Marques's weblog

Only my spirit remains

Seriously can anything else break? I have already posted so much today, but today is filled with so much frustration and it just kind of piles up on other things.

For one thing my fan is already dead. My nice, gorgeous, stainless steel, nearly 100 dollar fan is dead. It has actually been dead for like 2 weeks. It lasted a whole freak week or so. Pathetic. British craftsmanship is all about style and not quality and this fan is the unfortunate product of that. Every day I watch Fifth Gear and all they do is talk about how British cars are so sweet, but they wouldn't buy one because of the quality. I need to figure out how to return it, but the maid here threw out the box so good luck on getting that exchanged.

Of course there has been the ongoing saga with my bike. After three trips to fix spokes I eventually had the back wheel rebuilt. This was so frustrating because I really felt it cut down on my ability to get around the city. It didn't break this weekend during a 30 mile ride so hopefully I can close the book on that one.

Today the landslide started when my watch, my beloved watch died. The time of death appeared to be at 10:50 GMT this morning. The second hand appears to have exhausted itself and now only twitches. I mourn its passing quite a bit. Technically it is more of a vegetable though because the digital part still works. I could get by with that, but out of sentimental reasons I have always left that on Seattle time and will likely not change it. I guess I could get a new one, but don't know what the best way to move on is.

The landslide ended with my apt. I haven't written up anything on it yet because till this point I was almost sure it was going to fall through. Last night was the first night I felt I had a home to move into next and with one reply today those dreams where put on hold. Today I was supposed to finalize things and the landlord sent over the contract without clearly stating the room I was moving into. Being anal I fired back asking him to clarify that in the contract and low and behold he had switched the room on me. I don't really think there is any way I can fit into this room which is by far the smallest of the three offered. I am so pissed about this. I called and he was basically like "Well in my notes it says you will take whatever" and I was like "Notes, what notes there was never a record of me stating that and in the email I explicitly stated which room the down payment was for." I even have him replying in acknowledgment. The conversation ended with him trying to talk to someone there and try to get someone else to trade or something, but if I am going to hold out for the larger room I have no expectations whatsoever that someone else wouldn't do the same. I don't know in the end it will probably come down to when the deposit hit the bank. This of course would make it a big deal that my bank fucked up and caused the deposit to be a day late.

This shit is so shady here because he can turn around and unload this room in a second and so I have no leverage. Honestly I think I will get my deposit back, but I will be in limbo until I do. Also my bank was awesome enough to send the deposit twice so he actually has my first months rent too (customer service may be the most broken things). I'm fucked.

Kenneth hearts Mariah Carey

I have been meaning to post this for a while and it really more a video I find amusing more than anything else. In London they actually show real music videos on TV. I guess they still do in the US, but in Seattle you had to pay extra to get those video channels. It is pretty amazing really when you think about it. Of course this is not as amazing as the fact that they show boobies on TV**.

Anyways it was while I was enjoying some thai food at a restaurant the following video came on and it is pretty amusing. Of course when I saw it then I couldn't hear the vocals which meant I didn't hear Mariah (good), but also missed out on Kenneth (bad). So then I listened to it here and everything was flopped around. So far I have learned that after Kenneth quits talking you can pretty much put it on mute. Unless of course you are Yachi because I am sure she loves this song.

** Unlike music videos not all boobies on TV in London are real, but like music videos you have to pay extra to see those channels in the states.

This one molests your ears

So now that the purchasing dam was broken it was time to brake out the old chip and pin. Amazingly since I have been here I have not bought a CD. That is pretty crazy for someone who moved to a city in order to experience the music he loves so much, right? I mean honestly my ideal walk to work would probably include picking up a piece of fruit and a cd on the walk to work every morning.

The problem is that even thought I walk all over I see very few record shops and when I do they are seldom open. Technically I only attempted to go into one so far and that was at a market. I was rejected because I was eating chinese. I mean you are fucking walk in store in an outdoor market selling what are likely stolen CDs and you are not going to let in someone who has purchased food from one of the 40 booths prior to your store? Come on. Anyways I finally got a store albeit an HMV and picked some up.

To my surprise the aforementioned UNKLE had a new CD out. So I picked that up along with a Verve cd because people out here really seem to hold them in high regard. I don't think I am quite there on them yet. Anyways the UNKLE CD picks up right where the last one left out. Definitely departing from the old stuff. It is titled End Titles: Stories For Film and it is pretty much like it sounds. This is where I see it connected to War Stories. War Stories to me was really great because it was such a visible album and then here the attempt was explicitly stated. This actually has some tracks from War Stories with vocals added in. I still need to listen to it more to get a better feel, but I don't feel like it is strong enough in its emotive qualities and this hurts the visualness. We will see, but right now it is no War Stories. In the end, because of the theme and release proximity, I am guessing these were tracks that didn't make it past the cutting room floor the first time and now are getting to see daylight.

The spending continued or tried to continue at least. I haven't wrote this up yet, but someday I will talk about work and when I do I will mentioned the fact that I work near Kick Ass Kicks Lane. Ok that is not the real name. You got me. Anyways there are so many cool shoe stores and there was one pair in particular I had been coveting since I started working here. Reebok has a line of Voltron shoes (this is actually the second version) and I wanted the green ones. Turns out these are the only fucking shoes in the whole line that do not come in my size. Apparently green patten leather is in short supply. Those people must be building olympic stadiums or something. This is severely disappointing since 2 days prior a guy told me they come in up to 15s. How am I supposed to defend my fucking planet if I can't even wear Voltron shoes. I mean I can't wear my old bed sheets as a cape because my mom finally threw them out. What else have I got? Lame.

Turns out all cool shoes stop at 13s and as a result I still have money saved up for retirement. Maybe my feet will have shrunken by then so I can buy some sweet orthopedic loafers. In any case I need new shoes. My old ones are worn out from all the walking. Won't Tim be surprised when 20 pairs show up in a couple weeks.

Then I went on to shirt shopping. I was mildly more successful at that. I have yet to figure out the quality of the shirts, but since everyone in London dresses up all the time you can get reasonably nice dress shirts that meet my style requirements fairly easily. I found a store called NEXT which is right by work and I am pretty excited about the ease of shopping there. Of course this is for dress shirts where it is easy to find my size. I am pretty much fucked everywhere else. Don't be surprised if you see a picture of me next year with a really nice shirt and tattered clothes everywhere else.

The back slide

Good relationships and back slides seem to go hand in hand so it is with that statement that I announce my return to Seattle. Technically this isn't really a surprise since many knew I was coming back in August anyways.

Here is the general itinerary.

NYC

Sat 23-Aug-08
BA 175
London (LHR) Terminal 5 to New York (JFK) Terminal 7
Depart 10:25 am
Arrive 12:55 pm
Duration: 7hr 30mn

On Sat the 23rd I will depart for NYC to see the Chris's. Right now I think the plan is to stay at Graves and chill in the city. Tim gets in on Sunday and Tuesday we are heading to the venerable Yankee Stadium to see the Bo Sox play their last series in the stadium. Should be fucking sweet. Now if the Yankees can make it matter.

Seattle

AA 269
Wed 27-Aug-08
New York (JFK)
Depart 4:45 pm
Terminal 8 to Seattle (SEA)
Arrive 7:55 pm

Next it is off to Seattle to do some work and attend what should prove to be the social event of year, Ben and Stina's wedding. I get in on Wed and will likely work Thursday and then take off Friday in order to be lazy before Ben and Stina's wedding. The weekend will mostly be filled with Bumbershoot and hopefully an attempt at tubing on Sunday.

I will have to work during the next week, but you can be assured that something will be going on each night. I will also be there the whole next weekend so I am sure we will figure out something to do.

I still need to figure out where I will be staying at this time, but there is a high likelihood it will be at Chateau JamGlue.

London

Sun 7-Sep-08
BA 48
Seattle (SEA) to London (LHR) Terminal 4
Depart 6:45 pm
Arrive 11:45 am +1 day

As with all back slides, one must return to reality and break it off again. For me this will take 9 hours which actually is way better than the 13 hours it will take me to get there. I will probably struggle into the office so I only have to take a half day or something.

External brains are iTastistic

So I got the iPhone on Friday and after very high expectations I have to say it easily surpassed them. The apps are really the icing on the cake. Earlier today I was listening to 670 the score while biking around the city and now I am writing a blog post outside a bar. Insane.

The battery may be the only concern and because of that I will have to write more later.

Like I just got here

So it has been a month and honestly I don't know how much has changed since I moved here.

I am still living out of a suitcase.

I still haven't figured out my next living situation.

I still don't have a fucking cell phone.

So in many senses things are the same, but I am getting much more familiar with city and making good progress there.

The cellphone is what lead to my first frustration of the day. I had been waiting to get the iphone until there wasn't much of a line and today was the day. The line only took me an hour to get to second from the big show. Then it took me 30 more minutes to make it to the big show. After 30 mins more of a verification I was lucky enough to find out that they couldn't sign up people that haven't been residents for 3 years. That was sweet. I am so glad I spent two hours on that. I told the guy they should have put that on the website and he assured me they did. However in the big showdown I won. He went to the page and was only left with the comment that "well it should be there". To which I said "Yeah I know". Apparently I have to go to O2 directly, but they only get new stock randomly. My schedule isn't one that works with randomly.

Anyways I went back to work accomplished nothing and then eventually was pulled into getting a couple drinks with the team. I had a new report start this week so the team had a reason to celebrate.

Later on that night I decided to wonder around shoreditch which is close to where I live. I strolled around for a bit and eventually saw a bar that had something I had been missing quite a bit... a juke box. The bar itself was quite plain and small, but the juke box was awesome. There were way too many songs for me to chose between. The songs I did pick were:

Man who sold the world - Nirvana
Dance Commander - Electric Six
Big mouth strikes again - The Smiths
Mr. Brightside - The Killers
Burn my shadow - UNKLE

I was really impressed with the UNKLE cd because many people would consider it to be a worst done by UNKLE, but honestly it is one of my favorite CDs of all time. It just has amazing flow and feeling. A lot of that comes from the accompanying vocals for many of the songs. Ian Stansbury (The Cult) does two songs and his voice is amazing.

Anyways the place was too small to do much so I just grabbed a beer as I listened to my songs play. It was a bit wierd because it would play all the songs on a cd together regardless of whether or not they were put in together. So 'Dance Commander' played with 'Gay Bar' even though it was put on before my songs. That was weird, but hey someone requesting 'Gay Bar' is never a bad thing. It also meant that I got three Smiths songs in a row even though I only played one.

Anyways I was getting ready to leave when some people came in from outside and sat on opposite sides of me. The guy started talking to the girl and then the girl started to talk to me. It was clear that she just didn't really want to talk to to the guy.

She started to ramble from there. She was quite drunk and it started off quite rough. Apparently she is fan of horticulture. She said that like 20 times in a row. Anyways we talked for a bit about politics and that was nice since I have had few conversations outside of work since I have been here. Just when it was going well she exited stage left though to hit the bathroom.

In her place I substituted her roommate. Again conversation was going well until I told her that she should probably check on her friend that had been in the bathroom for quite some time. So then she exited stage left. Apparently stage left is a black hole because they never came back. I wanted to say bye at least, but the bar was closing down so I was forced to exit stage right.

I moved on to a bar which I had been to before called Catch. It always seems to be full of a lot of hipster's on the bottom floor and then live music upstairs. I really like Catch because it is free and the upstairs gives you a feeling that you are part of something great at its beginning.

I went to the upstairs and was immediately puzzled by what was going on. There was a single person on stage whom I assumed was a man at first look. The voice seemed to match. Upon further investigation the singer had super long hair. As I got closer I noticed that the singer had no shirt on and had decent sized saggy breastestes. I have no fucking clue what the person was supposed to be. I mean I really was confused because I could have sworn it was a man, but it doesn't matter what a man does he would not get breasts like that.

Overall the performance was ok though. Technically I don't know what he/she was doing there either, but it was ok to listen to. There was a drum machine and sometimes he/she sang and sometimes she/he did spoken word. There were definitely plenty of people familiar with the performance though.

After this I decided to head home. I got some late night food and ran into another American. He was from New Orleans and was here for school during the summer. He had been to a Devotchka show. This was somewhat troubling for me because I totally would have went to that show, but didn't even know it was going on. This is the problem with London. It is just too big to figure out what all is going on. That may be the hardest thing to master about this city.

So now I sit at home writing this and watching a show called "England's Missing Top Model". The premise of the show is kind of dumb because they try to find handicapped people and then pick the best model between them. What makes it weird is that everyone has a different disabilities and so I don't feel they are all on the same playing field. Some have one arm, some can't walk, but some are just deaf. While being deaf sucks it just doesn't seem to be a blocker to being a model as much as not being able to walk. The only reason why I mention this is because even though this is England's show there are non British people on there and one is from Seattle. Seriously why do you need to import people for a show like this? How do you end applying for this from there? The Seattle girl is the most annoying of all and is mostly just a brat. She seems normal, but I guess has nerve issues because of a car accident. She also has an purple cast on her arm that has never been explained. In fact her being on this show might confuse me more than the performer at Catch. Well at least she is wearing a Dick's shirt. Seattle represent.

Well that is a month. I'm out.

Till next year SW19

If you don't live in London then you likely don't know what SW19 means, but that seems to be a favored term for the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Today it all ended with a really great final. To be honest I felt like I heard a lot about it when it started and a lot this week, but not too much during the week. I mean it was on TV every night, but it is not like you see bars making a point of it or anything. It is something like this that reminds me just how big London is. In other cities this may be an all consuming thing, but here there are so many things going on that you actively need to try and keep up with such a large event.

I really enjoyed the advertising campaign for Wimbledon leading up to the tournament. It showed clips spliced together of tennis greats volleying back and forth. The voice over was done by McEnroe which is weird being American and all, but it was an added bonus. I wish I could find it, but hopefully you saw it.

The problem with the clip is that it reminds you of how good the game used to be when there was much more volleying and less brute power. It makes you wish that everyone had small rackets again. Honestly we grew up watching the majors after getting home from church, but somewhere along the way it just seemed to lose its interest and even when I played in high school I rarely watched. I know it is all tied to the style of play, but I definitely think that is part of it.

The final today was an amazing match and had more of that classic feel even though Nadal is a power guy and Federer's serve is so outstanding. In the end I really wish Federer would have won, but at least he didn't go down in 3. I just don't care for Nadal's style, be it in terms of play or fasion. Like between every point he wiped off his left arm. I mean i can bond over sweating, but that was just ridiculous. Federer just seems much more classic.

The final was was also good because there were quite a few spots where I could picture myself making the same unforced error. In their case this was largely because of the wind. In my case i don't need the wind. It did make the sport feel more approachable though. Even though I was not totally caught up up in the Wimbledon excitement it did make me want to get back into tennis. I am left wondering what sports I can be active in over here and this seems like a pretty good candidate.

Next year I am definitely going to try and catch a match. I would have liked to this year, but I just couldn't get my stuff together. I guess Wimbledon is the only major that doesn't presell every ticket. The whole weekend before the first Monday's matches there were families camped out waiting to get in line. According to one person I talked to out here even if you leave at like 3 the second Monday or Tuesday you can probably get in to see some action.

Don't trust anyone over 300

That is the saying I wanted to put on a shirt for Friday. I don't think anyone would have got it, but it would have been funny to me at least. In any case don't worry the fact that Friday was my nation's bday was not lost on me. From the point at which I accepted the offer I had already planned on taking that day off and I did. The only problem was that I didn't know what I was going to do with it. Turned out to be none to glamorous.

I started it by adventuring to a new part of town on Thursday night, but it was fairly boring. I ended up making my way home around midnight and upon entering a little market, picked me up some bud tall boys for the weekend. On the way home the clock hit 12 so I cracked one open and let the celebration begin. Actually that was the only celebrating for the night. When I got home I talked to Natalie and Tim to catch up and then called it bedtime.

I had told coworkers that I was going to spend Friday drinking bud and finding a hot dog to eat, but it ended up being much less fun. I spent most of the day trying to make sure my deposit on a place got transferred to the manager(I will write more about that later). The other big task was to fix my bike.

The first day out with the bike I broke two spokes. This is worrisome because I had broken two right before I left. I decided it is about time that I learn how to fix these because being dependent on a bike shop is not really something I can afford since turn arounds can take days. So I got the spokes earlier in the week, but didn't have the tools. I picked those up and then setup the goal of getting the spokes in. The tire would need trued as well however it was already getting later in the afternoon so that would have to wait. I got off the gear cassette and inserted the spoke, but for some reason I could only get it threaded on to a certain point. I tried using oil. I tried backing out the spoke and putting it back on. I tried a different spoke, but eventually I tried to go America on it in honor of the day and that just broke the spoke off at a point where there was nothing I could do. Lesson learned, the tire is now at the shop.

So after fucking up my tire it was time to get cleaned up, dressed in red, white and blue and meet up with fellow patriots from work. I had debated going out with work people because this would probably never happen in Seattle, but I didn't really have anyone else to celebrate with so off I went, with a bud in hand of course. Since I hadn't had a chance to find a hot dog yet I did the easiest thing I could do. I picked up some McDonald's. I didn't really know what Ronald would think entering a McD's while drinking a beer so I put in my back pocket. This proved amusing when I dropped my change and had to bend over to pick it up. After several attempts I just had to admit defeat and take the beer out of my pocket to pick up the money. I needed the change after all because change here really isn't change. It is money and a lot of it. One of the coins I dropped is worth like 4 bucks. If this was the US then I would have said fuck it. Then again if this was the US I wouldn't have had a beer in my pocket would I?

So I was off to find my coworkers. They were supposed to be at a bar near work call Detroit. The bar was kind of nice which means that it was nothing like Detroit at all. I mean there were no feces on the ground and the hallways were too narrow for most people from Detroit to even fit through. I assume the owners had never even been there and assume they only took the name because of its association with techno.

After that we moved on to some bar called Roadhouse. This place again was nothing like its namesake. This seems to be a trend. It is like in Arrested Development when they go to the American restaurant in Wee Britain. Unfortunately there were no donuts on the menu. However this place did have a happy hour and it turned out to be quite kick ass. On the menu it said "Two Second Beers for 2.75" and that beer turned out to be Coors Light. Whoa yeah. 2.75 is cheap for a beer of any type, let alone two of something that contains so much rocky mountain refreshment.

While we were also at Roadhouse I gave Britain what may prove to be my most significant contribution to its culture. We were sitting there eating and one of my coworkers used the slang term "cho cho" to reference a vagina. I had never heard this term before and asked it that was the new slang to replace "va jay jay". No one at the table had every heard the term va jay jay before. I told them about Oprah and they were astonished, but agreed that it was the best term ever. In a year from now I am going to go to Glasgow and someone will say va jay jay and I will be able to turn to them and say "Did you know I started that?". Also in the conversation I found out that a coworker is friends with Joel McHale from The Soup and even went to his wedding. That is pretty sweet. Maybe I can meet him if he ever comes to London.

Oprah's va jay jay

After finishing up at Roadhouse we meandered to other bars around work. They were all basic pubs. We had a discussion about what we missed from the US and honestly one of the things I miss is the fact that different bars have different feels. You get that some here, but for the most part every pub feels exactly the same. Some will serve food, some won't, but they all have the same beers and mostly the same atmosphere. Like I said I know the other places are out there, but I think they get drowned out by the common ones. I also miss salad bars and good deli sandwiches. They have Subway here, but not much else. There are many things, but I can cover those some other time.

Eventually the crowd dissipated. I went home to regroup and then eventually went out and walked around bar area near where I live. I didn't really see anything too exciting though so I went home and called it a good bday.