First of all, to all of you that donated books: they are here!! yay! Thank you.
Since most kids can't read this level of English we decided to use them as a fundraiser.
The books I had left behind were covered in dust, was I gone that long?
My friend Pi Wee Wah missed me, no matter how hard she hits me. And that blanket was made by her mum specially for me. :)
I missed Thai food more than I thought... This is fried rice with egg.
I was all excited about going to see the world's biggest library. I was a literature student and I absolutely love libraries...
I wasn't quite sure on what to expect but it certainly was more beautiful than I expected...
I also got to see Gutenberg's bible. No pictures allowed of course but I was happy just the same.
After two hours inside I only saw part of the first building, I'm going to go back and do an official tour later this week.
I know that I'm 27 and that I should appreciate other things such as the historic importance of London, breathe in the places that inspired so many... however all I can say is that it was a lovely (albeit very cold as you can see from the picture above) sunny day and I ate wonderfully.
Details from Hyde Park and the Albert Hall Memorial.
I know London has a bad reputation for food, that you have to go to foreign restaurants but I think people have been going to the wrong places. In the UK you don't go to a restaurant to have a typical British meal, you go to a pub - a dark, with an ugly carpet, with dark wood furniture one - and you have, for example, a steak pie, shepperd's pie (my favorite), sausage and mash and any dessert with custard. I absolutely love custard. So today for lunch we had a jacket potato in a little stall in Convent Garden (the old market), that's basically a baked potato with topping of your choice and later in the afternoon I had a delicious shepperd's pie and an apple pie with custard. And that was it, I was happy.
Details from Trafalgar Square.
Oh, yes, I bought more books. I tried to resist but the 2666 is 32e in Brussels and here it was 18e...
Tomorrow evening I'll load up the pictures into the posts, so be sure to return to these posts to have a look.
I'll leave you with a bit from The savage detectives:
"I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way. (...) I'm not really sure what visceral realism is. I'm seventeen years old, my name is Juan Garcia Madero, and I'm in my first semester in law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in. I'm an orphan, and someday I'll be a lawyer. That's what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night. Or anyway for a long time."P.3
For those of you who don't know, I'm currently in London. The fact that I made it here after carrying furniture, books (too many), cds (way too many) and dvds (also too many) from 18h until midnight with - 4 is a true miracle.
It was a sort of Portuguese moving system. We didn't want to pay a moving company so we carried everything ourselves, we yelled a lot of instructions to each other, we ignored a lot of instructions until one bookshelf almost landed on my foot, we stopped to eat for about an hour and after moving some more stuff we were hungry again. What wasn't Portuguese was the weather. Imagine carrying stuff down 3 floors and then reaching the street where it was -4 and cross a busy intersection with your sofa. Or cd shelf. Or playstation. Then you go up 3 floors again and continue. We then proceeded to Leuven where most of my stuff will be kept. Yes, that's right, we had to unpack again and carry again. We went to bed exausted and took a train at 10 am to London.
So far London has not disappointed me but it has not amazed me yet either. I mean, expected facts list:
Things I didn't expect:
Tomorrow I will go to a museum, a park and eat a pie and a dessert with custard in a pub, just not sure which ones yet. Now I will take a shower and read one of my new books in bed, it's called The savage detectives by Roberto Bolano and the first four pages were very promissing.
I know the Fnac and Bertrand are very popular and well, convenient but I grew up with "Livraria Esperança", literally Bookshop Hope. Sure it's dusty. Yes, they're not very nice to books even making new books look like second hand ones, but it's quite the sight isn't:
The bookshop gave new meaning to its name when I was able to find two Portuguese authors that Fnac and Bertrand didn't have (they even told me I wouldn't find it anywhere).
Now I'm reading The white tiger by Aravind Adiga. It follows the life of a low caste boy and his rise. It is not depressing as it might seem, it's full of life, hate, some love, fear and lots of greed and survival. Accoding to the main character not even most Indians understand fully the caste system, I'm starting to believe him. Why are caste fiction stories interesting? Because they deal with man's ultimate quest: fighting one's destiny, looking for a better life.
While in India I noticed some order of things (mind you, some insane version of order, some sort of wonderland but still an order), I noticed an airport clerk with a servant for example. It infuriated me. The clerk even refused to take something from the servant's hand and he had to set it down on the table so that the clerk could pick it up. I was appalled. Two months later and from the confort of my home I think that despite all that, it is a good thing that that man had at least a job in a country that is pouring out more babies than it can feed. A bad job is better than no job at all in those conditions.
Perhaps now that I witnessed India and got confused by it I have time - and silence - to think about it, to read about it, basically to learn about it. Also today, the day that I bought another book that in some way regards India, the Western world in awaking to a terrorist attack that killed almost 10 Europeans. The terrorist knew that by attacking a posh hotel they would get the media, the media is a great pressure on the India government. But despite thinking those actions are horrible, that most media these days are dreadfull vampires, I wonder why the world is shocked at 10 Westerners dead when thousands of Indians died. If I die in Thailand will that matter to Thai people who can afford a tv?
Perhaps I am more prepared for India than I was when I visited it. I'll know more when I ran out of books about it. I think.
Sarah Macdonald went to India because she had to. She didnt like it - she hated it would be more accurate - when she first visited it and now her life circumstances forced her to go back, her fiancé was stationed there, it was either joining him or being apart for a year or two. Written in (what i'm starting to think is the Australian way) in a very witty, in-your-face, almost rude English, this sometimes politically incorrect way yet finds space for a context even at the most horrid situations. I personally have a problem with this politically correct age, when people are worried about ridiculous things and are more hypocritical than ever so Macdonald's writing was a welcomed relief.
Still India hits back, there is an earthquake that kill thousands, a massive drought and the traffic is still scary."India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true. It's rich and poor, spiritual and material, cruel and kind, angry but peaceful, ugly and beautiful, and smart but stupid." P.123
Indians must suffer a culture shock in Western societies as well:
" 'We Indian people, we look at the people more poor, more low, more hard than us and we are thanking God we are not them. So we are happy. But you white peoples, you are looking at peoples above you all of the times and you are thinking, why aren't I them? Why am I not having that moneys and things? And so you are unhappy all of the time.’ "P.127
Sarah and her now husband go to Kahsmir during yet another cease fire, mosques are boarded up, there are sand bags in front of temples, people have not worked or seen tourists in months. Muslims Indians are welcoming and nice, she is stuffed with food - twenty one types of lamb - and hears "I love you" a lot. She attents a Hindu festival, a mass rave where ecstacy is religion.
For the course of several months she experiences, breathes in and listen to Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Sufism, Hinduism, Judaism (and the Kabalah), Parsi and even the teachings of an alien called Kryon. Sarah also visits different parts of the country, goes to several Indian marriages, watches the drama of an India "saving face".
The reader feels compelled to join her in her religious quests and interaction with Indian families but not on the rest of her Indian experiences, I mean, she almost died of pneumonia... This book is an excelent way of reliving a culture shock or of learning how you could react to it, also through her life changing experiences we learn a lot about India, its religions and beliefs. It's also a bit like reading "history of religion" or a "world religions" funny essay. It still could use some pictures...
