An Insubstantial Blog

Oh thank god! The Roman Catholic Church has finally decided to forgive John Lennon for saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus. Kind of like 45 years late but whatevs. It seems like the quote may have hurt the pope's feelings but now has reconciled the fact that John Lennon wasn't an atheist but just an attention whore.

Today marks one week before I leave the country. Oh shit! I have a zillion things to do. I have to pack. I have to pray that my family acts a little bit sane about this. I have to try not to stress the fuck out. Oh wait, I'm doing that already.

Anything I should not forget to pack? I've added a few essentials that I did not bring to Denmark originally. My DVD collection is one of them. Also, any extra space in my baggage will be filled with macaroni and cheese, manwich, pancake mix, and peanut butter. I know the food won't suck as much as Denmark if it will at all. However, everyone needs an American fix every once and awhile and I'd rather it not be from McDonald's.

To anyone who has traveled, an important question. Have you ever noticed that foreign Coca-Cola tastes better? I don't really like it in the states but daaaaamn is it good in Europe. Someone told me that it's a slightly different recipe. I think it has to do with having the option to buy it in glass bottles. Or maybe I was just starved for good food in Denmark.

And for those who have been to the UK (ie the ONE person who reads this blog), what is one place out of London that I HAVE to go. I definitely won't miss Bath, Oxford, or Canterbury. I'd also like to take the ferry to France at some point but I don't know if that will work out.

To come later today, more cross-stitch. I've finished all the ones that I needed to and have just been spacing out the posts.

I hate to admit it, but I may start reading the Twilight series. Don't judge!!! Regardless, they are light kids fantasy books and I think they would make just perfect airplane reading. We shall see.

Since it is already Monday morning in Australia, I have already received my pub placement! I'm really excited because it ended up not being what I asked for but exactly what I wanted. We had eventually agreed on living on the outskirts of London. I'm not only in London, but I'm a 5 minute walk from the British Museum and close to St. Paul's.

On December 2nd, I will start work at the Cittie of Yorke pub. Many sites as well as the guy who helped place me call it one of the great pubs of London. There has been a pub on the same spot since 1430, though this one was rebuilt in the 1920s. The website I've linked to has lots of pictures. It has incredible architecture with high vaulted ceilings. It also has private booth cubicles which are probably older than the restoration and are very rare in England now.

The job offer is pretty good. I make minimum wage. From that is deducted 26 pounds a week for room and board. Board consists of all meals except for on Sunday. Room will be in double or triple rooms with other workers who are mainly Australian and New Zealand-ers (?). Each room has cable tv and internet access. Also has laundry on site. I think that's a pretty good deal in all. I'll be working 5.5 days a week which is quite a bit. I guess it adds up to 40 hours and I'll make about 180 pounds. Hopefully they'll be lenient with a couple long weekends and such or I can get someone to cover my shift as I want to make it up to Scotland at some point as well as take many short trips to Canterbury, Brighton, Bath and maybe even the rest of Europe.

I'll have Sundays off and half of Saturday off. Since I'll be in Camden, I won't lose time in a long commute into London for sightseeing either! It should also make my first two days of running around a little less hectic.

On December 2nd, I plan to get to the pub using local transport from Gatwick airport. I'll have to take a train and transfer to tube with all my baggage! I'll go straight to the pub. Meet the managers. Then head out and get a cell phone. Also, try to get an appointment for a SS number. Then, to keep myself awake AND get oriented, I want to take the newLondon tour.

For anyone into travel, New tours are really awesome. They operate out of many cities. I've been on the ones in Berlin and Amsterdam. Their basic tour leaves on the same spot everyday. You just show up. The tour is free!!! They work for tips. The tours are often run by graduate students or English and Spanish speaking people who really know the city. Each tour lasts 3-4 hours with a food and bathroom break in the middle. It really is great for the budget traveller as it gives you city orientation, a huge and interesting history lesson, some neat hidden features of the city and even the food break is usually at an affordable but yummy spot. They'll also try to sell you other tours that cost money and pub crawls. In Amsterdam, we went on the Red Light District tour for about 8 euro and were really glad we did as we saw a lot of the area we would've missed otherwise. Anyways, in London, they offer 2 different free tours and I plan on taking advantage of them!

The next day will be hectic. I have to go to a meeting for BUNAC, the company that issues my student/work visa. They will give us info on insurance, bank accounts and how to find a job. It'll be boring since I already have a job but maybe I'll meet some people. It's mandatory. After that, I have to go get a bank account which I am told is no easy feat in England. At least I'll be a few tube stops away from all of these places!

I know I haven't explained much about me yet. One major thing is that I like to travel. The summer before my senior year of high school, my parents saved up for me to go to Europe with some classmates (who didn't like me all that much) and some older (way older) yet more fun people. I visited France, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland all in 16 days. I saw more than I could process. My parents assumed that would be a once in a lifetime trip.

However, in my freshman year of college I fought to get into a seminar on Buddhism. Thanks to a wonderful grant, I got to spend 12 days in Kyoto, Japan with my classmates and a professor who is one of the leading scholars in Japanese forms of Buddhism. We visited well over 20 Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Nara and Kyoto. Japan was so different than anything I had ever experienced. It was culture shock to the extreme. I couldn't even find my way home there I was so disoriented. Large flashing shopping streets would have a thin little passageway leading into a quiet and peaceful shrine. I never knew where I was or where I was going. I just followed and attempted to take it all in

That summer, I put my graduation money from high school to good use. I went to France to take language classes for a month in Paris. I did not learn a whole lots. I'm really awful at languages. But I visited every museum and did almost everything Paris had to offer. I made friends from Japan, China, Taiwan, and Australia though we hardly ever spoke the same language or really knew what was going on. But we laughed and took pictures and spoke bad French to each other. I lived with a host family, which was an experience I would care to forget but such is life sometimes.

Having been scarred once, I opted away from the host family experience when I studied abroad in Denmark last year. In hindsight, living with a Danish family probably would have been a good idea. Danes are reserved and often shy. They can be hard to meet especially as I was going to a school of American and some Chinese students. Denmark was dark and a tad bit depressing. I didn't hate it but 4 months was long enough. My travel break was a breath of fresh air. Actually, I take that back. I visited Russia and breathed in the most polluted air I ever have. Russia was an insane experience. One that I loved and hope to never have again. 2 days in Vienna made me fall in love and reaffirm that Austria may be the greatest country on earth. Budapest was not all it is cracked up to be. I found it beautiful on the outside but sleazy and cold on the inside. Perhaps I need to spend more time there. Ireland was beautiful, had beautiful books and was everything that Ireland is supposed to be. North Ireland was naturally beautiful while also providing an important history lesson.

The weekend I spent in Amsterdam, it poured. Continuously. It was miserable. I also came down with a cold. Everything was against me. I need to go back because somehow, I still fell in love with it. I loved the gritty feel of downtown and how you can imagine it is still the 17th century with sailors pulling into port for tattoos and hookers. I love Van Gogh. And I will admit, I loved the coffee shop culture. I spent most of the time cursing myself for not studying abroad in Amsterdam instead.

With my parents, I traveled to Berlin. It was stressful. They don't travel much. It was cold. We stayed in a hostel which wasn't their idea of a vacation. We stayed two days. Due to bad luck, the second day we seemed to miss the opening times for everything. However, my favorite part was hopping on a bus and taking it through the center to the end of the line. The end of the line were old communist apartment complexes. Berlin, for me, is a place to visit and not to stay. My first impression was negative but Berlin gets under your skin. Every inch of the capital has so much history packed in, most of which your parents or grandparents lived through. In one second, you see a memorial to the past while the next, a new modern building rises.

In Denmark, I climbed into stone age burial tombs, hung out with hippies and drunk Greenlanders in Christiania, and sat through some of the most mindnumbing classes ever. I spent a weekend on a remote island in the Baltic sea, rode the oldest operating roller coaster, and walked home 4 miles home at 4am mildly drunk and was never harrassed once. I discovered: Danes really do make the best butter, their bagels are also delicious but you can't buy them in a grocery store, just speak English because no one can pronounce Danish, as an American "nej tak" is the only Danish phrase you need and it can go with any situation, going green is easier when the government mandates it, and Carlsberg beer won't begin to taste good until you arrive back in the states and somehow miss Denmark even though you thought you were sick of it.

Today, at my mind numbing job that is cashiering, I talked to a woman who turned out to be a professor at the local state university. She asked me if I had just graduated and what my major was. I told her it was art history.

The reactions to this major have been plentiful but break down into two categories. Dumb people who don't value education think I'm an idiot and can't believe I wasted my money on the degree. And what the hell will I ever do with my life?

The other half are very well educated and the overwhelming response is highly nostalgic. Oh, I wanted to major in that but I decide against it. And suddenly, I'm this amazing person who actually stuck by my useless degree just because, well, dammit, I really do like art history. This is exactly what happened with this woman who went on to get her PhD in Biology.

I can't help but think if more of these people went on to get art history degrees, the world may not be filled with an abundance of hipster New York brats running the art world and writing bullshitty articles that devalue the field. But that rant...is for another post.

But how come art history is the hidden desire of so many people, especially science people? Sure, the job prospects are dismal. The field is filled with the above stated hipsters. But there are genuine art critics and teachers out there, many whom I was thankful to have taught me.

I guess I don't have anything incredibly insightful to say. It's just I never thought of my silly little major as making middle aged women secretly want to live through me.

As for the professor I met today, she plans on taking a sabbatical to live in Florence and look at art all day. Ahh, the perks of being a tenured biology professor. Can't say I'm not jealous. I told her I was moving to London to work in a pub and look at art all day. I guess I'm not that worse off.

Why yes, I have unfortunately decided to start a new blog. I blame this mainly on a certain internet friend who goes by the name, substantial, because his blog is...supposedly...substantial.

Since my blog will not be serious, long, dense, or ridiculously Republican, I could only come to the conclusion that this blog would be very insubstantial. I am also incredibly uncreative when it comes to naming things. That being said, my blog should be infinitely more interesting to read. No long essays, no philosophy, and nothing that requires too much thinking. Actually, I like thinking. Just not when it comes to blogs.

About me you ask? I am a recent graduate of a hippie liberal vegan pot smoking school. Surprisingly, this has left me almost unemployed. Luckily, I have a lot of time on my hands while I procrastinate impending doom...um I mean, grad school applications.

While stuck at home, I do lots of crafty things. I've always loved cross-stitch and just recently got into designing my own things. If you've never been, please check out Subversive Cross-Stitch, who, without, I may have never realized that my obsession with cross-stitch could actually result in making cool things.

I also make jewelry. Except, right now I'm broke. Start up costs for cross stitch? Really low. For jewelry? Not so much, especially when you really like shiny, fun beads.

The other part of this blog will be about travel. I like to travel any chance I get. Since I'm practically unemployed and the economy is crashing around us, I decided to go work in a country that doesn't suck. So, soon I shall be flying off to London where I will be guaranteed full time work in a pub. Getting paid in pounds is so much better than dollars. Let's ignore the fact that our economy crashing is causing everyone else's to as well. At least I'm not going to Iceland, eh?

Anyways, wasn't that interesting? Now we shall see if anyone bothers to read it!

If you do, friend me. Or leave me comments. It will make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.