Norfolk Terrace, UEA. Day 11. 22:04. Run Til You’re Done + How the Blowfish Got Its Name
My heart pounded. I warmed up my legs, did strides, but all in a focused fury. Meditated for a minute, let the timer count the minute so I could forget. I tapped the outside window and clicked my watch and took off, starting in an elevated sprint ‘til I reached the trees. I followed the path all the way round the lake, halfway feeling too out of breath. The pace too fast, but I had to press on. I wanted to prove myself, even in this silly contest. Yes, I felt able to stretch out my stride, did that, also calmed down my breathing and assumed a more focused run movement. All right, by three-quarters around I wasn’t feeling as bad as I started. Definitely out of recovery mode from the beginning sprint, almost at last-minute sprint mode. Wow, it feels weird to be racing less than twenty minutes. There’s a bench…is that the one Dan told me to go past and then head toward the flat’s corner window (just touching the grass)? Maybe. I see the hedge, I’ll take it. Mud, mud, ugh, yes! tougher ground and now grass, and the last stretch on tough grass. I got this. Here comes that unstoppable pain jamming at me but my mind knows it’s only momentary. Here it comes, the window, touch. Done.
6:56.3. Fastest time for the flat. I heard cheering from my flatmates and then an unexpected chorus of girl voices yelling “That was amazing!” from an adjacent flat’s kitchen window, looking out to the grass like all of the Norfolk Terrace kitchens do. I panted and got my breath. I checked my degree of recovery. Good, a little out of breath but seven minutes should bring me back to a resting heart rate. Sweet, that was better than I thought it had been while running. Always one to compete, Vinny told me I had missed the right bench, about ten-fifteen meters added to the trail in that case, but I figured it only ten-fifteen seconds at the most so adding that to my time, Vinny and I tied. We were both content. The girls from the adjacent flat were asking questions as I hopped into the window and onto the kitchen seat. Stephen and Vinny explained that we were racing for time, as a flat activity.
After that unexpected run, I quickly showered and made the most out of shopping in the city centre. I got a lot of what I needed, from white T-shirts to silverware, all at DQ (NOT Dairy Queen, remember they don’t have that here. It was a we-have-everything Target-kind-of store). Headed back, cooked raw ground meat for the first time on the stove (usually did pasta and BBQ’ed burgers/salmon on the grill back home) and the ever-generous Laura let me have a bit of her garlic. Then the ever-nice Jen explained how I cut the garlic and put it in with the meat. Charlie later asked Jen for help and Jen put in a bay leaf on top of his meat. He cried out, “You just put a leaf in my meat. So do I just put it in there and pound it around?” Yes, there was acknowledgement of the innuendo thereafter.
After Vinny and I worked like bosses on a good meat sauce (wow, I just remembered back on a choir Christmas carolling bus ride when Stephen was Spaghetti and Ryan was something else. And I was “meat sauce”. Brothers-by-inside-joke who were to start a spaghetti factory. Good times.) and pasta and carrots, we ate and then joined a clean-the-kitchen marathon started by us and Dan (always keen to clean too). Dan and I started off to watch Black Swan at Lecture Theatre 1 and found it empty. Apparently the ad on the wall promoting the movie “This Wednesday!” had been there for a while. Boo. Still watching it tonight, but by other means. And wow, speaking hour and some later, that movie has a painful aftertaste but an actually better after-aftertaste upon reflecting on the movie’s interesting message of how obsessed perfection is a death wish. As Katya told me, that movie is definitely a sex thriller…and would be awkward to see in a movie theatre with the whole family. Really bizarre. Ended the night talking to Katya on skype and then unexpectedly finding a lot of my flatmates (and Steff, but he’s an honorary flatmate) at the kitchen table playing yaniv. Man, I think I’ll try to make this card game atmosphere happen more often in the Labyrinth (oh, that’s the name of my Berkeley flat, shared with 2 girls, 2 guys. But I’ve been temporarily replaced by a very friendly subletter Evie until I get back).
Random query (btw, they say “query” here, instead of “question”; So, in lecture, it’s “anyone have any queries?”): As my dad asked me, I wonder why I keep looking up in pictures as my general pose in photos of me in the UK. Huh.
Oh one last thing. Earlier, after dinner and before midnight, I fabricated a wonderful story to Marie about how the puff-fish got its name. But hey, it was Marie who started it by saying, “You just have an answer to everything, don’t you?” And I couldn’t resist when she asked me, “Well then say something about the blowfish” and I came up with this: The blowfish was cornered at a wall [Marie: Wall? Me: Sorry, coral reef] by baby sharks and then PUFF! It’s big and the sharks run away scared [Marie: But that’s not the puff-fish] and then the blowfish met the puff-fish who was smoking a joint and offered the blowfish some. And that is how the blowfish became the puff-fish [British term for it?]. The End.
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