All Things Bright and Beautiful

It is Christmas on Oxford Street. A busy, noisy, fabulous Christmas, if a tad early. Prosaically enough, I bought myself a pair of badly needed trousers, but I made up for that by losing myself at Waterstone's until I could not remember ever coming in. I was enormously impressed by Stephen Baxter's Destiny's Children trilogy, starring perhaps someone whose name sounds like 'Beyonce'. It occured to me that I haven't read a good book - textbooks and guides to consulting aside- in a long, long time. But then, the long bus rides I used to take in Athens are impossible here -the Tube is just too overwhelmingly practical.

It is a difficult time for the MSc people. London may be at its festive best, but, with the deadline for a big Valuation project looming ever closer, we are left longing for consumerist silliness but having neither time nor energy to pursue it. Add to that my job hunting, which is itself a full-time occupation, and it all starts looking positively dismal. Enter Dot Richards and the Brighton trip schedule. A weekend spent with our dodgy faculty in the closest thing the English have to Mykonos? Well, let me check my filofax... I think I've got something arranged with the Scandinavian Bikini Team... nope, that was last week.

Now Brighton is an excellent town by anyone's standards. But it is hard to appreciate when one sits sleepless, stiff and cold inside a coach. Checking into the Royal Albion Hotel, which is a lot less impressive offline, we didn't quite know what to make of this place. We did know, however, that we could look forward to a free meal, unheard of in London, and wine, lots of wine. So we binged away. Oh, some of us complained that the beef was inedible and we were all impressed at how the Royal Albion could mess up the chocolate cake so bad. I mean, you have to do ugly things to five layers of chocolate to make it taste bad. But we survived. Or maybe we died and went to karaoke purgatory. Because what happened afterwards was good and evil and definitely sublime.

In Greece, faculty members will not so much as talk to you unless they a) want you to carry their bag for the following year, b) are looking to shag you in exchange for passing grades in Macro II, or c) are trying to con you out of insane amounts of money trading currencies. Don't laugh. I got into the LSE on this guy's letters of recommendation. I have nightmares of explaining to Dot Richards why my referee is in jail. Anyway, my background left me ill-prepared for the lost Blues Brother, the talented Mr. Macve, and his indian partner (a noted academic himself). The holding hands part killed so many of my brain cells that I screamed.

Now my own favourite faculty member is Dr. Al Bhimani of Summer School fame. I took the man's course before I even knew what was in it and was very disappointed he'd lost that moustache. But what a cool guy nonetheless. He wanted to sing Abba's "Money, Money, Money". After all, as he said, what else would a guy from Accounting sing? Rrrriiiight. Anyway, the karaoke people would not oblige and he was stuck with "Take a Chance on Me", a song I had once heard an Erasure cover of and badgered my English teacher with for a month. How it all ties together, eh? At least Dot Richards (left) and Mary Comben (right) joined my man Al on stage. I could at least tell myself they were doing an Abba impersonation. In his video I went on record as having said "I don't like Abba!" It will come in handy when I'm rich and famous. At least allegations of homosexuality will not stick.

Purgatory is never the end of the story, is it? After the last echoes of "Let it Be" had died down, it was time for the afterparty, and that was held -of necessity- at the only place big enough to let us all through: Creation. Now Creation is one of those clubs that inspired the Matrix cave dance scene. It feels like you've died and gone to hell and found all the other wicked sinners are down there with you. (The Lunatic at Earl's Court Station objects: you don't get to keep your body in Hell, so don't you be gettin' anae idees). But it is a cleverly designed club, catering to the less-infernal crowd as well. An 80's club, shameless but not tacky, lies just behind the main stage, well insulated from the punishing sounds of Creation proper.

Now I am no clubber, and in such places I tend to drink a lot early on so I can take the noise and the crowd. I think a lot, as I always do when drunk, of bizarre things. This time, I thought of the English and why they are so degenerate. Is it the cold? Is it the sun setting at four o'clock? But by the same token, why isn't Iceland submerged in a sea of beer and vomit? Is it the long history of drinking excess escalating into something worse? Then how come there's any Irish people left at all? Is it dysfunctional families? Possibly. I see women pushing baby carts in England that would never be allowed to push crack in Athens. But there must be more. Why are English women such complete tarts, and how does that figure into everything else? I have come to the conclusion that, uniquely among nation-states, the English are the only people who collectively despise themselves. That's why they they never miss an opportunity to act in a self-destructive fashion.

This just might answer my friend Haris' question the other day: why do the English consider Boudicca, who led an army that burnt ancient Londinium to the ground, part of English history? Why does Tennyson get so excited about her? They do because they secretly wish someone would burn nowaday London down, I think. They have a monument to the Great Fire of 1666, as well. Coincidence? But all of this still begs the question of how the English came to despise themselves so. Another day's blogging, I guess.

But enough of these depressing thoughts. The night ended abruptly with fluorescent police barging into Creation. It turns out one of our party was not just drunk, but a complete and utter lunatic on top. Fear not, the sterling reputation of the LSE is safe. And it was time to go anyway. We went to sleep and woke up to the most dazzling sight imaginable.

On a sunny day, Brighton is paradise. The Lanes, Brighton's picturesque market, is built, oddly enough, much like a Greek island hora, with narrow cobblestone roads lined with cute little shops. You can navigate simply by picking the most downward-sloping road every time. And the crowds of happy people that come and go seem to think it's exciting as well, even though it's home. But what I was most suprised to see, in wintertime England of all places, was that molten-gold glow of the sun bouncing off the sea and onto the pavements. I walked around with a massive purple afteglow in my eyes, I stood staring so long. A friend once said while driving down Vouliagmenis that these things nourish her soul and I thought little of it. I understand things a little better now.

This seemed like a good opportunity to get my first upright picture taken for the blog. Well, it didn't quite work, but here goes anyway. I could have picked someone shorter than Thanos to stand next to, but such things aren't always easy to arrange.

As you would expect from a sunlit city by the sea, there is a marina in Brighton. In my homesick mood I thought at the time it looked much like ours in Phaliro. But it doesn't, of course. This one is a huge commercial complex that would put all of Glyfada to shame, and with better service as well (though that is not hard to beat, if memory serves). We had coffee here, and, when the sun had finally set, made our way back to the hotel.

There was an opportunity cost to all this walking around in Brighton. We missed our 'motivation seminar'. More accurately, we woke up early, went to the seminar, and walked out in five minutes. There's only so much "BELIEVE IN YOURSELF YOU CAN DO IT" bullshit I can put up with, especially from a ridiculously gay guy I'd learnt to despise on karaoke night. Is it just me who thinks if you're useless you will not and should not get a good job? What's wrong with the world being fair for a change? When he suggested that we repeat positive affirmations to ourselves every morning, I nearly threw my chair at him. Let's just hope he wasn't paid for this.

Night fell over Brighton, and the MSc people headed for the famous Pier. I never miss an opportunity to act childish, and (a relief, this) neither do all of the other business-savvy cutthroats at the programme. So we hit the rides, and the bumper cars, and even the cans-hitting range that is always rigged (bottom ones are full of sand). And we hung upside down. As a rule, one should never trust people who refuse to hang upside down for a while. No-one should take themselves that seriously.

It is easy to underestimate how cold it can get down by the sea. I should have known better, but then the Aegean is a tame sea and she looks after us most of the time. The ocean, however, knows no master, and while we were going about our amusement park business, it froze our immature asses off. Stiffly, we made our way back to the Albion, to plan for the night.

It always pays to have contacts. One of the Albion's employees, Akis, was a Greek studying in Brighton, and like most Engineering folks, he was a helpful and deeply decent guy. Upon hearing that we had been to Creation and were headed to the Walkabout that night, he shook his head vigorously. "I wouldn't go near either place". Instead, he pointed us to the Saqqara , a club for actual, honest-to-god humans. Certainly, I was in no rush to meet the police again, and everyone was looking forward to some decent folks for a change. So we changed course, braved the inner city streets and spent the night at the Saqqara. The night blurs for me at that point (Red Bull + Vodka does not help maintain focus), though I remember eyes and ankhs looking out at me from wall and pillar and a few exquisite women. What I do recall, most vividly, is the way back.

Our group was divided for a while. Some of us set off to the hotel, while others stayed at the dodgy-looking seaside chipper , not eating any of that stuff I hope. Then a white car pulled over next to me and the door opened. My eyes trailed it all the way back, and there didn't seem to be an end to it. Was I being invited into a limo? Not wanting to wake up minus one kidney, I hesitated. But it turned out the rest of the guys were inside, and had hired it much like one would flag down a cab. I went home in style, and fell into a stupor. Riding a pimpmobile is hard work and I had SO much work to do come Sunday...

...I am doing it now.

Celibacy and the City

By the time you do your second master's degree, some world-weariness has inevitably set in. I didn't come to the LSE expecting it to be a temple of learning, a high-tech wonder or an architectural masterpiece. I knew this was no campus university, and didn't necessarily expect to get a room in one of the Halls. I even anticipated that intellectual challenge would be moderate at best. On the other hand, when you leave home to study abroad for the first time, it is impossible to fully do away with the drama of it all.

Of all the things I have seen in London so far, the LSE library is most faithful to the drama. Now I love libraries, though I never got round to actually studying in one, and I love exclusivity. Imagine my satisfaction, then, when I walked in following registration to be greeted by a sign proclaiming this to be "the largest library of the social sciences in the world". More than that, it is a gorgeous building; I could not resist taking the classic "Ivory Tower" photo of its spiralling staircase.

You meet the darndest people in libraries. In one of my early visits, I was delighted to get hold of that rare creature, my old friend Irene (who, I am assured, is a fan of the media blog), and even take a photo. Some people take pictures and ghosts appear. Some people take pictures and aliens appear. I took a photo of Irene and Panos Spiliotis appeared in the background (right), wearing a face so characteristic he could do the Cheshire Cat trick.

After about an hour of checking email, browsing bushspeaks.com and generally keeping valuable IT resources from serious students, I made my way back to the (sur)real world and the fancifully lit-up buildings of the LSE. Magic and mystery hover around ivory towers and the LSE has been getting its share lately. The Ecumenical Patriarch visited this most secular of universities the other day, an occasion I thought I should not miss. There was a running joke amongst the Greeks in the programme:

- Father, I have a problem...
- Tell me, my child.
- I feel so lonely here in London.
- Yes.
- I'm too embarrassed to talk to the girls.
- Yes.
- And they are all Chinese.
- My child, do you masturbate?
- Father, I masturbate...

This is, of course, all fiction. At the LSE, we are equal opportunity lovers and we are very fond of Asians, especially the saucier ones. Besides, no one seems to have the time or energy for coffee, let alone masturbation. Which is probably safest, too. We're so malnourished our teeth would fall off.

Anyways, his All Holiness did come and give a most enjoyable lecture. He has an excellent voice and is probably a theologian of incredible depth, though even he could not quite make the connection between the Triadic principle of perichorisis and the need for further European enlargement. But I am intrigued by such matters and tend to take them home with me. How fortunate then, that literally a stone's throw from my home rise the spires of St. Cuthbert's, one of London's most beautiful and renowned churches and an Anglo-Catholic one, at that. I have often taken little walks round the Philbeach Gardens and spent time looking up at this gorgeous building, if only because it provides a much-needed counterpoint to Tesco Kensington, open 24 hours.

In case you were wondering, craning my neck to photograph the tip of a spire did not convey some mystic message of enlightenment. I am pretty much as hopelessly astray as I was when I first got here. Living on one's own does not qualify as monasticism. Being unable to cook worth shit does not qualify as fasting. Not getting any does not qualify as celibacy. The world's end is always nigh at Earl's Court. I'll know because Tesco will be closed.

Bouzoukia Night!

I've been aching to write this post since before I even thought of the Media Blog. This is the long-awaited Bouzoukia Night post. Buckle up everyone and upgrade to DSL if you can. It's a big one.

It all started with an invitation from the Hellenic and Cypriot societies here at the LSE. Now, I know the thought of me signing up to a Hellenic Society will raise a few eyebrows. I went to great lengths to avoid it. But I was registered, as it happened, by my ex-debater Roberto who is the President of the LSE Hellenic Society. Talk about networking. At the time I thought, poor kid, what sad and sorry mess has he gotten himself into? I have since had cause to reconsider.

There was to be a Hellenic Party that night, Wednesday, the 2nd of November. It feels like ages ago, but it's been less that two weeks. Amazing. Now my first impulse was to skip that sad celebration of culture shock and write my umpteenth application to some management consultancy instead. I have never been too fond of documents signed "The Committee" and had been spending rather too much lately.

Enter my colleague Thanos, connoisseur of bespoke tailoring and other masterpieces. He informed me over Skype that I could not possibly betray the crew by not showing up again. I had been touchy about matters of honour since I had come to London and so I reluctantly decided to follow. The evening was to start with a football game, Panathinaikos v. Barcelona, in the Underground Bar.

Now I have not followed the team's progress since we beat Ajax years and years ago, and could not name three people on the roster, but, even so, five goals are too many to watch and beer doesn't make it any better. We left the game early and solemnly made our way to the Quad...

...and into a whole different world. Well-arranged tables and surreal lighting gave one the impression of being in a decent (ok, yeah) Athens joint, minus the overwhelming smoke, for which I was grateful. With an ingenious arrangement of seats, we soon found ourselves seated at the front, a perfect vantage point from which to take pictures. I was not too excited about having two obviously stoned Cypriot musicians on stage, singing ever so slightly out of key, but they got better as the night wore on, and I was getting steadily drunk, so it didn't matter for long.

As with all good things, there was a catch. As massive organizational cock-up would have it, the Societies had not managed to get a late licence. You know what that means... Pub hours! At 11 we were politely informed that the party was over and we were to go home; the musicians packed up and made to leave. But they had underestimated us, all of them. Within seconds, we were singing our own enormously loud encore and the stage was busy all over again. If pressed to come up with the highlight of the night, the encore would be my unreserved choice.

One of the best things about being drunk is that you never notice how far you've walked. This is a good thing because the encore couldn't last forever and the rest of the party was to take place in Soho. To call that a five minute walk is the kind of understatement one can only make to the drunk, but that is what we were told. We were quite drunk, did I mention?

Now Jimmy's Bar is properly a koutouki by night. It is a small, terribly claustrophobic joint, tiptoing around licencing laws with the dexterity of a man on hard liquor. It was perfect. By now, most people were eyeing the remaining ladies and wondering how they ever got so pretty, and those of us who truly enjoy the music of a koutouki were preparing song requests. One such request by our striped friend from Thessaloniki was rewarded with cigarettes, courtesy of the musicians. Those of us who took a puff got more than we'd bargained for. We got a taste of home... George Linardakis' home in Kalamata.

After that, things really got out of hand. They tend to around 3, especially among people who have been eating too little and working too hard. People cheated on other people. Others puked on other people. Worse still, some freeloaded on all of us. But you expect such things in such joints, and we have never made mention of any of that ever since. Except the cheating I think.
With the party over, I made my way back to Earl's Court. This involved a Night Bus, which ought to tell you it was not nice. I didn't catch my death, for which I thank the gods of ridiculously big cities, and I even showed up for AC430: Corporate Finance and Asset Markets the day after. Cool.

Late Breakfast... As Greek As It Gets!

I wasn't doing very much this morning when I got a call from my friend Alex (photo, left). He'd been out partying in the neighbourhood and was looking to start what was left of the day in style. I suggested a late breakfast and he suggested souvlaki. At Earl's Court, of course, you can do both.

The short walk down Warwick Road to Earl's Court tube is not too spectacular, but it is a cheerful stroll and it usually makes my day. Looking out of my front door (photo, up left), I catch sight of the Kensington Mansions. I had hoped to live on that side of the road, but alas, it was not to be.

Now Alex and I were to meet at the station (photo, left up) , a huge construction which brings to mind the station at Peiraias: both were once rail stations, I think, and are now left looking awkwardly large (photo, right) in the crammed towns that have sprung up around them. This one certainly is primitive: an arrow points to the platform the next station will be arriving at, and to its destination. You never know when it is due.

Following a typical station-exit mix-up which by now does not surprise me, Alex and I meet, walk past the Lunatic and start to make our way towards Earl's Court's famous Greek souvlaki restaurant, As Greek As It Gets. We pass the beautiful Blackbird (photo, left), a pub with an unashamedly black facade which I've always wanted to visit, but have never had any reason to. But the Blackbird cannot hold our attention for long. A wonderful specimen of British Absurdity looms straight ahead...


The Knife Surrender Bin (photo, right). Apparently the London Metropolitan Police is concerned about the knife culture that's sprung up in London recently. That is, of course, only fair. Alex and I do have some doubts about the means employed to curb the trend, though. I can almost imagine the argument: The no. one reason why teenagers carry knives is because they've got no convenient way of disposing of them. And, once they've got the knife (or machette, in some photos) on them, they feel obliged to stab or hack at someone. Gosh. I never got to stab anyone growing up. Anyway, good luck with that.

Still considering the intricacies of the Knife Surrender Drive, we make our way to As Greek (which is what we call the place, in the blase brevity of international students everywhere). Now this is everything a Greek restaurant abroad ought to be: the menu includes everything you wish they served at your local souvlaki place, and a few things you are glad they don't (who pays 3.50 pounds for a glass of retsina anyway? It's not even Kourtaki!). Giannis Ploutarchos features on the TFT displays (photo, up left), and the portions are large and oily (photo, right). Extremely good vegetables in there, I thought, and an excellent serving lady, Eastern European if I can still spot them in London.

The problem with late breakfast in London is that, by the time you are done, it is dark already. Preparing for a round of online psychometric tests, I make my way home, past the rather depressing Exhibition Centre (up left). My brother would love the show: Jeremy Clarkson will be tormenting some excellent cars in there this month. With that thought, I turn homeward just in time to catch one last glimpse of the setting sun on the Kensington Mansions (down left). I'm holding my own against the short days so far, let's see how long I can keep it up.