Yay friends
Apr. 21st, 2010 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livLast week I wasn't on DW much, cos I was busy having soul-nourishing conversations with some of my favourite people, in person.
Work sent me to a course at St George's medical school to learn how to create exams for assessing medical students. Since the course was in the middle of the week, I took Friday off to allow me a long weekend in London, and managed to make a few plans with people I wanted to see.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shreena very kindly offered me crash-space in Southwark, which is conveniently close to the hospital in Tooting. And that gave me a chance to spend a couple of evenings chatting to her (and quizcustodet for the first evening), which I very much enjoyed. I've known Shreena for over 20 years, and I find her incredibly insightful and just a great conversationalist.
I met up withlethargic_man on Wednesday evening after the course finished for the day. We went out to a Mildreds, a mid-range veggie restaurant in Soho, cos lethargic_man had enjoyed the food there in the past and wanted to go back. The food was indeed very good, in the style I'd describe as contemporary English (with a few international additions too), but the restaurant was somewhat crowded and incredibly noisy. I voted against staying for dessert, since the whole point of the evening was to chat and we could barely hear eachother speak. So we repaired to some random, vaguely north African cafe for mint tea (that is, tea made out of actual tea, with a lot of sugar and leaves of spearmint, not the infusion of peppermint alone that you typically get in English establishments) and a slightly quieter atmosphere.
Thursday evening I headed to Leytonstone for an evening with the wonderfulkhalinche. We just couldn't stop talking until we were almost falling asleep in mid-conversation, so that was just perfect. We seem to be at the delightful stage of making friends where you just explain your life to eachother, and khalinche is an exceptionally good listener who is also willing to share some of her own history and thoughts. *bounce*
You'd think I couldn't get much happier, but I spent the whole of Friday with MK, one of my dearest friends whom I see far too rarely because he lives in Australia (and doesn't believe in online journalling). He's on a slightly whirlwind trip to Europe for his sister-in-law's wedding, but managed to clear a whole day for me, which I'm really grateful for. And we talked about everything, taking up several of the threads we've been weaving since we met at Oxford interview in 1996. Due to the volcano we had to spend some time in Tooting (again!) so MK could rehearse his role in the wedding. We met up with a friend of his and went out for a tasty Thai meal at a place called Banana Leaf in Clapham, which was very nice apart from accidentally muddling orders and giving me a pork and shrimp dish, with the unkosher stuff hidden inside a dumpling so I didn't easily spot it.
In the end the lovely conversation plus the time spent wandering back and forth across London meant that I was too late to go to the Friday night meallethargic_man had invited me to. So I decided that the best plan was to head straight to Cambridge; my apologies to the people I didn't quite manage to see, especially nanaya.
I am really glad I did make it to Cam, even though it hadn't been in my original plan. I had a completely glorious day withjack and his friends T&R, walking along the Cam to the Plough pub for a tasty (though not terribly veggie-friendly) lunch, with even more good conversation. I ended up falling apart laughing about a chinese whispers story where a mathematician asked a non-mathmo a problem starting "so, if you tile R2", and the non-mathmo interpreting this as "R2-D2". When I tried to repeat this story to R, she further interpreted it as being about Scrabble tiles. Then there was jack's party in the evening, with lots and lots of lovely people and extrovert bouncing and more good conversation. Finally I spent Sunday with my parents, and managed to be on the same train as my colleague returning to Stoke.
I must admit I am getting a little fed up with green sorts being smug about the volcano blocking air travel. Yes, yes, you are very virtuous in foregoing flying, good for you. But really, people who are trapped in the wrong country, spending more than they can afford and being powerless to deal with urgent problems at home or missing important family occasions don't deserve your schadenfreude. I'm sure I'm not the only one who knows several people directly affected by this. And even if aeroplanes are evil, at least they don't interfere with my breathing.
Two much nicer creative responses to the volcano:
papersky wrote poetry (the comments have a bonus awesome ash-cloud dragon animation).
redaloud wrote prose.
Work sent me to a course at St George's medical school to learn how to create exams for assessing medical students. Since the course was in the middle of the week, I took Friday off to allow me a long weekend in London, and managed to make a few plans with people I wanted to see.
shreena very kindly offered me crash-space in Southwark, which is conveniently close to the hospital in Tooting. And that gave me a chance to spend a couple of evenings chatting to her (and quizcustodet for the first evening), which I very much enjoyed. I've known Shreena for over 20 years, and I find her incredibly insightful and just a great conversationalist.I met up with
lethargic_man on Wednesday evening after the course finished for the day. We went out to a Mildreds, a mid-range veggie restaurant in Soho, cos lethargic_man had enjoyed the food there in the past and wanted to go back. The food was indeed very good, in the style I'd describe as contemporary English (with a few international additions too), but the restaurant was somewhat crowded and incredibly noisy. I voted against staying for dessert, since the whole point of the evening was to chat and we could barely hear eachother speak. So we repaired to some random, vaguely north African cafe for mint tea (that is, tea made out of actual tea, with a lot of sugar and leaves of spearmint, not the infusion of peppermint alone that you typically get in English establishments) and a slightly quieter atmosphere.Thursday evening I headed to Leytonstone for an evening with the wonderful
khalinche. We just couldn't stop talking until we were almost falling asleep in mid-conversation, so that was just perfect. We seem to be at the delightful stage of making friends where you just explain your life to eachother, and khalinche is an exceptionally good listener who is also willing to share some of her own history and thoughts. *bounce* You'd think I couldn't get much happier, but I spent the whole of Friday with MK, one of my dearest friends whom I see far too rarely because he lives in Australia (and doesn't believe in online journalling). He's on a slightly whirlwind trip to Europe for his sister-in-law's wedding, but managed to clear a whole day for me, which I'm really grateful for. And we talked about everything, taking up several of the threads we've been weaving since we met at Oxford interview in 1996. Due to the volcano we had to spend some time in Tooting (again!) so MK could rehearse his role in the wedding. We met up with a friend of his and went out for a tasty Thai meal at a place called Banana Leaf in Clapham, which was very nice apart from accidentally muddling orders and giving me a pork and shrimp dish, with the unkosher stuff hidden inside a dumpling so I didn't easily spot it.
In the end the lovely conversation plus the time spent wandering back and forth across London meant that I was too late to go to the Friday night meal
lethargic_man had invited me to. So I decided that the best plan was to head straight to Cambridge; my apologies to the people I didn't quite manage to see, especially nanaya. I am really glad I did make it to Cam, even though it hadn't been in my original plan. I had a completely glorious day with
jack and his friends T&R, walking along the Cam to the Plough pub for a tasty (though not terribly veggie-friendly) lunch, with even more good conversation. I ended up falling apart laughing about a chinese whispers story where a mathematician asked a non-mathmo a problem starting "so, if you tile R2", and the non-mathmo interpreting this as "R2-D2". When I tried to repeat this story to R, she further interpreted it as being about Scrabble tiles. Then there was jack's party in the evening, with lots and lots of lovely people and extrovert bouncing and more good conversation. Finally I spent Sunday with my parents, and managed to be on the same train as my colleague returning to Stoke.I must admit I am getting a little fed up with green sorts being smug about the volcano blocking air travel. Yes, yes, you are very virtuous in foregoing flying, good for you. But really, people who are trapped in the wrong country, spending more than they can afford and being powerless to deal with urgent problems at home or missing important family occasions don't deserve your schadenfreude. I'm sure I'm not the only one who knows several people directly affected by this. And even if aeroplanes are evil, at least they don't interfere with my breathing.
Two much nicer creative responses to the volcano:
papersky wrote poetry (the comments have a bonus awesome ash-cloud dragon animation).redaloud wrote prose.