My kinda town rewind

To celebrate my imminent departure from the United States of America, I decided to look back at some of my old 'My Kinda town' posts and repeat them. Here are a couple to start with from my first few months in Chicago:

Dec 17 2003
Everyone is so nice to each other here it is sometimes nauseating. Many meetings end with loads of idea’s being floated that most people seem to think are complete bo11ocks. But no one will say it for the sake of upsetting someone’s feelings. In London in my experience in a close working team, it was more than except able to say “I think that is bo11ocks!”. Here in PC world you have to consider everything before tactfully suggesting that we tweak (a lot so it is unrecognizable) a previous idea to form something slightly better. That’s a win, win, win.

I have trained one of the lads in the office to call me a fcuking cnut once a day, because I so miss the ‘c’ word. It was common language in my office but is never used here because it is considered the ultimate insult. I mean you can call someone a mother fcuker, and that is fine!

It’s a bit like a women’s breast being blurred out on TV at 11pm at night, but watching someone having their brains blown out on afternoon TV is quite acceptable.

I have to admit some of the idiosyncrasies in this fine country I love. I was in Starbucks the weekend when a large fat lady in front of me asked the bloke server how many calories there were in the carrot cake. He looked at his co-worker (loving that expression too) and they both looked at the woman and said they didn’t know. “I need to know” she said and was told by the staff that it might be on Starbucks website. The large lady considered this for a while, whilst I looked at her incredible girth. “Ok, I’ll take just one she said.” Only in America eh?

Jan 2 2004
Time to update you on the things that annoy me most about Americans and America:

1. They bastardize the English language. I am forever seeing signs and names of places called things like Ezee Lay, Finger Lickin Good, bizzybees, Supa Shine. Kwik Pix and Hot Tix. And everything is abbreviated. This reminds me that some young fat (they are all fat) kid rocked up to me the other week and thought it “kind of neat that I spoke English!”

2. Words are spelt wrong, look – color, traveling, favorite and marvelous and bank check - all changed by my Microsoft spell check! Thank you Mr Gates.

3. They eat, sleep, breathe and eat and eat and eat food. That is what America is good at, oh that and being paranoid.

4. I watched the basketball the other night on TV and the Bulls after being way ahead lost in the dying seconds of the game to a very dubious decision. At the final whistle the Bulls fans were singing and dancing and happy, yes happy. Can you imagine that happening at a football league ground? If the yanks took out their violence on sports officials and opposing fans then maybe less people would get shot walking down the street!

5. It is fcuking cold.