Romantic Antihero™

Today we had relaxed classes and got some info about what to do in case of an emergency and all that. Almost everybody was planning to go to London for the weekend, so there was a sense of urgency, I suppose, to class for some. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere this weekend, so I just went back to my room for a bit after class, then wandered out to walk around city center. I ended up buying a rugby ball, because they’re loads cheaper here, and just to have one I guess. I had been told that we wouldn’t be getting dinner on Fridays, so I stopped at a chip shop (local fast order type thing that’s not much more than a counter) and bought the most fantastic bacon cheeseburger. Bacon in England is different that in the States. They don’t have the thin, narrow strips like we do, but it’s more like simply fried ham, even more so than ‘Canadian’ bacon.

Coming back I was hanging out in my room looking at the internet and whatnot when one of my friends comes in and informs that they were serving dinner on Fridays. Well, damn. But that bacon cheeseburger was excellent, so it was still a win. What we had planned after that was to get a punt from the school. Turns out that you have to rent them, but since there were three of us it wasn’t so bad. To take one of the professional punts you have to pay £12 a head, but for us it was £6 an hour for the punt.

Punting on the Cam. It’s such a romantic notion, isn’t it? The reality of it is somewhat different, at least in the touristy summer season. I mean, it’s still very cool, and I imagine that in the off-season for tourists that it’s much more like what you’d imagine. But right now the river is filled with rowdy tour groups, so it’s not like the serene, romantic images that some of you may have seen. It’s very casual, and the river is kind of littered in some places, which is sad.

And punting is not easy, let me tell you. There were three of us and we each took turns doing the punting. The first one of us to have a go ended up making us go mostly in circles. There are a lot of punt collisions on the Cam, and it’s generally a source of amusement, though it can get frustrating when you run through a knot of punts or you’re just pinballing off the sides of the river. We each eventually got it figured out, and with only two near disasters.

One of my friends got us caught up under one of the many willow trees that line the banks. Coming out of it forcefully have mispoled and nearly lost his footing coming out from under the branches, coming within an inch of going into the river, arms wheeling and everything. On the return trip I was navigating under a bridge when I miscalculated the speed of the punt, the height of the bridge and the length of the pole. The pole ended up wedged between the river bottom and the face of the bridge, and I almost went into the river trying to hold on to it. I ended up letting go and pushing my hands against the ‘ceiling’ of the underside of the bridge to drag us back to the pole to rescue it. But I’ve got a method down and that was really my only mishap after I figured it out. The professional punters make it look so effortless, but when we got back I was went with sweat and drippings from the pole and worn out from the upper body strength needed for my method. It was great fun though, and we’re planning on getting a larger group for next time to show off the skills we learned.

After that the three of us sat on the river-wall shooting the breeze and getting to know one another better. Another good day.

Reviresco!

Today (though I’m writing this the next morning) was a good day. We had lively discussions in class and went over some interesting material with our professors. After that a group of us walked across the bridge and played some soccer in the park again. Playing around with the ball as we gathered to go we joked about the ball going into the river. Guess what happened next? Fortunately a soccer ball is something sacred here, and no less than three punts diverted to rescue our ball for us. Later on at the park we were joking about the ball going into the moat (yes, the moat) and what do you think happened next? To clarify, some of the colleges with property on the “backside” of the river have water channels going around them that connect to the river. They’re just about four feet across and at least three feet deep, I think, but they’re very discrete. Actually a lot of the buildings have archaic but nasty defenses around them, sort of reminding you of the history of the place, not to mention that the continued class system is in fact very real. Coming back from that a friend and I headed down to Regent Street to do separate things, and I ended up in the local Games Workshop store:

There I mixed in briefly with the locals, played a game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle with the clerk, and heard some very encouraging and authoritative rumors concerning new codices and plastic models for Warhammer 40,000 factions that haven’t seen any love in a long time. I found out they were doing a WHFB 8th Edition launch party this Saturday, so I think I will go back for that, maybe meet some more locals and whatnot.

Walking back I took a couple of pictures, just to have something to make my blog colorful. Or colourful, as it were:

I took some different streets home just to get to know the place, and ended up in front of King’s College again. This time I decided to do more than take a funny picture of a single statue, as the building really is quite impressive. This is the chapel, I think, and the rest of the college is off camera to the left.

I don’t know why, but I found this amusing. In the States you get signs shortening the word “through” to “thru”. Here in England they do it properly, writing it as “thro'”. Words are neat to me.

The local market, despite being over run with junk and tourist trash, does have some neat stuff. Like an semi-amazing collection of reggae albums. This was the “under £10” section. I sincerely wish that bringing a record or ten back in my suitcase would be safe. I saw some really cool things at that store that I don’t think I’ll ever find in the States.

What we have planned for Friday is to check out the Hall’s punt and explore the city by river. We spent the evening watching rowdy tour groups of Spanish teenagers try to to each other off their punts and ramming one another, which was both annoying and funny to watch at the same time. The professional punters exhibited an amazing ability to expertly steer their craft full of paying customers through these knots of chaos upon the river as if they weren’t there. We wanted to check out a punt after the river calmed down, but apparently you can’t take the Hall’s punts out after 8pm. You can keep them out after, just not check them out after. That’s the plan for Friday night, anyway, and hopefully I will have some fun story that doesn’t involve us sinking the college punt to share.

Reviresco!

No pictures today…

We’re starting to get into the groove of class, and today even presented arguments based on international law. I ended up as spokesman for our team, and with the help of a classmate who picked up my oratory slack when I started to flounder (though I picked myself back up for the rebuttal), our team c0nvinced a panel of fellow students that our case was better. Good stuff.

After class I was going to go kick the soccer ball around the park, but I ended up taking a heavy nap instead. I woke up for dinner, and tonight there was a different guy in charge of the serving line who was making fun of one of my classmates for taking a double serving of dessert, suggesting that he was going to bring him a bucket to put his dinner in tomorrow. Which made me put my second bowl away (I wanted a green salad and some potato salad…) because I didn’t want him making fun of me too. Later he came out and was mocking one of our classmates who filled up a small glass with ketchup for his fries. I mean, it was funny and all that, but still.

After dinner we headed out to a pub (an honest to goodness pub, not just a bar) called “the County Arms” that was across the river and more toward the residential section of town that another of my classmates had plotted for us. For whatever reason one of my regular companions and I took off early and followed a different route. We got there first and secured a space, and soon the rest of us came in. We were there to watch Germany play Spain in their World Cup match, and throughout the first half locals filtered in and eventually filled the place. There seemed to be only the first two of us there who were rooting for Germany; everyone else seemed to either for Spain to win or uncommitted.

Walking back the two of us who got there early deviated from the group again and went in search of an ice cream store we had passed the day before. Getting there we discovered that they wanted far too much for a little scoop of ice cream, so we wandered back to Sainsbury’s and got some store bought for much cheaper.  The city center was full of Spanish students chanting and singing because their nation won the match, and we could hear that somewhere some of them had got their hands on some fireworks and were setting them off. After that we walked back, and I ran up to my room to change out of my school clothes and met everyone else back on the wall overlooking the river. One of our professors was there and we hung out for a bit talking about books and movies and whatnot, but everyone cashed out early this evening.

My proposed trip to Scotland is up in the air right now, as I have discovered that it may be twice the cost I was thinking it would be. Complaining about this I was directed to a website that offers a better choice of cheap rail fares and given other suggestions to reduce cost as well, so we’ll see if that’s still on or not.

At some point, I think next week, we’re taking a school trip into London to rub elbows with some lawmakers and see some cool government stuff. We’re kicking around the idea of all of us getting Trinity Hall ties from the shop I posted about yesterday, which would be cool, I think.

I’ve got to listen to a podcast before I got to sleep, which got mixed reviews from my classmates, but it sounds like tomorrow will be an interesting day in class either way.

Reviresco!

Today was a LONG day. Still haven’t snapped a picture of the dining hall, but I got a ton of pictures today. First thing we did after class was to head out see the Folk Museum that was closed yesterday. On our way there we passed by a shop where I had to indulge my habit:For those of you who don’t know, I collect scarves. I know, it’s a strange thing to collect, but there it is. I started with traditional English football scarves when the Kansas City support club has some special ordered for members. From there I got an original first season KC scarf that was only given to the first people who showed up to the first game as a present from a friend. From there I branched out to favorite SPL and EPL teams, and then to college scarves and then scarves that I just found interesting or fashionable to wear. At first I was rather indiscriminate about the football scarves, but then I decided I was only going to collect or wear scarves for places I actually had a personal connection to. So, I still have things like my Newcastle Utd scarf, but I never take it out and wear it because I have nothing to do with Newcastle Utd. But here I am going to school at Trinity Hall in the University of Cambridge, and I may be a “summer student” but I am here, so I feel it’s a legit connection. This is certainly one of the funnest and coolest things I’ve ever done and want something to remember it by/brag about having done it, so it was natural for me to add a University of Cambridge and Trinity Hall scarves to my collection:

These things are actually kind of a big deal, being a conspicuous social status thing, sort of like a class ring to a prestigious school or pin for a respected fraternity are in the States. About the college scarves for people who don’t know: you know how in Harry Potter stories they all went to Hogwart’s but were in different “houses”? And each house had colors and they wore them as ties and scarves? That idea is taken directly from English public schools and universities like Cambridge. There’s the University of Cambridge, but all these colleges are like separate schools that just have all this shared history in the same town.

But I’m digressing. There is so much more that I did today and I need to get to it. After we left that store we went further into the city center. They don’t serve lunch here myself and another KU student stopped at Sainsbury’s (which isn’t so much like WalMart like I said yesterday, but is more of a grocery store), and got some quick snack food, and I even remembered to convert things into dollars to remind myself of what was actually expensive or not. Walking around the general area I also took a picture of it:

There’s all this really cool historical stuff and decent shopping, but then there’s also the market area which is full of utter crap. Except late at night when the burger wagons roll in. But seriously, it’s like a giant Spencer’s or Hot Topic came and vomited its tackiest merchandise right in the middle of this place. But on the other side is one of the coolest churches ever. Weird. So ☝cool stuff and ☟utter crap.

I guess they also sell legitimate market stuff there like flowers and vegetables and stuff, but it’s so crowded out by the Family Guy T-shirts and “funny college humor” stuff, not to mention the touts and homeless people. Who are usually one and the same. I guess at least beggars here actually try to sell you something other than a sob story. They’ve got all these toothless glue sniffers who stand around trying to sell magazines to people walking by, although the one guy who plays his guitar can actually sing decently, which is something, I guess.

These are my touring companions in the Folk Museum. It wasn’t really what I thought it would be, but it was kind of cool. I’ll post more pictures over on my Myspace album, but here are a couple for RA:

A Lambretta scooter from the “England in the 1960s” temporary exhibit. Later on I saw somebody riding a vintage Lammie, so that was cool too.

And some obligatory touristy nonsense in the courtyard outside.

This was after the museum when we were walking over to the other side of the Cam. This is a direction we took yesterday, so I think we just sort of did it again without thinking about it. I tried to make a panorama view of two photos because I thought this street just looked neat.

One of my friends bought a football (it’s illegal to call it a soccer ball here, I think) when I was in the store getting a bacon and chicken wrap, so when we got tired of plodding along the road we stopped at this park near the backside of King’s College and kicked it around. We ended up a little further down at another park area near an intersection where lots of people were, and it was funny that as soon as the ball came out almost everybody’s heads turned to watch it. It’s not like we did this out in public to show off or anything, part of it had to do with pure spontaneity, the other part had to do that we have a very beautiful lawn, “Latham Lawn”, right outside our building in Trinity Hall, but doing anything on the grass is forbidden.

I just wanted to show you this. This is a bike lane. Traffic here, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is pretty wild. I don’t feel safe on the sidewalk, I certainly would have to work up some nerve to ride a bike on these roads.

We walked back over the Cam, but instead of turning north to go home, we turned south just to see what was down there. We found the Fitzwilliam Museum, which was free and had an amazing collection, not to mention it seemed to be bigger on the inside than its already large outside. So that ☝ was our cultural high brow moment of the day. This ☟ was our cultural low brow moment today.

These fine examples of working class Englishmen were hard at work erecting scaffolds for restoration construction of a very nice church near the Senate House building, and of course we just couldn’t resist taking turns photographing ourselves near their truck…

I get a kick out of this: I actually belong here. I know it’s not as a permanent student, but still, it’s a very cool feeling to be a part of this incredibly cool thing and this prestigious and historical place.

This is what the outside looks like, if anybody was curious. There is the gate pictured there, which I’m standing in, in the preceding picture. At a certain point during the day they close the big iron barred gate and you have to go through the Porter’s Lodge, which is an office with doors on either side of the iron gate in the gate tunnel. The Porters are these very formal guys who are like butlers but not, I guess, and are in charge of the grounds. They are very polite and helpful, and do things like tell you where the best pub to watch a World Cup game are from, assign you your room, sign out the key to the computer room (which is literally a computer room, as there is only one computer in it), tell you to stay off the grass, that sort of thing.

My window overlooks Latham Lawn, like I’ve shown before. The people in this photo are KU students and the people I hang out with here. I snapped this picture after we got back from walking around as I was up in my room getting ready to go eat dinner. We like to sit in the shade of that tree during the off hours and do our readings for class or just shoot the breeze. There is also a bridge you can’t see off to the right, and people stand on it all day taking pictures, sometimes of us. The punters (English gondoliers), or a group of them that I think may be rogue punters as opposed to the organized businesses, moor their punts across the bank about twenty or thirty feet to the right of that willow tree, coming out of a canal ditch thing. They are these scruffy sort of young guys who do a lot of lounging around in the sun without their shirts on singing pop songs a cappella, maybe because they’re trying to be cute for the girls walking over the bridge or maybe because they’re bored out of their minds. I don’t know. Tourists can also rent punts and take them out on their own, which provides us free entertainment during the day, because they often have no idea what they’re doing. I took a picture of this group, who were having all kinds of trouble:

They lost their pole and floated around for a while, then the man stood up and was going to get into the water to rescue the pole. Then someone remembered there was a small oar stowed on the punt, so we didn’t get to see anyone jump into the river after all. We were a bit disappointed, and that lady in the blue standing up was sort of put out with our being an audience. For us it was a bit of role reversal, I suppose, because a lot of the rental punt groups, along with the people on the bridge, interact with us via funny comments as they go by and see us sitting up there on the wall.

There’s one of the rascally punters there, and also up in the corner is the bridge that people stand on and take pictures. I’ve been over there on it, and it really is a great view down the Cam and of several colleges in a row on its banks. King’s College, which is right south of us, is large and ornate. Those two punts with the black and white floorboards are the Hall’s punts, and the rumor is that we can check them out from the Porter’s Lodge. Then WE can be loud, silly and dangerous on the river! Did I mention the dangerous part? The people who rent the punts are always running them into each other, it’s like bumper cars on the water out there.

This is the Senate Lane right across the street from Trinity Hall. It’s how we get into the city center and points beyond, though I suppose there are other ways. Past the lady on the bicycle is our group of KU students who walked out after dinner to watch the Netherlands play against Uruguay in their World Cup match.

I took this photo for my friend Johnny, who I’m sure would like this place. An authentic “Northern Soul” club in England. This was after we walked halfway to the pub we were originally going to, went into a different one instead, watched the first half of the match and then were walking back to a different bar to watch the second half for reasons I didn’t bother to ask.

I was up in my room when one of my new friends called me down to sit on the ledge and hang out. Coming out I looked up and thought the lights of my room made a neat scene, so I fetched my camera and took this shot. It didn’t turn out as well on screen as I thought it looked IRL, but there you go. If I didn’t capture the mood to share with you at least I will be able to use it as a prompt to remember it myself. Very pleasant evening…

Reviresco!

Bear with me here, because I’ve been out drinking with my colleagues…

Tonight I decided that since it was the first night it was necessary to bond with my classmates by going out to a club with them. I learned all about English change, because I had to ask the bartender what it was he just dumped into my hand after I handed him a 10 pound note. I think I’ve got it now. You have to be careful, because a cheap import in the States can be more expensive here. Kirin Ichiban, which is a relatively cheap import from Japan, is more expensive here than at home, for instance. Oddly enough, Corona was the cheap 2 pound beer this evening, which is still more expensive than at home, but was the cheapest deal they had. It’s real easy to stop translating pounds into dollars when you buy stuff. For instance my lunch was 8 pounds, which would be entirely reasonable in dollars, but afterward I was thinking how that was really like $15, and maybe not such a good deal on the American economy. Exchange rate sucks for us. Anyway.

So today was our first day of classes, right? It was also my first day to eat breakfast here at the hall. I’m going to get a picture of the dining hall for a later post, because it is awesome. The staff are all ultra polite to you, and the food is good, even if it’s not exactly filling. The KU people all sit together at the same bench to eat, which is cool because we’re getting to know each other and all that. Our classroom is pretty neat, and I can’t help but wonder about all the famous people who went through Trinity Hall who may have studied or lectured in it. I found out today that my dorm room is special, after comparing to some of the other people in my program it looks like I have one of the “special” dorm rooms. It’s just my luck manifesting, I suppose. And I do feel lucky to be here. And it is a luck I worked hard to build…

But I digress. Our “history of law” class started today and it was cool, and then we had our first law class right after, which was also cool. I’m really looking forward to all of this, and the first day was very interesting. Afterward some of us went out to Sainsbury’s, which is sort of like Wal*Mart but not, and we bought necessities like razors (I left mine on my bed at home when I was packing) washing powder, deodorant, groceries for the dorm, some of us bought bag fulls of booze (not me). That sort of thing. The line at the register was long, and the cashier lady suggested self service to us, and I made a joke about how I “don’t do business with robot folk”, and I don’t think she knew I was joking…

After we did our shopping and dropped our purchases off in our rooms we met back up on the lawn and picked a random direction and headed out, just to see what was out there. The driving situation here is crazy, let me tell you. Your average American would be wrecked inside of five minutes, because there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to who goes when at some of these intersections. And the bicyclists have nerves of steal, all riding down the side of the road inches away from getting hit by cars but not seeming to care, not to mention that the sidewalks are very narrow and sometimes you end up walking in the street and there’s not much you can do about it. Also, we spotted a bird that none of us knew what it was, and we instantly dubbed it the “silly footed cock-pidgeon”. A very nice retired fellow at the back gate of King’s College told it was a “Moorhen”. This is what they look like:

We ate lunch at an Italian cafe off the river, and it was very pleasant. Then we went back and fooled around individually until it was dinner time, then met back up in the dining hall. After I was sitting in my room when one of my classmates came and got me for an excursion out on the town, and I couldn’t refuse this first night’s fun. We went to this place called “ta bouche” or something like that which ended up being “la douche” by the end of the night. Toward the beginning of the evening I would say that everyone there were summer students at a Cambridge university, but at a certain point locals started filling in. One of my companions was bound and determined to chat up one of the beautiful women filling the place, so eventually I found myself in an interesting conversation with some girl’s aunt (because he was hitting on the niece, if you can believe that, and the aunt was totally my age). Eventually I had my fill of that sort of thing, because it really isn’t my scene anymore, so I said my goodbyes and headed out around midnight. Everything here is so unreal and scenic, even leaving a Euro trash techno bar looked interesting enough to take a picture of:

This lane was narrower than most regular streets in the city center, but not by much. Coming out of there I was confronted with this:

This is literally right after leaving the little alley the bar was in, this totally beautiful and imposing but just there architecture. Stuff like this is all over Cambridge town like it’s just no big deal. The best food I’ve had in England yet was at a street vendor who only operates after hours. While I was standing there some American students from some other program were overheard to say of me, “Ask him, isn’t he an American?” “I thought he was but he isn’t” or words to that effect. What? Bonus: this was the first place that had Dr. Pepper and not just Coke:

I got sort of turned around coming out on King’s Parade street and snapped a picture after I figured out I had been walking the wrong way:

Again, really scenic beautiful old city lane, totally random and no big deal thing.

So, I really have to get to bed now so I can wake up early enough to have a look at my readings and get to breakfast on time. I’ll try to remember to get a picture of the dining hall tomorrow, because it’s neat.

Reviresco!