frozen time

returned from beijing to london. the white grey sterility of airports and trains, always disjointed with the reality of sharing air and crowded space with 700 strangers. time suspended between cultures and cities.
no video on air france (again) leaves me with don dellio's cosmopolis and quixan's one man's bible. both the ramblings of the truly modern free, depressing in my 10 hour return to reality. to the pile of bills, the phone calls, the emails and the mess that is my room.
beijing was pure luxury, and my waistline shows it. i did not miss london (gasp). but here is home, and i'm looking forward to tomorrow's 9 to 5, precluded by an early morning cycle in my jet lagged state. sleep time now. photos this week.

5.30 am. sunday.

5am view
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

beijing's been one big party and feast. exactly what i needed after 6 months of worry about work. ?london? what?

blue skies!

after days of pollution dust haze, it's a gorgeously sunny blue sky. we drove to beidahe, where the party officials used to relax on the beach, and where now the roads are perfect and the houses big. seafood and more seafood, and sun and sunburn, and lots of chinese famlies being happy at the beach.

even the small towns in china are big, and they build up, leaving the farmland to come all the way in to the towers.

the most interesting section of the journey was taking the wrong highway out of beijing (i think we missed a syllable and took the jin jin shang instead of the jingshan expressway and getting utterlly lost in TEDA - the tanjin economic development area. the government builds all the infrastructure first, so there's a grid of perfectly built and signed 6 lane roads evenly spaced every half mile, and nothing there. and nobody either. endless factories recently built... it's like 6th of October outside Cairo, but instead of streets and lightpoles in the middle of sand, it's in the middle of salt mud flats.

food....endless food. i'm going to gain a pound or two here, eating two large meals a day. all sorts of dumplings, fish, cockles, vegetables, egg and tomato... cheap and good!

heat....locusts, humidity, warm sweaty nights and crowded rooftop bars. more locusts, and dragonflies to eat the insects.

photos to come when i can synch my camera to a computer.

it was gorgeous yesterday.

nothing like an overnight electronic music festival at the great wall - watching the misty dawn across the mountains from a high tower. then back down to continue the dancing, and buses back to a beijing cafe lunch.

cycled down into the forbidden city last night in a warm dry dusk, across the ring roads and into the old housing hutongs last night. cycling is easier here than in london - not only is it flat, you've got your own road. the double roads adn 4m pavements make the avenues super wide though, and it decieves you into thinking beijing has low density, with so much sun on the streets.

off to the beach today, in a large company bmw. nothing like old aiesecers in all corners fo the world.

???

my body is confused. it feels like 6am on a saturday, with the requisite hangover. but i'm in an aisian high rise, it's 100% humidity, and raining like mad on the tennis courts below. and we're off to eat noodles, and then i'm going to hit the basement gym. caffeine, where are you?

oh, its good

should reiterate. good fun. dinner, flatmates, drinks, dancing... perhaps im just foreigner, but more important, they're ALL nice. even the cycle guys carrying 3 women...

when in mars

do as the martians do.
arrived at noon, ate veg, waited for the danish, slept
kate has space galore, and expensive furniture. but the building quailty is not great
when faced with skinny dark thousands, play on your assets. ass. breasts. white. repeat ass.

the best workout ever - 3 hours of trance house dancing at babyface.
mel, it's like oil can but cross... dancing is king, the waiters look like kung fu masters
who spend their time setting fire to vsop, and showing off for who's paying.

i managed the stage twice, against a tide of skinny yellow and skinny white. god bless salsa and mandy's hip top teachings. i can now out do a 4ft 8in chinese on stage just with my thighs, and their ability to squat for hours. that and i have an ass.

i read white swans on the air 'france' (frAAAnce) (not american procnuncion) over....i'm upon recent chinese history. it helps in kate's post modern 5th floor. we look out over high rise construction and an empty park. tomorrow is party on the great wall, like tonight, i have nothing to do tomorrow, or the day after. holiday!!!

when in mars

do as the martians do.
arrived at noon, ate veg, waited for the danish, slept
kate has space galore, and expensive furniture. but the building quailty is not great
when faced with skinny dark thousands, play on your assets. ass. breasts. white. repeat ass.

the best workout ever - 3 hours of trance house dancing at babyface.
mel, it's like oil can but cross... dancing is king, the waiters look like kung fu masters
who spend their time setting fire to vsop, and showing off for who's paying.

i managed the stage twice, against a tide of skinny yellow and skinny white. god bless salsa and mandy's hip top teachings. i can now out do a 4ft 8in chinese on stage just with my thighs, and their ability to squat for hours. that and i have an ass.

i read white swans on the air 'france' (frAAAnce) (not american procnuncion) over....i'm upon recent chinese history. it helps in kate's post modern 5th floor. we look out over high rise construction and an empty park. tomorrow is party on the great wall, like tonight, i have nothing to do tomorrow, or the day after. holiday!!!

it was windy, and it rained. today.

two weeks, that must be some kind of record for london. and today wasn't even what you'd call rain. more like a mist blowing in the breeze. straight into my face while cycling. it all dried seconds later, when the sun emerged again.

the tender has been submitted. tad dah. i can sleep again at night without waking, panicked, at 3am. even more than that, i can get some serious sleep. tonight will be 7 hours at least. and life returns to semi-normal.

going to beijing on thursday afternoon. can't wait. kate's got some awesome dj parties lined up - one on the great wall, and one on the beach - and some travelling in between. i've already stolen her roomate's bicycle for the days when they're at work. in cairo it was cheap taxis, in beijing here comes the bike. it's not just a holiday i need, it's some serious culture shock.

there's been a whole bunch of accent comments lately. guess i'm meeting new people - i give everyone i meet 3 hours before they get curious/run out of other polite conversation and ask about my accent. the english place me as eastern european, or canadian. the scots usually get it right, although sometimes i'm south african. the americans think i'm european, and and the germans think i'm english.

does anyone else use business cards as coasters?

getting ready to go out clubbing with mandy & co. i'm just about reconciled with the new haircut and it's layers beause it shows off my grandmother's earings perfectly.

work has been 8 to 10 for the past 6 days, and will continue tomorrow at 10am. i'm looking forward to a saturday night out dancing with the girls, even if i have to be back making decisions on the tender document tomorrow morning. i'll bet 10 pounds my boss calling wakes me.

i've been too busy to blog, too busy to call, too busy to say hello to even the dearest friends. but it's a good project - it's all mine simply because my boss is too busy, and i'm the only one who knows everyone else invovled. it's with our biggest clients. and two other firms we'd love to work with in the future. so far, so good. as always, a learning experience. two different bids on the same site - one for 530 houses, one for 1473. it's my job to argue for higher densities, and to assemble the document that contains both. negotiate between the architects, the engineers, the graphic designers, my firm the sustainability experts, and the end all of end all - the developers. where's the line between firm decisions and smiling coersion?

but i've got 6 copies of everything due at noon on monday, and it's all or nothing tomorrow. the nightmares haven't hit yet, but the will tomorrow.....

the nice bit is that i'm that manic phase where i go cycling for an extra hour on the way home at 11, along the river in the reflected sillouhettes of london's skyline on thames. a wonderfully warm week where midnight tank tops bring wistful memories of austin, where the windows stay open 24.7 and when you can't wait to laugh drunkenly leaving the club.....

from london

getting on with life.

as if the definition of life didnt' include bombings these days. i wonder sometimes what the reaction would have been if the bombs had gone off at buckingham or at #10 rather than in a middle-class tube station. probably less communal despression, and probably less political action.

i heard myself talk on friday, and heard myself say 'we' instead of 'the english' or 'londoners'. moving into the second person, rather than the objective third, it's a sign of something. a londoner, yes - i've been that for a while. but 'we' as in 'english'? i'm holding judgement on what could just be a slip of the tounge.

the white curtains are still up around the bus, and they are still dragging out decomposing bodies from a deep subway tunnel, but otherwise it's all normal in the capital again. it's been one crazy week - live 8 seems months ago - rather than a week, then the olympics, formula 1, the bombings, the v-day celebrations in pall mall....

something clicked in me this weekend personally, that had nothing to do with the bombs. to be honest, it centered on makeup. and the fact that i haven't worn any for weeks. there's really no excuse - i mean it's hot, and i've got enough freckles to pass as irish - but the underlying reason is i've simply stopped caring. i still dress nice, still wear the heels and jewlery, still agonizse in front of the mirror, but unless it's an important meeting or clubbing, i can't find the energy for a bit of foundation and some eyeliner. this is a good thing - finally getting used to london's constant public face - and the city can take me or leave me.

the ground beneath our feet

'Savagely woken from a pleasant dream'

Londoners woke yesterday still basking in the warm glow of their Olympic triumph. Then came the news they had dreaded - and half expected - since September 2001. James Meek walks through the streets of a suddenly pedestrian city

Friday July 8, 2005
The Guardian

All the shock was Wednesday's: London's Olympic day. All the horror belonged to Thursday: London's day of bombs. And the fact we were not surprised makes it no easier. No easier to know, now, that on that mild grey morning, among the millions moving through London's transport system, with their banal thoughts of delays and meetings and lunch and holidays and money, were a handful of people whose thoughts were not banal at all.

Like many east Londoners, I went to bed last night astounded to find myself living within walking distance of the Olympic Games. Like many, I woke up not in the least surprised to find myself living within walking distance of a ruthlessly executed act of mass murder.

I take the 73 bus between Hackney and central London most days and, on Wednesday, for the first time ever, the driver made a news announcement over the PA. "For those who are interested," he said, "London has been chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games." Nobody could quite believe it.

Next morning the same bus drew up at the stop outside my house, the doors opened, and for the second time ever, the driver made a news announcement. A different sort of announcement. It was easy to believe. But did it have to be so soon?
....

It was only when you got to the shuttered gates of Angel tube station that the full sense of a capital in the grip of an emergency began to sink in. The Angel crossroads, leading to Clerkenwell, the City and King's Cross, was thick with pedestrians marching on unexpected journeys. It was the kind of weary crowd of clerks on foot that stimulated entrepreneurs into building the Underground railway, the world's first, 142 years ago. In the last century, in two great wars, the Underground protected the people of London from bombs. One ad for the tube in the first world war read: "It is bomb-proof down below. Underground for safety; plenty of bright trains, business as usual." In this century, in a war without clear aims, end or sides, it has become - as, for four years, we have more than half expected - a place where bombs go off.

For anyone who has lived in London for more than a few years, the tube map is more than a map on the wall. It burns itself into the brain, like the circuit diagram its design is based on. At news of any disruption, little stretches of it flash red, and almost without thinking, you try to chart a way round the obstruction. For the whole system to be sealed up without warning is to find the ground beneath your feet, paradoxically, to be not so solid as it was.
....
In retrospect, a London bus was an obvious target, a symbol of the city and, coincidentally or otherwise, of 2012 - the No 30 goes to the heart of London from Hackney Wick, part of the future Olympics site. Terrorists have put bombs on buses in Israel and Moscow.

Yet deep down, I suppose, I never really believed a bus would be a target either honourable enough, or justifiable enough for a terrorist. It is still a poor person's means of transport. Looking at the pictures of that ripped apart vehicle I know the cold, cheap feel of those nasty orange poles for hanging on to, and the abrasive feel of the fabric of those nasty blue seats, and think of all the faces of tired hard-working people and student tourists and truanting teenagers looking down from the windows into the prosperous world of Bloomsbury, and just hoping to get on with something good.

London buses, particularly the buses between Hackney and the centre, are also filled with immigrants, and it is very possible that if a bomb exploded in any one of them, it would kill and maim at least one person from every continent and of every major faith. On any busy Hackney bus you'll hear a dozen different languages besides English: Albanian, Turkish, Polish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, French or Yoruba.
.....
On my way from home yesterday morning I popped into one of the local newsagents to buy batteries. He was talking sadly on the phone about the atrocities and as he served me I remembered going into the same shop, at about the same time, on the morning of September 11 2001. The newsagent is Asian and I remembered that while I was in there a white woman in her 50s had put her head round the door and said to him: "Don't worry, we know you didn't want this."

It was an uneasy, backhanded sort of reassurance. The kind of "don't worry" that, if I were the newsagent, would make me worried. Now we are all very worried. Worried about our neighbour and worried that our neighbour is worrying about us. Our neighbour at home; our neighbour on the tube; our neighbour on the top deck of the No 30. Live and let live may have won us the Olympics but live and let live may not be enough. Londoners may have to learn to do the thing they hate more than anything else in the world: talking to strangers on the bus.

overwhelming

the number of emails, of texts, of phone calls.... thank you to everyone around the world - from singapore cairo bejing new york bombay los angeles paris - who found some way to to make sure i was fine today. it's been a long long day.

it started when people called saying the tube was a mess, and they'd be late. then the never ending sirens, and the silence. the empty buses, the crowds walking. the grocery stores are closed, but the pubs are full, and all those who live far out are finding friends to stay with.

I cycle to work, but i walked home today. walked with friends, and found more. we walked among ambulance sirens, past cordoned off streets and alongside racing police cars. through the rain, we found crowded pubs with faces glued to the news. i live near edgeware road station, and the stories there are horrendous.

even more eerie, because at work things basically continued apace after the inital panic. when the explosions stopped, it was just a worry for family and friends; you learn who you care about and who cares for you.

we had meetings scheduled with urban designers who work across the road, and we met, had lunch as a big family of an office, and then continued. we huddled around the computer speakers for news, for blair, and made sure all family and friends were ok, that we all had a place to crash. and then we went back to work.

the british are used to bombings - they've had the IRA, and before that, WWII. people here stuff it up, they get by, they congregate in pubs and drink with the crowds. and they are determined to get up tomorrow and continue their way of life.

there is no hunt for the killers here, no 'we'll get em', no immediate anger. there's not really any 'uniting' against an enemy. it's depressing, it's sad and - barbaric (mimicing blair). but there is no rising up of a london populace against anything. we will mourn, but we will soldier on. otherwise the bombers succeed.

the quote - blair

"Our determination to defend our values and ways of life is greater than their desire to create death and destruction and impose extremism on the world. What ever they do it is our determination that they shall not succeed."

Blair said "it's reasonably clear there have been a series of terrorist attacks in London." There have been casualties, he said "both people that have died and people seriously injured."

"It's particularly barbaric that this has happened" on a day that people are meeting to deal with world problems at the G8 in Scotland.

(from sky news)

PM TO RETURN TO LONDON
The Prime Minister has been kept in close touch with developments and made a live televised statement from the G8 summit at Gleneagles at noon.

Mr Blair said the attacks were apparently the work of terrorists designed to coincide with the G8 and described then as "barbaric".

He said he intends to return to London to see the situation himself and would fly back to Scotland later tonight.

Mr Blair said: "Our thoughts and prayers go to the victims and their families."

He said the people of Britain were more determined to defend the values they hold dear than the terrorists were to destroy them.

The summit will continue.

like madrid

it's likened to the madrid blasts...

blair speaks

on national radio/tv - of determination to continue with our way of live and the values we hold dear. the determination that these terroist blasts will not succeed. of the disaster, of innocent people dead... he never mentions freedom.

we listened huddled around my computer speakers.

its getting quieter

but everything's still fucked. i'm at my office - came by bike - but the streets are either empty or full of sirens. everyone's kind of shell shocked, huddling round our office radios. everyone i've been able to get in touch with is ok - but apparently one of the worst explosions is near my house.

i think there would have been more explosions by now if they were planned, so perhaps the worst is over, and now it's time for the casulties to start being counted. everyone's praising the good police/bus/hospital response.

when in need of a break....escape, and then Dune.

i read. 4 hours disappeared on the floor of the local municipal library today, and i emerge peaceful, calm... i might even say happy but happiness only comes to me with success, and success over three days of sickness and depressed anger is not a victory.
the book - not important. it's the ability to wisk me away from this earth, this time, these worries and this reality to another.

but i return home, to clean, to cook, to pick up a favorite. i've had my break, now it's time to charge, refreshed, back into life. it's time for dune.

"he must lay the best coffee heath to attract the finest men"
"attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting them up for the attack sinister"
"as always, Paul experienced a sense of presences in his father, someone totally here"
"the mind commands the body and it obeys. the mind orders itself and meets resistance"

metaphysical torture

weekends. weekends of allergies and antihistamienes cloudy heads alcohol and itchy throats. in these drowsy afternoons i wander in the dust of our silent flat, haunted by my own thoughts. what kind of idea am I? where do i bend, and where would i break? i work for a personal cause, should i work to a personal goal? the torture of london lies in opportunity cost, in all the lives you could be living. an endless moveable feast.

la contessa brings a friend home, and i in the ever long dusk rest my bothered mind to watch the two dark skinned thin figures talk. watching talk, studying finger obessions, the little hair calming unconsious movements, shifting on the bed, both figety in thier chatty oblivion. in these absent hours obsess the blue against brown, the beauty of cheekbones.

the white windowframes are glowing. it is almost dark.

its quiet again today

yesterday i woke to the sound of helicopters, and heading out for breakfast discovered the streets thronging with people. i was puzzled, thinking perhaps a london marathon, until i saw the newstands, screaming live8 in Hyde Park. i'm glad i didn't get up early to go for a run.

it's all very well meaning, and the speeches and broadcasters did a fine job of reminding the world of poverty, but the event put no pressure on anyone to do anything. it's a huge fluffy piece of marketing, like the cotton candy you never finish at the state fair.

and the helicopters didn't quiet down until midnight. a noisy crowded day in central london, with every pub blasting the coverage.