Katie & Friends Go To London

Did you know there is a book about Katie in London? Of course I own it. :-)

Anyway, originally 5 of us made plans to go to London this past weekend. Sadly enough, Rachael had the flu & Mel's dad was in the hospital, so they backed out for obvious reasons. Therefore, Michelle, Ella, & I went on the adventure ourselves. It was quite fun! Crazy things happened to us ....

We should start with Saturday morning. Mom called me at 4am (10pm OBKY time) to ensure that I did wake up since the taxi was coming at 5am to pick us up so we could catch our 6am bus. Despite 3 hours of sleep, I got up & stayed up long enough to eat breakfast, make lunch, & get in the taxi. The best part of my early morning was when Freddy came in, slightly bleary eyed, & demanded "what the hell are you doing?" "Going to London." "You didn't tell me this!" "Yes, I did! I told you last night at dinner!" This is a typical conversation between Freddy & me - he is always demanding to know where I am going, especially at 4am. Then Matt walks in, tells Freddy to put some pants on (he is wearing boxers & a tshirt at this point), & says hi to me. Matt hasn't been to bed yet, which is typical Matt. Then the guys discuss my going to London, Matt names some places to go see, & I just stand there, waiting for them to finish talking so I can eat my bowl of cereal. The taxi arrives & we head into town. The driver is quite chatty - a nice chap. He lives on the Gower which is considered the prettiest part of west Wales. He asks why we're going to London, etc., etc.

The bus finally arrives & we crawl to the back to claim the last few seats so we can all sit together & sleep. It is a 5 hour bus ride to London & not a very comfortable one, I might add. We all dozed but nothing really resembling sleep. We arrived in London at 10:50am, bought a map, & started off. Because it was so warm & pretty out, we decided to walk to our hostel which was between the Earl's Court & Gloucester Road tube stops. Yay for me for navigating with the map & not getting us lost once! At one point though, I did stop a policeman, who was quite cute & had a very nice accent, for directions - I was on the right path, thankfully. Our hostel was a 5-bed room that cost us each 16 quid a night. We shared the room with a couple from Ireland who were very nice.The hostel was also right across the street from St. Jude's Church.

Once we were settled, I texted Marci Cornett, a sorority sister from TU who is currently studying at Regent's College in London. We had planned on meeting up & we roped her into playing tour guide for us. :-) We went to the British Museum where we saw the Rosetta Stone.

However, before we went in, we had quite an experience! Ella & Michelle were taking photos of the outside of the building. Michelle decided to take a photo of a security guard standing next to a BM sign. He noticed she took his photo, came over, and asked if she took his photo. We thought we were in major trouble when he said "You have to delete the photo. You did not ask my permission to take a photo of me." Michelle says okay and we're all a little nervous. Then he asks her to give him the camera. She says no! I realize that he wants to take a photo of us in front of the museum, so once he explains himself, Michelle hands over the camera for a photo op of the group. After that, the man stands there & tells us a story of his 36-year-old daughter and the advice he gave her about men. Marci & I kept looking at one another, wondering if he would ever stop talking! Finally he did & we were able to go into the museum. And no pictures were deleted. However, we now know that if you want to take a photo of a security guard, ask their permission!!

After the Museum, we went Nando's, a Portugeuse restaurant. Ella's food was so spicy hot that she was crying "tears of happiness." I had a veggie burger that was spicy despite the fact that I ordered the lemon & herb option! It was good though.
Marci & me at Nando's.

From there, we met up with Marci's roommate Dmitria from Maine & another TU student, Chelsea. The 6 of us then went to what felt like the most northern part of London to see the play Keeler. The play is based on Christine Keeler's 2001 autobiography about the John Profumo-Christine Keeler political sex scandal in the 1960s in London. Keeler was a show girl in Soho when she met Dr. Stephen Ward whom she ended up living with though she insisted it was a platonic "brother/sister" relationship. In July 1961, Ward introduced her to John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War, at a pool party at Cliveden, mansion owned by Lord Astor. Profumo entered into an affair with Keeler, not suspecting that she was also sleeping with Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior naval attaché at the embassy of the Soviet Union. Since she had sexual relations with Ivanov, the "Profumo Affair" took on a national security dimension.

In December 1962, a shooting incident in London involving two other men (Aloysius ‘Lucky’ Gordon & Johnny Edgecombe) who were involved with Keeler led the press to investigate Ms. Keeler, & reporters soon learned of her affairs with Profumo & Ivanov. But the British tradition of respecting the private lives of British politicians was maintained until March 1963, when the Labour MP George Wigg, claiming to be motivated by the national security aspects of the case, referred in the House of Commons to rumours that Profumo was having an affair with Keeler. Profumo then made a personal statement in which he admitted he knew Keeler but denied there was any "impropriety" in their relationship.

Profumo's statement did not prevent newspapers publishing stories about Keeler. On 5 June 1963 Profumo was forced to admit that he had lied to the House, an unforgivable offence in British politics. He resigned from all political offices. It was never shown that his relationship with Keeler had led to any breach of national security. The scandal rocked the Conservative government, & was generally held to have been among the causes of its defeat by Labour at the 1964 election.

Keeler was imprisoned for 9 months for perjury in a related trial involving Gordon. Ward was charged with living on the earnings of prostitution, including earnings from Christine Keeler & her friend Mandy Rice-Davies; Ward took an overdose of drugs on the last day of his trial, & did not recover consciousness to hear the verdicts. He was found guilty of living off immoral earnings, but cleared of procurement. He died of the overdose.

Profumo maintained complete public silence about the Profumo Affair for the rest of his life, even when the 1989 film Scandal and the publication of Keeler's memoirs revived the affair in the public mind. He died in 2006.

At the height of the Profumo Affair in 1963, Keeler sat for a portrait which became famous. The photoshoot with Lewis Morley was to promote a film, The Keeler Affair, that was never distributed. Keeler had unwisely signed a contract which required her to pose nude for publicity photos. Keeler was reluctant to continue, but the film producers insisted, so Morley persuaded Keeler to sit astride a bentwood chair such that whilst technically she would be nude, the back of the chair would obscure most of her body. The photograph has subsequently been much imitated and satirised.

The first part of the play was slow since they had to build all the background information for those of us unfamiliar with the story. After intermission, it got better. The one thing that shocked us the most was the nudity. Nowhere did it mention that full nudity on Keeler's part was involved! It stated their would be gunshots, but that was it! So when Keeler went skinny-dipping & then got out of the pool sans towel, we were a little shocked. But I must say that the blocking was done very well - had we been sitting directly in front of the stage, rather than on the side, we would not have seen as much.

The play ended at 10:30pm. The Swansea crew had been up since 4am, so we were all tired & ready for bed. We parted ways at the tube & went back to the hostel to sleep.

The next morning, we woke up freezing cold! Michelle slept in her jacket! It took us awhile to get moving because we didn't want to leave our warm beds. By 10am, we were finally up & moving & ready to leave. We had breakfast at a little cafe run by the cutest little man next to our tube stop. Then we went to Trafalgar Square for the Chinese New Year's celebration & parade.

I think this is an interesting photo because of the IPod ad in the background.
After the parade, which lasted 20 minutes, we went to see Big Ben, Westminster (closed Sundays), Buckingham Palace, walked the Strand (oldest street in London), visited the British Library (home to the Magna Carta, original Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Chopin, Beethoven, & Mozart works), ate at Wagammama's in Earl's Court (Asian restaurant - I ate with chop sticks!), & then headed back to Swansea at 7pm.



You can't take them anywhere!!

We got a cab back to the village, arriving at the houses around midnight. I think I went to bed at 3am that night.

The Joys & Pitfalls of Valentine's Day

So Valentine’s Day is here – it’s quite evident. You can hardly miss the men scrounging around a card store looking for anything really – a card that simply says “I love you” or what not. You can’t walk into the local bookstore & run into your MA advisor who is, of course, searching for a Valentine’s Day card for his wife & a birthday card for his son. Then he tells me the bookstore doesn’t have much of a selection & I remind him, slightly sarcastically, that he is in a bookstore. Then I go to the card store to find a birthday card – EVERYONE is packed into the little place. Most of the occupants? Guys. Surprisingly, there are but 3 people in the chocolate store – all women. And of course, we mustn’t forget the guys walking around with flowers in their hands. Really guys … let’s be original. Make a card; make some flowers (which can be done with Hershey kisses).

But why do we do this? Who designated my birthday month as the month for romance & kisses & crap? I mean really! Do we need a day that makes you tell someone you love them? Shouldn’t you do that every day? Valentine’s Day is expected & then when you forget or fail to pick up something, what do you get? Yelled at, of course. So, for those of you who have bought into the commercialization of the day & have no clue what you are celebrating, I’m here to help. Consider it my token of “love” to you.

So there was this guy named Valentine (hopefully you figured this one out yourself). He is sainted. He dates back to Christian & ancient Roman tradition. (Random fact: The Catholic Church recognizes at least 3 different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.) As with any good saint, we need a few legends.

First: Valentine was a priest who served Rome in the 3rd century. Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men because he decided that single men made better soldiers (makes sense since they do not have wives & families to care for, but maybe he did it because he knew they would die in battle & well, you don’t have to pay as much to the family if there is none, right?). Anyway, Valentine got upset, defied the Emperor by performing marriages for young lovers in secret, the Emperor finds out & orders him put to death.

Second: Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape Roman prisons where they were beaten and tortured.

Third: Valentine sent the first “valentine” greeting to a young girl – the jailor’s daughter – whom he fell in love with while imprisoned. Before he died, he supposedly wrote a letter and signed “From your Valentine.” (Yes, let’s all ooh & aah & say how romantic.)

So we've got the legend out of the way. Why February of all months to pick to honor this guy?

The Christians: Well, some believe that the middle of February is the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial, circa 270 A.D.

The Pagans: It can be argued that the Church loves to change pagan holidays into their own in order to Christianize conquered peoples. The pagan festival of Lupercalia (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar begins with this feast before the whole Ides of March stuff happened and knocked off Caesar) fell during the ides of February (i.e. February 15) which noted the official beginning of spring and called for purification. Lupercalia is actually a fertility festival dedicated to Romulus & Remus (the Roman founders raised by wolves) & to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture (because it’s spring). In JC, Caesar’s wife Calpurnia hopes to be touched by Antony as he runs through the streets because she will become fertile if touched by a bloodied sacrificial strip of goat’s hide. (Yes, the Romans were a strange bunch.) After all this running took place, the young women paired with a bachelor for a year through a lottery, which typically ended in marriage.

The Pope: Around 498 A.D. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day and the Roman “marriage lottery” system was outlawed because it was considered un-Christian.

The French & English: They believed that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, hence romance. (Frankly, I don't agree. First, it's still cold. Second, the wind blows me all over the place, so how can 2 birds sit in a tree long enough to profess love to one another without being blown away? After all, I weigh more than they.)

The first recorded association of V-Day with romantic love is with my good friend Geoffrey Chaucer (yes, the dude who wrote The Canterbury Tales). In Parlement of Foules (1382), he references V-Day with birds picking mates in this poem honoring the 1st anniversary of engagement of King Richard II of English to Anne of Bohemia.

The oldest Valentine still survives in the British Library in London. It is a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.

Several years later, King Henry V supposedly hired writer John Lydgate to write a valentine note to Catherine of Valois (I’m beginning to see elements of Cyrano de Bergerac here).

Britain began celebrating V-Day in the 17th century but it got really popular in the Victorian time period when they went all out with making cards. You can thank the USA for the commercialization of the holiday (same with Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and every other holiday known to man).

So that's V-Day in a nutshell. But what about all this gift-giving? I must question the sincerity which we send these gifts. Do we feel obligated to go out & buy massive amounts of chocolates or over the top floweral arrangements? Do women, or men, even want these? After all, the chocolates will get eaten & make you fat while the flowers will die in a fortnight. And what about those who don’t have significant others? All this lovey-dovey jumbo only grates on their nerves & cause significant depression (did you know many suicides happen around Christmas & Valentine's Day? Makes you think .....). V-Day only highlights the people who don’t have spouses or boy/girlfriends. Hence, the creation of Girls’ Night In or Boys’ Night Out when the opposite sex is forbidden to intrude. The girls watch girly movies while eating ice cream & the boys go out to the pub. But then you have to ask why do the girls choose to stay in & watch movies when there is a whole bar full of single guys seemingly in need of a girlfriend? Hello! The answer stares you in the face! The single guys aren’t the only ones at the bars (at least not here in Swansea). You’ll find couples sucking face, getting completely & utterly trashed, & doing who knows what else in public.

And what right in the head, single, respectable female wants to see this? Not me, thank you. Or my female friends. We’ll stick to watching our sappy girly movies while we drool over Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice & dream of our own Mr. Darcy. Or maybe we'll critique fairytales (thank you Mr. Disney) & the crap we have been raised on with the handsome prince coming to rescue us from our evil stepmothers. I don't need a guy, let alone a prince, to rescue me or buy my chocolates. I’ll do that myself … & at least I'll get the chocolate that I like. And remember the previous poem I posted where the prince turns back into a frog?

So now you know why I think Valentine's Day is overrated & completely & utterly unnecessary. Maybe you will realize just why exactly you choose to celebrate, or not, a holiday that has become as commercialized & over the top as Christmas. No longer are we showing true feelings but seeing who can get the biggest & best present & spend the most money.

Random & Interesting Facts About V-Day
• In 1835, the remains of St. Valentine were given to an Irish priest named Father John Spratt by Pope Gregory CVI, after Spratt impressed the Pope with his passionate preaching during a visit to Rome. The gift, in a black and gold casket, can still be viewed every Valentine’s Day at the Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, Ireland.

• In 1969, the Church removed St. Valentine’s Day as an official holiday from its calendar. Feb. 14 is now the feast day for Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius.

• In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote V-Day as an occasion for giving jewelry (preferably expensive engagement rings).

• According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (Approximately 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)

• 85% of all valentines are purchased by women. (Of course this is because guys fail to remember what day V-Day falls on despite all the mass advertising & reminders everywhere.)

• V-Day is celebrated by the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, and Australia.

• In Japan & Korea, women give candy, chocolate, or flowers to people they like, becoming an obligation for many women.

• In Persian culture (Iran), V-Day is discreetly celebrated by most lovers despite disapproval by the government.

Snow Day

This morning, I woke up to kids laughing and screaming. I couldn't figure out why, so I just rolled over & went back to bed. At 11am, I decided to get up since I had to go to class. Lo and behold, snow! Tons of it! OK, well, tons of it in the Welsh sense. Freddy & I decided we needed groceries (& he needed the pharmacy as he has the flu) so we walked to Killay. Remembering that I had class at 2pm, I called some of the people to see if they were going - buses were not running between the village & the uni, so I would have to walk 2.5 miles in the snow. We decided not to go because of the weather. Come to find out, the uni was closed anyway and her professor failed to email us! Oh well. I have a snow day! Here are some pics of Swansea, actually covered in snow!

Looking out my window; Stefan's car is covered.

The trees

Freddy and his friends in a snow ball fight.

Looking out over the village from the hill our house sits on.

The road to Killay was icy - very few cars drove towards town.

Sketty Road, heading towards the university. The roads are all downhill from there, so I cannot imagine riding a bus in it as everyone was having tire problems!

Our village in snow.

Mumbles Pier

Yesterday, Michelle, Erin (Michelle's US housemate), Ella (American who lived in my house for a weekend & then moved to an apartment), & I took the bus to Mumbles & then walked to the lighthouse. We encountered one slight problem - the tide came in quicker than anticipated & we got stuck!! But it was fun! These are photos from the adventure.

Our destination

Taking a detour to the ocean for some quick photo ops.

The sun setting ,first indicator that we need to turn back ASAP!

The lighthouse, up close & personal

Ella is stuck on a rock! And she is wearing little flats with no socks!

I think all of our jeans looked like this by the time we made it back across.

My Birthday!

OK, so my birthday was yesterday & I had the pleasure of not feeling well. Oh well ... granted Alice has been sick & now Freddy has a very bad case of the flu. :-( Anyway, Saturday Alice, Lan, Michelle, David (Lan's boyfriend), & I had a "luncheon" to celebrate 3 birthdays - Lan's on Jan. 3, Michelle's Jan. 18, & mine yesterday! So we made 2 cakes & mom sent me granma's recipe for chicken with water chestnuts & we made mashed potatoes & green beans. Very yummy! So here are some pics.