Totally Bizarre
Topic: Stephen Says
I'm working from home on my day off today so that I can catch up on paperwork. 10 years ago, if someone had said I'd be living in England siting at a pink table filling out staff appraisals, I'd have laughed at them.

Frankly, wired
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Billie Holiday
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries

As usual when I write, Stephen's at work. He's working again! And Tuesday is the Annual Review so their house needs to be spic & span. Of course what this also means is another piss-up with the co-workers on Tues. night. I've been trying to plan out our meals for the week, and realize that Tues. we'll be eating out or not eating at all, and then on Wed. we're going to be too hung over to cook or to go out. So what's the best hang-over food to have kicking around? I thought maybe tomato soup? Come on, I need your suggestions!

I failed to mention that on Wed. I had my first driving lesson on a manual car! I managed to find "the bite", and got up to shifting into 2nd gear. Then I coudln't seem to do it again. I'll have my next lesson on Tues. before the piss-up. The goal though is to pass the test before Christmas.

Another exciting development is that I dropped into the new Woking YMCA (called the YPOD) which recently opened, and offered to volunteer in a theatrical capacity. They didn't yet have anyone to do this, and were hoping to offer a drama workshop, so I'm handing in my volunteer app. and will email the YPOD with my ideas. They've got financial support, space, but not enough interest from youth yet. There's a small recording studio, a fair-trade cafe, and a small stage. It has so much potential it's overwhelming, but exciting.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Yesterday I went into London armed with a bolstered bank account, and went shopping.

Bonjour Agent Provocateur! Link to Lingerie

I hit Oxford St., North Kensington & the charity shops. In fact, I fared better at the charity shops: A navy Versace skirt for 25 pounds!

Today is chillax day. Going into to town to get the paper, drink coffee, and eat.

A good day to you all.

Paranoid? Moi?
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: Fabriclive: The herbaliser
Topic: Stephen Says
This whole terror alert at Heathrow doesn't rub me right. Like the last terror raid that accomplished nothing but shooting a Muslim man in the arm and the raid before that where the police blew the brains of a Brazilian man all over the tube, something just isn't right.

With thousands of American troops moving into Baghbad as a last ditch attempt to stop the country from falling irreparibly (If it isn't already) into chaos and Israel out-doing Lebanon in terms of massive human rights violations and the whole of the Middle East about to boil over and with Blair & Bush trying to take a vacation as their governments rebel against them, what does the West need?

A healthy dose of paranoia and fear-mongering, that's what. And another bogus terror alert (The biggest yet [!!!]) should scare all those middle of the roaders into believing that the mess that the Neo-Cons and their hench-men have made of the world is actually worth it.

Remind everyone of 9/11, scare, scare, scare and take the heat off of Lebanon, Iraq, the recall of Parlament and Leiberman's loss in Conneticut.

Anyway, I hope I'm just being cynical. But if I'm wrong, well, that's just as scary but in a different way...

PS - It's been a long day.

EDIT:
And I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Oh, and apologies for all the typos. I wanted to just chug out my thoughts.

Cambridge the 3rd
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Nomeansno - The day everything became isolated & destroyed
Topic: Stephen Says
Things have been hectic over the last few days. My sleep in at work was generally disturbed, not in the least by the fluorescent light in the kitchen coming down at 3 o’clock in the morning and having to tidy the mess up.

I suppose that I thought Cambridge was going to be similar to Oxford but instead it turned out to be Royal Holloway’s bigger and more pretentious brother. I suppose the fact that it came into existence as a place for graduates of Eton to go for further education says something about the closed nature of the town and the general pomposity and feelings of self aggrandizement that goes along with being in the town and a part of the ‘scene’.

(On a side note, Elisabeth wondered out loud the other day how our experience with Royal Holloway & Englefield Green has shaped our feelings about living in Britain. Whether or not we would have this anti-elitist attitude if we had spent our first year in Birmingham, Cardiff or south London and not been exposed to the asinine belief of upper-class academic elitists…)

Like Egham, Cambridge is a university town and exists to cater to the thousands of students that live there for nine months of every year (Unlike Egham, it’s also a horrendous tourist trap the other 3 months of the year) so, unlike Oxford, which has the feeling of being lived in by real people (As opposed to students & tourists), Cambridge caters to the whims of people with more money than sense – no nice pubs, no sense of the town other than ‘look at me, I’m HISTORIC!’

(On another side note, Elisabeth and I were also musing on whether or not establishments with reputations as Bastions of High Education [note the capitals] are really all they’re cut out to be. Or whether the fact that they’re able to actually impart some knowledge upon the student body of spoilt rich kids who are only there because their parents could afford to send them makes them such Bastions.)

So that’s it for Cambridge. The 3 things that will stand out in my mind from the day are:

1)Feeling generally aggravated & annoyed almost as soon as we arrived when I realized that instead of it being a fun day out, we were going to be surrounded by tourists doing annoying touristy things as well as tourist trade people trying to rip everyone off.

2)Getting one of the angriest punters on the river as our escort. He was a theatre student who deliberately rammed other boats and capped his tour off by saying “lets knock people into the water” and then rammed more boats harder.

3)Stopping to take a picture of the front of the Scott of the Antarctic museum and having some nice man tell us how to sneak around to the front of the museum to see the statue of a naked boy whose body was based on that of Scott’s son. And then noticing his wife had a beard.

So that’s it for blog entry 501. Elisabeth got the honour of posting our 500th entry yesterday.

Cambridge Part II
Mood:  lucky
Now Playing: Nick Cave -Abattoir Blues
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
This week's chugging along nicely...Monday Stephen did a sleep-in and I had a chance to be on the computer all night.

Now Tues. just about gone and we've spent the evening watching a British TV drama called GBH on DVD.

Back to Sunday and Cambridge though...

It was a beautiful day, we were debt free, and arrived after a hot but leisurely train ride.

It was a 20 min. walk from the station & of course a map wasn't necessary. Every pub along the way though, even though it was shitty looking and right on the main street, Stephen was like "lets come back here for lunch". No dear-I'm sure there are better places in the actual center of Cambridge.

So we had no trouble finding the old colleges and cobbled streets surrounding...

I believe that is the front of St. Johns college...
well basically neither of us cared too much about the college buildings too much. I mean, they were closed to the public, or required an entrance fee, and frankly, who cares? I can not get excited about buildings built for rich, and not necessarily intelligent people that exclude students of certain backgrounds etc... And all the while they purport to be fair minded logical people.

So we took in what else Cambridge had to offer. ? Bog standard high street shops, or else quaint over-priced and over-crowded pubs, cafes or restaurants.

We did cough up for a shared punting experience. Here's our punt master hard at work:

It was lovely to row behind the impressive buildings (call "the backs") and hear snippets of their history/rivalry.

The back of St. Johns college. Apparently students like to scale the building at night and hang shopping trolleys, text books, or bicycles on the top.

This bridge was originally built by Sir Issac Newton using mathematical principles to hold the wood together instead of using any bolts or supports. A few wiz kids decided they would dismantle it in the middle of the night and being as bright as they were, reassemble it by morning. they failed, and were expelled. No one can figure out how to re-construct the bridge on Newton's principles. And it's now standing with the aid of many nuts, bolts and supports. "Hey, weren't you studying at Cambridge? What happened?" Sucks for them.

The one decent bakery in town...it looked so good I couldn't bear to go inside without accepting the fact I would gain 10 pounds.

And finally some bicycle pix:

Cambridge in pictures
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Stephen Says
Just got back from the day in Cambridge. Can't say I liked the town but more on that later when I've had some sleep.

Some of the gargoyles, grotesques & statues of Cambridge to keep you company into the night:

And me being stupid on a phone booth:

G'night!

Stuff, stuff, stuff
Now Playing: Elisabeth upstairs on the piano
Topic: Stephen Says
Stepen and Elisabeth are now debt-free. In a bizarre stroke of maturity, we eschewed Pride in Brighton with some of my co-workers (And the standard apocalyptic drinking session that would inevitably ensue) in favour of paying off my student loan, investing a couple of thousand pounds(!) in ISA's (the UK equivilent of RRSP's) and going out for a coffee & bagel where an old lady beat Elisabeth with her cane for not getting out of her way (Evidently, it was preferable in this ladys mind to beat a stranger with a stick then deign to ask them politely to get out of her way, please.)

Anyway, after realizing that our mission to be more productive & travel Britain & Europe more was in danger of falling apart and that we would spend another weekend in Woking, we hastily made plans to take off for Cambridge tomorrow to go punting on the Cam. How terribly posh, don't you think?

And then we went to the pub to read the paper where I've officially been turned off by The Guardian and its smug faux-liberal new Labour bourgeois smarmyness. I imagine The Independent on Sunday will re-new my faith in the UK press tomorrow.

Although, are you allowed to go punting on the Cam with anything more liberal than the Telegraph tucked under your arm? I don't want to be chased through Kings College by a bunch of easily offened toffs...

Forever Changes
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Love - Forever Changer
Topic: Stephen Says
Yes, we're listening to one of the greatest albums of all time to celebrate the passing of Arthur Lee who died today. C'mon everyone, feel the Love.

It's been a hell of a 48 hours and thank God this weekend has arrived and I've got 2 days off. Sadly, Brighton's pretty much off the cards and I tried to get us tickets to see Patrick Swayze do Guys & Dolls but that was sold out so now I'm left with some nice ros-eh and a (probably) weekend out to, um, er... Bristol? We'll see at any rate - I've got plans.
Really.
I think.

Maybe.

R.I.P. Arthur Lee

Random, general update with some pictures
Mood:  lazy
Topic: Stephen Says
Ok, ok, I haven't had anything to say in a while. I've been tired, it's been hot, there's nothing going on. We're off to Brighton this weekend for Pride so that should offer a wee bit of excitement.

The Independent on Sunday had a special feature on Brighton Beach this Sunday where they wrote, in the typical elitist we're the best, British way that Brighton Beach gets trashed every night with broken bottles, cans, drunks & drug addicts, people get robbed, into fights and have alot of random sex. And the next day it gets cleaned up so people can do it all again. Isn't that great?!

Where as in another country, the article would have focused on, I don't know, the fact that people care so little for their local environment that they trash it every single night.

Anyway, should be interesting.

I don't know, I have a nasty suspicion that I've adjusted to living in England as I don't have any prtty gripes about all the random stupidities that I witness on a daily basis. Maybe I'll start carrying a journal. With nothing to bitch about, there's nothing to blog about.

I know it's a bit late, but this muddy picture shows what I came home to on Thursday as a result of our Wednesday night out:

At least I'm not the only one who's getting too ld to party...
(That said, E's making a point to do a hell of a lot more than me and seems to be seeing an awful lot of theatre & music in London so go figure...)

The following is a pointless pic to post. Not all of you may know about our super-awesome calander that features animals made out of food. Well, last night I tried my hand at it. This is a bunny rabbit made out of tofu bruger. Yum!: