Nearly homeless!

Okay, for those who are interested, here are links to pictures of the stuff that I ate! I asked one of my friends to write down the names so I could look them up, haha.

Dosa - the crepe thing filled with potato goop
Vada - a spicy bread thing that we dipped in different sauces
Lassi - the yogurty drink!
Gobi 65 - the bright orange, fried cauliflower

Now an interesting word about the paan. Turns out that I was spelling it wrong, first of all. Second of all, when I did manage to look it up I was horrified! Paan is a really nasty tobacco, carcinogenic chew that used to be popular in India but apparently is falling out of favor. It has something called areca nut in it that is ridiculously bad for you. Not only does it dye your teeth and mouth red, but it also has really high rates of cancer associated with its use -- even without throwing the tobacco in there! So I was a bit cranky that they had me try to eat that at first, but it turns out that most restaurants (finding the practice of chewing paan distasteful), serve a "virgin" version of it with mint and lime and a few other things all wrapped up in the betel leaf. Phew!!!

We ended up skipping the dubstep club simply because it was far away. We may try again when it is warmer out, because we hear the toilets are amazing. No joke, people on the internet will not stop talking about the "cool" toilets, so we will have to go see what that means, exactly. Hmm! Instead, we walked to Camden and followed our local residence hall stoner to some of his stomping grounds. We wound up at a café / bar / club thing (no entrance fee, therefore my new favorite place) halfway between Camden and Chalk Farm. The smell of weed hung in the air near the entrance, but once we squirmed our way through the crowd big fans were keeping the air fresh so that was nice. The artists performing advertised themselves as a trance-techno-synth group. I liked the music more than I suspected that I would! It was very much like stuff that Jen-Kuang, Kyle, and I used to do at the Zoo Bar or the conferences in Texas and Oklahoma. There was a pre-recorded (I assume) track rolling over the top that the performers were interacting with, banging on drums, using whistles, saw blades, etc, and a woman was either whispering or crooning Sanskrit into a mic with heavy effects, so the whole package came off as very cool. We were probably the youngest people in the place by about twenty years, but we still had a lot of fun. We got to pet a man's rottweiler puppy on the way out too, so that was a clear win. He was standing by the entrance smoking, high as a kite, just holding the dog's leash and smiling wanly. The dog was incredibly excited each time someone opened the door to leave the club and would run up to them wagging its nubbin, so naturally we had to stay and pet it for a good ten minutes. We considered trying to take it back with us to keep it forever -- most likely the guy wouldn't have minded that much! haha.

We have had some excitement here in the ole residence hall for the past couple days. Yesterday, I was washing some dishes when the water stopped working. I filled up a few bottles in my room with what water there was left, texted the vice warden to make sure he knew there was a problem, and then went to the gym. A fire hydrant had exploded across the street and was spraying water everywhere, so that solved the water mystery! I was only at the gym an hour or so, but it was already fixed when I came back. When I walked inside, the floor was squishy with water. Uh oh! The vice warden was running around frantically and wouldn't talk to any of us. It turns out that a guy living on the first floor (that is the second floor to people in the US) had been mystified by the lack of water and had cranked his taps all the way open, then given up and left for the afternoon. Wellll you can see where this story is leading. Sure enough, when the water came back on it overflowed and dominated poor Sanjiv's room just below! He said it started out as a trickle that he put a trash can underneath, but soon it was a waterfall, so he evacuated his electronics and watched from the hall. Even worse, his room is right next to all of the main electrical stuff in the house and the flood trashed some of the systems pretty well. Parts of the house no longer have heat or lighting, haha. But it also knocked out all of the smoke detectors in the house because they are rigged through one main panel! They didn't figure out the smoke detectors were gone until late in the afternoon, so they told us we should leave the house if possible and then made the poor vice warden patrol every twenty minutes through the entire house. All night long! Poor guy!

Since they told us to limit our time in the house, a few of us went to McDonald's, ate ice cream, played card games, and listened to several homeless guys rant about the USSR's role in WWII until we got kicked out at 2 am or something. When we woke up this morning, we were told that we were going to have to find another place to live for the next two days. I called some friends and they said I could stay with them, yay, but not everybody had that option, especially the students from China who have not made a lot of friends outside of the program. So the administrators said whoever couldn't find housing could come sleep on the floor of one of the other residence halls....great. A few people made a pretty big stink about this and demanded hotel rooms, plus compensation for food and inconvenience, and the next thing we knew we were told that we could actually spend the night, they were just going to post several security guards to patrol the building instead! I guess hiring people is cheaper than paying for hotel bills! I was pretty happy because if I was booted for two nights in a row, not only was I going to have to take enough stuff to last me through Saturday, but it meant that I would be sleeping on the floor for three nights + a couch two nights in Spain! That is a lot of uncomfortable sleeping for one week!

In the meantime, because I was planning on spending the night at a friend's house, we had schemed up some movie watching to do and figured we might as well do it anyway! I took a bus out to Finchley Central, a part of town in Zone 4 that I'd not been to previously. I followed her instructions from the station to her house, and was amazed how quickly a busy, fairly typical tube station bustling street faded away to trees! I walked along the side of the road without seeing any buildings for a few minutes, crossed a couple bridges, etc. She had told me that I needed to take a right after a big bridge, and I was getting nervous that I had missed it when suddenly through the rain I saw a gigantic viaduct! Here is some more information about it, it seems quite interesting! She lives in a proper neighborhood in a house, so that was kind of fun to see an English home. On the way back, I decided since it was late I'd rather take the tube and pay for the Zone 4 fare than try to get all the way back to the bus station, and I ended up at Mill Hill East. It was tiny! It was a tiny platform with a "waiting room" and everything -- very old school. It didn't even have ticket barriers! There is only one stop, because a train basically acts as a shuttle between Mill Hill East and Finchley Central, where I had initially arrived. Back in the day, the station was intended to connect the two portions of the northern line, but WWII had disrupted the building plans and after the war it had never been continued. I liked it because it was a quirky, old looking little place.

Tomorrow I'm going to Camden in the morning to work on a group project, and then making fancy cupcakes in the afternoon. Wednesday I'm going to a 3D conference thingy (I have no purpose in going other than to play with new gadgets...admission was free, so why not?), and then Wednesday night I am taking the bus to Stansted around 10 pm! I figured why pay £10 to wake up at 3:00 in order to get to the airport in the wee hours of the morning, when I could pay £2 to head there in the evening and sleep in relative comfort on the floor? haha. If I don't like it then I guess I'll have to default back to the 3 am thing. I wish all the cheap flights weren't the ones that were at balls o'clock, but I suppose that is why they are cheap.

This might be my last update until I get back from Spain on Saturday. I arrive Thursday morning and I have a few hours to entertain myself until Brad gets back from work. I looked at a map, and it would appear that the bus will drop me right next to the beach, so I'm gonna go hang out by the Mediterranean with a book and a bocadillo (sandwich) until the afternoon. Friday I'm dragging Brad to museums to see ancient Phoenician ruins and things, and then on Saturday we're taking a bus to a different beach somewhere! It should be fun!

Now I am getting quite sleepy, so I am afraid I must sign off. Au revoir!