29 November 2008
So this is Thanksgiving
The fourth Thursday of November means its Thanksgiving here and the official start to the holiday season (that lasts until 1st January). Thanksgiving has been celebrated in America since the English settlers arrived in the 17th Century. The most famous one seems to be the one in Plymouth (Massachusetts) in 1621 (however there were others before this and the earlier Spanish settlers had them in the 16th Century). Here the settlers gave thanks for the food they had managed to grow and the help they had received from the native American Indians (and in return they appear to have relieved…
24 November 2008
Viva La Vida; Vive Le Difference!
Several events last week highlighted the differences between the two cultures of Britain and America. It all started when we received an Amish Friendship Bread “starter”, a sample of the said bread and some instructions. Now just to clarify the Amish are those people with the funny beards who don’t like TV and other modern things. They originated in Switzerland in the 17th Century and moved to Pennsylvania because they were persecuted in their home land. There’s about a quarter of a million Amish today in various places (mainly Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana with a few in Ontario over the…
05 November 2008
When fiction meets fact
Two years after Matt Santos won the fictional US Presidential Election in TV’s The West Wing the real life person he is supposedly based on, Barack Obama, won the real thing. The 37 pages of other election results have also been decided (or will be today) and so thankfully we can return to normal advertising, at least for another four years. You won’t be surprised to hear that not everyone is as happy as Mrs Obama about the result last night. An elected member of the State Board of Education in one of the districts here (ie a supposedly educated…
02 November 2008
Be silent, friend, Here heroes died, To pave the way, for other men
As we arrived at the Mission San Antonio de Valero, otherwise known as the Alamo, the strains of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” was just fading out on San Antonio’s new 97.7 rock station (so new it didn’t even have a decent strap line - they should follow the lead of San Francisco’s 107.7 The Bone - “Classic Rock that Rocks”). Its funny that Ozzy Osbourne should be singing at this point, since he famously urinated on the Alamo during a tour there in 1982 (he was wearing one of Sharon’s dresses at the time, since she confiscated his clothes in…
31 October 2008
Trick or Treat?
Although the tradition of celebrating Halloween was started in Europe by Pagans it has long been a popular annual celebration here in America. Unlike the UK, in America the vast majority of people take part in the festivities (apparently something like 80% of adults give out candy and 93% of children go out trick-or-treating). Anyway, here’s the Halloween agenda: 1. Get a Pumpkin: No problem there. Plenty to choose from at our local grocery store. 2. Decorate the house, and any children you might have: 3. Go out and trick-or-treating and return with your…
24 October 2008
This week I have been mostly in Chicago
Time for another bit of traveling, this time starting in the Windy City. Chicago is the third largest city in the USA (New York City and Los Angeles are numbers 1 and 2 respectively - Houston is number 4) and is on the shore of Lake Michigan, one of the five North American Great Lakes. As always with America, everything is bigger so this Lake is actually larger than Croatia. You can see the shore here with Navy Pier (which includes a Ferris wheel, theaters, museums, shops and restaurants) to the left: I can think of at least two bands…
18 October 2008
Friday night at the Warehouse
What could be better for a Friday night than going to a 1920’s era converted warehouse to listen to the masters of progressive death metal, Sweden’s very own Opeth? Warehouse Live, located in Houston’s Warehouse district (where else?) is just a few blocks from Minute Maid Park, where we saw the Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves a few weeks ago. This place is unlikely to win any venue awards (apart from smallest toilets) but it was an ideal location for Stockholm’s finest. The name Opeth, in case you are wondering, is derived from Opet which means “city of the…
13 October 2008
In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Today is Columbus Day here in the USA, a public holiday to celebrate the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America. He spotted land (the Bahamas) on 12 October 1492 (actually 21 October in the modern Gregorian calendar). This is celebrated as a Federal holiday on the second Monday in October every year. Unfortunately for children here in Houston this is just another school day as they have to make up the time missed during Hurricane Ike’s visit here. Of course not everyone thinks it was a good idea that Columbus discovered the Americas on behalf of the Europeans. There’s some…
29 September 2008
The largest bingo game ever?
7 weeks after we last saw it in Epsom our container arrived in Houston. This container left Felixstowe, UK and sailed to Houston, USA via Bremerhaven, Germany and Charleston, USA as shown here: The container arrived at the Port of Houston, after navigating up the Houston Ship Canal. The first steamship travelled up this route in 1837 and Houston unloaded the world’s first container ship, the M/V Ideal X, in 1958. Today the Port of Houston is the largest port in the USA by foreign tonnage (and second by total tonnage). 7,550 vessels carried more than 200 million tons of…
28 September 2008
Houston, we’ve had a problem
If ever there was an understatement this must be it. 200,000 miles from Earth an oxygen tank ruptured on board the spacecraft Apollo 13 and damaged the service module resulting in a loss of oxygen and electrical power. Commander James Lovell (played by Tom Hanks in the movie Apollo 13) reported the incident to the Apollo Mission Control Center in Houston using just these words. The story of the successful return to Earth of the three astronauts (Jack Swigert and Fred Haise were with Lovell) is a credit to the engineering ingenuity of the astronauts and the ground team. Anyway,…