A wandering American perspective on England, chess & bananas
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 8:17 am
Hello,
My name is John Chernoff and I must admit, much in the style of Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, that I, like so many, am an American. I've come to England for no clear reason(1) and am participating in various chess tournaments throughout the area to give my venture some sort of loose structure and sense of purpose. This post is to be my first attempt to share my initial impressions of English/Irish/Welsh culture, people, chess, and bananas.
First off, the bananas. At the airports at least, they are noticeably smaller than American bananas and, according to the BBC, often shipped with poisonous tropical spiders. In my opinion this is a bad thing. Waiting in a lengthy queue for a delayed Ryanair flight is challenging enough even with a banana, but simply intolerable when said banana is under-ripe, undersized, over-expensive, and you've just been bitten several times by an angry funnel web spider that's probably been through an almost equally arduous journey.
Well, enough about bananas. My trip began with a 6:00 AM arrival in Shannon, Ireland, where I had a nice chat with a lady whom I in retrospect believe to have been the head customs officer. She was most helpful in ascertaining that I did indeed have a return ticket and in directing me towards some of the safer fruits available at that hour. After that, various things then transpired in Ireland that I will not relate right now, instead preferring to fast forward a few days to the beginning of the e2e4 Chess Congress in High Wycombe. Actually, nevermind, I'll do that later, I've a train to catch right now.
To be continued,
- John
(1) Or, rather, several unclear reasons, some of which I may detail in an another episode. For now I suspect the simplest way to put it to a chess playing reader would be a somewhat personal form of zugzwang.
My name is John Chernoff and I must admit, much in the style of Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, that I, like so many, am an American. I've come to England for no clear reason(1) and am participating in various chess tournaments throughout the area to give my venture some sort of loose structure and sense of purpose. This post is to be my first attempt to share my initial impressions of English/Irish/Welsh culture, people, chess, and bananas.
First off, the bananas. At the airports at least, they are noticeably smaller than American bananas and, according to the BBC, often shipped with poisonous tropical spiders. In my opinion this is a bad thing. Waiting in a lengthy queue for a delayed Ryanair flight is challenging enough even with a banana, but simply intolerable when said banana is under-ripe, undersized, over-expensive, and you've just been bitten several times by an angry funnel web spider that's probably been through an almost equally arduous journey.
Well, enough about bananas. My trip began with a 6:00 AM arrival in Shannon, Ireland, where I had a nice chat with a lady whom I in retrospect believe to have been the head customs officer. She was most helpful in ascertaining that I did indeed have a return ticket and in directing me towards some of the safer fruits available at that hour. After that, various things then transpired in Ireland that I will not relate right now, instead preferring to fast forward a few days to the beginning of the e2e4 Chess Congress in High Wycombe. Actually, nevermind, I'll do that later, I've a train to catch right now.
To be continued,
- John
(1) Or, rather, several unclear reasons, some of which I may detail in an another episode. For now I suspect the simplest way to put it to a chess playing reader would be a somewhat personal form of zugzwang.
- tend to be smaller than one might find elsewhere in America or Western Europe for important reasons. 
carrot isn't even a fruit, an the umlaut not working either