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ETA: meant this for the little_details community, actually, but feel free to help me out! ::scurries off to repost in CORRECT place::

Couple of questions for a fic...

1. What's the typical July like in, respectively, London and Florida?

2. I have an upper-middle-class British family, the head of which needs to go to America for a week or so on business. What job might he have, and what city on the East Coast would he be headed for?

3. Is there a level of karate in which a normal-sized fourteen-year-old girl could kick the ass of a large but surprised 20-something guy? He's not going to fight back or anything, I just need to know what I can call her so she'll be able to take him down.

Mood::

curious

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There are 22 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

July in Florida in not quite as bad as August in Florida. *g* Eeer, sorry, but August is something of a hell month. Are you thinking anywhere in particular? I'm asuming that this is pre A/C so...

Very muggy. Thunderstorms rolling in (at least in the west and central areas) off the Gulf around 5 pm just about every day. And I mean thunderstorms with easily 5 - 10 near lightening strikes a minute if the conditions are right. Daily get up around 91 deg with very high humidity and uv indexes around 8-10 constantly. This, in the full sun, can easily push the "feel" of the air to around 100. Whe do sometime go up into the high 90's in the shade.

Night doesn't bring much relief (save for maybe right after the storm), as the humidity holds the heat in quite well. WEather.com puts the average low for july in the 70's... Um noooo. It generally stays in the 80's (and feel wise high 80's).

Florida in the summer is significantly hotter than the islands (at least around the coast). They usually run high 85 to low 75, and their temps do change that much as they have far less humidity.

The mosquitos suck major blood and the cockroaches try to take over the world. There is no such thing as a quiet night as the cicadas and locus and various other bugs make tons ove noise.

Pretty much the opposite of England.

Any specific questions?

And, eeep, is this not PotC? Let me know what era you're looking at and I can give specifics.

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Oh GOD, I totally meant to post this to litte_details, but MONKEY I LOVE YOU OMG.

This would be set in the Will/James modern AU from around Christmas. Got a suggestion for where the Turners/Sparrows/Swanns might live? All I know is that they have to be near water, because of the Pearl, Jack's little speedboat, and Mr. Turner has one too, and their family's got some kind of dockside restaurant and I'll shup up now.

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Love you to darlin'! :-D I've lived in Florida all my life so... PLus OMG intrigued!!!

I'm trying to remember the details of the AU (omg i'm sorry brain like swiss cheese) so I can tailor it properly, but...

This is from a biased position, but the Clearwater/St. Petersburg/Tampa area would work fine (plus I know it well *g*). Some of the best beaches, great area for water sports, Gasparilla (http://www.gasparillapiratefest.com/) (okay so it's in January not July, but must flaunt omg!!), Captain Memo (http://www.captmemo.com/), dokside restaurants that you can dock your boat at really exist here, large Caribbean population (for flavour to the story)... I could give you hard-core specifics with maps if you like.

(I'm trying to avoide cleaning, :-D) I'm monkeyofocean on aim if that would be easier.

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3. Is there a level of karate in which a normal-sized fourteen-year-old girl could kick the ass of a large but surprised 20-something guy? He's not going to fight back or anything, I just need to know what I can call her so she'll be able to take him down.

It depends. I don't think I could take down a 20-something guy, and I'm tall and fifteen, and I'm blue belt.

She'd probably have to be at least blue, and I'd say she should go for the head first. Roundhouse right to the temple, but then again that's not really practical. Maybe a two finger strike to the eyes and then a kick to the belly or groin. It all depends on the moves. Like, if some guy has really poor reflexes, I could possibly knock him out with a strike to the temple, or by pressing my fore and middle fingers into the hollow at his collarbone.

If you want help with like the karate moves and stuff, I can do that. But for the girl to take out the guy, I think some experience in dirty street fighting would be best, really.

Don't need him knocked out, like, unconscious knocked out -- just on the ground, looking up (at this puny kid and Jack Sparrow laughing at him), possibly stunned a little. Shouldn't need actual moves, since it's from James' POV and he wouldn't know.

Although hee, now he's in my head going "Did you learn that in class?" all disapprov-y.

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Karate stuff:

Basic self defense moves would work pretty good - fingers to eyes, kicks to groin, etc but if you want a really effective takedown - have the girl be studying aikido or aiki-jiujitsu (the jiujitsu stuff is more lethal but aikido is far more mainstream. the whole point of aikido is to let the agressive energy work against itself while you calmly step out of the way. i've been studying it for almost 9 years now and i'm only 5'4" and i regularly take pretty big guys down. the bigger they are, the harder they fall. she would probably need about 3 years experiece, at least in any martial art. depending on where you study, after three years you can be anything from a green or so belt to a black belt. it's not really the belt color that signifies, but the time put into.
Here is a website that has some video clips (check out the first one) of what an aikido throw would look like.
http://www.aikiweb.com/multimedia/videos/chida.html
Will be happy to answer any other questions if you have any

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Thank you! :)

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London is usually pretty warm in July. About 25 celcius I reckon

New York probably. To meet someone about investing in some stocks and shares

Sorry, don't know anything about karate

Gracias Hils!

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london is usually low to mid twenties in july. it's also quite muggy and horrible because of the pollution. because we're all meterilogical (i can't spell that, you konw what I mean :-)) drama queens, every july is a "heatwave" if it's hot or an ominous portent of "global cooling" if it isn't. we are never, ever subject to "normal" weather on this island. ever.

upper middle class and living in london would give you 2 options - advertising/marketing/music industry creative media or on the more boring front finance.

the media centre of London is Soho, it's where all the film companies have their hqs, house-wise people tend to either live in North London (Hampstead, Highgate, Primrose Hill - this is all Mary Poppins land) or out West - Maida Vale, Notting Hill (this is a bit young and trendy actually, maybe not) Kensington and Chelsea.

The financial centre is, obviously the City (the actual city of London). this is sometimes referred to as the Square Mile. this is where all the big financial stuff happens. one particularly important industry is the insurance industry, which actually started here anyway (read Quicksilver - it explains it all). the actual square mile contains mainly big English companies - Lloyds, Cornhill etc but you can find the British headquarters of companies like Merryll Lynch on the outskirts as well.

living wise - someone who works in the city will be pretty well off. they may live in the actual square mile (the only place with housing there is the Barbican, ask me more about this if you want to know) Clerkenwell is nearby but I'm not sure it's the soort of place you'd raise a family. Because of how the trains work, city workers tend to live in the nicer areas or South East London or even Surrey and get the train in to work. likely suburbs would include Dulwich, parts of Forest Hill, Orpington, Greenwich.

I have to dash because I'm late for work, but If you want to know more about any of this drop me a line - I love rambling on about London to a captive audience :-)

Ooooh, excellent detail. Thank you!

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you're welcome - I didn't mean to run on as much but I was typing over my morning coffee and getting visibly more hyper as I went.

if you want to know anything else drop me a line

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Well, if you've got the time, once I finish it, would you like to Britpick it for me? I'm much less sure of my footing in modern times, and though it's set in Will's home in Florida, James and his whole family will be there. Doesn't have to be a full beta, just poke me if speech patterns sound off or you think of some good slang to toss in. I'll probably be working on it mostly this weekend.

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I'd love to, I don't have much on next week so email me it whenever you're ready - lolita_stardust at yahoo dot com

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heh. july in Florida? hot. hot. more hot. not as hot as august but bad enough to ruin your day. big bloodsucking bugs. a hurricane or two. occassionally littered with dead bodies after some dip shoots off a gun into the air on the fourth...but thats pretty much every day for Jack im sure ;)

Hee! Thank you.

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To add to what

lolita_stardust said, upper middle class could also make your guy a solicitor. Most of the big City firms are also based within the Square Mile, although the biggest (Clifford Chance) is now in Docklands. The banks are also all now in Docklands, down at Canary Wharf. This is East London, on the river, in a modern development of high-rise buildings and a shopping centre and so on. So you have the insurers, most law firms, smaller investment banks and the like still in the City, and CC and the big banks at Canary Wharf.

Clifford Chance is one of several law firms here with American operations, most of which are based in New York although there are some with Washington DC offices too.

Lolita mentioned Lloyd's - that's the roots of the insurance industry, but doesn't employ too many people by itself. Someone who works at Lloyd's (it's a bizarre concrete building in the centre of the City) is generally an underwriter or a broker employed by an insurance company, and won't spend an awful lot of time at Lloyd's. They come in for a few hours a day and spend the rest of the time in the offices of their company.

Fabulous. Thanks!

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ooh yeah forgot about canary wharf entirely. I didn't really understand how Lloyd's works, I kind of expected a huge building like that to have a ton of people working in it.

so are you from London then? I hardly ever encounter other Brits online

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Lloyd's does have a ton of people working in it, but it's not a particularly big employer itself - it rents out the space to the underwriters. It's pretty cool inside. They have a huge ledger full of details of shipwrecks dating back as long as Lloyd's has been going - that's what it all started with.

I'm currently living in London, though not from London. I'm a northerner, really. :)

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really? me too - I lived in Leeds til I was 18 then moved down here for uni

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January