The UK: Where pounds are pounds and pounds are hashes

Wasting time on a Friday night, something strange occurred to me.

£

This is a pound sterling sign, usually called a pound sign. On UK keyboards, this sign is on the "3" key, and you can input it by pressing Shift+3.

#

If you are from North America, this is a pound sign. On a US-International keyboard, this symbol is on the "3" key, and you can get this by pressing Shift+3 on the same keyboard. Elsewhere in the English speaking world, this sign is called a "hash". So essentially, the pound key occupies the same place on the keyboard no matter where you are from.

So what if you are in the UK and you need to type the pound sign? Well, you press Shift+3. OK, great. Now what if you're American and you are in the UK and you need the pound sign? OK....look look look at the keyboard aaaaaaaannnnd.....nope, no pound sign. Well, there's a pound sign, but it's not the one I need. Where is the pound sign? you ask your British friend.
It's on the 3, he says.
No, I mean my pound sign.
You mean the hash key?
Yeah, that's the one.
It's on the 3 key.
What do you mean? It's not there.
Oh, right. You have to press Alt+3 for a hash. #. OK, good.

Wait a minute. So in the UK the pound sign is where the pound sign is, but there's no pound sign there, only a pound sign. To get a pound sign, hold Alt and press the pound key, and you will get a pound sign, which is actually a hash. A pound is a pound but a pound is a hash. Got it?

Wait a tick...what's that next to the Enter key?

Queen Mary

I hated my time as an undergrad at Delaware. Well, I didn't hate all of it - I had some good times and I still have a lot of fond memories of the place - but I was pretty depressed most of the time I was there. Academically speaking, I was happy: I loved my professors and the courses I took, and I was a content and eager student. I learned a lot, and I am thankful for that. Socially, however, I was miserable: the shitty house parties, the shallow people, the same boring bars and few things to do, all of it made me unhappy. I just didn't fit into all of it, and I'm sure I can thank Delaware for my fondness for novels and drink. I suppose now though, when I think back on it, it wasn't too bad and that I'm probably being melodramatically whiny, but when I was there I couldn't wait to be done with it all. I remember the day I graduated from Delaware, when we had all gotten our replicate diplomas and all of the speeches were said and done, and everyone tossed their hats in the air....I think? See how memorable it was for me? Well, anyway, I remember that I didn't toss my hat, I just took it off and headed right for the fire exit, walked right out of the building without waiting for my family or friends and got right in my car and drove straight back to my apartment. I was done, and so happy to be done, and I wanted to get the hell out of there and away from uni.

But this time, at Queen Mary, things are much different. It sounds silly, but it's nice going to uni in a big city, and not only a big city but a big city in another country. It's nice to meet new people, and new professors, and learn something new.
I have already mentioned how busy I am, but I failed to mention that I am happy at Queen Mary despite workload and learning curve challenges. Since leaving Delaware, I have missed academia, and Queen Mary has been a deliciously sweet breath of fresh air.
Queen Mary's Mile End campus is small, but not too small. You see a lot of the same people from day to day, but there are enough nooks to escape to. It's small enough for all the administration to be in one building, and to walk across campus in about 5 minutes.
There are also a few cafes and whatnot for students to hang out in, and even a campus bar. Yes, a bar - coming from a teetotaling country, imagine my shock when I found this campus bar and its student-priced pints. I usually don't go there too often, because it has a kind of trashy environment, and usually undergrads go there and get pretty hammered, which is a little too reminiscent of DE for me. I was also taken aback at the Linguistics MA introduction party to see professors filling cups with wine and going around with bowls of chips and chatting. It was a bit kitschy, but delightfully friendly and the best way, in my opinion, to be welcomed into the department. Generally, however, I have been quite surprised by the acceptance of alcohol on campus, especially in a country where most everything is banned and you are watched on CCTV all day.
But thankfully, this lax attitude is ubiquitous around campus. It's quiet, tidy, and never too crowded (save the fire alarms, which are strangely frequent). It's (apparently) quite safe, and every Thursday there is a cutesy farmer's market in front of the Students' Union where vendors peddle organic produce and various overpriced grilled sandwiches which are gobbled up by overly trendy students (but hey, for most of them, they are licensed to that at this point in their lives). You know, the air about Queen Mary's campus reminds me of a poster/t-shirt that is popular here at the moment: it's a vertical Union Jack crested by a crown and the following phrase set in P-22 Underground - "Keep Calm and Carry On". Somehow, it seems quite appropriate here.
One unique and interesting feature of the campus here is the graveyard situated smack in the middle of the campus. Yes, a graveyard. And not any graveyard, a large Jewish graveyard; Mile End - the East End of London - used to be a largely Jewish area, although sadly you wouldn't guess it today. At the moment, much of the cemetery is enclosed by construction safety walls, but I think it is nice that they have retained it and are in the process of preserving it. It's always good to see history being saved, and it has the nice quality of reminding you that everything you learn here and all the money you spend on it will ultimately be a waste, a kind of aptly placed memento mori. It's also filled with squirrels, whose comical antics can be quite distracting and fun to watch when you get bored at the library.

Nuevo Cemetery

And the library is usually where I am while on campus. Queen Mary's library is by no means great - it isn't huge like UD's and most of the books are geared towards the sciences and engineering, but it's not bad. It's a bit strange for me because I never went to the library as an undergrad at Delaware, hated it; but at Queen Mary's library I find I am better able to concentrate and am less distracted than I am at home. Plus, there are a few good spots to hide and study. I have a favorite one tucked in a corner where there is a small table and a window looking out over the cemetery and the chemistry lab beyond with its fog-spewing nitrogen tanks.

If the library gets too crowded and loud, or all of its 162 computers are being used to check facebook, I go to the Lock-keeper's Cottage. The Lock-keeper's Cottage is an old house next to Regent's Canal where the Mile End lock-keeper used to live with his family, and which Queen Mary modified into a humanities graduate student center and tacked some pseudo-modern architecture onto. It's nice because you need to have a PGT card to get into, which means that it's usually quiet (aside from the occasional Spanish postgrad) and secluded, and, as it looks over the lock, a serene environment with the sound of water spilling through the lock and the *ting-ting* of bikers on the towpath opposite. There are always a few computers free there, and it's a good place to go and get some group work done while having a cup of tea, and watching the boats go through the lock.

The Lock-keeper's Cottage, in greener times.

The one thing Queen Mary does have in common with Delaware is the awesome staff - everyone in the Linguistics department has been so kind, helpful, and resourceful. There's no shortage of brilliance in that department, and despite occasional spoonfuls of condescension (which I suspect are deliberately placed to encourage us students, in an odd way), we are all on a first-name basis, which is quite nice. Everyone is approachable - human - and willing to go out of their way to help you. Or perhaps this perception of mine is just crossing the faculty social protocol between undergrads and graduate students? I doubt it, though. Regardless, I owe it to them and my studies here the past two months for helping me finally uncover my niche and find happy comfort in that.

On a final note, I should tell you about my favorite study partner, Phoebe Samuel Guedalla. She was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica in 1819 and now lies parallel to the library, outside the window of my favorite study nook. When I lose interest in sociolinguistic theory and its quantitative studies, I look out over her sarcophagus and daydream about her: what she looked like, who she was, how she came to England, and what she did with her life. Was she happy? Did she have children? Was her death peaceful? Could she have known in her life that she would one day be surrounded by a university? Will people think about me like I do her when I am long dead.....

And then I come back to reality, and phonetic variants no longer seem that important anymore. Perhaps that memento mori is a bit too potent and aptly placed.

Between Paradise and Damnation: Life as an MA Student

Last night, while waiting for my weekly seminar to begin, I was asked a strange question by a Linguistics PhD student: "What's it like being an MA student?" Hm, good question.

"It's a bit like purgatory," I replied. For some reason that was the first thing that came out of my mouth, but as I thought about it, it made a lot of sense - life as an MA student is a bit like purgatory. Why?

Well, it's a transient state, albeit one that feels like an indefinite amount of time despite knowing when you'll be finished. I know that at a certain point next year I'll be done with all this and there should be some feeling of accomplishment at that point, but I'm not exactly sure how long it will be until then. The future is clouded by strange clouds of deadlines, IPA, vowel variation graphs and statistics.

The intellectual purgatory is more poignant than the existential one, however. At one end of the spectrum, you feel a bit proud and envision yourself a learned scholar, delusionally placing yourself in a type of premature 'intellectual paradise': you can read most of the dense academics texts with ease, difficult concepts come fairly easily, and in class you can answer the questions that leave the undergraduates in an embarassing stuporous silence. You feel glad you're not in their shoes - you got that bit over with years ago, you're ahead of the game now. You're on your way.

And then you go to your MA seminar to be licked by the torturous flames of intellectual hell. You think you're clever? An hour with your MIT-trained professor will tell you otherwise. As you listen to them lecture on about unergatives and unaccusatives and raising analysis in Gurung syntax you think, "Damn, I haven't got a clue. How the fuck did they get so smart? Where do they learn this stuff? How can I learn it? Where do I start?"
The lecture soon goes on an off-topic tangent: "So, what are your linguisitic interests?" You know that you like languages and have a bit of a knack for them and that you want an MA because you think it will help you out professionally down the road but you've got no clue about which specific areas you'd like to focus on and besides Linguistics is such a big field full of interesting stuff how does anyone ever figure it out anyway?.....
You try not to sound stupid and piece something together quickly: "Well, I was a teacher for a bit, so I'm interested in bilingualism and code-switching, but on the technical side of things I'm fascinated by syntax and its relationship to semantics." At least when you become an MA student you get upgraded to a Grade B bullshitter.
"Oh, really!? Well you should talk to Dr. So-and-so about that he's working on a book about..." Yeah, that'll make me feel better. You hope that the topic of dissertations doesn't come up, because you've got less of a clue about that than ontological questions about the existence of God.

"Have you got any questions?" you are asked at the end of the seminar.
"More than when I came here, thanks," you reply.
"Don't worry if you don't understand a lot of the material," Professor Genius explains. "Most of your master's career you're not going to understand a lot and you'll have more questions than answers, but it does get easier."
"Is this from personal experience?" Professor Genius pauses thoughtfully.
"It's from experience. Don't worry, it'll get easier." You leave the seminar wondering if this is just standard mawkish consolation for all fresh graduate meat or if it really does get easier, and also if there was any condescension guised in all of that.

One thing is for sure, though - you've got a lot of catching up to do, on top of your weekly reading and the four new computer programs to be learned. Don't forget you have a linguistic interview due next week, and you've got to design an experiment by next month. Oh, and don't forget you've got to sort out the path of your academic career soon, too.

But that's why you've come here in the first place, isn't it? To learn?

Mile End

London is charming. Strange, but charming.

We've finally gotten settled into the swing of things here in London. Domestically, at least. I can't say that it has been difficult - acclimating hasn't been too taxing, save the weather. Andy called it when I came here two weeks ago: you get four seasons in one day, everyday.

We began our house hunt last Monday. After viewing a few too many available flatshares in "council estates" (a major misnomer - they're more like decrepit housing projects), we stumbled upon a lovely sunny and clean room in a small, newly refurbished flat in Mile End in East London. There was lots of light, everything was brand new, the view was nice, the Bangladeshi couple living there were heartwarmingly kind and friendly, and the best part (for me at least) - it was a seven minute walk to Queen Mary, and a four minute one to the Mile End tube station.
"We've got a cleaning policy here, too," Rhiana told us. "Every week someone different has to clean the house." Sold - when can we move in?
And so by Wednesday night we were home, the night glare from the skyscrapers in Canary Wharf shining through the window and the whiff of brand-new-sheets formaldehyde mixing with the cool breeze wafting. We're still setting up house, but we have a comfy place to sleep.

Room with a view.

The new neighborhood, Mile End, is if nothing else a quite quirky place. Most of the neighborhood is home to London's Bangladeshi population, and there is a sizable Arab Muslim community as well, so about 90% of the shops on Mile End Road are curry restaurants, halal fried-chicken-and-doner shops, and, of course, countless barber and call shops. Surprisingly, and pleasingly, most of Mile End seems to lack the necessities of the globalized gentry such as Starbucks, Pret-A-Manger, Mickey D's, BK, Au Bon Pain, and the likes. Just miles of cultural fried staples.
And then, there are the English English who inhabit East End, those whose accent makes me feel sometimes as if I am in a perpetual Guy Ritchie movie. I can't help but giggle when these people talk, because it all seems a bit surreal. You know, you hear all that on the television, and then you are just tickled pink to find out that people really do talk like that. It's a bit like when Anna came to New York and looked at the houses on Laurel St. and said with a giggle, "I'm sorry, but the houses....they're just like in the movies!" That's one of the few things I still haven't gotten used to yet, the accent, and I'm sure it's for the same aforementioned reason - it just sounds funny to me. But then, I hate to think what the Brits make of my American drawl. I'm sure it sounds for them to hear me say things like "quid" and "get on" and "crisps" and "mash" and the like (I'm still getting used to the lexicon, as well).

Still not quite sure what to make of the language.

There is lots to do in Mile End. There is a great park across the road, Mile End park, which follows a canal - Regent's Canal, complete with locks and adorable houseboats - which you can walk along all the way to Victoria Park, which is just under a mile away from where we are, and has plenty of cycle paths (God I need to get a bike soon). That seems to be the ironic thing about Mile End - there is lots of stuff around in just under a mile from Mile End. There is a community sport center three minutes away, and a sort of adult playground just across Grove Road with all sorts of jungle gym-like equipment that looks like a lot of fun to play on. There is a theater down the road (about a mile??), and beyond that is the famous Brick Lane. And should all options in our locality be exhausted, we are only a 10 minute tube ride to Central London.

Regent's Canal

Oh yeah, and let's not forget about Queen Mary. The campus is quite small and, unlike most of London and the University of Delaware, it's not a giant brick shithouse. Small is a good thing, because it's easy to find things. It's not crowded, the atmosphere is laid back. The graduate center is located in the old lock-keeper's house next to the canal, which is a nice space with a nice view, and the library is seriously high-tech, albeit a nice place to come and use the internet (since my computer doesn't like the wireless at home). I haven't spent too much time on campus though. When I went to enroll on Thursday, I felt queasy walking around among all the undergrads - it reminded me of my sentence at Delaware, and all the sfigati I had to go to school with then. The students here seem more cosmopolitan and less boisterously obnoxious, but let's say I'm not feeling the urge to dive right into the student life here. Well, maybe I should just shut up and get over myself like Anna says.

One of the great thing about England is, naturally, the pubs. Really, there are a lot of pubs here. From the outside, most of them look the same - hanging sign, painted latticed windows, quiet and tidy looking. You imagine a fire going inside with old Britons sitting around in dim light sipping a pint and chatting. But even though most pubs look similar from the outside, they are all starkly different on the inside. One pub I went into last year with Evan had a few ales on tap and served only Mongolian food. A pub in Stepney Green, called The Hayfield Masala, is a pub/Indian restaurant. There's The Little Driver in Bow Road with antique mirrors, carpeted floors, and tired washed-out East Enders; there's The Wentworth Arms around the corner that's a testosterone cesspool of middle-aged drunken angry football and rugby fans; and, our favorite, there's The Victoria on Grove Road that, despite its tacky leather sofa/mounted deer head/old mannequin Victorianesque decor, has managed to assert itself, oddly, as a decidedly hipster bar. Nonetheless, we love the free live music (last night it was a fiddler with suspenders and muttonchops) and movie every Sunday night, and it's never crowded. It was a pleasant surprise of a find. There seems to be something new to discover in every pub.

And so far, London has been kind with its charming surprises. On Saturday, we went to the Bermondsey Street fair, which was loads of fun (it had a petting zoo!), and we found a craft brewery in the industrial zone under a nearby railroad bridge. A walk along the Thames Path revealed a fantastic open air used book market. Yesterday, on the way back from Victoria Park, we stumbled upon an impromptu "race" in Regent's Canal - a group of people had made home-made rafts out of household materials. It was a fun discovery, and although the Inner-Tube Girls won, the boy with the cluster of inflated surgical gloves tied to his waist was a close second.

Ye Olde Pig Roast at the Bermondsey Fair

Start your engines, racers.

One of the most pleasant encounters we've had here, though, was with an older woman at a curry stand at the Chrisp St. market in All Saints while on our house hunt last week. While ordering a cup of tea, she overheard me speaking to Anna and turned around:
"Are you American?"
"Yes."
"Oh, my goodness! I'm so sorry, but you remind me of someone I knew a long time ago, someone I was engaged to."
"Engaged? What happened?" And she proceeded to tell us the story of how long ago, when she was young, she fell in love with an American seaman posted in England. He was a chauffeur. She loved him a lot, and they were engaged, but one day he went off on the ship and he never came back.
"That's terrible! I'm so sorry," I said.
"Yeah. I had a breakdown for three years," she replied.
"Oh God, I'm so sorry."
"It's OK. But he was so handsome, and charming. He looked a lot like you too. Oh, and the dancing......*sigh* Well, if you've got any friends, could you bring them over here so I can meet them?" I laughed and said I didn't have any friends, and offered to buy her tea, since she had earlier said she was having troubles with her rent.
"Come on, let me buy your tea," I said when she protested. "I like hearing stories, and yours was a nice surprise."
"Yeah. I've got a lot of stories. I would have written them down, but I don't know how to spell."
"Well, that's OK, lots of people can't spell," I said. "In fact, I saw a sign earlier that said 'Driver's Wanted'. But it had an apostrophe, so it was wrong."
She looked at me blankly. "What do you mean?"
"Well, if it's plural, it shouldn't have an apostrophe, because then it would be possessive..." I rattled on as Anna rolled her eyes. "....so it's wrong you see, because of the apostrophe."
"The what?"
"The apostrophe," I replied.
She turned to Anna. "Is that a bad word or something?"


Oh, London - please keep the surprises coming.

Weird London