when in dublin

After you have a pint of the black stuff in Dublin, it's hard to imagine enjoying it as much anywhere else. Especially when you're drinking it while looking at the Wicklow Mountains, where the water used in making Guinness flows down and into St. James Gate. Especially when, the night before, you drank Guinness in The Temple Bar, in the heart of Dublin. Especially when you wonder if it can ever taste as good as it did the moment you realized you were a Guinness lover.

Because in Ireland, I did.


cheers,
HRH e. cawein

worldwide

This was taken just outside of Westminster Abbey at the beginning of our first full whirlwind day around London's biggest and best. Today, we're off to Dublin to have a pint of Guinness and work on our Irish accents.

And in other amazing news -- my mom booked a plane ticket to London! She'll be here for a week, and best of all? Day one of her trip is the Ides of March.

cheers,
HRH e. cawein

solution sundays

Solution Sunday is being posted in the very wee-est hours that can legally be considered Sunday -- it's still dark outside! If the sun hasn't risen yet, can one technically consider it a new day? Or isn't it still Saturday night? Don't start talking about a.m.s and p.m.s, it's too early. I'll get confused.

I'm up this side of the sun for a very good reason, though. In about half an hour, I'll be heading to the airport to pick up my best friend for a week-long stay! This town will be so red when we get done with it someone will be channeling the ghost of Joseph McCarthy. We're also heading to Dublin for two days/one night while she's here, so you can brace yourself for some heavy posting about our adventures in the near future.

Until then, here are your answers:


1. A slag is commonly understood as a slut. Additionally, to slag off to someone would be to tell them off or insult them, mock them, etc. It should be noted, though, that it seems this word has gone through many reincarnations, and there are probably a few other acceptable uses, but they all resemble these two in meaning.

2. Now, we all must ask ourselves whether there is a tinge of irony in the fact that my dear old mum and dad knew exactly what barmy means: crazy. Maybe I come by it honest. Or maybe raising me and my brothers has made them barmy! Well, this is like how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop. We may never know.


cheers,
HRH e. cawein

fag break fridays

Welcome to another lively installment of Fag Break Fridays! Without further ado, today's slang:

1. Describe one or both the uses of the word slag.

2. What does the word barmy mean?



In case you're wondering, slag has been popping up in my reading and in the spoken vocabulary around me a lot lately, and I heard the word barmy twice just today. Crazy Brits.


cheers,
HRH e. cawein

reasons for being

As much as I try to act like the main reason I came to London was to study at Brunel and to be a part of this masters program, there's no denying the fact that what pushed me to discovering the university in the first place was my serious need to be back in this city. I wouldn't classify myself as a shoot first, ask questions later kind of person, but when it came to my initial decision to head overseas after graduation, my gut was far more involved than my head.

Of course, the head-related things fell into place eventually. I found a program I loved at a respected university and knew that it would be the perfect fit for me. It was a program that could be done in a year, which was good on several levels -- one of them certainly being monetary and the other being that at age 22, I wasn't so keen to plan things concretely any further than that. At age almost 23, I'm still not.

Now, after five months here, the head-related items are still falling into place, like stray chips in a game of Plinko on the Price is Right. (In the Barker days, of course.) These moments have happened to me in the library (when I've realized time and again what an abundance of British literature there is about popular music, and how exciting it is to have all of it at my fingertips), in the classroom (when I've been encouraged to stretch and push the parameters of the masters program to get the best education on the topics that interest me), and in my greater classroom, the city itself.

This week I attended the first in a series of lectures on popular music at the British Library given by Simon Frith who, though perhaps unknown to anyone outside musicology, is the author of more than half the books sitting on my kitchen table at this very moment. Unfortunately for all of us, Simon's not nearly as good a public speaker as he is a writer and music theorist, but the lecture topics are interesting enough to keep me glued. This week's was an introduction, a view to the rest of the series, which will discuss how rock changed everything in popular music, and a little of the who, why and where along the way.

As I was leaving the lecture hall on Wednesday night, another one of those head-related-things clicked into place, one of those crucial, justifying factors for the necessity of a British education: Where else in the world can I read a book about popular music history by Simon Frith, go and hear him lecture about it, and then hop on the train to Gerry Raferty's "Baker Street," past the St. John's Wood of Abbey Road Studios and the famous street crossing, toThe Clash's "Guns of Brixton"?

Nowhere.



cheers,
HRH e. cawein

solution sundays

So I like alliteration. It's the headline writer in me.

Unless you're like my mom and Googled the answers anyway, you've been waiting in suspense for two days to find out exactly what the hell this stuff is. Well, maybe not suspense. Curiosity? Maybe you forgot all about it. But here are the answers anyway.

A press-on towel is, disturbingly enough, a maxi pad. I saw it written on the dispenser in the ladies' room at work and thought it was too good to keep to myself.

And washing up liquid is used to do dishes. Interestingly, you'll almost never see the word 'detergent' used here in any context. My laundry detergent is labeled as 'washing tablets.' This of course is related to the fact that dirty dishes here are referred to as "the washing up" and dirty clothes as "the wash" or "the washing."


cheers,
HRH e. cawein

fag break fridays

Welcome to Fag Break Fridays, so named for the British slang word "fag," meaning cigarette. Each Friday for the forseeable future, I will post a word or phrase unique to the British, or at least the UK, and invite you to comment with your guesses as to what it refers to or means. Please, refrain from Googling to find the answer -- it's much more fun that way.

To get things started, a double feature!

1. What is a press-on towel?

2. For what purpose would you use washing up liquid?


Let the guesses begin!

cheers,
HRH e. cawein

what?

I got a couple of iTunes gift cards for Christmas, and after immediately nabbing some albums and songs I'd been lusting after for a while, I've been looking around for new music, stuff I haven't heard, stuff I haven't heard enough of, and of course, new workout tunes.

In pursuit of that last quest, I went to check out some tracks off of Kanye West's latest album, Graduation. I listened to the tracks that had been downloaded the most, including the first single from the album, "Stronger," which features a significant sample from the Daft Punk song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." Though I wasn't crazy about that particular choice, it did at least make some sense.

But then I clicked to get my 30 second preview of a song called "Champion." Suddenly, a familiar voice sang out from beneath the track: "And you realized that you were a champion in their eyes."

For a second, I was a bit miffed.

Get along? Get along, Kid Charlemagne?

Yes. Kanye West has sampled Steely Dan. What's next?


cheers,
HRH e. cawein

the motherland

It's sneaking up on 8:30 p.m. GMT, and with the exception of my usual commuter catnaps on the tube to and from campus, I've made it through the entire day without crashing, and I'm thoroughly impressed with myself.

We touched down at Gatwick this morning about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. That, combined with a relatively speedy trip through passport control and immigration (compared to the glacial pace at which I moved through the same line in September) made for as pleasant a trip as one can have after spending a combined ten or so hours on a plane. And with a 1 p.m. class to get to, it was a relief to be home by 11:30 and washing off some of that transatlantic film.

When I got done with class, I knew that if I kept moving I could fight the lag, so that's what I did. I went grocery shopping, unpacked, cleaned and worked myself into an organizational frenzy. It felt good to be settled again and I needed to get it all out of the way so I could have my head on straight for what lies ahead -- three weeks of preparation for my first solo concert.

Yikes.

With that, I think I'm going to give in to jet lag.

cheers,
HRH e. cawein