More London explorations and even some countryside

On Wednesday I went to a Wire concert with my friend Eric (Wire is a post-punk British band that formed in the 70’s). We went to a pub before the concert, where I ordered my usual cider (because I generally think beer tastes like rusty water). While pouring my drink from the tap, the bartender asked us where we were from (our accents probably gave it away). After telling him we were from the states, he nodded with approval and proceeded to ask me if I would like ice in my cider. I initially thought this was a stab at the “unsophisticated American” stereotype, and responded “hah…no thanks.” But he was serious and assured me that “ice is nice.” I took his word for it, mostly because I liked the way he used rhyme to sway my opinion, and asked for precisely two cubes to avoid a potentially watery cider. And indeed, the ice was nice. As we sat in the pub, I suggested that we initiate a game of “count the number of bald people” upon noticing an unusual abundance of bald men around us (I already had a head start with 6). This task soon became overwhelming however, when we entered the venue for the Wire concert. While there was a portion of people who were our age, the grand majority appeared to be Wire’s fan-base from 'back in the day' but were clearly pushing their mid-50’s in present day - and therefore, balding. Even half of the band was bald. So, we never reached a final count.

I visited Greenwich with a few friends on Friday. There, we walked around the royal naval academy.

....which looks remarkably similar to Skidmore’s campus.

Royal Naval Academy

Skidmore

We then walked around the town and market area, before getting lunch at a small seafood place in town. The restaurant was keen on playing R&B slow-jams for the entire duration of our stay, which made for a strange ambiance while I was gnawing on my fish and chips. Later that evening, we took a ride on the London Eye (a very large ferris wheel), which has an amazing view overlooking London. 

 The London Eye

One of the views from the London Eye - there's Big Ben.

I also FINALLY saw Big Ben (It’s really absurd and embarrassing that I have been here for a month without seeing this landmark). Afterwards, we checked out a comedy club in Leicester square. The “comedy club” was really just the basement of a hotel. There were a couple of good comedians, but most of the comedy was the type that receives pity-laughs from the audience in between long periods of silence. But actually, I found humor in how bad some of the jokes were - so it was a good time.
Oh and we also happened to run into a group of Teletubbies at one point in the night.

On Saturday, I went on a hike with the UCL hiking club in Arundel, a small town south of London. I’m glad I went, though I spent 15 minutes lying in bed that morning debating whether the trip would be worth getting up at 8 AM on a Saturday. The hike was a mere 11 miles (no big deal…) but my once-grey sneakers were in no way suitable for the rain, consequent mud, and liquefied horse poop that they encountered throughout the day. I also forgot to pack a rain jacket, so that was a pleasant experience (I am rarely coherent at 8 AM in the morning, so I didn't pack or dress appropriately). But I really did have a good time. We walked through the village and the wide-open fields, where chickens frolicked and herds of sheep roamed. We also saw a lot of swans in the fields, which was a little unexpected.

It was the very essence of what I imagined the English countryside to be like. 

There was a solitary phone booth along the barren road. I was inclined to take a picture of it.

Along the hike, we found a small church, where we stopped for a while to get warm, and a castle atop a hill. 

It was also nice to hang out with more non-American students (my mission since day 1). We all went out for tea and lunch at a cozy little restaurant in the town. We were all cold and drenched, so the hot tea was perfect. I also got butternut squash soup (it was the last one!) and it was delicious. I didn't want it to end.

On Sunday, I went to the Chinese New Year parade/celebration. It was so crowded that I could barely move (I just googled the estimated number of people who attended - 250,000). We all went for dim sum afterwards (sooo good...and it was my second dim sum that week).

The roads were lined with colorful lanterns.

What do Ultimate Frisbee, Morgan Freeman, and the Canterbury Cathedral all have in common?

Nothing. I'm just horrible at thinking of titles for these posts.

I recently joined the ultimate frisbee team here at UCL, in an effort to meet more British people and also to perfect the art of throwing a frisbee. I attended a couple of practices last week, and exhibited my tremendous lack of skill at the sport. Unbeknownst to me, I can’t even throw a frisbee (catching it with grace is whole other ordeal). Instead, I resort to chucking it as far as I can, without aim, and hope that someone will catch it. However, this method has failed me numerous times, since the frisbee usually ends up in an open field where nobody is standing within several meters. Luckily, the people on the team are very chill (as the stereotype of an ultimate frisbee player seems to demand) and are supportive of my effort, however pathetic the outcome of this effort may be.

Another perk of being on the team is that they have a pub social every Wednesday. Last week’s theme was “pirate night” - so everyone on the team came to the bar dressed as a pirate (for me, having limited resources, this meant tying a scarf around my head). As we made our entrance into the bar, the people inside stopped sipping their drinks and stared, probably questioning our motives and level of sobriety. At least there were several of us in pirate garb, so our dignity did not need to be questioned. The sound “Arrrr” resonated around the vicinity of our table throughout the night as we played several pirate-themed drinking games. Then, it was time for the Three Pint Challenge (*ahem* drinking an alcoholic beverage out of a Frisbee with a straw). Unfortunately, this is a “right of passage” that all Frisbee players must endure. I think that’s all I’ll say about that.

On Friday, I saw the likes of Morgan Freeman, President Obama, Isaac Newton, and Bob Marley…at the Madame Tussauds wax museum. Sadly, these personalities were unresponsive to my attempts to chat, but it was still pretty amazing to observe how realistic they looked. I am probably just a dunce, but it was surprisingly easy to mistake an actual person for a wax figure, or vice versa - especially since I didn't immediately recognize some of the figures. So, at one point I wondered why some creep in the corner of my eye was staring at me for such a long period of time. I glanced back at him and realized that I had been getting annoyed with a wax figure of Steven Spielberg. In another embarrassing instance, I was walking with my friend and asked him who one of the figures was supposed to be (in reference to a rather ordinary looking man with shades on). This “figure” then looked at me, laughed, and started walking. He was apparently having a picture taken of him.

           

                       Here we are crashing the oval office.

                Here I am thinking about complex theorems alongside my buddy Albert.

            On Saturday, I went on a trip to visit the town of Canterbury, which is East of London and home of the Canterbury Cathedral and the Canterbury Tales. We went to lunch in the town, and I got this very nutritious meal consisting of pancakes, whipped cream, bananas, and sprinkles.

                                                    

         The Cathedral was beautiful and I loved looking at the stained glass inside. Meanwhile, we could hear singing from the choir practice taking place in the center of the church. It was also enjoyable to peruse the gift shop afterwards to see the various things you could buy to commemorate your visit to the Cathedral. Among these items were rosaries, crosses, postcards, neckties with crosses on them, milky pens, and large erasers. I don't know who looks at these latter two items and thinks "great times at Canterbury Cathedral." But I guess I would have purchased a milky pen had I felt that my inventory of milky pens leftover from fifth grade was inadequate.

This is a picture of the entire Skidmore group that went.

                                          
I was actually laughing hysterically when this picture was taken because a giant subway sandwich was waddling by us while we were standing there. 

Some more pictures of the cathedral:

 
So that's about it. Look out for my next post!

A touristy weekend

You may be pleased to know that I finally did something touristy this weekend…and even took pictures. So, I will try to make my entries less wordy and more visual (here's your cue to sigh with relief). 

…But first let me bore you with a generous amount of writing.

On Friday night I went to another music venue called Koko. This time however, a sequence of bizarre events did not follow. I went with my flatmates Rachel and David, and we decided to show up at the venue a little early so that we could buy tickets, assuming that if the venue’s site states the time “9:30”, that the show would start at...9:30. We arrived unfashionably early at the hour of 9 to find that the doors were locked. I peered in the window to find a few men standing inside and staring back at us, watching the show we were apparently putting on as we helplessly struggled to pry the door open with our fingers. Finally, after several minutes, one of them decided that it would be a good idea to provide us with some information. The guy directed us to the box office at the side of the building to get tickets. Walking around the corner, we found a small, inconspicuous window barricaded by 5 large dumpsters. We stood for a moment, pondering the dumpsters’ anomalous placement directly in front of the “box office.” Perhaps we were the first to have given thought to how these dumpsters might make the window inaccessible. We returned to the main door where another man instructed us to stand in a queue until the doors opened at 9:30. After scoping the premises and realizing that there was nobody around who intended to enter the building, we did as we were told and formed a queue. All three of us. We waited in our "line" for perhaps 15 minutes until a few more people showed up. Evidently, these people did not recognize our line formation, and like us 15 minutes prior, assumed that they could enter the building with ease. We watched their thought process transition from realization to acceptance, until they finally coped with the fact that the doors remained locked after a second, third, and even fourth violent pull. It was then that I understood why the guys inside were slow to help us earlier - petty human struggle can be amusing. Exasperated, they turned to us for help. We proudly informed them that we were “queueing” until the doors opened.

As a side note, in case you are unaware, the British love to queue and take it very seriously. Whether you are waiting for a bus or standing on an escalator, there is always a queue. If you do not recognize or respect this queue, and contribute to disorder by standing somewhere in the middle of the line, you will surely be put in your place and left feeling ashamed of your inattention to methodical aggregates of people. I learned this the hard way and ever since, I make sure to stand directly behind any single person...just to be safe. This once became uncomfortable however, when my person of choice turned around, wondered why I was perfectly aligned with him, and then slowly inched away. Better to be a creep than to disobey the unwritten rule of queuing.

Now back to Friday night. When we finally entered the venue at 9:30 sharp, I was surprised to see how cool the place was. The inside of the venue looked like an old, Victorian era theatre and was multi-tiered with balconies overlooking the stage. Above us, a humungous disco ball slowly rotated and provided the room with some sparkle. 

We sat down and ordered drinks, and then waited…. As the second hour approached, we were sure there was an impending power outage or gas leak - maybe these misfortunes weren’t so uncommon at British music venues, I thought. After another hour, the opening band took the stage, and we pushed our way to the front of the crowd. The band was called “The Lost Generation." Like their name, their music was not very original - I could not distinguish one song from another, and was convinced that the entire set was just one very long song. The headlining band, the New Politics, put on a pretty good show and the lead singer showed off his ability to break dance and climb things. We had a good time and I was thankful that Koko fulfilled my intent to see live music that night, unlike The Good Ship a few days earlier.

On Saturday, I met up with my dad’s cousin Shadi, who moved to London from Lebanon and has settled here for the past 7 years. I was pleasantly surprised to find out only a week ago that I had family here. The last time I saw Shadi was when I was 5 years old, so this made for an interesting experience when we had to meet up with each other at a train station. Fortunately we found each other, though I stared at and approached a few too many people in the process. We went back to his apartment (which I was happy to find out was in the center of “little Beirut.” Win!) where I met his family. We all went out to lunch at a very, very good Thai restaurant. The food was delicious, and I was grateful that I did not have to subject my taste buds to another one of my home-cooking creations. After lunch, they showed me around different parts of London, and our day ended with a very nice desert and coffee.

Later that evening, I met up with a group of Skiddies (or “people who attend Skidmore College” for those unfamiliar with the term). We scoped out some clubs and bars in another area of London, but with little avail. Most of the places were packed as per usual. You see, most of the bars here are so densely populated that suffocating, profusely sweating, and making physical contact with 6 people all at the same time are part of the experience. We gave up and returned to one of the dorms, where we listened to music and talked for a while.

On Sunday, I met up with a couple of other Skiddies, Valerie and Tiffany, and we planned a day to the Tower of London. But first, we sat down for an English Breakfast at a nearby café. Feel free to salivate at the sight of this picture. These were probably the best sausages I have ever had.

We crossed the London bridge on our way, which was a pretty anti-climactic experience considering that it is the subject of an acclaimed nursery rhyme. It looked like any other bridge and I was in no way concerned that it was at risk of falling down.

I guess I was mislead to believe that this, more aesthetically pleasing attraction, was the London Bridge. But I was corrected and learned that it is called the Tower Bridge. It does not have a popular children's rhyme devoted to its name, so that's my excuse for not knowing it. 

    

We spent most of the day at the Tower of London, and started off with a walking a tour lead by a costumed tour guide or “Beefeater.” He was an awesome story-teller and was very involved in his role. 

This green area was the former moat. The level of the moat was lower than the ground of the Thames, and consequently, all of the trash from the river flowed in and accumulated around the towers -  making it arguably the most effective moat in history.

After the tour, we walked into the different towers to see the Crown Jewels and other things like artillery, armor, thrones, and torture tools like the one below, which stretched the victim's arms and legs in opposite directions. ...Not a fan.

Here are a couple of the guards who are not allowed to move. What a job. The bottom picture shows the living quarters for the Beefeaters and their families, and even the queen if she chooses to visit.

This is where the private executions took place. There was a separate location for public executions, but this area was specially reserved to behead those who were related to the royal family or close friends with the king (what an incredible honor). Anne Boleyn was one of those people.

Here are some more pictures of the towers. It was a gorgeous place and I would very much like to live there.

This is another beefeater. He was enjoyable to look at and I liked his cape, so I was happy to immortalize this moment with a photograph.