The flight of the bumblebee

---The attendants fire up the tellies and treat us to the enchanting tale of Jagdish and his trusty elephant. This epic display is quickly followed by a vintage Indian cartoon full of more stereotype-busting flying carpets.

This jolly display of poor TV is broken up when we are served dinner. I opt for the carniverous cuisene, eating leg of lamb with potatoes and vegetables, which is surprising on two fronts. One, it tastes just like a beef roast. Two, it is really quite good.

After polishing off my roll, salad, juice, and ultra-bland yogurt, I move onto a pudding filled with cashews and almonds, by far my least favorite portion of the meal. Feeling somewhat unsatisfied with the amount of food consumed, I turn to my neighbors, both of whom do not seem to enjoy Indian food quite as much as I since the only items missing from their plates are the rolls and the lettuce salads. Not wanting to be "that guy," but unable to help myself, I ask them how there meals are -- admittedly flimsy subterfuge merely supposed to elicit offers of free tastes.

My plan works like a charm -- I end up getting another leg of Mary's little friend, and almost the entire vegetarian selection -- a feast of curry, spicy rice pilaf (a multi-colored concoction that looks like culinary confetti rather than your average rice dish) and nifty little corn (I think) Frisbees called papins (sp?)

Eating any of these items alone is equivalent to licking a bar's bathroom floor, but putting them together tastes like ambrosia of Olympic quality. I finish off the paste of vegetables, eat more of the nutty pudding hybrid, and thank my neighbors for their generosity.

Stomach now rather content, I sit back to watch the movie, the nifty Thomas Crown Affair, and hope to drift off to sleep.

--- Just as I begin to get into the movie I realize my worst fear to have come true -- no, the plane isn't going down in a ball of flames, forcing me to vomit uncontrollably after also finding a hair in my nutty porridge and realizing that saving myself until marriage was a really stupid idea -- the movie is edited.

My first clue was when Rene Russo calls someone a "mother funship." My second was when I see the credits roll and realize I have not seen hide nor hair of Russo's unmentionables. Having seen this movie before I know it borders on geriatric porn -- both unsettling and yet strangely arousing, especially when the senior citizen responsible for bearing all is the yummy Russo.

Cheated out of nudity and still over four hours away, I settle in to attempt a short siesta so I can greet my new home well rested and chipper.

--- What's that saying about the best laid plans? Something about them them being doomed to fail or being laid to waste, right? Well, as the saying goes, so too went my plans of fitless slumber as I was unable to get more than 9.2 nanoseconds worth of sleep.

Every time I would feel sleep's warm embrace about to engulf me, the woman ahead of me would move her chair back even further, someone else would bump me, or the blooming babies two rows up would start singing duets more blasphemous and aggravating than a Gloria Estefan and N'Sync effort.

That said, this resilient world-walker did not get much sleep, and thus was a little rough around the edges when the sun rose (a truly beautiful sight, even though I didn't get to see it directly) and we were served a huge continental breakfast of tea, a pastry, and -- oh wait, that was it.

If they would have woken my ass up for a crappy little pastry and three sips of tea, I would have kicked them from here to a site well past the sand and sun of hometown Bombay.

--- The plane lands without incident, I stretch, gather my things, and get ready to meet my new city. As I reach the front of the plane I realize that something is a little different (besides being in another country, dingleberry) -- I can see the sun shining in through the door.

Not remembering there being many windows on airport walkways, I step into the sunlit dorrway and see the reason for the difference -- there is no traditional exitway. My fellow travelers and I are departing the plane on an old-style staircase, propped right up to the plane, and hitting the bottom right on the runway!

I feel as if I've stepped out of the 00s and into the, well 00s (of the 20th century, though, of course). As I descend I half expect Bogey to be at the foot of the stairs, all set to tell me, "here's looking at you, kid" again. (And yes, I know that makes me Bogey's sexy girlfriend in this little Casablanca comparison, but I'm really quite pretty if you get me in the right lighting.)

I retrieve my luggage, meet the leaders of our International Enrichment group, board a bus, and then head off to our new destination, the apartments of 4 Knaresborough in Kensington.

--- While on the bus, I am beginning to feel a little excited. Whether from my finally being here in London, from the cool landing apparatus, or the enchanting strains of Michael Bolton and Simply Red that are wafting out of the bus' speakers, I do not know.

Deciding that it might be the latter (and that I might not be alone in my enjoyment of truly quality music) I stand up and lead the group in a rousing rendition of "Time, Love, and Tenderness." The group was little cold at first (I had to dodge several pumps and brochure books, alone with half a dozen dirty looks), but gradually they warmed to my idea and really belted out the notes.

After the song, the music mysteriously stops, a phenomenon that could not be explained when I inquired with the driver (he was as baffled as I.) Mildly disheartened, I return to my seat and take in the passing scenery. The houses look slightly different and I'm amazed at the number of flats that have satellite dishes (seriously -- they are on virtually every one. I can count on one hand the number without. I later find out that it is because the basic television service consists of a whipping five channels.)

The biggest surprise that I notice, though, is that the cars drive on the other side of the road! All of them! I had heard about the amount of drinking these people do and thought maybe they'd gotten an early start, but the bus driver said that's how they all do it. Wow. In London less than an hour and already I've learned something. A positive harbinger of things to come...

---We arrive at 4 Knaresborough, unload everyone's luggage, and begin the check-in process. I get to the check-in lady, a lovely British chippy named Adi, and find that I have been granted a single room! At first I am disappointed because I was looking forward to meeting new people and proving to myself that living with roommates doesn't have to suck (contrary to all my previous experiences in this area.) Then, I realized it was probably for the best because I like to retreat to a space all my own when the world begins to crash down around me (and because I'm a bitch. Past roommates have told me so.)

Ready to see my solitary mansion I lug my 40lb. suitcase and two backpacks up the 3 1/2 flights of stairs (souring my disposition ever so slightly), but when I get to flat 10 on Floor 3.5, I take a deep breath and get ready to meet my paradisical command center.

--- I put the key in the lock, turn it, and the door swings open revealing... a big white dresser blocking the doorway. A little stunned, I chance sticking my heda through the gap for a better view. Surely the reason the door is partially blocked is because there's so much cool stuff in the flat that there was no more room for the dresser anywhere else.

Well, I take a quick look around and realize that I was right about one thing -- there was no more room for the dresser anywhere else. Too bad that's because there's barely enough room for my head in the flat.

I never thought, after my puny room junior year, that I would ever encounter a smaller space that people were expected to live in. Well, there goes one more dream down the drain (right along with my hopes of being voted "Prettiest Lass in London" and "Best Sex of '99").

I turn sideways, squeeze my way into the room and then realize that my suitcase will not fit through the door. Marvelous. My first solution is this: I decide to alternate trying to pull it and push it into the room, then adding the careful craft of kicking and cussing, quickly followed by more kicking and yet more cussing.

When this plan doesn't work (not even close) I decide to huff and puff, carelessly stomping around and cursing more vehemently. Surprisingly (at least to me), this too does not work (it only succeeds in making my suitcase blush with my sailor talk), so I am forced to buck up and move the infracting dresser so as to fit in my behemoth of a suitcase (thanks, Dad.)

This plan works much better and I decide to put off unpacking for a bit so I can take a better look around the room. Besides the dresser (actually much smaller space-wise than it felt moving it, but isn't that always the case?) I have a bed (rather lumpy -- just like my oatmeal and the back of fat girls' legs) a garbage can (with a bag in it! (black)) and an old desk (small, but with a drawer!). I also have a set of three pots (all with a revolting ensemble of dried and burnt food relics in the bottom (remnants free of charge)) and a tiny refrigerator, which once I open it nearly forces me to vomit thanks to the overpowering aroma of hot, old mold. Seriously, it smells utterly atrocious; like the thing everyone talks about having died when they smell something bad gave birth to something which did die and is now stinking up my fridge.

Breaking up my scenic tour of the flat fit for a king, nature begins to call and I suddenly realize that my apartment is without a water closet (without a closet of any kind, actually, but one problem at a time, please...). Frantic, I begin to think of places where I could relieve myself -- the sink, out the window, in the empty canister of film I have in my bag.

Luckily, Adi comes to my rescue and stops me from doing anything rash (or illegal). Adi informs me that along with my own room, I also have my own private bathroom! Remembering how some things can sound really good in theory, but really suck in reality (my private room, for example) I ask her what the catch is. Do I have to share it with an attendant that I have to pay with each use? Was somebody killed in there? Is it across the street?

Adi seems to get a kick out of my pessimism but assures me there is no catch. Then she tells me where it is -- in the basement (I wasn't so far off with my across the street talk, eh?). Just for those of you who weren't paying attention earlier, I live on Floor 3.5. The basement is thus Floor -1. So for all you non-math majors out there, that means I have to go down roughly 5 flights of stairs just to take a leak. Yay, London...

--- Nature calling much more insistently now, I decide to try out my spectacular solo shitter and run downstairs to the basement. I try putting the key into the lock and turning, but it doesn't work. So, I run back up five flights of stairs to tell Adi that the key doesn't work. "Really?" she says. "I don't believe it. Let's have a look."

So, we run back down five flights of stairs to the bathroom, find out that I'm really not as stupid as I look and that the key still doesn't open the door. Adi runs into the other room to make a telephone call and then comes back to tell me that I can't use this bathroom until Monday (remember, today is still Saturday) when the locksmith can come. She then runs upstairs since she notices my "if looks could kill" glare fixing right at her.

Honestly contemplating pissing through the keyhole and letting the janitors clean it up, my conscience gets the better of me and I run upstairs and relieve myself in the janitor's closet. Feeling much refreshed, I return to my chateau on the hill, room #10.

---Deciding that I'm too angry to unpack and that I need to get out of my room right away (my roommate is already getting on my nerves and I'm getting a little claustrophobic since I can't raise my arms all the way above my head (in truth, I feel a like a fat person in a phone booth -- a wee bit cramped.)

I go downstairs again and opt to help people (specifically the ladies) lug their suitcases up the stairs (they don't know my name yet already love me). After a few smiles (and a rather strange situation with a girl named Betsy -- she gave my -- ahem -- produce a little fondling (apparently trying to guage its ripeness. Just so you know, 'twasn't quite ripe yet.) -- a rather hearty one at that -- because, and I quote, "You've been so good with my luggage, I just wanted to help you with yours."

Needless to say, Betsy and I are the best of friends now and I think London is just the greatest city in the world..)

Anyways, after a few smiles and my encounter with Betsy, we rendesvous as a group and head off to the Fox and Henderson's Restaurant for a feast of fish and chips. The meal is great, made that much better by the fact that it was completely free (Jack, the head of the program, paid for all 100 of us!) After lunch we head to Imperial College for a short meeting regarding the residences, and then we go back to Knaresborough to unpack.

--- Unpacking goes well and requires some improvisation -- all my dress stuff fits in the dresser, as do my sweaters and socks, but I am forced to put my boxers and undershirts -- guess where -- in my kitchen cabinets. It's a blast.

I'm feeling a little tired now -- all the moving, flying, and not sleeping is catching up with me, so I decide to sit on my bed. The lumps in it feel like glorious mounds of massaging magic to my sore hindquarters and I cannot recall a time when sitting felt so good.

Trying to up the pleasure ante I decide to lay down. Now those mystical mounds are working their mojo all over my back, melting away the stress of the day and similarly, I cannot remember a time when laying down felt so good. I could go on laying like this for days. Nothing could stop me from -- zzzzzzzzzzz.......

---Thanks to my unbelievable hedonism, I sleep for an hour and a half, roughly, but the duration is unimportant -- mere drops in a sadly empty bucket. What matters most is that I sleep twenty minutes past 7PM. Why does this matter, you say? Because the group disembarked for a raucous pub crawl tonight at the jolly hour of? Anyone? Anyone? (Here's a hint -- it's the same as the number of deadly sins, wonders of the world, and seas) Right! 7! And yours truly decided to oversleep.

So I am faced with a rather sticky dilemma: stay in my dumpy cubbyhole alone on my first night in a strange city, or wander the streets and hope to reunite with the group. I take a moment to look around my room (and in that moment my eyes make approximately 162 complete revolutions around the room) and decide for the latter.

--- I leave the comfortable surroundings of my apartment building and set sail on the uncertain waters that are the streets of London at night. I walk around town, passing bar after bar, but I am unable to locate any familiar faces (what I am able to find are my fair share of pretty ones, though. Quick aside: to the good looking blond girl with the unruly curly hair who took my phone number along with my heart? Call me...)

I continue aimlessly traipsing around the city for another half hour, poking my head in all sorts of interesting bars that I hope to frequent before my time here is through -- the oldest bar in Kensington, called the Goat Tavern, which has been open since 1696, an Irish bar called Mahoney's, a nifty little blues bar, etc.

Eventually I go back to the Rat and Parrot, the only bar I specifically remember Jack mentioning on our tour, the bar he said the night would close at. To my relief, I see some group members, but none I've met so far. Fearing an awkward situation, I hesitate, but I figure there's nothing to lose and enter the bar anyway. I ask if they've seen anyone else from the group and, lo and behold, he points to a group in the back of the bar chock full of all the people I've already met.

We rendesvous at the bar, drink a couple of pints of John Smith, the smoothest beer I have ever tasted and my new favorite drink, for about an hour. After this Jack rallies whoever is able (and willing) to leave the Parrot and leads us to another bar. This one, called Da Vinci's, is located right in the Union of our college (I'm not kidding! It's one of three bars on our school's property. American colleges can't hold a candle to this joint. Going to school has never been so much fun...)

We drink more pints, but this time I switch to Caffrey's, my favorite Irish ale, one I discovered on a journey to Boston last year. As I order my beer, I get scolded by the bartender for not saying, "Please." I usually do, regardless of country, but the one time I don't I get yelled at.

Sobbing uncontrollably, I apologize to the man, both for my transgressions and those of my American counterparts (who apparently, judging by the longevity of his rant, were much worse at saying "please" and "thank you" than I was) and return to my table.

On the way, Betsy runs into me and tries to check on my luggage again (I was like, "Whoa, dude. My suitcase is totally back at the apartment right now. I think she's hitting on me.") This reunion with the Travelware Tickler is a fun capper to the evening and I return to the flat around 1, a little soused, but no worse for wear. Utterly exhausted and a little bit inebed, I turn in for the night after guzzling two or three pots full of water (yep, right out of the dirty ones. When you're a little saucy, you don't care about revolting chunks of dried noodles and burnt up pasta sauce getting into your drink. It just adds a little flavor to the already pungent water. Besides, that which does not kill me -- Aghhhh......)

A New Day - The First Full Dose

--- I wake up at 7:30AM with hardly any after effects from the previous night's bender. I go through my morning ritual of washing up, brushing teeth, etc. All is normal until I go to turn off the water -- the knobs cooperate with me, easily tightening as if shutting off. The problem is, the water itself doesn't want to comply. It keeps shooting out of the faucet, spraying the sink and the surrounding counters, even me.

I try turning off the water valves under the sink, but, of course, I can't get them to turn; they're stuck like a burger lover in India. So, I run up to the top floor (Floor 5 if you're counting) and knock on the residence director's room. Still half-sleeping and thus visibly perturbed with yours truly, Ali opens the door. I explain my problem to him and he nods, carefully concocting a solution of pure genius (he's a phD candidate at Imperial College, after all).

The results of this mental mulling? "Wait till Monday when I can call a plumber." The door proceeds to shut and I'm left with an overwhelming urge to kick things. Instead, I shout through the door, "Alright, but if this thing floods the building and I have to call Noah again, your ass ain't getting on the boat."

I go back downstairs, pound on the water valves with my shoe and finally get the blooming thing to turn off. Ali, the resident Rhodes scholar comes down a little later, sees the sink, and then says, "See? I told you if you left it alone it would fix itself."

Needless to say, Ali is extremely lucky I know the meaning of the word restraint, otherwise, as Ralph Kramden was so apt to say, "Wham! Bang! To the moon, Alice!"-- a Bozo-sized boot mark would have been left imprinted on his ass.

--- Around 9:30 we take off for a guided bus tour of London. Our guide, a lovely British lass, tells us loads of interesting info and I get equal amounts of good pictures. We get to see the memorial to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the River Thames, St. Paul's, Trafalgar Square, and much more.

After the tour we stop for lunch at a nice British restaurant, McDonald's, and I sample their savory two cheeseburger meal with chips (fries, for the foreigner). It really is quite delectable and afterwards we wander around Piccadilly Circus for a while.

We stop in several shops, including the allegedly "largest Elvis souvenir shop in the world." (I can just hear the people in Graceland grumbling and calling their lawyers.) (It really wasn't that big. I hear Yemen actually has a larger one, but the shopkeeper got rather standoffish when I brought this up and he proceeded to threaten to brain me with his 'I Love Elvis' baseball bat, so I let it go...)

--- Eventually we end up at the Rock Circus, Madame Tussaud's wax museum for all things musical. This experience starts out rather slowly -- we only get to see a few wax figures, mostly of people we'd never heard before (like who the hell are Sir Cliff Richard or the band Status Quo? Can you say nobodies?) (To be fair, though, there were some really good figures of Brian Wilson, Michael Jackson, and the Godfather of Soul himself, Mr. James Brown.)

We were then subjected to an extremely corny video montage of rock's history, replete with unbelievably stupid rock lighting and strobe light displays. If that wasn't bad enough, there were even poorly animated wax figures of Keith Richards and Bruce Springsteen (who looked more like Erik Estrada from CHiPs than the Boss).

This part was like a bad cross between the Disney Hall of Presidents thing and a badly dubbed Japanese film -- the movements were jerky and exaggerated, and the lips were moving, but they were ridiculously out of sync.

After this stupidity was over, though, things turned around. Wax figures of guys like Chuck Berry, Robert Plant, Mick Jagger, Simon and Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, and Eric Clapton all made appearances of stunning believability.

Then came the creepy cemetery section for those rock icons who went too soon. Identical replicas of Marvin Gaye, Freddie Mercury, Michael Hutchence, and Jerry Garcia were there, and this really started to make me a little uneasy.

They had videos going with these people talking and they had their music playing and it really freaked me out. I ran out of the room crying, shrieking like a little girl because I just couldn't take it anymore (actually I just got really antsy -- like every time I looked at the figures I kept expecting them to move or ask me what the hell I was looking at.)

I got over this, though, and was brave enough to have my picture taken with Billy Idol and the Spice Girls (one of which I swear grabbed my ass, but maybe that was just the tour guide...)

--- We make our way over to the Criterion Theatre for the 4 PM show of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Abridged!" My seat is in the third row, dead center- a better ticket I could not buy (Jack really did us right again -- he paid for these, too. He's my current hero -- loves pubs and likes to spend money on me. Quite the winning hand.)

The play is really quite hilarious and wonderfully ingenius. They actually do go over, to varying degrees, all of Shakespeare's works, even the less familiar stuff. Highlights -- realaying the story of Othello in a rap (made even funnier since the entire cast consists of three whiter than white actors), all of the plays involving kings in the context of a football game, and getting amazing audience participation for the ending of Hamlet where the entire audience had something to do during the finales.

(Here they divided the audience into five sections and had each of them do something different at the same time -- some were swaying their arms back and forth over their heads, some were standing up and rubbing their stomachs, some were running in place, etc., but all were saying a crucial line while doing their gestures. It was quite a sight and a laugh.)

The play was a blast and, after a brief pause to look at a fire-eater/juggler, we jump on the Tube and return to our neck of the woods. All rather famished from the day of walking, we decide to stop for dinner. This time we decide to try authentic Italian cuisine and eat at Pizza Hut (quite the adventurous crowd I hang with, eh? I'm sure you know this was not my first priority, but I must remember to be flexible.)

After a lovely meal of spicy chicken pizza and about a dozen glasses of Pepsi, I return home and go to sleep around one. My first two days here have been completely exhausting, but also completely entertaining.