Fire Regulations

So far I have noted a huge difference in the treatment of fire safety here. Fire exits are marked differently, typically a green sign with a running man and a directional arrow to point towards the exit, rather than the US red light "EXIT" signs from the ceiling. Long hallways, like my corridor, are split by a fire door halfway down, and most doors are hinged to close unless propped open. Furthermore, leaving a door propped open will result in a verbal warning from a warden here.

The fire alarms are tested once a week in public areas and are so sensitive that in the flats, even steam will set off the fire alarm unless the windows are opened to ventillate the air. On the other hand, I have no idea where the closest fire hydrants are... there are probably plenty and I just haven't noticed them.

Today I was in my maths lecture when we heard a very high-pitched whining. The professor paused in the middle of his explanation of Bessel functions, and said, "I assume that's just a drill. Well, we'll move on, shall we?" Wow.
He continued to talk about Bessel functions for a minute more, with no one in the lecture theatre paying attention. Finally, he put down his chalk and said, "well, okay, maybe we should participate in the drill too, so I'll leave this here for today. If you want a copy of the notes I'll leave them by the teaching office later this afternoon." The students took their collective time packing up before leaving, and we all stopped to pick up copies of the notes on our way out. The crowd of students, from our class and others, stood next to the building's front doors, which I am pretty sure is not a fire safety regulation. In fact, most of it was against regulations.

Recently I've been exploring all those words that are spelled differently between British and American English.
-"Fetal" gets turned into "foetal". A lot of double-vowels.
-grey
-colour, honour, neighbour, etc.
-realise, civilise, etc. Nothing has a "zed", pretty much.
Turning my language default to British English helps catch a lot of these.

-Oh, and "cell phones" are "mobiles", which I can't even pronounce properly.
-when you want to call someone, you phone them. I never remember that one.
-"well" can be used to mean "very". So, "He was well upset."

Last night I went to Laserquest (like Laser Tag) in a competition between Phys Soc and Maths Soc. We all were able to play two games... and while I was awful (ranked 15th out of 18 in both games) I had a lot of fun. The packs had sensors on the back, chest, shoulders, and lasergun, but were designed for use by people much larger than myself, so the too-broad shoulders clipped walls as I turned corners. I'd like to think that at least I didn't get in the way of my fellow team members, but I literally ran into so many that I'm not sure that's the case either... oh well. PhysSoc won anyway! And it was just an amazingly fun evening.

A lot of people have taken it upon themselves to educate me in terms of British comedy. Mostly this means watching old John Cleese sitcoms, along the lines of "Fawlty Towers".