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!

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:

Go back to paving hell with them on January 1.

Making resolutions is silly for the most part, but I still like doing it. So there. I'd like to consider my 2013 ones accomplished :P Here's to a new life in Great Britania!

1) Climb a V7
Last year's goal was to climb just one V6 and I ended up getting five sends under my belt. Emphasis is still on staying injury-free!

2) Read 52 books 
My third year doing this, and I don't think I've regretted making room for reading while waiting for planes, commuting, etc. A quarter of my books were in French, which has been a nice way to brush up on vocabulary. More non-fiction needed though!

3) Write and publish 3 pieces
I decided against doing NaNoWriMo this year, but work gave me the chance to publish a bit about gay refugees in three countries and on what resources can assist them in the Bay Area. Looking forward to writing something about killer robots.

4) Keep in touch with friends & family
Everyone says that moving is tough in the first year, and I don't want to lose the excellent support system I have in the Bay Area. Plan on seeing more blogposts from me, and we will all keep talking, even if it has to be while wearing silly hats on Google Hangout. And come visit in London, even if I'm living in a British hovel! I'll make you some cat food pâté and some shampagne (it's the latest thing, you put a drop of shampoo in a whiskey glass, some cubes of ice, and a few glugs of vodka).



I moved out of the Oakland co-op yesterday. Going to miss that frigid little double room :(

Pretend you're a tree and I'm a lumberjack

I haven't posted in a while, and I swear I'll try to be better about it. Still waiting for a proper English summons, but this has been an incredible year, despite the many frenzied scuffles. Or is it because of? 

Lots to stick in a scrapbook if I had one. 

There are nights where I'm watching the Goonies while doing a passable imitation of a beached whale full of Thai food. And spooning is a magical phenomenon that can manifest in a one-foot width of sofa. 

Blinking awake in a rainy Berkeley morning with Tyler squeaking about everyone needing to get a fucking room, Jesus Christ. 

Chris is also up and buzzing about like Martha Stewart, frying up fluffy omelettes dripping with gouda and smoked turkey and caramelizing some raspberry banana pancakes. Many Saturday mornings where I feel incredibly lucky and I don't want it to end, and I'm hugging him close as we fall asleep again.

I stumble to the bus home in a carbo-stupor, overshoot my stop, walk along the 580 from puddle to puddle while continuing to read Molière plays.

And then we're on a mountain, looping around and the earth is indeed round in addition to green and being half sky.

There was a confusing night by the BART station bar after the dairy eating contest. The earnest poetess makes eye contact and announces to us, "I wrote two poems, one from the airplane to the wind, the other, the wind to the airplane." 

We try to leave, but we are locked in, garlands of chains and requiring a key, flashes of Triangle Fire. Poetry night with too much lighting is not a great combination.

And we're walking along burnt hillsides, filled with plebian scramble for brunch and I finally pick up the little tree I wanted for hanging necklaces and trinkets. 

Separate hikes, don't get it twisted. I still have a soft spot right there for the fire trail behind the Berkeley stadium. And there you run into Christian singles.

California is gorgeous, and it'll always be home. My safety net, those people you call as soon as something particularly good or awful happens to you, they're all tucked into the Bay Area crannies. I know you people will change and grow, but I want to have cake, eat it, and have some for breakfast as well. 

Can't you all just fit into a suitcase, stay quiet, and then emerge with a clowncar roar in Heathrow? Work on it, especially since Cirque is in town for pro tips. 

I swear I'm dressed for a costume party in the picture below. I'm a saint, a Russian one, patron protector of domestic workers. Fur coat and tea cup make me domestic, right? 

We wandered into the soupy rainbow lights of the theater, and led everyone back to the table laden with food. There were Oakland dock cranes and Sutro towers, and dresses, chocolate brownies.

I finished my second year of reading a book a week (currently on my 56th book)! Kicked it into high gear in October and November thanks to Talia (and to getting fired ho ho), and I ended up racking up solid slabs of literature. A quarter of my books this year were in French, which means that my reading skills are coming back! 

Once I tackle de Beauvoir's Les belles images, we'll see what I can engulf next. Reading French lesbian literature means I learn words like "un godemiché," but then I wrap up the book with the feeling that I just peered too deeply into someone's life and something blinked back. Messy, messy. 

There's a lot o' eating going on: goat vindaloo, sopa de res, bacon muffins with egg surprise. Even as a morning person, there's something amazing about waking up at noon, wallowing in warm sheets until hunger strikes, and then having delicious Salvadorian soup before realizing the sun sets in an hour. 

More friendsgivings than I can consume turkey for, but I will always have room for more persimmon pudding with boozy cream. We contributed flawed rugelach, doubling and halving various things, but it's hard to mess up raspberry jam, walnut paste, bittersweet chocolate, served warm from the oven. For another, pan culde bread pudding with orange flower water and cranberries. 

Possibly overkill, but buying conches en masse ("two in each color, yes.") meant that David and I got matching heart cookies made out of very very white flour dyed very very pink. 

Chicken counting one two three

It's been like summer vacation, where I often have no idea what day of the week it is. There are simply four or five days of the week where friends aren't free to play during daylight hours, and then there are two odd ones where we romp around in the sandy valleys.

There's been bounty hunters that show up on our doorstep at 3 am.

And I'm sending out job applications into the Ether, each time counting chickens before the rooster even gets a twinkle in the eye. "I could see myself living in a war-ravaged and mega-homophobic country, why not?" That kind of musing and I'm catching up on my Book a Week vows. Seven novels in the past week and I just picked up my eighth. I've been reading about Burroughs and Ginsberg writing to each other about going face-deep in ayahuasca in South America.

It's kinda shocking that it's the 41st week of the year.

I've also been doing some writing on the side, definitely rolling around some ideas for Spoonwiz.

Here's a rough chunk I need to edit and add to about food and community:
There's something that touches the soft squishy side of me almost every time we have co-op house meals. It sounds incredibly crunchy granola made by Berkeley grandmother anarchists, but I think every culture has figured out on its own that putting certain things in your mouth is blissful, and that you want to be happy and warm in the comfort of other people. So we gather and swarm at various points of the calendar year. Thanksgiving, a convocation of urban tribes bearing turkey, oh-so-clever usages of pumpkin, and a joke about what corn is called back home. Tết, Hannukah, it's all about warmth, about family and close friends, about bringing your neighbor a pot of hot soup on a winter day.

Why did our cave ancestors stumble upon this ridiculous formula of Food + People = Joy, and then decide that civilized people would only indulge in the practice of being really happy a few occasions of the year? More simply, why aren't we all exchanging moon cakes every Friday instead of once a year during Lunar New Year?

Bags of gourmet Cheeseboard pizza often magickally appear in our house fridge, courtesy of a co-oper's boyfriend who picks up what the artisinal bakeries nearby can't sell. On most nights, a co-oper will bring a friend or two to dinner, and it's an endless flow of the global nomad community that centers on hubs like Oakland. I like the idea of people resting up, eating some homecooked food in our urban oasis before they make the long gorgeous curve down the Pacific Coast Highway. It's sometimes like an orphanage. Not to the extent that the trope is a sad one, but that we are always a port in the storm for our friends. Recently fired friends, traveling the world friends, broke ones, there would always be a small room with clean sheets off the living room waiting for you.

So yeah, life is pretty good even if I don't know what's next. Hazy and unclear, but it's been a lot of fun to have the time to think, to plan out what kind of career I want.

Standing outside my co-op after a caution cookie shard and I'm holding warm heartstopper pizza while Tyler wraps up his cigarette, the Vietnamese woman next door, Coi, smiles shyly at me as she walks into the orange light and then around her own small garden. We had finally met the other day when she thanked me for the paper bag of cukes we had left her. Her son will stand between our buildings and just scream and scream until Coi barricades herself into a room or the police come.

I'm wandering the Urban Ore aisles with my best friend and it all seems like one of the used doors will just get tugged on, a knob will turn, and we will just be in the past, an alternate dimensiom, or just fucked. An older man hovers over me as I flick through the crusty paintings, and as my flipflops pad through the musty innards of Ore, I'm thinking of the Yelpers warning about getting all your tetanus shots, but people are also hysterical in general practice.

Thought I'd lost this again, but the thread is regained. Obviously still rocketing along, it's like Kerouac is making fun of us, trolling us, it feels like the right time as I move through this pool of fog, Abhorsen bells tolling, moving backwards, simultaneous swirls and orbits of metal. I want to be traveling, getting to know a city by myself, learning customs, fitting in like I pride myself on doing, being the cat who has fun in a paper bag.

I don't think that it's a bad thing. Except for Jakarta and holding in liquid explosive shit while wearing my only suit in the smothering dripping heat of Indonesian summer, and there alternates clouds of bugs that nibble at you and smoky meats that emerge from the grill for you to nibble. It's all a series of nibbles, where this stand sells the best duluk from a particular province known for juicy, and I'm ready to get back to my hotel to sit on the throne, and the daily hour where my driver makes ten minutes of smalltalk before I give up, nod off, and my interpreter is still chatttering away, so I wake up to continue talking about his side business as an artist, he owns a printing press, and I'm talking to the precocious Gutenberg of Jakarta.

I don't want these to be my last adventures, and I don't think they will. I remember having a giant shit eating grin on my face every time I travel, and especially one warm morning when I woke in Bangkok in a purple bed, slithered into some shorts and flip flops, walked into a cloud of humidity, looking to spend some baht on fresh fishcake and fruit, and doing the wai to the valet and doorman, and I watch the street food vendor's child carry a bucket more than half her size down to the brown torrent of a river under a pedestrian bridge. All of the rice noodles, pork and herbs float in the oily scum as the girl and bucket both submerge.

I'm waiting again and it's like last year and the ones before since I'm just waiting and hanging, not that I mind, there's something about staying hungry, being young and dumb, and wanting to see the world on someone else's dime. Last year, I had visions of Japan, Morocco, France, and I ended up feasting on ribs in white barbecue, talking to a very naked and very large man who insisted I listen for hours as he talked about struggling against the company and losing, about his roof leaking all winter, his kids going hungry, going around to six different soup kitchens. Another man told us to stop filming once he started crying and that it would be hard in a small Southern town, the neighbors talk, you know.

It's the twenties that are important because you're finally a baby adult, and you're making what feels to you and your friends like major life choices, and people a little older are looking at you and smiling at how you really have no idea what you're getting yourself into soon, and you're falling into a cliche. Where there are rivers of unmentionable herbs, milk, honey, ink black plumes of late night conversations.

Travis concert, cookie crumbs midway, smoking on an airy patio with a front row seat to crackhead shenanigans, succulents, dying tomatoes, and the golden virgin mary, we take a break out of the clouds to get Tu Lan vermicelli, "I hope it's still good even after the city made them clean their kitchens of rats."

The tornado is not a metaphor.

Moritz Aust | Watching The Storm - Day Seventeen

A little note known fact is the alternate title this photographer considered: "Let's go put on matching suspender outfits and watch the tornado tear up our corn. #nohomo"

People have been asking whether I had trouble adjusting to humdrum life after Burning Man. And it's vaguely embarrassing to realize that I do not have the right to notice much of a change, but this is because (1) I am funemployed and (2) I live in a co-op, (3) in Oakland.

I come home through ganja fog to smiley strangers handing me fried okra and pancakes on the regular, so yeah, it's a little dry out there in Nevada.

The not-working part of my life is certainly going splendidly, though it has only been almost two weeks. This means that it is still socially acceptable for me to tell everyone, "All I did today was climb, go to yoga, and pick tomatoes while half-nekkid in our garden."

Soon I'm going to say it less cheerfully and people will wonder if I have a trust fund. Or met a hippie sugar daddy, let's be real.

Life really is very much on the side of awesome, even if I occasionally feel like I'm off-track, whatever race we're running. I just know that currently I'm being paid on the side to write a screenplay about the Holocaust, I'm camping away, and I really want to complete the whole wave-soaked meander up the Lost Coast trail soon.

This past time was a scouting trip basically, and while it's a little tangled and mangled in some parts, the Tolkien views more than make up for it.

Our campsite on the last night of the backpacking trip

There were just a lot of surreal moments where you think, "So this is nature, eh?" The five of us slipped and sliced our way through immoderate amounts of wilderness, made camp in little glens fit for Bambi and his dead mom.

Places where some nice hobbit boy might run off with ya.

Just this month, I literally won four sets of free tickets to plays that I would have otherwise paid to see anyway. This year has been an excellent haul for my uncanny ability to win chance contests and drawings, an iPad and a trip to Canada for three being the highlights. And I swear that most of the time, it's because I'm the only that cares about winning.

And I was vindicated recently when I won tickets to a film festival by filming my stuffed Thai cat Dinga as he gyrated to the Scissors Sisters for fourteen hot seconds. I can now add "award-winning film-maker" to my list of titles, but again, I found out at the screening that I had been the only person to enter the contest.

Woo, go me, go.

So I'm applying for a few jobs on the daily, figuring that I'll land something ridiculous again.

Eventually.

The past two years since law school have been amazing experiences, so I'm trying to continue this upward trend toward whatever I'm supposed to end up doing with my life. I've embraced the fact that I'm somewhat off track for most lawyering, but if I can get people to continue paying me to do interesting things around the world, I'm pretty okay with that.

Next steps will mean a solid chance I'll be leaving the Bay Area, which will be interesting since it's been home for twenty-three years, if not twenty-seven for all that I remember of Hong Kong.



Not that I haven't considered it before, but it's much more real when I'm looking at postings in Bangladesh, South Sudan, and Afghanistan. I'm in adventure mode, and I want to get out and tilt at windmills.

And it's simply been easier to think about it once close friends moved on to other places: Danny to Japan, Erik to Madison, Tristan to his own jetsetting adventures, etc.

While I still have a good circle of amigos here, it's hard not to think about leaving too when you have to hug a friend really hard, realizing that tonight is the last night you'll be clinking beers for a while.

But we're still on the hunt to recruit for Musketeers. I just might take the search abroad.

Dark Horse creating his "Chris Kosienski" identity while I stand amazed.

Soup dumplings, then goats at the zoo, and then Dolores Park make for an excellent Saturday.

Feeling rosy today, Mysterio?!

We have a habit of fitting both of us into small places. Or big chairs.

Okay, I have to go back to tending my cardamom kombucha. And in other news, we have fleas in our house.

I have spent two months with permanent night-time itchy leg, and more than one morning has me waking up and watching small black dots bounce on my blankets.

Again, remember that part about how normal life presents no culture clash?