The playing musical chairs with cars thing is getting old fast. Too many Simkin girls have too many places to go. Today, for instance, found me unwillingly transporting Mumsie to the gym and Em to rehearsal.The only pro being that I find my expressway driving has much improved, bizarre considering I haven't driven in... a lot of many months.
Since last... we spoke? I ranted at you? You read this? I gave in to my mother's insistent requests for more postings even though she lives in the same house as me? What's the verb there? I went to Pittsburgh and saw the apartment that I signed the lease for sight-unseen and some friends. The apartment turned out to be gorgeous, the friends are the same as I left them but with a new fondness for throwing dinner parties.
Home Depot has not so much hired me as left me a voice mail saying they need me to fill out new hire forms, which is anticlimactic but probably good, yes?
I went to my cousins' bnaot? bnai? bar and bat? mitzvah which was great, they did a terrific job and it was nice to see some extended family. I made the unsettling realization that I did not feel comfortable performing an aliyah without a head covering, which perhaps firmly cements my position in the Conservative movement after all. Also, I find most of the singsongyness of Reform shuls irritating. If I'm going to go to a service, I usually like to feel minorly martyred with heavy boring chants.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Don't Freak Out, We Made You Tacos
My culinary experiments have been met with less than enthusiasm.
So far Dad and I have made quinoa and beef stuffed peppers (and tacos for lame people), curried chicken (and regular chicken for lame people), and homemade pizza from scratch utilizing flour ground at Rudyard Kipling's stone mill with NO CONCESSIONS FOR LAME PEOPLE. Mom and Emily are not adventures or fun, be advised. Also they make faces.
Life at home so far is not unlike my last week in London, in that there is bloody nothing to do and the flowers are nice. Emily proposed we trade lives but it would never work: I'm far taller than her and currently sporting trendy short hair. The librarian at the local public library recognized me, remarked upon my absence, and placed requests for me for all the obscure British authors I'm now into. My job prospects are a shade brighter than bleak but only a shade and feature the new party store which has taken over the balloon business from the old party store. Why is one of my most marketable skills making balloon bouquets? Is that weird?
So far Dad and I have made quinoa and beef stuffed peppers (and tacos for lame people), curried chicken (and regular chicken for lame people), and homemade pizza from scratch utilizing flour ground at Rudyard Kipling's stone mill with NO CONCESSIONS FOR LAME PEOPLE. Mom and Emily are not adventures or fun, be advised. Also they make faces.
Life at home so far is not unlike my last week in London, in that there is bloody nothing to do and the flowers are nice. Emily proposed we trade lives but it would never work: I'm far taller than her and currently sporting trendy short hair. The librarian at the local public library recognized me, remarked upon my absence, and placed requests for me for all the obscure British authors I'm now into. My job prospects are a shade brighter than bleak but only a shade and feature the new party store which has taken over the balloon business from the old party store. Why is one of my most marketable skills making balloon bouquets? Is that weird?
Monday, April 26, 2010
Places Like Home: There Aren't Any
Certain phrases are clearly never going to leave my vocabulary. I'm back in 'the states' and it's 'brill' and I'm 'so sorry' I haven't posted to notify my loyal readership of that and subsequently incited their wrath (Hi Texas Simkins! Please don't sic the dogs or Emma on me!). The excessively apologizing for things like being in someone's way or imagining that you might possibly be in someone else's way or otherwise potentially impeding them in any manner has apparently become noticeably ingrained- my mother has commented upon it.
On Saturday I teamed up with Ruthie, who lived in the same building as me and was on my flight, for the fifteen hour odyssey that was lugging gabillions of pounds of luggage down Praed Street to Paddington station, onto the Heathrow Connect train, through the endless corridors of Europe's busiest airport, and finally arriving at our gate several hours early. Which gave us ample time to plan a tea party to be held at an undetermined date celebrating the prince's as-yet unannounced engagement. I will miss British pop culture and celebrity gossip.
The flight went fine and actually landed early, but not before I had time to watch two feature length films, four television episodes, and dissect the frozen vegetables and shady pasta-esque concoction which I was presented with in lieu of lunch.
The Simkin welcome committee practically knocked me over and disrupted the flow of weary travelers attempting to leave international arrivals, then took me to see Bubbe (my grandmother) and my cats (who remain, unsurprisingly but reassuringly, furry and uninterested in my affairs) and then out to a dinner with my aunt and uncle and grandparents during which I practically fell asleep in my Cesar salad to everyone's amusement except mine.
Yesterday I woke up at 5:00 Eastern Standard Time because it was late morning for me with my European internal clock, and to my familys' great chagrin pro ceded to make an omelet and catch up on episodes of Dollhouse I'd missed- quietly, but still at an ungodly hour.
Mom and I went to see Emily in a Jewish theater festival where she was excellent, then I attempted to get my room and life in some semblance of an order before enjoying a homecooked meal and watching Castle episodes with Dad and Skimmer (this blog's namesake of sorts).
I am now confronted with the issue of what to do with Skimbolina. Not the cat, whom I will obviously continue to admire from afar for fear of his razor claws and "playfulness" but this blog, which while perfectly permissible and reasonable to keep as record of my exciting adventures and misadventures from abroad strikes me as somewhat pretentious to keep just to recount my ever so ordinary life in Audubon Pennsylvania. On the other hand, I do enjoy writing it quite a bit and although reader comments are few and far between my mother claims that I've got a substantial readership among her friend and family. I will think about it and get back to you: right now I need tea and more Wii Fit, because I loathe being thirsty and inactive. Cheers!
On Saturday I teamed up with Ruthie, who lived in the same building as me and was on my flight, for the fifteen hour odyssey that was lugging gabillions of pounds of luggage down Praed Street to Paddington station, onto the Heathrow Connect train, through the endless corridors of Europe's busiest airport, and finally arriving at our gate several hours early. Which gave us ample time to plan a tea party to be held at an undetermined date celebrating the prince's as-yet unannounced engagement. I will miss British pop culture and celebrity gossip.
The flight went fine and actually landed early, but not before I had time to watch two feature length films, four television episodes, and dissect the frozen vegetables and shady pasta-esque concoction which I was presented with in lieu of lunch.
The Simkin welcome committee practically knocked me over and disrupted the flow of weary travelers attempting to leave international arrivals, then took me to see Bubbe (my grandmother) and my cats (who remain, unsurprisingly but reassuringly, furry and uninterested in my affairs) and then out to a dinner with my aunt and uncle and grandparents during which I practically fell asleep in my Cesar salad to everyone's amusement except mine.
Yesterday I woke up at 5:00 Eastern Standard Time because it was late morning for me with my European internal clock, and to my familys' great chagrin pro ceded to make an omelet and catch up on episodes of Dollhouse I'd missed- quietly, but still at an ungodly hour.
Mom and I went to see Emily in a Jewish theater festival where she was excellent, then I attempted to get my room and life in some semblance of an order before enjoying a homecooked meal and watching Castle episodes with Dad and Skimmer (this blog's namesake of sorts).
I am now confronted with the issue of what to do with Skimbolina. Not the cat, whom I will obviously continue to admire from afar for fear of his razor claws and "playfulness" but this blog, which while perfectly permissible and reasonable to keep as record of my exciting adventures and misadventures from abroad strikes me as somewhat pretentious to keep just to recount my ever so ordinary life in Audubon Pennsylvania. On the other hand, I do enjoy writing it quite a bit and although reader comments are few and far between my mother claims that I've got a substantial readership among her friend and family. I will think about it and get back to you: right now I need tea and more Wii Fit, because I loathe being thirsty and inactive. Cheers!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
New Boots vs. Cute Flats vs. Ruby Slippers: Clear Winner
It’s been a tense week but it’s starting to look like I might get home okay. Let’s not be excessively optimistic, but Heathrow is open. I’m mainly attributing it to the ladybug I found on Tuesday, which was clearly magical lucky.
The sad thing is I find myself not much able to appreciate these last few days in London, so badly do I want to get home. I want to see my family and my friends and my cats, of course, but I have renewed appreciation for not just the little things about home but the tiny, the miniscule. I cannot wait to do chores and errands, laundry in a machine that actually works and grocery shopping for familiar brands.
I will tell you the thing about London, because I know you’ve been waiting, thinking anxiously to yourselves, ‘Whenever will Sarah tell us the thing about London!?’. The thing is this: it’s a terrific background for a life. It’s got everything you could ever want… if you have a life, with work and engagements and obligations and people to see. As a city to just loaf around in its indisputably better than most, but even still, there’s only so much. I have done all the London-y things I wished to do, seen the museums and the markets and the landmarks and the parks, the West End shows and the pubs. I have skimmed the layer of tourist things and got to the semi-native activities and it’s been spectacular, but the past week has been like living on icing and Swedish fish. A day with nothing more to do read in the sun is great (environmental damage to my skin notwithstanding) if it’s recovering from a full week of activity, a well deserved respite, but if all I’m resting up from is a previous day in the park and all I’ve got to look forward to tomorrow is another day in the park, for me at least it’s significantly less enjoyable.
So that’s what I’ve been up to, Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park and Regents Park and Primrose Hill and some devastatingly beautiful novel I found in the CAPA library. Also the farewell class of Understanding British with the inestimable Professor Fosdal which took place at a pirate themed pub in Covent Garden (of course it did). I took two exams and turned in three papers today and I’ve got one more exam tomorrow, then the goodbye dinner and what’s being billed as a killer night at ISH before the hazy nightmare that is transatlantic travel commences. And, of course, thanks to my new Murad products, I have been taking wicked good care of my skin.
The sad thing is I find myself not much able to appreciate these last few days in London, so badly do I want to get home. I want to see my family and my friends and my cats, of course, but I have renewed appreciation for not just the little things about home but the tiny, the miniscule. I cannot wait to do chores and errands, laundry in a machine that actually works and grocery shopping for familiar brands.
I will tell you the thing about London, because I know you’ve been waiting, thinking anxiously to yourselves, ‘Whenever will Sarah tell us the thing about London!?’. The thing is this: it’s a terrific background for a life. It’s got everything you could ever want… if you have a life, with work and engagements and obligations and people to see. As a city to just loaf around in its indisputably better than most, but even still, there’s only so much. I have done all the London-y things I wished to do, seen the museums and the markets and the landmarks and the parks, the West End shows and the pubs. I have skimmed the layer of tourist things and got to the semi-native activities and it’s been spectacular, but the past week has been like living on icing and Swedish fish. A day with nothing more to do read in the sun is great (environmental damage to my skin notwithstanding) if it’s recovering from a full week of activity, a well deserved respite, but if all I’m resting up from is a previous day in the park and all I’ve got to look forward to tomorrow is another day in the park, for me at least it’s significantly less enjoyable.
So that’s what I’ve been up to, Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park and Regents Park and Primrose Hill and some devastatingly beautiful novel I found in the CAPA library. Also the farewell class of Understanding British with the inestimable Professor Fosdal which took place at a pirate themed pub in Covent Garden (of course it did). I took two exams and turned in three papers today and I’ve got one more exam tomorrow, then the goodbye dinner and what’s being billed as a killer night at ISH before the hazy nightmare that is transatlantic travel commences. And, of course, thanks to my new Murad products, I have been taking wicked good care of my skin.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Eyjafjallajokull
Under other circumstances, I might go on a bit about Friday having been our last “real” class with Professor Fosdal –who is now my facebook friend!- because we’re meeting at a pirate-themed pub next week, and how class was conducted partially in the park and partially in the Goat Tavern (right by the Milestone Hotel of Milavec fame). Were things different I might discuss excursions to Camden Market, Portobello Road Market, Covent Garden, and Piccadilly nightclub Tiger Tiger.
But no, things are the way they are, and what was at first a distant and unlikely joke of a travel disruption is now a very real threat. Iceland’s unprecedented geographic activity may well stop me from getting home in anything like a reasonable manner. Because this isn’t like a flight being canceled or delayed, this is like there are no more flights for the foreseeable future. The media is recommending alternative forms of transportation, with the consequent that the Eurostar is sold out for weeks and ferries and trains are seeing huge boosts in ticket sales, but you know what? There is no train to Philadelphia from Paddington! Or King’s Cross or even St Pancreas! None at all! That is not a viable route!
And transatlantic ships have been out of vogue pretty much since the Titanic, making them all but impossible to find let alone book.
The wind might shift on Wednesday enough to clear up flights for Saturday, but if not my future is exceptionally uncertain. Anyone who knows me even marginally probably knows I am not someone who thrives on uncertainty. Some of you may be familiar with the Excel spreadsheets I keep to monitor my degree progression or my extensively detailed calendars, or what I total drag I am to take to a party what with my excessive questions about where we’re going and how we’ll get there and how we’ll get back and if John McKay will be there. So it is not a happy camper who is blogging this.
Of course there’s nothing to be done other than anxiously investigate how on this godforsaken ash-covered earth one goes about finding a ship that isn’t an outrageously expensive cruise liner or getting to New York by way of Panama and Beijing… and walk.
The count on Times I Have Walked To Buckingham Palace for the Sheer, Unadulterated Hell of It is now at three. Although this time I finally managed to see the changing of the guards with the silly hats and the mobs of foreign tourists. So I walked in that direction until my iPod died, came back to make lunch and recharge the iPod, and then walked in the other direction to Primrose Hill. Walking alone in London after dark is inadvisable so after dinner I may have to be content with pacing my building’s staircase, but this is no occasion on which to sit still.
So as not to leave off on such a pensive angsty note I will briefly regale you with the details of my flatmate Bridget’s 21st birthday at Tiger Tiger, which involved no less than fifteen rowdy drunken Americans horrifying other would-be travelers into changing tube cars, some members of our party being kicked out of the club for sloppy inebriation before a fifth grader’s bedtime, me dancing with a boy who didn’t seem to know the words to the American songs and didn’t seem to know the words to the British songs and was really only just smiling in response to anything I said and turned out to be from the Czech Republic and not know any English at all (but was a decent dancer nevertheless), and Chloe and I getting kicked out of Tesco not for any semblance of disorderliness but merely just because it was closing.
And all that’s great but… I want to go home.
But no, things are the way they are, and what was at first a distant and unlikely joke of a travel disruption is now a very real threat. Iceland’s unprecedented geographic activity may well stop me from getting home in anything like a reasonable manner. Because this isn’t like a flight being canceled or delayed, this is like there are no more flights for the foreseeable future. The media is recommending alternative forms of transportation, with the consequent that the Eurostar is sold out for weeks and ferries and trains are seeing huge boosts in ticket sales, but you know what? There is no train to Philadelphia from Paddington! Or King’s Cross or even St Pancreas! None at all! That is not a viable route!
And transatlantic ships have been out of vogue pretty much since the Titanic, making them all but impossible to find let alone book.
The wind might shift on Wednesday enough to clear up flights for Saturday, but if not my future is exceptionally uncertain. Anyone who knows me even marginally probably knows I am not someone who thrives on uncertainty. Some of you may be familiar with the Excel spreadsheets I keep to monitor my degree progression or my extensively detailed calendars, or what I total drag I am to take to a party what with my excessive questions about where we’re going and how we’ll get there and how we’ll get back and if John McKay will be there. So it is not a happy camper who is blogging this.
Of course there’s nothing to be done other than anxiously investigate how on this godforsaken ash-covered earth one goes about finding a ship that isn’t an outrageously expensive cruise liner or getting to New York by way of Panama and Beijing… and walk.
The count on Times I Have Walked To Buckingham Palace for the Sheer, Unadulterated Hell of It is now at three. Although this time I finally managed to see the changing of the guards with the silly hats and the mobs of foreign tourists. So I walked in that direction until my iPod died, came back to make lunch and recharge the iPod, and then walked in the other direction to Primrose Hill. Walking alone in London after dark is inadvisable so after dinner I may have to be content with pacing my building’s staircase, but this is no occasion on which to sit still.
So as not to leave off on such a pensive angsty note I will briefly regale you with the details of my flatmate Bridget’s 21st birthday at Tiger Tiger, which involved no less than fifteen rowdy drunken Americans horrifying other would-be travelers into changing tube cars, some members of our party being kicked out of the club for sloppy inebriation before a fifth grader’s bedtime, me dancing with a boy who didn’t seem to know the words to the American songs and didn’t seem to know the words to the British songs and was really only just smiling in response to anything I said and turned out to be from the Czech Republic and not know any English at all (but was a decent dancer nevertheless), and Chloe and I getting kicked out of Tesco not for any semblance of disorderliness but merely just because it was closing.
And all that’s great but… I want to go home.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Goodbye Murad
Last day of work today! I put the final touches on all seven databases and their corresponding media quick lists, sorted some nail polish kits, and made up gift packages: perfect finish.
And guess who got a Murad gift package all their own?
Keifer Sutherland! ...but me too, which was really sweet. It has Active Radiance Serum, which is the product I've been promoting all semester, so that was appropriate, and also some pomegranate stuff which is excellent. It's no longer my responsibility to promote Murad products (although Leandra and I had supposed that a signfigant bump in US sales upon our return to the States would bode well for our hypothetical possible future applications to work for the American branch of Murad in LA), but on the off chance anyone has burning questions about which range might be appropriate for them or what the cellular water principle is... please ask, because otherwise all my hard won product knowledge will go to waste.
In less cheerful news: a volcano apparently erupted in Iceland and the subsequent ash has closed down the entire UK airspace. Which is problematic for flights. So, if it takes longer than a week to clear up, I have an issue...
And guess who got a Murad gift package all their own?
Keifer Sutherland! ...but me too, which was really sweet. It has Active Radiance Serum, which is the product I've been promoting all semester, so that was appropriate, and also some pomegranate stuff which is excellent. It's no longer my responsibility to promote Murad products (although Leandra and I had supposed that a signfigant bump in US sales upon our return to the States would bode well for our hypothetical possible future applications to work for the American branch of Murad in LA), but on the off chance anyone has burning questions about which range might be appropriate for them or what the cellular water principle is... please ask, because otherwise all my hard won product knowledge will go to waste.
In less cheerful news: a volcano apparently erupted in Iceland and the subsequent ash has closed down the entire UK airspace. Which is problematic for flights. So, if it takes longer than a week to clear up, I have an issue...
Monday, April 12, 2010
Hamish the Highland Bull: Scotland
I never know quite where to leap into a thing. The beginning is too predictable, but anywhere else is disorienting. And the end, well, the end is usually King’s Cross Station.
Anyways, there we were on a train racing through the British countryside in a manner not at all unlike the Hogwarts Express. The scenery was lovely but only so entertaining for so long before some manner of diversion was called for. Thus: Degrees. A game tentatively based over Six Degree of Kevin Bacon, but since none of us (the group being comprised of Chloe, Sarah from Belgravia, and I) knew enough about Kevin Bacon films (Footloose! Dirty Dancing? The one where the… Midwestern kids fight… the Commies?) or cared that much about how many links it took to get to our destination, we ended up with things like Pontius Pilot to Martha Stewart and Anne Boleyn to Matthew Fox. Great fun.
Then we arrived in Edinburgh, navigated to our hostel and grabbed something to eat: I ordered a “Cheeseburger” which was actually ground beef mixed with cheese and grilled into a sort of patty but not that bad. We then stumbled upon a Ghost Tour led by a charismatic graduate student and signed up.
Which means I can now add “Gone on a Tour of Haunted Edinburgh” to the list of things I have done accidentally, which so far includes rock climbing (It was Emily’s fault, as if you had to ask) and how to make successful nachos.
The tour was neat and more historical than terrifying. Saturday we got up early for our tour of the Highlands. I am privileged to have seen a lot of really beautiful places in the last two decades, but none compare to the Scottish highlands. They’re just beyond gorgeous. And they have sheep and little lambs and great furry beasts called Highland cattle, one of which we got to meet and pet at a tourist trap (his name is Hamish, hence the title).
Our guide Steve (who was kilt-less but assured us that he usually had traditional Scottish garb and had only the other night sat in a bowl of guacamole but assured us that it was a great party nonetheless [side side note: I have never gotten the deal with kilts. I wore one for five years at Agnes Irwin as find them thoroughly uninteresting]) started off the tour with “And here you have Edinburgh castle, built in1985 out of match sticks for a school project. Good, are you awake?”
The weekend was outlandishly gorgeous, like some of the best weather since I’ve been in the UK, which was terrific except when we got to Loch Ness. It looked like a lake on a sunny day. Which it was. People were canoeing and everything. It was not at all mysterious and did not look liable to harbor a monster of any sort.
That night we ate at the Conan Doyle pub of Sherlock Holmes fame and meandered the city a bit before retiring. Sunday morning we toured Edinburgh Castle and shopped a bit before catching the six hour train back. At no point did I eat Haggis, but I don’t feel that bad because tour guide Steve said it’s not a real local dish anyways.
Anyways, there we were on a train racing through the British countryside in a manner not at all unlike the Hogwarts Express. The scenery was lovely but only so entertaining for so long before some manner of diversion was called for. Thus: Degrees. A game tentatively based over Six Degree of Kevin Bacon, but since none of us (the group being comprised of Chloe, Sarah from Belgravia, and I) knew enough about Kevin Bacon films (Footloose! Dirty Dancing? The one where the… Midwestern kids fight… the Commies?) or cared that much about how many links it took to get to our destination, we ended up with things like Pontius Pilot to Martha Stewart and Anne Boleyn to Matthew Fox. Great fun.
Then we arrived in Edinburgh, navigated to our hostel and grabbed something to eat: I ordered a “Cheeseburger” which was actually ground beef mixed with cheese and grilled into a sort of patty but not that bad. We then stumbled upon a Ghost Tour led by a charismatic graduate student and signed up.
Which means I can now add “Gone on a Tour of Haunted Edinburgh” to the list of things I have done accidentally, which so far includes rock climbing (It was Emily’s fault, as if you had to ask) and how to make successful nachos.
The tour was neat and more historical than terrifying. Saturday we got up early for our tour of the Highlands. I am privileged to have seen a lot of really beautiful places in the last two decades, but none compare to the Scottish highlands. They’re just beyond gorgeous. And they have sheep and little lambs and great furry beasts called Highland cattle, one of which we got to meet and pet at a tourist trap (his name is Hamish, hence the title).
Our guide Steve (who was kilt-less but assured us that he usually had traditional Scottish garb and had only the other night sat in a bowl of guacamole but assured us that it was a great party nonetheless [side side note: I have never gotten the deal with kilts. I wore one for five years at Agnes Irwin as find them thoroughly uninteresting]) started off the tour with “And here you have Edinburgh castle, built in1985 out of match sticks for a school project. Good, are you awake?”
The weekend was outlandishly gorgeous, like some of the best weather since I’ve been in the UK, which was terrific except when we got to Loch Ness. It looked like a lake on a sunny day. Which it was. People were canoeing and everything. It was not at all mysterious and did not look liable to harbor a monster of any sort.
That night we ate at the Conan Doyle pub of Sherlock Holmes fame and meandered the city a bit before retiring. Sunday morning we toured Edinburgh Castle and shopped a bit before catching the six hour train back. At no point did I eat Haggis, but I don’t feel that bad because tour guide Steve said it’s not a real local dish anyways.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Nessy!
I can vividly remember my freshman year RA warning me during orientation about how fast college would go by.
I am still wondering where freshman year went, let alone sophomore year and London. It was here a minute ago! Now they’re telling me I have to go home in a few weeks, er, well, more like days at this point. This is mysterious to me.
Anyways, this week was a rush of uneventfulness and projects and papers and internship stuff. My presentation on the Republic of Cyprus (or, thanks to Turkey, lackthereof) went well, my paper on Westminster perhaps less so. The weather has been gorgeous though, I walked home yesterday through the park and then stopped by the pond to read because I didn’t want to go inside. I am subsequently sporting a rosy glow that is in fact the first stages of sunburn. Only I could get sunburned in the British Isles.
This afternoon we leave for Scotland via train for the weekend. I am going to find the Loch Ness monster, which I have been preparing for ever since we did that ridiculously extensive reading unit on it in the fourth grade. Then we get back and muddle through a last week of classes before exams and before I know it I’ll be back in Philly. I’m struggling to wrap my head around that.
I am still wondering where freshman year went, let alone sophomore year and London. It was here a minute ago! Now they’re telling me I have to go home in a few weeks, er, well, more like days at this point. This is mysterious to me.
Anyways, this week was a rush of uneventfulness and projects and papers and internship stuff. My presentation on the Republic of Cyprus (or, thanks to Turkey, lackthereof) went well, my paper on Westminster perhaps less so. The weather has been gorgeous though, I walked home yesterday through the park and then stopped by the pond to read because I didn’t want to go inside. I am subsequently sporting a rosy glow that is in fact the first stages of sunburn. Only I could get sunburned in the British Isles.
This afternoon we leave for Scotland via train for the weekend. I am going to find the Loch Ness monster, which I have been preparing for ever since we did that ridiculously extensive reading unit on it in the fourth grade. Then we get back and muddle through a last week of classes before exams and before I know it I’ll be back in Philly. I’m struggling to wrap my head around that.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Turkish Cypriots
Eek far too far behind on blogging. Which has something to do with all the lovely people who’ve been visiting me and a great deal to do with the papers and presentations professors have been assigning essentially spur of the moment. Oh, why not lets have a twenty minute power point due next week. Sounds like great fun. No, don’t mention it at any point in the past few months, that’s alright, it would take the excitement out of it!
Anyways, the student council pub night went well. Friday I met up with the Milavecs for a meander around Picadilly and dinner before they saw Billy Elliot, which to my great disappointment they were disappointed by. Anne and I were going to just hang out at their hotel with a friend of hers from Denmark but she hadn’t seen Buckingham Palace, so we asked the concierge how long it would take us to walk there from Kensington. He told us not to try and that it would kill us and offered to hail us a cab. The concierge staff is excellent about hailing cabs, but of course we walked anyways. Barely an hour each way!
Times I have now walked obscene distances across London to Buckingham Palace for the sheer hell of it: twice.
Saturday we walked down Billionaire’s Row to Notting Hill Gate and wandered through Portobello Road market for a bit before heading back to Harrods again. Our attempts at dividing to conquer the girls swimsuits (Aunt Bonnie and Anna), men’s stationary (Uncle Stan and Julia), and souvenir shop (Anne and I) left us with extra time before we were supposed to reconvene, so we rode the Egyptian escalator all the way to the top of the store where we discovered that the eerie opera music we’d been hearing was not prerecorded but rather being sung live by a woman in a red bedazzled gown on one of the balconies.
Sunday I bid the Milavecs adieu as they caught their plane back to Philly and went to go meet up with the delightful Christy, my Pittsburgh roommate who is currently studying in Florence. We attempted to view the Victoria and Albert Museum but she’s sick of Renaissance art by now and I never cared for it to begin with so we settled on just catching up over tea for a bit before seeing the Tate Britain, which was really cool. Later we got Cadbury Cream Egg McFlurry’s (a true cultural phenomenon) and other British junk food and made grilled cheese and talked for hours.
So that’s some brief catching up for you. Now I return to contemplating the architectural significance of Westminster and the political implications of the admission of Cyprus into the EU.
Anyways, the student council pub night went well. Friday I met up with the Milavecs for a meander around Picadilly and dinner before they saw Billy Elliot, which to my great disappointment they were disappointed by. Anne and I were going to just hang out at their hotel with a friend of hers from Denmark but she hadn’t seen Buckingham Palace, so we asked the concierge how long it would take us to walk there from Kensington. He told us not to try and that it would kill us and offered to hail us a cab. The concierge staff is excellent about hailing cabs, but of course we walked anyways. Barely an hour each way!
Times I have now walked obscene distances across London to Buckingham Palace for the sheer hell of it: twice.
Saturday we walked down Billionaire’s Row to Notting Hill Gate and wandered through Portobello Road market for a bit before heading back to Harrods again. Our attempts at dividing to conquer the girls swimsuits (Aunt Bonnie and Anna), men’s stationary (Uncle Stan and Julia), and souvenir shop (Anne and I) left us with extra time before we were supposed to reconvene, so we rode the Egyptian escalator all the way to the top of the store where we discovered that the eerie opera music we’d been hearing was not prerecorded but rather being sung live by a woman in a red bedazzled gown on one of the balconies.
Sunday I bid the Milavecs adieu as they caught their plane back to Philly and went to go meet up with the delightful Christy, my Pittsburgh roommate who is currently studying in Florence. We attempted to view the Victoria and Albert Museum but she’s sick of Renaissance art by now and I never cared for it to begin with so we settled on just catching up over tea for a bit before seeing the Tate Britain, which was really cool. Later we got Cadbury Cream Egg McFlurry’s (a true cultural phenomenon) and other British junk food and made grilled cheese and talked for hours.
So that’s some brief catching up for you. Now I return to contemplating the architectural significance of Westminster and the political implications of the admission of Cyprus into the EU.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Milavecs in London
The Milavecs are in London! I cannot emphasize how cool that is!
The Milestone Hotel and Apartments where they are staying is like something out of a fairy tale, or perhaps The Royal Tenebaums. Old school elegance and decadence and a gorgeous location. The concierge staff has come to refer to me as Ms. Milavec and I’ve not corrected them; it’s easier and this way they don’t question why I’ve got a key. After I met up with Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Stan and Anna and Julia Saturday we went to Harrods (I accidentally put us on the wrong bus, or rather the right bus in the wrong direction, which Uncle Stan will never let me live down, and subsequently we’ve taken cabs everywhere with a variety of charming Cockney-accented drivers) before celebrating the girls’ eleventh birthday with an afternoon tea.
I was prepared for some degree of ceremony but had not anticipated the elaborate tea pouring ritual the wait staff carried out, which included not only juggling four different types of tea in five different tea pots with accompanied strainers and saucers and milks and creams but also the constant refilling of cups nearly every time we took a sip, eventually prompting the ever sweet and obliging Anna to exclaim “How much tea do they expect one person to drink!?” We laughed far too loudly to be appropriate for a tea room, at which point I questioned if we could be more American if we tried, and then we laughed more. So so much fun and so so good to see them!
Sunday we had a spectacular brunch at the hotel before seeing a matinee performance of Jersey Boys, after which we met up with Chloe for dinner at Hix Soho (glass fish coffin mobiles and taxidermy sea gull décor = NO) and walked along Regents Street for a bit. Or wait, at some point we went to the Round Pond and I regaled the girls with stories of my horrific bird encounters and Julia took too many pictures of dogs, but I forget where that fell sequentially into the weekend. Anyways the show was absolutely amazing and has been added to the dauntingly long list of productions I am dying for the soundtrack to. Since I shared Anna’s hilarious anecdote it’s only fair to mention that when at one point during the course of the narrative a character referred to the song ‘Walk Like a Man’ as a metaphor Julia astutely pointed out “No it’s not: it’s a simile.” They are darling children and I’ve almost forgiven them for being taller than me.
Also Anne is here from Germany! Alas my Milavec adventures have come to a brief hiatus as I’ve got class late tonight and tomorrow is the student council pub night that I’ve been helping plan and subsequently really can’t miss, but I think I’m going to stay over with them on Friday at which point the cousin fun will resume.
The Milestone Hotel and Apartments where they are staying is like something out of a fairy tale, or perhaps The Royal Tenebaums. Old school elegance and decadence and a gorgeous location. The concierge staff has come to refer to me as Ms. Milavec and I’ve not corrected them; it’s easier and this way they don’t question why I’ve got a key. After I met up with Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Stan and Anna and Julia Saturday we went to Harrods (I accidentally put us on the wrong bus, or rather the right bus in the wrong direction, which Uncle Stan will never let me live down, and subsequently we’ve taken cabs everywhere with a variety of charming Cockney-accented drivers) before celebrating the girls’ eleventh birthday with an afternoon tea.
I was prepared for some degree of ceremony but had not anticipated the elaborate tea pouring ritual the wait staff carried out, which included not only juggling four different types of tea in five different tea pots with accompanied strainers and saucers and milks and creams but also the constant refilling of cups nearly every time we took a sip, eventually prompting the ever sweet and obliging Anna to exclaim “How much tea do they expect one person to drink!?” We laughed far too loudly to be appropriate for a tea room, at which point I questioned if we could be more American if we tried, and then we laughed more. So so much fun and so so good to see them!
Sunday we had a spectacular brunch at the hotel before seeing a matinee performance of Jersey Boys, after which we met up with Chloe for dinner at Hix Soho (glass fish coffin mobiles and taxidermy sea gull décor = NO) and walked along Regents Street for a bit. Or wait, at some point we went to the Round Pond and I regaled the girls with stories of my horrific bird encounters and Julia took too many pictures of dogs, but I forget where that fell sequentially into the weekend. Anyways the show was absolutely amazing and has been added to the dauntingly long list of productions I am dying for the soundtrack to. Since I shared Anna’s hilarious anecdote it’s only fair to mention that when at one point during the course of the narrative a character referred to the song ‘Walk Like a Man’ as a metaphor Julia astutely pointed out “No it’s not: it’s a simile.” They are darling children and I’ve almost forgiven them for being taller than me.
Also Anne is here from Germany! Alas my Milavec adventures have come to a brief hiatus as I’ve got class late tonight and tomorrow is the student council pub night that I’ve been helping plan and subsequently really can’t miss, but I think I’m going to stay over with them on Friday at which point the cousin fun will resume.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Not Now Gustave
There are a number of frightfully quotable lines from Love Never Dies, most of which are not fit for incorporation into civilized conversation due their obscenely ridiculous and/or ridiculously obscene nature, but “Not now, Gustave!” is always appropriate.
When you see a wretched sequel or adaptation, the only thing that can prevent it spoiling the original for you is to –quickly- try to remember what you fell in love with in the first place. Or so we told ourselves to justify seeing Love Never Dies on Monday and rushing off Wednesday morning to buy tickets to Phantom of the Opera. It took roughly 7/8 of my food stipend for the week, but it was more than worth it and eating is overrated anyways.
It’s a far darker and psychologically twisted story than I think I was able to grasp when I last saw it ten years ago and somehow unshakably compelling. I’ve already read the original book but there’s a slew of ghost written (ahaha) Phantom literature which has crept onto my summer reading list, along with researching how cathedrals are built, AP Style, and Winston Churchill. These are things I do not know enough about.
Thursday was the student council movie night, sparsely attended by four student council members and one (1) actual legitimate student. But I successfully made popcorn in a British microwave, a feat which the CAPA staff tells me has rarely if ever been accomplished before, so there’s that. The Pub night will be better attended.
Friday was a CAPA orchestrated boat trip to Greenwich. Yes I did manage to get sunburned from a mere 45 minute jaunt on the upper deck of a Thames river boat, but as I’ve got the sun defenses of an albino that’s hardly surprising and the views were worth it (…or were they? As much as working in the fashion industry might destroy one’s body image working in the skincare industry does terrifying things to one’s perspective of their skin. What we need here is some Murad Active Radiance Serum and Murad Essential C Eye Cream.)
The Royal Observatory was really neat, although the historical implications were not quite as cool for me as being in the key locale of ‘The Secret Agent’ which I had to read earlier for British Fiction. The Greenwich market was also adorable. Successful navigation of the Docklands Light Rail system and outer tube lines to get home.
Afterwards I went to the British Museum basically just to see the Rosetta Stone. The other exhibits are not particularly entrancing -a statue, a mosaic, another statue, some coins, oh look a statue- except for their age and sheer quantity and the fact that nearly every one of them is stolen from other countries.
On the home front: I have classes for next semester, basically the right ones, but not enough of them. By which I mean I’ve got five and I wouldn’t know what to do with fewer than six by this point but the Pittsburgh Filmmaker’s classes are being excessively tricky to get into.
Today my aunt and uncle and twin cousins come to visit! I'm off to brave the swans in the park and try to meet them at their hotel, wish me luck. Fiendish swans.
When you see a wretched sequel or adaptation, the only thing that can prevent it spoiling the original for you is to –quickly- try to remember what you fell in love with in the first place. Or so we told ourselves to justify seeing Love Never Dies on Monday and rushing off Wednesday morning to buy tickets to Phantom of the Opera. It took roughly 7/8 of my food stipend for the week, but it was more than worth it and eating is overrated anyways.
It’s a far darker and psychologically twisted story than I think I was able to grasp when I last saw it ten years ago and somehow unshakably compelling. I’ve already read the original book but there’s a slew of ghost written (ahaha) Phantom literature which has crept onto my summer reading list, along with researching how cathedrals are built, AP Style, and Winston Churchill. These are things I do not know enough about.
Thursday was the student council movie night, sparsely attended by four student council members and one (1) actual legitimate student. But I successfully made popcorn in a British microwave, a feat which the CAPA staff tells me has rarely if ever been accomplished before, so there’s that. The Pub night will be better attended.
Friday was a CAPA orchestrated boat trip to Greenwich. Yes I did manage to get sunburned from a mere 45 minute jaunt on the upper deck of a Thames river boat, but as I’ve got the sun defenses of an albino that’s hardly surprising and the views were worth it (…or were they? As much as working in the fashion industry might destroy one’s body image working in the skincare industry does terrifying things to one’s perspective of their skin. What we need here is some Murad Active Radiance Serum and Murad Essential C Eye Cream.)
The Royal Observatory was really neat, although the historical implications were not quite as cool for me as being in the key locale of ‘The Secret Agent’ which I had to read earlier for British Fiction. The Greenwich market was also adorable. Successful navigation of the Docklands Light Rail system and outer tube lines to get home.
Afterwards I went to the British Museum basically just to see the Rosetta Stone. The other exhibits are not particularly entrancing -a statue, a mosaic, another statue, some coins, oh look a statue- except for their age and sheer quantity and the fact that nearly every one of them is stolen from other countries.
On the home front: I have classes for next semester, basically the right ones, but not enough of them. By which I mean I’ve got five and I wouldn’t know what to do with fewer than six by this point but the Pittsburgh Filmmaker’s classes are being excessively tricky to get into.
Today my aunt and uncle and twin cousins come to visit! I'm off to brave the swans in the park and try to meet them at their hotel, wish me luck. Fiendish swans.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Woefully Incompetent Badgers
Our Shakespeare class saw Henry V at the Southwark Theatre (not the Globe, but a block away from it so greatness via proximity). First performance I’ve seen in ages that I was completely taken in and enchanted by rather than Cappie-ing it in my head. The performers were dressed as dodge ball players and the stage painted as a Risk board to emphasize the game-like nature of the play’s portrayal of war. Excellent use of slow motion pinball battle sequences (how often do you get to say that?).
At the intermission Chloe and I sipped wine and chatted about the foundations of morality and religion, a moment which may have been the high point of my intellectual life thus far and quite conceivably ever.
Saturday we took a train to the countryside to stay with one of Chloe’s cousins who lives in Kent. The countryside is gorgeous, the cousins were lovely, the dog was adorable, delightful weekend. Ninna is a terrific cook and her kitchen has an aga, which I think is the neatest kitchen appliance I have ever seen (It’s like an oven that’s constantly on with different compartments that are always at certain temperatures and a range that’s always hot).
We saw Rudyard Kipling’s house and gardens one day and Winston Churchill’s the next (Chartwell). The National Trust gift shops are amongst my favorite places for souvenirs, to say nothing of their cream teas. With regard to this post’s title, Kent is apparently overrun with badgers which aren’t even very good at being badger-y and do things like fall out of hedges backwards into lanes. Also pheasants, I saw two from a distance, and so many sheep.
There were in actuality only a few things I came to London determined to do. I planned on seeing this or that museum, I hoped to stop by a market or two, I deemed several historic landmarks more than worthy of an afternoon. But I was hell bent on seeing the sequel to Phantom of the Opera premiere in the West End, and see it I did.
Love Never Dies does not defy description per se, but it does blow a raspberry at it. Let’s try “a glorious and trite mind-blowing rebellion against continuity and canon”. Does it help if I told you I shook with just barely contained silent laughter for the entire production? The images projected on elaborate smoke screens so frequently you wanted to tell Weber to just make a movie already, and the lyrics so bad –vulgar even- you didn’t want to believe they were real, and the plot twist you could see a mile off and still never wrap your head around.
When the cast inexplicably joined hands and began to bow, my first reaction was to remain seated and calm until someone somehow explained something. But no, the musical really was over, and Chloe and I were spilled summarily into the street to ponder what it was we had just seen. Chloe was completely dry-eyed, the first time she’s left a theater without mascara streaked down her face since we’ve been theatergoing companions; whereas I actually had tears welling up from sheer confusion. We are still turning to each other at regular intervals and proclaiming with outrage that this or that detail is fiercely illogical.
And of course, even as we watched it, we were keeping a sharp eye on what the best duet was going to be. The winner is ‘Devil Take The Hindmost,’ which I highly doubt is destined for a cabaret near you at any point in the near or distant future, but I take a great satisfaction in having called dibs on the role of the Phantom before the song was even over, such was my insight.
At the intermission Chloe and I sipped wine and chatted about the foundations of morality and religion, a moment which may have been the high point of my intellectual life thus far and quite conceivably ever.
Saturday we took a train to the countryside to stay with one of Chloe’s cousins who lives in Kent. The countryside is gorgeous, the cousins were lovely, the dog was adorable, delightful weekend. Ninna is a terrific cook and her kitchen has an aga, which I think is the neatest kitchen appliance I have ever seen (It’s like an oven that’s constantly on with different compartments that are always at certain temperatures and a range that’s always hot).
We saw Rudyard Kipling’s house and gardens one day and Winston Churchill’s the next (Chartwell). The National Trust gift shops are amongst my favorite places for souvenirs, to say nothing of their cream teas. With regard to this post’s title, Kent is apparently overrun with badgers which aren’t even very good at being badger-y and do things like fall out of hedges backwards into lanes. Also pheasants, I saw two from a distance, and so many sheep.
There were in actuality only a few things I came to London determined to do. I planned on seeing this or that museum, I hoped to stop by a market or two, I deemed several historic landmarks more than worthy of an afternoon. But I was hell bent on seeing the sequel to Phantom of the Opera premiere in the West End, and see it I did.
Love Never Dies does not defy description per se, but it does blow a raspberry at it. Let’s try “a glorious and trite mind-blowing rebellion against continuity and canon”. Does it help if I told you I shook with just barely contained silent laughter for the entire production? The images projected on elaborate smoke screens so frequently you wanted to tell Weber to just make a movie already, and the lyrics so bad –vulgar even- you didn’t want to believe they were real, and the plot twist you could see a mile off and still never wrap your head around.
When the cast inexplicably joined hands and began to bow, my first reaction was to remain seated and calm until someone somehow explained something. But no, the musical really was over, and Chloe and I were spilled summarily into the street to ponder what it was we had just seen. Chloe was completely dry-eyed, the first time she’s left a theater without mascara streaked down her face since we’ve been theatergoing companions; whereas I actually had tears welling up from sheer confusion. We are still turning to each other at regular intervals and proclaiming with outrage that this or that detail is fiercely illogical.
And of course, even as we watched it, we were keeping a sharp eye on what the best duet was going to be. The winner is ‘Devil Take The Hindmost,’ which I highly doubt is destined for a cabaret near you at any point in the near or distant future, but I take a great satisfaction in having called dibs on the role of the Phantom before the song was even over, such was my insight.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Tube Car Full of Pigeons and Children
Yesterday was filled with political science-y things. Which was weird for me since I tend to focus far more –perhaps too much- on the writing side of my dual major. Anyways in lieu of class we attended a lecture from the media liaison coordinator at the UK office of the European Union which was not uninteresting (do you like my pseudo-British ambiguity?), focusing mainly on the curiously strong (Altoids!) anti-EU sentiment. Far better was wandering through St. James Park before hand; absolutely gorgeous and filled with flowers and pelicans (!).
I found myself with a few free hours in the middle of the week day, which I can’t recall happening before. I considered rushing off to a museum or landmark or some such to take advantage of it before deciding that it might be good to relax for thirty seconds. I do that every so often. Errands to my bank (Barclays) and produce supermarket Sommerfield, as opposed to the general shopping up supermarket Sainsbury’s or the occasionals supermarket Tesco or the specialty item Marks and Spencers, London is a city that loves it’s supermarkets. I don’t even frequent Waitrose or Asda.
At the Spanish Cultural Institute for a lecture that was really more idle banter between someone who may have written a book on the Spanish civil war and someone who was a drummer for Genesis but was not Phil Collins who decided to give up his international musical career to live in a remote corner of Spain and raise sheep. The introduction was all in Spanish and I was terrified that the whole lecture might be in Spanish, but no. It was weird.
This morning’s Understanding Britain class involved speakers who mistook the time and didn’t show and rearranging that leaves us with no class next week (so we can go on the Greenwich boat trip!) but a visit to a Mosque on a Tuesday (so I’ll have to miss internship hours…) and incidental discussions on the origin of morality. Awesome.
Then Chloe and I went to Westminster Abbey (Queen Elizabeth! The Coronation Chair! Edward the Confessor! Isaac Newton from Da Vinci Code!) and then bought tickets for LOVE NEVER DIES. (Critics are claiming that it just fades away in a puff of melodrama and pseudo opera, but spectacle is what we’re there for).
Now we’re headed to Henry V at Southwark theater for Shakespeare class.
I found myself with a few free hours in the middle of the week day, which I can’t recall happening before. I considered rushing off to a museum or landmark or some such to take advantage of it before deciding that it might be good to relax for thirty seconds. I do that every so often. Errands to my bank (Barclays) and produce supermarket Sommerfield, as opposed to the general shopping up supermarket Sainsbury’s or the occasionals supermarket Tesco or the specialty item Marks and Spencers, London is a city that loves it’s supermarkets. I don’t even frequent Waitrose or Asda.
At the Spanish Cultural Institute for a lecture that was really more idle banter between someone who may have written a book on the Spanish civil war and someone who was a drummer for Genesis but was not Phil Collins who decided to give up his international musical career to live in a remote corner of Spain and raise sheep. The introduction was all in Spanish and I was terrified that the whole lecture might be in Spanish, but no. It was weird.
This morning’s Understanding Britain class involved speakers who mistook the time and didn’t show and rearranging that leaves us with no class next week (so we can go on the Greenwich boat trip!) but a visit to a Mosque on a Tuesday (so I’ll have to miss internship hours…) and incidental discussions on the origin of morality. Awesome.
Then Chloe and I went to Westminster Abbey (Queen Elizabeth! The Coronation Chair! Edward the Confessor! Isaac Newton from Da Vinci Code!) and then bought tickets for LOVE NEVER DIES. (Critics are claiming that it just fades away in a puff of melodrama and pseudo opera, but spectacle is what we’re there for).
Now we’re headed to Henry V at Southwark theater for Shakespeare class.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Bits N' Bobs
Chloe and I had tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace which was amazing, perfectly divine Darjeeling and scones with clotted cream and wee sandwiches and one of my sister’s namesake pastries (éclairs, for those unaware of Emily Clare’s initials). We dressed for the occasion -this being our formal tea- and were somewhat disappointed to find ourselves surrounded with French and American tourists in jeans, but I suppose sometimes atmosphere is something you have to bring with you. The miniature orange trees on the tables helped. We have such plans for tea parties and dinner parties and debutante balls next year. Mainly we just want excuses to bake things and play dress up. What does one serve at a French Revolution themed party? Cake, of course.
The Oxford Tube is not a tube at all but rather a bus service that runs regularly between London and the city of dreaming spires, as it’s been so dubbed by someone according to some of the tourist literature I’ve accumulated. This glaring misnomer proved to be of no consequence as it allowed Chloe and Rachel and I to take a delightful day trip to Paulina’s future study abroad location. In our unscripted wandering about we saw Christ Church and the Botanical Gardens (including what I think must have been the bench so romanticized in Philip Pullman’s books) and had fish and chips in the pub Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to frequent. Chloe bought yet another hat, as she is wont to do at the least provocation.
The luck of the Irish brought us a gorgeous day for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which we walked to all through Hyde Park and Green Park and what felt like every park in the city. They’ve crocuses and snow drops now, they’re lovely.
Things I had to come to London to learn to appreciate: smoked salmon, bell peppers, Nutella, milk in tea.
I’ve literally worn the soles off my high heeled boots. Now I click click click off to work on the exposed metal and try not to wake Chloe in the mornings with their clattering on the hardwood floors.
Languages spoken in my flat: American style English (everyone), British style English (Chloe), Russian (Elana to her parents), French (Anise to her parents), German (Alex to her parents and international friends), Spanish (Alex again, she’s a linguistics major), and Simkinese (by me to my parents and sibling. I reckon it ought to qualify as at least a dialect by now, such are the nuances and subtleties of our nearly two decades’ accumulation of inside jokes and miscommunications).
This blog has disintegrated into a laundry list I’ve what I’ve done -and not even a terribly satisfactory one at that- for which I apologize. I hope it’s at least worded nicely for you but I’ve been much remiss in the witty observations and wry commentary I had hoped to achieve, and things being what they are I can’t even promise to address the issue. I can promise to finish my List of Awesome London Things and tell you at least briefly about them, and maybe pause to reflect over the summer. Maybe.
Also: Chloe and I are teaching ourselves to sing our favorite musical duets. So far we’ve got the confrontation scene from Le Mis down pretty well and are working on Wicked’s ‘What is this Feeling?’ Godspell’s ‘All for the Best’. Our flat mates are correct in their judgment that we are patently insane.
The Oxford Tube is not a tube at all but rather a bus service that runs regularly between London and the city of dreaming spires, as it’s been so dubbed by someone according to some of the tourist literature I’ve accumulated. This glaring misnomer proved to be of no consequence as it allowed Chloe and Rachel and I to take a delightful day trip to Paulina’s future study abroad location. In our unscripted wandering about we saw Christ Church and the Botanical Gardens (including what I think must have been the bench so romanticized in Philip Pullman’s books) and had fish and chips in the pub Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to frequent. Chloe bought yet another hat, as she is wont to do at the least provocation.
The luck of the Irish brought us a gorgeous day for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which we walked to all through Hyde Park and Green Park and what felt like every park in the city. They’ve crocuses and snow drops now, they’re lovely.
Things I had to come to London to learn to appreciate: smoked salmon, bell peppers, Nutella, milk in tea.
I’ve literally worn the soles off my high heeled boots. Now I click click click off to work on the exposed metal and try not to wake Chloe in the mornings with their clattering on the hardwood floors.
Languages spoken in my flat: American style English (everyone), British style English (Chloe), Russian (Elana to her parents), French (Anise to her parents), German (Alex to her parents and international friends), Spanish (Alex again, she’s a linguistics major), and Simkinese (by me to my parents and sibling. I reckon it ought to qualify as at least a dialect by now, such are the nuances and subtleties of our nearly two decades’ accumulation of inside jokes and miscommunications).
This blog has disintegrated into a laundry list I’ve what I’ve done -and not even a terribly satisfactory one at that- for which I apologize. I hope it’s at least worded nicely for you but I’ve been much remiss in the witty observations and wry commentary I had hoped to achieve, and things being what they are I can’t even promise to address the issue. I can promise to finish my List of Awesome London Things and tell you at least briefly about them, and maybe pause to reflect over the summer. Maybe.
Also: Chloe and I are teaching ourselves to sing our favorite musical duets. So far we’ve got the confrontation scene from Le Mis down pretty well and are working on Wicked’s ‘What is this Feeling?’ Godspell’s ‘All for the Best’. Our flat mates are correct in their judgment that we are patently insane.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Spain In Conclusion
When pondering where to start the beginning is a rarely as good a place as you might suspect it to be, but let’s jump in there regardless, which is to say pick up where the previous post finished and mention that Natalie Bell and I toured the Alcazar Palace gardens despite the pouring rain and they were lovely and orange-filled.
The unfortunate truth of international traveling is that sometimes you just want something familiar and inexpensive and you can’t help but go to McDonalds. Further unfortunate truth: sometimes someone will somehow kick your bag out from under your table and book it out of there without anyone noticing, as happened to Abby. Luckily her passport was safe in the locker at the hostel: her wallet, camera, phone, and iPod less so.
We went to two police stations to try to report the theft, both of which were closed. For siesta. Justice should not take a siesta!
Abby was able to email her mom to cancel her credit cards and when we catalogued the loss the only really irreplaceable thing turned out to be the pictures of the trip on her camera. Absolutely terrible experience but reaffirming of the ultimately minimal importance of material things.
That evening we met up with a friend of Abby’s who has lived in Sevilla for the past year. He took us to a local tapa bar where he claimed to be known –people are always claiming to be ‘known’ places-, but we were only able to doubt him until we walked in the front door and observed how enthusiastically he was greeted by the entire staff. Hilarious. No offense to the culinary skills of anyone who has ever cooked for me who is reading this, but I would not hesitate to describe the saltimbocca as the best thing I have ever eaten ever, followed closely by the pineapple goat cheese toast and orange marmalade pork. Spain knows its food.
Later Natalie took me to meet up with some of her friends for the bizarre Spanish tradition of drinking in the streets and too close to the river and subjecting oneself to the unbelievably disrespectful catcalls and comments of roving hoodlums. Unenjoyable.
Sunday morning we relaxed around the hostel a bit before catching the bus to the airport. Flight was without a hitch but the return to central London was anything but: the confirmation for the Stansted Express train tickets was linked to Abby’s stolen credit cards, which turned out not to matter as the train was down for emergency service anyway, so we took the hour long bus ride to Liverpool Station where the night bus did not deign to make either of the three supposed routes I waited for. Frozen, exhausted and miserable I decided that if ever there was a time to tap into emergency supplies this might be it and decided to take a cab home. The driver told me it should cost around twenty quid and apparently took pity on me and gave me the frozen-exhausted-miserable girl discount because even when the meter came to several pounds over that he only charged me a twenty.
For the grand finale of the trip, I blanked out on the door code to my building.
This morning I woke up at 8 a.m. London time, which in Spain would have been 9 when I’d become accustomed to waking up to the bells of the cathedral (Suzanne Vega much?) and hopped up to get to the Professional Beauty trade show which involved multiple tube transfers and some dodgy business with the light rail system. My first legit trade convention -with a badge and everything!- involved a strange fluctuation of roles from assistant to the PR director to dishwasher to retail associate to VIP tender and back. Interesting experience.
Finally finally to bed.
The unfortunate truth of international traveling is that sometimes you just want something familiar and inexpensive and you can’t help but go to McDonalds. Further unfortunate truth: sometimes someone will somehow kick your bag out from under your table and book it out of there without anyone noticing, as happened to Abby. Luckily her passport was safe in the locker at the hostel: her wallet, camera, phone, and iPod less so.
We went to two police stations to try to report the theft, both of which were closed. For siesta. Justice should not take a siesta!
Abby was able to email her mom to cancel her credit cards and when we catalogued the loss the only really irreplaceable thing turned out to be the pictures of the trip on her camera. Absolutely terrible experience but reaffirming of the ultimately minimal importance of material things.
That evening we met up with a friend of Abby’s who has lived in Sevilla for the past year. He took us to a local tapa bar where he claimed to be known –people are always claiming to be ‘known’ places-, but we were only able to doubt him until we walked in the front door and observed how enthusiastically he was greeted by the entire staff. Hilarious. No offense to the culinary skills of anyone who has ever cooked for me who is reading this, but I would not hesitate to describe the saltimbocca as the best thing I have ever eaten ever, followed closely by the pineapple goat cheese toast and orange marmalade pork. Spain knows its food.
Later Natalie took me to meet up with some of her friends for the bizarre Spanish tradition of drinking in the streets and too close to the river and subjecting oneself to the unbelievably disrespectful catcalls and comments of roving hoodlums. Unenjoyable.
Sunday morning we relaxed around the hostel a bit before catching the bus to the airport. Flight was without a hitch but the return to central London was anything but: the confirmation for the Stansted Express train tickets was linked to Abby’s stolen credit cards, which turned out not to matter as the train was down for emergency service anyway, so we took the hour long bus ride to Liverpool Station where the night bus did not deign to make either of the three supposed routes I waited for. Frozen, exhausted and miserable I decided that if ever there was a time to tap into emergency supplies this might be it and decided to take a cab home. The driver told me it should cost around twenty quid and apparently took pity on me and gave me the frozen-exhausted-miserable girl discount because even when the meter came to several pounds over that he only charged me a twenty.
For the grand finale of the trip, I blanked out on the door code to my building.
This morning I woke up at 8 a.m. London time, which in Spain would have been 9 when I’d become accustomed to waking up to the bells of the cathedral (Suzanne Vega much?) and hopped up to get to the Professional Beauty trade show which involved multiple tube transfers and some dodgy business with the light rail system. My first legit trade convention -with a badge and everything!- involved a strange fluctuation of roles from assistant to the PR director to dishwasher to retail associate to VIP tender and back. Interesting experience.
Finally finally to bed.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Sevilla II
I think Barcelona was necessary to further highlight how awesome Sevilla is. Not that the former city wasn´t lovely and filled with... nice architecture, and stuff and things, but the experience we´re having in Sevilla is spectacular, primarily due to staying at a much better hostel. We went on a tapas tour on Thursday of local resturants which was really cool to say nothing of delicious and we met some great people, most notably Bastian and Sophie (respectively from Germany and north England but both currently working in Norfolk) whom we then ¨toured¨ with all of yesterday, if by toured you mean followed Natalie Bell´s meandering around the city which in this instance I do. We also met Ivy from China and a whole gaggle of American students studying in Switzerland, it´s very neat.
Last night we did the pub crawl that got rave reviews from some of the other CAPA students. I suppose it was authentic in the sense that the three bars we went to were loud, crowded, and smokey, but the club the tour finished at was playing exclusively bizarrely static-y ´50s music by which I could not abide, and it was pouring rain, so we took a taxi home.
Today the rain continues so I don´t know what all we´ll get up to. I will have reflections on things later, mostly pertaining to the dismally linear life plans Americans foster and how they do not include years for travel and backpacking and biking from Spain to Scotland and such but rather focus on college and grad school and career advancement and settling, and my feelings on the matter, which must wait until later mainly because I´ve not firmly decided them.
Last night we did the pub crawl that got rave reviews from some of the other CAPA students. I suppose it was authentic in the sense that the three bars we went to were loud, crowded, and smokey, but the club the tour finished at was playing exclusively bizarrely static-y ´50s music by which I could not abide, and it was pouring rain, so we took a taxi home.
Today the rain continues so I don´t know what all we´ll get up to. I will have reflections on things later, mostly pertaining to the dismally linear life plans Americans foster and how they do not include years for travel and backpacking and biking from Spain to Scotland and such but rather focus on college and grad school and career advancement and settling, and my feelings on the matter, which must wait until later mainly because I´ve not firmly decided them.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Sevilla I: ¿What When?
Last day in Barcelona consisted of attempting to find this place set up for the 1992 Olympics that was supposed to be models of all the different regions of Spain. We found it eventually but didn´t feel like paying to get in, so wandered around Montjuci Park for a bit before meeting up with one of the guys we knew from London and hanging out at the hostel for a little.
Caught the flight to Sevilla, narrowly, as they were checking luggage requirements as we got on the plane in the pouring rain and if they´d pulled us aside our bags probably would not have been accepted. Also, complaint 192 against Ryanair: they are too cheap for those tube hallway things and make you board your plane on the tarmack, which was exciting at first but now just cold and wet and cattle-like.
Natalie´s directions to the hostel here were spot-on, and we´re right by a cathedral. Cathedrals are excellent for navigating, as any Pitt student can tell you. I had what I thought was dinner with Ms. Bell, which was lovely as it was great to see her and catch up a bit, but later turned out to be lunch since Spanish dinners at at 10 pm at night. Which means people don´t even leave for bars or clubs until 11 at the earliest, usually closer to 12:30. An ideal night for me usually includes getting into bed by 2 at the latest, and here that´s when the party just gets started. Crazy does not begin to cover my feelings on the matter.
Also: they have oranges on all the trees here, its neat.
Caught the flight to Sevilla, narrowly, as they were checking luggage requirements as we got on the plane in the pouring rain and if they´d pulled us aside our bags probably would not have been accepted. Also, complaint 192 against Ryanair: they are too cheap for those tube hallway things and make you board your plane on the tarmack, which was exciting at first but now just cold and wet and cattle-like.
Natalie´s directions to the hostel here were spot-on, and we´re right by a cathedral. Cathedrals are excellent for navigating, as any Pitt student can tell you. I had what I thought was dinner with Ms. Bell, which was lovely as it was great to see her and catch up a bit, but later turned out to be lunch since Spanish dinners at at 10 pm at night. Which means people don´t even leave for bars or clubs until 11 at the earliest, usually closer to 12:30. An ideal night for me usually includes getting into bed by 2 at the latest, and here that´s when the party just gets started. Crazy does not begin to cover my feelings on the matter.
Also: they have oranges on all the trees here, its neat.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Barcelona II: I apologize in advance for grammatical errors resulting from use of a spanish keyboard
So. Spain.
On Sunday we saw one of the houses designed by Gaudi -Barcelonaś epic architect- with some girls we met at the hostel who were architectural students studying in Rome, one of whom went to a rival school of my high school and knew people I graduated with. The world is the size of a breadbox.
Following that we got crazy lost looking for Las Ramblas, which is supposed to be this awesome avenue with shops and vendors and such. There were some street performers that were cool, I always enjoy people painted like statues for some reason, but other than that I wasn't terribly impressed. Eventually we got to the Mediterranean, which I don't think I'd seen before.
We eventually stumbled upon the Picasso Museum in the heart of the windy Gothic area of the city and got in free for reasons Im not clear on, something to do with the exhibits being redone, and that was kind of cool. Dinner at the most touristy ripoff place ever with sham tapas, suspicious seafood paella, bad sangria, and some sort of peculiar pastry from a box for desert, but even a tourist experience is an experience too. On that note its also kind of refreshing to be able to be a full-tourist and take pictures whenever you feel like it instead of in London where we try to be very discrete. After dinner we tried to find the Olympic village and couldnt seem to so finally called it a night and headed back to the hostel, but that ended up being only the beginning of the adventure.
As we exited the funicular station and began our way up the mountain path we noticed an unanticipated fellow traveller: a wild board. Like, a pig the size of a bicycle. Just chilling directly in our way.
I thought it was sort of neat and probably harmless but was torn between whether we should sneak past quietly or try to frighten it off. Latia was terrified beyond measure and burst into tears. Seeing as how sheś afraid of all animals, even small dogs on leashes, I suppose it was to be expected. We called the hostel reception desk who assured us that the animal was not dangerous but agreed to send down a van to get us anyway.
Another girl had come to the station by this time, who had lived at the hostel for a month and was not at all afraid of the boar but didnt feel like walking up the hill she ended up chatting with us for a bit. She was from France and spoke Spanish and a little English but I was thrilled that with my little bit of Spanish and some inventive gesturing we were able to breach the communication barrier pretty well. You wouldnt think that a hostel called InOUt would boast many semi-permanent residents, but it appears to. Surprisingly there are also very few youths, most people seem to be closer to middle age or are small children with families. Not what we expected but its working out fine.
Monday we went to see Gaudi`s masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia. Itś an incredible cathedral that is still only half way done, so even as we were touring it there was still construction going on and will be for the next twentysome years. We (perhaps Ive failed to mention that my travelling companions are Abby and Latia from the Belgravia house) ran into Rachel completely by chance, shes in Barcelona for a day or two before moving on to Rome. After that we went up to yet another Gaudi construction, the Park Guel, which was gorgeous and had great views as befits a place which requires four escalators and multiple flights of stairs to get to.
Returned to the hostel before sundown to avoid the boar and just hung out on the porch here for a bit, soaking in the sun we never see in the UK, and then had rabbit for dinner at the hostel restaurant.
Now weŕe going to try to find Spanish Epcot and some castles! Adios!
On Sunday we saw one of the houses designed by Gaudi -Barcelonaś epic architect- with some girls we met at the hostel who were architectural students studying in Rome, one of whom went to a rival school of my high school and knew people I graduated with. The world is the size of a breadbox.
Following that we got crazy lost looking for Las Ramblas, which is supposed to be this awesome avenue with shops and vendors and such. There were some street performers that were cool, I always enjoy people painted like statues for some reason, but other than that I wasn't terribly impressed. Eventually we got to the Mediterranean, which I don't think I'd seen before.
We eventually stumbled upon the Picasso Museum in the heart of the windy Gothic area of the city and got in free for reasons Im not clear on, something to do with the exhibits being redone, and that was kind of cool. Dinner at the most touristy ripoff place ever with sham tapas, suspicious seafood paella, bad sangria, and some sort of peculiar pastry from a box for desert, but even a tourist experience is an experience too. On that note its also kind of refreshing to be able to be a full-tourist and take pictures whenever you feel like it instead of in London where we try to be very discrete. After dinner we tried to find the Olympic village and couldnt seem to so finally called it a night and headed back to the hostel, but that ended up being only the beginning of the adventure.
As we exited the funicular station and began our way up the mountain path we noticed an unanticipated fellow traveller: a wild board. Like, a pig the size of a bicycle. Just chilling directly in our way.
I thought it was sort of neat and probably harmless but was torn between whether we should sneak past quietly or try to frighten it off. Latia was terrified beyond measure and burst into tears. Seeing as how sheś afraid of all animals, even small dogs on leashes, I suppose it was to be expected. We called the hostel reception desk who assured us that the animal was not dangerous but agreed to send down a van to get us anyway.
Another girl had come to the station by this time, who had lived at the hostel for a month and was not at all afraid of the boar but didnt feel like walking up the hill she ended up chatting with us for a bit. She was from France and spoke Spanish and a little English but I was thrilled that with my little bit of Spanish and some inventive gesturing we were able to breach the communication barrier pretty well. You wouldnt think that a hostel called InOUt would boast many semi-permanent residents, but it appears to. Surprisingly there are also very few youths, most people seem to be closer to middle age or are small children with families. Not what we expected but its working out fine.
Monday we went to see Gaudi`s masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia. Itś an incredible cathedral that is still only half way done, so even as we were touring it there was still construction going on and will be for the next twentysome years. We (perhaps Ive failed to mention that my travelling companions are Abby and Latia from the Belgravia house) ran into Rachel completely by chance, shes in Barcelona for a day or two before moving on to Rome. After that we went up to yet another Gaudi construction, the Park Guel, which was gorgeous and had great views as befits a place which requires four escalators and multiple flights of stairs to get to.
Returned to the hostel before sundown to avoid the boar and just hung out on the porch here for a bit, soaking in the sun we never see in the UK, and then had rabbit for dinner at the hostel restaurant.
Now weŕe going to try to find Spanish Epcot and some castles! Adios!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Barcelona I
Hola. Im in a hostel in a Spanish city. I know, its weird.
Ryanair does not bear me the personal vendetta I had initially supposed and did not force me to check my bag or refuse my reservation or anything wretched, and startlingly played trumpets when we landed in Girona. We caught the bus to Barcelona, navigated the metro and the funicular (apparently I was on one but Ive no idea what the funicular actually is, its like a metro with weird seats and too many wires) and climbed up a mountain to our hostel. Like, an actual mountain. The website describing it as a brief stroll was lies.
The several times Ive had to ask for directions or help my mangled Spanish has been met with pained if kind smiles and offers to switch to English, French, German, anything.
Now, off to try to do things. I say try because there is no guarantee anything will actually be managed.
Ryanair does not bear me the personal vendetta I had initially supposed and did not force me to check my bag or refuse my reservation or anything wretched, and startlingly played trumpets when we landed in Girona. We caught the bus to Barcelona, navigated the metro and the funicular (apparently I was on one but Ive no idea what the funicular actually is, its like a metro with weird seats and too many wires) and climbed up a mountain to our hostel. Like, an actual mountain. The website describing it as a brief stroll was lies.
The several times Ive had to ask for directions or help my mangled Spanish has been met with pained if kind smiles and offers to switch to English, French, German, anything.
Now, off to try to do things. I say try because there is no guarantee anything will actually be managed.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Are You Ready For Some Football? Not Particularly, No.
On Saturday I attended my first (and, let’s be honest here, last) “football” match. As I’ve previously suspected sporting events not taking place in the Oakland Zoo or featuring Sweet Caroline hold no interest for me.
We’d been instructed not to expect or even hope for a win, such is the talentlessness of the team we were there to support, but the Queens Park Rangers pulled off a narrow 2-1 victory. That’s right, three goals the entire 95 minute game. Exciting! Although there were brief bouts of heading the ball that were amusingly not unlike really violent tennis.
Avid fans may have noticed that the typical match should go on for a mere 90 minutes rather than an excruciating 95, but the refs added on five minutes to compensate for the disruption in play caused by the streaker. Yes, the streaker. That actually happened.
When we asked Professor Fosdal about it he said he’d only seen such a thing happen once before, ironically by a CAPA student with the result that student advisor Kieran is now banned from buying QPR tickets.
Other things we asked Professor Fosdal about:
Me: “Where’s the best place to watch the Chinese New Year Parade from?”
Him: “…China”
Rachel: “Where are you going?”
Him: “Into the dark cold void of your absence, the arid desert of banishment from your lovely presence, wherein I shall be sustained only by the flickering hope that I may have the joy of seeing you once again next week.”
He also told me not to turn in any written substantiation for my oral presentation because then he’d have to read it and he’d rather not read papers.
Sunday we went to Trafalgar Square to see the Chinese New Year celebration. Being just barely five foot one on a really good day crowds are not so excellent for me: I could barely see even the giant television thing let alone the actual festivities. I think there was a giant caterpillar on sticks at one point? Might have been a tiger or a dragon or something.
Later we went to Regent’s Park to walk around, then walked to Hyde Park, to walk around more. Lot of walking going on here. I love it, my Tae Kwon Do-worn knees do not. There are times when I can feel my ligaments pulling apart in unnatural ways when I wonder if all those jump spinning hook kicks were worth it, and then I remember the indescribable feeling of breaking boards and I think yes, and then I try to walk up some stairs and I think no.
We’d been instructed not to expect or even hope for a win, such is the talentlessness of the team we were there to support, but the Queens Park Rangers pulled off a narrow 2-1 victory. That’s right, three goals the entire 95 minute game. Exciting! Although there were brief bouts of heading the ball that were amusingly not unlike really violent tennis.
Avid fans may have noticed that the typical match should go on for a mere 90 minutes rather than an excruciating 95, but the refs added on five minutes to compensate for the disruption in play caused by the streaker. Yes, the streaker. That actually happened.
When we asked Professor Fosdal about it he said he’d only seen such a thing happen once before, ironically by a CAPA student with the result that student advisor Kieran is now banned from buying QPR tickets.
Other things we asked Professor Fosdal about:
Me: “Where’s the best place to watch the Chinese New Year Parade from?”
Him: “…China”
Rachel: “Where are you going?”
Him: “Into the dark cold void of your absence, the arid desert of banishment from your lovely presence, wherein I shall be sustained only by the flickering hope that I may have the joy of seeing you once again next week.”
He also told me not to turn in any written substantiation for my oral presentation because then he’d have to read it and he’d rather not read papers.
Sunday we went to Trafalgar Square to see the Chinese New Year celebration. Being just barely five foot one on a really good day crowds are not so excellent for me: I could barely see even the giant television thing let alone the actual festivities. I think there was a giant caterpillar on sticks at one point? Might have been a tiger or a dragon or something.
Later we went to Regent’s Park to walk around, then walked to Hyde Park, to walk around more. Lot of walking going on here. I love it, my Tae Kwon Do-worn knees do not. There are times when I can feel my ligaments pulling apart in unnatural ways when I wonder if all those jump spinning hook kicks were worth it, and then I remember the indescribable feeling of breaking boards and I think yes, and then I try to walk up some stairs and I think no.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
I Just Have A Lot Of Questions
eneral update before I fall even further behind. This is not my preferred format of blogging but those eighteen credits are catching up with me in the form of papers and papers and papers, and we’re planning our weekend trips (Edinburgh, Dublin and/or Belfast, and Oxford), and lately staying up late into the hours of the British night to chat with friends back on the East coast has seemed like a good idea, so… yes. So sorry.
INTERNSHIP
I am doing really cool PR things! I am contacting journalists about feature stories and magazines about product giveaways and drafting copy for websites and media kits and making gift packages for celebrities! Some of whom use currency symbols to spell their names, or won Brit awards, or are ska princesses!
Most exciting was being charged with unraveling the mystery of the incorrect EAVs (Estimated Advertising Value, how one determines what public relations work is worth), which involved politely and professionally harassing the “account manager” who insisted the figures were correct when they were not and then calling the third party who provided the statistics used to calculate the figures and finally eventually getting to the bottom of it. It was very satisfying. And pigeon-free.
THE FLAT
The problem with living in an eight person flat is that when you see a glaring problem, like a sink of dirty dishes or a full garbage bin, you think ‘Hmm. Someone should do something about that,’ and walk away. Diffusion of responsibility and all that.
THE WEEKEND
…why would you start a weekend on Wednesday? I remember freshman year of college when I was utterly mystified and not a little horrified that some people went out drinking on Thursdays even though they were school nights, which at the time seemed an unpardonable sin. Here Thursdays are taken for granted as a party night and Wednesdays and Tuesdays are the new frontier. Some people go out so hard during the week that they don’t even bother to go on the weekends! I just can’t get that logic (possibly because it’s a logic-free equation. Or because I did not do so well in Intro to Logic class last semester. Or both.)
Umlaut and I had managed to avoid having to navigate the night bus system until very recently by either coming back early (before the tubes close) or by only going to walk-able places. The bus that eventually got us home though? Number 27, historically the lucky number of the female side of my family.
HARRY POTTER TOUR
Upon arriving at King’s Cross for our Harry Potter walking tour we immediately noticed the woman in the floor length cloak and elaborate witch hat and debated how mortifying it would be if we approached her and she were in fact not actually the tour guide. But she was, and she was *spectacular*, animated and knowledgeable and everything. How does one see every Potter-related locale in London in two hours? BY FLYING.
If by flying you mean dashing at a flat out sprint over wet cobblestones after a costumed woman with a broomstick, which she did, so yes. She stopped briefly outside a Southwark theater to talk about something and the stage crew came out to shush her because they were midway through a performance of the Scottish Play and she freaked out and yelped “Oh no not the bad one!” and ran away.
PALACE OF WESTMINSTER TOUR
My European Government professor managed to get us in even though I don’t think non-UK citizens are technically supposed to be able to right now, and it was awesome.
INTERNSHIP
I am doing really cool PR things! I am contacting journalists about feature stories and magazines about product giveaways and drafting copy for websites and media kits and making gift packages for celebrities! Some of whom use currency symbols to spell their names, or won Brit awards, or are ska princesses!
Most exciting was being charged with unraveling the mystery of the incorrect EAVs (Estimated Advertising Value, how one determines what public relations work is worth), which involved politely and professionally harassing the “account manager” who insisted the figures were correct when they were not and then calling the third party who provided the statistics used to calculate the figures and finally eventually getting to the bottom of it. It was very satisfying. And pigeon-free.
THE FLAT
The problem with living in an eight person flat is that when you see a glaring problem, like a sink of dirty dishes or a full garbage bin, you think ‘Hmm. Someone should do something about that,’ and walk away. Diffusion of responsibility and all that.
THE WEEKEND
…why would you start a weekend on Wednesday? I remember freshman year of college when I was utterly mystified and not a little horrified that some people went out drinking on Thursdays even though they were school nights, which at the time seemed an unpardonable sin. Here Thursdays are taken for granted as a party night and Wednesdays and Tuesdays are the new frontier. Some people go out so hard during the week that they don’t even bother to go on the weekends! I just can’t get that logic (possibly because it’s a logic-free equation. Or because I did not do so well in Intro to Logic class last semester. Or both.)
Umlaut and I had managed to avoid having to navigate the night bus system until very recently by either coming back early (before the tubes close) or by only going to walk-able places. The bus that eventually got us home though? Number 27, historically the lucky number of the female side of my family.
HARRY POTTER TOUR
Upon arriving at King’s Cross for our Harry Potter walking tour we immediately noticed the woman in the floor length cloak and elaborate witch hat and debated how mortifying it would be if we approached her and she were in fact not actually the tour guide. But she was, and she was *spectacular*, animated and knowledgeable and everything. How does one see every Potter-related locale in London in two hours? BY FLYING.
If by flying you mean dashing at a flat out sprint over wet cobblestones after a costumed woman with a broomstick, which she did, so yes. She stopped briefly outside a Southwark theater to talk about something and the stage crew came out to shush her because they were midway through a performance of the Scottish Play and she freaked out and yelped “Oh no not the bad one!” and ran away.
PALACE OF WESTMINSTER TOUR
My European Government professor managed to get us in even though I don’t think non-UK citizens are technically supposed to be able to right now, and it was awesome.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
A Volunteer To Test A Theory
I recently got a chance to catch up with a few people, on Facebook chat and my Pogolink international calling (how great a name is that?) most notably my literal BFF for life Ally and my beloved Rachel, which was terrific. It’s a great consolation that while I will eventually have to leave this amazing place I have spectacular people to come back to and hang out with all summer.
Summer. By this time last year I think I’d already signed a contract for a summer internship with JPSI, whereas now I am woefully behind on that process. But I get back before the end of April so I should be able to rustle up something gainful, but then with this job market… Alright, no more with things I can’t do anything about right now.
More with things I can justifiably freak out about now, like the labor-intensive process that is crafting a course schedule to carry two majors and two minors, writing my British fiction paper, finishing my postcards, and showing Flat Stanley an appropriately good time around the city. I have so far declined offers to take Flat Stanley clubbing on the pretext that he belongs to an eight year old and that that would be wildly inappropriate albeit hilarious, but we did take in Big Ben (so pretty lit up at night!),the tube, and tea. Photos to follow.
My Introduction to British Culture class involves a lot of walking tours, which actually aren’t rubbish but instead rather educational and cool and get me to parts of the city I’d never go to on my own, but frequently involve spending some forty minutes of would-be class time in the café of a museum drinking tea and eating pastries. Also Professor Fosdal is wonderful if perhaps excessively passionate about his views on architecture.
However: thirty some years ago whenever anyone fell in the Thames the first thing they did upon fishing them out was pump their stomach because the river was so full of toxic sludge that ingesting a bit of water alone could kill you never mind drowning. Professor Fosdal has a theory that attempts to clean up the river have so improved the water quality that you might stand a chance of survival if you fell in today. I’m the smallest in the class, so he started at me quite hard while asking for volunteers to be thrown in…
Chloe has several cousins living in and around the city, one of whom invited us to lunch. Umlaut hadn’t seen some of these people in a decade so while we were reassured that ‘Hugh’ would pick us up from our flat and we wouldn’t have to mess with the weekend tube, we realized we had no idea whatsoever Hugh might look like. Fortunately he was the lost looking gentleman pacing Praed Street who we suspected might be him.
All the cousins were absolutely lovely, lunch was divine, and we got Chloe back to Paddington station in time to catch her train to go see her other cousins, so a perfect afternoon overall. My previous experiences with being an outsider at family reunions (Hello Davitt clan! )had prepared me well for what could have been a potentially daunting occasion, a formal lunch and all, and then everyone was so so nice, so it was fine.
My advice should you find yourself in such a situation however: Do whatever your host is doing if uncertain about accepting or declining offers of hospitality, except in the case of gin and tonics. Always accept a gin and tonic. Remain amiably and unfailing polite and you’ll be fine. Also: don’t be fazed by silverware. If a frightening amount is laid out always use whatever is farthest away from the plate first and work your way inwards as appropriate.
When conversing with native Brits it’s very easy to slip into their vernacular and start to fling about fiercely unnatural phrases like ‘mate’ and ‘dreadful row’ and ‘fancy a cuppa tea’ and other such. Especially since I confess to expressing myself in a somewhat affected manner to begin with and am no stranger to excessive ‘quite’s and ‘lovely’s and other such circuitous articulation. …for an example of that claim, examine the craft of the previous sentence. And then there’s the temptation to put the slant of an accent on certain words where it feels like it belongs, and before you know it your speech is an utter travesty. At all costs, remain true to your own linguistic heritage.
Summer. By this time last year I think I’d already signed a contract for a summer internship with JPSI, whereas now I am woefully behind on that process. But I get back before the end of April so I should be able to rustle up something gainful, but then with this job market… Alright, no more with things I can’t do anything about right now.
More with things I can justifiably freak out about now, like the labor-intensive process that is crafting a course schedule to carry two majors and two minors, writing my British fiction paper, finishing my postcards, and showing Flat Stanley an appropriately good time around the city. I have so far declined offers to take Flat Stanley clubbing on the pretext that he belongs to an eight year old and that that would be wildly inappropriate albeit hilarious, but we did take in Big Ben (so pretty lit up at night!),the tube, and tea. Photos to follow.
My Introduction to British Culture class involves a lot of walking tours, which actually aren’t rubbish but instead rather educational and cool and get me to parts of the city I’d never go to on my own, but frequently involve spending some forty minutes of would-be class time in the café of a museum drinking tea and eating pastries. Also Professor Fosdal is wonderful if perhaps excessively passionate about his views on architecture.
However: thirty some years ago whenever anyone fell in the Thames the first thing they did upon fishing them out was pump their stomach because the river was so full of toxic sludge that ingesting a bit of water alone could kill you never mind drowning. Professor Fosdal has a theory that attempts to clean up the river have so improved the water quality that you might stand a chance of survival if you fell in today. I’m the smallest in the class, so he started at me quite hard while asking for volunteers to be thrown in…
Chloe has several cousins living in and around the city, one of whom invited us to lunch. Umlaut hadn’t seen some of these people in a decade so while we were reassured that ‘Hugh’ would pick us up from our flat and we wouldn’t have to mess with the weekend tube, we realized we had no idea whatsoever Hugh might look like. Fortunately he was the lost looking gentleman pacing Praed Street who we suspected might be him.
All the cousins were absolutely lovely, lunch was divine, and we got Chloe back to Paddington station in time to catch her train to go see her other cousins, so a perfect afternoon overall. My previous experiences with being an outsider at family reunions (Hello Davitt clan! )had prepared me well for what could have been a potentially daunting occasion, a formal lunch and all, and then everyone was so so nice, so it was fine.
My advice should you find yourself in such a situation however: Do whatever your host is doing if uncertain about accepting or declining offers of hospitality, except in the case of gin and tonics. Always accept a gin and tonic. Remain amiably and unfailing polite and you’ll be fine. Also: don’t be fazed by silverware. If a frightening amount is laid out always use whatever is farthest away from the plate first and work your way inwards as appropriate.
When conversing with native Brits it’s very easy to slip into their vernacular and start to fling about fiercely unnatural phrases like ‘mate’ and ‘dreadful row’ and ‘fancy a cuppa tea’ and other such. Especially since I confess to expressing myself in a somewhat affected manner to begin with and am no stranger to excessive ‘quite’s and ‘lovely’s and other such circuitous articulation. …for an example of that claim, examine the craft of the previous sentence. And then there’s the temptation to put the slant of an accent on certain words where it feels like it belongs, and before you know it your speech is an utter travesty. At all costs, remain true to your own linguistic heritage.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Home is Where…
I’ve recently provoked a domestic uproar by referring to all the snow back “home” in Pittsburgh. My mother left a comment detailing a rambling string of events and occurrences pertaining to the house outside Philadelphia she and my father have lived in for the past eighteen some years, outraged that I could possibly think of anywhere else when I thought of home.
Ironically she failed to mention herself, my father, sibling, or the two felines who deign to grace us with their presence in her summation of home, and obviously those are five very crucial factors.
But where is home really?
Is it that house? The general area of Audubon/Norristown/King of Prussia we live in, or the city of Philadelphia as a whole? Is it where my life as an adult arguably began in Oakland? Is it a dorm room that my keycard won’t let me access any more, or an apartment on North Dithridge I’ve signed a lease for but never actually seen?
I remember coming back for Thanksgiving freshman year to find my belongings shuffled and boxed and pilfered, and turning back the cover on my bed to find a reprehensible collection of dirty socks and algebra textbooks and other things my sister had hidden rather than put away, and thinking ‘Well this isn’t home anymore.’
But that’s more of a detached sense of materialism, of not carrying about stuff. I like the things I have, but I wouldn’t not have won my Cappie and Tae Kwon Do medals if I no longer had them physically draped on my desk. Any of my books, minus the ones particularly signed or inscribed to me, could be replaced. Many of the clothes would do well to be replaced. I don’t need the trinkets and the clutter, they just define my space.
I might conclude it’s just the base I’m operating out of. Praed Street right now, the house in Audubon over the summer, Dithridge after that, then who knows where.
When I say I want to go home I usually just mean I don’t want to be wherever I am. So is home more of a negative quality, as it were, defined by where it isn’t? Is it wherever I want to be when I don’t want to be where I am?
I would try not to dream of quoting a lyric, much less an inextricably middle school lyric, but I can’t help but have Something Corporate’s ‘Woke Up In A Car’ run through my head: “I met a girl who kept tattoos for homes that she had loved/If I were her I’d paint my body ‘till all my skin were gone.”
I’d close this up on a sugar-sweet note for you if I could, but I’m not really sure I’ve got one.
Ironically she failed to mention herself, my father, sibling, or the two felines who deign to grace us with their presence in her summation of home, and obviously those are five very crucial factors.
But where is home really?
Is it that house? The general area of Audubon/Norristown/King of Prussia we live in, or the city of Philadelphia as a whole? Is it where my life as an adult arguably began in Oakland? Is it a dorm room that my keycard won’t let me access any more, or an apartment on North Dithridge I’ve signed a lease for but never actually seen?
I remember coming back for Thanksgiving freshman year to find my belongings shuffled and boxed and pilfered, and turning back the cover on my bed to find a reprehensible collection of dirty socks and algebra textbooks and other things my sister had hidden rather than put away, and thinking ‘Well this isn’t home anymore.’
But that’s more of a detached sense of materialism, of not carrying about stuff. I like the things I have, but I wouldn’t not have won my Cappie and Tae Kwon Do medals if I no longer had them physically draped on my desk. Any of my books, minus the ones particularly signed or inscribed to me, could be replaced. Many of the clothes would do well to be replaced. I don’t need the trinkets and the clutter, they just define my space.
I might conclude it’s just the base I’m operating out of. Praed Street right now, the house in Audubon over the summer, Dithridge after that, then who knows where.
When I say I want to go home I usually just mean I don’t want to be wherever I am. So is home more of a negative quality, as it were, defined by where it isn’t? Is it wherever I want to be when I don’t want to be where I am?
I would try not to dream of quoting a lyric, much less an inextricably middle school lyric, but I can’t help but have Something Corporate’s ‘Woke Up In A Car’ run through my head: “I met a girl who kept tattoos for homes that she had loved/If I were her I’d paint my body ‘till all my skin were gone.”
I’d close this up on a sugar-sweet note for you if I could, but I’m not really sure I’ve got one.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Tuesdays with Murad
Chloe, having Tuesdays off from classes as it were, came to visit me at my lunch break and brought me chicken curry. Then we went to see the British library, which has among many other things in its treasure trove of relics the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible.
The fact that we were able to see those wonders of history on a whim is my only comfort in the face of missing Snowpocalypse 2010 back home in Pittsburgh. While, that and the fact that I rode a red double-decker bus to work today. And everything else.
I actually didn’t have any choice in riding the bus to work since the tubes were absolutely abysmal this morning. Go on and shut down the Circle line, take the District if you must, but if you do all that AND abscond with the Hammersmith and City you’d damn well better not take the Piccadilly and Bakerloo too. Fun fact: you can take all of those brightly color-coded lines to basically the same places, with a little maneuvering. I take so many trains in so many directions that I’m often left with a minor panic attack when the peculiarly Andromeda-Strain-esque voice of the speaker system announces a stop other than the one I’d anticipated when I’d forgotten where I was going or how I was trying to get there.
Having finally completed updating the PR databases I’ve moved on to combing through every issue of some several dozen publications for traces of Murad media coverage. So much fun at first but eventually they all started to blur together into a hazy mess of celebrity gossip and feverish consumerism. I’ve picked a fine time to develop a taste for shoes and hand bags and eye creams, now when for the first time in years I don’t actually have any source of income, all this interning being for academic credit as it were.
For a moment it looked like I might be carrying a permanent reminder of my time at Murad UK embedded in the palm of my left hand in the form of a bizarrely accidental splinter from the warehouse door. I didn’t mind terribly and pointed out to Chloe that at least this way she’d have a way of identifying the real me if and when I was replaced with a robot clone, but Rachel displayed a somewhat unnatural delight in digging into my skin and managed to remove most of it. She also braids hair exceedingly well and usually has chocolate with her. I want her to be my nanny.
The fact that we were able to see those wonders of history on a whim is my only comfort in the face of missing Snowpocalypse 2010 back home in Pittsburgh. While, that and the fact that I rode a red double-decker bus to work today. And everything else.
I actually didn’t have any choice in riding the bus to work since the tubes were absolutely abysmal this morning. Go on and shut down the Circle line, take the District if you must, but if you do all that AND abscond with the Hammersmith and City you’d damn well better not take the Piccadilly and Bakerloo too. Fun fact: you can take all of those brightly color-coded lines to basically the same places, with a little maneuvering. I take so many trains in so many directions that I’m often left with a minor panic attack when the peculiarly Andromeda-Strain-esque voice of the speaker system announces a stop other than the one I’d anticipated when I’d forgotten where I was going or how I was trying to get there.
Having finally completed updating the PR databases I’ve moved on to combing through every issue of some several dozen publications for traces of Murad media coverage. So much fun at first but eventually they all started to blur together into a hazy mess of celebrity gossip and feverish consumerism. I’ve picked a fine time to develop a taste for shoes and hand bags and eye creams, now when for the first time in years I don’t actually have any source of income, all this interning being for academic credit as it were.
For a moment it looked like I might be carrying a permanent reminder of my time at Murad UK embedded in the palm of my left hand in the form of a bizarrely accidental splinter from the warehouse door. I didn’t mind terribly and pointed out to Chloe that at least this way she’d have a way of identifying the real me if and when I was replaced with a robot clone, but Rachel displayed a somewhat unnatural delight in digging into my skin and managed to remove most of it. She also braids hair exceedingly well and usually has chocolate with her. I want her to be my nanny.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Escape From the Clutches of Winged Doom
Perhaps that’s a bit much, to describe the Circle Pond in Hyde Park as winged doom, but it did harbor an unsavory quantity of malicious water fowl. Granted I would count even one foul fowl too many, but there were several dozen swans bigger than a third grader there.
And no one stops them from… being there! I don’t know what I’m trying to articulate precisely but I found their degree of freedom to stalk about and flutter most disconcerting.
That aside Chloe and I spent the better part of the afternoon wandering the park and it was gorgeous. Unfortunately it greatly reinforced Chloe’s desire to attain dual citizenship and live here forever, and I will miss her dreadfully if she insists on not living in the same country as me.
Prior to that we navigated dismal tube closures to China Town, only to discover that there wasn’t much in the way of exploration to be done there. Just some paper lanterns and restaurants really. But then we realized we were near the National Portrait Gallery and that was awesome, particularly since I’ve not yet lost all my hard-won AP Euro trivia knowledge of historical figures and it was neat to see them.
All of the above occurred and was composed on Saturday. Today, Sunday, involved a moderately successful trek to Portobello Road market and the Victoria and Albert museum and an extraordinary event wherein I had heard of a place I wanted to go (Hope and Greenwood’s Candy Shop), looked up the address, found the corresponding tube station, navigated a map, and somehow actually got there. I cannot recall that ever happening before.
And no one stops them from… being there! I don’t know what I’m trying to articulate precisely but I found their degree of freedom to stalk about and flutter most disconcerting.
That aside Chloe and I spent the better part of the afternoon wandering the park and it was gorgeous. Unfortunately it greatly reinforced Chloe’s desire to attain dual citizenship and live here forever, and I will miss her dreadfully if she insists on not living in the same country as me.
Prior to that we navigated dismal tube closures to China Town, only to discover that there wasn’t much in the way of exploration to be done there. Just some paper lanterns and restaurants really. But then we realized we were near the National Portrait Gallery and that was awesome, particularly since I’ve not yet lost all my hard-won AP Euro trivia knowledge of historical figures and it was neat to see them.
All of the above occurred and was composed on Saturday. Today, Sunday, involved a moderately successful trek to Portobello Road market and the Victoria and Albert museum and an extraordinary event wherein I had heard of a place I wanted to go (Hope and Greenwood’s Candy Shop), looked up the address, found the corresponding tube station, navigated a map, and somehow actually got there. I cannot recall that ever happening before.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Stop The Pajama Drama: Tesco Has a Dress Code
Britain, being a comparatively tiny country with rather good gun control regulations (i.e. I’m pretty sure Brits do not have the right to bear arms…), has fairly little violence. And if you think about it, what is a US newspaper composed of if not violence?
So here the Brits are, trying to supply enough news for a menagerie of newspapers, and they are reduced to full reports on a parking meter that is misreading in German and a woman who has caused uproar by insisting on doing the grocery shopping in her pajamas, leading to the conclusion that even quick shops like Tesco must uphold some standard of dignity.
Those are the kind of stories I start and end my day with, thanks to the free papers ‘Metro’ and ‘Evening Standard’.
What with the pigeon upset on Monday I’ve been somewhat remiss in proper blog maintenance, so forgive me if I neglect to recap the better part of a week.
Vivid recollection of our Sunday in Camden Market have begun to escape me, but it was absolutely brilliant. A bizarre punk-Mecca meets faerie land, contained in a former horse stable with chandeliers. Little shops and kiosks sell everything whimsical you could imagine. Chloe and I kept remarking upon how much it felt like walking into a Neil Gaiman novel and eventually remembered that’s probably because he lived near here.
I procured several gifts which I shall not describe in the interest of keeping the element of surprise for the reciprocates who happen to be blog followers, and also a lovely dress for myself because all my flat mates are now sporting Camden Market dresses. They basically all have the same empire cut in different fabrics and we all look super cute in them.
You barter for everything, even the food. We negotiated for peculiar Chinese-Indian-Japanese fusion dishes with “free” soda and –drawing upon memories of my mother’s epic forty five minute interaction with a sundress vendor in the streets of St. Thomas over a decade ago- managed to talk my dress down five pounds. The half-turn away and the ‘maybe-for-ten-but-certainly-not-for-twenty’ techniques are key.
Chloe and I had tentatively decided that some Tuesday she should go to Trafalgar Square and see what shows she could get cheap tickets to, since she doesn’t have class that day. Which is how we went from “whatever-maybe” to front row balcony seats for Billy Elliot in the span of a few hours. For under thirty pounds no less!
Between being lucky enough to have culturally-inclined parents and my stint on the Cappie theater reviewing circuit I have seen many, many musical theater productions. Which I only mention because I want the full weight to sink in when I make the statement that Billy Elliot may be the greatest musical in the history of ever.
I laughed, I cried, I smirked smugly when I was able to decipher the thick accents and British slang, and my heart skipped a beat when he started doing pirouettes. You could not ask for anything more.
Classes here consist of walking tours of various qualities (some involving the professor trudging wordlessly onto the tube without mention of where we we're going or why, getting off and walking several blocks before pointing out some landmarks that were totally irrelevant to the course and then getting a pint at a pub Christopher Marlowe used to frequent) and lectures delivered in perturbing lulling accents that are so hard to absorb information from but otherwise quite good.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that every crosswalk has the traffic-direction-appropriate “look right!” or “look left!” painted on the concrete to aid pedestrians in the avoidance of incident. Its little things like that that make you love this city.
So here the Brits are, trying to supply enough news for a menagerie of newspapers, and they are reduced to full reports on a parking meter that is misreading in German and a woman who has caused uproar by insisting on doing the grocery shopping in her pajamas, leading to the conclusion that even quick shops like Tesco must uphold some standard of dignity.
Those are the kind of stories I start and end my day with, thanks to the free papers ‘Metro’ and ‘Evening Standard’.
What with the pigeon upset on Monday I’ve been somewhat remiss in proper blog maintenance, so forgive me if I neglect to recap the better part of a week.
Vivid recollection of our Sunday in Camden Market have begun to escape me, but it was absolutely brilliant. A bizarre punk-Mecca meets faerie land, contained in a former horse stable with chandeliers. Little shops and kiosks sell everything whimsical you could imagine. Chloe and I kept remarking upon how much it felt like walking into a Neil Gaiman novel and eventually remembered that’s probably because he lived near here.
I procured several gifts which I shall not describe in the interest of keeping the element of surprise for the reciprocates who happen to be blog followers, and also a lovely dress for myself because all my flat mates are now sporting Camden Market dresses. They basically all have the same empire cut in different fabrics and we all look super cute in them.
You barter for everything, even the food. We negotiated for peculiar Chinese-Indian-Japanese fusion dishes with “free” soda and –drawing upon memories of my mother’s epic forty five minute interaction with a sundress vendor in the streets of St. Thomas over a decade ago- managed to talk my dress down five pounds. The half-turn away and the ‘maybe-for-ten-but-certainly-not-for-twenty’ techniques are key.
Chloe and I had tentatively decided that some Tuesday she should go to Trafalgar Square and see what shows she could get cheap tickets to, since she doesn’t have class that day. Which is how we went from “whatever-maybe” to front row balcony seats for Billy Elliot in the span of a few hours. For under thirty pounds no less!
Between being lucky enough to have culturally-inclined parents and my stint on the Cappie theater reviewing circuit I have seen many, many musical theater productions. Which I only mention because I want the full weight to sink in when I make the statement that Billy Elliot may be the greatest musical in the history of ever.
I laughed, I cried, I smirked smugly when I was able to decipher the thick accents and British slang, and my heart skipped a beat when he started doing pirouettes. You could not ask for anything more.
Classes here consist of walking tours of various qualities (some involving the professor trudging wordlessly onto the tube without mention of where we we're going or why, getting off and walking several blocks before pointing out some landmarks that were totally irrelevant to the course and then getting a pint at a pub Christopher Marlowe used to frequent) and lectures delivered in perturbing lulling accents that are so hard to absorb information from but otherwise quite good.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that every crosswalk has the traffic-direction-appropriate “look right!” or “look left!” painted on the concrete to aid pedestrians in the avoidance of incident. Its little things like that that make you love this city.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Abysmal Working Conditions- When Pigeons Attack
I always get to work early so I can maintain my visa requirement of twenty hours a week, but today I was the very first person in the office.
I heard a unsettling fluttering sound and a cooing not unlike a winged rat coming from the conference room, but thought nothing of it as I tried to get my internet connection to work.
Suddenly… there was a pigeon on my desk.
A. Freaking. Pigeon.
Just chilling, and flapping around, and being terrifying.
If you didn’t know, I have a deep and abiding fear of birds stemming from the time I was assaulted by a goose as a child. Perhaps that background information is necessary to grasp the full horror of this situation.
Eventually someone wandered in who I pounced on and made call someone, anyone, who could rectify this awful situation.
The guys who work in the warehouse (the Murad office is located in the loft above the Murad warehouse, conveniently enough) found the entire situation hilarious and spent three quarters an hour chasing the foul beast from one rafter to another and throwing jackets at it before concluding that nothing could be done.
When my supervisor arrived I informed her that I was terribly sorry but could not possibly work under these circumstances. She understood and told me to accompany the marketing intern on her adventure to Harrod’s to investigate the Murad counter there and the sales strategies of the other brands.
Bet you didn’t know there was a fitness studio in Harrod’s. Or a life size wax figure of the owner on a pedestal. Or no less than three different escalator areas, one of which is Egypt themed.
When we got back, the pigeon was gone.
Pest Control shot it and tried to clean it up but there were still bits of feathers all over my desk.
That is all.
I heard a unsettling fluttering sound and a cooing not unlike a winged rat coming from the conference room, but thought nothing of it as I tried to get my internet connection to work.
Suddenly… there was a pigeon on my desk.
A. Freaking. Pigeon.
Just chilling, and flapping around, and being terrifying.
If you didn’t know, I have a deep and abiding fear of birds stemming from the time I was assaulted by a goose as a child. Perhaps that background information is necessary to grasp the full horror of this situation.
Eventually someone wandered in who I pounced on and made call someone, anyone, who could rectify this awful situation.
The guys who work in the warehouse (the Murad office is located in the loft above the Murad warehouse, conveniently enough) found the entire situation hilarious and spent three quarters an hour chasing the foul beast from one rafter to another and throwing jackets at it before concluding that nothing could be done.
When my supervisor arrived I informed her that I was terribly sorry but could not possibly work under these circumstances. She understood and told me to accompany the marketing intern on her adventure to Harrod’s to investigate the Murad counter there and the sales strategies of the other brands.
Bet you didn’t know there was a fitness studio in Harrod’s. Or a life size wax figure of the owner on a pedestal. Or no less than three different escalator areas, one of which is Egypt themed.
When we got back, the pigeon was gone.
Pest Control shot it and tried to clean it up but there were still bits of feathers all over my desk.
That is all.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Want to go see a palace or a park or something? Want to just get on that bus no matter where it goes?
CAPA is a tricky sort of program to define. My mother persists in telling people I’m going to the University of London, which is not even slightly true. I have an associate member card to the student union of the Imperial College which is LOOSELY affiliated with the University of London, and that’s as far as that goes. Also incidentally apparently Imperial is the fifth best school in the world, or so they claim.
The Center for Academic Programs Abroad (CAPA) partners with American universities to develop programs that meet the home universities’ academic standards to the extent that Pitt can call the program ‘Pitt in London,’ but because it’s doing the same thing for a few other schools it’s not really Pitt, and it’s all terribly perplexing.
The three biggest contributor schools are Pitt, Massachusetts and Minnesota, but there are a handful of kids from other universities, mainly Rider, Buffalo, and Ursinus. Of course anyone from Ursinus I always ask if they know Josh Ecker, and so far all of them have said oh my god yes he’s so great how do you know him? How do I know Josh Ecker? How? I went to preschool with Josh Ecker. I’ve been camping with Josh Ecker. I’ve seen in a decade’s worth of New Years with Josh Ecker! My Josh Ecker street cred is unparalleled, and subsequently the Ursinus kids have much respect for me.
And while we’re playing Jewish geography of sorts, a friend of Chloe’s whose studying in Paris was here the other night and she brought a friend with her who grew up in Blue Bell. I asked if she knew Gabrielle or Noah Stang and she said absolutely, and wasn’t Gabby’s mom so nice. (Hi Wendy!) So here’s this random girl in a pub with me in London and we probably were on the same birthday party circuit when we were seven. ‘Small world’ feels like an understatement.
Yesterday we woke up and were like eh, want to go to the Tower? I think that may be my favorite part of living here, that we’re justified in doing all the touristy things but at the same time we have weeks to do them. So we toured the Tower of London essentially on a whim, also walked across Tower Bridge and then walked back just so we could say we’d done it. They’ve painted it a gaudy blue in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. The crown jewels exhibit is excellent, there’s a moving walkway like at an airport that takes you past them so no one can loiter and block the view which I always find most troubling at the popular exhibits in museums.
But the thing about being only half tourist as it were is a subsequent frustration with full bred tourists. Oxford Street may in fact be the best shopping locale in the world, it is indisputably ridiculously convenient to my flat, and it is absolutely riddled with tourists. I have never considered myself particularly claustrophobic but even I could not have taken another second inside Primark or TopShop. We’ve given up entirely on going there to accomplish any real shopping, but will probably still wander back occasionally if only because I find something about Selfridge’s delightfully silly. Also it beats out Posvar Hall AND Scaife Hall for the coveted title of ‘Best Escalator Riding in the Free World,’ a title I feel myself uniquely qualified to bestow given my courier experiences.
We’re about to head out to try Camden Market now, it’s supposed to be sort of punk-ish.
The Center for Academic Programs Abroad (CAPA) partners with American universities to develop programs that meet the home universities’ academic standards to the extent that Pitt can call the program ‘Pitt in London,’ but because it’s doing the same thing for a few other schools it’s not really Pitt, and it’s all terribly perplexing.
The three biggest contributor schools are Pitt, Massachusetts and Minnesota, but there are a handful of kids from other universities, mainly Rider, Buffalo, and Ursinus. Of course anyone from Ursinus I always ask if they know Josh Ecker, and so far all of them have said oh my god yes he’s so great how do you know him? How do I know Josh Ecker? How? I went to preschool with Josh Ecker. I’ve been camping with Josh Ecker. I’ve seen in a decade’s worth of New Years with Josh Ecker! My Josh Ecker street cred is unparalleled, and subsequently the Ursinus kids have much respect for me.
And while we’re playing Jewish geography of sorts, a friend of Chloe’s whose studying in Paris was here the other night and she brought a friend with her who grew up in Blue Bell. I asked if she knew Gabrielle or Noah Stang and she said absolutely, and wasn’t Gabby’s mom so nice. (Hi Wendy!) So here’s this random girl in a pub with me in London and we probably were on the same birthday party circuit when we were seven. ‘Small world’ feels like an understatement.
Yesterday we woke up and were like eh, want to go to the Tower? I think that may be my favorite part of living here, that we’re justified in doing all the touristy things but at the same time we have weeks to do them. So we toured the Tower of London essentially on a whim, also walked across Tower Bridge and then walked back just so we could say we’d done it. They’ve painted it a gaudy blue in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. The crown jewels exhibit is excellent, there’s a moving walkway like at an airport that takes you past them so no one can loiter and block the view which I always find most troubling at the popular exhibits in museums.
But the thing about being only half tourist as it were is a subsequent frustration with full bred tourists. Oxford Street may in fact be the best shopping locale in the world, it is indisputably ridiculously convenient to my flat, and it is absolutely riddled with tourists. I have never considered myself particularly claustrophobic but even I could not have taken another second inside Primark or TopShop. We’ve given up entirely on going there to accomplish any real shopping, but will probably still wander back occasionally if only because I find something about Selfridge’s delightfully silly. Also it beats out Posvar Hall AND Scaife Hall for the coveted title of ‘Best Escalator Riding in the Free World,’ a title I feel myself uniquely qualified to bestow given my courier experiences.
We’re about to head out to try Camden Market now, it’s supposed to be sort of punk-ish.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Commies!
For reasons pertaining to his own amusement my British Culture professor likes to introduce the UK’s many newspapers by first describing the type of people who read them and then matching that description to members of the class.
This is how he described the readership of the radically conservative ‘Daily Mail.’
“You’re lying awake in the dark night. A tree branch scrapes against your window. You hear a scratching noise in the corner in the shadows. The scratching gets louder, then louder. Terrified you clutch your bedclothes and whisper ‘…Commies!’”
He’s my favorite.
Yesterday I worked in the morning and then had a field trip for European Government to the Imperial War Museums. Even the grunt work at Murad is actually pretty cool: I was updating all of the product line press releases with the new prices so basically just copying and pasting, but now I know what all the press releases are like and how the language works for that. Also I finished all of them in just a few hours which apparently no intern has done before, so, yes.
Imperial War Museum was not terribly interesting, and I actually probably have to go back for a different class anyway. I did do the Holocaust exhibit though, which is pretty heavy for a mid-afternoon jaunt, so now I’ve seen Holocaust museums on three continents. I don’t know what to say about that distinction.
Chloe and I are watching Viva UK 40 music videos right now -basically British mtv- and it’s remarkable how blended the cultures have become. Half the singers we’re debating if their American or not. We are double checking our answers on Wikipedia and we are usually wrong.
Brief exploration around Piccadilly Circus yields the conclusion ‘like Times Square but shorter buildings, less neon, and more likelihood of being pick-pocketed’.
The student council would appear to be comprised of studious action-minded individuals, with lots of pertinent questions and logical suggestions. So basically the polar opposite of any student body governing organization I’ve ever participated in.
Later we checked out the pub at Imperial College, the university CAPA is loosely affiliated with only in the sense that we can join their clubs if we so choose, and the International Students House known as ish. Where there was karaoke. Of Backstreet Boys. Which I did not participate in at all or even slightly, but felt disconcertingly like a contemptible drunken American just by witnessing.
I keep hoping to eventually catch up enough on documentation of current events and on-goings to have time for some reflection on what being here is like, but alas not yet.
This is how he described the readership of the radically conservative ‘Daily Mail.’
“You’re lying awake in the dark night. A tree branch scrapes against your window. You hear a scratching noise in the corner in the shadows. The scratching gets louder, then louder. Terrified you clutch your bedclothes and whisper ‘…Commies!’”
He’s my favorite.
Yesterday I worked in the morning and then had a field trip for European Government to the Imperial War Museums. Even the grunt work at Murad is actually pretty cool: I was updating all of the product line press releases with the new prices so basically just copying and pasting, but now I know what all the press releases are like and how the language works for that. Also I finished all of them in just a few hours which apparently no intern has done before, so, yes.
Imperial War Museum was not terribly interesting, and I actually probably have to go back for a different class anyway. I did do the Holocaust exhibit though, which is pretty heavy for a mid-afternoon jaunt, so now I’ve seen Holocaust museums on three continents. I don’t know what to say about that distinction.
Chloe and I are watching Viva UK 40 music videos right now -basically British mtv- and it’s remarkable how blended the cultures have become. Half the singers we’re debating if their American or not. We are double checking our answers on Wikipedia and we are usually wrong.
Brief exploration around Piccadilly Circus yields the conclusion ‘like Times Square but shorter buildings, less neon, and more likelihood of being pick-pocketed’.
The student council would appear to be comprised of studious action-minded individuals, with lots of pertinent questions and logical suggestions. So basically the polar opposite of any student body governing organization I’ve ever participated in.
Later we checked out the pub at Imperial College, the university CAPA is loosely affiliated with only in the sense that we can join their clubs if we so choose, and the International Students House known as ish. Where there was karaoke. Of Backstreet Boys. Which I did not participate in at all or even slightly, but felt disconcertingly like a contemptible drunken American just by witnessing.
I keep hoping to eventually catch up enough on documentation of current events and on-goings to have time for some reflection on what being here is like, but alas not yet.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Product Training
When my internship supervisor Zoe told me I’d have to do some product training to familiarize myself with the Murad line before I started working on anything PR-related, I imagined we’d sit at her desk for a lunch hour or two and casually discuss day cream and clarifying serum.
I did not imagine a three day intensive course with an expert product trainer imported from Manchester and ten licensed skin therapists. Or power point presentations and bound booklets and detailed scientific explanations and histories or literally running out of skin on my hands and arms to try things on.
Seriously, right now I have assorted swatches of mica-infused shimmering balm and environmental protection with spf and hydrating silicon-based gooks all contradicting each other to an inconceivable end, and one side of my neck feels bizarrely firmer than the other, and my left wrist is “sleeping” because there are hormone-laced topical on it that are making it think it’s nighttime. Or something.
Still, it’s really very cool. There is more to skin care that I ever considered. I mean in all honesty I sort of considered dietary supplements and firming lotions to be sort of dubious frauds, but no. I have now witnessed firsthand the startlingly immediate effects of moisturizers that cause a palatable difference in your skin quality, contemplated the properties of Asian superfruits, and articulated The Murad Water Principle in my own words.
And I am here to tell you that it is legit.
Also when I came in this morning there was a little tin of pens and office-y things on the desk that I suppose is mine now marked ‘Sarah’s Stuff’ and I was totally charmed and welcomed by the gesture, even more so when I saw it contained an adorable sample of my favorite Murad lip balm.
I stayed late to help the product trainer set up for tomorrow’s session and was thus able to log a full nine hours for today. I need an average of twenty a week to fulfill my visa requirements, so I’m hoping to work late a few nights and then take off a day or two to travel or something.
I have launched an initiative to visit at least one museum and/or historically or culturally important location per weekend. You can follow my exciting exploits- …right here, actually. I ought to be posting illustrative photographs but they take forever to upload to the blogger site, so I refer you to Facebook for those (I highly recommend Chloe or Rachel’s albums over my own, which though well-annotated are somewhat sparse).
Tomorrow I may have to take one for the team and volunteer to have facials demonstrated on me.
I did not imagine a three day intensive course with an expert product trainer imported from Manchester and ten licensed skin therapists. Or power point presentations and bound booklets and detailed scientific explanations and histories or literally running out of skin on my hands and arms to try things on.
Seriously, right now I have assorted swatches of mica-infused shimmering balm and environmental protection with spf and hydrating silicon-based gooks all contradicting each other to an inconceivable end, and one side of my neck feels bizarrely firmer than the other, and my left wrist is “sleeping” because there are hormone-laced topical on it that are making it think it’s nighttime. Or something.
Still, it’s really very cool. There is more to skin care that I ever considered. I mean in all honesty I sort of considered dietary supplements and firming lotions to be sort of dubious frauds, but no. I have now witnessed firsthand the startlingly immediate effects of moisturizers that cause a palatable difference in your skin quality, contemplated the properties of Asian superfruits, and articulated The Murad Water Principle in my own words.
And I am here to tell you that it is legit.
Also when I came in this morning there was a little tin of pens and office-y things on the desk that I suppose is mine now marked ‘Sarah’s Stuff’ and I was totally charmed and welcomed by the gesture, even more so when I saw it contained an adorable sample of my favorite Murad lip balm.
I stayed late to help the product trainer set up for tomorrow’s session and was thus able to log a full nine hours for today. I need an average of twenty a week to fulfill my visa requirements, so I’m hoping to work late a few nights and then take off a day or two to travel or something.
I have launched an initiative to visit at least one museum and/or historically or culturally important location per weekend. You can follow my exciting exploits- …right here, actually. I ought to be posting illustrative photographs but they take forever to upload to the blogger site, so I refer you to Facebook for those (I highly recommend Chloe or Rachel’s albums over my own, which though well-annotated are somewhat sparse).
Tomorrow I may have to take one for the team and volunteer to have facials demonstrated on me.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Chloe Is Always Right
Trying to manage a bevy of girls celebrating a twenty first birthday is like herding butterflies.
Gorgeous, awesome, wonderful butterflies.
In celebration of Latia’s legal coming of age she and all her flat mates –henceforth known as the Belgravia girls because that’s the part of London they’re living in and because we will need to refer to them more because they are epically fun- joined Chloe and I at a bar our flat mates assured us would be awesome.
Unfortunately they made this assessment based solely off a flyer promising cheap drinks which upon closer inspection turned out to be only on Wednesdays and live bands which would have been better suited to a high school open mic night. And no dancing!
Clearly that would never do, so my fellow cruise director Umlaut and I navigated multiple tube transfers with ten plus people in tow (Where’s Jen? Did we lose Abby? Quickly everyone, to the Bakerloo line! No, brief stop at Sainbury’s!) back to our flat for an impromptu dance party of our own before deciding on heading back to the club we were at last night, Moose, which was a great time. The Europeans pronounce it ‘muse’ but the décor includes antler silhouettes and other such rustic allusions, so my bet is on ‘moose’.
Unfortunately Moose is somewhat BYOB. Plenty of alcohol but totally bring-your-own-boys if you don’t want to risk getting creeped on. Being as big a group of girls as we were we probably would’ve been fine, but we took the precaution of inviting our friends from Flat 6 along.
Now, you would think Flat 5 would be on one floor and Flat 6 would be above it, right? That would be logical, yes?
London architectural design laughs in the face of logic.
Which is why when I took the spiral fire escape staircase upstairs a few minutes later to ask the gentlemen drinking on the balcony above what was taking them so long, I was mortified to realize I was not addressing the intended group of boys at all, but rather the inhabitants of Flat 7. If I’d been a little slicker I might have told them to come out with us anyway, but things being what they are I apologized for the inconvenience and disappeared. So that’s their story for the weekend.
Eventually we got everyone down Oxford Street to the club, right by the French Connection UK store (“Oh, Eff see you kay?” asked Abby. “Sorry, I don’t speak French,” I replied, blatantly missing the abbreviation.) Moose is fairly inexpensive as far as London dance clubs seem to go, with a three pound cover charge which is really four because you have to pay to check your coat, and you can’t not check your coat, but inexpensive in London is a total oxymoron when you consider that a pound is nearly two American dollars. As far as I’m concerned it’s worth it, because so far it’s two for two spectacularly fun nights, but perhaps not for twice every weekend.
And to think I used to leave the dancing to Emily! Why should the triple threat girl (acting, singing, AND dancing) get all the fun? No, no I say to that.
This morning I utilized my secret super power to get a hot shower (Oh, did you not know that waking up before nine regardless of how late I stayed up the night before was my secret super power? Because it is. I am physically incapable of sleeping in.) and got some reading done for classes before Chloe and Rachel and I headed over to the Tate Modern Art Museum.
The collection is a lot of darker things and really minimalistic modern-y modern art of which I’m not so fond, but there were a few pieces I loved. Or rather the phrase that came to mind before I could banish it with a shriek of no-no-I’m-not-my-mother-noooo was ‘made my heart sing’. Thanks Mom (yes there was a Monet water lily).
The coolest exhibit was a multiple artist collaboration exploring different interpretations of this one throw away anime character they somehow obtained the rights to, and the disconcerting implications of identity and self-possession of fictional characters. I did not like when it stared at me with its blank digital eyes.
Walked across the millennium bridge (apparently it’s the one that gets destroyed in one of the Harry Potters) to St. Paul’s Cathedral where there were bells, successfully navigated the weekend tube home (they shut down 80% of the lines and then mangle the remaining ones for maximum fun/problem-solving skill practice/”construction”) and discovered at awesome curry place a few blocks down from our flat.
In summary, brilliant weekend.
Tomorrow I start my internship!
Gorgeous, awesome, wonderful butterflies.
In celebration of Latia’s legal coming of age she and all her flat mates –henceforth known as the Belgravia girls because that’s the part of London they’re living in and because we will need to refer to them more because they are epically fun- joined Chloe and I at a bar our flat mates assured us would be awesome.
Unfortunately they made this assessment based solely off a flyer promising cheap drinks which upon closer inspection turned out to be only on Wednesdays and live bands which would have been better suited to a high school open mic night. And no dancing!
Clearly that would never do, so my fellow cruise director Umlaut and I navigated multiple tube transfers with ten plus people in tow (Where’s Jen? Did we lose Abby? Quickly everyone, to the Bakerloo line! No, brief stop at Sainbury’s!) back to our flat for an impromptu dance party of our own before deciding on heading back to the club we were at last night, Moose, which was a great time. The Europeans pronounce it ‘muse’ but the décor includes antler silhouettes and other such rustic allusions, so my bet is on ‘moose’.
Unfortunately Moose is somewhat BYOB. Plenty of alcohol but totally bring-your-own-boys if you don’t want to risk getting creeped on. Being as big a group of girls as we were we probably would’ve been fine, but we took the precaution of inviting our friends from Flat 6 along.
Now, you would think Flat 5 would be on one floor and Flat 6 would be above it, right? That would be logical, yes?
London architectural design laughs in the face of logic.
Which is why when I took the spiral fire escape staircase upstairs a few minutes later to ask the gentlemen drinking on the balcony above what was taking them so long, I was mortified to realize I was not addressing the intended group of boys at all, but rather the inhabitants of Flat 7. If I’d been a little slicker I might have told them to come out with us anyway, but things being what they are I apologized for the inconvenience and disappeared. So that’s their story for the weekend.
Eventually we got everyone down Oxford Street to the club, right by the French Connection UK store (“Oh, Eff see you kay?” asked Abby. “Sorry, I don’t speak French,” I replied, blatantly missing the abbreviation.) Moose is fairly inexpensive as far as London dance clubs seem to go, with a three pound cover charge which is really four because you have to pay to check your coat, and you can’t not check your coat, but inexpensive in London is a total oxymoron when you consider that a pound is nearly two American dollars. As far as I’m concerned it’s worth it, because so far it’s two for two spectacularly fun nights, but perhaps not for twice every weekend.
And to think I used to leave the dancing to Emily! Why should the triple threat girl (acting, singing, AND dancing) get all the fun? No, no I say to that.
This morning I utilized my secret super power to get a hot shower (Oh, did you not know that waking up before nine regardless of how late I stayed up the night before was my secret super power? Because it is. I am physically incapable of sleeping in.) and got some reading done for classes before Chloe and Rachel and I headed over to the Tate Modern Art Museum.
The collection is a lot of darker things and really minimalistic modern-y modern art of which I’m not so fond, but there were a few pieces I loved. Or rather the phrase that came to mind before I could banish it with a shriek of no-no-I’m-not-my-mother-noooo was ‘made my heart sing’. Thanks Mom (yes there was a Monet water lily).
The coolest exhibit was a multiple artist collaboration exploring different interpretations of this one throw away anime character they somehow obtained the rights to, and the disconcerting implications of identity and self-possession of fictional characters. I did not like when it stared at me with its blank digital eyes.
Walked across the millennium bridge (apparently it’s the one that gets destroyed in one of the Harry Potters) to St. Paul’s Cathedral where there were bells, successfully navigated the weekend tube home (they shut down 80% of the lines and then mangle the remaining ones for maximum fun/problem-solving skill practice/”construction”) and discovered at awesome curry place a few blocks down from our flat.
In summary, brilliant weekend.
Tomorrow I start my internship!
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Clubs and Markets
Going out in London (but really anywhere):
-Don’t drink anything that isn’t poured in front of you and constantly attended by trustworthy persons
-Try not to dance with anyone you didn’t come with
-Keep at least one person who knows how to get home within sight at all times
-Have Rachel do your eye makeup (she can be bribed into providing this service with cookies)
That said, very fun night out dancing with the flat mates. Two of Anais’ French friends were visiting and several of the boys from the flat above ours came with us so we were quite a large group, but the places (a pub on Oxford Street and a club farther down Oxford Street) were very cool. Bizarrely though almost all the music they played was American, but like two or three years behind the curve, so a little lame. And the great thing about living in Paddington is that we can walk home without fussing with the sketchy night buses.
Some members of our party may have attempted to quote Shakespeare to varying degrees of success while walking back from a night out in London in the rain: definitely memorable.
This morning Chloe and Rachel and I went to Portobello Road, an awesome antique outdoor market in Notting Hill where I must return to purchase a proper English teapot with cloying little painted flowers, for which I am very excited. And we got English breakfasts! With dubious meats and weird tomatoes and eggs cooked exactly unlike the way I like them (i.e. how Dad makes them), but it was an important if stomach-injurious cultural experience.
My course schedule requires me to basically read an entire British novel and an entire Shakespeare play every week. So, I’m going to get on that.
-Don’t drink anything that isn’t poured in front of you and constantly attended by trustworthy persons
-Try not to dance with anyone you didn’t come with
-Keep at least one person who knows how to get home within sight at all times
-Have Rachel do your eye makeup (she can be bribed into providing this service with cookies)
That said, very fun night out dancing with the flat mates. Two of Anais’ French friends were visiting and several of the boys from the flat above ours came with us so we were quite a large group, but the places (a pub on Oxford Street and a club farther down Oxford Street) were very cool. Bizarrely though almost all the music they played was American, but like two or three years behind the curve, so a little lame. And the great thing about living in Paddington is that we can walk home without fussing with the sketchy night buses.
Some members of our party may have attempted to quote Shakespeare to varying degrees of success while walking back from a night out in London in the rain: definitely memorable.
This morning Chloe and Rachel and I went to Portobello Road, an awesome antique outdoor market in Notting Hill where I must return to purchase a proper English teapot with cloying little painted flowers, for which I am very excited. And we got English breakfasts! With dubious meats and weird tomatoes and eggs cooked exactly unlike the way I like them (i.e. how Dad makes them), but it was an important if stomach-injurious cultural experience.
My course schedule requires me to basically read an entire British novel and an entire Shakespeare play every week. So, I’m going to get on that.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Nobody Panic!!!
It's alright, you can all settle down. I'm taking eighteen credits again.
I know, I was freaking out too. What would I have done with all that free time? As it is I'm only working one job and not in a single club or association! Luckily I've picked up 20th Century British Fiction, meaning 1.) fewer lit classes to take back at Pitt, both a pro and a con and 2.) six solid hours of literary fun with Chloe and the same professor!
The earlier three hours being composed of Shakespeare.
In addition to those there's European Politics, Intro to British Culture, and London Through Internships which is a supplement of sorts to the internship experience.
So, there's that to be contended with.
Somehow I failed to mention what we looked at at Harrods, which is crucial. Amid some of the best shopping in the world Chloe and I eschewed the clothing, ignored the jewelry, and although we looked briefly and unsuccessfully for the hat section we eventually found what truly captivated us: The Playmobils display.
Gladiator Playmobils, Egyptology Playmobils, Victorian Playmobils, nomads, blue whales ("They're life-sized!" exclaimed Chloe, perhaps meaning that they were life-sized for the playmobil figures but perhaps indicating a troubling lack of knowledge of basic marine biology), they had them all. Delightful.
Later we met up with a smattering of other girls on our program for pub food and pints at their local hangout in Bavaria. Okay not Bavaria per se, but some London neighborhood that sounds close to that. Anyway it was a very nice time and we've ever intention of doing it again on a regular basis. I've decided I infinitely prefer the British style of casual social drinking to the frat party dynamic. Throw in some battered cod and crisped potatoes and you're all set.
And throwing darts is somehow so satisfying!
Other important highlight of today: my first lukewarm shower in London, memorable because every other show has been ice cold (What's cooler than being cool? ...sorry.) And have I mentioned our dangerously heated towel rack? How nice, you might think. No. Not nice. Scalding hot and inconveniently placed. Is alright for putting pajamas on though, because then they're toasty.
Soon we have the ME info session thing. The what? you might ask. This is your blog, everyday around here is ME day for you. But no, not me as in me but me as in My Education, another intriguing feature of the CAPA program focusing on exposing students to cultural events and local locations with an unfortunate acronym.
Also also: it would appear that Chloe and Rachel and I will all be living in the same apartment building in Oakland next year! The tea party never has to stop!
Seriously, we drink ridiculous amounts of tea, all the time.
I know, I was freaking out too. What would I have done with all that free time? As it is I'm only working one job and not in a single club or association! Luckily I've picked up 20th Century British Fiction, meaning 1.) fewer lit classes to take back at Pitt, both a pro and a con and 2.) six solid hours of literary fun with Chloe and the same professor!
The earlier three hours being composed of Shakespeare.
In addition to those there's European Politics, Intro to British Culture, and London Through Internships which is a supplement of sorts to the internship experience.
So, there's that to be contended with.
Somehow I failed to mention what we looked at at Harrods, which is crucial. Amid some of the best shopping in the world Chloe and I eschewed the clothing, ignored the jewelry, and although we looked briefly and unsuccessfully for the hat section we eventually found what truly captivated us: The Playmobils display.
Gladiator Playmobils, Egyptology Playmobils, Victorian Playmobils, nomads, blue whales ("They're life-sized!" exclaimed Chloe, perhaps meaning that they were life-sized for the playmobil figures but perhaps indicating a troubling lack of knowledge of basic marine biology), they had them all. Delightful.
Later we met up with a smattering of other girls on our program for pub food and pints at their local hangout in Bavaria. Okay not Bavaria per se, but some London neighborhood that sounds close to that. Anyway it was a very nice time and we've ever intention of doing it again on a regular basis. I've decided I infinitely prefer the British style of casual social drinking to the frat party dynamic. Throw in some battered cod and crisped potatoes and you're all set.
And throwing darts is somehow so satisfying!
Other important highlight of today: my first lukewarm shower in London, memorable because every other show has been ice cold (What's cooler than being cool? ...sorry.) And have I mentioned our dangerously heated towel rack? How nice, you might think. No. Not nice. Scalding hot and inconveniently placed. Is alright for putting pajamas on though, because then they're toasty.
Soon we have the ME info session thing. The what? you might ask. This is your blog, everyday around here is ME day for you. But no, not me as in me but me as in My Education, another intriguing feature of the CAPA program focusing on exposing students to cultural events and local locations with an unfortunate acronym.
Also also: it would appear that Chloe and Rachel and I will all be living in the same apartment building in Oakland next year! The tea party never has to stop!
Seriously, we drink ridiculous amounts of tea, all the time.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
“You should just keep a list of everything I say and draw wisdom from it.”
Ironically we cannot recall anything in particular that was actually said today, but I may end up having to write a memoir of Chloë instead of one of London if she has her way. I mean she’s not royalty per se, but peerage is pretty impressive. If nothing else she’s invaluable for matters of British authenticity, and she doesn’t cheat much at cards.
Since last we spoke, er, I posted at you (?) not a terrible lot has occurred, but I’ve got to keep on top of things. There was a panoramic bus tour of all the crucial sights led by one of those terrifically funny and knowledgeable tour guides one is sometimes lucky enough to come across and a spectacularly giggly girls’ night (“No. I was on a ski lift.”) with Umlaut and 8th, who are actually Chloë and Rachel, which my mother could apparently not discern through context clues. Chlo ’s nickname is lurking over her last letter and Rachel was the last roommate to join us, her homestay having fallen through dismally. She basically lives in our room.
Sunday involved an attempt at visiting the Tate Modern museum, foiled by time constraints, and a separate attempt at visiting Camden Market, foiled by tube cancellations (Does the bloody system never actually not have delays and re-routings? Any native you ask will nod wearily and tell you no, it never does not.) and finally a successful visit to Oxford Street, premiere shopping and walking distance from our flat.
Granted my background as a courier means I consider walking distance anything much less than four miles, but still, it’s really just like three turns. Rachel and I split off as Chloë met up with a high school friend also studying in London and explored Topshop and Selfridges, where Rachel and I were informed by a sales assistant that a particular dress we were admiring was three thousand pounds in a tone that clearly conveyed hilariously clearly ‘Please don’t touch.’
Rachel’s personality can be best described as Annoying Summer Camp Counselor, and I say that in the most loving way possible. Her feeling is that everyone should have sunny happy fun all the time and relax. Much as I know I would have despised her had she actually been my camp counselor (I needed my brooding time!) I adore her: she’s the perfect complement to my where-are-we-going-how-do-we-get-there-will-we-be-on-time-probably-not-oh-no anxious nonsense. Truth is we don’t always know where we’re going and lord knows we don’t always know how to get there, but eventually we get somewhere. Usually.
Anyways that tangent aside we got a traditional pub Sunday Roast, which was not totally to my liking but an essential cultural experience. Yorkshire pudding ISN’T EVEN REALLY PUDDING.
Monday I had my internship interview. The internships through CAPA are basically set up so it’s somewhat perfunctory , but an interview is an interview.
I arrived early at King’s Cross but not early enough to find platform 9 and ¾, since the station is a freaking underground labyrinth. Upon arriving at Omega Place I found not a single indication of a major cosmetic company’s headquarters but rather an abandoned warehouse and an ominous fence.
Suddenly out of nowhere a gentleman appeared and when I asked him if he’d ever heard of Murad he said of course, he worked there, and showed me the super secret hidden door and keypad, which led up a narrow stair case to a perfectly lovely converted loft office space.
Crisis thusly averted I met with my supervisor Zoe, who seems terrific. My responsibilities will include some things like writing press releases, blogposts, web copy, updating press kits, and even reading magazines to clip out media coverage and researching competitor brands.
Worst part: I’ll have to undergo product training and use samples of all the cosmetics. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get through it somehow. …Sarcasm aside I’m very excited!
To get academic credit for the internship I also have to complete an internship course, which had its first lecture last night. Eh, s'alright.
Chloë and I had a very violent game of Spit (card game) with the terrorist deck.
Today we walked to CAPA through Hyde Park, where we encountered a swan who wished me ill. I could just tell it had malicious intents towards my personage.
Travel Fair, which was not so much a fair as an opportunity to grab a handful of leaflets on various programs and then Harrods, because it’s Harrods. Most decadent department store ever anywhere, great fun.
Now we rest up briefly before meeting some people for dinner, hopefully fish and chips.
Since last we spoke, er, I posted at you (?) not a terrible lot has occurred, but I’ve got to keep on top of things. There was a panoramic bus tour of all the crucial sights led by one of those terrifically funny and knowledgeable tour guides one is sometimes lucky enough to come across and a spectacularly giggly girls’ night (“No. I was on a ski lift.”) with Umlaut and 8th, who are actually Chloë and Rachel, which my mother could apparently not discern through context clues. Chlo ’s nickname is lurking over her last letter and Rachel was the last roommate to join us, her homestay having fallen through dismally. She basically lives in our room.
Sunday involved an attempt at visiting the Tate Modern museum, foiled by time constraints, and a separate attempt at visiting Camden Market, foiled by tube cancellations (Does the bloody system never actually not have delays and re-routings? Any native you ask will nod wearily and tell you no, it never does not.) and finally a successful visit to Oxford Street, premiere shopping and walking distance from our flat.
Granted my background as a courier means I consider walking distance anything much less than four miles, but still, it’s really just like three turns. Rachel and I split off as Chloë met up with a high school friend also studying in London and explored Topshop and Selfridges, where Rachel and I were informed by a sales assistant that a particular dress we were admiring was three thousand pounds in a tone that clearly conveyed hilariously clearly ‘Please don’t touch.’
Rachel’s personality can be best described as Annoying Summer Camp Counselor, and I say that in the most loving way possible. Her feeling is that everyone should have sunny happy fun all the time and relax. Much as I know I would have despised her had she actually been my camp counselor (I needed my brooding time!) I adore her: she’s the perfect complement to my where-are-we-going-how-do-we-get-there-will-we-be-on-time-probably-not-oh-no anxious nonsense. Truth is we don’t always know where we’re going and lord knows we don’t always know how to get there, but eventually we get somewhere. Usually.
Anyways that tangent aside we got a traditional pub Sunday Roast, which was not totally to my liking but an essential cultural experience. Yorkshire pudding ISN’T EVEN REALLY PUDDING.
Monday I had my internship interview. The internships through CAPA are basically set up so it’s somewhat perfunctory , but an interview is an interview.
I arrived early at King’s Cross but not early enough to find platform 9 and ¾, since the station is a freaking underground labyrinth. Upon arriving at Omega Place I found not a single indication of a major cosmetic company’s headquarters but rather an abandoned warehouse and an ominous fence.
Suddenly out of nowhere a gentleman appeared and when I asked him if he’d ever heard of Murad he said of course, he worked there, and showed me the super secret hidden door and keypad, which led up a narrow stair case to a perfectly lovely converted loft office space.
Crisis thusly averted I met with my supervisor Zoe, who seems terrific. My responsibilities will include some things like writing press releases, blogposts, web copy, updating press kits, and even reading magazines to clip out media coverage and researching competitor brands.
Worst part: I’ll have to undergo product training and use samples of all the cosmetics. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get through it somehow. …Sarcasm aside I’m very excited!
To get academic credit for the internship I also have to complete an internship course, which had its first lecture last night. Eh, s'alright.
Chloë and I had a very violent game of Spit (card game) with the terrorist deck.
Today we walked to CAPA through Hyde Park, where we encountered a swan who wished me ill. I could just tell it had malicious intents towards my personage.
Travel Fair, which was not so much a fair as an opportunity to grab a handful of leaflets on various programs and then Harrods, because it’s Harrods. Most decadent department store ever anywhere, great fun.
Now we rest up briefly before meeting some people for dinner, hopefully fish and chips.
Friday, January 15, 2010
“If you slit open my veins tea would run out.”
Full day of orientating. Predominantly redundant and obvious but nevertheless necessary. In a gap between two Umlat and I explored the proper direction and uncovered the majestic British Natural History Museum. The wings are expansive but the main hall is a delightful menagerie of skeletal beasts, including dodos and fanged critters and that ancient not extinct fish I learned about in fourth grade, dominated by a huge dinosaur skeleton.
The dinosaur skeleton is only a fake casting because THE REAL ONE IS IN THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM IN PITTSBURGH. How cool is that that we have the legitimate article and London of all places displays a gigantic fake?
I say ‘we’ like I’m from there. Which I guess I can decide if I am. I befriended a kid in an Oakland Zoo shirt on principle.
They brought in a police sergeant to expound upon the dangers of the city, or rather tell us the cheapest places for pints, how we could safely dispose of illegal pepper spray and mace (classified in the UK as firearms, minimum of two years’ incarceration for first offence), and that if we were arrested for being stupid drunk he would post the videos on his FaceBook for everyone to laugh at.
Internship orientation with information that it pains me to think anyone could not know about interning (i.e. “Smile!” “Be on time!” “Make good tea!”). Interview on Monday, somewhat a formality but if they despise me on first glance I’ll be reassigned.
Official welcome tea at the Regency Hotel, wherein our lovely academic dean made the statement that titles this post on her slavish devotion to steeped substances and reenacted a brief Monty Python skit.
Charming tiny sandwiches of non eggy substances (I despise egg sandwiches) and intricately built layered concoctions that may have been passion fruit-inspired or improvised tiramisu or key lime pie-based. Superb tea, naturally.
Crazily crowded tube ride home, but the tube is already starting to feel natural.
We now contemplate going to a pub, or instead just waiting around until the pubs close (at eleven p.m.) and complaining and then going to sleep. I hate not having a plan, the overcoming of which will have to be amongst the goals for the semester. Still, I can’t help wanting to know what I should wear or if I need my oyster card (tube fare ticket, just tap it on the turnstile and go) and how much money to bring and how far we need to go and just generally what.
I feel awful putting on makeup and dressing up without my beloved Paulina and Christy, and somehow (black belt be damned) it doesn’t feel safe to go out without the boys. Not in some bizarre female misogynist women-without-men-are-nothing kind of way, because well duh, but it’s just what I’m used to, it's the only form of going out I've ever known.
Called Dad in attempt to assuage homesickness. He told me that girl cat misses me terribly and is hiding under beds again like a poor sad thing.
LATER... like 2:30 a.m. later
Umlat and 8th and I met up with Samuel, also a Praed Street dweller, for our first pints (Beck’s) at a genuine pub, a tiny place called The Grand Western a block down from our flat populated sparsely by friendly locals who insisted on taking our pictures for us. Followed by a detour to some other pub, boasting food and moderately better prices but also middle age drunken Welsh gentlemen who appeared harmless but inquired excessively into our native ancestries and the fabric of my coat.
We then returned to our flat for a viewing of a possibly illegal or at least dubiously acquired copy of ‘The Life Aquatic’ and gin and tonics with our new friend and his flat mate Patrick. Lovely night overall, despite initial darkening of homesickness, kept at bay by charming company and a moderate quantity of (entirely legal here, may I remind you) alcohol.
Tomorrow, we embark early to navigate the tubes and buses given the supposedly temporary shut down of our main line for the panoramic sightseeing tour.
The dinosaur skeleton is only a fake casting because THE REAL ONE IS IN THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM IN PITTSBURGH. How cool is that that we have the legitimate article and London of all places displays a gigantic fake?
I say ‘we’ like I’m from there. Which I guess I can decide if I am. I befriended a kid in an Oakland Zoo shirt on principle.
They brought in a police sergeant to expound upon the dangers of the city, or rather tell us the cheapest places for pints, how we could safely dispose of illegal pepper spray and mace (classified in the UK as firearms, minimum of two years’ incarceration for first offence), and that if we were arrested for being stupid drunk he would post the videos on his FaceBook for everyone to laugh at.
Internship orientation with information that it pains me to think anyone could not know about interning (i.e. “Smile!” “Be on time!” “Make good tea!”). Interview on Monday, somewhat a formality but if they despise me on first glance I’ll be reassigned.
Official welcome tea at the Regency Hotel, wherein our lovely academic dean made the statement that titles this post on her slavish devotion to steeped substances and reenacted a brief Monty Python skit.
Charming tiny sandwiches of non eggy substances (I despise egg sandwiches) and intricately built layered concoctions that may have been passion fruit-inspired or improvised tiramisu or key lime pie-based. Superb tea, naturally.
Crazily crowded tube ride home, but the tube is already starting to feel natural.
We now contemplate going to a pub, or instead just waiting around until the pubs close (at eleven p.m.) and complaining and then going to sleep. I hate not having a plan, the overcoming of which will have to be amongst the goals for the semester. Still, I can’t help wanting to know what I should wear or if I need my oyster card (tube fare ticket, just tap it on the turnstile and go) and how much money to bring and how far we need to go and just generally what.
I feel awful putting on makeup and dressing up without my beloved Paulina and Christy, and somehow (black belt be damned) it doesn’t feel safe to go out without the boys. Not in some bizarre female misogynist women-without-men-are-nothing kind of way, because well duh, but it’s just what I’m used to, it's the only form of going out I've ever known.
Called Dad in attempt to assuage homesickness. He told me that girl cat misses me terribly and is hiding under beds again like a poor sad thing.
LATER... like 2:30 a.m. later
Umlat and 8th and I met up with Samuel, also a Praed Street dweller, for our first pints (Beck’s) at a genuine pub, a tiny place called The Grand Western a block down from our flat populated sparsely by friendly locals who insisted on taking our pictures for us. Followed by a detour to some other pub, boasting food and moderately better prices but also middle age drunken Welsh gentlemen who appeared harmless but inquired excessively into our native ancestries and the fabric of my coat.
We then returned to our flat for a viewing of a possibly illegal or at least dubiously acquired copy of ‘The Life Aquatic’ and gin and tonics with our new friend and his flat mate Patrick. Lovely night overall, despite initial darkening of homesickness, kept at bay by charming company and a moderate quantity of (entirely legal here, may I remind you) alcohol.
Tomorrow, we embark early to navigate the tubes and buses given the supposedly temporary shut down of our main line for the panoramic sightseeing tour.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
First Real Day in London Commences Swimmingly
After sleeping for an unprecedented twelve hours Umlat and I made our first cups of authentically British tea. Our authentically British teapot is utterly confounding and may well be missing some vital heating components, so we improvised by boiling water in a saucepan and then sort of dumping it into mugs.
Thus fortified we threw on out trench coats and set off to explore Paddington, most notably finding THE Paddington Bear, who will now accompany us on all our travels, and the grocery (Sainbury’s). Find pictures wherein the Paddington Bear explores our flat and -I am startled by his sudden appearance- on FaceBook! Also BooBah, which 8th roommate Rachel brought! He is terrifying!
We then meet up with all our roommates for our first ever tube ride [Not that different from SEPTA, but MIND THE GAP!!!] to CAPA, where we’ll take our classes and be orientated tomorrow. Mid-search for a museum Umlat and I were mistaken for Londoners and asked for directions. Needless to say we were flattered beyond belief.
Brief exploration of Paddington followed (must find a new way to string sentences together- and then and then and then and then) wherein we grocery shopped. I was initially concerned as to how I would possibly survive in London on what had seemed a meager meal stipend because every restaurant seemed exorbitantly priced but groceries are actually quite cheap (Umlat and I found a place where we could split lunch for a pound and a half each, two packs of pasta for two and a half pounds, etc.) My theory is that restaurants are so expensive because they have to cover the cost of rent in London as well as the food and preparation.
I endeavored to purchase a small bottle of wine because for the first time in my life I could legally. Examining the selection, over ninety percent of the decently priced ones were from California. Are you happy Mr. Bottleshock!? I wasn’t going to buy American wine in Europe so I found a French, only to be told by the cashier that he needed to see ID because he thought I was fourteen. Dismal.
More tea in the flat because, well, we’re in Lond- I would actually totally have multiple cops of tea in the states, so that’s untrue- when an unexpected eighth roommate showed up, her home-stay having been miserable.
All at a pub for about twenty minutes because they close at eleven, declined to join my suitemates at a bar having to get up early tomorrow.
Cornish Pastries of beef, onion, and potato wrapped in flaky goodness for dinner!
It’s super late here and I have to be up early! Cheerio!
Thus fortified we threw on out trench coats and set off to explore Paddington, most notably finding THE Paddington Bear, who will now accompany us on all our travels, and the grocery (Sainbury’s). Find pictures wherein the Paddington Bear explores our flat and -I am startled by his sudden appearance- on FaceBook! Also BooBah, which 8th roommate Rachel brought! He is terrifying!
We then meet up with all our roommates for our first ever tube ride [Not that different from SEPTA, but MIND THE GAP!!!] to CAPA, where we’ll take our classes and be orientated tomorrow. Mid-search for a museum Umlat and I were mistaken for Londoners and asked for directions. Needless to say we were flattered beyond belief.
Brief exploration of Paddington followed (must find a new way to string sentences together- and then and then and then and then) wherein we grocery shopped. I was initially concerned as to how I would possibly survive in London on what had seemed a meager meal stipend because every restaurant seemed exorbitantly priced but groceries are actually quite cheap (Umlat and I found a place where we could split lunch for a pound and a half each, two packs of pasta for two and a half pounds, etc.) My theory is that restaurants are so expensive because they have to cover the cost of rent in London as well as the food and preparation.
I endeavored to purchase a small bottle of wine because for the first time in my life I could legally. Examining the selection, over ninety percent of the decently priced ones were from California. Are you happy Mr. Bottleshock!? I wasn’t going to buy American wine in Europe so I found a French, only to be told by the cashier that he needed to see ID because he thought I was fourteen. Dismal.
More tea in the flat because, well, we’re in Lond- I would actually totally have multiple cops of tea in the states, so that’s untrue- when an unexpected eighth roommate showed up, her home-stay having been miserable.
All at a pub for about twenty minutes because they close at eleven, declined to join my suitemates at a bar having to get up early tomorrow.
Cornish Pastries of beef, onion, and potato wrapped in flaky goodness for dinner!
It’s super late here and I have to be up early! Cheerio!
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Complimentary Viewing of Amsterdam
After a somewhat harried family dinner at Nifty Fifties (Philly cheese steaks, because who knows when I’ll have opportunity for those again) I found myself the laughing stock of international departures as my parental units and sibling insisted upon documenting my slow progress through security with cell phone photography.
That accomplished and several tearful phone call goodbyes later I found myself squished onto US Airways Flight 728, served icky barbeque chicken and elderly salad, acquainted with several fellow London-bound Pitt students via my sweatshirt’s helpful advertisement of my university affiliation, and presented with the option of several Bones reruns to peruse. When I exhausted them I turned to the GPS channel, which provides passengers with helpful information like the temperature outside the cabin, an animated representation of the flight’s global progress, and the exact sites and dates of several epic shipwrecks (Titanic 1912, Lusitania 1915). WHY WOULD I WANT TO KNOW THAT!?
Suddenly I notice that my destination is no longer listed as London, no. It is now Amsterdam.
This worries me as my shuttle reservation, flat, indeed my entire program, are not in Amsterdam.
Given the stark facts of an hour and a half wait in holding pattern above Heathrow and a mere forty-five minutes of gas left it was the only option, but still, the four hour delay entailed by the sojourn to the Netherlands was less than welcome. Still it afforded me the opportunity to meet several other students from my program, including Mystery Roommate (i.e. FaceBook-less) Alex.
Finally finally I arrived, exhausted but otherwise safe, at number 5 Praed Street, greeted by Umlat who had given me up for dead and four other flat mates who I confess I’ve yet to learn the names of.
My flat is gorgeous. Spacious and superbly located.
Tomorrow, we take the city.
That accomplished and several tearful phone call goodbyes later I found myself squished onto US Airways Flight 728, served icky barbeque chicken and elderly salad, acquainted with several fellow London-bound Pitt students via my sweatshirt’s helpful advertisement of my university affiliation, and presented with the option of several Bones reruns to peruse. When I exhausted them I turned to the GPS channel, which provides passengers with helpful information like the temperature outside the cabin, an animated representation of the flight’s global progress, and the exact sites and dates of several epic shipwrecks (Titanic 1912, Lusitania 1915). WHY WOULD I WANT TO KNOW THAT!?
Suddenly I notice that my destination is no longer listed as London, no. It is now Amsterdam.
This worries me as my shuttle reservation, flat, indeed my entire program, are not in Amsterdam.
Given the stark facts of an hour and a half wait in holding pattern above Heathrow and a mere forty-five minutes of gas left it was the only option, but still, the four hour delay entailed by the sojourn to the Netherlands was less than welcome. Still it afforded me the opportunity to meet several other students from my program, including Mystery Roommate (i.e. FaceBook-less) Alex.
Finally finally I arrived, exhausted but otherwise safe, at number 5 Praed Street, greeted by Umlat who had given me up for dead and four other flat mates who I confess I’ve yet to learn the names of.
My flat is gorgeous. Spacious and superbly located.
Tomorrow, we take the city.
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