Produceren in Azië (PIA)



London

Product Development Language and Culture

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Minor: Global design and manufacturing. Human Technology

Project : PTC Product ontwikkeling Taal en Cultuur

Docent en : David Harry en Gerard de Koning

Studiejaar : Jaar 2

Schooljaar : 2008-2009

Plaats : Den Haag

Datum : 19 januari 2009

Projectleden : Joyce Beukelman

Versie : 1.0

Index

1. What made me interested in London? Page 3

2. My latest trip to London Page 4

3. What makes London different from The Hague? Page 7

3.1 Museums Page 7

3.2 Royal parks Page 8

3.3 Habits Page 8

3.4 Security Page 9

3.5 Taxes and overall prices Page 9

Conclusion Page 10

Source Page 11

1. What made me interested in London?

About 4.5 years ago I visited London for the first time. A friend of mine was living in London and I went to visit him. Before I actually went over there, the thing what was most repeated about London is that it’s extremely expensive. Besides that there is a lot to see and visit in the city for tourists. I had also heard that it’s a great place to go shopping because they have those huge department stores like Harrods. I thought it was time to go and see for myself and asked my friend if I could come over and get a tour. So I packed my bags and got on the train (I was too afraid to fly). About 8 hours later a friend of mine and I set foot at waterloo station. This is the train station the Eurostar stopped at in the past. We dropped our bags at my friend and we went for a walk in South Kensington. After this we didn’t go to see a tourist spot.. no, we went to a pub. I was most amazed about the friendliness of the people in the bar. A lot of people came to us for a talk. The rest of the week we visited the famous tourist places in London like London Eye, Big Ben, The Tower Bridge and of course Buckingham palace. At one point we went to a movie theatre at Leicester square. This was one of the things that made me fall in love with the city, the seats in this particular theatre tilt a bit when you lean back in them. But most important, just around the corner there was a Mexican restaurant where they served the best food ever! Of course I also went shopping, I really couldn’t help myself. The prices for food in restaurants were a little bit more expensive than in the Netherlands, though clothes we’re around the same price, so I extended my wardrobe quite a bit.

When I think back about my little adventure there is one thing that still embarrasses me. We were on our way to Chinatown by bus. Now these busses are huge! But that’s not the problem.. the problem was that they didn’t have doors back then. So my friend tells me: “we need to get off the bus at the next stop” so the bus stops and I jumped out. Then I heard my friend shouting “Hey this is just a crossing, not a bus stop!!” so I had to chase after the bus to not lose my friends out of sight.

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Shopping at Harrods

2. My latest trip to London.

On January 7th this year I went back to London to find more cultural differences for this class. Well let me tell you, this was quite an adventure again. Again I took the train to London, this time because the bank didn’t want to give a poor student like me a credit card to pay for flight tickets. It all started at the check in for the Eurostar. I had to go to passport control and there was a luggage check as well. Now this guy at the luggage check started to ask me questions in French. I couldn’t understand a single word of it and I asked if he could speak to me in English, he couldn’t. I thought I was in big trouble, he just kept talking. I didn’t know what to do so I just carried on with what I was doing. I grabbed my jacket from the little box and then I understood. He just wanted his little box back. I was so relieved. I arrived this time at Kings cross, St. Pancras station. I had to take the Piccadilly line to south Kensington again. All the lines have names and also a colour code. But what I didn’t know is that they have a north, east, south and west line for every line! I had no clue in what direction South Kensington was and it took me half an hour to figure out how the lines work. Eventually I did arrive at the right station.

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Underground map of London

On Thursday I went to High Street Kensington and talked to some shop employees to see if there were differences marketing. There didn’t seem to be major differences. I went to PC world and also asked an employee there. Besides helping me he tried to sell me an IMAC. He kept going on that it’s very cheap now that the pound is so low. But again I’m still a poor student so I told the poor man I had to catch the Tube and took off as fast as I could. I wanted to go to Hyde Park but I didn’t know how to get there. I went to the underground station and asked a man in a kiosk if he sold maps. The man looked at me and said “excuse me, what did you ask?” I told him again I needed a map. I had to repeat it 4 times until he understood me. “Ohh a mAAAAp you mean!” then I realised I was speaking American instead of British. In the end I got my map but I still couldn’t find it so I gave up and went back to my friends place. On my way back I almost got hit by a car because I looked in the wrong direction for traffic. When I got to my friend his door yet another challenge faced me. I couldn’t get the door unlocked. I was trying to get in for over half an hour and I got afraid that the police would show up soon thinking I’m a burglar. I called my friend and told him I couldn’t get in. He told me to turn the key to left instead of to the right. This worked, strange but true!

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The place where I stayed

On Saturday my friend took me to Hyde Park. Now this was the worst idea ever. It was freezing and very windy. I’m still amazed my ears didn’t fall off. After we walked for 15 minutes we decided to go to a museum instead. We left the park and needed to cross the street to go the underground station. This sounds very easy but it wasn’t. At this time there was a major strike. Over 15,000 protesters gathered in Trafalgar Square in support of the Israeli invasion, and where walking right towards us. All the streets had been blocked and there were heavy armed policemen. We didn’t know what to do. My friend told me that the police in London isn’t so nice when they see trouble coming. I thought well we do need to get out of here fast. So I walked over to a policemen and asked him in bad English how I could reach the underground station. It seemed like he laughed at me but he did help us cross the street without any problems.

Eventually I had to go back to Holland. By then I thought I saw it all. In other words, made a fool out of myself enough way to many times. Though it turned out I had to do it one more time. We were running late and had to take a run towards the underground. At the moment I jumped in the doors closed and I got stuck in between. I can tell you; these doors close a lot harder than our tram doors! Of course everybody stared at me again.

3. What makes London different from The Hague?

The first thing I noticed in London that everything is massive. The buildings are a lot bigger than in The Hague. Houses are normally shared by more people because hardly anyone can afford a whole house there. They have a lot of shopping malls and since the currency of the pound dropped so much you’ll find a lot more tourists from Holland and Belgium.

A lot of people use public transportation to go to work. Even though tubes come every few minutes they are extremely crowded at rush-hour and the chances are high you have to let a few tubes pass before you can get in.

3.1 Museums

Since December 1st 2001 a lot of museums in London became free to visit. You don’t have pay an entrance fee. The government made this happen so everyone would be able to visit museums. This of course attracts a lot of tourists. You might think that those museums are small and boring but that is absolutely not true. One of the 3 largest museums in London is the Natural History Museum. And believe me, this museum is massive. In this museum you can see Dinosaur Skeletons. This museum has over 70 million items. These are divided in 5 main collections: Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology. The building itself alone is worth seeing, it’s beautiful.

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Inside the natural history museum

3.2 Royal parks

There are a lot of parks in London. They all belonged to the Royal family. Everyone is allowed to visit these parks if you follow the rules. The parks are 22km2 of land. The funny thing is that there is also a cemetery part of the royal parks. A weird thing about these parks is that there is a special police force called the metropolitan police to keep order in these parks. There are no cars allowed and these policemen ride horses in the park. There are a lot of public events going on in these parks as well. The royal parks are: Bushy Park, The Green Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, The Regent’s Park, Richmond Park, St. James’s Park and the Brompton Cemetery.

3.3 Habits

I went for a drink with a few British people. It was 4pm and they just got back from work. The first thing they do in the pub is order a pint. I asked them if they didn’t need to eat first. They asked me why? I told them to prevent them from getting drunk right away, in the afternoon.. The first reply was “Well, that’s exactly the point!”. I started to look around and I noticed a lot of people where already drinking beer. According to my friends this is normal in Great Britain. At lunch time they go to a coffee shop for a coffee and after work to go get “pissed”. At the time they sober up a bit they go for dinner. This can also be in the middle of the night since there are a lot of restaurants open 24/7. When I was having a pint with my friends I thought the alcohol hit me pretty fast. I suddenly started to see green people walking around. Luckily I took a picture so now I know I wasn’t pretending it.

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Green people walking around in London

3.4 Security

There are a lot of camera’s all over London. They where implemented to lower the crime rate. Though numbers show that’s its not helping at all. While walking on the streets I didn’t notice much camera’s until I went from South Kensington to North Kensington. At this place there where a lot of camera’s placed on walls. This part of Kensington is a not a rich as the south part.

3.5 Taxes and overall prices

While talking to my friends they told me the one thing that frustrates them most is the amount of taxes they have to pay. They claim to pay up to 60% of what they earn. As far as I know this is the same as in Holland but I’m not sure. Though the daily expenses in London are higher because groceries are more expensive. Besides daily expenses rent they have to pay is in my eyes ridiculously high. Buying a normal 3 floor house in central London will cost you over a million pounds.

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A massive building. I wonder how much that would cost.

Conclusion

If you are an outgoing person London is the place to be. There is always something to do and there are a lot places to visit. However if you would want to live there you need a well paid job and not minding overcrowded tubes everyday. The different parts of London can differ a lot. There are rich parts but there are also poor parts. The nice thing about London is that they speak English so you are able to communicate with the people there. People from London aren’t that different from the Dutch, I bet there are green people running around in Amsterdam as well.

I most say I found it very pleasant visiting London again and being focussed on the cultural differences. 4,5 years ago I didn’t notice everybody drinking at 4pm, neither did I know anything about the museums or the parks. I just went there to see the tourist attractions.

This subject was very interesting and a nice break from our minor project. I would advice everyone to actually visit the country/city they want to talk about because it makes you see so much more. Last but not least, if you ever visit London, make sure to visit the natural history museum!

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Tower Bridge

Source

I made the pictures myself besides the picture from the natural history museum. I stole it from:



The only information I looked up was when museums became free for everyone:



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