It's been a week since my last post and for that, I apologize. I've been amazingly busy most nights, which I'm pretty happy about because it's a whole lot better than being super bored by myself. Highlights from this week will be far less interesting than last week and I can't say I've lost any more phones, but I think that's probably a good thing.
Last weekend ended pretty quietly with me going to the Tate Modern on Sunday afternoon and walking around South Bank a little more. I remained much closer to the area I'm familiar so that I couldn't lost. The museum is huge and there's a ton of interesting works to see. The featured gallery was a photography exhibition showing all sort of family portraits of people related to people who have died throughout history. It was interesting, but after about 3 hours of art and walking around, I got a little bored so I decided to take scenic route back to my flat. Along the way I saw the Globe where Shakespeare originally showed all of his plays. Happy I saw it, but there were way too many people around. I decided to call it a day.
Work on this week was pretty uneventful. I don't think the people there really thought about how they wanted to use me so it's been mostly on me to figure out how to fill my day. Thankfully no one in my office back in SF really knows I'm gone so requests from there keep rolling in. After work is where most of the exciting stuff happens so I'll stick to those stories.
On Monday night I officially had my first curry. I was working later than expected and one of the guys from my team suggested we grab some beers and some dinner. He was shocked to hear I hadn't been to a curry house yet, especially because the best one in the area is apparently right below my flat. So curry/Indian food is a lot better over here, but so much spicier than I am used to. After only a few bites I was already sweating and my nose could not stop running (someday someone will have to explain why that happens when I eat eat spicy food). The meal was fantastic and the walk home was even better because it was literally about steps. The next morning, however, I was still feeling the effects of the curry. We have market update meeting every morning at 8:30am and I was still sweating through the whole thing. Everything I drank or ate still tasted like curry. Just from that I've decided it might be best for me to avoid curry houses as much as possible.
British food overall is terrible. From what I can tell, they have no concept of fresh vegetables and anything healthy they do have tastes completely bland. We are definitely spoiled in California. Meat here comes predominately in the form of sausages or burgers. I can honestly say one day I had sausage for all three meals one day, and from what I can tell, that's actually somewhat normal. Someone here was talking about how he thought that most people here eat pretty healthy and had to stop myself from laughing because I realized that he was being serious. I'm not even sure how that's possible because I can't even find salads on menus here. The other easy option here is of course fish and chips. Every place has some form of fish and chips, and every place claims to have the best. I'm no expert, but they pretty much all taste the same. And they all come with a thing called mushy peas. These have to be the worst form of peas known to exist, yet they apparently love them. I think the idea is to take already terribly tasting peas, mash them together and then overcook them. Talk about culinary mastery. I'll be avoiding these from now on.
Other fine bits of British cuisine that I've had are things like brown sauce, shrimp chips, and sausage rolls. Brown sauce is good, but it's just like a brown sugar sauce. Apparently it's big here. The shrimp chips are vile little things. Imagine Lays potato chips flavored like ketchup and shrimp. The sausage rolls are delicious, but quite possibly the most unhealthy thing I've seen here. They are basically really fatty sausage inside a puff pastry and topped with butter. A guy in my team ate four of these with a diet coke for lunch. I almost had a heart attack just watching him eat that.
On Wednesday night I went out to Leicester Square (pronounced Lester, go figure) and Soho to check out the theater district. I grabbed dinner with Anne, the lady from my flight over, and her daughter. Dinner was expensive and again not very good, but Anne and her daughter were good company. I think they were kind of bored after having been traveling all throughout Europe with just each other and needed someone new to talk to. After dinner I decided to take them to a pub because they hadn't had a drink yet since coming back to London. I think I got them both pretty drunk, which was not my intention, but very funny by the end of the night. Anne again tried to drink like I do and her daughter was not an experienced drinking even though she was a sophomore in college. I quickly realized I could out drink the town of them combined so the night ended pretty early. After I got them back to their hotel, I wandered around the area for a bit just to see what was going on there. Bad idea. This area is definitely the tourist spot of London and I was quickly annoyed with the number of people bumping into me and the randoms that kept walking up to me and asking if I was to go clubbing or if I wanted to "have a good time". After a few seconds of that, I just hopped in a cab an got out of there.
Thursday night was supposed to be a team dinner night, but the boss man decided to postpone it for the week after. That meant everyone had the night free from wives/girlfriends already cleared so we decided to make it a big drinking night. We went to a bar called Dizzy's across the street from work and started with a few pints there. Our intention was to do a bit of bar hopping, but after enough drinks no one was in any shape to make any decisions so we just stayed, which is fine by me because I knew how to get home. No great stories to tell other than apparently Brits like buying Americans random shots and I was again the last man standing that night. When I walked in the next morning, one of the guys from my team told me that I needed to go back to SF because he wasn't sure his liver could take many more nights like that. I'm pretty proud of that.
Friday night was more of the same. This time we did end up doing a bit more bar hopping so I got to see a bit more of the town. Went home around 1am and got a great night sleep before what I hope to a very fun and busy weekend. The plan is to do some touristy stuff today, including Regent's Park, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and Westminster Abbey. Sunday was supposed to include a trip out Wimbledon, but I just checked and apparently they don't play on the middle Sunday unless rain forces them to. Looks like I need to find something else to do. Thinking I might try to get out to Stonehenge now instead. Should be fun. And with that, I'm off to go explore.
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