"It's Been A Long Long Time, Hasn't It?"

Wow.


I let this go without an update for an entire month? I think the recent Georgetown loss to Daivdson in the NCAA tournament was the catalyst for me to write here (we didn't even make Sweet 16 goddamn!) Hmmm, I almost don't even know where to begin with this.

I guess I will try to be short and sweet and give quick summations.

So my last post saw me scrambling to go off to see Amsterdam. Really nice quaint city. The rumors of decadence, debauchery, prostitution, and drugs is highly exaggerated. It really is only confined to the Red Light District, and even then, I didn't think it was so bad. Hell, I even managed to get coffee from an Amsterdam coffee shop, can you believe that? I think every single Dutch person we met spoke very very good English. Example: while we were trying to find an authentic Dutch restaurant (seems like it almost doesn't exist: Argentine steakhouses are another matter all together) we asked in a butcher's shop and the attendant behind the counter said, in response to us asking if she spoke English, "I don't speak English very well, but I'll try my best" Understatement! We went around and saw the Van Gogh Museum which would have been good except other museums had his best pieces and so the namesake museum was at a bit of a disadvantage. I saw the Night Watch and I was psyched because there is a song about it by the band King Crimson. There is a lyric from that song that I thought was very fitting: "Dutch Respectability" Indeed the Dutch seem like a very kind, helpful, intelligent, industrious people and I think Amsterdam has gotten an unfair seediness ascribed to it. So in sum, yes we did find a Dutch restaurant eventually. And yes, there are tons and tons of bicycles: it seems to be the preferred method of travel.

On March 1st I saw the play "Speed the Plow" by David Mamet with Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey. It was really a lot of fun and their acting was superb. Their chemistry was really good and it went from one moment to the next seamlessly and effortlessly. If this was in the States or in New York City, it would have gotten a tony or something. I really think plays are much superior in London. But NYC has the upper hand on musicals, definitely.

So after Jess and I arrived back, then the spring break D6ers came and we went to our usual Indian restaurant on Brick Lane, Monsoon. That night I went to sleep feeling a little weird and then it started: Gastric flu. For most of the week I was not only sick and out of commission, but sitting on a toilet as well. I'll leave out the gory details: it was not pleasant to put it lightly. To add more to tragedy, Jess seemed to contract a few days later an even worse version of the virus that affected her even more and she ended up having to go to the hospital. I was worried for her--and for our Eurostar train reservations to Paris. But I swear, I was entirely concerned about her health!

In the throes of illness Jess braved with me to see The Zombies in concert for the 40th anniversary of their magnum opus Odessey and Oracle. The concert was awesome. They played the entire album plus other hits like She's Not There, Tell Her No, I Love You, and a cover of Sticks and Stones. Plus they played the Argent song "Hold Your Head Up" Plus they had 4 of the original members (one passed away) and Colin Blunstone, the lead singer, played 3 songs from his first solo LP which had a string quartet on stage. Awesome! I bought that album as soon as I got back home to the States and I love it. A really great find. And people ask me why I always keep searching for more and more music: to find a great beautiful song that I would have missed otherwise. I could rattle off a huge list of fantastic songs that I found that never get any radio airplay and only because I kept on casting my net, I found them. Back to the concert, I was impressed that they hauled out some brass players and yes, a mellotron!!! to completely reenact the album. Chris White impressed me because he sort of looks nerdy with his glasses and out of shape middle aged, but he still could play and sing really well AND he wrote half the Odessey & Oracle album. Impressive. It was a really great concert and I'll always remember it

By the final week of our term, everyone had recovered and we were doing our last bit of work to finish up for term. However more tragedy was on its way: my external hard drive died :-( I think the internal disc is still intact but I have tried without any luck to recover the data. Hopefully going to a company won't cost me too much. 450 gigabytes of music. Damn. Hah and Daniel was nice enough to call it "karmic justice" Thanks!

Now that everyone was recovered, Jess and I did our one day Paris trip. We got a French breakfast special in a cafe right next to Gare du Nord. Then we hopped on a yellow line tour bus which gave us a tour of the main sites of the city AND a way to get around all day (as you can hop on and offa s much as you want). We saw all the main sites plus went around the Musee d'Orsay which is incredible (both for the impressionist art contained within as well as for the architecture as it used to be a train station and is decorated as such) We went to Notre Dame, by Les Champs-Elysees (Jess- dah-duhduhdah yes you do! haha), L'Arc de Triomphe, Ivalides, Trocadero, but we didn't really want to stop at Le Tour Eiffel, and finally we ended in Montmartre by Sacre-Coeur. There we walked around, saw art, and had crepes. I was a little bummed that we didn't see Pere Lachaise cemetery with Jim Morrison's grave but maybe I'll save that for next time when I have kids....or not...

That night we met up with Reed, who is studying at Science Po, for dinner but we didn't watch our time as we ate away. So we went back to the Metro (which oddly runs on rubber tires and not rails!) but the train seemed to be a long time away and we were worried we would miss the train so we went up to get a taxi. I don't know how but there were no free cabs to stop for us: it was horrible luck. Jess and I got to Gare du Nord running to the train at 9:10PM (it left at 9:13) but the staff was standing around and said we had missed the train. I guess the looks of utter dejection we had on our faces plus the downcast nature of my pleas to figure out how to get out of the city brought us sympathy from the staff and they allowed us to exchange our tickets for the first train out of Paris the next day. So we went back to Reed's dorm and stayed there. I set my alarm on my mobile to wake up for 4:50AM so we had enough time to exchange the tickets and get through security. Then before we went to sleep there was an argument over a mat and where certain parts of us sat on it in relation to each other. I won't go into details. So in the middle of the night, I wke up as my arm had fallen asleep and I look at the time and I see it is 530AM!!! My phone was still on London time which was an hour behind! So we scrambled and got on the RER and God only knows how we did it, but we made the train. I think Jess said multiple times "Jared, we're not doing this again when we travel" Ooops! :-X But in sum, it was ridiculously fun and fast paced and we saw everything we wanted to. Never a dull moment when Jess and I travel. I wonder what is in store for us for our 2 week Central European odyssey in April...

So then that day I flew home and the next I was off to Georgetown for a long weekend. It was good to be back on the Hilltop and it will be nice to be back there for Senior year. And now I'm relaxing at home, in a position to be able to this long overdue blog post. Coming up will be more news on what I am doing this break and if reality and stuff I need to do over on this side of the pond has caught up with me yet. I'll try to be more timely in the future. My apologies. Though I have no idea who reads this anymore.