It's All London Baby (Complaining the English Way, Hygienic Norms, and Some Healthy Confusion)!

I had a wonderful dinner last Thursday with a few (girl)friends - where I learnt to complain in the English way. "Complaining the English way" means that instead of mumbling and telling yourself you will never go again in a place you disliked for something due to the service or the food, you make it notice to the manager of the place, who will do its best to compensate you for what went wrong - with a dessert, or in any other fancy way. Cool, isn't it? I like it - my critic attitude is definitely fulfilled by it.

Anyway, we had a lovely evening any anthropologists would dream about: talking with some other intellectuals, not from your field, about what we notice as similarities and differences between cultures - and Brigida and I are deeply embedded in this educational attitude and in broadering our knowledge about human cultures beyond academic community. So we spent some of our time teaching about hygienic norms and conceptions among gypsies, Italians and British people. When you take the shower in the morning, for example, we first use the bidet, and then take the shower: yes, we wash ourselves twice. And no, the bidet is not "that piece of forniture that fill the space between the WC and the sink". Just as we would never use the small towel - the one we use to dry our privates - to dry our hands and face as well, for which we use the bigger towel. Of course, we had finished our dinner before talking about these issues - it wouldn't be nice to talk about intimate washing whilst eating...

The day after I had what I consider the best interview I ever had for a job with whom could be considered at a first sight as a 'weird' professor - as I couldn't even understand, before meeting, is she was a 'she' or a 'he'. Her name is in fact Sue, but she uses as well the name Johnny to refer herself. On the net I saw some of her articles signed either with the masculine or the feminine name - so I couldn't really understand. But at a certain point I didn't worry about it anymore. "Whatever!" - I told myself, a comment really nice I learnt here, that means something like: "Whatever it is, it's not an issue of mine, and/or it doesn't make any difference" - it's all London, baby!

Anyway, the inverview didn't give me (at least not immediately) a job, but opened up some opportunities. What's more important is that it has been the best inverview I had in my life: two hours spent 1) with a passionate person willing to learn about my researches, attitudes, aims, 2) listening with a sincere interest and care to me, 3) telling me a true and objective analysis of what I've done up now (so congratulating me for the good things as well as criticising for the wrong ones), 4) suggesting me the further steps to achieve my goals (and not forcing me to necessary do this in her department), and showing to be a people person with a deep and warm kindness to support me - like she could see my past in my eyes.

Unbelievable! Something special I wish all the ones I love to live by/with someone else such as a potential mentor/tutor. So I'm keeping on thinking/wondering/reflecting about this still now. I'm getting every day more confused, but still in a serene way. Thinking about next steps. What I want to do. Where I want to live the next few months. What am I actually looking for in general...

Is This an Ordinary Day (a Walk in Camden, Unexpected Kindness, and British Good Food)?

Waking up quite early in the morning last Saturday - 4 cats around are not really the best company to sleep as long as you would like to! - I made up my mind to get to Camden Lock Market and have a walk around there before meeting in the afternoon with the London Art & Culture group.

I took the overtrain and then walked down the railway station to reach the market area. Camden is a folkloristic place to say the least, where people go to exhibit themselves and tourists buy any kind of fake punk stuff to have the feeling they recall an old memory, born and developed here, who affected them not only in teenager years - fucking seductive for the ones of us who still live/feel that way.

 

I mixed with this human flow, and became a further stranger among them. I ended up eating a wonderful seafood paella - sitting on the pavement in front of the channel. Sun was kissing me and about other 50 winter lizards, whilst looking around and thinking about my best friend and how much I desired to have her here with me to share this.

'Kindness' is the password, and no matter at the moment that it might sometimes be connected with hypocrisy - althugh I didn't notice this happening around me up now. "Anything bad that might happen to you, if you go through any crisis or feel like crying or just need to talk, call me!" - a complete unknow lovely girl from the London Art & Culture group told me this after visiting together a contemporary art exhibition last Saturday at Saatchi Gallery. Yes, this is London, something very different from the cold, cool town of our imagination. The exhibition wasn't astonishing: much of the works was somehow already seen - it seems to be quite hard to say something really new in contemporary art! But at least I met lovely Londoners in it - Rebecca and Samina. Yes, my dear ladies: I feel a little more confident now so I'll be able to join you also in the evening next time!

Sunday I met Brigida and her friend Ula to go to a free shop in the area of Spitalfields. But we soon ended up, with some more mates, to join a pub - one of the most messed up place I've ever been, with such a loud volume music you couldn't talk, so stuffy that you can understand why swein flue spread so much here, and with such a bad and mixed taste in forniture&decoration that you don't need to get drunk to throw up. This to tell the truth, but nervertheless the building was really lovely, and in any case there was a very nice and relaxed atmosphere - not to mention the brilliant Brigida's friends and the funny conversations we had with them!

We finally went for dinner in a place that deserves a mention, as everybody say UK food sucks: no, it doesn't (when you have an 'anthropologist of food' leading you to *highly selected* bistrots such as the St. John restaurant where you get local food cooked according to ancient recipes. What I tasted recalled no memory in my head, it was something unexpected and so good that you... ahem... can't believe it's British!