Weeks 11 and 12- Parties, Treadmills, Drunken Fools, and Indians with Poor Mexican Accents

By jollyhippo  |  Location: United Kingdom  |  10/01/06

Why hello there, I didn’t see you come in. Welcome back to LEAH LUGS CRAP AROUND THE WORLD weeks 11 and 12, two marvelous weeks in which I rediscovered London and generally harkened back to the wild city adventures of my study abroad days, or perhaps it is more accurate to say “nights” rather than days, as the bulk of that time was spent wandering London’s winding streets in the dark hours of night, uncovering new pubs, new clubs, and new levels of food poisoning in “dodgy” Chinese restaurants in a darkened SoHo lair. Indeed, over the course of these past two weeks I have hearkened back to such adventurous and wild, spring break MTV sort of times, falling in love with London and its many winding streets all over again as I welcomed two good American friends, Shannon and Vanessa, into the London lifestyle while simultaneously leeching off their various school orientations.

But, my friends, as interesting as this all was to me at the time, I feel the most interesting focus for a blog (or “blob”, as my mother would say) this week lies not in my many adventures in pubs, clubs, restaurants, and house parties, but more in my various interactions with and observations of the many different sorts of ethnicities within London. Essentially, then, this week’s entry is all about multiculturalism, something I have been meaning to write about ever since I first arrived here in London. Now, if I were a mature person, I would write pages and pages about the many different neighborhoods in London with so many different types of people; I would write about how London is home to nearly every type of culture and ethnicity one could imagine (except, perhaps, the English!), and how this issue of juxtaposition has woven London into a large tapestry of complementary skin colors, fascinating cultural interactions, and an appreciation of the “other.”

I could do that, or I could make fun of foreign people (myself included), and that is what I’m going to do. So here, Ladies, Gents, and Arthi, is my bulleted list for the week:

1) I make fun of African people.
2) I make fun of Kiwis.
3) I make fun of Indians.
4) I make fun of Americans.
5) I make fun of Americans.
6) I make fun of Fins.

And finally,

7) I am arrested for cultural insensitivity, screaming “America! Fuck yeah!” all the while.

So let’s just get this boat a rockin’, shall we? Number 1: Making Fun of African People. This, of course, I say without knowing what region of Africa I am really looking to make fun of but that in it of itself should do enough to make fun of Americans (“Oh he was from somewhere in Africa!”) to allow me to temporarily get away with such an error. The particular African to which I would like to refer arrived one bright and early morning to the gym in the basement of the International Students House, an extremely cheap and extremely crappy gym about the size of a clown car and boasting a full range of about four occasionally working machines. Outside of the dilapidated and pathetic state of the gym itself, working out here is always interesting as different people from all over the world stay in the rooms above the gym as they take holidays in London but desire not to pay for such an expense. I have always had interesting cultural interactions here, from the very sweet Brazilian cleaner who always smiles at me and says, “Hi!” (the extent of her English), to the Indian cook who I always frantically try to beat to the one elliptical, to the blond Ukrainian woman who had purchased her scant gym outfit in days of former bodily glory and not yet submitted to the humiliation of covering her newly acquired fat rolls with a t-shirt or really any sort of decent clothing, to the anal retentive English trainer who, when asked to turn the volume on the TV up and the booming dance music down, looks importantly round the nearly empty gym to find the one (ONE!) other person on a treadmill and say condescendingly, “No, it would disturb the other patrons,” ah, the ISH gym has it all.

But, my friends, nothing will ever beat the African who appeared the other day, clearly a novice as he showed up in the ultra-comfortable workout outfit of jeans and a tight-fitting t-shirt. To be fair, the man did realize any attempt to figure out complicated workout machines boasting instructions in a language he had yet to master would probably not be the best of ideas, so as I sneakily slipped onto the elliptical before the Indian cook could and the Ukrainian’s breasts and fat rolls threatened to poke her eye out as she bounced up and down on the treadmill, the African man waited patiently to be shown the ins and outs of the ISH gym. He was soon joined by yet another character, the very nice Kiwi (New Zealand) young man who works at the desk (when the anal retentive Englishman isn’t there), who is about six foot five and has the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger back before the aristocratic life of a governor pushed his pectoris muscles from the category “I WILL PUMP. YOU. UP!” into the more “I WILL NURSE. YOUR. CHILDREN!” region of things. This BEEFCAKE of a kiwi is entirely a character unto himself, defying all stereotypes of a TOTAL MUSCLE MACHINE with his surprising accent, which is about as refined and upperclass of an accent as you could possibly find. After three months of working out at ISH, this still never fails to catch me by surprise when I am checking out of the gym, blinded by the sheer bulk of his biceps, only to hear him wish me upon my exit to have a “lovely day” and to “thank you kindly for patronizing our gym.” In my life I have never meant such a gentle and refined BEEFCAKE.

Of course, it was this GENTLE GIANT who was given the duty of showing this tight-jeans clad African man the workings of the gym and soon a scene so fascinating (ahem, hilarious) was to result that I couldn’t help watching (probably another factor in this was the fact that the gym is entirely covered in mirrors and is the size of a cardboard box). After a very polite greeting, the KIWI FROM MUSCLE instructed the wide-eyed but jolly African to stand on the treadmill, pressing the first buttons for him and teasing the belt onto a very slow speed. Alas, the PUMPING KIWI was knowledgeable enough in his job and knew to break the African in slowly, putting the belt only up to the speed of a grandmother inching her way from the kitchen sink to the kitchen refrigerator while clutching a walker. What the ARNOLD KIWINATOR did not anticipate, however, was just how disoriented the belt would make the poor African who must have believed the treadmill required a whole new type of walking and accordingly started marching awkwardly, lifting his knees as close to his chest as he could manage, and stomping his ankles (no, not the soles of his shoes, his ankles) painfully back onto the treadmill. It is a testament to BEEFCAKE’s patience that he was able to coax the African into eventually walking more normally, if still stilted, but such success too quickly went to our hero’s head, and before long he made a fatal mistake. “Good,” he cooed through fifty layers of shining muscle. “Now put it up to a higher level, make it go just a little faster.” The African, energized by his success, immediately pushed at the buttons and almost as immediately, the belt began whirring at super-sonic speed, the African cried, “Oh my goodness!”, trying to revert back to his high knees-ankles style walking but at sprinting speed, his legs and arms flailing in every which direction. “Slow it down!” PECTORIS 2000 shouted in vain, clearly distressed by the African’s improper form and a little disoriented from the knock he had just received in his nose from the African’s hapless limbs. “YOU NEED TO SLOW IT DOWN!”

But alas, the African could not hear the instructions of this gentle giant over the thunder of the treadmill, his arms continued to flail, and in an instant, the man was thrown back off the treadmill, now flopping like a fish on the two inches of floor space between the treadmill and the mirror. Indeed, it was nearly as good as Ok Go on treadmill

  • , but it ultimately lacking the same grace and knowledge of body. The poor, sensitive MUSCLE-A-THON somehow managed to turn off the treadmill and looked down at his failed patron with concern and dismay, looking truly perturbed at the events that had just taken place.

    “Are you okay???!!!” he asked with palpable concern.

    “No problem!” the African mouthed jollily and eagerly leaping up from the ground. “Let’s try again!”

    And so, to the chagrin of our KIWI BEAST they did try again, and I was given the unenviable task of not staring too hard and not cracking up to obviously as similar scenes were repeated time and time again. I know, I shouldn’t laugh, it’s not funny when people’s bodies flail around and then they get hurt.

    But it IS funny and I couldn’t help but laugh.

    So that, my friends, was my exposure to the Kiwis and an African one early London morning, a scene of hilarious cultural interaction which was only furthered later that hour when I made my way to the local Tesco Express to pick up my daily breakfast of mango and yogurt. This particular Tesco is usually packed with harried business people, stopping for a moment for a bite before work, but it is not them who crack me up. No, it is the Indians who man the tills in a straight and efficient line of five. This line is truly a spectrum of English speaking abilities, with some of the cashiers able to fully enunciate, “Next please!” and others barely able to utter even this one phrase. These latter cashiers are my favorite, particularly one young man who looks to be in about his twenties and, for whatever reason, has managed to master not an Indian accent, not an English accent, but a very poor Mexican accent, and when I say a very poor Mexican accent, I am thinking of an accent straight out of South Park or my father. Coupled with this poor Mexican accent is the young Indian man’s clear fatigue and frustration with having to work this same boring job day after day, a fact that comes across strong and clear as he calls for the next customer by closing his eyes, opening his mouth wide and screaming, “Neh pease!” and when no one responds, a repetition a little louder, “NEH! PEASE!”

    I say all this not to worsen relations between America and every other country in the world, nor to showcase myself as insensitive, stupid American, but to exercise the joy of “taking the piss” out of every available culture. This, of course, can only be done fairly and properly by also making fun of myself and my own culture, so from “NEH! PEASE!” let’s move on to the Americans who always have and always will provide the most rich material to draw from. The first of the American stories comes directly from family friends John, Carol, Sarah and Jeff, all of whom read this blog (so hi, guys!), two of whom are living in London for a semester (John and Carol), two of whom were visiting for a few days, all of whom I met in the trendy Hoxton area for what turned out to be quite a raucous dinner the other week. I won’t go into the details of CERTAIN conversations as I don’t think anyone would like to relive them, but I had quite a blast hanging out with this bunch and mostly, drinking until late at night with people’s my parent’s age, something I never knew could be so much fun (apparently people over the age of thirty have fun as well! Who knew!).

    But to get back to making fun of Americans, the best part of the whole evening was when in typical American fashion, the champagne wasn’t being as well held as it should have been and drunken confessions began emerging. As I said, I will not detail all these confessions (to preserve a marriage!), but we did manage to learn from Jeff, who is quite grey and quite bald, that not only does he have a toupee that he tries on when his wife and son are out of the house and model before all available mirrors, but it is called, (of all things!), “The Kevin.” That’s right, this close family friend and well-established member of the Ithacan community has a toupee fancifully named, “The Kevin,” a fact I threatened and subsequently promised to note in my blog, and so here we are, now you all know the truth, and you are better people for knowing it.

    Such notations are more my ulterior motive for writing this last section and are ultimately less related to my goal of making fun of different ethnicities, but never fear, I have a story to humiliate Americans for the ages. This story comes from the bar at the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in Central/North London where I have been hanging out quite often recently as my friend Shannon has just begun school there. SOAS is always a kick as the students in it are liberals/hippies/nerds, and are just up my alley. As with throughout the rest of London, you are more likely to meet people from all over the world in SOAS than you are actual British people, a fact that was confirmed on the aforementioned night at the student bar. As we hung out at the bar, we managed to meet a German, a Swiss guy, an East Ender and of course an American called Adam. As it was the grand reopening night for the bar, they had all sorts of goodies, including, to everyone’s joy, free food. They set the food out on a table, announced, “free food” and before long the characteristics of the poor stereotyped ethnicities began to emerge.

    “Free food?!” the relatively large German asked incredulously, rushing off to the table and returning with a mound full of food before any of us could bat an eye.

    “Free food?!” the East Ender asked next, slowly meandering up for his food and returning eventually with a healthy portion.

    “FREE FOOD?!” Adam and I, the Americans, shouted with desire and panic (panic that there wouldn’t be any left for us) and quickly shoved our way into the queue. Here is, of course, where are true American colors began to shine. We, the Americans, who have never gone hungry, who have never starved on an African plain, who have never known poverty or struggle or war or famine, HAD TO HAVE THE FOOD. What if it ran out??!!! WHAT IF WE GOT THERE AND ALL THE FREE FOOD WAS GONE?!

    These were precisely our thoughts as we stood next one another in an agitated and antsy state, watching the very calm and unperturbed nationalities slowly shovel portions onto their plates. Together Adam and I watched the food dwindle lower and lower until Adam turned to me with a knotted brow and said in a thick voice, “There are only four rolls left…”

    What? WHAT?! Only four rolls left! “Adam,” I said, grabbing his arm with a sense of urgency and comradery. “Reach around them and grab the rolls. One for me, one for you. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAN GRAB THE ROLLS!” And so, in true pushy, imperialistic, obese American form, Adam reached around the calm citizens of more logical nations and grabbed two of the four remaining rolls and everything was right in the world. We weren’t going to starve!

    This, of course, plays more generally into the free food phenomenon that seems to drive people in all shapes and forms utterly mad, particularly Americans like myself, the girl who is still excited by the prospect of “free samples” on certain days at American grocery stores, even if the “free samples” are complete crap I would never eat again. “It’s food! And it’s FREE!”

    The only nationality I have ever seen more excited by free food than an American has got to be the Fins, more specifically, a tall Fin with both floppy limbs and floppy hair that studied at the University of Rochester, a jolly young man who was known ubiquitously around the U of R campus as, “Happy Finnish Guy”, not because students had met and decided that this would be his name but because each individual student had spontaneously thought up this name on their own. After all, he was a happy Finnish guy, so what other name would have suited him? So happy was Happy Finnish Guy that, according to my friends who worked in the campus coffee shop, all one need do was give him his order of drink and food (I forget just what this order was, although I’m sure you, oh my beloved coffee shop friends, can bring me up to date on this) and he would sit at a nearby table with a grin on his face, happily indulging himself in consumption and content with the world at large.

    Well, Happy Finnish Guy (who, for some odd reason, had more of a stereotypical Austrian, Hans and Franz, “We will pump you up” sort of accent) would later give me, and all other witnesses, quite the scene to remember when towards the end of the year there was one of many events on campus in which some group was giving away free food, a phenomenon on the Rochester campus that I quickly abandoned as not near worth excitement as the free food was never nearly as good as say, free samples at Wegmans on a Saturday. It was a rare bright and sunny Rochester spring afternoon and I was milling about the steps of the library with about thirty other students happy to soak up the sun, indulging in the activity of just “chilling out” which is so rare on that campus, when Happy Finnish Guy came bounding around the corner on his long legs, his floppy hair all in disarray, a line of chocolate tracing his mouth and a half-eaten Krispy Kreme doughnut in his massive hand.

    “Free food!” he called in his strange Austrian accent so that it sounded more like, “Free fud!”. “Dere ees FREE FUD!” he added to clarify his statement. When no one reacted as this was really a normal occurrence, he bounded up to individual groups of people and cried in utter joy and disbelief, “THEY ARE GIVING AWAY THE FREE FUD! GO AND GET YOUR FREE FOOD BEFORE THEY ARE NO LONGER GIVING AWAY THE FREE FUD!” People smiled tentatively and laughed awkwardly as if to say, “Uh-huh, we get it, now leave us alone” and before long Happy Finnish Guy grew frustrated with us all, bounding back down the steps and around the corner of the library to where the free food lay, proclaiming, “I WILL GET THE REST OF THE FREE FOOD!” And I assume he did, as no one followed. Oh, poor Happy Finnish Guy, alone in his excitement.

    Finally, though, to get this show on the road, I have one story of cultural interactions yet to tell. Naturally, this story was sparked by what else but my 30-pound penis-shaped hiking backpack, which is really a cultural interaction of its own. As fate (meaning, my aching back and pervasive laziness) would have it, I decided after making bookings to travel through Europe and Asia that my poor 30-pound penis bag

  • was just too huge for me to lug around for 8 months on the road and that I was just going to have to re-sell my penis bag and opt for a much smaller, much lighter bag, even if this meant only have one pair of every essential article of clothing. As a result, I bought a much more comfortable and smaller bag and sold my penis bag to a work friend, Jennie (and um, by the way Jennie, it really only looks like a penis when its stuffed full, so just um, don’t stuff it full, and um, sorry I didn’t mention this when I sold it to you, AHEM). In order to get the bag to Jennie, I knew I was going to have to bring it to work during rush hour, a fact that wouldn’t have been THAT bad had the bag been empty. But of course, being the intelligent woman I am, I decided to pack the bag full of materials for grad school applications, and since I am applying to about 20 schools, this made for yet again a very large and very heavy backpack. Thursday morning I slung the backpack onto my backpack and was immediately subjected to horrific flashbacks of earlier times spent lugging my heavy penis bag around London which put me into the proper state for a nervous breakdown, a state that was only worsened by the fear of lugging so much crap on packed rush hour buses and tubes. Fortunately, the bus ride was less full than I had expected (though no one moved to clear their light purses from the luggage rack when I came on, as if their purses were really such a burden to carry) which gave me high and false hopes for the tube but alas, this is where my luck ended. The first tube rolled up and of course was completely packed to the doors. There I stood, looking forlornly into the packed car, debating about whether or not I should just wait for another train and receiving sharp glares from all the passengers broadcasting the hostile message, “Don’t even think about it”, but I was late for work, had no other choice, and knew the next tube wouldn’t be any better.

    So I did what I had to do and pushed onto the packed tube with my oversized penis bag, apologizing to all nearby passengers and putting on my best “I know I’m an asshole I hate people who do this as well but I had no choice” type of face, praying I wouldn’t get stabbed. Always the people-pleaser, I looked around at the passenger’s faces, hoping that I wasn’t being too awful, and was surprised to see that most people were looking in other directions completely indifferently. “Phew,” I thought. “Not too bad.”

    That is, until, I looked to the guy directly next to me in the middle of the car. Now, I don’t know WHERE he was from, so I can’t pin a nationality on this one, but I can say that this was perhaps my most interesting cultural interaction so far. Here in the center of a car was a hardcore, heavy metal, overweight tattooed rocker sporting piercings in nearly every visible orifice (and who knows about the hidden ones). There he was, Mr. Hardcore, in the middle of a rush hour, suit-clad crowd, glaring at me with the nastiest look I have ever received. In this moment I felt like a very small and very red animal being glared down by a very, very pissed off bull, raring to charge. I looked down at the writing on his leather vest (MOTORHEAD, and FUCK YOU, amongst other things I won’t repeat), gulped, looked back into his eyes and mouthed apologetically, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t respond, he just glared. And glared and glared.

    And glared and glared is what he continued to do as passengers piled off the tube at various stops and I managed to move both myself and the backpack away from him into a luggage-designated area. Now with plenty of space to move, Mr. Motorhead/FUCK YOU continued to glare at me and stood still in the exact same spot, not once even shuffling his feet, continuing to grip the center pole and shoot my barbs as if to say, “FUCK HIKING BACKPACKS! FUCK YOU!”

    Ah, of course, of all people to have ended up on the tube next to with my huge hiking backpack, it had to have been motorhead guy. But oh well.

    And that is the end of my blog for the week. I do like to end my blog with a sort of “eh” feeling, so in this way it has been a success. I leave you, friends, families, lovers, and coffee-addicts with the London Character of the week, which goes to the bus driver of the 137 this Friday, who cheered on all the other bus drivers as we made our way down Oxford Street, and occasionally even passed gum through his windows to the more cheerful ones. But of course, the London Character of the Week will always go to the man who gives out free gum.

    Cheerio!

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