Jenn: Friday night would have been normal if it had ended at 2

We did make it to a Kebab van which is a very Oxford thing to do.

There is this awful, awful "public service announcement" commercial that makes me bury my head in a pillow and sing until it's over or leave the room. I've seen it three times and it gives me nightmares.

• The scene: A mom is driving with two teenage kids in the back seat, nice day, looks like a car commercial.
  
• We see a scary white van following the car. Voiceover: "Like most victims, Louise knew her killer".
  
• Louise is watching the scary van in the rearview mirror. It turns right. She looks back at the road and slams into the car in front of her.
  
• The camera is on the back seat. We watch her son slam forward and then slam back. His nose is all bloody. Then the daughter starts screaming (this is awful).
  
• Voiceover: "When Billy killed his Mum he sat back down. Wear your seatbelt"
  

They have much more graphic commercials here. I was talking to someone about it and he said that last Christmas they started showing insanely graphic drunk driving commercials. And drunk driving actually plummeted. They also have way less commercials here, so when you're watching an American show (I don't watch that much tv I swear) the commercial breaks are at all the wrong spots.

Today I learned just how random the co-op process is...

We got the resume packages from co-op this afternoon. There were a whack of them. The first thing my boss did was thin them out for me (I guess I was the second round people had to get through) and then he was going to narrow it down to about 12. Gareth made 2 piles a "yes" and a "no". You were put in a pile based on your cover sheet. If it was empty or had more "Goods" and "Very Goods" than "Excellents" and "Outstandings" it was a no (There was a case of a cover sheet with 2 "Excellents" and 1 "Very Good" that was tossed in the air, heads it's a yes, tails it's a no).

But Gareth (probably like everyone) had weird things that got you to round 2... Like fancy, coloured paper (how ridiculous is that!).

Then I went into the boardroom with the stack of resumes for round 2. Jenn looked at the ones for test and I looked at the ones for dev. About half of them were awful. They were misspelled or had no whitespace or were just ugly. There were some that were printed out with a printer that was low on ink. And they would have funny things like uC++ (you guys see why that's funny...). One girl was turned away because she "Programmed in html".

The packages that stood out had good, personalized cover letters. Gareth would search out the ones with cover letters because they were more fun. And anyone with a half decent resume to back it up got through the second round.

Also, the 'Interests' section at the very bottum that everyone says is crap probably got some people through. When I was undecided that's where I would look. Anyone at that point with 'break-dancing club' I knew would fit in at the company (DDR, remember).

Reading the paper yesterday, Waiters Lose Court Battle over Tips caught my eye. In the UK tips paid via credit card or cheque don't necessarily go to the waiter. The biggest problem I have with this is that the customer is deliberately led to believe that the money is going to the waiter. That's what a tip is.

A follow-up article today quoted the lawyer representing the 4 waiters: Even if the employers are keeping the money [from tips], a lot of waiters are told that, if asked, they must say they get it.

When I was a server we made great tips but I would also cash out to the bar (1.5% of my total bills for the night goes to the bartenders) and the hostesses (1%). So if a table left no tip the server actually loses money. We were also forbidden to talk about tips, it was grounds for being fired. I think because it created animosity between the kitchen staff and the servers.

We would also put about $1 every shift into a pool. If a group dined-and-dashed it was 100% the waiter's responsiblity to pay the bill. The pool was insurance that would cover the bill.

Saturday we went to London (again). I really want to love London. It's a hard city to love but I think we took some real steps in our relationship. I went to Portobello Market for hours. That's the market in "Notting Hill". I went into the travel bookshop (it's real). It was actually a really good bookshop.

It was London Open House this weekend. Hundreds of buildings that aren't usually open to the public are, well, open to the public. It's a big architectural event. When I'm in situations like that (art galleries etc.) I feel some regret at not having a liberal arts education. Anyway, I went to the Carmelite Monastary and Leighton House. Then I met up with the rest of the kids on High Street and we had a fantastic, reasonably priced meal.

Paris: Friday October 4th to Monday October 7th

I'm tres excited!

So last night Jenn and Sean and I are sitting around the kitchen table listening to BBC1 or Fox (both Brit-candy-pop). We're listening to a song we've heard over a million times before "She's What I Go To School For" by Busted (they were at Party in the Park and according to J and S very good air guitarists and lip synchers).

It's a song that you don't really listen to the words of. But we started listening for some reason and got really confused when the line "she may be thirty-three but that doesn't bother me". What was this song really about?? We listen closer. It can't be about his teacher, THAT'S ILLEGAL.!!

At the end of the song the female British announcer came on and said, "Busted. A song about stalking your teacher".

Here are the lyrics for your enjoyment. I'll maybe put the song up if I can find itand/or have time.

Gareth the boss just got DDR Dance Mats. Dance Dance Revolution. They're set up in the conference room and I think it would be perfectly acceptable to dance the day away. That's way cooler than foozeball eh?

Last night we went to the Eagle and Child. It's kind of cool when you're in a pub and it was built in the 1300's eh? We went with this guy who Jenn met on the bus. The guy Craig, worked at MTV as an intern this summer and had some good "famous people" stories. We really are slightly desperate for friends. I'm awaiting what Oxford is like *with students*. Craig is on exchange at Oxford Brooks, which is the University down the street from Oxford (think of the complex you'd have. Kind of like Laurier :) ). We're trying to get the low-down on freshers week. Mmmm eighteen year olds...?

Grocery shopping is very different here. And since I have no money to eat out I've been doing a lot of grocery shopping. You notice right away that the grocery stores are smaller and few people have carts. I like that. There are also some great food that you just can't get at home. Like curry everything. And yogurt here is fantastic. Today I had "strawberry-rhubarb". There are some weird and wonderful flavours and they sell them in "theme" packs of 4. There's gooseberry, rhubarb, blackberry... a whole caramel theme.

But every single visit to the grocery store is made stressful by the check-out line. First, it's normal for lines to be 10 people deep. Everyone just stands there while there are only 3 queues open. I saw a guy wait for 15 minutes to buy a pack of batteries. But this I can handle. The only real problem is that you have to pack your own groceries. "What's the problem Natalie?" you ask. Anytime you find yourself with a reasonable number of groceries, it is very difficult to keep up with the cashier. You're trying to pay, the bags get stuck. When this happens the cashier waits for you. They don't help you with your bags and they don't start ringing in the next person. They sit and wait while you fumble madly and everyone stares at you.

So now I see the checkout line as a "challenge". As soon as it's my turn, I just throw things in bags wildly, give the cashier the biggest bill I have and throw the change in my purse.

Notes about the weekend:

Friday is a blur. The pub turned into 'All Bar One' an over-21 bar which turned into a club, 'Love' ("Where are you?" "I'm in Love"). Jenn told me more than once, "This is the drunkest I've ever been". The night ended with Jenn puking out our kitchen window which was pretty funny.

The drinks at Love were £4.50 each. Let's do the math: £4.50*2.4 = 10.80 CAD.

Sean was picked up by an unstable girl in Borders on Saturday. When he said he lived in Canada she said, "That must be really scary, what with all the bears." Don't worry. He got her number.

I really like slightly hungover Sunday afternoons. No one does this better than Jon, Robin, Kev et. al. So this Sunday I was hungover and didn't feel like doing anything except watching movies and eating popcorn in my pajamas. But we don't have a VCR... I read a book instead.

But Sunday night... College Girls part II. We followed around a completely different college girl as she campaigned for vice-president of the Oxford Union. It was sooo good. Of course Mark is going to join the Oxford Union. My prediction is that Mark will soon own a tuxedo with tails.

Comments don't work yet. Going to the pub.

Last night we had our orientation at our new gym. According to 'some guys', Chelsea used to go there. Everyone talks about Chelsea with disdain, but will tell you every degree of seperation between them and her (eg "My friend lived down the hall from her boyfriend"). The gym is really nice and clean and new. The orientation-guy commented on how impressed he was with Americans/Canadians because the first thing they do when traveling is find a gym (as opposed to the British who go straight to the pub).

Although we did go to the pub last night as well!

Jenn and I bought our tix to Italy. We leave for Venice on Wed. October 23 and leave from Rome on Wed. October 30th.

This weekend was great. The staff party on Friday involved a lot of (free) food and good wine. A bunch of us went to the Purple Turtle afterward which is the Oxford Student Union bar. They didn't seem to have an amazing selection of beer but they did have Labatt Ice. On Saturday Francis, Will and Sean and I made it to London again. We spent the whole afternoon in the Tate Modern and we only saw the 3rd floor. It was fantastic and I regret not going to the MOMA with John and Jen when I had the chance.

The best part of the weekend was possibly College Girls. It's a docu-soap about girls going to St. Hilda's, Oxford's last same sex college. The beginning was like the beginning of 90210 but instead of Beverly Hills it was in Oxford. The plot was brilliant as well. It followed 'The Socialist' as she protested the Uni's new £1000 fee.

And it actually had the line (with piano music and the camera on a swan) It is winter. And the river where Lewis Carroll once wrote of Alice in Wonderland has overflowed.

For undisclosed-to-the-internet-community reasons I had a doctor's appointment today. I registered at the clinic in my district (so now I actually have a family doctor). The doctor asked me to "wee in a pot". I found that funny.

Right now I'm at a staff party (this is an noon-night event). We're drinking (a lot) and playing Quake. The team that wins (Quake) gets to choose a new lifesize cardboard cutout to join Buffy. Yes that's right. There is a lifesize Buffy cardboard cutout in the office. She has her own business card. Did I mention that when Jenn and I joined the co. we doubled the number of women in the office :).

The story so far:

I've moved to Oxford UK for my co-op term at Decisionsoft. I've found a place to live with great people for an obscene amount of money. I'm living with 3 students from Waterloo: Jenn, Sean and Francis. We live in a 5 bedroom flat (no common room except the kitchen). As of now our flat doesn't have a phone, and we don't have a 5th flatmate yet.

I think that Oxford is the nicest city imagineable. It's old and there's so much history. It's also really manageable and everything's centralized. It's a big student town. And it's really easy to get into London (about a 1 hour train ride).

I've been here just over a week and I'm already pretty used to things that I thought I'd never get used to. I'm used to the 'driving on the wrong side of the road thing'. I'm also getting really used to the accents. (aside: Yesterday a cashier made Jenn say "about" because she was Canadian... Isn't that weird?) And the weather isn't awful (yet?). It's never really hot but there have been some great sunny days.

I also think that this blog is hideous but everyone else has taken the good templates! I might or might not make it better.

First post.