alfian@LJ
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tooks
1. New reviews
I would also like to point out that I am not the person who comes up with the titles.
2. London blog updated, I was totally kidding when I said that was all there was, see below.
3. Back in Charlottesville, spring struggles into being.
Gravestone with engravings wiped clean by time
I just realised that this plane doesn't come with individual TV screens when I'd been happily expecting to have Pride and Prejudice, Walk the Line and Elizabethtown ready for private perusal. I feel very cheated.
We waded back to the apartment and I found myself locked out because parents had decided to wander to Burger King for a bite. So I waited on the landing under the dripping scaffolding.
On first sight, the Globe Theatre was disappointingly shiny and new, though of course my expecting the actual theatre to still be standing was absurd. This second building was constructed with painstaking care to match the original. The revamp took fifty years.
The place is packed with schoolkids - not teens, not pre-teens, to be sure, but somewhere in the interesting middle of a middle. The tour included Americans. They always stick out once they open their mouths with questions that may not blaze with epiphany but display unflickering interest. The circling wooden 'O', painted heaven and hell (the trapdoor) and groundling area provide space for plays to continue in nice inspiring fashion. African Macbeth, Japanese Comedy of Errors, Indian King Lear - internationally, globalization + Shakespeare = complete sense in our times. It rounded up at a wrought-iron gate at the exit depicting examples of animal imagery Shakespeare had used.
"He bares his teeth - like an angry ape -"
We run for lunch at this comforting cafe, where mum and I order the special, steak and kidney pie with mashed potatoes, and dad gets scones, bang-up British style. I hazily eavesdrop on an uppercrust-accented couple at the next table and decide that British culture is certainly more impermeable than American. Perhaps I say this now because I've had time there to decipher their code. But MTV, jocks, wild college parties and road trips are part of media we grew up with. What has Singapore to do with separate teaspoons for cream and butter or arguments about the effective placement of trees in paintings?
Then the gift shop, where I again spend 500 years poring over the beatitudes of children's lit set in Elizabethean times and an absolutely delicious abridged, illustrated copy of Romeo and Juliet, then another couple of days choosing postcards for everyone.
There's nothing wrong with my mother's hair, it's just her Russian hat
Steak-and-kidney pudding - looking a lot less exciting than expected, but tasting a great deal better
Globe postcards on dorm wall - I cannot say enough about how much I love them.
Note the one on bottom right - that's Viola, or a man playing a woman playing in man in '"Twelfth Night".
The actual tomb of Isaac Newton, Westminster Abbey. Scanned from a postcard - no photography allowed.
My mum and dad check their watches a lot; I spend "too much time" standing and examining every shop/monument/air at hand. I saw Westminster Abbey after winding through various tube stations, London is permanently grey and rainy as promised, but once inside this place you are on sacred ground, a gathering off the mighty competing for your attention. Oliver Cromwell's tile is at the foot of the Royal Air Force commemoration window, Milton jammed behind coffins and effigies. I did not find Darwin's stone until I was standing on top of it. The most chilling of all were the tombs of Elizabeth I and Isaac Newton.
With Ben
Westminster
Freezing rain, so rapid-fire switching between umbrella, gloves and tube ticket left me all a-muddle. Chinese food for lunch at Basewater, with roast duck swimming in oil and a suspicious opium-like sauce, tofu and gluey vegetables so reminiscent of Newton hawker food back home. It was nicely void of pagoda-shaped takeout boxes and fortune cookies.
Remains of a protest
Covent Gardens was great for shopping the way we emptied our pockets in Disneyland. I was sorely tempted to take all the children's books with me. Carrying mysteries in your head that reflect on nothing outside, Oriental dragon adventure, a cloud kingdom - take you away with one well-chosen opening line. Also, the Mr. Men books (Mr. Uppity for Han), angels with stained glass wings, old comics pressed into purses and photo albums, heart-shaped underwear bags, Accessorize beauties. Another temptation arose in the Opera House greeting cards - one with a photo of the lead dancers at a ballet rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet. Their facial expressions were perfect alignments of pleasure and suffering at the thought of parting, clasped in each other's arms. I looked at that picture for a long time. It was only a rehearsal.
Accessorize - one sublime purchase
Covent Garden - a busker with face like Woody Allen
Billy Elliot, the musical - "Child actors kick ass, unlike the screech that marred The Lion King" -quite easily, I love musicals.
Billy's wonderfully portrayed as completely at ease with his sexuality at so young an age. He displays only mild disbelief at Michael's clear "poofter" leanings, never reacting awkwardly to his friend's raiding his mother's closet or kiss-on-the-cheek greeting; rather, he responds in kind to understand him - an echo of the madcap conclusion where every cast member, regardless of gender, dons a tut to dance in complete abandon. Voracious self-discovery is highlighted as healthy and precious.
Closing scenes verged on campy; an inevitable quality of musicals, but I remembered how much I liked the movie ending where Billy as an adult stepped into the spotlights - a lot more softly effective. Yet this was extended in earlier stripped-down scenes where the little boy is solo on stage with the lights, raw and powerful in how they force the audience to focus on Billy's effortless dancing. We cease to question the masculinity of ballet when the strength of such graceful expression is so apparent.
And Jamie Bell - fan the heat - was in the original. *FANGIRLS*
Andrea told me great story about seeing Ewan McGregor in Guys and Dolls, though it was very sad lah - he saw her trying to secretly take pictures when he was onstage and GLARED FURIOUSLY at her the whole time. Result - staff tried to confiscate her camera during the interval. Ewan, you snitch!
At dinner before Billy
With Kor and Andrea in theatre
Since I have been far from comprehensive for some time, I will spend the rest of my spring break making up for it by writing about London and beyond instead of studying for my Poetries of Asia test, because it is frankly more important.
Narration is based on an ex-letter and scattered journal entries over the week.
I overslept when Bailey's brother was picking us up for the DC flight to Canada over Thanksgiving. I missed the taxi when I was rushing to take the Greyhound to Arlington before going home for winter break. Then, I woke up to blinding sunlight on a day when I was to catch a 4.30am cab for my 6.30 flight to London.
I wanted to punch myself in the nose, even after the first icy realization, even after finding a solution after some frantic phone-calls. My cab driver was the real WT deal, bristly with trucker cap, barking "Git off the road! That's what sidewalks are for!" to unfortunate pedestrians, but a gruff angel neverthless. I didn't say much, just laughed at his "Off we go into the waaide blue yonder!" because I was scared as hell.
My new flight had a layover in the DC airport from noon to 9pm, so that's where I hung out in punishing limbo. The above picture shows my Oreo milkshake from Potbelly's, the only place in the terminal that sold something other than fastfood and liquor. It came with two mini-Oreos and a savoury flower-shaped biscuit with a hole in the centre like a doughnut, pushed through the straw, how cute is that? A+ for presentation.
An Indian man on the flight to Frankfurt seems mildy offended by the fact that I study here and speak American. I think he was hoping for something more from a foreign face. I forgot that, on my way out, I no longer needed the college student blanket.
I saw GOF on the plane; it is ferociously re-watchable. I noticed things I hadn't seen the first two times, things normal people would have caught with no trouble, like Ron's Chudley Cannons blanket and one of the twins grossly and uncharacteristically calling "See you later, Ced!"
Life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
My bed in my brother's apartment is a sofa right next to the front door and shoe rack, covered with everyone's coats and hats. So if a mad axeman decided to break in, I'd be the first person he'd bring down. It's deliciously comfortable, though. Also, my dad snores like a creative thunderstorm, so this is greatly preferrable.
My mouth wouldn't stop falling open, fish-like, when I was on the bus on the way into London, Big Ben, cathedral and so huge I wanted to climb out and measure myself against it. But first thing I was put on a bus to Cambridge from the airport. My new dream is to go there - or Oxford - on exchange, but to brave the mighty Oxbridge is no small matter. Oliver Cromwell, C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden - they were there. Philip Pullman's Jordan is there still. I can dream.
Coach to Cambridge
Huixin waits for my parents to catch up
The first of many very photogenic trees
King's College
Mum at punting place
Cattails
Toothy smiles, punter looking murderous in background
Bridge of Sighs, or where students cross, shaking in their shoes, to collect exam results
Huixin's dorm room comes with a private bathroom with shower, sink, toliet etc. The hall also has a common bathroom with a tub for anyone who just feels like bathing in a bathtub. That's insane, and not college life at all. That, all, is private school all over.
I had dinner with Shuyang at La Tasca, fab Spanish restaurant where we had to wait 45 minutes for our seafood paella, but how comforting to know there is a place where it is an enjoyment to wait quietly for good food, accompanied by easy conversation with an old friend who remembers everything! Shuyang is one of those lucky, serene people who's completely seasoned for overseas study, spending her first semester showing other first-years around and going on an eleven-day Germany tour because it was a dream. She doesn't have her own bathroom, but does have a single big enough for a stellar CD player, two wardrobes, and three friends to sleep over, truth. On food and friends,
Paella!
Huixin cooked for me! How sweet is she?
Shuyang's abode - the incomparably beautiful Newnham College
I am hardly discontented with UVA, of course, but Europe has the tradition and gravity that American turntable talk cannot explain away. I have no idea what that has to do with my prattle about bedroom sizes. Maybe it was how Huixin fried cabbage and chicken in the sunlit kitchen on Monday morning, as opposed to quickie dining halls with take-away options, or the library that, in place of arguing Comm school kids, has every novel ever published in the English language.
