Who’s Gonne Drive you Home ? Not Me!

I don’t like driving, never did, and I actually don’t understand why people enjoy it. What is the great fun of sitting in a machine that could kill someone. Why is it freedom to sit confound in a tiny space where you can barely move? to me freedom is walking.

Why is that enjoyable to drive in a narrow road behind a cyclist that you cannot overtake because you might kill him? The funny thing is that I feel safer as a pedestrian, crossing roads with limited visibility running in between cars on a dual carriage way with no zebra crossing, but when I am sitting behind the wheel of a metal monster then I am scared – why is that?.

Driving brings responsibility: you need to make sure you don’t kill anyone and no one is killing you. You need to check front and back and side mirrors that nobody is overtaking you or just trying to commit suicide – and when you drive you notice that there are a lot of suicidal people who just stroll or cycle underneath your wheels…

The real freedom is using public transportation: no responsibility at all, you just hop on and off in what stop you like, if the train or the bus breaks down you do not need to call AA and wait in the middle of the road to be rescued, you just get off the train and go to another train, cursing at transport for London that they are useless, but basically you have a little bit more time to read that magazine or finish that book, or prepare for your meeting, nothing is required of you –

now that my friends is what I call freedom.

But here is the strange thing that actually made me write this post: like most of you I got my driving licence at the age of 17, as soon as it was legally allowed, and have been driving many years, not with joy or fun but just as a necessity to get me from A to B. Then I moved to London where I completely relied on public transportation and I was free to go from bus to train whenever I felt like it. But after many years of relying on public transportation I had to drive again,

well it is just like riding a bike I thought – NOT.

It’s as if that part of my brain was surgically removed. As if I had never set foot in a driver’s seat, it could be a plane’s cockpit for all I care, completely new to me, I could not even shift the gears!!!!

What happened? isn’t my brain suppose to dig from the back drawers of my memory the driving manual? to dust it a little bit and then Ta Da!! to drive away? sadly not.

I am sitting behind the wheel, affirming every chauvinistic stereotype in the book, baffled trying to remember which gear does what and which button is the hand brake (oh wow there are automatic hand brakes now…)

So if you are stuck behind somebody who is driving at a constant 20 mph  , it is probably me, so relax, take your time, say hello, I will not drive any faster anytime soon!

A Glimpse of the London Property Market

What has not been said about this property market? that it is a bubble, that it is unsustainable, that prices in London will always go up. It seems like everybody in London is looking to buy, to sell, preferably both at the same time. I dare not predict the future but as a foreigner that has been living in this city for nearly 10 years I have a few observations to make about the peculiarities of this system.

Climbing the property ladder this idea is completely alien to me, where I come from you buy when you can afford and you buy where you want to live, but here a 23 years old paralegal once told me he intends to buy a flat – with what money???? Clearly I missed the memo and refused to buy a flat just for the sake of climbing the property ladder, three years later that flat increased its value in 30% – ok I get it now. But just think about it: a 23 years old, who has only worked for maybe two years wants to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds that he does not have on buying a flat which he probably does not want just to get on the property ladder – isn’t it why we got into the crisis? But yet it looks like this is the right way of doing things in England, or at least in London, so as they say: when in London do as the Londoners do!!

Good Faith in Negotiations this is the jewel in the crown and the most challenging difference between the UK property market and at least Civil Code legal systems. Under Civil Code you need to conduct negotiations in good faith, you don’t waste people’s time for the sake of it. An offer is binding and an acceptance of the offer is a contract, not in a property contract in the UK: an offer is not binding, I will say it again to make it clear: AN OFFER IS NOT BINDING, you can offer left right and centre, you don’t have to buy any of those properties. There is no certainty in the system, you can invest money in a survey of the property, pay a lawyer to do searches and then the seller found a better buyer that can offer more, and off he goes and you stay with the expenses of your searches and you can’t claim it from the seller because the negotiation is not binding. That leads me to another term:

Gazumping: you found the house of your dreams, you spent money on the survey, you paid the solicitor to do the searches and everything looks good you want the house, now the seller knows you invested time and money in this house, you will not walk away from the deal, so they increase the price- gazump, in a civil code legal system this is called negotiations in bad faith and you could claim damages from the seller, but here in the UK it is legal and you can either tell the seller to f*** off and come to terms with the fact that you just lost a few thousands, or you cave in and you pay extra to this bad faith seller.

Chain/Chain free: say you own a flat but now you want a bigger flat or a house or a house with a garden, in order to afford a bigger house you need to sell your flat and with this money buy a bigger house – so far so good, but in England you don’t want to stay houseless or to leave your house to a rented property until you find a house – so what do you do? You buy and sell at the same time – you are in a “chain”. Now if the house you are buying is owned by people who do the same as you – they also buy a bigger house with the proceeds of the sale of their house and want to do it at the same time – you now have three property transactions that have to happen at the same time: what are the chances of that? Admittedly this is an ideal situation nobody spends money on unnecessary rent or move an extra unnecessary move, but what are the odds that all these chain transactions could happen at the same time?

School catchment area: now that is a real pain, the easiest rule is that if you have kids at school age, you either need at least a £2 million pound home or move out of London. This is quite understandable, this city attracts people from all over the world, it is over populated and there is shortage of houses and schools. No longer are the days you went to the school near you together with all your neighbours – simply because this school will not have enough places. The situation is so ridiculous that the school measures the proximity of your house to the MAIN gate of the school so that if you live adjoining to the backyard of the school and can literally climb your fence and get to school you might still not be admitted to that school because the distance between your door to the school’s main gate is outside the catchment area! Confused? Worried? Well you should be!

Freehold/Leasehold

An interesting English legal concept: you have ownership and not so much ownership.

Freehold: you pay hundreds of thousands of pounds and then you own your property.

Leasehold: you pay hundreds of thousands of pounds and then you own your property, except you can’t put a carpet, you can’t remove a carpet, you can’t do renovations, you can’t do structural works without the consent of the freeholder – who is the ultimate owner. You can buy a top floor flat but the ultimate owner of the roof will be the freeholder and not you. So what is actually the difference between rent and leasehold? You pay a lot more for a leasehold…

Carpets: carpets are so important in the English home that they are actually a part of the Leasehold agreement, reason being that they block the noise so if you are walking with high heels or have a toddler throwing balls the neighbour has a layer to muffle the noise. Surely these leases were drafted in Victorian times were there was no insulation, these days you can simply add insulation and put a wooden floor but you would still be in breach of the Lease because an insulated wooden floor is not a carpet…

Window in the bathroom or lack thereof: clearly the smeliest places in the house are kitchen, bathroom, toilet – one would expect a window for proper ventilation in these rooms, but somehow bathrooms and toilets with windows are few and far between in London. I guess it is due to the fact that most properties in London are Victorian and Edwardian conversions: large houses for families and their servants were converted into flats for modern life living. These toilets and bathrooms were not intended as such and were built quite randomly inside a flat where there was no possibility to have a window. The funniest thing (or the smeliest thing) is that now even new buildings are built without a window in the bathroom (sometimes even two bathrooms without a window) because generations of people are used to having bathrooms without a window so why build one? That is how I chose a flat – if there is a window in the bathroom I take it!

Bidet: for our continental friends, no there is no bidet in the English home – use the bath and get over it!!

Stereotypes – xenophobia or human nature?

The first thing that strikes you about London is the diversity of the people. Stand inside any tube carriage and in that small space you will see people from different colours, a mix of languages and styles. It is what makes London so special so unique, here you are on an English island and yet you can eat the best Indian food outside of India, French restaurants, falafel from the middle east, and in each restaurant the food would be served by Indian, French  and Lebanese staff to make the experience authentic. One would think that this is the perfect place to get rid of prejudice, shake off those stereotypes.

I always thought that the origin of superficial stereotypes is ignorance: you never met black people so you think they are basketball players or rappers, you never met Jews so you would say that all Jews are rich and they are all lawyers. But once you get to meet people they cease to be unidentified groups and become individuals with specific traits that don’t have necessarily anything to do with generalisation. And what better place to meet different people than London?

Ironically, I found that the longer you live in London and meet people from different cultures, the more the stereotypes are being reinforced, because you feel that just by meeting one or two blacks/Jews/Japanese you already know all of  them. Which made me think: perhaps it is just human nature, not necessarily good or bad, but when does stereotyping become racism and xenophobia? Where is the limit? Clearly violence, verbal or physical, is the ultimate limit but is one considered an anti-Semite only when one says a “dirty Jew” or is it also anti-Semitism saying “all those banker Jews”?

Recently there was a talk about banning saying “that is so gay” in children’s playground, is that taking politically correctness to the next level? Or is it just helping us becoming more civilised, because in order to live in a multi cultural society one needs to be more sensitive. Surely we would not tolerate the insults of “nigger” or “kike” so why tolerate “you are so gay”.

We are all more attentive when it is our group/culture that is being stereotyped but we would happily look down at other groups thinking it is alright. Jews would be appalled at anti-Semitic remarks but would be quite indifferent about comments on Arabs or blacks. On the other hand the Jewish creators of the TV shows “Family Guy” and “Curb your Enthusiasm” make such explicit jokes about Jews that if they weren’t Jewish you would say they are anti-Semites.

So what do we need to do? Do we need to stop being primitive and stop generalising every behaviour we see in one person and saying “that is so Italian”, or accept that this is part of human behaviour, it is natural and there is nothing to do about it and as long as it is not offensive just accept it and ignore it? Well I am not one for ignoring it, if that is what we did then the word Nigger would still be acceptable and that is not what we want in a civilised society. On the other hand, is everybody saying “that’s so gay” a homophobe? If everybody saying “Jews are rich” is an anti-Semite then I am afraid most of Europe would be considered anti-Semitic.

Perhaps it is the context where we use these stereotypes or simplistic generalisation, perhaps we need to be aware that we are using these terms just to make life easier on ourselves to deal with the different cultures we encounter on a daily basis, and as long as we are aware that this is just superficial and not necessarily true than it is acceptable. The trouble is, when you hear these stereotypes again and again you start believing in them. Is this our natural mechanism for dealing with Multiculturalism? On the one hand this is one of the biggest allures of London that it attracts people from all over the world bringing their traditions and food, but on the other hand I guess we are not used to it and the way we deal with it is boxing all these cultures into simplistic stereotypes.

I am afraid I don’t have answers only questions, to me London with its diversity is the most extraordinary place and I love meeting people from countries I have never been to, but I would lie if I would say I don’t cringe sometimes at hearing certain languages or seeing certain people, I acknowledge that it is my problem and try not to discriminate or mistreat anybody based on my preconceptions I can only hope you do as well.

Plastic Surgery – The Demise of Western Society?

You know the feeling, you already got the Chanel bag, the Cartier watch, you have been to the safari but something is missing, you just don’t know what: so, when there’s nothing else to buy let’s go under the knife!

How bored do we really need to get to decide: today I will go to the hospital from my own accord, I will get under full anaesthetic, and get somebody to cut me open. It is definitely a symptom of over affluent bored western society that we are actually doing something that could be quite dangerous. The latest PIP breast implants scandal was a warning to us all that we can’t just cut our breasts open shove silicone in them and later when we don’t want it anymore cut them again and take the silicone out – it should not have been put there in the first place!!

Before any medical surgery the Dr tells you that there are certain risks involved in going to surgery and that you should only do it if it is necessary, so why would you do an elective non medical one? I understand we are all superficial, we all wish to be young beautiful and thin but the price to pay is so high and the results are usually not worth it.

One could argue that western society does not tolerate old age, that women who want to make it in any business, especially in show business, have to be barbie dolls with large breasts and voluptuous lips. Actresses would say that in this men’s world a woman’s career is over after thirty, and if you don’t smooth those wrinkles, get the boobs lifted or the lips blown you will never get a job. But if you do these procedures you don’t look younger or more beautiful you just look like someone that shoved melons in her bra or got punched in the lips – is that sexy?

Take for example the beautiful Lara Flynn Boyle, who became famous playing the elegant Donna in Twin Peaks, then the roles started to dwindle and all of a sudden one day she appears with bloated lips that cover her whole face! From a beautiful and elegant woman she turned into a plastic doll straight from a porn movie – what a shame. How about Nicole Kidman, she used to have beautiful thin triangle lips and high cheek bones but in the last few years she has got voluptuous lips and perky Jaclyn Smith style plumped cheek bones – she doesn’t look younger or more beautiful she just looks like somebody else – I think it is creepy.

Probably one of the most serious cases was Britney Spears getting breast implants as a teenager, while her breasts were still growing, clearly Britney’s mother did not have her daughter’s best interests in mind and probably all she cared about was how much money she could make out of her daughter – the bigger the cleavage the bigger the pay. I always wondered what kind of a Doctor, who swore an oath to put the interest of the patient first, would perform such a procedure, knowing it is elective and that the breasts would continue to develop. Shouldn’t there be regulation that prohibits doctors from performing elective surgeries on under aged? (excluding deformities, reconstruction post operations, accidents, and such serious cases).

Michael Jackson was another radical case in which a black man turned white under the knife – again the doctors that performed those procedures on him should have put the interest of the patient in front of their eyes – clearly the desire to become white is somewhat crazy and perhaps instead of performing plastic surgery they should have referred him to therapy. But hey, Jackson was a consenting adult, and a very rich one might I add, and no doctor bothered to think whether it is needed or not and just performed these unnecessary procedures and made lots of money out of it. Perhaps in Michael Jackson’s case one could argue that in our society one needs to be white in order to be successful (although I would think that at least in the music industry black men and women are very prominent and successful).

So whose fault is it? Male chauvinists? Our self obsessed narcissistic society? Technology and the “selfies” – not only do we look at ourselves in the mirror all the time, we now send to the whole world pictures of ourselves because we are so great.

It is quite sad if you think about it. Here we are in the western society well off, healthy, well fed, no wars to worry about not a care in the world, yet we would always find a reason to be unhappy, if everything is perfect we would invent something to obsess about, a trip to a third world country should change our proportions and make this idea of plastic surgery seem as ludicrous as it really is.

Is Nicole Kidman more successful after those procedures? I am pretty sure Lara Flynn Boyle isn’t… so what did they actually achieve? Hoards of actresses and wealthy women that straighten their wrinkles and lift their eyes just look constantly surprised with a mouth that moved to the other side of their face – do they really feel younger and more beautiful because in reality they just look like a freak show!

So next time you think about looking younger or more beautiful just buy a cream or make up – and here’s a thought stop being so self obsessed and donate the money to a worthy charity!!!

 

12 years a slave and thoughts about mankind

I wanted to call this post hurrah it’s Oscar season – part 2 but there is no hurrah in this movie. It is a brutal, hard hitting, in your face story about slavery and cruelty of mankind. I watched the entire movie with feeling of revulsion and the crying was not cathartic at all it was of shame, of shame of the human race that this is how we act. Watching the movie I could not stop thinking that this is not a historical tale about 19^th century slavery in the US, there is still modern day slavery in this day and age in western countries and that is what made it so hard to watch. I could not tell myself those evil white people 200 hundred years ago we are better than them, when everyday there is another story in England about people that were kept in state of slavery for years.

Moreover, in one of the early powerful scenes where a perfectly lovely civilised couple is shopping for slaves, who are standing stark naked men and women together like cattle, the lovely gentleman really wants to take as a slave the woman together with her two children but simply can’t, so instead of just not taking her at all he chooses to take her without her children even though the slave trader tells him straight that the girl will be sent to prostitution – and that was the nice guy!!! He really wanted to help but it was not his problem so he simply couldn’t give up that woman no matter what were consequences. It made me think about us modern consumers buying cheap cloths made in Bangladesh and India and we already know the conditions these cloths are made of, we know they are made in sweatshops by young children but we continue to buy because it is cheap it is convenient and Bangladesh and India are too far away for us to really factor the people that live there to our daily shopping.

The movie reaffirmed my view that mankind is inherently evil, just as it is said in Genesis. The slave owner kept saying slaves are his legal property and therefore he can do as he sees fit, including beating and raping. But just because someone is allegedly inferior to you or you see them as your property does not mean you need to be cruel and evil to them, they can work for you (not paid of course, hey they are still slaves) you can give them food and bed and that is that you don’t have to go the extra mile and also be evil to them. But we can see that throughout history, in state of war when people can they are cruel to those deemed inferior to them just because they can. During the Holocaust Jews were demonised and in occupied countries civilians went the extra mile to hurt them well beyond the duty to the Nazi regime, just because they could and were legally allowed. During wars in distance places we saw soldiers from the west committing horrendous acts just because it was far away and they were the ruling power in that area and basically because they could.

I was a bit afraid of watching this movie because I knew it would be a brutal one, but isn’t that the whole point of reading books and watching movies? To learn something, to expand your horizons otherwise we stay ignorant and watch only light entertainment (nothing is wrong with light entertainment, I am all in favour but not only) we can’t allow people to ignore horrors of the Holocaust, Rwanda or current atrocities in the Middle East just because it is too difficult to watch, we need to engage, learn and try to change. Obviously my conclusion from the movie is that nothing is changes and people still commit horrendous acts to others if they deemed inferior or weaker – but we have to try!

On a slightly lighter note, I loved the fact that Brad Pitt produced this movie and gave himself the role of the only positive white man – the man that saved the protagonist.

It is a very good movie and an important one but if the visual is hard for you maybe the book would be a better way to get educated.