A lot of wind:

Currently I am reading about wind energy in the UK, where it is a much larger deal than in the US. It's actually required that all energy companies buy a certain amount of their electricity from certified renewable generators.

If anyone wants to read this and summarise the parts on wind energy by COB tomorrow, you would be my best friend. I'm trying, but my eyes keep glazing over and I keep getting emails from my roommates like this:

"i cant laugh this hard at work

-----Original Message-----
Subject: RE:

well, i guess we could get a pet guinea pig. would we just leave him here when we leave with a sign that says "interns, please feed and clean out shit"?

-----Original Message-----
Subject:

urgent--
look at p20 of current grapevine, left side, last entry"

How am I supposed to read about wind energy?

Life rocks, pretty much:

I had a wonderful weekend, the best in a long time. The reception at the FCO was great, a lot of fun and so nice to talk to some people who were closer to my age. One interesting difference between the FCO and State is that many of the Brits were just out of university or had only worked for a couple of years, so they were mainly in their mid- to late-twenties, rather than mid- to late-thirties, which seems to be the norm for JOs here. I met a cute boy too.

York was great. It's absolutely beautiful, the walls are all they're cracked up to be, and there was really way too much to do for a day. But I strongly recommend it if any of you are around the UK.

Sunday, I went to Mass and then to lunch with my cousin, her husband, her mother, and her kids. It was nice to see a family again, that's something I always miss in Chicago and here. Tea was great, the food was good and the ambience really wonderful.

I just wish every weekend could be this good. Really.

I'm a busy girl:

Well, not at work. But I still have to be there for eight hours.

But the rest of the time, I'm busy. Last night, we went to a Slovakian wine and beer tasting and fashion show, which has to be one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. Basically, it was just the contemporary dance people wearing clothes made alternatively out of gauze (and she was wearing a thong, and believe me, I KNOW), burlap sacks, or oh so attractive fake fur. The wine was good though. Then C-- and I went to a pub at LSE and I had a snakebite (which is cider, lager, and blackcurrant syrup) and tastes very good. We went home and a couple of random Hillel people were there with Elina, so they made fun of our food and talked for a while.

At 5 today, I am going to a tour of the FCO, the British equivalent of the State Department. I've been in the building, and it's gorgeous and I'm looking forward to the tour. There is also a reception for junior FCO officers and junior State officers which could be cool. Then T-- is coming in to stay tonight, so I'll meet her somewhere(?) and go home, eat dinner, and go to another party at the Marine House tonight.

Tomorrow, T-- and I are catching an early train to York and spending the day there. It's supposed to look like an old medieval market town, which I am definitely excited to see. I'll get back to London about 9:00, and we may be going somewhere with some Hillel boys or I may be crashing. We'll see.

Sunday, I'm going to go to Latin Mass at 11 and then do something touristy in the afternoon (maybe V&A? maybe shopping? I do need clothes). Sunday afternoon at 5:30 is our tea at the Ritz, which I am very excited for. Check out the menu:
Afternoon tea sandwiches: Smoked salmon with lemon butter on brown bread
Poached salmon with watercress on brown bread
Roast turkey on sun dried tomato bread
Cream cheese and chives on caraway bread
Cucumber and dill on spinach bread
Egg and mustard cress on brown bread
Salt beef and mustard on granary bread
Freshly baked plain and fruit scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream
Madeira and rich Dundee cake
Afternoon tea pastries and cream cakes:
Apricot, mango and passion fruit mousse
Three chocolate mousse
Raspberry tart
Mixed fruit tart
Lemon meringue tart
Millefeuille
The Ritz selection of tea or coffee.

Yeah.

Monday night is the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower, preceded by a tour of the Tower (for free) and preceeded (and possibly followed) by drinks at the Beefeater's Pub in the Tower.

Working for the Embassy is an experience, I realise, and even if I decide not to do the foreign service, I'm definitely glad I did this.

Slovakian contemporary dance:

No, I don't really want to explain it, but I went to a Slovakian contemporary dance performance Tuesday night and it was actually pretty interesting. There were two groups performing, one three women who were very interesting. The headliner group (if such a thing can exist at a Slovakian contemporary dance performance) was to me not as interesting. Or possibly just longer.

But anyway, we had great seats, first row, about ten feet from the stage. And we were on the VIP list.

Cough cough:

So I sound like I've acquired a three pack a day habit over here. I cough constantly at night and often during the day. I finally went to the medical unit here, and the doctor prescribed an inhaler for me.

It's annoying, I'm not sure I'm using it right, and I'm still coughing.

Now another person in my department has started. I kind of feel like Typhoid Mary. Terra, are you sure you want to go to York with me this weekend?

FDA testing:

When the FDA was founded in 1906, the safety of food additives was tested by feeding them to a "poison squad" of government employees. Our current theory is that these were actually interns.

Peace in NI? Not yet:

See this Guardian op-ed piece

Cubbies:

The Times described the World Series as "the equivalent of the FA Cup Final."

House of Commons:

I went to a committee meeting at the House of Commons on Wednesday. It was pretty cool. A secretary of state for trade was testifying about the failure at the WTO meeting at Cancun. She was a Labour party member, as were most of the members of the committee, and they wanted to move on from Cancun and see what could be salvaged from the talks there. But two or three Tory committee members weren't quite so eager to progress from Cancun, concentrating on why the problems which had come out at Geneva hadn't been solved in the two years since Geneva.

It was unfortunately very civilised, not like some of the stuff you see on C-Span, but it was pretty interesting.

Sangria and Shakespeare:

Last night I went to a showing of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Comedy Theatre. It was all men, and Helena was balding, a bit disconcerting. But the acting was good, and the staging not bad, and we had a good time.

Afterwards, we went to this tapas place and had white wine sangria, which is really really good. It's also a bit dangerous, since it doesn't taste like alcohol at all. I felt like I could have kept drinking it all night. Two of us polished off 1/2 a liter in about 20 minutes and seriously thought about ordering more. But we wanted to leave in time to get the last Tube home, so we did that instead.

Unfortunately, after a fun night, I have to have a crappy night. Tonight, I'm going to the gm, eating cold chicken tikka out of a plastic bag (from Tesco and really pretty good), and then walking three quarters of a mile to the launderette since in the three weeks I've lived in London, I have had a grand total of zero nights with a working washing machine. I had to go buy extra socks last week after I wore my emergency pair.

British Food:

Will concurred with the joy that is Sainsbury's Diet Lemonade. I tried the Tesco stuff, it's OK but not as good. I've been avoiding the Cloudy Lemonade.

I also really recommend Hob Nobs with Milk Chocolate. And Cadbury's cookies!

In terms of the food at the grocery store, they have eight different kinds of sliced ham and one of chicken. And at least 20 kinds of cheddar and NO provolone.

But I had a cheese and tomato croissant yesterday that was wonderful. Man, I'm making myself hungry. It's after 3 here and I haven't had lunch. I should go work on that.

No work:

We're off today. It's Columbus Day. It's weird not to be working when everyone else is. Weird, but nice.

Trip to Wales:

I went to Wales this past weekend. Saturday, my roommate and I caught a 07:45 train to Cardiff. There, we met Terra, who had come over from Oxford. We went to Cardiff Castle (which is underground Roman walls, a small Norman keep, and a much larger Victorian neo-gothic home). Then we went to Cardiff Bay, though apparently we didn't make it to the nice part, and instead all we saw was the crappy part. Wales was playing Serbia in Millenium Stadium right across from our B&B Saturday night, so it was a bit wild. We went to two pubs and then a club after the football game ended. I thought one guy we met had an Irish accent but he said he was from Wales. It turns out his parents were Irish, so I was less confused than I thought. I really thought I could distinguish Irish from Welsh.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast (greasy and heavy, you know the drill) and then I took the train to Swansea and from there a bus to Pennard, a town on the Gower Peninsula (a very small town). Swansea was kind of neat, but I didn't make it to the Dylan Thomas house or anything. I was only there an hour.

Pennard (or Southgate) was beautiful, it was just cliffs down to the sea. You could climb right to the edge of the cliffs and then there was a path to the beach, which was a little sand and a lot of shelving rocks (volcanic or earthquake, I couldn't tell). I walked inland and saw the castle and lots of horse poop, but no horses. The town consisted of two newsagents, a coffee shop, a pharmacy, and a pub.

I got a bus back from there at about 6. I spent approximately 7 hours yesterday in some sort of moving conveyance, 4 trains and 2 buses. Too much time.

If I ever get to a computer that I can upload pictures, I have pics of the old flat and of Wales sitting on my laptop, so I'll put them up.

Library card:

I got a library card for the city of Westminster last night. It's pretty damn exciting. I'm hoping I can check my email for free there on Saturdays. Maybe they'll even have a wireless network.

Wireless:

I need wireless. My card isn't working at all. I need my laptop on the internet to download some stuff and upload pics of the old flat. I called Dell UK today and the guy suggested I just reset everything. I need to find a place around here with wireless.

Pubbing:

Went pubbing last night. Lemonade in the UK is kind of difficult to explain, but it tastes more like Sprite than lemonade in the US. Anyway, vodka-lemonades? Very good. Sketchy Polish guys with a "modelling agency?" Not so much.

Lunch with other interns:

Yesterday, all of the interns went to lunch with another girl who hasn't been cleared yet but is in London hoping it will happen soon. The place we went was pretty good though a bit expensive. I mention this mainly because it highlighted the difference between us interns. Three of us are undergrads and we're all roommates. We spent most of the lunch wondering whether there were cameras in the Embassy bathrooms and cafeteria because we needed to steal toilet paper and salt and pepper. We also wondered what happened if you get caught stealing a roll of toilet paper from the US Government. (Ordinarily I wouldn't be all up on stealing toilet paper from anywhere, but we had some at the old apartment and the landlord stole it. Like we left a package there with a bunch of the rest of our stuff and when we came back, the toilet paper was gone. Along with my CDs, which he claims he was keeping safe in the maintanence cupboard...)

The other interns are grad students (or one just graduated) and were talking about their interest in French literature blossoming throughout high school. They seemed about 20 years older than us, rather than 5 or so. They also talked like a college interviewer ("so, I am interested to know, where you all came from and why you wanted to come here. Let's start over here.")

Not cool.

The London Times:

A couple of tidbits from the Times today:

One new development is going to ban "ugly door knockers." Who decides what's an ugly door knocker?

An interesting article on wild boar hunting in southern England. Apparently, the boar has come back and there are now about a thousand wreaking general havoc around farms.

An article on the gag order (well, they don't call it that) on discussion of a jury's deliberations. Apparently, the only time what happened in deliberations came out was when four jurors used a Ouija board to determine guilt. And that was only because it happened in a hotel room.

Socialising:

Well, since I am trying to make the most out of my internship experience, I went to a party at the Marine House in London last night. It was a lot of fun. They had beer for £1.50, but I didn't even have to pay because a couple of Secret Service guys bought me more beer than I wanted. I met a bunch of Marines and Navy guys, all the interns came, though one only for a few minutes, and there were about 5 USSS agents also there, most just in for a few days. I got there about 9 and stayed to almost 1, unfortunately too late to get the last Tube back. We got a night bus back instead and got home about 1:30. Then we ate Ritz crackers and peanut butter.

The quote of the night?: 'Having a security clearance really doesn't entitle you to open the Royal Mail.' Email me for context.

Radio silence:

Don't expect to hear much from me this weekend. Tonight, I'm packing and then going to a party for the Marines. Saturday, I'm packing, signing the lease for our new place, and going to Cambridge to see Will and Maggie. Sunday, I'm coming back from Cambridge, moving, and working in the control room. So I'm expecting to have approximately three minutes this weekend, which I will not spend blogging.

Thank God:

Got a new flat. Just off Oxford Street, about 5 minutes from work. Hopefully includes hot water. It's been three days, and I had to wash my hair in the kitchen sink last night, using water I boiled in an electric kettle. There are pictures and as soon as I get to a camera I can upload them on, I shall.

U of C:

So I guess everything's started back up at U of C by now. How's everyone doing? How are housing and classes and the new buses?

I miss being warm:

So we haven't had heat or hot water for the last two days at the flat. I'm going to have to break down tonight and take a cold shower. I just feel gross. I can't wash my hair though; it's just going to have to stay dirty for one more day. The landlord swears the heat will be up tomorrow.