Quick (as possible) recap of the past week. It's not super exciting, but with my upcoming trip out of the UK I'll have both more pictures and more eventful blog posts. My week last week started out badly. After a pretty great weekend I was woken up by the knocking of the maintenance crew, yet again. Since they have shown a tendency in the past to knockandopenthedoorimmediatelyafter and I wasn't exactly appropriately dressed I yelled "DON'T COME IN! DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR" while struggling into some trousers (note, "pants" here means underpants). I open up the door and it's the same man who came to measure my window a while back. The same one who came into my room while my friend Anna stood there in nothing but a towel. So we had already had the talk about how necessary it was for there to be advance warning. He asked if he could come in and replace my window. I said no. I reminded him that we had already had the discussion about "advance warning" and that I needed the next 45 minutes to get ready for my day and he could come back then. He apparently didn't have any other student's rooms to invade and could not wait the 45 minutes. He went down and brought back one of the Sidney Webb maintenance men who was distinctly unpleasant. This "John O'Leary" accused me of being "abusive" and demanded the window replacers be allowed into my room and threatened that he was planning to "report the incident to the Warden." I got myself dressed and went down to the reception to figure out who I was supposed to complain to. And there was Mr. O'Leary, standing at the reception desk and loudly talking about me to two other Sidney Webb employees. I hear the receptionist saying "well I don't know who she is but I think I've seen her around" as I walk past I raise my hand and identify myself quite loudly as the "her" she is trying to identify and walk past the desk into the next room to see if the warden is available for a meeting. O'Leary follows me and when I ask where I can find someone to talk to, he launches into a tirade about "well, ROB isn't available because he is on holiday and he is ENTITLED to a holiday and" I cut him off "I don't have any issue with Rob taking a holiday, I like Rob, but I asked who is here and available to speak to." He starts sputtering that I'm interrupting him and I made it quiet clear that I find his manner of speaking to me to be abusive, and I will not stand here and be spoken to in a way that he found inappropriate for me to use with the maintenance crew. He finally tells me that the Warden isn't at Sidney Webb, he is at YOUR SCHOOL (LSE), and that there is absolutely no way that they could ever possibly consider informing students of maintenance work in their room, because that's not how it works in England, etc. etc. etc." I decide to take it up with the Warden and e-mail him regarding a meeting. We meet at LSE at 4:30 that afternoon and I describe everything that happened. He of course has not been contacted by O'Leary (which is incredibly anti-climatic after his threats to do so!) and makes all the right sympathetic noises and agrees that he was pretty sure that advance warnings were the policy. Note, at this point I'm still waiting to hear back from him, but given that it's been a week I feel justified e-mailing him tomorrow.
Anyways that was as I said before, an upsetting way to start the week and I self-medicated that afternoon by getting back into bed and watching Riding Giants on BBC.That night I tried my best to make some cookies. This was an effort that actually began Sunday night. I decided I was going to bake. The first signs of a problem were when I checked three different stores without finding chocolate chips. The "baking" sections of every store are just filled with a variety of dried fruit! I bought chocolate bars instead, and a back-up bag of chocolate chip cookie mix in a bag (with actual chocolate chips!). Then I encountered my next problem which is that our measuring cup is in grams. And it tries to compensate for different densities of ingredient by having different marks for flour and sugar, but when I'm trying to use dense brown sugar and loose white sugar they clearly aren't going to be equally accurate on the sugar grams mark. I did my best to estimate but my problems didn't end there. The real problem was the butter. Which comes in a 250 gram block. Unlike the American butter sticks that have tick marks to measure tablespoons there is no similar helpful sign on the English butter stick so I had to guesstimate what 170 grams of butter looked like as well. Then, in my attempt to soften the butter I instead melted the butter in my microwave. This was my fatal mistake. The cookies were cookie crisps. Flat and crunchy, delicious, but not what I had in mind. So Tuesday I wanted to redeem myself, and the only way I could think of doing that was to make the packaged cookie mix. These ones I burned. It was utter, crushing failure in the cookie making department.
Wednesday was an exciting day for the UK. It was the biggest public sector strike that they have had in 30 years to protest cuts and changes to their pension system. There was also a giant protest march right past LSE. I wasn't exactly sure how affected the transportation system would be but decided to leave a little earlier than normal for class. Which turned out to be a good idea because the buses stopped running at Waterloo and I had to make my way across Waterloo Bridge, which was closed to traffic
There were police helicopters circling overhead, police boats on the river and useful signs posted to inform readers what their rights were if stopped and searched or arrested by the police. I had to literally walk through the protest march twice to get to class, dodging through around and between the people. After all the recent Occupy violence I was actually pretty excited to see a bunch of police standing around without giving into the temptation to pepper spray, beat or even arrest anyone. Then I saw an article that a bunch of protestors broke off from the main march to break into the headquarters of the UK company that paid the most in executive compensation and got themselves all arrested. Because of the protests I had to skip the gym in the morning but I made it there that evening once most of the excitement had passed. The class was huge! Definitely the biggest I'd been to since moving to London. I was really glad I made it since I love the chance to train with new people. Unfortunately in my second sparring match I landed hard on my right knee, and then a few minutes later twisted it badly. Badly enough that I had to leave the mat and spent the rest of the night icing it with a bag of frozen peas. I spent the next couple of days hobbling around with a pronounced limp. I was just grateful that it clearly wasn't sprained and it got better every day.
The good news is that this was also the impetus for me to finally sign up with a GP (doctor). I have my first appointment Wednesday and we'll see how it goes! Even more exciting is that I finally went to see a girl about a horse! I saw an ad on gumtree looking for someone to look after her horses, she has a shetland pony and a very young Irish Sporthorse. I went out to see the place and meet her/them. The horses have just gotten a case of Strangles so they will be out of work for a while but since I am going out of town and so is she we will meet back up in January to talk about details. It's kind of hard to describe where the horses are kept, it's in the suburbs on a patch of land in big enough for some paddocks and stalls. She has big plans to change the place - putting in a roundpen, purchasing some pygmy goats and chickens and rebuilding the stalls and the horses seemed generally well cared for. But it's getting cold here, so I know if I end up getting involved I'm going to need to invest in some hard core all-weather warm insulated muck boots and gloves, things I unfortunately didn't bring from home. Also you can file under "weird coincidences" that her name is Samantha, which is the name of the woman I leased a horse from for two years in LA.
This weekend was pretty quiet, I found out my friends Jardena and Alison were going to Chabad for Shabbat dinner so I decided to tag along since I hadn't been in over a month. They have a new Chabad centre location on Baker street they just moved into and dinner was exactly as I remembered it. I had a chance to see a couple of people I hadn't seen in too long and practically rolled out the door since the three hour long dinner means you just eat and eat and eat. Saturday night I stayed in because I had plans for paintballing the next morning and had to get up super early and wanted some sleep. I ruined that plan by taking an ill-timed nap and didn't get to sleep until ridiculously late and still had to wake up early in the morning.
The paintballing adventure was planned through my BJJ gym. The facebook note said be there at 8am, which in Brazilian time means no earlier than 8:30. I got to Camden Town a little early, grabbed some tea at Costa and made my way to the gym. There were 12 of us going, of course I was the only girl. We drove to the place about an hour north of London, getting lost twice along the way before stopping to ask for directions. The paintball park was in an extremely gorgeous location in the rolling green English countryside. We suited up, as a girl I was the only one given (allowed even) to have an upper body armor thing to put on under my coverall. It was also the only time it hasn't been over 100 degrees when I was paintballing. It was just cold enough to be uncomfortable unless you were running around, which we were for much of the time. It was the first time that I've played with only the people I came with. We played multiple games in different arenas, including one that involved crawling through the woods and one that simulated "urban warfare" which I singlehandedly won! Being the smallest came in handy when the game allowed for using the dummy we were retrieving as a shield, the referee described it as looking like the pair of coveralls was running by itself because I was so effectively hidden behind it. It was a great way to end the week and I enjoyed myself SO MUCH that I was once again too tired to do a proper blog on Sunday night.
But here it is, better late than never. The next blog will be up on Sunday provided that I have internet access wherever I am. I leave for Nice on Thursday morning! Anyone with suggestions on things to do, places to go, or people to see in Nice, Monaco, Cannes or Italy in general shoot me an e-mail!
Much love,
Anyways that was as I said before, an upsetting way to start the week and I self-medicated that afternoon by getting back into bed and watching Riding Giants on BBC.That night I tried my best to make some cookies. This was an effort that actually began Sunday night. I decided I was going to bake. The first signs of a problem were when I checked three different stores without finding chocolate chips. The "baking" sections of every store are just filled with a variety of dried fruit! I bought chocolate bars instead, and a back-up bag of chocolate chip cookie mix in a bag (with actual chocolate chips!). Then I encountered my next problem which is that our measuring cup is in grams. And it tries to compensate for different densities of ingredient by having different marks for flour and sugar, but when I'm trying to use dense brown sugar and loose white sugar they clearly aren't going to be equally accurate on the sugar grams mark. I did my best to estimate but my problems didn't end there. The real problem was the butter. Which comes in a 250 gram block. Unlike the American butter sticks that have tick marks to measure tablespoons there is no similar helpful sign on the English butter stick so I had to guesstimate what 170 grams of butter looked like as well. Then, in my attempt to soften the butter I instead melted the butter in my microwave. This was my fatal mistake. The cookies were cookie crisps. Flat and crunchy, delicious, but not what I had in mind. So Tuesday I wanted to redeem myself, and the only way I could think of doing that was to make the packaged cookie mix. These ones I burned. It was utter, crushing failure in the cookie making department.
Wednesday was an exciting day for the UK. It was the biggest public sector strike that they have had in 30 years to protest cuts and changes to their pension system. There was also a giant protest march right past LSE. I wasn't exactly sure how affected the transportation system would be but decided to leave a little earlier than normal for class. Which turned out to be a good idea because the buses stopped running at Waterloo and I had to make my way across Waterloo Bridge, which was closed to traffic
The good news is that this was also the impetus for me to finally sign up with a GP (doctor). I have my first appointment Wednesday and we'll see how it goes! Even more exciting is that I finally went to see a girl about a horse! I saw an ad on gumtree looking for someone to look after her horses, she has a shetland pony and a very young Irish Sporthorse. I went out to see the place and meet her/them. The horses have just gotten a case of Strangles so they will be out of work for a while but since I am going out of town and so is she we will meet back up in January to talk about details. It's kind of hard to describe where the horses are kept, it's in the suburbs on a patch of land in big enough for some paddocks and stalls. She has big plans to change the place - putting in a roundpen, purchasing some pygmy goats and chickens and rebuilding the stalls and the horses seemed generally well cared for. But it's getting cold here, so I know if I end up getting involved I'm going to need to invest in some hard core all-weather warm insulated muck boots and gloves, things I unfortunately didn't bring from home. Also you can file under "weird coincidences" that her name is Samantha, which is the name of the woman I leased a horse from for two years in LA.
This weekend was pretty quiet, I found out my friends Jardena and Alison were going to Chabad for Shabbat dinner so I decided to tag along since I hadn't been in over a month. They have a new Chabad centre location on Baker street they just moved into and dinner was exactly as I remembered it. I had a chance to see a couple of people I hadn't seen in too long and practically rolled out the door since the three hour long dinner means you just eat and eat and eat. Saturday night I stayed in because I had plans for paintballing the next morning and had to get up super early and wanted some sleep. I ruined that plan by taking an ill-timed nap and didn't get to sleep until ridiculously late and still had to wake up early in the morning.
The paintballing adventure was planned through my BJJ gym. The facebook note said be there at 8am, which in Brazilian time means no earlier than 8:30. I got to Camden Town a little early, grabbed some tea at Costa and made my way to the gym. There were 12 of us going, of course I was the only girl. We drove to the place about an hour north of London, getting lost twice along the way before stopping to ask for directions. The paintball park was in an extremely gorgeous location in the rolling green English countryside. We suited up, as a girl I was the only one given (allowed even) to have an upper body armor thing to put on under my coverall. It was also the only time it hasn't been over 100 degrees when I was paintballing. It was just cold enough to be uncomfortable unless you were running around, which we were for much of the time. It was the first time that I've played with only the people I came with. We played multiple games in different arenas, including one that involved crawling through the woods and one that simulated "urban warfare" which I singlehandedly won! Being the smallest came in handy when the game allowed for using the dummy we were retrieving as a shield, the referee described it as looking like the pair of coveralls was running by itself because I was so effectively hidden behind it. It was a great way to end the week and I enjoyed myself SO MUCH that I was once again too tired to do a proper blog on Sunday night.
But here it is, better late than never. The next blog will be up on Sunday provided that I have internet access wherever I am. I leave for Nice on Thursday morning! Anyone with suggestions on things to do, places to go, or people to see in Nice, Monaco, Cannes or Italy in general shoot me an e-mail!
Much love,
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