be surprising satiating.

Tomorrow marks the first week's weigh-in. Was it all worth it? Til tomorrow, dear readers. Til tomorrow.

DYJCMF: Day 3. A Modern Day Parable.

When I was about 4 years old, a grocery store cart hit me in the face and put me in the hospital. There I was, a little kid shopping with my mom, riding along on the bottom rail of a seemingly innocent run-of-the-mill metal cart and next thing I knew, I was lying on my back in the middle of the frozen foods aisle bleeding profusely from a huge gash above my left eye.

Although I can't really recall the details, I imagine myself trapped under the evil cart with produce in my hair, milk pooling next to my head, eggs smashed on my chest, stay-at-home moms screaming, and someone on the loudspeaker declaring, "Clean-up in aisle four."

Though it only resulted in a few stitches, if you look closely, I still have the scar just above my eyebrow. To my four-year-old self, the injury merely represented my begrudging acceptance of my mom's oft-made "shopping-carts-aren't-meant-to-be-ridden" warning.

Little did I know that today, the injury and its consequent scar would come to represent a much bigger issue: the beginning of a lifelong love-hate relationship with food.

In other words, food is all fun and games until somebody gets hurt/fat.

DYJCMF: Day 1

I'm hungry. Already. In my defense, I ran a half-marathon in Edinburgh yesterday so the need to feed is stronger than usual. But still, it's not even 8 am where Blake lives, and I'm already ravenous. The grapefruit and salad I have eaten today have already left my stomach in search of some nutrient-deficient part of my body and only an empty growly cavern remains (what? is that not how digestion works?). To boot, some guy at work brought in some food to share from wherever he was on holiday and even though I have no idea what it is, I do know that it is 1) a bread product 2) covered in some kind of sugarly glaze and 3) looking at me seductively.

But this is all par for the course, and I'm up for the challenge (and whatever other sports metaphor you want to throw in there).

First, however, I need your help. My parents are in town this week so I'll just do my best eating-wise. But starting next Monday, I have 5 weeks up for grabs. Any week-long diet you want me to try will be considered. If I select yours, I will even name that week after you, and naturally, due to my extensive readership and international acclaim, this will no doubt motivate you. So come on. Cough it up.

Did you just call me fat?

There is nothing more satisfyingly awkward than looking someone in the eye and asking, “Did you just call me fat?” No matter how innocuous their prior statement, no matter how skinny you might be, no matter how comfortable and familiar your relationship, the person on the receiving end of that question will inevitably squirm and fall all over themselves to ensure you that they did not, in fact, infer that you’re in possession of extra poundage.

My friend Amy once made a 5-year-old girl cry by delivering that withering line. If I have the details right, she was visiting her former boyfriend’s family on a camping trip. When they got there, his niece grabbed Amy’s hand to give her a tour of the camp site. When they arrived in front a dodgy looking chair, the niece said as a precaution to her older friend, “Don’t sit there. It’s got a wobbly leg.” Naturally, Amy turned to her, looked her squarely in the eye, and said, “Did you just call me fat?” As mentioned above, usually a person on the receiving end of that accusation would just proclaim, “Oh no no! Of course not! I’M the one who would break the chair. No, not you, you skinny little thing!” But of course, this kid was caught off guard, and is FIVE YEARS OLD, so down came the tears.

Although I don’t advocate terrorizing small children, many of you know I do delight in a good, “Did you just call me fat?” story. And so, at the dawn of my New Blog Endeavor, I’m going to borrow the line that has brought me such joy.

Presenting….

The “Did You Just Call Me Fat?” Challenge

For the next month and a half, my friend Blake and I are going to have a weight loss competition. Whoever loses the most weight by May 18 wins $100. That’s 100 U.S. dollars paid by one of us to the other for shedding as much poundage as poss.

Why are we doing this? Because we could both stand to drop a few el bees, save a little money and generate some fodder for our blogs.

Why should you care? Well, you shouldn’t, but if you do, you’ll get some very regular updates to both the OckleShow and Blake’s blog. Two for the price of one—what could be better?

What will we talk about? Leaving no stone unturned (that will be punnier if you’re a Brit), we will detail the lengths (and widths) we’ll go to win the competition. Plus, I’ll be sure to make it interesting by trying out all kids of crazy techniques—maple syrup diet, all blue foods diet, etc—purely for the sake of your entertainment. So if you have any suggestions for ways I can torture my body, let me know. I’m game.

The DYJCMF Challenge begins Monday, 6 April at 9 am GMT sharp. More details will be provided then. Don’t forget to tune in. It should be a big fat riot.

Lost that lovin' feelin'

You'll be happy to know, I've located the source of the problem. An explanation for my complete and utter inability to write a simple blog post.

See, when I began this blog, it had a purpose, an editorial focus,if you will. I was moving to London, and for better or worse, I felt that documenting my observations of the good, the bad and the ugly of this transition would be entertaining for my friends and family at home. Every time I strayed slightly off course (see any post where there's lots of pictures of my weekend), it seemed incongruous. So I tried to stick to the objective: The funny, quirky and at times infuriating differences between life here and life in the States (with the exception of Sam, but even he sort of made sense).

The thing is, I now believe the OckleShow has lost its raison d'etre. After almost 10 months of being here, the times when I stop and marvel at the pure Britishness of it all have become fewer and farther between. I don't compare every little thing. Entire days go by and I don't think about BEING IN LONDON; I just think about being. It's weird, but I think I've finally sort of become used to it.

So with this in mind, I'm going to embark on a search for the next generation of OckleShow. What will it be about? Will the cast of characters stay the same? Will I replace my sister with another not-similar-enough-looking-but-better actress and expect you not to notice (see Roseanne)? Will someone just inexplicably disappear all-together (see the other daughter on Family Matter)? Will someone give birth to twin babies (see Cosby Show/Full House)? Will there be the sudden appearance of a red-headed step child (see Brady Bunch/Diff'rent Strokes)? Or an orphan (see Growing Pains)? or a ridiculously precocious kid (see Cosby Show, Family Ties, and the entire "you got it dude" stage of the Olsen twins)?

I'm taking suggestions. Fire away.

Driving Miss Crazy

Have you given up on me yet?

I know. I deserve it. 14 days sans a peep warrants your disillusionment, your disenchantment, possibly even your disownment. But before you write me off forever, before you put your spiteful pen to divorce paper, consider this....

I'm in the early stages of getting my UK driver's licence (you're intrigued, right? Right?). Step 1 was learning that the word "license" does not have an s. If only that were where the mind numbing ended, but far from it.

See, in this little hamlet we call England, getting a licence as a U.S. expat is a right pain in the arse. If you took getting a bank account, combined it with that whole TV licence nonsense and threw in a dash of good old-fashioned heavy machinery operation (only on the wrong side of the....um, factory), then you'll at least be closer to understanding just how big a pain in the arse it is.

In America, they let donkeys drive cars. Okay, maybe that's not true, but they might as well. In some states, you barely have to be out of the womb to operate the sort of farm equipment that removes attractive men's appendages on a regular basis (if you believe the movies, which of course I do).

On my 16th birthday, I took my test at the Northbrook, Illinois DMV with a very recently torn medial meniscus in my right knee (I removed the brace in the parking lot beforehand). Though I could barely move my leg, I passed. I passed the written test too: My driver's ed teacher, some obese sweaty man named John whose lessons involved me driving from one suburban drive-through takeout place to the next, had told me all of the answers, including the very educational instruction that "Number 10 is always C" (complete with pneumonic device, "Tennessee.")

An hour after starting my testing process, I drove unceremoniously out of the DMV with my new license in tow. It didn’t matter that for the next 48 hours, I proceeded to terrorize the neighbourhood with my incredibly inept driving. It was irrelevant that on the second day of having my license, I hit a parked car. All that mattered was that I had achieved my god-given right as an American to seek my manifest destiny on the nation’s roads.

See, in America, at least in those days, nobody really cared if we couldn't drive worth a damn. Nobody minded if we didn't actually know the answers to that tedious test. That was The Man's test, and damn The Man! We are Americans! We are frontiersman, and we need to explore the open frontier! We have the unalienable right to go out and be fruitful and prosper (using fuel-guzzling SUVs of course), and so help us, we won't let some silly test get in the way of our journey! Besides, what better way to learn how to drive than by just driving! It's the mightly US of A, and you know, that's just how we do.

Not so here in GB, it seems. They appear take a much more conservative point of view on the activity of driving. They call it a "privilege." It's all about safety and control and not hitting objects or people and blah blah blah zzzzz......

Not only that, but they seem to think we Americans can’t drive (the gall!!)….so much so that while all of the Europeans, the Japanese, the Koreans, the South Africans, the New Zealanders, etc etc etc can just turn in their respective licences for a UK one upon arriving here, the Americans have to start from scratch. We actually have to endure the indignity of applying for a provisional license, which is a fancy English-person way of saying Learner’s Permit, which is a fancy American way of saying, “You can’t drive without your dad.”

Once you go through the long process of getting your provisional license, then you have to take what by all accounts is a very difficult two-part written test with like 10 million questions and a video portion. Then, on a different day, you have to take a really difficult 40-MINUTE driving test. I mean, can I bring a book-on-tape? What the hell are we going to do for 40 minutes?

Not only that, but to add insult to injury (or hopefully in this case, lack of injury), I read today that you have to bring a spare rearview mirror so that the instructor can see behind you. Which is good because you know, in moving over here, I got rid of 90 percent of my belongings, but I kept a whole box of extra rearview mirrors, just in case. You would think that if they needed them, maybe they’d, I don’t know, keep an extra few around the DMV...? Even Alex thought that was ridiculous (I quote: “In my day, examiners were able to turn around in their chairs.”)

Anyway, I have so much more to say on the subject, but I’ll stop for now. Might as well string out the content so that I can get over here more than once a fortnight. Stay turned to the Show for more on my impending attempt to be allowed to do something I’ve been doing for 15 years. Not that I’m bitter….

Graham, Pat and Hidden Valley Ranch

These days, life generally chugs along with nary a blip on my “Attencione! Foreign County!” radar. What once seemed odd or confusing is now convention. What once seemed scary or off-putting is now de rigueur. Eight months since I first set foot on these rocky shores, it seems, dare I say it, life has become more or less normal.

Or so I think…and then something weird happens and I’m suddenly taken back to those early days of streaking tube stops and hiding at my desk. This week I discovered a difference between the US and the UK that’s so divisive, so inexplicable, so just, wrong that I felt I had to write about it (even though I have no idea where I’m going to go with it).

Here’s the deal: Brits do not know about s’mores. Not that they don’t like them or don’t care about them, they actually have never in their lives heard the word “s’mores.” Sure, they toast marshmallows over the fire…but then they just eat them. There’s no melted chocolate-y goodness or satisfying cracker crunch. Just a plain old marshmallow left stranded roadside without a delicious vehicle to your mouth.

So of course, upon realizing this, I felt the need to explain.

Me: “So you take two graham crackers…”
Any one of the many Brits I polled this week: “Two what?”
Me: “Graham crackers. You know. Graham crackers.”
Brit: “What’s a graham cracker?”

I mean, is this possible? First Ranch dressing is nowhere to be found here. Now, I find out that graham crackers don’t exist. I mean, I haven’t even wanted them, but WHAT IF I DID?! What if I’d woken up in the middle of the night with an overwhelming desire for graham crackers and I’d headed out in the cold and wet to the 24-hour Tesco just to find that no one has even heard of them? HOW WOULD I PROCEED? Plus, I’m seriously doubting that a country without graham-cracker crust is even one I want to live in.

Aside: I feel it’s important that I address the Ranch thing as well—an issue no less important than graham crackers, but one that I’ve at least has some time to accept. The weird thing about Ranch is that it’s not like everyone thinks, “Oh Ranch dressing, that’s an American thing. We don’t have it here.” It’s actually as if all evidence of Ranch dressing has been strategically and covertly eliminated from the British collective psyche.

Case in point: The Cool Ranch Doritos bag here appears to be totally normal—electric blue, close-up pic of the triangular chip…and then the words “Cool flavour.” They just photoshopped the word Ranch out as if it were never there. It’s almost eerie. It’s as if Ranch is in the Witness Protection Program for delicious flavors and isn’t allowed to leave the country. Like the evil British scientists are going to steal the recipe and clone American culture. Like maybe Ranch dressing holds the very Essence of America and if spread to foreign soil, all of the nation’s secrets will be revealed. But I digress…

It just goes to show that there are probably a great many cultural dividers still lurking beneath the rain-sodden surface of British culture. This is good news for the OckleShow. I’ve been thinking recently that maybe I need a new shtick—after all, at some point I’ll run out of commentary on Moving to London and it will, if it hasn’t already, go from ex-pat blog to just pat blog. Pat Blog. Pat the Blog. Anyone? OckleShow 2.0: Pat the Blog? No? Okay. I miss graham crackers.

A blog day afternoon

Remember when you were a kid, you’d sit on the floor and scratch the back of the person in front of you while he was scratching the back of the person in front of him; and so on and so forth in a big blissful circle of socialist back-scratching harmony?

Yeah, me too. Those were the days. In fact, just last night, I was lamenting to Alex the fact that you can pay for a massage but not for a luxurious back-scratching, which in my opinion, is almost equally sensational. Untapped market if you ask me.

Instead of actually setting up my own shop (besides, I have a list of about 20 other Credit-Crunch Careers that don’t involve potentially touching gross people’s bodies), I’m going to flash my poetic licence and approach the matter in the more metaphorical sense.

I began this whole back-scratching conceit with the expectation that it would lead me to a discussion of the Seven-Month Itch. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, this is the phenomena that your average expat experiences in between The Arriving-in-a-New-Country Excitement Stage and The Holy-Sh*t-I-Actually-Have-to-Live-Here-Now Acceptance Stage.

Buuuuttt…..then I decided I wasn’t up for over-analysis on this fine Thursday eve. So, in an astounding demonstration of the versatility of my metaphorical skillz, I am going to instead make this a post about bloggers….and how, in my limited experience of them, they seem to have a whole you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours approach to getting the word out about their stuff.

Some of the people I know who blog have already put a link to the OckleShow on their sites, and so now it’s my turn to return the favor. Plus, dear readers, you get the added benefit of finding new ways to waste your work day and tempt the gods of redundancy with your unwavering commitment to procrastination.

A quick note: Some of these sites are from friends of mine, and might not interest you if you’re not particularly curious about seeing the daily goings on of their 3-year-old children. Others are just general blogs that I follow because I’m a Millennial-Gen Y cusp baby who needs information like I need oxygen, man.

News: I tend to be a bit of a newshound, so I check these sites regularly. They are just informative enough to keep me up-to-date and just fluffy enough to appeal to my short attention span and even shorter short-term memory.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/: Ariana Huffington is a genius for keeping this composite of all things news, from Barak and Michelle to Brad and Angie. It’s a one-stop shop of digestible nuggets of just slightly over-sensationalized news with lively bloggers who help you sound smart at dinner parties. Also, Republicans, it’s not for the faint-hearted, so you’d best be a card-carrying ACLU member to attend this party.

http://www.politico.com/: This is what I read when I want to feel smart. It’s totally aspirational in that I’m-a-person-who-reads-politico kind of way. I check it every day, but some days, I only log about 2 minutes because inevitably, in the middle of some article on the GOP’s rocky road back, my mind starts wandering and I begin to wonder what Maddox and Shiloh are up to.

http://www.salon.com/: I discovered this in grad school and I still read it regularly. It’s good journalism prettied up for the smart kids.
http://www.slate.com/: Good journalism prettied up for the cool kids.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/: An institution. You can’t argue with greatness.

Celebs: I considered putting all things celeb in the news section, cuz, you know, it is news, but I reconsidered. Before I begin, consider that my daily digest of tabloids has been cut back sharply with my move. Judge me not for what I do but for how far I’ve come.

http://www.perezhilton.com/: Nuff said. It’s like crack to my American-celebrity-deprived brain.

http://www.gofugyourself.com/: I want to lobotomize the women who keep this site and transplant their brains into mine. They are wittiness incarnate, even though they are just talking about fashion.

Friends: These are the aforementioned sites kept by a sampling of my worldwide poss. These people are not just my friends, but are also endlessly entertaining both on “site” and off.

Swiss Family Mac: My former co-worker Meghan and her lovely husband Brian moved from Baltimore to Switzerland around the same time I moved to London. Meghan’s often funny, always touching accounts of raising a 2-year-old and being pregnant in a country where she can’t speak the language are a great read. Her sister, Colleen, a fellow Londoner, also keeps a blog formerly called Design This.

Rich and Creamy: This endlessly entertaining blog from my Irish Londoner friend JJ is a daily digest of the best of the blogosphere. It’s where you go when you don’t want to do your own scan, but still want to keep up on the day’s funny, thought-provoking or downright ridiculous cyber-happenings.

Aside: I realize I’ve slipped into promotional copy mode. My apologies.

Finndustry: Another former co-worker and friend, Derek keeps this very cool design and design industry blog.

Amalah: Okay so she’s not my friend (I don’t know her) and I’m not a mommy (it’s sort of a mommy blog), but this is one of the most reliably funny things I read on a regular basis. Plus, she’s my hero for making blogging a full-time paid job.

Not on the Moon Yet: My good friend Blake rarely updates his blog (the cheek of it!) but when he does, he’s damn funny.

I'm sure there are more, but those are the standouts. Feel free to post a comment if you have some other ideas or if you are a secret blogger yourself (geek!). And for those of you whose blogs got shout-outs today, consider your backs scratched, courtsey of the O Show.

The BarackleShow

Every time someone shows up on the rocky shores of Great Britain (having surrendered the comforts of her far-off land to pursue a better way of life, or her boyfriend, or a cure for her rampant anglophilia), she makes a promise. She swears to her family back home or her new colleagues or anyone who will listen really that she will NOT fall into the trap that has claimed so many of her predecessors.

She will NOT quickly join a community of people of her own nationality.

She will NOT frequent only bars that cater specifically her nationality.

She will NOT live in the neighbourhood known as the one where all of the expats from her country live.

Generally, she will NOT recreate the country she came from within her newly adopted city.

Instead, using her powers of open-mindedness and tolerance, along with the special novel brand of charm found only in the place she came from, she will gather a vast menagerie of friends so rich in cultures and nations that that it would make the UN jealous. She will truly experience life in a global city.

Months after her arrival, however, she’ll look around whatever schlocky bar has her country’s flag hanging proudly from every available wall, take a sip of some familiar beer that was crappy in her own country even before it travelled miles from its source, and say to her look-alike friends in their shared native tongue/accent, “How the hell did this happen?”

This, ladies and gents, is the destiny of the expat in a big city. Try as you might to spread your proverbial wings and immerse yourself in the local culture, you ultimately end up gravitating toward your own kind. Why does this happen, you ask?

Here’s a theory for you. New friendships require the presence of two aspects:

1. Something (the more the better) in common. [aka MUTUALITY]

2. The shared desire for new friendships. [aka MOTIVATION]

For me, your average(ish) American, who do you think are the people that most often meet those criteria? Right. Other Americans. It’s very rare that I meet a Brit whom I have enough in common with (work, mutual friends, etc) who doesn’t have 8,000 friends already; or alternately, some new Parisian import might be looking for friends but because say, she doesn’t know who Brenda Walsh is (even when she pretended to be French for that one summer while living in Paris with “Reek”), we probably don’t have anything in common.

Then I come across some American chick fresh off the boat who ohmigod knows so-and-so who was friends with whats-her-face in high school and BAM, instant buds. Easy peasy, no effort.

Not that I’m complaining. In fact, out of fatigue or need (probably both), I have succumbed to the inevitable my-pals-will-mostly-be-Americans thang. So when my San Fran-originated friend Amanda asked me to accompany her to an American Ex-pats in London meetup group event last night for the inauguration, I not only agreed, but was actually excited to meet some other imports [MOTIVATION] gathering to celebrate our shared history in the making [MUTUALITY].

There was one problem, however. When we arrived, we discovered that the whole place was full of people NOT from America. Instead, it was chock-a-block with single men from Pakistan, New Zealand, Canada (okay, it SORT of counts), Germany, England, you name it, who seemingly signed up for this Americans-only event and paid their 10 quid to get in, JUST TO PICK UP CHICKS.

Apparently these guys felt the need to amend my List of Requirements for a New Friendship with the following:

3. One party exploiting the other's proud political day for his own purposes [aka MANIPULATION]
4. One party believing that by virtue of the other's usually open and friendly nationality, that she will take kindly to his creepy advances [aka MISINFORMATION]
4. One party believing that that by virtue of the other's oft-depicted-in-movies slutty nationality, she is easy [aka MASTURBATION]

Suffice it to say, it was not a giant success in the friends department, although Amanda and I did socre a date with a new potential girl friend next week. Not only that, but we had a great time at the expense of the foreign imposters. After all, who better to do that with than your fellow Americans?

Sam I Am: Part 4

In his element, Sam is sublime. Perched on a diminutive wooden stool, acoustic guitar resting on his thick right thigh, a single dull spotlight casting eerie shadows beneath his lowered eyes, he sings with the soulful baritone of a Chicago blues singer.

He doesn’t know I’m here. I’ve stopped by a small Holborn pub on my way home. A sign, scrawled in permanent marker, sits in the window and reads, simply, “On stage tonight: Sam Minor.” The scene inside is typical—wooden walls, cracked tiled floors, pale-faced men and women in scarves and dark jumpers sipping pints around dimly lit tables. In the far corner of the pub sits Sam and his guitar. His voice is striking—deep and urgent and strangely haunting.

As I enter, he is finishing a song. Then he clears his throat, looks shyly out at the crowd and mutters into the microphone: “This next one’s called Blue Became Scarlet.”

He sings:

Eliza Doza
Dazed in Ibiza
Chasing tropical hazes
The blind never raises

Major Minor
Croons in a diner
He only finds her
Buried in liners

They held hands in the fire
The ghost is a liar
The day lambs became harlots
The day blue became scarlet

M’am with a plan
A kaleidoscope damned
Seeking colors and light
Finding just black and white

Jack of all trades
With fury in spades
He was the sun in her weather
She was just wax and feathers

They held hands in the fire
The ghost is a liar
The day lambs became harlots
The day blue became scarlet

As he finishes the song, striking a final melancholic chord on his guitar, Sam raises his head and looks out at the crowd. His eyes focus on a single spot, and his face suggests a shared knowingness. I scan the crowd, searching for the recipient of his soulful gaze. When I see her, her slight frame strikes me as being as ghost-like and unimposing as Sam’s giant form is large and concrete. If I hadn’t been searching, I might not have noticed her at all.

Elizabeth Mendoza. Eliza Doza, I think wryly. Her impossibly straight blonde hair hangs half-way down her back; on her face, it's cut in a severe line that comes close to obscuring her dark brown eyes—the only remaining physical evidence of her Spanish ancestry. Her pale skin is translucent, a feature that is exaggerated by her simple pink shift dress and the long cream cardigan she wears belted over it.

Detecting my gaze, she turns and looks at me. She raises a small, pale hand and waves, offering a wan smile. I wave back, forming a single word on my lips. “Beth,” I mouth. She nods once so slightly it’s almost imperceptible, and turns her attention back to Sam.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

2009

Happy New Year! If you’re thinking it has been an unacceptably long period of time since my last post, well, then, fair enough. In my defence, however, I have a) been abroad in Australia, thereby completing the circle on my quest to use all three of my passports in a single year (shh….don’t tell the INS) and b) managed to contract The Never-Ending Virus, which has manifested itself in three colds, a horrific two-week long sore throat, a sinus infection and conjunctivitis over the course of a month and a half.

Even now, I sit here at my desk with a new sore throat/headache combo. This is after having taken a round of oral and eye-drop-administered antibiotics last week and countless packages of sinus/decongestant/cold medicine over two weeks. I have slept and slept. I’ve eaten well. I’ve cut back on the booze. WHAT DOES IT WANT FROM ME??? If anyone has any suggestions about what to feed the new-to-london beast that resides in my head, please let me know. I’m at my wit’s end.

Anyway, apart from the plague, I had a delightful holiday season. After a crazy 2008, full of many changes and adjustments, I’m looking forward to a slightly calmer 2009, (though if the economy has anything to do with it, we all might be in for a slightly more interesting year than we’d hoped).

Here are my goals for 2009 (in no particular order):

1. Write a novel
2. Get in shape
3. Read more books
4. Sleep more
5. Travel
6. See my friends and family as much as humanly possible
7. Establish a less transient, more home-like presence in London
8. Stop The Virus from killing me in my sleep
9. Write frequent and entertaining blog posts

I’ll get started on #9 soon, I promise. Um, just not today. More soon. Happy 2009!