all of london is sneezing

seriously. i know this is not a nice city for people with allergies (just ask my mom), but the majority of people on the train this morning sounded like they were in the final stages of Captain Tripps. most of my co-workers we sniffling and sneezing as well. apparently the pollen count is quite high today, and i hope this is the cause of all the mucous, because i really don't want to have a cold for my visit home! hrmmph.

fun with photo booth

friday night out in london

in an effort to take more advantage of the cool city i live in, as well as to nurture my addiction to curry in a different place (the dudes at cafe saffron know me by name), friday night i headed to brick lane. brick lane is the mecca for curry, and also known as curry vegas. i normally avoid curry vegas because the neon lights are scary and so are the guys standing outside the 100 or so curry restaurants, trying to bribe you inside with discounts and offers of free wine. i've been seduced by the free wine before and well, it was about as good as you'd expect free wine to be, which is not good at all. :-)

however, my roommate Ly recently introduced me to the magic that is toptable.com, and i found a discount at a curry place on brick lane called sheba. i like discounts and i was in the mood for an outing to shoreditch, so off i went into the rain and wind. my summer attire here consists of tights and trench coats...

i knew sheba would be a decent place to eat because the guys out front didn't bother me and they didn't offer me anything free. they did politely thank me for choosing their restaurant. awww. everything was reasonably priced (smaller portions but that's probably for the best) and the saag i had (i get saag at every curry place in order to have a consistent bench mark for ratings) was different that any that i've had in london so far (no two are ever the same). it was well spiced (flavourful, not spicy), not too creamy and not too greasy. perfect. AND i didn't feel overly stuffed when i finished. Adam had the chicken tikka masala, which was decent but i haven't had enough of this in london to benchmark it.

final verdict? i would go back - definitely a safe haven amidst the madness of curry vegas.

since i wasn't stuffed, a pint of beer sounded nice and we decided to finally try the white lion, which is two doors down from me and technically my "local". i have always avoided this place because they have a lot of tvs, hideous curtains, and frosted windows. it looked small and menacing. however, inside is actually more spacious than i thought and it was a really wide mix of people. Adam actually said that the white lion is more of a typical English pub than say, the Kings, or other establishments that i always thought were super authentic! guess i still have lots to learn...


inside the mythical white lion

at long last

i started knitting this afghan in, oh, i don't know, 2008? october? it was right before my first marathon and i specifically selected the pattern from "fast knits, fat needles" because, well, we all know i lose interest in things pretty quickly.

so here it is, june 2010, and i've finally finished the bugger. granted, i have about 15 loose ends to tie in but never mind that, it's 99% of the way finished. i was so very pleased with myself that i felt the need to pose blanket (that's his name) in two ways for his inaugural photos:






he doesn't completely match my furnishings; however, let's bear in mind that i selected the yarn colour another lifetime ago, ya? regardless, i actually love that it took me so long to knit because there are a lot of memories in blanket already and he's only just brand new! colds, break-ups, sleepless nights stressing about work, hungover saturday mornings, and happy, mindless hours spent sitting in my old favorite chair knitting and staring out at the ohio river. all of these things went into blanket's creation over the past two years. i shall treasure him.

world cup fever

so, news just in, but football (soccer) is really big over here in England. the Brits love their local teams as much if not more than they love their mothers, and will watch every match faithfully. i know people who have actually scheduled important meetings around match times. with it being the World Cup this year, you can imagine the excitement that has ensued.

i haven't jumped on the football train yet (parents: yes, i did manage to find a boy that doesn't watch sports on tv!), but i do have a tottenham hotspurs toothbrush holder and i enjoy a good match now and then. i've been eyeing this whole World Cup thing with mild interest, mainly because there was a US v. England match this past saturday. if i was going to watch any of the 1,000 games, it seemed the US match would make the most sense. what made it even more special was that Beth's friends Anne and Tommy were visiting from...Cincinnati! i would say that 90% of my other friends, London and Cincinnati combined, know Anne and Tommy. while i had never personally met them, i knew enough about them to feel as though we'd been friends for years. so it was really cool to actually meet them in person (as we were parting, Anne actually said "it was good to catch up with you!" :-)

the match itself was good (1-1 tie) and the crowd at the pub was civilised, which was a pleasant surprise because Adam was fairly certain i was going to get my @ss kicked by rioting locals. moi? i think he was more worried about the fact that football tends to bring out the hooligan in the nicest of gents AND there is a lot of anti-US sentiment when it comes to football. but, we were watching the match at a pub in Angel, off the beaten path and tucked safely away in a corner. we had a really nice mix of Brits and Americans, so there was plenty of spirited banter. fun times!

many hours after the match ended, we wandered across Angel to a restaurant called the diner, which specialises in greasy American food. oddly enough, i've been meaning to go there for ages. i had a spicy, drippy, beany chicken burrito, cheese fries, and the better part of Adam's milkshake. mmmmmmm.

i'm unsure as to what time we left, but i do know that we were well on our way to stoke newington before i finally realised we were walking the wrong way up essex road. oops. :-)

trooping the colour

today is a big deal in london, as it is the celebration of the queen's 2nd birthday. no, the queen is not 2, she literally has two birthdays and this one is commemorated with a parade, aka the trooping of the colour. i would have quite liked to watch this and if i were my friend emily, i would have learned of this event months ago and then made plans to watch. this post would then be full of interesting pictures and a more accurate tale of the celebration.

except.

i just found out about the event yesterday, since i live under a rock (a happy place to be) and never watch the news, read the paper, etc. i don't even really turn on my tv ever, so i'm clueless as to the happenings around london and the rest of the world.

so. i'm watching the event on tv, sporting rats nest hair and a giant bathrobe. i can't tell if the parade has actually started yet, but there are many guards lined up impressively wearing the bear hats. i thought they were called bear hats because they LOOK like little bears, but it turns out the hats really ARE made of bear. who knew?

the queen is wearing a violet suit with matching hat (its a nice colour) and riding in a carriage that was made for queen victoria in 1874. what's funny is that today is my stepdad's birthday, and now that i look back, he's been pointing out for years that he shares a birthday with the queen. i wonder if he knows she has two birthdays? her real one is in april, so perhaps she actually shares MY birthday.

at any rate, today's parade/ceremony remind me of the changing of the guard in washington d.c. it's cool to watch, even on tv.

i did make a rather unsettling finding though. the band kept playing a familiar tune, and memories of middle school choral concerts flooded my head, the lyrics halfway still burned into my brain "sweet land of liberty...", "from every mountainside, let freedom ring".

i always thought this was an american song, so i asked why the band was playing it. i was promptly laughed at and told "this song is called God Save the Queen". wha???

first of all, i thought God Save the Queen was a sex pistols song and secondly, it doesn't sit well with me that we stole the melody and then re-wrote the words. kind of disrespectful to the english people and anyway i feel a bit cheated. this is not unlike the horrible day when i discovered that city chicken isn't actually chicken. (it's pork) hrrrmph.

exploring the wide world of nhs

So in this great new land that I live in, we have "free" healthcare (free meaning we are taxed out the wazoo). Luckily I have had good experiences to date (you don't have to pay for certain medications, like contraception, hurrah!) The one caveat to all of this is that you must register with a GP, unless you fancy spending your life hanging out at walk-in centres.

I had of course not bothered to register with a GP because I was getting by just fine at the walk-ins. However, there comes a special time in one's life when you get a little gift called a urinary tract infection and suddenly sitting around in a strange waiting room for three hours is less appealing. Hence, I looked online to find a GP in my postcode, printed and filled out the necessary forms, and pulled together the only "proof of residency" I could find: a bedraggled deed of assignment from my flat and a notice from my credit card company with my office address on it.

I took said documentation to the GP's office nearest work and encountered a disgruntled receptionist who appeared to really, really enjoy working in public service (not actually). I had filled out one of the forms wrong (apparently an NI number is not the same as an NHS number) and she was not a fan of my bootleg proof of address. It was all I had!

We went back and forth a few times:

Me: can you tell me what would be acceptable?
Her: utility bills or council tax statements
Me: I don't have either of those, what can I do to get medical care?
Her: (shrug) walk-in centre? Go find one online.

Thanks.

I felt relatively defeated so I did the only thing I could think of: went in the bathroom and cried :)

Some days I feel really at home here and other days I feel completely lost. Being unwell and having gotten no sleep the night before didn't help! I wrapped up the pity party after a few minutes, re-applied my makeup so I could walk out of there with SOME dignity, and promptly treated myself to a curry.

I then went home to find any further scraps of evidence to prove that I live here and then hunted online to find a more humane GP in my area. Done and done (found a change of address form from my bank - would this do????).

The next morning I phoned up the GP to see if they would indeed let me register and they were SO nice. Thank God. Registration took 2 minutes and they had me in the system 3 hours later.

But.

They had no available appointments until next week. :) they did, however, have a walk-in service the next morning, ha! After all that. Oh well, at least I have a GP now...

P.S. Don't worry parents, I am FINE