The Weekly Brit

A New Weekly Brit?

2009-01-20T16:44:00.001-08:00

Hi all,

I have a new blog!

The address is http://daverobbinsjournalism.blogspot.com

It's titled "Talking to Strangers."

Thanks for reading!

The End!

2008-08-03T23:19:00.001-07:00

Okay - it's time I just come out and say it.

I do not have the time, or energy to finish this blog.

Moving back from England has provided as much material for writing as living over there did. Unfortunately, the material that I've gotten since arriving home hasn't been nearly as exciting or fun... nothing says "Good reading" like applying for a student loan, getting my tires changed and getting TOTALLY screwed over by some administrative procedures currently in place by the UofA.

The stories I've told have been based entirely on vivid memories - memories I don't think will fade any time soon. And even if some of them do, letting the less important memories fade is a very commonly used technique for writing non-fiction.

This coming semester I'm finishing my journalism requirements. The department has told me I really should stretch it into 2, but the job I want after graduation starts considering candidates in January - and I want as much relevant experience as possible by that point. One of the things I'll be doing is an internship with an online newspaper, and it'll require me to have a blog. Continuing my tales of travel in Europe isn't one of the things I can chose from - but... we'll see what I can do.

Both for myself and for my readers, I do want to finish writing these stories. I don't know when I'll have the time to - but WANTING to is what will eventually get them done.

So - thank you for sharing my journey through Europe with me. Thank you for your reading, your emails, your comments, the packages filled with presents - and most of all, the phone calls.

To my former flatmate's - not all of the exchange students I know had the same experience I did. Some of them actually hated it - but in each case, it had to do with whether they were happy with who they were living with.

Susan, Juliette, Maria & Dom - thank you all for being so much fun to live with. (God - I hope I didn't forget anyone... hey Sam, can you think of anyone I forgot to include in that list? Hmm...) Living with you 5 was one of the best experiences I've ever had, and I'll look back on it fondly for the rest of my life.

Thank you.

Susan, me and Juliette in the kitchen on our last night in Norwich.

Me, Juliette and Susan broke into Sam's room (which he had moved out of a week prior) to take pictures. Sam's reaction: "Oh my God, why?"

Sam and I hanging out in his back yard in London on my last night in England.

A Tribute to Tony Snow

2008-07-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

To quote Steven Colbert,

"Tony Snow is a man who can speak for an hour - and at the end of that hour, have said nothing at all - like nobodies business."

Despite the fact that Tony Snow sold his soul and worked for Satan - both of these are prerequisites for being a good journalist - and he indeed WAS very good at what he did. I do genuinely admire the White House Press secretaries for how awful and painful of a job they must have.

Hunter S. Thompson said, "The journalism business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs."

So Mr. Snow, on the day that you die, I wish that you may run free with thieves and pimps forever - in the long plastic hallway in the sky!

Tony Snow
1955-2008

Hello readers!

2008-06-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

Hello readers!

It’s already been a month since my last real post? My apologies, I’ve been quite busy!

Pat came to visit for the last two weeks of my stay in Norwich, which was a blast. I got ready to move back to the states, spent the last few days with Sam and then took the 11 hour non stop flight home to Phoenix.

Since getting back 12 days ago, I’ve been down to Tucson to find a place to live (found one), retrieve my kitty named Bread from his babysitter, came back here to find and buy a car (2003 Hyundai Accent), as well as spend time with every important person I’d been missing who was geographically possible to see.
Yesterday I spent 4 hours going through “The Writers Market” finding places to send the short stories I wrote in England to for publication… today, I’m not sure what I’m up to…
I will – I will – I WILL finish the backpacking stories – as well as the rest of my England stories. I got off that damn airplane and hit the ground running and still haven’t had a moment to catch my breath – oh yeah, and I’m moving back to Tucson on Tuesday.

So, when things settle down a bit – I will finish my tales! Hopefully sooner than later… but who knows!

I am home!

2008-06-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

I am home safely and already sunburned! Go Arizona!!

Anyway - The Weekly Brit will continue until I finish my stories! I've got something for all of the backpacking destinations and a few stories from once I got back to England. Not sure when the next one will be though. I'm heading to Tucson tomorrow to HOPEFULLY secure a place to live next year - as well as pick up Bread and see Rachel.

But - that's just tomorrow... so, sometime AFTER tomorrow Saint Patrick's Day Part 4 will run!

"Fingertips" & "Mona Lisa Chicken Dinner"

2008-06-03T05:40:00.001-07:00

Hello readers,

In the blog I've spoken about both of the short stories I've written this semester, "Fingertips" & "Mona Lisa Chicken Dinner."

Unless you're JD Salinger - who supposedly has written 15 novels that he refuses to have published on the grounds that he knows they're perfect and doesn't need anyones opinion on them - the main point of writing is to have your work read. So, I'm making these two short stories available!

To receive a copy via email, please send a request to maximumbandit@gmail.com and I will email you a copy.

-Dave

LONDON - Saint Patrick's Day - Day 3

2008-06-01T10:46:00.001-07:00

Dom’s band brought in such a crowd at Madden’s the night before that they got invited to play again the next night. Instead of following and going to the same bar for the same party a second night in a row, I got in touch with my buddy Dave who I had stayed with in London in the past. We agreed to meet up in SoHo and go out for dinner and a few drinks. I told Dom I’d meet him back at his house later that night – he said he’d wait up and make sure I got back alright.

I took the tube from Dom’s house to Piccadilly Circus and met Dave in front of the giant McDonalds. From there, we went to one of his favorites, Waxy O'Connells and over a beer or two we talked about his upcoming graduation and career options – among other things. That is, until he got a text message.

“So uhh – I was talking to this girl earlier to see if she was free tonight… and she said she wasn’t – but she just texted me and said her plans changed and she’s free – mind if she joins us?”

And so we became three.

This was Sunday, the night before real Saint Patrick’s Day. I met him right around 10pm and asked him what time the tube would stop running, so I could make sure I’d get home okay. He said it should close around 12:30 or 1 a.m. Good enough for me. Plenty of time.

Dave’s lady friend meets up with us and he suggested we head to a bar named “Ain’t Nothin but Blues Bar.” Live music every night – fancy people and expensive beer – sounds like a plan!

Despite the £4 pints, the place was really, really cool. It was a small venue but packed – even from the back we were no more than fifteen feet from the band. People were dancing and partying – wearing silly Guinness hats for Saint Patrick’s Day – the singer proclaimed that Saint Patrick was the patron saint of cheap beer – it was a blast. I stayed until their set was over and then decided I needed to get going so I wouldn’t miss the tube.

I stepped outside and looked around. We’d been to a bunch of different places before there, and I didn’t really have my bearings. There were a few taxis waiting outside. One of them waved me over.

“Where you trying to get to?”

“Woodside Park… how do I get to the nearest tube?”

“Tube’s closed, mate,” he says. I look at my watch.

“It’s only 11:30!”

“It’s a Sunday – tomorrow’s a holiday. Tube’s closed.”

I look at him blankly.

“You said you need to get to Woodside Park?”

“Yup.”

“That’s far mate, real far. I can give you a ride there for £200,” he offers.

For the record, this converts to $400 US dollars.

“That’s very nice of you – I have £7 in my pocket. Will that do?”

“Okay okay – I can do it for £150.”

Everyone likes trying to rob the Americans.

“That’s still very nice of you… I have £7 in my pocket…”

“£125?” he tries.

“Look man, I’m not bluffing. I’ve got £7 in my pocket – is that going to get me home or what?”

“Nah man. £125.”

“There a bus stop nearby?”

He points me in the direction of darkness – basically keep going straight and hang a left at the homeless person.

I figured at this point I wasn’t going to be home by the 12:30am I had told Dom. I pull out my phone and dial his number.

“We’re sorry – you have insufficient funds to place this call.”

My heart sinks.

I enter the code into my phone to see how much funds I DO have. £0.11: there is a God. This is EXACTLY enough to send one text message. Outgoing calls and texts cost – incoming everything is free.

“Dom – call me. I’m out of credit – kind of lost - and the tube is closed.”

I pop my phone back in my pocket.

The cab driver might have been trying to screw me over and pay off his mortgage on one sucker-American, but he gave good directions in the face of defeat. I got to the bus stop and wait for a few minutes, alone, before a bus pulled up.

“Will this get me to Woodside Park?” I ask the driver.

“No man – no that’s REAL far away!” he says, laughing.

“Yeah… yeah I know… do you know how I can get there?”

“Yeah man… take this to Trafalgar Square – get off there and take the N20 all the way up to Woodside Park.”

I swipe my travel card – and so far the only thing that hasn’t gone wrong on this expedition is that there’s plenty of money on it for me to get home – and even get lost on the way there.

Still no call from Dom.

Trafalgar Square is two stops up. I get off my bus on the east side of the square and see an N20 departing from the west side. I walk over and check the schedule. The bus leaves every half hour – good enough. London’s transportation has a helpful feature where they tell you exactly how long it’ll take to get from one destination to another. Trafalgar Square to Woodside Park? It says 2 hours. I have a half hour to kill – and I realize that there is something I need to do before that 2-hour bus ride starts… I’ve gotta pee!

I start wandering around Trafalgar Square in front of the National Portrait Gallery and realize this isn’t going to be easy… security is everywhere. But – security work here – and if they have to patrol all night – they’ve got to pee SOMEWHERE, right?

“Hey man – there a toilet around here?” I ask one of the guys in a yellow jacket.

“Uhh – well, you could climb up on one of the lion statues and try and make it into the fountain,” he said.

“Uh… any other ideas?” I ask, laughing nervously.

“Not a thrill seeker – eh? Well…” he said, leaning in closer, “if you go down that little alley way there are some nice dark corners…”

“Are you serious?” I ask.

“Look mate – you ain’t been in London if you haven’t peed on the Portrait Gallery,” he said. One of his colleagues hears this and starts laughing 10 feet away.

I followed his directions – his instructions – and sure enough there WERE plenty of dark corners. Mission accomplished!

As I headed back to the bus stop, the guard who had been circling the fountain sees me walking by and shouts “Hey! Yeah? Yeah? Everything cool now?”

I nod my head, shoot him a thumbs up and say, “Thanks, mate!”

I check my phone again – still no call from Dom.

The bus finally pulls up. I tell the driver where I’m trying to get. He confirms that this bus WILL get me there and it WILL take exactly two hours. I ask if he can give me a heads up when we arrive – he agrees. I didn’t really believe that he WOULD, but after he made sure I got where I was going – I found that if you ask a bus driver ANYWHERE in Europe to let you know when you’re “there,” wherever that is, they’ll help you.

Two stops past Trafalgar, Neil Diamond’s voice comes booming out of my cell phone – chanting the anthem of Red Sox Nation – finally: Dom is calling.

I tell him the situation.

“The night bus is a blast, mate! You’ll make friends with someone and the two hours will fly by,” he tells me.

And so it was. Two stops later, at Tottenham Court Road Station, on steps a really cute girl who comes over and asks “anyone sitting here?”

“No, go right ahead,” I tell her. She looks at my UEA hoodie.

“What’s an American in a UEA hoodie doing going to North-North London at this hour?”

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Katie.

Katie is getting a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Theater from a university in London. She’s done a bunch of stage theater but is more interested in television. She also does vocal performance but tells me she doesn’t think she can make a career at it. My art-high-school dork alarm starts blaring. I’ve made a friend.

I very modestly brag about a few of my art-school accomplishments, such as singing at the Tempe Music Festival on the same day as The Counting Crows. Apparently, this is her favorite band.

Score.

“You have very kind eyes – I could tell you were an artist when I first saw you, that’s why I sat down with you,” she tells me.

She asks me what I’m studying at UEA – I tell her creative writing which gets the same gasp/squeal as The Counting Crows.

She asks what kind of “stuff” I write. Despite loving to talk about writing, I hate getting this question. First of all, if I answered it truthfully I’d have to include term papers, emails and random messages I write on people’s Facebook walls – because that’s ALL writing. I’ve always felt like if it’s simple enough to explain concisely in conversation – why would you bother writing it down? Of course – this answer would kill a conversation real fast and make me look like a dick so I gave her my “thoughtful” copy/paste answer that I’ve been practicing for years.

“I like writing about human relationships. The psychology of human interaction is fascinating and tend to write situational fiction, primarily about getting through conflicts.”

In laymen’s terms, this translates to “I like writing about things happening to people...”

Someone looking for a longer answer will realize I haven’t actually said anything and ask a follow-up question, where as someone who just wants to show polite interest will nod their head approvingly and tell me it sounds interesting. She followed by asking who my favorite author is.

We get back onto acting – and I ask who her favorite performer is.

“Jerry Seinfeld,” she says.

“You know… my grandmother lived in the same little-old-lady home as his mom,” I tell her.

Really? Did I just try to brag about that? Wow… way to go, Slick Bandit.

She didn’t skip a beat though, we kept chatting and telling stories about our various artistic endeavors. I tried to remember a monologue I preformed my senior year of high school – got through the first few lines and then made up the rest of it.

“You should go to auditions! You’re so good!” she said excitedly, slapping my arm.

“Nah – I think I’ll stick to writing.”

“Well, you are a man of many talents,” she tells me, looking out the window.

“This is my stop,” she says. I look at my watch and realize mine should be in the next few minutes too.

“Come find me when your name is in lights – okay Mr. Writer?” she says and then lays a HUGE kiss on me.

“Okay…” I say, surprised and a little dazed.

Sure enough – my stop was the very next one. The bus driver stuck his head out of his little window and says “Hey you – this is you!” and I make my way back to Dom’s house.

I tell him the entire story, he and his brother laughing along the whole way.

“I told you you’d make friends on the night bus.”

Going home in 16 days

2008-05-31T10:07:00.000-07:00

Before I begin with Saint Patrick’s Day Part 3, I’ve got a few other things on my mind.

I’m coming home in 16 days… I think this is the most mixed feelings I’ve ever had about anything – in fact it might redefine my view on what having mixed feelings even means.

I’m glad to be coming home. I miss my friends, my family and the familiarity of being home… I was up working on some writing a few mornings ago and actually went onto UofA’s website and watched the sunrise over the campus via their webcam. Seriously? Who does that? Well, me…

These 5 ½ months are very rapidly coming to an end… which is just so weird – in my very first post I was writing the night before leaving about how it felt like it was never going to happen – like I couldn’t possibly imagine what England was REALLY like.

It’s a place. Everywhere is just a place. But before I came over here I really expected it to be like another world. People live here, people work here – people are people here. People are still people everywhere. Big cities are big cities anywhere on the planet, which really first hit me as a belief and a knowledge in Edinburgh as I walked past a construction yard, graffiti and a traffic jam.

I’ve made friends here. It’s not the culture, the food, the fact that you can go to a pub at 11am after a big test and find your entire class in there - it’s not any of that I’m REALLY sad about leaving – it’s the friends I’ve made. THAT’S what I don’t feel ready to leave… because in all reality, I’m never going to see most of these people again.

I guess that’s all I have to say on that… I've started working on the next installment to Saint Patrick's Day but am not in the creative writing flow right now. It'll be up soon.

LONDON - Saint Patrick's Day - Day 2

2008-05-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

The next day Dom’s other band, The Screaming Bluejays, practiced most of the day. They’re wicked good. They were practicing for a gig they had the day I was scheduled to leave for Scotland, so it was cool to hear them play. But, the Gaelic sounding named band had another gig that night as well. This time at a pub called Maddens in East Finchley (North London.) The gig wasn’t set to start until later that night but it was the last day of the Rugby Six Nations so we headed over at about two. The six nations is like the super bowl of rugby – though they also have a world cup. As Dom is a rugby player – he was stoked about it. I was too, as I’d never really gotten to watch a rugby match.

Let me just say – rugby kicks ass. They have two different types – Union and League. When we silly Americans think of the bloody rugby with biting, kicking and hair pulling without pads, what we’re thinking of is Union. (Apparently though, biting, kicking and hair pulling are all illegal.) The closest sport to union rugby I can compare it to is ice hockey. The clock starts – everybody goes. You kick ass and fight hard to score. When you score, the clock stops until everyone can make it back to the center of the pitch and the process starts all over again. It is NOTHING like American Football, except for the fact that it is played on grass and the ball is of a similar shape. Those are the only two similarities. (Rugby League is what NFL football came from.)

Though I’m sure there are just as many intricacies to rugby as there are to baseball, it was still really entertaining to watch even without knowing the strategy and statistics. We had a blast watching, yelling and cheering. Wales won the championship… I don’t remember if Dom was pleased about this because depending on his mood he tells people he is either Irish, Welsh or English… so who knows, he could have been simultaneously excited and sad. Two parts sad, one part happy? Maybe!

After looking through some of the photography I’ve done, Dom asked if I could bring my camera along and shoot some good photos of the band playing – which I was happy to do. They had quite a crowd going by the end of the set. Near the end, with my camera still around my neck I went up to the bar for a pint and a really big guy comes over and says “Hey photographer! What are you drinking?”

“Oh – thanks! I’ll have a Carlsberg,” I tell him.

“No. You’ll have a Carlsberg and a double scotch!”

“…”

Man, English people are nice.

I don’t remember what his name was – only that he was a bond trader and he apparently made a lot of money that day.

One of this guys friends saw us talking and comes over to say hi.

“Are you buying drinks for an American again?” he asks, laughing. Apparently this guy is fond of us Americans.

So, after I finish my two drinks, another round of Carlsberg and scotch is handed to me. I can see that this is very shortly going to be a disaster, but also see an opportunity.

Midsong I go tap on Dom’s shoulder. He looks up at me with the bagpipe tube still in his mouth.

“These guys are buying me drinks just because I’m American and they want to get me drunk… any drink I put down on this table is for the you guys… k?”

Dom nods. James on the fiddle has heard this as well. He grins.

I put my scotch on the table and go back to the guys who have decided I’m entertaining because of my accent.

“So where in America are you from?”

“Arizona.”

Bond-traders eyes light up.

“Like… like that song? Like that song that goes ‘I’m standing on a corner in Tucson Arizona!’ there?”

“Winslow Arizona.”

“What?” he asks.

“Standing on a corner in WINSLOW Arizona.”

“Well, is that where you’re actually from?”

“No, I’m actually from Tucson but that’s not the lyric.”

“Well if you’re from Tucson then that’s the lyrics!” he proclaims and starts singing The Eagles at the top of his lungs.

“Five double scotches!” he yells, pointing at the girl behind the bar.

“So, if you’re from Arizona, was the grand canyon like your high school hangout?”

Clearly, the bond trader doesn’t want the answer to be no to any of his questions.

“Yeah, we go there sometimes… it’s not a bad hangout.”

“Have you seen the movie Superbad?” he asks. If you’re unfamiliar, Superbad, being true to it’s name, was one of the worst movies ever. It was like American Pie mixed with Napoleon Dynamite - except with none of American Pie’s nudity and none of Napoleon Dynamite’s humor.

“Yes… I have,” I tell him, absolutely knowing where this is headed.

“Dude, you’re our McLovin!” (an arbitrary reference to the movie.)

One of his friends hears him say this and comes over and agrees.

Bond trader starts singing again. “All the way from the USA – McLovin! McLovin!”

This was probably chanted about 600 times in the next few hours. Most of them usually ended with me being handed a drink that I dropped on the table.

As Bond-Trader drank more, his focus shifted from getting ME drunk for his amusement to getting himself drunk for mine.

I was talking to Dom for a moment, and just like my cat, Bread, this guy had to do something dramatic to get my attention back.

“McLovin, look!” he shouts. Both Dom and I turn and look. Bond-Trader ripped open his button-up shirt, sending buttons flying, poured a tequila shot down his chest and lit it on fire.

“MY CHEST HAIR IS A VOLCANO!” he shouts. My jaw drops, Dom starts laughing.

“Come on guys, you should try it! McLovin, you’ve got chest hair, don’t you?”

“No. None at all.” (Oh, the beautiful art of lying.)

“That’s a shame. It’s fun!” he says.

“Did you already finish your scotch, McLovin?” Dom smirks, as he and James are in possession of the last two drinks this guy has bought me.

“Yeah man! Can’t you keep up?”

This guy easily weighed 245 pounds. I said this and he looked like I’d just kicked his puppy.

“I can’t keep up with an American… you should feel proud of yourself.”

I wandered off to the bathroom at this point. When I came back out there was a tray of 30 shots sitting on the table.

“What the hell are those?” I ask Dom.

“Sambuca – he bought them for the band… seems you both got the same idea about sharing,” Dom tells me.

I’m going to pause here to address the morality of this situation. Yes, we were kind of taking advantage of this drunk guy. HOWEVER, someone smart enough to make a successful career as a bond trader should be smart enough to know their limit – and smart enough to keep their credit card in their wallet. If they’re going to choose to drink to the point that their financial-good-judgment disappears, I’m certainly not going to step in and act as the voice of reason on their behalf. That’s what friends are for, not strangers.

Bond-trader asks Dom at some point if scotch is my favorite drink – because he wants to get me my FAVORITE drink in the world. Dom tells him a sapphire and tonic with a lime will win me over.

“I got you your FAVORITE!” he says as he hands it to me. I nod approvingly.

One of bond trader’s friends asks me at some point if I’d like to come outside with him for a smoke. I turn down the cigarette but tell him I’ll come hang out with him.

“What’s your real name again?” he asks – sounding sober – which is refreshing after talking to someone who has drunk himself into the preoperational stage for the last hour. He asks the normal questions – where do I go to school – what am I studying. I ask what he does for a living.

“It’s really boring – I work in publishing,” he says. He picks up on my excitement as I immediately ask “with who?!”

I won’t go into the details because – to most people – this WOULD be a really boring conversation, but as I’m hot to get a job with the Random House Publishing Group, I grilled him with as many dorky questions as I could imagine.

Bond trader came running outside to find us some point later.

“McLovin, I jut bought your friends a presents and I want you to have my sweater,” he says as he loosely ties the sleeves around my neck.

“Wear it as your cape, McLovin! McLovin cape – forever!”

He runs back inside.

“Does he do this often?” I ask publishing guy.

“Yes. He likes bars with Americans in them like most kids like pet stores. It’s really kind of embarrassing.”

I head back inside to find out exactly what it is that he’s bought for my friends.

I kid you not. Three $160 bottles of champagne. Dom, Miriam and Shamus each took one home.

“Hi Dave,” an attractive woman says at one point.

“Hi…” I say.

“I’m Bond-Traders fiancé… would it be too much to have his sweater back? He’ll want that for the walk home.”

I laugh and take it off and hand it to her. She goes back to her table with her friends and I sit back down with Dom. Without fail, five minutes later Bond-Trader is back with the sweater.

“I’m sorry Cindy took your cape – she’s not usually this much of a bitch – I told her it’s yours now and she shouldn’t steal. I’m sorry. Would you like another drink?” he asks, patting my head. I tell him “No thanks, I’m good” which he heard as “Yes please, I’d like another sapphire and tonic with a lime.”

I try and tell him to keep the sweater, I don’t need it but he INSISTENTLY demands that it is mine now, and he “wants nothing more to do with it.”

It’s about 3 a.m. at this point and time for us to head home.

“McLovin, next time I’m standing on a corner in Tucson Arizona – we’ll go to a bar again – and you’ll wear your cape. Okay?”

Deal.

So with a designer sweater that doesn’t fit – and three expensive bottles of Champaign – we all climb onto the night bus and head back to Doms.

Dom playing the pipes.

Dom clapping along to a Shamus solo.

Dom singing "Dirty Old Town"

Shamus on the guitar.

Shamus playing the drum that I mentioned in my previous post.

James on the fiddle.

Miriam on the flute.

Shamus and Miriam.

From left to right: Bond Trader (probably chanting "All the way form the USA"), Me, Friend of Bond Trader, and guy trying to get free drinks from Bond Trader

From Left to Right: Bond Trader, Publishing Guy, Friend of Bond Trader

LONDON - Saint Patrick's Day - Day 1

2008-05-24T09:46:00.001-07:00

Okay – so before we get down to business, this conversation just occurred:

Sam: “Susan, you don’t have a soul.”

Susan: “That’s not very nice, Sam.”

Dave: “Yeah Sam, don’t be a dick. I’ve seen Susan’s soul before – it was that time a couple of weeks ago when she got really drunk in the kitchen, smeared peanut butter all over her door and then fell asleep in front of my bedroom door… yeah it was kind of just hanging out…”

As of yesterday at 2:17pm GMT, I am finished with my studies here at the University of East Anglia. I’m psyched to be done with the hard work part, but also glad I get three more weeks of time in the is country to relax and spend time with the friends I’ve made over here. Everyone in the dorm has different schedules for coming and going – but someone fun will be here until the day I move out. Pat is coming on June 4^th and my friend Dave from London might come spend a weekend here.

And now, ladies and gentlemen – the moment you’ve all been waiting for – stories of backpacking!

This will be divided up into many posts over the next few weeks. It will be broken up by country. Some countries will be broken into segments – some segments broken into atoms and atoms into anti-matter!

Yeah: exactly. We all know I’m not really planning that far ahead. I mean, for Gods sake, I went to France by myself and barely knew how to say, “Do you speak English?” in French.

Oh, but that story is to come! Not today, because today we start in London. We’re going all the way back to Saint Patrick’s Day.

The five days of Saint Patrick’s Day.

I will come right out and say some of the Saint Patrick’s Day celebration memories are a bit jumbled. That is not (purley) because Saint Patrick’s Day is pretty much a celebration of beer, but – well, YOU celebrate the same holiday five days in a row and see if after two months you can remember what happened when.

I headed into London on the 13^th of March for my first leg of the trip. I was staying with Dominic in London. His parents were in the Lake District on holiday. Dom and his brother Sebastian were going to be meeting them later in the week but for a few days they had the house to themselves.

The reason I was there on the 13^th was because Dom’s band (whose name I can’t remember… it’s something Gaelic) was invited to play at the American Embassies Saint Patrick’s Day celebration in London. Dom being the class act of a fellow he is invited me to join. It was wicked cool – the embassy on Bond Street is a no kidding around military complex. That shouldn’t have surprised me but I’ve never been in an embassy before and I’d never actually thought about it. Metal detectors, bomb sniffers, rubbing us with tissues and putting the tissues in machines to see if there were drugs on our persons – it was intense. That had to put all of the instruments through the airport style x-ray machines and being just as shy as I am, Dom asked the guy running the machine if he could come look at the screen and see what bagpipes look like on the inside. The guy was very nice and let us. (Usually the band isn’t too much of a threat.)

Lots of hot shit people were there. I’m not quite enough of a politics dork to identify senators just by looking at them but I’m assuming the guys who were sipping their cocktails with armed Marines standing behind them giving passers-by the evil eye were pretty important. I went into the rest room at one point and heard this bit of conversation occur while I peed.

“Hey Jim, I didn’t know you were coming!”

“Yup. Kinda tired. I was in The War Room at 8 this morning and now I’m here.”

He was wearing a badge that had his name on it but I didn’t want to try and peek at it for fear of him thinking I was peeking at something else, and then going to find one of his Marine friends.

Dom’s band consists of him on bagpipes, James (who is 19 like Dom) on fiddle, Shameus (James’s dad) on guitar/drums/anything that needs to be played, and Miriam (16) on flute. I got to help set up and do sound check. Unfortunately, a bunch of jet lagged senators, cabinet members and diplomats boozing on foreign soil don’t make a very good crowd for anything – especially a band. There was a bit of dancing near the end, and I’m PRETTY SURE I saw Michael Chertoff dancing to “Sexy Back.” (No, I’m not calling his secretary to see if he was present. That would make this journalism – which it’s not. J)

Another invite to the celebration was a group of Irish step dancers who came and preformed after the band was done playing. They of course did the running out into the audience and conscripting unwilling diplomats to come dance with them on stage which was greatly amusing. The whole evening was good fun. I have very limited pictures because I did not have camera clearance. I’ve got a few pictures from some people who did, which I’ll post below.

This really shouldn’t have made me as excited as it did, but they had Sam Adams at the embassy bar. Nothing sooths the homesickness like the sweet nectar of home! They didn’t have the Octoberfest brew (ya know… cause it was March) but they had the Boston Lager and the Winter Lager which was more than I could have asked for. I was stoked. Not only was I stoked, but I later found out that the man who served me my Sam Adams was the head of security for the entire embassy. Apparently when you do too good of a job making sure nothing bad happens – you get to bartend until something hits the fan.

Dom had far more beer than I did on night-one of Saint Patrick’s Day. We’ve never actually discussed this system but I’ve noticed that we both gauge our intake levels on how much the other is drinking – so there’s always one of us in good enough shape to keep an eye on the other and make sure everyone gets home without incident. Granted, this might not have been very smart on Dom’s part because not only did I have no idea where we WERE but also I couldn’t have found my way home if my life depended on it and I had a GPS in my hand… well maybe that’s not true, but it was my first time in Central London for sure.

I’m not sure the relation, but at one point someone’s little cousin named Natasha, who was 12, came over to our table and started talking to us. At 12 years old, this little girl was wearing a shirt that said “All the cute boys are gay.” Who lets a 12 year old wear that? Honestly!

Anyway, this little hellian at one point steals Dom’s can of cider, runs away and then comes back about 10 minutes later.

“What did you do to my cider?” asks Dom.

“You won’t drink it if I tell you,” she says.

“I promise you if you tell me what you did to it, I’ll down it in one gulp.”

You’re kidding, right?

“I filled it with toilet water,” says Natasha.

Dom looks sad.

“Don’t be a moron,” I say.

Occasionally Dom says realllly dumb things when he’s drunk that everyone remembers and repeats over and over until it stops being funny. So far, none of them have stopped being funny. Okay, take it from the tops!

“I filled it with toilet water,” says Natasha.

Dom looks sad.

“Don’t be a moron,” I say.

“No! No! You know what Dave? I – I am a – a man of my word! I’m a man of my word! I’m a man of word and I promised Tash that if – I promised that she would…” and DOWN the hatch it went.

The only thing I could do was shake my head and laugh hysterically.

“You’re going to get Hepatitis-C, Dom.”

“What’s that?”

I’ll spare all of you out there who are legitimately worrying about the outcome of this incredibly bad judgment. Natasha found out that Dom was really, really worried he was going to die and later told him that she had actually filled it with water from the sink.

Personally, I still would go get a Hep-C test… but personally, I also wouldn’t drink a cider can filled with toilet water… but that’s just me… and me? I’m a man – I’m a man of my word!

Anyway, we left the American Embassy shortly after this. Dom and Shameus were pretty toasted, so I followed closely behind James, as it was his house I was to spend the night at. (Apparently Dom’s parents hadn’t left for the lake district yet.)

At some point, Shamus gave Dom a drum. It was a hand held drum that you play standing up and bang on it with a small stick. I don’t remember the name of it but you get the picture. It was a drum. James and I are sitting on a bench in the tube station talking to each other when Dominic runs off with the drum. Dom’s a big boy, he can handle finding his own way home if indeed he’s run off somewhere. But he hasn’t.

No, because a moment later James and I hear a loud voice boom from across the tube station.

“Who wants to see me take it out and give it a good whacking?!”

Dominic is standing there with his hand in the drum bag, threatening to take out the drum stick. Granted, his drunken mannerisms made it clear that this was an intended sexual innuendo and he wasn’t about to flash someone – but it was late and the tube station was crowded…

“Pretend we’re not with him,” James says.

“Yes. He does this all the time,” he tells me.

“Really?” I ask.

“WHO WANTS TO SEE?!?!?”

“Okay…” I say, chuckling.

James and I watch Dom go harass poor sober people in the tube station as Shamus actually HAS taken the drumstick out and is giving it a good whacking. Unfortunately, because both James and I wanted to see it happen – Dom did not get arrested – or even scolded. So, other than Dom making more noise than normal, we got back to James’s house safely.

Dom told me ahead of time that “English people” don’t use heaters like us Americans. They ask if I want a blanket before I go to sleep on the couch – I take one and everyone looks at me funny.

“Okay, well, you know where they are if you need more in the night…”

I woke up a few hours later and in the darkness could see nothing except a long trail of my breath coming out with every exhale. Yeah, they sure as hell DON’T use heaters like we do – and by that they mean they don’t use them AT ALL.

Dom and I at the American Embassy.

Backpacking Adventures Starting May 25th

2008-05-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone.

Maggie and Marja just got here - so obviously I'm keeping this brief. They're leaving on the 21st, I've got my last final on the 23rd and then some alone time in Norwich until June 8th. The first installment of my backpacking adventures will be posted May 25th!!! Probably nothing substantial until then.

-Dave

Popes, Presidents and Shakespeare

2008-05-15T04:38:00.001-07:00

These past few days have been very interesting. I finished my Shakespeare final, Hillary Clinton’s lead campaign strategist told the press that Hillary has 3 testicles – and the pope announced yesterday that believing in aliens is no longer a sin.

::head spins around::

WHAT?

That’s right readers of The Weekly Brit. The pope – Pope Benny Sixteen – Joseph Alois Ratzinger – announced that believing in aliens is NO LONGER A SIN.

I read this on a message board and checked some credible news sources and found its true. I ran out of my room and into the kitchen to tell someone and had a Freudian slip the way only someone from Arizona can. With 100% sincerity, I said,

“THE POPE JUST SAID IT IS NO LONGER A SIN TO BELIEVE IN ILLEGAL ALIENS!!!”

That was when everyone just kind of stared at me…

“I mean – aliens – like from outer space… not Mexico…”

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s lead campaign strategist in fact DID tell the press that Hillary has 3 testicles. I did not make that up. Remember James Carville, the guy that looks like a greyhound who used to host CNN’s Crossfire with that little dweeb who wore a bow tie all the time? Carville has been the lead campaign strategist for both Bill and Hillary’s campaign. As Hillary’s campaign is slipping away for reasons I’ll let those “political bloggers” tell you about – they’re pulling the gender card back out. Actually – I think calling it the gender card would be a misnomer, because really they’ve pulled out the genital card. Here’s the quote from her LEAD CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST.

“Hillary is the tougher of the two, the candidate you want on your side in a knife fight. If Hillary gave Obama one of her cajones – they’d both have two!”

It seems that the campaign for the knife wielding tri-balled candidate from New York is nearly over as she has lost her lead in every race possible as Obama has scored two key endorsements. John Edwards and James Carville – yeah – the guy who made the testicle comment came out and (got himself fired) by endorsing Obama.

Lastly, I survived my Shakespeare final. I’ll find out my score at the end of July.

If anyone is unfamiliar with the show crossfire and would like to see an excellent clip form it, the link is below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

Sonnet Movements

2008-05-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

From now until May 14^th – it’s Shakespeare study study study time, and dammit, by the end of it I will poop a sonnet!

Other than the work I've done reading the plays I needed to throughout the semester (key word being needed), I’ve basically started preparing today. I’ve also been informed by Sam that finals don’t really work the same way here as they do in the states. This is how I described finals in the states – and if the ENTIRE country is an over generalization, at least the departments of humanities and journalism at the UofA.

It’s like a drivers test. You get in the car, you drive, don’t hit any pedestrians and keep the car on all 4 wheels the entire time – you pass. Finals basically require you to prove that you read the assigned reading and understood it. Multiple-choice tests are common, as are essay tests. You will score highly on both of them if you can repeat as much information from lectures and text as possible. Secondary reading lists are sometimes issued in classes, under the pretenses that if you actually do secondary reading you’re a huge dork – even by English major standards.

Over here – apparently – they don’t want you to repeat anything you learned in the class – and you’re even encouraged not to. Instead, going back to the drivers test analogy, you get into the car and show the person proctoring the test the different types of fabric that can be found making up the seat he’s sitting on. Discussing the history of the windshield wiper is a plus, as is jump-starting the car with nothing but a Swiss army knife. Do that – you pass on the assumption that if you learned all of that, you probably took the time to learn to drive as well. You’re suppose to go out and do a whole lot of secondary reading – and on your essay final (multiple-choice tests do not exist here) you’re suppose to talk in great length about all of the things you DIDN’T learn in the class – that you later taught yourself… If you can do that, you pass – and they just assume you did your homework too.

Faaaaaantastic…

Sam asked how many books I take out of the library a semester. I thought for a minute and told him that I could only remember taking roughly five books out of the library in my entire college career – a few for that damn archeology class I dragged myself through freshmen year, one for my British poetry class, and one for research I was independently doing for a short story I’ve been working on.

Sam started laughing. In fact, he might still be.

I tried to defend our education system by saying “Yeah but we have to buy a ton of books…” which flew like a chicken. Apparently they do too – though I only ended up buying 2 this semester.

Anyway, with all of that said – I’ve been diligently preparing for this foreign style of exam that I have on Wednesday by fine tuning the roster of my first-place fantasy baseball team, and reading articles on Wikipedia about how to cool my God damn room down without going out and buying an air conditioner… as much as I love the view I have I’m facing east-north, so, the sun starts shining directly on my window at around 10 and doesn’t relent until about 6 or 7.

The interior decorator UEA hired to paint my door purple and put in pink and black curtains (I wish I were kidding) in front of my window had the brilliant idea of putting up the heaviest pink and black fabric possible. You could fry an egg on these monstrosities. I’ve had my windows and door open all day, fan blowing full blast – but thanks to Wikipedia I’m also wearing my “Jesus Hates the Yankees” shirt soaked in ice water. “When you can’t cool the room – cool yourself,” Wikipedia says. To hell with dripping all over the purple carpet, it’s hot in here! And, it makes my feet feel nice and refreshed whenever I walk through one of the many puddles that are everywhere!

I actually have been studying – too… in fact writing a blog post is the study break I promised myself when I started working this morning – but writing about studying is just about as exciting as doing it, so I’m sparing all of us.

I’ve spent the past week in Italy with Mom, her childhood friend Karen, and her husband, John. It was wonderful. I will put up pictures at a later time but it was really gorgeous. Karen and John are renting a house in a town called Montisi, population 300, outside the city of Sienna. It was the least touristy place I’ve seen since coming to Europe – less so even than Norwich. It was literally in the Tuscan country side, the house was surrounded by sheep farms, vineyards and mountains. We went on a hike of some different part every day, exploring Montisi, Sienna, Sinalunga and Trequanda. We ate gelato, drank wine and did all of those Italian things that we silly Americans (correctly) associate with Italy. It was great.

Unfortunately, hiking and eating gelato doesn’t lead to great blog post stories… so I’ll leave the Italy story at that for now, but maybe I’ll think of more to add when I start working on my backpacking adventure stories. On that note, Dave's backpacking adventure will start being written/posted on May 24^th. I have from the May 24^th-June 8^th with no classes, no finals, and no visitors so I’ll have plenty of time to work on those… AND stay up until 4am every morning watching major league baseball online. (What the hell else am I going to do? Explore Norwich? Well, actually... yes that'd be a better use of my time abroad...)

You will not believe how many pictures there are to come… it’s an intimating task and the intimidation is the entire reason I haven’t started yet. Thanks for reading – I’ll post again soon.

Slower than a Bunny

2008-04-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

Today, one of the other Arizona exchange students studying here at the University of East Anglia had a birthday party. Etta is turning 20 on Tuesday, and instead of having a normal college party, she decided that she wanted to celebrate NOT being old and threw a “kitty party.” This party included an ungodly amount of both sugar and caffeine (to the point that my hands are still shaking as I’m typing this out.) The party was in one of the kitchens in our dorm, looking out onto the lake.

Like most universities, UEA hosts a ton of different clubs – except here they call them societies. The club baseball team I’ve been playing on is technically called “the baseball society.” They have some more outlandish ones, such as the cocktail society (which the members of have shortened to The Cock-Soc) and the unanimous favorite: The Game Society.

UofA has something similar – as do a lot of universities. Except UEA’s game society has a large group of people who, every Sunday from noon until sundown, LARP. For those of you who are not huge dorks, I’ll explain. (For the record, I am including myself in the former group.)

LARPing is a lot like the renaissance festival. It is an acronym for Live Action Role Playing. People who LARP generally take it even more seriously than those who just role play – because LARPing involves costumes, real weapons, and most importantly: real battles.

Every Sunday, from noon until sundown – there is a battle at UEA. It starts on the field by the lake, and is driven deep into the forest. Every Sunday. Let me reiterate. Every Sunday.

This Sunday was no exception. We had our sugar party in the kitchen and watched them sword fight, throw dice at each other and then belly flop onto the ground after the numbers read a critical hit. Their HP was depleted and they didn’t have enough mana to cast a greater healing spell on themselves. Their only hope was that someone could resurrect them before it was too late.

As the party wound down the LARPers were much more entertaining to watch than the sugar. In fact, we all were watching pretty intently.

And then someone said, “We should go attack them.”

I laughed at this, liking the idea and imagining a battle of epic proportions in the forest. Our whole motley assortment, hyped up on sugar and caffeine, wielding sticks and screaming our cries of combat.

And then Dom turned to me and said, “You want to mate? I’ll do it if you do.”

Another gal at the table said if we both went, she would come too.

That is what I call an offer you cannot refuse!

We took a 10-minute break to prepare. Dom and I returned to the flat while Etta and her friend went to theirs to get shoes – and weapons. I immediately put on my catchers mask, throat protector, and grabbed the most fearsome weapon I had: a large, plastic, slotted spoon. I also grabbed a frying pan, with which to bang my large plastic spoon while I shouted an epic war cry.

Dominic put my colander on his head, grabbed a wooden spoon and a pot, and we headed back to battle stations.

We exited our base and approached the battlefield with vigor and bravery. A few cars passed us on the way, eyeing us the way anyone would eye a man wearing a catcher mask and waving a slotted spoon in the air. I gave them a thumbs-up – they honked.

“Think anyone has ever done this to them before?” I asked.

We had a few things that the LARPers didn’t. Actually, we probably had more than a few things that the LARPers didn’t… but the most immediate of those things was the element of surprise. While we clearly were doing something out of the ordinary, our appearance alone was not what made it obvious that we were preparing for an ambush.

From about 100 yards we could see them battling it out in the forest, standing in the middle of the dirt road that cuts through it. Dom said, “should we just run up the road yelling?”

In my casual Dave fashion I responded, “Yeah right, I’m not running that far.”

With a brute force charge out of the question, we elected to use more stealth tactics. Down on our knees, crouching under branches and hopping over fallen logs, we drove our way through the dense forest. We were ready.

We stood silently in the brush for a moment – listening. They had no idea what lay in store. With the sugar, caffeine – oh yeah, and that “adrenaline” stuff, I stood as still as I could, feeling my heart beating quickly and breathed in and out heavily.

“SPARTANS!!!!” Dom finally shouted. “PREPAIR FOR GLORY!!!”

“HA-OOH! HA-OOH! HA-OOH!”

“SPARTANS!?!?!?!?”

“HA-OOH! HA-OOH! HA-OOH!”

…and then, in the spirit of my old room mate, Kinsey - as I banged on my frying pan with the large slotted spoon - I shouted:

“TOTAL WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Out of the brush we came with ferocity! Twigs snapped and a cloud of dust was left in our wake as we threw our war-ready bodies from the woods and onto the gauntlet with only our screams of combat brave enough to follow in front. The sky above us drew together in anticipation, casting a shadow on the dirt at our feet, which soon would be soaked with blood and glory.

At the end of our 20-foot charge, we stopped in front of a group of 10 who stood there, motionless and silent – kilts flapping in the breeze and bits of rain dripping down their leather tunics.

“Uhh…. total… total war?” I asked.

Nothing.

Dom lightly hit one of them with his wooden spoon.

“Look Mortimer,” said a paladins, “he’s spooning you.”

Someone chuckled.

“Really?” I asked. “That’s it? You’re not even going to chase us?”

They stared back at us.

I gave my pan and slotted spoon a rattle.

“Go bug them,” the paladin said, pointing off into the forest “they’re much more likely to fight you.”

I put the spoon in my back pocket and picked up a stick, then took off running in the direction I had been pointed, yelling, “TOTAL WAR!” and banging the stick on my pan, which, to my pleasure, made much more noise than the spoon had. Dominic and the other girl followed.

We got within 20 feet of this group, a group much larger than the first, and we hesitated.

“They have bows and arrows…” Dom said.

“TOTAL WAR!” I yelled, giving my pan a few more good whacks. Dom followed in close suit.

“SPARTANS, PREPAIR FOR GLORY!!!”

“HA-OOH! HA-OOH! HA-OOH!”

They too, ignored us.

“Come fight us, you cowards!” I yelled, waving my pan and stick in the air.

And thus, my invitation was accepted.

A small fellow, wearing a studded leather vest and a black robe drew his sword in both hands and hurled it off into the forest. He undid his belt and let that drop to the ground before throwing his wooden shield in the other direction.

“Oh, shut the fuck up!” he yelled, and very angrily, started marching towards us.

I wasn’t entirely sure if this wee-fellow was a dwarf of an elf, though when he got within a few yards of us it was clear that if he’d even broken five-feet, it only happened yesterday. Because he had neither a beard nor a battle-axe, I decided he was an elf.

I stood my ground, eyeing the little bugger, waiting to see what was going to happen. Dom took me by the shoulder and said, “Lets walk away Dave. This isn’t worth it.”

Then the elf started to yell.

“I HAVE BEEN HAVING A REALLY SHITTY WEEK, AND I AM TRYING TO DE-STRESS BY HAVING A BATTLE IN THE FOREST WITH MY FRIENDS, IF THAT’S QUITE ALRIGHT WITH YOU!!!”

“Look man,” said Dom, “we’re just trying to have a little fun. We’re not being malicious.”

“Oh, fun, huh? Yeah. Well, it was funny the first few times you did this, but it stopped being funny MONTHS ago, so fuck off!”

Question answered.

Two more guys started coming toward us – though unlike the elf, they seemed a lot calmer. One put his hand on the elf’s shoulder, while the other one came around to talk to Dom. Paladins, probably – but maybe Bards. I forgot to ask.

The man who approached Dom identified himself as the president of the game society. He told us that indeed, people really do come out of the brush in similar fashion frequently, though some of them actually try and start real fights. He apologized but told us “it’s hard to tell whose joking and who wants trouble.”

The elf shouted a few things about his parents getting a divorce and his grandmother being sick. I bit my tongue and let him yell despite my temptation. His Bard friend now pulled on his shoulder and led him back into The Shire.

“I’m sorry for the confusion, but I really appreciate your enthusiasm,” said the president-Bard. “If you guys really want to join us, show up by the lake at noon next Sunday and you can battle with us. It would be great!”

“Can I wear my colander?” Dom asked.

“No, it has to be approved gear, but we have plenty that you can borrow.”

“What about my noble war-axe?” I asked, pulling out my spoon.

“No, but you can use this one if you like,” he said, pulling a dagger out of his boot.

In the background I could see the elf trying to find his sword in the brush. The Bard stood glaring at us and a few people fiddled with bows and arrows.

Etta, the birthday girl, and a few friends had been standing about 100 yards back watching the excitement. As we approached them Etta asked, “what happened?”

“They didn’t think it was funny!” I responded, feigning surprise.

“They should have been appreciative – we spent like 20 minutes planning that!” Dom told her.

“That’s like – four times as long as it took to plan the Iraq war!” I responded.

When we were almost back to the dorm, still in combat gear with weapons drawn, I turned around and, one last time – for good measure let out a war cry.

“TOTAL WAR!!!”

Photos from Backpacking

2008-04-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

Prague

Interlaken, Switzerland

Atop the Eiffel Tower

Paris

Inside Sigmund Freud's office. Vienna, Austria

On a bridge with Paris in the background.

Flowers in a park in Paris.

Amsterdam

Austria

Bruges, Belgium

At a gunnery post in Edinburgh Castle, Scotland.

Playing chess with Teri in Interlaken, Switzerland

My faithful travel buddies: Teri, Lauren and I in Berlin, Germany.

I AM CULTURAL REVOLUTION!!!!

2008-04-25T03:48:00.001-07:00

Okay, not really – but I have gotten Sam and Dom into watching baseball. Dom seems to actually be getting into it – while Sam seems to be enjoying hanging out with us and rooting for the other team. The three of us sit and watch it on my laptop, drinking beer, and as always, teasing each other unmercifully. Last night after Dom got some good zing in on Sam, Sam put on my catchers mask and announced “THIS IS NOT ONLY A PHYSICAL BARRIER BUT MY EMOTIONAL PROTECTION SHEILD!”

At this point, Dom smacked him across the front of the mask with my fielding glove. Sam kind of yelped and then said “BUT AT LEAST YOU DIDN’T HURT MY FEELINGS!”

Pictures of this whole ordeal are currently uploading…

I do feel I’ve done my part in sharing culture with the Brits though. Dom gave me rugby – I gave them baseball. And, conveniently, because neither country shows the other ones sports – I’ll probably never get to watch another rugby game again after I go home, and unless Dom buys the MLB.TV subscription, he’ll never see baseball again. Yay for media rights monopolies.

One of the most astonishing things I have learned since being over here is how little American History we actually learn in American schools. My mother can recited all of the American presidents Washington-Truman! (Truman was president when she learned this neat trick.) I’ve always thought of this as some cute oddity that only she could do. BUT ALL OF THE BRITS CAN DO IT TOO!!! What the hell!?!?

I’ve also realized I never learned anything about World War II, or WWI for that matter. My AP History class in high school started with Pearl Harbor and ended with the US single handedly defeating the Nazi’s, saving the Jews and then going headlong into fighting communism. Regan said his “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall” bit and there again, we single handedly defeated communism while the rest of the world cowered in our greatness.

I realize now how stupid this all is, but, when the American education system teaches you that, and nothing but that, you never have any reason to object. Seriously, from the time when they taught us that ‘the Indians were our friends and then they all decided to move to Canada,’ to ‘World War II was a war between the US and The Nazis… we’ve had not a moment of intervention where someone said ‘by the way, everything you have learned is bullshit.’

Granted, part of this “OMFG” is because Sam is an American History major. I know he’s going to know more about the history simply because of that, but it’s more that I’m amazed at how much they actually teach us in school is just blatantly wrong.

For the record, people in Europe give absolutely no credit to the US for the Berlin Wall falling. When we were in Berlin, and went on a “The History of Berlin” tour (Which was great, by the way) neither the US or Regan were mentioned once… oh, and apparently WWII was not a war between the US and the Nazi’s exclusively. (Okay… I already knew that, but I knew that because of what my parents and grandparents taught me – NOT because of what school did.)

Conclusion: my cultural awareness continues to expand. Horray!

I believe that’s all the story I have for now. I’ve got a lot of homework to do today, as we are hosting a baseball tournament against a bunch of different universities this weekend, including Oxford. Stories about that and our past few practices to come!

Thanks for reading!

(NOTE: The Weekly Brit has just reached it’s 100^th typed page.)

He lives to write again!

2008-04-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

Hellllloooooo faithful readers!

I apologize for the delay in my blogging. The reason I haven’t yet posted anything since I got home is feeling the pressure of the daunting task of writing down my entire month of backpacking. This caused me to go into “I’ll do it tomorrow…” mode. So, here’s what I’m going to do… I’m going to wait and do the month of travel part at another time. I took lots of notes while I was gone. Quite honestly, it was all memorable enough without notes and I PROMISE it’ll be up eventually, but it’s realistic to say it might not happen until I get back to the states.

Mom is coming to visit in a week. Maggie and Marja are coming on the 15^th of May. Pat is coming at – some point – in his traditional Pat fashion. I’ve got finals to study for, and a short story to make perfect in the next week.

But, I’m back! I promise! I’ll return to doing my normal “whats happening” blogs, and maybe if I have a slow day here and there, I will pound out a few words about the backpacking.

This is a long way of saying I’ll do what I can. It probably won’t be very well organized, but I’ve got this all on a word document on my computer, so, I will organize it when it’s complete.

After the month was over, we got to Amsterdam Schipol Airport, and flew back to London. Hopped the train to Norwich, and then got the bus from the station to the dorm. I turned my phone on and sent a text message to Dom, reading: “Crack the champagne, bitch! D-Funk-Robbins is back in town!” Dom sent me one back saying “I’ll chill the bubbly. Good to have you home.”

Now, I’m a fan of demanding people ‘crack the champagne’ for minor accomplishments. I don’t ever really mean it, and though I don’t think Dom believed I was serious… he indeed WAS chilling a bottle of champagne, and cracked it when I walked in. I felt very, very loved. Most of my 9 roommates were in the kitchen and they made a toast. It was a wonderful welcome home.

The next few days – hell – the rest of the week was almost entirely dedicated to resting, doing laundry, grocery shopping, oh yeah – and homework. I had an interesting experience in my fiction class.

The first story of the semester I turned in I turned in thinking “Yeah! This is bad ass!” I turned it in then emailed Mom a copy. I’ll break here to say that Mom is an excellent editor, and has been trying to prove to me for years that she won’t just say she likes something ‘because she’s my Mom.’ She proved it, once and for all with this story.

“Uhm… well, sweetie – at no point, anywhere in this entire story does it make any rational sense, resemble anything such as coherency, or have believable characters…” I took this criticism like a champ and IMMEDIETLEY got defensive and suggested that she just didn’t get ‘what I was going for.’ Well, the rest of my class thought it was pretty bad, also. But, the work shopping process succeeded, and I actually think the story turned into to one of the finest pieces of craft I’ve written.

So, I was suppose to turn in my second story of the semester the day I returned. I didn’t. I emailed the professor to inform him this wasn’t going to happen. He said this was fine but I needed to have one into him by Thursday AT THE LATEST. I pounded out 1,800 words, edited it a few times, sent it in. I was thinking “This is shit, this makes no sense.” I sent it to Mom.

“It’s really good…” says Mom.

“You’re just saying that because you’re my-”

“DON’T YOU DARE SAY I AM JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE I’M YOUR MOM! I WAS HONEST ABOUT YOUR LAST STORY, WASN’T I?!?”

Point taken.

“Okay… but… I think it sucks. How can it possibly be as good as you’re saying?”

She told me what she liked about it, and we agreed that I’d see what the workshop group said.

Even they liked it! Even the metal-head who writes about snapping people’s necks and kicking zombies in the face seemed to like it.

Conclusion: I’m a terrible judge of the quality of my own work.

Well, maybe. I think right now it’s apparent that I’m writing this when I’m tired. I need to get me some sleep. More stories soon. Thank you all for reading, and thank all 6 of you who emailed me and asked me when I would be blogging again. Yay for encouragement!

Back in England - Safe and Sound

2008-04-13T15:59:00.001-07:00

Hello readers!

I'm back in Norwich for the start of beautiful Spring! (Spring here means it's freezing cold, pouring rain, and I'm still wearing a down jacket. Joyous Joy!)

Just wanted to post that I'm back in one piece and had a great time. I'm not sure how I'm going to go about posting about the month of backpacking, and at the same time post about the current goings on... but I'll figure something out... it'll probably just be scattered...

I said in my last post that there wouldn't be any new ones until the 16th... simply becuase I knew then that I probably won't have a ton of time in the next few days... which I still don't.

So, sit tight! Plenty of stories to come!

No New Posts Until April 16th

2008-03-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hello Readers!

I'd like to take this chance to thank everyone who has been reading. Thank you for all of the comments below, the emails, the Facebook messages, the Myspace messages, the phone calls, the webcams and the presents in the mail!

Most of you would know I was lying if I said "I wouldn't be writing this if you weren't all reading it," because I would... but I wouldn't be having nearly as good of a time without all of the support from everyone!

This short post will be my last one until I get back from backpacking. I've been staying in London for the last 9 days. Thanks to everyone who has let me stay with them, and fed me!

I'm heading to Scotland in the morning, and going on my whirlwind 10 country tour from there. I'll have lots of pictures, lots of stories, and lots of posts when I return.

This will be my last post until April 16th. I'll be back and posting regularly by then!

A Perfect Little Day for a Raincoat

2008-03-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

“Live from the Laundrette” has already been used as a title twice. It seemed witty the first time, a nice chapter marker the second time but… I thought it would sound dumb for a third time. So, just for reference – I’m at the laundrette.

To my left are a boyfriend and girlfriend arguing in front of a dryer. He’s trying to “fold his shit” while she’s trying to “find her perfect little bra thing” and “throwin her shit all up over his shit.” She seems to think that if her “perfect little bra thing” doesn’t come out of the dryer stat, that some “shit” will happen. Meanwhile, in an attempt to make things worse he is grabbing her stuff and “chucking it on top of her shit,” so she doesn’t have a chance to “fold that shit.”

They’re Americans.

Before leaving for a month of back packing in less than 48 hours, I decided I needed to at least START the trip with clean clothes. I put in my suitcase what seemed to be “a sensible week’s” worth of clothing. While it all is getting washed, that sensible week’s worth of clothing is going to be cut in half and I’m going to just wear dirty clothes half the time. Score.

But really, who goes backpacking and has clean clothes to wear every day? My brother has gone back packing a few times and while we never directly discussed the laundry issue, I’m pretty sure he was not carrying with him “a sensible week’s worth of clothes.”

I don’t have very much to write today – so I’m going to tell you a story I’ve had on my mind for a few weeks that just hasn’t seemed to fit in with any other post I’ve written so far.

Before baseball practice season kicked of, I knew I needed some appropriate workout clothes. I also decided, being a catcher, I needed to get a cup. I headed into town with Sam, who knows all of the places that would sell such things. We find a store that has track pants and what have you, and then I find myself a nice cup for $6. (That thing only needed to save my unborn children once to pay for itself… and such it has done!)

Anyway, so I get the cup and ask Sam “how does the thing stay in place?” He tells me that my boxers will hold it there. Sam and I have done laundry together enough times for me to know that what he calls “boxers” are very different from what I call “boxers.” We debate about whether or not mine would hold them in place. Sam is sure they will. I inform him that unless this cup is capable of defying gravity, it’s not going to stay. We leave the sports store and head off in search of a place that sells what Sam calls boxers.

Sam informs me, “it doesn’t matter where you go. Underwear is expensive.” (My theory that important things are cheap in England, while unimportant things are expensive in England means that these Brits are freeballing it 90% of the time… unless my theory is incorrect, which is highly unlikely.)

So, we find a store that’s selling 3 pairs of what Sam calls boxers for $40, and though I truly believed we could find them cheaper some place else (like I don’t know… ANYWHERE!) Sam has a class to get to and I’ve got practice. I pay for them and we head back.

All works out fine with both the cup and the boxers. It wasn’t until I washed them the first time that I noticed the tag. This was a separate tag from the “instructions for laundering” tag. It’s bigger. The font is bigger and it reads “KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE.”

Something had to have happened somewhere along the line that made this tag a necessary edition to these incredibly expensive underwear. Did someone light their ass on fire then try to sue because there wasn’t a warning telling him not to? Are the underwear I have just purchased especially flammable?

Somewhere along the line there was a meeting. Professional people in suits sat down at a big long table and discussed the pros and cons of including a tag specifically to warn people to keep them away from fire. These hard-working men and women made a decision on this issue, and the decision was that this was an important addition to the underwear and I can only describe that with one word – amazing.

But that’s not all. I noticed shortly thereafter another addition. There was a small black sticker on 1 of the pairs. It was on the front of the underwear – front and center. Right in the middle of the action. It was a small, black, circular sticker that read only three small font words. “NEW AND IMPROVED!”

If only it had been screen printed...

No Clever Title

2008-03-10T17:38:00.000-07:00

See, the joy of having a perfect attendance record in one class, and only missing one session of the other means that if I don’t go to either of my classes tomorrow, no one is going to say “That damn David Robbins kid! Gar!”

I’ve been debating for about the last 2 hours whether or not I was actually going to get up at 9 a.m. tomorrow to go talk about Antony and Cleopatra. Answer: No.

I’ve only written 75 words and my eyes are already noticeably starting to droop. This is either going to be a very short post, or a very long one that makes less and less sense as it goes. But, I have a few stories, so here goes.

We had a party at Robbie’s house the Thursday before our away 2 away games against Windsor. (Robbie is the team captain.) It was suppose to be a “watching a baseball game from last season” meeting where we’d discuss strategy and drink beer except… we removed the strategy and in its place drank more beer… who saw THAT coming?

We had a blast. Robbie, a diehard Marlins fan decided to put on one of their games. (MLB.tv allows subscribers to watch every game from last year during the off and pre season.) He picked a game against the Mets, however, the first hour of this game was a rain delay. Though we were able to fast-forward, this resulted in about 5 minutes of fast-forward and vicious, bloodthirsty ridicule.

Since the replay included the rain-delay, it also included the commercials. The running commentary of American advertisements coming from British kids was the best part of the game. (I mean, it was the Marlins… and I already knew the score. Who cares how great Dan Uggla’s swing is. His last name is Uggla for a reason!)

I don’t carry a notebook with me on a regular basis. I take notes in my cell phone. If someone says something good and you whip out a notebook, it draws attention. Pull out your cell phone and start texting away, no one bats an eye. Save it to drafts, they’ll never know you’re listening like a journalist. All of these are quotes I wrote down during the evening.

During an SUV commercial: “You’ll never need a car this big. But you want one, because it looks fucking awesome!”

During a Pizza Hut commercial: “But a ridiculous amount of pizza, get a ridiculous amount of pizza free!”

Someone decided we should play a baseball related drinking game at one point. We toss around a lot of lame ideas and then for the 900^th time, a preview for some inspirational baseball movie called “The Final Season” is played. During this preview, Paul announces, “Guys, I’ve got it. We’ll watch The Final Season, and every time a father has an inspirational talk with his son whom he has become estranged from, and baseball is the thing that brings them together, everyone takes a drink!”

After the game ended we started flipping between channels on TV. We skip over some bizarre looking sport and I ask, “What is that?”

“That’s netball. Don’t the have netball in the states?”

“No.”

“Oh. It’s a lot like basketball except everyone is on ice skates… and they’re all blind folded.”

Everyone enjoys picking on the American.

The UEA Blue Sox won the first game on Saturday 14-6. In the second game we were losing 6-3 in the 4^th inning. The other team was at bat. With no outs, the bases were loaded, and it was pouring. The Blue Sox decided to cut their losses and call it a 6-3 loss instead of submit to the inevitable beating they were about to take.

I spent the weekend hunkered down in my room writing 2 essays, planning my Easter vacation, and making some moves in Fantasy Baseball. Some genius in my league dropped Paul Konerko to pick up Curt Schilling the day after the Red Sox made it very clear that Schillings career was over. Way to go, team stupid!

I’ve put in a waiver request to acquire Konerko.

Schilling being done means that drafting Clay Buchholz was a really good move. Today, Redsox.com referred to Jon Lester as the Ace for the 2008 season, as Josh Beckett is already struggling with a back injury.

After seeing his new title as the Ace of 2008, I checked to see if he was available, and he was. I have since dropped Mark Buehrle to make room for Lester from free agency. Even if Buehrle were to have a season better than any he’s ever had before, that’d put him at 16 wins. 16 wins is on the good end of mediocre. Boston would not be calling Jon Lester their new ace in March if they thought he was going to even be in the ballpark of mediocre. Passing up the opportunity to pick up this platinum prospect would be something I’d really regret later in the season if he performs even half as well as he should. Plus, if he doesn’t, there’s plenty of old duds like Buehrle sitting in the lukewarm pool of free agency.

I realize that this gives me 6 Red Sox players on my team, which goes slightly against my “I’m not letting my bias get in the way…” but they won the World Series! This is slightly different than a Royals fan having 5 Royals just because they like the good old blue and gold!

I’ve got Mike Lowell who kicked ass last year and is not showing signs of slowing down. I’ve got both of Boston’s center fielders, Crisp and Ellsbury. I’m waiting to see who they say will be their #1, at which point I will re-assess having both of them on my team. I’ve got Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester, and lastly, Jonathon Papelbon.

I’ve got a lot of prospects, possibly picking up Konerko, and I have 5 knock out relievers, 3 of whom I’m willing to trade. I think it’s fair to say this is going to be a good year for The Damn Bandits fantasy baseball.

I’ll keep the Weekly Brit updated on the trades, but for some reason, Fox Fantasy Baseball has trades disabled right now. I emailed them to complain and they responded saying it was a technical error that they were working to fix. I’ve never seen a technical error take a freaking week to fix, but then again it is Fox.

Fox is probably too busy doing voodoo magic on Barack Obama and having their sweatshop laborers turn enough of a profit to pay for Eliot Splitzer’s overdue balance. (The pictures from that story are heartbreaking. His poor wife! Poor thing should have made that asshole go apologize to the nation alone. She looks like she needs a hug.)

That wraps it up for this post. I will put up my full travel details of where I’ll be and when before I leave, but this might be my last post for a while. I will have my laptop for the first 10 days in London but I’m not bringing it with me after I head to Edinburgh on the 24^th.

Real and Fantasy Baseball

2008-03-05T13:29:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, I did not make the squad for our baseball game at Windsor. (I know I’ve been saying North Hampton the past few posts. I’m not sure where I got that. It’s Windsor though.)

As much as I’d love to go, I know it’s nothing personal. The team was only able to bring 12 guys. Part of it was how many guys the team we’re playing against said we were allowed to bring, part of it is that’s how many guys we could fit on a mini-bus.

I can say completely honestly, I know without doubt that there are at least 12 guys on the team who play better baseball than I do. I realized today I have been hoping and wishing that I’d get out there and play some amazing baseball and turn out to be this super stellar athlete, but as it is written in the genes of Robbins’ family males, such is not the case.

But I’m making friends, having a good time, and can say till the day I die that I played baseball in college. (Kind of like how I tell people I used to wrestle. No one ever asks “Yeah but did you suck at it and permanently ruin the cartilage in your left knee?”)

Practice, as usual, was a lot of fun. It was intense due to the game on Saturday. We went for a run, did infield and outfield drills, did base running drills (which would tire out a car), batting practice, the whole shebang. (We actually do almost all of that every time… there’s a set routine… it still seemed worth noting though.)

It is a lot of work. My legs are still tired. We are working for something, but everyone is there to have a good time.

There’s a lot of laughing. Robbie stands at shortstop, both playing and adding color commentary, making up statistics for everyone as they bat. During batting practice, where only a few balls made it out of the infield, the guy in right field decided to sit down in the grass and wave.

Surprise surprise to everyone blood related to me, I actually hit a ball! And got to first! Yeah, that’s right, I can run 90 feet sorta-kinda fast, but faster than it takes to throw the ball there. (Yeah. Eat it… every gym teacher I ever had!)

If you don’t follow Major League Baseball, don’t care about Major League Baseball, and won’t be entertained reading me WRITE about it, have a good evening. More posts to come soon.

I decided against doing a live draft for Fantasy Baseball this season. The time I had was when I’d be in Paris. It takes 7 hours to do. Both reasons alone eventually seemed good enough to not do it. So, I did an automated draft. Here’s who I got.

Batters:

· B. McCann

· M. Jacobs

· D. Uggla

· M. Lowell

· J. Peralta

· M. Ordonez

· H. Pence

· C. Crisp

· C. Blake

· B. Hall

Pitchers:

· C. Buchholz

· J. Peavy

· D. Willis

· J. Putz

· F. Rodriguez

· T. Saito

· J. Papelbon

· M. Mussina

· T. Hoffman

· M. Buerhle

· N. Lowry

Last night, putting Clay Buchholz anywhere on my list seemed like a strikingly good idea… but, I put him as like my 60^th player. (12 teams each picking one after another.) He was my 5^th round pick. NOW I’m thinking this was a wicked bad idea.

The Red Sox don’t even have him listed as a pitcher on the depth chart (either as a starter or a reliever), and his future is SOOO up in the air. There are 2 possible outcomes. Either I’m intuitively so baseball smart that this was just a bloody brilliant move, or at the end of the season I’m not going to make it to the playoffs because I wasted my 5^th round pick on some noob. (Judging by all 6 of my red sox jerseys, the fact that I follow it ferociously… and that I’m a baseball player (duh!), I’m kind of banking on it being the first one.)

You might have noticed in my pitching lineup that I have an uh-mazing bullpen. In the MLB’s top 10 releif pitchers list, I HAVE 5 OF THEM! HOLY CRAP! This is good for the time being, because I’m hoping to trade off at least 3 of them… but come the first game of the season this is going to be a huge problem.

Ups: I got Magglio Ordonez and Jake Peavy

Downs: My base stealing SUCKS, I have too many relief pitchers, and Coco Crisp might not even be a starter this season.

Roar!!

2008-03-05T04:19:00.001-08:00

Psyching up, pumping up, getting ready for our last practice before our game on Saturday, and before we find out who gets to PLAY on Saturday. Full post to come later today.

Spring Break and Baseball

2008-03-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

I have a ticket to London 10 days from now. They don’t call it Spring Break over here, no no… this country isn’t afraid of offending people for mentioning the fact that religion exists. This is Easter Break… and it last for A MONTH.

Thursday the 13^th UEA is hosting an early Saint Patrick’s day party. I’m hesitant to go, seeing as I’m already going to ANOTHER early Saint Patrick’s day event, and then going to real Saint Patrick’s Day. I’ll keep you updated on what I decide to do.

The night of Friday the 14^th is the American Embassy’s Saint Patrick’s Day celebration, where my flatmate Dom is has been invited to play bagpipes. He got me on the guest list shortly after he was invited to play. (Thanks, Dom!)

I’m going to spend a few days with Dom, then a few days with Dave (the buddy I stayed with the first time I went,) and then a few days with Sam. All 3 live in different parts of London, and have different things they want me to see. I’m also planning on going on a 2 day trips, 1 which will take me to Stonehenge, The Windsor Castle, and The Roman Baths. I’m also going to do one that takes me to Stratford on Avon, where Shakespeare is from.

After my roughly 10 days in London, I’m heading to Scotland for a few days, then flying to Dublin. My favorite poet, William Butler Yeats lived in Dublin. My favorite poem of his is titled “The Wild Swans at Coole” and while unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it all the way to Coole in a short time (or, affordably) I’m excited to see where he lived, and pay homage to one of the two writers to inspire me to become a writer.

From Dublin, I’m flying to Paris – by myself. I’m really excited about this bit. I don’t speak a word of French (Though my friend Ross did tell me how to say “I’m Canadian,” in case I get in any trouble.) I’m either going to starve to death or leave after a few days with a few phrases of French I know how to say.

And things are just STARTING to get exciting! After Paris I’m meeting up in Switzerland with my UofA travel buddy, Teri, and her friend Lauren. Teri being awesome planned this WHOLE trip, hostels and everything, and after doing all the hard work invited me to come along. I’m very grateful. From Switzerland, we’re going to Lictenstine, Vienna, Prague, Vineberg, Berlin, Bruges, Belgium; Brussels, Amsterdam, and then flying back to London and getting back to UEA.

I’m not risking bringing my laptop, so there won’t be any substantial posts while I’m gone. However, I’ll be hitting up internet Café’s to check my email so I’ll probably put up small ones. Every year for the past 4 years someone has invited me to do something really, really cool during spring break and I’ve had to turn it down because I didn’t have enough money. I told myself that it would pay off, because eventually I’d go on a trip SO MUCH COOLER that it’d be worth only getting to do once.

Well hot damn, I’m glad I kept THAT promise to myself, otherwise I’d have been pissed!

Baseball practices have been going well. We’ve got our first game @ North Hampton on Saturday. But, only 13 people can go. (Not totally understanding why, but it is indeed so.) So, tomorrow is our final evaluation practice, after which they will tell us who gets to travel to North Hampton and play for UEA and who has to stay home…

Conveniently, my catchers mask, glove, and batting gloves arrived in the mail today. (Thanks Dad!) So for our last evaluation practice, I get to look like hot shit and stop missing easy catches because of using a lousy glove.

Of course, I will let you know tomorrow whether or not I get picked to travel to North Hampton.

And with that, I leave you!

The Big Red Chair

2008-03-02T09:35:00.001-08:00

During my sophomore year, back at the UofA I took intro to writing poetry. English 209. This class was taught by Professor Steve Orlen, who is exactly what I visualize when I close my eyes and think of a poet.

He was completely out of his mind, but he knew what he was talking about. He knew it so well that I’m sure his lessons only got stronger as he got crazier.

On the first day of our lecture, he blindfolded all of us. 100 people in the class, I kid you not. All of us blindfolded. Then he told us, without taking off the blindfolds, to get out a piece of paper and a pencil. When that was done, he turned off the lights and told us to write poetry. Really. That simple. He turned off the lights and said, “Write poetry.”

But then Professor Orlen started yelling. He wasn’t yelling at us, he was yelling to us. He was yelling things like “VACCUM CLEANER, USED CAR SALESMEN, GARBAGE DISPOSAL, WHEEL BARREL, OAK TREES, BARNUM AND BAILEYS CIRCUS, JUMP ROPE, JUMP ROPE, JUMP ROPE!!!” This went on for about 10 minutes, and then he yelled “HAAAALT!!!!”

Blind folds off.

Lights on.

“Now,” he said softly. “I want you to take every abstraction, and write in its place, “THE BIG RED CHAIR.”

So, we go through and change every feeling-word to the phrase “THE BIG RED CHAIR,” and then he asks us to read them to ourselves. When we finish that, he says we may leave. Inevitably, someone asked “What was the point of that?”

To which he responded:

“When you understand that – then you’ll be a poet.”

Every once and a while I have a mental explosion that, when it settles, a bunch of things I’ve learned all have become incredibly clear. I still don’t understand the big red chair exercise, but I had one of those mental explosions this week.

My first short story of the semester was due this past Friday. Professor Henry Sutton said at the beginning of the class that it MUST be a complete story, and it absolutely must fall in the word limit he gave us. (between 1,350 and 1,650 words). 1,650 words is an incredibly short number of words with which to tell a complete story. The shortest story I’ve written in my college career prior to this one was 3,338. To give you an example, in this post you have so far read 413 words.

The draft I had the class workshop fell within range. But as many rough drafts are, it was ROUGH. It didn’t make sense. It was very, very fragmented. I figured out what was happening as it went. This is very normal, but I didn’t go through and sand down the edges well at all. I decided I needed to completely re-write the story for this draft. When I finished writing it, it was 2,400 words. I felt very panicked. It did everything it needed to. It told a good story, made sense, had good characters. But it was 750 words too long.

Slowly but surely, I made it shorter. I started by cutting out short sentences, and bits of sentences. I re-wrote descriptions to make them more concise. By the time I got to 1,850, there was nothing more I could do but go through and take out individual words. It was in the middle of finding individual words to take out that I had one of these mental explosions.

I don’t remember who said it, but for sake of loyalty I’m going to credit it to William Butler Yeats. He said that in both fiction and poetry, every word must be able to stand alone as art.

Every single word in that story was individually selected, hand crafted, and inserted as art on its own. Every single word was re-considered and it’s value appraised as I decided whether or not to keep it or cut it. Every phrase was read aloud to hear that it flowed smoothly and to assure that there was nothing superfluous. The plot of this story is not my favorite of the ones I’ve told, or the ones I’m working on but the craft, style and composition of this story is by far the best thing I have ever written.

The mental explosion was not simply the satisfaction that I’d written one of my best pieces to date, but that for the first time I had felt the process of turning every single word on the page into art an of it’s own.

I have yet to write about feeling homesick in this blog. At the point when I wrote “I haven’t felt a lick of homesickness” I wasn’t lying, but it would be lying to say that I still haven’t. The reason I’ve chosen to not write about it is that it has come and gone each time before I had a chance to write it down, but now is my chance to tell.

I certainly have felt homesick. I do feel homesick as I’m writing this. I felt homesick on the train into London last weekend. It comes in two ways and from two different parts of me. The first one is that everything is so new to me all the time. I was talking to Mom on the phone the other day and said to her that I miss using US currency. It’s little things like that. Money doesn’t feel the same, doesn’t look the same. I still have to convert it to US currency in my head before I buy anything.

I miss food at restaurants not being so damn expensive too. Not only that, but I miss the familiar restaurants. I miss my local Thai restaurant on Grant and Campbell where they know me by name: but not as Dave, but instead as “No Soy.”

I miss the weather. I know I’ve spent the last 9 years whining about how hot it always is in Arizona, and how I wished it rained more… I truly thought I could come to a place where it was always raining, and I would feel the excitement I feel in Arizona when it rains, but feel it every day. I honestly do miss the days on end sunshine. In my pile of stuff I kept by the door, (keys, wallet, phone) my sunglasses used to be one of the essentials. Right now, I’m not even sure where they are because I haven’t needed them more than a handful of times since I arrived.

I miss the people I got so used to being with so consistently. I still have the key to Pat’s front door on my key ring here and I miss using it! I miss going over to Kate and Rachel’s apartment to watch the Daily Show at 11 p.m., accidentally falling asleep on the couch and then getting to have breakfast with them in the morning.

And lastly on the familiarity front, I miss the little mischievous fuzzball who stands on the toilet seat and pounces at the shower curtain while I’m bathing, and licks my shoulder while I sleep.

This is the picture I currently have set as the wallpaper on my computer.

The second front on which I’m feeling homesick is the reality that the house really isn’t going to be the same, if even still ours, when I get home. Dad sent me 28 close-up photos of my room about a week ago and asked if I could go through them and tell him what to keep and what to throw away. I couldn’t just tell him what TO throw away without mentioning what not too. The response to the pictures, for the most part was, a history of the things I wanted to keep. “That blanket is the one I had on my bed in Manchester from the day I got out of a crib until the day we moved to Arizona.” “That yellow box contains every note and memento every girl I dated in high school ever gave me.” “That pile of wood nailed together is a sailboat we made together when I was in kindergarten…”

I told the stories of the lead action figures from Nanny and Poppy, bronze piggy banks from Grandma and Grandpa, porcelain dogs and puppies Mom had when she was a little girl. I told him my memories of souvenirs he would bring me when he first started going on business trips when I was little.

I sent Dad this email this morning and within an hour got a call from him. I really didn’t think the emotion I was feeling while documenting everything important to me would come through in the writing but it clearly did. He told me he laughed through parts of it and had tears in his eyes through others. The way he put it was that the story behind everything in my room was the history of my life, which I think is a very accurate description.

I have very mixed feelings about not being there for this. I have very mixed feelings about everything the separation of our family has brought in the last few years. When I stay in that house, it is so easy to feel the bad memories and forget the good ones that did occur, but there really are plenty of good ones. The fact that even a small part of me wishes I could be present for the final dismantling of the home that the 4 of us once shared seems to be a good sign that once this is all over and done with, I will think fondly of the years I grew in that house.

Breaking News Update!

2008-02-27T02:32:00.000-08:00

Okay... not really...

We had an earthquake last night! I had literally just pressed "Publish Post" for the post below and then ::wobble wobble wobble:: I think "Hmm... what was that..." then two of the other bedroom doors in the flat open. Jamie and Maria stick their heads out and say "WHAT WAS THAT?!"

Scientific mumbojumbo about The Weekly Brit's first earthquake!

CNN talks about The Weekly Brit's first earthquake!

I'm only this excited because I've never felt one before.

Also! Check out the previous post, Live from the Laundrette! It's new and exciting!

Live from the Launderette!

2008-02-26T16:33:00.000-08:00

Just sitting here, reading on my laptop, minding my own business and then a girl comes along, sits down, places a can of orange soda in between the two of us and before I have time to finish the thought “That’s going to spill,” it does. No apology. She just picks it up, leans over my laptop and tosses the can in the direction of the garbage.

Ah yes, my butt is wet and sticky. This gives literal meaning to the phrase: “Dave has a sweet ass!”

First things first! #10 on the UEA Bluesox was taken, so I am officially #33!

This past weekend I went into London again - this time with my Arizona-friend Teri. It was a different experience than going and staying with someone who already lived there. Going with another tourist as a tourist certainly leads to seeing and doing more. So now in my two trips I’ve seen what London is like for a local college student, and seen it as a tourist.

This weekend we saw Portobello Road, which, according to Wikipedia the worlds largest antiques marketplace. According to Dave, it was an outdoor Walmart selling everything from “1800’s leather boxing equipment” for $10 and WWII Rolex watches stolen off the wrist of Adolph Hitler himself for only $5! Nothing like authentic jewelry. They also had a nice selection of “I Heart London” shirts, soccer jerseys, and boom boxes playing American rap music. (Nothing says antiques marketplace like “I’m Slim Shady, the real Slim Shady…”!)

After Portobello Road we made our way over to Buckingham Palace and watched the changing of the guard. I got a metric ton of good pictures all courtesy of my background in journalism. (Rule of thumb: If you do something you absolutely know you’re not suppose to get a good picture, and stop the second a police officer tells you to, and plead ignorance, MOST OF THE TIME you won’t get arrested.) Done and done!

People were pushing their way up to the big gate surrounding the palace during the ceremony. Pushing became over rated and people started pulling themselves up ONTO the gate and taking pictures through it. When I say “people” I mean, probably 25 people were already up on the gate prior to me deciding to do this. Cops and guards were everywhere. No one had been extracted or yelled at, yet so I figured I’d hop up.

Clearly, this happens every time and they have a set point in the ceremony where this is no longer allowed, because all at once (about 5 minutes before the end) the cops started telling everyone to get down… and we did. (Well, I did at least. A few didn’t, and they were not shot at which I was somewhat disappointed about…)

After that we headed to a restaurant called Wagamama’s. Teri had heard about it and seemed really excited about going, and despite the fact that it was a Japanese noodle restaurant, and I assumed there wouldn’t be anything I could eat there that I wouldn’t have an allergic reaction, I decided to be a good sport and go. Last time I made this decision, I ended up getting free dinner at “Tucson’s Authentic Japanese Cuisine” called something like Itchyballsaq who informed me not only that there was both MSG and Soy in EVERYTHING ON THE MENU, but that they also pre cooked all of their food a few days in advance and the kitchen closes when the restaurant opens. They re opened the kitchen and put some chicken in a frying pan and fed me for free, because no one likes a kid with food allergies and hunger related angst!

Anyway, unless there are some extraordinary circumstances before I leave, Wagamama’s will win The Weekly Brit’s Travel Award for Most Allergy Friendly Restaurant Ever! I meekly said “I have an allergy to soy and MSG… is there anything you can prepare without those?” Our waitress pats my shoulder and says “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” (This is usually the precursor to “No.”) Instead, she went and fetched me a menu specifically for my people! A whole menu just for people allergic to Soy and MSG!!! I was very excited. That must have been how Moses felt after wandering through the desert for 40 years and then matzo fell from the sky. (Or something like that.)

21 years in a world of MSG and Soy in everything from Ice Cream to Turkey and finally, my day has come! My people are recognized!

After wonderful food with wonderful service and no allergic reaction, we headed off to The National Gallery. I’m not much of an art nut, and though I enjoyed it I fear I’ll sound less and less intelligent the more I say about it… but there was a bunch of stuff by Da Vinci , and Monet.

After this we took pictures of ourselves on the big lion statues in Trafalgar square. 900 small children had no problem pulling themselves up onto the lions back, but a full grown adult (yeah… me…) could barley hump my way past it’s tail. Instead I pulled myself up into its paws and got pictures there. (They’re below. Lottsa pictures in this post.)

Finishing Trafalgar Square, we headed back to Teri’s aunts house where we both immediately dozed off on the two couches in the living room. After nap time, we played a rousing game of “Life,” and then had dinner.

Sunday we got up early again and headed out to The Tate Modern (museum of art). I was bumbed that the National Gallery had nothing by Renee Magritte, and Teri was determined to find me some. (Unfortunately, they didn’t either, those bastards!) but it was still a cool museum. Her guidebook said for BOTH The Tate and the National Gallery to allow yourself TWO FULL DAYS DEDICATED TO THE MUSEUMS. We did both in record time. The National Gallery in under 2 hours and the Tate in under 1.

After The Tate we saw The Globe Theater. By “saw” I mean we walked past and acknowledged it was there. Here’s why. It’s not the real Globe. It’s not in the same location as the real Globe. It’s not even CLOSE to it. And, even without seeing a show, it cost $25 to go inside. Done and done!

And then it was time to go to Hogwarts… or at least try our hardest! To Kings Cross Station! Platform 9 ¾!!!

So, I’ve been to platform 9 ¾. Don’t make a trip to England just for that, for God’s sake. Apparently a bunch of stupid kids kept slamming carts into the wall between the real platform’s 9 and 10 and did something like $140,000 in damage, so Kings Cross station now has a separate little area (with a cart cemented into the wall) for you to take your picture.

Some Harry Potter facts: Harry Potter 1 was actually titled “Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone” over here in England. They changed the name before taking it to America. Also, according to the family we were staying with, the scenes in the Harry Potter movies were actually filmed in London Paddington Station, rather than at Kings Cross.

After Kings Cross, it was off to Hamleys: the greatest toy store in the world. I’ve never been in the FAO Schwarz in New York, but I get the feeling these two stores would get into a fist fight if they were any closer. (And seeing as FAO has gone bankrupt twice in the last 6 years, I’m assuming Hamleys would win.)

Anyway, it was wicked cool. I don’t care how old I get: an entire room dedicated to Thomas the Tank Engine will always get the same reaction out of me - pure, unadulterated joy. I didn’t buy a Thomas tank engine, but I did come damn close.

In this day and age where the Power Rangers are in outer space and Garfield and Friends is no longer aired, I was glad to see that Thomas has remained relatively unchanged. They’ve ditched the name “Shining Time Station” and are just calling it “Thomas the Tank Engine.” It also appears in the last 14 years while I have not been paying attention, Thomas has made friends with both an airplane and a helicopter. It also appears that Sir Topham Hatt has disappeared, but come on… does that really surprise anyone? Who wore a top hat 24/7 in 1989?

After Hamleys it was time for lunch, and then time for going home.

I took the train from London Liverpool Street to Ipswich, and then boarded a bus from Ipswich to Norwich.

I was sitting reading when a man sat down next to me. It only took a few minutes before he started talking to me. He seemed nice enough. He gave me a piece of chewing gum and told me about his family. I was bored too and probably would have been the one to start a conversation had I not had a book with me. I thought nothing of it… yet…

I tell him about my weekend in London. I don’t mention Teri specifically but refer frequently to “we.” He says “are you with the other Americans on this bus?” he asks.

“No, I was with a friend. She doesn’t have class till Thursday but I’ve got to be back tomorrow.”

“So you’re alone?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“How are you getting back to the University?”

“I have a bus pass.”

“Oh, don’t take the bus. I can give you a ride home if you’d like.”

This offer surprised me, however, I’ve made the same offers before. I’ve seen drunk girls wandering around my apartment complex, walking in circles and bumping into cars at 3 in the morning when I’ve been driving in. My logic is that if they’re drunk enough to not realize getting into a strangers car is a terrible idea, then I’m saving them a lot of agony by taking advantage of their judgment only to make sure they get where they’re going safely. (Only once have I given one a ride back. Every other time they’ve been sober enough to tell me no.) Back to the action!

“That’s very nice of you, but I really don’t mind taking the bus,” I tell him.

“I’m not trying to rob you or nothing,” he says, and I’m officially creeped out.

“It’s really alright, I already paid the 130 pounds for it, I might as well get my moneys worth, right?” I say, trying to match his jovial tone of “I’m not trying to rob you!”

My hope that this is just a kind fellow like myself trying to help a stranger disappears completely. He doesn’t let it go. I keep my cool the entire time, deciding that if this guy really is dangerous that offending him will serve me no purpose. I continue kindly refusing.

But he keeps pushing. He keeps asking. He even starts asking me what my reason for not wanting him to give me a ride home is. I continue telling him I’ve already paid for my pass, I’d like to use it so I get my moneys worth.

We start to pull into the station and he tells me he needs to call “the ride” and see when they’ll be there to pick “us” up.

Very slowly, I reach into the bottom of my camera bag, feel for my knife, push it into my sleeve so he can’t see it, then drop it into my side pocket so it’s easier to get to if I need it. He watches my hand the entire time. I’m sure he’s seen the knife and fleetingly feel bad that I’ve offended this extra-friendly super-creepy man. However, being extra-friendly myself, I know that if I saw someone reach for a knife in response to my kindness, I’d back the hell off.

“Look how hard it’s raining, let me give you a ride.”

“No thank you sir,” I say as I start to get off the bus. I’m walking quickly, he’s following faster.

“I can get your luggage for you, which bag is yours?” he asks as we get to the luggage thing below the bus. I grab my backpack, throw it over my shoulder and mutter “this one,” as I walk away. I go sit down at the #25 bus stop. (It’s well lighted, has benches, is covered from the rain, and there’s about 5 other people there.)

A few minutes go by and he leaves me alone. I assume he’s left. I’m sitting reading when he walks back up to me.

“David, the car is here. Let’s go,” he says forcefully.

“Sir, no thank you. I’d rather take the bus,” I say without looking up from my book.

“But it’s cold and raining. I’ll worry you’ll catch a cold. I’d feel better if you let me give you a ride home,” he says, though his kind sounding voice has gotten creepier and sounds meaner.

“No thank you. This jacket is very warm,” still gazing at the book.

“Look at the schedule! You’ll have to wait another 22 minutes before the bus even gets here. You’d be home in that time if you let me give you a ride.”

“No thank you,” now watching his feet.

He pauses.

“Alright. David? The car is leaving. Now, let’s go.”

“NO!” I respond much more forcefully as I’m now looking at his face.

We glare at each other for a second. He takes a step towards me. I stand up quickly. Left hand out, right hand in pocket gripping the handle of the knife. He looks puzzled, and makes another motion towards me. Before I wait to figure out what this motion is I take a step towards him, grab and shake his left hand with mine and say “Thank you for your offer. Goodbye.”

He goes away at this point.

Finally I get on the bus and realize something. I didn’t actually see where he went. He could have just gone back into the parking lot and waited for me to get on the bus. There’s only 1 bus to the university every half hour at that time on Sunday. There are only 3 stops I could be getting off at. Shit.

I call three of my friends, none of whom could meet me at the stop for various reasons. I don’t have campus security’s number in my phone, and don’t want to call 999 (their equivalent of 911) so I just quickly, in the best, scariest posture I can muster walk back to my dorm, still holding the knife handle in my pocket.

Thankfully, this is the kind of story that is exciting to read because of the story, not the surprise ending. Nothing happened on my way home, and nothing has happened since… though much to my surprise, my flat mates who I thought would tease me about getting so freaked out all had the same reaction of “Don’t talk to ANYONE in Ipswich. Ever.” Apparently it’s notorious for bad things of that sort happening.

I also realized that when you have to take a train to Ipswich and a bus home because the rails are being worked on, they don’t check your ticket to get onto the bus, just to be polite. So, creeper in Ipswich could have just hopped on looking for someone to… well… in his own words… rob.

After my post from Day 1 of being here, thinking I almost got robbed blind in Heathrow Airport, I commented that I’d learned my lesson and wouldn’t let my guard down like that again. I can safely say I proved that right, but I hope I don’t have to again.

Me in the paws of the lion at Trafalgar Square.

Teri, my loyal travel buddy, also in the paws of the lion!

Beginning my education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Intently playing with a race car at Hamleys Toy Store.

Pure, unadulterated joy! Thomas The Tank Engine!!!

More tank engine excitement.

Teri is praying by this rocking horse because IT COSTS $3,000!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!

Look guys! This is almost as big as my bedroom in ManziMo was!

WANT TO SEE MORE PICTURES FROM LONDON? CLICK HERE!
(You DO NOT need a Facebook account to access this album!)

The Baseball Diaries Part I: Sweating and Shivering

2008-02-21T05:46:00.000-08:00

Play ball!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a no kidding around baseball team.

Spring training started yesterday. This was the first official practice of the season, though the guys have been getting together and having “unofficial” practices all semester. I’m definitely not in prime shape, but I feel confident that I could come home from England in better shape than I was in when I was 15, before the slue of 2 injuries and a hospitalization that kept me from working out for 3 years. (And, though there is no possible way I’ll be able to continue with baseball when I get back, I’m already psyched to get back into boxing training when I get home! Roar!)

The first practice was yesterday. It was intense. It was real. These guys are taking this very seriously, and so am I. We started by playing catch for about 40 minutes and then went for a run. After the run we stretched and then broke off into two groups – infield and outfield. Regardless of what position you play, or WANT to play, everyone is doing everything. I started off in the infield group.

Our coach, whose name I cannot remember, played baseball at Cambridge University and is now a fire fighter. He asked me “what’s your preferred position?” “Catcher,” I reply. He chuckles, noticing I’m wearing a catchers mitt and says “how come I knew that… Well, if you’re the catcher, you don’t need to field ground balls right now.” So, he hands me a ball and a bat and asks if I can hit some ground balls for people to field. I throw one ball up and hit it – line drive over everyone’s head (pure luck). “A little lower!” he yells. This doesn’t work all to well, and after I’ve missed the ball twice he says “Just throw grounders then.”

He runs through instructions on fielding ground balls (which, though I was far away I was listening to intently because I probably needed the practice) he comes back to where I am and starts hitting grounders with the bat. “Alright catcher, catch!” he says, and instructs the guys fielding them to throw them back to me.

After one hits me in the shin, two fly over my head, and another hits my wrist hard enough to break the skin he yells out “You need to AIM. It doesn’t matter if you get to it if you throw it away!” He then informs them for EVERY BALL that I don’t catch, the person who threw it to me has to do 5 push-ups. Way to not put any pressure on me!

He wasn’t a dick about it at all though. If I just dropped it they didn’t have to… it was more the ones that were thrown 25 feet to my right and 15 feet above my head that earned push-ups. (And I still had to chase the hell after them, so I got my exercise in just fine.)

Then we did outfield drills. The team has JUST enough mitts for everyone, but the more senior members of the team got the better ones (simply because I didn’t want to be the new guy who went and grabbed the good mitt from one of the pitchers). So, I started out taking pop-flys in the outfield with the brand new (and not broken in) catchers mitt. That didn’t go very well. One of the pitchers quickly realized that all of the balls I was safely under were popping out of my glove BECAUSE of the glove, rather than my ability. So, we traded gloves, which went better.

Now, I’ve watched enough baseball to hear people say this 8,000,000 times. Let’s say there’s a really high pop fly that happens to be on a B-line to where the center fielder was already standing. It’s a fat, fly ball. The fielder pulls out “War and Peace,” reads the first 9 chapters, then takes a nap, and wakes up and catches it. People watch that and say “HE MAKES THAT LOOK SO EASY!!!” Catching a fat fly ball coming RIGHT to you, where you don’t even have to take a step IS really easy. Happened 3 times yesterday, I caught all 3.

The difficult thing about catching a fly ball is tracking it. This tiny white object is moving at incredible speed across a background of white clouds. You can see what direction it’s heading just fine, but how far away it is and how fast it’s going is difficult.

In professional baseball, if there’s a high fly ball to 2^nd base, the center fielder is suppose to back up the 2^nd basemen – he’s got to book it from center to 2^nd before the 2^nd basemen gets it, and be behind him when he does. Here’s how this probably started.

Back in 1800-whatever when major league baseball was first established, Sparky McCenterfielder saw the ball flying towards second and ran towards it because he couldn’t tell how far away it was. It sure LOOKED LIKE it was coming right to him. Someone teasingly asked him “Sparky! WTF, mate? The ball was like 200 feet in front of you!” Sparky, now embarrassed, smacks the person teasing him and says “I was… uhh… backing up the 2^nd basemen, you ninny!” and then everyone did this because they didn’t want to be out shined by Sparky. Stay tuned for more installments of “the interpretive history of Major League Baseball.”

After finishing outfield drills it was time for a scrimmage match, and for one of the teams: I got to be the catcher! Like, for real! Mask, chest protector, leg protector, mitt! I was the rock behind the plate!

As excited as I was, there was an immediate “oh shit…” It was probably 40* out this entire time. You could see our breath so clearly this looked like a meeting of the UEA Cigarette club. But, running around for 2 hours prior I was drenched in sweat… which was cooling my skin enough to cause me to be shivering. But this was my chance, nothing was going to stop me!

I suited up and squatted down behind home plate and the game started. My legs started shaking immediately. After 2 hours of running laps and chasing balls, having 197 pounds of weight being supported entirely by my quadriceps wasn’t what my body had in mind. But I toughed it out; this was no time for whining or wussing out!

I honestly can’t say how well I did. The pitcher I was catching for threw more wild pitches than the other pitcher (who was being caught by a guy named Chris, who everyone calls Stonewall… an appropriate name for a good catcher.) I was really tired, and my reflexes for diving out of my squat to catch a wild pitch a foot and a half off to my right were shot. But, I was catching! It was amazing. My dreams of being a little league catcher at 8 years old re-lived! My fantasies of becoming Jason Varitek accomplished! (well, not accomplished… but we’re on that path.) I can comfortably say that Stonewall would have caught better than me even if we were catching the same pitches, and we weren’t cold… but I still think I’d have done a lot better than I did yesterday.

As for batting, I took a walk on my first at bat, and got safely to third after that. I was tagged out at home on the second out, with bases loaded, after I stopped at third but the guy behind me kept going. He was caught in a pickle and with me touching third, all they needed to do was tag second to get him out, so I took off towards home hoping they’d be so caught up with the pickle, that they wouldn’t notice. But, of course they did, and I got tagged out by a good 4 steps. (Didn’t I mention in a previous post something about my ability to be stealthy?) Someone started yelling “slide” when the catcher had the ball but I knew that that would just result in me going from RUN mode to SIT mode and I wouldn’t make contact with the plate, even after the catch.

The whole thing was a blast. If Stonewall indeed got that nickname for being a catcher, than I think it’s very unlikely I’ll be able to work myself up to being the starting catcher this season. But, I say this with total sincerity; I’m just thrilled to be doing this. We’re playing between 5-7 games this entire season, and we practice 3 days a week. After 2 weeks of practice, I’ll have already had more time on the field catching than I would if I were to start every single game all season. And I do get to catch every practice.

I get to be the rock behind the plate! I get to wear the mask! I get to play baseball!

I'm a College Baseball Player

2008-02-19T04:44:00.000-08:00

I'm a college baseball player. I play for the University of East Anglia. Damn right!

Two of my flatmates play for UEA teams. Dominic plays UEA Rugby, and Sam plays UEA Squash. I mentioned wanting to join the baseball team shortly after getting here, but saw that they have 4 practices a week for 2 hours each. This conversation got brought up again at dinner last night.

“What are the practices like?” I ask Sam, about squash.

“We play squash for a few hours…”

“When do you do weight lifting?”

“Never…”

“Do you have running days?”

“No… where did you get that idea?”

Of the six days a week the UofA club team practices, 3 days they just do weight lifting, 2 hours of running two other days (The rest they play ball), and then 1 day a week is dedicated to playing.

Apparently that’s not the case here. Practices are entirely playing the game, with all sports offered.

“And you don’t even have to go. I’m a captain of the squash team and I only show up half the time and no one cares.”

I didn’t even have that leisure in little league! Mom was always like “Honey, you made a commitment and your team is relying on you!” Damn right! I kept the bees of Masconomo Park in good shape by running away from them, all while hoping to God the ball never came my way!

So, Sam directed me to where I can go to sign up for this last night, and I figured I’d mention it in my putting pictures up blog. I went to the office today and said “I want to sign up for baseball” and they give me that awesome “Oh, you’re an American!” look I’m growing both used to and fond of, and then they gave me an email address.

I emailed the captain of the team, who emailed be back really quickly sounding very excited that I already know so much about the game. So, it's official, I'm a college baseball player.

If I can’t be number 10, then 33 will work if I can have a “C” on the front of my jersey… and if both are taken I’ll just befriend #10, get them drunk and steal their jersey. (Oh and I said “them” because all the teams at UEA are co-ed, so not only will I get to play baseball but I’ll get to meet girls! Do I really have to go back to UofA in the fall?)

In other news, Cambridge University was very cool. The entire story of the day can be told through the pictures from the post below this one. I must say though: Cambridge University is not making its money giving campus tours! A lot of the campus was closed off to anyone but students, including their central library, which was a bumber. But, we got to go see the “Cambridge University Press” bookstore where pretty much every textbook I have ever used lives.

This coming weekend I’m heading back into London, with a friend from the UofA, Teri. I’m going to do some more in depth sight seeing – like going into all the pretty museums I took pictures of from the outside last time. Also, Teri has family living in London who offered free food and housing for six. I am very grateful for the opportunity (thanks Teri!)

Yeah, so uhh… I definitely feel like I should have some more exciting stories but that’s about it… two promises of more exciting stories to come.

MLB Spring Training games start in 8 days!!! Baseball season has returned!!! And, because I’m a “Loyal MLB Supporter” (which is code for “You give us your money every year”) I get to watch all of the spring training games online, commercial free (though I probably won’t… because I’ll be doing much cooler things.) My fantasy baseball team (The Damn Bandits) is drafting in 29 days, going for their second world series title in 4 years.

Lastly, Andy Pettite has admitted to being lying scum cheater who licked HGH off of Roger Clemens cleats. Eat it Clemens - big asterisk next to all 7 of your Cy Young Awards!

Note: I will try to keep my baseball rants to a minimum as the season starts… key word being try.

Pictures from my trip to Cambridge

2008-02-18T14:55:00.000-08:00

"Oh my God, this carrot doesn't have enough chocolate in it! I'm gunna die!" - Me about 3 minutes ago.

The link below will take you to pictures from my trip to Cambridge University this past Saturday. I'm heading to London with one of my UofA colleagues this weekend so I'll have a bunch more pictures of that soon.

Look for a story-post tomorrow or Wednesday.

Sneak preview: The University of East Anglia has a baseball team? Is Dave trying out? Has he already joined?!? Find out soon!

CLICK HERE FOR PICTURES OF CAMBRIDGE

A Dirty Martini with a Splash of Raging-Dickhead, Please.

2008-02-14T08:07:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines Day!

Susan, Juliette and I went out for cocktails last night. They wanted to go see “Juno” but decided within 8 seconds of ordering their first drink that they’d rather just drink instead. I had gone along knowing this would happen, and even though they said we’d only be there for about 20 minutes, I went expecting dinner… and dinner I got!

We staked ourselves out at a table and though the place was not busy, I thought it made sense for someone to stay at the table, so I let the girls go fetch their beverages first. (They came back with a pitcher of blue stuff and vodka.)

This is only the second time I’ve been to a Norwich bar that was in no way affiliated with school (which, a ton of them are). I figure I’ll order something snazzy to show off a bit and feel like hot shit. I’ve never had a dirty martini, but my sister tells me they’re good so I figure I’ll give one of those a try.

I go up to the bar and am greeted by a fat guy who doesn’t ask what I want, just stares at me.

“A dirty martini, please.”

“A what?”

Come on… seriously?

“A uhh… a martini.”

I figured at this point since I don’t know what makes a martini dirty… I’ll just order a normal one… because I know what’s in those.

“Like… a sweet martini?” guy asks, looking at me like I’m an idiot.

“Sure.”

He pours an ounce of some brown liquid into a highball glass and hands it to me.

“This… isn’t what I ordered.”

“This is a Rossi. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“No…”

“Well what did you want?”

“A martini…” (Going back to my previously “seriously?” apparently the answer was yes.)

“Okay… and what did you want IN your martini” guy asks, starting to get pissy. I try and keep my cool.

“Vodka… vermouth… in a martini glass.”

“That’s not what you said you wanted,” says guy.

He grabs the “Rossi” out of my hand and slams it down on the bar. Now glaring at me the entire time, he takes two shot glasses, fills one with vermouth, one with vodka, and then pours them into another highball.

Instead of continuing to fight with this asshole, I just cut my losses and pay for it. He hands me my receipt, which has 2 drinks on it.

“Did you charge me for that?” I ask, pointing to the Rossi that is still on the counter.

“Well it’s not fucking free,” he says.

“Well… then give it to me if I paid for it.”

Now he realizes what I was pointing at.

“Oh… no, I didn’t charge you for that.”

“Then why are there two drinks on my receipt?”

“There are two shots in that martini, aren’t there?”

And then, Al Gore appeared out of nowhere, and surrendered to me his Nobel Peace Prize for not ripping this guys balls off and serving them to him in a martini glass… (Excelsior!)

Needless to say, 1 ounce of warm vodka mixed with 1 ounce of warm vermouth is enough to burn the hair out of the inside of a grown man’s nose, in case you were wondering. I’ve tasted some incredibly disgusting drinks, but even a Three-Wisemen tastes better than that.

But I paid $8 for it! So… I drank it anyway… or… most of it… I thought the taste of dinner would help it go down smoother but it was actually the opposite. So, after my fish and chips arrived I gave the rest to Juliette, who downed it like a champ.

Juliette reminded me afterwards that due to the bet mentioned in my previous blog post that Sam still owed me a beer, so I could make myself feel better by saying I’d only wasted $4… and hadn’t won a beer from Sam.

This entire experience further solidified my belief that you can never go wrong with a Sapphire and tonic.

So, today is Valentines Day… as you may have noticed by the date stamp on this post… or by the “HAPPY VALENTINES DAY” at the top of the page. I don’t really have any plans. Susan came up with the idea that she, Sam and I should hang out and drink wine and eat chocolate because we’re the only 3 (out of 10!) who live here that don’t have a significant other.

But, Susan decided to head home for the weekend instead, and Sam and I decided that it would be a bit homoerotic to sit and consume wine and chocolate together in one of our bedrooms on Valentines Day… so we’re going to substitute wine with video games, and chocolate with carefully crafted “your Mom” jokes and call it a night!

I hope you all have a nice Valentines Day, (or had, if you’re reading this later) Feel free to post what your plans are/were in the comments section! Keep the comments coming, they’re a lot of fun to read!

Sam bet me a beer I wouldn’t do “this” at the dinner table

2008-02-12T06:42:00.001-08:00

“Oh, while you’re all here: Sam bet me a beer I wouldn’t do this at the dinner table,” I said, then did it.

Susan and Dominic looked at Sam and said in unison “that was a stupid bet!”

So, last night Sam and I were playing Madden (that kid is unfairly good at the game… fucking British kids…). I scored a touchdown and, sitting in my chair, thrust my hips forward twice (like… humping an invisible thing in front of me.) Sam says “I’ll bet you a beer that you won’t do that at the dinner table!”

“Does it have to be dinner?”

“No… but at least half of the flat has to be there.”

“Does it have to be a beer?”

“No Dave, it can be a cider.”

“Deal.”

And then we shake.

“But you have to say something blatantly sexual, to one of the girls at the table, and then smack your own ass after it.”

“That wasn’t the deal Sam. I made two humping motions without saying a word, and you bet me a beer I wouldn’t do THAT at the dinner table.”

“I know… but that’s stupid!”

“Yeah? Why do you think I took the bet?”

Sam still has a gambling problem, and – I’ll have a pint of Strongobw, please.

Speaking of Sam, shortly after blogging about his “AHH, AHH!!! JESUS CHRIST, DAVE!” experience, Sam told me the following.

“See, I know you, Dave. I know that if I retaliate, even though I have it in writing that you think it would be just and fair, you would STILL re-retaliate just because you’re an American! So the way I see it is, I should really just cut my losses and wait patiently for your next scheme!” I almost felt bad… but then Sam locked me out of my room and jousted me in the face with a dirty, wet mop and stole my desk chair… or maybe that was what I was retaliating against… Unimportant!

Our trip into Cambridge was put off until this upcoming weekend. (In case I didn’t mention that we were going to Cambridge… we were… and then we didn’t… and now we are again…) We got our tickets yesterday and I’m stoked.

So, this past weekend was rather quiet with a few excursions, but mostly just hanging out in the flat.

On Friday night, Dom, Susan, Juliette and I went to a party at one of the “nice” dorms. (Keep in mind, I have my own bedroom, a water front view, and a sink… and I’m in the poor kid dorm.) The nice dorms have queen-sized beds, full bathrooms in each suite, and leather seats in front of their kitchen table… and they STILL cost less than housing at the University of Arizona.

We arrived at around 9 and the majority of the 20 people who were there had already polished off a few drinks, including a girl named Sarah. Dom knows her, I don’t remember how, but he introduces us.

“Hi, I’m Dave.”

“Hi Dave, I’m Sarah.”

“Sarah, nice to meet you,” I say and she squirms with excitement.

“I just… LOVE the way Americans say my name! Will you… uhh…. Tehehe…. Will you say my name again? It’s sexy…”

This went on for about ten minutes.

Actually, no: it went on for EXACTLY ten minutes, then guess what happened? (Come on… you all know…) Her boyfriend showed up!

Now, I’m mentioning this not only because her boyfriend showed up (which happens to me more than reasonable or fair) but also she poignantly ignored me the rest of the evening.

As we were leaving the party I was incredibly tempted to go up to her boyfriend and say something like “Hey, tell Sarah I said thanks for the head she gave me before you got here,” but momentary glory of getting her in trouble with El Gordo wouldn’t have been worth the broken nose.

So, after dealings with women went unsuccessful, it was time to go do man things. That’s right: here at UEA, it’s bunny season.

No, no. Not Playboy Bunnies… I mean... BUNNY bunnies!

So, Dominic and I went to the rugby pitch to unleash our inner cavemen. It was time for bunny chasing.

If any of you have a copy of the movie “Homeward Bound” within arms reach, you might want to just pop that DVD into your computer and watch the scene where they tried to do this. Older and wiser than Dom I may be, but he got to play the role of Shadow (making me Chance, the full-grown puppy played by Michael J. Fox)

I knew we weren’t really going to catch any, but somehow after a few beers watching something run at full speed away from you, truly fearing for it’s own life is an empowering feeling. (And in return, I’m sure watching me sit on the grass wheezing for air for about a half hour was an empowering feeling for the bunnies after I decided it was time to call it quits.)

We tried to catch this all on video but my camera’s video capabilities wouldn’t have it. (Honestly, I don’t think any camera could have captured it with how dark it was.)

But here’s something I did wonder. In the unlikely event that I had somehow caught one simply by sheer luck of surprising the thing, what the hell would I have done when I caught it? I mean, a cave man would have killed it and eaten it but come on, did you click that link? Did you see that bunny? I probably would have been so astonished that I even made physical contact with the thing that I’d’ve held on to it in amazement for long enough for it to bite the shit out of my hand, and then I’d’ve dropped it. Good thing I am neither fast enough, nor stealthy enough to catch a bunny.

I only have one class on Mondays. It is my “The Politics of Language” class, which I have commented on in previous posts as being incredibly boring. It still is, but it’s getting a bit better. We’re moving on to some cooler stuff. This past Monday we had what felt like, at the end of it, had been a 2-hour group therapy session talking about our educations.

The professor started us off by writing 20 sentences on the board, and each one of us had to break it down and explain it. Subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object, context, connotation, all that stuff. We all went through and discussed our sentences and then he broke us up into groups of 3’s. He said he wanted us to debrief about how the experience had been for us, and then we would discuss with the class about how that came to be. (That was a poor way of describing it, but I’ll just clarify by continuing…)

In my education, other than what my Dad has taught me about spoken grammar, I have never had any formal education regarding grammar, structure, or even punctuation (minus my lovely copy editing teacher telling me he wanted to send me to Guantanamo Bay for unlawfully harboring commas: the grammatical terrorists.)

I remember roughly in sixth grade they started mentioning terms like “direct objects” and telling us “Oh, you’ll learn about those next year!” This continued, telling us we’d learn it “next year” all the way through something like 10^th grade, when all of a sudden in 11^th grade we should have learned it “last year.”

My AP English teacher during my senior year, try as she might, knew full well that she was dealing with a bunch of students who had been inadequately informed of direct objects as consequence of our high school being under-funded. I can proudly say I scored a 2 on the AP English test.

But, I graduated high school and made it to college. I decided I’d probably learn this in English 101. They told us we’d learn it in 102. What happened when I got to English 102? “Didn’t you learn that in English 101?”

The reason I said that this was like a group therapy session was because every person in the class, to some degree, had had the same experience.

Professor Womack brought up an essay he’d recently read called, “The Lost Generation of Grammatical Education.” It stated that the baby-boomers had never learned the type of grammar that the “college kids of today” were learning.

But none of us were! Including the two ladies in our class who are my parents age. The professor said that each one of us was dramatically off, and incorrect, in our description of the sentence structure. And then, the inevitable question came.

“But if we can all comprehend both spoken and written English, and none of us are failing out of college because of grammatical mistakes, why is it so important?”

Apparently, that is exactly the point of this entire class. It’s called the POLITICS of language because apparently there’s a movement of grammatical anarchism on the rise and we’re going to lead it! (Power to the punctuation!)

This class may have outed me, and I may be outing myself further by writing about this… but since last year I’ve had the dream of finishing grad school and then making a million dollars writing a book called “I have a Ph.D. in English and I still never learned what a direct object was!” So, for sake of that dream happening, please don’t tell me what a direct object is. I want to see if education will ever tell me on it’s own… because in this degree, it doesn’t seem like it should be something that I have to ask to learn… in the very least, they should be asking why I DIDN’T learn it, but still: no one has.

More Pictures from London

2008-02-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

This link is below in the last post, but for those of you looking, here again is the link to pictures from my trip to London.

PICTURES FROM LONDON!!!

This was a weekend of 2 Dave's, as I was staying in London with my friend, Dave. He put his Red Sox cap on my head at some point in the evening, and I quickly proclaimed "I AM THE KING OF RED SOX NATION!" I so am, too.

I don't know why I like this picture... I fully acknowledge that I look silly, but I think I was just genuinely surprised that there was a camera there! And how!

This is me, Dave 2 with Dave Jr. (Dave Walker's flatmate Rocko dubbed us Dave 1 and Dave 2, but then I informed him that I was older so we became Dave 2 and Dave Jr.)

Tea, anyone?

We were playing dress up in the kitchen... there was a red hat and a scarf. Somehow, the logical next step seemed to be unbuttoning my shirt and pulling a knife, and BAM, I was a gangster! Don't act like you're not impressed.

Thrift Store Chair

2008-02-06T08:53:00.001-08:00

I’m loving England. I know I’ve said that before, said it here, said it to all of you but this is experience is just getting more and more fulfilling as time going further. I’m 3 days shy of being here for a month. I’ve still got 4/5^th of my trip remaining but I’m already wishing I could have stayed here for a year.

I just came inside off the roof. It’s a beautiful sunny day. Dominic sent me an IM saying “It feels like summer, mate. How about a cup of tea on the roof?” I pause and think “I really should work on that 3,000 word essay I have due Friday.” Before responding, I look at the assignment sheet again, and I read it wrong. No more than 1,000 words (I can type 125 words per minute. You do the math.) Plenty of time, seeing as I only have 1 hour of class tomorrow, no classes Friday and it’s not due until night time.

Dom was right, it feels like summer out. It feels like a summer in Boston, which meant I was sitting on the roof shivering like a baby, but I refused to put on a sweater. It was too beautiful out for one.

I’m making close friends here. I’m becoming very close with both Dom and Sam. Last night (or, I suppose this morning at 2:30) Dom and I played the best practical joke I have ever even heard of on Sam.

He told me once he sleeps with his window open. Dom and I climbed out on the roof. (parents and parentlike-readers: I promise going on the roof is safe. It’s flat, with a wall at the edge, and there’s about 8 feet of walking space between the windows and the wall). Sure enough, Sam’s window is open. Norwich England has virtually no crime… because they pretend it’s Harlem. There are bars over the window, but they’re wide enough part to pull back the shades and snap a picture. The flash woke Sam who started screaming.

“AHHHH, AHHHH!!!!” then he realized it was us. “JESUS CHRIST, DAVE!!!” He will retaliate eventually, and I will deserve it. I will keep you updated.

I’m still amazed I have a water front view. We sat on the roof, sipping tea, looking at the water, the forest and the big blue sky above us and talked about our lives. We’re both in the same boat of not knowing what we’re doing after college because we have about 200 things we could do that would make us perfectly happy, and we’re both excited about that.

Sitting on the roof, talking about my future was the first time since I’ve been here that I felt like I could enjoy going to graduate school right out of undergrad. This is not a proclamation of intent by any means, but it’s a really strong statement that this month I’ve been here has been what I needed. I need a break from Tucson. The journalism school has a pretty set path for us, and for the last 2 semesters I’ve had to take extra classes so I could afford a semester out of the program. That’s been rough. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve learned that journalism is not what I thought it was, and I do not respect, and do not want to associate with what it IS. (However, this happy blog post is no place for my “What’s wrong with journalism” rant.)

I logged onto my UofA account to look at my credits and transfer units and everything. (Sign language has transferred: so I’m officially a junior, and I’m a half-semester ahead of where I need to be. Boyeah!) I scrolled down to the journalism section and saw something amazing. I am 3 classes away from fulfilling my degree requirement. 3. Not only do I get a semester away from lying and stealing, but when I come back I only have 3 more classes on lying and stealing until I have a degree in lying and stealing!

I went into the city of London for my first time this weekend. It was very cool. I have to say though, cities are cities. They’re very big, they’re very cool. There’s a lot of touristy stuff and famous sites to see but the experience of being in a COMPLETELY different universe hasn’t really hit me, and certainly didn’t in London. To quote my friend Katie “Well, you are in America’s Mom…”

However, this isn’t necessarily bad thing. I haven’t felt a lick of homesickness, which I suspect has a strong correlation to the fact that I don’t feel like I’m on a different planet. (Before anyone calls me sadly… like Rachel… I miss all of you, and have been thinking of you all lots… I just don’t miss Arizona… or North Point… or living with Kinsey, for that matter.)

Anyway, back to London. I didn’t mean to say I didn’t enjoy my trip… I was getting at saying that I’m just becoming more and more aware of how happy I am living in this small England town on the coast.

I’m not going to give a play-by-play of London, but instead link you to pictures! It’s through Facebook but if you follow this link you DO NOT need a login or an account.

This is the link:

http://arizona.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2239258&l=63665&id=10125855

Anyway, it’s 4:50pm and I’m about to leave for the grocery store with Dominic. I’m out of food, except for 2 cans of canned chicken. (By the way: Mom, you told me to try canned chicken so I don’t die of mercury poisoning from eating too many tuna sandwiches. The canned chicken they have in England is one of the most foul, disgusting things I’ve ever seen. It tastes bad enough to give a goat a nightmare. I will just substitute my tuna ration with more peanut butter.)

Yeah, so I’m out of food and hungry! I hope you’re all well!

I wonder if this is a bad idea.... + LINK TO PICTURES

2008-01-30T04:25:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure how this lapse in technological judgment occurred, but it cost $12.

So, I was trying to update DirectX. Sam and I ordered FIFA 07 so I could properly learn “fOOt bawl,” and my computer said that since there was a new edition of DirectX out I had to update it. I’ve never downloaded DirectX before, because everything that needs it (except FIFA, apparently) comes with the necessary update loaded on the disk. I try to find it on Google.co.uk (which is what you get to if you type in google.com in the UK) and I’m brought to a bunch of sites that require me to pay for this update. I think “That can’t be!” but then, decide since I’ve never downloaded it before, and Microsoft is evil, it very well could be.

But, before paying for it, I try to see if I can get it to work without paying for it.

The UEA monitors our internet usage like Big Brother, it’s pretty obnoxious. We had to sign an agreement, a long list of things we wouldn’t do, and if we do them our internet gets cut off and it costs $100 to turn it back on.

Without committing to any badness, I just dip my toe in the water and search for the term “Keygen,” on Google. I push go.

Nothing happens.

Refresh!

Still nothing.

Skype logs off.

AIM crashes.

….

You’ve GOT TO BE kidding.

::knock knock knock::

“Dave, is your internet working?” asks one of my flatmates, poking his head through the door.

“Uh… no… that’s a big negative.”

I confide in my flatmate that I MIGHT have just got our entire flat’s internet cut off, who in good confidence, immediately tells the other 8 people we live with.

The next hour was like a power outage during a ‘nor Easter. We were all sitting in the kitchen, I made some dinner, some people just waited.

“Dammit Dave,” says Susan. “Why couldn’t you have fucked up the internet when I still had vodka?”

Juliet’s phone rings: it’s a friend in another dorm asking if our internet is working.

“No, Dave fucked it up.” (This is all being said half jokingly, half ‘did you really just ruin everyone’s internet?”)

About an hour and a half later, everyone’s internet kicked back on… mine included. Still frightened by my near-death experience (yeah, they would have KILLED me) I agree to pay Microsoft $12 for DirectX 9.0.C. annnnd the software still doesn’t work.

Annnnnd Microsoft has a warning on their site saying some British site is charging people to download DirectX 9.0.C and it’s free on “this link.” Insult to injury? The game still doesn’t work. I called tech support, they were no help.

In other news, I’m heading into London for my first weekend on the town on Friday morning. (I know I’ve been saying I’m going to London to study for about the last 2 years, I was kind of using it as a generic term because I thought I was going to be much, much closer. Technically I’m in Norwich, but it’s just a short train ride to the city!)

Don’t have classes today… going to read some of Henry IV part 1, and go into town to purchase a Fedora. (There is a fedora store in town… I’m very excited.)

Lastly, here are pictures!!! The link is to Facebook, but it’s set up so you don’t have to have Facebook, or log into ANYTHING to see them.

http://arizona.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2235610&l=3a265&id=10125855

Enjoy!!!

Emma

2008-01-29T06:12:00.001-08:00

The death of a pet brings you to a different conclusion than the death of a person. While death is inevitable for all things, it is much more immediate with pets. When you purchase them, at some point you calculate how old you will be when they are no longer in your life again. It is this knowledge that changes the experience, because it allows you to love them in a different way than you would if they would be there forever. No more or less, necessarily, but in a different form.

This emotional logic comes from the mind of an adult, though. It is different with children. When we’re young all we see a small fuzzy thing to play with and love. I cannot say at 8 years old, when Maggie got Emma that I had even accepted the concept that one day my parents would die. I certainly wasn’t thinking about it in terms of her, or Max, when we got them.

So with the passing of Emma passes my last youthful acceptance of a pet coming into my life: the unconditional greeting of a new friend, and the faith that they will always be there.

I was afraid of cats when Maggie got Emma. My only experience with cats had been our 400 pound, razor-toothed tabby who spent her days pretending to be asleep while family was in the room, but bright-eyed and biting as soon as it was only the two of us.

I didn’t understand why Maggie would want another demon-spawn bundle of joy in the house, but she somehow conveyed to me that not all cats were like the one we had. I am sure of this because I remember sometime around Thanksgiving parading around the house putting up home made posters in favor of Maggie getting a cat for Christmas.

I was still a bit afraid of her when we got her. The razor-tabby (Lucia – only a two letter difference and it’d be Lucifer!) didn’t have front claws and she still drew blood on a regular basis. Emma came with claws! That could only be bad, I thought.

Conveniently, Emma was not only afraid of me too: but was afraid of all living things and the majority of inanimate objects. My fear of her quickly subsided as she and I had an unspoken agreement that she wouldn’t bite me if I left her alone. (I’d like to clarify that this agreement was made preemptively, as I never once witnessed Emma bite a human.)

Things stayed this way between Emma and I until Maggie left for college. About two weeks after Maggie left, for the first time in our relationship, Emma came and jumped up on my chest while I lay watching television. Through the rest of high school, including the 9 months where I was out of commission with mono, Emma kept me company by lying on my chest watching my face intently as I watched television.

Pets are one of the few things in life we go into knowing, whole-heartedly, that we will lose. Parents expect to outlive their children. When we buy houses, even if we know we won’t live there forever, it is at least expected that 100% of the money put into it will be returned to us, if not with a profit.

We eat food believing there will be more, fuel our cars believing there will be more gas next time – we fuel our lives believing there will always be more of whatever we need. We go into hardly any situation knowing that we will lose something in the end.

But we know we will lose pets, and coming with the acceptance of that is a different kind of love we share with them. We can love them for what they are, and what they bring us in the short time they’re with us.

I don’t know how well I've said what I'm trying to say, and worry I’m starting to repeat myself, so, I’ll leave it at that. I tried to find a good quote by Emma Thompson (who Emma was named after) but, that didn’t work so, I’ll go with one of Maggie's other favorites.

Farewell, my sister, fare thee well.
The elements be kind to thee, and make
Thy spirits all of comfort: fare thee well
-William Shakespeare

Emma saying "Hi!" to me over Skype, January 23rd, 2008

The Laundry Diaries

2008-01-24T06:35:00.000-08:00

Some stupid American’s t-shirt is hanging out of the washing machine because they weren’t paying attention when the closed the door and now there’s water all over the floor at the Laundrette… oh wait, that was me. (Yeah, they call it a Laundrette.)

As if prompted, the moment I start writing about this, some friendly maintenance man comes and unlocks the washer, gets my wayward shirt pushed back into where it belongs and resets the machine for me.

Apparently no one here is worried about their clothes getting stolen. At UofA I’d walk into the laundry room in our dorm to find 3 girls sitting on top of three washing machines, as if ready to attack from above anyone coming to steal their clothing.

Things disappeared from my wash from time to time, but I was 85% certain I had probably just lost it, and 99% certain that if I were getting paid minimum wage, the amount of time I’d spend guarding 1 potentially stealable t-shirt, I could earn that money back and buy two more.

People are definitely hanging out in here. It’s like an internet café except for the fact that it smells like soap, and do to my darling contribution there’s water everywhere. There is a row of girls sitting on the other side, reading magazines, texting and chatting amongst each other. All they need is those big hair drying cones and you’d have a totally different scenario!

If my theory stands correct that important things are inexpensive and crap is expensive, laundry is crap as my two loads plus 15 minutes of dryer time have already racked up an impressive $8.81. But, these dryers are like the ones we had at the gym I worked at. Not only could I fit inside them, but I could fit inside them with all of my laundry and still be comfortable. 15 minutes of drying time could do the trick… thank God dryers cannot leak.

Today I decided it’s time I stop worrying about not looking like… an American from “Death Valley.” (Apparently Brit’s aren’t impressed by the Grand Canyon. Of everyone that I’ve told I’m from Arizona, they’ve all asked “Oh, in Death Valley? Cool!”) I’ve been wearing my jacket everywhere but I’ve been leaving the scarf, hat, and gloves at home from time to time because I’m clearly the only one wearing them.

I guess I owe an apology to all of the Arizonans who I’ve been making fun of since the moment we moved here, who wear mittens and scarves when it drops below 85*. Note: I said I probably owe them an apology… but they’re still not getting one – losers!

I’ve officially had two weeks of classes. (As I’m done for classes today, and I don’t have class on Friday.) Shakespeare is exactly what I was expecting: A lot of reading, discussing what we’re reading, with the added bonus of a hot discussion group leader. Our lecturer, Peter Womack, is also my “The Politics of Language” instructor. That class sounds boring, and it sure is. We’ll spend the first two weeks discussing the history of the dictionary. For Tuesday, he’s asked that we spend “at least six hours becoming friendly with the Oxford English Dictionary.” I’m really not sure how one becomes friendly with a dictionary… I’ve always found them to be curt, and full of themselves, but who knows. Things are very different here in England.

Sadly, the entirety of my previous paragraph is true… we really are suppose to do this.

My creative writing class is an interesting group of students with a pretty badass instrutor named Henry Sutton (author of “Thong Nation” and “The Exhibitionist” and “Kids Stuff.”)

There is a lot of ego in the world of creative writing. I hope it doesn’t make me arrogant simply by saying this, but a lot of young writers are already writing their Pulitzer acceptance speeches already. We have yet arrived at the point in the semester where I have had an opportunity to read the work of any of my peers, and will not publicly criticize anyone’s work at that point, but I can already tell who THINKS they’re hot shit.

One girl in the class, an American (unfortunately) who, if she’s not from one of the Ivies, she sure wishes she was, is in that group. She also clearly wants to make sure everyone in the room can hear her voice booms like John Maddens.

There are “elements of fiction” which are taught to us in every single creative writing class I have taken. They’re pretty standard. Roughly they are, character, plot, issue, setting, imagery, language, dialogue… stuff like that. So, Dr. Sutton asks us to list, in order, our top five. American girl asks “What if I have more than 5?” He tells her “Just your TOP 5.” We go around, everyone up to her lists 5 that are actually ON the list.

It gets to her turn to say what her top five are, “Transcendence, Universality, (I forget the next two) and Conclusiveness.” Everyone in the class gives her that thoughtful look that translates to “What the bloody hell are you talking about?” and our professor kind of moves on.

(By the way, Laundry has officially crossed the $10 mark.)

At the end of that session, he requests that for next week we have an original 300-word excerpt showing how we use our #1 element. (Mine is character, by the way. I could care less what’s happening if I don’t care about who it’s happening to, which has been my primary struggle with Shakespeare.)

So, beginning of our next session, it’s time to read our excerpts. American-Girl’s turn rolls around. I’m assuming she’s picked something other than transcendence, assuming she’d be satisfied by proving to all of us that she’s much smarter than we are… but no!

She reads her little excerpt and Sutton, as he has done for all of us, asks “How do you feel this reflects (chosen element.)” He asks her this, and she gives a REALLY esoteric answer which included the immoral copout “Well this is actually true” (and thus, not fiction… in a fiction workshop) Someone in the class (not me, but I wanted to) interrupts her and asks “what are you taking transcendence to mean?” And so the game begins, can she tell us what it means without using the word? Well no, she didn’t, I believe she said it twice. It was something along the lines of “for it to transcend a greater form of grandeur,” except not nearly concise.

There’s always one or two people like this in a creative writing class. Unfortunately for all of us, in my poetry workshop at UofA, that person just happened to be our TA.

Anyway, this was all a long transition into saying why I like Sutton (The professor.) This is a short story class, he’s made that very clear. He’s put this in the most respectful, yet “I’m not kidding” way I’ve ever heard a professor say it. “I realize many of you are already well into the process of developing longer projects, primarily novels, which is fantastic, but this is not the venue for stories of such length. Everything you turn in MUST both start and finish within the page limit.”

That’s why I like him, cause he doesn’t take our crap.

For fairnesses sake, if someone had said this to me when I was in high school, convinced I was already writing the great American novel, I would have had a fit… I had not yet learned how critically important the ability to write short, concise stories is. No one who cannot write a good short story will ever be able to write a long, compelling novel. Unfortunately, the market for short stories is not a moneymaker but look at it this way.

Each minor league baseball team is owned by a major league club. The minors lose a huge amount of money for the majors, because since not very many people care what happens 'on the farm,' and tickets are dirt cheap, they're unable to bring in any revenue. But the majors wouldn’t be what they are without the farm teams, a stepping stone for good players to become great. The same is true for fiction. Short stories, and the small-money market that exits for them is a stepping stone for good writers to become great, and most importantly, to be heard of.

Sam has a Gambling Problem

2008-01-20T04:47:00.000-08:00

“Dave, you cannot possibly eat all that pasta.”

“How much you want to bet I can?”

Dave wins 1 beer.

“If you can get a girl to kiss you at the party on Tuesday, I’ll buy you three beers.”

3 beers at stake.

“Okay, so what if it’s that girl, Amanda?”

“If you get her to kiss you, at ANY point in the semester, I’ll buy you 10 beers.”

13 beers (total) at stake.

“Think I can score seventy points in the game, Sam?”

“Not a chance.” (This was while playing Madden NFL 2007. 2 minutes left in the game, I had the ball, and 64 points, on my own 30.)

“I’ll bet you a beer I CAN.”

“You’re on.”

2 Hail-Mary’s later… 1 beer for Dave.

“I need to stop making bets with you.”

“I’ll bet you a beer I can get you betting again by the end of the night.”

“Piss off, Dave.”

All American Pigeons are Cowards

2008-01-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

I still have yet to fully grasp the fact that I’m still a student, even though I’m in this exciting, fun new place. Classes have started though, I only have three, and only have classes three days a week. The Politics of Language meets at 11 on Mondays, Shakespeare meets at 9 on Tuesdays, Creative Writing meets at 11 on Tuesdays and then Shakespeare again at noon on Thursdays.

Shakespeare will require us to read between 1 and 2 plays a week, and do various essays. I’m about half way through King Lear (writing this on Friday night) as I have to have that, and Henry V read by Tuesday.

My other two classes don’t seem like they’ll be too difficult. Similar to UofA classes, which don’t feel hard as long as you want to be doing what you’re assigned to do. (In this case, writing.)

I realize I haven’t said a word about my living arrangement in this whole thing so far. I’m in Norfolk Terrace, (Norf-uck) in a single standard flat. 10 bedrooms sharing 3 toilets and 3 showers. (Yes, I’m aware I told some of you we had 2 toilets and 1 shower… there was 1 toilet and 2 showers I did not become aware of until yesterday.) We also have 2 large refrigerators, 1 stove, a grillthing (I haven’t figured it out) 2 microwaves that have burners in case you want to bake something, and a sink (With no garbage disposal. The nerve!)

My room is slightly smaller than Manzi-Mo, where I lived freshmen year but I’ve got it to myself. I have a waterfront view, and a ‘fire door’ leading to the walkway outside. Since I’m at the end of the walkway, it’s kind of like a patio.

It’s all neat and tidy, which, for those of you who know me, means only half of my belongings are strewn across the floor. I went and bought 24 more hangers today so I could put things in my closet. (24 hangers for $4. Score.)

Speaking of money: things aren’t as expensive as I thought they would be. Important things, even with the terrible conversion rate, are still significantly cheaper. For example, I had to buy some cookware, and found a huge pot with the most impressive non-stick-whatever I’ve ever had the pleasure of cooking with for $4. An equally large colander was $2. A Pyrex baking thing, large enough to bake a… large thing was $2 as well. Maybe I’ve been shopping at the wrong places, but that seems like some damn good priceage.

Important things I said, are very cheap. Crap isn’t. I brought a ton of PC video games to play on the plane on the way here, (which I actually didn’t use) but haven’t been planning on using them here (because that would be a waste of time.) My flatmate Sam saw that I had Madden Football 07 and nearly shit a frizbee. He tells me he’s been watching the NFL for the past few years, and has been playing an older version of Madden but no one ever wants to play it with him. He also tells me that even through playing the game, he still doesn’t understand defensive play calling and would love for me to show him.

Then he sees that I have MLB 2005 (sadly, that was the last year a MLB game was released on PC.) and out comes the frizbee! We’ve talked baseball a bit since I arrived. He owns a mitt but “doesn’t know how to use it”, and is going to bring it up from London next time he goes home. This very quickly turns into a conversation about “so where could we find a controller for you to use?” so we could play the game together. We arrive at the video game store and I have one of those priceless moments I’ll keep having. “Is that in DOLLARS?” 60 pounds per game. New releases are roughly 80 pounds. ($120 and $160, respectively.)

“Why, how much are they in the states?”

Novels are roughly the same price, maybe a little bit less. I have yet to buy a text book through the university, as most of the books my classes require are novels you can buy at any bookstore. I’ll keep you updated. I still need to get 2.

As we’re walking around the town square I almost trip over a pigeon. Fat little guy strutting around. He doesn’t fly off to avoid almost being squashed, instead he just looks at me like “You bloody wanker!” Sam teases me for almost tripping over a pigeon, and I tell him “You would NEVER get that close to one in the states. It would fly away.” Sam informs me that all American pigeons are cowards

Sam, Dominic, Etta (from UofA) and I go down to the Union Pub to watch the Chargers v. Colts game on Sunday night. (By the way: if Peyton Manning ever makes it to the NFL Hall of Fame it will only be for the record of “Most Games Lost because player wet himself, forget his name, and went to cry on the sidelines because there was a teensy bit of pressure.”)

During our evening watching American Football, talking about American sports, and America, Sam volunteers this bit of knowledge.

“When America gets to the pearly gates, the thing that is going to send you straight to hell is the invention of Cheese Whiz.” I shout “HERESY!” and we all laugh, as Peyton Manning sucks his thumb on the sidelines.

During the third quarter, one team had to punt the ball, which the announcers pointed out was the first time in the entire game that this had happened. Sam comments that this shows a different attitude about sports. In England, they don’t focus as much on the individual players, but as the team as a whole. The commentators continue talking about the fact that this is the first punt of the game. Sam can’t take it anymore.

“What kind of useless fucking piece of information is that? Why are you telling me this? What do you want me to do with that?”

Some point after this, when I realize the Colts aren’t going to win because Peyton Manning is still sucking his thumb and has thrown his 14^th interception of the season, 6 of which occurred THAT GAME, I see an Australian girl named Amanda across the bar, who I met at our international student orientation. I excuse myself from our table and go start flirting with her. She’s sitting with a guy, who introduces himself to me, shakes my hand and then kind of squeezes my shoulder. In the most politically correct way imaginable, I took this to mean he was gay. In an ever so wonderful twist of fate, he’s actually her boyfriend… who is also studying here for a semester. I shift my mode from “flirting” to “just saying hi” and as I’m getting up to head back to my table, she invites herself, and boyfriend to join me. Easy decision there, and they hung out with us for the rest of the evening.

About to head to bed. I've got to finish King Lear tomorrow. I've got pictures taken that I just need to upload and share with you all, so until then, thanks for reading!

DAVE'S PHONE NUMBER IN ENGLAND

2008-01-13T16:16:00.000-08:00

My phone number here is +44-798-529-0855. If you DO NOT INCLUDE THE + SIGN your call will not go through. On both my phone and my Mom's phone you get the + sign by holding 0, but if you cannot figure it out, call your service provider.

CALLING THIS NUMBER WILL BE HELLA EXPENSIVE FOR YOU: T-Mobile charges $0.34 per minute, I don't know what other carriers charge but it will be roughly competitive with that.

However, since I have a pay as you go plan, I only pay for outgoing so if you call me, I don't pay a dime. Long story short: call at your own risk.

A Hore, The Police and Two Kisses

2008-01-13T16:15:00.000-08:00

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

“Come in.”

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

“Come in…”

“It’s the police! Is there a David Robbins in there?” says the voice behind the door.

Doesn’t this just sound like a prefect way to start the experience?

“Can I help you?”

“Are you David?”

“Yes.”

“We have a message for you,” the officer says as he pulls out a note.

“A parcel from British Airways has been delivered to the University Police Station, to be delivered to you. You may pick it up any time, our doors are open to students 24 hours a day!”

The last time the police delivered a message to me was “Hi. Your neighbor called 911 about your dogs barking. I can’t hear them, so you don’t have to do anything… but I was required to let you know. Have a good night.”

This was on the evening of my second day here, and for the record I was already asleep when this note came. I was taking a pre-party-power-nap, which judging so far how these kids party, hard, and into the not so wee hours of the morning, I’ll be doing frequently. More on that later.

At around seven on Thursday evening, I met Sam. Sam is a fellow from South London, who is studying American History. He immediately asked if I’ve been following the US Primaries, and then says “Look mate, I just want to tell you if… and I don’t know if you are… but if you’re a Bushite people here are going to rip the piss out of you.”

To rip the piss out of is a term for “Tease.” Sam uses it frequently. There are other things you can rip from someone, such as “the Mickey” but that is reserved for company who doesn’t appreciate hearing about your piss, such as Grandmothers. “Taking a piss on” someone is like teasing, except in the sense of pulling your leg, and “Fuck off?” is the preferred response when you think someone is taking a piss on you… synonymous with the American “No shit?”

I tell Sam I am not a Bushite, and that my piss is safe from being ripped out of me. By the look on his face, no one ever says anything of that sort out here, and I am already accomplishing the #1 thing they hope all American’s will accomplish: saying silly things.

This all is on the way to the grocery store, after Sam informed me that he didn’t have any food (As he had been gone for a month) and realized I hadn’t bought any since I arrived.

“I want to clear a few things up mate. We Brits aren’t all lawyers, and we don’t all have bad teeth. Do American’s really believe that?” I tell him I hadn’t heard the lawyer one but the bad teeth one was certainly a belief.

“In fact,” I say, “my friend Rachel even told me I should bring 6 months worth of toothpaste because you don’t even sell it here.”

“And she’s a good friend then, mate. I have to go to Paris every two weeks and smuggle a tube back in my anus. By your tone, I’m assuming you’ll be coming with me on Saturday?”

This conversation of stereotypes continues until we get to the store. I ask him shortly after we get there if they sell peanut butter here, which they do… everywhere. Mayonnaise is my next question, which he also confirms and then pauses, and gives me a sad look.

“I want you to know I could have ripped the piss out of you twice right there, and just started at you blankly as you asked me about peanut butter any mayonnaise… but I know you’re tired because you’re still jet lagged so I’m being nice, but tomorrow: you be ready,” says Sam.

We get back, eat some food, then go chill in our rooms for a while with the plan to leave for “The Union Bar” (the pub) in an hour. The University of East Anglia has at least 7 places that serve liquor, for a discounted rate, on campus. Five are full-on bars, one is a restaurant that has a bar, and one is a liquor store. (During out hour of chill time is when my message from the police comes.)

We get to the pub at around 9:30, it’s already packed. Sam and I go up to the bar and he asks “what are you drinking?” I tell him I’ll try what he’s drinking, as most of the drinks are new to me. He orders two Fosters-Shandy’s. Half Fosters beer, half lemonade. I’ve heard in America that Fosters isn’t popular in Australia, where it allegedly comes from. That may be the case, but it’s VERY popular over here.

Sam and I sit at a table and start chatting. We get back onto American politics and history, and he informs me that he can recite every US president ever, every state in alphabetical order, and every state capital. This isn’t because he’s majoring in American history, either. Every British student has to know this information.

“I thought of another stereotype,” I say after he tells me this. “British people are smarter than Americans…”

One of Sam’s friends comes over to say hi to him shortly after. Sam introduces us. Friend goes and sits back down at his table, and friend’s gorgeous female companion comes over to say hi to Sam. I have no way of knowing if she’s his girlfriend though. Sam introduces me to girl as well, whose name I learn is Emily. As soon as the American accent creeps out of my mouth her eyes go wide and she comes over and starts talking to me. We talk for about fifteen minutes, I don’t remember what she’s majoring in but it was something similar to creative writing. She tells me she lives in my dorm, the floor below me, and only one room away from mine. I’m getting psyched by the implications and then Sam’s friend comes back over. This has happened to me three times now, and I now understand that it’s just how they do things.

Sam’s friend is the boyfriend, shame… He interrupts our conversation and holds out his hand for a shake and very sternly says “Hi, I’m (insert name… I don’t remember.)” He then gives Emily a look, and points with his thumb to the door and says to her “We need to leave,” then turns his glare back at me. I’m happily sitting in my seat, and return his glare with sheer size… so scrawny boy with ruffled feathers and hurt ego leads his bombshell girlfriend out of the pub, and Sam and I continue chatting. (I didn’t just ignore my flat mate the last 15 minutes, he was off talking to someone else. I told him the story afterwards.)

Last call in England is at 10:45 pm. Pubs close at 11. Some have a permit for extended hours, which lets them serve until 1, but pubs usually only apply for that for special events. So what do Norwich kids do after leaving the pubs? SEX! Well… at least so the advertisements would say. The Norwich Campaign for Free Condoms has signs up on busses and all over town, which display “No Name? No Judgment? No Problem!” I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to mention that… I don’t think I’d get a better place than that. Prostitution is also very legal here. I’ve found their slogans and advertisements equally as amusing as those for the free condoms, however for sake of the fact that my mother is reading this I’ll just tell you that you can Google “Norwich Escorts” and find all the billboards if you’re interested.

The next day, which I believe was Friday we did more orientation stuff. I’m locked into my three classes, fiction, Shakespeare, and the politics of language (Which sounds really boring.) I went to the advisers office and tried to switch out of Politics into “Book Publishing” which sounds amazingly awesome.

At UEA you have to request an add/drop form ahead of time, and that has to be approved before you can even TRY to get into a class. (Unlike at UofA where you go pick one up and get everything approved after it’s signed.) So many people have requested forms for this class that they are no longer even granting preliminary add forms. I asked if I could go speak to the teacher and see if they would add me.

“Yes. You’ll have to speak to Whore about that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Whore. Rachel Whore. That’s the professor. If for some reason enough people drop the class, and none of the 20 students who have been issued preliminary add forms show up, then maybe… but Professor Whore is who you’d need to talk to.”

It was like this woman was trying to see how many times she could say WHORE before I let slip a giggle.

“Uhh… how do you spell that?” I ask scrambling for a pen and paper. All she responds with is “No W.”

I meet three more of my flat mates the next day. Dominic, Susan and Juliet. The four of us (Sam included) go to a “Welcome Back Party” for all the students at the LCR (lower common room.) I assume this’ll be a dinky little get together in some room below the bookstore. No, the LCR’s actually another bar. Go figure.

Shortly after we get there, Dominic announces he’s “going to the ladies,” and walks off. I ask Sam after Dominic is no longer within earshot if Dom is a ladies man. He confusedly answers, with vague details and then asks why I’m asking.

“Well, he said he’s going to the ladies… does he know some girls over there or… is he just going to go hit on some random girls?”

So in England it is common to say “Going to the ladies room” or “Gentlemen’s room” which gets shortened to just “the ladies” and “the gents.” Dom, in the same way I occasionally tell people I’m heading off to the powder room, makes the same joke. I figure now is a good time to tell Sam that if anything is ever said to me, and I immediately follow it with a question that has no bearing to any of the relevant context, assume I’ve misheard something.

Sam shortly heads back to the dorm, and Susan and Juliet wander off into their own world. Dom and I bond. As we’re wandering around, running into people on the rugby team (which Dom is part of, which is a pretty big deal here) I spot two girls trying to take a picture of themselves doing the ‘holding the camera in front of yourself’ method. I whisper to Dom “I’m flirting,” and then approach the ladies. They say they think they got a good shot of the two of them, but thank me for offering, this sparks a conversation.

Like most women I will randomly approach to flirt with, these two ladies were gorgeous. Dom observed later that again, as soon as they heard the accent and asked if I was American they wanted into my trousers! (Roar!)

So, like the girl from the previous night, there were boyfriends. Boyfriends were there. It took me until this evening to figure out that this is just how it WORKS in England. The guys came up and interrupted the conversation to introduce themselves to me. Unlike the guy last night, they were playing it cool, and like always, I was too. In America, the guy would come up and start yelling “YOU TRYING TO COP A FEEL ON MY WOMAN, YO? WHAT DU FUCK!” This is much more civilized. I wait for my cue from the girls, one of whom says “Well it was wonderful talking to you. Have a wicked time before going back to Arizona!” and then… and then…

Girl number one leans in and gives me a big kiss on the check… with boyfriend still standing right there. I freeze, fully expecting to get punched in the stomach only to feel girl number two kissing me also, still with boyfriend in toe.

These Brits kick ass…

I apologize this post is as long as it is, and I’m assuming it starts to be apparent about halfway through that I was feeling deadline pressure as this has covered the span of roughly a week… I have more to write, I’m finishing this two days after it happened and have two more days to write about but I’ll save that! Thanks for reading!

Dave's Mailing Address

2008-01-11T11:04:00.000-08:00

David Robbins
Ntc006 Norfolk Terrace
University Of East Anglia
Norwich, England
NR4 7TJ

I haven't quite finished writing the most recent post but it should be up soon! I love the comments, keep'em coming!

Preview of Next Post:

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

“Come in.”

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

“Come in…”

“It’s the police!” says the voice behind my bedroom door.

2008-01-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

My final day at home was far busier than I had anticipated. I had a long list of things to do over the last week. It had roughly 30 things on it, and I got done all but two of them… however, I added about 5 on the last day. Packing was one of the tasks on the list, but considering how long it took it should have been written down at least five times. I thought it would take at tops three solid hours. Oh foolish world traveler! How wrong I was.

Here’s how packing went. I took a lot of things - out of a thing - and put those things right into a different thing - leaving the first thing. I’d go more into detail, but I don’t think I can afford the extra bandwidth charge I’d have to pay to include the true excitement of moving thing one and thing two.

I’m not really sure I got everything I needed to… my second bag was approaching the 75 pound weight limit, and I didn’t think I could get it closed… before continuing to pile more stuff in I needed to test my theory. I fought the good fight of ‘volume vs. zipper’, and shoved everything in and closed it. It was at this point I asked myself, “now, why on earth would I open it again?” So I didn’t. Done and done. I can’t remember if I packed my raincoat…

Mom who had seemed a bit scared and anxious transitioned quickly into pure sadness that I was leaving. She said it was especially hard that she couldn’t be there to help me prepare and see me off. We had a good talk about this as I was waiting to board the first plane in Phoenix, and by the time I had to turn off the phone, we were both back to all smiles.

Dad, who seemed purely sad from the beginning stood his course and stayed that way until I left. He gave me the bracelet he has worn every day of his life since shortly after I was born. My mother gave it to him as a gift before he, Uncle Barry, and their buddies sailed off to Bermuda and back. She gave it to him for good luck and love, and as Dad said, he was now giving it to me for that same reason. Dad told me over the phone after I got through security that he was going to wait and make sure the plane took off on time before leaving, just like he and Mom did when Maggie and I were really little.

I’d like to clarify now that this whole post has been written over the course of 36 hours, in which I’ve slept a total of 5. I honestly can’t remember the flight from Phoenix to New York. That’s how tired I am. More on that later though…

I think I read the entire flight. Perhaps it was just incredibly uneventful. I’m reading “Lamb” by Christopher Moore right now, which will be added to my permanent favorite books of all time list as soon as I’m done.

JFK Airport was a trip. It was like the Biltmore Fashion Center did it with Sky Harbor Airport and their secret, post-marital-lovechild was put up for adoption, sent to New York and then grew up to be JFK Airport. There were all these upscale shops and restaurants, a place with a sign saying they make their own wine… oh, and a Rolex store.

As I waited for my flight I called my parents, tried my sister, and texted furiously. I boarded my double-decker British Airways 767 sleeper plane, and thought I had it made. I walked on board and there were twin beds for as long as the eye could see. As excited as I got, I very quickly realized that the eye could apparently only see through first class. So, I step into business class and get excited again because instead of beds there are big recliners. Sweet, I get a recliner… but my seat was in row 45 and I was just getting through the teens. Business class passes me by and I make it to the section with big, “normal” first class size chairs. Fair enough, I can live with first class. This kept going.

Long story short I got to the back of the plane and sat in my regular seat along with all my fellow poor people. I was also pissed that I had a window seat until I saw: her…

Extra cutie sitting in the middle seat. You mean? If I have to get up at some point I might have to touch her leg and ask her to move? You mean I might have to start a conversation? We might have to fall passionately in love with each other in the heat of international travel only to never see each other again?!?

And then I dropped my cell phone. My backpack was already in the overhead storage locker, all of my crap was under the seat and I couldn’t see where it went. Sitting down I pawed around at the floor. Nothing. I felt around with my foot. Nothing. She’s noticed I’m doing something strange at this point but hasn’t said a word.

“I dropped my phone,” I say quietly. She stares at me blankly. My heart thumps “She didn’t respond? Could she be deaf? Could I have an opportunity to impress Extra-Cutie using my sign language equivalent to that of a retarded fourth grader?” No dummy, you’re on an international flight, she just doesn’t speak English.

Lame…

At this point I’m standing up, facing the wrong direction, with my face against the back of my chair desperately feeling around under my own chair, mollycoddling the foot of the old lady who was sitting behind me. I won’t dwell but I’ll just say she was in a crabby mood the whole flight…

I fish my phone out from under the chair, FINALLY, as Extra-Cutie is now kind of leaning the other direction watching me intently as I probably looked like I was trying to blow up the plane before it even left the ground. Victorious, I hold it up and again say “I dropped my phone.” She sees it and says “Ohhhh” and nods her head at me.

“Oh” still has not confirmed for me that she can hear… deaf people say “Oh” all the time. For many, it’s one of the only words they CAN say. I let my little fantasy live on a little bit longer in my head until the beverage cart rolls around.

“Hi folks, we just wanted to let you know we’re running an open bar until continental breakfast is served.”

WHAT? I wonder to myself as the flight attendant hands me a plastic bag, which contained a tooth brush, tooth paste, an eye shade, and a pair of blue socks.

“Red wine, please,” I order. There was only one varietal available, but it was what I would have chosen anyway. Shiraz. Glorious!

Extra-Cutie orders “o-RONGE jooz.” So fine, she’s not deaf. Big deal.

Dinner is served, Lasagna with a salad, bread, two deserts, and of course, a teacup. I declined the tea because I didn’t want the caffeine to interfere with the scant few hours of sleep I might score on the plane. That earned me a look from the flight attendant as if by rejecting the tea, I were solely responsible for Princess Diana’s death.

I put in earplugs, put on sunglasses, turned out the light and was off to sleep… and then it happened. I feel Extra-Cutie’s arm nuzzling up against mine, sort of on top of it. Granted, this was probably a kind way of saying “Hey dickhead, share the armrest!” (Seeing as she couldn’t have said it even if she wanted to…) but I didn’t care. There was that slight chance that this was my moment in history… and it was at that very moment that I threw the blanket over my lap. (With my free arm. Duh!)

As I dozed off I had the song “And I Remember Her…” by Jim Croce playing in my head.

During continental breakfast I decided it was time to bridge the language barrier… and by that I mean try and make conversation while hoping she spoke a little bit of English, because I sure as hell didn’t speak whatever she did. She told me she was “Jer-man” and that her name was “CAT-ee” (which, I’m assuming is German for Katie… go figure. The unattainable ones are always named that.) I told her that my name was David, and as we shook hands she repeated “DAY-vud.”

And that was the end of our romance… one of the greatest love stories ever told, if I do say so myself!

Customs took a total of 10 minutes before I was cleared to carry on to the baggage claim where I discovered after about 40 minutes of waiting that British Airways had lost one of my bags.

This is the second time that this particular suitcase has gotten lost during an international flight of mine. I got incredibly upset about it last time, and I’m not exactly sure why… though I remember it somehow correlated with me missing a flight. Anyway, this time it wasn’t really a big deal. There was a slight look of confusion when I said “I actually don’t have a phone number for you to reach me at when you find it… I haven’t lived here that long… oh, ya know… about twenty minutes.”

I gave them the number for the school. If it’s not here in 3 days I’m saying I had a $3,000 suit in that bag and will be perfectly happy to re-buy all of the clothes I had in it.

I carried on my little way, honestly quite thrilled that I didn’t have 2 suitcases to lug around for the next five hours. Shit, I should lose my bag every time I travel. My shoulders are happy little campers. Everyone has told me that the Brit’s are very friendly. I ask a few strangers questions, people continuously point me in the right direction.

Then I ran into a gangly fellow with an American Accent, who is getting his whole degree over here. I forgot his name within less than 8 seconds, but he too was helpful. At that point I was trying to find the bus station, which required an elevator down, taking “the tube” (subway) up one stop, another elevator, down the escalator, through a long hallway, and turn right. This fellow has done this before, and showed me the way.

He asked if I really had fit all of my stuff into my one suitcase. I told him “No, British Airways lost my other one. They’ll deliver it soon.” He asks “they didn’t lose your laptop did they?” No, I reply… and then giving more information than I needed to “It’s in my backpack.”

Half way to the bus station we pass a currency exchange station, and he asks if I got pounds already, because you can’t buy a bus ticket with US dollars. “Yes,” I said. “Did you get enough?” he asks. Right answer: “I already have my ticket.” Wrong answer: “I have 40 pounds.” As soon as I said this I realized I shouldn’t have, but rested easy knowing that I purchased a security wallet, which was dangling around my neck.

We get to the bus station and he asks if I can watch his luggage while he goes to buy his ticket back to his campus. I say that’d be fine, and do so. He comes back with his ticket. I had mentioned earlier that I was hungry, and he points out a café behind me. I ask “do you mind watching my stuff while I go get some food?” He says it’s fine.

Then I realize what I’ve just done.

I was next in line when I made this realization. My laptop, Ipod, camera, supporting documentation (everything but my passport, which was also around my neck) $2,000 of migraine medicine, and a suitcase filled with contents unknown to everyone but me, have just been left in the possession of a stranger I met not more than twenty minutes ago.

He had asked if I had a laptop AND how much money I had. We chatted about school. He showed me where to go. He established my trust by having me watch HIS suitcases (Which occurred to me at that point, could have been empty.)

I barrel out of the coffee shop, in full 5’9” 200-pound kill-mode and see the fellow just sitting by my stuff, quietly reading a book. He looks up at me and raises an eyebrow. I ask “You uhh… sure you don’t…. want anything?” He shakes his head no.

I go back in and quickly grab my breakfast. After I come out, he says, “I got an 8:40 bus ticket, I actually need to get going.” and he starts to gather his stuff and walk away. Throwing subtlety to the wind, I mutter “okay, nice meeting you” as I tear open my backpack to find what this gangly fellow has stolen, still in kill mode. Laptop: Still there. Ipod: Still there. Camera: Still there. Documentation: Still there. Medicine: Still there.

At that point I decided that this kid must either be the dumbest thief on the planet, or no thief at all. I’ll vote for the latter. (I have since searched everything. Nothing is missing, and nothing sketchy was planted in my bags.)

I’ve heard horror stories about people doing exactly what I had just done, and getting robbed blind within minuets of arriving in a foreign country. Lesson learned, possessions safe. Win-win.

And Pat, if you’re reading this (Which I’m sure you’re not, because you don’t like “words”) I heard your voice in my head right before switching into kill mode saying “Davey!?!?!?!”

I drink my coffee and eat my “That” which, was the end of needing food but not wanting to leave gangly-potential-thief with my stuff for any longer than I needed to. I quickly move into my second stupid idea which is, putting on my noise-canceling headphones and listening to music while I wait for my bus to arrive… which I will only know about via a PA system. I figure out that this is a one way ticket to sleeping on the floor at Heathrow International Airport about ten minutes before it’s scheduled to board. Two stupid things for a day were enough. I was a smarty-pants from that moment forward.

I boarded the bus bound for The University of East Anglia, in Norwich, Norfolk. (Pronounced Nor-itch, Norf-uk… you’ve got to squeeze the F into that first syllable, otherwise you sound like an idiot.)

Seated next to me was a girl named Dallas, also headed to UEA, also majoring in creative writing, also exhausted. We exchange exhausted banter the entire 4 ½ hours to school and she tells me how much she likes me, how funny she thinks I am, and how glad she is that we get to be friends. Score one for Davey!

We get to school and get our room keys and what have you. This is where the “I was so tired, I can’t remember” part starts to fade back in. I get my things brought up to my room and am too exhausted to be excited that it’s only slightly smaller than my room in ManziMo, except I don’t have to share it with anyone. I call British Airways to check on my bag, which they still haven’t found, and then realize I’ve had neither food or water in a few hours (except of course, for a bag of Swedish Fish.)

I meander in a diagonal line towards where I think food should be and somehow got there within a few minutes. I find a sandwich that seems like it shouldn’t give me an allergic reaction, and remember the advice of Miss Scott who told me to ask for “still-water,” otherwise I’ll get seltzer (which is the most foul tasting creation since photo processing chemicals.)

“Excuse me, do you know if they sell still-water here?”

“Where are you from?” he asks… picking up on the accent.

“The US.”

“Yeah, I figured. What part?”

I had just asked a Mormon, who was debating religion with a Hindu, for help. He invited me to join them for dinner. I didn’t know what conversation I had just been invited into, and probably would have accepted the invitation anyway, but boy was THAT a surprise. I didn’t even think they HAD Mormons in Europe!

I cannot express enough how difficult that conversation was to focus on while drifting by on 5 hours of sleep in the last 36.

So I said “more on me being really tired later,” earlier in this post. It’s now 7:33pm (12:33pm in Arizona) and I’m really just shooting to stay awake until 8:00 before falling asleep. Oh, and these Brits do everything in military time. So it’s actually 19:35 and I’m trying to stay awake until 20:00! I don’t have anything more to write…

I’m eating Milk Duds, and because I don’t have a student ID card yet I can’t get online, an subsequently can’t use Skype to call home, and can’t even actually post this until tomorrow so… Happy milk duds… and goodnight internet land.

1/6/2008 11:31pm

2008-01-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

In 38 some-odd hours I’m moving to a country I’ve never been to. I know three people there, one of whom will live at least 200 miles away, the other two will be in dorms across the way, however though they will have only been there a week longer than me.

What I’m leaving is a house with impromptu polka dots. Every twenty feet there are four squares of different colors. From the street it looks like the mark of a stark raving lunatic, but from the inside you can learn it’s about to be painted one of those four colors… eventually

One of the toilets doesn’t flush. One of them never stops flushing. The sink in the kitchen gets hot when you turn the “cold” knob and cold when you turn “hot.” There’s been a beer can on the patio table since New Years, and a Nerf dart stuck to a mirror downstairs since the going away party last night.

The house, which has been for sale for a year now, is a casualty of the divorce that started 13 months ago. Both of my parents have promised me that it’ll be finished by the time I come home. Dad told me tonight that if the house sells while I’m gone his new home will be mine as well.

He also told me as he was going down to bed that he’s not going to die while I’m gone. While this is reassuring, the fact that enough people have told him they fear that he might, even without him having anything concretely wrong with him, is not. I was the first to tell him this a few years ago. He tells me that this “truly saved his life.” He’s profoundly sad that I’m leaving. He’s sad in a way I’ve never seen him before.

Mom on the other hand, who has been living in Texas since June is more scared than anything. She knows we can handle not seeing each other for a semester, but being 1,000 miles seems very different than 7,000. We spent an hour practicing using Skype today, running every possible scenario. Her computer calling mine, mine calling hers. She called my cell from her computer, I called hers from mine. With and without webcam. We covered our bases.

She reminded me today that when I got to the airport on Tuesday that I “really need to make sure (I was) through customs before (I) start to dilly dally.” I visibly winced, shook my head and started laughing to which she replied “I love Skype! If we hadn’t been webcamming I’d never’ve seen that reaction!” I assured her, in my own words, that I’d get through the gates before I started to “fuck around.”

When I think about England, I get an image of a narrow street with three story brick buildings on both sides. All of the windows have festive awnings, and a red double-decker bus is driving by with cigarette smoke pouring out of the windows. Steam is coming up through a sewer cap in the middle of the road, and that’s just London. All of that I’ve seen in movies, but I’m not living in London.

When I think of where I’ll be living, Norwich, I come to a huge void. It’s like in the video game Command & Conquer (and every other war strategy game ever), how the enemy base looks before you build the spy satellite. There’s a bunch of trees and hills, an alligator and a polar bear pacing uncomfortably close to each other, all of this surrounding a big area covered in black. They call it “shrouding.”

I know Norwich is the home to The University of East Anglia, where I’ll be studying. I know Ian McEwan studied there. He’s the author of “Atonement,” which I haven’t read, and “The Comfort of Strangers,” which I have. I know that they do not sell macaroni and cheese, but that peanut butter can be found at any “international grocery store” and that the university has an indoor swimming pool.

Everyone I’ve talked to, whether they’ve been to England or not, offers me advice. You’ve got to go to Pickadilly Circus.You’ve got to go to a soccer game. Don’t try and stay up all night the night before and sleep on the plane: you can’t beat jetlag.

What this boils down to is that I’m going to a country that I know almost nothing about, to live in a city that I really know nothing about, and other than three people I’ve hung out with a handful of times, I’m going alone. This is the first night I’m feeling nervous about most of this.

My wonderful friends from home threw me a going away party last night. It was the most intense mix of people I’ve ever spent time with, but it was everyone who wanted to see me off, and most of them – all of the close friends – have told me that they really wish I weren’t going, but know why it’s important.

I’m glad I’m feeling nervous. This is supposed to be scary. I’m not just going somewhere new by myself – I’m going far enough away that coming home due to homesickness is not an option. I’m going to be there until June 16^th, and that’s all there is to it.

There will be no girlfriend at home who will call me to start fights just to make sure I don’t get lonely. My sister won’t live ten minutes away and lovingly invite me to her parties when I neglect to go out and find my own. This is going to be nothing like freshmen year – because I’m going to do it right this time. I don’t have a semester to get used to things. I have a semester.

I have three suitcases, seven framed photographs, and a few thousand dollars. What that equates to, I’m not sure yet, but it’s going to change my life. If it doesn’t, it’ll only be because I didn’t do it right, and I just can’t let that happen.

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR DAVE IN ENGLAND (To be updated as I get more information.)
Phone: +44-798-529-0855 (if you don't include the + sign it won't go through. On some phones holding 0 makes it appear. If not, call your service provider and ask.)
AIM: MaximumBandit
Skype: darobbins10 (Skype is free VOIP, free international calling, free webcamming. It’s wonderful… and it’s also the only way you’re getting me on the phone.)
Email: maximumbandit@gmail.com

Mailing Address:

David Robbins
Ntc006 Norfolk Terrace
University Of East Anglia
Norwich, England
NR4 7TJ