Faded White

Things are getting really busy here in London as mid-term papers and presentations are due left and right. I don’t really have as much time or energy during the week anymore to go exploring. I have to check out Highgate Cemetery sometime though as it should make for some interesting photography. Unfortunately there are a lot of restrictions because it’s such a famous place.

Tonight was quite a night. After class I finished off the last of my roasted lamb I’ve been eating for a few nights and then my flat mates dragged me to a reggae concert. They had bought tickets but would not leave until I would go with them. I don’t particularly like reggae but they finally pressured me to go after convincing me that it would be a once in a lifetime cultural experience. This is London after all, and the Afro Caribbean influence is an integral part of the city.

So we walked to the Astoria and I bought my ticket for the Steel Pulse concert. Apparently they are famous in the United Kingdom and have one a Grammy (not that that means much). They are also really old. We mentioned to my pop culture professor today that we were going to see this group and he got excited and said he saw them 20 years ago! So there’s all this history behind it.

The six of us got there rather early around 8pm but they weren’t performing until 9pm. So we stood around talking on the club’s rather empy floor until 8:45 or so. Then our group decided to move up to the very front right up against the stage. Then like a chain reaction, the moment we moved over there everybody in the room followed suit and the crowd started growing in size behind us. Basically it was really cool because I’ve never been part of a party starting movement.

We were so close during the performance that I wish I had one of my cameras. There was this great homeless looking old black guy who kept cutting in front of the barriers to get pics with his mobile phone again and against throughout the performance. He was so determined to get photos with his little phone. The Steel Pulse lead singer put on a good show and interacted with the crowd and with the rest of his band members. He shook our hands in the front of the crowd during the middle of the concert. Each of the band members had such personality. Even the back up dancers/singers had individual personality that came across. I guess this is what you can see when you’re right up in front. This was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to bar none. And I finished it off with two bottles of Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola and Dandelion & Burdock. Best soft drink maker ever. And to eat I had chicken and lamb shwarma. Late night tunes and grub. Mmmmm….

So many ideas became clear to me while I was at the concert. I finally felt I understood music as a propoganda tool. I mean I’ve known that for quite a while but I’ve never felt it before to truly understand it. But there were strong politcal messages in the band’s lyrics and when merged with feel good tunes and thumping beats, the messages are easily absorbed with little resistance. It was quite startling to think about it even as I was experiencing it. I also got much closer to understanding why the hell I am driven to take photographs. Another piece of this mystery was handed to me. Before I’ve understood that I am heavily visually driven. And I realized that I am escapist. Now to add two these two things I realized that I am obsessed with living moments in my life over and over again. It is almost more pleasing to relive my memories than to actually live them out in the present. When I was watching the concert I wished I had my camera and was trying very hard to see and remember everything that I became distracted with just enjoying the moment. I wanted to remember everything so I could replay it over in my memories at a future date at my own convenience again and again if i pleased. Any way. Enough existential musings.

Make sure to read my Scotland I post before this one. On my second day in Scotland, I took a tour up to the Highlands and Loch Ness. Our driver and tour guide was this crazy guy called Disco Dave. He has so much energy I don’t know how he does it. He was a great storyteller and told us about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and how Mel Gibson screwed it all up in Braveheart even though Disco Dave liked the movie. They were all pretty epic medieval stories that took place in the lands that we were passing through. That’s what made it so interesting. You would listen to this story of terrible massacre in the valley it actually occurred in or see the battle field or castle of another tale. The great thing was that it was all college students so Disco Dave didn’t spare the bloody details or swearing that added richness to the stories. I don’t know if I could have survived that exhausting 12 hour tour were it not for Disco Dave’s energy and love of his country.

The Scottish Highlands are the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in the last year and a half since I took my California road trip. The light was incredible as the sun glimmered through the clouds casting huge God rays on the grassy glens below. The only thing was that my camera was dead! The night before it had been bumping around with me at various bars and had no battery left. I was trying to travel light so I didn’t bring a backup camera. It was beautiful but I wasn’t able to capture it. There was even a guy in Highland dress kilt and all playing the bagpipes at one parking lot pull out overlooking a great view. It gave me goosebumps in the cutting wind seeing this vista listening to this music of the land. At Loch Ness most of the tour went on this optional boat trip out on the lake to look for the Loch Ness monster. I decided to save my 7 pounds and put it towards a nice leisurely lunch of courgette soup and more haggis, neaps, and tatties (turnips & mash potatoes).

We didn’t get back to Edinburgh until 8pm. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant which was pretty good. Then we met up with my friend’s friend who was there visiting Edinburgh the same day and staying with his cousin, Steve, who is Scottish. So I had great conversation at a lounge type bar, Henrick’s, with this 35-year-old or Scotsman and his wife. Steve was pretty interesting to talk to and we had an intercultural exchange. Steve and his wife are over 10 years older than us but they are still mid twenties at heart. Before I knew it the clock had struck 1am and the bars were closing down around town. We went our separate ways and I wandered with my friend and his friend around town. People get a lot more wasted in Edinburgh than in London. It is really a college town after all. There were bodies stumbling all over the place after the bars had all let out on Satuday night. Vomit was everywhere. There was a police officer examing a broken window at a shop. I asked him if it’s always this bad at night and he said yeah, especially on weekends. At that moment his radio went off with report of a fight somwhere else. What a different place the sleepy town during the day turns into at night. But Scotland is a great place to visit and I have to go back someday with a camera that’s working and take a roadtrip through Scotland’s natural wonders.

I went to Scotland this pass weekend with a friend from my program. We booked a trip with a tour company for two nights in Edinburgh. The trip started at the crack of dawn with an early morning train journey that took five hours. The seats were really uncomfortable and there was no leg room. When we finally arrived we were herded onto a bus and spirited around the city on a whirlwind tour of Edinburgh. The tour guide was this Scotsman dressed in a kilt wearing a belt and tie imprinted with Scotland’s flag. He had a heavy Scottish accent and kept cracking corny joke after corny joke. It was too much for me after only having 4 hours of sleep the night before and having just got off of a long train ride. When we checked into the hotel it felt like it had been such a long day but it was only 4pm. I brewed us a cup of tea in the hotel room and we were off again in search of dinner because we were starving.

Turns out that people in Scotland are very particular about meal times. You can’t get an early dinner or lunch. Dinner is strictly after 6pm and lunch from 12pm. So we had nothing to do but walk around and kill time. We ate a wonderful meal at this restaurant/bar called Magnum. This is where I got my first taste of haggis, the Scottish national dish. It’s basically sheep offal minced and cooked with oats in a sheep’s stomach. A big sausage that you cut open and serve if you will. Magnum’s version was deep fried (another Scottish passion) in little balls and served on a bed of mash sprinkled with red and yellow pepper coulis. It was good. Next I had a venison casserole which was decent and satisfying. For dessert I got a raspberry & rhubarb crumble served with creme anglaise made with vanilla bean. It was the perfect blend of tartness mixed with sweetness. Finally we finished with coffee and tablet. Tablet is also known as fudge in the UK. It’s a type of homemade style candy. The same ingredients as caramel but not cooked until “caramelization.” Let’s just say it goes perfectly with coffee.

After that we just went from bar to bar. We talked to some Scottish girls at the first place. People are a lot friendlier in Scotland it seems. If you start talking to them they’ll actually have a conservation with you. There were some navy guys in town who were going partying so we ended up getting swept into their crowd into some Irish pub that was packed. The navy is expectantly a very heavy drinking culture and when a whole bar full of them get lubricated it gets pretty loud with group singing. We ended up back in our room around 1am after my friend was drunk and having another deep fried haggis for his night cap. Most of my money goes into tech gadgets. I now see where a lot of other people’s money goes.

Had brunch with Jackie at Fortnum & Mason’s Fountain restaurant. Fortnum is a high end department store of food and homewares with three restaurants. We both had a full English Breakfast comprised of eggs, toast, tomato, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, black pudding, tea, and juice. Stuffed. I figure I had to eat this meal once and to do it properly I went to this respected establishment. The sausages were pretty good and so was the tea and juice. It’s not something I would recommend ordering for recreational eating though. Even the English have abandoned it for the lighter Continental fare of croissant or scone with coffee or tea.

Next I splurged on another luxury. I figured if I’m going to get a solid white shirt it should be something special because it’s versatile and will never go out of style. The famous clothiers on Jermyn Street in London is where I turned. I bought a shirt from Pink. Thomas Pink was an 18th century tailor famous for making the best hunting jackets the aristocracy could buy. It even led to the term “In the Pink” which today means good health but used to mean embodiment of perfection. Or more literally in one of Pink’s jackets. The name was relaunched in the 1980s with that quality in mind to make shirts and eventually branched out and was eventually bought out by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesy like every other brand. So that’s why there are Pink stores all over the world now but this is the original. That’s my long winded heritage and mythos of the shirt I bought. …Maybe a wie bit of rationalization. They still have a cute sign of a fox dressed in a hunting jacket outside though which alludes to the history.

The store atmosphere was surprisingly casual like a BR and less like a boutique, which I was expecting. I already knew the shirt I wanted since March after seeing someone else with something similar from Pink. A white twill slim fit French cuff with standard collar. I asked to be measured, and this young woman advised me on fit. As always, I had to get it altered because the sleeves were too long so I have to go back to pick it up in a couple of days.

I haven’t posted in a while because I finally got sick after everybody in my flat did. I was out for a week on my bed downing pot after pot of tea. It’s also midterms at this point so that doesn’t help. The past couple weeks I’ve visited Parliament and took a tour through the House of Lords and House of Commons. The most interesting thing though was when we exited we stepped right into a press core with lenses pointed upwards. I turned my head and there was a man on the roof with a sign. He was protesting something, which later on I found out was child custody issues.

I also visited Windsor Castle and Hampton Court in the past couple of weeks. Windsor is a quaint town and I had some decent fish and chips next to an upstairs window at a cute cafe. At this point though I’m quite done with visiting palaces.

I’ve also started eating out a little bit more. I had some very good but expensive shwarma at a Lebanese place called Maroush. It’s a slow roasted lamb that is shredded and placed in a pita with vegetables and served with tahini (sesame paste). It just seems really weird eating street food at a nice restaurant. I’m also starting to get addicted to Indian food. It’s everywhere here and priced affordably. There are curry lunches for around 5 pounds which is as cheap as you’re ever going to get at a sit down place.

Last night I saw a play called UN Inspector at the National Theatre. It was a comedy about a fictional Eastern European country. The corrupt president and his cabinet mistake a broke businessman as an undercover UN Inspector and bribe him to not report them to the international community. Hilarity ensues.

The same night one of my flat mates was flipping through the latest Playboy and calls me over. We both stare speechlessly at the Girls of the PAC-10 feature. There on the page staring back at us is someone who looks very familiar half-naked in USC gear. “What’s Tari’s last name?” he asks me. I look at the caption and answer the question accordingly not quite believing what I’m seeing. This is the girl that lives downstairs in our program…how girl next door is that?!

I went to the main royal residence today to tour the state rooms. These are the rooms open to the public during the summer and where official guests and diplomats are recieved the rest of the year. The rooms are designed to impress from the grand stair case to the ballroom to the banqueting halls. The picture gallery had classical paintings larger than I have ever seen before. I’m usually not a fan of realism in painting but I found myself examining the royal portraits because I was astonished by the technical mastery on such a large scale. The same goes for the sculptures dotted throughout the palace.

Each room was packed full of decorative details that it took me a couple of hours just to get through the couple of rooms. I had to scrutinize each room and it’s details from ceiling to the wallpapers. Then there’s the priceless furniture. The weather was nice when I visited, so sunlight was pouring in streams through the windows facing the gardens making the dining room as well as the music salon dazzle. I’m usually not a big fan of palatial visits but I guess the sunlight streaming in did a lot. The tour ended in gardens. Photography isn’t allowed inside so I only have this shot outside from the gardens.

I also dropped a decent amount of change at the gift shop. I’ve been searching to purchase a tea cup and saucer set while I was here in London but hadn’t found anything that I really wanted. I finally found a stunning example of a European tea cup. It’s a gold plated set designed for the royal family by Faberge. It was so beautiful that I knew my search for an English cup and saucer had ended. The only question was whether to get one or splurge and get two. You can probably guess what happened.

This weekend was the Thames Festival celebrating the river that defines the geography of London. In fact, London was built and is commercially successful throughout history because of the river. The festival lasted two days from noon to night and involved a lot of boat racing, food, crafts, and music. Festivities stretched for nearly 2 miles along the south bank of the river from the London Eye to the Tower Bridge. On early Saturday evening, I set out solely with the intention of doing a quick scouting mission of the area to decide my perpective from which to photograph the following night’s fireworks display. I did that but ended up staying all night. I ate curry, rice and samosas for dinner, and I think I’m starting to get addicted to Indian food here even though I haven’t had a chance to eat really good Indian cooking yet.

The reason I got stuck there was because I got sucked into browsing all the booths and also the Foyles bookstore there. I’m one of those compulsive people that has to examine everything in a store thoroughly before leaving so it took quite a while. Then there was this really cool music event happening when I stepped out of Foyles. Along the embankment people were packed at least 6 persons deep dancing and trying to get a view of a DJ out in the middle of the river on a platform. It was spraying a mix of water and fog into the air while images were projected onto this misty screen to accompany the beats of the music. I couldn’t get a frontal view because there were so many people so I had to settle for a side view by climbing onto the nearest bridge.

On Sunday I set out in the late afternoon and walked the entire 2 mile length of the festival to see all that it had to offer. I made sure to eat lunch before going to better control my a la carte spending while there. I still ended getting a chocolate, hazelnut, banana, and rum crepe from the French food area. This was sort of ironic because part of the celebrations was to mark the 200 year anniversary of Nelson’s victory over Napolean at the battle of Trafalgar.

I hopped on a tube back to the other side of the festival because I was too tired to walk the 2 miles back with my camera gear in tow. I got back just in time to photograph the night carnival parade with its procession of lanterns and such. This was a pretty stressful shooting situation because I’m not very experienced at using flash much less in an action situation. You have to remember also that you’re competing with lots of other amateur and pro photographers for basically the same shots so it’s hard to get those intimate eyes directly into the lens portraits. Once again I have to thank National Geographic Photographer Bob Krist and his book Spirit of Place, which I read to review right before the trip, for his tips on shooting events exactly like this. I was able to draw on his wealth of experience to supplement my own lack thereof.

The night ended with me grabbing a plate of jerk chicken and rice while camping out at my chosen spot an hour before the fireworks were set to go off. I wasn’t even the first photographer on the scene. Some guys had already set up their tripods when I got there. So I set up my equipment and tested the settings making sure everything was ready to go. Then I finished my dinner and stood there. Eventually people started to line up around me and I had to defend my space lest I lose the spot I had waited an hour for. When the fireworks finally came, I was underwhelmed. I have to say that for a festival as big as this the fireworks were unimpressive. Either they spent all the fireworks money on New Years or the British don’t know how to do a proper fireworks show. It was supposed to be 15 minutes long but ended up being at most 10 minutes. And it seemed very simple with all the fireworks firing around the same place in the sky. The smoke also obscured the Gherkin in my photos which was another downside. Anyway, it was a tiring 7 hour day for me but at least I was able to get some satifactory shots.