Streaky is how you Americans like it (and bacon).

Dharma's birthday shindig was a blur of tinkling Pimms, three chocolate cakes on three birthday noses, and sequential portraits done while sporting an oppressive blue sombrero. It's funny how I've gotten used to an hour across London not being too far now atop a big red bus from Bermondsey to Shepherd's Bush. Going west!

I've been on a rekindled lovefest for Cobra beers, so bear with me as I will be bringing my lager-friend to all picnics and barbecues I'm invited to in the next month or so.

My little room, such good light for so much of the day!

I'm now a Hackney denizen, after an epic day of watching our neo-Nazi Romanian mover-men (swastika tattoo with eagle atop on his calf, I shit you not) schlep things down eighty-two steps. Great day for moving house since everyone was at someone else's flat or more likely, at the pub, jostling for ogle space as Germany beats Argentina in the World cup.

Missing Julia already! Though I'm sure she's amused and I'm still ashamed that I called dibs on the ottery nazi.



Though I'm already in love with the new flat, and as soon as I see the terrace overlooking Homerton, I know I'll be spending a lot of time there just reading, writing, laying on my back staring at the sky. My little basil bush happily lives here.

It's strange being in the hip neighborhood since Hackney is the Outer Mission of London, and I used to be in the Oakland equivalent in Bermondsey.

I'm unpacked by the next day since I still don't own much, my little travelin' prayer flags flapping away in the warm breezes of mid-July. I've gotten so used to my bed touching three out of four walls in my room in Bermondsey that suddenly having double the space is a rush to the head. I forgot how nice it is to just read on the cool wooden floor on a early morning before work.

Nights, dozens of insects in varying sizes but all flying zoom into our rooms, orbiting the lights until we suck them all into the vacuum. Who knows what they'll do in there?

The Gun, the pub on our corner

Barely a street away, there's a massive Turkish supermarket with the biggest onions I've ever seen, halal butcher, greengrocers, and then the ubiquitous Tesco Metro hulking in the middle.



My first night, we're cheering along with the locals in a tiny place literally next door down called The Gun. And then it's vaporised ice cream on our terrace as the purple sun sets over London and our candles. So yeah, it's like we had a night inside the Anthropologie catalog. We swing back into things with a barbecue for two soon enough, so we carry on.

My walk to work is now a perfect 3.1 miles (5k!) each way, and I'm turning at The Blind Beggar (apparently the Salvation Army started here), passing Hurwundeki, until finally Jack the Ripper's hangout.

Ice cream and candles after Germany triumphs.

Nina's kimbap made my day.

There's a evening where I walk past the jalebi and samosa vendors, weaving through crowds of people feeling sorry for myself, and by the time I pass the canal, I'm kinda homesick and a Englishwoman gives me a sympathetic half-shrug when we make eye contact. And then Lana del Rey blares from someone's car as I walk by the giant poster of the lizard goddess, and I have a big grin on my face in the remaining mile through Grandmother's house in Cambridge Heath to home.

First meal in the new flat, so of course I had to make a curry.

I spend a day working away in a big beam of sunlight that just slowly sweeps across the room until it's time to start up the chicken coconut curry. I think I've made a curry for myself once a week since coming to London, a few curries actually fitting into a distinct country's flavors, but mostly a comforting love child of Thailand, India, and Hong Kong.

Some turn into coriander tapanade to be eaten with darkest rye breads. Sonnenblumenbrot suffices too. And hey, one of these weekly curries won 2nd place in a contest, so apparently I'm honing currymaking as my Care Bear skill.

I wasn't lying about el Sombrero Opresivo.

Jess and I spent an hour slowly making the coals for the faux braai, shielded by bamboo mats, the fire starters igniting in very carcinogenic ways as we tuck more and more matches and stories into the coal. Sausages bubbling in rich juices, crispy oozy halloumi that breaks my dairy vows, and then onion velvet and blackened sweet potatoes nested in the coals. It gets chilly as the day crinkles up in pleats on the horizon, and there are even some sausages for a fatty fry-up in the morning with Algerian bread to soak it all up.

We blaze up some coals again on Friday night as the storm clouds slowly drift west over us. Boerewors makes it a proper braai, I suppose. Violet the dachshuahua licks my nipple as our candles sizzle in the drizzle.

Breakfast on the terrace!

The Ghanaian mum in the next middle is nagging again, and someone gives me the thumbs up for  the mellow lady tunes I'm piping into the space between us. Play some Window by The Album Leaf one morning when you're just lazing around on a Saturday morning. That's a lovely ass feeling, boys n' girls. Also Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap. Wake up to that, strap on your walking shoes, and go explore your city.

Lehnert accuses me of doublespeak when I talk about how being "fine" sounds to me like being "upset." It's sometimes fun to think of work (in the same way little kids think about superhero lives they'd lead), where we're just delaying 1984 from merging with reality, and it's looking hopeless, but there just might be salvation in next week's glossy issue, just around the corner.

Fireworks going off in Victoria Park! No internet until end of the month = bingewatching Downton Abbey and lots of catching up on my book a week.