Island Hopping

King of the bongo

2011-11-10T19:32:00.000+00:00

I heard this story while at Eton from someone directly involved in it. I am giving my best account of it here, omitting names and positions.

Background: The picture you see above is the Language School at Eton, called Birley Schools (after an old Head Master, I am given to understand). The widely supported view is that this is an old, ugly, grim and generally badly-designed post-war brick building that should have never happened. Also, more and more boys are nowadays taking Modern Languages courses, and the old building is just not big enough to cope with the demand.

Given these facts, the powers that be have decided to throw down this building and build a new, bigger, better, uncut Language Schools. This is already under way as I am writing this, due to be completed in a couple of years.

Now the story is, it turns out that a certain person in Modern Languages is very friendly with the President of Gabon’s wife (one of the sons went to Eton or something). Having mentioned the situation with the language schools, she generously offered to donate a hefty sum to the College for this new building. As you know, Eton College is a public charity, and it frequently takes donations like this one.

The terms of the agreement were fairly generous: they gave the money, and Eton would have a yearly scholarship for one Gabonese boy, and of course, would name the building after whoever made the donation.

Unfortunately this is where the story ends, for the surname of the President of Gabon is… “Bongo”.

“Bongo Schools” is a name Eton is not yet ready for. Maybe good enough for the Music Schools.

*The present name of the project is “International Schools”.

The old school tie

2010-11-22T19:03:00.001+00:00

I had chanced upon this expression a number of times, most importantly in Orwell’s writing. I knew it was one of those things to do with the British obsession with class, but I had no idea of how far it went. Boy, was I in for a treat.

As many others do, Toby Young (of How to lose friends and alienate people fame) came to Eton to give a talk, in which he read the “prologue” (The return of the Eton mob) of a book he has in the works. It was a fantastic reading, perfect pitch, intonation, everything. And with every sentence he read I heard a click; a piece of the puzzle fell into place.

I had been collecting these pieces for a long time but I had them in all the wrong order. Now they suddenly fit together and sense shone at the seams. Everything he spoke about, his time at Oxford, how he wasn’t accepted or successful there because his origins and manners and accent and whatnot where not quite posh enough; how Hugh Grant (who according to him comes from a similarly upper-middle-class non-public-school background) did make it big because he knew how to impersonate the persona; how modals and manners are just a charade played to the entertainment of a certain class; how his teachers told him he should never say “I went to a school called…” as if you were ashamed of your school not being one of the famous ones… it was all gospel to me. I learned so much right there and then that I can’t write it down without it becoming a book (yet another one). My first proper introduction to the British class system.

I loved it so much that after he finished I sidled up to talk to him. I was initially met with reasonable politeness, which metamorphosed into coldness and distance with amazing speed as soon as I had uttered 3 words of greeting. I made him visibly very uncomfortable (an effect I find I very often have on people around here). This man, who criticized and “exposed” the snobbishness of a class system that in his view ostracized him for not having the required “pedigree” was in fact so deeply a part of it that to him I was a very unsettling incongruence: What was I doing there? A scruffy looking foreigner attending his lecture to Eton boys? A darkie, as it were. Who did I think I was to approach him?

It was my final moment of revelation, of epiphany. Like Neo at the end of Matrix (one), like Alice at the end of herself in Wonderland, the world became lined with falling, fusing green characters, and the whole pack of cards rose up into the air. My eyes were open, I could now see.

For some reason, I didn’t quite seem to fit in here. Frequently I would open my mouth and it would seem I had just made a faux pas. Surely I have made a good number of them as usual, this I am aware of, but it was strange that I wouldn’t get it right once. I kept blaming myself and coming up with one thousand and one explanations of what exactly I was doing wrong, and kept finding faults in my demeanour, etiquette, attitude, manners, you name it. I knew I was doing something wrong but didn’t know what it was exactly. It turns out that what I definitely got wrong, my one massive mistake, was ever expecting to fit in.

One could say British society has moved on a great deal from classical Victorian times. Now it doesn’t seem to matter that much what your parents deal in or what colour you are. The one thing that matters and will always matter, the one thing everybody asks in these circles, is what school you went to. University is secondary. It always helps if it’s Oxbridge, but it could be any “red brick”* and it changes little if you are, say, an Old Etonian.

I already knew that dress code was… well, coded. I first discovered this when I was to attend an event that required “Black Tie”. I thought “oh fine, I just need to find a black tie”. And they said “no no no my frien, you no understan” (ok, those were the words of a Thai scooter-taxi driver, but this was an almost exact replica of that moment) - Black Tie stands for black bowtie, which implies a silk-lapelled dinner jacket, silk-lined trousers, patent leather shoes, a white shirt with cufflinks and a bowtie which funnily enough can in fact be any colour of the rainbow.

In the same way, the last event before Long Leave was to be “Suit and tie”. You might think this straightforward enough. I know I did. Now this turned out to be coded as well. The suit is a normal suit, any suit, yes, but the tie, ah the tie!, the tie is you old school tie, the tie you wore at school, because of course you went to a school where you had to wear a uniform which included a tie. Who doesn’t?

And why is this? It is so that Old Etonians, Old Harrovians and such ilk can recognize each other and say “Ah, you!, you sir are one of mine!, you and I play in the same league old chap!”, knowing themselves above all the scum with less-pedigreed stripes on the pieces of cloth hanging from their necks, so that everyone can spot his own among the strangers.

So this is the world I have been thrust into. Very interesting as a sociological study, yes, but now I see this demeaning, debasing, small-minded world for what it is I would never want to be a part of it, even if I could ever fit in. I’ve decided I’d much rather keep my Tesco Value tie and my humanity.

* Recently established UK universities of lesser prestige.

Common Lane

2010-10-11T02:18:00.005+01:00

See that house? This is where I live, 2 Common Lane.

Google Streetview never made it here, so I have to grace you with some of my own pictures. I share quite a big house with other teachers, all of them fantastically awesome chummy chums. (They might read this, so some ass-kissing is inevitable, but the truth is they are all actually really cool)


My bedroom	My bed	View from my window

We each have two rooms in it, a bedroom upstairs and a study downstairs, apparently for tax reasons – our study counts as our workplace. In my case, it really is, for this is where I do all the teaching. I have to say it’s really handy.

We have an amazing garden at the back with lawn of perfect radioactive green and a huge weeping willow and a bit of jungle around the corner. I can only wish the right weather will one day come to make proper use of it!

As for the location, the house is perfectly situated some 100m from the main "attractions": the main college building, the library, the gym and pool. I wish it was also 100m away from the railway (aka the Portal to London), but alas, that’s a 15min walk.

Update: Slideshow!

Burgled

2010-10-10T01:13:00.000+01:00

It is 7:32 am. Sam knows this because it says so on his computer screen. At this time someone opens his studio door, pokes his head in and says “oh… is this Tom’s room?”. Reply: “No, who are you?”. He mumbles something about repairs and the front door being unlocked and goes away. Sam ponders the logic statement “Entity: (probably) Burglar –> Action: Hit with golf club”. But this straightforward approach is thwarted by the thought “What a racist I am! Just because he’s black!”.

So Sam thinks no more about this and goes to have breakfast. When he’s back, his laptop, wallet and phone have sublimated, as has his bike (borrowed, not even his), and another 3 laptops, 1 wallet, 1 iPod, check books and other easy-to-sell stuff from around the house. Sam concludes: “Gosh, I wish I was more racist!”.

That’s the story as Sam tells it anyway.

More details emerged later: The guy tried to get into other houses and failed so he finally forced one of our windows open with a plank he broke from the wooden table in our garden, came into Tom’s studio, trashed it and took everything he thought valuable and small, including his wallet which explains how he knew his name. He walked right past a £500 mike, which is both lucky and tells us he knows nothing about music or the modern hardware used for it (clue number two). After meeting Sam he probably hid somewhere else in the house until he left, then proceeded to plunder the rest at leisure.

I was the lucky one of the bunch, he took nothing of mine. Also, it might have helped that I don’t leave anything of value in my studio (much less my wallet) and always lock my bedroom. The one thing he could have taken from me is my Eton laptop, which must have had 10 previous owners, one of them in all likelihood Fred Flintstone. I so wish he had taken it, so I could get a new one.

So yes, interesting things can happen around here. It’s bad enough that it happened but perhaps the worst of it is, when you think about it, that we were burgled by the shittiest burglar in all of Slough, probably shortlisted for shittiest in Berkshire. He tries to get into houses at random, doesn’t even bring his own crowbar and, to add insult to injury, makes off on the bike he steals.

It is not the first time this happens, and I bet it won’t be the last. Slough is just too close. Maybe they’ll take my rubbish laptop next time, fingers crossed.

Chambers

2010-09-26T18:58:00.000+01:00

I am in a big room that predates me by over 500 years, lined up with busts of Eton’s most illustrious sons, on the wooden panels on its walls thousands of names proudly carved in heavy Latin script.

I am in the midst of a gathering of a hundred and fifty men (and some 10 women) wearing penguin suits and bowties and harrypotteresque gowns over that, who are all stamping their feet (the accepted form of applause at Eton) and the floor is shaking, in spite of the padded carpet preemptively in place. The Head Master is masterfully delivering one of his encouraging “well done” speeches, which I always enjoy listening to but the point of which I invariably forget the instant he is done. After his final and dismissive "thank you”, the volume in the room rises up from complete silence to a “fahfahfahfahfohfoh” crescendo like there was someone slowly turning a knob.

This meeting is supposed to serve a double purpose: both to hear important announcements by the Head Master and Lower Master and to conduct official school business with other beaks in the few minutes before and after that. Tradition dictates that if you want to speak to someone you have to hold on to his gown (which is why everybody has to wear one*). This is recursive; if someone else wants to speak to that person he (very occasionally she) will then have to hold on to your gown and so on. It is quite common to have chains of 3 or 4 people holding on to each other’s gown.

The meeting finished, everybody rushes off to their divs, some stopping by School Office to check their pigeon holes. Outside the main building, boys are waiting to try and get hold of beaks, most often because they have been told by those masters to “see me after Chambers”. They might have misbehaved or want a quiet word about something.

It is an interesting experience, bizarre and slightly surreal like everything else around here, but once the novelty fades it becomes just a right pain in the arse. This happens every morning, 11:20 to 11:40, Monday to Saturday, and it is compulsory to attend. Us Language Assistants don’t have to be there on a Saturday, but it still means Mon-Fri I have to jump out of bed into a suit just to go loaf around for 20 minutes (bonus picture: me in a suit) and all I can think is: there go 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Of course nowadays most school business is carried over email, which is quicker and better no matter how you look at it. So why Chambers then? Just for an extra bit of social atmosphere? Why compulsive Chapel for boys at 8:35am? Why the penguin suits and the black shoes? Why the gown-pulling and the foot stamping? Why beaks? Why the Wall Game**?

There’s a saying around here, it goes:

“Ask not why, ask since when.”

* Except us Assistants, nobody wants to speak to us.
** Quidditch

Eton College

2010-09-25T18:49:00.000+01:00

Slough is rumoured to be rough, and this year I am working at a public charity for boys just outside of Slough.

Technically, this is all true, as Slough “has a relatively high crime rate, with figures for all crime statistic categories above the English average and figures for several categories more than double the English average” and Eton College "is one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868”, Wikipedia dixit. However, it is also true that Windsor Castle (one of the Queen’s residences) is a 10-min walk away, that Windsor is a tourist wonderland and that Eton is commonly perceived to be the cream of the crop amongst the most exclusive schools for boys in the world.

Only boys study here, so a boy is a pupil/student. Yet a beak is a teacher, the headmaster is the Head Master, a class is a div, boys in the same year are a block, a term is a half (Michaelmas, Lent and Summer, so 3 halves), lessons in the morning are scheduled as schools (1st School 9:00-9:40, 2nd School 9:50-10:30 and so on to 5th) and those after lunch as After Four (4:30-5:10), After Five (5:20-6:00) and After Six (6:15-7:15). After lessons and in between them, much sport is done, and a number of games unique to Eton are played here, like Eton Fives and The Wall Game.

So what am I doing here? I am not a boy, not yet a beak, but I am the Spanish Assistant at Eton College for 2010/2011 – though I prefer the rather pompous term Lector, fahfahfah. I am here to teach the boys and help them with their oral Spanish (however that may sound). There is a new Lector every year, all of them from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, so here is another reason to consider myself lucky to have studied there. This is for me an amazing opportunity to get to know the Tradition that inspired Harry Potter from the inside and to teach in possibly the best environment one could hope for.

For Eton is… special. It is special in so many ways that it will take me many, many posts to point it out. So as this new journey of discovery and understanding I am embarked on progresses I will endeavour to share my discoveries. You’re welcome to tag along!

Delayed

2009-08-17T09:07:00.002+01:00

For the first time ever, I was able to sleep before a flight. I even slept well. I woke up in time, did the last things I had to do, left early but in no hurry. It was a nice clear summer night outside. The moon was pretty, the crickets were singing. The bus came on time. The driver was nice to me. The next bus came on time. People were nice to me and smiled. When I arrived at the terminal at the exact time I expected to I knew something wasn't right. This can't be happening, I told myself. No last-minute rushes, no running down aisles loaded with bulky items, shouting at morons and jumping queues, no sweating, no panting, no stress, no panic. Too good to be true. Too perfect.

A perfectly engineered plan working out just fine. I started to panic. Something's wrong, I kept telling myself.

I started going over my to-do list and my to-take list. Surely I had forgotten my ID? No such luck. Mobile phone charger? Securely in my backpack. Maybe I left the oven on at home? Nope. Left the lights on? Not at all.

A sense of impending doom started crawling up my spine. My plane's gonna blow up, I thought. Or worse, instead of London I'll end up in Liverpool. I must have cancer. And swine flu. And AIDS. I'm about to be robbed, then murdered. No, murdered first. My eyes kept darting side to side, expecting the unexpected any instant.

When I arrived at the check-in desk, the relief was tangible, warm and wet. My flight was delayed 4 hours. "Oh, so that was it!", I cried and started dancing around, kissing babies and hugging old ladies.

Flashback

2009-08-05T00:50:00.002+01:00

It often happens that while I'm busy doing something of any interest, I can't find the time to tell the world: Hey, look at me, look at what I'm doing!

After I finish doing that thing I want to tell the world about, I often find I can't be bothered any more. When this does not happen, and the motivation lives on, it may then happen that I don't find the time or the inspiration.

Furthermore, it may happen that while I wait for the time or the inspiration, some new thing I want to tell the world about comes along and previous one gets discarded and buried in the scrapyard of ideas. The circle is complete.

In other words, I'm rubbish as a reporter.

This is why I have decided to stop apologizing about late updates to this blog and write. But the only way I can do that is by breaking its linear structure. Thank Hollywood for flashbacks. From now on, don't expect posts to appear in any order, be it thematic, chronological, or just logical. I will write about whatever I feel like, when I feel like, and try to cover everything I want to shout out to the big wide world. Hey! Look at me! Look at what I'm doing!

Tschörmany, also

2009-05-27T20:56:00.005+01:00

Continuing my Ryanair-sponsored getaway-spree through Europe, I landed in the heart of Bremen.

Bremen strikes me as the greenest city I've ever been in. Polysemic greenness. They're big on trams. They're huge on bikes. They're monumental on parks. I've never seen so much greenness together. The Bürgerpark is perhaps the prettiest and greenest area I've seen in any city so far. It's so green it upsets your colour balance. You walk out of it and everything looks red and blue in comparison.

There is one thing people go to Bremen for: to take their picture with the statue of the musicians (though in the story they never actually make it to the city). I did that too. On a very different note, there's some important aviation/aerospace industry around the city, clustered around the airport and the university. Bremen is also home to the beer I most hate in the world: Becks.

I don't have that much more to comment on the places, but travelling is always full of anecdotes, so I'll give you a few of them.

Here's one: while enjoying an idyllic afternoon in one of the endless parks in Bremen, listening to an old accordion played by an old man, I saw a rape scene. Three males run after a female. They grab her by the back of her head and all together they pin her to the ground. They jump on her and penetrate her one by one, fighting over supremacy. It's ducks I'm talking about.

The female has 4 baby ducklings of most terminal cuteness, who run around clumsily, bobbing and clustering, not knowing what to do. Their mother runs away, and so they find a foster mother in a doormat-dog on a leash. They all run after it and cluster around it and chirp their filial love. The poor dog is utterly confused by this and doesn't know what to do. At this point the people passing by decide to intervene, and like an organized team they chase away the 3 rapist ducks, pick up the ducklings and take them to their mother. Everybody feels good and useful, and there is some heart-warming bonding between absolute strangers. The female duck swims with her ducklings to the other side of the lake, where, upon arrival, she gets raped again.

Here's another: the very kind lady who housed me in Bremerhaven (Tobias' aunt) was determined to put an extra 5 kg on my frame before I left. Though my German is rubbish, I could quite get what she was saying, as the word "essen" (food/to eat) featured predominantly in most of her sentences.

"Blah blah essen blah blah essen blah essen. Blah blah essen?"
"Oh no, I'm full, thank you very much"
"Blah blah essen essen essen blah!"

We cycled in Bremerhaven on borrowed bikes. If they're free, they're good. I, as per use, got a contraption of exotic wobbliness and exquisite rustiness. It was, ahem, wobblier by the time I gave it back. I also got a bit of a suntan and sharp pain all over my body. Great fun.

I went to Hamburg for a day and a bit. I took the only existing coach service between these two neighbouring cities: the Ryanair bus2fly (don't get me started on coach travel in Germany and railway fares, I feel foam coming out of my mouth already). The driver was an old man with a white shoe-brush moustache, who appeared to be in his 9th month of pregnancy. I asked him if I could get on. He didn't answer. I got on and handed him my ticket. He took it, sat there looking through it for a full minute, then all of a sudden banged his fist on the steering wheel and yelled "Scheiße!!!" (shit!). He handed me my ticket back. I asked, "everything ok?". He seemed to suddenly realize I was there, looked at me in surprise and nodded. Tic-tic-tic, ils sont fous, ces Goths.

There are some cute sights to see in Bremen & Bremerhaven, but after one day their touristic appeal is utterly dead. They look like nice quiet places to live, but boring as hell. Even the Universität Bremen seemed to elicit as much fun as an empty packet of crisps. Except for the tower. The tower can be had fun with:

Hamburg, on the other hand, though I couldn't see much of it, did tickle my curiosity enough to make me want to visit again. Big & bustling, night-life, ferries up and down the river. My kind of place. Darn, I wish I'd had time to visit the red light district...

Both in Bremerhaven and Hamburg I spent an impossibly long time watching enormous cargo ships docking, undocking and going through locks, loading and unloading containers. Not exactly your standard tourist attraction, I'll grant you, but I myself found entertainment aplenty in watching containers being loaded and unloaded. The novelty of it somehow made it very appealing.

Seventeen days, one hellish essay, one visit to Spain and many beers later, two Ryanair one-pounders took me all the way to Frankfurt. Well, not really. Not all the way. More like all the way to fuck-knows-where, smack in the middle of a beautiful nowhere, an area of amazing lush greenness, smooth hills, canopied riverbeds, fields of radioactive yellow and cute small towns. Frankfurt-Hahn airport, that is. It happens to be much closer to Luxembourg.

For the "financial capital" you expect, Frankfurt is remarkably cute and a surprisingly interesting place to visit, even if just for the day and to take in the architecture and go up a skyscraper for some sights. Who would've thought?

I got the sights, the photos, the beers and definitely the sausages. This wraps it up for Tschörmany for now. But I vill be bakkh, also.

A penny's worth

2009-04-30T16:11:00.015+01:00

I love flying. It makes me think. I can't stop marvelling at the miracles of technology that I see all around me. A flying machine is roaring 30000 feet above the ground, and it's taking me in its bosom above the clouds, over the mountains and seas at 500 miles an hour. I keep smiling a silly smile and silently giggling in amazement. I look around me, trying to read in someone else's face similar signs of an inner epiphany. Am I the only one?

Maybe I'm weird, or maybe I'm still a child inside. I can't help it. I keep marvelling and wondering. I think of all the manpower, the knowledge and ability and effort and resources necessary to keep this steel bird flying. I think of all the engineers and technicians and their teachers and of the pilots and their instructors. I think of the fuel and the oil, of the middle eastern country it most likely comes from and of the rigs and tankers and pipelines and the occupying armies.

But I think back before the aircraft was even built, of the miners and machines that extracted the aluminium and iron and copper and titanium. I think of the traders and stock brokers who bought it and sold it and made it move around the world. I think of the rubber from Brazil and oil from Malaysia and cotton from the US that became the tyres and window frames and seat covers. I think of the kilometres of wiring snaking through its skin and I think of the thousands of kilometres those materials travelled, to be processed and then travel again to be reprocessed somewhere else. I think of the foundries and factories and warehouses, of all the farmers and truck drivers and grunts and foremen and factory workers.

But I think back before it was even in production, of the research and design teams that worked on each individual component. I think of the hundreds of companies involved, big and small, of their executives and secretaries and administrators and investors and receptionists and cleaners. I think of the market analysts and product design specialists who decided what the characteristics of that model of aircraft should be. I think of the state of technology at the time, what improvements were available that could make the final aircraft faster and cheaper to build, more secure and lighter, easier to fly and repair.

And I think of the cycle of industrial production, and I think of that cycle several thousands of iterations back, through the days of propellers and then through many, many wars, hot and cold, worldly and otherwise, and how without them technology would have never advanced at the pace it did. I think of politicians and businessmen and investment bankers and military strategists and international organizations and territory and resources. I think of how the use of planes for reconnaissance missions and for bombing troops and cities and shooting down other pilots put the focus on improving aircraft technology. I think of radar and radio and jet engines and pressurized compartments and computers and composite materials and navigation systems.

I think of all the pilots who were shot down and all the men and women and children who died in bombing raids. I think of all that had to be bombed, razed, burnt, of all the death and destruction. I also think of all the talent and genius and creativity and energy and chest-filling euphoria of those who made it all possible, one little step at a time, a small improvement here, suddenly a whole new idea there. And I think of the sweat and effort of those who worked hard to make it a reality, and of those who are still doing so right now.

And then I zap back to the now, and I see how it is all interconnected, and how every piece of the puzzle was necessary to get me where I am now, in this situation. Every invention, every breakthrough, every invasion, every takeover, every merger, every bead of sweat and droplet of blood and drop of oil were essential in allowing me to fly now in comfort and safety over thousands of kilometres. The whole world has come together with one aim: to give me the power to fly for the Ryanair price of £0.01, one penny sterling.

My eyes are sparkling. I can't help it.

Oslo, No way

2009-04-21T01:00:00.022+01:00

For a country so preposterously sloshing in oil, the capital of No'way is strikingly unremarkable. I don't mean it's bad. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing much right either.

The first impression I got is that the most expensive city in Europe features a surprising number of junkies, beggars and tramps rummaging in rubbish bins. They've recently outlawed prostitution, ruining the business for the hordes of Nigerian hookers formerly active in the city, so I've narrowly missed seeing these as well.

From the last paragraph you might get the impression that Oslo is a bit of a lawless city. And you would be right. There are no policemen to be seen anywhere, save for the accidental lonely couple on horseback, minding their own business and filling the streets with manure. Laws are conspicuously not enforced, and for someone coming from Airstrip One, CCTV is shockingly yet blissfully absent. I guess it's basically just like any other normal city. London must've nibbled at my brains somehow.

Visitors and locals alike all agree on one thing about Oslo: public transport sucks. Not just because it's criminally expensive. Trains work when the planets get aligned in the right order. There is no public transport at night to speak of. There are some night buses that will take you to the suburbs, for the Guinness-world-record-breaking price of 100 NOK one way (a whopping £10 at the current exchange rate).

Trafikanten is the Oslo equivalent to Transport For London. The main office is situated just outside Oslo Sentralstasjon. Check out this picture.

See all those people hanging around, bottom-right, on top of the stairs? As you get out of the train station you'll have to walk past them. At this point any number of jolly fellows will approach you and greet you with one word: "hash?", "speed?" or "cocaine?", marking their stock in trade. In a situation of exquisite surrealism, the traficantes (drug dealers) of Oslo are all clustered around a Cyclopean column covered in red neon that shouts "Trafikanten".

With English and a few words of German in your linguistic toolbox, deciphering written Norse is fairly easy. On the other hand, when spoken it sounds like the bastard offspring of Finnish and Hindi. I constantly made life impossible for any Local who would be so polite to answer my questions. Like a hyperactive kid lost in an exposition of exotic interestingness, I kept poking my finger at random words and cooing "Whassat mean?". Tons of fun for me. I wish I could say the same for the poor victims of my geekiness.

The one inescapably unique thing in and about Oslo is Vigeland Park. The more I think about it, the less I can understand how it could ever be built, and the happier I am that it was. Naked statues everywhere? Naked boys and girls together? A huge phallic monument of intertwined naked bodies? Go build that in Spain in the 1940s, see what happens.

Central Oslo aside, people in Norway don't live. They camp. They don't have houses. They have bungalows. They all live in the forest, surrounded by the sounds of chirping birds and the smell of wood fire. I kept humming to myself that tune that goes "Little boxes, on the hillside" while beholding the ultimate suburban utopia.

Norway is of course not representative of all of Scandinavia, and Oslo is hardly representative of Norway as a whole. And yet, I did manage to get a fleeting glimpse of Scandinavianness, and two aspects of it have impressed me strongly: the houses and the people.

I'm on my knees in love with Scandinavian houses. I've finally found houses that are just the way houses are supposed to be. Or the way they teach you they're supposed to be when you're a kid. When you learn how to draw a house, you don't paint an appartment building in red brick exposed, nor a crumbling brown-bricked Victorian façade. You draw a roof and big square windows and a door and you paint it in screaming bright colours and add a green garden and smoke coming out of the chimney and maybe a tree or two. That's your basic Norwegian house.

Not only do I love them on the outside. The inside inescapably strikes you as a photo springing out of an IKEA catalogue. Don't tell the owners that (I did); IKEA is just as much despised for its cheapness as it is popular for its low prices. And it's not just the way they look. They just feel right. Having electric heating under your floor just feels right. Having a whole wall of your living room open to daylight just feels right. (Having your toilet always by your front door, this I do not quite grasp.) The lighting is great; the furniture is comfortable, practical and design-conscious; everything feels the right size and shape and position. I reckon Feng Shui is practiced most in the top end of Europe.

From my limited exposure to people in pubs, the impression they made on me was one of proverbial loud, boisterous, back-slapping, good-natured Vikingness. Manly slaps on the back and brotherly handshakes keep coming as glasses keep clinking to the chorus of "Skål!". After a few half-litres they tend to mix and match, always open to meeting new people to invade, pillage and rape, with a slap on the back and a belly-booming laugh. They are quite jolly-spirited, not easily offended (I've tried), and generally quite a fun bunch. Thumbs up.

I'd love to sprinkle this post with some nice panoramas of Oslo, but it has proven impossible. It's just not a pretty city. The best views of Oslo are from the top of the Opera House, because from there you can't see the Opera House.

So what about the experience? All in all, I've had a blast. Yet had I visited backpacking on my own, I wouldn't have had a tenth of the fun. Isn't it good to have friends. To friends! Skål!

A Canterbury Tale

2009-04-04T01:06:00.017+01:00

Earlier today, while pondering over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, I chanced upon a mediaeval candybar wrapper, on which I discovered a scribbled fragment of Middle English poetry. I'm terribly excited. I think I've found Chaucer's missing 23rd Canterbury Tale. I've sent it out to experts in the field. In waiting for the fame and glory that must surely come with such a discovery, I've translated it for you into present-day English. Enjoy.

Here begynneth the Visittynge Studdentes tale

Once on a time, as old tales tell to us,
There was a happy student on Erasmus.

When sweet February with its weather mild
The snows of January left behind,
So happened that upon a sunny day
He saw a Facebook advert that said "Hey!
One pound will take you really far away."
He quickly clicked and found to his dismay
There were too many options to choose from
And he could not decide on where to go.

"Oh well", he thought, "I might well decide
That I to Canterbury town will ride,
To pay a visit to old friends; and new,
to have a pilgrimage like there've been few."

And so he packed his bags and onwards went,
And on the road found many an accident,
Till late in the morning and sleep-deprived
To Canterbury town his bus arrived.

And he went out the whole town to explore.
"Hey, I recall being here before!",
Every now and then he stopped to exclaim.
For it is true that with touristic aim,
Barely one and a half years agone,
Those very cobblestones he had stepped on.

Up to the University he climbed
(Up a hill with a slope truly inclined)
Where a friend he met -there was much rejoicing-
And crashed at the student halls, well poising.

They covered in their visit the whole grounds
Marking the campus, forests and happy sounds
And the many merry hopping bunnies
(And as a private joke he thought "Yummy!").

Then they gatecrashed a mirthful party
Where they found merriment and company
To last for the full night or even more,
But watchmen came and stopped it well before.

The next day to the Cathedral he went
As had been his first touristic intent.
He found it worthy of admiration
(Especially liked the decoration).

Later in the day, alone he found himself;
Companyless and deserted by friends
After musing a bit he did decide:
He gatecrashed another party that night!

Friends plenty at the party he then made
And from time to time someone would just say
"It's so odd I've never seen you before!"
He would stand, beer in hand, drinking more,
And then reply, grinning from ear to ear,
"That's 'cause I'm a Visiting Student here!"

And this is just the start of his story,
For he did go back to Canterbury.
Yet the remainder is a different tale
And won't be told but after much, much ale.

In memoriam

2009-04-02T23:28:00.002+01:00

Classes are no more. They have ceased to be. They've gloriously expired and gone to meet their maker. The 2nd term finished on the 27th of March.

Four remaining Creative Writing workshops in May and 2 essays to hand in is all that keeps me a Goldsmiths student still.

One part of my stay here is over. Another one is just starting. My accommodation is secured at least until the 20th of June, yet in all probability July will see me here still. Three months left at least, and many, many possibilities.

I look out with a newborn's eyes into a glittering future heavy with potential. Study? Work? Travel? 'Tis for time to tell. In the meantime, I hum a requiem for the lost classes while drinking in memoriam.

See See Tee Vee

2009-03-31T22:27:00.010+01:00

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Privacy is public.

The Other London

2009-02-19T02:57:00.001+00:00

You all know one London already: the London of Big Ben and Hyde Park, of Fuckingham and Piccadilly, of the British and the Tate; the touristy, fashionable London of arts, entertainment and culture, of proper Britishness binding together an astounding multicoloured amalgam of ethnicities, languages and cultures. But there is another London, of which I have not yet spoken.

It's the London of foxes rummaging in trash bins, of rats scurrying away over the railway tracks. It's the London of drunken blokes meandering in the fog, while others sleep in a puddle of their own puke in a bus stop. It's the London of old people arguing with themselves while they drag their feet down the road, carrying their own boring tragedies.

It's the London of brown-bricked suburban slums, of chavs in patchy outfits and loud voices picking up fights, of broken homes and fractured families, of street gangs and overdose, of knives and guns, of black kids stabbed to death in front of an off-licence.

It's the London of urban tribes, of the destitute homeless with their feet sticking out of cardboard homes in the subways, and bruvva can you shpare some change. It's the London of sects and cults, of street preachers, of creationism in Christian schools and jihad in mosques.

It's the London of theft and murder, of beatings and rape, of deaths by stray bullets. It's The Other London, unseen to a passer-by, hidden to all but those who want to see it - it's London Below.

Over all of this and much more, Big Brother keeps watch with his composite bug eyes of a billion CCTV cameras. He doesn't give a flying fuck as long as the money keeps flowing.

The things we have

2009-02-16T14:05:00.005+00:00

On the 21st day of January of 2009 I became another happy inmate of the Goldsmiths student halls. I now live in Batavia Mews, right next door to the hostel I spent over a month in, and just opposite Goldsmiths. I fall off bed into class. I share a 3-story, quite uphill "flat" with 6 other guys of exquisite awesomeness. We each have a room. This is mine:

I have the best views of the London skyline from my window. By day

and night.

We have a dodgy backalley. From there, it looks like a prison.

I call it Ratavia Meows. We don't have many rats. We have mice. They're nice. We have a kitchen, which is almost always in a post-Katrina state. We also have a balcony with nice views, and a roof you can climb on. Sometimes we go out there for a laugh.

We have more broadband internet than we can give use to. We have 3 toilets, one bathtub and one shower, 2 ovens and 2 fridges, one microwave, a few fastidious kettles and 2 vacuum cleaners we seldom use. We have the cheapest rent and the most complaining cleaner ever. We have clanking metal stairs on the outside and a security fence to keep us in, we have springy mattresses and endless creaking stairs inside to keep us in shape. We have heaps of fun.

And we have many parties. The other day, I had my own.

We have all I could ask for, and then some. Isn't it good, Batavia Mews.

Winter Wonderland

2009-02-07T17:41:00.016+00:00

I arrive in Madrid. It snows. They close Barajas airport, trains stop working, buses stop circulating, all traffic is jammed; shops, schools and universities close, everybody blames the government. And I think bloody hell, this would never happen in London. I go out and enjoy the snow:

I arrive in London. It snows. They close Heathrow airport, trains stop working, buses stop circulating, all traffic is jammed; shops, schools and universities close, everybody blames the government. And I think bloody hell, this would never happen in Norway. But then I think again. I go out and enjoy the snow:

Hello again

2009-02-07T16:14:00.010+00:00

Moving from my ex-flat to the hostel, birthday parties, non-birthday parties, spontaneous late-night beers, interesting new acquaintances, moving from the hostel into the student halls, the Asian Week, Obama's inauguration, a screening at BAFTA, a lecture at the Instituto Cervantes, comedy in Greenwich, the National Gallery, Hello Again the musical, snowball fights, gym evenings, beers, meeting new people to have beers with, meeting old people to have beers with, walks through Central, pub quizzes and 1-pound-pints, clubbing all I could bear and then some, parties in halls, pub encounters, plus of course lectures and seminars and creative writing workshops, translations to do, books to read (about), library times, essays to start thinking about, and all the eating, sleeping, shopping, showering and washing-up inherent to (a healthy) life.

These are some of the activities that have prevented me from posting anything here for such a long long time. And now for something completely different.

Akzident

2009-01-18T15:52:00.006+00:00

On the road again, destination Madrid. I pack up at Pomeroy Street, say my goodbyes and jump on a bendy bus to Victoria Station. Two punks get fined for not having a ticket. At the easybus stop on Fuckingham Falace Road, I meet the thickest brick, bluntest tool in the shed of a Polish bus driver you could imagine, and after some procrastinating, we're off. It's 16:20.

Very soon we're up to our necks in a traffic jam. We move by jolts. Everywhere there is chaos and red lights in the darkness. Then in an astounding show of prowess, our driver slams us into another van. “Currrrvaa!” (bitch) is his war cry. He starts in pursuit of the other van. “Currvaaa!”, he repeats and repeats, while hitting the horn in free verse. Finally he catches up with the other guy, points and shakes his hands above his head while hitting the horn. Both vehicles stop on a side lane. It's 16:35.

The drivers step out, start discussing whose fault it is. Then they start discussing whether it is anyone's fault. Then they start discussing whether there is anything to discuss at all. It's 16:45. I watch the minutes trickle away while they keep going back and forth expertly assessing damage and our driver keeps flailing his hands around, pointing and shrugging and sweating. “Contact! Telefon!”, he demands of the other driver. It's 16:50.

I decide I've had enough, jump over the driver's seat, get off the bus and point out to him that we should be going.

He shrugs and shows me his scratched bumper in a gesture of quiet despair mixed with hopeless acceptance of inevitability – one would think he's pointing to his lost youth, to his third divorce or to his incurable haemorrhoids. “Akzident!”, he offers as explanation. “Akzident!”, he insists, his vocabulary limited, but his tone rich in inflection, denoting “This, as you see, is fate. Fighting fate is pointless.” I steal a glance at the quite inconspicuous and irrelevant scratches on the bumper, and quickly summon the words that might well be my best shot at getting back on my way to the airport. “Akzident! But I have plane! Now quick-quick, taxi airport chop-chop, yeah?” I offer while I present him with a flurry of urging hand gestures and speed-encouraging facial expressions. “No problem!”, he dismisses twice. “Contact! Telefon!” It's 17:00.

We start again by snake-racing our way out of a labyrinth of narrow backstreets, climbing on sidewalks and zigzagging among taxis. Two policemen on a pedestrian crossing ahead. I pray to all deities, from Allah to Zeus, please don't let him run them over. It's 17:05 and we're back in Marble Arch.

What follows is an agonizing 95 minutes of feeling the merciless methodical ticking of a fluorescent digital clock while looking ahead in despair at never-ending winding lines of red lights in the dark rain. London never seems to end. My flight leaves at 19:00, the boarding gate is supposed to close at 18:30, and easybus was supposed to drop me in Stansted at 18:05. We get there at 18:40.

By this time I need to urinate very badly, but instead I just jump off the minivan and run like the wind. I use my most desperate, most pathetic voice to jump several queues, I bark and spit at several square-headed members of staff at “airport security” to fuck off and to hurry it up for fucks sake, my plane's about to leave. The idiocy of the concentration-camp treatment still makes me lose a few minutes, but I jump into my untied shoes, pull up my belt-less pants, grab my stuff and start running like mad down the halls of the very well designed labyrinth of duty-free traps that await the naïve passenger before the departure gates.

When I get there, tomato-red, panting and wheezing and sweating like an old horse, I find that the flight is delayed and thus the boarding is just about to begin. “Currrrrva!!”, I offer to no one in particular while I bang and lock the toilet door.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

2009-01-10T23:02:00.003+00:00

I am not one for tradition. I am not one to run with the herd, to buzz with the swarm. I am not one for religion, thus I am personally unlikely to find the anniversary of the birth of a prophet a worthy cause for celebration*. I am not one for conventionalism, and the idea of a socially-dictated date for family bonding makes my blood boil. I am not one for presents, and find present-giving on fixed dates to be a pure celebration of consumerist debauchery -- Saint Marks&Spencer.

All this goes to explain why last xmas, while pretty much everybody ran away to their homes and families, or with their loved ones, or with their friends, I stood like a tree, firmly rooted in London.

I had great plans at first. I though I would study. Then I learned all the libraries would be closed for 12 days. Ok, I thought, the gym then, work hard on those muscles. Then I learned that the gym would also be closed. Ok then, I thought, let's do some tourism. This I finally did, and enjoyed the atmosphere of the city dressed in light with her lips painted neon, but let me tell you it was damn fucking cold.

So I spent xmas & New Year's Eve in London. It was nothing much, but it was all right. I had my time, time to walk and think and lose myself down the streets among the crowds, which I cherished. I also enjoyed some really good moments, and have some really cool people to thank for that.

And so now, after the whole xmas jazz, when others are returning to London, I go away, inverting the J&B commercial. I've come to Madrid for a week: the Ghost of Christmas Past is visiting.

* Nor am I particularly inclined to celebrate Saturnalia, Sol Invictus or the winter solstice.

2009

2009-01-01T12:00:00.000+00:00

May you all have a joyful, abundant, prosperous and unforgettable 2009! May it be full of riches and solid in health, ecstatic its every moment, epiphanic its every memory! Happy 2009!

The weekend

2008-12-29T09:06:00.018+00:00

Tourists take over London on a weekend. Every Saturday, a new Armada of Spaniards, Italians and Frenchmen invades Central London, turning every street into a queue, every corner a waiting room. Camera in hand, Ryanair or Easyjet tag on their luggage, bewildered look on their faces, they patiently queue up to take the same picture as everybody else, with everybody else in it, to buy the same t-shirt and key chain, walk the same streets, eat the same glazed nuts, get into the same cafeteria.

The London Eye is a wheel of glittering sparkles out of a fairy tale, with a thousand flashes from inside the cabins. I stand in awe and amazement; I wonder at how widespread technology is among the masses, yet how scarce are those savvy enough to extract any value out of it. Flashing the Houses of Parliament, in full daylight, 1km away, from behind a glass?

The city grows out of the swarming biomass like a termite mound. Westminster, Victoria, Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Trafalgar, Tower Bridge, Hyde Park, Fuckingham Falace, all teeming with the unsynchronized swinging of tens of thousands of limbs, the dissonant chatter of thousands of voices, the glitter of thousands of flashes.

Many would hate this. I love it. I love being in it, moving in it, smelling it, tasting it, swimming my way through the conglomeration of bodies and shouts and sweat and excitement and surprise and joy.

Most of all, I love the Sunday market in Camden Town. Memories of Thailand keep rolling in. The market is not that big and the prices are 6 to 7 times higher, yet the sellers are very frequently Indians or Arabs, which means prices are, also here, "flexible". You don't even need to haggle, just stare at something for 3 minutes while insisting you're just looking, thanks, and the price plummets like the British Pound.

The weekend in London is sparkling, spectacular, magic, a numbing kaleidoscope of colour and sound, a ride on a roller-coaster. I can't wait for the weekend to begin.

Go Central

2008-12-26T18:10:00.012+00:00

When the never-ending sprawling labyrinths of silent streets lined with crumbling brown-faced victorian houses by the railway bridges of Lewisham get my spirits too low for the fried chicken/kebab shops and off-licence Kwik-e-Marts of New Cross to raise, I jump on board a wheeled red cocktail-shaker and go on a pilgrimage to London Central.

I walk the shushed back streets of Westminster and the chilly banks of the Thames, then I hop on the first bus to anywhere. I climb the hills of Hampstead Heath, where foxes howl at night. I tread on the crackling rustling of dry leaves in Green and St James' parks, then get a free UV session by standing outlined against the squall of colour and light in Piccadilly Circus. I take a tour of spicy SoHo, watching dealers and strip clubs, among the ringing and squeaking of rickshaws and the calls of alcohol-marinated chavs.

In the day, I plunge into the avalanche of shoppers in Oxford Street and raging hordes of tourists elsewhere, having my body bumped against a thousand bodies, and my ears caressed by a thousand different languages, both familiar and exotic.

In the night, I walk alone through soulless streets, the sleeping city my good company. I watch the orangey silhouette of Big Ben ghostly rising from the silent mist, propped up by a ray of orange light. Dancing on the dark Thames I find the surprised O of the London Eye, the moon its written accent. I lose myself in the labyrinth of glass and light of the Docklands, my sights on the tip of One Canada Square, hypnotized by its rhythmic lightning bolt electrocuting the speeding clouds.

Hammersmith to Islington, Camden to Victoria, I zigzag through London in the night. I make my way back in the ambiguous hours when early risers go jogging and hordes of hooker-dressed clubbers dizzystep their giggly way back wherever they call home, wearing their high heels in their hands. Refreshed and uplifted, I go back to my current residence in London's Bronx, knowing that Central is the place to be, dreaming of the day I can finally Go Central for real.

Send me an angel

2008-12-10T21:15:00.006+00:00

I woke up to an overflowing bladder and the worst hangover in a decade. I pinballed my wretched body wall-to-wall all the way to my crappy latrine. As I watched several litres of yellow excretion flee my body and transfer to the London sewage system, recollection dawned.

Or it should have. It actually didn't. Doing my best to piece together the shards of my shattered memory, this is what I think happened. I ingested vast quantities of alcohol in the shape of an amber flowing fluid, at a handy measure of one pound sterling per every half-litre container. I talked to people. I queued for more half-litre containers. I danced. I danced?? I danced! At one point, I looked at the bar and they had just stopped serving drinks.

Then there's suddenly no more information. A black screen. Cut to the next scene, where I am trying to make my way home. Apparently an earthquake is in process, for I have difficulty walking straight and in an upright position. Sudden cut to the next scene, where I am puking my guts out, then I fall down and pass out.

Then a big black emptiness. Then, sudden cut to mid-action, where I am talking to someone. I look up. Under a blinding light, a pale-faced, ginger-haired young man dressed in bright white is helping me to my feet and talking me back to my senses.

I don't know what we're talking about, but I guess I'm giving him my life-story rant: where I'm from, where I'm now, why I'm in the gutter. He follows attentively and encouragingly. He's being very nice to me. The fumes of alcohol clouding my vision clear up a bit and I take a better look at him. He's dressed in white, yes: white trainers, white sneakers, a white cap. He has a shabby beard of 4 hairs and crooked, unpaired teeth.

We talk on for a while, but now we're walking. Somehow now I'm managing to walk in a straight line, so, his mission fulfilled, he sees me off. Over my shoulder, I thank him somehow, but I can't remember any words, just connotative goodwill and friendliness, which he graciously acknowledges. Here recollection stops: a damp smell and the sound of pouring urine bring back the now.

Suddenly alarmed, I pinball back to my room and check that I came back with all my stuff: money, check; mobile, check; glasses, check. I hit the hay again with such a feeling of gratitude as I haven't felt in ages. Thank you, guardian angel with crooked teeth.

Nothing

2008-12-05T02:48:00.010+00:00

My glasses decided today that they had had enough and were not going to put up with my abuse anymore. After sleeping on them again, and twitching them into something worthy of the Guggenheim, I tried to give them their true shape back. The right arm snapped like a twig in my guilty hand. Luckily, over the last decades a handsome bit of technology has been applied to the idea of "glue". I applied the idea, the technology and the product.

Today I've also kicked goodbye the preposterous salmon coating of my room. I've splashed and sloshed and worked and sweated and sworn quite a bit, but now I'm the happy paint-spotted tenant of an empty room glowing in glorious white.

Why am I telling these stories? Because they're all I've got. That's how interesting my life has become. That's how full of magic and surprise and ecstatic amazement my everyday is. Right, I once more go out, do stuff, meet people and drink more than a reasonable amount. But it's not the same. Something's changed. Something's missing. There's a big black hole sucking away the sparks, and it's deep inside me.

I wish I could tell you of euphoria and ecstasy, of epiphanic insights into the clockwork of the universe, of lives other than my own and places other than this. But that would be pure artifice. The feeling is gone. The Childlike Empress must be ill: the Nothing is here.