tonight just turned awesome, but the awesomeness itself took long enough that now i need to go to bed, not take the time to recount it. I will give a report tomorrow. For now, here's some pictures of my newly decorated room. I've got photos up of friends from oberlin and new ro, some training shots, me and sensei at the holloween party, me and robin and reba from the same, and the family. also posters of captain marvel, the bindlestiffs, the outlaw josey whales, and some others; more to come. there's also a take out menu from Gig's, our chippy, and of course the good old Jolly Roger to oversee things. I am thinking about investing in a lamp or christmas lights. either would add to the hominess of the place and honestly, i could use the light. the urge to decorate came from reading Raymond Chandler. In an early bit in "The Long Goodbye," Marlowe describes this guy's room like so:

His apartment was small and stuffy and impersonal. He might have moved in that afternoon .... There wasn't a photograph or a personal article of any kind in the place. It might have been a hotel room rented for a meeting or a farewell, for a few drinks and a talk, for a roll in the hay. It didn't look like a place where anyone lived."

After I read that, i thought that it could be a description of my own room, and it damn well shouldn't be. I want to feel like i live here, not like i'm just passing through the place. I was a bit frustrated at the decorating - i kind of didn't want to make it into another college room, with a mass of posters and cards on the walls, but i don't really have any fine art or anything, and it all suits me well enough, and reminds me of me. So now i have a room on its way to comfortably decorated. Tomorrow, laundry and cleaning (i vaccuumed today - mad points).

HOOOOOOLY fucking hell.
It's snowing in London.
Snowing heavy. You know how it started out? With thunder. Lightening, Two HUGE thunder claps, and now it's snowing in London. It's biblical. You know what's next? Locusts! Gosh, it's really coming down. I will have to take some pictures. Oh my lord, it's really gorgeous and chilly and madnificent. I think that it only snows like once per historical era here, this is really amazing. I'm sure that there have been English monarchs that didn't see snow for their entire reigns. Oooo, it's really pretty and magic feeling. I heard the thunder a few minutes ago and thought it must be raining (rather logically, really), and just now went to check and see how wet it was before i went out. I pulled back my cutains and just stood there, dumbstruck, not really understanding what looked so different about the outside but knowing it wasn't the same. It took me a moment of solid concentration to realize that the ground in the alley outside my window hasn't always been white, and that white means snow, and that the snow was still in fact bursting from the sky in handfulls, like angels pelting snowballs at the workingmen in their bowler hats. It is really something.

(Later) Some pictures. I went to the main UCL building, very neoclassical, huge and beautiful, and took some shots of things inside the main gaits. These are them. You will notice two pictures from the same angle and vantage point, but very different. One is with flash, the other without, and you can see it both snowing and snown because of the difference. My favorite is the one of the statue. It's extraordinarily cold and slippery out, and the city is very shit-down from the snow. Tubes stopped, cars in confusion, pedestrians sliding around; it's like - guys, it's two inches of snow. relax. still, pretty and fun. i am going to stay in a cook a hot meal and read shakespeare and coleridge, and read some fiction with a glass of wine before bed. a good night in store for me!

So our Pint turned into a foray to our favorite chips place (or "chippy" as they refer to them here), for some, well, chips. Dude, chips are such a good invention. They are really really good and filling and delicious versions of french fries, but somehow infinitely better than fries could ever be. They start out in a little paper bag, like a small-size MacDonald's fries bad, and then wrap this big piece of greasy paper around it to make a big cone, and then shovel more chips into it until it fills up. They also give you a little wooden two-pronge folk to eat them with, out of your big paper cone. You pour some malt vingar onto them and a lot of salt, and then you walk around with your paper cone of delicious salty chips. Health? Oh, no. Tasty and cheap? Oh, yes yes yes. They are kind of like heaftier versions of Thrashers, for those of you who have been down to the Rehobeth beach boardwalk. Sooo good, are chips.

Our place to go for them is Gig's Fish Bar and Kebab House, a few minutes walk away. Ahh, Gig's. These middle-ages guys from Cyprus own and cook at it. They like us, and we like them, and we always leave Gig's with a good feeling and a some kind of pocket (paper, pita bread, gyro) full of greasy deliciosity. Gig speaks with a very "you lika de juice?" strained and accented voice, always sounding as if he has just finished singing soprano and his throat is struggling to make sounds that are still formed and audible. He always calls us "boysss" and calls any girls "lady" or "pretty lady" or "miss," and is always smiling. He seems to like what he does a great deal, and always has a kind word and always slides your drink down the counter to you, and is very happy when you catch it just right.

So to Gig's and then we got a call to come to the University London Union to join people John knows at a "club" that they have there. It was expensive and lame, the DJ was terrrrrrible (we would have killed for something with a good, danceable beat), and it was impossible to meet anyone or dance with anyone you didn't already know. Do people actually meet people when they go dancing? How does this work? Or are pubs and dance clubs actually just illusions of social fluidity, and everyone is there with people that they already know? Or maybe there are just ways of doing it that I am as yet unfamiliar with? It is a frustrating mystery. If anyone has some light to shed, hook a brother up.

So the good chips, crappy clubbing, and then home and to bed.

Oh, yesterday afternoon however I had a good time seeing some clowning. I didn't see as much of the show as I had aimed to (a busdriver lady barked at me to sit down whenever i asked her where i should get off, insisting that it was on "the other side," whatever the hell that meant, and finally admitted/realized that she didn't know where i wanted to go, and thought that we had passed it long ago), but it was still free and fun. I got to see this clown-come-friend Hillary who I met at the Palace in NY a few weeks ago, and who invited me to this gig here. It was really wonderful to see her and meet her people; she was extraordinarily nice and welcoming, and introduced me to all her friends. Tonight I am going to join some of them at this clown Paka's show at a theatre called The Albany, if i can find it and get there on time. Here are a few pictures from the clowning thing yesterday, and then I am off to shower and read some Chaucer.

Alright now fellas, what's cooler than being cool?

So far a weekend of fun days and funny nights.
Friday afternoon I went to a lecture that I saw advertised about, called “the Clash, Revolution Rock, and Rebellion.” It was this guy in his late-30s who used to be a roadie for the Clash, telling stories and sharing facts and ideas, all with this big passion and awe behind it, and it was really neat. Comparing them to other bands, talking about how important they were to a generation of young people in Britain figuring out how to feel angry at their government and society and parents, about how influential they were to a lot of people’s political thought and musical direction. Very cool lecture, although I’m not sure I took away anything concrete. Still, really neat hearing someone talk knowledgably and passionately about the Clash for an hour.
Last night was kind of silly, and it looks like tonight will be about the same kind of deal. Had some tentative strings of plans that kinda fizzled out, couldn’t get in touch with Dave (my old co from Becket) because the number he gave me doesn’t work, a girl I made plans to hang out with fell sick, you get the idea. John and I went to a studenty pub nearby and shot a game of pool, which was fun but kind of silly, since we both had been trying to make other plans and had ended up there through the lack of anything better materializing. Tonight looks to be about the same; we are waiting to hear back from friends of his who have the promise of something fun to do, but I think that if they call us it will be with an idea to be active during much later hours than either of us want. We may end up shooting another round of pool, or the equivalent activity, and calling it a night.
It is very weird to have my chief friend and co-conspirator here be named John. I am used to telling people stories about “me and john” and meaning John Tozzi from New Ro. It feels somehow underhanded to be talking about another John, like I’m cheating on him, hahaha.
Okay, the word has just come in, it’s a bust. We’re out to get a pint.

Dinnerage, a good affair.

I have been doing very well with cooking for myself. John and I are getting to be an efficient cooking team, dividing up the labor and the food used. I'm finding that i do most of the actual cooking work, and we are both very happy in this situation. He does the things like boiling the water for pasta, heating up the bread, i do things like selecting and stir-frying the veggies, adding spices and ingredients, making the tastiness and sumptuosity happen. We both contribute to the Arnold Shwarzenegger impressions that myseterious yet invariably accompany almost any time spent in a kitchen (although he conceded tonight that my Arnold was better - yessssss) Tonight was good food; I had bought a small package of ground beef for 75p with a mind to add it to a pasta sauce, and it worked brilliantly. Half an onion and a clove of garlic got started in some olive oil in a pan, onto which i added some oregano oregano to cook in, and then added and browned the meat (adding in lots of red pepper flakes and some normal grindy pepper too). nce the meat was nice and cooked through I poured a bottled premade sauce into the pan, and voila! It was deeeeeeeeeeelicious! That sauce on pasta, warm pita bread on the side to scrape ouur bowls with, and fizzy lemonade to drink. That Lemonade stuff is growing on me; i totally hated it at fist but the bottle i had bought was quite large; but by the time i had finished it off, it had really grown on me, and now i'm on my second one. So dinner was great, and then Dad called and got me out of dishes. Score. It was also really really awesome and wonderful to talk with him, about Al Kooper and academics and living life in london and all kinds of things.

I find that I really enjoy the cooking as long as it's for more than just myself. When it's just me, PB&J or something out of a can (i had tinned mackerel in tomato sauce earlier for a sumptuous treat - much like sardines, and in fact quite possibly the same fish), or cold cereal. But cooking for two usually doesn't require much more labor or substantially greater quantity than cooking for one, and is exponentially more rewarding and fun. Sleep time for me. Hey, how cool are those picture, huh? Next time we cook I will have John take one of me as photographic evidence, and post it up.

To bed and sleeping, goodnight!

Well!
It seems that my amazing sister has scored me an upgrade for this blog service, meaning that I can post some pictures!
So I will make a more detailed entry later tonight or tomorrow morning, since I know I haven't updated in a few days, but here are a few highlights from my first few days, when I took some pictures.

So this is one of those cute SmartCars that I have been seeing around London. I think that they are probably cheap and gas-friendly, environmental, and freakin TINY enough to be oprerable by remote-control. Great for parking, great for city driving in general; terrifyingly unsafe for highway driving is what i hear. But for the dedicated London urbanite, they're probably awesome. And CUTE! Driving here is insane and scary. I might have my international driver's license, but I will wait until I'm out of London to even think about using it. The streets and driving regs here are funny and calamitous. The majority of streets that I have been on have been far too narrow for two cars and a row of parking, let alone two rows of parking, but it all seems to work somehow. The lines that get painted for road lanes seem to have no real bearing on driving patterns; turning lanes double as normal traffic lanes for the opposite direction, and cars can park facing in any direction on a the street. People seem to manage it. I have seen cars in a lane waiting to turn, and a car begins to turn towards them forcing them to back up and line up behind other traffic to let someone through. Two directions of traffic can share the roads in weird ways, cars can park facing anywhere, and everyone drives at like 45 miles an hour. There is also no kind of grid, this being an old old city, so you have to find your way by genetic memory and instinct, and if roads are closed or detoured (actually, they don't say "detour," they say "diversion," which i think is the funniest sign in the world. I will have to snap some more pics of traffic signs), they will not be well marked, if at all.
Driving. CraaaaaazY.

Next come a few signs I liked from Tottenham Court Road, a big commercial bustling street in the neighborhood. These are just a few that I liked a lot. First we have a Japanese Restaraunt that, acording to its name, has a higher grade in Aikido than I do:


And, since every neighborhood has to have its Church:



This is the wrapper of the first English candy bar I bought, which I bought completely for the packaging. My favorite has become the Crunchy Bar, which is like a little foil wrapped piece of heaven. Freakin heaven. It's chocolate aroud some kind of honeyness, like crystallized honey and deliciosity. Awesome. But that's not this - this is just chocolate.


That's all from me for now. More soon. It was a good week, I will share about it.
Later.
I will take more pictures too (with me in them).

I have been having a really good couple of days.
Yesterday morning I got up nice and early, with a plan to go to the lecture for Restoration Lit even though I’m not in that class. The classes here are divided into giant lectures and smaller seminars, and with the lectures the idea is for them to give you background info and interesting topics for thought and exploration, and each lecture is self contained; you don’t need to do any reading or prep for them. With this in mind, I have decided that the lectures for classes I’m not in should be as accessible as any, so there’s no reason not to go to them and get some free learnin’. It’s like they’re saying, “hey, we’re handing out some free learnin’ … cooooome ‘n’ git it!” And yes ma’am, I think I will. So anyway, I didn’t. I thought I would, but I definitely wanted to take it easy yesterday morning; I was still mad tired from the AikiSunday before it.

So I was having my nice bowl of cereal in the hall kitchen instead of getting my free learning, and I met some people! In particular I met this girl Selena from Nottingham who lives a few doors down and is in her fourth year, studying French. She was actually quite friendly, and later in the day when I got home from classes I found a note from her inviting me to go salsa dancing at night! I went, and it was loads of fun. It was she and a friend, and this club down by Leicester Square (we went through china town to get there – more like china street than town, but very neat) where they go for Salsa lessons every Monday. I went and joined the intermediate group to stay with my new friends even though I haven’t salsa-d more than once ever and it was like two years ago at Oberlin. I held my own, let me tell you. Felipe, Latino boys, you would have been proud of me. The first part of class was partners in a ring with instruction in the center, and every couple minutes we changed partners. We learned a bunch of moves in succession that eventually made one long salsation. It was fun and laid back and very non-scary and doable. The second part was the Wheel, a different kind of salsa-ing with lots more partner switching and set steps which a leader in the group calls out, kind of like a quarterback calling spot plays. This too was fun and doable, and afterwards the place opened doors into normal club operation and we stayed and danced for a few with our newfound salsa prowess. It was really fun, and with British kids, and made me feel very successfully social.

I didn’t go to the Brazilian club tonight, although that had been a tentative plan for a while. Instead I went out to drinks with Aikido people after class, and actually found it a bit disappointing. I think that I will start directing my social energies away from the club. There are very few other students in it, mostly realer people with jobs and things who have been training for years and years and years, and I feel a bit stranded in the conversations. That’s okay; the training is marvelous. Lots of drills and exercises, lots of very technically oriented instruction. Tonight lots of suwariwaza and hamni-handachi, and very specific direction with them, It’s quite technical, and very helpful. I feel like I will bring home very good skills and habits from it. Yo, I mad suck at suwariwaza. I need to get better at that.

Directing my social energies away from the club shouldn’t be too tough though, I am beginning to think. I met some more American kids today that seem really nice and friendly (friendly Midwesterners yo, I’m saved!), and we might do touristy stuff this weekend together, as well as checking out the London Mime festival (as long as it ain’t people in glass boxes kinda stuff, and is cheap). And now I have met British kids too. And I’m getting back in touch with Becket Brits, including my co from years ago who it will be marvelous to see. And maybe Brazilian night next week, who knows! Things feel good, I will go to sleep happy … and bloody exhausted! Aikido, Salsa, Aikido … enough is enough (although tomorrow night I may do some capoiera at U of L, just to spicen it up a bit!).

And there’s studying to do too! Tomorrow I hit the library to find out what Coleridge wrote about Venus & Adonis, and to read what other people wrote about Coleridge! Very exciting, believe it or not. Read his Eolian Harp poem, it’s quite good. We discussed that and some others in seminar today, but I didn’t agree with the class’s treatment of This Lime Tree Bower My Prison; I thought it was too easy and simplistic and that there was really more there. I will have to email John Olmsted about it.

By body’s sore, but content. I’m gonna russle up some ibuprofen and food and maybe a shower and Don Delillo before bed.

Aikipub

I'm glad to discover that the intrinsic and spiritual connection between Beer and Aikido is one that the English unfalteringly support.

Friday night I met up with people from the club to celebrate one of their birthdays at a club-favorite pub, called the Yorkshire Grey. Getting there was in itself a bit of an adventure, mainly in that it was the farthest afield that I have travelled from my flat. I am finding my area of London to be more or less navigable, as long as I stay comfortable with streets doing strage things. Some of them for instance change name. This is no biggie, run of the mill. Others however change direction. This is a bit more difficult to deal with. I can navigate a square circuit of sidewalk and be on one street the entire time if I'm in a square, for example. Yes, I can make four left turns and stay on Gordon Square, which (just to make things more ... fun?) is off of Gordon Street, which may or may not link up with or share a neighborhood with Gordon Place, or Gordan Road. It can be tricky but is always rewarding, in the sense that every street I've turned onto has more exciting thinsg on it; pubs, shops, food, art galleries, gorgeous architechture, street art, vendors, all kinds of life. I'm loving being in this big city.

So I made it to the Yorkshire Grey and things were great. A discovery on the subject of British etiquette and friendliness: if you're sitting at a table with friends and there's no drink in front of you, there is a good chance that one will magically appear there soon. This isn't quite as true as all that, but friends will take care of you if you are of a lower social/wage bracket. Their sense of fairness and civility tells them that the bloke with a job should buy the student his drink. It is really friendly and nice, and everyone is really warm about it all. I did make another related discovery, however. Apparently one is not supposed to let/encourage someone else to choose his or her drink. This, in fact, constitutes making a pass at somebody. I became aware of this when, after several curiously awkward interactions of "hey, sure I'd love another. Beer, whatever's your favorite," or "sure, whatever you're having," someone told me "not to say that unless you mean it." One the one hand, I find this really funny. The other side, however, is the onset of a momentus decision. If I cannot let another choose for me, then the time has come. I must find "MY BEER." A harrowing journey through the taps of local pubs may be required to find the perfect medium, tasty and smooth, cheap enough to get bought more than one, expensive enough to not suck. Oh, how the days do grow longer; mama, I'm a'growin' up now.

The night out was quite fun. It felt good and even stabilizing to be out with real people in a normal place, doing something regular. No contrivance about it, you know what I mean? No "international student orientation" kind of stuff. Just life and firendliness and a slice of culture. With a pint, of course.

I was to an aikido seminar in Birmingham today with the club. There was lots of really great training, and i got to take home a new pair of bruisy bruisy wrists. If you want a fuller report, I'll be happy to email you the one that I wrote up for Aikido friends back home (but chose to spare you lot from). One thing that's not in said report: the drive up was my first view of some English countryside. It was neat. There were sheep! LOTS of 'em! Sheeeeeep! Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
Okay, i need sleep now.

What I got from Tesco

Fresh Milk, 1.07
Lemonade, .58
Pasta Sauce, .93
Yogurt, .81
2 Naan bread packages (2 pcs per), 1.00
1 Grapefruit, .41
Cornflakes, 1.23
Rice Crispies, 1.71
Maryland Choc Chip Cookies, .56
White Bread, .43
Linguine, .35
Starbursts, .29
Can of Baked Beans and Sausages, .71
2 Onions, .19
Raspberry Jam, .90
Red bell Pepper, .67
2 Cans Ham, .71
Corn Niblets, .59
1 Can Chick Peas, .41
1 Can Tuna in Sunflower Oil, .70
1 pack Garlic Pita Bread, .40
1 head of Garlic, .29
2 Limes, .36

Total: L16.36

A successful adventure.
We have met the enemy, and he is to be feared no longer.

Supplies

I ran a bunch of errands today and discovered that it can be a surprisingly exhausting occupation of time. I got some things I very much needed though, like toothpaste. I forgot mine at home and have been using the little tube of airline toothpaste they gave me on Virgin. It ran out in the morning though, so push came to shove and I went to the drug store, Boots. Wait, is it a Chemists? Who knows. Anyway. I was very happy to see my favorite kind of toothpaste there for cheap – I love it mainly because of the name: “Colgate Fresh Confidence Toothpaste.” It makes me really happy; now my teeth can finally have fresh confidence! It’s so silly, but it makes me chuckle every time I brush, so that's none too bad.

I also got a mobile phone! Part of my adventure yesterday included a lot of incidental research into the different plans and phones, and I’m satisfied I got the right deal. For those of you with a mind to call me up sometime, my number is 079636 93980, plus country codes beforehand, and I don’t get charged for incoming calls! I got some household essentials yesterday too, toilet paper and soy sauce and a 10lb bag of Japanese rice. The rice was too expensive compared to US, but a good deal for here.

I really need to start buying food. I’ve been spending like L2 to 2.50 or so per meal and haven't really started cooking for myself yet because I just moved in like two days ago and haven't really even unpacked or anything yet ... and also cause the supermarket scares me. It’s partly the whole buying-all-my-own-food thing which I intimidating since it requires a pre-emptive investment of a larger sum of money, and either a prescient or a planned-out understanding of what I’m going to eat in the next week. That's part of it, but the supermarket itself also just scares me – Sainsbury’s is its name and it’s really expensive and very busy, and there's so many people doing stuff and buying things. There's also arx & Spencer but i think that's more expensive. I think that I will have to brave Sainsbury's tomorrow afternoon though. I can get cornflakes and milk at least, and that shouldn't be too much money. And maybe I’ll get some kind of veggies and some cooking oil, and then I can fry them up to put them on my rice. So that's maybe a good sounding plan. I can do that. Ooo, I can get bread and jelly too (it’s probably called Jam here) and have sammiches too, since Mom and Dad were brilliant enough to make me take peanut butter with me. Thanks parents, that was spot on. And maybe i could go for canned tuna fish and mayo; those could be good investments. In the kitchen for my hall everyone has their own cabinet with a lock on it, so no one has to worry about storing or safekeeping their stuff. I can horde me treasures there! Yarr!

I will report on my success/possible failure later.

I will also fill you in on my fabulous adventure yesterday, involving a Welshman and the Brazilian Exchange among other things.