October 24, 2007

I'm bored with the USA
The yankee diet

Ryan Lowell | contributing columnist
rlowell@smcvt.edu

Tired of all those gimmicky diets that just don’t work? Fed up with Atkins and South Beach? Want to lose three pounds every time you buy a pint? Come to London my friends, I’ve got a diet for you.

People have always told me that London is a trendy city, and that all the latest fashions hit the UK months before stateside citizens hear of them, but I didn’t know their trendsetting applied to shedding pounds too. I know all you partygoers out there who brought your laptops out to the threes so you could read this as you drink vodka from an ice luge think you must be too drunk and that you’re missing the catch. You probably are too drunk, but I assure you, this diet is fool-proof.

In fact, I personally know dozens of Americans who have travelled abroad and kissed goodbye an average of 100 pounds per week. I know what you’re thinking, I must have made friends with every morbidly obese tourist this side of Stonehenge right? Wrong. Unfortunately, despite these true facts and figures, the only part of our bodies that seems to be shrinking noticeably is the pocket we keep our wallets in.

Everyone warned me that a semester in England would be expensive, but I guess it’s taken me a while to really notice. I spent those first few weeks exchanging paper for food and spirits, just as I always had. A piece of paper with a 10 on it for a pizza, a piece of paper with a 5 on it for a pint, it all seemed quite normal really. But as the weeks passed by and I paid the ATM a visit, I realized my money was vanishing into thin air, pilfered by an unknown thief who’s trademark was to leave £ sign where $s used to be.

I've been trying to fit in with the Brits, but it’s hard to keep up with their nightlife when every hard-earned American dollar I’ve ever made is worth a mere 50 pence to them. I never liked bothering with change in the past, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and let’s just say every two pennies counts nowadays.

At first I tossed change in the bottom of my desk or into a wishing well as I do in the states, before realizing that in this country, just because it’s a coin, doesn’t mean it’s chump change.  Here, no value lower than five pounds is deemed worthy of a paper bill, meaning you can be handed a coin that’s worth up to two quid. That’s four whole dollars for those of you keeping track at home (8 cups o’ noodles while we’re going into of all the practical currencies I use here.) So even on the muddiest days, every time I see a little coin on the ground, I drop to my knees to pick it up, while all the British tourists in America laugh as they spit their gum onto George Washington’s green paper face because they ran out of napkins.

My fiscal issues would be depressing enough if I only had to balance my recreational spending, but lucky for you readers, there’s more to this cruel joke. Seeing as I don’t have a meal plan, I get to pretend to be a real live mature being who can actually shop, cook, and take care of himself. I can tell this is punishment for every time I didn’t eat my broccoli as a kid, and every time I complained about the hot dog bar in Alliot. At night I lay awake thinking about all of my friends fortunate enough to take one bite out of their greasy Alliot pizza, spit it out, call it crap, and toss it on the conveyor belt. I don’t want to sound like your mom guys, so forget the kids in Africa for a second, but next time you want to throw your burnt fries at your friends in the middle of the dining hall remember this, there are starving Americans in London.