Sleep Spent

Months ago, I was on a reading binge. Ringworld, The Price of Loyalty, Snowcrash: I was on a roll.

Then I ran into the verbose baroque-itude that is The Count of Monte Cristo and stalled for nearly two months. In the meantime, I kept buying books and adding them to my To Read shelf, which is now full to bursting.

Instead of trying to force myself to read anymore of the wretched Count, I decided to cut my losses and move on. So on the plane I began Me Talk Pretty One Day, which didn’t last me three days. (Brilliant collection, by the way. David Sedaris is hilarious.) Having anticipated this, I was prepared with Garrison Keillor’s newest novel, Love Me. This was funny as well, but not as much. It was meant to be a more wholesome entertainment, I think. (Which is odd, because the man talks about sex literally every 10 pages.)

That book was good, but it was short too. I finished it today and would have been in trouble if I didn’t have this incredible book buying habit. I entered this country with three books, one of which was a gift. I’m going to leave it with six.

One of the books I just purchased is Northern Lights (The Golden Compass for you Americans), the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Apparently this series started in 1995 (!!), but I’ve only just heard about it this year.

This novel is immediately engrossing. I’m 80 pages into it and I can’t put it down.

Even better, I’m learning words and history (most of it from my own explorations on the side with Wikipedia). And best of all, it takes place in Oxford! (Well, some of it does, anyway.)

Somehow I’m going to have to stifle my excitement long enough to catch some rest, because tomorrow I’m up early to walk around in Soho. Catch you fools later.

I’m off to Oxford in a bit, but I wanted to write a quick post on what I’ve been up to lately.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, as you are doubtless aware, and I am staying here with a bunch of Americans. This being the case, we all made food and celebrated. It came off surprisingly well. I made my mom’s famous Pumpkin Upside-Down Cake, and people raved about it. This is despite my forgetting to add the evaporated milk that, even now, rests inside the pocket of my coat.

Before that on Thursday, I did some shopping. I returned a shirt which I found too small to H&M, but they didn’t have the exact shirt in the next larger size. So I proceeded to look around through all their clothes and settled on two long sleeve T-shirts, a blue T-shirt and two button-down shirts (very nice). And not too terribly expensive, though I have to keep remembering to multiply every price by two. (That probably won’t end anytime soon, either.)

On Wednesday I was busy. I nipped over to the Type Museum in Stockwell in the morning and got a private tour. Very kind of the man to do that; they have an open day once a month, which I wasn’t able to make. It was incredible to see how the typesetting process worked back in the days before computers. Type founding, which they still do at the museum for somem clients, is particularly incredible work, with upwards of 6 unique stages to go from a drawing to an actual “matrix” piece, which is then used to mold the hot metal into a piece of type for printing. Thank god for Adobe, huh? :-)

After that I stopped back by Foundation House and went out to lunch with Brian Ridgers, my Shakespeare teacher last year. We chatted about a little bit of everything over some great southern Indian food. Then I dropped by the Saatchi gallery and looked at the pieces they had there. I was particularly impressed by David Thorpe (sample), but the great white shark in formaldehyde was awesome as well.

In the evening I went to see Steven Lee, a comic. He was very funny, better than Robert Newman was. A few jokes I didn’t get, but a very interesting habit of dissecting jokes that didn’t quite work and making them hilarious when seen inside-out. I’ve got another comedy show lined up for tonight, after Oxford.

Which reminds me, I have to get going. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I’ll talk to/see you all again all too soon. :-)

Fortunately, it’s not unfortunate, this series. I went to see a man named Robert Newman last night. He’s an anti-globalism protester and a stand-up comic. As an anti-globalisation protestor, he had a pretty good thing going, what with the historical references and the topical allusions to misgovernment. As a stand-up comedian, he’s got some work to do. There was a lot of unnecessary pausing, and sometimes I couldn’t follow him. Other than that, he was pretty good. I give the night a (***/*****).

Always good when they can use the word “thwarted” in a story like this, but that doesn’t stop this Canary Wharf/Heathrow story from being unsettling.

Today I had coffee (and later dinner) with Brian Ridgers, one of my London professors. We chatted about a little bit of everything. He and his wife just bought a house in Devon, which he insisted I come and visit. (That’s going to have to wait until next summer though. Great excuse to come back!) And I’m going to help him get a deal on some Apple hardware.

After our coffee, I took the Underground out to Kew Gardens in West London. I took a bunch of pictures of crazy plants, from staghorn ferns to orchids. And I saw a real, live piranha!

“Is it true that there are going to be piranhas in the aquarium?”
“Where did you hear that!?”

shrugs “My source indicated it was a possibilitiy.”

“Well, yes, but piranhas are a very tricky species.”

Number of hours I’ve been here: 8
Number of attractive-to-hot fratboy roommates: 7
Number of lesbian porn mags on the toilet in the bathroom: 1
Number of penises I’ve seen so far*: 2

This is going to be an interesting 10 days.

• Just to make things clear, I in no way initiated any of the penis viewing. There was some garbage can pissing and then some “I’m going to touch you with my cock.” (Not me “you”; another guy.)

I’m reliving the drunken frathouse college experience I never had.

For starters, I went to the Bank of Britain Museum. That was actually really interesting. I didn’t realize that the Bank was actually a private institution until it was nationalized in 1946 (along with a rash of other things like the railroads). That would be like having a private Federal Reserve which wouldn’t technically be required to act in the interest of the United States. This private bank managed the UK’s national debt from its founding in 1694. Cool stuff.

Then I headed over to the British Library, which I somehow managed to miss the last time I was here. shrugs It was really cool, particularly the part of the exhibition they had on typesetting. That whet my appetite for the real thing, which I’ll see sometime next week.

I also stopped by the London Transport Museum, though I’d already been to the museum part of it, to buy some stuff at the shop. I got a ginormous, laminatd poster of the Underground for my office. W00t!

Five minutes into my internet session, I went to go press Return to begin a Google search. But on this keyboard (a different one from last night, much easier to type on) there are, inexplicably, three keys between the Page Down block and the arrow keys. Those three keys are Power, Sleep and Wake. And Power means what it says---it powers down immediately.

So I lost my search string, but I learned that when you power the machine back on and enter the code you used to begin the current session (50p/30 min), it starts back from the beginning. So that’s really 50p/unlimited internet. :-P

Sadly, though, I can’t get terminal access, so I can’t check my e-mail, since said e-mail is on a machine in Cupertino. Oh, well; I’ll have that all settled tomorrow.

So I have arrived in London and gotten checked into my hostel. Everything’s great, except that I’m really tired---it’s 11:29 am the next day as I write this.

This is the funkiest keyboard I’ve ever used. It’s really messing with my touch typing. Built like a brick, though...

London is the most expensive city in the fucking world. I had shepard’s pie and green beans for dinner (at an admittedly very nice restaurant...) and it cost me £30. That’s about $60 USD, for those of you keeping track. Thank god I’m only going to be here for a few days. :-)

On the tube ride from Heathrow to my hostel, there was this American woman who just would not shut up. She kept talking about how she’d been coming to London since the 60’s, “but only for vacation.” Despite all that, she didn’t know how to say “Lester” Square and “Camden” Town. And when someone asked her for advice on how to get to Lancaster Gate (Central Line), she gave directions to Leicester Square (Northern & Piccadilly Lines).

I, OTOH, have gotten the hang of things quite quickly again. I even helped a Londoner choose the right train at Earl’s Court station (a notoriously tricky station to negotiate, with something like 5 different destinations for trains all called “District Line.” Silly Brits!

Tomorrow the plan is to get up early (should be no problem, I’ll still be getting over jetlag), get some food and go to a museum. Should be great! :-)

17 min left on this kiosk, so I’ma go browse my dailies. I’ll keep everyone posted.

So I went into the AT&T Wireless cum Cingular store on Monday because I wanted to make sure my phone was going to work in the UK. The website had said it wouldn’t, so I was going to buy a new phone. But the clerk who helped me said it WOULD work. “Great!” I said. “Problem solved.” But I should have known better than to trust the word of someone who had to be told that “Britain” would probably be listed under “United Kingdom.” >_<

For starters, I couldn’t call abroad. Which was a problem, because when I’m in the UK, I am supposed to dial internationally (011+44+the number). Turns out WorldDial wasn’t turned on (!!). The bimbo at the store didn’t tell me this. I found it out after I called 611.

Everything was all set, they told me on Monday. Except I still couldn’t call abroad. So I called 611 again today. And this time it turns out my phone WON’T work in the UK because they use 900/1800 and my phone is 850/1900.

I went to the store on Monday to get this squared away so I wouldn’t have this problem! I was going to buy a fucking phone!

Oh, but I forget: I’m “now part of the largest wireless network in America.” Whoop-dee-freakin’-do.

I guess I’ll be buying a calling card.