Ten Lords A-leaping

"Ten Lords A-leaping", released on January 3, 2019, is the tenth installment of the 12 Days of Hello Internet series. The series consists of twelve parts, released one day at a time from December 2018 to January 2019, that together serve as Hello Internets fifth annual Christmas special and as its 116th overall episode.
Grey's just opened a envelope. Did you get a good one or not? I was distracted trying to, at any spare moment, open onvalopes in this mountain of onvalopes that we have. So Grey, here's one I just picked up at random. I don't know who it's coming from. They didn't sign it. It's a really cool picture of the Museum of Flite in Seattle. I'd love to hear about the paper cuts related to living abroad. And the paper cuts you have now when you visit home. Paper cuts is my favorite section of the podcast. Do you get any paper cuts when you go back to America that you wouldn't have had before? Like, that's easy to complain about things in England. That's great fun. But do you ever go back to America and think, you know what? America doesn't do this thing well. Everything related to payments in America is a real paper cut. Just everything that you have to do with a credit card and signing slips of paper. And also the thing in restaurants, which seems so archaic now that you just hand away to your card and they whisk it off to some back room where I like I presume they have a machine that makes 10 copies of your card that they hand out to their friends and then you come back and just sign the bill. It seems like a trust based system built in the 1700s as opposed to in the UK where a man brings you a little computer you verify that it's you and write the exact amount and just go for it. So I feel like everything about payments is really annoying in America. The paper money is all the same size. The whole money situation in America is really annoying. That'd be my paper cut for returning. You for Australia? Actually, something for Australia and America, it's not annoying me, but I find that something that I've drifted away from as I've become more and more anglicized living in England is like the brashness and the confidence of Australians and Americans. I mean, maybe people perceive me this way too still, but like I do find like the in your faceness of Australians and Americans, like I find it charming. But I do find it like it rattles me how friendly and how conversational everyone is. I think I've become a lot more British stare at my toes, standing a queue. So I do notice that because you notice it so quickly, like when you go back to Australia, when you pick up your higher card, you're already getting it. Get out of my way! How you doing? And they're really friendly. Where you going? What you doing? What you doing on the weekend? Whereas here in England, it's just like there would be no talking and they would just say, car three is yours. They don't want anything to do with you. But in America and Australia, like customer service is so friendly and the people are so outgoing. It's not paper cup, but I just find it like it's disorienting. This is orienting. Part of the advantage of living abroad is actually all the paper cuts. In a way, like I think the interesting experience of living abroad is the fact that all sorts of things that you would never expect are different. I think that makes it a more engaging thing for your brain instead of just living in the same place all the time. I think it's good for brains to have that jardness. But the downside of it, and I think especially for people like us who have lived abroad for such a long period of time, I always describe it as living abroad for my entire adult life, which is true. That you become like a man without a country in a way. And so the past few years in particular, when I travel back to America, it more and more feels like visiting another country. And so it becomes that there is no country that is home. There's just countries. So the UK is not home for you now. You don't feel at home in England. I think if I spent the whole of my life here, it would still always, I would still always feel like what I am. I'm an immigrant to this country and I live here and I know how to make things work here. But I'm always going to feel like an immigrant. And it's just a funny feeling that when I go back to America, that I said it particularly in the last few years, it feels more and more like a different place. I don't mind being a man without a country, but it's just an interesting thing to note that it feels like almost like I'm going to Canada. Oh, it's a place that's very similar to where I grew up, but a lot of things are just a little bit off or different. Should we open one from Australia? This one here? Oh, yeah. I'll open this one from Australia because it says on the outside of the envelope that it's come from Brisbane. I'm sure it will be very friendly. It's got a wreath on the front, but it's made from eucalyptus leaves and koalas and a platypus. Oh, yeah, and a platypus, you're right. Dear Graham Brady, I hope you both have a lovely Christmas season and wonderful new year. Have you ever thought of doing a live stream Q&A from the Antibodes? I haven't thought of that from Brisbane, and there's a piece of paper inside. Oh, it's a family picture. Don't read this out. Oh, I just read it out. But the part I'm not supposed to read out is everyone's names. There's a picture of them all from Brisbane. That's very nice. Thank you for your family photo. We have thought about doing live shows, like recording live, and then we immediately realized it's a terrible idea because we mess up so much when we're just doing the show anyway. Hello Internet is fundamentally not a live thing. It is for your benefit that it is edited, and you listen to a polished version of our conversation. And you don't have to listen to our false starts and stops or anything else like that. This is true. And Audrey's very worse. Yes. Oh, yes. Only the absolute uneditable stores make it in. She has been snoozing all afternoon over there. It's terrible. She's a very tired little dog. Trying another random one. This is a very thick envelope from Canada. Very thick usually means glitter. Oh, but this time it means adorable, star wars themed stockings. There, excellent. There's an R2D2 stocking, a Darth Vader stocking, and a Chewbacca one. And I love all of them. That's awesome. That's great. Is that a purchase card? Oh, it's got like an official logo on it, yeah. It looks really nice. Many thanks for all the countless hours of entertainment from Canada. Tim, Tim and Millie. Thank you very much. Here we go. This one's come from Matt, Dear Brady and Gray. Matt from Vancouver, British Columbia here, currently studying astronomy at the University of British Columbia. My idea for a topic is city planning of all the cities you've visited, what are some that stood out in terms of layout and design. Furthermore, what types of things do you look for in an ideal city? Gray, do you know what the world's best city is for layout and town planning? Is it Adelaide? It is Adelaide. Okay, tell me why it's Adelaide. Have you not heard of Colonel Light? I have not heard of Colonel Light. Colonel William Light, who designed Adelaide. Okay. Amazing town planner. In Adelaide, there's a hill that overlooks the city close by called Montefora Hill. There's a statue on top of Colonel Light pointing at the city that he designed. It's the iconic Adelaide statue. It's wonderful. Adelaide is brilliantly designed. Okay. Beautiful grid layout with these special parks in certain four quadrants and a park in the middle and then surrounded by park that they're not allowed to build on. They're not allowed to build on the Adelaide park. That's like a real condition of Adelaide. It's all being built on because the compromise after compromise is not. Adelaide is famed for it's... That's one of Adelaide's big claims to fame. There's so many. How can one contract? Because it was a very planned city. It was planned a long time ago. So it didn't just kind of evolve out of sprawl like London and become this crazy thing that you're having to continually compromise and patch up and fix. He said, this is the way we're going to do it. It's going to work for all time. And it can't. It did. I think grid cities are so overrated. I think the grid design is really, really overrated. It's one of the things I like least about cities. I've seen places do it well, but I think that's the exception. It's like... There are many public spaces that I go into. It's not really city design, but I think it's the same thing where... You go to like a new development and it's a public space. And I often think this must have looked amazing on architectural drawings. But that's a very different question from how does it feel to be in the space. And grid cities strike me that way. It's like, this looks great on paper. But as a person who's actually in the city, I generally don't like grid layouts. I will give one exception to the city of Salt Lake City, which has a grid layout. And I think is like the perfect... It's like a small city in America, but it feels reasonably big. And they did a very good job with the grid layout for complicated reasons. And they have trams that run up and down the center of the grid, because they have super wide streets. Like I happen to like... Sounds just like sounds just like Adelaide. Does it now? Okay. It is nice. I give it as an exception. But in general, I think there's a certain kind of person who goes like, Oh, this grid is great and orderly and it's going to be perfect. I much prefer the cities that have an organic field with them. It's also the thing that I know the grid looks good on paper, but I have a feeling that there's something about the organic layouts, which still does work. There's something natural about like where do the wide streets end up being? And then they filter out like capillaries into smaller regions. When I look for in cities, I look for something that feels more organic, as opposed to something that's a grid. But maybe one day I'll have to visit Adelaide and see how it compares to Salt Lake City. Oh man, imagine if you went to Adelaide, how that would be so exciting, wouldn't it? No, I think it's better that you don't. Oh yeah, you think it's better that it just exists in my head as the place that you describe? Well, no, I just rather that you picked on it like for the sake of giving me a hard time rather than picked on it from like a position of knowledge. Right. Yeah, right. Because this way you can always say, Oh, grey doesn't know what he's talking. Exactly. He doesn't understand. If he went, then he'd love it. Right. But if you went and hates it, then like where do I go from there? Right. I understand. You want to keep that open. Exactly. Oh, if he went, he would love it. He would. He doesn't understand. Oh, we got a bunch of glitter. Glitter has been a professional hazard in opening these Christmas cards. It has been a bit of glitter. Hi, CGP Gray and Dr. Brady Heron. My question for you is, as the year comes to its end, it's the perfect time for some reflection. What will you remember 2018 for? This is from Sean and Redding. That's a good question, isn't it? I will remember 2018 as the year that I went to Antarctica. Hmm. It feels like a million years ago now, but it was in March. And like, I do a lot of trips and holidays and a lot of them, I think. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. But it is possible that I will never go back to Antarctica. And certainly even if I do, there will only be the first time I went there. That made a mark on me. What will I remember 2018 for? The start of operations. The start of project cyclops. Well, this is, again, I have such a hard time looking back that I feel like in order to answer this question, I would have to pull out my calendar on my computer and like flip back through the day. And it's like, I just don't think that way. And it's like, and everything that I think of is things that happened in the past couple weeks. Right? Right. You know, I just happened to do this big interesting trip that we may talk about at some point in the future on the show. And it's like, well, I'll think of that as 28 is like, oh, but the only reason I'm thinking of that is because it happened a week ago. I mean, it happened close to three weeks ago because this is January 3rd. So yeah, 2018, it's a year. And it's great. I'm really bad at remembering years. And in like five years, if you say to me, what year did you go to Antarctica? I remember that it was 2018. But, all right. That was definitely my highlight of the year. My highlight of the year has been the 12 days of Hello Internet for sure. It did start in 2018. Yes, it did start in 2018. It will finish this year eventually. So soon, I'm opening one from Spain. All the Spanish teams right now are thinking, it could be mine. Did you send yours in a yellow envelope? It still could be yours. Did you put a Christmas tree sticker on the back? It still could be yours. Did you not send a proper card in a piece of paper? Oh, no, look. It says Merry Christmas from our family to yours. And it's a picture of, I think that's me. Yeah, that's you. It's Caveman Brady. It's Robot Gray. And there's a little snowman. Yeah. Kind of like cute, but horrifying, but horrifying in like a wonderful way. It is. I think it's very cute. Yeah. And on the back, we have a couple of questions. This is written in adult handwriting. This has come from Tim. I presume Tim is in just like overarching Tim. Abby Dahlia, aged four, who I'm going to attribute the picture to. Her signature is on the back there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is Dahlia then. And Cleo, aged one. Here's a question from Dahlia, who drew the picture. Do you want to build a snowman? Do you like building snowman? Snow people? To, you know, don't want to, don't want to upset anyone. Well, you were so snowman. Snowperson. I do want to build a snowman, but it never snowed enough in the UK. Have you got experience building snow people? I mean, I have built snowman in the past, you know, in New York when it snowed more. I don't think I've ever done it in the UK and I don't think there was ever really enough snow to do it. I don't think I've ever built a good one. You didn't specify I have ever built a good one. That's a very different question. The answer is no, but. Do you get excited by snow still? Like if it's snow. Yeah, snow is always exciting. How could snow not be exciting? It is amazing how snow is always exciting, how many times you say it. Yeah. Here's another question on the same letter. And this question has been asked by many people. So let's ask you, how is Mr. Chompers? You haven't spoken about Mr. Chompers for a while. He's doing very well. Mr. Chompers. He's grown up and he spends more time with his biological family now. But we do see him and we do take care of him and I'm always happy to see Mr. Chompers. We have him on some days of the month and also what is one of the pure lights of my life is that sometimes I'm out in the park and he's just walking along and up runs Mr. Chompers. Oh, like it's not your day, but it's not our day. Yeah. Right, but we're just out in the park and you're running into Mr. Chompers and he's so happy. He is so happy. So I'm very happy to see Mr. Chompers whenever I can and he is doing very well. He is very big. He's not living the fidgetron love star love. No, he's made a muscle. Like, he's a big, he is made of muscle. He can when, if I don't see him coming in the park, he can totally knock me over. So he is very strong. Nice. And he is the biggest example of his breath at his vet has seen. So he really is. He's an enormous dog that is made of all mouth. He's a record breaker. Yeah. And actually, I should be seeing him in just a few days, I believe, is his own schedule. So he's doing very well.
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