Week 3

Thursday, September 4th
British pop is such an awesome class. Today we talked about The Who for nearly 2 1/2 hours, and we watched part of their film Quadrophenia which is pretty messed up. I’m glad our teacher is so cool and laid back because if she wasn’t, this would be not such a great class to sit through.
Tonight I went to the Proms to see the BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform Tchaik 6, and it was pretty awesome. I went by myself, which was a little different and a lot more boring, especially before the concert and during intermission, but oh well. It was worth the 5 pounds. It still blows my mind that all of these amazing concerts are happening every night, and it’s just part of their culture here. I was thinking about what would happen if any of these orchestras came to Ithaca to perform the same programs, and they would probably be sold out very quickly. It makes me very happy that all of this great music is so readily available. The Proms rule.
I am definitely getting sick. Go me. I think I should probably get a lot of sleep tonight and tomorrow, and see if they have Sudafed over here because that would be clutch right about now.

Wednesday, September 3rd
Today I slept in ‘til 11am and it felt great. I’m trying not to come down with a cold, so sleep is a great thing. I didn’t really do anything too exciting today besides practice, buy some food and attempt to go to the Proms concert with the Berlin Philharmonic playing Shosty 10, but the line was at least a half-mile long and we didn’t get in. Omar and I went back to the London Center to practice and chill out until we were kicked out.

Tuesday, September 2nd
I hate the circle line. When Bill said it was the most unreliable line, he was not joking. I left my flat today close to an hour before class (should only take about 15 minutes to get to school), and got to class 3 minutes late. Ah well, yesterday the Edgware Road Station was closed due to a water main break at a nearby station. Relying on public transportation sucks.
I slept through a good part of British Art & Architecture today, and I sort of feel bad about it. The teacher is such a nice, proper British lady and her voice is so soothing. When it’s 10am and we’re looking at 85 different “illuminations” of Deuteronomy in the year 1365, with her narrating it all, I’m donskies. It’s great to learn about the history and what goes into making each of these pieces of art, but nearly 3 hours of that is enough to put anyone over the edge.
The wireless signal that we’ve been relying on for free internet at our flat is crapping out, so we took a chance and went to meet the students from Syracuse University that live in the flat directly below us. They’re all really cool, and they happened to have a wireless router that worked, and might be free. Go us. After that, we went to ISH to have some drinks and be happy about the free internet access we had just acquired. While Omar, Eric and myself were sitting at a table, this German college-aged kid walks over and asks to sit with us.
We met Phillip, a lad from Munich studying electrical engineering who happened to be in London for the summer at a language institute at Cambridge. He was pretty cool, and we had a fun conversation, ranging from politics to weather, and eventually to Octoberfest. Then we played the British version of pool which is much smaller (the tables, the pockets and the balls), and that makes it a bit more difficult. We were angering these guys that came in after us, who brought their own cues. Ah well.

Monday, September 1st
I’m still not diggin’ the Shakespeare class. I felt relatively confident in my knowledge of Revenger’s Tragedy, but that was quickly wiped aside when all of the drama majors started talking about what they read into the different aspects of the play. It felt like everyone was overanalyzing every little detail about the text and the production we saw, such as spending 30 minutes talking about one character’s room and what each piece of furniture symbolized. Most of it was quite a bit of a stretch. Maybe I’m not a deep enough thinker to appreciate that Lussuriosos’s pillar with a bench around it is phallic.
After class I checked out a sheet music store (Kensington Chimes Music), which is a 10 minute walk from the London Center. They had a ton of sheet music, scores, etc.. That might be a cool place to work, I’ll have to ask the next time I stop in.
Later on we went on a walk on Edgware Road to renew our Oyster cards and to see what’s down the other end of the street. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to operate the machine to renew my Oyster card, I felt like a stupid American. Then we walked down our street, saw a KFC, an SFC (Southern Fried Chicken) and an angry prostitute. We also stopped into an off-license shop to check out the price of liquor. One regular bottle of Jack Daniels was 20 pounds, or slightly under $40. Woof. I wanted to get a bottle and also buy a bottle of Coca-Cola to make our own Jack ‘n’ Cokes. They use sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup in soda over here and it makes mixed drinks taste amazing. Maybe I’ll save my pennies and buy a bottle of Jack before the end of the term…