Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Inspector Sands, kindly report to the control room.

Street next to where I work in Aldgate.
Apparently if you hear a reference to "Inspector Sands" while on the Tube, something awful has happened.

After a bit more than a week in London, I've gotten used to navigating relative to the Thames river. With my brain's aversion to learning geography (and math...s), I've been actively trying to remember street names, reciting them in the morning to myself as I walk towards Tower Bridge in the fog, egg, ham, and kale sandwich in hand. Everything is historic, everything dates back hundreds (if not a thousand) of years, and there's no reason why that crumbly wall over there doesn't date back to Roman times.

I don't think I'll get sick of this view on my wak to work.
The flight over the great blue seas felt quick, though I stayed awake almost the whole time watching a hobbit fight an overly-talkative dragon, beardy folk singer croon, and Jared Leto sell HIV meds. Border Agency gave me no trouble except to shit on the job I hadn't even started yet because terrorism. "You won't get any of my money," she huffed & puffed as she gave me back my passport.

My first meal here was Lebanese lamb kebab with mint tea in a cute glass, at a bustling restaurant on a street corner by the shopping district, women in midnight hijab wandering down the street with handbags and clutching children. I don't think I've been in a more diverse city, and I suppose that's why you leave the Home Bubbleworld, to realize even more starkly how San Francisco just comes in shades of Asian and white. Here, Asian doesn't even include me in most minds since it's usually images of Bangladeshis, Indians, etc.

Regent's Park - so much greenery!
Just an elementary school, so don't put this in your church fatigue box.
Paddington Bear, just chillaxing.
I remember months ago, it was disorienting to see through the interwebs old classmates becoming Supreme Court clerks. My gut reaction was to comment, "At least the Stanford brand name is doing something for someone." And I liked David's response: "Kevin, when was the last time you couldn't do something you wanted?" Which is true, and I suppose for public interest kids, there aren't really metrics for how well you're doing or whether you're headed in an upward direction. As long as I'm still ambulating forward in metaphor and enjoying the view & eats, I'm going to count it as a win.

And work here is indeed lovely, vague, and inspiring in alternating hours, and there's a delivery of fresh fruit every morning, people angling to snag a banana before the box devolves into just a few sad kiwis that I end up executing by mouth in the afternoon. I'm told to be like Briar rabbit, though I'm actively reviewing which patch of thorns to end up in, no tar baby in sight. Juggling balls, revealing corporate complicity: not such bad mandates.

I'm also on a quest to have lunch in a different little garden every day.

Where I ate lunch today. Either a church that was bombed in World War 2 or it was a Diablo 3 set. You decide.
My boss takes me out to lunch on the first day to a restaurant that would fit right into the Ferry Building next to Slanted Door, rustic wood tables next to floor-to-ceiling windows peering out onto a cobbled lane of cotton candy cherry blossoms. And then the second day there's boeuf bourguignon by the quay along the St. Katherine's docks.

I got excited thinking that each restaurant specializes in pudding, until I realize that it refers to all desserts.

NOODLES! I made them way too spicy, but had to stay the course.
Cronuts everywhere, so SF, watch out.
As you know, I like feeding my face, so a lot of what I notice in my daily life here flows into that. How the lemons are labeled cheerily as perfect for Pancake Day (apparently the English eat their flapjacks with lemon and sugar?). Kale isn't popular yet so only £1 for a kilo of the ruffles of greeny goodness, pineapple muesli from the co-operative food, everyone offering to make everyone else tea every ten minutes. Pop-up stalls by the water and apparently cloned at each borough market: baccalau, chicken peri peri, chorizo curry, earl grey macaron. And there's cake all the time because why not and it's even in the office manual for pastry culture to be encouraged.


My living room table where the magic happens
I'm in a perfect little flat in Bermondsey, right by a huge supermarket, just a quick two mile walk from work across one of London's biggest tourist attractions and looking down the Thames towards the other two of the Shard and London Bridge. It's an eighth of the size for twice the money, but it's a new game, new rules.

I'm meeting people, recreating a social network here. There was a United Nations of churrascaria through my flatmate: Turks, Greek, Georgians, Brazilian, and me. "Me duele la cara de ser tan guapo" somehow stuck in my head the next morning, along with the trough of charred meats that kept coming and coming on metal swords until we all had meat sweats.

Weird dreams about imprinting secrets onto tablets like skyscrapers that create transpirable text when they get dunked into tubs of molten gold. That 7D zombie ride from months ago was involved, when we crashed our Jeep, shot some innocent white folks (anyone notice that there aren't really minorities in shooting games?). Jet lag hasn't really hassled me, though I think my meal times are still off.


I'm spending my weekends just walking and walking, my first Saturday here bussing over to Greenwich, fascinated by the Royal Observatory's collection of decorative clocks, tourists swarming across the Prime Meridian, waiting on polite old British folks to not be in my picture of spiraling Tulip Stairs at the Queen's old crib. I was delighted to find Cantonese speakers at Tai Won Mein, and they basically rewarded my ordering in Chinese with as many condiments as I wanted. Holy shit that was a lot of chili oil. Sunday was strolling by the Camden docks, winding through horse tunnel markets, thinking that Cyber Dog should just go ahead and pass out Ecstasy before you enter the store, listening to sad-eyed Irish boys strum breakup songs.


After thinking that I was so proud of sneaking into the Malaysian embassy canteen (strangely on point with the lost airplane zipping through Malaysian airspace unseen, but that reference is too soon. #offensive), £3 for nasi rendang with grilled fish on the side, sambal, plenty of kecap manis drizzled atop, and an iced milo to wash it down.

Alright, my chicken adobo is done. Dinner time!


Monday, March 10, 2014

Bits and bobs before leaving on a jetplane


Finally at the airport now, waiting for my flight to Heathrow to start life in London. It finally hit me that I was leaving around two days ago, and it's just been me feeling nauseous about each goodbye, and the circle keeps shrinking with each meal until finally I'm walking David to Montgomery, hugging Mom, and then Lincoln & Dad right before the checkpoint at SFO. I'm excited about London and about working, but at the same time, it's scary leaving a place where I feel very loved.



The visa process took a long time, but I'm so thankful that I had the extra three months to spend with all the people I care about in the Bay Area. I've just been jotting down memories throughout (so bear with me for this blog dump essentially before London blogging begins in earnest). I know that while London is a perfect place to get caught up with exciting adventures, there will be evenings when I wish I could just call up Talia and laugh over Ethiopian food at Addis, or weekends that I would have spent just wandering around the Mission with David & Chris.

RAWRRRRR.
Memories like little nuggets, like buying fresh sayoong (egg puffs with an accent swinging up and arcing into the distance Yooooong!) with Mom in Chinatown. Me pointing them out to her through the bakery display and she just as excited says, "Should we get some?" Not a question at all since we had both walked into the Red A Bakery while we were talking for the sake of throwing off the Diet Resolution Police. This year, guys, I'll eat better. After buying dessert before lunch, we sit down to Hainan chicken rice, oily ginger moistening and scallions lightening the pale chicken colored a chrysanthemum yellow that had been dunked over and over in boiling water so that the flesh would cook perfectly while the skin stayed taut and tight. Then it was bathed in icewater to capture that moment.

The won ton noodles came and each morsel displaced its own sea of rich chicken broth, a soup so embued with flavor that it is a dense cappucino color with a slight particulate churn when you swish the noodles with chopsticks. A sprinkle of green onion origami loops and a few droplets of neon orange chili oil and it is ready to be shared. We slurp in silence for a few minutes, Mom wipes her mouth with a chicken-scented napkin, smiles with satisfaction, yet saying as if it were part of the ritual, "Still not quite like Hong Kong's noodles."

Nothing ever tastes as good as homemade noodles made by a sad older man with a wedge instead of a crotch. Well, or nostalgia. We are seated tucked into the back of the Hong Kong diner, a cha chaang taang, a common longhouse of ex pats from the fragrant harbor. David and I down the reheated sayung with some Duvel later, the golden banana scent washing down well with sugared and fried. Gorgeous runs to Locust and then Arguello streets, dodging baby carriages and nodding to other runners. Stretching in Grace Cathedral, colored streamers raining down over the sanctuary.


There were so many Sundays in the past six months where our sunscreen smells like summer and Dolores Park. Clare's sandwiches, armadillo Thai iced tea boba with almond milk at Boba Guys, walking through Dolores Park, past a bouncy house, smell of Tartine bread with cheese atop bubbling over us as we squeeze past the people in line for a fresh loaf. Warm toasted baguette filled with velvety roast beef, dabbed with horseradish mayo and dunked for a few seconds more than necessary in a bowl of au jus. Rabbit carved into the side.


The sandwich shop owner (the eponymous Clare?) asking if she can photograph the blue-eyed baby for a community page, and the little boy is smiling already in a sunshine grin, the Dad of course agreeing. And the punk gays with the pint-sized bulldog begging for food get photographed too in their squeeze-your-cheeks-snookums preciousness.

We don't get a picture, and it's not the either of us cares. There's just a brief flash of "What if we owned a tropical macaw and were the kind of insufferable hipsters who would take it to the neighborhood sandwich joint?" Our pearly scraggle teeth would be in a grin on the community page in an alternate but just as gentle universe.


Like walking through David's screen door in high excitement that we still had our half-sandwiches from earlier at lunch. Like Island Lodge Time (ILT) where Enlightened is actually a dramatic reenactment of Snowden story.

And final meal = clam ramen at Ramen Izakaya Goku with a side of some tears.

Lots to treasure, and it's comforting to know that it's all going to be there when I get back.

And speaking of send-offs, Talia did a ridiculously amazing job: