Notes from the Underground.

You are in a hole in the ground.  The demonic rumbling of trains overhead or underfoot or somewhere close by hints at the massive network of this underworld; it is a magnificent technological advancement in public transportation, to be sure.  But there is nothing for it: you are in a hole in the ground.

Sometimes there are only a few of you waiting, clustered together beneath the readerboard that asserts "Edgeware 1 min."  The emptiness is filled with the buzzing of the fluorescent lights and the glare from the white, white tiles.  Most substantially extant, though, is the gaping mouth of the tunnel: the dark, hellish tunnel that curves around, out of sight, to the center of the earth. 

Suddenly, with a gust of wind and a rumbling from the belly of the netherworld, the Northern line heading north is ejected from the abyss, bursting onto the scene flushed with the energies of effectual transport. 

This is my love letter to the Tube.

It is difficult for me to express in words what the London Underground means to me.  We are soulmates; it's as though it had been made for me.  As the girl who can hardly navigate her tiny hometown, the Tube is a godsend in this massive and confusing city.  The beauty of this system lies in the simplicity of the map.  It's genius designer Harry Beck recognized that the Tube map need not be geographically accurate.  All it needed to do was tell people how to get from Point A to Point B.  (He was paid only 5 guineas for this iconic design, which was adapted for use in every other major underground system in the world.)  All you have to do is say "I am here, and I want to be here, which color connects them?"
 

    

A thing of beauty.

It is the definition of efficient.  In fact, everything about the Tube is efficient.  People line up in two columns on the escalators, right for standing, left for passing; Oyster cards let you through in seconds; and the trains are always running one after the other, so if you miss one, all you have to do is wait a minute or two for the next.  And there is something meditative about the motion of a fast-moving vehicle on rails, the way it gently sways back and forth as it rushes you to your destination.  And the people watching... everyone here tries to be in their own little world in their own little way.  It is fascinating.
Now, as pointed out by Bill Bryson in Notes From a Small Island, the map's geographical solecism could potentially be misleading: "A stranger to London would get from Bank to Mansion House using Beck's map. He would take the Central Line to Liverpool Street, and then change to the Circle Line for another five stops to Mansion House. He would then emerge to find himself just 200 yards down the street where he had started from!"

Rey, Luke and Ani demonstrate how to ride the Tube in style.

But I have since learned that no one would actually make this error, because if my direction-disoriented self can figure it out, anyone can figure it out. 

I suppose I should bring this missive to a close, before I run away with my romantic feelings.  The best way I can describe my fondness for the Underground is to borrow from a phone message a friend once left me: I love you with my heart, and my soul, and my being, and my person.     

Yours always,

Meredith

  

P.S. I feel that this title's allusion to Dostoevsky neutralizes any past allusions that may have been made to Katy Perry.



This, too, shall pass...

... as my dad always says.  I'm borrowing a friend's computer for now, because the show must go on!  By which I mean, of course, this blog.  So, while things get sorted on the stolen property front, I will handle the situation by doing what I do best - talking about it!

And speaking of shows, the opera ran last week.  It was great success, with full houses and lots of positive reviews in all the major newspapers.  One of the posters: 

 

On Thursday, we went on a "flash mob" (I've never heard this term before; I'm assuming it's British?) meaning we went around major London areas singing bits from the show and giving out flyers for publicity.  We successfully attracted the attention of the police in each of these places, which we attributed to our fabulous musical talent, but which always ended up in our rather hurriedly running away... I wanted to stop and ask about the crime report for my computer, etc. since you have to report things over the phone and not in person (very strange) and which has been difficult since my phone was one of the stolen items, but I rethought this idea when I saw their rather unfriendly facial expressions.  Perhaps over the phone is best.  Anyway, here's a photo of us in front of the Royal Opera House:

And here are some photos from the show - just check out these sets!

Act I with the supercool giant bull

Act II with the swimming pool, which was a massive and rather hazardous set change

Act III with my favorite - the huge sparkly heart!

Backstage - one of my fun 60's poses + Francisco doing the twist;
Rupert in the back there is my on-stage beaux

Before each show, we'd do warm-ups and games with the cast to get revved up, just like we do before American shows, except that in America, we usually do the hokeypokey, whereas here they do the hokeycokey.  When they all said, "Yes quite, let's do the hokeycokey!" Raven (another Pomona student) and I looked at each other and said, "Oh, it's probably just the hokeypokey," we can do that.  And to be fair, it started out about the same way - "You put your right leg in, you put your right leg out" and all that - but took a sudden turn for the worse when everybody grabbed each other and ran into a pile in the middle of the room, Red Rover style, at which point Raven and I looked at each other in fear and said, "Oh, no, this is definitely NOT the hokeypokey."  And they did this over and over; it's a miracle anyone was in a state of health to still appear on stage.
So my fellow Americans, be warned: they take the hokeypokey to a completely different level here.

Stolen.

My phone, camera, and, worst of all, computer have all been stolen.  So.  There may be a halt in this blog for some time, as I will have nothing to report with (communal computers are shockingly hard to find), and nothing to report about, since the next bit of my life will probably be dedicated to trying to figure things out.  It is questionable as to whether I'll be able to start this blog up again, so thank you to all of those who followed up to this point; it's been a good ride!

California Gurls.

The sun came out today!!

It took a bit to remember what that strange yellow sphere in the sky was, but we quickly acclimated.  It's unbelievable how people's moods can brighten upon the arrival of the sun.  I'd forgot about the phenomenon of weather living in SoCal (where the term for anything other than sunny is simply, "Having weather").  But here you appreciate it alright.  A bunch of us were having lunch in the park, and I finally had my revelatory, "finding yourself" moment that you're supposed  to have when you study abroad:  I came to the shocking conclusion that somewhere along the way, I'd turned into a California girl.  Oh my. 

At the risk of aligning myself with Katy Perry - "West coast represent, now put your hands up!"

Virginia Water (singular).

This weekend, one of the folks on my hall (Faheem, better known as Faz) invited a group of us to come stay at his family home in Virginia Water (oh, how I long to add an "s," why is everything here singular??).  It's about 1 hr 30 min outside London, so we took the National Rail out on Saturday afternoon; during the ride, the boys amused themselves by playing charades.  It was so wholesome, heartwarming, and completely unlike anything a group of my guyfriends in the states would do.  Being 1 hr 30 min outside London also means Virginia Water is in the countryside, which was very refreshing.  They have a beautiful family home, and his mom sorry, mum, cooked us some fantastic meals of Indian food.  Here we all are:

L to R: Faheem (Faz), Luke, Me, Alex, Rehaan (Rey), and Anirudh (Ani).

Our activity-filled weekend included lots of soccer, table tennis, frisbee in the park, and golfing.  Being with a bunch of boys is rather exhausting!  But I must say my hand-eye coordination is beginning, albeit slowly, to come into existence.  See, I can aim and hit a golf ball!  Sometimes!

I scored a 47, I think it was meant to be!  Ok, it's actually a terrible score, but still.  47.

 

The crew again, looking pretty professional, I must say.

We also had quite a musical time.  Faz got out his quarter-sized violin and his parents brought out his brother's old cello.  The boys were also coaxed into singing "Colors of the Wind" and "My Heart Will Go On" when I found the piano music, which I consider to be a huge success.  The fact that they sang it, I mean.  I will not comment publicly on the actual quality of the singing... in their defense, it was out of their range.  There is a compromising video of it, but I will spare you, dear readers, and leave you with a silent picture.

And speaking of music, I've got to eat something before running to dress rehearsal to the opera.  I almost passed out and fell off the stage last night; probably shouldn't do that again, the director might yell at me for changing the blocking : )

Coma and collections.

Wednesday, I took a nap after tutorial around 2, and didn't wake up until 8.  This may seem like a long-ish but not abnormal nap, except that when I say 8, I mean 8 am.  The next day.  Because it was brought on by illness (still recovering from being sick) and it is uncertain whether or not I was capable of being awakened, the pre-meds claim it could technically have been a coma.  Despite the health hazards, I must say the 20ish hours of unbroken unconsciousness was quite rejuvenating, and I highly recommend it.

Tuesday, our architecture class went to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons.  It is a fantastic anatomical collection with a focus on abnormalities.  The most fascinating piece to me was an adult skeleton of an individual who'd had fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva - where muscle and connective tissue turn into bone.  You may be asking what our architecture class was doing in this macabre menagerie: we are studying the concept of collecting since it was a common hobby during the Enlightenment, and how collections were housed architecturally so that they didn't horrify the laypeople.  For example, the Hunterian household was divided into three parts, with the bodysnatching happening on one end, Mrs. Hunter holding posh book clubs on the other, and the anatomical collections displayed in the middle, a physical manifestation of its place somewhere between barbarous and polite society.

All this talk about collections got me to realizing that England really does seem to have quite an obsession with it.  Most museums here are the product of a single wealthy individual with an appetite for the curios.  This would be an appropriate time to mention the Wellcome Museum, which has become my second home.  The Wellcome Trust was the brainchild of Sir Henry Wellcome, whose dedication to health, research, and the public understanding of science makes him a man after my own heart.  It is only a block away from where I live -

- and has a beautiful library on the top floors open only to science/science history students.  It's the closest thing I've found to Honnold-Mudd back at Pomona, but what Honnold-Mudd doesn't have are things like Darwin's walking sticks or the medical case used in the 1933 Everest expedition -

- or Florence Nightengale's moccasins -

- or confocal microscope photography exhibits or the complete library of the human genome (a book for each chromosome!).  In short, it is nerd heaven.  If you've heard of the Science Museum, that's also a Wellcome Trust institution; many of the labs at UCL are Wellcome labs, too, and the list goes on.

I also recently ventured to the Charles Dickens museum, another prodigious collection.  On the way there, Alex and I we were amused to run into this elite establishment:

This college?  It's pretty okay.

- A great example of one of my favorite observations about the English and their fun signs.  "Humps for 300 yards" is another good example, albeit a bit racy - 

- But that's just the thing, they don't seem to realize the inappropriateness.  Which returns me to the Dickens Museum where, amongst some genuinely awesome artifacts from Dickens's life (like the table upon which he penned his last words), there were also some treasures like this:

They're referring to women in the family, but it sure doesn't sound like it.

Anyway, off to practical to play with rat babies! Er, I mean do super serious experiments with mammalian organisms.  Lots more soon!

Professors say the darndest things.

I realize I haven't talked very much about school here - save a few rants about lab - and since that's, you know, the reason I'm here, I thought I should address it.  The most significant part of any learning experience is, of course, the teacher.  This term has been a crash course in lecturing styles; with our two science courses being taught by a different professor each class, you never know what flavor of learning you're going to experience.  What they all have in common, however, is that they are not American.  This means I will often be caught off-guard by their mode of expression or humor - it's all good fun, of course, just different. 
The other day, for example, a professor was discussing central nervous system regeneration.  Despite speaking so quietly that if I closed my eyes I would be convinced he was in the other room, he did have a funny way of expressing himself.  He referred to spinal injury as "a jolly silly thing to do," which in context of his manner of speaking seemed perfectly normal, until I thought about it and realized, none of my professors at home would have referred to it in that way.  But with the accent, it's just not weird for some reason.  Everything sounds so reasonable with a good English accent.
My Science in the Mass Media professor showed a surprising turn of humor when a girl asked for a copy of the handout in the middle of class and he said, with a very posh accent, "What, did you eat yours over break?"  It was funny, but again, if said by an American, the humor would be lost.
Our vocal instructor for the opera was having us put our hands on our jaws to project better and said, solemn as anything, "A good jaw massage never goes amiss."  The accent, again, made it seem like a very practical thing to say, to which I might agree and answer, "Oh yes, quite."
Our architecture teacher, trying to explain Foucault to a class of students none of whom had previously read Foucault - which was comical in and of itself - tried to explain a concept with the sapient phrase, "A cave does not a statement make."  This would sound absurd with an American accent, but perfectly normal when he said it. "Ohhhhhh, so that's what Foucault meant," we all nodded, not understanding but believing that we had.
Finally, in a slightly different vein but equally as perplexing, I talked to a teacher after class who I had e-mailed previously.  She said, "Oh, you're Meredith.  I saw your name on the e-mail and I thought you'd be a boy."  Well, at least she didn't think I'd be the hindquarter of a camel (see previous post).  But I guess over here the original use of Meredith as a boy's name still prevails.  A definite difference I had not anticipated.
While I'm on the topic of school, I do feel the need to address my infamous Cellular Neurophysiology practicals because I had my last one Friday.  While I experimented on locust motor neurons, I also performed a second social experiment of my own which was: Since it was the last practical, instead of trying to fit in, I would treat it as I would a practical in the U.S. because this is how I work best and I have a hard time believing they're really having fun here when they act so solemn and formal all the time.  It didn't go over so well with the TA who has had it out for me since Day 1 - when he helped us, I said, "Awesome, thank you so much, that totally works now!" as genuinely as I could and put my hand up for a high five.  He just stared blankly back and in a flat tone asserted, "We don't self-congratulate here."  Jeese, is having fun while working illegal here?  But a winning moment came right at the end when we finally got an optional second part of the lab to work (seeing minis!) and the professor was saying how it was super important to get out right at 5 pm; he said that part of science was about being able to finish on time.  Instead of closing my mouth like a good UCL student, I decided I'd had enough with the not-interested-in-real-science attitude here (we were getting mini readings for goodness' sakes!!) and asked him how many times he left his lab on time.  He paused for a few seconds, smiled abashedly, and said, "Yes, ask my wife."  That's what I thought!  HA!  He let us stay for awhile afterward. 
It's very strange to me - and highly inconvenient, considering my personality type - that overt enthusiasm is supposed to be repressed here.  It is considered somehow impolite, I think; all I know is that people clearly do not find it to be a positive attribute, and I rather just feel judged, as if I've done something wrong by smiling too much.  There is definitely a lot more formality in every situation, often even between friends, which is stifling to me.  Their mode of expression is certainly beautiful here, and I, like every American, am enamored of it in all the British films I see.  But it drives me crazy in real life, when all I want to do in the world is chat with the lady ringing up my groceries just to get a smile out of her because she looks so serious.  But I can't, because that would somehow be rude. 
Huh?

Opera and Nightlife.

What a barrage of work!  The inconsistency of workload is so funny here; at Pomona, you have a constant stream of a little too much to do, so you develop a system and a momentum that carries you along.  Here it's nothing at first, then everything all at once.  Whew, what a busy week!

After Reading Week, rehearsals for the opera really picked up, so they have been consuming my time - but it's all good fun.  Doing this production has been my favorite part of being at UCL so far; I'll post pictures of costumes and things when we have them, but in the meantime, I thought I'd at least give a rough idea.  It's Weber/Mahler's Die Drei Pintos except we're singing it in English, so in this case it's The Three Pintos.  Like all operas, it's about love and the massive mis-communication attendant upon it, and it's quite funny.  It's being staged in 1960's Spain, so we will have sweet retro 60's costumes.  We learned how to do the twist last night, which is quite a workout when you do it for three hours!  Some of us also have to hold these ridiculous 60's modeling poses for long periods of time - it's like doing yoga or something, I don't know how Twiggy managed it.  These are picture of the set models, to give you some idea of the style of the show:

The first act is in a pub; when the bull flies in, it's pretty exciting.

The second act is a pool party - we're hoping we don't have to wear swimsuits on stage...

The third act involves a wedding, and the giant sparkly heart is the coolest set piece I've ever seen!

Also, in act two most of the cast becomes maids, housekeepers, valets and the like.  The director made an allusion to Downton Abbey, my new favorite BBC production, and everyone laughed because they'd all seen it! It was so bizarre because I'm used to being one of the few nerds who watches Masterpiece Theater, whereas here, Downton Abbey currently has the largest viewing of any TV show, except Dr. Who.  And while I'm on this digression, another fun difference is that we take a tea break in the middle of rehearsal.  Which not only involves a plethora of tea, sugar, milk, biscuits - a proper meal - but lasts above a half hour.  It's so different than my music rehearsals in the States.  But like I said, lots of fun.

On a different note, the other night UCL hosted a dance party that was held in "the world's best nightclub," so a bunch of Pomona students went because we figured we should check it out if it's really that famous.  Its best attribute is it's name, Ministry of Sound, and the clever logo that goes along with it:

 

The purpose of this story, however, is not to tell you about London's clubbing scene, but to describe The Incredible Journey we experienced trying to get back home.  See, we were on the South Bank, which is a famously not great place to be at night.  The Tube, which I love with my heart and soul, disappointingly stops at midnight.  So, while we left reasonably early, it took us at least two hours to get back home because the night bus system was so convoluted.  Every time we figured out which bus might get us close, we'd go to the stop only to find the stop was out of service.  Some buses just wouldn't stop at all, either.  It was a nightmare.  So, we had the joy of finding out what it was like to be out late, on the South Bank, with no way to get home.  London in the winter at night is also quite chilly, I might add.  But we were all together, and as Anjali pointed out, sometime next year when we're taking in the sunshine in snug little Claremont we'll probably say to each other, Remember that time we were stuck on the South Bank in the middle of the night and would have done anything to be safe and warm?

A more fun person than I would advise, if you plan to come to London, learn the night bus routes.  But I say, take the Tube and don't stay out past midnight.  Lesson learned.