What's with the British... traffic lights

In my years on this planet, I have travelled to many different countries (19 at this point), and have keenly enjoyed the differences between one culture and the next. While I do believe-clichéd though it may be-that there is more that makes us alike than different, more that unites us than divides us, I also feel that the nuances between two cultures are always fascinating and add spice to one's life and one's travels. So I love to see the differences, and compare my experience to the cultures I see around me.

In many cases, these differences are neither good nor bad, just

different and interesting. However, that's not to say there are some differences worth pitting two countries against one another for. And thus we come to today's "What's with the British?" post. I have come to the conclusion that out of everywhere I've lived, Britain alone must gain the title for World's Worst Drivers.

Now, I know this is contentious, and perhaps "worst" isn't exactly accurate. Let me clarify: Britain has the world's most inconsiderate drivers. I've ce

rtainly seen scarier drivers. The French for example, seem to have a distorted view of the size of their car, and merrily jostle into a space far too small for them (as evinced by the myriad bumps and scrapes on French cars). Americans practically invented road rage, and with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 250 million guns in the country, have reasons to fear that rage. The Cubans drive at breakneck speed, on whichever side of the road happens to be paved better, all while dodging oxen, chickens, and giant pickup t

rucks with 50 people in the back. And never before or since have I feared for my life like I did the day I took a taxi in Istanbul to Koç University evidently piloted by the illegitimate child of Mario Andretti and Lizzie Borden.

But I think the British are woefully inconsiderate for one primary reason (and many smaller ones I won't elucidate here): they have redefined the traffic light. This little fella right here:

Now to the rest of the world, this is a very standard symbol. Green means go, amber means slow down and red means stop. The British, however, have reinterpreted this. Green still means go, sure. But amber now means "fucking floor it!" and red means "don't worry, you've still got time to get through". I saw an American standup comedian once who described the people squeaking through at a red light by saying the first guy was legitimately unable to stop, the next guy excuses himself by saying he was just following the previous guy and a third person sneaks through admitting "sorry, I'm just an asshole". In Britain, four more cars follow that guy!

Most of these "What's up?" posts haven't been to rant-ish so far, but this one is: Britain, please stop when the light is red. I know you could lose up to 20 precious seconds, but I'm sick and tired of almost being run over for crossing-legally-on my bike or as a pedestrian!

What's with the British... deodorant

Continuing in my gripe of insignificant, yet strange and often irritating gripes about the UK: deodorant. Dear Britain, let me show you what deodorant should look like:

That's right, a stick of solid deodorant/anti-perspirant that you rub under your arms. These exist in the UK (only Lynx seems to make them, and they can be hard to find sometimes), but they do exist. And nobody uses them. Instead, they have this strange obsession with spray-on deodorant.

Now, it's not that spray-on deodorant is bad. It's that it doesn't work as well, people use so much of it that they end up filling the locker room with a noxious cloud of horrid-smelling cheap musk, they cost more, deplete faster and leave you reeking of cheap nastiness. So, actually, I guess it is that they're worse. There are times at my gym when I can't breathe without coughing and gagging in the locker room because some perspire-a-phobe has emptied nearly half a can on his underarms, chest, back, ass, legs, arms and face. I've literally smelt this putrescence outside two sets of doors from where it was applied.

Oh yeah, and you can't bring them onto airplanes. Use a stick of deodorant like normal people. Yeesh.

What's with the British... taps

OK, this is a consistent, albeit minor annoyance I've noticed since moving here. For some unfathomable reason, the British seem to insist on having separate hot and cold taps, rather than a single, adjustable one. Now, on the face of this, who cares? They're taps, it's not the end of the world. While this is true, it leads to the totally flummoxing situation where I have two choices when washing my hands; nearly-glacial cold water, or water so hot I cannot hold my hands under it (seriously, without hyperbole, the taps in the men's room in my office building dispense water so hot it steams). How is this useful? Who uses the hot one and where did they get the sub-dermal asbestos? But more importantly, is it really that tricky to get a tap which has an adjustable temperature?

What's with the British... an intro

So, I've periodically ranted about some weird eccentricity or idiosyncrasy about British culture, mores or norms. However, I've never really done so in a cohesive manner. That's about to change. Whenever I notice something that annoys, befuddles or perplexes me, I'll post it here, and tag it with "What's with the British". This page will serve as both an intro to this series, and an index. I expected that each post will be pretty short, as it's essentially just my ramblings about something confusing I've noticed since moving here.

• What's with the British... taps?
• What's with the British... deodorant?
• What's with the British... traffic lights?

Caving to the latest facebook meme

So, I was just going to ignore this latest facebook trend of "Post 25 random and largely irrelevant facts about yourself. But I've now been tagged in four such notes and read one from my friend Su who inexplicably didn't tag me (no love? Already thinks she knows everything about me? Who knows?). So here it is, 25 random facts about Dan:

1. I have two middle names; Wendell and Izatt. Izatt is my mom's maiden name; I'm not sure where Wendell comes from exactly.
2. I hate my birthday and since moving overseas and meeting new people have strictly limited the number of people who know when it is (mostly to girls I've dated). I don't like getting older, and I don't like a fuss and hate that everyone feels the need to argue this.
3. I'm in my fourth year of a three-year Ph.D. and haven't enjoyed a single day in the office in about two years.
4. One of my life goals is to watch all 250 movies in the IMDB top 250. I have yet to decide if I want to fix the list as it stands now, and watch those 250, or amend the list as new films get added.
5. For the first few days of my life, I was unnamed. My parents had thought of calling me "Jesse" but decided Jesse James sounded like a tribute to a bank robber. They thought of naming me Matthew but the nurse talked them out of it, saying that half the male babies born that year had been named Matthew. So until I became "Daniel", I was referred to simply as "Wrinkles".
6. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons frequently. My favourite character was a nearly-omnipotent level 25 fighter-mage who eventually became a demi-god and ruled over a large swath of land from on high. After that, the game kind of lost its challenge.
7. I periodically contemplate buying a motorcycle, but have so far refrained because my mother would fly to England and knee-cap me. Plus, I am concerned that I would look like a douchebag poseur. A seriously dorky one.
8. Due to hitting the gym and losing weight, I now own a suit jacket that is large enough to fit myself and my girlfriend in it simultaneously. I think it may be time to donate this to Oxfam.
9. I hoard many things, but amongst them are: padded envelopes, boxes of any kind and plastic shopping bags. I blame my parents and grandparents for this as my family owns such things as Christmas wrapping paper older than me, and three complete dining room tables.
10. I grew up in the same house for the first twenty years of my life, and have lived in 13 places since then. I went two years moving every 4 months, and this is the first time since 2000 that I have lived in the same location for more than 1 year at a time.
11. My first computer was a Macintosh 128K I inherited from my father. My current one is a MacBook Pro 2.33GHz 3GB Ram/320GB Hard drive. In the intervening time, I have had a Mac Plus, a Mac LC 475, a Powerbook 180, Powerbook Duo 280 and 2300c, a Powerbook 3400, A PowerMac G4, and a PowerMac G5.
12. When I moved to the UK in 2005, I brought two bags weighing 30kg each and a bicycle with me. I also shipped my 25kg computer (the G5 from above) and monitor over, and a box weighing about 15kg. I do not travel light, it turns out.
13. Despite being an electrical engineer, I am both somewhat frightened of electricity (having nearly electrocuted myself once or twice) and fairly incompetent. In undergrad labs, I blew up a CPU, two banks of NOT gates, three LEDs, two servo motors, an op-amp or two and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. The lab tech would become visibly worried whenever I would approach his office and once asked me "what did you break now?"
14. When my appendix was removed, in 1993, in Cuba, it was three times too long and in the wrong place, which made diagnosis difficult initially. As a result, it was only discovered by exploratory surgery lsating three hours and giving me a 6-inch, 22-stitch scar. A litre of pus was sucked out of my abdominal cavity, and the estimate of the surgeon was that my appendix had ruptured almost three days prior and had I waited as few as three more hours, I would've been septic, likely fatally. Coming on the first days of my holiday, the surgery and hospital stay ruined the entirety of my vacation. On the other hand, unlike when my friend Adam got sick on a camping trip with me, no helicopter-based evacuation was necessary.
    
15. Despite having debated at a university level for nine years, and achieving a modicum of success, I have never been to a Worlds competition. I have also never read the entirety of a single Economist, though I poked through a few articles in one issue around Christmas 2006.
16. No matter how drunk I am, I can almost always find my way home and take my contacts out. Even in a new city, I have never failed to make it home, and have only woken up with contacts in about twice.
17. I hate lab demonstrating (TAing), but have done so for two years running, and have grudgingly agreed to do it again this term, because I'm broke. However, I am refusing to mark anything this time (an activity I hate more than being completely broke). In the past, your mark would directly depend on how high you were in my pile. Near the top, I was less annoyed and frustrated, and thus more lenient.
18. I have one tattoo, on the back of my shoulder (a red maple leaf). I am contemplating getting a second, on my left upper arm, if I ever finish my degree. It will be (seriously) the schematic diagram of an N-channel enhancement-mode MOSFET transistor, surrounded by the words "Deus Ex Machina" (Latin for "A God From The Machine"). I think chicks will dig it.
19. I recently passed two workout goals: being able to bench more than my body weight (I can now do about 100kg) and do partial squats of more than double my body weight (I can now do about 200kg).
20. One of the most profound things anyone has ever said to me came from my brother, a guy not known for such profundity. He told me I'd waited too long in my life to start having fun. This is very true.
21. Although I want to travel around basically everywhere in the world, I get hesitant of places with an excess of poisonous snakes, bugs or jellyfish (which terrify me if I see them). That being said, I still want to go to Australia, which seems to have the highest concentration of all three. Oh yeah, machete-wielding rebels or machine-gun wielding drug lords also give me pause.
22. I am an unrepentant Triscuit addict. Anyone I know who goes back to North America does so with explicit instructions to bring me back some of these salty, wonderful crackers, as they aren't sold in the UK. The Black Pepper and Olive Oil ones are the best.
23. I do a mean version of Eminem's Without Me on karaoke. I will need to be moderately intoxicated to be convinced to do it, but not so much that I forget the words.
24. I'm convinced that everyone, even fairly "normal" people, have what I call "pockets of OCD"-little areas of life that must be certain ways, etc. I know I do: maps and menus must be folded correctly, socks must match completely, and so forth. Oh, and when I'm swimming, I'll often count the laps I've swum by finding significance in the number (i.e. 14 is the product of two primes, 15 is the house number I used to live in before my current place, etc.)
25. I have owned a total of six iPods, plus two replacement hard drives, two replacement batteries, a replacement motherboard and daughtercard and a second casing, including the buttons and electronic interface (that came with one of the second-hand, earlier iPods). Two are currently active (an iPod Touch and an iPod Shuffle), one was killed by getting rained on, one was run over by a bus, one was retired for a newer model, which was in turn left on a train when I was very, very tired.