h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Greetings!

And welcome to h2g2. I'm what's known as an ACE, a person who has volunteered to make newcomers to this site feel at home, introduce them to the Community, and help out in any way that I can.

You've lived in, or been to, all four corners of the globs it seems. Where do you hail from and where are you know? I'm a Brit in Southern California, so I can sympathise if your situation is somewhat like mine!

How are you getting around the site so far? All is good I hope.

Can I give you a little hint?, good. My personal favourite part of h2g2 is "Ask the h2g2 community" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/askh2g2). It's a HUGE, slightly random part of the site where anyone can ask anything they want to, and get feedback/debate/advice/whatever happens. Otherwise you can get involved with the other discussions that are currently raging. Go check it out, it's fun.

If you need anything, just give me a shout, I'll be checking this thread regularly, just in case you responded.

Cheers,

Ste

'globs'! A particularly fine typo, if I do say so myself. Read: 'globe', but I'm sure you could have guessed that.

Ste

Hi Ste, thanks for the welcome. I am originally from Glasgow, Scotland. Left there when I was 25 for London, and then spent four and a half years in So Cal, like yourself. I lived mainly in Laguna Niguel, near Laguna beach, though of course we travelled around a bit. Saw a little bit of Northern California, Ohio, Washington D.C., New York, Arizona and Nevada. We then moved to Australia and I am an Aussie citizen now. Hence the nick Albaus (Alba for Scotland and Aus for Aus, obviously).

We learned a fair bit and had a lot of good times, but I certainly know how it feels to be a stranger in a strange land (especially in sunny So Cal!). One of my favourite remarks was at the supermarket when the checkout girl asked where dh hailed from. Upon his reply "Australia" she said "oh, I just luuuv those European accents". Not much you can say to that really...Still, it was certainly a learning experience and we made some friends along the way.

Thanks for the hint, I seem to be navigating without too much trouble, but will be sure to check it out if need be.

Cheers

P.S. I rather liked globs...

Blimey, you've been around haven't you? I'd just love to hear your accent, have you picked up much along the way? I've only been here for about 18 months, so I haven't got any sign of a twang yet. I've been remarkably resistant to it actually, I have a feeling I'm teetering towards The Queens English, as I find I have to speak very well for people to understand me in the first place. When I went home for Christmas I slipped back into mumbling incoherantly though.

The amount of stupidity in So Cal is sometimes astounding.



Ste

Well, according to the people I meet I still sound like I stepped off the boat a couple of weeks ago, which is good and bad. Good in that I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. My mother would never speak to me again if I sounded anything but Scottish (mind you that might have it's advantages....) Bad in that I'm the only person I know who actually prefers to do the computer phone thing (press 1 for account balance, press 2 if you hate this bank, press 3 if you would like to be charged extra just for opening an account with us, etc.), as it's easier than trying to make myself understood if I am speaking to certain determined individuals. I think in order to lose my accent, I would have to make a concerted effort, and I rather like beng a Glasgwegian Guttersnipe, so why bother?

Of course the other great thing is that people come up to me all the time and say how much they love my accent, in supermarkets particularly, although people tend to strike up conversations everywhere from shoe shops to dentist's waiting rooms. After all this time away, I usually genuinely forget I sound "funny" until it is pointed out to me, but I always take it as a compliment that someone would speak to me just because they like the sound of my voice, and most people are actually very complimentary and friendly - although recently one little bogan described my accent as "shocking" when she couldn't understand the words "crumbed flake" until I actually resorted to spelling crumbed. However, I realised that she was as thick as a brick, and it was easier for her to say my accent was shocking than to admit to herself that her intelligence was so much below quota, so not much point in getting upset really

Yes So Cal is really something else. All the cliches and movies made about it are actually based on fact, sadly. On the other hand, it does have some brilliant tourist attractions. I have to say that I became a convert the first time I visited Disneyland and saw that it really was the Happiest Place on Earth. Bloody brilliant.

Regards

When I talked to a few of my relatives on the phone, they swore that I had picked up a bit of an American accent, which I was very displeased to hear (indirectly, from my Mum). But I proved them wrong at Christmas when I went to visit. I think they just expect me to sound like someone from LA/NY as soon as I got off the plane. I blame TV.

You say how people love the accent. It does have its advantages doesn't it? I got my watch strap fixed for free yesterday by being AWFULLY polite to three youngish (older than me though) women in a jewelers. Put on my best Queens English and everything: "Oh, that *very* kind of you, thank you so much". Ace. I never get anything but respect for my accent, that combined with glasses (I only wear them for strategic purposes) can get you any job in an interview too.

I tend to go through cycles. I'll have an immaculate English accent for a while, so that the natives can understand me, which gives me enough confidence to slouch back into gutteral devon/midlands/south england mumbling. Then no bugger can understand me and I get highly frustrated, so I have to switch back to proper English mode. And so on.

LA is Hell, I avoid it as much as possible. People are rude and mean. The rest of SoCal is great. Especially the desert (Anza-Borrego, ever go there?). It's all a bit bizarre out here; the way everything is less than thirty years old, the permanent perfect weather. Makes it all unreal sometimes.

Cheers,

Ste

Hello again,

>You say how people love the accent. It does have its advantages doesn't it?

Definitely, most people say they love it, strangers talk to me just because of my accent, I never have a problem breaking the ice anywhere I go. It can be a bit difficult to be incognito though - I called in to a radio show last week for a competition (sadly, I didn't win!) and had a fair few parents at my son's school rush up to me and ask if that was really me on the radio! I did think of trying to do an Aussie accent, but my attempt at Australian is not so much an accent as a speech impediment, so I decided against that

>Put on my best Queens English and everything: "Oh, that *very* kind of you, thank you so much". Ace.

Lol, nothing like winding up Americans for fun eh? When they were crapping on about their country (and btw I rather like some aspects of America, just not all Americans) I would point out that my ancestors were signing the Magna Carta about 600 years before their country even existed. A pile of crap actually; as far as I know, my ancestors were too busy shagging sheep and murdering one another to have anything to do with the Magna Carta, but it never failed to strike a nerve. Also, when talking to Banks I gave them the whole line about never having received such shoddy service in a British Bank and I usually got them to agree to my demands

>I tend to go through cycles. I'll have an immaculate English accent for a while, so that the natives can understand me, which gives me enough confidence to slouch back into gutteral devon/midlands/south england mumbling. Then no bugger can understand me and I get highly frustrated, so I have to switch back to proper English mode. And so on.

Lol, no I tend to just sound like Glaswegian scruff most of the time, though it I might go slightly to Kelvinside mode sometimes if I am trying to be polite and am having real problems being understood (my father always said that Kelvinsiders had their coal delivered in "sex"). Actually the only time I really ever altered the way I talked, deliberately, was when I was working in London for a time as a receptionist. I would do a great BBC accent to answer the phone as it just wasn't worth the time or effort working my way through the people who didn't like me because I sounded Scottish, the people who genuinely didn't understand me because I was Scottish, and the people who pretended not to understand me.....That of course is not to say or try to imply that all Londoners or English people are prats when it comes to a Glasgow accent, but there are a few and as I was being paid fairly well to answer phones, it was worth it, plus I figured it was in my best interests to do my job intelligibly

>LA is Hell, I avoid it as much as possible.

Yes indeed. ("And the air is, for some reason, yellow"). Without doubt the ugliest place I have ever had the misfortune to clap eyes on.

>The rest of SoCal is great.

Hmmm. Well, I am going to have to agree to disagree with you here. A desert with windows is how it pretty much appeared to me, both culturally and physically. Not entirely bad of course, but I found the bad outweighed the good considerably, especially after a couple of years.

>Especially the desert (Anza-Borrego, ever go there?). It's all a bit bizarre out here; the way everything is less than thirty years old, the permanent perfect weather. Makes it all unreal sometimes.

No, that doesn't ring a bell. We did drive from CA to Las Vegas through the Mojave and it is an amazing place. Wouldn't want to live there, but would love to visit again. I learned to drive in CA and have to say it was a lot easier and less stressful than driving in Qld, for all sorts of reasons....

My summation - well, America wasn't all bad and had some great points, but I wouldn't like to live there. One man's meat is another man's poison as my mother would say...

Regards