Stephanie Booth's online ramblings
[fr] Aux Etats-Unis du 2 au 12 janvier.
Just a note to let you know I’ll be in the States from Jan. 2-12. 6-11 (roughly) will be in San Francisco (yes, I know there’s a big Apple fiesta at that time).
Do drop me a note if you’d like to meet up! Maybe we can organise a dinner/party or something if enough people are interested.
Write-up of my 5-day trip to the UK. Movies with Aleika, Bombay Dreams in London, an IRC meetup.
The nice thing about having a laptop is that you can fire it up on the airplane and type in peace, without being distracted by IRC, instant messaging, e-mail and stats checking, or simple bloghopping. With iTunes in the background playing Bombay Dreams, my only concern is that the plane will start descending towards Geneva shortly.
My trip to the UK was short, and last-minute. I heard some people from #joiito were going to meet up in London on Sunday, I checked my easyjet flights, called Aleika–
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be landing shortly in Geneva. Please return to your seats, make sure your seatbelt is fastened and your seat is in the upright position, and switch off any electronic equipment.”
There goes the laptop, and I now find myself with a post which will be hard to date. Anyway. (Warning: this is a “cheese sandwich” post to some extent, so if you’re bored already, don’t bother reading it.)
Where was I? Yes, last-minute trip. I found a friend to house-and-cat-sit for me, which was nice, and spent the first couple of days at Aleika’s. We did our usual “girls at the movies” thing: get dressed up a bit, leave home late, grab some food which doesn’t come fast enough (well, it took long enough to arrive that I drank my pint of cider almost entirely before the meal, and can now testify that it’s all it takes to make my head spin quite a lot), jump into a cab and run to the theatre (slightly inebriated), only to find that the timings on the internet were incorrect, and we have another half-hour to wait before gleefully drooling all over Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing (OK, I got a bit carried away here, but you get the picture).
I got to spend nearly a whole day alone with Akirno, which was really nice. I didn’t get to see him much on my last visits. He’s grown so much! And he talks so much! (Yes, I know, that’s what I say each time I come back from Birmingham.) He’s a real sweetie. I love him very much.
Unfortunately, I caught a cold (over the top of my first one!) waiting for the bus after Van Helsing, so all my pre-London shopping was done in a rather feverish state. Looking at the bright side of things, it means I didn’t spend as much as I might have, which is a good thing, as my suitcase was already quite full enough (and my bank account empty enough, but that’s another story).
Driving to London went fine. We found a parking space right next to the Apollo Victoria Theatre. (Remember: Sunday matinée shows are a good idea if you’re going to London to see a musical or a play.) Bombay Dreams was really fun, specially as I know most of the songs Rahman re-used for the musical.
Still dressed up (I chose the pink dress), I headed for the #joiito meet-up. Despite this nagging feeling of being somewhat overdressed, and my cold, I had a very nice evening.
As always, though, I had to cope with the frustration of group meet-ups: not enough time to talk with everybody, not enough time to get into interesting conversations with those I talk to. Or maybe I’m just more of a one-to-one person? Anyway, standing invitation for any of you who would want to visit the beautiful town of Lausanne or practice French in the area — just drop me a line, or better (since e-mail is soon to be a dead form of communication, thanks to spam), catch me on IRC.
So, who was there? Well, as I’m nearing the ages of senility, I’m probably forgetting a lot of people, so please bear with me if you’re not mentioned, and let me know if it bothers you too much.
First of all, imajes, my kind host, who was so busy taking me through his iTunes collection on the train back that he missed his home stop. (Can it get worse than that?) Suw prevented me from being the only woman present (I can’t thank you enough for that). Joi was so utterly bored by my presence next to him that he left early to go back to his hotel and sleep — imagine that! (Actually, it seems jetlag also had something to do with it…)
I chatted quite a bit on the way there with imsickofmaps, and on the way back with snowchyld. Hugh managed to mess up my first blogcard somewhat (or whatever those things are called), so I am now the lucky owner of two of them. Gerard aka insert-coin took a nice bunch of photographs and has already put them online. I stole Suw’s camera to take a few photographs, but she’s not home yet, and those I took with my phone are stuck in there until I lay my hands on a Windows PC (thanks, Microsoft).
Apart from bumping my head on a couple of low doorways and leaving my coat there, I brought two things back (not literally) from james’ flat: VoodooPad, which I have not adopted as my official scrap-book application, and a book which made me discover a blog (how often has that happened to you?): Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs, a collection of great weblog posts. I read a few pages, and it looked really neat. It’s on my wishlist now.
I think this post is long enough, for a short trip!
I have arrived safely in India. More news later.
Just a note to tell everybody that I have safely arrived in India. I’ll be taking a coach to Pune this afternoon. Expect more news in a few days, including my cellphone number!
I must admit I’m sick of hearing this question. And as university has just started, I’m again meeting a whole bunch of people I haven’t seen in over a year and who are impatient for news.
The trip was overall a very positive experience. I would encourage anybody who has an occasion to have a similar life-experience to simply go for it.
I grew up a lot (but of course, one always grows up during a year) and feel that I belong to adult-land now.
The first three months were really hard, looking back. My solitary arrival, sickness the second day, a landlady I didn’t get on with and who gently kicked me out, illness and money problems in Delhi – all that was no fun.
The worst at that time was solitude. I was suffering from culture shock, slightly depressed, didn’t know whom to trust, and I had the feeling that try as they might, the people I confided in couldn’t truly relate to what I was going through. That was normal, of course – just as we have trouble imagining what it is for an Indian to land in our culture.
I wrote a lot during that time: my logbook, and “culture shock” notes – which I can’t really find courage to go through and sort out, as they send me back to deeply into those “hard times”.
Meeting Nicola in Delhi and the subsequent weeks in Rishikesh did me a lot of good. I had people to talk to, and got a chance to see how much I had already adapted to this strange culture. Going back to Pune was not too hard, as Mithun‘s family had kindly accepted to put up with me until I found a flat.
The third and last “part” of my journey is the longest – after having met Aleika and settling down in her big and protected home.
When I am asked what I did “over there”, I often answer (amongst others) “babysitting”. People often laugh a little.
It was much more than that, of course. Not everybody gets the chance of living with a baby before having their own. And I must say Somak and Aleika really let me take an important place in Akirno‘s life – I’m very grateful to them about that. It really contributed to making my Indian adventure such a great life experience.