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Last updated on September 4, 2000
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21-6-2000:
Arrival. Quote
of the day comes from
our first dinner here, which we had at Burger King. They have a sandwich
which
they call the "Chicken Flamer." So Inder orders one of these
"flamers" and as we're waiting for our orders, the following
conversation ensues:
Burger King Worker: Flamer? (holding up the completed
order)
Inder: Yah, that's me! (with a smile)
22-6-2000:
We find housing in one day. Thus, we are amazing and to celebrate, we head
off
to a Lebanese restaurant around the corner from our hotel. A royal feast
ensues. At the end of the day, we don't know the protocal of how to pay
our check. So we have Neil lean over and ask the rather intoxicated and
rambunctious guy sitting at the table next to us. Here we go:
Neil: Hey, do you know how we pay this?
Large, Rowdy Man: I don't f_cking now, I'm Irish! (hearty
laughter)
23-6-2000:
We sleep all day and then hit up a pub at night, followed by a lame-ass
party at the London School of Economics. A certain someone gets rather
intoxicated and becomes convinced that he's going to hook up. A certain
remaining trio realize the sausage fest nature of the party and leave. On
our way home, we meet Ms. White America, crowned by an angry expatriate on
the pyschotic bus we ride for all of five minutes. Later on, a drunken
Inder returns and relates that he "almost hooked up." Excitedly, we ask
the story and here it is:
Inder: So I was at this bus stop and I ask this hot blonde, in a
British accent, 'Excuse me, does this bus go to Paddington Station?'
Supposedly Hot Blonde I don't know, I'm a stupid American!
Inder: (Dropping the accent) I'm a stupid American too!
Armen, Neil: ...and?
Inder: That's it.
24/25-6-2000:
Moving into house off of Mile End tube station. Eating the Worst
Fast Food any of us have ever eaten, the menu is Fried
Everything. The moldy ketchup bottle I couldn't bring myself to
use should have been our glaring signal to not eat there. Playing
marathon Quake game ("I'm going to bed at 1"..."i can't believe it's
3:30!" -Armen). Waking up at 2pm to go to the supermarket. Taking a
shower in the tub. Getting to the
supermarket after it closes. Another horribly unhealthy dinner, this time
at McDonald's.
26/27-6-2000:
We make it to the supermarket while it's actually open. We look incredibly
stupid as we wait for our groceries to be bagged, only to realize after
about two minutes that we're expected to do it ourselves. Arms almost
falling off, we drag the stuff back only to have to go again for fruits
and veggies. The word "fruit" describes how we feel. Master Lucas proves
himself the true jack of all trades by whipping up some tasty tacos while
we ruin a vat of rice. We start on our programming project. I'll leave you
with a quote:
Neil: "My balls are better than yours"
Lucas: "I have no ball-... wait a minute..."
29-6-2000:
Bored at night, we decide to go to a pub and see some people. We head over to a couple different places,
but they're all either demanding "smart dress" or "no travellers." So in what is in retrospect a really
dumb idea, we decide to just randomly drop into a neighboring tube stop area looking for a pub.
This fails miserably as we pick London's equivalent of Compton. On our way through these sad streets
we run across a crazy homeless man who says something to us, and then becomes irate that we all ignore
him. He then starts shouting some weird shiznat for literally five minutes as we hurriedly walk on.
We can hear him three blocks away still facing us, still shouting crap. We narrowly avoid him on our
route back and decide never to go to Bethnal Green again.
30-6-2000:
Sweet Friday rolls around and Jason and Inder don't have to worry about getting up early.
So we bust out one of our three London guides and pick a bar called "The World's End" to head to.
Inder and Jason proceed to fall in love with Australian Surfer Ben, a man who "after six years of having sex
with women, is tired of it and needs a break" because, get this, "they only want to screw the surfer,
not me"-- gimme a break. As the 800 pound bouncer signals the post-11pm bar closing, we leave, the
aformentioned two quite reluctantly. It's clubbing time, we head to the underground.
The girl in front of
us starts throwing a tantrum because the turnstile eats her subway pass. Inder, who was following
her in line, ends up unknowingly nabbing her ticket. She guesses this and despite Inder's insistence
that there's no possible way he has her ticket, she looks at it and recognizes it as hers, ganking it
and taking off. From her accent, she's American and Inder, pissed off that she didn't care that
by her taking her ticket back leaves him ticketless, proceeds to get into a bit of a shouting
match with her, with the greatest Inder quote being: "You rude f_cking American! You think you own the world, don't you!"
In the meanwhile, a Brit who was behind Inder in line politely hands Inder's ticket back to the Comar,
who doesn't bother to say thank you, as he's too busy going off on his rude American tryst.
We get to the club, called The Gallery, about 11pm. The place is definitely interesting, three dance
floors and a lot of fun people. However, apparently as in most of Britain, every girl has at least one guy in tow,
so the boys don't do so well. Highlights here include Inder's $1 Pound Kiss and Jason's seemingly
effective mack stymied by the ever-present returning boyfriend, as well as the curiosity of the omnipresent habit of people
smoking while they dance. Neil and I find out that conversing with Brits in
a night club apparently requires study of a foreign language-- we have no frikking clue what they are
saying, though they are eager to talk and we are likewise eager to listen. We spend most of our time on the
"hip-hop" dance floor, where the DJ spins some weird, but danceable, crap. Both Inder and I request some Snoop, and he
tells both of us independently he doesn't have any. Then he proceeds to play Snoop. Bailing around 3:30,
the night is in my opinion a moderate success. Though I spend most of my time dancing communally with at least
10 guys at any given moment, the atmosphere and the entire experience overall was fun.
1-7-2000:
Getting up around 3 pm, we figure we should do something.
We decide on another club. Unfortunately, we don't get out of the house until 11pm and by then every club
we hit up has a ridiculously huge line and similarly ridiculous cover. So we go hunting for another
club, working within the limits of our knowledge of London without a map, the Underground closing
at midnight, and the fact that we don't know where any other clubs are located. Inder swears that
he is going to abstain, however as we bumble around and pass a club whose name escapes me, he goes
"we're not going here, flame-asorous rex is all i have to say." Continuing on to the next club
recommended by a convenient street person, we debate whether to go in. Jason is sarcastically (?)
captivated by the strapless fat chick that we can see from the window and the 3-1 Female to Male ratio with the sample
size of the very same window. Considering that the club is playing Michal Jackson's "Bad," we say no.
We start walking, hoping to get back to the neighborhood of the club from the previous night. Luke and
Neil bail on us halfway through. We hitch a "taxi" (someone's car) to the area from last night. For
whatever reason, we apparently lose all potential for creative thought and end up blindly going
right back to The Gallery. Tonight is "techno" night, but in all reality, tonight is "this sucks" night.
There's only one dance floor and about half the people from the night before. We jet out of there around
4, and on our way out, Inder and I notice a long line of almost exclusively males queuing up outside.
We both ask the bouncer what that's all about, and the obviously homophobic man lets us know that there's
a gay club from 7am - 3pm (poor dudes, not only do the hours themselves suck, but they're lining up 3 hours
before). He then proceeds to mess with both of us in various ways, asking Inder if he has his ticket
for that line and inspecting my ass and saying "yah, that should be good enough to get you in there."
We laugh our asses off, and get to a night bus station. Not only does the damn thing not come for
what seems like an eternity, but when it finally does, it passes us right by, despite Jason literally getting
in front of it to flag it down. And for added insult, the next one does the exact same thing. ouch.
Inder lies down on the bench and claims to hear chickens, and does this just as some dude is walking
by. I'm fairly sure this guy is going to kick his ass at this point, as he shoots Inder a deadly look
and starts buzzing around the bus stop, but he ends up being helpful and pointing out that our
mystical bus is pulling in right now.
4-7-2000:
Neil, Luke and I do our first sightseeing (believe it, two weeks in town and this is the first)
by heading over to the Tower of London. Interesting experience, seeing the Crown Jewels is well worth
it. It is absolutely ridiculous to see the amount of gold and the size and quantity of the diamonds
that are on display. It's the Fourth of July and to celebrate, we find a pub offering specials on
"American Beauties" (Bud Light and Jack Daniels) for "American Independence Day." As you can imagine, no one really cares about the
Fourth here ("yay, on this day, we lost a significant part of the British Empire!") so it's a quite time in
the pub. We bar hop to another local pub, where i walk in on same strange bizness in the bathroom. Two guys
are huddling together discussing something, and when i walk in they go into one of the toilet stalls
together and all i hear is "get that dirty finger away"... i get the hell out of there but when they
finally come out, they shoot me a couple of the dirtiest looks i've ever received. Your guess is as good
as mine.
5-7-2000:
We had gone to Wimbledon earlier, but only to have dinner and hang out at a pub, so Neil and I go back hoping to actually
visit the grounds. To our surprise, you can walk right up and buy tickets. For ten pounds, we get in
and we're able to watch Navritolova and Somebody Else take on the Williams sisters, a definite
keynote matchup. Further, Anna Pornikova herself is on the schedule and we, along with about everyone
else there, decide to wait and watch her match. Of course the interim match between the Navritolova match
and the Kornikova match takes absolutely forever, going a full 5 sets, and approximately one billion
games. By the time Ms. Anna takes the field, we are about to pass out from exhaustion, as these cheap
seats are standing room only. Though it was worth it to watch the most talked about female athlete in ages
hit a few volleys, we bail pretty quickly. It was also really interesting to watch as the crowd slowly turned
overwhelmingly male leading up to the match. Shocker.
7-7-2000:
In what has become our ritual, we hit up a club on Friday, this
one called Fabric. This one was a lot better than Gallery, though
not as many stories to take home. Jason and Inder bailed early, Jason
on his own will and Inder not so much. About 8 people on various
occasions decided that Neil looked a lot like a drug dealer and
asked him for some supplies. Nosferatu! Definitely a fun place,
this club wiped us out for the rest of the weekend.
8-7 through 14-7, 2000:
You know what we've realized is that most of life is composed
of useless and mindless little chores, like going to the supermarket
or doing your laundry or working. And that's what we did this week.
So nothing very exciting to report. On Thursday night, Inder and Jason
went to a rather exclusive club through Inder's work and ended up
meeting Jerry Springer. Or at least Jason met Springer, don't ask
about what happened to Comar. Friday night we originally went to
a small club that was, shall we say, whitewashed. Neil, Luke and I
really didn't feel very comfortable and jetted to a larger club like
the ones we'd been to the last couple weeks called Bulgars or some crap
like that. It was a nice place, though it was short about 2 or 3 hundred
people. I enjoyed the pleasure of being searched for drugs as
one of the bouncers thought that my looking through my pockets for
change looked pretty suspicious. I loved how stupid he felt walking
away empty handed since he came up to me with this supreme look of
"my boss'll be proud of this." Tool. Only other interesting thing
was Neil and I taking the stage for over an hour, showing the
Brits a thing or two about how to dance. Yah.
The rest of the Summer, 2000:
So surprise, surprise, I got lazy and stopped writing in my journal. To
bring a long story to a merciful short close, we weathered the remainder
of our time in London fairly well, though I think all of us were truly
ready to get out of there, some of us, myself included, with little desire
to go back there in the future. This despite seeing maybe 10% of the
tourist attractions there (yes, in 2 months we saw less than the typical
Joe American visiting London, don´t ask why, it´s too painful to
scrutinize). In the meanwhile, we took 4 day trips to both amsterdam and
paris. Paris was amazing, definitely will be my first stop when i come
back to Europe. Amsterdam less so. Which brings us to the finale of our
trip, a grueling month-long trek through Europe´s finest:
The European
Tour
Helsinki·Stockholm·Amsterdam·Prague·Munich·Rome·Florence·Barcelona·Ibiza·Madrid·London
Details to follow...
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