Becoming British

I’ve finally managed to book an appointment with my local council to go over with them my application form to get British nationality! I say ‘finally’ because it took me a while to pass the ‘Life in the UK’ test, gather all paperwork needed, find proper references and actually fill the form!  

Studying for the test wasn’t that bad and I can say I quite enjoyed it. United Kingdom has quite a fascinating history. The book starts from the prehistoric times going through all the way to the previous coalition government. It includes many different chapters including some regarding Magna Carta, the Elizabethan times, the Civil war, Victorian times, world wars and facts regarding social life. Parts of it are really interesting like learning about Henry VIII, Cromwell or how the Black Death of the 13th century affected the socioeconomic state of the country. However, there are things that I’m pretty sure not many British people know like the year that Sake Dean Mahomet opened his first curry house, how many people form a jury in Scotland or who was voted the greatest Briton in 2002! Just to let you know the answers are 1810 in George Street, 15 and Churchill. The book itself is quite small but dense with events, people and dates. What I personally found difficult to remember were all the names I didn’t know of British actors, artists, athletes and scientists mentioned with their accomplishments. However, I managed to pass the exam on my first attempt. 

Since then I’ve been trying to fill in my application form, which hasn’t been an easy feat. The form itself is 32 pages long and requires information regarding where you’ve been working the last years, where you’ve lived the past years and even where you’ve been on holidays for the last 5 years! The latter has been quite difficult since I had been having long weekends away here and there and that information is buried deep inside old emails. Not to mention the bookings that JJ had done that I couldn’t easily confirm. What I assume they want is to check whether I’ve been on a terrorist summer camp or if I’ve left the country for more than 270 days in the last 5 years! I did manage to gather as much information as possible. I’ve also got copies of my degree, P60s, ID cards, contracts for houses and jobs etc.  

After that meeting with the council, I’ll have to go for an official interview with the ‘Home Office’ and after that (hopefully) I’ll be all cleared for the ceremony and the naturalisation. Cross your fingers and wish me luck. 

Happy New Year

I’d like to wish for you a jolly, healthy, successfully and productive New Year!

We went to central London for the change of the year. We had arranged to meet some friends, but it was so busy that it was impossible to reach them. To give you an idea we were in the North Bank of Thames around 10 pm, close to Temple station (that’s two stops away from Westminster), and it was already crowded and we couldn’t get closer. They had already blocked parts of the road leading to the area around Big Ben. By 11pm the closed road where we were was full of people and there was nowhere to go but stay put and wait for time to pass.

At midnight, the fireworks display was really nice. I tried to enjoy the ‘show’, so I didn’t take many pictures. It wasn’t easy to zoom in, keep steady with everybody moving around and take a decent shot of the fireworks anyway. The atmosphere of the joyful crowds was pleasant as well (excluding some drunk people).

When the display was over, we quickly tried to get to a convenient open tube station and head home. JJ was working the next morning and we couldn’t afford to get stranded in the centre. The way back was funny. There were lots of people wishing each other for the New Year. The girl sitting next to me in the train had a carton decapitated Queen with her. Since she was slightly drunk and falling asleep, the Queen was resting on my shoulder as well. I couldn’t resist and told JJ to take a picture of me:  

  

Me talk Pretty one day.

(In case you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s very witty, easy to read and funny. I generally love Sedaris’ work.)

I was trying to read something (I’ll get back to that later) recently with no much of success and a story from when I first came to London came back to me. It was the very first week of classes and I was still trying to adapt to a very new and different environment. We had theoretical classes in the morning and practical classes in the afternoon at the computer rooms. The class was small. We were around 15 people overall, most of which were foreigners. I believe there were around 5 – 6 British people and everybody else came from a different country.

During one of these practical classes near the end of the first week, we were quietly working in the lab. After the first hour, a girl called ‘Elise’ stood up and started packing her stuff. I was a bit amazed that she was leaving so early since we had so much stuff to go through that I asked her about it surprised:

-Elise, are you leaving?

She started laughing her heart out loudly and she replied for everybody to hear:

-Yes, I’m still alive. It’s not like I’m dead yet!

That took me by surprise. Having a deep Greek accent of course my ‘leaving’ came out as ‘living’! I felt very embarrassed since I wanted to make a good impression to my new colleagues and now some of them were laughing at me. It was like a slap in the face. However, after feeling embarrassed I felt very angry at her behaving so childish. We were doing the same course and she found it difficult when it was at her own native language (bitch). Show me some respect! It took me a while however to give a presentation in the classroom without feeling extremely nervous about my English.

This story always comes back when I’m linguistically challenged.

Since I am a very serious book worm, I was reading the personal ads at the end of the GT magazine. Don’t ask me why exactly, but some of them are extremely hilarious like the one written by a wealthy 70 year old guy looking for a 18 – 25 male for friendship! Lol… Really? Because you’d have so much in common to share…

Anyway, have you read these ads recently? There are so many abbreviations that they are truly unreadable! OK, I can understand stuff like the ‘XL U’ (extra-large uncut), the LTR (long term relationship) or the ‘yo’ (years old) but what does these mean?

-CD (Compulsive disorder?)

-WE (well educated?)

-VWE (very well educated?)

-GSOH (gosh misspelled?)

-WLTM (white loving trash male?)

and last but not least:

-Convincing TV (what the f is that?)