straight or gay? it's okay! (as long as you're not polish)

And of course there had to be a post about something gay. I saw this sticker on a lamp post in our neighborhood and it caught my attention. But the sticker is not what this post is about.

I went to the gym today for the first time in well over a month. I haven't decided what gym I will be joining yet (since my class schedule is still TBD), but I managed to get a free pass at Soho Gym, a chain located mainly around central London. I desperately need to start burning all those Krispy Kream donuts I've allowed myself to gobble down.

The clientele, unsurprisingly, was largely gay. After my workout I sat in the sauna for a bit where I overheard a rather ridiculous conversation. Two extremely muscular (in a bad way), old men were chatting about which of the branches of Soho Gym has more of a gay following. This led to one of the men saying how appalled he had been when at another branch he had heard a couple of muscular men use the word 'queer' in a private conversation. The guy seemed to suggest that the term had been used in a derogatory manner, but had not been directed at anyone in particular or used to insult any particular individual.

The second man in the sauna, asked him whether he reported it to the police. The first man shook his head. The second man reminded him that using the word 'queer' is a form of speech that incites hate and thus can be reported to the police as a crime-- which I found surprising and somewhat troubling (but I won't comment further since I haven't read what exactly the law entails). The conversation went back and forth for a bit longer. Before leaving the sauna the first man identified the men who had made the 'queer' comment as Polish, to which he added: "Fucking Polish people. They should go back to their own fucking country."

I had a hard time trying not too chuckle.

the customer is always right

Watching Obama's health care address on the Internet last night (admittedly a few days late), I was struck, though not surprised, that the following remark drew some of the largest applause from both sides of the aisle:

My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That's how the market works.

Nothing proves your American bona fides like extolling the virtues of the free market, even if you're a liberal Democrat trying to reform our health care system. I rolled my eyes a bit while listening to that, feeling slightly left out of the general enthusiasm for market-based competition.

And then I did the laundry.

Having been away from Britain for a number of years, I'd forgotten certain things, such as the fact that nearly all the clothes dryers I've encountered here don't fully dry the clothes. They come out almost dry, but still distinctly damp. I'm not talking about one particular clothes dryer but rather Every. Single. One.

This situation seems to be widely accepted by English people, nearly all of whom seem to own a steel-frame drying rack upon which they hang these slightly damp clothes after they come out of the dryer, so that they can fully dry.

As an American, my natural response is to ask, "What's the point of a machine that only does part of the job that it's supposedly designed to do??" Why use an electric dryer at all, if you're just going to hang the clothes out (in the middle of the living room) to let nature finish the job? The charitable explanation is an environmentally conscientious one: weak dryers use less energy. So, in the interest of saving the earth, we invent crappy machines?

In New York, I and the people I know are given to casual remarks about how great everything is in Europe, with their single-payer health care and their fuel efficient cars, trying to distance ourselves from a certain strain of particularly "Ugly Americanism." Over here, though, I find myself again and again wanting to sound that very note, complaining about bad customer service, about shops that aren't open all night, about bad engineering.

Why does the toilet always need to flushed twice?

And, while we're at it, why are the toilet and the shower in SEPARATE ROOMS??

Most visitors to the UK will confirm that the problems I've identified are prevalent across the nation, in a majority of habitations and a majority of cities and towns. Does it have something to do with everything getting destroyed in the Blitz? War time rationing? Whatever the cause, it seems that your average Briton does not have this ingrained mania for customer satisfaction. He or she is more than likely to just put up with a less than ideal situation and make do.

Growing up in a land of air conditioning and free refills, even the most liberal among us have developed an attitude that we should be able to get what we want when we want it. Our way right away.

Obama's analysis of the American character is feeling pretty spot-on.