Les singes de reddition qui mangent du fromage


Also a cheese eater.

We went to Dieppe two weekends ago. After a four hour ferry ride, we arrived at the dock, searched for the customs building, gave up and waltzed out into the city. Ha. Some impressions from the trip:

• French food is both delicious and cheap
• You can eat chocolate crepe for lunch and have wine at breakfast and no one really cares
• Actually, in many cases, wine is cheaper than water, so what the heck
• Brandishing a meter-long baguette over your shoulder like a baseball bat is entirely normal.
• The average pain au chocolat costs about 70 (Euro) cents = CAN$1.10
• French food is, on the whole, better than English food
• My gosh I miss French food
• French boys often have boundary issues (re: wolf-whistling, circling hotel parking lot to gawk at girls in hotel lobby, etc.)
• Especially the sailors (re: boob-grabbage, impromptu kissing, etc.)
• French people are, as a whole, very nice. They are neither surrender...ers, nor monkeys, although they do eat a lot of cheese. Though the English might disagree.

Dieppe is a beautiful little town; loads of shops and restaurants. We were only there for one night, but people managed to buy their own weight in wine...and they drank about half of it on the ferry ride back to England. Harry and Ron (as I like to call them. More on my secret nicknames later) got completely plastered from a large portion of their 24 bottles of wine, and I half expected them to tipple off the boat.

This weekend we had a history trip to London (Southall & Westminster) and a British Studies trip to Portsmouth Harbour. Thirty degrees in London that day, eeeyow! Kobuta turned into roast pork. Highly inappropriate because Southall is an Indian/Bengali area and home to the largest Sikh temple outside of India. Ate a jalebi (deep-fried honey dough pretzel thing yum), which was free because I only wanted to buy one (just wanted to try it, 10 pence each). I think the guy in the store was taken aback by my ridiculously small order feminine wiles, so he just gave me the damn thing and waved me out the door. I love my frugal heritage.

Oh, and a film crew was hanging around the Castle all week to film a promotional video (heavily censored...no mentioning of other universities please), so they came with us to London. They also "requested" that our history tutorial be held outside, on the lawn in front of the Castle. We were reluctant, even though it was a sunny warm day, because that lawn is covered in goosepoop. Bleugh.

Anyway. Back to Portsmouth. A different vision of French-English relations. The major exihibit was the HMS Victory, commanded by the very brilliant, very short Lord Horatio Nelson in 1805 to punch the French & Spanish fleet in the mouth. Unfortunately, Lord Nelson died in the battle, 4 hours after being shot by a French sniper. Probably because Nelson was wearing more bling than the love child of Donald Trump and 50 Cent. Surprisingly, lots of French tourists come to see the ship; the site is pretty tactful, with less "Hey, look how bad we beat the French!" and more "You pretend to be a British sailor and we'll pretend to saw your leg off."

However, some resentment is still fostered:

Picnic table set up next to the Victory. Ironically, it was also next to a cart that sold crepes.

I am ten bounty hunters



The ISC actually organised a trip to see Episode III next week, but only three people sign up. The student activity coordinator/cruise director seemed a mite disappointed; I would have sign up if a)it wasn't cutting into my art history class and b)it wasn't going to suck. Ming's MSN name already says "Rise...Lord Vader." I think my reaction would be "Up Yours...George Lucas." But however bad it'll be, I still want to see it...geekdom and all.

(Thousands of miles away, on Skywalker Ranch, Lucas rubs his hands and laughs maniacally. Millions of geeks the world over will see his festering turd of a movie, purely out of a sense of duty to their geekliness! BWAAAAA HA HA HA HA!)

I do want one of these, purely out of a sense of duty to my right to stomp on things. Anyone got 36 million yen?

My Feet! My Feet!

Another week, another exercise in metatarsal pain. It was worth it though; the school days passed uneventfullly, but not quietly (I have the great fortune in being roomed on the party floor). Also, have somehow been incorporated into the Chinese Girl Dining Hall Posse.

Saturday trip to London, this time to the British Museum and then the National Gallery for art history course. Also the Tower of London in the morning; a morbid trip, what with the Bloody Tower and the Artillery Museum. That one was full of guns and swords that were shiny and artfully placed behind glass walls but were once used to blast and skewer people. A disturbing display of Britain's past gaijin smashery.

Sunday trip to Windsor Castle; the Queen was in residence ("Dude, she totally gave me the finger!") but sadly we didn't see her or her royal grandsons. Is it bad that I enjoyed walking around the town more than ogling the gold ceilings/chairs/toilets of the state apartments?

After all that walking, going back to the coach was a welcome relief. What are the chances of the ISC being persuaded to get a coach like this one?


I really don't think it says Focker...

Why, Lucas? Why?

Okay, although my brother swears that he believes Lucas will "pull it together" for Episode III, I have not one iota of faith that The George will make a decent movie out of it. Look how awful Episodes I & II were: the writing was atrocious (Anakin obsessing over Amidala for TEN years? Since he was 9? That's not romantic, that's creepy), the casting dubious, etc. But since I have to go to class now I leave you with this, from The Bynk Zone:

"So now, every time I see Vader saying great lines like 'Obi-wan was wise to hide her existence from me. Now his failure is complete', I'll be hearing 'Neener-neener, I know who she is now, and i'm gonna maker her evil so we can do evil things, like...like wear black and worship SATAN!' My god, Lucas turned Darth Vader into DARK HELMET!"

So when I do get around to watching Ep. III, I'll always see Rick Moranis instead of Hayden Christiansen. "Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

Classes? What classes?



Okay, one week of classes gone, two field trips and I am completely tuckered out. I never realized how many pages of notes you can take in three hours of class. Two papers due next week, one of which is the art history essay, 10 pages, 50% of my mark :o Egads!

The picture is from the bathroom at ASDA, the huge Walmart-ish store owned by...Walmart. Except that they sell fresh produce and have a liquor aisle. We took the ISC minibus there last week for food (bought HobNobs and popcorn).

Friday, everyone went to London for a Jack the Ripper walking tour and to see The Tempest at the Globe theatre. Walking tour slightly boring, the Globe was alightly awesome (standing yard tickets, 2 hours long). Miranda was played by a guy in a nightgown, and Caliban looked they way Antonio-the-gay-pirate-from-Twelfth-Night should have looked, ha ha. The coach buses here must be higher than the ones in Canada because lots of people had motion sickness (me included). Looks like I'll need that Gravol after all.

Saturday, art history trip to Canterbury Cathedral. After walking around London all day yesterday, getting out of bed that morning was not entirely appealing, but I did anyway. Cold rainy windy day, but the cathedral was indeed very breathtaking, pointy, old, etc. We went to a pub (The Jolly Sailor) in the afternoon, cos it's England and everyone's doing it.

There are now ducklings wandering the Castle grounds. Eeee!

Skin...Identity...Bangers and Mash



First day of classes today; so far I've had IDIS 304 (British Studies), which is an examination of British identity and culture through history, geography and literature. Very excited about this course...is it wrong that I'm so much more motived by this topic than I am about system architectures and databases? Oh well.

Talked about what we (Canadians/North Americans) view as inherently British/part of British culture. I'm currently listening to the Amelie soundtrack, which is a study of Englishness in itself (damn those Frenchies!). We have three profs for the course, of varying degrees of Britishness. I kept on finding myself comparing British and Canadian cultures during class (my Canadian Lit prof from last year would be proud), like the ideas about British/otherness, London/everywhere else, immigration, etc. It's going to be very interesting.

Went exploring a little bit after class; the Castle is surprisingly difficult to navigate. Loads of wooden doors leading into corridors and staiwells that don't always lead to an unlocked door. Tiny doorways indicate the older parts of the building. Apparently only the Castle walls date from medieval times, the rest of the castle (interiors, panelling, etc) are from a 1920s restoration. Herstmonceux Castle used to be in ruins until that time. It's used as a backdrop for films and weddings and stuff: I think the old Narnia series was filmed here in part and it was transformed into Hogwarts for a Coke promotion a while back. COOL.

This is our room:




The food is yum. Lots of stodge (my favourite kind) and Malteser ice creamsicles for dessert everyday. Loads better than the Sodexho sludge from Ban Righ, but really fatty...I'll have to restrain from eating the sausages at breakfast (which are really good, not the wimpy skinny burnt ones from Ban Righ), or else I'll end up with no arteries.

Off to Art History.