Odds & Sods

I've been working like a dervish the last few weeks and there's been a lot going on... So this is a kind of a cheap roundup of the last 10 days in Big Apple, Little Britainer land...

-- First of all, huge apologies to everyone who's braved the Sham Wow! guy enough to come back here... I lack the tech know-how to stop it from playing automatically. It's been bugging the hell out of me also, so I can only hope I have a few readers left... Personally, I've been saying 'Wow! Every time I use a sham wow!' in my sleep for weeks.

--You'll be pleased to hear, I'm sure, that the mouse and 'roach situation is more or less under control. Thanks for all the advice folks - but during a weak moment in Rite-Aid last week I was at my most American and thought that throwing money ($20) at the problem would be much easier than messing round with expanding foam and wire wool. After some time dithering in the shop, I bought a battery-powered electronic killing machine called Victor (no joke, those of you that know me). Anyway, after spending 30 minutes marveling about batteries -- seriously, how many things do you have nowadays that need batteries? I bet, including your TV remote, it's 90 percent less than the number of things you had powered by AA batteries in the 80s. Times are changing, people -- anyway, within 30 minutes the killing device had its first victim. The count is now at nine (dead), but the batteries have gone after I went away for the weekend and forgot to turn it off. One poor mouse was left with Victor for three days on end. Both Victor and the mouse smelled worse than the rotten potatoes when I got back, but at least there were no living, crawling things around to greet me.

--I made it to the Red Sox game last Saturday - the one that I'd been really looking forward to - in time for the last two innings. The trip to Boston was mildly interrupted by the failure of a rental car company in NY to find my reservation, and an alumni boat race in Westport, Connecticut, that took somewhat longer than expected (old people don't row very fast even when bribed with alcohol)... So, I made it to the eighth and ninth innings of the game, didn't even get a chance to get a drink or sit down, and then I got a call from work asking if I could come back to NY, please, and get to the office as soon as possible? Things kind of went downhill from that moment on and I'm only just pulling myself back together.

--On a more positive note, I appear to have found some tights! That stay up! And don't make my legs look orange! I'm a little cautious, still, as the real tights-wearing weather has yet to hit, but I'm quietly confident that these will do the trick. For anyone who cares, they're made by Hanes and are called 'Sheer Elegance' and I bought them in Duane Reade. Still no luck finding decent hold ups, but small steps etc etc.

--I've had some time to catch my breath and catch up on my reading over the last few days and I have to give a big shout out to all the blogs I read regularly - some of my favorites: Ali Blah Blah, Aye Wonder, A Brit Out Of Water, Alien In A Foreign Field, Almost American, Anglophile Football Fanatic, Bloody Brilliant!, British Daffodilly, Expat Mum, A Brit Different, Long Aye-lander in Glasgow, London Foodie, Brit Gal in the USA, Grand Lake Ink, and Not Wrong, Just Different have really kept me going. It's like having my own little secret support group. Thank you! If I could figure out how to give you those clever blog awards, I would - but if I knew how to do that, I'd probably also know how to turn off the Sham Wow man...

Root, root root!

When my brothers were here, we got tickets to see the Red Sox at Fenway Park. Unfortunately, what we actually saw was this:



We had a good night out* but the game was sadly called off. Happily, it was rescheduled. Unhappily, it was for after my brothers have gone. IE, tomorrow.

Amusingly, I'm writing this while watching the Red Sox play in the pouring rain tonight, and the weather forecast doesn't look so great for tomorrow. The Fenway experience by itself was definitely fun enough for one night, but it would be really nice to see a game**. I'm praying to the weather gods. I rather like the Red Sox - they're about as close to a UK football team as you can get in the US. Look -- they even make their own music without directing you to clap in unison with flashing lights and piped pop songs:



*what happened in Boston, will stay in Boston*** - but one of the highlights for me was ordering room service later that night, promptly falling asleep, then waking up with my contact lenses stuck to my eyelids to discover that my brothers had eaten ALL the food. Which just served to remind me of something that was my motto many years ago but that I had forgotten in these years living on my own: never blink when your brothers and your meal are in close proximity to one another.

**I haven't swapped allegiance from the Yankees, in case you cared. I'm having a bit of a strop though, since they sent my favourite player down to the minor leagues.

***It may actually not stay in Boston, as my youngest brother (16) didn't get to drink and spent the rest of the trip embarassing us with tales of our debauchery. He did, however, managed to get us kicked out of a certain bar for (not so) surreptitiously feeding him sips of our beers.

She didn't understand the question...

Hello! It's me again, Matt Frei! Maybe this routine is getting a little dull for y'all (local lingo, my dears) but I just had to rant a little and this is my only forum for letting off steam, ever since BBC Online cut my blog...

So I'm rather gutted that Sara Palin's first interview went to that cheeky Charlie Gibson on ABC.

You know, I had hoped that the fact the BBC is the news service FOR THE WORLD and all, and I'm so nice and easy going (with colour in my hair still! Unlike Gibson!) that Palin and her team might have chosen ME as her first interview, but alas, it wasn't to be.

Instead, I had to talk about the Gibson/Palin interview with my sidekick Katty Kay -- who, like, I talk to every day, so it wasn't exactly the interview of my career (plus, journo-to-journo interviews or 'two-ways' were a huge criticism of the Hutton Inquiry but sadly the producers seem to forget about this fairly regularly) - so anyway, Katty got a bit catty about Palin. She said that Palin didn't understand a question the Gibman asked her, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"

I mean, just because Katty's a blonde and Palin is a brunette.. and Katty went to Oxford and speaks foreign languages (like moi) and Palin shoots things and watches hockey... Well, whatever. So Palin didn't understand the question and didn't seem to know what doctrine meant. So what? I'm sorry Katty. You've been my sidekick for a long time, and you do have alright hair, and you mostly wear nice suits, but you need to understand something about politicians, if you ever want to be the anchor of a GLOBAL NEWS PROGRAMME. You need to know that even if they understand the question, they won't answer it! And even if they understand the question, they sometimes pretend they don't, just to give them time to answer it! Politicians can be nearly as cunning as me, trying to cover my grey hairs!

So, Katty kind of wound me up a little, because I'm working hard to ingratiate myself to the locals, and be all nice and cuddly and friendly to their politicians so we can get the big interviews and compete with the likes of the Gibman and Shepard Smith, and there she was being all sneery and European. Just the kind of liberal elite and sexist attitude (even from another woman! Especially from another woman!) that they'll pick us apart for. Be more like me, Katty! I model myself on everyone's favourite teddy bear:



Just with more hair.

Which reminds me of the questions I would have asked Palin: what hair colour do you use? I'm thinking of switching to the women's brands, they have so much more choice, and all this election stress is really bringing out my grey. Also, how do you get your fringe -- sorry, bangs -- to stay so fluffed? Sometimes I can get that effect with my quiff, but it never lasts when I go outside.



That's all for now.
Byeeee! Matt xoxoxo

It's not quite a routemaster...

But New York City's getting a double-decker bus. I'm not quite sure how I missed this, but thanks to Gothamist I learned the buses are being tested on select routes over the next 30 days. I wonder whether the native bendy buses (kind of double single deckers) will be put out by this new arrival?

At least one of the routes is quite near where I live -- so I'll definitely be trying to test one. I'll let you know how it compares with the real things...

I'm back!

Hello! Did you miss me? I'm Matt Frei, and you may have been watching me on the news on BBC America. Well, you may have been watching the news on any of the other umpteen channels you receive, but none of the others have me!

Oh yes, I'm back. And, boy, have I had a fun few weeks. The first awesome thing was, I got to wear a headset like the guy in the ShamWow ad. In fact, they even let Katty Kay wear a headset! I don't really know why, but the producer suggested it, and I thought it made me look more cool, American and (importantly) important, so I went along with it. The microphone was supposed to be flesh-coloured, so it was hard to see. But, really, it took on a bit of an orange tinge, especially on Wednesday when I was wearing an awesome, shiny, orange tie. I wanted to be neutral, politically, you see, and orange is the colour between red and blue, you know? .... (What's that? Purple? No! You're pulling my pisser! I went to Westminster, you know - I know my colours! Pink is my favourite.....).

Well, anyway, as I was saying, it's been a cool few weeks. I got to wear a headset, I wore an orange tie that matched my new dyed hair (I know, the producers won out on that one. My wife totally wanted me to grow up finally and go grey, but they said you just can't do that in this country, so we settled on a lovely neutral orange colour, and the tie really brought it out nicely.) I also got to be near all those important Americans. Wow. USA! USA! USA! When I go to bed, that's all I can hear. My wife says I shout it in my sleep. But anyway, it's been awesome. Did I say that already?

The weird thing is, though, that the producers just still aren't happy. Apparently, my forehead is a bit too wobbly. I need to be more like this guy:



they think that would help with the ratings. This guy, Shepard, kept interrupting people that were watching sports on other channels, so OF COURSE he got good ratings. Nothing to do with his unwrinkled forehead. Plus, he's called Shepard, people! He would never have got into Westminster OR Oxford. Can you imagine him in a pink shirt? Right. You can't. So you just know you can't trust him - not like me....

Anyway, gotta go and be important and English back in DC again. Ta-rah for now,

Matt

PS - I'd love to hang around and talk more, but I have to get back to the home base in DC. They've been arresting some people out here in the Minnesotas and I just don't want to get caught up in that stuff. The producers told me not to worry, because they've only gone after people that are actually doing stuff, rather than sitting around in a studio with a perfect headset etc, but you never know... Sometimes you feel a little vulnerable, being special like me in this country where they don't even know where Westminster is!

Learnings From Living In A Hot Country

New York is a whole ten degrees latitude south of Portsmouth, England.

"But what does that mean?" I whined, childishly, to a logical, more-grown-up friend of mine recently.

"Well, you're 1/36th further south."

Oh.

You see, in about two and a half years of living 1/36th and 10 degrees further south (and some amount and number of values further west), my combined learnings about the difference in the summer are:

1. You actually get to have a second wardrobe for the summer here. It's pretty fun, if you're into the clothes thing and not a nudist or a boy who wears the same thing every day. And the season's just long enough that by the time you're getting bored of your summer clothes, well, it's winter! It's like the fashion gods were born at 40 degrees latitude.

2.You wouldn't believe this (you people back home) but potatoes fricking rot. Yep - when they're less than a week old and in a dark cupboard. They rot. They don't just sprout eyes and get a bit rubbery - they disintegrate. Oh - and they STINK. I have never smelled anything as bad in my life as a rotten potato.

3. There are two types of people. The ones who resign themselves to the fact that there's no such thing as a comfortable temperature in the summer (the humidity is too high, the air conditioning can never be tweaked so it's just right) and the ones that will constantly tinker with the air conditioning, or fans, in a mission to find that perfect place.

4. Cooking? Ah, yes, cooking. Well, try not to think about it. Think instead about your electricity bill and the cost of negating the heat of the oven with the air conditioning. But hey, who needs to cook in this weather? Just eat everything straight out of the fridge -- and when you get bored of fridge-food, well (see no. 1) the seasons will be changing and you can dig out your crock pot or casserole and cook all the roasts you've ever wanted.

5. There's really no need to get sunburned. Mind you, I've lived here for three summers now and I wouldn't say I've really learned this one. I mean, I find it quite hard to believe that there's a 90 percent probability the sun will come back the next day - so therefore I take all the opportunity to get out in the sun that I can, and I've wound up lobster-looking on more than a few occassions...


Actually, one thing I really have just learned, via the amazing Google Earth, is that 10 degrees south on the same longitude as Portsmouth, England, is somewhere in the middle of Aragon, Spain. In fact, it's pretty much the desert.

Where are you? How does the latitude compare with your hometown? And what have you found most strange about your new geography (apologies to Ali Blah Blah if this is the incorrect scientific term)?

Visitors - The Unwelcome Kind

My brothers weren't my only visitors last month.

After picking them up, we drove from the airport to a few days by the beaches south of Atlantic City. Arriving back in New York a few days later, we found three cockroaches partying in the sink and a pair feasting in a food cupboard. It was a nice welcome to America for my youngest brother, and a nice welcome back to my middle brother -- who once had his fifth birthday cake consumed by some heartless carpenter ants when we lived here as kids.

My first task the next day was to find a suitable poison after my previous tactic of dressing as a superhero and wielding a can of Raid! had clearly failed. Adding COMBAT! to my anti-insect weaponry, I set about feeding the cockroaches before we went to bed, after having done any American housewife proud by cleaning out all cupboards and placing all contents in multiple sizes of baggies (as an aside, that word weirds me out nearly as much as panties.)

The next morning, the strips of poison were gone and the cockroaches were not evident. I did notice, however, some interesting small black crusts on top of the oven. Not having burned anything recently, I wondered vaguely whether I was witnessing the after-effects of the poison on the cockroaches and we all left the house to have a grand old time in the big city.

I should have recognised those little black offerings. When we walked back into the house, I opened the cupboard under the sink to throw some rubbish in the bin, and I was greeted by a mouse. Yes. A confused-looking mouse, whose nap in the bin by the cosy hot water pipe had been rudely interrupted. And later that night, a larger mouse made a bold run for freedom -- or, more likely, food -- across the kitchen and hallway.

We'd left the apartment empty for a matter of days -- but it clearly took less than that for it to become the building's cockroach mosh pit and mouse haven.

Weeks later and the building's exterminator has been and sprayed, I'm putting down COMBAT! every night, and yet the mice -- although less evident -- still appear to be holding up under the siege on the cupboard under the sink and the occassional drowsy cockroach still greets me in the morning.

Am I fighting a losing battle, or are there any secret agents of cockroach and mouse death out there that you know of? Also, I have a theory that the mice are actually eating the COMBAT! rather than the cockroaches... Apart from possible consequences to the level of mouse excretions, I suspect this isn't really achieving anything. Anyone else dealt with a dual mouse/cockroach assault?