Here's to you, wallet

I've tried to adapt since I've come to England.

I can dance with one hand raised, punching the air, to just about any song. Similarly, my butt and hips have become redundant while dancing.

Furthermore, I enjoy celebrating the various holidays and celebrations of the UK. Here in London, The Brick Lane Festival was pretty sweet, and I'm looking forward to a cozy British Christmas season.

Unfortunately, my wallet decided to celebrate a holiday of it's own--
The (british) National ID Fraud Prevention Week. By getting itself stolen. I kid you not: http://www.moneyextra.com/features/feature-national-identity-024347.html

There is a British National ID Fraud Prevention week, FAR different from the American National ID Fraud protection week, which is in February. Why we need two different weeks for prevention and protection, I don't know. Why even we need these weeks AT ALL is a greater mystery. AND perhaps the greatest mystery of all is why my wallet wanted to martyr itself in the hands of some Pikey.

At least I am, entirely-accessories included-getting into the spirit of things. And so, I raise my glass to you, wallet, as you suffer a painful death in the hands of some icky vagrant. At least you know how to celebrate.

Wallet, far right, treating itself to some beers, circa February 2006

Like sex on two wheels.

'Post more regularly,' they say. When the fans speak, I've got to listen.
There haven't been any large, embarassing or super-interesting moments recently, and thus, I've been hesitant to write. But, I'm in London- nothing's really ever that boring.

And so, with a slight nod to Alice Carney, I present to you, what's hot/not, L-Town version.

What's Hot:
Having classmates wear burqas. It definitely shakes up any image you might have of them being oppressed shrinking violets. On the contrary, I'm intimidated. The class we have together is Islamic Law- In an academic debate, one of us follows an interpretation of it, and one doesn't...!(not to mention all the various sunna that I'm learning I would be breaking...)

What's Not:
The awkwardness that came when I realized I had NO way of recognizing them outside of the classroom. I mean, we're not talking minimalist, sparkly, multi-colored veils here. I mean, up-to-the-eyelids black gowns, transforming them into black flying squirrels. And so I end up awkwardly waving at both of the girls at SOAS that wear them, not knowing which one I sat next to in class...


Especially Not Hot:
British Home Secretary Jack Straw expressing his desire that women not wear them (at least when they're talking to him..) articleness: --although it must be said it's been blown up more in the press than what he actually said...why is he spoiling for this fight?!

Hot:
The Healthy Urban Lifestyle. A phrase first coined by Joseph, it refers to walking everywhere (and maintaining that Swan-like thinness) and running on crowded Urban streets. Car exhaust? Bah! Nothing!

Not:
Running on the beach. Who needs the ocean when you can have asphalt?

Hot:
Angel. The tube station and it's environs, where I live.

Not:
The phrase "daddy's little angel", the angel emoticon, and the slutty angel Halloween outfit. I'm reclaiming Angel for Islington!


Hot:
My bicycle. Potentially, the sexiest thing ever. She is 80's fabulous, white with red stripes a 10 speed racing bike. WITH 90's kellogg's cereal box rooster ornaments on the spokes..(or so my British friends tell me) If I go on, this will slowly become a sort of personal-ad-sounding and maybe even slightly pornographic. Which is not okay, because she's MINE, bitches.

So far, no accidents. I've been bicycling around London for the past day, and yes I'm very proud of the fact that I'm still in one piece.

Not:
Sorry, nothing even vaguely un-hot about my bicycle. Although, I'm shopping around for a name...any suggestions?

Shari'a Legally Blonde

I am a nerd.

Keep in mind that I don't consider this to be a bad word. It's never stopped me from engaging in debauched behavior, nor enjoying myself to excess in various parts of the world.

But this thought, nevertheless, occured to me the other night, in a very posh bar somewhere near Goldman Sach's headquarters in London. I'm a few mixed drinks into the evening and I'm chatting with my friend's colleagues, all bankers.

10 minutes later, I'm almost in a fistfight with one of them. About grammar.

In more sober hindsight, it occured to me that 1) the girl that started the debate had what I've learned is an "un-posh" accent, and must've had a chip on her shoulder about it 2) I should really never ever do such things in social settings, ever ever again.

But I digress. The fight started because she said that "AMERICAN ISN'T ENGLISH."

This is my favorite fight to pick. No, American isn't English English, but i'll be damned if any linguist can tell me we speak an entirely different language. Structurally? The same. Spelling? Yeah, variations. Accent? sure, they've got the upper hand there. But I will not let Brits think they have the monopoly on the entire English language.

This is what I'm calmly trying to explain to her when I tap into her apparent massive insecurities.

"I speak a dialect of English, just like you speak a dialect of English," I say.

She turns slightly pink in the face.

"I may not speak the queen's english, but We are More Correct because we invented it!" (lame, lame argument).

I mumbled something about cockney rhyming slang, when her phone rang. At this point, I turn to a French friend who is sitting on the other side of me, ever so slightly scared of the whole conversation...

"Je m'excuse, mais, j'adore disputer..." She overhears this. "THAT'S it! I can't handle this! I know you're talking about me!"

I tried to translate to her that I was just excusing myself, and saying that I loved to argue, but all reason was lost on this one. I had another drink and bounced down Fleet Street.
........

Confirming my nerd-ness is my recent acceptance to a law program here, at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Islamic Law...I'm excited as hell, and almost late for my first class.

So, I'll be in London for the next year. Now it's your turn to visit.

The French are coming!

So, I'm in London. (Hence the blog title change). It's raining.

No matter what language you pose it in, I still will be reluctant to answer the question of what I'm doing here. It's really a complicated chain of events that got me here. It began with a war, and things sort of snowballed from there. I'll be staying here anywhere from 3 months to a year, again, depending on the snowballs.

C'est un peu dodgy.

What I have been doing the past 3 weeks is being underpaid. I've been working at a swish, new, well-hyped French restaurant in Chelsea. No names will be used until I see what the New York Times review says next week. Naturally, all of my co-workers were French, making my contact with the Gaullois in London massively larger than it was in Paris.

Encore, un peu dodgy.

I quit recently, not because I didn't enjoy my new frenchies or the restaurant or management, but because this whole "service" thing doesn't really float my boat. I'm more of a "be served" sort of girl.

At least I did learn.. Fun and Exciting New Ways to Include Sexual Harassment In The Workplace! Man, I will say it was endlessly amusing. A few examples:

Situation #1 As I'm standing in front of the bread basket, a co-worker reaches around me to reach the bread.

Me: "Touche pas a mon pain!" (a very clever word play in French, thank you very much..translation: Lay off my bread..)
Co-worker: "Man, if you guarded your ass like that from your boyfriend..."

Situation#2 I don't hear something my boss says.

Boss: "Well, you know that masturbation makes you deaf.."
Me: "But, uh, I, uh, have a boyfriend?"
Boss: "Is he English?"
Me: "uh, yeah"
Boss: "That explains it..!"

Oh, I shall miss them..! Seriously. All this American whinging about sexual harassment is annoying.

Off to trot around in the rain... P.S. someone POST COMMENTS, for fuck's sake!

Lay it on me, Ernesto

When things do happen, they hurricane. Or tropical storm.
In any case, shortly after posting the last entry, I made the mistake of going west of the intracoastal for a doctor's appointment, around the same time it became apparent we were going to be hit by Ernesto.

Chapter 1: In which I consider jumping out the window.
Scene: My OB-GYN's waiting room.

Seeing as the tropical storm/Hurricane was now impending, every single pregnant woman and every single FAT NEW YORKER decided to run to the OB-GYN's office. So, imagine the room is elbow to elbow in estrogeny or estrogen-replacement cranked-up women. Essentially, the 7th circle of hell.

As I scan the room, I see that these fat, wrinkly, (dear-god-why-are-they-at-the-OBGYN?!) old New York women have the only two acceptable magazines in the waiting room. I'm left with "Parenting" and "Healthy Baby," Shoot me. I soon hear that I have to be subjected to their banal observations about pop culture. Keep in mind it's obvious that these women can't possibly know each other-- they just share the sisterhood of "We're here to die and we'll annoy you until you do the job for us."

So they begin squawking to each other like migrating parrots: "My GAWD, How YOUNG Blythe Danner looked at the Emmys, and oh, that she MUSTA had collogen injections in her hands..." Then, they add their criticisms of Jane, my favorite magazine, that they held in their grubby, fake-nailed hands. (On a side note, why do strangers talk to each other here?! WHY?! I can't wait to go to the UK, where, they tell me, this kind of thing doesn't happen.)

"AW GOWD, LISTEN TA THIS.." one says, reading a letter in Jane. "I'M FINE WID SLEEPING AROUND IN MY TWAN-TIES, I FIGURE WHY DO I HAVE TO HAVE TO SETTLE DOWN YET?..."



"SO SHE'S SAYIN' SHE WAHNTS TO SLEEP WITH 50,000 MEN. UNBAHLIEVABLE."

...I stare down at my shoes uncomfortably, and think of moving one of my rings over to my ring finger.

So, yada yada, finally my name gets called, and I sprint out of the waiting room on the way out, still afraid to catch their eye.


Chapter 2: Ernesto gets ready to lay down the lovin'
Scene 1: driving around Del Boca Vista

Americans are especially good at two things. Consumption of food and consumption of gas. Throw in an impending hurricane and BAM! We surprise even ourselves.

I decide not to wait in a 2 hour gas line, but hedge my bets, and decide to fill up the car later. My dad hears we have a half-empty tank and flies into hysterics. Seriously-- If we're all destroyed WHY would we need to drive anywhere, anyways? The logic escapes me. (People tell me later that it's because when the power goes out, stations can't pump for days, weeks. Whatever.)

By the time I make it to the grocery store, every single desirable item is GONE. People are filling entire grocery carts to the brim. Do people really think food will cease to exist after the storm? OR (in some cases) that they really need to be eating that much?! No.

As I ask the large check-out man what he thinks of the storm, and we both decide this is a non-event. As if he were a part of this, the guy behind me in line (with a dozen or so candy bars in hand, might I add) decides to chime in.

"Well, the storm could go either way, HONEY."

HONEY?! Getting honey'd by a stranger was the last straw. I can't wait for this storm to be over.

Although I do enjoy a little tropical stormage.

My life as a schnook.

So there's been a definite lack of posting recently. Hard to explain other than the fact that nothing's been particularly "funny." I'm surrounded by the people I love the most, and feeling warm and fuzzy inside doesn't make for a good blog.

This said, I've been watching a lot of mob movies recently. When everything falls apart in my life, I always turn to organized crime movies. Gives me a sense of order in the universe. It also made me realize that I've been living in a world akin to the Witness Protection Program. Anonymity. Absolute security. NOTHING happens here. So, I give you the Ray Liotta quote that best summarizes the transtion from Paris to Delray Beach.

"Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over. And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different; there's no action...I have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody... I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."

Because I can't take it anymore, I'm moving to London. To have massive amounts of financial and personal insecurity. But at least I won't be living like a schnook.

Alumni of Sciences Po, unite and serve

Okay, so just kidding about having "The Fallout." For about the first week, I enjoyed a sort of touristic sort of awe about home. All the American accents! All the fat people! AND All the central air conditioning! But then, of course, all this must sour. To summarize the past couple weeks,

July 12-August 1: The Great Tits-Uppage of 2006. Where everything in my life, in short, goes tits up. War, tears, much gnashing of teeth, etc. Essentially, all the elements of a telenovella-- a really bad one.

August 1- Present: Despite being 'tout sur le dos' I decide to actually do things. Mainly, try and find desirable job for next year, and go to gym for a while to not think about how I don't have a job. Oh, and watch lots and lots of bad TV and movies.

Marking the end of this current period was our recent family wedding in Denver, CO.
My mom's side of the family, a bunch of lovely and crazy francophones, made this highly enjoyable. Highlights and Lowlights:

Highlight:
My grandmother, whispering to me during the wedding: "The last time I saw the bride, she was about 10 pounds heavier, she looked good. It didn't make her nose look so big. Oh, maybe I shouldn't be saying that."

Lowlight:
Being the only single woman, besides my 10 year-old cousin, to stand there and catch the bouquet. Luckily, she caught it.

Highlight:
Having an actual French waitress serving us at the wedding.

Lowlight:
Said waitress graduated from Sciences Po with a degree in Carrieres Internationales. I shit you not. The conversation went as such: "Vous etes diplomee de Sciences Po?!!" "Oui oui" (she says, in waitressing outfit)...

My parents' eyes sort of glazed over. THIS is what we're sending our daughter to Paris for?! Mention de chomage...no joke...

Luckily, she went on to say how she pursued hotel management after graduation and had an eye for moving to the States for this stuff. Still, made me kind of nervous. I'm not killing myself to eventually land a menial job in the suburbs of Denver.

On that note, wish me luck.
Cheers, y'all.