Days 15 and 16: Double Post

Double Post:

I decided not to blog about Thursday because, well, not much happened. So we’ll roll that one into yesterdays, call it a double, and move on.

Thursday was the first day of the 4th class we’re taking here, the one run by IES staff. London as a Multicultural city, or something of that nature. At first it seemed like it would be right up my alley: small discussions of what makes a nation, how is a nation defined etc. but it really ended up being too touchy-feely*. A lot of “self reflection” and “how does a nation make you feel” and “what do YOU think defines a nation”**, it just ended up being a little empty. Hopefully we were laying the foundation for more to come, but the prof. kept stressing how these techniques were the latest and greatest, so this may be what class is like for the rest of our time.

*Tom, during the break: If this class gets anymore touchy-feely, I’m going to have to take out a restraining order.

**I’ve got no problem with talking about what factors define a nation, as long as your starting point is language. It HAS to start with a common language. That wasn’t given as the base, we were one of two groups that brought it up, so it seems like we basically missed the point.

Katie, Ryan, and I stopped by Tesco on the way home, running into several people on the way. Once back at the dorm, my afternoon was full of laundry, reading and a bit of writing. The evening provided my introduction to both Nevermind the Buzzcocks and Blackadder, both of which are excellent shows.

Double post Part Deux!

Yesterday was the wonderful day off we get every week, and I needed it. Perpetual talk of crisis can be sort of exhausting, and the gloom of a 10 page paper due next week was dampening the mood around the dorm.

Sleeping in was great, and a welcome change from our earlish mornings when we have class. The first great surprise of the morning was that The Mountain Goats had released a new EP, pay what you want. Tossing them a couple bucks, I downloaded the album and have been more than pleased with it*. I really like the new style they’ve been going for, and I hope their next full album is more to this style than their previous albums were.

*The only downside is that telling people “Dude, you’ve got to listen to Satanic Messiah” makes me sound like a metalhead. Too bad this is folk-inspired indie, heavily attached to the piano.

6 or so of us spent the early afternoon thrifting around Chelsea. Now, that sounds like a great plan, but we all soon realized that “thrifting” in Chelsea means paying 80 pounds for a suit instead of 130. It’s a lot like thrifitng in Belmont in that respect, everything is cheaper, but nothing is cheap.

Disapointed with that attempt, we headed down to a food market in The City. Borough Market had everything one could ever want, and it was all fresh. There were fruit and vegetable sellers, meat shops, hand made pasta vendors, candy men, cheese shops, everything one could ever need! All of us found a few things to call dinner. I spent around 5 pounds and got an apple, two buns, a glass of cold cider, a bag to carry stuff in, a bottle of strawberry and pear hard cider, and a venison burger.

We made it home without much trouble and I set to making dinner. One of the non-Chicago people who uses our kitchen isn’t very good at cleaning up after himself, so I had to clean out the skillet before I used it, used it, and then had to clean it out again. Not a big deal, just annoying. The burger proved to be worth the wait; I’d forgotten how good venison is. Next time, however, I’m getting the boar burger.

We finished season 4 of Blackadder last night, and I’ve got to say, it was as good a show about war as I’ve ever seen. It’s a lot like a British version of M*A*S*H set in world war 1 in that they mix humor and tension very very well. The cast is stocked, Stephen Frye, Rowan Atkinson, and Hugh Laurie are all tremendous in their various parts. It still unsettles me how good Hugh Laurie’s American accent is. He’s British in Blackadder, so that of course is natural for him, but it just highlights how convincing he is in House.

I sat down to work at about midnight and banged out close to three pages, giving me four to work from today. I’m still a bit uncertain if I’ll have enough material, but I think I will. If not, 3 pages of block quotes will almost certainly bring me up to the limit!