Pescicure

When I first got to Brighton, I saw an ad online for a daily coupon website, and being a poor student, I figured it'd be a good idea to join. It hasn't given me much I can work with so far--it's not like a two-pounds-off kind of deal; it's more like give us a bunch of money and have twice as much money to spend at this particular establishment, most of which I have no need for. But I did get a deal on one of those fishy pedicures, so I thought that would be quite a lot of fun.

I went yesterday to the spa--it's called Asase Garra Rufa, and it's very new and cute. First  my feet got rinsed and dried in a little foot shower, to keep the doctor fish healthy, then I got some little paper slippers to walk over to the tank.

I think the lady was trying to tell me to sit on the bench, then slowly lower my feet into the tank, but sliding onto a bench is kind of hard when there's a tank in front of it, so I kind of slipped and my feet splashed quickly into the water. I almost fell in and squashed some little fishies. Typical. Anyway, they didn't seem to mind too much, as they swarmed my feet immediately and started nibbling away.

It's kind of an interesting sensation, as you'd expect. It feels like a bunch of little toothpicks are gently prodding at your skin, then it starts to kind of tingle, because there are so many bitey fish down there. I'm not sure if very ticklish people would be able to tolerate it. I was a little afraid that since my snow boots have been kind of cutting into the back of my ankle lately that it would start to sting a bit when they found that part, and it did, but not much. Towards the end I was lifting my ankle out of the water every time one of the fish got to it, though. If you do this, I recommend not having any scrapes, scratches, or cuts on you, since it wouldn't be pleasant to have those eaten.  Do remember to spread your toes for a while, though. I tried that out and felt them get right in there for fresh skin. I considered sticking a finger or two in the water to see if they'd eat my hand skin, but I figured the owner wouldn't like that too much, so I didn't. I'm sure they would, though. They were eating my legs as far as they were in the tank.

For 30 minutes I sat and watched the fish, drank a cup of coffee, and did some reading for one of my papers. The ad was kind of misleading, as it seemed to be saying that I would get a proper pedicure afterwards, with filing and polish, etc., but that was not the intention of the establishment--fish only. I'm inclined to think that's more a mistake on the part of the website's (awful) writers than the spa itself. At the end, I could notice a major difference in the quality of my skin--this is much better than those things you scrape your feet with, and it feels like a massage, too.

Birth-Giving

Being again outside of the States for Thanksgiving, and being poor and busy as I am, I almost decided to scrap it this year. But then Ed pointed out to me how sad I would be without it, especially given it's my birthday holiday, so I figured I could at least do Mini-Thanksgiving this year. Luckily, I had a Generous Benefactor to help me out with food-buying. It wasn't as expensive this year as in Korea, though, thankfully. All ingredients were readily available (except it being late in the pumpkin season, it was a little hard to find a fresh one, but Ed came through), and no more expensive than any other food, plus I was only cooking for two, rather than like twenty. Thanksgiving is on a Thursday every year (the 25th this year), but that's not feasible in other countries, especially since I have school all day Thursday. We decided to do it on the following Sunday, the day after my birthday. Friday evening was spent shopping and making pumpkin pies from scratch (yeah, crust AND filling from scratch), since those take longer than most other things. I'd made the pumpkin puree for the filling earlier in the week. It's cool.

For my birthday, I had my choice of breakfast cooked for me, which was sausage, eggs, toast, and a mocha, then a lazy morning and early afternoon, then a sudden realization of how late it was getting, and a rush to get to London before the science museum closed. We were supposed to also go to the natural history museum, but I was keen all along to the fact that we could never possibly have a nice laze about AND go to two museums. Right. Even with eliminating one of them, we only had under 90 minutes in the science museum before getting corralled out. It was a nice museum (it's FREEEEEEEE), and I need to get back to czech out some other shit we missed. Nothing will ever compare to the Boston Science Museum, though. Le sigh...

After the museum we killed some time walking around and looking at all the windows in the shops. It was cold, and we wanted to go IN the shops, but for some reason London is a retard, and everything except Harrods was closed. I kind of wanted to go in there, because the window displays looked really cool, and it might have some cool stuff to look at inside, I don't know. But it was mobbed, so bad idea. At seven we had a reservation at a French restaurant called Racine. Ed had a very nice experience with his food, with some sort of autumn salad starter and lamb, I think. I had a crab bisque starter, which was not what I expected, and which was too salty for me too finish. My entree was partridge with some sort of (maybe cheesy?) veggie thing wrapped in a leaf. The leaf thing was really good, but I wasn't liking the partridge. It started to taste mediciney and just really weird, and then my gin started tasting off, too. how strange. Ed did not call ahead to tell them it was my birthday, a wise decision, but he joked that he did.

All day he was trying to get me to think that he didn't get me any presents--or rather, that he did, but I knew what they were, which was a pie tin and a casserole dish, which I needed to make Thanksgiving. He also kept trying to tell me he'd gotten me a black licorice cake, and basically I'd rather die than eat black licorice cake, if even such a thing exists. What a bastard. Anyway, I knew that the cake part was total bullshit, but I had to admit that for very fleeting moments I was slightly concerned that I wouldn't be getting any presents, considering he'd bought me the cooking stuff, and a whole barrage of food, and took me out to London, which is exactly what he wanted me to be concerned about, so la di da.

Back at home, he kept it up for a while, giving me the casserole dish to open (pie tin had already been used). But eventually he had one of those A Christmas Story moments--say, what's that over there behind the Christmas tree? I think you missed one, Ralphie.

It's a cake! I had asked for the chocolatiest chocolate that ever chocolated, and it was delivered. Ed had a nice little chuckle at his cleverness in terms of the writing.

Then the Christmas Story moment continued, and I got my Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle in the form of things I actually like.


This is a Mameshiba pen, with an edamame bean. This is something I discovered in Japan, and definitely included in my Korea blog. Look it up on YouTube. It's hilarious.

This is probably the best present anyone ever got me. It's a tiny jar filled with watch parts. It's especially good for me, because I like containers, small models of things, and gears. It's amazing.

Here's the jar with the casserole dish, for perspective:

Here's another container, which is stackable and varying shades of green, which I like. I put stuff in it.

This is a Mameshiba pencil case, and is awesome. It has many layers:

Note the facial expression of the one on the left, and also the bean that looks like it peed itself. HAHAHAHA.

This is a Pikachu lunch box. It has two containers in it, which are stackable, and one fits inside the other when they're empty. The rubber band holds it all together, and make it Pirate Pikachu. Pirachu. Pikachirate.

Pikachu is.

Tackling the cake was quite difficult. First I took off the top disc of chocolate, then stabbed it right down the middle to help me cut through. I wish my camera focused better.

The cake was pretty tall to eat like that, and was taller than my mouth, but I managed to actually accomplish bites like this by starting at the soft bottom, running my lower teeth through until I got to the middle, at which point I could get my top teeth over the top and finish the bite. Yeah. I'm getting a haircut on Thursday, don't worry.

Cake debris:

It's now over two weeks later, and I've only just finished this cake, but still actually have a little container full of the chocolate bits. It's pretty rich.

So Sunday was The Big Day. Ed helped me all day with cooking, and it took us seven hours to finish. The menu was as follows: a duck (Ed prefers it, and I haven't had duck in a while), stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, broccoli and rice casserole, gravy, squash, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie for dessert. My mom said that wasn't mini, but there were several things I would have had in a full Thanksgiving meal which didn't make it.

I'm realizing now that there's no picture of the pies (I made three, one for us, and two for my classmates, whom I'd promised I'd bring something for my birthday and our last class). I'm pretty sure I took one, so maybe it got lost in a vortex between the camera and the adapter and the computer. DAMmit'AH.

Anyway, Ed seemed pleased with it, and I'd cooked enough for something like eight meals, so we each had leftovers for several days. Now that I'm writing about it and looking at pictures, though, I want more Thanksgiving. I should make some stuffing again. That stuffing is The Shit.

Speaking of traditional dinners, I went out for my first English Sunday roast at a pub yesterday, which was smaller than I thought, but still decent. Ed said it wasn't a very good example of a roast, though, so I should wait to blog about it until we have one that he says is good. I will say that I was quite shocked and dismayed to find that Yorkshire pudding is not sweet or gelatinous, and is in fact a solid, empty, bowl made out of a bread product. It's like those awful chocolate eggs that my dad used to get us for Easter--they sort of seem like Cadbury eggs, but when you bite into them, it's just shitty American chocolate on the outside and NOTHING on the inside.

Brighton: Closed for Snow

So when I wrote that it was snowing, it actually continued snowing for two or three days after that. The whole city, and wherever the hell else it snowed in England, shut down. They were not prepared. I was quite surprised by it, actually. I would have thought snow was common. But Ed said it snowed once last year, and before that it had been like ten years. Holy schnikes.

Ed took this picture of his steps before we left his house on Thursday:

I had stayed with Ed on Wednesday night, and was slip-sliding my way to the bus stop in my tractionless Filas (my snow boots had a problem with shredding the backs of my heels at the time, so I wasn't wearing them). But when I got to the bus stop, I read that the buses were only running on a very limited basis. Another student was there and she called the info line and found that none of the buses would be going as far as my campus, and that the rail service would be shut all day, as well. D'oh. I considered taking one of the buses that went to a campus a couple miles from mine, and then taking a taxi (with construction, snow, and other factors, walking would have been impossible), but I didn't want to spend the money. So I ended up getting Ed's keys from him at his work and holing up at his place all day, pissed that I couldn't go home and work on my current paper properly. I ended up still being able to work on it some, since most of my major sources I had in emails from my teacher, but since it's harder to read all that material online, and it didn't have all my highlighting and notes on it, the work was slow-going, and I didn't get much done. We were supposed to have our last session of the class the paper is for that day, too, but the whole campus (along with all the other campi) was closed and all classes cancelled.

I told Ed when he got home that I'd had a dance party, written my name on all his stuff, and licked all his food while he was gone. That second one still strikes me funny here and there. I also described the famous Tom Cruise scene from Risky Business and said I'd done that, but I don't think he got it.

Anyway, the bus service to my campus started back up again at 4 (I kept the up-to-the-minute info website on all day), but by then I really didn't feel like going home, so I stayed until the next morning and had to get up wicked early to make it back to campus for work at 9am. By the way, I got a job. I'm a computer helper at the computer poolroom in the library next to my dorm. It's an easy job. I just sit there at a computer and wait for people to have problems, most of which I can't solve, so I either get help from my pseudo-bosses in the Information Services office, or tell them to ask their teacher (or whoever is appropriate). I also fill the printers with paper and lock up teaching rooms (for some reason they don't call them classrooms here. That boggles me.) for the night. Can you believe I get paid the equivalent of over $12 an hour to pretty much study or do what I want online for a four hour shift a couple times a week? What a great country.

But I digress. The point I'm trying to make here is that this (part of the, question mark?) country is a total pansy when it comes to snow. Even though it snowed for two days, the total accumulation was only about six inches, as far as I could tell. That's just silly. Also, trains run on rails. There doesn't seem to be any way that extremely light snow could interfere with the operation of one of those guys. I can understand having trouble getting staff in, if there are few buses running and it's dangerous to drive, but surely some employees would have been available and able to show up. The only trains that were going in this whole section of the island were between London and two suburbs close to it. Blargh.


Ed's street:

I had wanted to have a snowball fight or build a snowman or something when he got home from work, but it was so damn dark by then, that it would have been hard. He suggested sledding (sledging), since he lives on a hill, but then all the ideas were thrown away due to his "manflu," which I think is just a cold. I said we could do all that next time, but he said it's likely there won't be a next time. That's kind of sad.

Also, it rained on Friday for like a whole day, and all the snow melted. 

The End.

Snow

Dude, it's like totally snowing here, right now, in November. Double ewe, tea, eff.

Remember, Remember

November 5th is Guy Fawkes Day over here, which we should all be familiar with, at the very least through watching V for Vendetta. So I won't explain it or give you the little gunpowder treason rhyme. They just call it Bonfire Night over here now, though, I guess similar to Americans generally referring to Independence Day as the Fourth of July, but for reasons more related to activity than date, of course. 

Happily, the 5th was on a Friday this year (not that it matters to me, not having to ever be anywhere before 11 as I do), and I had a date to the festivities in Lewes, a few miles from my campus. This event was put on by several bonfire societies from the town, and each society had its own parade through the streets, and there were several bonfire sites for later in the evening, as well, some free, some with an admission charge. Admission charges for the bonfires in Lewes and for others in Brighton, Hove, and other nearby cities ran from five to fourteen pounds, which I find outrageous (it's pants, question mark?).

Anyway, when planning this whole thing, Ed said the line (queue) for the trains was going to be wicked long, and I suggested we take the bus (since I have a bus pass already bought for each week). He said no go, the roads would be closed for everything, and it's a two hour walk from my campus, etc. So on Friday I took my longish bus ride and walk to the Brighton train station near his house, where there were, as expected, hordes of enthusiastic pyromaniacs, and Ed was waiting in a long line to get to a ticket vending machine. He was not pleased with this, and suggested we take the bus instead. It was like one of those "What an excellent idea I've just had, Smithers" "But Mr. Burns, I--aw, yes, great idea..." moments. Except I didn't allow him the credit and then later when the bus that we so easily and quickly caught passed by my campus, he felt bad for making me waste time with such a dumb plan in the first place. And well he should have.

The bus took us right to Lewes, and we just had a little walk to get to some stuff happening. That stuff included torches (not flashlights), getting ready for and beginning parades (processions), and what people seemed to be calling "bangers" (not to be confused with the bangers that go with M*A*S*H. I assume).

We were sitting atop a wall that was less than five feet high on the side we boarded from, but which was significantly higher on the back side, as it dropped down into a little parking lot (car park) behind us. I was scared, but it was a good vantage point to see an intersection of two roads. On one side, people were pulling a bunch of stuff into the road, like this totem pole, to be part of the parade, and in the rest of the area, there were a lot of fire and becostumed (befancy dressed) people doing stuff and carrying things.

I don't remember what the significance of the obelisk is. I think I figured it out from a banner or Ed told me later, but now I'm not sure. Feel free to comment if you know. 

A Guy. He is very sad because he failed.

After a bit where we were got boring, so we wandered around (about?) and found High Street, which was the main blah blah. Soon there were more parades with more burning, more banners and standards (bandards), and some floats and floatlike items.

War:

This float recognizes a hospital's help in the celebrations. Note how even Death gets a spot on it, as an important role he plays.

Burning crosses do not have the same significance in England as they do in the States, FYI:

There were a lot of fiery wheelbarrows being wheeled to their respective bonfires. Ed said it was like they were saying, "Don't worry, folks, we've got plenty of stuff to burn." It amuses.

Obama float. There was some BP-related action going on here and there through the night.

Also, I never got a picture of any of them, but there were quite a lot of "No Popery" signs being paraded around, and the phrase befuddled me for a while, until I bothered to look at the root word, and also was close enough and could see through the smoke well enough to see derisive cartoons of the ol' pope. Popery is an awesome word.

Bonfires were scheduled to start going around 9:30, so after looking at the maps and getting kind of lost for a while, we eventually made it to one of the free sites, where we had some doughnuts and I fell trying to scale a small but muddy hill. BOOOO-urns. Anyway, the fire was massive, but there were no marshmallows. There was a fireworks display that was pretty cool right next to the fire.

When the fireworks ended, our sort-of plan was to try and get onto the last bus leaving from Lewes, but that plan was shot when we saw hundreds of millions of people waiting in line for what we were told by officials were only two city buses. The next plan was to walk back to my campus (or close enough to it to get a different bus), but after we'd been walking for like twenty minutes and had only barely gotten out of the whole scene, it started raining quite steadily, and it became not as feasible to walk for two hours with no umbrella and not-waterproof clothes. We tried calling a cab, but they were only picking up from specific points around the city, so we went back, trying and failing along the way to hail a cab. It's not really New York here. On the way back into city center (centre) there were still people marching and playing music in the street, and it was like midnight by then. They must have been tired.

Somehow our plan got muddled when we thought about going to the nearby train station to see if we could get a cab there, and saw what should have been a prohibitively long line waiting for trains that were scheduled to continue running until everyone was gone. We got into this what should have been a prohibitively long and which turned out to be even longer than we thought line, and waited amongst the most annoying drunken British (redundant, Ed said, as I recall) chicks ever. After a while I had to shut myself down so as to prevent a surge of American violence. We waited in that line for like, ever, man. And the whole damn line was outside in the rain. It took until the next evening for my jacket to dry, even after blow-drying it for a while in the afternoon. The trains ended up being free, though, to my surprise. I guess they figured a lack of chaos was preferable to tons of money.

So yeah, Bonfire Night, man. It's cool, although Ed said this massive affair is unusual. Maybe if I'm around next year I'll see something more traditional.