catch-up london style, #5

i hopped across the pond just over a week ago, and finally have the interwebs at home again. meet the catch-up post, dated for your (my) convenience.

le 6 octobre 2012 (evening)

i’m sick now, battling the flu and other infections. my immune system has finally shut down now that i’m basically settled in, so i’m lying in bed with a hot water bottle, an extra sweater, and a mug of herbal tea at my side. this also marks six days in a row that the baby in the adjoining house is screaming its wee head off. seriously, i’m torn between confronting the parents (not fair, i realize, as the baby may have colic) and just never having children of my own. maybe i’ll just adopt a toddler rather than a newborn. i have the wailin’ jennys on in an attempt to drown it out, but it’s unfortunately not working very well. sigh.

so my day began with a bus ride to highgate to meet up with my friend (find her blog here), which it turns out is right across from jackson's lane, where i saw a physical theatre children’s show four years ago. it’s also home to ripping yarns, a used bookshop that specializes in children’s books, and several cute independent shops. meet my new pillow, which was from souvenir, an independent shop for local handmade gifts.

i haven’t named it yet, but it’s quite cosy, and makes my room feel more like a home oddly.

we checked out a photography exhibit on london gay icons at jackson’s lane after a stop into the bank and a brief lunch at a bakery on the high street (i had ginger beer and split a chocolate pear tart with my friend…the last thing that i ate today). then we walked on until we were out of highgate, and caught a bus to brick lane and shoreditch. i was very quickly losing steam, so we stopped in at the high tea market for coffee and tea (the drink, not the meal). by the time we finished there, it was getting quite late, so we headed back to find buses in our respective directions. i was guaranteed at least an hour and a half travel regardless, so i ended up going all the way to finsbury park to catch a bus home. only two buses, which was my concern, but they took ages regardless. finsbury park is not the most fun place to be once it gets dark, especially when you’re presenting female, alone, and not feeling well. normally i’m fine to act confident in dodgy areas, but that goes out the window once i’m sick. eventually i got sorted and found the bus stop home.

i got back to our high street just as boots (the pharmacy – kind of on par with shoppers) closed. luckily there was another chemist across the street, although i suspect it’s more expensive. didn’t matter, as i didn’t have any other choice at that point. i got what i needed, came home, put on the kettle, and called home to cry a bit and ask about what drugs to take for a potential flu. i’m staying in tonight, and sleeping as soon as my flatmate comes home and i can grab some tylenol from her, and will spend tomorrow indoors as well. good excuse to get some reading done, and perhaps an epsom salt bath. 

catch-up london style, #2

i hopped across the pond just over a week ago, and finally have the interwebs at home again. meet the catch-up post, dated for your (my) convenience.

le 3 octobre 2012

today was our registration day, and it was both boring as can be and incredibly exciting. most of our class was there, and we all hung out for lunch afterwards. my laugh has already become infamous (the snort very quickly came out, unsurprisingly), and a classmate has commissioned a cowl. go me :) of course, i’m also extremely low on funds, so i may have to wait to pick up the yarn. sigh. meeting with the estate agent in a short while to finally sign the papers, and i have a student card, which is apparently good for all sorts of discounts.

one of the things i’m most excited about is the library. we have 40,000 books solely about performance right on campus, plus loads of digital material and journals. and another library with 2 million next door to the british museum (we have to go early in the morning to register with them). i picked up one of my reading requirements, but an even more exciting find was “exercises for rebel artists: radical performance pedagogy” by guillermo gomez-pena and roberto sifuentes. i’ll probably hunt down a used copy for myself at some point, but in the meantime, i have a month to get through it.

some interesting things about london that people back home might be interested to know:

-there’s a store called argos, and it’s basically a supply-and-demand design. you walk in, search through a catalogue for things you need (i.e. bedding, toys, furniture…think sears, but in catalogue form). you write down the numbers of items you want, pay for them, and then they’re delivered to you from the back warehouse. it’s bizarre, and kind of brilliant, because you’re less likely to pick up extra crap that you don’t need. on a side note, the flatmate and i are going to ikea on friday. i’m sure the extra crap there will more than make up for argos.

-you can’t get a phone contract without a uk-based bank card. you can’t get a bank card for 7-15 business days after signing up for an account. internet takes 5-7 work days to set up. everything in the uk seems to take ages to sort out, and the country is paranoid about identity theft. it’s all a bit absurd. luckily i have a home address, because otherwise everything would take even longer to sort out. 

more planning

i'm making another eye pillow, this time for my best friend back in the prairies. she and i have been best friends since high school, and have supported each other through too many situations to count. she's also one of the few people i stay in regular contact with despite the distance and time since we've lived in the same city. some of our mutual loves include tea, yoga, books, and holistic healing. anytime one of us is dealing with life stuff, we talk to one another and the temporary solution is always 'do some yoga, read a good book (often 'cunt' by inga muscio), and drink herbal tea.' here's my brainstorming for her eye pillow embroidery design:

i haven't decided whether to fill in the teacup yet or not, but the colour scheme will definitely be in the warmer tones.

date someone who reads

a year or so ago, my friend put a quote as her facebook status. another friend then hunted down the article from whence it came. my twin and i both burst into tears after reading it, because we'd always been the "girls" who read. i share it now with you. the blog it is found on, art of transliness, is also pretty neat, if you desire some further reading.

date a girl who reads

as the holidays descend around us and people are rushing to find gifts, consider gifting a book - a collection of poetry, a DIY manual, something from an alternative publishing company or local author. or perhaps even better, gift a journal. i'm especially partial these days to filling her words compilation books with quotes/lyrics/thoughts/recipes/doodles for special folks and giving them as gifts.

food for thought

anyone who knows me knows i have a lot of opinions, particularly when it comes to food. i advocate for local food and food suppliers (i.e. the farmer's market over Stupidstore), organic whenever possible (although i choose uncertified local over certified shipped-from-west-coast-united-states), veg over meat (but i have more respect for responsible omnivores than vegans who eat processed GMO-soy products), seasonal over imported (even though i love mangos, avocados, bananas, coconut...), healthy over processed (despite cravings...). i guess what i'm saying is, food is complicated. even if you ignore more complex issues like obesity, anorexia, bulimia, "i'm just not hungry these days", "i'm on a detox/diet/my doctor told me", choosing what to eat is not as simple as "i want to eat this, therefore i'll eat it." anyone who says otherwise is either deluding themself or doesn't understand the many ways our everyday nutritional choices impact the world we live in.

i just finished reading "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. he also happens to be the author of my all-time favourite book, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" (which has apparently been made into a movie...i'm undecided as to whether i'll see it or not). foer is a jewish-american who lives in brooklyn. he is also now a father, and his son's birth is what pushed him and his wife to total vegetarianism, after years of kinda-sorta-most-of-the-time. foer started looking into the meat industry in order to decide whether he could justify feeding his new child meat. the current western society doesn't exactly advocate veg diets for newborns. however, as he kept meeting with resistance from the industry to be able to see for himself the animals he would potentially be feeding to his son, foer started digging deeper. the result is a beautifully and intelligently written expose into the meat industry, in both his words, the words of animal rights advocates, and the words of meat industry workers. he talks to small-scale farmers, factory farm workers (who always remain anonymous), auditors, PETA members, vegans who build slaughterhouses, vegetarians who run ranches, and the only certified heritage poultry farmer whose turkeys can still fly.

foer makes a lot of good points in his book, backed by piles of facts, that would lead a lot of people to the conclusion that going veg is the only option to avoid unnecessary cruelty towards livestock. it's not an argument for vegetarianism though, and that's the beauty of foer's argument. if you know 100% where your animal products and by-products are coming from, how the animals are treated throughout their lives and throughout their slaughter and processing, and can still justify eating them, then do it. i'm lucky in that regard with where i currently live - we have a vibrant agricultural community, with farmers whose locations you can travel to (easily if you have a car, not so easily if you travel by foot as i do, semi-easily if you bike on the highway) and who are willing to speak openly to people about their animals. the cheese man at the market was honest when he told me that in order to make his gouda, he needed rennet, and the only option was to kill a calf. it meant losing me as a customer, but i appreciate that he was open about it, and i can easily visit his farm and see the cheese-making process at any time should i desire it. we also have a lot of legumes easily grown in the region, and a local supplier makes their own tofu from organic soybeans.

where do i stand when it comes to food? i think that, so long as you do your homework and understand what your decisions mean in terms of local and global impact, you have the right to be an omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, or whatever else you decide. if you're going to stop eating meat but source your protein from processed products that decimate the Amazon with GMO-soybean crops, i'm probably going to ream you out the next time you attack someone buying a buffalo steak from the local farmer.

why does this matter? because eventually i hope to open a cafe, and the food we serve there may have an impact on you, should you choose to eat there. what we choose to serve can open up a world of discussion and reflection, and possibly change the way a person eats. so will the cafe be vegan, veg, offer meat, choose local or organic, offer cheesecake or "cheese"cake? the decision will have to be made via consensus, as it will be a co-op, but from my perspective, meat itself probably won't be served. it's expensive, and at this point too difficult to track to ensure the entire process is cruelty-free 100% of the time. what about eggs, dairy, goat milk? it will have to depend on where we are and what kind of local farming is around us, but i think that if we co-op members can't see, with our own eyes, the process from animal to shelf, we won't serve it. i'm not willing to risk the standard of a chicken's life for eggs when all my baking is currently vegan anyway. and i'm certainly not about to use antibiotic-laced milk from a suffering cow when i can get hemp milk from a field two hours away. it's a question of morals, and sharing food means potentially having to explain those morals. if i can't stomach the way something was processed, how can i expect customers to stomach my fare?