1st Round

I've managed to bullshit my way to over 2000 words in one essay and more than 3000 in another, through unknown & hostile postmodernist territory. I've mastered the technique of using 200 words to say what could be conveyed in 20, and repeating the same idea in different words till exhausting all possible synonyms. I've extended, inserted, lengthened, dilated, broadened, widened, swollen the text, injected its flesh with rapid-growth hormones and water.

I have earned my Black Belt 3rd Dan in the martial art of bullshitting.

I have also earned my freedom. Now the future lies ahead of me like a naked virgin's warm lascivious body, like a newly opened all-u-can-eat candy store, like a theme park glittering in the sun. What next? Where to go? What to do? Seemingly endless possibilities swarm my eager disposition, leaving me adrift in a hazy rotating kaleidoscope of desires.

The bell's ringing the end of the 1st round, and I'm still on my feet. Now for some time off before tackling the 2nd one.

House arrest

I'm a hermit. A prisoner. A castaway. For the past... --what? 16? 17 days? I've lost count-- few people have caught sight of me. I picture myself scratching a count of passing days on my cell wall.

I've measured my room and hallway so many times and with such precision, I could draw it to scale eyes closed. 4 and a half steps from my door to the opposing wall. Turn on my heels, 4 & 1/2 to the door, 7 to reach the fridge, 7 back and start again, book in my hand, a black cloud hovering over my head.

I've munched enough BS in the last days to last me two lifetimes. Scholarly literary criticism on modern fiction is full of manure so concentrated that, sparingly used, every page could fertilize half an acre for a year. One important lesson I've learned, I can share with you: when you reach the third use of the word "postmodernism", it's time to drop the book & chuck it in the bin.

Nothing coming after that will make the meagrest sense or be of any remote value whatsoever, to you or anyone else on this planet, with the one exception of the skunkhead dimwit who wrote it and will make a name for himself in the academia through an impressive pages-of-bullshit-in-print (POBSIP) figure. The more you read, the less you will understand. Learn from my mistake, spare yourself the pain and confusion.

Ok, the break is over. Now I'm going back to my cell, but I feel the first rays of hope playfully glittering in my eyes. In 4 days it will all be over. See you on the 27th.

Show me the money

£380 per month keep me out of the cold and the rain, and provide me with a latrine, a kitchen, broadband internet and two flatmates

£9.10 per week give me access to being shaken to senselessness in any amount of picturesque yet infernal red double-decker buses, for one week. They won't buy me access to the dreary rat tunnels under London, though

£5.00-£10.00 will furnish me with a jacket, pair of pants, shirt or indeed pretty much any other item of clothing at Primark

£2.20-£3.50 are the brackets for the usual amount I'm forced to fork out for a pint of lager in any pub/club

£1 is a pint of Carlsberg at the Goldsmiths Student Union pub on Tuesdays, or any 500ml can at an off-license store after 10pm

£1.10 gets me more pasta than I can eat in a week

£0.70 I can swap for a half-kilo jar of yummy pasta sauce

£0.30 provides me with 800gr of Tesco Value sliced bread

£0.10 I get subtracted for each minute of senseless mobile gossip and every 160 chars of text

£0.07 will buy me a sachet of Instant Noodles. (Sainsbury's Basics or ASDA SmartPrice. No relation to James Bond movies)

£0.01 I find on the ground every now and then. Nobody bothers to pick up pennies except me

£0.00 is what I pay for the fireworks I see every single night

£priceless living in London is.

Unhomeless. Homeful?

Exactly 30 days after arriving in London, I took possession of my room in a shared flat. I am no longer a hostel inmate.

I changed this:



For this:


No more girls going bonkers, throwing bottles at people, painting swastikas on the walls and being arrested by the police. No more rumbling earthquaking snoring from room-mates. No more Swedish nutcases stealing people's shoes and food. No more foot-and-ass massage from the thundering boom of the loudspeakers in the pub downstairs. No more drunken people snoring sprawled on the sofa. No more sharing everything, no more lack of privacy.

I wouldn't have thought I would miss hostel life. Yet I do. I miss meeting a different bunch people every day, the long legendary conversations into the morning, the instant improvised parties, the precious nuggets of experience I found in everyone.

It's good, having my own place. My own desk, my own bed, my own space. But the time I've spent in hostels, I cherish.

Overbooked

Two weeks of no news is good news. Too busy to bother is good.

My agenda overflows, brims over with appointments, like a girl's suitcase would with clothes. I run from place to place like a madman with his hair on fire. I have a hard time finding time to fart in.

Many of those appointments are academic in nature, with classes every day, sometimes interspersed, and a weird scattered patchy timetable.

Then there's the social aspect. Societies take quite a lot of time, and I'm only in two of them! I can't imagine joining another one at this time.

Yet I must confess that the reasons for which my days end at 6am are more of a cheery beerful nature. I down a 44cl sixpack a night on average, in the best atmosphere and the company of some the most amazing guys on this planet. Most of my calorie intake is probably from fermented barley.

As I already said once upon a time, please stay tuned through yet another commercial break.

Snow in October

"Is it always foggy here?"
"Oh, not at all! Only when it's not raining..."
-- from Asterix chez les Bretons

There's supposed to be nothing more British than talking about the weather. No surprise, as there's so much of it going on all the time. As "the Eskimos have 100 words for snow", the British certainly have quite a few words for rain.

I've had drizzles and spits and showers. I've seen it mizzling and sprinkling and pouring down. And I know more downpours and deluges and squalls are on the way. I've had rain and fog enough to last me one year, and I've only been here 45 days.

Today, I woke up to a grey new day. I walked out into a cloud. As soon as I was engulfed in it, this sentence came to my mind:

"Fog so thick you can't see your dick"

Wearing glasses is bad enough. Wearing glasses in the mist is pointless. Half a minute and I can't see where I'm stepping. It's just as well if I don't wear them.

When it's not misty it's because it's too windy for the water to stay suspended in the air for too long. Sometimes it's windy and dry and so cold it feels like you're walking through a cloud of razorblades. A few days ago, it snowed. It was quick and didn't last long on the ground. But it snowed. In October.

And in the midst of all this, while I wear two wool caps and shiver my way to and fro like a wet mole, semi-naked loonies in reflective vests jog on the streets, zigzagging among the chaotic traffic and the crowds of commuters, huffing and puffing and steaming away into the all-engulfing grey haziness. Tic-tic-tic, ils sont fous, ces Bretons.

101 Dalmatian posts

Popp!! Fssschssshhhhh...

That was the merry uncorking of a king-sized bottle of Champagne, celebrating Island Hopping's 100th post.

Long and short, dense and watered-down, of all shapes and sizes, locations and subjects, pure texts or images, these one hundred (and one) posts give this blog a nice, uniquely spotted Dalmatian coat.

Disclaimer: no dogs were harmed during the making of this blog.

Who's afraid of the big bad essay?

You might be wondering what the hell it is I'm actually studying here in London. I have 4 subjects/modules this year:

1. Shakespeare. A full year of Shakespeare. Just Shakespeare. That should be time enough for studying in minute detail every single last napkin he ever cared to scribble on, every single one of his shopping lists and love letters. But here there is just a one-hour lecture per week, so we're concentrating on a few plays. It's potentially both interesting and boring. Yet, as of now, it's just plain scary.

Essays. The very word makes me want to do the Homer: yell, throw my hands in the air, run, slam the door, start the engine & vanish with a screech of burning tyres.

2. Modern American Fiction. Got it just in time, exchanging it for a much nastier and boring subject (Approaches to Text, shudder). Looks awfully promising. When I saw, at last, Science Fiction treated as literature, I knew I had to get this one. On the downside, assessment is also by scary essays (shudder, shudder)

3. Translation for Professional Purposes. Two way translation between English and Spanish, with specialized topics (legal, environmental, IT, etc). Very, very interesting, and quite easy for me on the Eng-Sp front. Sp-Eng might prove trickier. Still a walk in the park in comparison to the above.

4. Writing Fiction - Advanced. Creative Writing, that is. Yes. Ohh yes. Yes, yes, yes. I can't believe it's a subject as such, one that I can even get credits for. It's such a pleasure that it's difficult to believe, it feels quite out of place.

And as of now, apart from these courses, I'm attending tutorials and a course on essay writing. The big bad essay is coming. He'll huff, and he'll puff and he'll want to blow my house in. I'm gathering bricks as fast as I can.

Sordid details

At Dover Castle Hostel, mice ate my cheese. I left my food in a plastic bag under the bed. During the night, I heard noises and cursed my room-mates for it. In the morning, I ate my food and was surprised that I had eaten so much of the cheese already. Then I realized the whole wrapper was gnawed through and the plastic bag had huge holes in it. Then I saw the mouse in the kitchen. It stopped, looked at me and went as close to laughing his contempt at me as a mouse can ever do: he wrinkled his nose, moved his whiskers twice, then scurried away.

On my first night in London, and during my first party, my much-loved black jumper burned to ashes. Bloody decorative candles on tables. I suddenly saw it on the floor while a girl was energetically stamping on it as if on a very stoic cockroach. This isn't funny at all, I thought. Turns out it was in flames and she was trying to save it from complete combustion. Too late.

I found a room in a shared flat I really liked. I loved the area, the room and the views. The two girls seemed good company, and the price was affordable. Everything seemed quite perfect. But they decided to "go with someone else". Take that, ego.

London weather got me. I caught a nasty cold on the 4th day. Living in hostels is definitely tough on my health. In summer, they'll have the air conditioning on and I'll freeze while some guys sleep naked. In winter, some guys will continue to sleep naked and keep the window open, while I shiver inside my cocoon of thick fabric. In the morning, I will emerge from my cocoon, not as a butterfly, but still as a coughing pneumoniac caterpillar.

Interesting Times

Let's have a party. Do you know these people? No? Well, this is Jamaica. See Poland talking to India? Oh, hello Greece. Oh, and Bulgaria, of course, how are you? Sri Lanka, great to see you! How's it goin', Barbados? Have you seen Taiwan? Oh, talking to Ghana, is she? Hey there Japan! Oh, Italy, meet Luxembourg and Switzerland. France, these are Spain and Norway. Australia's over there, talking to The States. Here come Brazil and Chile, and trailing them is born-in-Germany-half-Ghana-half-Lebanon. She speaks Mandarin too. Zambia, Korea, Finland, Mexico, Philippines, Denmark... Right. Ok, now we're all together. Let's have some beers. And then some more. And more.

Now, tell me. Tell me what it's like to work on the oil rigs in Nigeria and on the fields of Kazakhstan, tell me about running down the slope of an active volcano, tell me about politics in India and what it feels like to be a radio star in Asia. Tell me what you saw in Zanzibar, how you cruised the Caribbean and sailed through the storm in New Caledonia, survived pneumonia in China and civil war in South America, got rich at a casino in Yemen and spent it all in Djibouti to arrive penniless in Alaska. But let's change the subject. You could tell me about writing scripts and articles and books and about animation and design and sculpture and drama and sociology and psychology. And about working and living and studying and breathing and seeing and learning and tasting and loving and sharing. Tell me about you.

Tell me about courage and pride and the need to survive, about pleasure ecstatic and pain mortifying. Tell me of friendship and love, of magic and awe, of the beauty within every living thing. Now tell me of tragedy and misery, of pain and suffering, and tell me how you rebelled and fought and broke out, how you grew over it and then brushed it off, flapped your wings and flew away in the sky over the sea towards the setting sun.

May you live in interesting times. They say it's a curse. For the one chopping and mixing the stories, so far it's been a blessing.

Note: This is all true. In the same sense that a fruit salad is all fruit. Ingredients: some of the people I've met in the last 10 days, and a few of their stories. Chop into small pieces and mix. Decorate. Serve cold. Allergy advice: Contains nuts.