The Blog of Rob

After running out of things to watch I followed a friend's recommendation and took a look at Battlestar Galactica. I have vague memories of the original series as lightweight and relatively unchallenging entertainment, with the typical pantomime view of good and evil. I have to say the new version is much better, and has the potential to be really great. The idea of introducing evolved 'human looking' Cylons was something of a masterstroke, allowing the use of real actors in the role of machines which in turn allows a lot more depth of character to be explored. Humans are no longer purely good, Cylons are no longer purely bad and there is a rich vein of 'what makes us human' to be explored in the plots. Also the monotheistic belief system of the Cylons creates some interesting possibilities when compared to the polytheistic belief system of the humans in the show, and the 'religious war' background offers some interesting links with the older show - 'we have all lived before, this has all happened before' is one of the oft repeated mantras, of both religions, which indicates a fundamental belief in reincarnation of both individuals and the entire universe. So far I don't think the show has really reached it's full potential as far as exploring these issues is concerned (I'm near the beginning of the second series) and there's an obvious risk it won't ever reach that potential before degenerating into soap opera like most long running US TV shows, but if it even stays as good as it is now for another full season it will gain a deserved place in the classics.

November is possibly not the best time of year to be visiting a zoo, but the Baltimore Zoo was quite entertaining nonetheless. Our first port of call was the Otter, who put on quite a show - leaping in and out of the pool and pausing at appropriate moments to strike a pose suitable for photographing. There weren't many turtles to be seen in the 'Maryland Grassland' area but the petting zoo brought back some childhood memories and there were quite a large collection of African animals, including a slightly wheezing, but still vociferous, lion and a leopard cruelly placed where he could see gazelles every day but not get anywhere near them.

We located a nearby mall to grab some lunch and there were some tense (for us) moments as it became apparent we were the only white people in the building, as we started ordering our food we were quickly categorized into the 'damn tourists' category and people stopped giving us funny looks. The food was once again both cheap and plentiful, a very satisfying feature of american eateries.

In the evening we went to an ice hockey game, the Tampa Bay Lightning visiting the Washington Capitals, tickets being a bargain $5 each. Our seats were very high up but the whole upper deck was canted at a vertigo inducing angle which made you feel like you were almost directly above the rink. The game itself was quite strange, the home team got ahead early but then hardly got a shot in for the next two periods. Tampa Bay eventually turned their dominance into goals and forced the game into overtime and then into a penalty shootout which they duly won. What interested me was the contrast between the 'outside' entertainment at the ice hockey compared to the football. Although there was stuff going on at the football, nobody much seemed very interested and, apart from the odd cheerleader and the marching band at half time, the only thing that appeared on the pitch was the two teams and the stadium was full. The ice hockey was less than half full but there seemed to be something going on at every break in play - prize draws, organ playing, videos on the big screen and even some fairly blatant 'throw lots of free stuff at the crowd' type things. Between the periods we were treated to an absolutely hilarious 'junior' game (two teams of seven year olds following a puck around the rink - it was a lot funnier than it sounds...) and an "It's a Knockout" style race in suitably funny costumes, this with adults though. In all it seems the NHL feel they have to work a lot harder for their fans than the NFL.

We decided to start getting down to some serious shopping today, so Arundel Mills Mall was our destination. Our main focus was sports, computer games and music, but I still found time to buy a couple of books for light reading in Books a Million - The Gathering Dark by Christopher Golden and Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire (see my entry for Wicked below). I tried to find some new CDs by bands I'd found on emusic but the shops seemed to be a little too mainstream. After lunch, and not content with just the one mall, we located another one nearby (GPS is a marvellous thing!) and headed off to that - there was a large Dick's there and I bought some bits and pieces for the next football season - including some athletic tape in team colours!

The evening entertainment was a trip into Baltimore for a meal at Hooters - it was as tacky as promised, but although the girls were built appropriately it seemed they were just as bored as most other waitresses, at least the food was OK. After dinner we went to the excellent Barnes & Noble, built inside an old power station they'd retained the original furnace structures to add a bit of character - one of my favourite bookshops, didn't buy anything though. Next was a trip into ESPNZone where I managed to be awful at the 'throw the football through the moving holes' game and nearly as bad at the basketball shooting game, but all good energetic fun for up to four players.

We did the tourist thing in Washington today. After driving to Greenbelt we got on the Green Line towards central DC, changing at Fort Totten to end up at Union Station. The station itself is quite impressive, in the style I think of as neo classical (I could be completely wrong, of course) and hasn't been totally spoiled by having a shopping centre built in it. After a brief tour round a book shop (no purchases as yet) we set off to see the sights.

Unfortunately it started raining so we decided a museum might be a bit more comfortable than a wander around the monuments, so we went into the National Museum of Natural History where we had an enjoyable time looking at dinosaur skeletons before going into the basement cafeteria for lunch. After lunch it had stopped raining so we walked up to look at the White House, where we got shouted at by a police woman for daring to attempt to cross the (completely deserted) road at a place where there wasn't an officially sanctioned crossing. It started raining again then so we headed in the direction we hoped would lead us to the nearest Metro station, but we passed a very large Borders first so went in there. This time I did make a purchase - Playing the Offensive Line by former Giant's offensive lineman Karl Nelson and a Linux Journal. We also got directions to the Metro station and, a few minutes later, were on our way back home. The evening was taken up with Monday Night Football, watching the Vikings narrowly defeat the fast sinking Packers. I also read some of my new football book and was gratified to discover that Karl Nelson agreed with everything I'd been telling my linemen to do for years

This was the day that was the whole reason for the trip - the Raiders visiting the Redskins at FedEx Field. I realised I'd forgotten to bring any Raiders hats, so we had a quick pregame detour to the mall where we all bought a hat at Lids (and I joined the 'Passport Club' because it saved me $6). We were then off down the I-95 to the game.

We found our way to one of the outlying car parks and then queued up for the bus to the stadium, accompanied by some vociferous Raiders fans. The stadium itself is very impressive, though we ended up sitting behind a pillar which blocked our view of the 20 yard line there were TV screens every thirty feet or so we could always follow the game. Take my advice, however, make sure you've got a pocketful of cash before you offer to buy everyone hotdogs - $7 each! Food in America is usually so cheap too. The game itself was a little mistake ridden, with some odd playcalling on both sides, not least the Redskins decision to apparently ignore Clinton Portis for most of the fourth quarter (including on the fourth down play which eventually ended the game, where Portis was wide open underneath for the first down but Brunell didn't even look at him), but at least it was close and had the right result with a Raiders win! Getting back to the car park proved to be a little more difficult than the other way, first we had to queue to get on a bus, then the bus had to queue to get out of the car park as they had no special right of way. We listened to the Bengals-Colts game on the radio on the way home and then stopped off at Famous Dave's for tea, back to normal in American food terms, an big pile of food for about what you'd be buying a sandwich for in the UK.

We were booked on an early flight out of Heathrow on United Airlines, which meant getting out of bed at 4:30am At least the traffic wasn't too bad at that time! We were ahead of the rush so got our tickets and got checked in fairly quickly and had plenty of time to get breakfast before going through security (where we had our shoes searched, poor bloke looked a little upset at the smell) and into the boarding area. There was some delay because they had to defrost the plane before we could take off, but we left Heathrow only 20 minutes or so late. The in-flight entertainment consisted of a single tape with about eight movies to choose from, though it was slightly frustrating that you therefore had to wait for the longest film to finish before the tape got rewound and you could watch the next one. I watched Bewitched, Must Love Dogs, Bruce Almighty, some of Batman Begins (because that was the longest film, so always the last one showing...) and the end of Bad News Bears. Overall, not a bad selection, I thought, and the meals were reasonably edible.

Upon landing at Washington Dulles we were soon able to locate the bus stop for the car hire and, after the guy behind the counter tried really, really hard to give us an SUV instead of a car (he started off at $47 extra for the week, ended up basically trying to give it us for free), we picked up our Taurus and we were on our way. We nearly ended up back at the airport a couple of times because there were some new roads which weren't in the GPS software, but we were soon cruising along the interstate. One of the nice things about the US is the amount of space - in the UK the countryside always feels a little crowded, the roads are sometimes narrow because there's just no room for them to be any wider and everything is scrunched up close together, the US doesn't have so much of a problem there because there's so much more space to go around.

We arrived at our host's house after a few hours of pleasant driving and had some lunch while taking in the first quarter of the Notre Dame/Syracuse game and then had a trip out to The Mall in Columbia, no shopping at this early stage though, before locating the nearest Wendy's for tea.

Apparently immigrants to the UK will soon have to pass a Citizenship Test before being granted a British passport. The BBC have assembled a short test from the 'Life in the UK' guidebook to the official test. Aside from an unhealthy obsession with Santa Claus and fighting in pub car parks, the first question presents the following three options:

A: "Respect laws, the elected political structures, traditional values of mutual tolerance and respect for rights and mutual concern."

In other words, do as we say, not as we do.

B: "Share in the history and culture of an island nation with a character moulded by many different peoples over more than two thousand years."

In other words, we're a bunch of mongrels. though considering that until about 300 years ago England was continually at war with the Scottish and until about 500 years ago England was continually at war with the Welsh, statements like 'an island nation' are obvious b*ll*x.

C: "be part of a modern European democracy, one with a tradition of sharing our ways with the world – and allowing the world to bring its ways to us."

In other words, we've invaded most of the planet, we got over it, and we're much nicer now.

Of the many minor annoyances that I encounter on a daily basis, those little things that sap your morale and, over time, your strength and will to live, two of the most stupid ocurr at Waterloo and Putney station. Most mornings I get off the Northern Line at Waterloo, I walk up the steps and get on the escalator between the Northern and Bakerloo lines. I say 'the escalator', in fact there are three of them - two on the right go up, the one on the left comes down, so I go up on the right hand side and then walk directly across to the barriers out of the Underground system. Now, given that this is the shortest route between the Northern and Bakerloo Line platforms and the regular rail platforms of Waterloo, and that the slightly more convenient route is less convenient because they're repairing the escalators, this little hall gets quite busy in the mornings. You basically have a nearly constant stream of people coming up from the Underground and a similarly constant stream of people coming down from the train station, these two streams of people could move easily past each other were it not for one thing - despite having to come up (and go down) the escalator on the right side you have to use the exit (or entry) barriers on the left hand side. This means that people coming in both directions always have to walk across the flow of the people coming in the opposite direction with all the stopping, starting and oh-sorry-after-you that this entails. It seems such an obvious problem that is so simple to solve, and yet, instead of that, London Underground Ltd chooses to make everyone's day just a tiny little bit more difficult. Having successfully navigated the Waterloo rapids I can get on a train and relax for quarter of an hour and, given the time I usally manage to drag myself into work, the similar situation at Putney station is less of an issue for me but, by that time, I am attuned to the problem. So I get off the train at Putney and go to the stairs to get out of the station. Hanging above the stairs there is a big sign saying 'Keep Left'. As you walk up the stairs there is another hanging sign at the top, 'Keep Left'. You get to the top of the stairs and reach the gates, of which there are five, two to get in, three to get out and the three to get out are, yes, on the right hand side...

So the Northern Line is a disaster, it's taking me two hours to get home from work and yesterday it rained while all this was happening, but still some things in life amuse. Last night I got the rail replacement bus service from Bounds Green to Finchley Central, the bus was quite distinctive in that it was dark blue, in contrast to all the red buses in London, had the number 803 which, to my knowledge, is not a bus journey that exists in North London, and was the oldest bus I've been on this century. As we came up Ballard's Lane there was a woman standing at one of the bus stops talking to, I assume, a friend - she saw the bus coming and obviously started saying good bye and then walked out into the road (why that's stupid, I'll get onto another time) and signalled at this dark blue, number 803 bus. We stopped at the lights which gave her the opportunity to walk right up to us and start tapping on the door with an increasingly frustrated look on her face. This look was nothing compared to the one when the bus driver, continuing to ignore her, drove off as the lights change and we were treated to a few quite blatant gestures. Now I found all this quite amusing, this woman obviously doesn't care where the bus came from or where it might be going to but was still mightly offended that it didn't stop and pick her up. Given the amount of attention she pays to what buses look like I wonder if she lives her life in constant confusion because every bus she gets on seems to take her to a different place?