Day 81, 28 March: City Centre, Spongecake Fight (and Essays)

Norfolk Terrace, Day 81. City Centre, Spongecake Fight (and Essays)

A nice sleep was followed by a breakfast of eggs and toast. Afterwards, Katya and I headed off to the library, where Katya could print off her biology readings and I could continue the revision process for the Pip essay (then later, Shelley).

At Norwich City Centre

      Unlike the stickiness of staying in my room to revise yesterday, I appreciated moving about campus with Katya—unfortunately, I never got a chance to give her an extensive tour of campus, but we managed to spend two hours at the Norwich city centre, 4 to 6 in the afternoon. I bought a sleek black camera, the exact brand and number as my old one but British style. As is our nature as ‘foodies’, we found a pasty shop (still not sure how it differs from a ‘pastry’ shop) and had a good time sitting down to eat our meat-bread combinations in the courtyard facing Primark, a store similar to Marshalls in America. We had wandered in the store for Katya, but no flowy-style shirt was to her liking.  Upstairs we took pictures of ourselves in hipster glasses, and then left. We bought chocolate ice cream as we walked out of the ‘House of Fraser’ shopping centre.

Katya's last name is similar to
'Fraser', so I took this picture.

      I felt guilty—but as is my academic nature of perseverance, I knew I needed to spend three to four more hours in editing both my essays, revising citations in the Harvard reference method which the school apparently uses, and doing a last read-through before electronically submitting them a little under 24 hours before the Thursday midnight deadline. SWT-Pip essay…file received. SWT-Shelley essay…file received.

      It’s odd to think that not once did my words appear in print, as a tangible copy, just like it’s odd that more money is contained in a 2” by 3” (or smaller) plastic card than in one’s hand as bills. Civilized reality relies more on cyber-facilitated symbolism with the years. 5,000 songs compressed in megabyte storage. A work station reduced to a lap-held computer.

BRAINS...statue!

     I worked in the laundry room and then in the kitchen as Katya cooked—I wanted to finish the revisions, and I forgot to help out with the meal. But Katya understood and the pasta and meat sauce turned out amazing.

      I went back to write in my room. About an hour or two in, Katya came in to inform me that Dan and Jen had made a sponge cake. It was urgent to get to the kitchen before it was all gone. I complied and fortunately, the cake had not been touched yet. Forks and Vinnie’s spoon at the ready, we attacked it. Then we stole bits off each other’s forks, one hand-off went through three people before I made the bold interception. Katya even more boldly took my next bite. It was almost as if a cloud one would see in cartoons over a dusty fight scene had taken place—once the cake was gone, the cloud cleared and Vinnie triumphantly held up his spoon. My fork had somehow gotten jabbed into the head of the spoon.

      We all departed to bed, except me who unfortunately still had an hour to go for editing and then I had to pack for three weeks of traveling. I kept Katya up, who had finished packing much earlier, but this was the last work day for me in a while. Tomorrow: Paris.

We're just...funny.