Ein²

[Feminine Façades & False Faces]

I was listening to my '50 Least Played' list in iTunes a few weeks ago when it rotated to a Disney soundtrack song called Femininity from the 1963 movie Summer Magic. Talk about lyrics from an age with a different set of values:

Let him do the talking
Men adore good listeners
Laugh, but not too loudly (Haha)
If he should choose to tell a joke
Be radiant, but delicate
Memorize the rules of etiquette
Be demure, sweet and pure
Hide the real you

Can you imagine the damage done to an entire generation of young women upon being advised to "hide the real you"? So you would have a private personality that you could maybe share with your close girl friends and a public personality on display to your husband and his male friends or colleagues. I know I would find it very difficult, cultural expectations and conditioning or not, to go through life projecting a fa�ade so much at odds with my inner self-image, although even I admit to tailoring my self-expression somewhat for the audience at hand. Still, spending a large portion of your life suppressing your natural self sounds like the sure road to psychotherapy and confusion, because you feel that your 'true self' is not worthwhile or valued.

However, with the exception of the actual advice, maybe life isn't so much different these days, especially in our virtual world. The famous 1993 New Yorker cartoon, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog", pithily captures the very heart of the false face syndrome, even at such a young stage in the growth of the Internet. From my years of being involved in Internet Relay Chat multi-player games, I have had a fair bit of exposure to people and their personas on the Internet. Based on my anecdotal evidence, I would say that most people, at least to a small degree, portray themselves differently on the Internet than in so-called 'real life'.

Part of the perceived difference between the real and the virtual persona is due to the time flow of the medium. When you are text chatting with somebody, you have the opportunity to mull over your response. Even if it's a real-time chat, you still have that gap between thinking something, typing it, and pressing return to send it, which allows you re-think or reformulate your contributions. This time flow gap is even larger if you are interacting with others via e-mail, mailing lists, or discussion forums. Even if you are not consciously amending the projection of yourself, you are at least able to ensure what you display reflects the best that you can be, an idealized or stylized version of yourself.

For example, I do most of my current teaching online to distance educatiion students at the Open University. Even though I am notorious for my short temper and impatience, my students never "see" that aspect of me. No matter what the provocation, I can always keep my cool, precisely because there is a gap between my physical reaction and my virtual reaction. In this particular case, I am not deceiving anybody in a harmful way; I am, in fact, improving their learning experience.

What about those who do feel the need to hide their true selves, even on the Internet where they are already physically distanced from other people? They hide their bodies. They hide the darker sides of themselves beneath a cheerful exterior. The truth is, most people are unhappy with who they are. We are constantly bombarded on television and magazines, particularly women, to be pretty, to be thin, to be smart, to be witty, or to be the perfect housewife. Although I suspect it is not to the same degree, men, too, do not escape this. They worry about their appearance, their performance, and their very masculinity.

People who are, at heart, unhappy with themselves have the opportunity to revel in the freedom of the anonymous Internet. Your voice is too shrill? No problem, nobody can hear you. You're overweight and adolescent acne still plagues you? Again, this is the Internet, and nobody has to see you. You can't think of witty rejoinders until five minutes later? Not only do you now have more time, but you can use a search engine to look for other people's witty statements. You have the freedom to be a sock puppet or a troll or a fake femme. While these might be fun corners of your personality to explore or to encourage, how many true emotional bonds can be built between groups of people projecting false personas?

In the 1950s, you were encouraged to hide your true self and be someone model perfect. This is not the 1950s or 1960s anymore. Now, you have a choice. Yes, you can be anything or anyone on the Internet. Woman or man, why not choose to be you? Leave behind the false fa�ades. Value yourself. Be yourself.

[ADHD Adolescent and Adult]

Hello, my name is Michelle and I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The Beginning

Diagnosed, labelled, and forever branded. In 1978, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the psychiatrists and doctors pronounced that I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That was long before ADHD/ADD was fashionable even in North America. My diagnosis involved my being hospitalized for several months in the childrens' ward of the University of Alberta hospital while doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists tried to figure out what was "wrong" with me. They arrived at a diagnosis of ADHD only after eliminating everything else they could think of, including schizophrenia. At the time, ADHD, while known in Canada, was not often diagnosed, and it was very uncommon for it to be diagnosed in females.

What was I like before being diagnosed? Let me take you on a flashback vignette tour.

Vivid memory #1: Home, 1973
My parents have banished me to my bedroom. My mother, exhausted at trying to keep up with me, has left me alone for a bit without anything interesting around. I decide it is time to fingerpaint on the walls—with faeces.

Vivid memory #2: Back wall of classroom, 1977
I am against the back classroom wall, banging my head rhythmically, hard against the wall, and repeating "banana" ad infinitum. There is no time but the now. There is no thought but the one. I am calm. I am one.

Vivid memory #3: Classroom, 1978
The other students are learning how to print, tracing over letters in a workbook. Somehow I cannot do this. I cannot hold the pencil correctly. It hurts my hands. My straight lines look as if they suffer from Parkinson's. I feel immsensely frustrated because I cannot get a grip. The teacher tries to help. I lose it. The workbook goes flying across the room, pages torn and ripped. The contents of the desk are unceremoniously dumped on the floor. They return everything to its place. I start the destructive cycle over. This is repeated until finally nobody bothers to put the things back. They banish me to the hall. The hall wall and I are friends. I am one with my head-banging banana mantra.

I was a child with no sense of boundaries. I said whatever came into my head and did whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. My parents were forever lamenting that I lacked common sense or did not think before I did anything. It was not that I did not think before talking or doing, it was that I had no cognitive processes to assess the effect of my actions and judge them as appropriate or inappropriate. The world was an endless changing kaleidoscope of sensations, leaving me bewildered about what was important or relevant, and what was not.

My parents, poorly informed and confused about me, did not know how to cope. I was bouncy, too energetic, talkative, assertive, and rapid. My mother had a nervous breakdown shortly after my initial diganosis, and she was hospitalized for several months; she blamed me.

Most of my childhood I spent shunned, alone and friendless. Confusion, fear, and intolerance surrounded me. The children in the schools I went to shunned me because I was so different, so weird. My parents did not adequately understand my problems and had some problems of their own, so I probably did not get the support I needed there. It was a very lonely and sad life, and I feel that I did not have a proper childhood.

Life on Ritalin

What was life like after diagnosis and Ritalin? I find it difficult to describe the differences as I failed to recognize them. To me, I was the same—me. However, the outside world told me there were changes. I managed to spend more time in the classroom, although I still spent probably up to almost 75% of my time outside the classroom until 1983. My academics picked up, and I could learn things in the school. By 1982, I was an honours student, and I stayed that way until I graduated from high school. Throughout the entire period, I was not a spaced-out walking automaton; I was bright, energetic, ambitious, and bouncy—known for singing during classes and other odd, endured behaviours.

Throughout my school years, other students ostracised me for being "different," for being weird. My parents tried changing school systems but the overgrown hamlet I lived in just was not that large. The kids in the Catholic school system knew the kids in the public school system. I was always an outsider and a loner and that, combined with other oddities in my home life, left me profoundly marked for life.

Life after Ritalin

I stopped taking Ritalin in 1985/86, some seven or eight years after I first started. The doctors believed that children outgrew ADHD in adolescence and there were concerns that the Ritalin was interfering with the onset of puberty. I believe the latter to be true in my case as I went from having no secondary sexual characteristics to bursting out with them in relatively short order after that.

Not too long after I stopped taking Ritalin, I moved out of home and continued my studies via distance education, night classes, and summer courses. It took me three years to finish off my last year of high school after I left home, and then I returned to traditional "class-based" education by entering university.

Life at university was very difficult for me. I spent hours and hours trying to do the assignments. I could not pay attention at lectures, often falling asleep. It was an endless, unrewarding struggle to read. I would find myself reading the same paragraph over and over again and realize that nothing had sunk in. I immersed myself in my courses all the time. I did not have any free time. My common-law husband spent hours trying to help me. I taped material. I wrote up my own summaries of material. I typed up all my notes after writing them. Studying for exams was my own personal Hell. Despite all my efforts, I was just barely passing most of my courses. It was incredibly frustrating to put all that effort in and not seem to reap any benefits.

After two and a half years like this, I was on the verge of academic probation because my grades were so low. Something had to change, and several things did: I changed my major from pre-med to computer science, and I started a part-time job as the editorial assistant for an international peer-reviewed journal. I had been actively using computers since 1981, including doing BASIC programming and helping to teach courses. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon or a psychiatrist, not a computer scientist. However, my math, chemistry and physics courses were so unrewarding and stressful for me, I thought a change to something I liked better would help.

After a semester of that, my boss (and my job) moved from one university to another university. I elected to follow my boss and my job and continued my education elsewhere. The first benefit of that was that I was now at a university more flexible in their requirements for your degree. The second was I happened to stumble across a book in the bookstore on attention deficit disorder in children, adolescents, and adults. This revelation astounded me. The doctors previously told me, and I believed them, that children grew out of their attention deficit disorder. I bought the book and devoured it. It was immediately obvious to me that my own attention deficit disorder had not just "gone away" at 16, but it had been there still all along! My unorthodox last year of high school—lasting three years— had helped to mask it so that obvious problems did not appear until many years later when I started university.

Life Again on Ritalin

I made an informed choice to start taking Ritalin again. At this point, I was doing adequately well in my computer science courses, and it was substantially less effort for me than all my hard science courses, but I was still only doing about a C+ and, if I had stayed at my previous university, my cumulative average would have still been closer to a C-. I was a lot wiser than I was as a child. I realized that I had picked up some coping strategies over the years, and it was unnecessary to take drugs continually. Instead, I stopped attending most lectures since I did not learn from the anyway. I continued making my own notes, reading the textbook, and chatting with the instructors on points that were unclear, and I took my Ritalin when I needed to prepare for exams, complete assignments, or knew I would be stressed. This combination proved remarkably effective. I went from the verge of academic probation in fall of 1992 to graduating with high honours in an honours degree in 1995, and I was awarded a prestigious federal NSERC (National Science & Engineering Research Council) post-graduate scholarship.

Life Today on Ritalin

I hate taking pills. I abhor taking medication. Hence, while I should still be taking Ritalin to help me with my graduate work, I do not take it when I know I probably should. My supervisor is aware of my problems; he trusts me to manage things on my own and puts up with my missed deadlines. I would like to be better about managing the medication effectively in my life but that possibly requires more structure than I currently have.

Following up on the above paragraph, which I wrote in December of last year (2000), I have again started trying to take my Ritalin, as needed. I have recognized that I cannot, through sheer stubborness, manage the tasks that I cannot hyperfocus on without resorting to drugs. That includes: writing up my research papers, marking essays for the courses I teach, and working on statistics and doing large amounts of heavy, structured reading. I probably rather should say that I cannot do these things in a timely fashion. It is not acceptable to take three weeks to mark ten 1500-word essays if you are not doing anything else during those three weeks. It is not acceptable to spend two years working on your thesis proposal, even if it is fifty words. I have to compromise between my hatred of medication and my need to do things—to do things well and to do them in the allotted time.

Continuing to follow up, it is now January 2003. I am still experiencing difficulties in working well on my Ph.D. Last year, before I took a three-month leave of absence from all of my responsibilities I could inveigle my way out of and retroactively intermitted for the entire year, I visited an office on campus mandated to help students with various disabilities that can impact their ability to complete their programs successfully. They apparently knew of a few ADHD people on campus, but I was the most articulate person about the disorder they had met, in that I am much more aware of the impact it has on me, which is often hard to assess when you are the one being impacted. When I go back this term to start working on my Ph.D. again, they are going to try to offer me support in the form of mentoring (someone non-critical and not directly associated with my Ph.D.) and general group support. Doing a Ph.D. is isolating at my university in England. Doing a part-time Ph.D. is even more isolating. Doing a part-time Ph.D. with ADHD makes you an island, even in a country famed for its tolerance and encouragement of eccentrics, so group support might be beneficial to help combat that.

In addition to making arrangements for support, I also took it upon myself to take a time management course (twice) and a project management course, so that I could learn about setting goals and how to better plan and allocate resources. I am hopeful that, in combination with the mentor, I will be able to make realistic goals and then be supported in meeting them, without the need to get any negative feedback from my supervisor about my lack of progress. It will also give me another, non-critical sounding board for discussions about the state of my progress; one which is wise in the ways in the university and of doing degrees, but is completely in my court and has more time to devote to supporting me than a supervisor might. I forsee that I will be forced back onto Ritalin at least on a daily basis. A set schedule will definitely help.

There are a few great ironies associated with my attention deficit disorder. The first is that I do can concentrate intently on some things. Luckily, one of those things is programming and almost any type of technical-related problem. I can concentrate on those for hours on end, often concentrating myself into a migraine, because I am focussed so intently that I do not realize that a migraine is imminent. I can focus so intently that I am oblivious to the world around me, which means I am startled easily by sounds or movement. I spend a lot of time being startled.

The other great irony is that I need to take medication but, between the intent concentration and instant distractability, it is difficult for me to remember to take the medication I need in order to remember to take the medication. If you cannot quite follow that, it means that with such a poor sense of time and an ability to be distracted easily, it is difficult to adhere to a set medication schedule, particularly with the way my life is currently structured. As I do not have to work at set hours or go to anywhere at a set time, I sleep when I get tired and then get up and start over. Taking the drugs means remembering to take them either at the same time every day or at set intervals. I remember that I used to set my watch to beep at the set intervals. I was often so intent on what I was doing, though, that I would hear the alarm go, promise myself I would take care of it immediately after I finished my current involved task, and then it would be three hours later.

Last year, I recognized that I am still experiencing difficulties in working well on my Ph.D. Last year, before I took a three-month leave of absence from all of my responsibilities I could inveigle my way out of and retroactively intermitted for the entire year, I visited an office on campus mandated to help students with various disabilities that can impact their ability to complete their programs successfully. They apparently knew of a few ADHD people on campus, but I was the most articulate person about the disorder they had met, in that I am much more aware of the impact it has on me, which is often hard to assess when you are the one being impacted. When I go back this term to start working on my Ph.D. again, they are going to try to offer me support in the form of mentoring (someone non-critical and not directly associated with my Ph.D.) and general group support. Doing a Ph.D. is isolating at my university in England. Doing a part-time Ph.D. is even more isolating. Doing a part-time Ph.D. with ADHD makes you an island, even in a country famed for its tolerance and encouragement of eccentrics, so group support might be beneficial to help combat that.

In addition to making arrangements for support, I also took it upon myself to take a time management course (twice) and a project management course, so that I could learn about setting goals and how to better plan and allocate resources. I am hopeful that, in combination with the mentor, I will be able to make realistic goals and then be supported in meeting them, without the need to get any negative feedback from my supervisor about my lack of progress. It will also give me another, non-critical sounding board for discussions about the state of my progress; one which is wise in the ways in the university and of doing degrees, but is completely in my court and has more time to devote to supporting me than a supervisor might. I forsee that I will be forced back onto Ritalin at least on a daily basis. A set schedule will definitely help.

That was last year's theory. It is now 2004 and I still feel remarkably unfocused, especially in the duller winter months. I have acquired some additional tools, like Life Balance, to help me better balance, but there is still much left to explore.

My Thoughts on ADD/ADHD

• I fervently believe I never would have gone from the verge of academic probation to graduating with high honours in an honours bachelor of science degree without controlled usage of Ritalin.

• ADHD/ADD is over-diagnosed in North America. I would have to agree with others that parents/schools are far too eager to put children on Ritalin (or other drugs) without accurately and adequately assessing these children for other disorders/problems first.

• Everybody, even me, wants a "magic bullet" to solve their problems. The truth is that most things in life are too complicated for that. For some problems behavioural interventions seem to be sufficient. For others, dietary (I have never bought into this one, but...) changes can make a difference. Other people may require a change of lifestyle. Some might need drugs. In all cases, though, design the treatment specifically for the individual so that it contains all the components the individual needs to improve their quality of life. Their quality of life should be the prime consideration, not necessarily the "ease" or "comfort" of the people around them. If we are drugging our children to make the life of teachers in school or parents at home easier, there is something fundamentally wrong in our society. We should address those underlying issues, not dope out the symptoms.

• I could have used some additional help in terms of counselling and knowledge when I was a child, as could have my parents. There was not such a vast wealth of accessible information at the time, and I have suffered because of that. Now I need EinRepair and there is a shortage of accredited EinTherapists. Better-informed teachers, doctors, psychologists, and parents are better individuals.

Hello, my name is Michelle. I am the Ein, a unique experience in the world.

[Leaves Leave]

I wrote this poem and did the leaf on October 17, 2001. Right now, in Edmonton, it's a far cry away from the glorious colours of autumn, but it's one of my favourite images. Today, we're still in the grip of winter's white, but time is still turning, and soon, again, the leafy greens of spring and summer will change to sunset tones.

[Cognomen Command]

“To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual.”
-- Erica Jong from How To Save Your Own Life, epigraph to “My posthumous life ...” (1977).

“Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.”
-- George Santayana (1863–1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Dominations and Powers, bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 1 (1951).

Like most people, I had very little choice about my first name. On the day I made my grand "eingang" into the world, my parents burdened and blessed me with my first identity: Michelle A. Hoyle. Michelle—pronounced by them as mih-shell—Annette Hoyle. That is who I am. That is who I will be. That is who I was. Or is it? In my family, it was not a name that inspired—or I was not a person to inspire—nicknames. The closest thing to a nickname ever used among my relatives for me was Shell and that infrequently. Life continued this way until I was fourteen. Christmas of that year marked a turning point in my life. That is when everything hit the fan. That is when I discovered myself. That is when I became me. All these things hinged upon a single Christmas gift, possibly the best present I ever received from my parents: a 300 baud modem for my computer.

How did a humble piece of technology, no bigger than a paperback book, come to revolutionize my life so much? Communication equals empowerment. A modem opened the way for me to communicate with people who couldn't see me, but had to accept me based on what I said and how I said it. It didn't matter that I was fourteen. It didn't matter that my parents were trolls from an uranium mine shaft. It didn't matter that I didn't fit into my local social milieu in any way, shape or form. Edmonton had a very active discussion-based electronic bulletin board community. Although I didn't belong to any of the cliques there (of which there were three major ones), I had a passport that enabled me to travel seamlessly between groups. They never directly invited me to events, but I was always welcomed. I had found a much better, more accepting home than my parents had ever provided me with. This was heady stuff. I made friends, close friends, during this time. Most of the closest I'm still in contact with and still doing things with almost twenty years later. Without the affirmation and acceptance I found in this community, I probably would have just given into despair over the course of my life, most of which I felt powerless to control.

With my communication empowerment and a new electronic world vista came the realization that I needed a way to identify myself. Sure, I could use my original identity. However, in a community where the male to female ratio was 20:1, this was not such a good idea. I wasn't the only person who didn't "fit" well into society, and some other people didn't fit in dangerous ways. It was much safer and funner to take on a pseudonym, which I did for several years, choosing among several, depending on my mood that day and what/who I was trying to portray. Most of these haven't stuck much with me. As I became more well-known and better able to protect myself, I resorted back to using variants of my own name. Most people, however, are lazy. They don't want to type "Michelle" if they can type something shorter. I soon found my perfectly beautiful name shortened to "Mickey" or "Mitch." Yuck! I definitely was not a Mickey or a Mitch type of a person. No way! I needed a shorter, more acceptable name for myself, so I renamed myself Micha, pronounced mee-sha. Micha caught on like wildfire. It caught on so well that there are people I met during that period who still call me Micha, although we've been meeting regularly for the last eighteen years. Every once in awhile, I even catch EinSweetie referring to me as Micha to other people.

Why Micha? I have no idea. I mean, it's obviously related to my given name, but it's not a common diminutive form in western Alberta. I came up with the pronunciation on my own, too, and I was quite serious about that. Nothing worse than having your name mispronounced. Not too long after adopting the name, I eventually had to resort to signing my messages "Micha (mee-sha)," because people were calling me 'mish-ah' continually, which didn't have the same feel to it. Micha. I just wanted to be called Micha. No middle name. No last name. Just Micha. This was the first and the longest lasting of my name incarnations.

This business of just having one name, like Cher or Madonna, has been with me a long time. I've never liked having to refer to myself by my full name. I frequently introduce myself to people using just one name and only give them my full name if they insist. I didn't have any initial choice in my last name. I didn't pick it myself. It's hard to change on the spur of the moment, especially if you don't want one at all. Our modern culture is not set up to handle people who don't have first and last names. When I was teaching at the University of Alberta, I had a student whose name was Suliman Suliman. It turned out he had only one name, but the registrar's computers needed a first and a last name, so they just doubled up. Micha Micha sounds strange to my ears, though—vaguely reminiscent of a bad pizza chain advertisement. Later, when I attended university myself, I just introduced myself as Michelle, but the sound of the name had changed from my parents' original dubbing, taking on a distinctly Micha flavour. I was now Mee-shehl (or Mieschäl).

Probably my most successful self-invented identity is that of Eingang or Ein. I wrote a story earlier about the origins of Eingang, so I'll just briefly recap here. After many years of electronic bulletin boarding across North America, I graduated to the Internet and started chatting in real-time with people throughout the world in 1991 or 1992. Again, much like my local bulletin board community, it was wise to choose a name that might help avoid unwanted attentions from the mostly (hormone-laden) geeky world I was inhabiting. So I wanted to choose something vaguely male sounding or non-gender specific. At the time, I was travelling quite often between Canada and German-speaking areas of Switzerland. The word "Eingang" appeared all over the place: on the entrance to the highways, above doors into malls or buildings, everywhere! This word appealed to me a lot, so "Eingang"—entrance—I became. German speakers know Eingang is a masculine word, and English speakers generally don't know, so I didn't ever suffer from those unwanted attentions. Later, I decided, in retrospect, that my nickname should really fully be "Eingang des Chaos"—the entrance to Chaos—which, for those of you who know me well, is very appropriate. This is who I am now and, probably, who I will continue to be for a long time.

This is definitely an Eindentity I have constructed for myself. I am "Eingang" or "Ein" to many people, and I'm very comfortable with all my Ein Things. There are EinColours, EinFoods, and EinWords and EinPeople. It's a self-made cult. It's odd that a name I chose based mostly on sound turns out to be so right. "Ein" itself means "one," which serves to reinforce my notions of being einzigartig (literally, one of a kind) or unique. Mee-sha, Mee-shehl, Ein. I am One. I am Ein. My names, which I have altered to suit my personality, affirm who I am and what I want to be each and every day. That is the power of a name.

[Adventures Across the Atlantic]

S&M Files, Episode 2: November 27, 1999
Continued Price Shock

Hearing price shock from me is not surprising. What is surprising is how it continually sneaks up and waps me upside the head.

Mini Doughnuts: Remember those little doughnuts that float about the deep fryer on little conveyer belts and pop out fresh and hot at $2 bag or 3 / $5. Well, surprise! The Toonie-sized wonders are here for a reasonable pound note ($2.60). Oh wait, that's £1 for 3 donuts. Count them: 1-2-3. Ha! Ha! Three little donuts. For those that can't afford that kind of extravagance they can be purchased *singly* for a mere 35p (86¢).

Coke: Needing my fix, I hit the local Safeway and found cans of Coke on sale. Say, that's pretty reasonable: a pack for about $4.50. Safeway normally discounted a 12 pack to $4.00 back home. It wasn't until I tried to pick it up that I found out it was a 6-pack.

Long Distance Savings

5 ¢ a minute to Canada. With the help of the local Tandori and Bangers shop, we acquired a dubious looking card offering 5¢ a minute to Canada through some wierd invisible Internet routing. My first call home was a bit noisy and it clipped a bit if both people talked at once but soon, I believe, the volume of porn traffic on the net decreased. Lo and behold: Clear conversation!

Maybe it's not actually real. Maybe the conversations I have at this rate are not *true* conversations. It's like the Matrix movie. I only think it's a low-cost conversation. It's just an illusion or lesser reality. Or maybe I've been eating too much fish and chips.

Actually it turns out it's not real. Two calls on the card have almost wiped it out. Must call technical support, get my questions answered and offer proper design.

Found a cell package that gives me cheaper daytime calls than [missing text here. -ed]

Visiting The Brighton Pavillion

For those that havn't seen this pseudo-palace, it's sort of the Graceland of 19th century. Indian on the outside - Chinese on the inside. Well, not actually Chinese. The Prince received a gift of some Chinese wallpaper one morning and was so inspired he created a Chinese fantasy palace. The fantasy part is his; this is what Chinese looks like to a proper Englishman. Except the classical British architecture keeps seeping through. Think English stiff chairs on a backdrop of red dragons.

Actually the whole thing is pulled off rather well and certainly says more for good taste than some modern wonders that come to mind. (Atchoo WEM atchoo! <cough> pardon me)

Garbage Collection

We have a backyard. Really, we do. I can see it out the window. We've never been there. It is not for us. We are denied. The house just does not go to it. Apparently the fish and chips shop does.

We asked them where to take our garbage. "Oh," they said, "just put it on the street by the bin like everybody else." She pointed happily out the window to a wastebasket the size of a small chair. She suspected this was in fact legal because the waste did get taken away. "How often?" we asked. "Oh, I don't think there's a schedule. They just sort of come by." Apparently, this is true but they do just sort of come by three to four times a day, most commonly at about 2 AM when they take great care to crush the glass on the spot and scrape the pavement clean with large iron bars wielded by drunken stampeding elephants.

More Tourist Fun

The Pier: I normally picture piers as places to dock small boats rather than a place to house large, heavy amusement rides and a rollercoaster. Apparently, the Brighton Pier also contains amusement machines that are exceptionally gifted at removing 10p pieces from your pockets.

London

Visited the center of the financial universe but was barred entry. Apparently to leave the train station, one must feed one's ticket into a machine which determines if you are worthy of passing. I wasn't. I watched the throngs of worthy gifted people pass through but had to throw myself on the mercy of London security.

You know you're in England when the local Macs-like convenience store offers magazines, candy and fresh bread.

On the way back discovered an opportunity for a scenic tour of Sussex and area in the dead of night by boarding the right track and wrong train.

Well, apart from being terrified of choosing between rent and food, having a great time!

Cheers lads!