Rome!

We're heading to Rome in 9 hours. So in the meantime, please send your attention to a website with educational value, perhaps.

I'll be back with pictures of people with moustaches, and with pasta in their moustaches. Perhaps the Colosseum, also.

Injuns

By the great feathers of Crazy Horse, we had some great Indian food tonight!

The name of the place was Memories of India, and it did, indeed, stir up a great reminiscince for the days of Indian food in the old country. Indian food fulfilled these desires, luckily.

So, on this, the third leg of the Great London Culinary Mission (yesterday, we devoured a sandwich that involved the flanking of tomato, mozzarella and basil with two slabs of panini, slung to us by a great Armenian man who said he would have given us better service if we were not male), we waltzed into a completely empty Indian place. It had Zagat Survey ads from 1984 in the window. So we knew that it was good even before we were born.

The characters: Darcey, Alyce, Catherine, Kelly Travers (one of those people who exist best with multiple names, such as Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Prince William) and myself. Until around the 20-minute mark of being in the restaurant, the only sounds that broke through the crystalline silence came from the occasional clink of a glass being cleaned at the bar. Eventually, we had the audacity to converse but Alyce and I had not the gall to order anything outside of Chicken Tikka Masala.

Kelly Travers (left) and Alyce hang out behind a piece of garlic nan and some masala and rice.

Darcey and I raise a fork for love and for nutrition.

WE ARE FULL AND THUS WE ARE JOLLY! Except Alyce has diabetes (in small amounts), which means that she doesn't have the chemical that tells her she's had enough food. That means she's led a life being totally unfulfilled and has no chance of being there. This is sad.

But Alyce and Catherine are still excited because they ate delicious Indian food for under $20.

BUT SHE IS VERY AFRAID OF THE MOIST TOWEL.

So that should catch us up with ridiculous ramblings and journeying. Love, me.

St. Pauli Boy

The Tate Modern, as seen from THE SKY.

The steps spun along a curve that maintained angular velocity as it rose. For the first 150 or so steps winding around the dome at St. Paul's Cathedral (out of the eventual 530), the climb moves gently, meandering around a long and gradual ascent that conveyed us to a ring around the altar and main seating area. Directly under the painting on the ceiling of the dome, vertigo began to ensue.

And what else could we do? We are young and powerful and with futures that will only go upward, not the least concerned with the possibilities to the contrary. So we might as well chase it. We hiked, onward and upward, as the astronauts say. Do they say that? They should. At least until they come back to earth. Then they should say, "see you next time, space."

But anyway, we moved back toward space. The next phase brought us to the first outdoor deck, 2/3 of the way up the Cathedral. We were now at a height that rendered impossible any sort of weight applied to the outer railing. I am one of those people whose disposition tends away from plummeting to death down the side of St. Paul's Cathedral. Perhaps you are a guard-rail leaner. They are made of steel, a substance I trust categorically.

Anyway, the picture that started this great ramble is from that level, of the Tate Modern (art) museum, a converted power plant whose front meets the Millenium Bridge, known as The Wobbly Bridge to the British. As part of an incredibly embarrassing celebration of the year 2000, the British avoided Y2K fear through wasteful and ill-conceived construction. The Bridge, on the third day of use, wobbled under the weight of its pedestrians. It was closed down for a year and a half so that 5 million GBP could go into it to make sure it no longer wobbles. The name stuck, though. It Wonders of Architecture brother, in Greenwich, the Millenium Dome, looks like one of those big plastic things with the holes you fill with pens, pencils or other long, sharp things. Asparagus? They're still trying to figure out what they should put in the Millenium Dome.

After that level, we embarked on the final ascent. Due to a rather inconvenient fear of heights, the tight steel staircase, which appeared to be capable of falling at a sneeze or breeze, was not the most fun.

Nor was the final walkway to the outside, which brought us to this circular platform around the top of the dome, wrapped around a circle around 12 meters in diameter. As one of the tallest non-skyscrapers in London, it was very scary and resulted in my being glued to the wall. Not these people, though:

The one looking irritated is Dave. He's irritated because he's one thousand feet in the air.

Then you get this view. And any agony, fear or trapping shatters. Crashes to earth. But not literally. That'd be dangerous from this height.

Top: The Erotic Gherkin; Bottom: Tower Bridge

If you ever get the chance to go to St. Paul's, do it. Do it if you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Spanish. Whatever. We don't get the chance to see such intricacy so often, such minute enormity. Hooray!

Internship!

If anyone has any information on the proper positioning of wickets or the 10 different ways to make outs -- or how many outs constitute an inning -- in cricket, this information will be of the greatest use to me. Don't send money. Don't send fruit leather or even Fruit by the Foot (they only have fruit by the centimeters here). Send information. On cricket, please.

Unless I show up at my interview in the following fashions: (1) Pantless; (2) Crying; (3) Eating a sandwich that spews mayonnaise; (4) Humorless; (5) Considerably drunk, it looks like I'll be working for sports section at The Observer, The Guardian's Sunday paper.

Fate followed me over-the-seas, perhaps stowed away in baggage. Having tried to land an internship with a music or 'lifestyle' magazine (which originally intended something along the lines of FHM, but led many friends to pull up their eyebrows and laugh at the possible euphemisms ... yes), the internship coordinators offered me the spot at the Observer. Apparently I'll get clips at a 400,000+ circulation paper, so long as I have a 'working knowledge of football (soccer...gah), cricket, rugby and tennis.

I anticipate meeting the Williams sisters. Or at least a man who looks like the Williams sisters. This makes me very happy.

Food Trip the first, continued

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for people to Cook at Home, it becomes necessary to cultivate the power of improvisation and flexibility. Thus, for the beginning of this week's food tour, we will set upon heating up different foods that could be considered from different cultures, though indisputably cooked by one incompetent chef.

The weapons we have at our disposal go, clockwise from the bottom right: Sainsbury's packaged honey cured ham and turkey (30 slices in each package), Old El Paso tortillas, Kikkoman soy sauce and too much rice; clementines; English Mustard!; Cheddar Cheese; Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale (not pictured but later imbibed).

The pair of tortillas enclosed a liberal distribution of mild cheddar cheese, which milds out onto its equally mild terrain after heavy heating under a wet paper cloth (for the tortillas) and in the microwave (for modern deliciousness).

The quivering ham and turkey are laid next to each other on their trembling death bed, primed for the smothering by their oppressor, King Mustard.

Smothered!

The tortilla curls up, enclosing its contents in their final death shroud. The rice, having been boiling the entire time, joins with the soy sauce to create something that looks like fried rice and tastes like rice with all of the salt from the West Indies. The clementines later absorbed some of the runoff from the soy downpour.

Aunha! 'Vee do not hyave such very good cooking in zee France,' says Baptise, who is sad for the lack of hugs he suffers from due to the distance from his girlfriend.

But we do in America, my friends.

We do in America.

(this is a celebratory ice cream bar)

Food journey!

For millenia, man has eaten food to allay his desire to gain nutrients. George Washington ate food. So did Abraham Lincoln, and so did people who weren't presidents. Like Warren Harding. Women have eaten food. Food has also been eaten by the following people: people in different countries, people with long hair and bald people, people who smile or cry when they wake up in the morning and even some animals. One time, I heard that people have even eaten other people for food. It's really important!

But in London, peope aren't as fortunate as the rest of the world. Whereas in America or Bratislava, people have eaten foods made more excellent through the use of spice. Did you even know that BRITAIN WAS A BIG COUNTRY THAT USED SPICES BACK IN HISTORY? Yes! The East India Trading Co. brought things like salt to the white man. But ever since the British lost their stake in The Burden, they spent more time concentrating on metaphors with America (I heard today that Britain was Greece to our Rome -- that they created a great deal of art and retained a culture while we 'adopted' everything we had) and less time on paprika or coriander.

So this week, I bring you the various sides of British culture. Or, some of the various sides. I'm sad to say that alighting this ever-speeding train got off to a bit of a bump and has yet to move at the speed of America. However, one must understand that in Britain, change always occurs gradually -- it creates the tradition of stability, according to Professor Michael Thornhill, who said today that the British can take their beer better than the Chinese because "we've had centuries of experience."


The Odeon movie theatre in Leicester Square, right next to Picadilly Circus. What happens when movies without the epic nature of King Kong aren't playing? Like, "



Every 1GBP (GBP = pound sterling) pizza I've found sports a composition of around 97% bread and a trace layer of cheese atop insinuations of sauce that-once-was, resulting in a very soft and heavy final impression, not unlike that of oatmeal or the mentality of suburban teens.



But when I took a picture of the pizza place, this Portuguese man suggested I buy a slice. It was, as he said, da best.

Baguettes

Perhaps the largest and most primal component of adventure and exploration is ingestion. When we're young, we put everything that our hands can manipulate into our mouths -- pens, video game cartridges, bottles and the other source of liquid nutrition. It's all in the great and lofty pursuit of learning -- the drive behind adventure, as far as I can tell. But we never really lose the urge. All of our adventures in high school usually ended up in some sort of diner or other place that allowed us to eat something fried or drink something that was the next of kin from the coffee bean. This week, I'll try to undertake a diet that aspires to achieve a multitude of goals:

1. Intelligent eating, so as to be in better shape by the time I go to Rome this weekend and Barcelona in two
2. Creative eating, so as to prove that London food isn't all mush and mayonnaise.
3. Exploratory eating, so as to promote the sense of adventure around various parts of the city, which will be catalogued in digitized pictures
4. Economic eating. Expect a few visits to baguette places that fill their delicious and elongated bread with chopped meats and mush and mayonnaise -- before I go to the real delicious eateries at night. But I'll stay away from retelling the rather droll stories of baguette and arid chicken.