The Supermarket Trip

Need to take a minute to post on the supermarkets after my trip there tonight, as they were one of the first things that stuck out to me when I got here.

Well, the majority of the supermarkets are reasonably small, 'express' sized supermarkets. There are probably 3 or 4 really big supermarkets. The small ones have an appalling selection of foods. I happen to live about a 15 minute walk from a nice big one, so that's where I have started going. Tesco's, it's called.

So, first things first.

-There is an extreme lack of fresh food. I'm talking produce, vegetables, meat, and fish.
-An incredibly high percentage of the foods are packaged.

If I want to buy tomatoes, they are not usually loose (only at the BIG market is there a small selection of loose, regular old tomatoes). Then, most times, they sell tomatoes in a plastic tin. Sometimes the tin is then covered in the outside in plastic. This is a theme that is repeated ALL over the produce and vegetable aisle. Everything is covered in plastic. Plastic here, plastic there. When you can get loose items, it is of the staples. Today, I got a few loose basic tomatoes, some loose red onions, even loose garlic and loose avocados. There is no such thing as a giant pile of potatoes, a giant pile of apples, a giant pile of anything. Even when loose, they come individually tagged and in crates. But the amount of plastic seen in the fruits and vegetable sections is overwhelming. In the express stores, forget about buying anything that is not packaged. On the bright side, at least some of the supermarkets charge you 10 pence for a plastic bag.

Another oddity is that produce that can be ripened on the counter usually comes unripened. I suppose this is because nearly all the produce is imported and it increases the shelf life if they pick it early. Usually, the plastic wrap will say where it is from. My cheery tomatoes are from Morocco. My asparagus is from Peru. My red pepper is from Italy. My orange is from South Africa. Surprisingly, my green onions and broccoli are from Scotland. One thing you CAN get from Scotlan in bulk, for very cheap, of course, is white potatoes.

I recently read an article that, not surprisingly, most of the surface of the UK has been converted for agricultural use. So, of course, there is an extreme lack of fruits and vegetables, and what they have is mostly imported. The article also said that there really are only about 6 varieties of apples that they grow in the UK. I think that surprised me.

Then, there is a big freezer section, 2 or 3 rows. The baked bean section is great, it is HUGE, the largest I have ever seen my entire life. Lots of human gases must be produced from such a high baked bean consumption. Then, say you are looking for black beans... first you need to look for baked beans. Then slide over 3 or 4 columns and you are in the 'pulse' section, where all the other 'beans' are. Next time I am lost I'll remember to ask the clerk 'Can you please direct me to the pulse section please?'

The breakfast sausage section is massive. You can get them in the traditional form, or squares. And they are CHEAP. Large selection of bacon, too.

Forget about much fresh meat, as in, the butcher just cut it 'fresh'. Just go straight to the refrigerated aisle and pick up a packet. I guess if you want good, fresh meat, go to a butcher.

The selection of frozen and refrigerated prepared foods is massive. All sorts of meat pies. Haggis. Things you couldn't even think of.

On the other hand, I started a trend of buying a few new, random food items each week. If you can't tell from the food blogs, I'm having a lot of fun doing this. There are many things I haven't seen before, which is great, except my heart probably doesn't like, for example, today's combination of pork pies, Haggis, Irn Bru, and Mulligatawny soup that I picked up... it'll just have to work a little harder until I leave:

Irn Bru. A Super Scottish drink they claim cures hangovers. Loaded up with caffeine and sugar. Tasted like any other energy drink. They say it competes with Coke and Pepsi here:


MacsWeen Haggis. George said it was pretty good Haggis, even for being sold in the supermarket, so I went for it:


Mulligatawny soup. Never seen it in a US supermarket (probably wasn't looking). Wikipedia tells me its some Indian-British originated soup with curry flavorings.


'Melton Mowbray Pork Pies'. Sounds like a heart attack and artery clogger. I reckon I'll have a go (reckon that it might be my new favorite word, by the way). Melton Mowbray is a city in England famous for its pies (NOT fruit pies!)

Foods in Scotland, Part 2

...and it continues...

-The scotch pie. Actually, it is just referred to simply as a 'pie' here. As in 'Hey Jimbo, let's go grab a pie for lunch.' Commonly bought at your local pie shop (which is basically a bakery). Filled with minced meat. Personally, not bad. Not the greatest thing in the world, though. Comfort food.





-Steak Pie with Chips. Just cut up pieces of beef, in some amazing sauce, really really tender as well. The most delicious thing I have eaten here so far. I'm not a big fan of fries, but they tasted better when dipped in the sauce from the meat.



I elected not to purchase them out of fear for my well being, but indeed it is hot dogs in a can:


Walkers Chips. Prawn Cocktail. Roasted Chicken. Worcester Sauce. English Roast Beef. The list goes on. I tried the prawn one, Worcester sauce, and chicken ones, and they were all way too strong tasting (and in a bad way as well). I don't really want to eat chicken chicken, I want to eat potato chips.





Fish and Chips. Not sure why the are so popular in the UK, but I won't be buying them very often if at all. Large chunk of white fish deep fried. Nothing too special about that.



Scotch Egg. Admittedly, these are ok. By ok, I mean I might buy another one sometime before I leave, just for the heck of it. You can eat them hot or cold. I bought them at the supermarket. It is a hard boiled egg, wrapped in sausage, breaded, then deep fried. I could never think of that combination on my own. I might even try to experiment and make some on my own.





Beef Burger. This was a burger, breaded, and deep fried. Of course, it was served with chips. I loaded the chips up with brown sauce. Admittedly, it was edible. Bought at a chip shop. I guess a chip shop might be considered fast food.





This is just a sausage (can you see it in there?!?!?!). Covered in cheese. Again, loaded up with chips. Actually, this was Eduardo's. I can not attest to the taste of this dish, but I am sure the picture may serve justice:



Really enjoying the culinary experience that is the UK, nonetheless. Trying to keep my arteries unclogged at the same time. Stay tuned for more food blogs, there are certainly a lot of unknown delicacies remaining to eat here...

Back to Reality...

Well, first week of classes is officially over! What a week indeed.

In fact, it was quite a good first week. This year, I must say I have become accustomed to a bit of a leisurely life, travelling around alot, meeting people, learning and seeing plenty of not so necessarily career related things, and having generally a bit of a agenda-less time of reference since leaving UL. I still maintain it is something everyone should be able to experience at some point or another. But I've been looking forward to changing it up a bit, having a goal to focus on, and something to put my mind and energy to.

If I had only one expectation of the program, academically, it was that it was not going to be easy (but nothing worthwhile ever comes easy right? ahhh how cliche). I say this for three reasons. One, I haven't been a student for 3.5 years. I have forgotten a lot of the academic knowledge I learned in school, knowledge which in addition, I did not use a whole lot of at UL. Two, my mentality is not necessarily in 'student-mode'. And third, simply that I expected the classes to be difficult. I suppose I had a bit of a sneak peek at some of the upcoming academic material as a few UL colleagues are/were getting masters in fire safety at US Universities.

For the most part, my expectations were met based on what I have seen in the first week. I have had no problem getting into student mode, essentially studying my ass off. I attribute that in part to the fact that working for 3 years gave me a greater appreciation for learning, classes, etc, and I really want to put forth the effort to absorb the knowledge, learn it well, and not waste my time. I also feel almost that I need to put a good 40 hours plus extra in anyways (in reality it will be much more), as I did working normally.

Regarding the first and third points, well, at least two of the four classes are quite challenging, and this is compounded in parts by the fact that a few of them have pre-requisites that I (and some of the other Erasmus students), have not been exposed to. All that really amounts to is that I have to work doubly hard to cover material that I already should have known.

Let me explain further. One class, Finite Element Method, is a primarily civil engineering based course, for 4th or 5th year undergraduates. Well, I am a mechanical engineer. Most of the students have taken a course before Finite Element Method, and on the first day of classes, we were basically expected to know what was covered in that course. So basically, I spent hours and hours studying Mon-Thurs, checking reference books out at the library, and trying to learn the material of one semester in a matter of days. Of course, we did approach the professor about this as a group, and due to our special circumstances, he gave us 8 or so Erasmus students a 2.5 hour personal crash course on the stuff. It helped alot, but it will still be a bit of an uphill battle.

Other than that, the classes seem interesting. This semester will probably dictate whether I am interested in doing my thesis on something related to structures and fire, which is the specialty at Edinburgh. One class, as I mentioned, is Finite Element Method. In a sense that is explainable to all, it deals with simulating, through computer models (a program), what happens to a structure (for example, a building), or a part (for example, the bumper of your car), when 'something' happens to it (for example, simulating the effect of a car crash on a bumper and how the bumper changes shape as a result of the crash, or simulating how the heat of a fire might affect a wall or column in a building). There is a computer program we will be using, some mathematics (differential equations hooray!), and it is generally much more detailed and complicated than I have described above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method

The second class is Fire Dynamics. This class is basically the science of fire and how fire behaves (yes, it does behave! Hopefully not naughty though...ok, commence tomato throwing at once). It uses a lot of chemistry, thermodynamics, heat transfer, differential equations, and other engineering disciplines. Admittedly, I haven't used a lot of that stuff in awhile, so I will have to spend some time (the real question is how much, haha) refreshing myself.

A third class, a bit of an odd class, is the Philosophy of Structures. This is another civil engineering class. Basically, thinking about how structures (such as bridges and buildings) behave when something happens (like an earthquake or fire), and thus also philosophies of designing the structures in light of possible events. It is not a class that is big on numbers and calculations.

The last class is Engineering Management. For me, I have taken a few similar classes, did some related training at UL, and, well, managed projects at UL. It is another word-heavy class. One lecture a week and an examination in December with 3 questions worth 100% of the final grade. Cost, Time, Quality, Sustainability, all those buzz words that you associate with management are all there.

So a few observations. The classes are bigger than I was expecting. Mainly because most of them are actually filled with undergraduates. The management class had 210 people! The others have had between about 40 and 80 or 90 students. Much different from my background at Bradley, where I felt like I could actually talk to a professor in a smaller classroom. Teachers don't really take many questions in class (actually, people don't really ask questions during a lecture, I should say...). I kind of had an impression the classes would be smaller since it is a post grad degree, but, there are 24,000 students at this school, so that kind of eliminates that possibility I suppose. Also, the marking system here is much different than my experience in the US. Almost all of the grades in each class is basically your score on the final exam. I will consider myself a bit of a test dummy on educational quality of US vs. European Universities. Check back in in 3 months and then next June for an update.

I am also I suppose a bit surprised at how heavily the class load is weighted to structural/civil engineering. But that's the specialty here, and it is what it is. I'm here to learn.

So it is going to be a lot of work. A lot of studying. Of course, as long as the subjects stay interesting, all should be fine. Anyways, it was all expected to begin with, and is now coming to fruition. In the meantime, hopefully I have a little time to enjoy Edinburgh!

In conclusion, I present to you a few things that just should not exist!

I didn't have the heart to purchase hot dogs that come in a can, but here they are in all their glory (barf!):


I did take a stab at these and must say, I will not be a returning customer. Final conclusions are that all animal products should not appear as flavors in chips (prawns, chickens, steak, fish, etc, and trust me, they have all these flavors here):

A bit on the City

Usually when I meet a new person here, one of the first questions they ask is 'Do you like Edinburgh'.

It's actually a hard question to answer. It's been just over a few weeks here, so I still have plenty of time to explore and get to know the city and formulate my opinion. But, I can't usually unequivocally and emphatically answer 'YES', to that question. So far, I like the city, but am certainly not enamored with it.

Possibly because it is a little familiar. The foods are different, but not in a strange or exotic way. Of course, they speak English, of which I understand 80-90% of the time (I find myself having to ask people to repeat themselves sometimes). The city is a mixture of new and old. Mainly, the center of the city is very historical, but once you get outside of that, It is all fairly new.

After the first few days here, though, I thought that it was not a very diverse city. But my opinion is changing after a few weeks and learning more about the city. If I walk down any random street here, it is true, chances are I will not see a black person or a hispanic person. And that is something that is very different from the bay area or Chicago. However, there are a large amounts of people from India, Bangladesh, the Middle East, Poland, China, and Southeast Asia. The thing about the diversity here, and I think this is how it should be, is that everyone together makes up the society as a whole. There is no China town, little italy, SF mission district, Chicago Devon St, etc. Everyone, on the surface at least, is part of society. That implies learning English, not living together in blocks and communities, and generally being part of the 'normal' culture (adapting). While Chicago is probably one of the most diverse cities in the US and even world, the fact is it seems that there is a neighborhood pecifically set aside for every race, and when everyone just withdraws to their own mini country within a country, it really isn't actually that diverse. So anyways, I think the spread of diversity here is less than in the US, but the integration is much better. I'd like to look into why that is cause I can't really say (immigration laws & programs, how housing is structured, attitudes towards illegals, borders, etc).

Let's see.....I have decided I am not a huge fan of the beer here. The average Scottish beer is better than the average US beer (taking budweiser as the 'average' American beer'). In that regard, it is because they have a bit more flavor. But I went to a beer festival the other day with Brecht and Karliss, and was actually really disappointed...but that is mainly because I am simply not used to the beer style. I felt like all the beers were flat. In fact, one of the brewers said they don't carbonate the beers very much. So that leads to very little foam, not many bubbles, and a thin, almost watery flavor in my opinion. They were also not very cold. Not sure if that is normal or not, though. Anyways, at the moment, I'm not a huge fan of the general beer style.

Friday night I went to a traditional Scottish dance called a Ceilidh (pronounced 'kay-lee'). Basically, a band played very upbeat, traditional folk dance music, and led people through the steps to many different dances. I think it equates to something like line dancing on super steroids. Anyways, there were about 300 people in the hall. There were people of all ages as well (though as it was hosted near the University, there were a bit more people in their 20s). Anyways, basically, you have partner dances and group dances. In some of the group dances, everyone ends up dancing with everyone. It is very fast paced, not much stopping, and even sometimes in groups the men end up lifting the women up (which leads to an extremely sweaty, stinky room after only a few dances). Occasionally, it can be hard to follow the guy shouting the steps on the microphone over the band, but here, many people did not know what they were doing, so I fit right in. Of course, only about 10 or 15 men were wearing kilts, so you can tell the % who were actually Scottish. The high tempo of the dances really created and environment where everyone was having fun, everyone was dancing with everyone (no machisimo), and it would be hard for someone to not enjoy themselves. I myself had a blast, and anyone reading this knows from a few blogs before I STUNK to the nth power at the Tango and Samba.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9ilidh

Last dance took about 20 minutes (women on one side, guys on the other. Each partner goes down the gauntlet and goes in a circle with arm interlaced around each man or woman. Quite the sweat fest):


Pair dance:


Edinburgh is generally a very safe city. I live about a 35 minute walk from the city center, and have had no problems walking home at night on occasion (George told me it is very safe anyways). There is a neighborhood north of the city called Leith, near the waterfront, that seems to have a reputation for not being the safest place at night, but that seems to be about it. But if I don't want to walk home, the bus service is really good. It is 1.20 pounds per ride (something like $1.80). Plus, they are double deckers, so that's just good fun being able to walk up a set of stairs on a moving bus.

Since George is a walking encyclopedia on UK history, I'll have to post a blog sometime on history. I find it pretty interesting. As well as the relationship of Scotland to England and Scotland to the UK in terms of governance. When talking about history here, it's impossible not to talk about religion, so need to write about that (if only for my own memory). Plus, more food blogs. Prawn Cocktail, Worchester Sauce, and Roasted Chicken flavored potato chips anyone?

Other than t

Brecht (Belgium) and Karliss (Lativa), having our first Fish and Chips:


A picnic just outside/above the city with Hernan (Argentina), his wife, Karliss, and roomate Eduardo (Mexico City). Good Spanish practice!:


Having Chinese food at our place with Eduardo and George before watching Manchester United play the Rangers (a Glasgow team).