28.8.07

susan sontag goes biserk

funny the things people get obsessed about.
there is a woman who comes every day to the national library. my friends and i call her the susan sontag look alike as it seems she is delibrately cultivating such an image (long grey hair with one streak of black in the middle, dresses as badly as possible etc). i have walked by her desk a few times from which i have deduced she must be studying on the indian caste systems...or something like that, based on the books on her desk.
anyway, she always sits in the EXACT same seat everyday, and she arrives exactly at opening in order to secure that spot, which she holds for herself until closing. but today her world was turned upside down.
i was sitting in a seat of my own (choosen randomly) when i heard a loud, animal like growling sound coming from behind me, i turned around to see the womans eyes blazing and her nostrils flairing. i followed her gaze to see what caused this fury and sure enough, the unthinkable had happened, she arrived 10 minutes after opening, and someone had taken her seat!! she flipped, stormed over to the guy (no doubt a first time user) and demanded he move....but his english was apparently dificient as he kept raising his hands in confusion and gesturing with confused raised eyebrows. finnally she sat in another seat and preceded to slap her documents on the desk loudly. a proper freak show.
i hope this isnt what happens to people if they spend too much time in libraries, if i start doing things like that, someone please hit me. hard.

23.8.07

updates

i have been very bad and i havent written anything in ages. i do have a good excuse though: i finnally moved house this past week, which means NO MORE WALTHAMSTOW! thank god!
i am now in the process of resettling into my new flat located a nice 30 minute bus ride from work, yeah!
the cat is still having difficulty ajusting but i hope she will settle down in the next few days, paws crossed! i meanwhile still need to buy the last few things and then i will start to feel that i have a new home.

9.8.07

hooligans

i dont know what it is with this country (england) and its hooligan children. it is really strange, there are so many of them and they behave in a violent and pointless manner i have never seen anywhere else.
yesterday 2 boys came into the bookshop. at some moment, one of them (who was about 9) pushed my collegue, a petite german girl. she looked at him for an explanation, and he said sarcastically that it was an accident. she continued what she was doing. then the boy and his friend (who was about 12) started throwing books of the shelf and onto the floor. at that point my collegue asked them to leave. they spat in her face. she began ushering them out, but even at the front door, with everyone watching, they were throwing things off tables and on the ground, shouting abuse and obscenities. outside the shop, they started laughing and walked off.
this sort of thing seems to happen all the time here. you see it alot on the bus. a few months back a bunch of similar young kids jumped on top of me as i was getting of the bus so that i fell and ripped my trousers. they, again, laughed and ran off. it is quite difficult to do anything. technically the boys in the shop didnt commit a crime (they didnt destroy or steal anything) but they just behave atrociously, and seemingly for absolutely no reason.
of course there are kids who behave badly everywhere, in all countries, but it is this last point that particularly bothers me here: there never seems to be any reason for their behaviour other than maybe boredom. it is one thing to start a fight over some grevance, real or imagined, but these kids seem to do it as a sport. the other thing that is striking is that they are always very young, like 10-16, always white and "ethnically" british, and always seemingly constantly unacompanied. when these guys came into the bookshop it was already after 8pm. what were a 9 and a 12 year old doing cruising the west end alone at that hour anyway? where the hell were their parents? my german collegue and i posed these questions in bewilderment to our head of security, MD. he just laughed at us. "just imagine" he said "you call the parents in here, they will be younger than both of you cause they had the kids at 15, they will be smoking and drinking and fucking a different guy every night...you think they have time to look after those kids?"
scary thought.

7.8.07

london update

i really should be working on my next chapter of my thesis. but i ahve had lots of distractions lately, and not all of them related to work or harry potter.
finnally, i found a new flat so i will be moving in a couple of weeks. thank god. there was a really gruesome murder on my street a few days back...and well....enough said.
other than that, caitlin and yuri have just relocated to london. so i have been hanging out with them. they have a nice place in south kensington, and instead of sitting in the library all the time like a good phd student, i have been going around to museums with caitlin and drinking in their flat.
yesterday we wandered throught the V&A and friday we went to the exhibit on mega cities that is currently on at tate modern. that was really cool. i loved the airal views of mumbai, london, cairo, johannesburg and tokyo. and their were some really great photos from each of those places....plus a video on toilets in mumbai, which having experienced them close up, proved only to be too accurate. i like mega cities, i have always operated on the assumption the larger and smellier the better. i think that is why i love mumbai so much when i was there. or moscow or istambul or cairo. i know i am alone in this view, but parks and green space make me really nervous and uncomforatble. i am sure i suffer from some strange syndrom....but anyway, if you are in london and get a chance to see it, go, it is worth it!

2.8.07

some books and an indian summer

first let me note that the title of this entry has nothing, NOTHING to do with the weather. how can we even hope for an indian summer (in the english sense of the word....ie baba leto to use the less ambiguous russian) when the english one has not even started?
by indian summer i was rather referring to the upcoming 60th aniversary of the "the midnight hour while the world slept" (to barrow from nehru) and pakistan and india became two countries, seperate both of each other and of the british empire.
the hype has been fairly impressive. the library has been doing a big exhibit on Gandhi's Quit India now movement, and even the bookshop has been doing displays on indian literature in anticipation of the great event. additionally, a whole cluster of new books has suddenly appeared devoted not only to independance, but also to the events surrounding the partition...something which indian and pakistani historiography seems to have all to often ignored. meanwhile, trafalgar square has been filling up every weekend with all kinds of events aimed at commemerating the events....alll of which seem to feature beautiful young dancers in saris and loads of food and music.
extra indian books have been ordered into the bookshop and i have been stocking up, even though i should be writing my chapter.
i really like indian literature. i wish i knew enough about pakistani books to comment on them or choose them for a display, but alas i am sadly quite ignorant of their literature, music and art. I do, however, have some notions of indian writing, and i have been learning more all the time.
i read kiran desai's booker winning Inheritance of Loss. i liked it well enough, but not on the level of other booker winning indian works (such as the god of small things). i read mistry's a fine balance, which i liked better. and now i am sinking my teeth (or eyes) into the 1,400 epic a suitable boy. so far, i find it mesmerizing and i am absolutely amazed by vikram seth, the writer who managed to produce such an epic. respect.

1.8.07

the first summer bash

according to the bbc, it has been the rainest three months since records began in the 18th century. it rained literally non-stop from may until this week. several people died in the floodings and property damage reached the into the billions of pounds. it has all been incredibly bleak and depressing....and cold with temperatures around 17 degrees.
so it seemed something like a miracle when 2 days ago the rain STOPPED. and it has been at least partly sunny since. now in a normal country, this would seem like normal weather, but here where we have used to such greyness, it seems miraculous. and it was the perfect weather for the triplets birthday bash which took place last night in Angel. it was my very first ever birthday party for triplets, and it was good fun. we started with dinner,and from there moved on to a bar where various people showed up and we had cocktails and took loads of silly photographs....it was good fun, and it felt like finnally (in AUGUST!) we were having the first proper party of the summer season!