Posts by Louisa

for those of you who’ve been trying to get through, i’m ok. i arrived at the tube station about 30 seconds after they closed down the central line, and because the buses were so crowded i decided to walk for a while. then a friend called me from the centre of town and said that things seemed to be getting worse not better and i should just go home. so i did.

once again, i’m feeling very fortunate. all of my friends and coworkers are fine (still waiting to hear back from one, but i’m optimistic), and i’m home and safe.

but man, it still really really blows.

i can’t decide whether this elicits anger or terror, but either way it begs to be shared: mobile prophecies (yes, you read that right) from the group who brought you the Left Behind series, which looks to me to be a DaVinci Code-ish (and man, what a ham-fisted pile of fewmets that was) suspense/horror series designed to get those of us who think Darwin might have been onto something there to shake in our boots about the pending apocalypse.

Grr.

ok, ok, yes, yes. i know. not that “the apparent demise of c-d” caused anyone any alarm or anything – really, people, i could have been bleeding in a ditch somewhere! and did you care? did you? no. harrumph.

anyway, i’m back. by way of excuse i can only offer the insanely long time it takes to get broadband hooked up in this country, in combination with the fact that there seem to be three airport networks in this building, but none of them are connected to the internet. puzzling? yes. frustrating? in the extreme. but fortunately, the wait is over.

of course, i don’t actually intend to post anything of real interest today. consider this a proof-of-life trailer of some really lame sort – but soon, i intend to regale you with:

Blood Brothers: A Review
this was, no shit, one of the three worst shows i’ve ever seen in my entire life. both of my companions to this wretched piece of shit agree. the only thing that i can think of (in other words, that i haven’t completely blocked out due to the trauma) that was worse was Starlight Express, on which i wasted three hours of my sixteenth birthday in new york. which is probably why it stuck.

Tales from the BC
we’ve moved, my division. out to scenic, desolate W12, where we have a lovely view of a prison, a really dodgy council estate, and (at a distance) wembley stadium. the building, though at first glance simply stark and depressing, offers endless amusement. yea verily, it is a theme park of modern office design. we’ve got isolation podules. we’ve got muppet walls. we’ve got cacti on wheels and a spittin’ rail and secret elevators that go nowhere in particular. we’ve got it all, folks, and we’re publishing our very own guide. soon.

while i know that things are better in threes, i’m going to leave it at two for now because i can’t think of a really good third.

but i’m back. and london still completely rocks.

I’ve spent the last several days at my mom’s apartment, which has been lovely on a number of levels. We don’t see each other all that often, which makes the time all the more precious and rich, for one thing. And while we’ve had lots of conversations and watched a few movies, there’s also been a lot of quiet time, which is something I’ve had rather a dearth of lately. In between Christmas meals (which have been fantastic!), I’ve actually been able to (finally) do something about the CSS in the photography section of this site – while it’s still by no means perfect, it’s no longer an eye-bleeding horror, at least on the Mac side of things. Ye Windoze users, please do snap a quick screen shot and send it along – the last time I doctored the stylesheets in gallery, for some reason the new versions only appeared on the mac side, and on Windoze machines everything was still painfully green and purple and ick. Anyway, that wasn’t my point.

I’ve also finally had some time to read. The fantastic Travis gave me a book before I left called The Debt to Pleasure, and in the past weeks I had only managed to make it a paltry seven pages in. Now I’m well underway, and must say I highly recommend it. Full of vivid descriptions from an avid chef and sinister undertones of which I do not yet know the origin or outcome, it’s a lush read. So, since I’d never heard of the author, John Lanchester, before, I googled him, and came up with this review, written in October. So point one, Lanchester is equally good in essay form, and two, this sort of struck me. I might be making myself rather unpopular with the following statement, but I have felt for some time that intellectual life, in general, is richer in the UK than it is here. Perhaps it’s just the people I’m exposed to (thanks to the people I already know, and now my work as well), but I find it’s much less common to be confronted with a blank look or rolling eyes when more complex topics creep into a conversation. I had pretty much taken it for granted that critical thinking and intellectual debate was more par for the course in England than America, full stop. Lanchester’s contention that this intellectual life is largely stilted, superficial and false is both unexpected and alarming. Have I been duped? Or is he just a literary/critical pessimist, preferring to see the (admittedly repetitive) glass of discourse and debate as half-empty rather than half-full? Am I so dazzled by people’s ability to use and understand four-syllable words that I’m missing the fact that their points are cribbed from some 19th century philosophy? I don’t think so, but perhaps the honeymoon just isn’t over yet.

Thoughts, anyone?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: I shut down the comments again, sorry. It’s not that I’m disinterested in feedback, even of the you-need-a-twelve-step-program variety (which I always find amusing). Rather, it’s that despite the installation and ongoing configuration of MT Blacklist, a plug-in that allegedly blocks comment-spam from the roughly nine and a half billion online pharmacies and texas hold-em parlours, I was getting upwards of two hundred spam comments per day. Since I really can’t be bothered to spend a half hour a day deleting those – hell, I can’t be bothered to spend ten minutes posting, most of the time – I’ve shut it down. You’ll just have to email instead.

Did everyone have a good Christmas? And what are we doing for New Year’s Eve?

It hasn’t felt much like Christmas this year. What with the move, and the new job, and all the attendant logistical hassle and all the newness and million and a half things to think about, even with the lights in Regent Street and the displays in Soho, it hasn’t felt like Christmas. And now it’s Christmas Eve and I’m back in Chicago, at Mom’s house, and we’re having dinner with friends (the family you choose) tonight, and really between last night and tonight, I’m beginning to feel a little festive. Last night we went down to the local, and I got the warmest reception imaginable. Spent the night telling stories and doing too many shots and generally catching up and eating mom’s cookies, and really, that was a tremendous and lovely gift. As they always are.

So Merry Christmas, everyone. Spend it with the people you love, and don’t forget to tell them. Now I gotta go wrap some presents.

4. These people take their sports seriously. They also take their sports fans seriously. As a result, they’ve got the funnest way ever to watch a game: with commentary from rabid fans of both teams. If you have Interactive TV (which a staggering percentage of people do), you just hit the red button and select which soundtrack you want to the match – the professionals, or the fans. Select the fans, and presto! You’ve got hours of screaming, cheering, hilariously impassioned play-by-plays, interspersed with unbelievably inventive non-obscene epithets (a favorite went something like this: “Go on! Tear his head off so you can drink Guinness from his neck!”). I love it.

5. Tom Waits does not work here. In the American city of your choice, you can put in your headphones, press play on The Heart of Saturday Night, and you’ve got a soundtrack for your walk, or bus ride, or train ride, or whatever. In London, it just doesn’t sound right. Something about the architecture, maybe – not gritty enough? Too pretty? Too old? Or maybe it’s the roads – too curvy? I don’t know. All I know is that’s the first time it’s happened, and I felt for a brief moment totally out of synch. I’m feeling much better now, thanks.

6. My hair hates the weather. It’s less cold, yes, which is nice, but it’s also a lot more humid. Which means gray, which can get depressing – but which also means that my hair is vacillating between Sly and the Family Stone reject mode and just hanging there limply, looking at me. Can hair look forlorn? I think mine does.

…was once again reinforced for me this morning, though it really had nothing to do with the efficiency (or occasional lack thereof) of London public transit. Here’s how it went down:

9:20 – realized that I had not gone to cashpoint last night. Subsequently realized, after ransacking every pocket, that I had only £0.95 in cash. Bus fare is £1.00.

9:30 – exited flat.

9:34 – arrived at shop closest to flat where travel cards are sold. Asked for a travel card and a packet of tissues. The man got a travel card, stamped it, and asked for £5. I handed him my Visa. he very apologetically told me the Visa machine was broken. I inquired as to the location of the nearest cashpoint and was told it was in the next shop down. I promised to return when cash had been procured.

9:38 – arrived at “next shop down” which was actually the 8th next shop down. Went to the cashpoint. The cashpoint would not accept my card because my card is not UK-based. My UK-based card, along with my monthly paycheck, is stuck in the mailbox at my new flat. I do not yet have the key for the mailbox at my new flat.

9:40 – went to the counter at the second shop, explained the cashpoint difficulty, asked for a travel card. Was told that Visa cards are not accepted for travel cards, tobacco or pretty much anything else I would want to buy at that shop. Explained again my increasingly urgent need to get on transport into city. Was told that if I bought an Oyster card, I could pay with Visa.

9:42-9:52 – filled out the paperwork for an Oyster card. Was asked how much transit I wanted on said Oyster card. When I said “a week,” was told that I could only pay with Visa if I bought a whole month. Resisted the urge to (a) lunge across the counter and throttle the nice pakistani man on other side, or even (b) inquire as to why, when I had made it known that I needed to pay with Visa, he would even ask that question. Instead, I gritted my teeth and asked for one month, please.

9:53 – paid £78 for an Oyster card with one month’s transit. Will be out of the country for 10 days out of that month.

9:58 – finally got on the bus. If I had had additional £0.05 in my pockets, handbag or purse this morning, I would have been arriving at Holborn at more or less exactly that time.

At least it’s good for a laugh, eh?

1. Night buses rock.

2. Getting a bank account in the United Kingdom without a credit history, regardless of your nationality, is an adventure into the deepest circles of hell, yea verily. It’s a Sisyphean cycle of procuring letters of reference and documents addressed to you at various places and confirmations that the documents addressed to you were sent by the people you claim sent them and so on and so forth until you really think you might just break down and cry right there in the lobby. An example:

she: Do you have proof of address?
me: Yes, it’s in this letter from the BBC.
she: No, that won’t work. We need a bank statement that’s addressed to you.
me: But that’s why I’m here, to get a bank account. So unless you give me one, I can’t have statements addressed to me.
she: Yes.
[long, awkward pause while we stare at one another]
me: Right, you’ve been very helpful. [Exit]

3. There are not one, but two positions in Cricket with the word “silly” in them (Silly Mid On and Silly Mid Off, if you must know). Actually, there’s a whole section of the field referred to as “silly”. This from the same game that can go on for up to three days (!), but always breaks for tea.

Truly, London is a magical place. And the lights in Soho are lovely.

So here I am, camped out in an office in Soho stealing bandwidth (thank god for friends employed with internet companies). I live in London now, or will once I find a flat and get a bank account and all that sort of logistical nonsense. But in the meantime, I’m here, fully delusional with jetlag, and happy. We are hoping those two things are unrelated. Maybe I should hold off on posting until I’ve had some sleep, eh?

But really: even though it hasn’t fully set in yet, and even though the moment it does I’m going to miss everyone like crazy, it’s good to be home.

Entering into a poker game at 2 a.m. is a dicey proposition at best. When the game is at your local, and involves several die-hards, it’s worse. And if you’re playing midnight baseball with a black mariah rain-out, expect to be there until it’s 7 in the morning and you no longer care how much money is in the pot. Except for hoping that if you don’t win it, the person that serves you the most drinks will. Which she did.

Note to self: wait, never mind. That was fun.