Sparknotes: British Culture

I learned three important lessons in British culture today:

1. Biscuits are serious.

I brought dark-chocolate/orange filling "biscuits" (you've always known them as "cookies") into work today and we demolished them with four pots of tea. We drink cup after cup after pot. The best part is, when someone offers to make a pot of tea, everyone reacts with surprise, as if it's the most brilliant idea anyone has had in the last eight minutes since the last pot drained.

So biscuits. The British love these cookies. I had this question: What do you call a meal of "biscuits and gravy"? My co-workers were puzzled. So we Google-image searched it. "Is that like...a bread roll?" "Oh! I see..it's like a scone!" This was the conversation my co-workers had while pondering this image:


2. Urban gardening and organic food is "Stuff British White People Like," too.

I attended an exhibit/seminar today about creating more edible landscapes in London. The ideas were cool-- if they could work. One artist rendered this flying contraption that could help you travel while growing wine grapes. It was fascinating, but what about the simple problems we could fix now: getting everyone clean water, enough food?

3. Football players are very, very skillful. And very, very beautiful.

My friends and I went to a locals-only pub to watch the Barcelona-Manchester match. My co-workers told me to cheer for Barcelona, and they won. I was more amazed by how athletic those guys are. No time outs, 45 minute halves. They know they're good, and the camera knows they're good-looking, too. Another plus: no one in the pub stared at us like we were Midwestern college students. We cheered, we watched, we drank Guinness.

To read more about lessons learned from all students working in London, check out our blog posts at the J-school Web site. I wrote under the work section about my job at Mute.