Smoking and Fire Alarms

Fire induction today got me thinking.

Alia, my teacher, wrote me a lovely email when I first got here saying, 

If I may, I'd like to offer a bit of advice that I would give to any friend living in another country.  Of course you can take it or leave it.  Living in another culture opens your eyes to other ways of being--which is good.  People do things differently there.  And you may want to try on their ways.  For example, the fashions are a bit different in London, and so you might want to try on their style. Personally, I think that might be fun.  However there's one nasty habit Europeans (not just Londoners) have: smoking cigarettes.  Ugh.  It's everywhere!  Some people may have started at an early age in order to look real cool, or there may be other mysterious reasons why they started smoking.

The reason I tell you this is because I have American friends who were traveling and were offered tobacco and, they thought, well, what the heck, "When in Rome..."  But now they are back in the States with an ugly addiction.  I really feel for my friends who fell into that hole. Now they really struggle to climb out of it.

And she is entirely right, many of the people smoke here. People smoke cigarettes here a lot. I mean A LOT. And as a cultural thing they just drop them on the ground wherever they are. (I personally find this disgusting and actually contemplated cleaning the bottoms of my shoes yesterday then realized that that would completely futile, but that is beside the point) Some places you can't avoid stepping on them. You will often see public waste bins and ashtrays smoking. 

Fortunately for me my parents drilled it into me never to smoke, and I find it disgusting (haunting memories of being dragged through Harrah's or Harvey's as a youngster by my dad as he pointed at the gamblers who smoked and remarked very loudly about how they were filthy, stupid people, or my Grandpa showing pictures of smokers lungs, come to mind...) And thankfully Queen Mary is an entirely non-smoking campus. 

Also, Londoners are completely terrified of fire. No wooden structures are allowed in the city any longer. Now, while QM is not in the city center way out here in the East End, they still have this pervading fear, hence the insane amount of fire safety equipment in every building. My my flat alone there are smoke alarms, heat alarms, fire alarms, fire doors, alarmed fire doors (doors that will beep incessantly at you if left open too long), fire extinguishers, fire blankets, and fire action directions and no smoking signs on almost every wall. This however is a major problem for one of my roommates, who smokes like a chimney. He can't smoke in the apartment and has to walk off campus (Yay!). 

Also, the warning labels on cigarettes here are REALLY INTENSE. Examples. (How can you smoke something when there is a dead baby on the package? Seriously?)

Today we had to go to a fire safety seminar, which was honestly a waste of my time as I had gotten all that information in 2nd grade with a far more visceral lesson. The "fire induction" told us how to exit buildings, how not to start fires, etc. But at ZCES the fire department was hard core. They had a trailer that we got to go through that actually lit things on fire, like a 'tea towel' on a burner, and then we had to practice exiting the building, stop, drop, and roll, AND we got to tour the firehouse, go down the pole and see FIRETRUCKS! (I honestly think this is where my obsession started and I may or may not have walked back to the fire station the next day at recess...) This was obviously a much better lesson. (London Fire Engine)

Anyway, all these fire events today, especially the note that tampering with your smoke detectors, like putting a plastic bag over them, was a criminal activity, made me think about the stupidity of smoking. At Queen Mary, and I suspect all over the UK, if you disable a fire alarm you do not get a warning, they will kick you out of housing, they will press criminal charges for reckless endangerment of others, and you may be expelled from the University. Whoa.

It also reminded me of the first time I came to London with my mom when I was 13. On the plane, one man tried to disable the smoke alarm in the bathroom so he could smoke mid-flight. Of course someone noticed and he was put in a seat next to the flight attendant and was strapped down with restraints for the rest of the flight. We also had to wait for police to remove him from the plane before we could get off. It was intense. 

And if the penalty is that extreme, why risk it?