Bernice's Visit Part Deux

...Following on from Matt's post below...

The next day poor Matt had to wake up at 6:30 and go to work! Bernice and I slept in quite late and then hit the museums.

We first went to the Science museum, which Bernice liked, because she's science-y. Next, we went very briefly to the Natural History Museum to do one of the best parts: riding an escalator through a giant paper mache model of the earth. Then we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where we saw the jewelry collection. Holy moly, there were some huge gems in that exhibit. All under glass, of course. It was well bling-bling.

Then we walked through Hyde Park to get to Oxford Street and Primark, the cheap clothing store. Bernice bought some stuff, and I did too. The vast majority of our purchases was black tights. I bought a throw blanket for the couch. (It was only 2 pounds/$4!) Matt met us at Primark, and we decided to try to see a show. Bernice's choice: Wicked The Musical. Well, I'm not a huge musical fan. But we all really, really liked it! Matt and I even downloaded the soundtrack from iTunes.

The next day Matt went to work again. Bernice and I went to the Tower of London, which is always awesome. We had a really good Beefeater tour guide. He reminded me of Steve Coogan (who is in that movie Hamlet 2, unheard of in the US until now, but he's a huge star in the UK). Then Bernice and I went to eat at Wagamama (the same restaurant chain in which I have previously been stalked by a certain British theatre actor) and we both really liked it, but Matt hates it. They have these strange desserts like chocolate cake with wasabi cream, and strawberry cheesecake with ginger. Bernice and I tried the chili and lime pavlova with raspberry sauce. It was strange. The whole time we were eating it we couldn't really tell if we loved it or hated it.

After the Tower, we went to the National Portrait Gallery, which is one of my favourite art museums in London. We saw all the old Tudor and Elizabethan portraits that you see in European History textbooks.

The next day we went to Madame Tussauds wax museum. The following pictures are the fruits of our labours there:








It was simultaneously the creepiest and coolest thing. Of all the weird, creepy statues there, for some reason I was most creeped out by Patrick Stewart.

Next, we went to the National Gallery, where we were met by Matt and then we grabbed some pizza and saw Wall-E for Orange Movie night. It was cute.

This morning, I took Bernice down to Gatwick Airport and she just sent me an email from Greece saying she loves it already... so it must be good!

Now it's time to hunker down and look for A JOB!

Bernice's Visit

We've been back in the UK since Friday with Grace's sister Bernice visiting. It's been kind of an extension of our holiday in the USA.

On Friday we didn't do much except trek home. Things in the UK weren't working very well on our arrival. The passport line was drastically understaffed at Gatwick airport and Grace and I ended up waiting in line for two hours before they finally got to us. Then we were through in one minute. After that it took us another two hours to catch a train, then a taxi home. Everyone kind of collapsed after that. It was rainy and, by the time we were up again, it was close to six. So we went for a walk in the neighborhood, and got stranded in a really, really bad rainstorm (shoes like boats with water sloshing around in them, an extra ten pounds of water in your clothes).

But we bounced back on Saturday, getting up relatively early (9:30 is early for jetlagged people) and heading out to Cambridge for a daytrip. We snuck in a punting trip in the one hour of sunshine - perfect timing. And my punting was spectacular I would say. Not very fast, and there was some wasted effort, but we went in a straight line (relatively) and we went where I wanted us to go. Maybe it was easier without trying to simultaneously drink a corona.

Visiting Cambridge is great with nerds. Both Bernice and our friend Keith are in biology, and they are the only people enthusiastic about making a trek out to a monument to the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick. In my eyes, its not a great monument, tucked off the main path, next to a parking lot. But Bernice, like Keith when he visited, took a picture and seemed pumped.

Otherwise we showed Bernice some colleges (my student ID is valid until January 2009) and the Fitzwilliam Museum. Grace was excited about the museum because it has a large ceramics section and I don't really like ceramics (at all). Bernice does though, so Grace got to see them.

We've also discovered the gardens of Clare college. It's a good garden. No seriously. Lots of weird paths that wind to different plants and sections. You'll be walking along and stumble upon a sunken pond, or a banana plant forest. Here are some banana plants.


We also caught up with some friends living there. One of them works in London and takes the train in. We have the same commute time, which is crazy. It's because she lives a two minutes walk from the Cambridge train station, where she can take a 45 minute express train to London King's Cross. From there it's a short walk to work. I take two buses across London, for a one hour trip, door to door.

Getting back to Cambridge was a bit miserable. We didn't want to leave by 6, when the last express trains leave, because we were still talking with our friends. We decided to eat before we left and had a really slow service at a restaurant, then waited for 20 minutes for a bus. I got fed up waiting and said we should walk, and then five minutes later the bus whizzed past us. Around 10:00 we got to the train station, took the 75 minute non-express train.

Taking the late train to London on a weekend is a bit hairy. It's like the drunk bus in a US college town. Lots of kids get on and are rowdy. We moved cars when the girl seated next to us started to vomit. Grrreat.

The next day we got up even earlier and took a 90 minute train to Salisbury. We were going to see...



Stonehenge!

We took a bus ("the stonehenge tour") from the train station and boom, we were there!

There were audioguides.



They were really, um, informative. Basically it said:

We don't know what stonehenge is for
We don't know how they made this thing, but the stones are from 20 miles away, and 200+ miles away.
It wasn't built by the druids. Don't be fooled. They came later.

Somehow they managed to stretch this out to an hour.

As for the stones themselves, they're puzzling. You can't get close to them, there's a roped off path. They look really heavy. Here they are with some crows, so you can get a sense of scale.



It's a relatively remote place. Almost 10 miles outside Salisbury, in a field (with a road running right by). Really windy out there.

There is one thing I liked. There's this rock placed maybe 200 meters outside the circle, and it's left uncarved and put into the earth at an angle, so it looks like its pointing to the circle. Creepy?



Anyway, we also went to see Salisbury Cathedral, which has a really tall spire. Check it out.


No pictures allowed inside. Sorry.

We made it on the 4:30 train, and were home before seven. No drunkies this time, very classy. The Thommandru sisters fell asleep on the ride and I read about physics - it's a shame no one else living in this flat finds them interesting to talk about, cause I am excited about this book. Upon arrival at our flat, we made dinner and watched I Am Legend. The end.

An observation

Matt's always talking about the differences between the US and the UK.

Land of the Free

It's great to be back in our hometown. We know where to buy anything we need, where to eat, where to go to pubs - it's great. We're driving on the right side of the road again, and there are open spaces. Relatively no traffic either.

Still, you can't help but be a little bit affected by time abroad. Here's three things I noticed about America, after having been away for eight months.

1 - We've still got a weight problem. It's obvious and everyone knows it, but it still struck me this time. A lot of people are, well, a bit larger.

2 - We're rich. The country is the richest in the world, and it shows. Everything was just a notch or two nicer than in the UK. Cleaner, newer, more designed. From the hair cut shops to the architecture. And cell phones seem to have caught up, though I can't be sure about that, since mine is the cheapest imaginable, and looks like its the first model developed with a color screen.

3 - Campaigns are way bigger. I just watched Barack Obama's big speech. This must be an area where the stereotypically reserved nature of the British continues to manifest. There is nothing like the American election that happens in the UK. People do not get this excited about candidates. Barack Obama is loved in the UK. He could probably fill a stadium there too (and he practically did in Germany). But no UK politician could.

Tony Blair, in his final, resignation address, said he was 'proud to have served the United Kingdom, the greatest nation on the Earth.' And people just scratched their heads. They were like, "we don't say that kind of thing here." The only people who fly the flags are soccer hooligans. On the way home from Chicago we drove through a small town with a bunch of flags hanging from the lamp posts on main street. Not uncommon here, not done there.

Done and Dusted

Well, Grace's dissertation is pretty much done and dusted. We're going into town this morning to print and bind the thing before we hop on an afternoon flight back to the USA. And I'm completely done with all my freelance work. My most important concern, for the moment, is what the inflight movies will be.

In the US, we'll be in Iowa till September 4. I've never packed lighter. I brought almost nothing to do, not even my laptop. I'm going to just relax and visit with people. It's gonna be great.

On the way back, Grace's sister is coming with us, and we should be getting in Friday morning. We'll do one or two day trips that weekend while she's in town (we're thinking stonehenge), but then I'll have to head back to work.

See (some of you) soon!

Summer In Britain

Get out your coats and scarves! It's August!

Two Things

(Can you tell I'm procrastinating?)

1. Check out this blog, it's about hilarious decorated cakes. I think the funniest ones are the ones where the cake decorator writes something like


Happy birthday
Jimmy
(in green)!


in icing on a cake... in red.

Check out the CakeWrecks Blog here.

Update: This picture should make clear what Grace is getting at.



2. I forgot to mention this earlier but while Matt and I were without internet, we went up to the Highgate Library to use their computers. We tried to check the blog to see if there were any comments. The Highgate Library internet filters blocked out our blog because they've classified it as a pornography site! We clicked the link to contest the classification, but I don't think it's been changed. This is a complete injustice!

Aaaaaauuuuggghhh

I'm sitting in the library at UCL writing my dissertation. I hope to finish the draft today, but I'm not sure I can. This is the first time I've left our flat in three days of constant writing. The sunlight was absolutely blinding this morning.

Four more days until we come home!!!!!!!!!

Visiting the USA from a Foreigner's Perspective

We've finally got the internet and I really should be working on some freelance, which is due Friday, but instead I'm writing a little something here. I lost my whole weekend to freelance work, so I'm finding it difficult to stay on the ball over the week.

Anyhoo, I've been wanting to mention this for a few weeks now.

I'm the only American guy at work, so its interesting to hear everyone's opinion about the land of the free. One thing that came up a lot two weeks ago was how much everyone hates our airport security. Apparently, a bunch of US tourism associations issued a survey to foreigners traveling to America and found that foreigners now fear US immigration and passport people more than terrorists when they are traveling to our country. The people at my office echoed this, saying how, when they get off the plane they get incredibly nervous and have to remind themselves that they haven't actually done anything wrong. They said it's far less stressful getting through customs in Russia than it is in the US. And these guys are Canadians and Europeans, not people from the Middle East. One guy in our sales department is from Lebanon (I think) and he got interviewed for hours apparently. The security people seemed to think it was amazing that a non-terrorist person from Lebanon would try to visit the country. And I remember how some of my other friends went to New York with their families for Christmas. They had to get their fingerprints and photos taken before they could enter the country. Like criminals!

I think its a shame, but these people don't have a Senator they can write to and complain so nobody does anything. In fact, everybody (myself included) is terrified to make a fuss about anything when you're at the airport, since the security people seem to have all sort of power that they can use arbitrarily. By the time you leave, you put it behind you though.


In lighter news, one of our relatives was talking about customs at Dulles International in Washington, D.C. Apparently at this airport, if you arrive on an international flight you are not permitted to leave the airport until you collect your bags and recheck in, and go through security. Let me be clear. This is not an instance where you have to collect your bags and go through security a second time before you can catch a connecting flight. This is an airport where you have to collect your bags and go through security a second time before you can walk out the door and take a cab home. I guess so you don't blow up one of the taxi cabs. My relative said that, because of this rule, Dulles international is perpetually on the edge of full-on riot. These Americans get home after these 8 to 15 hour flights and they just want to get into a car and go home. But then they find they are not allowed to until they go through security. And the yelling starts.

Good times!

If you are interested, there's a pretty funny blog post here about the Kafkaesque trials you must submit to before you can LEAVE the Pakistani capital of Karachi.

Also, I've added a bunch of links to the blog to all the nerdy economic and economic development and foreign policy blogs I'm reading now.

Spotting Number Two

I wasn't going to try new postings, but I had to make it known, especially for Patricia.

Spotting Number Two of Adrian Lukis, Mr. Wickham from the BBC Pride and Prejudice Miniseries:

For context:

This time he came in to Wagamama, a trendy yet cheap chain noodle restaurant, where I was eating with some friends. Matt was still coming to meet us from work, so he did not see him. I was with the same friend as before and she said the woman he was eating with was his daughter.

I just realised how stalker-ish this sounds. I'm not a stalker, honestly, if anything he's stalking me. What business did he have coming into the one Wagamama in the entire city in which I was already eating? Clearly I'm the one being stalked.

I apologise for sounding like a crazy person, my brain is mush from dissertation-writing.

So busy

We've been really busy the last few weeks and we're going to be busy the next two. I am currently writing my dissertation and Matt has a ton of freelance to do, not to mention editing my dissertation (for which I will be paying him the exorbitant sum of $800 per hour, seems like a rip-off but he's the top of the editing field) (the joke there was that I'm paying him from money he earns himself, since I am unemployed, and that there will be no physical or electronic transfer of money).

The good news is at the end of these two weeks, we'll be coming home to Iowa City for a week. We're very, very excited to get through this and enjoy some time at home and see all our friends and family. We haven't been home for 8 months, so we're looking forward to it. FYI, the blog will probably be quiet for the next stretch but after that... the adventures continue!!! And for the first time, Grace will be facing THE REAL WORLD of job hunting in the narrow and narrowing human rights field!!!

Moving Days

The day has finally come for Grace and I to say goodbye to our little studio. We've actually been looking forward to this move for quite some time, because the charming studio has become a cluttered sweatbox in the last few weeks.

To be able to afford something bigger than a studio, we've had to move out of the centre of London. Check it out.



We brought over the first load of luggage last night. We've thought about how to move, and since we don't own any furniture (or even bulky TV's or desktop computers), we're packing everything into suitcases and duffel bags then taking taxis over (20 pounds per ride). We estimate it will take three trips, between our four suitcases and two duffel bags. It was a minimum 120 pounds to rent a van. When we finish unpacking at the new place, we put all the little suitcases into bigger ones until we just have two big but basically empty ones. We then take the bus back home. Unfortunately its a 45 minute ride. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try and bike into work. It would be a good workout, and the bus takes over an hour I hear, plus it would be cheaper in the long run to bike, but I would need to buy all the gear first, and shower at work, which is not a tempting proposition.

We arrived in the place last night around 9 and had some trouble getting in at first. Our landlords are on vacation till the tenth, so if anything goes wrong, we might be in a bit of trouble. But after 10 minutes, we figured out how to open the door. We've moved to a safe area, so we weren't really concerned about being in the street with all our luggage.

Anyway, the new place is cool (temperature wise) and big. Grace and I sat on the couch (we have a couch again!) and I just stared to the far corner. It was a strange sensation. It seemed so far away. The new living room is about the size of our entire studio, but it seems bigger because there's so little stuff. We've got a bed plopping down right in the middle of our studio, plus a kitchen, desk, and lots of shelves poking out everywhere. Without that bed in the middle, the new living room just seemed so wide and free. You can get up and walk to the opposite corner of the room in a straight line!

We're not sure the history of our place, but its a bit old. The doorframes are not seven foot, as is common now, and my head can just touch the top of the frames of the new flat if I really stand with good posture. The doors themselves look really old, with ancient doorknobs. My theory is that we're living in refurbished servant quarters.

We are having to re-adapt to normal life in some ways with this new place. For example, we have a bigger refrigerator (still tiny by American standards), with a seperate freezer. Since there's not a grocery store three minutes walk from our new place, we won't be able to just pop over to the grocery store every day to get our dinner, as we do now. We will have to keep a well-stocked kitchen. For example, last night, I was hungry at 11 after we got back from the unpacking, so I just walked over to the 24-hour Tesco express, which is just around the corner, and bought a yogurt and a muffin. Now I'll have to keep yogurt in the house (!). Also, we have a dresser, you know, with drawers. We currently just put all our clothes on shelves, because, well, there's no dresser.

Anyway, we hope to make one run this morning and the last one this evening. The new place won't have access to internet until the landlords get back, so we might be a bit scarce for awhile on the blog, but I guess that's not a huge change of pace.

Oh my good god, this is the fattest cat I have ever seen

Her name is Princess Chunk and she weighs 44 pounds:


For a video that might make you ill, see this.

Heat

It's not very hot in England ever - they had the hottest day of the year last week and it was only in the 80s. Still, Grace and I are struggling because we're living in a little sweatbox.

We're on the top (fifth) floor, so all the heat of the building floats up here. And you've got two human bodies, our laptops, and oven/stoves all pushing more heat into the room. Also, our windows don't open more than six inches, apparently because they are worried we'll all fall out. Finally, there's no AC. So, while it's only in the 80s outside, I think it must be hotter up here. I'm covered in sweat all day. Miserable. The whole thing makes you sleepy and groggy all the time. And our chocolates (left over from going to see Batman on Thursday) are melting. We've got two fans running, but it just isn't enough.

We move next week. We'll still be on the top floor, and most residences don't have AC, but hopefully the windows will open up and we can keep the kitchen heat safely in the kitchen.

Anyway, I'm sick of it now. I'm heading outside.

Update: When we were in India, chocolate was not a very big delicacy. I wonder if that has to do with the fact that it would probably melt most of the time.

Second Update: Another problem is that its always really hot up here so I under-dress for going outside. I always think a T-shirt and shorts will be plenty, but when I get outside I find it's actually jacket and jeans weather. Lame.

Sorry still nothing.

This is a non-post to inform you that nothing is going on with us

Sometimes we just have nothing to blog about!

We're Moving

So, it's not absolutely sure yet, but it looks like we've found a new flat. We're all set to move at the beginning of August, as long as my references don't sabotage me, and I think we'll be OK there.

We can't continue living in the studio paradise past September because neither one of us will be students by then, and this is student accommodation. And since we're coming back to Iowa from the end of August to the beginning of September, we're moving early.

Anyway, we've been on the prowl for a new place for a bit over a month now. At first we had very definite ideas about where we wanted to live - near a park. We didn't care if it was a studio again, as long as it was near a park. The idea was, we could run in the park for free, and not have to join gym memberships.

Well, it turns out that Grace really enjoys having access to the gym's equipment and doesn't actually like running that much. And I think I want to try swimming instead. So, then we decided that living near a park wasn't so important. By then we had gone out to look at a few places pretty far from central London and we sort of felt like we were isolated, so we decided we wanted to live in the city centre again, like we do now. This basically limited us to another studio, on our budget.

So we looked at a few places, but it wasn't that promising.

Suddenly, one day I woke up day and realised I did not want to live in a studio anymore. I confessed this to Grace and she said she had always felt that way.

There were a few things that made me sick of living in a studio.

1 - Grace always has to get up when I get up for work because there's just one room for me to eat breakfast and get ready for work. We have a sleep mask which she wears, but still, I'll be invariably making a lot of racket for an hour.

2 - Our building has some great facilities, including sound-proofed music rooms, where I have been playing the piano. I'm really enjoying picking up the piano after a decade of neglect, and would like to keep it up by buying a used electric one that I can plug a headphone into (note to Knifeblade and Erica or anyone else: Do you have any advice about this?). With a studio, that would take up a lot of room, and it would be a bit hard for Grace to concentrate. Furthermore, to learn songs, I watch people play them on YouTube and then basically copy them. And even with headphones for the piano, the laptop would still make a racket.

3 - Never any guests. We never have people over. And when we do, it gets pretty tight. Exhibit A, is this photo.



Furthermore, we've got Grace's sister coming to visit in September and we'll be having other guests come across the pond hopefully down the road as well. We really need to be able to offer them a place to stay. Paying for a hotel in London is just too expensive.

That's pretty much the main reasons. Obviously having more space is great in and of itself as well.

So, we expanded our search criteria and started looking for one-bedroom flats. We didn't have too much luck, but since we weren't in a big hurry (we don't need to find a place till the end of August) we could afford to wait for a good deal.

And I think we found one. It's an interesting situation. We'll be living in a converted attic of a family home, an old Victorian home. That means we have to go through their front lobby and up the stairs, past the kids bedrooms, before we get into our flat. Because of this, the place is cheaper than it would otherwise be. Today we met with the family for two hours, and we all get along great, so I think everything will be grand on that front.

So, the flat. It's not one, not two, not three, but four rooms (and that's not even counting the bathroom). We're quadrupling the number of rooms we live in. A 400% increase in number of rooms. There's a bedroom the size of our current flat. There's a living room, also the size of our current flat, and it has a fireplace (not in use, but it's a 'period feature'). There's a kitchen, almost as big as our current flat. Get this. It has a REAL oven. Currently we use have a microwave/oven. You push one button and its a microwave, another and its an oven. It looks sort of like this:



It's good for cooking pizza and stuff, but not really for baking. And we only have two stove top burners. The new place has a proper oven and four gas burners. It's also got a fridge which would look tiny to Americans but looks enormous to us. We currently use a dorm room type refrigerator. The new one has TWO doors, one for the freezer and one for the refrigerator. Also, it has a toaster. A toaster is a pretty cheap thing, but we literally do not have enough countertop room for one. Finally, it's got a washing machine. Does it get any better?

Yes, because it has another room, which can be used as a study. Oh man.

And its in a nice area, albeit quite far from central London. My days of walking to work will be over, and I'll either get a bike or take the bus.

Anyway, we're quite excited. If everything goes according to plan, we'll be moving in on the first weekend in August.

Dr Who Breaks My Heart

Matt and I just started watching the new Dr Who series on the BBC. We've only watched 3 episodes, and the last one was the series 4 finale--I about got my heart broken over this one! It was just so sad. Long story short, the Doctor lost his latest companion, who I really, really liked and it was really sad.


Does anyone else watch Dr Who?

2008 Wimbledon Men's Final

Did anyone else see the Wimbledon men's final this year??? It was AMAZING!


What a heartbreaker for Federer!

At Last, A New Post!

We haven't written a long time, because we've been really busy. Let me start at the beginning.

June 25 - There's this mobile phone company in England called Orange Mobile, and if you have an Orange mobile phone, you get 2 for 1 movie tickets on Wednesdays. Grace and I bought a £10 pay as you go mobile phone last week just to take advantage of this deal. We saw Ironman on June 25, and it was great.

June 26 - We went to see 'King Lear' at Shakespeare's Globe theatre this night. The theatre is set up to look just like it did in Shakespeare's day, meaning they have a huge standing area that's really cheap and then more expensive seated areas. Naturally, we bought one of the 700 cheap standing only tickets.

So, on Thursday we met after work at the theatre. This was the third time we had tried to get tickets to the theatre. We had always assumed we could just walk up and get standing tickets - who in their right mind would want to stand for three hours and watch Shakespeare? Anyway, it turned out that tickets sold out quite early, even for standing only tickets. That meant we had to buy tickets in advance and put ourselves at the mercy of the notoriously volatile English weather. You see, like Shakespeare's day, the theatre is open air and the show goes on, rain or snow (in England if they stopped a show for something like rain, they would only put shows on one third of the time).

Anyway, the theatre. It's really nice with a thatched roof. The stage is raised up about five feet so even very short people can usually see the action if they're standing. Here's a picture of the place (I didn't take it though).



So the show started and for the entire first half (2.5 hours) I had only one thought. "What the heck is going on?" You see, I've never read King Lear. I know Shakespeare is tough stuff, but I figured I would be able to get the plot, even if I missed most of the clever wordplay. Nope. I missed some vital information in the first four or five minutes of the play and then had no idea what was going on for the rest of the play. Lots of Shakespearian raging and yelling and clever fools, but I was at a loss.

So I was easily distracted by other things. Like planes and helicopters. It was an open air theatre and they roar by overhead from time to time. There's not really anything you can do about that if you want to have a show like this anywhere in London. Secondly, the theatre was chockfull of teenagers, probably there on some mandatory English class field trip. They were not interested in the play at all and they just talked to each other and drank beers the whole time. One thing that the Globe is famous for is its really informal and you can come and go as you please, or bring in beer. And people do.

There was this part of the play where suddenly all these people in rags, covered in blood and mud, jump out into the audience and then act like nightmares or something, crawling around on all fours, growling, reaching out towards people and generally being like Gollum. I was like, 'what is this? A dream sequence?'

There was another part when one of the main characters had his eyes ripped out of his head by some other characters. That was pretty gross. They actually pulled some kind of bloody thing out on stage. Again, I had no idea why.

Well, when the intermission came I had Grace explain to me the plot. She had read (most of) King Lear and was vital in making the second half of the play explicable. She was even able to explain the crazy gollum people (they were insane asylum people) and the removal of the eyes (punishment for betrayal). The second half made a lot more sense. But, this being England, it started raining really hard. Lots of people left, but Grace and I managed to hunker down under an overhang of the roof. I was a bit protected, Grace not so much. She had to be in front of me or she couldn't see and that exposed her a bit to the elements. All in all, a great night at the Globe. Grace was wearing flats and walking home in the rain her shoes filled with water and she said it was like walking around in boats.

King Lear is good, but I think I would have liked it more if I understood it.

Also, the 26th was Mike's Birthday. Happy 22 Mike.

June 27 - We met up with one of Grace's classmates and his friends and went out to a club called Koko's. There was this guy who cornered us and talked with Grace and I. He was from the country and he was like a stereotype of the country boy in the big city. He kept saying this was his first time in London and boyee, it sure was different!

At the club a band was playing called Die! Die! Die!. They weren't that great.

June 28 - We spent from 1pm to 8pm at Regent's park having an extended picnic with a bunch of Grace's classmates. The weather was fantastic, sunny and cool. Grace and I have bought an essential piece of equipment, namely a picnic blanket (it's sort of like a normal blanket except its made of a canvas material so the wet grass doesn't bleed through and it folds up and has handles to carry). Anyway, the English kids brought Pimms, a classic British summer drink. It's this alcoholic thing you mix with sparkling water, mint, cucumber and orange rind. Grace really liked it, me not so much. We had beer too, of course.

But it wasn't really sitting around boozing. Grace and I brought our cricket set we bought in India and we all played a game. Grace and I's team got last. I am a really bad bowler. Still, the set was really nice and everyone was impressed by the equipment, if not the game. The German and American classmates all thought the game was a little weird, which I guess it is.

Anyway, it was a perfect day for me. I've wanted to relax in a park on a nice summer day for a long time this summer.

June 29 - I had to spend all day writing a freelance report for work. Lame. But that evening we went to a pub, again with some of Grace's friends, to watch the final game of the Eurocup 2008. Unsurprisingly, Eurocup is a European Soccer Championshihp. The two teams in the finals were Spain and Germany. Spain won. England did not qualify for the contest (only 16 teams do), so the entire championship has had a strange feeling to it. Nobody here feels like they have anything at stake, and they don't. Still, they love to watch football, so they do.

June 30 - We were scheduled to meet with this American guy whose been accepted into both Cambridge and the London School of Economics (LSE)'s economics diploma program. He's looking for advice about which one to choose. We decided to meet at a public lecture at the LSE, by Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International edition (or something), and author of a new book called "The Post American World." Basically he says we're entering a world where countries like India and China will be able to call more of the shots, alongside us. It's not the fall of America and the rise of China and India, we're all going to be up there, it's a world where no one country or two dominates things. He was a very good speaker and it was an interesting lecture.

He had this one really interesting fact. He was talking about how all the countries in the world now have their own media and 24 news networks, and can now form their own narratives, rather than relying on the one CNN and MSNBC gives them. Makes sense. Anyway, he was talking about how different countries see history differently. For example, in America, we look at WWII as a story where we heroically came in and, with help from our British allies, saved the free nations of Europe from fascism. But in Russia, they see things differently. Apparently 75% of Germany's forces were actually on the Eastern, not the Western front, and that is where Germany suffered 75% of its casualties. He talked about how, in the West, Stephen Ambrose wrote a book about the most decisive battle in 1943, which in his view was in Sicily and involved 65,000 troops. The same year though, in Kursk, there was a battle of over 1 million Russian and German troops. Long story short, to Russian eyes, the main story of WWII is the eastern front and the whole western front, including the Normandy invasions, is just a sideshow to the main event.

Another good thing about this lecture was the moderator. He was a Knight, a Lord. Anyway, when it was question time, he would cut people off and tell them to hurry up and ask their question if they started to, even a little, give speeches. Like this one guy started, "now, if I understand Chaos theory correctly..." and the moderator was like, "nope! That's too long! What's your question?!" Normally at these events you get people with crazy rambling questions, but not this time. Everyone was scared of the moderator.

After the lecture we took the American guy out for pizza and had a good time talking with him about England, America and everything. So good that, after that, we went to my favorite Belgian beer place, Bierodrome, and stayed the rest of the night (not that long when things close at 11) drinking Belgian beers.

July 1 - This was Grace and I's two year anniversary. We went out for dinner at L'escargot, a restaurant owned by the British chef Marco Pierre White, the chef who trained Gordon Ramsey. For the restaurant of a famous chef, it was really cheap (although expensive for a normal restaurant).

Grace had escargot, snails. She was pretty proud of herself for figuring out how to eat them without needing to call over a waiter, like the people at the table next to us did. Anyway, the restaurant was really nice and we had a good time. Apparently, if you go to the upstairs (we were seated downstairs) there is a genuine Picasso on the wall. And a Matisse.

July 2 - One of Grace's classmates was going back home to Germany this night, so we all went out again and had a bunch of drinks. By now I had been drinking a lot, for five out of the last six nights. I was starting to dread the Beer Festival which I had agreed to go to with a work colleague the next day.

July 3 - I secretly hoped my work buddy would be too busy to make it to the beer festival, because I felt like I needed a night in. Au contrair (spelling?). He had stayed till 7:30 pm at work last night and come in at 5:30 am to get everything done in time to go to the beer festival. So it was definitely on.

Grace stayed out of this one. We took the tube down to Ealing after work. Ealing is at the very end of the line, so it took 45 minutes to get there. Then we got lost and were given a million incorrect set of directions to the festival. Finally, at 7pm, we found the park. The festival was basically a cordoned off section of the park with two enormous tents, each one with hundreds of barrels of different kinds of (English) beer. Mostly Ale. Ale is a uniquely british drink. It's like beer, but its served uncarbonated at room temperature. Sounds awful, but I think it's quite good. One advantage is it doesn't get worse as you drink it. Beer is served cold, but by the time you get to the last drink, its not so cold and not so carbonated. With Ale, it starts out warm and flat, so no worries, it'll still be warm and flat at the end.

The beer's we tried had names like Blonde Witch, Snowdonia Ale, Wren's Nest etc.

I'm a bit amazed at how these beer festivals manage to work. I think if you had them in the US, people would get absolutely destroyed. But here, everyone is actually there to try the different kinds of beers, and, while they get drunk, nobody loses control, throws up, stumbles or generally causes any trouble. Anyway, I think my tolerance for beer is getting better all the time, because the next day I woke up without a hangover and went to work early.

July 4 - Happy Independence Day! is what lots of people at work said to me. They wanted to know how Americans celebrated the day and they all thought it sounded very nice. These holidays are one of those times you really miss home. Grace and I have missed the fourth of July in Iowa for three years now. We were in Chicago for our honeymoon in 2006, we were in India in 2007 and we're in England in 2008. Anyway, I very much miss it.

To celebrate we went to the absolutely strangest 4th of July festival I've ever seen.

After so much drinking, I desperately wanted something relatively peaceful. We live near the British Museum and they were having an Independence day, American themed celebration, so that seemed the obvious choice.

It was so weird. Now I know what people from other countries must feel like when they go to celebrations of their country in America. This America celebration crammed together the most bizarre set of American culture I have ever seen. Apparently the British museum's idea of an American themed party includes (I am not joking):

-Tap Dancing
-Lindy Hop
-Native American Craft Making
-Demonstrations of Basketball and American Football
-Jazz
-Quilt Making
-Swing Bands
-Print Making

To top it all off, we had "American Style" food. To the Brits that apparently means:

-Footlong hotdogs
-Cotton Candy
-Popcorn
-Cheesecake
-Beer

Originally they had Budweiser beer, but they ran out and started serving Becks (which is German I think), instead.

That's all. We will try to post again soon!

Iowa City Flooding

Hey all, Matt and I have been following the news of the flooding closely and just want to say we're thinking about all of you and hope everything will turn out okay. It looks like the whole community is really stepping up to help with filling and laying sandbags and helping people evacuate their homes. Good luck to everyone!

Pig in Boots

Hey, I just wanted to post this, it is the cutest thing I have ever seen, and maybe will cheer up you Midwesterners who are experiencing the Deluge right now:



Apparently, this little piggy from a farm in England didn't like rolling around in the mud with its siblings because it was afraid of the mud, so the farmers put on these teeny tiny wellington boots and now she is happily trotting about. Cutest thing ever.

Pygmalian

So here's a rule of thumb of mine - wherever you are, make an effort to do the things you can only do in that place (if they appeal to you at least a bit). So, in Iowa City, go to Pagliai's pizza, and the Hamburg Inn. In Ames, go to Thai kitchen and Battles' Barbeque (if you eat meat). In London, go see the art and the theatre (but don't worry too much about the restaurants).

So, in that spirit, Grace and I intend to see some theatre and visit the museums this summer. Last week we went to the National portrait gallery and the Tate Britain museum. And last night, we went to see 'Pygmalian' last night at The Old Vic, a historic theatre (Kevin Spacey happens to be the artistic director). They have a special deal for people under 25 - 100 12 pound tickets each performance for the young crowd.

Grace and I studied this play in high school, but it was impossible to understand a lot of the jokes when it was being read, because so much of it depends on accents. For example, there's a scene where the entire joke depends on the juxtaposition of the character's upper class accent and her lower class topics of conversation. This joke is entirely lost on a high school class from Iowa with no idea that there are different english accents. We all thought an english accent basically meant you dropped your "h's" and said "guv'nor" at the end of every sentence. It turns out there are dozens of accents, in London alone. And it was great to see the actor's make use of all these different accents.

So it was a good play. And I hope to see more. My theory is that I'll know what's good and bad and I'll begin to enjoy things even more when I've seen a slew of plays. It has worked with art, which I am now capable of really enjoying (for about 40 minutes - then I tend to lose my attention). After the play we went to the bar below the theatre (called the pit bar) and enjoyed a pint. The cast was down there, which was cool (it's not like we talked to them though). However, there was someone else there. This guy.

He's better known as this guy.

Henry Wickham from the BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries. Grace freaked out for about 180 seconds.

Red Bull Flug Tug

Update: Since posting this blog entry I have been informed that the event is actually called Flug Tag, not Flug Tug. Anyway, I found some much better videos on youtube of the action. I'll put them up at the end of the post. I might just recommend starting with them.

On Saturday Grace and I, plus one of our friends, went to see the "Red Bull Flug Tug" in Hyde Park. The "Flug Tug" is basically this silly competition where teams of people - usually men - build enormous gliders and then run them off a ramp into the Serpentine (the man-made lake in the middle of Hyde Park). It's a competition and people are judged on three criteria: creativity, performance and distance.

You can get a maximum of 20 points for creativity. The gliders are not usually built by people who know anything about aeronautics. They're usually more like parade floats that are pushed off a 20 foot ramp, where they fall straight down into the water and break spectacularly apart. The performance is also out of 20 points, and is based on a 30 second performance which the team does before they push their craft into the water. You get 2 points for every meter you glide through the air, for a maximum of 30 points.

Unfortunately, we showed up a bit late (it was free) and there were no more primo seats on the water. Like the majority of the 80,000 people who attended we had to watch the event on giant TV screens. Still, it was a good crowd, and a good excuse to drink some beer, sit in the sun and eat freshly fried donuts (I love freshly fried donuts).

Anyway, I took some videos, because you really have to see it to believe it. Unfortunately, these videos are pretty terrible. When you take a video of a TV screen, it shows up very badly, as you will see. Beware of flashing lights.

ANYWAY, without further ado, here is a typical entry. This one is Star Wars themed.



And here, if you can stand more flashing TV screens, is a wildly successful glider built by real engineers.



Other highlights:

-A very good looking plane built by engineers that snapped apart in mid-air from the weight of the pilot.
-A disco themed team whose glider was literally a giant discoball with some angel wings attached to either side. That went absolutely straight down.
-There was also a team whose 'glider' was literally just a fully loaded fruit stand.

Some Better Videos:

A Nun-themed team (The Bad Habits)


A Better Video of the Star-Wars Team (The Wrong Brothers)


Don't worry, this guy from the Evel Knieval themed team was alright.


And, one more time, the successful glider.

Scotland

We got back to London yesterday afternoon after a week in Scotland. Here's a brief photo tour of the trip.



First we - Mike, Rob and Me - took a train up to Edinburgh. You may have read about it earlier, on this very blog. We stayed in a hostel, 12 bunk beds. I thought it was an all male room, so when I changed that night, I treated it like a locker room. The next morning I saw lots of the people sleeping in the bunks were women.

We stayed at a hostel right under Edinburgh castle.



We stayed out each night, enjoying the live music scene. It's pretty amazing, a set of free live bands for the choosing.

The next day we hiked around town, seeing the castle, going to the top of Arthur's seat, an extinct volcano.





The hike up the mountain was about 45 minutes and pretty exhausting. Really windy.

The next day we headed off to Stirling on the train, to see another castle and the William Wallace Memorial.





Please enjoy the above, blurry photo of me by William Wallace (Mel Gibson)'s sword.

The next day we rented a car and drove off, into the highlands, to the town of Oban.

It was good times. Great to get behind the (passenger side) wheel of a car and drive on the (left hand side of the) open road. Once we got about 30 miles outside of Edinburgh it was just a two lane road, speed limit 60 miles per hour. We had lochs and little wooded mountains all around and the road was really, really windy. We got into Oban, went to take a whiskey distillery tour, and were shocked to discover it was totally booked up. We took a ferry ride out to the island of Mull.



The entire island has a population of about 2500. We only had two hours on the island before the last ferry of the night left, so we stayed in a pub for the whole time. We did not want to miss that ferry.


Like an idiot I thought it was warm enough for a T-shirt. The ferry ride was not so pleasant.

That night my glasses broke, and the only cool pub in town was having a concert which was sold out. We gave up and went to get some food from the local Tescos. It was closed. Oban sucks! That's not entirely true. It had a good sunset. In Scotland, we were so far North we had light until 11:15. This photo was taken around 11 at night maybe.



We left early the next morning (we had to get out of stupid Oban!). We had our first taste of one lane roads - first over a bridge.



Then we got up to Loch Ness, home of the monster.


Nothing to report on that front. We also did some hiking that day. We felt the rain added to the atmosphere.



We got into Inverness that night, the capital of the highlands. However, despite the existence of a three story pub called 'Hootenany' we decided to stay in that night and watch the football - America versus England! America lost 0-2 and the commentators made fun of our team a lot.

That afternoon Grace had finished her last exam and she took an 8 hour train ride up to meet us in Inverness. She got in at 11:05 and the next day we left bright and early for the far North, to the town of Ullapool (pop. 1300).

The landscape changed quite dramatically up North. It became really remote, barren and desolate, but I actually liked it even more.



We got into Ullapool, a really nice fishing village that mostly a jumping off point for hiking and then spent the afternoon hiking to the top of a 500m mountain called Stac Pollaid (Stack Polly). Mike thought, just for kicks, he would go for a little run on the mountain trail.







That night we had some drinks on the harbor.



The next day, Mike drove us part of the way out to another hike, this one to a waterfall. He was really excited to be on the wrong side of the road.



The cool thing about this hike was it started at a bookshop/cafe which was in the middle of the highlands, only accessible by a single lane road (you have to pull or back into a passing spot when another car is coming).

So we hiked out to see a waterfall. It was really bright and none of us had thought to bring sunscreen. I mean, c'mon, it was Scotland. Anyway, Robt was in danger of being sunburned, so he had to put on a 'cape.'






After the hike, we drove back, and got stuck behind sheep wandering around in the road. It happens on the backroads. Anyway, that night we all went out for a last round of pints. Some of us stayed longer and some of us stayed shorter. Me? I found I had a tick in my shoulder, his head all the way in. Grace and I had a good time getting it out that night.

The next day we drove due south, all the way back to Edinburgh. We did stop for lunch.




That night we had pizza hut and went to Indiana Jones (we were tired of learning about foreign cultures I guess). And the next morning, before we knew it, we were on the train and off to London.