I’ve been writing this entry throughout the week, so it’s a bit disjointed. I just split it into sections so it’ll make more sense.
Work
I've been here 2 1/2 weeks now. It seems like it’s been a lot longer. Things at work are still going good, but I had to jump into working on a lot of projects right away. In a way that's not so bad, it will take less time to acclimatize and it keeps me busy. We were supposed to have a marketing executive start work on Monday. A marketing executive isn’t the same level as you would assume in the States, ‘executive’ in this case is actually a junior position, someone a year or two out of university. This guy Mark was supposed to come on board to help my boss Martha and I out with our projects.
The work flow is that I would create a project plan, and lay out what needed to be done, and he could do a lot of the actual execution so I’d be free to work on other projects and do research and planning, etc. But the guy notified the agency on Friday that he isn’t going to take the job. Weirdly enough the reason he gave is that he wants to move to America to pursue working at a law firm. Random. Martha was really pissed off because he told us at the last possible minute. She said he’d seemed like a strong candidate and had done lots of research for the job and acted like he was really excited about it. Oh well. That means we’ll be without help for at least a month or so though while they recruit and interview, etc. I guess that’s how it goes.
Social StuffLast weekend I went out drinking after work on Friday with Martha and a few other people we work with. I had a few beers and then I met up with Jorge & his friend Paul who he works with at the drum shop. We went to this bar that for some reason, I think the way it's laid out, keeps reminding me of a TGI Fridays. But it’s like a goth/rock bar so I always feel like I’m in some weird goth TGI Fridays.
Then we went over to Garlic and Shots, which is a Swedish death metal bar. All the bartenders are Swedish death metal dudes & chicks and they serve all these different shots with garlic in them (I stick to the beer). The top floor is a regular bar, but the basement is where everyone mostly hangs out and it's dark and in the back they have a room with a coffin as a table. It's a pretty laid back bar though considering the theme. The weekend crowd in London is the same as it is in NY, it's like amateur night and all the B&T equivalents come into town and act like idiots so we end up in bars like Garlic & Shots because the frat dude types don't really go in there.
At the end of the night, these two guys came in and they were wearing suits and they were really dorky looking. I said to Jorge, what are those guys doing here? They look so out of place. Then one of them opened his wallet and it lit up in flames. Jorge and I were like whoa, what was that? Then he closed it, and the flames went out. Then he opened it, and flames licked out over it. I was fascinated, so I went over and asked him to do it again. It was a special trick wallet, I don’t know how it was set up, but it was the coolest thing. Turns out he and his friend were magicians. I asked him to do a magic trick so he did this trick where he took a rolling paper and ripped it up into a bunch of little pieces, rolled it into a ball, lit it on fire, and opened it up again and it was in one piece. He gave it to me to examine and I was amazed. Jorge was like, dude, it’s not the same one he ripped up, it’s a sleight of hand, but I told him no way, dude, it’s magic! Then I got the guy’s card. You know, for later. When I’m in a pinch and I need a magician.
On Saturday I met up with Gabriela in Soho. Gabriela is a friend I’ve known for a few years in NY, I think we originally met through Bobbo, and she moved here two weeks before me. It's funny cause she lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn and now she lives in my neighborhood here. She lives by Old Street, which is like an 8 min walk from her flat to mine. It’s been good to hang out with her, because even though I've only been here a few weeks, I already feel very far away from NY. Not that I don't feel close to my life in NY, it's just that I can feel the distance. I’m realizing it will be a long time before I see some people and that’s starting to settle in my head. I miss people a lot already so I know that will be hard, even though I am really glad I am here.
But seeing Gabriela makes me feel like I have a connection to home. And I know it will be awesome when Kevin moves here, and when Anya is in Oxford. It just helps me feel more comfortable to have connections to home, and not like I am floating in this new world.
So on Saturday Gabriela and I walked around town and she showed me good shops to go to in Soho. The exchange rate is killing my bank account, so I’ve had to be careful about what I’ve been buying. I picked up a UK mobile though, Gabriela helped me pick out a cute little Sony Ericsson phone from Orange. It's a pay-as-you-go phone, because I can't get a plan until I have a bank account and residency proof (of course). So I'll just have to do pay-as-you-go (which is more $) until I get settled with all that. Everything has been like that so far, like I was saying before, you can't do one thing with out the other and it's like a vicious circle. I just have to be patient I guess.
We had dinner at a Vietnamese place, there's a lot of great food around here. We stopped at her flat, it’s really nice and it’s in a new building. When the boys get back from their trips we’ll have to start looking for a new place. I think we can get a whole house with 4 people, but it probably won’t be new or as central as Gabriela’s place is, I don’t think we can afford it, Old Street area has gotten pretty expensive. I’d like to try to find a place that’s in good condition and where I feel relatively safe walking on the street at night. But in general I also want to save as many pounds as I can, and if I spend any money it should be on traveling. I don't want to blow it all on rent, that would be such a waste.
That Saturday night I hung out with Jorge cause he was leaving for Portugal the next morning. He played a festival there on Thursday with Metallica and Mastodon, and from what Jorge & Joao told me, it went great and everyone had lots of fun. They played to something like 10,000 people and Jorge said by the time Metallica came on there was like 40,000. They got to hang out with the other bands backstage and it sounds like it was a blast. I’ll have to get the full story when I see them. I’m jealous, wish I could have gone.
Jorge’s band is called More Than a Thousand, if you’re curious. They’re touring around Belgium next and then going back to Portugal to record some songs, so he'll be gone most of the month. Nuno went to Portugal this week also, to visit his family and watch Jorge play. So it's been pretty quiet in the flat.
Also last weekend, my friend Jordan was in town. He’d been in Cambridge visiting friends for a few days. Sunday morning he called and said he had a few hours to get together before he had to catch his plane. I’d just been wandering around at a gallery in my neighborhood that was showing an exhibit on the history and evolution of skateboards and skateboard sneakers, which was actually pretty interesting. There's a lot of cool stuff in my neighborhood, just down the street there's tons of galleries and clothing boutiques.
So Jordan met me near my flat and I took him to the indoor market at Brick Lane (which I described in my last blog). I go there every Sunday, I went this morning again, and I just love it. I’ll probably get sick of it eventually, but not until I try every type of food and get to know all the different designers. This morning I bought an awesome red cap there from this lady that hand-makes them. And I have my eye on this one artist’s stuff, he does these great prints that I think Mary would really love. I want to buy one for her, and one for myself when I get my own room.
Jordan really liked the market. He had a little crush on this adorable girl who makes these gorgeous bright-colored cupcakes with little decorations on top. We split some Ethiopian and Japanese food, and shared a strawberry cupcake for dessert. Then we walked around the other section where all the artists and designers sell their clothing at booths and Jordan bought this cool sportsjacket that has a hood attached. Nuno’s ex-girlfriend Nikki used to sell jewelery there and she’d introduced me to this guy before, he makes some fun clothes for guys, jackets and tops and stuff.
We were having a good time, but Jordan only had like a half hour before he had to go so I walked him to the train station through Spitalfields, which is a huge outdoor / indoor market. It's more high end than the Brick Lane market and has shops like Benefit in the indoor section. The outdoor area has tons of booths with clothing and jewelry and baked goods and stuff. Even though we only had a little time to hang, we made the most of it and had a fun time, it was good to see him. I dropped him off at the train and then I went and walked around Spitalfields more and I just loved it. They have SO many cute dresses and tops that are more my style than the stuff we have in NY.
I went there again this morning for awhile by myself and then Gabriela met up with me. I bought a few things, but I had to leave so much stuff in storage back in NY, so I can sort of justify it… I’ve been looking for a chunky gold-colored necklace for awhile and I found the perfect one. The girl who makes it let me custom pick out all the pieces, like the chain and it has a few charms that hang off it. I really love it. I also got some shea butter from an African guy and apparently the proceeds (if it’s true) help some children at a school in Africa, so good deed for the day I guess.
Last Sunday I also tried to go to the flower market, which my flatmate Rose said is amazing and you can get gorgeous flowers really cheap. It's only on Sundays, same as the Brick Lane market. I had walked over there after Spitalfields, but by the time I had gotten there it was closed. So I was determined not to miss it this weekend. I went this morning and it really was amazing. There’s a whole street closed off and lined with nothing but flower stands and all the merchants are just yelling out prices and there’s flowers everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Big sunflowers and roses, stargazer lilies (one of my favourites), orchids, everything. I bought 3 bunches of roses for £5 and a delicate white orchid plant for £5. The orchid should last for 6-8 weeks they said, so that will brighten up the kitchen.
Last weekend was also Glastonbury, which is a big UK music festival, and Joao’s band played a few sets on different stages. I heard it went well. I’ll see him tomorrow so I’ll get to hear about both Glastonbury and Portugal. I hung out with my friends Rory and Rachel on Tuesday. We didn’t do much, they just stopped by my flat and then we went for a drink at the Royal Oak, which is a cool pub in the neighborhood. It’s funny because we hang out at a bar called the Royal Oak in Brooklyn as well.
Rory is a friend I met through Megan, she introduced us a few years ago when he was visiting NY for the first time. We showed him around the city and had a good time, and we’ve been friends since. He used to be in a band called Test Icicles and they would tour in NY a lot, so I’d see him pretty regularly. His girlfriend Rachel is a sweetheart, I first met her when they came to visit NY a few months ago, and I hung out with her a bunch the last time I was here. I’m glad to have them here because they’re both just such genuinely sweet, nice people, and I always have a good time with them.
Another thing I did recently that was fun was I hung out with Annick's parents. They were in town visiting their friend Janet and they took me out to see this play in the West End. It was a comedy called Boeing-Boeing and it was super funny. I was surprised at how good it was. It was really sweet of them to take me. Their friend Janet and her daughter Gina came with us as well and we all went out to dinner afterwards. Gina just graduated high school and she’s studying to be an opera singer. It was interesting to hear her talk about opera and what she thinks of some of the well-known young singers on the stage right now (she thinks most of them are crap). Annick’s Dad Howard was telling me that Gina has an amazing voice, I’d love to see her sing sometime. It was good to see them, I think I will see people from home pretty regularly, which is great. I've only been here a little while and Annick's parents, Jordan, and the Slackers were here already.
The Slackers played at the Underworld in Camden on Wednesday. I went to see them after work and it was pouring rain (shocking, I know). The Underworld is a venue that’s literally under the World’s End pub, hence the name. I’ve been to the World’s End before, but never to Underworld. It’s a pretty decent-sized venue, it has a couple bars, and it’s pitch black inside. I was wearing heels and I kept thinking I was going to fall down and break something every time I tried to walk. When I got there, I ran into Marcus right away. I went backstage for a little bit, had a beer and caught up with Marcus, Glen, and Dave and then I went out front so they could get changed.
The boys were sweet and said I could just go back and grab beers whenever I wanted, but I didn’t want to be rude and just keep going back and taking their beer, so I went to the front bar. I don’t know what the deal is, but sometimes you just get a bartender with a chip on their shoulder. This girl served every single person around me for 10 minutes and just would not take my order. I was getting so pissed and I was missing the first few songs, but I waited patiently. And she kept even looking straight at me and still skipping over me. Finally she takes my order, and she fucking asks me for ID. ID! I’m 29 and the drinking ago is 18. The guys were saying I should be flattered, and I do look younger than my age, but I really think she did it just to be an asshole. Anyway, after that I didn’t bother with the bar again, I just went backstage.
The guys played two sets. During the first set I watched from the crowd and it was really fun. They sounded great, everyone was super into it. It was nice because it was a mixed crew, lots of teenagers and twenty-somethings, but also a lot of people in their 40s and 50s as well, which is cool. Ska and punk are so much more mainstream here. In America, it’s marginalized, but here everyone knows who the Specials, Madness, the Clash, the Sex Pistols are. You hear ska and punk and reggae being played everywhere, even in mainstream stores. It’s one of the things I really enjoy about England. If you ask any random person in America who Shane MacGowan is, most people, even in the cities, wouldn’t have a clue. But here, when we went to see the Pogues and the Dropkick Murphys play during Christmas two years ago, it was all over the TV and in the papers. Everyone knows who the Pogues are. It’s kind of awesome.
And apparently London REALLY loves the Slackers as well, so much that I was amazed. After the 1st set was over, Marcus came and grabbed me and brought me backstage. After awhile, you could hear them yelling for them to go back. They went back on and this time I watched from the side of the stage. The second set was really energetic and I don’t know if everyone was just really drunk (and high) or if the Slackers were playing especially good that night, but the kids were going MENTAL. It was kind of amazing to watch. I’ve seen countless Slackers shows over the years and this was one of the best crowd responses I’ve ever seen. There was so much energy, the kids were grabbing the guys in the band, climbing up on stage, stage diving, screaming along to the songs, it was crazy. It was probably one of the best Slackers shows I’ve been to.
I went backstage with them before the encore and after awhile the guy from the venue came back and was like, you guys better go out there, they’re howling for blood. They went out, and it was true, the crowd just lost it, and they played two encores. I’m glad I got to see them play here. Besides being great friends, The Slackers are also definitely one of my favorite bands. They are just incredible musicians and such a pleasure to see live. And I was proud of Glen because he’s really turned into a great co-frontman, along with Vic. I’m glad to see that people in London appreciate them as much as I do. It made me feel warm towards my new home, that they know good music when they see it.
After the show, a reporter from the Sun came backstage with his wife and two teenage daughters. They were talking to Vic and Marcus and I think they took some pictures. But the funny thing was the two teenage girls were freaking out about being backstage. They were saying to each other “Oh my god, we’re like, totally backstage. Can you believe this? That’s like, a door… BACKSTAGE. And that’s like, a beer… BACKSTAGE.” It was kind of amazing, because it was literally some crappy room with a few chairs and some food and beer, and me, Vic, Vic’s girlfriend Jess, and Marcus and Jay. Not really super exciting. But it was cute they were getting all freaked out and excited about it.
I think they definitely get more of a rock star treatment over here than in the States. They even have a tour bus. I know they always have a bus when they come over here, but I only ever see them in NY and Boston and they obviously don’t get a bus there, so I was like, whoa you guys have a bus! Like a real one! They invited me to go along with them for a few days to other shows, but I couldn’t because I had to work. When they come back in the Fall though, I’ll jump on with them for a few days. I think Tiffany will be with them on that tour as well, so that will be fun.
After the show we hung out for a few hours and had some drinks. Their friend Squirrel was there from New Orleans and she was saying that there’s so much rampant crime in New Orleans now. People are just getting robbed and murdered all the time and the police are too short-staffed and funded to do anything about it. She said it’s basically descended into lawlessness and things are really bad there. It was sad to hear about.
Squirrel herself was a bit of a character. She’s one of these kind of tough girls that seems really fun to hang out with, as long as she doesn’t fly off the handle. Glen was telling me that back when they taped Real World New Orleans that there was some love-interest storyline between a guy and a girl in the house. Somehow Squirrel was involved with the storyline like a love triangle or something, I didn’t understand that part. But the salient point was that it ended with Squirrel and the girl at a bar having a boxing match. The Real World girl was so not prepared to fight someone like Squirrel and I guess the minute the match started and the cameras were rolling, Squirrel beat the girl senseless and then held up her gloves into the camera and yelled something like ‘Welcome to the real world, bitch!” They showed it on TV and Glen said it was amazing.
So that was my Wednesday night, and I stayed in Thurs. This weekend was pretty chill. Friday they took us out for drinks at work as a celebration for hitting a target a few months early. I had a good time, got to know some of my co-workers a little more. Saturday night I went out with my friend Lemon and her friend Billy. Lemon is a girl I met at a club called After Skool about two years ago. We had such a fun time dancing and hanging out that night that we kept in touch ever since, and I hung out with her the last time I was here. She’s a sweetheart.
We went for a drink in a pub in Camden and then to another pub called Nambucca, which I’ve been to a few times over the years. It was pouring so we stayed there for a few hours. Lemon and her friends were going to this club night near Tottenham Court Rd in Soho called Frog. Apparently it was Frog’s last night, so there was going to be huge lines and it would be super crowded. The club scene here is lots of drugs and binge drinking and making out and all that, which I think I’m honestly getting a little old for. Lemon had passes for her and another friend, but not for me and Billy. They said they thought I could go in with them, but I didn’t want to take the risk and have to stand in line for hours with a bunch of drunk 18-year old kids and then pay £10 to get in. Does that make me sound super old and crotchety? I do like to still go out to big clubs sometimes, but I also think that when you are close to 30 you kind of need to start finding other places to hang. You gotta retire gracefully. I don’t know if I’d feel good about ending up as some creepy 35-year old in the club doing lines in the bathroom and making out with 19-year olds, know what I mean? And yeah, ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I really do think if you’re still going to clubs like Frog and AfterSkool (which are basically like MisShapes in NY) when you’re 30, it’s a slippery slope. I don’t care if I look young for my age, it’s time to start moving on…
So I went to meet up with Gabriela in East London instead and we went to some pub with her friends. We had a good time dancing and then I walked back towards my flat with Gabriela’s friend, who lives nearby. She was really nice, she just moved here from Glasgow. Today, went to flower market, Spitalfields, and now just hanging in. Writing this.
Lost in TranslationSo here's a little anecdote for ya...
One morning on the way to work, I wanted to pick up some breakfast. I went to little cafe that I had been to for lunch earlier in the week, they have really good sandwiches. I wanted something breakfast-y but it's hard to get that around here. They're not as into breakfast culture as we are, especially not anything you can eat on the go, besides maybe a muffin. So I'm thinking, all I want is a sausage, egg & cheese sandwich. I normally try to eat healthier than that, but I’d been drinking the night before and it really is the best thing after a late night drinking. This, I think, is a reasonable thing to want for breakfast.
The girl at the counter asks “what would you like?” in this really thick French accent. I say, “do you have any type of breakfast sandwich?” She says "sausage" and the rest is unintelligable franglish. I say, “excuse me?” and she says something about sausage and egg (or so I thought). I say, “Oh, sausage and egg? Can you do that?” and she's like, “Sausage and cheese with egg?” and I'm like, “Yeah that's great.”
The Italian guy at the register goes, “What are you having? Sausage and cheese and egg? What a strange sandwich!” and looks at me funny. So I'm thinking... uh oh, that can’t be good. I look over at the sandwich, and I realize my mistake. "Egg" to them means egg mayo, ie. egg salad. Ugh. Egg salad, cheddar cheese, and sausage, on foccacia bread. And we're talking like a large Italian-style sausage, cut in half and plunked on top.
So at this point, the sandwich is made, I’ve already paid, and I’m stuck. I tried it, and it was actually like the saltiest thing I've ever eaten. The cheese and sausage were super salty and rich, I had to throw it out. So, lesson learned. But at least I got an amusing anecdote out of it ☺
British Terminology I’ve Encountered“can’t be arsed” - can’t be bothered
“the loo” - the bathroom
“he’s really getting on my tit” - he’s annoying me
“sod it” - fuck it
WeatherThe weather – has been solidly crap. It is still raining all the time. There has been severe flooding up North and they are expecting even more. The flooding is so bad I guess because they don’t normally have this level of rainfall, especially this season, they said usually by now they even have water rations in effect since it’s so dry. Everyone says it’s not normal to have this much rain and I’m skeptical but I’ve heard it so much that I believe them. It’s kind of scary because they’re having heat waves across Spain and some other places and here it’s like monsoon season. It’s just bizarre.
I don't know if it's global warming or what, but hopefully it will stop raining and warm up soon. I think I might actually go out to Portugal to stay with Jorge one weekend, the flight is only £100 roundtrip and it would be really nice to sit on the beach for a few days.
British Current Events / PoliticsWell, you’ve probably heard about the attempted bombings. There were two cars that were found packed with explosives and nails and stuff. They were both taken away and diffused by the police. One was parked outside a nightclub in West London and the other was near Picadilly Circus, also West. Then yesterday some guys drove a car into the airport in Glasgow, Scotland. Only a few people were injured slightly but the guys in the car survived and when the police got there, one of them lit himself on fire. The whole thing is just crazy.
After that, they had to detonate a car that was parked in the Glasgow hospital where the suspects were taken from the airport. They are saying all the incidents are linked, and they’ve raised the alert level here to the highest. I don’t have TV so it’s probably better that I don’t have the news so I don’t freak myself out. I guess I just have to try not to worry about it, since I don’t have any control over it and getting scared and worked up about it isn’t going to help anything. No one around me seems super concerned, people are talking about it, but just like, so what happened? No one’s freaking out or anything. Although if those car bombs had gone off, it would have been really horrible. I guess the whole threat of terrorism here is something I’m used to from NY, but I also feel like it’s not something I’ll ever get ‘used to’. It always makes me nervous, but I also realize that I have to live my life regardless, and there probably isn’t anywhere you can go these days where’s there’s no threat of violence.
Another big news story is the iPhone being released, which I’m sure is also all over the place in the US. It’s not even released here for another 6 months but people are really into it.
Probably the biggest story is that Tony Blair stepped down this week, and a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown took over. An interesting thing I didn’t know about politics in England is that they don’t actually vote for the PM. They vote for the party. So whoever is the head of the party that gets elected becomes Prime Minister. I’m not sure why I didn’t know that, other than I guess the NY educational system deciding after they taught us about the Tea Party and the Redcoats, there wasn’t much else to say about Britain.
Tony Blair stepped down largely over his handling of the Iraq War. I am glad to see that change can be made here like that, and that it seemed dignified and normal, like, thanks for the work Tony, but you fucked up so you need to step down and let someone else handle this. Maybe that’s just my outsider perspective, but that’s how it seemed to me. I don’t know much about Brown. The papers say he is serious and responsible and capable, but it seems everyone is reserving judgement to see how he handles things.
I wish we could do that in the States, just have George Bush step down and have someone capable come and try to start cleaning up the mess. But of course that’s not how we do it, it’s gotta be so extreme and insane. Like Bill Clinton cheating on his wife and lying about it and then the Republicans forcing the entire country to be constantly subjected to a disgusting and needless impeachment trial with all the paparazzi and gory details. Over nothing. But George Bush lies over and over again to the American people and he still gets re-elected, he’s still waging wars, still in power, ignoring the environmental crises, etc, etc. and nothing happens to take him out of power. We elect a Democratic majority and they fucking fold when they need to stand up. And still nothing changes. I don’t know.
Another couple interesting things about the system in Britain. At my job, they just have to fill out some forms and then I am registered for National Healthcare. They take out a lot of taxes from your paycheck, similar to in the States, but part of it goes to National Healthcare so that’s cool. I mean we pay local, state, federal, social security, and then on top of that our companies pay for health care and then we also pay for healthcare out of our paychecks on top of that. And then we go to the doctor and we STILL have to pay even more, it’s crazy.
But in England, as far as I understand it, you just go and register with your local doctor and give them your National Health number. You might have to pay a little bit for certain things, but it’s never that much, and if you go to the hospital, everything is covered and you never have to pay. Even prescriptions are just a few pounds. I’m not sure what the health care quality is like, but man, from where I stand, the whole thing is pretty amazing. In a way, it makes you just feel safer somehow, that if something happened to you, you wouldn’t lose everything or not get the care when you needed it.
And our system is so overcrowded and messed up. Every time I’ve been to the hospital I’ve gotten such bad care, it's horrible. But when my Dad got sick two years ago when we were visiting London, they treated him right away, were super nice and explained everything, took care of him, and he was able to go home later that night. And they didn’t charge him a thing. It was amazing.
Michael Moore’s movie Sicko is coming out any day now, and whatever you think about Michael Moore, I do hope it opens up a greater discussion about reforming health care in the States. It’s such a bad situation and they act like it’s impossible to change it, but it isn’t, they do it here and as far as I can tell it works well enough. I mean I’m sure there’s flaws in the system, but I have to say, universal health care seems pretty amazing so far.
Another interesting thing is that my company actually does my taxes for me. They fill out the paperwork and send it in, and that’s it. They have set ways of calculating the taxes so that you don’t really get a refund because they make sure to just take out what you owe. So I won’t get a refund, but I also don’t have to file my taxes or deal with it, which is pretty cool. I still have to file back in the States, but at least I don’t have to do both.
So those are the upsides… On the downside, other aspects of the system here are fucking bizarre. One of the most insane things they do here is when they run a credit check on you, they base part of your credit on your address. So if you live with flatmates that haven’t paid the bills or defaulted on council tax (a local tax that everyone has to pay), then it will show up and affect your credit rating. If you move to a new flat, and someone else who lived there before you was late or defaulted on bills, it will affect your credit rating, even if you had nothing to do with it. How insane is that? But it’s true, I’ve been told this by the people at the mobile phone place, and at the bank.
They also have pay-as-you-go utilities in some places. Rory was telling me that he has an electric meter at his flat and you just put money in it, like coins or a credit card. If the electricity runs out and you don’t have any money, you just don’t have electricity until you put more money into it. How weird. But in a way, I guess it kind of makes sense to pay as you use it. In the US everything is based on credit, so they basically are giving you a service based on credit and then you pay them back. Half the time I was always arguing with my gas and electric company for overcharging me. As ghetto as pay-as-you-go electricity seems, at least you know what you’re paying for.
The other thing I’ve encountered is that the banks here are really bad, they make it very difficult for you to get an account if you just moved here. Also, from what I’ve read about them, you have to be very careful to watch out because they hit you with crazy hidden and overdraft fees, even when they claim it’s a “free” account. Which they do in the States too, but here it seems maybe worse.
But I was finally able to get a bank account with HSBC on Friday, and my job said they would pay me for June this week (since I normally wouldn’t get paid until July 25th). So I’ll have some pounds and stop having to pay for everything with my poor half-priced dollars.
AdjustingMy phone finally switched over, so my US cell phone is dead now and my cell phone number goes to my phone at home. I won't go into it, but dealing with Vonage was a fucking nightmare. It took me over 3 hours on the phone with Vonage customer service to finally get someone who knew what they were talking about to help me get things hooked up. And who spoke enough English so we could understand each other (outsourcing is CRAP and I hope companies start realizing that they might be saving money, but their customer support quality has plummeted and they are going to really lose customers).
Everything’s working now, though, so you can reach me anytime and I have voicemail. I’ll try to call people soon, things have just been so crazy that I haven’t had much downtime and haven’t been able to contact people as much as I want.
I’ve been really fluctuating emotionally. I miss people a lot, I think about Max and how I won’t see him as much anymore and how I’m going to miss a lot of stuff in people’s lives. I miss Rick so much, he was such a big part of my every day and I notice him not being there all the time, especially when I’m tired and all I want to do is just cuddle with him and relax and I realize we can’t do that anymore.
They say that you’re the most stressed during certain life events: moving, breaking up with someone, starting a new job, etc. And in the last two months I’ve just been going through so many of them at the same time. Moving to a new country, living with new people, starting a new job, leaving my friends & family (and my cat), leaving Rick and adjusting to not being in a relationship anymore, saying goodbye to Adam and knowing that I won’t see him for a year because he has to go fight in a war. Again.
And in the middle of all this, I found out that an old friend of mine, Scott Swaner, had died. Scott was someone I became friends with in Boston, he was going to Harvard Grad School for East Asian Literature. Mary and I met him because she thought he was cute. Scott dressed very snazzy and wore nice suits, and Mary had noticed him at a show. My friend Tim (the guy from the Bosstones that I used to do my magazine Rude International with) decided he was going to play matchmaker and he went and introduced himself to Scott and talked to him for awhile. He brought Scott over and introduced him to me & Mary, and that got Mary and Scott talking.
This actually was at a Slackers show at the Paradise, when they were playing with Hepcat and the Gadjits. This might have even been the first time I saw any of those bands play, and it was also the first night I met Robyn. I guess now that I look back on it, that night turned out to be a precursor for a lot of things and people in my life.
But anyway, that’s the night we met Scott, and we hung out with him at the show, and he came home with us and we got drunk on wine and stayed up talking all night listening to Tom Waits. And we were good friends ever since. Scott and Mary ended up being the first models for our fashion shoots in Rude International. There was like a 3-page spread of Mary and Scott on Dicky’s scooter that we borrowed, if anyone remembers from the magazine. Those fashion shoots were my first versions of what I later did with Pin-Up NYC. Mary was embarrassed about that shoot, because she found out later that the guys that worked at the liquor store in Allston had her picture hanging up in the back room. Haha. Can’t help it if she looked hot!
Scott moved to Seoul for awhile to work on his PhD, where he had actually lived for awhile when he was younger, as a Mormon missionary. Scott had a really fascinating life and I won’t go into all his personal details, but he had a lot of very interesting experiences. He was older than me, and he had been raised as a Mormon in Salt Lake City and traveled for awhile as a missionary before being ex-communicated from the Church (and from Brigham-Young where he was going at the time) because he had a girlfriend and was into ska and punk music, among other things.
But he picked himself back up and started his life again, and he did some really cool things. He got his MD at Cornell, and then went to Harvard, and won a Fulbright Scholarship. He helped organize the sit-in at Harvard when they weren’t paying their workers a living wage. He worked on translating poetry from jailed political poets in Asia to help get their work out and bring attention to their cause.
Scott was a brilliant and complicated person, but he was also really sweet, always in a good mood, always up for fun. When Mary and I moved to NY he came to stay with us and we would stay up all night talking about everything, from music, to politics, to literature. I can honestly say that Scott has always been one of my favorite people. We lived far away from each other in the last few years, and so kept in touch intermittently, but wrote each other long emails trying to keep up with each others’ lives. He had taken a teaching position as Assistant Professor of Korean Literature & Poetry at the University of Washington in Seattle and the last time I heard from him was about a year ago.
I was going through old pictures and emails when I was packing up my apartment and I came across a bunch of emails from Scott, and was looking though pictures of us from college. I was planning to email him to tell him about my move and see if he wanted to come and visit. When I was staying with Mary my last few weeks in NY, she also had been thinking about Scott, she wanted to contact him to have him read at the reading series she curates. She looked him up on the web to get his current email address and instead found an obituary. Scott had died of pancreatic cancer in December, 9 months after his original diagnosis. He wrote a blog starting from when he was first diagnosed up until his death. I scanned it, and as Scott was an amazing writer, it was fascinating and humorous and sad all at the same time. I can’t bring myself to read the whole thing yet, maybe in a few months. I was shocked to realize that Scott was dead.
I was upset at first that he hadn’t contacted us, hadn’t told us, but I realize now that’s crazy. He obviously had so much to deal with in front of him, and what was he going to say? ‘By the way, I just wanted to let you know I’m dying..?’ I guess it was just hard to find out about it like that, that he’d passed away a few months ago and we didn’t even know. Didn’t have the chance to say goodbye. His family and friends wouldn’t have known to get in touch with me & Mary, we didn’t really know anyone else in his life. Even in Boston I’d never met any of his friends. I think he just had people from lots of different times and places in his life that he kept in touch with, he didn’t have a cohesive set of friends that I knew of. From reading his blog, he had good friends in Seattle who took care of him until the end, so I’m glad to know that. But I just still can’t wrap my head around the fact that he’s gone and I won’t ever talk to him again. I think it’s just starting to sink in.
When I first started looking at job opportunities in London, I was open to the possibility that I might get a job and have to move pretty quickly. I didn’t know how I really felt about that, other than I had kicked a set of events into motion, and whatever the plunge would be, it was going to be something I’d have to see through. Like when you get to the top of a rollercoaster ride and you think, do I really want to do this? But you don’t have a choice, you’re already on it and you have to go wherever it takes you, no matter how scary it is. So I had kind of braced for that. Because even though people might say, well you had a choice, I didn’t feel that way. I decided that I was going to try and see if I could move here, and leave it up to fate. And if I had the opportunity, that I would take it, that it would be my path.
But once I was actually offered a job, in a way, I felt like my previous life suddenly ceased to exist, and I was thrust into this new world. Everything that happened from that moment on was a series of stressful and emotional experiences that have taken me from my life in NY to my life here, and I’ve had little to no breathing room in between.
Now that I’m starting to settle in here a little bit, I’m first beginning to process things like being away from my family, Scott’s death, having to leave Rick, and they’re kind of hitting me hard anytime I get a moment alone. I think it’s healthy to take time and deal with this stuff, but I also need to try to keep myself on an even keel. I have to focus on my job right now and making some money and getting stabilized here. So I’ve been kind of fluctuating emotionally in the last week or so, but I’ll be alright. I just need to stay focused. And I have to say, London has definitely been doing it’s best to keep me on my toes…
Work
I've been here 2 1/2 weeks now. It seems like it’s been a lot longer. Things at work are still going good, but I had to jump into working on a lot of projects right away. In a way that's not so bad, it will take less time to acclimatize and it keeps me busy. We were supposed to have a marketing executive start work on Monday. A marketing executive isn’t the same level as you would assume in the States, ‘executive’ in this case is actually a junior position, someone a year or two out of university. This guy Mark was supposed to come on board to help my boss Martha and I out with our projects.
The work flow is that I would create a project plan, and lay out what needed to be done, and he could do a lot of the actual execution so I’d be free to work on other projects and do research and planning, etc. But the guy notified the agency on Friday that he isn’t going to take the job. Weirdly enough the reason he gave is that he wants to move to America to pursue working at a law firm. Random. Martha was really pissed off because he told us at the last possible minute. She said he’d seemed like a strong candidate and had done lots of research for the job and acted like he was really excited about it. Oh well. That means we’ll be without help for at least a month or so though while they recruit and interview, etc. I guess that’s how it goes.
Social StuffLast weekend I went out drinking after work on Friday with Martha and a few other people we work with. I had a few beers and then I met up with Jorge & his friend Paul who he works with at the drum shop. We went to this bar that for some reason, I think the way it's laid out, keeps reminding me of a TGI Fridays. But it’s like a goth/rock bar so I always feel like I’m in some weird goth TGI Fridays.
Then we went over to Garlic and Shots, which is a Swedish death metal bar. All the bartenders are Swedish death metal dudes & chicks and they serve all these different shots with garlic in them (I stick to the beer). The top floor is a regular bar, but the basement is where everyone mostly hangs out and it's dark and in the back they have a room with a coffin as a table. It's a pretty laid back bar though considering the theme. The weekend crowd in London is the same as it is in NY, it's like amateur night and all the B&T equivalents come into town and act like idiots so we end up in bars like Garlic & Shots because the frat dude types don't really go in there.
At the end of the night, these two guys came in and they were wearing suits and they were really dorky looking. I said to Jorge, what are those guys doing here? They look so out of place. Then one of them opened his wallet and it lit up in flames. Jorge and I were like whoa, what was that? Then he closed it, and the flames went out. Then he opened it, and flames licked out over it. I was fascinated, so I went over and asked him to do it again. It was a special trick wallet, I don’t know how it was set up, but it was the coolest thing. Turns out he and his friend were magicians. I asked him to do a magic trick so he did this trick where he took a rolling paper and ripped it up into a bunch of little pieces, rolled it into a ball, lit it on fire, and opened it up again and it was in one piece. He gave it to me to examine and I was amazed. Jorge was like, dude, it’s not the same one he ripped up, it’s a sleight of hand, but I told him no way, dude, it’s magic! Then I got the guy’s card. You know, for later. When I’m in a pinch and I need a magician.
On Saturday I met up with Gabriela in Soho. Gabriela is a friend I’ve known for a few years in NY, I think we originally met through Bobbo, and she moved here two weeks before me. It's funny cause she lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn and now she lives in my neighborhood here. She lives by Old Street, which is like an 8 min walk from her flat to mine. It’s been good to hang out with her, because even though I've only been here a few weeks, I already feel very far away from NY. Not that I don't feel close to my life in NY, it's just that I can feel the distance. I’m realizing it will be a long time before I see some people and that’s starting to settle in my head. I miss people a lot already so I know that will be hard, even though I am really glad I am here.
But seeing Gabriela makes me feel like I have a connection to home. And I know it will be awesome when Kevin moves here, and when Anya is in Oxford. It just helps me feel more comfortable to have connections to home, and not like I am floating in this new world.
So on Saturday Gabriela and I walked around town and she showed me good shops to go to in Soho. The exchange rate is killing my bank account, so I’ve had to be careful about what I’ve been buying. I picked up a UK mobile though, Gabriela helped me pick out a cute little Sony Ericsson phone from Orange. It's a pay-as-you-go phone, because I can't get a plan until I have a bank account and residency proof (of course). So I'll just have to do pay-as-you-go (which is more $) until I get settled with all that. Everything has been like that so far, like I was saying before, you can't do one thing with out the other and it's like a vicious circle. I just have to be patient I guess.
We had dinner at a Vietnamese place, there's a lot of great food around here. We stopped at her flat, it’s really nice and it’s in a new building. When the boys get back from their trips we’ll have to start looking for a new place. I think we can get a whole house with 4 people, but it probably won’t be new or as central as Gabriela’s place is, I don’t think we can afford it, Old Street area has gotten pretty expensive. I’d like to try to find a place that’s in good condition and where I feel relatively safe walking on the street at night. But in general I also want to save as many pounds as I can, and if I spend any money it should be on traveling. I don't want to blow it all on rent, that would be such a waste.
That Saturday night I hung out with Jorge cause he was leaving for Portugal the next morning. He played a festival there on Thursday with Metallica and Mastodon, and from what Jorge & Joao told me, it went great and everyone had lots of fun. They played to something like 10,000 people and Jorge said by the time Metallica came on there was like 40,000. They got to hang out with the other bands backstage and it sounds like it was a blast. I’ll have to get the full story when I see them. I’m jealous, wish I could have gone.
Jorge’s band is called More Than a Thousand, if you’re curious. They’re touring around Belgium next and then going back to Portugal to record some songs, so he'll be gone most of the month. Nuno went to Portugal this week also, to visit his family and watch Jorge play. So it's been pretty quiet in the flat.
Also last weekend, my friend Jordan was in town. He’d been in Cambridge visiting friends for a few days. Sunday morning he called and said he had a few hours to get together before he had to catch his plane. I’d just been wandering around at a gallery in my neighborhood that was showing an exhibit on the history and evolution of skateboards and skateboard sneakers, which was actually pretty interesting. There's a lot of cool stuff in my neighborhood, just down the street there's tons of galleries and clothing boutiques.
So Jordan met me near my flat and I took him to the indoor market at Brick Lane (which I described in my last blog). I go there every Sunday, I went this morning again, and I just love it. I’ll probably get sick of it eventually, but not until I try every type of food and get to know all the different designers. This morning I bought an awesome red cap there from this lady that hand-makes them. And I have my eye on this one artist’s stuff, he does these great prints that I think Mary would really love. I want to buy one for her, and one for myself when I get my own room.
Jordan really liked the market. He had a little crush on this adorable girl who makes these gorgeous bright-colored cupcakes with little decorations on top. We split some Ethiopian and Japanese food, and shared a strawberry cupcake for dessert. Then we walked around the other section where all the artists and designers sell their clothing at booths and Jordan bought this cool sportsjacket that has a hood attached. Nuno’s ex-girlfriend Nikki used to sell jewelery there and she’d introduced me to this guy before, he makes some fun clothes for guys, jackets and tops and stuff.
We were having a good time, but Jordan only had like a half hour before he had to go so I walked him to the train station through Spitalfields, which is a huge outdoor / indoor market. It's more high end than the Brick Lane market and has shops like Benefit in the indoor section. The outdoor area has tons of booths with clothing and jewelry and baked goods and stuff. Even though we only had a little time to hang, we made the most of it and had a fun time, it was good to see him. I dropped him off at the train and then I went and walked around Spitalfields more and I just loved it. They have SO many cute dresses and tops that are more my style than the stuff we have in NY.
I went there again this morning for awhile by myself and then Gabriela met up with me. I bought a few things, but I had to leave so much stuff in storage back in NY, so I can sort of justify it… I’ve been looking for a chunky gold-colored necklace for awhile and I found the perfect one. The girl who makes it let me custom pick out all the pieces, like the chain and it has a few charms that hang off it. I really love it. I also got some shea butter from an African guy and apparently the proceeds (if it’s true) help some children at a school in Africa, so good deed for the day I guess.
Last Sunday I also tried to go to the flower market, which my flatmate Rose said is amazing and you can get gorgeous flowers really cheap. It's only on Sundays, same as the Brick Lane market. I had walked over there after Spitalfields, but by the time I had gotten there it was closed. So I was determined not to miss it this weekend. I went this morning and it really was amazing. There’s a whole street closed off and lined with nothing but flower stands and all the merchants are just yelling out prices and there’s flowers everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Big sunflowers and roses, stargazer lilies (one of my favourites), orchids, everything. I bought 3 bunches of roses for £5 and a delicate white orchid plant for £5. The orchid should last for 6-8 weeks they said, so that will brighten up the kitchen.
Last weekend was also Glastonbury, which is a big UK music festival, and Joao’s band played a few sets on different stages. I heard it went well. I’ll see him tomorrow so I’ll get to hear about both Glastonbury and Portugal. I hung out with my friends Rory and Rachel on Tuesday. We didn’t do much, they just stopped by my flat and then we went for a drink at the Royal Oak, which is a cool pub in the neighborhood. It’s funny because we hang out at a bar called the Royal Oak in Brooklyn as well.
Rory is a friend I met through Megan, she introduced us a few years ago when he was visiting NY for the first time. We showed him around the city and had a good time, and we’ve been friends since. He used to be in a band called Test Icicles and they would tour in NY a lot, so I’d see him pretty regularly. His girlfriend Rachel is a sweetheart, I first met her when they came to visit NY a few months ago, and I hung out with her a bunch the last time I was here. I’m glad to have them here because they’re both just such genuinely sweet, nice people, and I always have a good time with them.
Another thing I did recently that was fun was I hung out with Annick's parents. They were in town visiting their friend Janet and they took me out to see this play in the West End. It was a comedy called Boeing-Boeing and it was super funny. I was surprised at how good it was. It was really sweet of them to take me. Their friend Janet and her daughter Gina came with us as well and we all went out to dinner afterwards. Gina just graduated high school and she’s studying to be an opera singer. It was interesting to hear her talk about opera and what she thinks of some of the well-known young singers on the stage right now (she thinks most of them are crap). Annick’s Dad Howard was telling me that Gina has an amazing voice, I’d love to see her sing sometime. It was good to see them, I think I will see people from home pretty regularly, which is great. I've only been here a little while and Annick's parents, Jordan, and the Slackers were here already.
The Slackers played at the Underworld in Camden on Wednesday. I went to see them after work and it was pouring rain (shocking, I know). The Underworld is a venue that’s literally under the World’s End pub, hence the name. I’ve been to the World’s End before, but never to Underworld. It’s a pretty decent-sized venue, it has a couple bars, and it’s pitch black inside. I was wearing heels and I kept thinking I was going to fall down and break something every time I tried to walk. When I got there, I ran into Marcus right away. I went backstage for a little bit, had a beer and caught up with Marcus, Glen, and Dave and then I went out front so they could get changed.
The boys were sweet and said I could just go back and grab beers whenever I wanted, but I didn’t want to be rude and just keep going back and taking their beer, so I went to the front bar. I don’t know what the deal is, but sometimes you just get a bartender with a chip on their shoulder. This girl served every single person around me for 10 minutes and just would not take my order. I was getting so pissed and I was missing the first few songs, but I waited patiently. And she kept even looking straight at me and still skipping over me. Finally she takes my order, and she fucking asks me for ID. ID! I’m 29 and the drinking ago is 18. The guys were saying I should be flattered, and I do look younger than my age, but I really think she did it just to be an asshole. Anyway, after that I didn’t bother with the bar again, I just went backstage.
The guys played two sets. During the first set I watched from the crowd and it was really fun. They sounded great, everyone was super into it. It was nice because it was a mixed crew, lots of teenagers and twenty-somethings, but also a lot of people in their 40s and 50s as well, which is cool. Ska and punk are so much more mainstream here. In America, it’s marginalized, but here everyone knows who the Specials, Madness, the Clash, the Sex Pistols are. You hear ska and punk and reggae being played everywhere, even in mainstream stores. It’s one of the things I really enjoy about England. If you ask any random person in America who Shane MacGowan is, most people, even in the cities, wouldn’t have a clue. But here, when we went to see the Pogues and the Dropkick Murphys play during Christmas two years ago, it was all over the TV and in the papers. Everyone knows who the Pogues are. It’s kind of awesome.
And apparently London REALLY loves the Slackers as well, so much that I was amazed. After the 1st set was over, Marcus came and grabbed me and brought me backstage. After awhile, you could hear them yelling for them to go back. They went back on and this time I watched from the side of the stage. The second set was really energetic and I don’t know if everyone was just really drunk (and high) or if the Slackers were playing especially good that night, but the kids were going MENTAL. It was kind of amazing to watch. I’ve seen countless Slackers shows over the years and this was one of the best crowd responses I’ve ever seen. There was so much energy, the kids were grabbing the guys in the band, climbing up on stage, stage diving, screaming along to the songs, it was crazy. It was probably one of the best Slackers shows I’ve been to.
I went backstage with them before the encore and after awhile the guy from the venue came back and was like, you guys better go out there, they’re howling for blood. They went out, and it was true, the crowd just lost it, and they played two encores. I’m glad I got to see them play here. Besides being great friends, The Slackers are also definitely one of my favorite bands. They are just incredible musicians and such a pleasure to see live. And I was proud of Glen because he’s really turned into a great co-frontman, along with Vic. I’m glad to see that people in London appreciate them as much as I do. It made me feel warm towards my new home, that they know good music when they see it.
After the show, a reporter from the Sun came backstage with his wife and two teenage daughters. They were talking to Vic and Marcus and I think they took some pictures. But the funny thing was the two teenage girls were freaking out about being backstage. They were saying to each other “Oh my god, we’re like, totally backstage. Can you believe this? That’s like, a door… BACKSTAGE. And that’s like, a beer… BACKSTAGE.” It was kind of amazing, because it was literally some crappy room with a few chairs and some food and beer, and me, Vic, Vic’s girlfriend Jess, and Marcus and Jay. Not really super exciting. But it was cute they were getting all freaked out and excited about it.
I think they definitely get more of a rock star treatment over here than in the States. They even have a tour bus. I know they always have a bus when they come over here, but I only ever see them in NY and Boston and they obviously don’t get a bus there, so I was like, whoa you guys have a bus! Like a real one! They invited me to go along with them for a few days to other shows, but I couldn’t because I had to work. When they come back in the Fall though, I’ll jump on with them for a few days. I think Tiffany will be with them on that tour as well, so that will be fun.
After the show we hung out for a few hours and had some drinks. Their friend Squirrel was there from New Orleans and she was saying that there’s so much rampant crime in New Orleans now. People are just getting robbed and murdered all the time and the police are too short-staffed and funded to do anything about it. She said it’s basically descended into lawlessness and things are really bad there. It was sad to hear about.
Squirrel herself was a bit of a character. She’s one of these kind of tough girls that seems really fun to hang out with, as long as she doesn’t fly off the handle. Glen was telling me that back when they taped Real World New Orleans that there was some love-interest storyline between a guy and a girl in the house. Somehow Squirrel was involved with the storyline like a love triangle or something, I didn’t understand that part. But the salient point was that it ended with Squirrel and the girl at a bar having a boxing match. The Real World girl was so not prepared to fight someone like Squirrel and I guess the minute the match started and the cameras were rolling, Squirrel beat the girl senseless and then held up her gloves into the camera and yelled something like ‘Welcome to the real world, bitch!” They showed it on TV and Glen said it was amazing.
So that was my Wednesday night, and I stayed in Thurs. This weekend was pretty chill. Friday they took us out for drinks at work as a celebration for hitting a target a few months early. I had a good time, got to know some of my co-workers a little more. Saturday night I went out with my friend Lemon and her friend Billy. Lemon is a girl I met at a club called After Skool about two years ago. We had such a fun time dancing and hanging out that night that we kept in touch ever since, and I hung out with her the last time I was here. She’s a sweetheart.
We went for a drink in a pub in Camden and then to another pub called Nambucca, which I’ve been to a few times over the years. It was pouring so we stayed there for a few hours. Lemon and her friends were going to this club night near Tottenham Court Rd in Soho called Frog. Apparently it was Frog’s last night, so there was going to be huge lines and it would be super crowded. The club scene here is lots of drugs and binge drinking and making out and all that, which I think I’m honestly getting a little old for. Lemon had passes for her and another friend, but not for me and Billy. They said they thought I could go in with them, but I didn’t want to take the risk and have to stand in line for hours with a bunch of drunk 18-year old kids and then pay £10 to get in. Does that make me sound super old and crotchety? I do like to still go out to big clubs sometimes, but I also think that when you are close to 30 you kind of need to start finding other places to hang. You gotta retire gracefully. I don’t know if I’d feel good about ending up as some creepy 35-year old in the club doing lines in the bathroom and making out with 19-year olds, know what I mean? And yeah, ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I really do think if you’re still going to clubs like Frog and AfterSkool (which are basically like MisShapes in NY) when you’re 30, it’s a slippery slope. I don’t care if I look young for my age, it’s time to start moving on…
So I went to meet up with Gabriela in East London instead and we went to some pub with her friends. We had a good time dancing and then I walked back towards my flat with Gabriela’s friend, who lives nearby. She was really nice, she just moved here from Glasgow. Today, went to flower market, Spitalfields, and now just hanging in. Writing this.
Lost in TranslationSo here's a little anecdote for ya...
One morning on the way to work, I wanted to pick up some breakfast. I went to little cafe that I had been to for lunch earlier in the week, they have really good sandwiches. I wanted something breakfast-y but it's hard to get that around here. They're not as into breakfast culture as we are, especially not anything you can eat on the go, besides maybe a muffin. So I'm thinking, all I want is a sausage, egg & cheese sandwich. I normally try to eat healthier than that, but I’d been drinking the night before and it really is the best thing after a late night drinking. This, I think, is a reasonable thing to want for breakfast.
The girl at the counter asks “what would you like?” in this really thick French accent. I say, “do you have any type of breakfast sandwich?” She says "sausage" and the rest is unintelligable franglish. I say, “excuse me?” and she says something about sausage and egg (or so I thought). I say, “Oh, sausage and egg? Can you do that?” and she's like, “Sausage and cheese with egg?” and I'm like, “Yeah that's great.”
The Italian guy at the register goes, “What are you having? Sausage and cheese and egg? What a strange sandwich!” and looks at me funny. So I'm thinking... uh oh, that can’t be good. I look over at the sandwich, and I realize my mistake. "Egg" to them means egg mayo, ie. egg salad. Ugh. Egg salad, cheddar cheese, and sausage, on foccacia bread. And we're talking like a large Italian-style sausage, cut in half and plunked on top.
So at this point, the sandwich is made, I’ve already paid, and I’m stuck. I tried it, and it was actually like the saltiest thing I've ever eaten. The cheese and sausage were super salty and rich, I had to throw it out. So, lesson learned. But at least I got an amusing anecdote out of it ☺
British Terminology I’ve Encountered“can’t be arsed” - can’t be bothered
“the loo” - the bathroom
“he’s really getting on my tit” - he’s annoying me
“sod it” - fuck it
WeatherThe weather – has been solidly crap. It is still raining all the time. There has been severe flooding up North and they are expecting even more. The flooding is so bad I guess because they don’t normally have this level of rainfall, especially this season, they said usually by now they even have water rations in effect since it’s so dry. Everyone says it’s not normal to have this much rain and I’m skeptical but I’ve heard it so much that I believe them. It’s kind of scary because they’re having heat waves across Spain and some other places and here it’s like monsoon season. It’s just bizarre.
I don't know if it's global warming or what, but hopefully it will stop raining and warm up soon. I think I might actually go out to Portugal to stay with Jorge one weekend, the flight is only £100 roundtrip and it would be really nice to sit on the beach for a few days.
British Current Events / PoliticsWell, you’ve probably heard about the attempted bombings. There were two cars that were found packed with explosives and nails and stuff. They were both taken away and diffused by the police. One was parked outside a nightclub in West London and the other was near Picadilly Circus, also West. Then yesterday some guys drove a car into the airport in Glasgow, Scotland. Only a few people were injured slightly but the guys in the car survived and when the police got there, one of them lit himself on fire. The whole thing is just crazy.
After that, they had to detonate a car that was parked in the Glasgow hospital where the suspects were taken from the airport. They are saying all the incidents are linked, and they’ve raised the alert level here to the highest. I don’t have TV so it’s probably better that I don’t have the news so I don’t freak myself out. I guess I just have to try not to worry about it, since I don’t have any control over it and getting scared and worked up about it isn’t going to help anything. No one around me seems super concerned, people are talking about it, but just like, so what happened? No one’s freaking out or anything. Although if those car bombs had gone off, it would have been really horrible. I guess the whole threat of terrorism here is something I’m used to from NY, but I also feel like it’s not something I’ll ever get ‘used to’. It always makes me nervous, but I also realize that I have to live my life regardless, and there probably isn’t anywhere you can go these days where’s there’s no threat of violence.
Another big news story is the iPhone being released, which I’m sure is also all over the place in the US. It’s not even released here for another 6 months but people are really into it.
Probably the biggest story is that Tony Blair stepped down this week, and a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown took over. An interesting thing I didn’t know about politics in England is that they don’t actually vote for the PM. They vote for the party. So whoever is the head of the party that gets elected becomes Prime Minister. I’m not sure why I didn’t know that, other than I guess the NY educational system deciding after they taught us about the Tea Party and the Redcoats, there wasn’t much else to say about Britain.
Tony Blair stepped down largely over his handling of the Iraq War. I am glad to see that change can be made here like that, and that it seemed dignified and normal, like, thanks for the work Tony, but you fucked up so you need to step down and let someone else handle this. Maybe that’s just my outsider perspective, but that’s how it seemed to me. I don’t know much about Brown. The papers say he is serious and responsible and capable, but it seems everyone is reserving judgement to see how he handles things.
I wish we could do that in the States, just have George Bush step down and have someone capable come and try to start cleaning up the mess. But of course that’s not how we do it, it’s gotta be so extreme and insane. Like Bill Clinton cheating on his wife and lying about it and then the Republicans forcing the entire country to be constantly subjected to a disgusting and needless impeachment trial with all the paparazzi and gory details. Over nothing. But George Bush lies over and over again to the American people and he still gets re-elected, he’s still waging wars, still in power, ignoring the environmental crises, etc, etc. and nothing happens to take him out of power. We elect a Democratic majority and they fucking fold when they need to stand up. And still nothing changes. I don’t know.
Another couple interesting things about the system in Britain. At my job, they just have to fill out some forms and then I am registered for National Healthcare. They take out a lot of taxes from your paycheck, similar to in the States, but part of it goes to National Healthcare so that’s cool. I mean we pay local, state, federal, social security, and then on top of that our companies pay for health care and then we also pay for healthcare out of our paychecks on top of that. And then we go to the doctor and we STILL have to pay even more, it’s crazy.
But in England, as far as I understand it, you just go and register with your local doctor and give them your National Health number. You might have to pay a little bit for certain things, but it’s never that much, and if you go to the hospital, everything is covered and you never have to pay. Even prescriptions are just a few pounds. I’m not sure what the health care quality is like, but man, from where I stand, the whole thing is pretty amazing. In a way, it makes you just feel safer somehow, that if something happened to you, you wouldn’t lose everything or not get the care when you needed it.
And our system is so overcrowded and messed up. Every time I’ve been to the hospital I’ve gotten such bad care, it's horrible. But when my Dad got sick two years ago when we were visiting London, they treated him right away, were super nice and explained everything, took care of him, and he was able to go home later that night. And they didn’t charge him a thing. It was amazing.
Michael Moore’s movie Sicko is coming out any day now, and whatever you think about Michael Moore, I do hope it opens up a greater discussion about reforming health care in the States. It’s such a bad situation and they act like it’s impossible to change it, but it isn’t, they do it here and as far as I can tell it works well enough. I mean I’m sure there’s flaws in the system, but I have to say, universal health care seems pretty amazing so far.
Another interesting thing is that my company actually does my taxes for me. They fill out the paperwork and send it in, and that’s it. They have set ways of calculating the taxes so that you don’t really get a refund because they make sure to just take out what you owe. So I won’t get a refund, but I also don’t have to file my taxes or deal with it, which is pretty cool. I still have to file back in the States, but at least I don’t have to do both.
So those are the upsides… On the downside, other aspects of the system here are fucking bizarre. One of the most insane things they do here is when they run a credit check on you, they base part of your credit on your address. So if you live with flatmates that haven’t paid the bills or defaulted on council tax (a local tax that everyone has to pay), then it will show up and affect your credit rating. If you move to a new flat, and someone else who lived there before you was late or defaulted on bills, it will affect your credit rating, even if you had nothing to do with it. How insane is that? But it’s true, I’ve been told this by the people at the mobile phone place, and at the bank.
They also have pay-as-you-go utilities in some places. Rory was telling me that he has an electric meter at his flat and you just put money in it, like coins or a credit card. If the electricity runs out and you don’t have any money, you just don’t have electricity until you put more money into it. How weird. But in a way, I guess it kind of makes sense to pay as you use it. In the US everything is based on credit, so they basically are giving you a service based on credit and then you pay them back. Half the time I was always arguing with my gas and electric company for overcharging me. As ghetto as pay-as-you-go electricity seems, at least you know what you’re paying for.
The other thing I’ve encountered is that the banks here are really bad, they make it very difficult for you to get an account if you just moved here. Also, from what I’ve read about them, you have to be very careful to watch out because they hit you with crazy hidden and overdraft fees, even when they claim it’s a “free” account. Which they do in the States too, but here it seems maybe worse.
But I was finally able to get a bank account with HSBC on Friday, and my job said they would pay me for June this week (since I normally wouldn’t get paid until July 25th). So I’ll have some pounds and stop having to pay for everything with my poor half-priced dollars.
AdjustingMy phone finally switched over, so my US cell phone is dead now and my cell phone number goes to my phone at home. I won't go into it, but dealing with Vonage was a fucking nightmare. It took me over 3 hours on the phone with Vonage customer service to finally get someone who knew what they were talking about to help me get things hooked up. And who spoke enough English so we could understand each other (outsourcing is CRAP and I hope companies start realizing that they might be saving money, but their customer support quality has plummeted and they are going to really lose customers).
Everything’s working now, though, so you can reach me anytime and I have voicemail. I’ll try to call people soon, things have just been so crazy that I haven’t had much downtime and haven’t been able to contact people as much as I want.
I’ve been really fluctuating emotionally. I miss people a lot, I think about Max and how I won’t see him as much anymore and how I’m going to miss a lot of stuff in people’s lives. I miss Rick so much, he was such a big part of my every day and I notice him not being there all the time, especially when I’m tired and all I want to do is just cuddle with him and relax and I realize we can’t do that anymore.
They say that you’re the most stressed during certain life events: moving, breaking up with someone, starting a new job, etc. And in the last two months I’ve just been going through so many of them at the same time. Moving to a new country, living with new people, starting a new job, leaving my friends & family (and my cat), leaving Rick and adjusting to not being in a relationship anymore, saying goodbye to Adam and knowing that I won’t see him for a year because he has to go fight in a war. Again.
And in the middle of all this, I found out that an old friend of mine, Scott Swaner, had died. Scott was someone I became friends with in Boston, he was going to Harvard Grad School for East Asian Literature. Mary and I met him because she thought he was cute. Scott dressed very snazzy and wore nice suits, and Mary had noticed him at a show. My friend Tim (the guy from the Bosstones that I used to do my magazine Rude International with) decided he was going to play matchmaker and he went and introduced himself to Scott and talked to him for awhile. He brought Scott over and introduced him to me & Mary, and that got Mary and Scott talking.
This actually was at a Slackers show at the Paradise, when they were playing with Hepcat and the Gadjits. This might have even been the first time I saw any of those bands play, and it was also the first night I met Robyn. I guess now that I look back on it, that night turned out to be a precursor for a lot of things and people in my life.
But anyway, that’s the night we met Scott, and we hung out with him at the show, and he came home with us and we got drunk on wine and stayed up talking all night listening to Tom Waits. And we were good friends ever since. Scott and Mary ended up being the first models for our fashion shoots in Rude International. There was like a 3-page spread of Mary and Scott on Dicky’s scooter that we borrowed, if anyone remembers from the magazine. Those fashion shoots were my first versions of what I later did with Pin-Up NYC. Mary was embarrassed about that shoot, because she found out later that the guys that worked at the liquor store in Allston had her picture hanging up in the back room. Haha. Can’t help it if she looked hot!
Scott moved to Seoul for awhile to work on his PhD, where he had actually lived for awhile when he was younger, as a Mormon missionary. Scott had a really fascinating life and I won’t go into all his personal details, but he had a lot of very interesting experiences. He was older than me, and he had been raised as a Mormon in Salt Lake City and traveled for awhile as a missionary before being ex-communicated from the Church (and from Brigham-Young where he was going at the time) because he had a girlfriend and was into ska and punk music, among other things.
But he picked himself back up and started his life again, and he did some really cool things. He got his MD at Cornell, and then went to Harvard, and won a Fulbright Scholarship. He helped organize the sit-in at Harvard when they weren’t paying their workers a living wage. He worked on translating poetry from jailed political poets in Asia to help get their work out and bring attention to their cause.
Scott was a brilliant and complicated person, but he was also really sweet, always in a good mood, always up for fun. When Mary and I moved to NY he came to stay with us and we would stay up all night talking about everything, from music, to politics, to literature. I can honestly say that Scott has always been one of my favorite people. We lived far away from each other in the last few years, and so kept in touch intermittently, but wrote each other long emails trying to keep up with each others’ lives. He had taken a teaching position as Assistant Professor of Korean Literature & Poetry at the University of Washington in Seattle and the last time I heard from him was about a year ago.
I was going through old pictures and emails when I was packing up my apartment and I came across a bunch of emails from Scott, and was looking though pictures of us from college. I was planning to email him to tell him about my move and see if he wanted to come and visit. When I was staying with Mary my last few weeks in NY, she also had been thinking about Scott, she wanted to contact him to have him read at the reading series she curates. She looked him up on the web to get his current email address and instead found an obituary. Scott had died of pancreatic cancer in December, 9 months after his original diagnosis. He wrote a blog starting from when he was first diagnosed up until his death. I scanned it, and as Scott was an amazing writer, it was fascinating and humorous and sad all at the same time. I can’t bring myself to read the whole thing yet, maybe in a few months. I was shocked to realize that Scott was dead.
I was upset at first that he hadn’t contacted us, hadn’t told us, but I realize now that’s crazy. He obviously had so much to deal with in front of him, and what was he going to say? ‘By the way, I just wanted to let you know I’m dying..?’ I guess it was just hard to find out about it like that, that he’d passed away a few months ago and we didn’t even know. Didn’t have the chance to say goodbye. His family and friends wouldn’t have known to get in touch with me & Mary, we didn’t really know anyone else in his life. Even in Boston I’d never met any of his friends. I think he just had people from lots of different times and places in his life that he kept in touch with, he didn’t have a cohesive set of friends that I knew of. From reading his blog, he had good friends in Seattle who took care of him until the end, so I’m glad to know that. But I just still can’t wrap my head around the fact that he’s gone and I won’t ever talk to him again. I think it’s just starting to sink in.
When I first started looking at job opportunities in London, I was open to the possibility that I might get a job and have to move pretty quickly. I didn’t know how I really felt about that, other than I had kicked a set of events into motion, and whatever the plunge would be, it was going to be something I’d have to see through. Like when you get to the top of a rollercoaster ride and you think, do I really want to do this? But you don’t have a choice, you’re already on it and you have to go wherever it takes you, no matter how scary it is. So I had kind of braced for that. Because even though people might say, well you had a choice, I didn’t feel that way. I decided that I was going to try and see if I could move here, and leave it up to fate. And if I had the opportunity, that I would take it, that it would be my path.
But once I was actually offered a job, in a way, I felt like my previous life suddenly ceased to exist, and I was thrust into this new world. Everything that happened from that moment on was a series of stressful and emotional experiences that have taken me from my life in NY to my life here, and I’ve had little to no breathing room in between.
Now that I’m starting to settle in here a little bit, I’m first beginning to process things like being away from my family, Scott’s death, having to leave Rick, and they’re kind of hitting me hard anytime I get a moment alone. I think it’s healthy to take time and deal with this stuff, but I also need to try to keep myself on an even keel. I have to focus on my job right now and making some money and getting stabilized here. So I’ve been kind of fluctuating emotionally in the last week or so, but I’ll be alright. I just need to stay focused. And I have to say, London has definitely been doing it’s best to keep me on my toes…
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