Birthday / London

This past week contained a couple of exciting happenings – my birthday on Thursday, and a trip to London to see Rosalind at Kings College who was also celebrating her birthday. The week was somewhat defined by things having frustrating beginnings that turned out well in the end – my birthday began with a failed attempt to book a train to the island of Arran for when Miguel comes to visit, after which I battled it out with Finale for a few hours in a frantic effort to finish my Bach Society piece for an upcoming rehearsal. I finally did finish around 4PM (woot – at least that is finally done), and round about 6PM Jack, Annabel, Katie, Anna, Cindy, Rachel, and myself departed for Kushi’s – a posh but not overly expensive Indian place that was recommended to me by Anna 2 and Corinne. Kushi’s was a pretty nice treat – it is set in an old converted church, and is adorned with ridiculously big chandeliers and large potted plants. The food was quite nice as well – a little heavy (the Housewife’s cookbook keeps things lite) – but very satisfying. Afterwards we retreated back to Warrender where we decided to rent a movie and drink some materials. It being my birthday, it was my movie choice, and on a whim I decided on “Sideways.” My dad had been rambling about “Sideways” for a while after it came out (“it caused a big spike in the price of Pinot!”), and Paul Giamatti reminds me of my cool older cousin Tim, who is a pro violinist. Not very good reasons to watch it perhaps, but it was a decent movie. The characters were funny enough, and it makes California look absolutely beautiful. Anyways, the plan was eventually to go out clubbing, but it got rather late and most everyone decided to head off. Jack and I, however, decided to continue the night, and met up with Courtney and Hannah at a club called Medina near the uni. We drank perhaps a little too much, and did a little dancing (Medina is a hip hop oriented club), until the club closed at 3. 5 Hours later I was up again and on my way to Edinburgh station, where I had to catch the 10:30 train to London. Aside from feeling pretty woozy at the outset of the journey, everything was going well, until I realized that I had forgotten my Young Person’s Railcard and I had accidently brought “Sideways” with me (it was rented from an hourly movie place). Things only got worse when the train arrived in Peterborough (1 hour north of London) where we were told that there were electrical problems on the railway, and that there was another train heading back north if we wanted to catch it. This did not bode well – 2 hours later I boarded a bus, where I sat next to some very entertaining girls from northern England who were very nice but also very difficult to understand – they were fond of saying that things were “fab,” or “mint,” and used “me’ in place of “my” and “lad” for “guy” and other such things. Anyways I finally got to London after about 4 hours, met Rosalind, Ashley, and Kendall at Kings, and promptly accompanied them and some British friends of Rosalind’s to a club somewhat like Medina in another part of London. The next day Ashley, Ros, Kendall and I went and had lunch at a delicious tea and sandwich shop in a sort of indie-ish neighborhood called Camdentown, and then went to walk around Regents Park. My friend Max, who is spending the year at Cambridge, also met us up. We dropped by the British Museum briefly (got to see the wonderful Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles), but it was closing, so we were soon headed back to Rosalind’s for her birthday celebrations, which were to be held at the small and friendly student run bar located in the King’s College dorms. The bar did not disappoint, and Rosalind was subjected to a slightly watered down version of a Kings College birthday tradition in which the birthday guy / girl has to down an obscene amount of gin in very short period of time, while onlookers sing a traditional “gin song.” Anyways it was good times (and Ros did very well), and the next day we woke up late, went to lunch, and then I headed off to catch the 3PM train back to Edinburgh. It was really good to see Ros, Ashley, and Max again – everyone seems to be doing quite well, and being abroad has certainly given all of us new perspectives (some favorable and others not) on Columbia and the past few years of school. The general sentiment seems to be that Columbia is better academically, but worse socially than the UK. Although I wasn’t in London long, my impression was positive – it resembles New York in its size, multiculturalism (although there seems to be more of an African and Arab presence there than in NYC), and hustle and bustle, but it is also more spread out and in some ways felt more livable than New York – perhaps that is a function of the reduced density. I hope to go back before I leave.

Happy Birthday to Rosalind!

The English country side from the GNER train.