Blog Traffic Jam, Part 2 of 5: Language Barrier Overcome (Barely)

Or "When they say, 'Italian church,' they mean, 'Italian church".

I had meant to go to Westminster Abbey for Pentecost services this morning because, even though it’s Anglican, it’s Westminster Abbey. I hadn’t been to a Catholic Mass in three weeks, but I figured that since I had been busy the first two Sundays here and I had gone to evening prayer at St. Paul’s Cathedral last weekend, I hadn’t become too much of a heathen and I could go somewhere else again.

But then I woke up later, and moved slower, than I wanted to this morning. Given the amount of time it took to make & eat my eggs & bacon, and given that I’d meet with crowds at Westminster because it’s Pentecost… at Westminster Abbey… I decided to go more local. There’s a small Italian Catholic church called St. Peter on the north end of our street, so I decided to go there instead. Our area used to be called Little Italy because of the influx of Italian immigrants in the last century, so I figured that I’d be able to see something interesting. The journey would be shorter than the one to Westminster (two minutes compared to 15-30 minutes), and I’d have a better chance to get a good seat.

I left the flat at 10:45 for the 11:00 service. I walked up Hatton Garden and turned right, and there was a pure-white Gothic-style church waiting for me. I walked up the steps, past a middle-aged couple standing on the sidewalk, and saw the list of Mass times. …I mean, the lists of Mass times. One list was in English, and the other was in Italian. Next to the listing for the 9:30 Mass was, “(English and Italian)”, and I said to myself, “Oh, good! They acknowledge their history. I like them already!”

I entered the church, which had gold all over the altar area, large paintings behind the altar & on the outer walls, and icons of saints along the sides. I walked past St. Anthony of Padua and noticed that instead of that spelling, the nameplate said, “S. Antonio di Padova.” I was heartened by the knowledge of their roots, but I also began to think differently about the “(English and Italian)” tag.

I sat down, found that both the pews and the kneelers were made completely of wood, said a quick Hail Mary in English, and sat down. A few other people were scattered amongst the pews, and just to test my worry, I listened in to a few conversations. That didn’t work, because I was in a church & people were whispering. So, I kept looking around, hoping to find proof that everything would be all right linguistically.

More people shuffled in. Some of them sat in front of me, so I leaned in (inconspicuously!) and listened. Sure enough, they spoke Italian. As if to drive the point home, they had in their hands a foldout to follow the Pentecost Mass, and it was entirely in Italian. I buried my face in my hand, hoping that my Spanish would pull me through.

And then I thought, “It’s a Catholic Mass. It’s universal. I’ll be able to follow this.” But to make myself more sure, I kept in plain sight the Mass guide of the churchgoers in front of me, which meant I read over their shoulders.

The organ sounded, the priest walked down the aisle with the acolytes, and he reached the altar, where he said, “Nel nome del Padre, e del Figlio e dello Spirito Santo.” Ha! I told myself. I know that answer! “Amen.”

“La pace, la carità e la fede da parte di Dio Padre e del Signore nostro Gesù Cristo sia con tutti voi.”

Umm… What is it in Spanish? “¿Y con tu espíritu?”

Nononononono, it’s, “E con il tuo spirito.” But I was close. I blended in enough.

“Fratelli, per celebrare degnamente i santi misteri, riconosciamo i nostri peccati.” Hey, I know that last word! It’s “pecado” in Spanish! Sins! Oh, right, silence.

“Signore, pietà.” “Signore, pietà.” Hey, it’s a call-and-respond!

“Cristo, pietà.” “Cristo, pietà.”

“Signore, pietà.” “Signore, pietà.” That was easy.

Then the Gloria. I couldn’t even hope to follow that, especially with the singing. I said it to myself in English.

I peered over the shoulder of the woman in front of me to catch a glimpse of her Mass guide during the first reading. Fortunately, I had heard the story of Peter & the apostles speaking in multiple tongues at least 20 times, so I couldn't miss anything. (I especially didn’t miss the irony!) All I had to do was say the response at the end, following the reader’s “Parola di Dio.” “Rendiamo grazie a Dio,” I said.

Then followed the psalm, and with great luck the woman in front of me held her Mass guide in unobstructed sight so I could sing the refrain, “Manda il tuo Spirito, Signore, a rinnovare la terra.” The second reading was easy enough (the usual one about the fruits of the Spirit dalla lettera di san Paolo apostolo ai Gàlati), and I responded with the previous reading’s “Rendiamo grazie a Dio.”

And then the Gospel. “Il Signore sia con voi.”

“E con il tuo spirito.”

“Dal vangelo secondo Giovanni.”

“Gloria a te, o Signore,” with the crossing of head, mouth & heart.

I could understand bits & pieces of Gesù’s promise of the Advocate with help from the woman’s Mass guide, but after responding with, “Lode a te, o Cristo,” I feared for my linguistic sanity. The homily’s coming! No foldout can help me now! I tried to grasp it for a few minutes, but eventually I resigned myself to letting my mind wander, occasionally catching references to “no partido politicano,” “tuo Spirito,” and “risurrezione.” I also resigned myself to reciting the Creed to myself in English.

I wandered in and out of understanding until the main part of the Eucharistic rite. Because I had seen it happen at least fifty times a year for more than 20 years, I knew the visual cues that would lead to the bells tolling for the elevation the bread/Body & the wine/Blood, so I had something to look forward to. The words, though, were lost on me (Spanish wasn’t helping!), and the woman in front of me didn’t always keep her Mass guide in the same place, making it harder to follow.

But (Godsend!) the man next to her laid his copy on the pew during the Padre Nostro! I could look down and say it with everyone! Yay! “Sia santificato il tuo nome! Tuo è il regno, tua la Potenza e la Gloria nei secoli!” I excitedly gave “pace” to everyone around me. I was back in the game. If you can call Mass in a foreign language a game.

Communion came up, and I saw chaos. I had forgotten that not everyone takes Communion in an orderly fashion. I found that out when my cousin married into a family of Colombians and everyone on my side feared that during the wedding Mass they would all go up to the priest at the same time instead of wait in line. The same happened here: people came from the sides to the middle aisle, people sitting in the back rushed to get to the front, and there was a Los Angeles bottleneck next to my pew. I got up, shuffled my way down the aisle like everyone else in order to blend in, and received the Eucharist, surprisingly without any bruises!

One more call-and-respond, one more look over a shoulder, one more “Rendiamo grazie a Dio,” and the Mass was over. It was quite a linguistic adventure, one that I’ll recall during my first Mass in Spain next spring. I took home a copy of the Mass guide I never had, just for my personal records.

Next Sunday, I think I’ll go to the church on the other end of the street. I hear they say Mass in Latin!

Just kidding. I’m thinking Westminster.

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 1 of 5: Father Knows Breakfast

I haven't blogged in five days, so, as if to match with the time I've missed, I've built up five new entries concerning that stretch. The first one appears below; the other four, which will cover the first three weeks of my internship, my experience with pizza, maintaining my tourist side, and today's trip to Canterbury and Dover, will follow in the next day or so.

***

Thank you, Dad.

Now, that's a pretty blanket statement. "Of course you're thankful for your father," you say. "What for?" I respond with an acknowledgment of his teaching me to love sports & work, his pushing me to be an Eagle Scout, and his dedication to his family. But I add one more critical thing that has come in handy over the weekends here:

Thank you, Dad, for breakfast.

Thank you for starting most weekend mornings with the smell of bacon and eggs, that I may learn to love waking up to such sweet nose-ticklers. Thank you for making the bacon and eggs so well that I regret eating them in less than five minutes. Thank you most especially for teaching me, after you had considered me worthy and able, to cook the bacon and eggs. I've made them every weekend morning here in London, and because I will always associate home with a good breakfast, those mornings bring back memories of Eagle Meadow Drive like none other. I haven't been pining for a return to the States because I haven't been homesick, but when the need comes of a small taste of home, those breakfasts hit the spot. (And my flatmates like the smell, too!)

Thank you. Very much. And yum.

Art Apology... Or Not.

Our group took a semi-grand tour of London on Saturday. We visited St. Paul’s Cathedral, Covent Garden Market, Buckingham Palace, and Green Park before heading back home, but in the middle of our trip we stopped at Trafalgar Square and took a gander at the (free to enter! but no photos...) National Gallery. Me being a visual person, I absorbed every old painting I saw… and…

I was both amazed and disappointed. Amazed, in that each painting paid great attention to details in the backgrounds, the faces, and the light sources, and in that I marveled at the talent and dedication needed to paint each picture. Disappointed, however, in that some of those weren’t good technically. The light source made half the face lie in shadow, or the whole painting was too dark, or insignificant parts shined with brilliant light while the focus didn’t have enough exposure.

I caught myself saying, “This guy (or that guy, or such-and-such woman) could have bumped up the exposure a bit. That would have struck my eye better.”

Artists and art critics aren’t supposed to talk like that. They’re supposed to focus on composition, brushstrokes, and color. I, on the other hand, had focused on the lighting and, even worse, had spoken in the language of photography. I told myself that with a few turns of the aperture dial and a press of the shutter button, I could have made a better copy of these otherwise impressive paintings in less than a second.

Once I came to that conclusion, my shoulders sank with what I had come to realize. So, in the spirit of atonement that has taken some hold in the politics on both sides of the pond, I, as a photographer, apologize on behalf of my profession for killing the painted arts.

Because frankly, modern art sucks. It’s too much out of left field, it relies too much on the artist’s individual perception & ignores universal means of interpretation, and on the whole it doesn’t have any direction. With painted portraits and landscapes and such, there is at least the aim of re-creating the visual world using materials that don’t seem visual at all. (Honestly, whodathunk that liquid from flowers and colored near-paste could create something like The Last Supper? Simply the possibility is mind-boggling!) But now that anyone could do that with any medium-quality camera, visual art (or at least painted art) has nothing to strive for.

* * *

That’s what I was gonna write. I wrote down the idea for it on Saturday, drafted the beginning on Sunday, and had it all mapped out yesterday morning (Monday).

Then yesterday afternoon I visited Tate Modern, the (free to enter! but no photos...) modern art gallery on the south bank of the Thames. I now wish to take back my apology. Photography did wonders for artists, because it made them think outside the boxes that their media (canvas, paper, etc.) had corralled them into.

Now, I’m not saying that still cameras saved art. Given the cultural feeling at the beginning of the modern art movement and the technological progress humankind had made by then, something was going to change art. The world’s culture needed to be re-invented to adapt to all the changes, and not even the absence of photography would have prevented artistic change. I’d even go so far as to say that photography played a bit part, although an important bit part, in providing the cultural changes that prompted the modern art movement.

I’m saying that the still camera freed artists from the need to strive for the perfection in painting that I alluded to earlier. Since images perceived through human sight could be reproduced almost exactly through a camera (not exactly, of course, given the artificial frame every photo requires), artists didn’t need to work toward visual faithfulness. They could focus instead on different dimensions of human perception besides strict vision.

***

Take the Tate’s Red Flocked Wall by Keith Sonnier. The artist pasted thick layers of plaster six feet high and three feet wide on a wall, covered it with red painted sawdust, and pulled the plaster sheet partially off the wall. The end result is a near-vertical shag carpet of sorts, with the top edge still clinging to the wall while the bottom is tied to the floor a foot away from the origin.

My first thought was, “Lame. This says nothing to me.” I had seen much of the same thing at the Art Institute of Chicago, when I came across a red wooden two-by-four leaning against a wall. Seriously. That was all.

Really, REALLY hoping that there was more to this than just a feigned artifact of the 70s, I read the placard next to it. The placard for the red board in Chicago hadn’t helped me at all (it didn’t say anything!), but this one enlightened me to no end. Apparently, Sonnier has to remake the piece everywhere it goes. When it moved to the Tate, he layered the wall in plaster, covered it in red sawdust, and peeled the bottom part of it off the wall. Before the Tate, when it was somewhere else, he layered that wall in plaster, covered it in red sawdust, and peeled part of it off the wall, but not in the same way. Maybe it bulged in the middle, or maybe the top was pulled off and rolled down a little bit, or maybe Sonnier only pulled off one corner. Such varied repetition meant to stress the impermanence of a work of art and such work’s relation to its environment.

***

Now, you may say that a piece of art should be able to astound the viewer by itself. It shouldn’t need a card. Previously, I would have agreed with you. But no. Just as you can’t grasp an entire cataclysmic event by reading one newspaper report, and just as you can’t conclude that they should put iodine in the water after one scientific study extolling its benefits, so you can’t describe an entire experience or concept just in a piece of art. Artists through the years have tried to say everything on one canvas and have failed because they didn’t realize the limitations of staying in one medium or two dimensions.

Modern artists know this (or at least Keith Sonnier knows), and when they try to convey something like impermanence, time, or mobility, they know they have to rely on more than just their work. They have to use all of their resources (including, if necessary, multiple walls in multiple buildings) to convey their ambitious message, and as long as the viewer can grasp the message… eventually, I’m okay with the unorthodoxy.

I take back everything negative I’ve said about modern art. Specifically, I take back the quip I shared with Chris Kaiser in Chicago, that modern art pieces are nothing more than conversation starters. Red Flocked Wall and other pieces at Tate Modern changed (and started) my mind. My bad.

Damn, I'm Missing the Indy 500!

I saw a lot of Facebook status updates (seven in the last hour) celebrating Carburetion Day specifically and race weekend generally. That made me think of the roar of cars at O'Reilly Raceway Park, the mass of humanity at 16th and Georgetown, the cheers of fans as the 33 racers cross the start line, the screams of the same fans when the winner crosses the finish line. I've only been to the race in the past three years, but after living a mile from the race park for my whole life and going to high school in the middle of everything race-related, May has come to mean frantic excitement. (And a bit of hillbillyism, but then again, doesn't everyone have a little bit of backwater in him?)

This May has meant frantic excitement, too, but in an oh-my-God-I'm-in-London! sense, not in an oh-my-God-cars-are-gonna-crash-into-each-other-at-225-miles-per-hour! sense. It's still excitement, but nevertheless I have this feeling that I'm missing out on something. I've experienced it all my life, but missing it once makes me love it and want it even more. Next year I'll hopefully be able to experience that brand of eye-popping awesomeness again, and I'll appreciate it more than ever.

Have fun at Carb Day and the race, all you Indy people! And for those who don't get to feel the thrill of the month of May, I have one thing to say: You are deprived and unfortunate people. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Except London. Or anything overseas.

The Ugly American’s Guide to Obtaining a Bri-ish Accent

1. Resolve not to get a Bri-ish accent. Use a full American accent (from the Midwest, from the South, from the East Coast, etc.) with everything you say.

2. Sit in on a lunch at work, preferably on your first day. A lunch that involves buying food from the local grocery and bringing it back to the office works best.

3. Pay attention to the brand names. You’ve likely never seen them before, and you’ll wonder how to pronounce them. Think of the way you, as an American stubbornly keeping his/her accent, would pronounce it.

4. Listen to a co-worker asking someone to pass the Lurpak. It’s a sort-of-like-butter spread that many Britons put on their bagels and bread slices.

5. Compare how the co-worker said “Lurpak” to the way you imagined yourself saying it. Likely, you would have said, “LOOOR-pak,” whilst—no, while—your colleague said, “Could you pass me the LURR-pahk?”

6. Think of how embarrassing it would be to pronounce a popular British food product the wrong way. Compare the feeling to that of a Brit saying, “Could I have some Ski-uhls?” at an American candy shop.

7. Listen to another co-worker asking to pass the same pack of LURR-pahk. Pay extra attention to the “a” in pak, as it will sound higher and more distinguished than your hick-ish “a”. (See difference between the Spanish colour—color—“amarillo” and the Texas town of Amarillo.

8. Ask a co-worker to pass the LURR-pahk. They’ll act like it’s no big deal, but you will forever be grateful for not sounding like an ignoramus.

9. Realize that you had to use a British accent to pronounce the name correctly. Curse your pledge to remain American.

10. Listen to your co-workers as they talk amongst themselves. You will hear words like “bollocks,” “quid,” and “aubergine” that do not appear in American English. Realise—realize!—that you cannot by any means use your American accent to say these words without risk of being called a berk—buffoon, loosely—, and accept the fact that you’ll have to be British, at least a little.

11. Answer the phone at work. It will be a Brit on the other line (guaranteed!), and even if you can understand everything your co-workers say, the phone receiver makes things seventeen times harder to comprehend. You will get maybe seven words out of the conversation. Come to grips with the fact that you have to practice speaking Brit-like yourself before those phone calls become more than blabber to you.

12. After two weeks at work, read things “out loud” in your head. Notice the fact that you’re reading them with a British accent, even if it’s written by someone with a well-known American voice (Obama, Jim Gaffigan, Bill Nye, etc.). Come to grips with your own impending Bri-ish accent.

13. Resolve to get rid of the accent before you get home. If you don’t return to the American style early enough, you might get people mad enough at you to throw you under a bus and tattoo your face with tyre—tire!—tracks.

A Few Observations from My First Week in London

1) I slide into a routine REALLY easily. By Thursday (my third day at my internship) I felt like I knew my route to work well enough that I could walk it blind. (I would have to be extra careful to mind the gap, of course, but I could do it.) I’ve always known that I establish routines quickly and stick to them, as evidenced by work habits at my summer job, methodology in mixing sound & photos for a slideshow, and my early mornings. I now have stronger proof of this fact, though, because I’ve been able to make and keep one in an otherwise foreign country.

2) British computer keyboards are different from American keyboards, and that’s gonna throw me off until the end of my internship. They don’t change the letters around, of course. (If they changed the QWERTY format, every computer maker would get a letter in the mail from me invoking the Geneva Conventions!) What HAVE changed, though, are the left shift key area and the quote marks. The left shift key is smaller, so when I’ve reached for the key with my pinky, I’ve often missed and clicked the next key over, leaving the screen with a backslash and the lowercase version of the letter I wanted. Just as annoying, the quote marks and the commercial “at” (@) have switched spots, so my quotes have turned into, @Thanks for all the work you do! \you’ve helped us so much!@ I can’t say this out loud because that would interrupt the work flow, but when that happens, I just have to go, @Gah!@

3) I owe a debt of gratitude to Kirstie. She let me borrow her Frigg album one time, and after listening to one of their songs on the way to the first day of work, “Jokijenkka (Riverdance)” has become my theme song for the trip.

4) The British papers are subjective. They don’t show overarching BIAS toward everything they cover, which I erroneously implied in a previous post, but there is some ideological coloring. I’m developing an argument in my head about whether it would be better for American papers to admit their subjectivity or keep up an air of disinterest. That will come later. Maybe MUCH later.

5) You could be walking randomly around London and run into a protest.

6) Beatles music sounds different over here. You walk to work, a Beatles song shuffles up on your iPod, and instantly you feel like you’re more in Britain than you’ve ever been before. I wasn’t even walking down Penny Lane, and that song felt special.

PROCEDURAL NOTE
I don't know if I'm annoying people yet or not, but in case I am I'll stop tagging people in each note on Facebook. I'll be keeping this blog up for the rest of the summer, but now that I've started it for those of you who were interested (and now that, hopefully, I've got you hooked!), I don't think I need to tag people anymore. (Let me know, of course, if you get a thrill from being notified that "Alex has tagged you in a note.")

Past and future posts will always be available on my Facebook page and at the original blog site. Make sure to comment in each place if you feel so inclined, because 1) I want to keep talking to all of you and 2) I get such a thrill from the acknowledgment!

What I Did This Weekend

1) Went to Thomson Reuters, the wire service, Friday morning. (It used to be simply Reuters, but it merged with The Thomson Corporation last year.) Editor-in-chief David Schlesinger showed us around the newsroom, told us the company employs over 2,500 correspondents and editors around the world in 197 bureaus, and took questions as we munched on cookies and drank water from nice bottles. After we left, David sent a Facebook message to our class moderator saying we conducted a very good interview session. That’s right, we’re journalists!

2) Visited Westminster Abbey on Friday afternoon. Sadly, they didn’t allow any photography inside the church, but I guarantee you it’s beautiful. Frustratingly awesome, even, because there’s so much to take in and enjoy. Outside the gift shop, I followed around a pigeon and made it fly off right when I pressed the shutter on my camera.

3) Took photos of and talked to protesters at Parliament Square. You might have heard about the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and their 25-year civil war with the majority Sinhalese. Apparently, lots of Tamil supporters live in London, and they descended on Trafalgar Square outside the Houses of Parliament on April 6 protesting the British government’s lack of aid to the minority group. (The British pulled out of the island colony after granting independence in 1948.)

Interestingly enough, the Sri Lankan government hasn’t been calling the group a minority ethnicity, which is what the Tamils that Sarah Brubeck and I talked to wished to call themselves. The Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan government prefer to call them terrorists. Later on in the weekend, that government declared victory over the Tamils after closing them off from any escape by water. Now, the Sri Lankan government has refused access to the war zone to journalists, so no one can decisively say that the government is telling the truth, but the Tamils did call for a cease-fire, especially after their leader was reportedly killed. I plan to follow this much more, if only because I feel a small bit involved, having reported on the protest through photos for the Indiana Daily Student.

4) Visited Stonehenge and Bath on Saturday. As I’m more of a visual person than a verbal one, I provide you with photos from the trip. Check them out.

5) Ate dinner at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane. This was not the London everyone knows; in my opinion, it was livelier and more interesting, while more run-down, than the rest of London. The narrow one-lane street was full of vendors selling random knick-knacks on blankets, graffiti (but high quality graffiti! Some of it was golden!), vinyl stores, small clubs, and high walls. And everyone was Indian. There’s a statistic saying that England is 91% white, which is even less diverse that I had first thought, and I think the other nine percent lived on Brick Lane.

At first, our group couldn’t decide which Indian restaurant we wanted to go to. Fortunately, we had people helping us with our decision: the owners. They stood outside their restaurants saying, “Hey, come in here, best Indian food in London,” and, “Please, come in, we have great service,” and, “Hello, you want to come here, right?” After walking past ten or so restaurants and hearing a dozen sales pitches, we went to the one that offered us a free round of drinks. (I got white wine.) After everyone had finished their fish masala and lamb curry and nan, we felt full, satisfied, and tastyfied. (i.e. The food tasted great, and we weren’t stuffed to the brim.)

6) Indulged the American in me and watched Taken. Liam Neeson is a badass.

Notes from the “Dark Side” of the Wall

For my entire communications career (if you can call it that, given how young I am), I’ve been on the side that reports the news. Whether through words or photos, I’ve been training for the media in the literal sense of the term, meaning that I’ve striven to be a responsible filter to help people decide what’s important enough to know about. Everyone in the world knows the problems of bias that go into such a position (which is why I said “responsible!”), but that’s the job I’ve come to learn, know and love.

This summer will be interesting, and not just because I’m going back into writing after spending a semester as a photographer. This summer I’m working for the Science Media Centre (SMC, and yes, I’m getting used to spelling it “Centre”). It’s a place that collaborates with scientists and their affiliated institutions (universities, corporations, etc) to put issues of science and health in the public eye and to make sure such issues get explained the right way. Basically, I’m working in science public relations. I can’t believe it, but I’m on the other side of communications.

I’ve heard people say, jokingly and not, that p.r. is the “dark side.” p.r. agencies have agendas, they say; whereas journalists report to what the public want and need to hear, press officers only think of the interests of their own companies & clients at the expense of the common good.

I used to think that way. I had also hoped that everyone would think this way, because that would create the impression that the media should actively enforce a complete freedom from the "dangerous influences" of corporations’ agendas represented by their p.r. firms, that is, not listen to p.r. agents at all.

I laugh in the face of that opinion now, especially when it comes to science. Sure, I still believe that the media should be free to report as they wish, but…

1) British media don’t often follow a standard of objectivity. They don’t often report to what the disparate and dissenting publics want and need to hear, but instead mainly to one certain public. This problem exists in American media, to be sure, but it’s not as blatant as in Britain, where a major national newspaper exists for each variation of persuasion (The Independent for the strongly-left, The Guardian for center-left, The Times for center, The Daily Telegraph for center-right, and The Daily Mail for strongly-right). You could argue that such blatant bias is better than hiding a slant you know is there (you could argue that in a future post, let’s say), but the point here is that British media are not totally objective and well-meaning, no matter how they dress themselves up. Thus, the claim that journalists report for the common good of all doesn’t hold much water.

2) p.r. can provide a great public service: explanation. Especially with science, the public often doesn’t understand the inner workings of a business or an industry. The same goes with journalists; sometimes they don’t have the time or can’t get the knowledgeable sources themselves to explain something like science to the public. The SMC helps them out by holding press briefings of discoveries and the state of the science, as well as putting reporters in contact with scientists willing and able to talk clearly to the media. That way, the guy who writes the newspaper or website article can easily explain the finding or issue to the public, and the public’s (or publics’) understanding of science increases. I love being able to do that, especially since people don’t understand the scientific process well enough. (Like the part about one study not proving anything because, with the flaws inherent in human knowledge and observation, no scientific idea can be “proven,” only supported. Why can’t people get that?!)

Huh. Not only am I back into writing, I’m on the other side of the media. This’ll be fun. And not just because I’m taking the Piccadilly line to work.

Like Forcing Toothpaste Back Into the Tube

I’ve never felt closer to strangers in my entire life. … Okay, I’ve never been closer to strangers before. I didn't feel much emotional attachment.

I can’t say that I’ve been to an Eric Clapton or Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, so I also can’t say that the Tube (London Underground for all you yanks) at 9:15 a.m. is the densest acre of humanity. But I can say that it should rank in the top three. I’ve never had to sacrifice so much personal and geographic space to maintain my claim to two square feet anywhere else.

So, I get off the Central train at Holborn this morning to get onto the Piccadilly Line to go to Green Park where my internship is. (I picked that route because, as I told another intern, I love the sound of “Piccadilly.”) That first train wasn’t very crowded, by the Tube’s standards (no intimate person-to-person contact) but I had arrived at the station later than I had the rest of the week, so I expect the next train to be a little more populated. I run down the escalator, keep my eye out for the southbound platform, stand behind the yellow line next to the track, and wait. To my chagrin, the next train will come in four minutes, which totally goes against the usual train-a-minute routine I had grown to expect in my… three days… of riding the Tube.

As the four minutes tick by, more potential passengers enter the platform and stand behind the yellow line with me. And more. And more. And more, until I get the feeling I’m gonna have to get skinnier quickly.

The train arrives. It’s stuffed with people. Like jelly in a doughnut, like cheese sauce in a Hot Pocket, like crème in a Double-Stuf Oreo. My eyes get wide ( O.O ) as I see the massive cluster of beings and wonder how I can shimmy my way into it.

The doors open, and I see everyone is thinking the same thing. …Well, I assume it. See, people don’t show much emotion on the Tube. It’s common courtesy not to say anything, because apparently Britons like silence when they have nothing else to do but wait for a tram to take them to work. As such, their faces are as stoic as an Olmec temple on a children’s game show as they hang onto the overhead steadying bar. They’re the same way on the platform before boarding. But as they shuffle and glance at other people, I can tell they’re jockeying for the coveted next-to-the-door position. I can tell because ::avoids eye contact:: I’m acting the same way.

People get off the train. The successful shufflers get on. Some hangers-on slide in. The desperate one finds an unclaimed spot. And I’m left on the platform, looking to the guy next to me with a “You dropped your ice cream cone, too” look.

I know I have to get on. The next train doesn’t come for another five minutes, and if I don’t get on here, I’m gonna be late to my internship. I don’t see any space, though, without making someone press their face against the window glass.

But then… an opening!

Granted, it’s right in front of the door, and someone’s pretty intent on not moving, and I’d have to move my backpack to my front to make sure the door doesn’t close on it, and I might have to rely on the proximity of people around me to make sure I don’t fall when the train moves, but even with all these thoughts in my head, one statement prevails: “I can’t be late.” So, I push my way onto the train...

and after almost falling backward, I take my two square feet. I move my backpack to my front. I find a good stance to steady myself against the train’s jerky start. And then I realize my head (MY HEAD) is in the door’s way. With nowhere else to go, I rest my head against a woman’s back, in her blonde hair. That’s right: in. her. blonde. hair. I can’t imagine how awkward SHE felt.

I stay exactly where I am from Holborn to Covent Garden, where THANK GOD! people get off. My two square feet suddenly become a square yard! I enjoy the rest of my train ride to Green Park, confident that I’ll get to the Science Media Centre in time.

…

I walk past my turn. I'm five minutes late. ::facepalm:: Fortunately, my co-workers don't notice or say anything.


[Next post: a synopsis of the first three days of my internship]

First Full Day

We had class, I suffered from jet lag between 11:30 and 1:30, I bought a phone, I hung out in a park, and generally enjoyed myself the first day. After class, it was pretty much a pleasant British stay-cation holiday at Bloomsbury Park.

'Ello, Mate! (I can say that without getting a look!)

Disclaimer: Some of what I’ve said in the last day or two may have seemed like I was bragging. If you read my Facebook & Gchat statuses that way, then, “Whoops. My bad.” I didn’t want to brag; I was just excited!

* * *

Sunday morning, 7 a.m. British Summer Time:

We get off the plane at the Gatwick Airport. I pull my stuff out of the overhead compartment after not sleeping at all on the trip. (I tried, but I never got tired enough to nod off.) I hurry up and wait for everyone else in front of me to move down the aisle toward the exit. I step off the plane, and I hear an air-traffic guy over a walkie-talkie. He speaks with a cockney accent.

It finally hits me. I’m in London.

We’ve all moved into our flats on Hatton Gardens between Holborn and Clerkenwell. (Which, by the way, is pronounced CLARK-en-well. There are no clerks in Britain, only Clarks.) (I’m constantly on the lookout for a Gable.) Caitlin, Katherine, Sam, Sam, Zach, Nick and I live in a seven-person flat on the second floor, and naturally the girls have their own bathroom. There’s a lot to complain about in the apartment (there’s not a lot of space, the balcony doors don’t stay closed, the guys’ toilet doesn’t flush, and the girls’ toilet makes you wait 10 minutes between flushes while the water resets), but honestly I didn’t care about that when we first got here. We had to buy some basic groceries, eat dinner at the Spaghetti House, stuff ourselves into a phone booth, and generally have a good time.

That included stopping at a pub. We HAD to do that the first night; London wouldn’t be London without it. We went to Penderel’s Oak on Holborn east of Chancery Lane, and all of us got a drink.

Including my teetotaler self.

That’s right, I had my first alcoholic beverage, legal and otherwise, in a London pub. Once I found out I’d be in London, I wanted my first drink to be a warm dark beer served in such a place. Any pub would do, and any warm dark beer would do. I didn’t have high standards, but frankly, the beer I got didn’t even meet those standards. I’m never getting Ruddlers Best again, but the experience of sitting in a pub and drinking a beer… really slowly… made it worthwhile.

[I tried other people’s drinks, and my favorite by far was Strongbow cider. It ruins the self-prophecy of a Stuff White People Like point (“Being able to walk into a bar and order a beer that no one has heard of makes white people feel good about their alcohol drinking palate.”), but it’s still really good. It’s like drinking apple juice. Believe me, however, I won’t drink it as much as I drink apple juice at home. I sometimes go through a full jug in a day and a half.]

Thoughts on Delta Flight DL812

I was excited when I walked onto the plane in Atlanta to head to London. I was excited when I filled out international contact information to get to London. I was excited when I realized I was on my first overnight, international flight… to London.

What I forgot to get excited about was the seven-hour duration of the flight. I swear, I think I’ve developed restless leg syndrome, I was so antsy. The first part of the flight had to be sit-down-only, anyway, but then we flew into some turbulence, so we were told to stay seated for even longer. I thought, “I’m sitting down. I’m gonna be in this plane for seven hours, and I have to sit down. Gah!”

Fortunately, there was one more thing to get excited about: movies.

Much to my exuberance, there was a little TV screen in the headrest of the seat in front of me. …Okay, everyone had such a screen, but when faced with staying in my seat for indefinite forevertude, I could only focus on my own screen and the handset that came with it. I scrolled through the options, and I found PREPOSTEROUS AMOUNTS OF MOVIES, most of them I had really wanted to see. There was Slumdog Millionaire, Caddyshack (which I’ve seen but have never tired of), Yes Man, Gran Torino (also one I would never tire of), Milk, Bienvenue Chez Les Ch’tis (kidding! It was there, but not in Spanish, so I respectfully declined), The Reader, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Hairspray (all of which I didn’t consider watching but included to make sure you knew what you were missing!), The Notebook (that one belongs in the former category), and tons upon tons of other flicks.

Out of this plethora, I chose two recent releases that I wanted to see more than any other new movies: Frost/Nixon and Doubt. Both of them appealed to the heart of me with their journalistic and Catholic subject matters, and in my opinion did better than anything else I’ve seen in showing nuance and all sides of a situation.

Because of that nuance (and, in line with the title of the second movie, doubt over which side is right), I feel ready for London.

…

::raised eyebrow:: “What??” you wonder. “That doesn’t even make sense! Increased doubt makes you ready for a new kind of experience?”

Why, yes, it does. I’ve thought more in these two movies than in any other movie besides Contact, because of the moral uncertainty. (And because I didn’t have much else to do.) My mind feels much sharper now, more in tune to nuance and the particulars of my surroundings. As such, I feel like I can read a new situation and see exactly, or at least very nearly, what I need to do. I wasn’t ready to do that before because I was mentally resting, which as I alluded to in the Prologue is what I normally do during the summer. Now that I’m on my toes, I know I won’t go into my time in London on autopilot, which would be disastrous for such a new situation.

…Okay, mentally I’m on my toes. But it’s 11:54 p.m. at home and 4:54 a.m. in London, and since I didn’t get much sleep last night, I’m starting to feel not quite physically animated. …

And so closes the first entry of the blog. (Excepting the Prologue, of course.) Hopefully, when I wake up I’ll be in a new country for a new kind of summer.


…Ha. I’m reading this back, and I’m thinking, “This is so corny, it belongs at the Indiana State Fair.” Better to get it out now, I guess, before I butter up anything meaningful. I’d hate to talk about my first day at the Centre with words like “I feel ready” and “I’ll be in a new country for a new kind of summer.” Although I’ll keep the internal monologue. I’ve always liked talking to myself.

…Did I admit that?

Prologue: On the Way

For most of my summers during my academic career, I’ve fallen off the face of the earth. I’ve felt content to spend all day at home, where I could read a book, watch TV, or play Civilization III for six hours straight. (True story!) Even though my friends have always lived close by and been able to hang out, I’ve always seen summer as an opportunity to do nearly nothing at all. Even once I got a summer job as a research assistant, I drove straight home almost every day and lounged.

This year, I wanted to change that. Staying home all day, while it has its benefits (free food, few responsibilities to worry about), has gotten old over the past… 19 years… I was looking for a change, one that involved more social time, more fun, and more people.

Well, I got it. On another continent.

During the one summer when I want more than anything to stay close to both the people I’ve met this year and the ones I’ve known for over a decade, I get to go to London for an internship and class for two months. Now, I’m not begrudging this opportunity at all; I’ve been looking forward to it since Dave Boeyink invited me to join the Ernie Pyle Scholars program over e-mail in the spring of my senior year of high school. And I’m not saying the people going with me are lame; in fact, the trip with them to St. Petersburg was GLORIOUS, and not just because of the shuttle launch. I’m just dumbfounded by the timing. I experience more personal and social development than ever, and I don’t get to share it very easily with more than four-fifths of my friends.

Here’s the key phrase, though: “very easily.” It’s still possible, and I plan to take every opportunity. I won’t let it detract from the London experience, because frankly, this kind of thing happens once. Maybe twice. But I still want to keep in touch, so this is a good time to say “I love you” to a few services:

1) Skype. I just set it up Friday night, but already I’m excited for it. After my parents and I set up our accounts, we tried it with both of our laptops on the kitchen table. I have to say, I felt very “meta” talking to & seeing someone across the table through the Internet. It’s like G-chatting with an IDS copy chief when both of you are in the newsroom, except in this case you wouldn’t interrupt any work if you talked or laughed out loud. (Like, say, when you’re watching Lord of the Rings footage matched with the song “Hungry Eyes.”) I’ll have to figure out when would be the best time to Skype given the five-hour difference, and if I should just improvise conversation times as I go along, but I see a lot happening with this. (Especially since, unlike using a phone, it’s free!)

2) Facebook. Now here’s something that a) is more flexible and b) I’ve used for a while. Talking to someone over Skype provides a human voice and, if capable, a face, but Facebook is much more convenient. I don’t have to organize times for wall posts or inbox messages, and when someone’s on the chat function when I am, I’ll appreciate the coincidence.

3) G-chat. Same point with the coincidence of Facebook chat, but this has the added benefit of reminding me of the IDS. Alas, there won’t be any massive reply-to-alls, but at least I’ll still have the look and feel of wasting time in the newsroom. (Especially if I get to waste time at the Science Media Centre!)

4) Blogger. Really, this is an arbitrary love. I just found a site that would let me easily share words AND photos while allowing readers to leave comments on here and Facebook. But it’s still a love, at least in the sense I’m using here.

So, even though I’ll be enjoying the work, plays, culture, and (gasp!) pubs of London, I won’t forget to keep up what I’ve built at home. Hope to see you guys on Skype, G-chat, or Facebook, and enjoy the blog!

Nick Cusack looks out the window at England. ...Okay, so it's a little out of order. I can do that, it's a prologue!