Honest Ads

When you watch as much British tv as we've been lately, you start to notice some interesting differences from what we're used to seeing on Canadian and American ads.  There seems to be a great amount of effort put into making advertisements as transparent and honest as possible, and this leads to some pretty amusing statements.  The key is to read the fine print.

We're used to ads for products claiming "More people prefer..."  Well, one of our favourite ones here is for Flora butter.  The ad states that more people prefer Flora butter in a taste test, but when we read the not-so-small print along the bottom of the screen, it tells us something along the lines of "in a survey of 60 people, 47% preferred Flora butter and 42% preferred the leading brand."  Therefore not even half of the people surveyed actually would have chosen that brand of butter!  

I like the cosmetic ads that have to declare when the model's appearance has been enhanced.  In shampoo and hair colour ads, the advertisers state when the model/actress is wearing hair extensions, and whether or not they're real human hair.  My favourite examples of honest advertising has to be in the mascara ads, where they state every time the model had false eyelashes.  It's as if they are admitting up front that your own eyelashes will never look that good without some extra help.

The funniest ones are probably movie trailers, which are ridiculously honest.  In an effort to give a detailed explanation of the rating a movie has received, at the end of each ad there will be a sentence about the film's scenes or content that affected the rating, whether it be "scenes of bloody violence" or "scenes of sexuality."  Our favourite so far is from the new Renee Zellweger movie, which according to its rating "contains one use of strong language."  Can you imagine being the person who had the watch the entire movie (which looks awful, by the way) and count the amount of times "strong language" was used?  

To be honest, details like these would make movie watching for someone like me, who does not like to see blood or violence, much easier, as I would know exactly what I'm walking into.  And it's also nice to know whether your hair could actually look that full, or your eyelashes that long, because you bought a certain product.  And the claims made in the butter ad make me question all those similar claims I've seen through the years on tv back home.  It really makes you think.  

The Week in Review

Enough of these epic posts about major events or themes.  I think I'll take a couple minutes and let everyone in on our daily lives.  Might be terribly interesting, might be terribly boring.  I don't know...

Monday started off like usual, with me running 3 British History One tutorials in a row.  I've been looking forward to them these past few weeks because we're into the student-run tutorials.  At the start of the semester I assigned teams of students to run one of five specific tutorials.  In the 10am tutorial, two international students had created a board game using a world map showing the many colonies of Britain, and the other students travelled around and answered questions on the various colonies they were in.  Excellent stuff, and creative -- I was very proud.

That afternoon I had my monthly supervisory meeting.  I always get quite nervous, and try to counteract this by making a list of stuff I've done and questions for my supervisors.  The major thing I've accomplished in the past month was to develop a system of organization for my primary source research.  My first major source is Cobbett's Parliamentary Papers, which go up to 1803.  I'm stuck in the early 1790s at the moment, but am slowly reading through every time the West Indies and slavery is discussed, then recording important quotations and their location and date.  This had become an 18 page, 10 000 word Word document that was too big to be useful.  To fix the problem, I took a half day course on the database software FileMaker Pro, wrote out a point form outline of my thesis and numbered/lettered each segment, and went through every quotation coding it to match a segment in the thesis.  Ta da!  My professors seemed happy with the results, too, and I'll be meeting them again in April to give them an update.  It's quite likely I'll still be working away at the papers, although hopefully I'll have moved onto the Hansard (post-1803).

Tuesday morning I was back to the papers until I heard a knock on the door.  It was our neighbour from downstairs asking if I'd like to join her for a trip to Ikea.  As if she had to ask!  We took the bus to the southern outskirts of Edinburgh and after a nice cheap lunch, spent a good part of the afternoon wandering through the showrooms wishing we had houses to decorate with all that amazing streamlined furniture.  Plus I pointed out the couch, chair and ottoman that we once had in our living room back on the other side of the ocean.  I miss that chair.  The furniture we have here is awful and uncomfortable.  I long to have a 3 person couch again.  I was good -- all I bought was a set of steak knives for £2.95.

Wednesday wasn't terribly exciting.  I think I spent most of the day inputing data.  Oh, I did find a new argument regarding the slave trade because I had moved onto 1793, and the French Revolution has the MPs terrified of change in the name of liberty and freedom.  I should have anticipated that.

Thursday was a great day.  Derek woke up to some excellent feedback about the second draft of his thesis, so that put both of us in a great mood.  A friend of mine came over in the afternoon and brought some excellent chocolate chip cookies, and the three of us sat and chatted for over an hour about school and traveling and homesickness (she's an international student doing a PhD as well, but in economics).  We both continue to struggle with school bureaucracy, as we're both tutoring scholarship recipients and are therefore treated by some as award winners and others as employees, very different classifications when it comes to payroll, human resources and the government.  Have I mentioned that I still haven't been paid for marking 90 essays, beginning last October?  And I'm supposed to mark 30 more next week?

Friday I woke up ill.  I'd been fighting off a bug for a couple days, but it won yesterday's battle.  So I turned down an invitation to karaoke, miss the weekly drink with the upper year PhDs that I've only recently started to go to (because I only found out about it 2 weeks ago), and just stayed inside on the couch with comfy pants (trousers) and some ginger ale.  I'm feeling better now, thanks to the rest, my inhalers, some LemSip Max (just like NeoCitron) and excellent care by Derek.   

Working out at the Pleasance

Last summer Derek and I had a plan.  We would move to Edinburgh, get settled into our place, find our way around town (and my school), and join a gym to stay active and counteract all that not so healthy British food we'd heard so much about.  Shockingly, it didn't happen.  Not that we didn't stay active.  The countless hills, hikes up the crags and large city parks kept us moving just about every day.  We'd go for walks to get our bearings and find new views of Edinburgh castle or some beautiful church to enjoy.  But joining the gym had been a goal of ours that wasn't reached, or even started.

Over Christmas, we got a push in the right direction.  Knowing about our desire to hit the gym, for Christmas Derek's mom got us some very useful presents.  Running shoes and sport socks from the Reebok store at St. Jacob's outlet mall, a pale blue gym bag, and cool stainless steel water bottles had us ready to go.  Derek had gym clothes from last year, and I was given a great pair of cropped pants to pair with my dance school or Canadian olympic t-shirts.

After getting back home to Edinburgh we hit the ground running (literally, for Derek anyway).  The school gym is called the CSE -- the Centre for Sport and Exercise -- and is located about 10 minutes away in the Pleasance.  They have an amazing selection of new cardio equipment, my preference, all of which have their own little televisions to watch.  There's also an amazing rock climbing room a couple stories high, raquet ball courts and a large gym.  I spend my time on the treadmill and either the elliptical or the bike.  Derek goes from the treadmill to the weight room, and then we meet up to stretch.  We go three times a week, and its rather nice.  I knew I would never go on my own, so this is working out (no pun intended) rather well for both of us, I think.

Trip to The Burn

On Friday I joined nine University of Edinburgh postgraduate history students and three profs for a retreat at The Burn, a 1791 manor built on 160+ acres of land 100 miles north of Edinburgh.  We were all under the mistaken impression that it was in the Highlands -- its too close to the east coast, and the hills were nowhere near high enough.  The term 'burn' is the Scots word for a smallish river and is fitting, as a rapidly flowing river stretches along the one side of the land.

The weekend flew by.  There were four 1.5 hour long sessions on topics such as 'Favourite Historians,' 'Numeracy and History,' and 'Shortcuts in History.'  The food was good, although too exotic for me.  On Saturday night I skipped the bright red chicken tandoori and stuck with white rice.  The building was very cold, and our bedroom colder.  With a comforter the width of the twin size bed and a small radiator on the far side of the huge master bedroom, my roommate and I struggled to sleep.  The stairway up to the girls' bedrooms looked like something out of Beauty and the Beast.  All we needed was our ballgowns.

The best part of trips like these has to be the free time.  The Games Room was a hit, with a ping pong table and snooker table (my preference).  I was surprised that a game of snooker could go on for 2.5 hours and not be finished, although we must consider the fact that 3 of us had never played before.  Luckily we had a great coach and a lot of fun.

Discussions around the fireplace on all sorts of current events, academia and our countries of origin lasted until 1am on both nights.  There was also a tiny bar the size of a janitor's closet which closed at ten, so everyone had to get their glasses of whisky or bottles of wine early and prepare for the evening ahead.  This was the best time to bond with fellow students whom we'd never met, as the school provides little opportunity for students in different years to meet each other.

We also did quite a lot of walking.  On Saturday we walked a couple miles to Edzell Castle, a 14th century castle/home.  While it looked like ruins from the lane, there were rooms to explore and a gorgeous garden unique for Scotland.  On Sunday afternoon we took a bus to Arbroath Abbey, the site of the creation of the famous Declaration of Arbroath.  Founded in 1178, the abbey must have been massive.  It was dedicated to the late Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury.

I was definitely hesitant to go on the trip, as more and more students dropped out in the weeks leading up to it, but I'm so glad I went.  I think I've made a good friend or two and took some great photos, so it was well worth the frigid nights.