SHIT Day

So I woke up today and looked outside and it's a bright and sunny day. One of those rare days in London. So I get up and set about to go run some errands I needed to get out of the way before I go home for a couple of weeks.

First, I went to school and went to the clinic because I was feeling sick all weekend. Of course...damn bureaucratic NHS clinic people don't have any help. They always just send you away and it's like...if you feel like you're going to die, go to the hospital. Free health services are great and all, but yeah, they don't do shit for the little things. So basically, I went there for NOTHING.

Then I went down to the administration building which is across the Thames River. I've been having the worst time paying off this damn £80 for my fees. I've paid over £10,000, but because of a damn £80, the damn school has cut off my email access!!! So, I go there with the cash and they say they don't take cash. I try running the payment again via credit card, and it won't take my credit card. So...I went all the way there for NOTHING!

Then I go to Chinatown to get my mobile unlocked in case I can get a US SIM card for while I'm in the States. I get there and the guy tells me my phone isn't even locked. So...I went all the way there for NOTHING as well!

And then I go to the British Library to check out some books that aren't available at my school library. I was thinking I'd take them with me to LA so I can get some research work done. Turns out, can't borrow books from the British Library and not only that, I didn't have my passport so I couldn't even go in and read there. Went all the way there for NOTHING too!!!

So I come home having spent 4 hours and over £5 on bus and Tube to run around town and get NOTHING done. I go have a coffee at Starbucks and bitch at my friend Magda about my lousy day. I do a little cheap and cheery shopping in the Brunswick, and I'm about to feel a little better. I'm walking down the street thinking, the day might get better when the mother of all shitty things, I see this:



NO!!!!!!!!!!! Hugh's back with that evil rich bitch! I swear, it was like this:

London Lite Man: London Lite?
Me: (about to ignore him and my face drops when I see the headline) NO!
London Lite Man: Yes.
Me: NO!!!!!
London Lite Man: (sympathetic look) Yes, I know.

What a shit day...

Home

Was watching "Garden State" the other day and when I first watched it, I didn't catch this, but this is so true to me these days...

Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in...isn't really your home anymore. All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit...that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew: You'll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day, and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist.

I'm glad to be going home to Fullerton tomorrow, but at the same time, in this strange way...it's not really home anymore. At least not in the sense it was back when I was a kid.

Seven Wonders of the Modern World

I read this in Time. There is a online voting site to pick the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. There are 21 semifinalists you can pick from. So far, I've only seen 3 of them (Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China).

Here are my picks:


Alhambra - because of my fascination with Katherine of Aragon

Christ the Redeemer - symbol of faith

Great Wall of China - because Canadian David peed on it. Great memories.

Pyramids of Giza - because duh

Statue of Liberty - out of patriotism. Go USA!

Sydney Opera House - modernity and I find it amazing that they built it with a population of just 64 people! John, you did an excellent job. (inside joke)

Taj Mahal - because I just always thought it was beautiful

Vote for your favorites.

http://www.new7wonders.com/

*PINCH*

So it's officially been 6 months since I arrived on this island. And it's been over 8 months since I left home back in July.

And in all honesty, I still have very little clue about who I am or what I want to do. If anything, the past 8 months have opened new cans of worms and I am more confused than ever. But I guess that's why I'm here.

Anyhow, today was St. Patrick's Day. And in good ol' Irish tradition, I went to meet my friends at an Irish pub to have a pint in the middle of the day and watch rubgy on the telly. Speaking of which, rugby is not a game...it's just a bunch of thick-calved men tackling one another. And they don't wear helmets! I mean...WOW. But anyhow, it was a beautiful day outside, but we were in a basement pub kicking back pints and singing Irish songs. It was quite great.

Remember back in elementary school how if you didn't wear green on St. Patrick's Day, people could pinch you? I always thought that was an Irish thing, but I was talking to the Irish folks and they tell me they've never heard of that! Apparently, it's another one of those things that Americans come up with. And I was SHOCKED because growing up, I HATED St. Patrick's Day because of the pinching. Asian people don't look good in green, and so I don't have green clothing. And every year on St. Patrick's Day, everyone would pinch me. I remember teachers giving out green shamrock stickers just hoping we'd stop pinching each other on the playground. I HATED ST. PADDY'S DAY! And this whole time, it wasn't even a part of the Irish traditions!

Well, I like St. Paddy's Day a lot better now that I can associate it with beer instead of pinching. Happy St. Paddy's Day, boys and girls. And stop pinching!

So Cultured

I read in the Daily Mail (London paper) that a hot dog vendor or some kind of stall vendor had graffiti on his stall. Some man came to him and offerred him £1,000 (~$2,000) for it. So the vendor cut out the graffiti and sold it. It took £600 to fix the wall and so he netted £400. TURNS OUT...the graffiti was a Banksy, this really famous graffiti artist, (I think I saw one in Vienna, remember?) so the piece is worth about £500,000. Poor hot dog vendor sold it for £1,000. I thought this story was interesting because it shows the value of being culturally aware.

Speaking of which, I had a very "cultured" weekend. Started with Thursday night when Magda and I went to a gallery opening at a small basement gallery in Fitzrovia. Magda's boyfriend's an artist and it was some artist friends of his. The exhibit was on text messages. And we just hung around and mingled and drank free wine.


My friend Magda.


People mingling.


Tracey Moberly in front of her samplers stiched with her personal text messages from famous friends.

The funniest part of the evening, though, was when me and Magda were standing outside the gallery having a smoke and we see this posh looking woman walk past talking into her cellphone really loudly. Then she sees this man and starts going crazy. She was KICKING HIS ASS. She's kicking him with her stilleto boots in the groin and just going cagefighter on him. The people in the restaurant in front of where they were fighting ran out and pulled her off of him. And she kept slipping out of their grip and continued to beat the shit out of the man. Then she walks off and he follows. After a second though, the man turned around and started running in the opposite direction away from her, and then she starts chasing him down the street yelling "Get the fuck back here, James!" It was a great little moment.

ANYHOW, the next day, the director of my program arranged a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for our class. I hadn't been there yet. It was the only part thing I wanted to see that I missed on my sightseeing tour back in September. So the tour was great. Because our program deals a lot with the operation of cultural organizations, that was primarily what we discussed during our tour. The interesting thing was that the Globe Theatre was rebuilt in 1997 by an American, so the business model they follow is very American. They don't rely on public grants. They are completely run on corporate sponsorships and self-generated income. I've just spent the last six months being brainwashed into the European model so it was interesting to see the American model implemented in Britain.


Shakespeare's Globe


Inside the Globe. If it looks familiar, it's because Shakespeare in Love was filmed here.


Our tour guide talking to our class.





After the tour, Magda and I went to the Tate Modern. I hadn't been there yet. Usually, contemporary art museums can be kind of bullshit, but the Tate Modern turned out to have a really great collection. They had a few Jackson Pollacks, a great cubist Picasso, an abstact Matisse, etc.


The Tate Modern


This was an installation inside the museum. You can slide down it. I didn't.


This is a recent acquisition called "Sliding Doors." It's a series of moving mirrored doors.


I got these two pictures and then security came and said "No cameras."

After the Tate, we walked along the South Bank because it was such a beautiful day. The weather has really turned over here. It's almost spring! It's still a bit chilly, but I no longer need to be wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves anymore. It's great.


A view of the Thames and North from the South Bank.


The Millenium Bridge.

Along our walk, we stopped at the.gallery@oxo because there was an photo exhibit called "Britain of View." It was a series of photographs of the British countryside and coastline.

Note that all the pictures in this entry were taken with my new cellphone! :) I got a new cellphone this week, so if you want the number, let me know. It's the hot pink version of the LG Chocolate and I named it Cherie after the Mon Cherie chocolates.

So that was my cultured weekend in London. If anyone tries to offer me £1,000 for graffiti, I know better than to accept.