Out and about

I met up with a former classmate and friend from the alma mater tonight in the chic, up-and-coming bar Aqua Nueva. Beautiful design, amazing smells of food streaming in from their Spanish and Japanese themed restaurants and the usual uptight and overdressed crowd. We had a great time, and she suggested that, after two bottles of Cava, we take a wonder down to Cuckoo Club, her often frequented place to hang out. Which would have been, supposedly, great fun, except that she has been drinking since lunch, so the doorman whom she was tight with, deemed her unfit to enter even before she opened her mouth. We hang around for a bit, trying to convince him that she wasn't as unstable as she may have appeared, but he was unmoved. Sharing a fag, trying to figure out the future party options, I mentioned that as she usually went out alone, my presence as a sort of chaperone, could have impeded her chances of getting in. Before long, she bade me goodbye to attempt her way into the club on her own. 

This is a thing I really hate about London. You can never actually aim at going out on a weekend night without sufficient amount of planning. You either circle around town like 'bird-shit in the air' as the Hungarian saying goes, or you are giving up all your self-respect, trying to beg your way into where you want to party. A total buzz killer. 

I was expecting having dinner before the catching up deteriorated into the Cava, so I was pretty gone and completely exhausted from a day of library-ing after only the alcohol part of the night delivered. Catching the night buses to Notting Hill I got the chance to observe the desperate crowd lined up in front of Amica. There was even a guy in wheelchair involved, for the sake of persuasion. For crying out loud.

Optimistically enough, I was wearing heels, despite the breaking and tumbling incidents of last weekend. I usually speed-walk to the rhythm of my music, so, my Ipod on shuffle, out of the 3631 songs (just checked for the sake of accuracy) I stumbled upon the following two great tunes, which I kept playing over and over to slow me down, to cheer me up and to give me a nice chilled way of walking, without tripping over anything. 

Ok, never mind, somehow I can't upload or attach the videos from YouTube, but here are the links. 

I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye

and

Nika Pata Lambo by Kaissa

Sunday, Monday, happy days...

So I fell off a curb today, because this is how I spend my in-between library time. And I realized that before my own clumsiness or a London cabbie kills me, I think I should update my blog. Oh, the priorities. I spent a day and a half recovering after a weekend long high school reunion, which left me broken in body, but quite uplifted in soul. 

Naturally, the first, Friday, night was a bit awkward, trying to sum your life up in the past 7 years, to people you are not even sure care, can be dull. Of course this was only until the boy arrived who makes everybody drink. Heavily. After that conversation became more or less meaningless, but a whole lot more entertaining. S, my true best friend from those days, and I caught several night buses until we made it from Brick Lane to Notting Hill, but time flew by as we drunkenly stumbled around London. 

Saturday, we spent the whole, beautifully sunny day, trying to get from NH to Barbican to check out Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's new installation, The Curve. A musical composition with zebra finches flying around, decking out and feeding themselves sick on top of electric guitars connected to amps and creating some truly weird sounds of Mother Nature's rock'n'roll. Dinner was pleasant, but the banging club music at Tiger Tiger a little later didn't really help the long over due catch up, but the vodka sure flew abundantly. So much, in fact, that true to form I tripped on some stairs and ended up breaking off my boot heel completely. Thank god, S found it, but as there wasn't anyway of reattaching it I elegantly limped around for the rest of the night. I'm not sure I fell because the heel came off or I just TUI (Tripped Under the Influence haha) and consequently the boot fell apart. It is a very egg or chicken conundrum. Not surprisingly, I didn't remember this significant moment until the next day, when looking for something else, I found the missing part of the footgear in my bag.

Sunday turned out to be much more debaucherous than planned. Instead of a quiet stroll through Camden market, we managed to get tangled up in several bottles of wine with two other old mates and ended up having a rockingly great catch up time, which really felt like how a reunion should feel like.  

Monday brought a hangover to die from after my head has rolled away to an undefined location. S, left in the morning, I'm not sure how; I was still dying. Was dying through most of Tuesday too, although that may have been only a case of severe laziness, and Wednesday I finally got my ass to the library. So now that I most carefully, and less so entertainingly walked you through my week, here I will stop, and promise not to write anymore, because, well I will be in the library. And I try not to use 'boring' as a deadly weapon. Cheerio. 

Happy World Book Day, 2010

The 11 o'clock viewing just got cancelled. It was a dream place. Affordable and spacious. And it will stay so, because I will never see that it was actually a ran down hole. So I will keep beating myself up about it that I have missed out on this possibly perfect opportunity. This is what viewings are really for. To see what you do NOT want. But no fretting, I still have a quarter to 12 and a half 12 appointment to see where we do not wish to live. As you can see I am resorting to morose skepticism in order to not be disappointed, as I was when the agent called minutes ago to cancel the viewing and I went into a not-so-dignified chain of cussing, that may have offended my neighbours on the other side of the paper thin walls. 

You will be glad to know, that I still haven't made it to the library, since the last brief visit to register for my library card (which is actually a piece of yellow paper with a barcode sticker on it, fancy huh?). London is sunny! Who in their right mind would voluntarily imprison themselves within four walls, when spring comes trotting into the grey and rainy town? So I took a long, wonderful and bathing-in-the-sunshine walk in Hyde Park. Then, took a long, wonderful and bathing-in-the-sunshine walk in Regents Park. Then ... alright, to cut to the chase I also walked up to Camden and then Kentish Town. Let me tell you, I walked everywhere except to the library. 

I also wondered into a bookstore, when I was waiting for my randez-vous with the Doctor. I should have learned never ever to do that. It is dangerous activity for my time and also money. I could live in a bookstore. Just sit on the ground, and devour everything from classic to cult, through non-fiction to cook books. Somehow, I never end up reading what I'm supposed to be reading (fascinating pieces for aiding the structuring of my theoretical framework - says me, swallowing back a little vomit) so basically I procrastinate from reading by reading. I walked away, with only the essentials. At one point I was clutching five books, and trying to decide on the verge of tears, which ones I should take home. I think this is what most people feel when they have to pick out puppies from a litter. 

Under the Frog (A béka segge alatt) by Tibor Fisher

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, y en español

and finally,

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk,

which by a simple game of 'reach-in-the-bag-and-see-what-you-get' was the first to be read. Sitting at Euston, waiting for the Doctor, the station disappeared as I was sucked in to the horror and insight of the narrative. I actually had to look up at times, to tear myself away from the vivid images that my mind kept belching up of torn intestines, mouths bleeding from cold sores and carrots. While I was trying to find the appropriate balance between continuing reading and registering that there is still a somewhat normal reality around me, I noticed that the girl next to me is immersed in the Bible. I don't think I've ever seen anybody actually Reading the Bible. Nor at a coffee shop or on the bus or, in this case, at a train station. There is talk about it all the live long day, but not a sight of somebody just casually whipping it out. Of course, it is also possible that I haven't frequented the right places. So, I looked at my book, the one that is clinically dissects and smears the world the other is striving to build, and the other whose message is threatened or at least faded with the existence of the prior. I looked around, and it was only the two of us reading in a long row of people playing on their blackberries, iphones, ipads you name it, anything to not look and recognize each other, while from the Haunted rose cruel, disgusting and illuminating reality of the everyday life and from the Bible rose the promise, guilt and superiority of an other universe. And the girl and I played out the silent war of worlds from within our hands.  

Baby steps

At the end of this day I can proudly declare that I have a functioning phone and a number to go with it and I have re-registered at library of my alma mater. Furthermore, I successfully opened a bank account even though at the first branch this was denied to me, because my proof of residency was in an obscure language, which impeded the world's local bank to function properly. Anyhow, in a different branch it turned out that there is actually a whole account policy designed for oversees people taking British jobs. However, besides not being able enough to look up my UK postcode on the WWW based on my address (I wasn't supposed to touch anything, in case I may perform a swift security breach using Royalmail as portal) the otherwise really pleasant bank clerk and I had the following conversation:

"So you are doing your masters. Wow. So what is it in? Banking and accounting?" 

Maybe I was wearing something formal and tight-ass?

"No...I study something like sociology."

"Oh, well, that's good enough too."

WHAAAAAAT??? THE F****CK??? Thanks Mr. BankClerk that you approve of the direction of my education slash life. Weight off my shoulder. 

I also managed to book two apartment viewings for tomorrow. I've already had some email correspondence with the person who is letting the place I've already fallen in love with and, I wouldn't go so far as to call him eloquent, but he read clear and logical. When he picked up the phone, he sounded more like Hannibal. So if you don't hear from me in a few days, come and look for me. 

It has been a great day, I have gotten a whole lot done, and to put the cherry (well, prematurely) on the cake I even went for a run in the morning. Even though my nicotine soaked lungs couldn't take more than 15 minutes, I bathed in the beautiful forenoon sunshine, despite the cold that made me into a glass-cutter and incidentally made the eyes of the workmen pop out. 

Overall, I declare the day a total success. May my productivity increase. Amen.

Best website for the skint yet culturally eager Londoner

This may be me. So this may become my favourite cyber-corner for a while. YAY.

http://www.timeout.com/london/aroundtown/features/6274/London_on_a_budget.html 

Notes to self

Note to self: please for the love of god remember for once not to travel when so incredibly hungover. Or if travel is already scheduled, then please don't get so obliterated that you want to throw up in the car on the way to saying goodbye to the grandparents. 

When I am in this miserable state and have to take a plane, or any form of windowless transportation, I have, what only can be described as panic attacks. I was having the smoothest 3 hour flight from London to Helsinki a few years back, yet I was unable to detach my mouth from the paperbag, breathing heavily and probably freaking the shit out of my neighbour. This is due to the fact, that for some reason I become (only when battling the aftereffects) acutely aware that there is no fresh air on board and I am enclosed in this space where there is no exit and I am breathing the same stale air as a 100 or so other people do. The more I think about this the more aware and panicked I become and it takes only minutes to reach the bottom of the downward spiral, where the sane part of my brain is screaming (almost inaudibly for the one that went berserk) to stop being so moronically childish.  I usually turn all three air-conditioning nipple-thingies towards myself on full, and while I freeze my ass off I have the vague impression of fresh air caressing my face. 

This was of course no longer a problem when the flight was delayed with 3 and a half hours. Note to self:  WIZZAIR sucks!!! Just because they rob maybe less from you, for the idiotic idea that you have to PAY for your checked-in luggage, (which can be a miserable 15 kilos) it is so not at all bloody worth being stuck at Ferihegy 1 for 4 hours, which can, with the best of intentions, only be described as mind-numbingly boring. 

As usual I bought the Economist, but my still alcohol hazed mind could not process it faster than at the rate of a page/30 minutes, so I gave up and bought The Reader by Schlink. Moving as it was, it didn't make for the best travel-reading. Its moral complexity left me breathless and deeply in thought and an airport and later a psychotic screaming and kicking child behind me, did not quite provide the relaxing atmosphere I would have required for reflection. 

When I, of course, missed the last tube, I ended up with one of those talkative cabbies. Naturally, when I told him where I was from he told me he was starving. After a day like that I almost cried from pain hearing this. But he went on telling me that he wouldn't be here if it had not been for a Hungarian man. His Polish father was in a camp and was in the Death March when he was 14 or 15. When he could not go on and laid down in the snow, a man lifted him up and told him he needed to live. So the cabbie's father was dragged up and survived. So did the Hungarian man, who is around 90 now. And the cabbie was born, to tell me this story, take my breath away and give me a lot more to think of than when I started out for the day. 

Note to self: everything happens for a reason.

New Beginnings

Well, hello, and welcome back. It has been a while. How've you been?

For a bit more than 10 days now I am sleeping in a bed and in a room on my own after three and a half months of sharing with boyfriend, friends, sister, parents and of course the occasional random strangers. At first it seemed awfully quiet and strangely relaxing not having another heartbeat close, no sounds of breathing. Also, I tend to worry about me snoring and pissing off others (except when I'm wasted, then of course I'm hardly capable of giving a shit) so I can finally have guilt free dreams. 

Being home is always blissful, for the first days. There is usually a viewing planned for the extended family, where they come around, eat, hang out and pat me down and try to comprehend why I do the things I do within the space of a few hours. This also frequently involves telling me that I have lost weight, which is more often than not untrue, and I think it's because they remember me as chunkier than I actually am. At Christmas I made the mistake (after some wine and Jagermeister) of ranting about my adventures in the Chiapas jungle interspersed with a cleansing ritual, which just added to my already ready-made profile, that everybody remembers how darn cute I was when I was a kid, but now I am just plain weird. 

So it's been good to be home, but I've gotten quite lazy here. I started with doing vigorous yoga and running around organising and sorting out stuff, and putting stuff here and there, and typing and faxing, and feeling real productive. Now I even have time to update my blog about a bunch of bollocks, which will essentially boil down to the following:

I am moving to London. After a lifestyle, which can only described as bumming about on an international scale, I plan to take a break for a while, move in with the boyfriend, research my thesis, get an internship, eat healthy, do some exercise, generally settle down and be a boring knob. Sounds like fun? Yes, and beware, I plan to write a blog about it. The good part about it is that I have a feeling I will be inclined to fuck this idyllic picture up, or at least bump into some more or less seriously entertaining difficulties on the way.