I went through a few of my photos tonight. Here are four of them. More to come…
A view of Buda side from under the Chain Bridge. The bone-chilling cold from the Danube nearly gave me hypothermia, plus my camera froze. Good times.
i arrived back in London last night. Two-hour flight, eight-hour journey. Sigh.
The last thing you want to hear the pilot say when you’re landing in London is “dense fog.” As in: There’s dense fog in London, the airport is fogged in, it’s pitch dark outside and I can’t see a damn thing, but hey, we’re landing anyway.
The last thing you want to see during landing is the Hungarian woman sitting next to you receiving a text message on her phone. It had been announced several times that mobile phones cannot be switched on at any time during the flight because they interfere with the aircraft’s systems. These announcements were made in English and Hungarian. I would assume that a person with even an extremely low IQ would comprehend that “mobile phones cannot be switched on at any time” means they cannot be switched on at any time — certainly not while the pilot is landing the plane using instruments alone since he can’t see the flippin’ ground. I said to the woman, “Excuse me, you have to turn that phone off.” She had the nerve to act annoyed that I scolded her, then once the phone was off, she waved it in my face so I could see it was off. I gave her an evil, withering look that sent a shiver down her spine.
I couldn’t possibly feel more disconnected from Thanksgiving right now. This is my fourth Thanksgiving living abroad and Thanksgiving isn’t really part of my life anymore. Even before I moved abroad, when I lived in New York and Boston (for a total of 9 years) I was an orphan, since my family lived so far away and I could never go home for Thanksgiving. A couple times I spent T’giving with my parents in NYC. We ate at Tavern on the Green and saw the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from our hotel room window (once we saw the massive balloons for the parade the night before T’giving, where they were tethered on the Upper West Side not too far from where I lived).
But most of those nine years I was invited to spend Thanksgiving with friends/work colleagues [and I must say, inviting people who are far from home to have Thanksgiving at your house is a very kind-hearted and generous thing to do]. Sometimes I accepted these offers, but I was never entirely comfortable having T’giving with other people’s families. Often times I’d just spend the day alone, eating T’giving at a NY diner one year or staying home all day to work on my novel. As an adult, Thanksgiving would always bring up a tremendous amount of anxiety in me, as it does for people who live far from home or who don’t have families at all. There’s so much pressure to do something meaningful, when sometimes that isn’t an option. Perhaps now I feel just relieved that I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
I’m feeling a bit sad today, though, not because I’m missing Thanksgiving (my parents and sister are in Las Vegas!) but because this is the first Thanksgiving when both of my mom’s parents are dead. When I think of my fond Thanksgiving memories, my maternal grandparents are always a big part of them. My grandfather has been dead for ten years, but for some reason, since my grandmother died I’ve felt his loss again. And there’s nothing like the holidays to bring up those feelings. I think of those Thanksgivings from when I was young. I can’t necessarily remember individual holidays, but just a big swirl of memories. Like most families, we always spent Thanksgiving cooking, but my grandfather could always be found in one place — on the sofa, watching football. The sound of his football games would echo throughout the house. He loved the Dallas Cowboys. I can hear the sound of those football games perfectly now. I can smell his cologne and our turkey cooking and the yams with apples and marshmallows. Even now, far away in Budapest, I carry that with me.
I’m thankful that I have such memories. Happy Thanksgiving everyone…
[taken on my june trip to budapest]
First things first: Congrats to my friends William and Drew on their civil union! [W, I'm shocked that you didn't wear white. I thought you were saving yourself for marriage civil unionship?]
Okay, so now back to regularly scheduled programming….me in Budapest.
Yesterday morning was hellish. I was in the dentist’s chair for three hours. [Note to any dentists out there: Don't underestimate the importance of deodorant. Also, a breath mint wouldn't kill you. 9 out of 10 dental patients recommend them.] My dentist is a bit rough. He obviously missed the day in dental school when they taught everyone that a human being’s mouth is not made of elastic and therefore cannot stretch to any size. He did such a work-out on my mouth that the dental assistant had to put lip balm on me twice. By the time I left, I looked like I’d had a collagen injection.
Well, I’m actually staying in Pest, but that’s a minor technicality.
I’m back in the Hungarian capital for part 2 of my adventure in dental tourism. I’ll be here till Saturday. I did all the really difficult stuff in June, but I have to stay for a whole week now because I need to have a porcelain crown made, which takes 5 days. Even staying here for a whole week, plus airfare, it’s still only about half as much as paying for a British dentist. Boo for British dentists. I really love Budapest, so I’m thrilled to be back. It’s such a charming, lovely, bewitching city.
Unfortunately, my bad luck with air travel continues. I took EasyJet, but today’s headache had nothing to do with them (unlike the six-hour flight delay they subjected me to last time). But I just have to say that EasyJet is a complete tack fest. What kind of airline sells scratch card lottery tickets mid-flight? Next time I wouldn’t be surprised to see a chimpanzee riding a unicycle down the center aisle of the plane, for crying out loud.
So this time, my troubles began before I even left London. I got to St. Pancras to take my train to Gatwick Airport, only to discover that there were NO trains going to Gatwick today. The British rail system often goes haywire on weekends, when they do all sorts of engineering works, but I checked in advance to make sure the trains would be running. I planned to take the cheaper First Capital Connect train from St. P, which takes an hour. Gatwick Express runs from Victoria and is super fast, but I’m too lazy to go to Victoria (plus it costs more). Well, no trains were running to Gatwick at all from either station for reasons unknown. Luckily for me, the folks at First Capital Connect actually paid for me to take a taxi to Gatwick, which in the end cost the company £125/$186.
Don’t you just love it how Obama has chosen so many Clintonites to work with him? I seem to remember during the primary that Obama and his supporters urged us to ditch the Clintons, who were supposedly so toxic for the country. Hmmmm. Now Obama is surrounded by Clintonites. And the icing on the cake — Hillary as Secretary of State.
From the AP: “Some Obama supporters have praised him for reaching out to his toughest primary opponent. But others question why they worked so hard to defeat Clinton only to see her, and many close to her, grab prizes in the new administration. They note that Obama repeatedly campaigned against ‘the politics of the past’ and Washington ‘dramas,’ thinly veiled jabs at the Clinton presidency as well as President George W. Bush’s tenure.”
Seems like all that stuff Obama was saying during the campaign was just empty rhetoric. His actions speak louder than his words.
Some people may wonder why I moderate the comments on my blog. Most of the blogs I read and comment on don’t use moderation, which means if you leave a comment, it appears instantly, without having to be approved by the blogger. Comment moderation is one of the things I hate about blogging. It’s a pain. If you leave a comment when I’m sleeping, or if I’m away from the computer all day, then it could be 8 hours or more before your comment appears. I really hate that. The reason I moderate comments is because I get a lot of spam comments. I use Akismet, a spam filter that catches thousands of spam comments, but a surprising number still get through. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. Just now I logged in after being away from the computer for three hours and I had 8 new comments, all of them spam. Most of this spam is of a highly disturbing nature. For example, one of the comments I just deleted was advertising videos of women being raped; another was advertising videos of mother-son incest. I have no idea what you’d actually find if you clicked the links in these comments, but I don’t want to imagine it. Let’s just hope if you click, you go through to an FBI sting operation. This sick stuff is the norm for spam comments, at least on my blog, and every time I have to read these comments it lowers my opinion of humanity. I do not want anything like this appearing on my blog for even a second.
So I continue to use comment moderation, despite the fact that I hate it. Sorry for all the inconvenience it causes, but at least now you know why I use it. If anyone knows of a spam filter that works better than Akismet, please let me know.
For my novel, I was doing some research on Sojourner Truth, who was a slave and became an abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Her famous speech Ain’t I a Woman?, which was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, is powerful and unforgettable. Since it’s short, I thought it would be nice to post it here for those who’ve never read it:
“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.”
–Sojourner Truth
The British have a saying — “lost the plot” — that I quite like. It means to go crazy. So the sentence “Jane lost the plot” means that Jane went crazy.
I’ve adapted this idiom for my own use and given it my own special meaning. If I’m having a bad writing day, I say that I’ve lost the plot. Of course I mean it literally. I’ve lost the plot to my novel, nothing is working, the characters are rebelling, the story doesn’t make sense. I’ve lost the plot! It manages to sum up exactly how I feel.
Luckily, the writing is going really well right now. I am often very productive in the autumn. The danger time is coming though — Christmas break. Last year I went off track completely after Christmas and New Year’s and didn’t get back to writing regularly again until April. That is not an option this year. Since I entered the third year of my PhD in September I’ve felt a real sense of urgency. I really have no time to waste. This is good, because I accomplish nothing without a deadline. While I’ve always known the general deadline for my PhD, a deadline that was two or more years in the future did little to motivate me. Quite the opposite, it gave me a sense of security and luxury. But now I can see my deadline. I can see how close it is and I’m writing like mad. It feels good to be writing, to have the pressure on. I like it. By the end of this current academic year, I need to have the novel finished and in good shape so that in the fourth year I’m just doing revisions. I’m not taking all of a fourth year – maybe half of it. Also, I will start looking for a New York literary agent in February. That’s my goal. I have a couple personal recommendations for agents, so I hope that gets my foot in the door. No time for losing the plot now.
Early this morning I woke up very suddenly because I heard my grandmother call my name.
It’s been two months since my gran died. So often during these two months since her death, I felt sad that I could not feel her presence around me. By presence I mean her spirit, her energy, or whatever you want to call it. I was so far away from home when she died and I had not seen her for two years before her death. It upset me that I could not feel her presence at all, that I did not have a sense that she was out there somewhere.
This morning I heard her voice say my name very loudly and clearly, which woke me up from a deep sleep. I saw her face in my mind. It sounded like she called me from the end of a long corridor or tunnel. There was an echo, a vibration, an energy that I could feel in my body. She just said my name once, but there was an intensity to it. And it was unmistakably her voice, a voice I had not heard for a long time.
I stayed in bed for a little while after being woken up by the sound of her voice. It was a strange experience. I felt at once startled and also touched. And then as I lay in bed this morning, I suddenly remembered that today is my grandmother’s birthday. I had totally forgotten. She would have been 87 today.
I don’t know if it was really my grandmother calling my name. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but I’m open to the possibility that it was her. I believe that it could have been her. For a brief moment this morning, I felt her with me. Happy birthday, Gran.
Ricky Gervais in the Daily Mail: “In America, success is celebrated. America knows the difference between a reality show and De Niro. In England it’s: ‘You? Success can’t happen to a person like you!’”
Time for another book update, this one stretching back to July! I won’t recap everything I’ve been reading, but just a few things. I’ve been lucky that many of the books I’ve read recently have helped me tremendously with my own writing. I’ve also been on a fiction-in-translation kick for several months now. I’ve grown quite tired of British and American fiction and I’m enjoying my tour around the world. Right now I’m reading Anna Karenina, which I am loving so far but it’s so heavy to carry around with me. Damn Russians.
Okay, so first up, Haruki Murakami. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle blew me away. I can’t tell you what a profound effect this book has had on me as a writer. I was in a writing slump that lasted for a couple months this summer. Reading this book pulled me out of it and helped me to think about my book in a whole new radical way. I can’t imagine where I’d be now if I hadn’t read this. While I couldn’t possibly describe the plot of this 700-page novel, suffice it to say that it’s filled with kooky, strange and metaphysical happenings, plus a lot of zany women. [Oh - and there's a scene with a guy being skinned alive from head to toe that's unforgettable.] At it’s heart, however, is a very ordinary man who just stumbles along in life. In-between the bizarre happenings, we get pages of description of him just eating lunch or going to the dry cleaners, but it’s so interesting! Murakami has a way of grounding his books in the ordinariness of everyday life, which is really what I took away from this book as a writer. Ultimately, this book didn’t make much sense to me, but I still loved it. Just as a side note, apparently for the English-language translation (upon which other foreign translations are based), several chapters were cut by Knopf to shorten the book. Sacrilege!
Reviews of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: NYT and a review round-up here.
As I mentioned before, my visa extension was renewed this week by the Home Office. I didn’t know for how long it was renewed until today, when I went to school to pick up my passport. My visa has been renewed until January 2011! That’s longer than I requested. I should have my PhD well before that time, but it’s nice that I don’t have to worry about visas and such for the rest of my studies.
I’m not on campus very often, so while at school today I met up with a friend and we had lunch in the cafeteria. I had “toad in the hole,” a British specialty I’d never had before or even heard of. Toad in the hole is sausages cooked in Yorkshire pudding batter, served with gravy. Today I had a vegetarian version made with Quorn sausages. Yum!!!
My friend had one of those British dishes that I could only eat if someone held a gun to my head. She had tuna with sweetcorn (a common sandwich-filler here — tuna, mayonnaise and corn niblets all mixed together), served on a baked potato. I adore tuna, but I could never eat it with corn, nor could I eat cold tuna served on a hot baked potato. Who invented this dish? And why on earth do people eat it? She offered me a bite, but the mere sight of it activated my gag reflex. This is one dish I don’t think I’ll ever be brave enough to try.
I promise to stop talking about the election, but Luke left a comment on my previous post with a link to this video from the Onion. I love the Onion’s videos and this one is absolutely priceless. A must see.
And from the Guardian, my quote of the day. They describe Sarah Palin as “the woman many blame for John McCain’s defeat and their party’s disarray.” Yeah, when in doubt, blame the female. The Republican party’s disarray has everything to do with Sarah Palin and absolutely nothing to do with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, et al. As for John McCain, if Palin cost him the election (doubtful), then he has no one to blame for that but himself. Palin was just being herself — McCain is the one who decided she should be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Another election, another man going to the White House with adoring wife and children in tow. Some things never change, eh?
Oh Anglofille, you might be saying, why can’t you just be happy about this election for one day? I am happy — happy that this election is over so we can all focus on reality once again. Just think, if all this time, energy, money and press coverage had been spent on a worthy cause, say AIDS orphans in Africa, then we could really feel proud of ourselves today.
Am I glad that we have our first African-American president? Of course it is an exciting and proud day for America and the world. But Barack Obama is still a man and the White House, U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are still dominated by men — women have very little representation in the U.S. government at any level. Even that hotbed of feminism, Pakistan, has had a female leader (wait, oops, she was assassinated). Sadly, given the sheer hatred and vitriol we saw directed at Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton (a lot of it from Obama supporters), it’s not likely that we’ll see huge numbers of women being elected anytime soon. So while it’s fine to celebrate one barrier being broken, there are still too many other barriers that exist. If anything, this presidential campaign has reinforced them and made them worse. Unlike a lot of people who are celebrating a new dawn in America, I have not developed amnesia about the very recent past. Patriarchal values always triumph. To those who say — “women wait your turn,” I say: Fuck you.
There’s another reason that I’ve spoken out against Obama. And make no mistake — it hasn’t been easy speaking out against him. I’ve felt so much scorn directed at me from friends and acquaintances because I’ve criticized Obama and this is not something I shrug off. I don’t enjoy being hated, despite what you might think. But you know what, I am a writer, not a weenie. DISSENT is important. I know dissent is not tolerated that much anymore in left-wing circles in the US and many parts of Europe unless it is directed at “safe” targets (the right-wing), which says a lot about the direction our cultures are headed in.
After 9/11, the right-wing went nuts — rampant patriotism, wars, turning a blind eye to the government’s increasing powers, etc. Funnily enough, I think the reaction to Obama by the left-wing is reminiscent of this, with the blind devotion to Obama, complete annihilation of anyone in their path to glory (Clinton) and a total disdain, hatred and marginalization of anyone who dissents. It’s been a scary time — it always is when people get swept up in a movement and show their true colors. I’ve been saddened by the people who have implied I’m a secret right-wing racist because I didn’t support Obama. If you think that about me, it says more about you than me.
Given that the entire world’s press corps is biased in favor of Obama in a way we’ve never seen before with any presidential candidate, I wonder why one powerless person — me — could cause people I know to get so upset. Dissenting voices are important and the fact that so many people on the Left cannot tolerate them is disturbing. Do you know how difficult it’s been to find information online that is critical of Obama and comes from the Left? It’s been damn near impossible.
This election has been a watershed moment for me. I no longer fit in anywhere politically. They say as you grow older, you drift more to the Right. Not me — I’ve become even more anti right-wing, while also growing completely disillusioned with so many on the Left. It’s a lonely place to be. Regardless of what category I may or may not fit into, I value even more highly than I did before the role of the writer in society as a voice of dissent. Too many writers have been silent during this election and I won’t forget it anytime soon — certainly not when, two years from now, they’re decrying Obama and his policies.
I think perhaps living abroad has had something to do with my changing views. Living in a foreign country helps you see your own country in a whole new light. It’s not that England is better than the U.S. (in some ways it is, in some ways it isn’t). But just seeing your country from afar is an eye-opener. I found out this week that the Home Office approved my visa extension, so I won’t be going back to America anytime soon. Thank heavens for that.
Joe the Plumber has been getting a lot of media attention during this presidential campaign. On this election eve, I have decided to turn to a plumber I know, my dad, John. He’s been a self-employed plumbing contractor for more than 30 years and like his daughter, has a lot of opinions about politics. As you will see, he is right-wing, which means we usually end up arguing a lot. Many of his views make me cringe in horror, though he’d say the same about me. [Have you ever read the blog My Right-Wing Dad? It's priceless.] Anyway, we did this interview this evening, but I was pressed for time so there isn’t much follow-up to his responses. BTW, I got the idea for this post when I read Stanley Fish’s column in the NYT this morning, which he wrote about his dad, called Max the Plumber.
Anglofille: What do you make of Joe the Plumber getting all this attention? Does he represent the plumbers of America?
John the Plumber: I wouldn’t say so. He certainly doesn’t represent the union plumbers (I’m not union). They would never have asked the question he asked Obama. The union leadership’s point of view is that the wealth should be redistributed, like communism. I would say that what I’ve heard him say pretty much I agree with. The fact that everyone knows his personal business is disgusting! The Dem’s didn’t waste any time violating his privacy (their basis for abortion).
Anglofille: Who are you voting for tomorrow?
John the Plumber: I’m voting for Palin. She’s the only one of the four who has any experience running anything. Senators make horrible presidents. Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy were two horrible administrations. (If Kennedy would not have been killed, his administration would have gone down in flames instead of being a folk hero). Senators aren’t sure why any of the rest of us are even here. They look at the world from a bastardized prism. In fact, I’ve added a new rule to my “Never vote for” list (it was only lawyers before) is never, ever vote for senators for president.
Anglofille: So you’re voting for McCain?
John the Plumber: No, I’m voting for Palin.
Anglofille: She’s not running for president. So you’re voting for McCain.
John the Plumber: I’m not voting for McCain, I’m voting against Obama.
Anglofille: Do you think Palin is qualified to be president?
This is officially the most horrifying news story I’ve read in ages. A 13-year-old girl in Somalia was gang raped. She reported the rape to the authorities, who then ordered that she be stoned to death by a mob of men for committing adultery. The stoning took place in a stadium filled with spectators and the way it is described in the news reports has made me feel physically ill. This murder was committed by the Islamist rebel administration that has taken control of the southern port city of Kismayo in Somalia. None of the rapists were arrested.
Despite the fact that I have been a feminist for most of my adult life, I still cannot comprehend this level of hatred of women. I just can’t imagine how “human beings” are capable of doing things like this. I wish there was something that could be done to help women and girls in situations like this.
Links:
Anglofille is an American living in London, finishing up a novel and a PhD, taking photos, and blogging about expat life, books, feminism and perpetual angst.
