Hey ho ladies and gents and welcome back to weeks 13 and 14 of LEAH LUGGING CRAP AROUND THE WORLD. These past two weeks crap lugging has been replaced by:
1) A 10K race
2) Smoky blues clubs with drunk Jerry Springer women
3) My arm nearly falling off thanks to incredibly painful and expensive vaccinations
4) More blues club and a sleazy Las Vegas singer with a proper English accent
5) And adventures in the Indian embassy. That’s right, Arthi, skim at least to the Indian embassy part because I spend a lot of time making fun of you and your people.

So let’s just jump right into it, shall we, because my arm still feels like it’s about to fall off and I’m not sure how long I can type before I DIE FROM PAIN (or at least shrivel into a mumbling fetal ball). We will start, my friends, with the 10k, a race sponsored by the evil empire NIKE called Run London. This run was the ultimate in media and marketing scams, advertising for months before the race and pitting North London against South London for the ultimate battle of fast running times. The idea was to decide once and for all who was better- those who lived to the north of the Thames or those who live to the south, and for months posters with masses of people in green (for north) and orange (for south) racing on either side of the river dotted the city. Only a complete idiot would argue that the run was anything but a huge Nike marketing ploy, but still protestors cleverly showed up at the race with signs like, “Corporation London” as if we didn’t know we had huge swooshes across our chests. I, however, was nonplussed by the protestors as my reasons for running were completely selfish anyway. Indeed, when I saw the many posters all around London, I thought not of achieving ULTIMATE GLORY for SOUF PRIDE or of challenging myself to train to the top of my ability and come in at a time faster than that of superman himself. No, ladies and gentleman, when the Run London came around, I chugged my way through 10 kilometers of Hyde Park purely so that I could have cool t-shirt. You see, my problem in living in London is that I never want to be a tourist, so I never have any cool souvenirs to prove that I was so here. So I was determined to run through London purely so that I could have a t-shirt.
And get a t-shirt I sure did, though I’d be lying if I denied the fact that while I walked towards Hyde Park on the day of the race sporting my bright orange t-shirt, I imagined the interviews I would surely be conducting at the end of the race, when I ran it under 15 minutes. “Ms. Kaminsky, your time was amazing. What was your motivation for running this race?” “Um… I really wanted the t-shirt.” “But how did you train?” “Um… I just ran a lot. You know. For the t-shirt. And stuff.” ULTIMATE GLORY! However, my dreams of domination were quickly suppressed when I learned that the unbeatable and famed British runner, Paula Radcliffe was competing the race, managing to arrive in half my time even though she was SIX MONTHS PREGNANT (though, as my running buddy Cassandra pointed out, we too probably carry more weight than her even when she’s six months pregnant, so WE were the ones at a disadvantage!).
The run itself was an interesting new experience, if anything because of the few but adamant spectators that occasionally dotted the courses, shouting, “Come on NORF!” or “Let’s go SOUF!” It was primarily these spectators along with my desire not to be passed by fat people that spurred me onto my own personal victory, managing to do not all that bad even without using my dad’s sage running technique from high school cross country of hiding in the woods while the rest of the team jogs on, and joining back up when they loop around. No, my friends, I ran the whole race, and effectively refuted the argument that Levine/Kaminskys don’t run. Alas, victory is mine!
After my ULTIMATE DOMINATION in Hyde park, I decided to celebrate twice within the two weeks with many parties and nights out, which is at the heart of the reason why this week’s blog is a little forced (the amount of effort it is requiring to write this is astronomical, my friends, as-tro-nom-ic-al). Such nights, along with wonderful dinners, plays, and music, have only served to further engrain my love of London into my soul. The first crazy night from these two weeks took place at a blues club that I went to with my friends Claire and Joe. This was a classic sort of club, very small (though wonderfully, not smoky!) and full of amazing music. I had booked a table ahead of time, and as always usually tends to happen in such small places, found out that our place had been reserved right next to the musicians, meaning that the base was nearly in Claire’s lap. To me, clubs like this are the ultimate in a type of soul and passion that extends beyond just that American, downtrodden blues belt. As always, the characters in this club, both in the band and in the audience, were well worth noting both for amusement and praise, if only because when the musicians wail, they sound like oppressed black men from the heart of the American south, but when they stop, they thank the audience very politely in incredibly strong and stereotypical British accents. “Oooooooooh baby I got the blues… Why thank you, thank you very much, what a lovely applause.” What’s more, in this first blues club the lead singer looked just like Eric Idol and the guitar player looked like Bob Hoskins (as Claire pointed out, thank you Claire), so together it was a mixture of Monty Python and Who Framed Roger Rabbit singing the blues.
What is so beautiful about clubs like this is that as the night goes on, the music gets wilder, more intense, more soulful, the people get drunker and subsequently dance more wildly and by the end of the night, you can’t tell the audience from the band because they’re all the on the floor singing and dancing anyway. As with any music club, it usually takes ones, overly drunk person to get the dancing going, and this club was no exception. About halfway through the night a middle-aged schlumpy-looking woman (probably around 45) came sashaying in with her more attractive but also middle-aged friend and huge hulking boyfriend, shaking her saggy middle-aged tushy in a far too small 1920s flapper outfit. As she made her way up through the very small middle row of tables, she pumped her arms into the air and shouted, “WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! WooooooooOOOOOoooOOOOOO!!!!!” As I feared would happen, she soon spotted Claire and me and shouted (spit) all over our table, “Come on girls! Dance! Dance with us!” Oh, god, I thought to myself. “Okay!” Claire shouted, and before long the club was bopping with dancers.
I, however, managed to avoid dancing for longer than Claire and watched the whole scene with amusement, thinking to myself that soon the very drunk middle aged flapper would have a drunken Jerry Springer-esque meltdown in five, four, three, two, one… and yup, thank you very much, without any indication as to what had caused the trigger, the very drunk flapper turned around and began shouting at her giant boyfriend, “This is your fault! It’s your fault! You don’t know me! You don’t know me!” “You’re drunk!” he shouted back at her. “So are you!” she replied, which was true. It would have gone on this way if the friend hadn’t separated the two, with the guy drunkenly continuing to explain, “No, you don’t understand, she’s drunk.” Then two minutes passed and the drunk middle aged flapper was back to shaking her booty, shouting, “WOOoooooOOOOOOooOOOOOOO!!!” all the while. It was quite the scene, and eventually I got sucked into dancing too, shimmying the night away with the drunk middle aged flapper and her Jerry Springer’s passion.
It was an experience I would attempt to semi-replicate a week later by returning to a different blues club with Claire and many work friends the next week. This blues club has got to be one of my favorite clubs in London and was one I had discovered last year with my friend Rosie. It’s a bit bigger than the other club and there’s not nearly as much seating, meaning that by the end of the night, everyone is dancing on tables and chairs the crooning voice of the lead singer, who, this time around, looked like a sleazy Las Vegas lounge singer, complete with slick black hair, a tailored blue suit jacket, dark sunglasses and a thick (and surprisingly proper) English accent which was showcased in the beginning of the evening when he greeted the crowd with a friendly, “Why helloooooo!”.
Indeed, it was another excellent night spent like true rock stars, shaking our booties away, and made up for the awful day I had spent getting travel vaccinations and applying at the visa at the Indian embassy. Which reminds me of a story. Have I ever told you about the time I applied for a visa at the Indian embassy? Oh yes, my friends, this was one for the ages. I arrived at the embassy relatively late (10AM, which, when the embassy opens at 8:30, is a stupid idea, meaning the line was already around the block when I arrived), expecting to find a hilarious scene, and a hilarious (but frustrating) scene was exactly what I found. Now, I’ve never been to India, nor do I claim to know the mentality of Indians all throughout the world, but let me just say, one of my best friends who I lived with for three years is Indian and I have observed both her family and the families of all the many Indians who went to my school (ALL of whom were pre-med), so to be honest, I was expecting several things:
1) Complete disorder
2) Everyone to show up late
3) A lot of noise.

And oh how I right I was, though nothing could have prepared me for the scene I was to encounter. It began at the little window below the embassy where I picked up my yellow “q” card, asking the man behind the window if I would need an extra form because I wasn’t British. “Oh no!” he said in a thick Indian accent and laughing like I was an idiot. “You need no form! Just go upstairs and wait!” Okay, I thought I can do that, so I made my way to the door where the hugest and most intimidating Indian security guard I have ever seen put up his hand to stop several men from going through the door so that I could go first. Alrighty then, I thought to myself, and promptly made my way through the metal detector, which beeped loudly in protest and flashed red lights when I, every person before me, and every person after me went in without the guard paying one wink of attention (after all, he had to make sure people went through the door, but not the metal detector, one person at a time).
I made my way up the stairs to a hall crammed with people, most of whom were Indian and milling about in every direction. “A40! A17! A42!” a woman’s voice called in a thick Indian accent from a window fright before. “B13! B14! B18! B21!” another voice called from an unseen window. I looked down at my yellow q card. D57. Ah, a long wait was ahead of me, or was it? What were all these voices calling from unseen windows? Which were for passports? Which were for visas? Which were for god knows what other queues there could be in an embassy? I thought it wise to ask someone, so I turned to a hairy bearded white guy, the kind of hippie that looks like he could have traveled through India many times before for spiritual enlightenment and asked him what line was for what. He looked back at me as if he was on the verge of tears. “I have no idea.” It was a powerful statement because really, no one had any idea what was going on, least of all the Indians I asked. “Which queue is for the visas?” *Thick Indian accent* “Everything is for everything!” Ah, well okay then.
After a few minutes of trying to figure things out, I gave up and stood where I was, trying my best to stay out of the way of the many ancient Indian men and women shuffling by in Saris or trousers hiked up their wastes. There was one old man in particular who especially cracked me up, complete with his high-waisted trousers, a zip-up jacket and large owl glasses, sticking his hand straight out in front of him to make a path between people and shouting in a thick Indian accent, “Oh excuse me please I am very sorry excuse me tank you very much excuse me please!” He wouldn’t have cracked me up nearly as much if he ever stopped moving, but instead for some reason he was on a senseless mission only to continue pushing his way all throughout the crowd shouting these “excuse mes” and doing so a neverending loop. It didn’t matter where I moved or how far into the crowd I managed to penetrate, the little owl-eyed Indian man was constantly pushing that erect arm at my elbow and muttering, “Oh excuse me sank you please!” Of course, heightening the hilarity situation was the sheer senselessness of it all, the number of old women doing the exact same thing without an apology, the number of people accidentally running into each other and greeting each other like they were long lost relatives (“Oh it is so long since I have seen you last!”) and the embassy was some reunion grounds, and the number of bewildered non-Indians standing around with clueless expressions, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Needless to say, my attempts at reading the book I had brought along, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, proved both fruitless and unnecessary to pass the time.
Finally, I figured out that the visa windows were along one wall and the system was designed so that when each teller was free, they would press a button moving the letter/number system along on a ticker up on the wall. Surprisingly organized one would think, right? Oh no my friends, you should know better than to jump to such conclusions! Sure, the tellers pressed the buttons with a loud buzzing noise, but if the person whose number came up on the flipper thingy didn’t jump up immediately, the teller would buzz on to the next number. As a result, even though we were already waiting in one massive and disorganized general q for our numbers to be called, once our numbers came up, a mass of people whose numbers had been flipped through too quickly would accumulate at every window. What’s more, I’ve been told that queuing really doesn’t exist in India anyway, which must be a fact because even once you went to wait in the queue and were just about to approach the window, an old Indian man or woman would inevitably elbow past you at the last minute and take your spot, offering up a q card that wasn’t due to be called for another several centuries.
I noticed such things as I waited for a very long time, constantly moving out of the way for that same old owl-eyed Indian man (“Excuse me! Sank you! Excuse me sank you please!”). Not surprisingly, by the time it neared my number, I gathered up all my stuff and prepared to leap. “D57.” GO! I sprinted up to the window, pushing old Indians out of the way (“EXCUSE ME! SANK YOU VERY MUCH!”) and pushed my application under the window to a very dour looking young Indian man. As I had waited, a fear had grown inside me that when I finally reached the window, I wouldn’t have completed one tiny thing properly and would have to repeat the procedure all over again. Which is of course what happened. Despite having checked the website ten million times and asking downstairs before I queued, the dour Indian man promptly told me in an accent so thick I could barely understand it, “It is £55, not £45 and you need to fill out this extra form.”
“What?” I asked. “It said on the website and they said downstairs as well that it was £30 for processing the application and £15 more because I’m American. That should be £45 total.”
“No it is £55. And you must fill out this form.”
“But that’s not what everyone else that I’ve spoken to has said.”
“It is £55 and you must complete this form.”
I gritted my teeth and slid him the extra ten pounds, the last of my money (thank god it hadn’t cost more or else I would have had to come back another day!) and took the form, beginning to fill it out with pencil to the side of his window, sliding aside so that other people could go up, when his uptight voice came barking through the window.
“Miss you must sit down to fill it out and then you bring it back only to my window. Move aside please!’
“I can’t stay here?” I asked, incredulous. “But it’ll take me two seconds to fill out.”
“You must sit down and wait again.”
I glared at him for about ten seconds, took the paper, shoved an auntie out of the way and pried my way into the last remaining seat. I filled out the paper as fast as I could, enduring stares of wonderment at my American passport, and then elbowed my way back up the window, where, of course, a huge queue had now formed thanks to the teller pressing the button ten million times and flipping past everyone’s number. By the time I got back to the window, another half hour had passed, but I smiled politely, said, “Hiiiii,” and shoved my stupid application back under the window. He looked at it for about thirty seconds and then barked, “You did not fill out the address. Take the form, sit down, fill it out and come back.”
“WHAT?!” I cried as the old Indian owl-eyed man elbowed past me for the millionth time, excuse me sank you (where the hell was he GOING?!). “Can I have a pen?”
“No,” he said simply. “Next please!” I glared at him. There was no way. I was. Waiting. Again. Motherfucker.
“NO!” I echoed back and took out a pencil, hurriedly beginning to scratch my address.
“Miss, move aside. Next please!”
“It’ll take me two seconds! See I’m already at my street line!”
“Move aside! Next please!”
“Excuse me sank you very much please!”
“Two more seconds! I’m at my town already!!”
“Move aside! Next please!”
“TWO GODDAMN SECONDS!!!”
“Excuse me sank you very much please!”
“NEXT PLEASE!”
“1! 4! 8! 5! 0!” I shouted my zip code triumphantly, waving the form in front of the window. “Look dude, I’m done! I’M DONE!” He looked me in the eye still unsmiling.
“Next please.” Maintaining a hostile glare, I slid the now completed application under the window. He glanced it over, acting bizarrely as if I was a completely new customer. Five seconds later he had reached a verdict. “Call in two days to check the process of the application. Next please!”
And just as quickly as it had started, my adventure at the Indian embassy had come to a close. I elbowed my way past the bewildered white/Chinese people, stood aside to let the old owl-eyed Indian past (“Excuse me please sank you please!”), made my way through the metal detector which this time let off a loud buzzing noise which the guard completely ignored, and pushed my way back on to the street. “Oh India,” I thought, unsure whether or not I was completely psyched or a little freaked out to travel India now. The story of the Indian embassy, I’m sure, will not end here, as I have to go pick up the visa in a couple days. So please, keep tuned.
Alrighty folks, that’s all for this week. I’m off to nurse my poor vaccinated arm.

This week’s London character of the week? All I have to say is excuse me sank you please.