Texas has a rep for being a wild place of the righteous cowboy way.
Austin has a reputation for being (a) weird (with a desire to keep it that way) and more recently (b) wired - and wired with intent, as exemplified by the SXSW music, film and tech conference mix
The whole state is also the place for cars - of all sizes (mainly big). Wide open highways and big wide roadways. I can't speak for the rest of the state, but in Austin at least, despite the CAR as the core means of individual transportation, drivers seem to be super pedestrian sensitive. Cars easily give peds the right of way at intersections. Interestingly, walkers also tend to wait for the lights at intersections, too. Jay walking seems the exception not the rule. And it seems to work. There seems to be an easy ebb and flow between cars and pedestrians that is rare. Now, maybe that's all just perception and not what a local Austonian (?) would tell you, but from the touristo/visitor perspective, Austin is a joy to walk.
One other thing? they have some interesting concepts with public transportation: core areas are seviced by something called the Dillo - a free bus service that takes care of the core area - about 5 miles square. It's free. But get this: public buses are 50c for adults. 50c for public transport!! AND Anyone with a university ID card can ride these buses FREE. Staff and students. The bus site has an effective route planner as well.
Austin is the third fastest growing city in the USA right now. It seems somehow incongruous that it would also have such a seemingly progressive stance on transportation. What a joy! visit austin: all the places you'd want to hit are available via bus or by walking - transportation is cheap and walkers are not treated as fair game for target practice.
Bliss.
(oh wow! and there's even wireless past every busstop! i'm posting this from a BUS coming down Congress AND THE CONNECTIONS coming out of shops and restaurants ARE FREE TOO!!!)
Technorati Tags: austin, pedestrians, technology, wifi, wireless
It never fails: get into a cab anywhere in the UK, and within minutes, i'll be asked "so, how long are you here for?" There are variations, "Are you traveling or on business?" - then the delicate probing to discover whether the accent originates from the US or Canada. This is followed by either "i have family in Canada" or "what part of Canada are you from?" - never mind that either (a) the person has never been there and so has no knowledge of what being from any region means or (b) their knowledge of the country is that they have relatives invariably either in Vancouver or Toronto. "They wanted me to come out there too, but...."
The surprise is the automatic assumption that if one has a north american accent, then that person is either a tourist or just in the UK on business. Even within a work context, i regularly get asked first if i am working over here and then "how long have you been here?" For a Canadian who's grown up around a sea of voices, such questions have never occurred to me to ask. But in the UK it seems it's the opposite. The assumption is first and foremost that you're visiting at most, and that if you're working here, it's just a quickie.
Is it so shocking to the UK psyche that someone from the New World/colonies would move to the old country?
In Canada, you're surrounded by accents, not the least of which is English of some sort. I've spoken with many many canadians about this: not once have any of us, on hearing a non-local accent EVER asked "so, how long are you visiting for?"
It's not that there's an assumption that the person either lives here (in Canada, say) or not. It's simply that to question someone about their locality would not occur as a question.
I was in yet another taxi awhile ago, and asked by the driver (a) where i was from and (b) how i liked it in the UK. When i asked her if she liked it in the UK, the reply was she hated it and wanted to leave. This is not the first time i've heard such admissions about wanting to get out.
I can't lay hands on it now, but there was a survey a couple years ago about Brits feelings about their home and native land - and nigh on 50% of them wanted to leave. Increasing numbers who can afford to are retiring to Spain and such warmer Euro climes - to the point where the local communities are getting quite miffed at the adamantly english invasion and lack of sensitivity to local cultures/languages.
Having only been here a few years now, i could only speculate about this angst to get out, whether these folks have ever been out or not, but it goes some ways to explaining the seeming mental hurdle that UK nationals seem unable to overcome when faced with a North American accent - a perspective that can't believe anyone who could chose to be elsewhere would be here.
The US still has mail on saturdays. Canada dropped saturday mail decades ago. In Canada it can take a week for a piece of post mailed from an address in Toronto to reach another address in Toronto. It recently took five weeks for an air mail envelop (light - contained a scarf a cousin had knitted for christmas) to arrive from california to the UK. "Typical" was the only reply.
In the UK, you can order a parcel from Scotland on Monday, and it will be with you in England by tea time on Tuesday.
To a Canadian, such postal service is just this side of miraculous; it's this kind of service that makes internet shopping something equally magical: order something from electronic scales to sneakers at a UK internet shop and it's there the next day - two days at the most - and at a savings from buying "on the high street." And there it is: brought right to your door. For those who are not keen on the hurly burly of heading into stores (the get in and get out types) this kind of shopping service is heaven sent.
And really, in the UK, there is an online store for everything. A colleague was telling me about a place that just sold hassocks. Another, that i wrote about earlier, just does light bulbs.
I thought perhaps this kind of internet service was a global phenom. It isn't.
i wanted to get a pal in the US a gift, so was looking to order something from a US online shop to be delivered to him - in the US: it would take 3-5 days to process the order and then another week for delivery of the goods. A ten day to two week process. The business processing the order was one part of the hold up; speed of the post is another.
Now maybe it's just that the UK has hit the sweet spot between geography and population density, such that it can move mail with such alacrity. After all despite Canada's land mass is three times the size of the US (the UK would likely fit inside the province of Alberta) it has a low population (about 33mil) compared to either the US (295mil) or the UK (60mil). Too few people to form a chain to pass the mail from one end of the country to the other?? And in the US? Just too many places for mail to get to, to be delivered efficiently? Dunno.
There's a lot of problems with services in the UK, as there seem to be in any country. Ask someone about trying to get an NHS dentist in the UK; where the concept of a semi-private room in a hospital is a complete non-starter (wards - just multibed wards here. does canada have wards in hospitals outside of Intensive Care Units?).
But when it comes to the mail, and what an efficient mail service enables for local trade, it seems quite untouched. I don't know what the rest of Europe is like, but compared to North America, the Royal Mail is a wonder.
In Canada, where i hail from, the term "brilliant" is gnerally reserved for truly outstandingly genius-like demonstrations of talent, intelligence, wit - whatever. It's not a term you hear often. If someone says "that was brilliant" or "she is brilliant" it's pretty much the highest degree complement with respect to intelligence or excellence one can achieve.
Not so in Britain (not prepared to generalize to the UK yet...).
In Britain, everything and anything can be "brilliant." Brilliant seems to be used in a way very similarly to the way "excellent" is used in most parts of North America. The one difference between the interchangeability of brilliant/excellent is the rather ironic way that brilliant can be used in the uk to indicate its opposite: you'll hear "oh that's just brilliant, isn't it" when something's really "a complete cock up" (to use another great brit'ism).
You'd rarely find a Canadian saying "oh that's just excellent" when it's a disaster. "That's just great...just great" is more common when going for reversal.
So if you're in the UK and someone says something you've done is "brilliant" - it's still a compliment, but it's just not as hot as you think were that epithet to be used back home. Alas.
Another expression that seems to have no Canadian equivalent is "bless 'em" or "lord bless 'em" or more simply "bless"
It's been harder to get a handle on when and how this particular expression gets used, but it seems to have something to do with covering one's ass after offering a critique of a person. Someone might say something to the effect of "he's not the sharpest tool in the shed" and follow this immediately with "bless him." The desired effect of the apostrophe "bless him" seems to be to mitigate the perceived harshness of the critique - so much to say "doesn't mean i don't like him or that he's not in other ways a nice person, no doubt."
The above interpretation is just deduction on my part based on the contexts of hearing the expression, and also the cultural context of observing the british reluctance (relative to canadians) of saying anything critical of anyone or anything.
This could well lead into an observation on canadian/british behaviour rather than word usage, but it's interesting to see how the two might be related.
It's just these small kinds of differences between english word usage that is part of the culture shock a person coming from Canada experiences when hitting the UK: the word differences become clues to deeper cultural differences that are more challenging to decode, because it's not a case of equivalences like "biscuit" in britain means "cookie" in Canada; it's a case of differences where there aren't parallels between the two places. So it sounds the same, but it isn't the same.
Even being in Britain for a few years now, i don't know how to interpret all the differences, but am better at recognizing them, and the recognition at least allows more comfort; less disorientation. I'll have to think of some examples anon.
Who'd a thunk it, eh? that two such supposedly historically close nations would have these, what would you call them, gaps in connection? I'm not sure what it's like for Brits going the other way, from here to Canada, if there's the same sort of sense of slight twilight zone off set. I have the impression of Canadians being so exposed, our heart, thoughts, everything on our sleeves, without being boisterous about it, that there'd be no difficulty getting a read on Canadian customs, practices and rationales for same. huh.
Mind you, try asking a Westerner why a Quebec'er may be a "separatist" and you'll soon see that we're not always so clear about our own culture(s), either...bless us.
My one previous experience of an apple store had been in a boston shopping center last summer when i watched in amazement as people came into the store, went straight to the cashier, pulled out a wad of hundreds, and requested an ipod. "Windows or Mac?" was the only question. More often than not, the answer was, interestingly, Windows. The cashier would turn to a wheeled cart, loaded with nothing but ipods, ask next "20 or 40" hand poised. The size was given and the exchange made. It mayn't have been a rush on the till, but it was a persistent and steady stream. And at least a transaction was taking place.
In London at least on this day, the grand Apple Regent Street Store was useless, unless of course your idea of a great store is something that disguises itself as an internet cafe - albeit one with some massive screens and the occasional ipod or digital camera attached. Maybe it's sale by virus? It was a pain in the ass. But since i seemed to be the only one in there interested in purchasing anything other than an iPod, maybe it's no big deal. Who am i to argue with a company that holds 2% of the PC market?
If you haven't been, the London Regent Street store is all open plan, pale wood floors, aluminum trim and glass panels, two floors. The crowd on the day i was there was largely 20-somethings taking over all the computer demo stations - to do email on a web browser or to configure IM to do fast chats. It was amazing. MSN messenger is certainly THE IM client - not ichat. There was a lot of IM'ing in spanish going on. Had word gone out to the backpack tourist crowd that this was the place to connect up with home? Something in the casual sashay of the staff suggested, however, that this was par for the course.
I had gone in to check out a new midi keyboard Apple was vending: it was attached to a 12"powerbook on a very short leash - and the guy "looking" at said power book was also just running a chat. When i asked about it wanting to check it out, the black shirted, black trousered "apple genius" was not particularly helpful: i wanted to try it. Like maybe to buy it. Oh well, too bad. Someone doing their email was using the space, so the customer can stuff it. Excuse me? i mean it must be a business plan right? Let people come in and use all this techno as a free internet cafe and that'll build brand loyalty. Don't ask them to move over because an actual customer might want to buy something or look at something. email/websurfing access is too important to the culture.
Two glorious 30" monitors set up side by side running off a g5 were not showing the marvels of final cut pro (aside: surely one 30" would do? have you seen these things? it's like swimming in a screen - just one - two is a jaw dropper. Who has a desk this wide? an office this wide??). No, these beauties were occupied by another person checking their mail. And that seemed to be just fine with all the staff.
And i mean all the staff. No shortage of the lads (i didn't see any women employed there: maybe they were all in the bathroom) who could point over the shoulders of the internet cafe-ers to try to paint a verbal picture of what the system would be like if you could actually get close to seeing it.
There were what appeared to be queues in front of many of the machines, but when i asked someone if they were in line (to try out the machine?) they said no. What they were doing, standing, staring, is still a mystery to me.
On the second floor is the theater. Some poor soul was giving a tutorial on the image editing software photo elements and doing some cool stuff. No one seemed to be watching - or listening; they were im'ing on their own laptops. Maybe the apple store is an open wifi point? so why not on a hot day come into the Xanadu of computer design, sit in a comfy chair, in a semi-darkened area, headphones on, and surf? Perhaps that's another subliminal message: Apple is so cool it provides free wifi; it is the internet cafe location (though there's no coffee on site) of choice. You don't need to come here to shop; just to absorb.
I'm trying to think of any other store where people could just come in an use the stuff for nothing to do with the store, actually stand in the way of potentially paying customers. Does this actually add, not lose sales?
Upstairs there was a line up not for the till, (like boston, ringing up ipods only there) but for the "genius bar" People with laptops, with questions, earnestly pouring out their hearts to another load of lads in a row, asking for healing, for vision, for confirmation that this was the end of their personal techno hell, the summit of wisdom had been reached.
At another round version of same, people sat in a circle looking earnestly at digital video cameras as the geniuses there walked the inner circle, helping decisions to be made.
While the first floor was the land of the internet cafe twenty-somethings, the info bars were the realm of people who looked like they already had substantial mortgages. Who might actually buy something - a digital camera not made by apple at the round bar - or who had actually bought something - at the line dance on the other side of the glass stares.
At uni i recall the rationalization for either selling software cheap at education rates was to build brand loyalty. Similarly, the looking the other way if someone had "illegal" software on their deck was rationalized as "heh, when i get a job and i can afford it, i'll buy it" - that's generally held true.
Maybe Apple's store is trying to build this kind of deferred product lust. Maybe that's a bigger market than the too few of us who might actually walk in to try something specifically with an eye to buy. Maybe it's working for apple. And the value of the many in the future exceeds the possible purchase at that moment by the one? Does this work? Or was this just a blip in the day of the life of a "flagship" Apple Store?
From a cultural perspective London Regent St Apple Store was an interesting experience, but as an individual consumer, it was a turn off. And if i wasn't already a long term apple customer, i could say one of those kinds of turn offs that make you feel you won't be back.
The Royal Ontario Museum has had one of the best presented ranges of Asian collections anywhere. Korea, Japan, China.
The British Museum is a grand place, with a masterful range of artifacts, but when it comes to the Asian artifacts it can't hold a candle to the ROM for presentation. Where the ROM sux, unless this has changed in the past couple years, is the lack of explanations for its displays. Here places like the British Museum come first every time.
Still, it's the display, the sense of mood, that the ROM creates. There's one room that has a set of wood carved statues of Chinese deities that is remarkable. The near life-sized carvings are on a raised platform with a wooden railing running round it - as if you're looking into a forest. Around the walls of the room are massive tapestries depicting scenes of enlightenment, and more carved sacred figures. The tone of the room is hushed, dark, deep. It's a wonderfully soothing space, with rich wooden benches for resting.
There's another gallery that had the statuary of a funereal garden or temple (forgive me, i do not know the terms). A model explains how the complete layout works. Two favorite pieces are larger than life grey statues of two guardian-like figures. one a warrior and one if i recall aright a scholar.
It was always disturbing that the museum hosted functions in this space (the gallery has large windows and you could see it from the street). Weird karma, that. Have a toast by someone's guardian of the dead?
The ROM also has a great rock/mineral collection. Here the explanations are better, and the flow of the displays are more tractable than the overwhelming number of cases at say the Natural History Museum in London.
Unfortunately, right now it seems that
most of the first floor (where all these galleries are) is closed (the page on closures is updated regularly) for a whopping renovation: the new facade is to have the museum appearing to come forth
from a giant crystal. Only hope this doesn't wipe out the great stuff that's been there like the last renovation did!
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2C6
http://www.rom.on.ca
If you like Sushi and are in Toronto, the best deal and best sushi in town has to be at Sushi Time.
They have two locations: one up around bloor and spadina, and one on the trendy queen street west.
They have great lunch specials and great combos. My favorites are the sashimi combos, which come in baseball, hockey and basketball sizes. Combos come with miso soup and green salad. All this for around 10$ Canadian for the baseball size.
The staff is also excellent, and seem to float between both locations.
Sushi Time
394 Bloor W, 416-323-2288
339 Queen W, 416-977-2222
My preference is for the location up on Bloor.