London day 2

Oohhh I'm tired. So let's be quick. Or not.

Walked out, looked for breakfast, decided on hummus after I'd passed one place, figured I'd see another. I can't take the supposed Eurabiazing of Britain seriously if I can't find hummus easily. Lots of fried chicken and burgers. I ended up in a cafe, and went for roast lamb and roast potatoes, with peas, carrots, and broccoli. Sound appetizing? I thought so.

More like, "cafe" is short for "cafeteria", rather than having anything to do with coffee. All those stereotypes about English food? Yeah (photo). Gray meat in dark brown gravy, overboiled vegetables -- the other two were edible, but the broccoli was a disintegrating loss. The roast potatoes were okay, something about the skin retained interest.

Public transit is dense and comprehensive and has nice maps, though not one superimposing tube stations over a map of London. Street signs are largely AWOL. Small streets are more likely to be labeled than, say, Whitechapel. It was easier to navigate Tokyo, *in English*.

Long-distance train station was impressive but had a total absence of trash cans. Also not much trash. The first is related to bomb scares I think, or maybe actual IRA bombs.

Later I decided to see what the English made of hamburgers, and realized a bit after that I'd found an "American style" diner, with 1950s-sounding songs and such. 3000 miles and...

Found the British Library, which seems more like what I thought the British Museum was. Found the British Museum in a brochure and on the map, and it sounds more like a normal museum. I'm confused but will check it out tomorrow if I don't sleep to noon again.

The only free wi-fi I've found was in the train station and it sucked. One more advantage of a phone: checking for wi-fi without having to haul a computer out of a bag and wake it up.

Rained a lot today.

Photos:
a bus stop map. I like the circles of walking distance radii
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindstalk/4880155687/
some British Library statue
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindstalk/4880765336/
money, with and without flash. One pound on the left, then 50 20 10 5 2. Yes, 2 is the widest. Remember the dime before you laugh. Pound is the heaviest and thickets. If there's a penny I haven't seen it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindstalk/4880766058/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindstalk/4880766464/

Post from the Underground

No actual connections in the tube but I can use MaStory to write offline. In lieu of having preloaded an LJ post page.

I don't think I mentioned the Iglesia de Dios, an obviously Spanish church, with culty subtitle that I don't remember. And Venetian blinds covering the windows, and people needing to be buzzed in.

It's parochial of me but I'm still surprised to hear very dark women talking like Catherine Tate in that schoolgirl skit she had with David Tennant. For that matter, everyone "talks like they're on Doctor Who." Perhaps because my landlady is Italian and thus doesn't, for contrast.

People here still play their headphones too loudly on the train, including this white girl in all black next to me.

Whitechapel road included a woman in full covering, only an eyeslit visible, talking to herself. I suspect cell phone headset under the burqa or hijab or whatever the outfit was.

There's a Museum of Childhood by my stop. Free admission, £1.70 for tiny cup of orange juice.

A bus carried an ad for Disney's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. :(

Didn't see any bookstores or movie theaters on my walks yesterday. Like my immigrant neighborhood in Chicago - though that might have had non-English stores.

But I'm at the Museum finally, having passed Korean, Lebanese, Japanese, and dim sum food. Which last I'll have to try despite the warnings. Also passed a Parthenon shop selling actual antiquities and It's All Greek selling fake ones.

Post-museum

I forgot a bit in my previous post. No bookstores before, right. But in the same street as the antiquity stores, a narrow way with a fully separated bike lane, was store for the London Review. Don't get much more bookish than that.

The British Library yesterday had a little store of its own. Iain Banks (no M) was in the fiction section. And later I saw some woman reading one of his books on the Tube.

On the Neverwhere geeky front, they do often say "Mind the Gap" on trains. And I recognize a lot of the station names. Including the spooky Blackfriars. (Undr renovation until 2011 apparently.)

Currently in Ah King, the dim sum place. Only a few varieties of dim sum, actually, more of a Chinese bar and restaurant. Time between menu and placing my order was rather long. But it's full of Chinese people, actually I'm nearly the only white person I see.

Hey, my dim sum sampler came quickly. I've had better, had worse. The potsticker was very bland by itself but meant to go with chili sauce. All the pieces came on giant carrot slices instead of the traditional square paper, except for the pork bun - no carrot big enough for that. :)

Still, it's already my best meal in England.

Oh yeah, the museum

That was fun big overwhelming. 3+ hours and I didn't see much of it at my pace. There's a big room to the Enlightenment, not so much about it as how they tried to make sense of the world. History of museuming, sort of. A little library, and a Museum gallery book I found there on Chinese printing. (The oldest surviving work is rather sophisticated; they were as good at color woodblocks as the Japanese and maybe earlier.) Chinese jades special gallery, then the main one on their history and art techniques. (Cloisonné enamels techniques were imported from Byzantium.) Repeat for India and SE Asia. Special gallery of Chinese ceramics. A bit of Japan, Egypt and Assyria and hey, they're kicking me out.

Lots of photos but I'm too skeptical of my battery to upload them now. Of note were shiny multi-color porcelain and enamels, Gandharan vs. Indian art, a very few photos of strikingly different South Indian art.

I heard a very British voice over my shoulder, a customer by the door ordering to go. I didn't expect him to look totally Chinese.

Hey, my duck is here. BBQ pork slices, some greens, and some rice with a spoon. Which IMO it needs, chopsticks aren't cutting. I wonder if Asians stay thin partly because it's too much of a pain to eat enough to get fat.

I kind of think I'm seeing different styles of Chinese faces in here. It'd make sense - big country! But not something I've noticed seeing before. Alternately, I should be seeing some cross-breeds at some point.

Speaking of ethnicity, yesterday had a bunch of redheads in Euston rail station, while Pancras had a Benugo Belgian chain cafe with the most exotic looking yet completely European faces behind the counter. You can tell who didn't bother emigrating to the US much. Also who hasn't watched nearly as many European movies as his parents would have liked.

And a couple of women at a table behind me... I can't tell if they look exotically European or exotically Chinese, or if they're speaking French or Chinese. (It's very noisy in here. But sometimes I'd swear it's European, sometimes Chinese tones. Though I now recall Swedish having a very 'Asian' sound on a San Francisco bus.)