It’s been a bleary-eyed day, and the phone rings while I was lazing in a jetlag-induced stupor. And this one phone call alone made my day.
Yahoo! Made it :) Ask me if you care :)
Besides that particular cause for celebration, I’d also intended to do a lil chronicalling of the UK trip. Fantastic, awesome it really was. Except for the first day, which was a scorching, disappointing afternoon in a deadly quiet York, spent lugging suitcases aimlessly due to incorrect directions from clueless passers-by, the rest of the trip was mostly awesome.
Highlights from York, where we spent two days – really glad to have met up with seniors there, credit all goes to the professor who kindly arranged the meet-ups. I almost wanted to break into tears the first day when i visited the uni with no guidance from the people there. it was honestly so quiet, save for the occasional flapping of the swans’ wings causing ripples in the lake.
but the second day more than made up for it. there was just enough hustle-bustle, and camaraderie that i had expected in a uni, and just enough friendliness to offset the cold in the weather. i could imagine studying there, i said. the en-suite rooms were so pleasant too! and the prospect of unpacking my suitcase, making that room mine, is enough to make me smile.
i’ll get those pretty toasters we saw in london. i think it was in a store called Octopus. those were the most cheerful toasters i had ever seen, and i didn’t think household appliances had ever made me that happy. the toasters from urban outfitters were so pretty too!
oh yes, stepping foot into london felt like a shopaholic’s dream come true. everything i had coveted online, everything i had browsed with only the navigation of my laptop mouse and the scrolling of webpages, i got to SEE for real.
urban outfitters bags, birkenstocks sandals in all colours and designs(gawd the heidi blum ones were really as gorgeous as they appeared online), the onslaught of harrod’s food hall, the wimbledon memoribillia!
the wimbledon experience was in a class of its own, just as roger federer is. tsk, no i didnt get to see him, and the closet brush with greatness i got was being within metres of lleyton hewitt. little lley! i wanted to scream. never thought i’d be one to get star-struck, even with a ‘little jack russell (john mcenroe’s words)’ like hewitt. but it was awe-inducing watching him effortlessly warm-up with those forehands and serves.
another memory to be etched was that afternoon at kensington park, after our morning tour of the palace. not to take any of the grandeur away from the late princess di’s residence, but after so many trips around castles and palaces and cathedrals and whatnots, i couldnt really tell the difference anymore between a dungeon and a royalty’s drawing room.
anyway, back to that afternoon. it was fairly nondescript if i really think about it. and if i chronicled it there is really nothing to be said. lets see: the wind blew. i placed a mapleleaf-shaped leaf into my book. the ice-cream man came by. a group of young adults invited us to play with them. a boy sneezed. the joggers jogged. dont ask me what was so memorable about the afternoon, but it was my first time lying on grass, in a park, under the sun, having lunch, and reading virginia woolf. with wind. with such a carnival-esque atmosphere on a tuesday afternoon. with thoughts of “wow why have i never done this before” flashing.
travelling is tiring, mentally exhausting, especially if you are navigating the streets of london sans tour guide, which was what we were doing most of the time. i pointed out this tee-shirt in a flea market which said “I’m with this idiot here and we are lost in London”. I pointed this out to mom, who good-naturedly laughed.
talking about good-nature, i’ve never met more good-natured people than in the past couple of weeks. the nightly talk shows were hilarious – okay, maybe im confusing good-natured with humourous, as you will see, not all people who make you laugh are necessarily good in nature. i loved the conan o’brien nightly talk shows! haha, gee i laugh just thinking about that poker face. he had this joke segment, and one of the jokes, lifted from the dailies, acutely pointed out the similarity between Tim Henman and a piece of undergarment.
They both have lots of support. But no cups…
dont ask me what a bra is doing without cups. as for tim, oh wells, not in our lifetime. and not in his. what am i talking about.
what else? there was such a flurry of activity i couldnt absorb it all. at many a castle-tours, i wished i could just take ONE DEEP BREATH -whoosh- and take in a gazillion years of english history all at once. failing that, i just had to content myself with the bombardment of names like king henry the fourth, fifth, sixth. really creative people dont you think, those who came up with such names.
there was kensington palace, buckingham palace, hyde park, regent park, kensington park, harrods, london bridge, tower bridge, the wibbly-wobbly bridge, river thames, the big ben, the houses of parliament, westminster abbey, the shops at tottenham court road, the shops at chinatown, the big bus!, ooh the phantom of the opera, wimbledon, the river cruise, the national gallery – virgin on the rocks :) – and no that isnt an alcoholic beverage, st.paul’s cathedral, and even then im sure ive left so many others.
but what is it you really bring back from these vacations? why do we spend thousands of dollars, tens of thousands sometimes for these vacations? what you get is a stack of photographs – some of which are over-exposed, under-exposed, and eh, what is that glob of thing doing in my picture. you are probably better off buying postcards, or lifting images online and photoshopping your face into the forefront of the big ben no?
well, it differs from trip to trip. for this one, i say no. it wasnt so much the castles and cathedrals that shaped the experience. but rather, the people, the culture. seeing so many disabled people navigating the streets independently, having a taste of what democracy is really like, being a minority race in a country which is predominantly caucasian.
speaking a language in an accent which is thought to be foreign. being conscious that you are different – i got that feeling alot on the first day, but thankfully it gradually diminished, though it wouldnt completely subside.
you are different, he said. and dont try to change that.
well, i had been bent on changing the colour of my hair pre-london-trip. but now im not so sure, not so much because im so proud of having black hair. but more because im ever so conscious now of whether people would think im trying to be something else. can i be proud of being who i am, and still want to change the colour of my hair?
eh, why not.
