You know when you're in England when... (take two)

You have discovered drinking establishments named "Dirty Dicks" and "The Famous Cock".

You know you're in England when...

You know you're in England when you sign up for the Royal Opera House's online ticket purchase service, and your choice of titles includes:

Baroness
Brigadier
Commodore
Count
Countess
Dame
Duke of
Earl of
H R H the Duchess of
H R H the Princess
His Highness
HRH Sultan Shah
HRH the Prince
King
Lady
Lord Justice
Marchese
Rt Hon Baroness
Rt Hon Viscount
The Dowager Marchioness of
Viscondessa

...or simply, "The Venerable."


And what the hell is a Princessin?

London Life: Take One

Today I commuted by bike for the first time. The ride from my flat in East London to the London School of Economics is 3.6 miles, pretty much a straight shot down a street that changes names about nine times. Last year my commute was 4.5 miles, so this should be a snap, right?

Wrong. It was harrowing. People do this every day? Good lord. I wore my helmet, donned my fluorescent pink biking vest and rode very conservatively, yet my heart was still pounding. I'm sure the veteran cyclists could tell by the look of terror in my eyes and the frequent, panicked glances over my shoulder that I'm a newbie. I know they're not going to hit me, if I'm not rude or stupid. I know that what I'm supposed to do is to ride out from the curb, perhaps a meter away, so cars and cabs don't squeeze me out but know that they have to give me space. But this is going to take some getting used to.

Everything else about living in London, though, is perhaps not as novel as it should be. London is already familiar turf to me. Yes, East London and the Whitechapel neighbourhood is new, and I love it - constant street markets, cheap and delicious Indian food, Somali translations everywhere, people of every hue. But the Tube is a pain, not a thrill; coming out of the Westminster station to see the Eye and Big Ben isn't exciting but just...is. Still, I'm no longer associating London with exhaustion, toting a big backpack, and harried dashes to catch a train or a bus, which is overwhelmingly how I remember it from last year.

I'm lucky to live near Regents Canal and Victoria Park - eight-tenths of a mile takes me to the canal and from there on out I'm on pedestrian-bike-only paths - and my runs are relaxing and gorgeous. The London Royal Parks Half Marathon is two weeks and two days away, and aside from the shin splints that are developing I'm feeling pretty much ready, and excited. The last of my five flatmates has moved in tonight, and it's shaping up to be a nice place. Best of all, Murray is staying in London and going to SOAS this year. Up until two weeks ago, we both thought he was going back to South Africa to take an internship, and that was going to be it for a while, and now he's about to move into a flat about a mile from me. It's very exciting :) (And the things we saw while flat-hunting on Monday made me very thankful to have already found a good place!)

Registration at LSE was today; I've got a student card, but I'm holding off on the "throwing myself into it" thing until classes really begin next Thursday... One more week of limbo, in which to finish my freelance work on 30-Second Economics, a book I'm contributing to - and celebrate my birthday on Sunday!

So that's what's up. I guess I don't write because part of me feels that it's indulgent, self-centred, to assume people want to read what I'm doing and thinking and learning. But I like reading my friends' blogs, so perhaps I'll make a bit more of an effort to record the trials and triumphs of my second year in England, my life in London.

Patriot, Misfit

(Written in my first week back in the States)

In the last 24 hours, I have been told four times that "This is the best country in the world," by women who insinuated that to feel otherwise just makes you darn stupid and, well, an evil socialist. I feel like a traveller in a foreign land, like an observer of some foreign culture: American patriotism.

But why? I'm glad I was born in the U.S. I loved growing up here, and when I am here I am happy. I'm proud of some of the things in our past, and some of the things we have contributed to the world. I'm fortunate and I know it. I loved showing off my country to my Norwegian friends last year, to my South African boyfriend this summer. Yet sometimes I'm wondering if I'm setting myself up for the life of an expat, because in a way I feel like I don't belong. Because I believe, more than almost anything, that nationalism should never supersede humanitarianism.

I know that's foolish. There are plenty of people here who feel the way I do - and plenty of people there who don't. (BNP, anyone?) Maybe it's just that two out of the last three years have been spent overseas. And the fact that during Bush's presidency, Americans abroad spent so much time apologising, trying to prove that we ARE great people.

But why is our nationalism and patriotism any different from that of my Greek friend, or my Belgian friend, or my Brazilian friends who love their countries? I suppose it's just more... loaded.

2008-2009: year of the bran flakes, natural yogurt, sweaty bike rides to school, trains to London Victoria, overnights at Goodenough, beachside jogging, dinners at 28 St Martins Place and South Downs hikes… To end in utter dissertation desperation.

life of a wanderer

The goodbyes have begun, and my eyes will moisten again and again as a cab pulls away or a door closes behind me. The people who have shaped my year are departing, one by one.

It's not just a sadness of not having friends around, of good times that can no longer be recreated, though I miss the conversations around the dirty Windlesham kitchen table and the post-class gatherings at the IDS bar. They have shaped not only my year, but my vision - of the past and the now and what is possible in the future.

These friends have invited me to see the world through the window of their past: An anti-establishment youth in a small German village. Living in 'project houses' at a Belgian university, eating communally with friends who care about social justice. Rising at 4 each day to cook for a logging camp in western Canada. Visiting grandparents on a Brazilian farm with pre-dawn breakfast of coffee with hot frothy milk, straight from a cow's udder. Six years in Paris, arriving without the language and emerging as a leading political activist with a vision for social change. A 40-minute bike across London each day to work in the superficial advertising and marketing bubble, and why to leave that life behind. A vivid picture of working as a professional chef.

These stories, and the people they have created, are forever part of my frame of reference, my vision of the possible. My life will be etched in reference to theirs, even after I can no longer call their voices and faces to mind. My challenge will be to emulate their best qualities: their wisdom and vision and humour and compassion, their capacities to listen and to inspire and to question.

And next year in London, I'll do the same. This transient life is disheartening at times - a year in Cape Town, a year in Amherst, a year in Brighton, a year in London, and who knows what next? But the excitement, the constant learning, the moments of euphoria and of feeling so alive, far outweigh the sadness of goodbye. It's a privilege to be doing this. And anyway, I prefer "see you soon."

Vote "no" on "no to genocide"?

As a shareholder of a Vanguard mutual fund, I was recently invited to vote on several proposals.

A year ago, I would've just voted according to the Board's recommendations, which are prominently advertised in the proxy statement: vote yes for every trustee, and vote yes for the updating and standardization of all funds' investment policies. I don't understand finance, I don't know what's best; these guys are professionals, I would've figured.

But a third recommendation gave me pause: the board of trustees is advising shareholders to vote AGAINST a proposal that would create procedures to prohibit investment in companies that "substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity, the most egregious violations of human rights."

How can anyone claim that there's no need to divest from genocide?

Well, here's Vanguard's take: You should vote against this proposal because it would "duplicate existing practices and procedures of the Vanguard funds".

A quick look around the Internet shows this isn't true: according to Investors Against Genocide, Vanguard invests $303 million in "the top problem companies" as of 1/31/2009. Between the late 2008 and 1/31/09, Vanguard increased its holdings in PetroChina from 177 million shares worth $134 million to 189 million shares worth $140 million. PetroChina, through its parent, China National Petroleum Company, provides funding that the Government of Sudan uses to conduct genocide in Darfur. In its reply, Vanguard does not address or refute these claims.

But, again according to the Vanguard trustees, "mutual funds are not optimal agents to address social change."

*****

So what if you believe you can't separate ethics from investment practices?

In their reply, Vanguard's trustees suggest their so-called "ethical" investment fund, the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund. Authorised in 2000 "in recognition that some individuals consider social issues when selecting investments", the fund "screens companies on social, human rights, and environmental criteria".

The top ten funds:
1. JPMorgan Chase & Co.
2. Apple
3. Intel
4. Google
5. QUALCOMM
6. McDonald's Corp
7. Amgen
8. Bank of America
9. Gilead Sciences
10. CVS

...McDonald's? If you're concerned with the ethics of a corporate-industrial food system run by transnational companies and retailers, or with the environmental sustainability of the planet, how can you support a company that's reshaping the world's diet to include more and more meat when livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases, according to an FAO study? And that's just a top of my head... I'm sure a more intrepid blogger would go to town with that list.

Can we really be living in a system where someone who wants to invest ethically has no better options?

*****

What's most troubling is that all of this slips under our radars. Who has time to read a 131-page .pdf document sent by an investment company? Not many of us - and Vanguard knows it. If you don't want to think, when you get to the online ballot, you can just click a button that says "Show me what the board recommends" at the top of the page, and it fills in your votes FOR YOU.

And you're not only voting against the "no genocide" proposal. In voting to "update and standardise investment policies," you're essentially letting Vanguard do away with its current regulations, which are stricter than national standards. For example, the new proposals would allow Vanguard funds to borrow more money and use more leverage, which means investing more money than you actually have in order to make more profits. But haven't we all seen in the past few years that this can go terribly awry? Isn't it clear that our national regulatory framework for finance isn't quite up to scratch, and that its construction was inherently political?

Sure, there's an argument that this will increase efficiency and decrease expenses - but at what cost?

If I've learned anything this year, it's that deference to "expert knowledge" and unflagging trust in regulatory structures equals a devolution of governance to people and institutions who don't have our best interests at heart. We need to be asking: how were the regulations created? By whom? With whose interests at stake?

Yet I'm not one to stand on my soapbox. I voted this time, but I've let these decisions slip past me more often than not.

And even with awareness, what's to do now? As we can see, when investors mobilise to democratically challenge the structural power of finance, the company tries to subvert them by claiming virtues it doesn't have. If collective action doesn't work, what can we do to change the system?

don't look at the sun

Much has lost its mystery. The day I spiralled down the back stairs of Webster and lurched against a bathroom wall, giggling - so this is what it feels like to be drunk! The day I realised I was the one in the romance, not just watching it on a screen. The impossible becomes possible - moving overseas, learning a language. Less lustrous things have lost their mystery, too - how banks create money, and what happens behind the scenes of newspapers.

But I'm still not sure about the sun. If you look straight at it, you'll go blind, they always said. I watched it, low in the sky, because no one was there to tell me I shouldn't, just like there's no one to tell me not to eat ice cream for breakfast anymore.

The colours changed as I stared, threatening to become a colour I'd never seen. You're pushing it, the sun said. You'd better blink - a game of chicken.

I stopped running for a moment as it slipped behind the skyline and underneath the sea, waiting for the green flash, but I must have blinked at the wrong moment.

snowstorm

I have never seen a city so excited about snow.

To be fair, it's the biggest snowfall England has seen in 18 years, or so they're saying. Train service was shut down, buses were pulled off the roads, school was cancelled. One English friend told me he hadn't made a snowman since 1990 as we rolled snow and stones together on the beach into a lopsided snow-woman. Yet it's quite funny that London's in such a tizzy over an amount of snow that'd be laughable in Michigan or Massachusetts.

Still, I've fully embraced the excitement. My experience of this snowstorm is coloured by the fact that I celebrated my first snowfall of the season last night with two Brazilians who were seeing the first snow of their lives. I was washing dishes when Kaoru’s laughing flooded out from the darkened second kitchen. “Look!” I rushed to the window: two grown men gleefully packing snowballs. “Come on!” I cried. “Hurry!” and laughing, we spiralled up the staircase to grab our coats and cameras. Last night, there was a mere centimetre or two of snow, and still we danced in the streets, laid down in the crystals and made a knee-high snowman.

And this morning, it was real snow. Proper snow, turning the trees to enchanted trees and silencing the city. A group of us met at the seafront at noon and, fortified with sticky-sweet donuts, began a sporadic snowball fight that would last for two hours. After defending our lopsided snowman from unkind comments, I walked to the Brighton pier and looked out over the beach, towards the marina. I smiled at the sight of at least two dozen snowmen spaced out along the beach. The snow was still falling, the streets were full of mush and the bus service was still spotty, but Brighton was out in full force.

It may be what I love most about England: people are always outside. Doesn't matter the month or the temperature or even the rain. In mid-January, as the temperature hovers around zero, the seaside cafés are open, people are sitting at tables sipping coffee, and the beach walks are packed with strolling couples, joggers and waddling children. The racks at school are still packed with commuter bikes so you can't even find a spot.

Everyone sympathised with me before I came, moving to a rainy cold island, and now that I'm here they often ask, "How's the weather?" as though expressing sympathy for a nagging health problem. Perhaps it's because of my low expectations that I've been pleasantly surprised. Earlier this month I went hiking for the afternoon, remarking how pleasant the weather was as I strolled through fields of sheep. Am I turning into a Brit?

Nah. My snowman-making skills were infinitely superior.

soundtrack: snoring

This library is dead silent except for one echoing, raspy snore floating up from the ground floor. Each time I look up from my books, I see a punitive notice:

“The Library has received many complaints from user about graffiti in the study spaces… If you are aware of someone who is defacing Library property in this way, please contact the building manager.”

Someone has scrawled on it “SNITCHES GET STITCHES.”

The UMass library hummed until late. Real late. But it’s hard for a library to hum when the café closes at 8, when you have to leave the library entirely just to use the bathroom.

This seems like a strange thing to say, but I miss all-nighters in the first-floor silent zone at UMass. May was a time of purpose, of culmination, of pushing beyond the limit – but knowing Joe Meloni would be there even longer than I would. And at least there, I could look forward to a gorgeous view of the sunrise.

But this is what I get, I suppose, for 3 ½ study-less weeks in Cape Town. Worth it? Yes.