So-Called Reality

It's no secret that I love reality tv, and I've been getting my full lately. It's an excellent incentive to get through a day of reading parliamentary papers. I thought I'd share some of my favourites with you.

Celebrity Big Brother

This is the last year that Big Brother will be running here, and I think that's very sad. But I also recognise that I'll have a lot more free time when it's over. Big Brother here is not like it is in the US. I was used to three one-hour episodes a week, centered around specific events: Head of Household competition, nominations, power of veto, eviction, and repeat. Here, Big Brother is on every night with a one-hour episode condensing the entire previous day, edited chronologically with times, and shows day-to-day happenings and conversations as well as tasks and nominations. There are also talk shows devoted to discussing Big Brother, like Big Brother's Big Mouth, where the latest evictees, past housemates, and the family and friends of current housemates come on to discuss the latest events and defend the housemates' actions.

If that isn't enough for you, some days have live feeds running for a couple hours in the afternoon, where you watch the housemates sitting around chatting. Most often you're stuck listening to birds and other nature sounds when the microphone feeds are cut due to the nature of the conversations. There's also a live feed to the house overnight, so you can watch them sleeping. A little creepy. But it can be fascinating to watch the live feed of the celebrity household, and catch a glimpse of how Hollywood stars, musicians and other rich people live, when stuck in a small house that they have to share with 11 others, with limited groceries and everyone sharing a bedroom.

Celebrity Big Brother is only a month long, compared to the three months of Big Brother in the summer for celebrity-wannabes. Celebs from the current house include Sisqo of The Thong Song fame, born-again-Christian Stephen Baldwin, very cute Swedish DJ and singer Jonas (aka. Basshunter), cross-dressing cage fighter Alex Reid, and multi-millionaire Ivana Trump. It's been quite an interesting couple of weeks. We were sad to see Sisqo evicted, but were fine with all of the other evictions, and aren't quite sure who'll win it. Like everyone else probably did, we were thinking the winner would be Vinny Jones, footballer-turned-Hollywood movie star who's taken on the role of House Dad, but he's been acting pretty silly and huffy lately, so I think Dane, having completed a rediculous task of faking a nightmare, screaming like a girl and getting a consolatory hug, is now a good bet. We'll see this weekend! (although sadly I'll be away, so I'll have to avoid all news until I get a chance to watch the final!)

Weight-Loss Shows

I'll lump these together, because there's so many of them that follow the same general pattern:

• a host introduces you to fat people or fat families,
• follows them around to find out how they got fat,
• shocks them,
• puts them on a diet and gets them exercising,
• and finally sees what happens a couple months later.

Each one varies the pattern, shock tactics and subjects a tiny bit. For example, Generation XXL followed young kids who were morbidly obese, interviewing them and their parents, and has them taking part in a university study on weight loss and self-esteem. It's shot in a documentary style, and says that they will film followups through the years, to see how the children do. It's amazing how some of the parents refuse to listen to the doctors and the specialists' advice about diet.

Fat Families has a 'former fatty' for a host, who helps adult families with 3 or 4 morbidly obese family members lose weight over 10-12 weeks by teaching them about portion size, shocking them with medical truths, using a small video camera to show them the extent of their body fat, and replacing at least one couch in their living room with a treadmill or exercise bikes. After the 10 or 12 week session each gets a makeover, and then gets weighed and examined. We've also been watching a lot of The Biggest Loser and The Biggest Loser Australia, both of which we're at least a year behind on.

Bad Kid Shows

Here's another category of reality tv that's popular (and rather fun to watch). There's the standard ones, like Supernanny and WifeSwap. But there's many others that I'm only just beginning to discover. They too generally follow a prescribed path:

• We're introduced to a family with spoiled, lazy, disrespectful children
• The parents decide that things are going to change
• They attempt to enforce rules and discipline their children for the first time in their lives
• After some hiccups and tantrums, the household ends up much more peaceful
• If there is a follow-up, it's either been a really good change, or everything's gone right back to normal.

There are so many of these that I can't remember all their names, and the purpose of the shows vary as well. There's shows like Supernanny, that are meant to teach parents how to be better parents and have happier families. Bank of Mum and Dad has parents completely taking over their child's finances for a week, after the child admits how many thousands (or tens of thousands) of pounds they are in debt, in order to get the child back on track financially and curb their spending. Never Did Me Any Harm turns a twenty-first century household into one from the era of the parents' childhood (for example, the 70s), where the children must live, work, and play how their parents did when growing up (minus the physical discipline and unsupervised hours outside), in order to be grateful for what they have and gain new respect for their parents and the household rules.

Electric Dreams

Electric Dreams was probably my favourite reality show of the past year. It was a three-part series that took a family of five through the 70s, 80s and 90s a year a day over 30 days. Each episode was the start of a new decade. The house was transformed by decorators, and the only appliances and electronics in the house were those that were consistent with the decade. Rooms in the house were blocked off to reflect the size of the average British home in that decade, the central heating wasn't allowed on for the first few days, and one night in the 70s the power was cut to reflect the rolling blackouts of the year.

Every day brought new deliveries to the door of new electronics and appliances according to when the average household got certain items, like a vcr, microwave, stereo, dishwasher, washer/dryer, computer, video game system etc. It was also fun to see the outfits and hair, the vehicles, and how the size of the house changed through the decades. But it was also amazing to see how quickly the items began to flow in and out by the late-80s, and how the pile of obsolete items in the garage kept growing. We got particularly excited to see the different game systems (we were hoping for an NES, but a Super Nintendo arrived instead). Some of the year-specific tasks were pretty crazy, like having to cook an entire meal and bake using only the microwave. I would not have eaten any of that whole chicken, which they had to rub paprika onto since it couldn't brown in the microwave!

Power's Out Again...

I can happily report that the cold snap has broken, at least for the time being, and we had temperatures of 7 degrees and some sunshine today, so things are looking up. But I'm going to rewind a couple weeks and let you in on another reason why we've felt particularly cold so far this winter.

On the evening of December 27th our power went out for the first time since moving to Edinburgh. It was a little scary, as we didn't know if we had any candles (other than birthday cake candles) or even a flashlight, nevermind who we should call. Do we call our landlord, our property agency, our energy supplier Spark Energy, or Scottish Power, who we thought might control the flow of electricity that we pay our energy supplier for. It was after 6 pm, so there hadn't been any light in the sky in over 2 hours. We used mobile phone lights and the lights from the streetlamp outside to dig around for important papers, like the instruction manuals for the place, our property agent's after-hours number and an energy bill. Derek checked on the fuse box but everything was fine.

We threw on our jackets and went out into the courtyard, where the lights were, and knocked on a neighbour's door but there was no answer. Luckily someone else was walking down the steps, and we chatted for a minute. He told us that his landlord lived in the building, whom he'd just seen, and she'd been in touch with Scottish Power and we were supposed to have power back within three hours. So that gave us a timeframe and we now knew to call Scottish Power to get more information.

I was really worried about spending the evening (or maybe even overnight) in such a cold flat. As I was saying earlier in a previous blog, our flat is pretty cold to begin with. Everything is electric, so without power we have no heat, no hot water, no ability to cook... We called our old neighbours who stayed in town over the holidays and asked if we could come spend the evening with them (and we'd bring dessert -- an apple crumble Derek had just been about to put in the oven). They were happy to have us over, so after a phone call to Scottish Power confirming that it was going to take a while we trekked across Grassmarket back to our old place, jealous of the many powered flats up and down the street.

It was so nice and warm being at our friends' home, I didn't really want to leave, but it was after 11 and we knew we should go back and check on everything. Our friends sent us home with two filled hot water bottles to help us sleep (and which we still need to give back!), and it was wonderful that they did because when we got home at midnight and turned on the light switch nothing happened. That was very disheartening. I called Scottish Power again, spent ages on the phone waiting to talk to someone, found out that they were still working, and got ready for bed. I hate washing my face in freezing cold water. But at least we had nice warm spots in the bed thanks to the hot water bottles. And the power did come on within the hour :)

The next evening, December 28th, I was excited for a family Christmas Skype. Derek had preheated the oven and was just about to put dinner in when the power went out. I was crushed, but prepared, as I'd gone and bought two large candles and Derek had gotten a wind-up flashlight. We stuck our heads outside, and saw that not only was the emergency stairwell lighting all on (a good thing), but that the next flat over also had power. Derek went outside and crossed the street to look up at the building, and saw that many of the flats still had power, including our neighbours and the flat directly above us. This was very disheartening. I called Scottish Power and got the standard 'we aim to fix it within 3 hours' response.

We still had dinner, as the oven was fully heated and the meal wasn't anything that you needed to worry about, and then decided to go into my office to make use of the heat, the light, the microwave and kettle, and the internet facilities for Skype. It turned out to be a good evening, and a rather amusing story to tell my family back home. I still got to see aunts and uncles and cousins and my grandma, and they got to see us and my office. When we got home the power was back on. This time it'd only been off for about an hour and a half. Not too bad.

In the next week my cousin came to stay with us for a few days, I spent lots of time working on my library research for school, and things were pretty normal. Then came the night of January 5th. We'd gone to bed before 11 pm, but as I was tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep, I noticed that the alarm clock wasn't on. I though that maybe Derek had accidentally shut the mains off to it (the switch found on every electrical outlet to turn the power off at the wall), but had a sinking feeling that the power was off again. It was, but luckily others were still up when it went off so that it was back on by the time we work up around 7:30 am. But still, it's a very cold night when there's no heat.

I found it very odd that whenever I told someone from Britain that our power was out, or (as time went on) that it was out again, that they'd ask me what I meant. Either they have a different term for it than we do (it's not like I was going around saying 'the hydro's out again' like I would have back home), or it's a rare occurrence. And if it is rare to have the power go out here in an Edinburgh flat, then why did (does?) it keep happening?

But the worst one for me was probably last week's outage. Around 2 am the power went out, so no heat. I probably should have bundled myself up in a blanket and made my way out to the living room to give them a call (we now keep a power bill by the phone for the emergency number), but I was too cold and I just hoped that someone else would call. And so of course I spent the night very cold and worrying that no one would call Scottish Power. I think I got up around 7 or 7:30 (very early for me) and there was still no power. So no hot water for a shower, no ability to have a hot drink or breakfast. I called Scottish Power right away, and it sounded like there were crews already in the area but that they hadn't known that our flats didn't have power. After a quick breakfast I threw on some grubbies and heading off to the office for some warmth and to power up my laptop. Derek stayed home to wait for our weekly grocery delivery (another blog altogether). He called me around 11:o0 to tell me that, after 8 and a half hours, the power had returned.

On my way home I stopped at the university's Advice Place, which is a great information hub. I asked about living standards, the rarity of power outages and wondered what we could do if this was going to be a regular occurrence. Their advice centered on letting the property agency know the details and asking them to look into it, and perhaps get an electrician out (although that might not be necessary, as it appears to be a wider issue with the building). As I walked home through Grassmarket I saw several Scottish Power vans around, a bunch of workers milling around, and a portion of the road blocked off (which is a pretty major deal on this narrow two-lane road), so this told me they were finally taking the problem seriously. We had lunch, during which time the buzzer went off, and a power guy asked Derek if we had power.

Right after lunch the power went out again. I asked Derek to go out and ask what was going on, and to let the workers know. He returned and told me that they'd said the power would be off and on all afternoon, but that it should be back by 4 or so. We decided to go to the library for the afternoon, stopping on the way to give a list of the days and times we'd been without power to the property agents. It was a good afternoon, and we decided that if the power was out when we returned home we'd order a pizza. But we didn't need to, as the power had come back on and has stayed on ever since.

It's been quite the learning experience. I hadn't realized how much I take electricity, light and heat for granted. We also got to see some of the wiring that serves our building of flats, and which lies on the ground under the big square stones that make up the sidewalk (and, as they're completely smooth, serve as an ice slide in the winter). I hadn't really noticed before how there aren't power lines up, lining the streets. I guess they're all underground. No risk of trees falling on them or wind knocking them over, but I suppose a much greater risk of mouse and rat damage, as well as water, and we've had a lot of precipitation lately! So I now know what to do when there's a power outage in Edinburgh, but I wish I didn't.

The Big Freeze

You've probably heard that much of Europe is experiencing colder temperatures than normal, and it's having quite the effect on transportation, school, energy consumption and so on. Scotland is no exception. Last night in the highlands it got down to -22.1 degrees C, which is very cold for the UK. The weather expert on BBC Breakfast this morning said that we're on the road to beat the record low temp. of -27. Schools have been shut for days, towns are getting 10cm on snow a day, airports are shut and major flights cancelled across the country, and the lack of gritting streets and sidewalks is affecting drivers and pedestrians alike. It's dangerous to go out for a walk. Just about everyone I know has fallen at one point or another.

All of this is very unusual for the UK, and people, buildings, and city/airport infrastructure is not prepared for temperatures and precipitation like this. Britain hasn't experienced such a sustained deep freeze since 1982. We should have known something was up when it started snowing on my birthday, and snowed everyday for a week. Having a white Christmas hadn't happened for the entire UK for 5 years. Two weeks later and the snow and ice are still here (they were reporting instances of freezing fog on the news this morning -- I hadn't heard of that). Let's put this in context. Last winter I believe we had five 'big' snowfalls, and maybe once did the snow last for more than a day. So how are we surviving in this country that is unprepared for snow, and living in a flat that is unsuitable for facing cold weather? Let me tell you...

Insulation

Like roughly 50% of Edinburgh's population, we live in a tenement building. Ours was redeveloped in the 1880s. It lacks a couple features that we would consider standard back home in Canada, but that would be quite uncommon in older buildings of flats in the UK. One is insulated walls. Another is double glazed windows that counter the cold Scottish winds. I would have thought that this would be a standard feature in such a cold, damp, windy country, but it's not. Not only is it not usual, but its actually forbidden in our building due to being a heritage protected building. So we now keep the curtains and shudders drawn at all times to make a slight difference and keep a bit of the cold air from circulating around the room.

One major problem we faced was that there was no insulation or draft excluders around our front door. Unlike a lot of flats, ours opens directly to outside, and without any sort of insulation or weather stripping around the old door (with a door frame that had seen many different locks cut into it over the years) we had cold air constantly pouring in. We spent weeks talking to the property agent, waiting for a contractor to come and put on some weather stripping and a brush along the bottom of the door. He came, he insulated, he insulated so much that the door would no longer lock and Derek had to call him back, and then the next night after wondering why it was still so cold I put my hand along the door frame and felt cold air pouring in. Sigh. So we trekked over to the hardware store a half hour away and to our surprise in the opening racks of the store were tons of insulation foam strips. It took two days and building up sections of the insulation to 1.5 cm out from the door frame (only at certain points though, due to the warped door), but the cold air seems to have stopped, and we no longer feel that using the front hall heater is a waste of money.

Heating

There is no central heating in our building, or in most buildings. We don't have gas heating, or electric storage heating. We have a giant electric fireplace that might as well be a big toaster for the usefulness and efficiency it achieves. We mainly use a space heater to heat the main living room/kitchen because it has a fan. We have the hall heater on low, and Derek has the bedroom heater on a timer that runs for an hour or so before bed, and then turns on again around 4am when the room gets its coldest. He also bought a thermometer to keep an eye on the living room's temperature. I don't venture out of the main room unless necessary if we have the door to the rest of the flat shut, because its just so cold beyond the door. The washroom can be pretty frigid, and a hot shower doesn't tend to warm me up anymore, although a nice hot bath can work.

Having a hot bath also takes a bit work and planning. The water heater is old and inefficient, and because we rarely use hot water during the day, we have it set to go on for 45 minutes to an hour each morning. If we wash the dishes in the sink we heat the water with the kettle, we wash our clothes in cold water, and we have an old electric shower that heats its own water (like a kettle) as well as providing the water pressure Edinburgh is missing. So I've found that as it's gotten colder it takes two days for the water heater to produce enough hot water for a good hot bath in the morning. That's not too bad.

The worst thing for me was probably hopping into a freezing cold bed every night, under a cold duvet and on top of chilly sheets. This we've now taken care of. A couple days ago Derek walked over to Argos and brought home a heated underblanket that we laid on top of the mattress and under the sheet. We turn it on an hour before bedtime, and can now crawl into a toasty warm bed at night. It makes us feel as though the energy being used is worth it, as it's heating us up, not the room (from which it would eventually escape out the windows). So this £25 purchase was definitely worth it.

Clothing

I have never in my life owned woolies before this winter. Now I wear them pretty much everyday. We probably wear 3 layers of clothing at all times when home, and 2 to 3 when out. We both have fleece sweaters that act as a middle layer, and than hoodies to go overtop. Derek had gotten me furry slippers that go up past my ankles, and I wear them everyday for the entire time I'm at home. When I go out I wear my UGGs which also keep my feet nice and warm (unless it too wet or raining, when I pull out my wellies and wear very thick socks underneath). Derek has thermal socks that he pulls out. When I was painting my toenails this morning I realised it had been a very long time since I'd spent more than a couple seconds walking around without socks and slippers or UGGs on. My toes were cold, so the silver was just right.

Ringing in 2010

Happy New Year! I can't believe it's 2010 (which I've taken to pronouncing as two thousand ten, following the proper pronunciation that was drilled into our heads in Grade Five Math). The year has gotten off to a great start. My cousin came to spend the last few days of a Europe trip with us, and arrived early enough on the 31st to join us for the massive street party of 80 000 people.

Hogmanay was quite the experience this year. The city seemed to have off-loaded the responsibility and planning to a private company, so there were some significant differences. Like last year we bought our tickets to the street party ahead of time, but this time rather than being convenient wristbands to wear and flash as you passed in and out of the barriers, we received large tickets that were left at one of the four entrances, and you couldn't leave and then return again. Instead of a bunch of stages with live music down the little off-shoots of Princes Street (the main street other than the Mound where the street party takes place), encompassing a range of styles like rock and celtic, there was a DJ at the West End entrance, live music down on Waverly Bridge by a rock band none of us had heard of but everyone around seemed to know, and a second DJ with provocatively dressed female dancers, so the music was a bit disappointing.

On the other hand, there was some great people watching! My cousin started it off by pointing out 'Team Neon Hat,' a group of four party-goers in similar neon-coloured tuques standing near the National Art Gallery at the foot of the Mound. We spent the next two hours spotting some the excellent and silly techniques groups had employed to try to spot each other in the crowds. Such 'teams' included:

• Team Sparkly Wigs and Santa Hats (a very conspicuous team)
• Team Patterned Wellies (not so noticeable)
• Team Super Heroes (a good one, except that we spotted two groups of them!)
• Team Black Balloon (very different, although the colour choice seems questionable as it was dark)
• Team Pink Afro and Star Sunglasses (a favourite of ours)
• Team Sparkly Berets

We hadn't thought to dress identically, but like all responsible, sober groups we did choose a spot for a meeting place in case we got separated in the massive crowds. Around twenty to midnight we fought our way train-style to a viewing spot at the base of the Mound and anxiously awaited midnight and the gorgeous fireworks display. The crowd counted down the last 30 seconds of 2009, and then the grounds of Edinburgh Castle erupted into light. The fireworks didn't disappoint. I took a couple photos, but as I was getting jostled by the celebrating crowds they're a tad blurry. I also videotaped the three-minute-long display, and the film is much more impressive than last years because I used my new camera with its microphone. Fireworks just aren't the same without the sounds of the explosions and the audience oohing and awing.

After the fireworks came the mass Auld Lang Syne, and then we started our attempt at leaving the party. That's when things got a bit scary. When I look at my photos of the street I can't believe how many people were crammed into such a small area. Edinburgh Hogmanay is not for the claustrophobic! On the way out the pushing and shoving started to intensify. It wasn't a smart idea to place a large DJ booth in the centre of a major exit point, forcing the flood of people to split into two groups in order to get out. It got to the point where you couldn't walk anymore. You just had to concentrate on lifting your feet often enough to not fall, as the crowd's movement slowly pushed you along. We made it, having had a great night with my cousin. It's certainly a memorable way to welcome in the new year, but I think we might stay in next year and watch from our front window or Grassmarket. It might be a bit safer. It should certainly be warmer!