2010-11-06 - 9:11 p.m.
-Classes are going well. The professors are cool and I'm learning a ton, especially about acting classical text.
-How do you do 12th Night with just 8 actors, only one of whom is a male? Do the first 3 acts only, double/triple up all the roles, and don't worry about gender. Viola and Sebastian are being played by the same person. I am Orsino AND Toby Belch, which actually makes me wish we were doing the full production.
-Do you like French fries? No, you don't. Not compared to the brits, who eat them with pretty much every damn meal. There's a place down the street from me that has a meal deal for a 9" pizza and an order of chips. Yeah. Fries AND pizza. Cause we are british and don't give a flying crap about the state of our arteries.
-Food is insanely expensive here, especially with the exchange rate. I have two things going for me, though.
A. My mom raised her son to know how to find a bargain. Cause she is awesome like that.
B. There's an Aldi about half a mile from my place. Yes, an Aldi. The same kind of Aldi you have in the US- cheap, ghetto-ass grocery store. For about $5 you can make a week's worth of sandwiches.
-The abundance of fries and other horrifically greasy food has me grateful for all the excercise I'm getting in movement classes. Between that and the long walk to and from the train station I hopefully won't come back home weighing 500 pounds.
-Everything is smaller here. Roads are narrower. Lots of them are 1 lane but not 1 way, so you speed up like a demon, then pull to the side to let an oncoming car go by, then pull out and speed up again. it makes cab rides tons of fun.
-Cars are also a lot smaller. Subcompacts ahoy!
-Fridges are smaller too, cause the big ones are power hogs. So it's several small trips to the grocery store a week.
-Food is (thankfully) less loaded with preservatives, which is nice, but makes it taste odd sometimes, and not always for the better. Out of morbid curiousity I tried a McDonald's near the school a couple days ago. Picture McDonalds, but bland and not at all salty. Which kinda makes it even worse- you can still tell that it's really bad for you, but it's also lacking that yummy greasy salty flavor that's the reason you eat that shit int he first place.
-Mexican food is nonexistent (boo) but Indian food abounds (yay, except when it's bad Indian food. Nothing in all of creation is worse than a bad shami kebab)
-We have a washer in the house, but no dryer (too much of an energy hog), so your choices when doing laundry are to either line dry your clothes, which is a real fun trick in a place where it rains half the time, dry it over the heather (if i had a dollar for every time I've come downstairs to find the heater covered in drying panties, I'd be Hugh Hefner. Joys of living with 5 women), or go to the insanely expensive laundromat.
-Laundry at laundromats is 3 pounds for a wash, and 20p for 3 minutes (yes, that's 20p, or about 30 cents. drying costs 10 cents a minute. THink about that next time you dry your clothes, how much that would cost.) With an exchange rate at roughly $1.50 for 1 pound, that makes it about $10 to $15 to do all your laundry. So if anyone is thinking of fun things to send me, clothes so I save money by just throwing away stuff that's dirty would be great.
-Found a new coat at an awesome thrift store. British coats have the zipper on the wrong side, so for once in my life I am wishing I was left-handed.
-At the same thrift store I met by an elderly Irish woman who moved from Dublin in 1945. She was really interested in talking to me because of my accent and general American-ness. She asked me if I had any Irish blood after looking at me, and when I said yes, she goes, "As an Irishman, I am sure you are also a good Catholic boy" then kissed me on the cheek and ushered me out of the shop.
-British grocery stores have found the solution to the problem of paper vs. plastic. It's called bring your own goddamn bags. No, seriously, they are not provided for you. You can bring your own bags, buy them from the store, or juggle your crap back to your subcompact car. Take your pick, but they aren't gonna pamper your whiny ass with crap like free bags.
-There's a product that's popular here called pork faggots, and they are basically evil in meatball form. Pork liver is the prime ingredient, along with pork skin and water. Actual pork meat is 6th on the ingredients list. The retail packaging for one brand, Dr. Brains (Dr. Brains. seriously), states that, along with peas and mashed potatoes, they make "a great meal for faggot loving families all over the country." Call me juvenile, but it sure made me snicker. Seriously, though, they are disgusting. From now on, when I see idiots holding signs that say "God hates fags" i'mgoing to pretend they are talking about pork faggots so it will actually make sense.
-Listen to the song "Nothing in Common" by Jason Robert Brown. It's on youtube. then imagine me singing it, cause I am. if you're nice, maybe i'll do it for you sometime.
-BBQ Rib, Roast chicken, prawn cocktail, salt and vinegar, smokey bacon, cheddar and red onion, and ready salted. Common flavors of potato chips. Notably absent? Cheetos. Sad panda. Though I got some in the mail recently to tide me over. (no, i did not order cheetos over the internet)
-Boobs are everywhere. On tv and in the newspaper, there are boobs displayed shamelessly and without controversy. Hail Brittania!!!
-Malt vinegar with salt on fries is strangely addictive. And the sizes range from a portion, which is the size of a small SUV, to a "large" which is an entire Irish potato harvest fried and served piping hot.
-I'm learning basic ballet, in preparation for period dances, singing, and fencing. So essentially, in learning the theatre of the renaissance, I am becoming a bit of a renaissance man myself.
-Our 12th Night director teaches acting shakespeare through performing sonnets in addition to directing. My new hobby is learning sonnets.
-Classes he's taught have had such nobodies as Kim Catrall and Sir Ian McKellan as students. So yeah, there's no pressure whatsoever in doing Shakespeare with him.
-British pop music is awful. The less said about it the better.
-Burke and Hare is an awesome movie. Hope all the Simon Pegg fans i know in the US get to see it someday. (yep, that's me being a huge dick about getting to see it already. Suck it up.)
-That's it for now. Time to memorize some Hamlet.
Ken
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