I’ve been so bad about updating my blog! I just realized that I’d never posted about the Transformers movie… We saw it the Saturday that it came out, a couple of weeks back. We thought it was really good, but kind of funny that the Ford was evil and all the Autobots were GM cars. (Come on, Jazz should have been an XLR, not a crappy Pontiac Solstice!) The thing was, the movie was so American that some of the jokes were largely missed by the audience. No, I can’t remember the specifics, but Ray and I laughed very loudly at something, and this guy in front of us turned around and gave us a look while shaking his head. No one else had laughed at the joke, either. Anyway, we thought it was great movie and it made me feel like I was home for a couple of hours. (That probably sounds silly since it was a fictional movie about a generic place where I’ve never lived, but it was a representation of home.)

One of the things I wanted to point out was in the commercials before the movie, there was one for the Daily Mail on Sunday. It borders on funny, but when put in the context of England, it is really sad. The difference between genders is very exaggerated here. Sexism is the norm here. Women must embrace the stereotype of shopping and fashion and being brainless gossips. And men must embrace the stereotypes of being drunken footballers and being strong and womanizing. Women are helpless and men are strong. But, that doesn’t mean that a man will give up his seat on the train or tube to a pregnant woman, because they say, “Well, if you want equality, then why should I?” Honestly, that is a statement I agree with. But since there is no equality here, shouldn’t there at least be chivalry instead? Women earn less here. I guess that isn’t really fair, though, because looking at the numbers, women in the US earn less, too… However, there is a huge difference in attitudes here. A good example: Not long after I first got here, my hdd started to die in my laptop. So I call our internal support folks… I won’t go through all of those arguments I had with folks, but the net of it is that I had to wait for the local desk side support team to replace my drive – in the next 3 weeks or so. Since I am not an idiot, I know that it isn’t going to last that long. Ray wasn’t using his laptop, so I ghosted my hdd image over and used his drive in my laptop. Finally, my drive comes in. I bring my old, wiped and toasted hdd, down to the basement where the desk side support guys are and expect to get a new one. The guy looked at me like I was nuts. He said that he had to replace it himself. I explained that I know what I am doing, I made a ghost image and I am using my husband’s hard drive right now. His response, “Oh, your husband made a ghost image for you?” I was absolutely shocked! I couldn’t believe that he’d 1) just made such a blatantly sexist assumption and 2) actually stated it out loud! In the US, the company I work for would have taken him aside for counseling, if not fired him out right. Not here. No one cares about things like that here. And I have a long list of crap like that which has happened here in the UK that would absolutely never happen back home – both sexist and sexual commentary. It’s the same company. But different rules seem to apply.

I should also state that this isn’t something that I am willing to bring up at work because it can sound a bit hypocritical. I am not offended at a really bad dirty joke that a co-worker tells… Or a vague discussion of another co-worker’s sexual encounters. I guess it’s the folks that I don’t work with every day that bug me. The ones that I don’t know. (Oddly enough, they have all been contractor type folks in MIS or facilities rather than regular employees.) It’s one of those things… Yes, a statement has to be taken in context, but if one makes me feel uncomfortable and the other makes me laugh… I don’t feel comfortable bringing it up at work because of how subjective the difference is.

Ok, enough of the rant for the day…

This evening, Ray and I are going to try to see about getting in with a kayaking group. Yay! I can’t wait!!