Adventures of stevenlichen

It has been a while since I updated my blog last time, and indeed quite some time since I moved out of campus to the city centre (the mere mentioning of city centre tickles me as Lancaster is barely a city to me in the sense that it is about the size of a village in China).

However, to be fair, life in town is definitely more colorful than it is on campus. For an international student like me, I would say living outside campus would be a huge step forward in terms of getting to know the real, average British people.

On the whole, the Brits are well-mannered people. Most notably, they line up for everything, e.g. bus, checkout counter in a store, or food stalls in an open market etc.; as one of my friends had rightfully observed, “when in the UK, good luck finding yourself the right queue to be in”. Secondly, those working adults are genuinely concerned about their public images; hence it is commonplace to find yourself rubbing shoulders with a group of well-dressed white collars in the tube. Thirdly, generally speaking, the way British English is pronounced usually conveys an aura of politeness and decency, adding to the speaker’s credibility and kindness.

Yet if you ask me about the cons of British people, I’d reply with some certainty — beware of alcoholics — on the basis of what I have witnessed so far. In daylight, it is unlikely that you see what the magic power of alcohol can do to the Brits, but at night, particularly the official “party time” (i.e. Friday evening and night), the streets will be filled with drunken workers, students, even teenagers.

You might wonder that why I use the word “beware”, since there is no dearth of alcoholics in your neighborhood anyway. Okay, that’s a legitimate question. But you will go along with my diction when you know that it is not uncommon that foreigners (i.e. international students like me) become the target of burglary, extortion or simply a meaningless beat-up. Reportedly, most of those who committed the crimes are alcoholics.

Is there a way of tackling this overarching problem with alcoholics? The answer is YES. In fact, there are highly qualified nursing centers dealing not only with Alcohol addiction problems, but also treat Drug Rehabs, Drug Addiction and conduct Drug Intervention.

I just hope those alcoholics, especially highly aggressive teenagers to seek for alcohol intervention before they do something more stupid than harassing foreign pedestrians.

This Article is from: Adventures of stevenlichen[http://stevenlichen.com]

URL: http://stevenlichen.com/2008/07/16/life-in-lancaster-beware-of-alcoholics/

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