Norfolk Terrace, Day 22. The Metrics
My apologies for missing today’s entry on the mark. Today was one of those lazy Sundays that, in retrospect, was quite productive. For one, I finally got that bloody gym induction done—now I can pay two quid during specified hours to use the gym. Soooo great. The only perk was a free gym session right after my induction, and my flatmate Dan met me there. After some time on the rowing machines, we headed over to do chest press on a machine and I was doing 50 just to start off really easy and I was surprised at how heavy it was. Then it hit me.
Kilograms, not pounds (except for currency…the British are odd). That fact saved me from feeing like an utter wimp of being a month or two out of decent lifting shape. There was thankfully a conversion chart on the wall, and the first one was 7 stone 1 pound = 44 kg. Yes, double conversion time—so a stone is 12 pounds, 7 stones add one is 85 pounds, and so in this case 1 kg is roughly 1.9 pounds (Google puts it at 2.2 pounds, more accurately). Let me just say that doing math in-between doing weights is as much fun as flossing while walking on fire. I ended up doing military press with 16 kg free weights. It just felt sad to go to a weight numerically below 30. No wonder Americans have inflated egos: their weight-lifting sounds more impressive when not in the metric system.
Later on in the day, I joined Dan and we made the 30-minute trek to a nearby international food supermarket Aldi’s. Alvin met us on bike and we each took a corner of the cart (it was a pound to get a shopping cart…but then you get it back once you put it back in the line-up after checking out—good way to get people to put back their carts, or as they call them here, trolleys).
The topic of nicknames arose in the kitchen this evening, and I found out that I should’ve been calling Vinny “Vinnie”—my bad, man. Gemma, who is involved with the army and gets paid to play netball and bucketball (neither game of which I have ever heard of before coming to UEA but I’m keen to watch both at some point), has the nicknames of “Gems” and “Jim-Jam”. Jen is Garlic Jen, Dan is Dan the Man, and once I know others, I’ll record them. Those are the ones I remember hearing.
The New Zealander Joe booked accommodations for 3-4 nights in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Talk about epic. I booked the flight as well.
I had a skype marathon tonight: 3 hours and 42 minutes. In a row—back-to-back skyping. I’m not kidding. Two and a half hours were spent with that significant other of mine (Katya!), and then the rest was split between my parents and my fellow Berkeley Labyrinthians (or roommates, but since our abode is the “Labyrinth,” “Labyrinthians” fits more), especially Sanjala. Sanjala is basically establishing a coalition for suicide awareness on campus, in addition to her club You Mean More—really inspiring. The subletter, the friendly new face to the place, Eva has taken over being the token runner in the Labyrinth. Man, I miss everybody, but fortunately, I got to participate in an old Labyrinthian tradition of Shirtless Sundays via skype. So there were Memo, Dylan, and I all shirtless and discussing a new tradition for next year, Rock Climbing Fridays. Ah, the good times live on.
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