Russian Winter Festival

This was from a week or so ago when the Russian community of London celebrated the Russian Winter Festival in (motherfucking) trafalgar square. Heej and I went because cultural awareness is important. Also, it was free.

You can tell that it's trafalgar square by the giant pillar which does not fit in the frame of any photgraph ever taken.

Basically, the festival involved several rock/pop groups singing in very enthusiastic russian on the stage in the center, as a crowd of tall blondes and people wearing fur hats (see: man in lower left 1/3) drunkenly cheered them on. T

here was borscht, there was beer, there were people advertising cheap airfares to St. Petersburg.

It was good fun.





Next: Camden and Giraffes.

Figuring Out Photos...

The Washbasin, as promised.

A Story of Impotent Rage

Something I wrote to Ashley Awesome earlier, but have decided to share with the rest of the world:

***

hey lady! I have a Story of Impotent Rage for you.

So, the guy from cornell in my flat of 5 people thinks he's julia fucking child and cooks these elaborate meals for dinner involving many spices and pots and pans going at once. He has a recipe/instructions written out, and follows it to the T, using every cutting implement in the process.


More background: I ran out of cash on friday and so haven't gone grocery shopping until yesterday. I am reeeaaaally looking forward to actually having some food that's not a selection from Corinne's Desperation Cookbook.

Now, I'm not one to begrudge another of thier culinary dreams, so for the first week or two, it's like, cool, he can cook. But the thing is, our kitchen has very limited space and resources, i.e. pots and pans and cutting implements.

So, even though his and my 'dinner times' coincided at first, his complex endeavors made it very difficult for me to boil a fucking pot of water to make pasta.

So, graciously, passively, silent like the courtesy ninja that I am, I have been trying to arrive home later and later in order to give him time to do his thing and clean up afterward before I get in the kitchen to make some food.

However.

He is either taking longer and longer or purposfully stymieing my plans for diffused kitchen-time. That Rat Bastard has been cooking fucking homemade meatballs for, like, 2 hours. I am HUNGRY. He is a DIRTY MOTHERFUCKER.

Now, for the kicker: You know my feelings about cooking in pans used for meat. I don't like doing it. I purchased new frying pans after an argument about damage incurred to the british girl's stuff, even though it was not my fault and almost certainly his, to smooth things over, and hey, I'll keep the pans when we leave.

HE IS COOKING HIS MEATBALLS OF ETERNITY IN MY FUCKING PANS.

FUCK. FUCKING SHITFUCK.

So, now, with nothing to do in my room because I have no entertainment, and no sign of when he will be done and cleaned up, I decided to stop vulturing around the kitchen, giving pointed stares to the back of his oblivious fucking head, come down to the computer lab, and express this grievious injury to you. I hope you enjoyed it!

***

PS: Not to worry children, now that my blood sugar has evened out a bit, I am totally over this.

A Thought

I would like to start a band, and I would like for it to be called 'Apocalypse Flashlights'.

Ugly Naked Guy

Lecture, 3:13 pm

Internal monologue: This girl smells like chicken soup...Why can I take notes without paying any attention?...Hey, is that back-fat?

Narrator: Indeed, as the psych building faces a residential apartment complex, and the resident in question did not believe in curtains, it was.

Internal monologue: Ugly Naked Brit! heeeee. hee hee. I am twelve.

Things (No Order)

Rachael: Washbasin and other photos are forthcoming...I am too lazy to remember both my camera and the usb/whatever cord when I'm in the computer lab(s). UCL terminology calls these charming nooks 'clusters' but I feel like those are what you find in breakfast cereal...you know, the grain-nuggets that aren't flakes or raisins? Clusters. Clusters are also places with public notices forbidding downloading of pornography onto the system. Also I can't make youtube work, which is agitating.

Covent Garden

So, Covent Garden was the site of an actual food-producing garden in the middle ages (this is all according to Wikipedia, so, you know) but circa 1600 beame an open-air market, and then a couple hunderd years later a massive enclosed market space was built, and centuries of history boil down to me hopping over puddles in this mess of little cobblestone streets lines with superexpensive stores and supercheap chinese food places and supercool vintagey shops.

There's usually musicians/street performers doing their thing during the day, and some urban landscaper genius has giant chandeliers on some streets which is very pretty after the sun starts to go down (at like 4 in the afternoon) and you've got crazy-old ornate storefronts on either side of you and the ground is always kind of damp so it reflects the little points of light from the chandeliers...all very fairy-tale cute.

And also, it smells nicer than NYC, so there's not even that to bring you down.

From my doorstep, it's probably a 20-25 minute walk there, but from the site of most of my classes it's like 8 minutes max. So I've just been shopping/wandering in the downtime between classes, a luxury that Ithaca, historically, does not afford. Cities are awesome.

However, there are some things that are not as awesome.

Smoking

Everyone smokes, everyone smokes everywhere. I knew this was going to be true in your paris or your rome or your south carolina, and I'd expect to see it on the street, and I always kind of laugh when doctors stand outside hospitals to take a cigarette break. I didn't expect the entire bar or club to be smoking, but I wasn't ::surprised:: that it was allowed. But the residence hall faq sheet-type thing practically begs you to smoke in the rooms. It's fine! It won't set the alarm off! Bring your friends, make it a party! That surprised me a little. Also, we've had 3 fire alarms in 8 days. J'accuse!


Exhorbitant drink prices

Holy sweet goddamn. Wine and beer at a grocery store or liquor store ( = my favorite word, 'offy') are mostly the same or cheaper. The bars/clubs make up for it, though. Any mixed drink is going to cost you £7 or more, which is $14 for those of you playing at home. A shot of jack daniels was £11. That is a twenty-two dollar drink, my friends, and that is just out of my league.

Until next time,
cjb

Motherfucking Trafalgar Square

So, about three this afternoon I decided it would be a good idea to go for a walk, look for some notebooks, get ready for classes for tomorrow, that kind of thing. I left my house and headed off, having a pretty good idea of where I was going and how to get back.

This plan went awry right about at Motherfucking Trafalgar Square.

Three hours later, it is dark and I am walking along a big iron gate, looking at the house inside it, thinking, 'Gosh these people have nice houses. Who even lives here? it's ridiculous. I wish I knew where I was. ' Then I turn a corner, see a giant fountain and statue, and realize I have been walking along Buckingham palace.

Oh, London. Your delights are endless. Also, your sidewalks.



Also, every guy over the age of 25 wears a black overcoat and is in a stressed out hurry.

The O.C.

They think american teenage life is like the O.C. On wearing a cornell hoodie: 'That's very O.C., that top.'

They ask questions about prom. They want to know if the politics of it are really liek the O.C.

London

I'll start from the beginning and move along.

JFK is terrible. We sat on the plane for 3 hours, taxiing along, unsure of where we were headed or if the plane was wandering of its own accord. However, this provided me with the opportunity to get acquainted with the women sitting in my row, who were from Cardiff and had spent the last 10 days shopping in NYC. I had the window seat, so it was my job to keep the row informaed as to whether we were moving. We laughed, we whined, we traded magazines and crisps (which are chips. chips are fries. Learning happens all the time.) and gum. Many hours later, over an anonymous portion of the atlantic, I remembered that Cardiff was the capital of wales. Thanks, 6th grade geography and Mrs. Egan!

Behind us were a row of guys who might have been speaking gaelic or might have had such crazy accents that I just couldn't figure it out.

I watched the sun rise. It was cloudy below us all the way across, just this whipped up mountain of froth from horizon to horizon. So then all of a sudden, you look and there's the slighest demarcation between sky and cloud-line, just a little icy blueness peeking over. Then you nap for a minute and look again because the layer of marshmallow fluff has been stained grapefriut orange-pink and gold and purple and some altogether surprising combinations. But, then it's the sun and you can see a coastline (ireland? wales? I'll never know.)and have to give up all pretense of sleep.

Yeah, so no sleep 'til london, so by the time they were serving breakfast I was in that sort of dreamy random mood. They passed out blueberry muffins. Blueberries are not my favorite things, and upon picking them out of the muffin I had a weird freudian flashback to being five years old after my little sister was hot off the press, and my mom finding dried-up, fallen-off umbilical cord remnant on the floor. I bet you a hundred pounds no one expected this paragraph to go in that direction! But, that solves the mystery of Why Corinne Doesn't Like Blueberries.


In my head the past couple of days, I've already ended up using 'a bit of...' and 'yeah' or 'innit?' at the end of sentences...I will come back sounding like madonna.

I had a very good time navigating from heathrow through the underground to my place dragging 2 enormous bags. Please send Karmic goodwill to the guys who helped me drag them up the stairs at paddington (sadly, no lost bears) and oxford circus (sadly no fire eaters). In sum: if you can handle the subway, you can do the underground.

The other people in my flat are good; one other cornell guy, a girl from manchester and a guy from newcastle, and a guy from spain who I haven't really talked to yet.

it's been rainy but warm. Grey like ithaca.

They make it hard to sign up for classes. You actually have to go talk to a body, half the time just to find out you're supposed to do it online. And classes are in hour blocks--so if you have an 11-12, you're screwed for your 12-1.

Food shopping was a revelation. orange juice comes in two incarnations: smooth or 'with juicy bits.' And I think I understand America's obesity problem. Everything is too big. If you sell things in smaller packages but charge as much (or more) as Americans usually pay, then portion sized are kept in check. Ingenious.

I've been doing this from a public computer room and now I don't want to sit here any more, so I'm leaving it for now. Later!

The Day Has Come...

It's raining here. It's raining there, too, which should not surprise me.

I hope the fact that that my luggage weighs very nearly as much as I do won't be a problem.

My mom is picking up a sandwich for me from the italian sandwich place. It is going to be perfect, delicious and melty, and also coated in garlic. I hope that hours from now, in the stuffy congested plane, my cotravelers will also think fondly on sandwiches and refrain from pitching me out the cargo hold, a la Wet Hot American Summer.

If you haven't seen that movie, you ought to. You've got time, it's break. I promise, it's worth it, and paul rudd is excellent.

Ok, I have to go put shoes on now. Yes, I did all my packing between 12 and 4 last night. No, I have no idea what's in my suitcase. This is about adventure, guys.

Goddamn!

T minus fifty three hours until departure...


I just saw a commercial for fresh human liver.