I cooked something! Okay, mostly I just stirred it, but I'm gonna count it anyway. A few nights ago Avi knocked on my door to say that he and Nithya were cooking chicken and that he would teach me how to make the amazing chicken that he made last month. This was, of course, a very exciting prospect and I immediately took him up on the offer. Over the next half hour or so I was guided through the process - when I got there the chicken was already coated in tumeric powder and was being microwaved to cut down on cooking time, and after that we put it in a pan containing vegetable oil (quick observation - the British don't say "vegetables;" the word is just "veg" and appears as such on all signs and ads, as in "Eat five servings of fruit and veg each day!") to fry it a little and finish the cooking. Multiple spices were added, few of which I can now remember (I can get them from Avi and write them down at some point), but I know cloves, cumin, that really strong powder I smelled in the hallway, and possibly caroway seeds were added. I think some tomatoes might have been put in as well. As I said, I was heavily guided through the process while Avi and Nithya made another batch of chicken in a different kind of sauce. During the process, we tried to put something in the microwave and ended up burning it terribly; it's a miracle we didn't set the alarm off. I actually have a lot less faith in that alarm after that incident. Carlos and I ended up with our heads hanging out the kitchen windows for a good ten minutes before we could breathe properly again. I think, however, that my favorite quote from the evening came when Avi instructed me to stir and poke at my chicken but noting the bubbling oil said, "Make sure you do it carefully;" after watching me tentatively poke at it with the very very tip of the spatula he clarified, "Okay, not that carefully."
At any rate, the cooking of both sets of chickens progressed at a fabulous pace and actually we were soon joined by the rest of the flat including Nithya's friend Nahal from Iran, who is also in the law program. She seems a very sweet girl. We had another kitchen bonding experience before our homemade dinner, and Nithya and Avi semi-fried these fluffy flat round bread things that are apparently another traditional food. I say "semi-fried" because it was akin to how I'd use olive oil to grease a brownie pan - just use one drop and spread it around so there's really no excess. Then they pressed them into the frying pan to brown them just a little. They were actually really delicious - kind of sweet and mellow, not exactly breadlike, almost more like a very thin doughnut, though not as sweet. But at any rate, once those were done we dug in, and both chickens turned out really well. Mine tasted different from when Avi did it, but apparently that's to be expected. From what I've come to understand, Indian cooking is kind of like how I go about making chocolate chip cookies these days - just put things in until it looks right. Consequently it tastes a little different every time, but it adds to the adventure. It made for an excellent flat dinner though, and there was, as usual, stimulating conversation of all types, although this time it seemed to center largely around jokes regarding Fauzan's homework project diagram of a fictitious oil well called Taminga, which which he's been spending an inordinate amount of time. I daresay imagination will be sufficient to imagine the nature of these jokes, which have not ceased all week. As we had the whole flat there, Ada suggested that we go out for a meal together at some point, and we had decided on doing dinner on Saturday night but eventually that had to be changed to Sunday lunch because Fauzan needed to do some work on Taminga (demanding little thing she is), and that adventure took place today, which I'll detail later in the interest of trying to remain semi-chronological.
Methods class on Monday was actually interesting, as we talked about formulating research questions. I've already had some experience with that (shout out to Dr. Imai once again), but the guy really took us through the finer points and had us come up with some in class. This class session has an assignment attached to it, which is basically just making up research questions on a random topic, but we have to prove they're valid and extrapolate them as generally as we can, because the more people your research interests and is relevant to, the more important it is. I'm going to do mine on Nazi anti-Jewish laws in Germany from 1933-9 because that can be extrapolated out in the general sense to ponder the mechanics of how any and all governments can take steps to isolate minorities within their borders. Thrillingly exciting, I know. It should be fun to write though.
Hebrew was also better this week; we got some in class time to practice reading with a partner (I was with Ellie and it ended up being hilarious . . . can you say "Train wreck"?) but I wasn't called over individually to have a talk with her about my progress so that was a good thing. It's starting to click but it's still very much a walk through molasses (which, I'm telling you, I wouldn't do if I were you - that was for you, Father dear).
At some point this week, Carlos had gotten word from Kola that there was a Halloween party over at Grosvenor Hall to which, as George Kenyon residents, we had access, so he, Ada, and I set out for that on Friday night. We got as far as our lobby before running into people - apparently it was our very own lobby party. It was quite a gig, lemme tell ya. It consisted of a pumpkin and individual bags of chips, and that was pretty much it. But at least it was convenient - you could check your mail and do your laundry between the songs being played on someone's laptop. Ada found a friend of hers, Mellie (also from Nigeria but did her undergrad in Boston), down there and the four of us went to Grosvenor together. Over there, it wasn't much better, although there was louder music. The main attraction was free pizza and beer pong, and we seemed to have limited interest in both, especially once the pizza ran out (despite my expanding palate, I still will not eat normal pizza). The four of us stayed for about half an hour and decided to go look for a party that Ada had heard about over at the Student Union. We made our way over there, but apparently the party had disappeared. We literally searched the entire building and it wasn't there. We asked at reception twice and the woman there hadn't heard about it (although we decided a search was necessary in spite of that, because we've learned not to trust receptions), so eventually we gave up and decided to try finding the club that the party was apparently supposed to move to later. Carlos thought he knew where it was so we walked toward City Center but it turned out he didn't know exactly where he was headed. We ended up hanging out outside the Deaf Institute Music Hall (am I the only one sensing a slight irony in that?) while he called someone to get better directions, but in the end Mellie wound up going back to the dorm so it was just the three of us. It was a nice walk down there, past the place where the Erasmus party was held last month. The club, Revolutions, was located along the canal with a series of bars and clubs, but since it didn't open until 11pm we decided to hang out in one of the bars next door for a while. We ended up just staying there and dancing the night away, and boy oh boy did we meet some interesting people in there. Our count for the evening was as follows:
1. One guy hooking his arm around Carlos's neck in a bromance hug and turning him around to show off to his friends
2. One drunk girl coming up to me and giving me a hug while informing me that she was jealous of me
3. One very corpulent 40 year old woman barreling into Ada while on her way to the door
4. One drunk girl attempting some interesting dance moves on Carlos which, shockingly, he didn't notice (but Ada and I sure did and were very entertained)
5. One creepy guy attempting to pick me up with an entirely too "hands-on" approach and whispering in my ear, "Do you fancy me?" However, because it was so loud in there, what I heard was, "Do you like fencing?" and consequently my answer was a little more affirmative than I intended until I asked him to repeat the question (yes, I know - the idea that some guy in a bar would be asking me if I like fencing is a tad ludicrous and probably I should have thought it through and realized it didn't make much sense)
6. One guy moving his way into our dancing triangle, shaking Carlos's hand, and then leaving
7. One guy coming up to me and holding up his hand for a high five and then leaving after receiving it
8. A multitude of people dressed (or undressed, as it were) in the Halloween spirit; we think the Avatar couple got the most points
So it was quite the evening, but it was a lot of fun. Three and a half/four hours is a long time to dance though, and by the time we left at a bit after two we were pretty darn tired, and hungry. Lucky for us, the Babylon 100% Halal Cafe is open at 2:15 am, so we got snacks of chicken to tide us over, and by the time we got back to the dorm it was about 3 am. I didn't see Carlos the next morning but when I finally wandered into the kitchen (still proudly pajamaed; I'm definitely past the stage of needing to look formal and presentable around these guys) Avi, Nithya, and Ada were in there munching on breakfast. Nithya had to leave after a bit but Avi, Ada (also still proudly pajamaed I believe; at least I wasn't alone), and I ended up staying in there and chatting for over two hours, once again touching on multiple subjects and battling with the world's problems. Ada was also able to enlighten us about her hair - she has it in dozens of little tiny twisty braidy things and I had assumed that it was her real hair, somehow braided and twisted so that it would magically stay like that, 'cause I know mine would last about three seconds if I tried it. Avi took it a step further and thought she did that every single morning. She thought that was hysterical and explained that it's actually synthetic hair that gets twisted in with her hair - what we see is half her hair, and half synthetic. It was really intriguing, and once she had us feel it we could see that it definitely didn't feel like real hair. She was contemplating taking them out so she started while we were sitting there so we could see how it worked. Apparently it's really common practice for her back home, but it's never (or rarely) only real hair - to give it more length and make it stay like that, you braid/twist in the synthetic stuff and and then set it with really hot water so it keeps the shape. Very interesting. That got us talking about hair and eyes and stuff, and Avi mentioned that I'm the first blue-eyed person he's ever seen. Then he said, "But sometimes I think your eyes aren't really blue - they're transparent!" I brought out the pictures I have in my wallet of Tess, Russ, and me so that he and Ada could see how our eyes are the same (or at least they were when we were little) and he was fascinated with Tess's red hair. I have her senior picture as well as one that was taken of the two of us when she was about nine months old so they could see that she really does have true, natural red hair. All in all, it was a marvelous few hours of relaxing conversation, and Ada and I discovered that we both like reading and have similar literary tastes, as well as loving bookstores. She read everything she could get her hands on when she was little, and is currently always looking for books to recommend to her 13 year old sister - Mother, Aunt Debbie, any suggestions you can offer?
That evening Kola Facebooked me and asked if I wanted to go Asda with him, so I said sure. It was a relatively uneventful trip, although probably not one I'd be willing to make alone in the dark. During the day it's fine, but at night it's a little sketchier. I didn't really have much to get but I spent a lot of time examining British products of various sorts, including bath products. I shall now reveal the winner for Most Interesting Bath Scent . . . Chocolate Waffle. Yes, that is a bath scent. Yes, I smelled it. Yes, it smells like something chocolate-ish, but I detected no hint of waffles. I don't think I'd really want to be washing myself in anything waffle-scented anyway. I also spent some time looking at British baby food - it's very impressive. I can see Frasier and Niles Crane feeding their children these baby meals - lamb dinner, mango rice pudding, salmon risotto.
I had a rather interesting experience this morning when I went out for some soap, which I'd forgotten last night. In fact, I almost titled this post "How I May Have Helped Contribute to Britain's Drug Problem" but thought that might be a bit extreme. Anyway, the story goes that I was walking along Oxford Road just past University Place and a guy, maybe 20 years old, came jogging up to me and asked if I had any spare change for the bus, 'cause he didn't have enough to get home. He looked reasonably distressed and there have been enough times where I or friends of mine have been assisted by random strangers in times of need that I was willing to donate the loose change in my pockets to his cause. As I did so, a woman came out of the store screaming that he was a heroin addict and that he was just looking for money to score smack. He shouted her down trying to deny it and she retorted that he's up and down this stretch all the time with sob stories "preying on helpless young loves like her," etc., etc. I figured it might be prudent to relocate and she started walking with me, with the guy asking me to just wait there with him for a few minutes until she left, but I told him I was heading in the opposite direction and changed course, leaving him there. Obviously I'd prefer that he wasn't a heroin addict, but even if he was I'd rather be taken in for a pound or two by some putz than refuse someone who actually needed assistance - as I said, I've been in that situation myself before and would feel really awful if I passed someone over when they actually did need some help. I'd rather be a slight bleeding heart than a bitter old cat lady. After hearing this story Carlos remarked, "You really are a magnet for these weirdos; how do you manage it?" Seems like it just runs in the family.
As I mentioned earlier, today was our prearranged flat lunch, and we decided, after much deliberation, to go to a Chinese buffet on the way to City Center - 60 dishes and a 10% discount for students. On the way we passed a streetside bookseller with a ton of old books and Ada and I remarked that if he was still there by the time we returned we'd definitely be taking a look. The restaurant was about 10 minutes away and ended up being pretty good - also probably the most authentic Chinese food I've ever had, a bit more sophisticated than the Ming Moon, and not too heavy either. I tried a sweet potato cakelike pastry, chicken in some kind of sauce, garlic shrimp, fish, and others. All of it was really good, especially the fish - it was somehow kind of sweet, and very good. The shrimp were also delicious, and you know what a shrimp connoisseur I am. They were quite good, although the garlic and butter sauce made them a bit difficult to shell. It was a really good time, and a good deal for the price (it was an all-you-can-eat and it worked out to about 6.5 pounds a person; it's cheaper on weekdays). I'd go back sometime. Regardless of the food, though, it was nice to just sit back, relax, and hang out a bit; I think we're a fun crowd :) We're thinking about going to the movies next weekend, or doing our own movie night in the kitchen.
On our way back, the book seller was indeed still there, and Ada and I examined just about every volume he had (eventually the others left and headed back without us because we were so engrossed). There were some interesting things there and I ended up getting three books (because that's exactly what I need, right? More books . . .) - one on a particular theory about the rise of Nazism, one written during the war about whether Germany will be able to withstand the fight against the USSR, and The Mayor of Castorbridge, which I haven't read but Gram has always said she liked; Ada picked up a novel by Iris Murdoch. She and I had a nice discussion about books on our walk back - they love Jane Austen even in Nigeria, and at the moment she's trying to find Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead, which we talked about a lot in Social Theory last year (shout out to Dr. O'Brien). When we got back to the flat, everyone was still in the hallway, talking, and that didn't end for probably another hour or so. Stay tuned for more fabulous tales of the exploits of the residents of 04 03 . . .
Sunday 31 October 2010
Monday 25 October 2010
Another Reason to Love the British
As if there weren't enough reasons already to do so, I have discovered yet another reason to love the British - one stop grocery shopping and flu vaccinations! Yessir, it's true - I got my flu shot today at Asda . . . nothing says awesome like getting vaccinated at your local grocery store. When I was in Asda last week I saw signs advertising flu shots (or "jabs" as they're called here) for 8 pounds in the Asda pharmacy, so I went over to check it out, knowing that I should probably get one. I was told to come back on the 25th to either make an appointment for a later date or get one right then, so I took this afternoon before class to head over and get it taken care of. I now have a sore arm, but I'm quite happy that I managed to get that done, especially since they ran out of shots for us at Orientation. They also had some marvelous sales in the fruit section so not only am I ready for battle against the dreaded influenza but I also have a lovely pile of apples, bananas, and clementines (Fair Trade clementines nonetheless, so I'm helping promote agriculture in developing countries which always makes me happy) sitting on my desk waiting to be turned into a multitude of breakfasts. I'm very happy that Asda is so easy to get to on foot - just hang a left when Booth St. ends and once you pass Abdul's Store of Newspapers and the Somali Golden Center of Opportunities, you're practically there.
Speaking of breakfasts, the other day I had an opportunity to sample a traditional Indian breakfast dish called uma-something, courtesy of Avi and Nithya. It was the first time Nithya had cooked this, and it apparently turned out beautifully (never having had it before I didn't have anything to compare it to, but Avi said it was very nice). It was cooked in a frying pan and had a starch base with a little bit of tomato and some onions. There were other things that went into it but I don't really know what they were. It looked a little like a more interesting version of mashed potatoes, actually. Once it's on the plate you sprinkle it with coarse sugar and eat it like that. It was pretty good, although surprisingly bland for what I've come to expect from Indian food (Avi said it was indeed an exception to the rule). I liked it though, but I'd be hard-pressed to really describe what it tasted like . . . somewhere between potatoes and oatmeal, perhaps? But a sweetened version of potatoes, because of the sugar. I don't really know, but it was worth trying. I've also been invited to cook the awesome chicken next time they do it :)
Hebrew is incredibly difficult, although I know I can learn it, unlike French. I have an ear for this, which was missing with the French stuff. But I would really like to know who thought it was a good idea to write down a language without the vowels . . . it's the most frustrating feeling, trying to sound something out and all you get is "stghb," and not having any idea of what it's supposed to be. At least if letters are missing from a language you know, y cn stll rd t rltvly wll. Case in point. But this is so maddening . . . our professor seems to think that we can't read well because we don't know the letters, which isn't true - I can do my letter flashcards with the sounds flawlessly; it's just when you try to string them together without vowels, it's really difficult to get it right. And despite her assurance that the first time a word appears the book will vowel it, that has not been the case thus far. But I spent a lot of time with it this weekend and I feel a little better about it now, although as soon as I get to class that will probably collapse. There are some fun girls in that class though - two undergrads, Rachel and Ellie, who've taken to sitting on either side of me. They make it a little more entertaining. Ellie is one of those really sarcastic people with extremely deadpan humor - she reminds me a lot of Tess in how she presents things. And Rachel is a sweetheart; she actually went to highschool in the US and is going back for Thanksgiving.
The weather has turned colder the past few days, to the point where I've started wearing a coat outside (so you know that everybody else has been freezing for weeks already), and we're really excited for snow. Avi has never seen it and Nithya only once, so this is gonna be awesome. Avi said while we were in the kitchen the other day, "Ever since I was a little kid and watched 'Home Alone,' I've always wanted to see snow!" It was hilarious. But we're definitely looking forward to the arrival of the white stuff.
Next week is Reading Week, which is a fancy way of saying we get a week off, ostensibly to catch up on our reading but in reality to do whatever, so I'm thinking that it might be a good opportunity to take that trip to Ulverston and make my pilgrimage to Stan's birthplace. Waiting outside for class today I actually met a guy who lives there, and he seemed a little perturbed that my main reason for going there was because of Stan Laurel; he said, in a rather haughty manner, "You know, we do have other stuff there too. It doesn't have to be all about him; you can walk around and things." I did, of course, fully intend to do so, but there's no denying that my main purpose for going there is the Laurel and Hardy connection. Hopefully I'll be able to secure a railcard by then, which will make it a much cheaper adventure.
Kola mentioned to me the other night that the McDonald's down the street is hiring, so I might check that out; I hate having expenses but no income, and it's really bothering me. But I have to get a National Insurance Number or something first so I can pay tax on it. I was talking to a girl about it before class today and I think there's a job center down the road that can tell me what to do on that front, because I really would like to work somewhere and start establishing a nest egg for when I get back.
So about three weeks ago I was informed that I was invited to a reception with the NAFUM board (the ones who gave me that scholarship). It was near City Center by the main branch of the library, and it was a chance to meet and socialize with some big shot Mancunian muckety-mucks. I was one of only four scholarship-receiving students there, and I'd say there were about six or seven board members, along with one or two wives. I was making the rounds and all (you know how much I love meet and greets) and one of the guys asked me where I did my undergrad degree. I gave my standard response of "A really small college in upstate NY" because nobody around here has ever heard of Elmira, and he asked where in particular, so I told him. He then turned around and shouted for his wife to come over - it turns out that he had gone to Cornell, she was American, and the two of them had met on the EC campus one afternoon some 40-odd years ago. Small world. And of course, the first thing he says is, "What did you think about the Mark Twain connection? Pretty fascinating stuff, isn't it?" Gag me with a spoon . . . I'm gonna be haunted by dear old Marky T for the rest of my life. I still wish I knew what was up with the bubble writing on his tombstone. Anyway, as far as a meet and greet with board members goes, it was pretty good, and after an hour of small talk we were free to go home. I started walking back with one of the other girls who was there, named Mina. Obviously, since it was the North American Foundation board meeting I knew she was from the US or Canada (Mexico is not part of North America, according to the University; Carlos was slightly insulted by that), and by her accent I was pretty sure it wasn't Canada. We got to talking and I found out that she was from New Jersey. I told her that originally I was too, and asked her what part she was from. It turns out that she's from Englewood, and she couldn't believe that I was from Teaneck. She said, "I bet you were born in Holy Name, weren't you?!" After we got over our excitement, her first question was, "So that must mean you're Jewish!" Logical assumption, given that I was born in Teaneck and am in the Holocaust Studies program, but I told her that no, I actually am not (although Hilary did always tell me that I'm Jewish by association). That gave me a nice happy feeling and reinforced my faith in eventual world peace because she (Mina) is Muslim and was perfectly happy to chat with me no matter what religion I was. Take that, haters. I'm getting so sick and tired of people "wanting to believe" that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists and have no intentions of bombing us, but then no matter how many Muslims speak out against extremists, it's "not enough" or it "doesn't count." Our flat has done quite well with a Catholic, a Muslim, two Hindus, an Anglican Protestant, and two agnostic/non-practicing Christians - no violent religious confrontations yet, and I'm pretty sure we'll be able to hold off on that. As a matter of fact, last week we all sat in the kitchen for two hours and talked about religion and our various faiths, and somehow we managed to do it without killing each other. We even still like each other. Crazy, right?
Speaking of breakfasts, the other day I had an opportunity to sample a traditional Indian breakfast dish called uma-something, courtesy of Avi and Nithya. It was the first time Nithya had cooked this, and it apparently turned out beautifully (never having had it before I didn't have anything to compare it to, but Avi said it was very nice). It was cooked in a frying pan and had a starch base with a little bit of tomato and some onions. There were other things that went into it but I don't really know what they were. It looked a little like a more interesting version of mashed potatoes, actually. Once it's on the plate you sprinkle it with coarse sugar and eat it like that. It was pretty good, although surprisingly bland for what I've come to expect from Indian food (Avi said it was indeed an exception to the rule). I liked it though, but I'd be hard-pressed to really describe what it tasted like . . . somewhere between potatoes and oatmeal, perhaps? But a sweetened version of potatoes, because of the sugar. I don't really know, but it was worth trying. I've also been invited to cook the awesome chicken next time they do it :)
Hebrew is incredibly difficult, although I know I can learn it, unlike French. I have an ear for this, which was missing with the French stuff. But I would really like to know who thought it was a good idea to write down a language without the vowels . . . it's the most frustrating feeling, trying to sound something out and all you get is "stghb," and not having any idea of what it's supposed to be. At least if letters are missing from a language you know, y cn stll rd t rltvly wll. Case in point. But this is so maddening . . . our professor seems to think that we can't read well because we don't know the letters, which isn't true - I can do my letter flashcards with the sounds flawlessly; it's just when you try to string them together without vowels, it's really difficult to get it right. And despite her assurance that the first time a word appears the book will vowel it, that has not been the case thus far. But I spent a lot of time with it this weekend and I feel a little better about it now, although as soon as I get to class that will probably collapse. There are some fun girls in that class though - two undergrads, Rachel and Ellie, who've taken to sitting on either side of me. They make it a little more entertaining. Ellie is one of those really sarcastic people with extremely deadpan humor - she reminds me a lot of Tess in how she presents things. And Rachel is a sweetheart; she actually went to highschool in the US and is going back for Thanksgiving.
The weather has turned colder the past few days, to the point where I've started wearing a coat outside (so you know that everybody else has been freezing for weeks already), and we're really excited for snow. Avi has never seen it and Nithya only once, so this is gonna be awesome. Avi said while we were in the kitchen the other day, "Ever since I was a little kid and watched 'Home Alone,' I've always wanted to see snow!" It was hilarious. But we're definitely looking forward to the arrival of the white stuff.
Next week is Reading Week, which is a fancy way of saying we get a week off, ostensibly to catch up on our reading but in reality to do whatever, so I'm thinking that it might be a good opportunity to take that trip to Ulverston and make my pilgrimage to Stan's birthplace. Waiting outside for class today I actually met a guy who lives there, and he seemed a little perturbed that my main reason for going there was because of Stan Laurel; he said, in a rather haughty manner, "You know, we do have other stuff there too. It doesn't have to be all about him; you can walk around and things." I did, of course, fully intend to do so, but there's no denying that my main purpose for going there is the Laurel and Hardy connection. Hopefully I'll be able to secure a railcard by then, which will make it a much cheaper adventure.
Kola mentioned to me the other night that the McDonald's down the street is hiring, so I might check that out; I hate having expenses but no income, and it's really bothering me. But I have to get a National Insurance Number or something first so I can pay tax on it. I was talking to a girl about it before class today and I think there's a job center down the road that can tell me what to do on that front, because I really would like to work somewhere and start establishing a nest egg for when I get back.
So about three weeks ago I was informed that I was invited to a reception with the NAFUM board (the ones who gave me that scholarship). It was near City Center by the main branch of the library, and it was a chance to meet and socialize with some big shot Mancunian muckety-mucks. I was one of only four scholarship-receiving students there, and I'd say there were about six or seven board members, along with one or two wives. I was making the rounds and all (you know how much I love meet and greets) and one of the guys asked me where I did my undergrad degree. I gave my standard response of "A really small college in upstate NY" because nobody around here has ever heard of Elmira, and he asked where in particular, so I told him. He then turned around and shouted for his wife to come over - it turns out that he had gone to Cornell, she was American, and the two of them had met on the EC campus one afternoon some 40-odd years ago. Small world. And of course, the first thing he says is, "What did you think about the Mark Twain connection? Pretty fascinating stuff, isn't it?" Gag me with a spoon . . . I'm gonna be haunted by dear old Marky T for the rest of my life. I still wish I knew what was up with the bubble writing on his tombstone. Anyway, as far as a meet and greet with board members goes, it was pretty good, and after an hour of small talk we were free to go home. I started walking back with one of the other girls who was there, named Mina. Obviously, since it was the North American Foundation board meeting I knew she was from the US or Canada (Mexico is not part of North America, according to the University; Carlos was slightly insulted by that), and by her accent I was pretty sure it wasn't Canada. We got to talking and I found out that she was from New Jersey. I told her that originally I was too, and asked her what part she was from. It turns out that she's from Englewood, and she couldn't believe that I was from Teaneck. She said, "I bet you were born in Holy Name, weren't you?!" After we got over our excitement, her first question was, "So that must mean you're Jewish!" Logical assumption, given that I was born in Teaneck and am in the Holocaust Studies program, but I told her that no, I actually am not (although Hilary did always tell me that I'm Jewish by association). That gave me a nice happy feeling and reinforced my faith in eventual world peace because she (Mina) is Muslim and was perfectly happy to chat with me no matter what religion I was. Take that, haters. I'm getting so sick and tired of people "wanting to believe" that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists and have no intentions of bombing us, but then no matter how many Muslims speak out against extremists, it's "not enough" or it "doesn't count." Our flat has done quite well with a Catholic, a Muslim, two Hindus, an Anglican Protestant, and two agnostic/non-practicing Christians - no violent religious confrontations yet, and I'm pretty sure we'll be able to hold off on that. As a matter of fact, last week we all sat in the kitchen for two hours and talked about religion and our various faiths, and somehow we managed to do it without killing each other. We even still like each other. Crazy, right?
Saturday 16 October 2010
"We'll bring masala!"
As of yesterday, I have been here exactly a month, and what better way to celebrate than by taking a trip to London? Granted, the timing was simply coincidental, but it still seems appropriate. My trip to London to meet up with Andrew was great, even though we only had about an hour together before he had to fly back to Ireland with the rest of his class. The train systems, stations, and ticket purchasing facilities were all really easy to use and I got there with no trouble whatsoever. The ride through the countryside to get there was amazing - it was so beautiful. I saw hedgerows and fields containing cows, sheep (I kept expecting to see Babe, even though I know he was Australian), horses, geese, the works. It was so quaint and absolutely lovely; I definitely hope to see more of that while I'm here. I know people say that countryside is countryside everywhere you go, but I still love it and think there's a difference between American countryside, British countryside, Polish countryside, etc.
It took about two hours and 15 minutes or so to get to London, and Andrew met me at the station. Since we had so little time before he had to leave, he took me down to Westminster station, where Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey are located; it's kind of like the main tourist hub. We did a very brief look around there and then I went back to his hotel with him to meet his friends, and then I took the underground partway with them on their way to the airport so I could get back to Westminster. I was relieved at how easy the underground is to navigate - it's so easy a caveman (or directionally-impaired American) can do it. I spent a while wandering around that main area and saw the main things there - Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, etc. It was gorgeous - pictures really don't do any of it justice. It's just so impressive. Because it was so late in the day by the time I got back there I couldn't go inside anything, but that just gives a really good reason for a return trip. After poking around that area, I took a walk down the Thames, which is also right there. I came across a monument to the Battle of Britain, and saw the London Aquarium from across the river. I then went over a bridge and spent some time walking down the other side toward St. Peter's Cathedral, although I didn't make it all the way down there this time (partly because it got dark quite fast, and I'd like to actually see it in daylight). But the walk along the river was quite nice, and I saw the National Theatre which apparently has tons of plays and stuff. I grabbed some food along the river, and then headed back to the Westminster area proper, and by that time everything had been lit up, which was incredible. It was packed with people taking pictures, even in the dark. It was well worth it. Eventually I headed back to the train station for the trip home. An interesting thing about British train stations (and the underground) - there are no garbage cans or trash receptacles anywhere except the bathrooms (which you have to pay to get into, so you sure as heck don't go in just to throw stuff out). I was puzzling over this but Andrew said that it was because back when the Irish were unhappy, they would hide bombs in the railway/underground garbage cans, so to eliminate that problem they've just eliminated the trash cans. But at the very least I think they could make them clear or hang a plastic bag or something; they now have a problem with people littering and just leaving their garbage all over because there's truly no place to put it.
So all in all, it was a really nice day, but I'll definitely have to do it again because there's so much I didn't get a chance to see. Top of the list for next time is the wreckage of the fake Rudolf Hess's plane at the Imperial War Museum, although if I go with my flatmates as a road trip that might be a hard sell . . . I got back to Manchester at 12:30 am and ended up taking a cab back to the University because there's no direct bus line that goes from the station to the Uni. and after 10 pm the buses become somewhat inconsistent and it can take up to half an hour waiting for one to show up (this is what happened to Kola and me when we went to Asda). I didn't really want to walk because to get to the station you have to go through some darkish, semi-sketchy places and while I'm perfectly willing to do it during the day, I wasn't thrilled about the prospect of doing it at night by myself. If it had just been a straight shot down Oxford Road I wouldn't have minded, but not through the other parts. So although it ended up costing a little more, it was okay. Pictures of the trip are available at this link; copy and paste it into the browser:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039229&id=71701775&l=584281bea2
When I got back I ran into Irene, Fauzen, and Avi hanging out in the hall; apparently they had just gotten back from a full-dorm evacuation fire drill and when I walked in they decided it would be fun to tell me that something in my room had started it while I was gone. I bought it at first, but then after Avi said something about it being my hair dryer I cottoned on, since I don't have one of those. It turns out it was a girl on the 14th floor who decided it would be a really good idea to smoke in her room. Fauzen had actually just gotten back from a class trip to Wales, so we spent a while chatting about our respective adventures and then went to bed. This morning when I woke up, I heard voices out in the hall and when I poked out to see who it was, it was Avi, Nithya, and Ada, and Nithya immediately pulled me in to have breakfast with them. She said that they would make me something called maki (I think?), which turned out to be Indian raman noodles. They're actually much better than American raman noodles - far more spicy and far less salty. The four of us had a marvelous conversation about politics and culture, and Ada explained the history of the current Nigerian political and social situation and the issues between the north and the south of the country. Apparently "her people" as she put it, were the ones who fought for Biafran secession during the 1960s civil war. After that, Avi asked me what most Americans think of when they think of India, and the most educated answer I could give was, "Technology and computer support, dowry, and bride burning." When I mentioned bride burning, a.k.a. dowry death, his eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "Oh, good!" When the rest of us looked at him with raised eyebrows he explained that he meant he was glad the rest of the world was paying attention to it because it was such a terrible thing. But he had us rather confused for a minute, haha.
After that the conversation turned toward lighter topics, such as traditions and pastimes in our respective countries, and after a while Avi turned to me and said, "Kate, I've heard that in America there's a tradition in which small groups of maybe four or five people go out in the woods or the wilds together, and they don't bring anything with them except a small folding house. They stay there for a week or so and they have to catch fish if they want to eat anything. Is it true??" I had to try very hard not to chuckle and explained that it was called "camping," and that yes, Americans do that sometimes. It sounded so bizarre when he put it like that; it reminded me of the semi-famous article "Body Rituals of the Nacirema," where a sociologist or someone wrote an article about American toiletries and medicines but from a completely different point of view to make us sound like a new civilization.
This question about camping led us into a discussion of camping, and what exactly one usually brings, what you do for food, if animals are likely to eat you, etc. Avi is now very keen on coming to the US and trying out this camping thing just for the experience. At some point as we were discussing this, Nithya got a call on her phone and went into the hall while Avi, Ada, and I carried on the conversation. As we were talking about the food aspect, he said after a while, "Well, we'll bring masala and that will take care of everything." "Masala" is the Tamil word for spices, i.e. practically the main ingredient in every Indian dish. Nithya came back and as she did, Avi got a call and went into the hall. Nithya as well was asking about the food and stuff, and after talking about cooking fish she said, "Well we'll bring masala and then we can handle anything." Ada and I roared with laughter that masala had been the first thing on both of their minds. Apparently Indians know exactly what their priorities are, or at least the ones I live with do. Don't get between these two and their spices; it won't end well.
Classes continue to go well, although I really wish Hebrew would write out vowels, or at least use pointed text all the time. It makes reading very difficult, although I guess it gets easier as you go on. The book we're using has no English except the glossary (and it also has a Hebrew/Russian glossary, which makes me happy; I miss Russian quite a bit), and I think they give you pointed text the first time a word shows up but after that you just have to remember what vowels go where. It's gonna be fun. We got a new student in the class last week though - a Nigerian Jewish guy. I wasn't aware that Nigeria had a Jewish community, and neither were any of the Nigerians I've asked about it so far (I almost can't believe that I actually know multiple Nigerians whom I can ask). He seems like a very nice guy though, so I think I can probably ask him if we could have a chat about it sometime. He goes by Elizar - his real name is something with multiple syllables and multiple "O"s that people apparently have a lot of trouble pronouncing, so he just goes by Elizar to save time. That happens a lot among Chinese students; they just take an English name they like because English speakers can't make many Chinese sounds properly (example: the two Chinese girls we went to the Erasmus party with, Valerie and Michelle, and Richard from EC). I think I could probably manage Elizar's real name if it was spelled out, but Elizar works just fine. I saw him again while I was walking to the train station yesterday and he was indeed wearing a yarmulke (and getting strange looks from passersby because of it). But I'm very curious to learn more about Nigeria's Jewish community, now that I know there is one there.
It took about two hours and 15 minutes or so to get to London, and Andrew met me at the station. Since we had so little time before he had to leave, he took me down to Westminster station, where Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey are located; it's kind of like the main tourist hub. We did a very brief look around there and then I went back to his hotel with him to meet his friends, and then I took the underground partway with them on their way to the airport so I could get back to Westminster. I was relieved at how easy the underground is to navigate - it's so easy a caveman (or directionally-impaired American) can do it. I spent a while wandering around that main area and saw the main things there - Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, etc. It was gorgeous - pictures really don't do any of it justice. It's just so impressive. Because it was so late in the day by the time I got back there I couldn't go inside anything, but that just gives a really good reason for a return trip. After poking around that area, I took a walk down the Thames, which is also right there. I came across a monument to the Battle of Britain, and saw the London Aquarium from across the river. I then went over a bridge and spent some time walking down the other side toward St. Peter's Cathedral, although I didn't make it all the way down there this time (partly because it got dark quite fast, and I'd like to actually see it in daylight). But the walk along the river was quite nice, and I saw the National Theatre which apparently has tons of plays and stuff. I grabbed some food along the river, and then headed back to the Westminster area proper, and by that time everything had been lit up, which was incredible. It was packed with people taking pictures, even in the dark. It was well worth it. Eventually I headed back to the train station for the trip home. An interesting thing about British train stations (and the underground) - there are no garbage cans or trash receptacles anywhere except the bathrooms (which you have to pay to get into, so you sure as heck don't go in just to throw stuff out). I was puzzling over this but Andrew said that it was because back when the Irish were unhappy, they would hide bombs in the railway/underground garbage cans, so to eliminate that problem they've just eliminated the trash cans. But at the very least I think they could make them clear or hang a plastic bag or something; they now have a problem with people littering and just leaving their garbage all over because there's truly no place to put it.
So all in all, it was a really nice day, but I'll definitely have to do it again because there's so much I didn't get a chance to see. Top of the list for next time is the wreckage of the fake Rudolf Hess's plane at the Imperial War Museum, although if I go with my flatmates as a road trip that might be a hard sell . . . I got back to Manchester at 12:30 am and ended up taking a cab back to the University because there's no direct bus line that goes from the station to the Uni. and after 10 pm the buses become somewhat inconsistent and it can take up to half an hour waiting for one to show up (this is what happened to Kola and me when we went to Asda). I didn't really want to walk because to get to the station you have to go through some darkish, semi-sketchy places and while I'm perfectly willing to do it during the day, I wasn't thrilled about the prospect of doing it at night by myself. If it had just been a straight shot down Oxford Road I wouldn't have minded, but not through the other parts. So although it ended up costing a little more, it was okay. Pictures of the trip are available at this link; copy and paste it into the browser:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039229&id=71701775&l=584281bea2
When I got back I ran into Irene, Fauzen, and Avi hanging out in the hall; apparently they had just gotten back from a full-dorm evacuation fire drill and when I walked in they decided it would be fun to tell me that something in my room had started it while I was gone. I bought it at first, but then after Avi said something about it being my hair dryer I cottoned on, since I don't have one of those. It turns out it was a girl on the 14th floor who decided it would be a really good idea to smoke in her room. Fauzen had actually just gotten back from a class trip to Wales, so we spent a while chatting about our respective adventures and then went to bed. This morning when I woke up, I heard voices out in the hall and when I poked out to see who it was, it was Avi, Nithya, and Ada, and Nithya immediately pulled me in to have breakfast with them. She said that they would make me something called maki (I think?), which turned out to be Indian raman noodles. They're actually much better than American raman noodles - far more spicy and far less salty. The four of us had a marvelous conversation about politics and culture, and Ada explained the history of the current Nigerian political and social situation and the issues between the north and the south of the country. Apparently "her people" as she put it, were the ones who fought for Biafran secession during the 1960s civil war. After that, Avi asked me what most Americans think of when they think of India, and the most educated answer I could give was, "Technology and computer support, dowry, and bride burning." When I mentioned bride burning, a.k.a. dowry death, his eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "Oh, good!" When the rest of us looked at him with raised eyebrows he explained that he meant he was glad the rest of the world was paying attention to it because it was such a terrible thing. But he had us rather confused for a minute, haha.
After that the conversation turned toward lighter topics, such as traditions and pastimes in our respective countries, and after a while Avi turned to me and said, "Kate, I've heard that in America there's a tradition in which small groups of maybe four or five people go out in the woods or the wilds together, and they don't bring anything with them except a small folding house. They stay there for a week or so and they have to catch fish if they want to eat anything. Is it true??" I had to try very hard not to chuckle and explained that it was called "camping," and that yes, Americans do that sometimes. It sounded so bizarre when he put it like that; it reminded me of the semi-famous article "Body Rituals of the Nacirema," where a sociologist or someone wrote an article about American toiletries and medicines but from a completely different point of view to make us sound like a new civilization.
This question about camping led us into a discussion of camping, and what exactly one usually brings, what you do for food, if animals are likely to eat you, etc. Avi is now very keen on coming to the US and trying out this camping thing just for the experience. At some point as we were discussing this, Nithya got a call on her phone and went into the hall while Avi, Ada, and I carried on the conversation. As we were talking about the food aspect, he said after a while, "Well, we'll bring masala and that will take care of everything." "Masala" is the Tamil word for spices, i.e. practically the main ingredient in every Indian dish. Nithya came back and as she did, Avi got a call and went into the hall. Nithya as well was asking about the food and stuff, and after talking about cooking fish she said, "Well we'll bring masala and then we can handle anything." Ada and I roared with laughter that masala had been the first thing on both of their minds. Apparently Indians know exactly what their priorities are, or at least the ones I live with do. Don't get between these two and their spices; it won't end well.
Classes continue to go well, although I really wish Hebrew would write out vowels, or at least use pointed text all the time. It makes reading very difficult, although I guess it gets easier as you go on. The book we're using has no English except the glossary (and it also has a Hebrew/Russian glossary, which makes me happy; I miss Russian quite a bit), and I think they give you pointed text the first time a word shows up but after that you just have to remember what vowels go where. It's gonna be fun. We got a new student in the class last week though - a Nigerian Jewish guy. I wasn't aware that Nigeria had a Jewish community, and neither were any of the Nigerians I've asked about it so far (I almost can't believe that I actually know multiple Nigerians whom I can ask). He seems like a very nice guy though, so I think I can probably ask him if we could have a chat about it sometime. He goes by Elizar - his real name is something with multiple syllables and multiple "O"s that people apparently have a lot of trouble pronouncing, so he just goes by Elizar to save time. That happens a lot among Chinese students; they just take an English name they like because English speakers can't make many Chinese sounds properly (example: the two Chinese girls we went to the Erasmus party with, Valerie and Michelle, and Richard from EC). I think I could probably manage Elizar's real name if it was spelled out, but Elizar works just fine. I saw him again while I was walking to the train station yesterday and he was indeed wearing a yarmulke (and getting strange looks from passersby because of it). But I'm very curious to learn more about Nigeria's Jewish community, now that I know there is one there.
Tuesday 12 October 2010
How Many Engineering Grad Students Does it Take to Put Together a Set of Pots?
Answer: the world may never know. Somehow, four of us (three engineers plus me, because although I supplied the screwdriver I was of no engineering help) couldn't manage to screw the handles on the lids of the pots Ada bought from Asda. I'm pretty sure that something was wrong with the pots . . . in the end we had to leave them loose because we were beginning to strip the screws. But my, does that pocket knife screwdriver come in handy. However, the incident with the pots brought us together as a suite once again, and we had a several-hour bonding session over topics ranging from religion to explaining to me what mechanical control systems are to the differences between the US political system and the Ugandan/Nigerian political systems (I think we barely scratched the surface of that one). We really get along marvelously well; I'm so happy about it. Ada, who seemed shy at first (which may have, in part, been due to embarrassment over causing the fire alarm that ended up introducing her to all of us), has turned out to be a doll; if Nithya couldn't move in, at least we got someone just as nice.
For those of you who know me well, the following statement will come as something of a shock - I ate an egg based product that night, too. Ada decided that she was going to cook an omlette and that I should have some (probably as a thank-you for the screwdriver or something), and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I don't like eggs. As it turns out, neither one of us had actually made an omlette before and Carlos ended up doing it for us (and it's probably a good thing, because we were planning to put carrots in it but he decided that probably wasn't a good idea). However, I did eat some of the omlette, and actually liked it. It even contained onions! I know, I know . . . pretty big step. I think it helped that it was a very thin omlette. But I would be willing to eat one again (although truth be told, I'd probably leave out the onions). I also ate my first fish and chips on Sunday, when Carlos and I went out in search of lunch. I'm not sure it was genuine, though, as it wasn't served on newspaper. But I daresay I'll be having it properly soon.
In other fun an exciting news, I'm going to London on Friday :) It was a very spur-of-the-moment thing - my friend Andrew from Elmira is studying in Ireland this year and he's taking a school trip to London this week, and he has Friday free to wander. Last night he Facebooked me asking if I could work it into my schedule, and it turns out that I could manage it. We're both really excited about it, and I can't wait to see the city. Buying tickets online was incredibly easy as well, and even though I don't have a railcard yet it only came to 51 pounds, round-trip, which isn't bad at all. I thought it would be prudent to find the station today and pick them up from the dispensing machine, and I'm glad I went to review the territory beforehand, since navigation isn't one of my strongest areas. I think I will be taking a cab home, though, 'cause it's not in an area that I'll be wanting to walk back in at night, and my return train doesn't get in until 12:30 am. It was a nice walk in the daylight though.
On my way back, I found Chinatown as well. The brochure that I got from Manchester before I came made it out to be this enormous bastion of Chinese culture situated in the heart of the city, with teeming crowds, etc. Well, it may be a bastion of Chinese culture, and it is situated in the heart of the city, but I'd hesitate to call it enormous. It looks to be about the size of the Grand Union parking lot, and the teeming crowds were three little old ladies and a lost 50-something year old man spinning around with a giant map. I did see the "famed" Chinese Arch, though, which is cool. And the restaurants down there are, I have no doubt, truly genuine Chinese restaurants. I stopped to read the menu for one . . . it advertised several items that are no doubt traditional because I don't think they really cater to typical British tastes. Included were slices of gently fried bull stomach, stir-fried duck tongues, shredded or sliced jellyfish with Chinese herbs, and for the really adventurous palate, sauteed sheep's bowel. Mmm-mmm good. They also offered a dish called "Glutinous Rice," and I'm not entirely sure what that is but it looks to be more my speed, although I would try the squid dishes that were listed.
That about sums it up for recent activities, but I'm sure that come the weekend I'll be regaling you with tales of my London adventure :)
For those of you who know me well, the following statement will come as something of a shock - I ate an egg based product that night, too. Ada decided that she was going to cook an omlette and that I should have some (probably as a thank-you for the screwdriver or something), and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I don't like eggs. As it turns out, neither one of us had actually made an omlette before and Carlos ended up doing it for us (and it's probably a good thing, because we were planning to put carrots in it but he decided that probably wasn't a good idea). However, I did eat some of the omlette, and actually liked it. It even contained onions! I know, I know . . . pretty big step. I think it helped that it was a very thin omlette. But I would be willing to eat one again (although truth be told, I'd probably leave out the onions). I also ate my first fish and chips on Sunday, when Carlos and I went out in search of lunch. I'm not sure it was genuine, though, as it wasn't served on newspaper. But I daresay I'll be having it properly soon.
In other fun an exciting news, I'm going to London on Friday :) It was a very spur-of-the-moment thing - my friend Andrew from Elmira is studying in Ireland this year and he's taking a school trip to London this week, and he has Friday free to wander. Last night he Facebooked me asking if I could work it into my schedule, and it turns out that I could manage it. We're both really excited about it, and I can't wait to see the city. Buying tickets online was incredibly easy as well, and even though I don't have a railcard yet it only came to 51 pounds, round-trip, which isn't bad at all. I thought it would be prudent to find the station today and pick them up from the dispensing machine, and I'm glad I went to review the territory beforehand, since navigation isn't one of my strongest areas. I think I will be taking a cab home, though, 'cause it's not in an area that I'll be wanting to walk back in at night, and my return train doesn't get in until 12:30 am. It was a nice walk in the daylight though.
On my way back, I found Chinatown as well. The brochure that I got from Manchester before I came made it out to be this enormous bastion of Chinese culture situated in the heart of the city, with teeming crowds, etc. Well, it may be a bastion of Chinese culture, and it is situated in the heart of the city, but I'd hesitate to call it enormous. It looks to be about the size of the Grand Union parking lot, and the teeming crowds were three little old ladies and a lost 50-something year old man spinning around with a giant map. I did see the "famed" Chinese Arch, though, which is cool. And the restaurants down there are, I have no doubt, truly genuine Chinese restaurants. I stopped to read the menu for one . . . it advertised several items that are no doubt traditional because I don't think they really cater to typical British tastes. Included were slices of gently fried bull stomach, stir-fried duck tongues, shredded or sliced jellyfish with Chinese herbs, and for the really adventurous palate, sauteed sheep's bowel. Mmm-mmm good. They also offered a dish called "Glutinous Rice," and I'm not entirely sure what that is but it looks to be more my speed, although I would try the squid dishes that were listed.
That about sums it up for recent activities, but I'm sure that come the weekend I'll be regaling you with tales of my London adventure :)
Wednesday 6 October 2010
Amazing Discoveries
As the title suggests, I have made several amazing discoveries over the past couple days. Two of them are answers to questions that many Americans have wondered about for a very long time.
Question One: Are English muffins still called English muffins in England?
Logically one might think the answer is "Yes" because after all, we in America still call it American cheese. Alas, the answer is "No." The correct term for an English muffin if you are, in fact, in England is apparently simply "white" muffin. I don't think it's exceptionally creative, but there we have it. On this side of the Atlantic, we have no English muffins, but white muffins. And yes, I did go into a grocery store yesterday just to find that out.
Question Two: It is well known that bored kids/teenagers/college students/adults-who-won't-admit-it in America often imitate (usually badly) British accents just for fun ("Not bloody likely!"). It turns out that yes, Brits imitate American accents for fun as well. I put this question to my classmate Juliet as we walked down the street yesterday; she laughed and said yes, and then remarked that most Americans end up sounding rather like Stewie from Family Guy, who doesn't have any kind of real British accent at all. But it's so nice to know that we're not the only ones acting stupidly in trying to talk like the people living on the other side of the ocean.
I hope that you will all sleep better tonight knowing the answers to these burning questions that have long puzzled us. However, there were even more discoveries made recently that I feel compelled to share with you.
Discovery: Guess which comedic god was born just a few short miles from here? (Hint - his name starts with "Stan" and ends with "Laurel") Good guess! Stan Laurel is correct . . . now, if anyone (except Dad, who should know it) can tell me his real name (without the help of Google or Wikipedia), I'll be very impressed. But yes - it seems as though our beloved Stan was born in Ulverston, which is relatively close to Manchester and easily accessible by rail. That will definitely be on my list of places to visit. He was born at 3 Argyle St., so maybe they have a little plaque there or something. If I could see the house in which he was born . . . wow. That will certainly be a journey to look forward to.
Discovery: Creepy British guys are still creepy, but their accents make them sound so much more harmless and endearing than American creepy guys. I found this out yesterday when I was walking to City Center to (finally!) get a yoga mat, since I now have money. I was waiting at a crosswalk and a guy (who wasn't actually from the UK but spoke accented English with a British accent) approached me and asked me how to get to City Center. Since I was going that way it was a little awkward to give him directions and then just keep walking in front of him, so we ended up going together. However, if he'd been a little more slick, he would have neglected to mention later on in the conversation that he's lived here for five years. And when we got to City Center he started pointing out all the landmarks . . . real smooth. However, my favorite part of the conversation took place as follows:
Ali: So are you a student here?
Me: Yep.
Ali: Wow, that's great . . . um, yeah I'm actually a student too . . . um, I study, um, buisiness! Yeah . . . that's it [I wish I were making this up]. I really like money . . . do you?
*a few minutes of unexciting small talk*
Ali: Do you have a boyfriend?
Me: Yeah.
Ali: Is he here with you.
Me: No, he's back home.
Ali: Do you miss him?
Me: Yes.
Ali: Really?
Me: Yes.
Ali: Are you sure?
Me: Yes!!!
*a few minutes later, as we arrive at City Center*
Me: Well, this is where I leave you; nice meeting you.
Ali: You too; hey, do you want my number, in case you wanna go out sometime?
After giving the lame excuse that I don't have a phone (not entirely untrue), he told me how wonderful it was to have met me, and then held out his hand for me to shake it. I figured, well, there's really no way to get out of this gracefully, and a handshake I can probably deal with. I took his hand, and then he proceeded to immediately reel me in and give me a kiss on the cheek. Now, I know this is customary in many other parts of the world, but I'm positive those cheek kisses are not supposed to last for as long as he was attempting to make this one last. I pried out of his grip and sprinted into the Aldi's as fast I could without making a scene. Quite the experience, lemme tell ya.
Discovery: The buses here at night are not always as reliable as we've been told. Kola and I found this out the other night when he asked me if I wanted to make an Asda run at about 8 pm via bus, so we went out there and go there just fine, but it turns out the 85 bus only comes every 30 minutes or so after a certain point, instead of every 10. We were told that point was at about 10:30, not 9:15. However, we did find our way back eventually, and I'm pretty sure now I could walk there (well I know I can; it's just a matter of doing it without getting lost), which will be good 'cause I'm not spending a pound each way every time I need to get supplies.
Discovery: I think I can actually do this graduate stuff. Yesterday I had my Holocaust class (there are now only two of us in there, as Karl dropped it for whatever reason, so it's just Juliet and yours truly) and Dr. Dreyfus asked me to give the rundown of the Moishe Postone article I was assigned to prepare. It wasn't supposed to be anything really formal; I just had to go over his main points and stuff, but it was a really dense, complicated, and highly theoretical article, which Dr. D. himself stated when he gave them out last week. So I did my spiel and when I was done he looked at me for a minute, shook his head, and said, "Wow . . . that was really good." Happy times :) And what made the occasion even better was that he said it in his really strong French accent, and as everybody knows, accents always make everything better (later on he started talking about "the law" and he sounded just like Clouseau; it took all I had to keep from cracking up, which would have been double horrible because of the subject matter). But that made me a little more confident that I can actually do this stuff, even though the British kids all sound so much smarter.
In other news, we finally have a sixth flatmate; she got here last night. Apparently her visa was delayed or something and that's why she couldn't get here earlier. Her name is Adah (the spelling is a very rough guess) and she's from Nigeria. She seems shy but nice, although she might be a little shy 'cause the other five of us know each other already and everything (we all got to meet her this morning when our fire alarm went off; I'm becoming very concerned about this campus's definition of "Fire Safety," because if it had been a real fire we probably all would have been burned to a crisp). But at any rate, it seems like she's a sweet girl, so we'll be able to continue being the most awesome flat in the building - modest, aren't we? But we definitely have a good thing going; I got really lucky with the housing situation.
Regarding the fire safety issue, part of the problem is that the smoke detectors don't actually detect smoke, apparently. They detect heat. So if you're cooking something on the stove and it gets hot but there's no smoke and no fire, the alarm may go off. Alternatively, if there is a real fire and it's just not burning hot enough yet, the detector may not go off. It's also a zoned alarm, meaning that it just goes off in one flat at a time, unless the fire progresses to the hallway. This is kind of a good thing because in a situation like this morning where there was no actual fire (they're particle detectors too, so mis-directed hairspray sets them off), the whole building doesn't have to evacuate. The downside is that the fire has to get pretty big before the rest of the building is notified if there is a real situation. Add that with the amount of time it took security to get there (no fire people ever seem to come when the alarm goes off; maybe if it were a full-building alarm that would change), our next-door neighbors would probably have been rather crispy. Maybe this is why they apparently don't want us to use our laptops ever, and all the doors in the building are fire doors - they know their response system sucks, lol. Something fun to think about when we're trying to go to sleep . . . but since the building hasn't ever burned down, probably it won't this year either.
Question One: Are English muffins still called English muffins in England?
Logically one might think the answer is "Yes" because after all, we in America still call it American cheese. Alas, the answer is "No." The correct term for an English muffin if you are, in fact, in England is apparently simply "white" muffin. I don't think it's exceptionally creative, but there we have it. On this side of the Atlantic, we have no English muffins, but white muffins. And yes, I did go into a grocery store yesterday just to find that out.
Question Two: It is well known that bored kids/teenagers/college students/adults-who-won't-admit-it in America often imitate (usually badly) British accents just for fun ("Not bloody likely!"). It turns out that yes, Brits imitate American accents for fun as well. I put this question to my classmate Juliet as we walked down the street yesterday; she laughed and said yes, and then remarked that most Americans end up sounding rather like Stewie from Family Guy, who doesn't have any kind of real British accent at all. But it's so nice to know that we're not the only ones acting stupidly in trying to talk like the people living on the other side of the ocean.
I hope that you will all sleep better tonight knowing the answers to these burning questions that have long puzzled us. However, there were even more discoveries made recently that I feel compelled to share with you.
Discovery: Guess which comedic god was born just a few short miles from here? (Hint - his name starts with "Stan" and ends with "Laurel") Good guess! Stan Laurel is correct . . . now, if anyone (except Dad, who should know it) can tell me his real name (without the help of Google or Wikipedia), I'll be very impressed. But yes - it seems as though our beloved Stan was born in Ulverston, which is relatively close to Manchester and easily accessible by rail. That will definitely be on my list of places to visit. He was born at 3 Argyle St., so maybe they have a little plaque there or something. If I could see the house in which he was born . . . wow. That will certainly be a journey to look forward to.
Discovery: Creepy British guys are still creepy, but their accents make them sound so much more harmless and endearing than American creepy guys. I found this out yesterday when I was walking to City Center to (finally!) get a yoga mat, since I now have money. I was waiting at a crosswalk and a guy (who wasn't actually from the UK but spoke accented English with a British accent) approached me and asked me how to get to City Center. Since I was going that way it was a little awkward to give him directions and then just keep walking in front of him, so we ended up going together. However, if he'd been a little more slick, he would have neglected to mention later on in the conversation that he's lived here for five years. And when we got to City Center he started pointing out all the landmarks . . . real smooth. However, my favorite part of the conversation took place as follows:
Ali: So are you a student here?
Me: Yep.
Ali: Wow, that's great . . . um, yeah I'm actually a student too . . . um, I study, um, buisiness! Yeah . . . that's it [I wish I were making this up]. I really like money . . . do you?
*a few minutes of unexciting small talk*
Ali: Do you have a boyfriend?
Me: Yeah.
Ali: Is he here with you.
Me: No, he's back home.
Ali: Do you miss him?
Me: Yes.
Ali: Really?
Me: Yes.
Ali: Are you sure?
Me: Yes!!!
*a few minutes later, as we arrive at City Center*
Me: Well, this is where I leave you; nice meeting you.
Ali: You too; hey, do you want my number, in case you wanna go out sometime?
After giving the lame excuse that I don't have a phone (not entirely untrue), he told me how wonderful it was to have met me, and then held out his hand for me to shake it. I figured, well, there's really no way to get out of this gracefully, and a handshake I can probably deal with. I took his hand, and then he proceeded to immediately reel me in and give me a kiss on the cheek. Now, I know this is customary in many other parts of the world, but I'm positive those cheek kisses are not supposed to last for as long as he was attempting to make this one last. I pried out of his grip and sprinted into the Aldi's as fast I could without making a scene. Quite the experience, lemme tell ya.
Discovery: The buses here at night are not always as reliable as we've been told. Kola and I found this out the other night when he asked me if I wanted to make an Asda run at about 8 pm via bus, so we went out there and go there just fine, but it turns out the 85 bus only comes every 30 minutes or so after a certain point, instead of every 10. We were told that point was at about 10:30, not 9:15. However, we did find our way back eventually, and I'm pretty sure now I could walk there (well I know I can; it's just a matter of doing it without getting lost), which will be good 'cause I'm not spending a pound each way every time I need to get supplies.
Discovery: I think I can actually do this graduate stuff. Yesterday I had my Holocaust class (there are now only two of us in there, as Karl dropped it for whatever reason, so it's just Juliet and yours truly) and Dr. Dreyfus asked me to give the rundown of the Moishe Postone article I was assigned to prepare. It wasn't supposed to be anything really formal; I just had to go over his main points and stuff, but it was a really dense, complicated, and highly theoretical article, which Dr. D. himself stated when he gave them out last week. So I did my spiel and when I was done he looked at me for a minute, shook his head, and said, "Wow . . . that was really good." Happy times :) And what made the occasion even better was that he said it in his really strong French accent, and as everybody knows, accents always make everything better (later on he started talking about "the law" and he sounded just like Clouseau; it took all I had to keep from cracking up, which would have been double horrible because of the subject matter). But that made me a little more confident that I can actually do this stuff, even though the British kids all sound so much smarter.
In other news, we finally have a sixth flatmate; she got here last night. Apparently her visa was delayed or something and that's why she couldn't get here earlier. Her name is Adah (the spelling is a very rough guess) and she's from Nigeria. She seems shy but nice, although she might be a little shy 'cause the other five of us know each other already and everything (we all got to meet her this morning when our fire alarm went off; I'm becoming very concerned about this campus's definition of "Fire Safety," because if it had been a real fire we probably all would have been burned to a crisp). But at any rate, it seems like she's a sweet girl, so we'll be able to continue being the most awesome flat in the building - modest, aren't we? But we definitely have a good thing going; I got really lucky with the housing situation.
Regarding the fire safety issue, part of the problem is that the smoke detectors don't actually detect smoke, apparently. They detect heat. So if you're cooking something on the stove and it gets hot but there's no smoke and no fire, the alarm may go off. Alternatively, if there is a real fire and it's just not burning hot enough yet, the detector may not go off. It's also a zoned alarm, meaning that it just goes off in one flat at a time, unless the fire progresses to the hallway. This is kind of a good thing because in a situation like this morning where there was no actual fire (they're particle detectors too, so mis-directed hairspray sets them off), the whole building doesn't have to evacuate. The downside is that the fire has to get pretty big before the rest of the building is notified if there is a real situation. Add that with the amount of time it took security to get there (no fire people ever seem to come when the alarm goes off; maybe if it were a full-building alarm that would change), our next-door neighbors would probably have been rather crispy. Maybe this is why they apparently don't want us to use our laptops ever, and all the doors in the building are fire doors - they know their response system sucks, lol. Something fun to think about when we're trying to go to sleep . . . but since the building hasn't ever burned down, probably it won't this year either.
Tuesday 5 October 2010
Pictures!
I'm sure that all of you are just dying to see pictures of this fabulous city, and I tried to upload some to the blog last night but it took forever just to put up the test picture, so I posted them to Facebook instead. Those of you who are not quite as Facebook savvy as the rest of us can see them via this link, or use the old login named after a certain famous comedian:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038978&id=71701775&l=415aa6fc5d
For those of you who are technologically challenged - copy and paste the link into the browser of a webpage, and then click on the pictures to see them enlarged and to read the captions.
There will be more coming; enjoy!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038978&id=71701775&l=415aa6fc5d
For those of you who are technologically challenged - copy and paste the link into the browser of a webpage, and then click on the pictures to see them enlarged and to read the captions.
There will be more coming; enjoy!
Sunday 3 October 2010
Adventures in Indian Food
The past week has been rather enjoyable, largely so because I've actually had some classes. Crazy, right? The nightmare of trying to register for a language course is now (hopefully) over; I walked in with my Hebrew sheet during last day registration and when I handed it to the LEAP (Language Experience for All Program) director he said, "Oh . . . you're that girl." Awesome words to hear. But I should be set on that front. Hebrew starts this Wednesday so that should be pretty exciting. I've always wanted to learn a language that doesn't write down vowels.
Research Methods is my Monday class, and I have to give a big shout-out to Dr. Imai on this one. This is the class that basically teaches us how to write like academics and how to construct a dissertation, etc. There are about 30 of us in that class, and the convener (because if I didn't mention this earlier, we don't have professors here; we have conveners) went around the whole class and asked us to talk about what kind of research we'd done in the past and what we thought research was. Apparently most British undergrads have to write a dissertation to graduate, so they already sound much smarter than we foreigners on two counts - not only do they have very cool, academiclly-inclined-sounding accents, but they've already done one of these dissertations. So the convener went around the room and everybody talked about what research they'd done in the past (some of it sounded really interesting - the Swiss girl I met at Induction did one on the image of Africa and Africans in children's books from the 1930s until the present; I'd be very interested to read that, actually), and when he came to me I said that American undergrads don't generally do dissertations but I talked about the hypothesis testing papers I'd done for Dr. Imai. When I mentioned the testing of the hypothesis, his eyes lit up and he said, "Yes, finally!" In that class of 30, I was one of only three kids (I guess I should stop calling us kids, since we're all 22 and over) who had a "proper" conception of research. So Dr. Imai, once again thank you for making us an awful lot of stuff that we really, really didn't want to do at the time but that ended up helping us out later on.
My Tuesday class is an actual Holocaust course - the Holocaust in History. There are three students, including myself. The other two, Karl and Juliette, are both native Brits and seem extremely friendly. The convener is French and is adorable in that marvelous way that Frenchmen always seem to be adorable. This is not to sound demeaning or like I don't take the French seriously, but there just seems to be something about Frenchmen that makes so many people say, "Awwww!" Maybe it's the scarves and berets; I don't know. But regardless, this guy (Dr. Dreyfus) really seems to know his stuff. He's going to be taking this from a largely theoretical perspective and have us analyze different theories, largely sociological, about the hows and whys of the Holocaust. It should be fascinating but very challenging as I'm not a sociologist. I would have been completely lost doing this week's reading if I hadn't taken Social Theory last year (a shout out to Dr. O'Brian for letting me stay even though I wasn't in the major). Dr. Dreyfus also took the reMARKable (Father, I hope you appreciate that) step of photocopying everything he wants us to read this term; I now have a stack of papers 7 inches high sitting on my desk. Much of it's dense reading due to the theoretical emphasis, and the paper I was assigned to give a short presentation on for next week is very heavy stuff - Moishe Postone's "The Holocaust and the Trajectory of the Twentieth Century," if anybody's looking for a little light bedtime reading. His argument is that the Holocaust can be explained in terms of capitalism, and if we break capitalism down we can associate it with modern antisemitism and that will explain not only the Holocaust, but postwar attitudes toward it. Not sure I buy it, but it was interesting, albeit long. Oh, and it this point it looks as though I'm the only one left in my discipline; there was one other guy but he was only part time and it looks like he may have left . . .
And now I'm sure you're all excited to hear about the Indian food promised by the title . . . this came about when we were having a rather wonder flat-bonding evening last week with the whole crew - Carlos, Avi, Fauzan, Irene, and yours truly, plus Avi's friend Nithya. She's absolutely marvelous, and she was actually hoping to move down here (she lives on 12th floor) because there's still nobody in the fifth room, and she's really taken to all of us (I must say, as a flat we are pretty darn awesome). So the six of us were having a grand old time, brought together by the fact that Avi decided he wanted to cook us dinner. He prefaced this with "I'm not sure if you'll like it or not . . ." which referred to an incident that took place earlier that week when he held out a container of something and told me to take a whiff. It was super-hot Indian chili powder, and man does that stuff clean out your nostrils. But I told him that whatever he was gracious enough to cook I would certainly try, and it turned out to be a very traditional way of making chicken, eaten with rice. Let me tell you, it was amazing. I can say it was actually probably some of the best chicken I've ever had, and I'm gonna have to get the recipe from him. It was a little spicy, but not enough to be overwhelming. He also made an okra gravy, but didn't know the English word for okra. Apparently they call it lady's finger and he thought it translated a little better than it does (I asked him what was in it and he said, "A lady's finger." I raised my eyebrows and told him I really hoped that wasn't the case; Nithya cleared up the misunderstanding). The gravy went seperately over the rice, and it was okay (I think I just don't really like okra), but it couldn't hold a candle to the chicken. Tremendous chicken, truly.
So we spent quite a while talking and joking and laughing hysterically about Fauzan's attempts to wrangle some cute Mexican girls and about the "big hairy Spanish guy" who walked into his buddy Alfian's room in the middle of the night looking for the bathroom and then offered to give him a back massage, and the subject of food and cooking came up. Apparently Fauzan and Irene love the idea of cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, but a real one - not my turkey sandwich idea, but a real stuffed turkey. Avi and Nithya were very enthused about this idea as well, and apparently there's a similar Indian festival at the beginning of November, although not with quite as much historical significance (I had to explain the meaning behind Thanksgiving and where the tradition comes from, but I explained using the term "Indians," and Avi was really confused; he said, "Really? That was us? Cool; I never knew that! I thought we got there a lot later . . ."), so we've decided that we're gonna try to combine the two events into one big Indian-American day of awesome food and cooking. Now how's that for promoting international diplomacy? Especially since a Ugandan, an Indonesian, and a Mexican will also be involved, and one way or another Kola will probably be invited so that will add a Nigerian as well. Go us!
My second experience with Indian food this past week came three days ago when I went into the kitchen to wash something and Avi was in there cooking something. He said it was his favorite dish, although I have no idea what it was called. It involved some kind of sauce and some kind of meat and five eggs all in a pan together and eaten over rice (I think). At any rate, I stayed and chatted for a while and at some point he tasted the broth (which was a lovely fall shade of orange) and then brought a spoonful of it over to me and told me to try it. Well, I did . . . my tongue was burning for 20 minutes after the fact. Not because it was not, but because it was spicy. He then told me that there were 14 spoonfuls of that chili powder in it, and that was actually considered relatively moderate. He laughed so hard when he saw my reaction . . . I honestly couldn't tell you what it tasted like, or if it tasted good/bad, etc. All I was conscious of was the burn. Quite the experience . . . I saw Nithya later on and she grinned and said, "I heard you got a little spice this morning, hmm?" She really is a doll; we found out that she's not being allowed to move down here, which is really a shame.
The things I've been asked since I've been here really make me smile. I don't know how much of this I've mentioned, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself . . . these are coming largely from Avi; apparently Indians have very interesting ideas about what goes on in America. For example, I've been asked if it's true that all parents kick their children out of the house with no money as soon as they turn 18, why don't we revolt on a regular basis, and if it's true lawyers and policemen hate each other. My absolute favorite, though, was when Avi told me how great it was that the police in America treat everyone the same, and that there's no corruption. I told him that wasn't exactly the case and he really was shocked. I mean, maybe compared to the Indian police force we're not that bad, but I don't think you could say that our police departments are without corruption and all that fun stuff. As far as general knowledge goes, I've also been asked how to cook a salmon, what a hamburger is, and how a freezer works (not too many freezers in India, apparently). Avi also now thinks he's allergic to frozen foods because his lips swelled up after he ate a frozen shrimp; I think it's a little more likely that he has some kind of shellfish allergy. But Avi, if you read this, you know I love you :D I've also been able to introduce him to some classic American music; he asked me to make him a playlist of American love songs, for his edification and delight, and I put "Cherish," "My Girl," and "Smile a Little Smile for Me" on there. Today he told me that he absolutely loved "My Girl," and sure enough, I could hear it on repeat, coming faintly through the connecting wall. Spreading classic American music across the world . . . it was an even trade though; he burned a CD of A.R. Rahman songs onto my computer (he would be the genius who did "Chaiyya Chaiyya" and the music for practically every Bollywood movie ever made), so here the two of us are, dancing around to music from the other person's country that we can't really understand. Good times, good times. I feel like we're supposed to be grown ups, but none of us feel like doing that just yet. I think I'm actually the youngest one here; I know that Carlos and Irene are 4 and 5 years older than I am, respectively, and I think Avi and Fauzan are both older by maybe a year or so, perhaps two. But as Irene said, "As soon as you get back into a college dorm environment, you start to act like a kid again, so why not enjoy it while you can get away with it?"
And speaking of other countries, etc., when we were having our courtesty-of-Avi dinner last week, he and Nithya spoke briefly in Tamil and when she stepped out for a few minutes he asked me if I liked how it sounded. Well, when haven't I liked how a foreign language sounds? I told him yes and then asked him to teach me how to say something. He thought for a moment and then said, "This is 'How are you?'" I can't really transliterate it, but it would look something like "Yuparri ilka" but with the "r"s and the "lk" aspirated. Well he said it for me and when I repeated it back to him he almost fell off his chair. Apparently my pronounciation was dead perfect. Now, not to sound boastful, but if you're reading this you probably do know that I have an ear for that kind of thing so it wasn't as extraordinary as he made it sound, but he was so impressed. He asked me to repeat it, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and then he just sat there grinning and shaking his head. He taught me a few other simple phrases to say to Nithya when she came back, although I can't remember them now. It was quite a bit of fun. Apparently, though, Tamil sentence structure is just like German, which I never would have thought since they're in no way related.
I think that concludes my fun update for this evening, although I will leave you with a piece of very deep, moving literature that I discovered earlier today. This poem was written by our very own Todd Bryant, and it looks as though he's inherited Dad's gift for offbeat rhyming and lyrics; enjoy!
Untitled, written by Todd Bryant
On a hot day in sunny Iraq,
I had a small cyst cut out of my back.
It doesn't hurt, which makes me say,
"Why did I wait all the way to today?"
I'll tell you why . . . here's the shtick.
The idea of a cyst makes me sick.
It took me a while and I had to go far,
But now I have one heck of a scar.
Research Methods is my Monday class, and I have to give a big shout-out to Dr. Imai on this one. This is the class that basically teaches us how to write like academics and how to construct a dissertation, etc. There are about 30 of us in that class, and the convener (because if I didn't mention this earlier, we don't have professors here; we have conveners) went around the whole class and asked us to talk about what kind of research we'd done in the past and what we thought research was. Apparently most British undergrads have to write a dissertation to graduate, so they already sound much smarter than we foreigners on two counts - not only do they have very cool, academiclly-inclined-sounding accents, but they've already done one of these dissertations. So the convener went around the room and everybody talked about what research they'd done in the past (some of it sounded really interesting - the Swiss girl I met at Induction did one on the image of Africa and Africans in children's books from the 1930s until the present; I'd be very interested to read that, actually), and when he came to me I said that American undergrads don't generally do dissertations but I talked about the hypothesis testing papers I'd done for Dr. Imai. When I mentioned the testing of the hypothesis, his eyes lit up and he said, "Yes, finally!" In that class of 30, I was one of only three kids (I guess I should stop calling us kids, since we're all 22 and over) who had a "proper" conception of research. So Dr. Imai, once again thank you for making us an awful lot of stuff that we really, really didn't want to do at the time but that ended up helping us out later on.
My Tuesday class is an actual Holocaust course - the Holocaust in History. There are three students, including myself. The other two, Karl and Juliette, are both native Brits and seem extremely friendly. The convener is French and is adorable in that marvelous way that Frenchmen always seem to be adorable. This is not to sound demeaning or like I don't take the French seriously, but there just seems to be something about Frenchmen that makes so many people say, "Awwww!" Maybe it's the scarves and berets; I don't know. But regardless, this guy (Dr. Dreyfus) really seems to know his stuff. He's going to be taking this from a largely theoretical perspective and have us analyze different theories, largely sociological, about the hows and whys of the Holocaust. It should be fascinating but very challenging as I'm not a sociologist. I would have been completely lost doing this week's reading if I hadn't taken Social Theory last year (a shout out to Dr. O'Brian for letting me stay even though I wasn't in the major). Dr. Dreyfus also took the reMARKable (Father, I hope you appreciate that) step of photocopying everything he wants us to read this term; I now have a stack of papers 7 inches high sitting on my desk. Much of it's dense reading due to the theoretical emphasis, and the paper I was assigned to give a short presentation on for next week is very heavy stuff - Moishe Postone's "The Holocaust and the Trajectory of the Twentieth Century," if anybody's looking for a little light bedtime reading. His argument is that the Holocaust can be explained in terms of capitalism, and if we break capitalism down we can associate it with modern antisemitism and that will explain not only the Holocaust, but postwar attitudes toward it. Not sure I buy it, but it was interesting, albeit long. Oh, and it this point it looks as though I'm the only one left in my discipline; there was one other guy but he was only part time and it looks like he may have left . . .
And now I'm sure you're all excited to hear about the Indian food promised by the title . . . this came about when we were having a rather wonder flat-bonding evening last week with the whole crew - Carlos, Avi, Fauzan, Irene, and yours truly, plus Avi's friend Nithya. She's absolutely marvelous, and she was actually hoping to move down here (she lives on 12th floor) because there's still nobody in the fifth room, and she's really taken to all of us (I must say, as a flat we are pretty darn awesome). So the six of us were having a grand old time, brought together by the fact that Avi decided he wanted to cook us dinner. He prefaced this with "I'm not sure if you'll like it or not . . ." which referred to an incident that took place earlier that week when he held out a container of something and told me to take a whiff. It was super-hot Indian chili powder, and man does that stuff clean out your nostrils. But I told him that whatever he was gracious enough to cook I would certainly try, and it turned out to be a very traditional way of making chicken, eaten with rice. Let me tell you, it was amazing. I can say it was actually probably some of the best chicken I've ever had, and I'm gonna have to get the recipe from him. It was a little spicy, but not enough to be overwhelming. He also made an okra gravy, but didn't know the English word for okra. Apparently they call it lady's finger and he thought it translated a little better than it does (I asked him what was in it and he said, "A lady's finger." I raised my eyebrows and told him I really hoped that wasn't the case; Nithya cleared up the misunderstanding). The gravy went seperately over the rice, and it was okay (I think I just don't really like okra), but it couldn't hold a candle to the chicken. Tremendous chicken, truly.
So we spent quite a while talking and joking and laughing hysterically about Fauzan's attempts to wrangle some cute Mexican girls and about the "big hairy Spanish guy" who walked into his buddy Alfian's room in the middle of the night looking for the bathroom and then offered to give him a back massage, and the subject of food and cooking came up. Apparently Fauzan and Irene love the idea of cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, but a real one - not my turkey sandwich idea, but a real stuffed turkey. Avi and Nithya were very enthused about this idea as well, and apparently there's a similar Indian festival at the beginning of November, although not with quite as much historical significance (I had to explain the meaning behind Thanksgiving and where the tradition comes from, but I explained using the term "Indians," and Avi was really confused; he said, "Really? That was us? Cool; I never knew that! I thought we got there a lot later . . ."), so we've decided that we're gonna try to combine the two events into one big Indian-American day of awesome food and cooking. Now how's that for promoting international diplomacy? Especially since a Ugandan, an Indonesian, and a Mexican will also be involved, and one way or another Kola will probably be invited so that will add a Nigerian as well. Go us!
My second experience with Indian food this past week came three days ago when I went into the kitchen to wash something and Avi was in there cooking something. He said it was his favorite dish, although I have no idea what it was called. It involved some kind of sauce and some kind of meat and five eggs all in a pan together and eaten over rice (I think). At any rate, I stayed and chatted for a while and at some point he tasted the broth (which was a lovely fall shade of orange) and then brought a spoonful of it over to me and told me to try it. Well, I did . . . my tongue was burning for 20 minutes after the fact. Not because it was not, but because it was spicy. He then told me that there were 14 spoonfuls of that chili powder in it, and that was actually considered relatively moderate. He laughed so hard when he saw my reaction . . . I honestly couldn't tell you what it tasted like, or if it tasted good/bad, etc. All I was conscious of was the burn. Quite the experience . . . I saw Nithya later on and she grinned and said, "I heard you got a little spice this morning, hmm?" She really is a doll; we found out that she's not being allowed to move down here, which is really a shame.
The things I've been asked since I've been here really make me smile. I don't know how much of this I've mentioned, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself . . . these are coming largely from Avi; apparently Indians have very interesting ideas about what goes on in America. For example, I've been asked if it's true that all parents kick their children out of the house with no money as soon as they turn 18, why don't we revolt on a regular basis, and if it's true lawyers and policemen hate each other. My absolute favorite, though, was when Avi told me how great it was that the police in America treat everyone the same, and that there's no corruption. I told him that wasn't exactly the case and he really was shocked. I mean, maybe compared to the Indian police force we're not that bad, but I don't think you could say that our police departments are without corruption and all that fun stuff. As far as general knowledge goes, I've also been asked how to cook a salmon, what a hamburger is, and how a freezer works (not too many freezers in India, apparently). Avi also now thinks he's allergic to frozen foods because his lips swelled up after he ate a frozen shrimp; I think it's a little more likely that he has some kind of shellfish allergy. But Avi, if you read this, you know I love you :D I've also been able to introduce him to some classic American music; he asked me to make him a playlist of American love songs, for his edification and delight, and I put "Cherish," "My Girl," and "Smile a Little Smile for Me" on there. Today he told me that he absolutely loved "My Girl," and sure enough, I could hear it on repeat, coming faintly through the connecting wall. Spreading classic American music across the world . . . it was an even trade though; he burned a CD of A.R. Rahman songs onto my computer (he would be the genius who did "Chaiyya Chaiyya" and the music for practically every Bollywood movie ever made), so here the two of us are, dancing around to music from the other person's country that we can't really understand. Good times, good times. I feel like we're supposed to be grown ups, but none of us feel like doing that just yet. I think I'm actually the youngest one here; I know that Carlos and Irene are 4 and 5 years older than I am, respectively, and I think Avi and Fauzan are both older by maybe a year or so, perhaps two. But as Irene said, "As soon as you get back into a college dorm environment, you start to act like a kid again, so why not enjoy it while you can get away with it?"
And speaking of other countries, etc., when we were having our courtesty-of-Avi dinner last week, he and Nithya spoke briefly in Tamil and when she stepped out for a few minutes he asked me if I liked how it sounded. Well, when haven't I liked how a foreign language sounds? I told him yes and then asked him to teach me how to say something. He thought for a moment and then said, "This is 'How are you?'" I can't really transliterate it, but it would look something like "Yuparri ilka" but with the "r"s and the "lk" aspirated. Well he said it for me and when I repeated it back to him he almost fell off his chair. Apparently my pronounciation was dead perfect. Now, not to sound boastful, but if you're reading this you probably do know that I have an ear for that kind of thing so it wasn't as extraordinary as he made it sound, but he was so impressed. He asked me to repeat it, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and then he just sat there grinning and shaking his head. He taught me a few other simple phrases to say to Nithya when she came back, although I can't remember them now. It was quite a bit of fun. Apparently, though, Tamil sentence structure is just like German, which I never would have thought since they're in no way related.
I think that concludes my fun update for this evening, although I will leave you with a piece of very deep, moving literature that I discovered earlier today. This poem was written by our very own Todd Bryant, and it looks as though he's inherited Dad's gift for offbeat rhyming and lyrics; enjoy!
Untitled, written by Todd Bryant
On a hot day in sunny Iraq,
I had a small cyst cut out of my back.
It doesn't hurt, which makes me say,
"Why did I wait all the way to today?"
I'll tell you why . . . here's the shtick.
The idea of a cyst makes me sick.
It took me a while and I had to go far,
But now I have one heck of a scar.
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