A Short Announcement

As you may have noticed, the blog has been on haitus for a while. It turns out that the degree I'm doing is a bit more work than I anticipated. Actually, it's been a huge amount of work, way more than I expected, and it's been taking up every bit of brain power I've had for weeks and weeks. Our next semester starts week after next and then I'll have three more months of lectures before writing a dissertation over the summer.

I should be back around the beginning of April, with all sorts of anecdotes and pictures of things I've baked and new style obsessions. Until then, I'm off to learn everything there is to know about the UK planning system - and to contemplate Gwyneth Paltrow's new detox diet. Don't worry; I won't do it. I refuse to do any diet that bans "nightshades" and wants me to drink lukewarm lemon water every morning. It might work, but I reject it for sheer goofiness.

So until I return, I leave you with photos of some Panda cookies someone brought to me as a souvenir from China. They look lovely on the box...


..but when you look inside, they're so angry!

Boa Noite!

I'm so sorry I've been away so long - especially since there has been so much chatter about the spaghettios! I do have a very good excuse for being away - I was actually away. And by that I mean out of the country, not just away from the keyboard.

I spent most of last week in Portugal on a field trip for the Making & Managing Places module of my planning course. It's one of the more urban design-y classes, so I enjoyed it a lot. (It turns out that planning is sort of boring. Urban design, though, is cool!) Anyway, we left on Saturday and got back on Thursday and spent pretty much every moment between walking around, taking photos, sketching, drinking very strong sweet coffee, and eating lots of seafood and pastries. The Portugese, people after my own heart, like a lot of flavour in everything. Lots of sugar, lots of salt, lots of garlic - whatever it is, there's a lot! The two most typically Lisbon dishes we had were bacalhau and pasteis de nata. Bacalhau is dried, salted cod which is re-hydrated and served in a variety of ways. I had it grilled, shredded and cooked with potatoes and cream, with spinach and cream, and in fishcakes (not all in the same meal, of course). The pasteis de nata are custard cream tarts - but so much more. They are unbelievably good; incredibly sweet but not cloying and perfect with a double espresso, called a bica and the default drink in Lisbon. I tried lots of other desserts, and they are all pretty good. Many are egg-based and, against all odds, I found one that was actually too sweet to eat. I couldn't believe it, but my sweet tooth had met its match.

Having done a couple of years of high school Spanish, I find that I can sort of read most Romance languages, usually enough of navigate a menu or public transport system, and I can sometimes understand what's being said if I concentrate, but I can't pronounce any except Spanish. I figure I could probably get along as well as any mute, half-deaf, semi-literate Portugese person, though, so I'm pretty proud of that...

Like the food, the trip was quite intense. We left the hotel every day at 9am and got back around 5pm. The entire time between was spent walking (Lisbon is very hilly) and looking at interesting buildings or neighbourhoods or streets. (One day we divided into two groups and my group got a short lunch break and no coffee/pastry stops - it was inhumane.) We sketched almost non-stop, too, which was really challenging but good. I will definitely consider taking a sketchbook on holiday in the future; it forces you to look at things much more actively and really imprints them in your mind. Of course, I also took over 250 photos, so those will probably help me remember, too.

I took lots of photos of grafitti - this is one of my favourites:

I was in Lisbon for the election but because of the schedule I didn't stay up to watch the results. I did, however, burst into tears of joy when I jumped out of bed and turned on the news first thing Wednesday morning. Everyone in our group kept congratulating me, which was funny. I mean, I voted, but I can't take full credit (unlike Sean Combs). Regardless of your politics, though, I think it will be a little bit easier to be an American abroad now. At the moment, the whole world (except Russia and Iran, that is) is just so happy and want to tell me all about it. I read one article that said it was as if the entire world had won the World Cup. Since it will likely be a very long time before the US or the UK do that, let's enjoy this now, shall we?

Kids Today

This is a thank you card I recently received from my 4-year-old friend Bo. (We'd sent her some little presents for her birthday.) This reminded me that I also got a thank you card from my niece Mattie after we sent her birthday presents. Say what you will about gangs and street crime - in my experience, the kids today are extremely polite.

Is This How Everyone Dresses in Helsinki?

I look at several street fashion blogs semi-regularly, but I sometimes find them frustrating. A lot of them seem to be shot guerilla-style – very little posing and bad lighting so that you can’t even really see what the person is wearing, much less be impressed by it – and with little if no commentary. And I know that many, many people love the Sartorialist, but I am not all that interested in what he thinks about the people he photographs. Also, his taste is sooo conservative and he only seems interested in thin, good-looking people who are wearing, you know, designer clothes. That’s why I like Hel-Looks so much. It has pictures of interestingly dressed Finnish people (mostly young but sometimes older people and children) and, believe me, they are never conservative or boring. Each photo is accompanied by a paragraph of the subject talking about the outfit and his or her philosophy of dressing. Some of them are pretty much what you’d expect – the clothes came from such-and-such shop and my style inspiration is a famous person with “good style” – but sometimes they are wonderfully off the wall. Lots of people wear second hand or homemade clothes, often as a response to obsessive consumerism. Lots of items are borrowed or handed down from parents or grandparents. One guy says he only wears denim. People seem to have strong views on colour and use it to respond to seasonal changes. Some of my favourite “inspirations”:

Swedish Elle and the city of Vaasa inspire me.

I want to make people smile with my style. Ten year old skate boys and fake tattoos from chewing gum packages inspire me.

Gipsy men have a great style. Personality is always stylish, too.

I adore my parents' style at the time when I was born. I wear their clothes from that time. (This person is 25.)

My moustache is my favorite accessory as it gives a certain je ne sais quoi to my outfit, regardless of what I'm wearing. I admire people with humour and something thorny in their style.

Wikipedia inspires me.

My obsession of the summer has been Ultra Sonar Bat Calls bat detector. Actually bats have inspired my style for years.

My inspiration & my style: quiet resistance.

Naturality, randomness and sky inspire me.

This jacket was so shockingly ugly that I just had to buy it. (Who hasn’t been in that position? What, just me?)

Semiotics, Finnish folklore, Beverly Hills and crazy thrifted things inspire me.

Ugliness inspires me. I get more self-respect when I dare to wear ugly clothes. Like these tights.

Some Interesting Things I've Seen Lately

Morris dancers at the Regent Street Festival. Almost all English people consider Morris dancing unbelievably naff i.e. ridiculous, lame, silly-looking, uncool in the worst way. It was pretty impressive, though. Essentially, it was a group of older gentlemen (in their 50s and 60s), heavily be-jingle belled and jumping around waving handkerchiefs and hitting big sticks together. Their flyers invited people to join, saying Morris dancing "is healthful. It's social. It's English." Matthew is not interested. I predict that in the next 10 or 15 years we will see punk rock Morris dancing, as a certain generation ages and looks for ways to enjoy more traditional pursuits but with the punk attitude they seem so determined to preserve. It will be ironic, see?

A burning motorbike! We were on a walk last night around dusk and noticed a fire and huge plume of oily, black smoke in the distance. It's not Bonfire Night (5th of November, Guy Fawkes Day), so we went to check it out. It turned out to be a motorbike burning very robustly on the edge of a football pitch in the park. Neither of us had a phone, so we couldn't call it in, but after a few minutes a fire engine showed up, along with a gaggle of kids on bikes, the two 14-year-old girls who did call it in, and a woman and her daughter who were just walking by and, like us, were attracted by the spectacle. The firemen hosed it down, which sent up a massive cloud of smoke and steam (very bad smelling). The police man who came along shoo-ed the kids away, then summed up the situation by saying, "Moped. Kids." We continued our walk, then went home and ate pork chops. Exciting stuff all around.

A peregrine falcon at the art museum. Apparently, they also hang around the BT Tower, which is very close to my work (I can see it from the windows in the upstairs ladies room), though I have yet to see one there.

The Lady Vanishes. I think this is supposed to be suspenseful and intriguing, but I've never laughed so hard at a Hitchcock movie. It features very funny depictions of English people abroad, which say a lot about how they see themselves and their relationship with the rest of the world. From what I see every day, not much that has changed.

Saturday Morning (and Early Afternoon)

Well, the stay-cation is over but it was fun while it lasted. We went to two dinner parties on the weekend, took long naps every day, ordered pizza and ate out, and watched movies every night. We went to Ikea, which was good but not awesome. The last time we got some nice bowls for 25p each (!), which we're both still really stoked about, and some great, cheap shelves for the conservatory, but this time we found that they don't have any smaller bowls at similar prices, or the ideal wicker laundry hamper, or very interesting shower curtains. However, I did get a set of two very adorable bowls for my morning cereal and some cookies, so it wasn't a total wash.

On Tuesday, we went Tate Modern to see the Cy Twombly exhibit. Matthew was not impressed. I had only seen the four paintings in the Tate permanent collection, which I kinda like, but I must say I was not impressed either. We agreed that it's a cliche, but his work looked like it was done by a 3 year old. Or a chimpanzee, as there were several with suspiciously "scatological" looking smears.

The next day we went to the London Transport Museum, which was completely awesome. It was pretty loud, but that's to be expected with so much going on in a 3 level open plan building. There were lots of old Tube carriages and buses that you could get into and try to imagine what it was like to be on the Underground in 1905 or whenever. (There are still a few Routemaster buses on "Heritage" routes that run along the Strand; when we lived in the West End and I worked in the City I took then whenever I could and I always ended up humming "A Day in the Life" because of the part in the middle where he says "grabbed my coat and found my hat, made the bus in seconds flat...") They have a great shop, but I only got a couple of presents for my friends Brandy and Jason who used to live in London but are now in Edmonton, where I'm sure they don't see as much TfL tat. Though, come to think of it, I bought my Tube map tea cozy in Lawrence, Kansas...

I also went to the V&A (not bad, but I enjoyed the shop more than the exhibits) and trekked up Camden High Street visiting about 6 different charity shops (all rubbish) and got a haircut. Actually, I got two haircuts, because the first one was frankly untenable and I had to go back and get it fixed. On Wednesday, I went to a new place, not too far from our flat and had a nice chat to the girl about what I wanted. I even showed her a picture of Michelle Williams. But then I had to take my glasses off while she was cutting my hair, and when I put them back on, the damage was done. It wasn't what I wanted - all choppy and too short - but I thought I'd try it. However, it just didn't work. In fact, the bad hair might have been what ruined my V&A visit and thrift-shopping. On Friday I went back and got her to fix it. Unfortunately, she'd chopped it so much that there was nowhere to go but up, so my hair is now really, really short.

It's actually not that bad, but it's been a while since I had short hair and I felt suddenly exposed as looking quite old and pudgy. However, I've been getting really enthusiastic positive reactions. People at work say they love it and think it really suits me and when my yoga instructor saw me, she gasped and said, "Your hair is beautiful!" The evil, self-defeating part of my brain interprets this to mean that I must have already looked old and pudgy, even with longer hair. The sassier part of my brain says, old and pudgy, whatever - I've obviously got a very cute haircut, so yay for me!

Last weekend we dressed up and went to see a Club Whoopee performance at the Thames Festival with our friends Sean and Michelle. It was really crowded, so we got some dinner from the foods stalls (Caribbean fried fish and a crepe for me, curry for Matthew) and hung out behind the amphitheatre. At the end of the performance, they invited everyone down to the performance area for a waltz and then played some more music so it was like a disco by Tower Bridge. Sean was in 1930s-ish tweeds and bow-tie and Michelle looked like Marlena Dietrich in a black suit and red satin shirt. I wore a little black dress with red, white and purple hearts all over it, which I think of as slightly Minnie Mouse-ish. Matthew got the most attention, though - he was in full cowboy regalia: black cowboy boots, jeans, Western shirt embroidered with guitars on the front and a Cadillac on the back, and white cowboy hat. A hipster in skinny jeans and a trilby hat literally stared open-mouthed at him on the Tube. It was great. The next night we went to see Snake Bone, a retro rockabilly band fronted by the guy who plays guitar in our friend Paul's band Number 9. They had two guest vocalists, a girl in western gear and braids and Lady Kamikazi, a Japanese girl who also DJ's rockabilly and swing music. They were both, er, not very good. The girl in the braids actually caused us both to wince involuntarily. When Lady Kamikazi sang "Summertime," I said to Matthew, "I actually know the words to this song, not to mention the melody, and I've got no idea what's going on." Later we ran into Sean and Michelle, who were out with their heavily pregnant friend Liz and her husband. We skipped the fireworks and went to dinner with them, then caught the last Tube home.

Then next morning I got up and rejoined the world of work, but only for a short while longer. Next week is my last week at the company where I've been all summer and then I'll be back in student mode. I've got two of my numerous textbooks already - and haven't made it past the 2nd page of the introduction in either one. Yay for graduate school!

Oh, and if you really must have some political content, Garrison Keillor is giving me the feeling that he probably won't vote Republican over at Salon.

Crazed Political Rant!

It’s an election year and this is a blog, after all, so I thought I’d better post some ill-informed political opinions post haste!

I don’t like Sarah Palin. This isn’t because she is a powerful woman or a former beauty queen (okay, maybe a little bit). I don’t like her as a prospective vice president because she is a Republican. To me, an intelligent woman being an enthusiastic member of the Republican party just seems contrary to nature. I view female Republicans with only slightly less scepticism than I do Log Cabin Republicans. Have you not read the brief, people? This party is not for you, it’s against you.

Everything I’ve read about Sarah Palin’s record and beliefs (and, yes, all my research was done on the internet, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong) suggests that she is pretty much the opposite of what I’m looking for in a VP. The idea that McCain may have picked her to appeal to Hillary supporters who haven’t yet warmed to Obama reveals the contempt in which the Republicans hold the American public, how very stupid they must think we are. (Unfortunately, the last couple of elections haven’t done much to disprove that notion, but I won’t get into that. I can’t – I still actually cannot believe the outcome of the 2000 election.)

I know that living in the UK, I don’t get to see the situation “on the ground.” But I do see what the past few years have done to the way the rest of the world sees America and Americans, and I’ve got to say, it ain’t good. It’s no fun to be lectured about the evils of imperialism by citizens of the British Commonwealth (formerly the British Empire) or about the US government’s genocidal treatment of Native Americans by a German. But Europeans love Obama – let’s have him, okay?

My one and only comment on Bristol Palin: Matthew informs me that “Bristol” is cockney rhyming slang. Bristol City (football club) – city – titty. Example: “Phwoar, look at the pair of Bristols on her.” That’s all I’m saying.