Day 53, 29 Feb: Weary Wednesday

UEA Library, Day 53. [1:34] Weary Wednesday

The hour doth grow late as I sit at a desk with Great Expectations, looking at the reflective windows and thereby seeing the illusory image of the shelves upon shelves of books in a library that never sleeps. Wednesday I have no classes, but I do the most work—oh the irony.

            The morning was devoted to health: ab workout, run (there were at least twenty dogs on the trail around the lake), breakfast, making lunch.

            The afternoon was devoted to academics. I swapped interior monologues with Sierra, the only other UC Berkeley student at UEA this semester with me, and realized that my character needed another revision. It turned into my second rewrite/fourth draft after our meeting. After four hours of a slow editing/rewriting process (with 40% of the work in the last 40 minutes), I completed a more suitable draft.

            The night was devoted to obligations of the stomach and academics. I cooked a shit-ton of pasta, finished off last night’s steak, all after the twenty-first hour of the day. I’m now in the library, on the verge of departing.

            Two last things: one, I witnessed the incredible ability of the subconscious to surface in writing today. During one of my breaks in rewriting the monologue, I glanced over a promotional message on facebook for a Peter Pan performance in my hometown soon. During the new draft, my character suddenly had a backstory where she was casted in Peter Pan. I didn’t make the connection until twenty minutes after the fact. Two, it’s rather surprising, but I keep running into friends in the library, of all places. First Alex, second Briar. So odd how coincidences work. Now I blow out my twenty-first century candle above my head, flicking off the florescent blub. Off, in the darkness.  

Day 52, 28 Feb: My Roommate Vinnie

Norfolk Terrace, Day 52. 21:19. My Roommate Vinnie

Vinnie giving a thumbs up
(He consented to the photo.) 

            Without creative writing class today, the only interesting points are academic or miscellaneous; without any centralized topic of interest, I have decided to devote this blog entry to the man who lives a half-wall away from me: Vinnie. [If you insist on skipping to Vinnie, start on paragraph 5. Otherwise, read on.]

           Before beginning, let me briefly go over a few points of the day: read more of Great Expectations, attended Robbie’s lecture (Robbie is Stef’s endearing nickname for Dr Robert Clark) on Dickens and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, attended a lecture (for FUN, yeah, shun me) on ‘Reclaiming the “Classic” Novel Reader’ of nineteenth century fiction, and cooked steak.

Steak with mushrooms...

            The lecture…yes, I was late again. Class starts on the hour, despite the deceitful description that it starts ten minutes after the hour. Bull. Stef keeps reminding me just to come at 4, but I resist. Dickens essentially defies Victorian convention with his uncharacteristic melodrama (a villain appears villainous from the first impression, yet this is not the rule, just a trend), ironic title, and the dame of the novel being “a cold-hearted bitch” (his exact words). The novel Madame Bovary is both writing about and IS fetish commodification, in which one transfers erotic desire onto objects (i.e. wearing a glamorous bra in a modern ad raises the implication that the wearer is good at “bumpy bumpy” [Robbie’s phrase for it, said on the same day he mimicked a clumsy girl in high heels in front of the lecture hall—a real character, that one]). So the novel is such a fetish because the very descriptions are erotically pleasing, following the theory of narrative “mimesis” (the act of resembling what the novel talks about).

The other lecture, in which Stef kindly joined me to, was a graduate research seminar reading of one scholar’s paper entitled “Reclaiming the ‘Classic’ Novel Reader [of Nineteenth Century Fiction]”—Dickens actually took a line from a reviewer’s description of the end of serialized chapter 1 of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop and put it in almost verbatim into a revised edition of chapter 1. That fact struck out as incredible that a reader could become a writer’s aid just like that. Past the somewhat hard-to-follow, dry writing of the argument, the lecture ended on this note: “Prose should just be a long intimacy with strangers.”

Vinnie Dressed for the Night

        Now…Vinnie. As I write this, he is currently half-inebriated and gathering the troops of the flat and the neighbour flats for a night out at the LCR (in defence of why I’m not going: sick and behind in work). The theme is Movie Stars. Clad in a black tie and white dress shirt, Vinnie struts around as a—it was first Men in Black, but ah, I believe it’s now Heath Ledger (I think it’s the Australian similarity he’s counting on).

Vinnie is a man of social aspirations with girls and camaraderie with his mates—his flat and New Zealand best friend Joseph being on the top of his list of hang-out buddies. He was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia to lovely parents whom I met on skype at some point. At home, he attends Monash University with Joseph and he is aiming for a degree in International Studies, but that’s enough biography. Next section: living with Vinnie.

As of right now, I’d say that his floor and my desk are at a tie for messiness: not bad, but not spotless. (I just checked.) He keeps a neat corner in his half of the room and generally types furiously into the late hours on his laptop at his bedside most nights (I know you’re grinning, Vinnie…)—okay, not quite. He goes out living life to the fullness most nights with some of his buds, enjoying the blissful enchantment from the bottle and the dance floor.

Dan and Vinnie playing Yaniv

But here comes the virtue of his good roommate role: he comes home quietly most of the time, respecting my sleep or concentration, and whenever one of us skypes or wants to put on music, we ask first. Our system works really well. He respects that I study more than I party and I respect his, switched around maybe. But this respect thing sounds too formal. We’re buddies. Even if he calls everybody either “buddy” or “mate”, I still give a personal significance to it. As he described earlier today on skype, I’m “a good bloke” and I definitely smiled on the other side of the room at that.

It’s been awhile since we cooked together, but it was fun and maybe we’ll start it up after he gets back from Paris this weekend (hint, hint, Vinnie?). I’ll ask him (unless he reads this first).

I’m actually surprised that Vinnie is not performing his pre-night ritual of listening to pump-up music right now, but he’ll surely have his text notes with him tonight to remind himself how it goes. (Think Momento.) Apart from what has been said so far, Vinnie plays football (not the American version) and futsal, I think it is.) and likes to win…a lot, as he would admit.

(I literally just went to the kitchen to take this picture.)

And that is Vinnie, the Aussie half a wall away. In sum, he’s a good guy.

Ah! I almost forgot! Vinnisms, here we go (capitalized for emphasis):

1. "Oh, that's a crispy one there."

2. "TELL you WHAT."

3. "YEH, buDDY!"

4. "Ahhh, mate."

5. "(H)eyy?"

6. "It's not ideal at all, to be honest."

Day 51, 27 Feb: Relaxation 101 and the End of the World

Norfolk Terrace, Day 51. [0:04] Relaxation 101 and the End of the World

            It was a sick day, starting with the unstoppable urge to sleep longer and ending with me really hoping to get to bed before half midnight (a British quirk in saying the time, i.e. “Half seven” is 7:30).

            Since my breakfast collided with my lunch hour, I had my peanut butter toast with sliced bananas and then directly after had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. With a befuddled expression written on his face, Dan asked me exactly how many sandwiches I was having, and I explained that I had “breakfast sandwiches” and was now having “lunch sandwiches”. Yes, I’m ridiculous.

            I walked into the post room and finally received my parents’ parcels! I looked at the document-shaped one and hoped that it was—yes! Piano sheet music! I had only brought over a scant two or three sheets with me, for the sake of minimal luggage, but now, with my swipe card, the arrival couldn’t have come at a better time. The other package held a few books I had asked for: Wuthering Heights (bearing a  “£2.50” price tag I had never noticed before…huh, it travelled from Britain to a Berkeley bookstore back to Britain), Heart of Darkness, and my copy of Stephen King’s autobiographical On Writing. I opened all the adhesive tape and envelopes in the library—I made more noise than I expected. Oops.

            I visited the piano practice rooms, got a bad pick for a room (piano out of tune a little, no working pedal), made the most of it, and realized my voice was terribly limited in my sick state. This thought encouraged me to decide against going to choir rehearsal tonight. Freeing my night/day from the one structured activity, I took a few liberties in being sick: watched an episode of Doctor Who and How I Met Your Mother, cooked salmon and broccoli (for the record, and to Vinnie, the salmon was cheap—I don’t eat posh food all the time), and emailed/IM’ed Katya. Oh, and I listened to music, which I don’t do as much as I should.

            I enjoyed all these activities more because I had worked at my reading assignment earlier and felt like I was escaping it. There’s almost more of a cherished purpose when the “play” in the day counterbalances the work unexpectedly. At night, I did return to the library with Dan and I read up to 163. I appreciate Charles Dickens more than ever now: he described “reading” in the words “follow that passage with your eye” (119). Something so minor he reinvents with a description, reincarnating an idea in a new light.

            In the midst of a school mindset (which begins every Monday and leaves on Friday, at least this semester), I taught myself to relax today—I’ll work the rest of my life, and despite my inclination to feel less worthy (of myself) when I am unproductive, I breathed in the air of a plentiful optimism. I have time to let myself not be confined in the library all day today. There is value in letting time be the lingering company on your porch after the day’s done, the empty space where responsibility is lifted and conscious reflection succeeds the refreshing inhale of the cool night air.

            At dinner, Jen and Matt built up a morbid conglomeration of the statistics and dead ends for the world’s diminishing resources. By 2040, the world’s oil reserves will be depleted. By 2050, usable fresh water on the massive scale will be gone. The supply of fish will run out. And there’s already an unsustainable 7 billion people on this planet. So, this put a damper on things this evening as well. Imagine a world where your children or grandchildren will struggle for things we take for granted. Now, don’t imagine it because it’s an awful image despite being a good Malthusian reminder of earth’s finite fruits of life.

            But there are moments when apocalyptic thoughts help bring up a new perspective. I hope that Doctor Who can be right in saying that humans will outlive their expected deadlines and find a way to survive (in the “End of the World” episode).

Meanwhile, Matt talked about saving up dough for space tourism in the long-term, but in five years, it will be possible. Can you believe it? As much as the present is always mundanely familiar, we are in the future. I’m writing this (for instance) and the minute I press “submit”, these words can appear on any computer plugged into the internet around the world—in less than a second. Or, if you like the more fun things, there are now high-speed hand dryers in public bathrooms—you go to a sink, the water pours automatically, the soap recognizes a palm, and then the hand dryer ripples your skin. You didn’t touch anything. On the flip side, you take out your handheld worldwide web of a smartphone, and there are no tangible buttons—all functions rely on touch, swipe, tap, tap, slide, swirl, zoom in, flick, swoosh.

But are we really in touch with reality? 

Day 50, 26 Feb: The Abnormal 'Telly' Dream and A More Normal Sunday

Norfolk Terrace, Day 50. [1:10] The Abnormal ‘Telly’ Dream and A More Normal Sunday  

            Think of Dexter, Star Trek, and CSI—all three TV shows (or shows on the “telly”) and morph them into one. Now imagine watching two episodes of this sci-fi crew of scientists, galactic navigators, and forensic specialists all aiming to save the life of a distant red planet. Drama occurs while on board: a member of the team goes missing, and all but the captain fall prey to a fatal secret: an unexpected visitor from the innards of their ship has made his presence known with an artistic video of their missing member residing in an elevator for merely eleven seconds and being shredded to pieces. A small group meet in secret and find the body, discover no traces of familiar human knife or blade marks, and soon become trapped in an endless cycle of finding more videos or witness more events of artistic murders on board. At all costs, the captain must be kept in the dark, or the predator will feed his claws into the small group, one at a time. But finally, they discover the ultimate aim: The captain is the Death Artist’s next target…

            I awake. I cannot say I’ve had such a fluid dream like that in a long time—the experience was so much like watching a television show that I find it still hard to believe that was just one long dream.

            I brought headphones on my run today, preparing for a 50-minute run (a run longer than 45 minutes makes me wonder if I’ll get bored, so only then do I listen to music as I run), and sprinted to an end at 47:30. I covered all the familiar fields, the cricket fields, the farm house, the befuddling woodland trail, and then the grand loop all the way out of UEA and around. Linkin Park (er, before their recent failed concept album Thousand Suns) fired up my pace and I got into an aggressive groove.

The First Three Tacos...

            Skype with Katya, a Sunday ritual. Five tacos I proudly made for dinner at 10:40 (skype ran into dinner hours, but I had lunch at 4, so no worries about starving). I bite into the cherry tomatoes as the means of cutting them in half—Gemma laughed as I did this. I finally made it to the library today, just for an hour: 11:30pm-12:30am. Vinnie clicks off his light now and so do I. 

Day 49, 25 Feb: Cabaret!

Norfolk Terrace, Day 49. Cabaret!

            I read a little of Great Expectations and then went off to the city centre with Dan. We discussed a bit of our excitement surrounding Jailbreak! during the bus ride. As we roamed through the mall, we first went to an array of clothing stores for Dan to get new clothes (some shrank in the wash) and I was obsessed with finding a specific yet generic blue-and-white striped shirt. Unfortunately, by the time I found my size at the fourth store, Primark, my interest in the shirt was gone. It saddened me for some odd reason. I didn’t end up buying anything.

            But for the better or the worse, I made up for not buying any clothes by buying a ton of food. But before that part two, lunch at this falafel place was incredible. I’ve never had as good a falafel as this one was. Dan, who ordered the same thing, agreed.

            At Sainsbury’s shopping mall, I ended up buying 4 dinners, 2-3 weeks worth of snacks and bread and most foods. £77. I had come prepared with five bags and my backpack. I have Dan to thank for helping me carry one of my bags. (Luckily, I didn’t use all my bags—just three and my backpack.)

Sainsbury's (Market)

            It took me forever to do the Kitchen Fridge Tetris game, placing foods of odd shapes in odd spaces. Most went into my little corner of the second fridge, and as I was wondering if other flatmates had a specific space for their stuff, Vinnie half-complained later that my Portobello mushrooms were in his spot and that answered my unasked question.

            I proceeded to write a first draft of an interior monologue from the perspective of a woman in her twenties at an audition. I used my memory of River City Theatre Company auditions I used to do in my early teenage years: the three judges, five auditioners in the room at once (each one goes up, then sits back down as nervous as the rest), the taped square in the middle of the floor to stand in while singing your twenty bars of a song. It all came back in these details.

            I shaved and supercooked (cooked-ate-cleaned in ten minutes) mince meat for two tacos and ran over to the union pub, the red bar side, to meet up with Jazzi, a friend of Dodo’s. (To refresh, Dodo is a UEA student currently studying abroad at UC Berkeley—I met him last November at a Mrs. Buch luncheon at Berkeley. We’re on the same scholarship but in different directions on the globe. Anyway, he told his friends about me, i.e. Kate, Stef, Jazzi, Abs, and here we are! I have to thank him for it at some point.) Jazzi introduced me to Alec (the British reincarnation of my high school friend Joel) and Ann, and within five minutes, Jazzi and Alec shed light on the crazy side of Dodo—he head-butted a frozen chicken that was flung in the air at him. Jazzi drove him to hospital last year, reflecting how this was the most bizarre hospital ride she had ever driven. I told them that he was in a co-op in Berkeley this semester (think hippieland student housing and you’re not far off) and that some of the co-ops raise chickens in their backyards. Needless to say, we all got along well.

            A half-hour later, we headed over to Cabaret, a production of musical numbers, duets, and some of the most hilarious MC’ing I’ve ever experienced. Jazzi told me that the concept rolled over from last year, and I could see its appeal. The straight man-funny man duo was outright ridiculously well-performed. One of them was definitely a British reincarnation of my Berkeley friend Rio Van der Staal and one of their centrepiece topics was the charity for which they were receiving donations. They actually mocked themselves of it at some points, CHARITY! But then seriously, they asked for donations. The whole night was really fun to watch, from Grease numbers to…Legally Blonde? I wasn’t too familiar with the second half of the show’s numbers.

            I pregamed /pre’d (drinking before an event) at the third floor of D Block in Norfolk Terrace—it was quite hilarious because two girls caught my name and then acted as if I was famous: “Wait..SPENCER? The runner from – Block?” (If you remember Day 11, these were the girls who cheered when I finished the 6:53 time going on lap around the lake. I had never met them—only heard them.) That was fun, and afterwards, Alvin, Marie, and I (with Vinnie walking behind) went to the campus club LCR and the night of crappy music, good drinks, and fun conversation (met up with Jazzi, Alec, and Ann again) commenced.

Day 48, 24 Feb: Wetherspoons

Norfolk Terrace, Day 48. Wetherspoons

            I enjoyed my morning in calm inactivity. Vinnie left the room, mentioning his star appearance on Joseph’s (New Zealand) Hydration Station radio show (known for its hungover Friday morning chats) on the campus channel Livewire 1350. Today, Emma (his friend) and Joseph had their normal quizzes and  argued whether Ben Howard was any good. Nevertheless, Joseph played “Wolves” and I facebooked him that it was my favourite song of BH—he mentioned it (and the fact that I was listening) and I suddenly felt like I was in a conversation without any way to say anything back (except through facebook). It was frustrating because I was tempted to just talk to my computer screen and have the illusion that they could hear me.

With Romanticism seminar cancelled, I wandered around campus, to the post room (or mail room), the travel centre (got my train ticket to London the day Katya arrives!), and to the music hall reception office where I finally received a swipe card (access to pianos all day any day; woo!)

            I ran into Marika, Rebecca, and one of their friends and in the midst of my errands, I stopped and had a bit of lunch with them. They invited me to their karaoke night at Project (a club in town) tonight, which I ended up sleeping through unexpectedly.

            The middle of the day I’m drawing a blank over, two-day detailed memory span it seems. Ah! There was skype with Katya, which turned out awful: both of our internet connections were fickle. Just before this—memory’s coming back—I went to an informational meeting with Dan about “Jailbreak!”, a charity event in which uni students get as far away from University of East Anglia as possible—without spending any money. Yes, hitch-hiking and/or pleading with flight attendants, bus drivers, truck drivers, train ticketers all in the name of charity are game. Dan and I (our group name “The West Coast Guys”—he’s from the west coast of Britain, I’m from the west coast of the US) will start a Just Giving account probably on Monday so I’ll do a little advertising pitch on the blog then.  

            It was a flatmates’ night out at The Bell, the name of an individual restaurant amidst the chain of Wetherspoon pubs (it confused me at first too). Apart from the initial hassle in gathering up four tables and a dozen chairs in one of the large dining spaces, the dinner was amazing. The six-lb. (yeah, the British use pounds when talking about burger weight) beef burger was impressive—and unexpectedly cheap! I got a pint of Thatcher’s Gold cider and the burger for six British pounds (as in the money—wouldn’t it be even more confusing if one pound weighed one pound? Ha!). I need to say that this cider was the best I’ve had in the UK—leagues better than Strongbow and smoother than nearly all other alcohol I’ve tried before. I bought a second pint of it without hesitation.

            The whole occasion for going out was a farewell dinner for James, who visited our flat again (he first visited Day 32) on a random Wednesday and left tonight. He got yet another tattoo on his left arm, vibrant illustrations running from shoulder to wrist now.

Aw, Vinnie and Steff sleeping

            Interestingly, as much as my flatmates and I were set on going out to the clubs tonight, the dinner was too early, the taxi ride back necessary, and the burger and cider induced sleepiness. Upon reaching my room, I, of contented body and tired mind, fell asleep at 10:50, my earliest UK bedtime yet. (It turned out that everyone in the flat, who went to the dinner, stayed in tonight too.)

Day 47, 23 Feb: Broke the Surface of the Sea of Work

 Norfolk Terrace, Day 47. [01:20] Broke the Surface of the Sea of Work

            It was the oddest sensation in the world. I finished Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, I finished the Romanticism reading, and suddenly I felt free—at 11 tonight, I didn’t feel behind in my work. In the past few weeks, I managed to have fun and put off the work for nearer to when the readings were due. And I finished Jane Eyre (from last week’s readings) on Monday, so this feels so odd to not be behind…I broke the surface of the sea of work and felt refreshed, deserving of a break without guilt. I spent my hour before midnight watching Doctor Who (the character of Charles Dickens was in the episode…coincidence that I’m reading Great Expectations for next week?) while putting away laundry from yesterday. Then the next hour I just goofed off and socialized with multiple friends and family on facebook.

            But this day started off good and stayed at a constant rate of good movement over contentedness all day. Romanticism seminar went over essay prompts and Madame Bovary (unfortunately, I didn’t finish until after the seminar; I got the ending spoiled for me, yet again. Ugh.) and the element of excess in her sad life of discontented marriage and neglected motherhood (the poor child has barely any mention in the novel, enhancing the child’s neglect even by the narrator). After, I grabbed lunch back at the flat, looked out at one of the warmest days in Norwich I’ve experienced so far here: 15 degrees or so. Families and friends were having picnics outside on the field between the ziggurats. Football was held outside (not American football) and teams gathered in different places throughout the grass.

            I went to the library and had one of the most engaging reading experiences that I’ve ever had: I realized that Stef and I were literally a page or two apart (different publishers, but nevertheless the translation was the same) so Stef suggested we race through reading to the end. We had basically 70 pages left, give or take. We stopped each other every now and then, asking or being excited to mention plot points like the “gala days” of Madame Bovary, her receiving an order by the king to pay her debts, and her eating arsenic and dying so grotesquely and leaving behind a husband still oblivious to her two scandalous affairs. My pages are smaller, so I blame that as the reason why Stef won. But still, we made good time and the experience felt like watching a television show with someone. We were reading in sync, and even looking up cool words (English majors…) like “concupiscence” (which means lust).

            After this, it took all my will to get changed back at the flat and run over to the track workout, ready to receive any painful session of what turned out to be the same as last week: 1000m- 3 x 300m-1000m-3 x 300m. But no final 1000m like last time. Again, it was still worth it.

            I had another microwaveable dinner (I bought two last night for £4; it was a deal) and then cooked up mash potatoes to have more food. Meanwhile I coveted my neighbour’s food. I admired Vinnie’s steak and homemade chips. I was eyeing Marie’s lettuce but I was completely surprised when she fed it to me and then lifted the plate to my mouth and proceeded to stuff it in. Well, I did eat it since I was weirdly craving lettuce, but I did feel like a legitimate garbage disposal—not unlike the playful nickname I had at one point back home YEARS ago at some camp (I was adamant to have the whole table of ten people not have waste, so if anyone didn’t finish, I was the solution, even a half-eaten popsicle). I went to the library with Dan, finished Romanticism readings, and then returned for the two hours of leisure. Now bed! 

Day 46, 22 Feb: Stream of Conscious 2: Motivation

Norfolk Terrace, Day 46. [1:52] Stream of Conscious 2: Motivation

[resuming from Day 45’s exercise of timing this:] No! The timer from the last entry has run out! I guess I’ll just be asleep at 2. You see, if you don’t know me, I have this habit I have yet to break in my life and it’s a really bad one. Could be why I’m not as tall as I’d hoped. Sleep. Late hours naturally flow into my schedule like the wind, one thing hits and then all of a sudden the dead silence of the night without the clamour of other voices gives me a lucid clarity to my thoughts and creativity (okay, timer went off now. New time: 10 minutes). Do you realize that I’m writing in a stream of consciousness fashion? An internal monologue version of a blog entry. Structure has temporarily been derailed and thoughts flow freely as the computer whirs and hums to the sound of my tapping fingers on the keyboard.

            Today I scratched the morning idea since I overslept yet again. I’m becoming ever-aware that I don’t want to waste away mornings. They’re more precious than I once imagined. Besides, I don’t want to miss breakfast of two pieces of bread peanut buttered and banana-ed! Yes, two new verbs of glory just added to the lexicon of the English language. Boom. Now onto the day!

            I had to pull away from an early (i.e. before noon) start reading in the library and settle with the task yet to be done this week: laundry. I spent quite a bit of quid on a double load, thanks to having too many shirts and having to wash my sheets this time. I actually ran back to get the sheets. Yeah, I looked quite interesting running in jeans, converse, glasses, and all with periwinkle sheets in my arms. (For the record, I did not choose the periwinkle—there was no choice.)

            WhatToWriteWhatToWrite…yes! I finished the laundry, had lunch in my room after preparing it for eating in the library, and while eating, I got into a glorious trance of watching youtube videos of Ben Howard’s music. I felt ashamed that I had some of his songs and never listened to him. He actually came to the campus tonight, but strangely, I am proud of my regret at not going—I know another artist I like now and there wasn’t really a chance for me to go to a show sold out for a while.

            (5 minutes left on the timer!) I finally made into the library, went to the top floor in one of the very corners of the building where the wind whistles and planted myself down at a window desk that looks out at the ziggurat terraces below. It’s a beautiful view. I read a decent bit, forcing myself to read til page 150 and taking longer than desired to do so. I stopped at some point and listened to the Goo Goo Dolls album from 2007. Again I was embarrassed by not listening to it before. I couldn’t stop listening and I was one song shy of listening to the whole album by the time I got back to work.

            I picked up groceries and went for a run with Marie’s friend Lee (up for a few days from Brighton) and this run was wicked!, my eyes adjusted to the darkness better than I expected and so we ran without   turning on the torch (British term for “flashlight”) after the first minutes. I ate a microwaved meal, justifying it because I had to return to the library shortly.

            I turned out spending more time relaxing, searching “motivation” in youtube and coming out with this amazing video of (timer’s off! Two minutes) a man without legs or arms since he was born. Nick Vujicic (paused timer to look up his name) is actually an internationally known motivational speaker and he even has a music video in which he sings. I admitted a tear at some point. He tried to commit suicide by drowning early on, but realized he couldn’t do it. He had more to live for. His book title Life Without Limits seems to attest to his ever positive source of strength. This was the second, third really, time today that I succumbed to an unexpected distraction that benefitted me.

            Back to the library I entered into a high-speed reading mode faster than before and got to page 278 by 1:15 (started at 10). The timer’s off, the day’s done. If this is too long, another day. Night.

            Well, let me just say that there are times when I feel like self-discipline conforms one into a contrived half-complete ideal. Procrastination is the means of compensation when there is that gap between productivity and deadline. Yet there needs to be motivation underlying it all. Tonight in the library, book-weary as I felt, I ploughed through fields of lines, crops of words, to get ever closer to the harvest of the last page—when all the emotions and remembered scenes charged from the words have a complete storyline, archived into the mind.

Day 45, 21 Feb: Stream of Conscious 1: Procrastination

Norfolk Terrace, Day 45. Stream of Conscious 1: Procrastination

I apologize for skipping this day the day of—for reasons of sleeping earlier than later in the post-midnight hours, I decided against the entry then. The day itself had some interest in the creative vein, but I’m trying to make as a rule keeping my posts shorter so as to let the daunting task of catching up not be so cumbersome and also for the purpose of keeping my prose tighter. In fact, I’m on a time limit of 15 minutes to write two days’ worth of stuff. Go.

            This day proved good at the start, waking up as I have been recently with a sense of embracing the day (before, I used to go to bed wishing I had done more in a day). I limited myself to three circuits around the lake for my run, keeping a good pace. I spent too little of the day reading Madame Bovary for Nineteenth Century Writing class, but I made the explicit choice to focus on creative writing assignments today as opposed to the reading. Look at me, even with so little class, I still procrastinate. I think I work best under pressure and yet it’s not something I’m proud of.

            I actually wrote the bare bones of a short story, going off what I wrote in creative writing class last week. That was probably one of the best experiences of writing without knowing what I was doing and suddenly stumbling upon a voice within my work. I had framed the voice to be that of a sarcastic teenage girl’s and somehow it felt natural, organic. I wouldn’t say polished or brilliant by any means, but everything must have a beginning and I feel like I had a moment of feeling a character’s voice in the force of writing furiously. Now today, I felt good on just barely making an end and knowing that soooo much more has to be filled in for it to be a comprehensive and coherent story.

            I let in a rush to 19^th Century lecture and saw a dozen students leaving the lecture amidst an otherwise empty lecture hall. The professor was sick. I never check school emails and this is what happens. I did get to finish creative writing reading articles, though, so that was the plus.

            The actual class today was more causal, more socially comfortable than ever before. I even leaned back my chair a bit in a relaxed position at one point, but I really did feel at home with all these students and a tutor who means well and provides great facilitation to the weekly themes discussed. Today was building a character’s voice (last week was building a character) through internal monologue. One of the examples, the most unstructured one, on the spectrum from structured to unstructured monologues, was from the last chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. I definitely smiled and appreciated it. I mean, that’s what this blog is referencing, after all. The Ulyssian? The Ulyssian journey? Yep. Why do you think I have a trip planned to Dublin? It’s all there in plain view but hidden.

            My mind is rushing into a blank—after that…? A surprise skype with Katya over tickets to the London Eye! We don’t usually skype this much, given our inconvenient time zone gap, so this is a plus. Dinner was the same as last night—I should’ve cooked it all last night but oh well. Good day.

Day 44, 20 Feb: RunThroughOfTheDay

Norfolk Terrace, Day 44. [2:07] RunThroughOfTheDay

Abs-Run-Shower-Emails-Vacuum-Breakfast-MadeLunch-Library-UEAChoirRehearsal(StillGettingUsedToDirectorCallingQuarterNotesCrotchetsAndEighthNotesQuavers)-WentCrazyInPianoPracticeRoom-CookedUpPestoFettucciniWithSausage-FinishedJaneEyre-SkypeWithKatya (ArrangingHotelBookings)-RealizationThatIt’s2InTheMorning.

Day 43, 19 Feb: Three Simple Things

Norfolk Terrace, Day 43. [0:23] Three Simple Things

Three Simple Things:

Food (bought £20 worth at UFO),

Blog (3 hours for 2 days: half writing, half uploading/editing photos [185]),

Skype (4 hours:21 minutes:5 seconds with Katya  [Also I cooked and ate dinner during the talk; brainstormed accommodations for the week in Europe together] + 52 min:48 sec with parents).

Day 42, 18 Feb: A Full Day of London

London. Day 42. A Full Day of London

This was also quite a long and eventful day, so the trope of divided sections will pass on into this entry:

I.              Slow-walking Down Oxford Street, then to Trafalgar Square

Waking up at 8:45 (we all planned to meet upstairs at 9), I slowly got ready and then joined the other three at the continental breakfast area. Jam and toast, cereal and milk, orange juice. There was a want for warmer food, but it was free so I can’t complain.

Royal Academy School

Cool Displays

            We all glided our way back to the Underground wyrms and popped up to the streets at Oxford Circus. From there, we simply walked down Oxford and New Bond Street, but the quantity of shopping stores and display windows continually kept us walking very, very slowly past them. At one point, we saw statues and the instant I saw the name “John Locke” under one, I cried out in wonder. There were twelve statues, three lining the first story, three overlooking the roof, both on the left and right sides of the grand entrance (in renovation with piles of wood and boxes). It turns out this was the Royal Academy School. Once back on a main street, we spotted a Cool Britannia store and took up our tourist role with pride. We bought mainly elegant postcards. Marika also made a point to buy this small stuffed bear.

            Eventually we made it to Trafalgar Square, where we played with the lions and photographed the water fountains. There was a certain bliss in being here, the crowds made up this lively square and the sounds of water falling meshed with running children’s squeals of joy composed a park setting on concrete. The four of us climbed onto the monument beholding one of the four corner lions (all guarding the tall tower in the forefront of the square) and took pictures astride it.

LIONS!

Shepherd's Pie!

            Soon we found a place to eat called The Stock Pot, and I just had to try the Shepherd’s Pie finally. It was a little expensive (£7.50), but similar to the amazing Fish and Chips of Walberswick (from Day 35, last Saturday), it was an experience.

II.             The Sweetest Tourist Trap

The Wonderful World of...M&M's?

       Our next stop was to be Chinatown, but something diverted us from our path. It was a sign and a gigantic building: M&M’s World. None of us had ever heard of such a place, so we were soon taken into a four-level consumer world of everything from life-sized M&M’s figures to mock famous paintings and an Abbey Road rendition (with the four M&M’s characters). I made it a point to visit all four of the characters’ statues (there were also costumed and dancing characters as well) and take a picture beside each one. All four of us also danced in front of this sensor which told us what M&M color we were. I was orange, the nervous one (boo), and I remember Alex being the black color (the machine was being racist, of course). Oh, Marika was red. Anyway, there came a time when I looked at the wall of columns upon columns of M&M’s in  vastly superior colour spectrum than I had ever seen. I decided to grab a bag (No-no No. 1), I proceeded to mix the Royal Mix with the UK colour mix with some of every blue M&M on the wall (No-no No. 2), and I tied the bag and decided to buy it (No-no No. 3). I am considerably embarrassed that I found myself truly caught in a consumer’s ensnarement in which the one way out was to buy it: there was no scale except at the check-out counter. The price rate was £2.10 per 100 grams…mine weighed 0.6 kg (600 grams). “That will be £12.60 please.” After the momentary fall from frugal grace, I joined the others on our side-exit (the dancing M&M’s blocked the main staircase) and thankfully made it out of the tourist trap without any further economic wounds.

I still can't get over this...mistake.*ahem*

       We made it to Chinatown (Morgana’s suggestion), but unfortunately, it was much less impressive than M&M’s World was. It was literally one street lined with shops and restaurants. Nevertheless, we walked through and came out at Cambridge Circus where we saw the sign “Signing in the Rain” above a theatre entrance. I started signing the fragment of the main melody that I remembered and suddenly we all realized that it was raining. How perfect. We were literally singing in the rain.

           

             III.            The Archives of History

Alex made the suggestion that we do something indoors and the British Museum made the most sense. We stepped up into the vast tomb of world history, organized by countries and eras in rooms upon rooms. Starting with Ancient Egypt (and seeing the Rosetta Stone in person), we made it around to classical Greece and Rome, admiring headless and headed statues alike. The motif of almost all sculpted work was the cut-off nose—was it just the most pointed front feature of the human body? Almost without fail, all of them bore no nose. Soon we made our way to Europe, medieval to modern, and I discovered a room devoted to watches and clocks. There was one device that held a regular clock on top but below had a carved plane for a metal ball to roll across in very gradual manner—then at the farthest point, the weight of the ball caused the tilted plane to shift its incline the other way. That took exactly one minute. The device was ingenious.

            Overall, my time at the museum became significantly more fun when I stopped caring to look at everything in the room or try to oversaturate myself with all the artefacts (British spelling of “artifact”). I just turned a blank eye to the less interesting and magnified my glimpse at what I wanted to see. An astrolabe, for instance, was cooler than the tenth porcelain plate of a royal set, in my opinion.

"Cradle to Grave by Pharmacopoeia"

Shakespeare, --- , Aristotle, Apuleius In a Row

By the end, we decided to see the two exhibits that I had expressed interest in seeing: The Enlightenment; and the Living and Dying.  The bibliophile (book-lover) in me soared to an excitement of astronomical heights when I saw original or Enlightenment-edition copies of books I had read or heard about: I even saw Balzac’s Old Goriot which I had literally read for class two weeks before. Two separate collections of Shakespeare were on display; there was Cicero; there was Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (read it for a class on ancient rhetoric last semester back at my home university)—all three of these were right next to each other on one shelf. The magnitude of this exhibited archived book collection was utterly astounding. As for the Living and Dying exhibit, nothing struck my interest except for the centrepiece of the room: a long glass display of—pills. There were two meshed rolls of pills, each in a netted pouch, and each roll held 14,000 pills, the estimated number of prescribed pills in an average person’s lifetime from cradle to grave (hence the title of the work: “Cradle to Grave by Pharmacopoeia” by Freeman, Critchley, and Lee). It almost made me angry at our chemical dependence, but my reaction was softened by Alex’s practical remark that we do live an 85-year life span now, not a 40-year one like our ancestors centuries back. We four left the museum, after a quick stop at the gift shop, and found the rain had stopped.

From the View of the Boadicea Statue 

             IV.             London’s Centrepiece and Departure

Arising from the Westminster Underground station, we stared at Big Ben straight in the face and walked over to the grounds of Westminster Abbey as well. 

The View Across Westminster Bridge

We decided not to go on the London Eye that evening, but we amused ourselves with the two wax figures near the London Eye ticket office, until Alex’s friend Carrie showed up. We walked into a sushi bar with a conveyor belt of coloured plates and ate a deceptively expensive meal (each coloured plate represented a different price) that was nevertheless quite enjoyable. Despite being farthest away from the belt, I still got a chance to grab one of the plates before the end of the meal. It was gratifying.

The night ended with Carrie, me, and the three (Marika, Alex, and Morgana) all heading in different directions on the Underground. I made it on time to my train to Ipswich, which transferred by bus to Stowmarket, and from there, the journey continued to Norwich by train. At five after midnight, I arrived in Norwich and commuted by bus back to campus. Before going to bed, I made sure to email Katya to wish her a happy 10-month anniversary (since it was still the 18^th in California). Thus ended a two-day trip to London that I am so thankful to have taken—it really rose my spirits to feel the pulse of England’s capital once more.

The Remnants of the Trip

Day 41, 17 Feb: Last-Minute London

Palmer’s Lodge, Willesden Green, London, Day 41. Last-Minute London

Norwich Railway Station

I have been in the UK for over a month—4 days in London and 36 days in Norwich. This weekend I couldn’t just keep up this lopsided tally: I needed to travel and not go stir-crazy in my room, on campus, or just around Norwich. There had to be a momentous shift in setting, and the answer came through Marika’s offer for me to join her and Alex on their weekend trip to London. After the indecisiveness Wednesday night, I made the resolution to go and come Thursday morning (yesterday), I bought two £16 tickets (to London and back to Norwich) and a one-night £15 accommodation at Palmer’s Lodge hostel in northwest London, a fairly quiet part called Willesden Green. The second night would’ve been significantly more expensive and I wanted Sunday to write the blog, skype back home, and try to catch up on reading. Come Friday, I shouldered my backpack and headed out to the Norwich Railway Station by bus. I was ready.

Since this will be a long entry, I have devised sections to divide up the length.

I.              Snow Drops and Societal Red-Tape: Conversations on the Train

On the National Express East Anglia train (which I took alone, since I found out only much later that my friends were taking a coach—oh well), I read a bit more of Jane Eyre, but about halfway through the two-hour ride, the lady seated across from me in those 4-seat table arrangements (two seats, table, two seats facing the former) began talking to me. In the awkwardly silent stage of any unfamiliar encounter, there can be little questions (I asked her, “Can we eat on the train?” She asked me later, “Do you know if the train stops at Stansted station?, etc.) that build up until a fluid conversation occurs and this is what happened. She pointed to a picture of a small white, naturally lilting flower in her Norwich magazine, saying “Snow drops. You must see them while in Norfolk. They’re in Walsingham. Think ‘waltz-in-ham’” The conversation soon flew into her recent travels to the US and then to my studying abroad at UEA in Norwich. She smiled and said, “Traveling broadens the mind.” She talked of her daughter doing one more year of preparing for A-levels (high school) in order to retake a few tests and try for university after being really sick for most of a year. She got into Leeds and now so many years later is living with her boyfriend in Australia for a year, and flying to California for the snow and skiing.

One story of hers actually helped me reconsider my oppressive image of dealing with all of society’s “red-tape” (security precautions, queues, conformity): her daughter was on a really slow bus to the Stansted Airport and was going to miss her non-refundable flight. The mother, the lady on the train, called the airport to tell them of the situation and asked if her daughter could go straight to the departure gate. After giving the airport correspondence all the details of appearance, name, and travel details, the mother gave her daughter all the directions and in the end, she flew through the airport and made the flight, with barely ten minutes to spare. “Sometimes, you just have to cut through the red-tape that society puts around you,” she concluded.

Upon leaving, she admitted, “It was nice to have met you,” and I returned the cordial remark. In the last minute, I asked her her name, wondering if that would at all matter after she had basically told me a summation of her life story (went to college near Norfolk, lives there now, worked as a teacher, retired and went off traveling, was on the train to a female Rotary club (public service for women and children) meeting in London). “Thorp”. Strangely, it didn’t affect the correspondence, for me. It was merely a name.

II.             In His Armchair, With his Pipe, Wearing His Hat

I looked up at the Liverpool Street Station’s metal-railed ceiling as high up as a cathedral’s vaulted arches, and felt a surge of refreshing freedom and bliss. I was back in London, amidst the organized bustle and teeming movement. I topped up my Oyster card for the Underground train system (“top up” is a very common British term for adding more money to an account) and headed off to Baker Street. Oh, you can guess why.

"You know my methods, Watson."

221B Baker Street. I found it: The Sherlock Holmes Museum, a place that would strike Sherlock as an unimpressive attempt at gathering authentic guns and pens and fires in fireplaces all mixed in with stuffed dummies, the Baskerville Hound’s head (a mantelpiece), and glass exhibits of only plausibly accurate items from his cases. Maybe the place would still amuse his inherent arrogance, nevertheless. For me, the self-guided tour was worth seeing, for the sake of Sherlockian fan loyalty, but the experience was far from moving. Still, I enjoyed it. The best part was dressing in “Sherlock’s” hat and pipe and having a woman dressed in an 1890s maid outfit (a Mrs. Hudson character) take my picture in “Sherlock’s” armchair. Unfortunately, I don’t think Sherlock would wear a blue checkered shirt with a half-zip up the front. 

III.            The Tube: London’s Labyrinth; Palmer's Lodge

I found Marika, Alex, and Morgana (another friend who joined last-minute) at the Victoria Railway Station and after an hour of orienting ourselves (going through long queues to get Oyster cards, topping them up, me buying all of us London maps), we navigated our way through the Underground, labyrinth of London, until we found our way onto the grey Jubilee line that led us to Willesden Green. While watching the trains weave out of dark tunnels and into the stations, I could not help but see them as mechanical worms navigating below the earth’s surface, eating and spewing people each time they stopped. 

Nautical Barracks of Palmer's Lodge

After being spewed onto Willesden Green station, we walked the quiet, predominantly residential streets and found Palmer’s Lodge, a backpacker’s hostel. It turns out that Marika, Alex, and I were all in the same 20-person co-ed room: the expansive room held 10 wooden bunk beds, each bed equipped with light, linen, and a bedside curtain (I felt as if I were in a submarine or some other nautical barrack—the place had a musky, wet dog smell about it too).

IV.             Reading Faces and Alternative Realities

Good Strawberry Cheesecake

         After a good cheap Chinese dinner, we agreed to appease Alex’s craving for cheesecake by sitting down at Mezzorama, a bistro with glass displays of cakes at the counter. Three of us had strawberry cheesecake, Morgana had tiramisu. The cheesecake had a less rich flavour than a NY-style one would, but the shortcake taste made it all the better. We took pictures of our food and the place—the ambience was exceptional: glittering jades on the ceiling, exotic walls, dim lighting supplemented with a warm firelight. After our dessert, I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked behind me to see a harmless, smiling face ask me where we were from. Our picture-taking had given us away. We told him California, Boston, Colorado, and Oregon—America, he concluded. 

       Soon his other two friends joined the conversation and all seven of us felt at ease with one another. The interesting part of the whole thing was an artistic reluctance to tell each other anything directly: we had to guess all their names, guess their careers, guess their ages, and guess where they were from (the last one actually came up first, since we had started with being from America). Marika actually was almost spot-on in her evaluations: she saw the hat on one of them and thought artistic but also in a leadership position and some banking or accounting career (he actually worked for himself as an IT consultant for investment bankers—very close); she saw the more reserved guy in the corner with his bulky frame yet mellow face and thought teaching or law (I thought law too since I had admitted my interest in law school and he had brightened at the comment; but he was a high school teacher who had almost done law school except for a family bereavement recently); lastly, Marika saw the first guy who had spoken to us and saw a job with computers (the guys laughed since it implied that he was a geek; I perceived his bright-coloured shirt to represent his artistic side being suppressed by his black coat; he was an architect, who inevitably worked with computers but not as a geek). Their names were David (architect), Jeff (teacher), and Maurice (hat guy, IT consultant)—all around mid-twenties and only David I know was Jamaican British.

            They evaluated us too: Marika looked like a Jennifer, I was just the surfer dude, and then others. Marika looked artistic so her majors were almost guessed correctly (film and art), Alex blew them away that she was a math major (and not something design or art-related), Morgana’s major and name stumped them—she answered as an anthropology major. I had told them mine earlier, as one of the first questions David had asked me before the discussion had extended to all seven of us.

Left to Right: David/Trevor, Jeff/Samuel, Maurice/Linwall

            The next part got interesting: we had names and majors/careers, but now we asked each other what our alternative ones would be. David was a Trevor of another artistic field; Jeff was a Samuel of executive business; Maurice a Linwall the Gospel singer (that was my notion). Marika a fashion designer, Alex a sculptor (Maurice had just instantly thought this), Morgana an owner of a PR company. At me, Maurice again just said surfer dude, but Jeff said there was much more to me than that. He saw musician. Lead guitar. Then he mentioned how I had this benevolence that would put me in a service field of work, helping others. I was glad I was no longer a surfer, since I’ve only done it twice and the California stereotype gets old quickly.

            Thus two hours flew by, but this chance meeting was one of those events that surprise all involved, remove any sense of expedient or hurried time, and attest to the eternal feeling of the possibility of human connection that can occur anywhere in the world.