three years ago today, I arrived at heathrow – luggage laden, wide-eyed, and hopelessly romantic about life in london. i dragged my suitcases through the streets of peckham, to a flat i’d never seen and a flatmate i’d never met. i had $4000 and a six month work visa, and it was the culmination of a life’s dream. it was an early spring that year and i spent my first full day in london soaking up the warm sun, drinking pints at a pub by the thames, and i remember thinking how incredibly lucky i was to be able to make it come true.

at the time, my only goal was to find a way to stick it out for a year and see what happened. and boy, did stuff happen. during the first week i was there, i did a pub crawl, stayed out all night, snogged my first brit, went on my first uk date, landed a job, went to museums, went to clubs… i thought that’s what my new life in the uk would be like. it was every bit as wonderfully exotic and vital as i’d hoped.

but really, after the weather turns and the shine wears off, life in london is like life in any big city. which means that often it is mundane and annoying. i was lonely and broke for a good long time. i had romantic disasters and culture shock and immigration woes. i got lost and confused and homesick. i thought long and hard about packing up and going home, convinced no one would even miss me if i did. that was the low point.

but: there were also flashes of the life i’d imagined myself leading. the weekend jaunts to grand european cities. the pastoral getaways and quaint charms of genteel britain. the crazy debauched parties and raunchy stories tucked away for old age. culture and historic ambiance abounding. the doe-eyed lover’s view of the picturesque and the rose-coloured. the quintessentially urban experiences that make you appreciate the pulse of a city. there were those hints of the brilliance underneath – and they kept me here.

and now, after three years, i truly feel i’ve reached a milestone of some sort in my relationship with london. that hard-won balance of the mundane and the amazing. a point where i am comfortable enough to leave, knowing my place in this city is assured, and will still be here when i get back. knowing i will be welcomed back into the fold, the heart of things, quickly enveloped back into life-current. I am at ease enough to take this for granted, and yet, still new enough to have my breath taken away occasionally. There are still days when I have that sharply acute awareness of how lucky i am to be here. those flashes still keep me here.

and here is a good place to be.

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so there was a big nationwide council workers strike today. and although i’m a council employee, i’m not a member of the union which called the strike, nor did i strike in solidarity. to be perfectly honest, i have mixed feelings over the whole thing.

on the one hand, i believe strongly in the right of workers to unionise. i think it’s a much needed tool of empowerment for those workers whose needs are otherwise marginalised or ignored. to someone making minimum wage, who would otherwise be at the mercy of unethical labour practices, the union is a symbol of strength and protection. “the little guy” always has a voice, no matter how low on the totem pole.

on the other hand, i feel as though over here, in a more socialised political landscape, the unions are so broad, so noisy, so constantly confrontational, as to be counterproductive. they often seem to me, to be spouting the political rhetoric of one party or another, and the idea of workers rights becomes subsumed when they are used to further a party’s agenda. they play a very different role here in the uk, because employees rights are already so well enshrined in law that there’s really very little need to protect “the little guy”. even in the private sector, the employee has so many rights and protections that oftentimes organisations are afraid to sack someone for poor performance, because the employee will just seek compensation via the tribunal system. so when the omnipresent unions start making demans *on top* of what seems to me to be a very generous system already heavily weighted in the worker’s favour… well it just seems like they’re taking the piss.

the issue at the heart of today’s strike was about protecting employee pensions. currently, council workers are entitled to retire at 60 with a full pension – a benefit which is being threatened in much the same way that social security is collapsing: a demographic skew of older workers living longer and fewer young workers paying into the system. but the fact of the matter is that nothing the government does is going to change that reality. it may not be fair, but that’s the way it goes. and i suppose i come from a generation where we don’t expect the government to take care of us in our old age. and we definitely don’t rely on it. that’s sheer folly. i’ve been hearing about social security now since the reagan years – it’s nothing new. and big pension schemes in the states have been imploding for years. pensions don’t work anymore. they’re a relic of an age when people carved out their careers over 20+ year with the same company, then retired at 62 and died within the next 12 years. we all know it doesn’t work that way any more. to expect the same structures to support an entirely different weight, without anyone taking a hit, is ludicrous.

if I thought the cause was just, i’d support it. or even if i thought the strike would accomplish its aims, i’d support it. but all strikes seem to do lately is engender distaste for the cause, anger for the workers and public, and distraction from the real problem at hand. people aren’t angry at central government; they’re angry at the workers who kept the schools and services closed. they don’t support the idea of solidarity for social change; they’re irritated at the inconvenience and power games.

so i didn’t strike today, and i’m not sure i ever will. i’m no norma rae. but then again, this ain’t no 1970s textile mill, either.

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council workers strike, pensions scheme

well the countdown of workdays now stands at 4. there will apparently be a leaving do, whether i want it or not (nevermind that I really hate extra attention). the list of things remaining to be done includes getting the china visa, cutting off the utilities (on friday), getting a haircut (thursday), and… that’s about it!

we booked two nights in a hostel for when we land in beijing. because i get really cranky when i’m jetlagged *and* homeless.

spent most of the non-hungover weekend working on the bare bones of the trip website (please note, now added in the menu above. not much to see there just yet, but soon…)

i’m starting to get a little anxious/nervous – but in a good way. you know, like when there’s something big and important and a little bit scary, but you can’t wait for it to get here? butterflies.

and i’m avoiding finishing the packing – we’re like 83% packed, and I just can’t bring myself to face the other 17%. but really, it has to be done very soon. 10% of the other 17% is sorting through miscellaneous papers and old bills (which must be saved for immigration purposes) and assorted crapola. gah. also, I have to find good homes for all my plants. anyone want a plant?

other than that, all’s quiet on the western front. sorry it’s not more exciting at the mo’, but I’ll try and make up for that.

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Wow. if you haven’t yet seen the bbc’s planet earth series, i just cannot recomend it highly enough. sunday nights at 9:00 on bbc1. it puts you in jaw-dropping awe of this unbelievable planet we’re so lucky to be part of. absolute wonderment, and startling cinematography. you must take a look at some of the video here.

we already own blue planet, and i’m sure that planet earth will be out on dvd soon. a must have for any collection.

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planet earth, bbc

i made chicken soup with dumplings, from scratch. without a recipe.

and it was goddamn *tasty*. hooray for me!

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rediscovering a horrible side effect of tight-wad living… a drastically lowered alcohol tolerance. we’ve been such cheapskates, for so long, that our drinking skills have been temporarily (god, I hop* not permanently??!) impaired. why were we such skinflints that we couldn’t even buy the odd pint? well, it’s not that a beer every once in a while is so expensive. it’s that you can’t go to the pub and buy just one beer.

[sidenote for my american readers: there's a hard and fast rule about pub etiquette in the u.k., which is that you don't ever just byob (buy your own beer) at the pub, but rather buy a round for everyone in your group. so - if you're out with 6 people, your round consists of paying for 6 drinks. now, it's not so bad if you plan to drink another 5 beers (as everyone takes "getting a round" in turn) to get your money's worth. but if you don't fancy poisoning your liver every time you go out, or emptying your wallet when all you want is your *one* beer, you end up either alienating friends and neighbours by flauting the "rounds rules", *or* you just stay home a lot more. there are, in fact various ways to subvert the "rounds rules", but really it's considered poor form of manners to do it more than very occasionally. read more about the "rounds" phenomenon here. the "rounds rule" is really not as onerous as it sounds for the most part, and it's just something you become acclimated to as part of the way of life (and in fact, is often a nice little cheery communal sort of practice), but it doesn't really lend itself to budget living, no matter how you look at it. it *does* however, help build up your alcohol tolerance rather dramatically.]

So, getting back to the story: I had a little pre-departure leaving-do drinks-thing with a couple of my female colleagues after work on Friday. We split two bottles plus a bit (another frequent practice when more than one person in a group is drinking wine, which often lends itself to overconsumption – rather than 2 people having two individual glasses of wine, they’ll split a bottle… which often turns into more than one bottle… you get the idea), so altogether, I had three large glasses of white wine over the course of a few hours.

then came home so that j and i could take kerryn out for celebratory drinks for his recent engagement. (the poor soul has had a “dry” few weeks [including his birthday!] due to extended antibiotic usage for his impacted wisdom teeth.) so kerryn, j and i went to our local up the street, which serves a delightful strawberry lambic (and if you’ve never had a belgian fruit lambic beer on a hot summer night, you’ve not lived – not that list night was hot, or summer, but after three glasses of wine, who needs any excuses for fruit beer?) and I had two pints of that.

so to recap: 3 glasses of white wine, two pints of fruit beer, between 6 pm and 1 am.

and I am suffering for it now. which means i didn’t make it to the post office to mail the fruit pies.

see, I also belong to this american expats forum – which is exactly what it sounds like. a bunch of americans alternately whinging about and glorifying the expat existence in the united kingdom. and one of the members back in the states generously sent a big box of hostess fruit pies for several of the regular posters, which i, gripped by some strangely benevolent impulse, agreed to re-distribute to the others on this side of the pond. a hostess fruit pie delivery chain was set up. now the pies took ages to arrive, and i only finally got them two weekends ago. and of course I was meant to send them last weekend, but we were in the midst of getting rid of all our furniture and fruit pie postage was waaayyyy down at the bottom of the “to do” list. then today, despite all my good intentions, i was far too hung over to make it to the post office, due to my newly discovered “liquor lightweight” fighting class, a direct result of being skint for the past 10 months.

so if you’re an A.e. member wondering where on earth your fruit pies are… i heartily apologise for not being able to handle my fruit lambic. take some comfort in the fact that I’m being soundly punished for not holding up my end of the fruit pie chain.

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lambic, beer, hostess fruit pies

to kerryn and tracey… who’ve made the momentous decision to say "forever and ever".

all our love…always.
jen and jonno

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more sporting heartache – adam vinateri (Mr. golden foot of the 2 superbowl winning field goals) is leaving the patriots.

can everyone *please* just stay put??!! 

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one of the differences i find most interesting about living in the UK is the difference in racial profile and classification.  For example, here, the accepted (census used) race classifications are:

• white (white british, white irish, white other)
• black or black british (black carribean, black african, black other)
• asian (indian, pakistani, bangladeshi, other)
• mixed (white/black carribean, white/black african, white/asian, other)
• chinese or other

To those of us from the US, this takes some getting used to.  Terms such as bi-racial or multi-ethnic are instead just called "mixed race" – which to the american ear seems a bit crude.  "Asian" means almost exclusively those ex-commonwealth countries which still play cricket. Everyone else from the continent of asia is lumped into "chinese or other", because really, there are few koreans, vietnamese, or other asian countries demographically represented here.  (and it sounds silly to say this, but it’s so ingrained… "african-american" is obviously not in usage over here.)  the distinction between black-carribean and black-african sounds pedantic (since most black-carribeans in the u.s. would say they were of african descent) until you realise that there are a lot more african immigrants in the u.k.  there’s no hispanic category – I presume they’re expected to identify as one of the white or black categories – and the term "latino" doesn’t even exist.  and it’s a particularly strange sensation to tick the box for "white – other" when one is used to just belonging to the category at the top of the list.

when I first started working for the council, one of the first tasks I had was to write up a "Race and Equalities IMpact assessment" for a project we were doing.  and it was like learning a while new language.  we become so used to throwing around the most politically correct terms in the u.s., it’s so ingrained, that everything else feels foreign.  "wrong" somehow.  racial sensitivity often takes a back seat in a country where 87.5% of the population identify as "white british", and it takes some adjustment to get used to.

which is really just my long-winded way of saying that living in a country with such a different approach to diversity and ethnicity points out just how much of a social construct all our ideas about race and classification really are.  a person’s skin colour or background doesn’t change when they move from one country to the next – but the way they are identified by others certainly does.  and by extension, the way we identify ourselves.

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Grasping at straws: Samuel L. Jackson stars in "Snakes on a Plane". No, I’m not making that up. View the trailer here. Sam, sam, sam… what happened??! I remember when you used to, like star in *good movies* and shit. Your cool quotient just hit the toilet dude.  The movie isn’t even out and already it’s spawning spoofs. That does not bode well.

South Park goes after scientology again in it’s newest season premier.  For those of you who heard about how Tom Cruise tried to kill the South Park scientology episode… I have the episode in question, featuring R. Kelly singing "tom cruise please just come out of the closet". Now I would never do anything as naughty as pass this along (unless you asked really, really nicely).  That would be wrong, not to mention prolly bring a lawsuit down on my ass.  But, you could always watch it here.  That’s the power of the internet, my friends.  Now I’m sure mr. cruise will *try* to find a way to sue the entire internet.  But until he does, avail yourself of the the miracle of technology.

Finally, a little hit of feel good:  if you like juggling (and who doesn’t like juggling?) and you like the beatles (and who doesn’t like the beatles?) check out the two great tastes that taste great together.  truly talented – the guy gotz mad skillz. 

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cruise, scientology, juggling, video, snakes on a plane, south park

anita roddick, founder of “the body shop”, who built her fortune on mass-marketing ethically produced non-animal-tested products, just sold her chain to corporate cosmetics giant l’oreal.

Ms Roddick said she had an issue with L’Oréal over animal testing but that the firm had “a great statement about what they’re doing on animal testing or what they are trying to do”. She said the assumption that L’Oréal was the “enemy” was “quite wrong”.

are people’s values and beliefs so flexible these days that they’re always susceptible to any amount of monetary wooing? are we still surprised? should we be?

selling out has become so endemic, it hardly seems remarkable any more. we live in a world where anything is for sale – even more so if it can be used to sell something else. long gone is the furor over iconic songs being used to sell expensive athletic shoes, and african supermodels endorsing ethically dirty diamond companies which pillage the land and abuse workers hardly gets a newspaper mention. these days, janis joplin sings a “piece of her heart” for cadbury’s. Ozzy osbourne, the self-titled “prince of darkness” associated with satanism, endorses a butter substitute. The great Pablo Picasso’s inimitable signature is emblazoned on the back of a line of Citroen cars. Is all cultural cachet really just up for sale to the highest bidder?

Pete Townshend of “the who” (who did an ad for the air force at the height of the vietnam war) has said, “These songs are my property. They came out of my head. I have every right to do whatever I want with them. You own your personal reactions to them and whatever memories they evoke for you, but the songs are entirely mine and I will use them any way I like.” And that’s pretty hard to argue against. As this article so adeptly points out:

“Pop by its democratic nature has destroyed barriers and prejudices (good), yet by its capitalistic nature has always been available for cooptation by the power elites (bad)… Nor is this merely a measure of how debased things have become, of how low we’ve sunk since pop’s glory days — whenever you think those were. In any kind of historical perspective, the contradictions of pop culture have always obtained as they obtain now. Pop was never pure, damn it.”

And perhaps that true of all manner of cultural media today – by very nature of its accessibility, it is ripe for overuse/misuse/mixed use. But it’s not just pop songs or icons anymore. And when blatant greed outweighs moral fibre, or loyalty to one’s beliefs, it’s hard to fathom the depths to which society has sunk in pursuit of the almighty dollar. art, music, film all plundered by congomerates with no sense of sanctity or cultural reverence. and stars, writers, singers all eager to prostrate themselves at the temple of crass commercialism.

I don’t know why i still expect any semblance of moral rectitude – nothing is sacred and no one is immune. it just strikes me as a sad commentary on today’s society that the threshold for cashing in seems to get lower with every passing day.

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selling out, the body shop, anita roddick

Not little Bronson too! my heart can’t take this!

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red sox

I’ve written about this before, but this article just supports my thesis: that what people are calling the “mommy wars” really still all harks back to pay inequity between the sexes, which is based in the expectation that women will always be the primary caregiver.

Inflexible workplaces offer socially mobile women a devil’s choice: they can advance in their careers or they can have families… But more often women don’t have that choice, and take the financial hit. Much of the “wage gap” is in fact a baby gap… Pretty much every aspect of women’s reproductive work is punished economically in the American workplace. And that affects all two-earner, nuclear households — the ideal to which we’re all supposed to aspire (the wage gap is estimated to cost working families $200 billion dollars per year).

While there has been an increase in the number of women working outside the home, that *hasn’t* translated to the same kind of increase in involvement *in* the home by most men. Yes, men are doing more – but women still take on the majority of domestic and childrearing tasks.

So organisations still operate on the presumption that it’s okay for women to be offered lesser jobs, or receive fewer benefits because their primary role is still as caregiver at home. I think in order to understand just how dramatically that impacts things like pay parity and families’ economic well-being, we need to start picturing what things would be like if the “men’s” and “women’s” roles were reversed.

I bet there are plenty of men who *would* like to take time off to be with their children – and if it made financial sense, would do so. In treating both men and women as potential primary caregivers, you make it easier for parents to return to work if they choose to do so, and you do away with the disparity in treatment (i.e. “wouldn’t you prefer admin work”). You empower people to reinforce strong families, solid working roles, and undo so much of the traditional caregiver stereotypes (”I won’t hire her because she’s likely to leave to have a baby and never return, or if she does, only work part-time”).

We’ve said it’s okay for women to have kids and work – but we’ve never said it’s okay for men to have kids and stay home.

And paradoxically, I think that even though we’ve said it’s fine for women to choose either way… we still *expect them to choose* to spend at least some time at home. Which means it’s no longer really a choice again, is it? Men almost never have to make that choice because usually it makes more financial sense for them to stay in the workforce. That’s incredibly unfair, to both fathers and mothers. Aside from the obvious example of breastfeeding directly, no one has ever determined that somehow a) women perform some sort of magical service at home that can’t be done by an equally attentive and caring and loving father and b) that these stereotypes don’t reinforce the traditional uptake of roles, reinforcing the gender pay gap, becoming a self-perpetuating cycle.

This is where the conflict amongst women over the gender-political impact of their own personal choices comes into play. We all intellectually believe that choices should be made solely on the basis of what’s best for a woman and her family. But in real life, it’s hard not to feel that one woman’s decision (either traditional, or non-traditional) makes it more difficult for the women who come behind her because of the expectations it reinforces. We become personally invested in how other women balance their work and home lives, because we feel it directly affects our ability to do the same. The decision to work or not carries so much more weight because it becomes a value-laden representative stance on families and feminism, rather than just an individual preference or path. The personal becomes political.

The workplace becomes a warzone and the homefront becomes a battleground. Instead of channeling time and energy into those things which we hold dear, we squander time and energy attempting to defend our choices by attacking others.

what a sad sad waste. and it will be even more tragic if all the infighting only means that 20 years from now, my nieces will be faced with the same agonising decisions.

you’ve come a long way, baby.

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feminism, women, workplace, sahm, mommy wars, family values

MP3 playlist (M3U)

the podcast link is here

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I think with all this getting rid of stuff, I am inadvertently becoming a buddhist.

spent this afternoon introducing j to the comedic genius that was mitch hedberg. goddamn that man was funny. so terribly sad he’s dead, and even worse that there’s no chance in hell of me finding any of his shows on dvd here in the u.k. if you ever saw him do standup, you can just picture the deadpan monotone slacker-style delivery of his jokes. these had tears streaming out of my eyes…

There is a commercial on late-night TV for this thing you attach to a garden hose. It says, “You can water your hard-to-reach plants with this product.” Who the fuck would make their plants hard to reach!? That seems so very mean. “I know you need water, but I’m gonna make you hard to reach. I will throw water at you. Hopefully, they will invent a product before you shrivel and die. Think like a cactus!” This product was available for four easy payments of $19.95. I would like a product that was available for three easy payments and one fucking complicated payment. We can’t tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is going to be a bitch. The mailman will get shot to death, the envelope will not seal, and the stamp will be in the wrong denomination. Good luck, fucker. The last payment must be made in wampum!

This one time I was in a convenience store, and a guy came up and asked me, “What’s the score?” and I said, “What is the game? If it’s a competition between me and you, and the object is to ask the other guy questions he doesn’t give a shit about, then you are winning, one to nothing.”

I bought a doughnut from a store and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I don’t need a receipt for the doughnut. Man, I’ll just give you money, then you give me the doughnut. End of transaction. We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can’t imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend: “Don’t even act like I didn’t get that doughnut, I’ve got the documentation right here. Oh wait, it’s at home, in the file… under D… for doughnut”

You know they call corn-on-the-cob “corn-on-the-cob,” but that’s how it comes out of the ground, man. They should call that “corn,” and call every other version “corn-off-the-cob.” It’s not like if you cut off my arm you would call it “Mitch,” then reattach it and call me “Mitch-all-together”.

I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don’t know why; that’s what they’re supposed to do. Now if he had had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed. Imagine trying to fly a chair. You’d have to run like a motherfucker.

In England, Smokey the Bear is not the forest fire prevention representative. They have Smackie the Frog. It’s just like a bear, but it’s a frog. I think it’s a better system; I think we should adopt it. Because bears can be mean, but frogs are always cool. Never has there been a frog hopping toward me, and I thought, “Man, here comes that frog…I’d better play dead.” You never say, “Here comes that frog” in a terrified manner. It’s always optimistic, like, “Hey, here comes that frog, all right. Maybe he will settle near me so I can pet him, and stick him in a mayonnaise jar.. with a stick and a leaf.. to recreate what he’s used to. And I’d certainly have to punch some holes in the lid, because he’s damn sure used to air. Then I can observe him, and he won’t be doing much in his 16-ounce world.”

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mitch hedberg

well.

no turning back now, I guess.

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i know I tend to go on a bit about not trusting all these identifying and tracking devices which are supposed to make our lives so much easier and safer… but turns out, I have good reason to be suspicious.

rfid chips are the next frontier for hackers

the impact would be felt far beyond the corner grocery store. RFID is used for a range of tasks, from identifying pets to paying for gas, by just about everyone from Wal-Mart (WMT), the world’s largest retailer, to the Dept. of Defense. There are hundreds of millions of RFID tags being used worldwide today, and the tally will reach tens of billions within seven years…There’s a growing financial incentive for would-be RFID hackers, too. RFID tags are increasingly used in credit card payments and other financial transactions.

which could make life very interesting for the people deciding to voluntarily get chipped.

see? Sometimes I’m not as dumb as I look.

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well after a lot of false starts, it seems we have sold the car.

(small rant aside: If you call and get directions and say you’re going to come look at our car, it is RUDE to do a no call – no show, and then chickenshit to *NOT answer the phone* when we call you back to see if you are still coming!! Three people pulled that crap… as if we have nothing better to do than sit around waiting for people…)

but now, brucie is going to a good home. i will miss him. i don’t know why I get so attached to them, but i always fall hard for my cars.

my first car was the old family hand-me-down, “the silver bullet”. He was a 1984 toyota cargo van, converted into a 7 passenger minivan – one of the very first off the line. i took my very first long road-trip by myself in that car, and remember being terrified getting caught in a really bad storm where the car wanted to carry itself across a four-lane highway. he made me very popular when I worked at a remote camp in the catskill mountains and none of the other camp counselors had any way of getting into town on their days off. he was unfailingly sound of motor, and never broke down on me. he was reliable and steady and i passed him down to my siblings when i moved to new york. in the end, “the silver bullet” lived for 14 years and went more than 200,000 miles – takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

my next car was also a family inheritance. “phantom” was a gunmetal grey 1986 chevy caprice classic. a real battleaxe of a car – the frame of that sucker was pure american steel, and I never felt safer. he was a guardian – i knew that nothing could happen to me in that car, he was so solid. my sis owned him before me and drove him into the back of a giant truck, so his hood liked to bounce around a bit and looked like it wore a permanent grin. He was rear wheel drive, and my apartment was on a steep one-way hill, so winter driving was always an adventure. he was boiling hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, but he served me well, lived a good long life, and went to the aids charitable organisation in the afterlife.

my third car was yet another relation donation. “bandit” was a smoke-coloured 1996 mitsubishi galant from my brother. he was my daily ride to and from work for the 3 years I lived in boston, and i *loved* driving him. i took him everywhere, and he really felt like another part of my family. we went to provincetown and montreal and new york and new hampshire on a regular basis. we went to the beach when it was fine and sunny, and the mountains when the weather called for a hike. my dog suzie sat in back with her seatbelt on, and we’d just drive. anywhere. everywhere. it didn’t matter. the driving was the thing. he had a sunroof which leaked, and I was forever taping up the edges, but in a secret way, i loved his quirks. he was my car during my divorce, and whenever i needed to get away, he was there. he wasn’t fancy, and he wasn’t big. he was your average mid-sized foreign economy car, but he saved my sanity in a million small ways. Having to sell him to finance my move to london was supremely difficult, and I still miss the feel of the stickshift in my hand.

so maybe it’s because remembering when j bought “brucie” reminds me of the very beginning of our relationship, when everything was new and exciting. maybe it’s because brucie was my first car in the UK, and allowed us to get the hell out of london when urban living got to be too much. maybe it’s because the memories of him will always be associated with my first memories of my new life with jonno.

so call me silly and sentimental. all i know is that i will miss our faithful friend, and remember him fondly.

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ugh. just went and got my lovely hepatitis A, typhoid, and yellow fever jabs.

Now I am just waiting for the angels of death to arrive.

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started packing up our stuff this weekend. as of next week, we’ll be living like nomads, as a friend is coming to collect all our furniture and take it away.

packing is such a bittersweet exercise. the unavoidable culling of personal detrius, sorting out one’s mementos and effects, and ranking their importance. What’s expendable, what’s not reflecting the shifting internal landscape.

i’ve moved 9 times since i left home after high school. i’ve left a trail of belongings like breadcrumbs through 4 cities, 3 countries. artefacts of the lives i used to lead, and my changing priorities. pieces of my old self shed like a skin. what i no longer needed or wanted or loved became junk. objects once infused with sentiment, now refuse.

and it’s a mundane process which drains them of their power – only time. the items i brought over in my suitcase when i first moved here to remind me of home, no longer carry that weight. home is no longer home. and when i revisit the items i left behind in basement boxes, they no longer seem so poignant. mementos less momentus. the attachment eases by degrees with the passing years.

but it’s tough, this paring down to the bare necessities. I’m a thrower by nature, but I’ve done this so many times now, that my instinct is to hold fast. i’m tired of discarding things because I have to. i want some stuff that is *mine*. things that feel like home. things that i keep just for the hell of it, just in case. i want the luxury of the non-essential.

nomadism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

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lovelovelove “my name is earl”. since j and i rarely venture out of the house anymore, we are always parked in front of the telly at 10pm on friday evenings, eagerly awaiting that week’s riotous installment with our cup of tea and pudding.

(for anyone jealous of our upcoming trip, i present this example as evidence of how sad our social life has become: a half hour television show is one of the highlights of our week. the sacrifices we make!)

and yeah, we’re behind the times over here, so I’m late to this party, since it’s already a big hit in the states, but the dialogue is priceless. some of my favourite quotes:

Darnell: I’m already registered to vote.
Joy: What?
Darnell: Not that it matters, because until we reform the electoral college, the popular votes will be ignored, and we’ll keep electing Presidents that only get a minority of the vote.
Joy: That must be some black stuff. I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about

Joy: Woo, this things making me sweat like a whore in church, no offense, Patty.
Patty: None taken. I don’t go to church.

Earl: (on his fabricated stint in Iraq) Well, Buzz, it’s a lot like the beach. Except the sharks have guns, and they’re running around on the sand, shootin’ at you and yellin’ in a fish language you don’t understand.

Joy: I want half that lotto money, Earl.
Earl: Yeah? Well, I wanted a legitimate baby and a wife who didn’t huff paint on Thanksgiving, but I guess life’s full of little disappointments, now ain’t it?

You can’t buy that kind of bellylaugh. brilliant.

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show, quotes, my name is earl