My occasional role in the tourist industry forces me to agree with you.. as long as you:
a) realise that you actually need to pay with your *own* credit card in the UK; we will not accept you signing "Cathy Bates" for a credit card in the name of "Norman Bates".
b) realise that when Brits are asked the question "How are you?", they treat it as a question about how they are, and thus will reply. Asking "How are you?" and then talking over the person's answer makes you seem a little bit autistic.
c) believe us when we explain that walking from point A to point B really is less than a mile, and that thus walking a mile from point A to the nearest tube and *then* travelling 2 miles past point B only to walk a mile back actually hasn't saved you any energy *at all*. You're actually doing more exercise than you intended in the pursuit of laziness!
Other than that, come on over!
Yes, I have a great desire to go. When I was checking on people yesterday, they invited me over, too. I'm not sure if it was an unthinking sort of request, or very deliberate.
in the center of the world
This is just crazy talk.
Well, I love the UK and have wanted to live there for nearly as long as I can remember. Way before Bush came to power. I think I might prefer Cambridge, and I'd feel awfully guilty about moving to the Southeast. I'd want to revitalize the Northern economy and live somewhere where I could afford to buy property.
Scotland would be wonderful too. I adore Edinburgh, although I'm not sure that I could make it through the winter there. I spent hogmonay there once, and it was wonderful, but I could barely make it to breakfast on time during the week I was there. I don't think that I could have handled showing up at the office in pitch black.
What's the British English equivalent to American English "how are you"? That is, what're y'alls rote pleasantries over there? Inquiring Merkins want to know.
"How do you do?", isn't it? A much better pleasantry, in that figuring out a literal answer to the question is so incredibly puzzling that no one is likely do so. ("Well, I do kind of like this... um, do what exactly?")
"How do you do?" "Well." This is a literal answer.
Both self-aggrandizing and enigmatic, if taken literally, no?
It needn't be interpreted as "I do well in the sense of making mad bank", more "things are going swimmingly, or at least, not drowningly". It's still literal.
The same way that you would interpret someone answering, as I habitually do, "how are you" with "well".
Is "rote pleasantries" redundant? I might need a firm but gentle admonition.
But in the latter case, 'well' means, literally, 'not ill'. In the former, 'well' is an answer to the question 'What is your manner of doing?' and seems to me to literally claim that 'My manner of doing [whatever it is I do] is competent and successful. What I do, I do well.' Self-aggrandizing.
I can't think of where one might go to have such administered.
LB, doesn't that depend on what "doing" means?
Well, yes. If 'doing' means the same as 'feeling' in this context, then 'well' works as w-lfs-n said. If is means 'carrying out some activity', as it usually does in non-idiomatic contexts, then I think my critique holds.
(And please tell me to get lost if I comment again today-- I'm facing a deadline and procrastinating, a bad, but all too common, combination.)
If only Heidegger had followed up Being and Time with Doing and Inquiry, completing the trilogy with Do You Have the Time?
I don't have that interpretation at all. Indeed, I have been asked how I'm doing, and responded, "I'm doing well", and I'm pretty sure my interlocutors have never taken it amiss. I think your interpretation of "how are you doing?" is faulty—does it not mean something more like "how are you getting along (but not at any specific task, just in the course of your day)?"?
does it not mean something more like "how are you getting along (but not at any specific task, just in the course of your day)?"?
Precisely right, b-dub, and made more right by the fact that LB can't defend herself.
Sein und Zeit
Tun und Fragen
Entschuldigung, wissen Sie, wieviel Uhr es ist?
What's the British English equivalent to American English "how are you"? That is, what're y'alls rote pleasantries over there? Inquiring Merkins want to know.
"All right?".
slolernr has it spot on: "all right." It's a question and an answer, all just a matter of punctuation. Clever stuff.
Just like Seņor Wences and Pedro!
"How are you?" is roughly the equivalent of "Are you all right, there, love?" (in a supermarket, when you look lost) or "Are you all right?" (general usage, but also said to me in London Bridge train station Thursday, when the trains were quite a mess).
Me, I prefer the Irish versions: "Howsagoin?" "Story?" "Whatsastory?" and "Howsdacrack?"
I don't think that I could have handled showing up at the office in pitch black.
Assuming you left work at anytime after about, say 4pm, you'd be leaving in pitch black too. But in the summer when you leave the pub at 11pm and the sky is still light, and then the next morning you wake up to bright blazing sunshine streaming in through the window only to discover that it's just 3:30am, that's weird too. Still and all, Edinburgh is a great place to be.
Of course the dark dark winter thing is true, albeit to a slightly lesser extent, in London. I worked 9 to 5 in an office with no windows there and if we were busy and I didn't get to step outside during lunch, I wouldn't see the sun at all that day. A couple of times this happened to me for an entire week. No fun, but London is also a great place to be, although in a completely different way than Edinburgh.
And in China . . .
Just kidding. But soon I'll probably be talking about Belgium all the time. Belgium is the new China.
I had the chance to interview for a job in Aberdeen once, though I had to turn it down due to scheduling problems (bird in hand v. two in bush). I was a bit concerned about that aspect.
Not the centre of the world, just the most comfortable place with its multiculturealism, and as such a centre for driving change in the attitude towards the developing and third worlds from the west.
Apart from that, wet and impersonal. Come, you will be welcome.
ps. Go to the Comedy Store in Leicester Square if you want to get a real flavour of London feelings as well as have a good night out and meet some friendly people.