You Are What You Eat!

Despite living in the UK for two years, Matt and I are pretty pleased how how un-British we are. We feel comfortable in our objective point of view on all things relating to British pop culture. Every time we watch a 'The 50 most funny moments in TV' we weep for the British sense of humor. Granted, the Brits have given us some very, very funny things like the original The Office, Extras, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python and many others. But trust me when I say that there are so many 'funny' moments that aren't really that funny. And there is an obsession here with certain celebrities which make even this pop culture American scratch her head. For example, Kylie Minogue would be voted queen if it worked that way. We can't figure out how this British press, known for its scathing reports on celebrities, sees no wrong with this woman. I mean, she's not really all that great and talented. It is funny how they call her things like a 'national treasure' and very conveniently forget that she's actually from Australia! Americans will best remember her as the woman who sang the 'Locomotion' song from the 80's.

Despite our staunch efforts in maintaining true to our respective countries, it has occurred to me that in some ways, we are becoming entrenched in the UK lifestyle. For example, we know who Lulu is. We know who Mylene Klass is (and hate her). When the papers talk about Jade Goody, we know exactly who it is and lately we've been humming the hit single "Promise" by Girls Aloud, despite the fact we never listen to the radio.

We look at loud tourists and shake our heads. We walk very fast, like any good Londoner does. We're starting to know all the political players and what party they represent, and even what that party stands for.

And heaven help me, but I can't stop calling diapers 'nappies' and pre-natal things 'antenatal'. You can't help but get caught up in the things around you I guess.

Lately it's become apparent in some of our meal choices. Before getting married, I was not a good cook. Well, I don't think I was, I never actually cooked enough to see whether I was good or not. But since being married, I would now say I've progressed to a mediocre cook. I'm doing better and have actually put together some semi-decent meals. Matt is a fantastic cook. He can just whip anything up and it'll taste pretty good (with only one exception...which wasn't very good, but the concept was there). In fact, we had company over last night and Matt made his famous lasagna and everyone could not stop raving about it. Myself included. It was even his first time making it vegetarian, since one of our guests doesn't do the meat thing.

Lately we've worked in two meals that have quickly become our favorites. We've started incorporating sausages into our meat rotations, we found a brand that is cheap and very yummy. So of course, that leads us to making Bangers and Mash (bangers are sausages, mash is mashed potatoes). And let me tell you, yummy! Now you have to know that our bangers are not like the link sausages in the States, nor are they the brats kind that you can get either. They're just regular yummy bangers.

I even made the mash from real potatoes and unlike our Christmas dinner when I tried to make it then, they turned out fantastic. Very creamy and very yummy, I have to admit I was proud of myself.

We've also started doing what we call 'Breakfast for Dinner' which might sound complicated to some of you, but basically it's where we cook breakfast foods and eat them for dinner. See? It's pretty self explanatory when you hear it that way, don't you feel silly?

But do our breakfasts include items such as pancakes, waffles, cereal or hash browns? Not on your life. We've become too British for that! Instead we have what is called a 'full English' which includes eggs, bacon, sausage, and beans on toast (okay, I don't eat the beans, but I have toast). It's also often served with mushrooms and tomatoes, but we don't do that. It's not the healthiest meal, which is why it's a treat, but trust me, it's a yummy meal.

So that's it. Slowly but surely, we're becoming British-ised. Though no matter how long we live here, I'm pretty sure we'll always be the "Aussie and American" living in London. And I'm pretty sure we'll never, ever fall under the spell of Kylie Minogue. Or Kate Moss for that matter.

Where you poo matters.

This commercial is one we see all the time. It's a testament of how sophisticated our lives are in London.

It's actually one of our favorites, and we quote it all the time. I think after watching it, you'll see why.



We just hope that the little boy grows up to be a major movie star and then this can be played on one of those 'before they were stars' shows. It's just that good.

It's snowing!

Greetings from snowy London!


How good can this get, listening to Take That and drinking hot chocolate while it snows outside!


Famous Abbey Road....


Long may it snow!

A Face Only a Mother Could Love?

For those of you who just assume our baby will be cute because of her mixed heritage, I thought I'd see if your optimism was justified. So after extensive studies of our faces, features and backgrounds a company (that only cost us 10,000 GBP to do) came up with this rendition of our soon-to-be member of our family.

And all I can say is...yikes!



What do you think about my little new baby Baby Ngai?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?


While I dig the curly hair, I'm not sure how much I like the fact that my daughter has a five o'clock shadow in that picture. Nor the uneven skin tone...hmmm...

What do you think? Is there any hope for our spawn?

I Have A Vision...And It's In Euro!

Last night, Matt and I had the opportunity to go to a live television extravaganza at the BBC studios. Our friends had two extra tickets to this live extravaganza and we couldn't resist the pull of the bright lights and glamor of show business. It's always fun to see how things work on tv, and yes, we do sound very cool when we casually mention our night out at the Beeb. But there was another reason we were excited. Well, at least why Matt was excited. See, the live televised extravaganza wasn't just any ordinary show...oh no...it was to narrow down with act would represent the UK in the Eurovision competition.

Eurovision? You're thinking to yourself. That sounds like a 3D show you'd see at Disneyland or something! Trust me, I know. Before moving here, I'd never heard of it either. And since moving here, I'd heard of it, but kind of thought it was cheesy and a really weird waste of time and money. Let me give you a little history, Eurovision has been going on for years, like since 1956 and is one of the longest running programs in the world. It's also one of the highest watched non sporting events in the world (thank you wikipedia). Traditionally, the acts are kind of cheesy and usually the winner might do okay in their country and in some areas around Europe, but rarely do they make it really 'big'. the most notable Eurovision winners who have won are Abba, and Celine Dion (who interestingly enough was representing Switzerland, not sure why since she's French Canadian). And that's it. Like I said, in recent years, the Eurovision contestants have been kind of cheesy and laughable (in my opinion, Matt completely disagrees).

The UK hasn't won a Eurovision contest since 1976...at least that's the impression they gave us last night at the live extravaganza, but according to wikipedia and the official Eurovision website, the UK actually took first in 1981 and 1997...so I'm not sure what's up with the lies we were led to believe.

Anyway, no matter when the UK last won, they are determined to win it again (which made much more sense if they hadn't won for 30 years, not so much now). Andrew Lloyd Webber the musical genius who wrote Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar and a whole bunch of other musicals, is writing the song that the winning act will perform at Eurovision. He's teamed up with a really talented (American) lyricist who's name I can't remember, but has written a bunch of songs we've all heard of (Rhythm of the night, Nothing's going to stop us now etc).

The live extravaganza is called "Your Country Needs You" and consists of six acts total, one is eliminated each week. The public votes for who they like and the lowest two are in the 'danger zone' and ALW gets to save one of the acts. So yeah, it's like American Idol or X factor...except the voting lines are only open for about 20 minutes and you know that same night who will get sent home. Last night narrowed the acts down from five to four.

So yeah, that's how we spent our Saturday night. It was fun to see all the behind the scenes moments of a live broadcast. We didn't realize that our tickets were just for standing room. We'd already been standing in line and whatnot for about 2 hours and to stand for another 2 hours and dance or whatever (right by the stage) was not ideal for an almost 6 month pregnant woman. Matt flagged an official person and asked if there was a spare chair available (which were reserved for friends and family and people who know important people) and they were able find an empty seat for just me. So I sat with the cool kids, while Matt and our friends hung out down below and danced the night away. It suited all of us just fine!

So because of last night we can add to our list of celebrities we've actually seen with our own eyes and in Matt's case, he was literally two or three feet from them (since he was right between the stage and the judges area).

We have Andrew Lloyd Webber:

Graham Norton (he hosted):

Duncan (from the defunct group Blue, he's a UK celeb):

And of course, one of the potential Eurovision winners. Maybe they'll make it huge and we can say we knew them when...

Jealous? It's okay...you can live vicariously through us.

Overheard...

Matt is playing FIFA '08 right now and apparently in a very tough match. A referee made a call he didn't agree with and this is what I heard exclaim loudly from the living room (in all seriousness):

"Man! That is unfair to the max!"

I love that he's stuck in the 80's. To the max.

You can thank me later

Tonight I stumbled upon this...it can only be described as a jewel of a website. And I thought the three of you who are my sisters and mom who read this blog would get a kick out of it. The website is called 'cake wrecks' and that's exactly what the site features...cakes that for one reason or another could be construed as wrecks. There are lots of different categories, and I encourage you to head over there if you'd like to kill some time and have a laugh.

But I couldn't resist putting some of my favorites on here though.

Although there are all kinds of cakewrecks on the site, I mostly got a kick out of the ones featuring literal translations. For example:

Apparently the recipient was having triplets and the instructions were to write 'congratulations' three times. But it gets better, check this one out:

Obviously the instructions were to write 'welcome' on the cake. I especially love the attention to detail the decorator has, they even included the quotation marks!

I don't think this one needs any further explanation!

I love it, rather than taking the time to actually create firework explosions, they just wrote it. But it still gets even better, this is my second favorite one:

What a way to celebrate the Olympics, eh? But it's not my favorite one, this one really does, if I may, take the cake:

Apparently the person requesting the cake was having a Wizard of Oz theme party. She didn't want to over complicate things by requesting a cake with a yellow brick road or anything like that, so she just instructed the cake designer to write 'Somewhere over the rainbow' except that was taken a bit too literally! And they didn't even spell 'somewhere right'.

Of course it's not all about literal translations. Apparently, misspellings are very common as well. And I didn't realize this before, but apparently the most misspelled word in the English language is 'Congratulations'. Here are some prime examples:


Awesome, right? But these cakes aren't all about what's written on them. Nope, some of them are just funny in their own right. Like this one.

I'm sure Jerry's friends are really wishing him luck, look how happy they are for him! Or how about one which is a minimalist's dream.

You know it's a winter cake because it says 'winter' at the top and there's a snowman at the bottom.

Of course some cakes are just not right.

I mean, it's impressive that it's an actual cake, but could you imagine taking a big knife to that thing? It's just a little too life like for my tastes (pun totally intended).

And this one I couldn't not post. Sorry if some on here find it offensive, I found it very funny. Apparently this cake was actually brought to an actual office. I assume it was the Scranton branch at Dunder Mifflin.

And now a few bonus cakes...here are some more funny ones.

I wonder what Libby does to be so close to death. And their birthdays are so close! Cool or scary? You decide.

I love the literal translation of this one. I'm guessing it was supposed to be Aunt/Mom, but they've spelled out slash. Or it's one twisted family and they're encouraging their aunt to flash their mom. Who knows?

Anyway, head over to the site, you'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll be glad you did. And yeah, you're welcome.