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.

How many types of sparkles are there?

Summer vacation doesn't exist for us. The thought throws me for a loop when I discover it each year (in the repetitive Colombus' discovery of America sense apparently).There aren't three months of year where you spend a lot of time crawling around the scrubby woods or just on perpetual loafing about. June blew by me this week, and that's half down, folks. Those warnings about winter being a thing in England will come to pass, and I do own a jacket or two.

Until then I'm liable to go wander Notting Hill in a duffel coat and fisherman's hat until a posh English family adopts me. If it worked for Paddington Bear, so why not me? I can check cocktail party in this posh posh area code off my list now that I've had butlers topping off my mojito soundlessly while little bloblettes of moreish food float around in platters (Moreish = British for a food so tasty that you want more of it).

The joke was on me later when I realised there was no alcohol at all in the mojitos. It's like a cleanse, guys. Lemonade and mint, I swear by it, totally meant to do that.

Worksnack: Some fried Algerian pastry.

I wrote a guest post on the Norwegian oil fund supporting drone warfare, and it got picked up on a minor blog of Norway's main media group. I'll take the minor wins when they come rolling in, and it was fun to check on the comments as Norwegians calmly debated the issue. I expected the compulsive trolling and name-calling that usually hangs out in Internet social spaces, but maybe it's more of an American thing.

#sometimesreadthecomments

After calming overcoming our first car stalling mid-road (there was a pub fortunately), we set up tents outside the village of Radnage in Buckinghamshire (within shouting distance of a pub). Yes, my first camping trip in England happened, and on a field that probably had orphans snip the grass into the perfect height for bare feet

There was a boiled treacle pudding, rice & chilli, with plenty of tea to start us off and ease it down. We then ducked into the Crown to wind down the evening with some local ale until we heard the rolling thunder. The water started pelting down, and we all finished the dregs of our pints before ducking out. Our tents had barely been battened down when the skies just let all hang down.

For the next four hours, it rained and rained and somewhere out there, a small white cat with spectacles mused about the desire to buy a boat. My new dinosaur-green sleeping bag was only £25 and it gave me all the mummy loving I needed to ignore the known world washing away.

We wormed out of the tent in the morning, and no one seemed to have washed away. Sodden grass steamed away into mist as I dodged giant flying bugs in the temperature cycling showers.

Fresh grass smells and allergies blew around us as we drove through leafy love tunnels toward a train festival. Enthusiastic Englishmen swarmed at us to show off their anorakin' merit badges, and I learn enough about train operation and restoration to earn a masters' degree on the spot.

We hop on a train to nowhere, and there's a mechanical computer.

We wander the wet trees, everything dripping, shades of honeydew and sunlight dapple. There's some kind of giant ornate mausoleum to a local family that doubles as a toast to bad taste, and we sit facing horizons of field and pasture, with a straight Roman road blazing through the middle. 

Lunch is served atop a sunny blanket and there is a celebration of British pork products, with Scotch eggs, pork pies, sausage rolls, and some gouda to just get us into another food group. 

Porkified sufficiently, I'm tanning in the sun sipping my first Ribena. The purple smell of liquid blackcurrant now superimpose warm English countryside afternoons onto my childhood memories of steamy Hong Kong streets.

We chase away dragonflies and make our way to the Hellfire Caves, where some poor servant girl got tricked into hooking up with a local nobleman. The noble stallion turned out to be three local boys who ended up stoning her to death. Yay, happy ending (and this is why you ask for face pics, boys). 

The caves themselves are a steep pebbley walk through damp tunnels that make up this ancient frat house. The river Styx at the bottom should have oozed more, something like this.

Cold pints during golden hour take us to another pub for a dinner of fish n' chips. It's naptime weather even when we leave for the leisurely hike back to camp, rustling through knee-high fields of golden grass. Birds of prey dive and dive on toasty thermals, and none of the nettle along the path seems to realize I'm not wearing long pants.

We pop into the pub and interrupt a 40th birthday, before marbles rumble in an elaborate twist on jenga.

The week before I left for home in San Francisco, it all zipped by in a blur of meetings, with a stop to consume extensive quantities of Ethiopian food with Zorah and Nina.

Oh Shoreditch, I can see why people like you so much.

Above, Nina is channeling our collective excitement for the vegan stews we are about to bathe in, just off Brick Lane. Sad that she won't be greeting me with perky noises at work, and she was sweet enough to bring me japchae on her last day at work.

She wins all the points. Excellent noodles for snaffing on while strolling back across Tower Bridge.

Stroll turned into a hustle once I got into the delusion that I would somehow be able to pack and move from Bermondsey to Hackney in two hours, and then pack more suitcases for my flight back to the States.

Julia talked me down from the edge, and I only packed for home.

And of course London looked like its gorgeous self when I left for my flight. 23 hours, and 4 in Charlotte with some passable BBQ.

But then I was home, and within a day, San Francisco turns during Pride into the magic gay kingdom that it really is underneath that fog and tech-hate. There's certainly ample sorcery involved when David and I walked right into Tartine with no line to snag some morning buns. No line again at Clare's Deli around the corner (I know, lesser magicks). 

Did Burning Man happen early this year?

Armed to the teeth with paper bags filled with carbs, we pick our way through the crowds in Dolores Park, waved off frantically to the side by the Wachowski sister as she tried to film a scene involving hot gay boys.

We still take off our shirts because honey badger don't what now. We've reached the finish line for the year and there is no more time to go to Equinox, everybody. Even if they have eucalyptus towels and the best q-tips.

San Francisco is home, and there is basically endless cuddling, which I am totally okay with. 

Two of my favorite people, and this picture would be in a scrapbook if I did that kind o' thing.

There's trivia night with Bebe greeting our London-representing table, and we make it onto the podium of red, white, and blue questions. People are getting married left and right, and I'm pretty excited about these first sprouts of wedding announcements. 

And then I'm on a sailboat with Lincoln's fellow MoFo legal eaglets, freezing in the sea spray while having a Lagunitas, and we're circling the Golden Gate Bridge before mountains of shrimp, oysters, and crab cakes fall upon us with a frenzy.

East Bay is where I'm going to be a cranky old person one day, I've decided, and Berkeley just keeps giving me pangs each time I go back. I will certainly have a peach tree, berry bushes, a goat. 

The Meresman clan serves up a perfect backyard barbecue of grilled spicy peppers fresh from the garden, Moroccan chicken and beans, warm buttermilk cakes topped with berries. A baby with the cutest ringlets eats a nectarine like a cheery beaver with its front teeth, and I'm going to have more bourbon whipped cream, yes please.

We roll our contented selves to Chris' nook just off campus, and after anchoring at 4.0 hill in the shadow of emo tree and the Campanile, we're perched on Indian Rock, staring up at purple veils and pink hazes floating down on the strangely organic rock because of the clots of people that swarmed all over. The three of us clamber like demented crabs towards the summit, where I'd once hugged another boy more than two years ago now.

As the fireworks light up the urban moonscape, people whoop and cheer, and we continue gazing where our view is unobstructed. We spend the whole time staring at the wrong patch of cotton candy sky, fireworks peripheral as it rained silver glitter wherever we looked. The rock is endless sojourning as we try to avoid firefly orbits around the Fountain at The Circle, the little bears at its base sheltered from the shiny stuff twinkling down.

We rewind our paths across campus, and we're just three mewling dudes in their late twenties rolling on wet grass and squinting at stars in the drizzle, hurting nothing and bothering no one. We make it back before starting an epic slumber party. Why and when did slumber parties stop being thing? 

Jackfruit atop oven-fresh brownies, while Lana del Rey is a reptile deity who is very interested in me, and I haven't been able to stop looping her at work yet.

♫ Down on the West Coast I get this feeling

Like it all could happen that's why I'm leaving

You for the moment, you for the moment, Boy Blue, yeah, you ♫ 

The week was over before I knew it, and this leaving was harder than the first time. There wasn't the distraction of needing to figure out the basics in London, and the full brunt of how much I'd miss the people who love me at home just bodyslammed me at the airport. 

Some things are more important than I would have thought four months ago, and I don't want to miss out on what I know makes me happy. I'm closing in on what I think I want, and I'm just anxious about making good choices at each of these itty bitty life junctions. 

Please do bear with me.

Until then, we're holding down the fort with persistence, spiderwebbing, and a little luck.

And where does Clay Aiken live? 

Couldn't stop imagining Norwegians on the street in Viking helmets.

View from the top of Oslo Opera House at night

Dozen carrots, Welsh cakes, tins of oily kipperfish, PB&J sammiches, and a small sachet of granola. I'm still traveling light n' breezy around Europe, but I have more food than clothes in my wee bag for four days in Norway. First time flying RyanAir, and I feel bad for the flight attendants as they roll out trolley after trolley of duty-free junk no one wants to buy ("it may be shit, but at least you don't pay tax on it!".

Just 1.5 hours later (I am still not over how close London is to the rest of Europe), I land in Rygge and make it onto the Ekpressen bus that takes me into Oslo. Norway at first glance is green, gray, and very wet. It feels like the Pacific Northwest, though it helps that Norwegians are obsessed with salmon too.

I was warned against Karl Johans Gate as the main thoroughfare for tourists and bandits, but the trade winds blow easy here, and I spend some time jotting and napping in the golden hour that just lasts and lasts. Packs of migrant women harass the Great White Tourist, but I slip right by with my Asian card. *slides it neatly back into my wallet* A knot of these vagrant ladies are coordinating with walkie-talkies, and I'm confused how the Norwegian beggar guild is stuck in 1997.

Oslo is warm heady lilac clouds at 8 pm, and there's a satyr shaking an angry boner and scowling at the children swatting at his endowment. I get my first glimpse at the food prices here, and the sandwiches in the bus station that are about to crumble into moist goop are being snatched up for around $12. What drove it home were the spindly little carrots about the size of my pinkie that were being sold in bunches of five for $8.

I essentially had at least $200 worth of carrots in my bag. Tesco, te amo and all for 80p.



I'm sleeping on the night train from Oslo to Bergen tonight, so I plan to just wander the city until it's time to choo-choo off. I come across a building facing the fjord-sea that would fit right into Detroit with its gorgeous art deco labor-sculptures, with hyper-blond Norwegian boys skateboarding off the worker monoliths.

The water and fish funk makes me think of San Francisco and a fisherman hops out of his boat to take a picture for me before asking if I'm from Japan. We both speak awful Japanese to each other, laugh about it, and then I'm off to fail at seeing the coastal fortress down the way.



Weird wealth disparities here as I see posh ladies clickclacking down the cobbled streets towards a Middlelander costume party while migrants dig through the rubbish bins for edible bits. Hoping for some air conditioner in the muggy air, I duck into Outerlands and find out that Friday Night Magic the Gathering exists in Scandinavia too. Sweaty nerd-space, and now I'm writing in the masterly painted Oslo Cathedral which is open all night as long as you don't sleep here.

I lit a candle, left a prayer in the hands of Jesus for friends, family, and me. Religion is like fried chicken, comforting and yet I don't think I need more of it.

I'm finishing a book while dangling my little feet on the slanted roof of the Oslo Opera House, eating Kaviar (pink fish goo in a tube, I'm classy like that) on bits of sesame flatbread. Couples are canoodling, and though I really do like the serendipity and freedom I get from traveling solo, I'm thinking about how it would be nice to have David here.

Not just to nestle and watch the sunset and cheesy shit, but there's something about getting deliberately lost in a new country and getting to share that with a partner-in-crime.

Somehow the train ride from Oslo to Bergen lived up to expectations, and the Norwegian overnight trains even furnish a blanket, eyemask, earplugs, inflatable pillowette. I take over both seats as my Dutch seatmate flops into the next row, and I wake up uncomfortably cold, surrounded by moonlight glaring off the snow everywhere. For the next two hours, I'm just snuggled in blankets, watching frozen rivers zoom by, interspersed with wooden tunnels and congealed little towns.



Bergen at 6 am was a lowpoint, just cold and drizzly. I do the Boxcar children face as I peer into hotels at actual smörgåsbord, but I'm really here to masquerade as a guest to pee. Lighter, I pick my way through the closed seaside carnival, probably for the national day last week. The UNESCO site of Bryggen are colorful houses when you really get down to it, and everyone in the downpour looks disappointed. The YMCA hostel finally opens up for me to dry and fluff up by the windows. Certainly no Flying Pig, and all is clean and quiet, everyone's suit cases are filled with tubs of peanut butter.

I throw down what I don't mind hostel bandits taking, and I'm off to hike to the top of Mount Fløyen. Leafy switchbacks with warnings about witches all the way to the top in my holey shoes, and once you summit, you can see the fingers of the fjord open up into the sea, little tanker ships and yachts just frozen with their wakes from this height.

Oodles of adorable Norwegian children racing up and down the hillsides. I wend my way down on my own path through what feels like the Oakland hills, cinnamon roll with custard in hand, and end up spending the evening brewing tea with some Scottish and Colombian backpackers on the hostel roof. Once insipid comments about learning Spanish off a cigarette pack started happening, I duck out since I have an early morning.

Asscrack o' dawn, the two Quebecois brothers and I make one last fishcake pesto scramble before clutching our Earl Grey mugs for the train station. This trip to Gudvangen through Voss for the Osterfjord has a sprinkling of Americans, and it's funny how there are clumps by affinity.

I love the little sphere atop the letter A in Flåm, little sun god font. I'm already antsy on this boat since we're in the middle of the intended attraction. Indeed quite pretty, but nothing beats the solid stout I have at the Aegir Brewery before naptime on the docks. Very viking bro place, and I'm amused that this beer costs 15% of my food budget.

The little train that speeds you from Flåm to Myrdal has everyone slamming from window to window trying to squeeze in shots of waterfalls. Kjosfossen is actually epic, though I can't believe it's someone's job to dance like a banshee above the falls to represent a Norwegian siren.

I get back too late to buy new groceries, but the free pile at Marken Gjestehus was baller. Full meal with dessert, and plenty to share with other people there. I've missed group meals like this, and my spicy pasta salad is a hit and a half.

The fish market by the hostel feels like the Ferry Building, albeit prices with an extra zero or two. I'm handed slivers of dark crimson meat, and it turns out minke whales are the only kind that Norwegians are allowed to catch for eatin'. The way our universe is put together, everything tastes like chicken or beef, and this is one of the latter, with a slight whiff of salmon. Tourists are gobbling down whale burgers, while I count through my krone and øre, ultimately deciding to lighten the load of food I'm schlepping from one end of Norway to the other.

My final meal in Norway is reindeer patties with traditional sides of potato, sauerkraut, and some kind of berry sauce, before I pop into Rimi one last time to pick up a mediocre Asian Pale Ale (I'm a sucker for lemongrass) and a fiskegrot (Norwegian fish pudding) to bring back.

A 4 am bus to the airport, and I'm back in London by 9 am for a full day at work. Airplanes are magic.

Next sojourn: Ireland?

Waiting in the queue has become a feature. We will start our signposting here.

"I'm working really hard now so that I can be happy at 45."

I laughed into my bun bo hue in the little Vietnamese joint out in far east Woolwich, but the two girls just stared at me blankly.

The British Chinese guy was serious. And I was beginning to resent them for taking me away from my book and the chance to get carnal with my hot carbs. I had already gotten myself over the earlier salvo from them: "We felt bad you were eating alone."

Gee, thanks.

It was a scenario where I was mostly perplexed at the gulf between us culturally despite appearances to the contrary. I value achievement and striving and all the other good nuggets, but waiting to be happy one glorious day seems a recipe to miss out on a whole lot of living. And from their end of things, I was the one wasting my life, my law degree, and when one girl asked my underachieving slacker self whether my parents approved of working for a charity, I called for my bill before answering.

I like to think I'm making good decisions, and it's Adventure Time all the time.

I loved just wandering the canal mazes of Amsterdam in search of Indonesian food. And this was after three days of slowly making my way up the northern Dutch cities, from the Hague to Noordwijk, Leiden, Lisse, and Haarlem. 

Lord, the Haarlem train station was gorgeous. Racing up the stairs through a light drizzle to get to a giant set of silhouetted arches, I couldn't believe I live in Europe. 

I think I repeat this fact to myself at least once a week since I still don't quite believe it yet. 

Wandering tulip fields by Lisse, mmhmm.

The little black moleskine I kept jotting notes in was somehow made less hipster/precious by the fact that we had won it from BeBe Sweetbriar, and it has Kill Your Darlings on it. 

Or is it more?

The reggae in Dampkring was too much, and I definitely lost something with the stoned cat on that orange & pink circus train of a decorative theme. It only took two days and I could see why the Dutch are a cheery people. 

Meeting Talia in Amsterdam was surreal, and I'm so glad we did it.

Incidentally, singing "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey at karaoke while accompanied by five ukelele players has made me realize how you really can't always fake it until you make it. 

Lesson learned. 

In the midst of gorging and unsure why it's happening

I won a three-course meal for four at Honky Tonk. My smiley fellow diners and I had such truckloads of American food. The thing that gets me here is that the winning was from writing a review of a different night where I endlessly consumed buffalo wings. London is ridiculous, where one night I'll be watching people faint as a girl with no hands picks up her father's severed hand with her teeth, having tea and buttered scones at a church cemetery, dancing 'til 3 am in the biggest bear club in the world, or boozing with barristers-to-be in a hall built with wood from a ship of the Spanish Armada. And that's just in the last month.

I do finally feel like I live here now though. It's funny how quickly life here became the new normal, but I'm still enjoying the poop out of it. 

And my flatmate just made me an amazing Greek salad with warmed feta chunklets. Nom nom. Perfect for a hot London evening.

I'm going to Norway next week! It was hard to say no when I spotted £39 flights to Oslo. I'll be sleeping on a train from Oslo to Bergen, riding a boat through a fjord, and hopefully not spending all of my monies on the pricey pricey Norwegian food. I'll give myself bonus points if I can track down some lutefisk: pungent stockfish preserved in lye.

(Title of this post was posted at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where you wait in line. Meditation kouan?)