Chicken and tips

I woke up fairly late on Sunday; around 11. Gary gave me three options for breakfast: cereal, cheap out, or classy out. I opted for classy out (but of course!), and he drove us to a nearby restaurant in Crystal City. It was pretty fancy, and I would’ve felt out of place in shorts had all the other customers not been dressed the same. What struck me immediately was how polite everyone was – it is something of a stereotype but in my experience quite true. Fascinatingly, they all think British people are the polite ones. I don’t. I suppose what we’re all really saying is “people in the service industries you’re likely to encounter as a tourist are polite”, but that’s a bit more of a mouthful. Even with that restriction, I’d still say Americans are more polite. An incredibly basic example: I bought plasters this morning at a chemist’s (or, “bandaids at a pharmacy”). In Britain, I would anticipate an exchange something like this:

Me: “Hi.”
Them: “Hello. Three ninety-nine.”
Me: “Thanks.”
Them: “Thank you.”

This morning’s conversation went like this:

Me: “Hi.”
Them: “Hello sir, how are you?”
Me: “Very well thanks, how are you?”
Them: “I’m good thank you. That’ll be three dollars and ninety-nine cents.” Me: “Thanks.”
Them: “Thank you. Have a nice day!”

To attempt to balance this plainly biased anecdotal evidence, I should mention the “conversation” I had with the baggage-handler at Penn station before I got on my train to DC. American trains go a long way, it is a continent after all. As such, many trains require you to check in your baggage before you get on the train. I assumed this would be the case with my train, so approached the man at the baggage desk. He was slouched over said desk, chewing a pen. I said I’d like to check my baggage in and he responded “Lemme see yer ticket” around the pen. After inspecting my ticket he said “It’s carry on”. I said “I’m sorry?”. He snapped “It’s a carry on train. You carry your luggage on.” I apologised and thanked him, and he seemed to mellow. “Where ya from?” he asked. “England,” I said, smiling. He said… absolutely nothing. He stayed slouched, chewing his pen, staring at me.

Also, I should say I don’t believe the woman in the chemist’s is actually interested in how my day is going any more than the figurative one in the UK, or indeed any other person to whom I am a stranger, but it is the /willingness to engage/ that I admire.

Anyway, I have digressed so much I never actually started. Sadly it’s now time for me to go hunt some dinner. The only other salient point you need to know is that Gary cooked chicken marabella for dinner, which was very nice (mental note to cook it when I get home) – that’s where the ‘chicken’ of the title comes from

Right, see you cats tomorrow. Probably.

I. Must. Sleep.

This probably won’t be the most lucid thing I’ve ever written, as I’ve now been awake for seventeen hours. However I can’t sleep on trains and I need to do something, so witterblogging can be that something.

Today started smoothly enough – up at 6 to checkin at 8 for a flight at 11. Unfortunately said flight was delayed by two hours.

Shortly after 1 the passenger sat next to me buried her fingernails into the armrests as we zipped off the runway up to 40,000ft (at over 500mph. Five. Hundred. Don’t be all ‘ya ya, that’s what planes do, get over it’ – that’s impressive!).

I was sat in the emergency aisle. When they asked at checkin if I would be prepared to help the crew in the event of an emergency landing I was tempted to say “well I’ll try and make everyone be quiet so we can drown with a spot of dignity” but I felt my audience wouldn’t have appreciated it. Thankfully the promised disaster never occurred (unless you count the makeup on one of the trolley dollies-haw haw! But seriously, she looked like the joker. Anyway)

As I sat on the plane I congratulated myself on my planning – I knew the bus from the airport to the train station would take about an hour, including getting the baggage on, so I’d left a four hour gap. This was now a bit-less-than-two hour gap.

*bung*

“This is Captain Hoojamaflip, JFK have us in a holding pattern, we will be arriving slightly later than scheduled.”

Bum. Hole.

When we arrived at JFK I still stood a chance, as long as customs went smoothly.

I expect those of you who have been to the US recently are chuckling now.

The ESTA, which I’d filled in online, needed to be filled in again on paper. I had no pen, but on the advice of recent US visitors I did have a printed copy of my ESTA form with me anyway. Not good enough! Needs to be on the BLUE FORM, as an official kindly snarled at me. After much pen-borrowing I got through customs to baggage retrieval, where my flight’s baggage had got mixed up with another’s. Tick. Tick. Tick.

By the time I got to the shuttle bus I decided it wouldn’t make it on time, so I got in a taxi. This would’ve been a good idea, had it not been rush hour.

So the drivers are all mental in New York. To a man. A man in particular being my driver (but of course), who weaved between fast-moving streams of traffic just like they do in the fillims. Strangest part about it: nobody blew their horn. Not once. Like they just accepted it as normal. Also no pedestrian ever shouted “I’m walkin’ hyeeeeyr!”, which was something of a disappointment.

The part of town containing JFK is fairly dull. Kinda like any other city really. Didn’t “feel like America” so to speak. Well, not until I saw a massive billboard with a splattered blood motif inviting people to give details on cop shootings by ringing 1-800-SHOT-COP.

Soon enough we reached NYC proper, and it was nuts. Vehicles (including bicycles and rickshaws) and pedestrians all ignoring signals and going (at speed) when they felt there was a gap. Eventually we pulled up and the driver waved me off down a street with a vague ‘that way’. As it turns out, he meant seven blocks ‘that way’. Cheers!

All was not lost at the train station. The woman at the ticket office politely informed me they’d take the cost of my unused ticket off the price of the next one. Hooray! So that’s $76 off.. slightly less than $200. Unhooray!

So that brings me to where I am now, in the quiet coach of the Acela Express to Washington D.C. (Americans always use full stops between letters in acronyms – trufax!). We just stopped at Philadelphia, and the light is fading. Over here it is getting close to 9pm. My phone says it is 0135, and my brain says it is banana o’clock.

Goodnight, if you can.

Digital economy bill

Below is the letter I sent to my MP about the digital economy bill. For more info on the bill, have a look at..

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/disconnection/why-care
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/extremeinternetl

The 38degrees site will help you write to your MP too.

Dear Mr Lloyd

Have you read the digital economy bill being rushed into law without debate?

It makes the owner of an internet connection liable for any copyright infringements that occur through its use, even if those infringements are carried out by someone unknown to the owner, without their knowledge.

Let’s imagine an average household. Fred has wireless internet installed at home, but he’s by no means an expert. His 13-year-old son knows far more than he does about the computer. Unfortunately for Fred, one of the things his son knows is how to download songs for free. He has a vague feeling that it’s supposed to be wrong, but he’s never really understood how – it’s not like he’s stealing them after all. Sadly, an infringement is an infringement and the kid will learn when Fred gets the first letter from the ISP. A couple of weeks later Fred’s son invites a friend over to work on a school project. His friend brings his laptop, and it automatically connects to the wireless network. It then resumes what it was doing before he put it to sleep at his own house – namely downloading the torrent of the new Transformers film. Oh dear! Infringement two. Fred is now particularly tense – the second letter has made it quite clear he’ll be disconnected next time, and he has no idea how to stop the computer letting his son download songs. Can you make the computer do that? He doesn’t know, so he has to rely on his son’s word. Unfortunately for him his technically-literate neighbour has hacked into Fred’s wireless network and downloaded several films.

When Fred gets disconnected, the letter says he can appeal. But what can he say? He has no idea who downloaded that last batch of films. His son is adamant it wasn’t him, or any of his friends. Fred doesn’t have the technical knowledge to know where to begin proving his innocence.

It’s fair to say I grew up with the Internet – I was “online” before the web had been invented – but even with that experience I couldn’t prove Fred innocent either. His wireless router probably doesn’t record information about the computers it connects to the Internet (mine doesn’t), but even if it did all it could record would be the MAC address. This is effectively just a name, unique to each computer. The record would contain entries for Fred’s computer, his son’s computer, and a mysterious other computer, which was connected at the time of the infringement. Unfortunately even with this information Fred still can’t prove his innocence as there’s nothing to say he doesn’t own the third computer too.

The fear of similar situations will mean public wireless internet will all but vanish. What cafe owner will take the risk? A technically literate one would realise the need to record extensive logs, which comes at a cost significant enough to make the free internet too expensive to be worth the effort.

Perhaps more important than the technical considerations is the fact we are talking about “proving innocence”. If that concept in itself is not fundamentally wrong then it is surely a significant enough departure from the usual application of law that it deserves intense parliamentary scrutiny – don’t you agree?

The music and film industries like to portray anyone disagreeing with their draconian copyright reform demands as freeloading “pirate” pseudo-anarchists who just don’t like paying for things. This is simply not true – all of my technically-literate friends are against this bill, and all of us regularly buy music and films, whether in shops or online, through services like iTunes and Spotify.

In a leaked email (available at http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/12/leaked-uk-record-ind.html) Richard Mollett, Director of Public Affairs at the BPI relates a “strange sense of detachment” amongst MPs regarding the digital economy bill. Apparently, MPs are “already resigned to the fact that they will have minimum input into the provisions”. Are you already resigned to it Mr Lloyd?

Yours sincerely,
Chris Russell