Soooooo like an hour after we posted last week’s blog, Biden dropped out of the race LOL. Although we have our concerns about VP Harris, this is not the time to complain. The last two weeks have felt like we all just fell out of a coconut tree (and got run over by a bus repeatedly as James said), but this week was a lot of chill working vibes and enjoying the summer. One might say we sat down to enjoy the shade under the coconut tree for the first time in a while.
Monday 7/22
Z: Catja and I walked over to Divorced Dads in the morning to get some serious work done but…all three of us were clearly in a procrastinating mood. This fine morning I got a prime seat at the table, so I applied to a couple of jobs before getting distracted. Catja and Callum laughed at Instagram posts, one of which prompted Callum to declare that he “can’t wait to get a girlfriend who is Birkenstock beanie queenie.” We all fell into a fit of laughter thinking about a “Birkenstock beanie queenie.” Catja and Callum got back to work, and I decided to watch a bit of CSPAN. Callum set up his monitor on the table, so all I could see and hear was a black box and Callum's disembodied voice. Shout out Gerry Connolly for his incredible questioning of the former Secret Service head, I have never seen him so angry and it was great!
C: Today, I struggled to figure out Virginia nonprofit tax exemptions for Gold Standard. I do not know anything about business taxes. After today, I still don’t. But I know marginally more. And I’m buddies with Savannah from Gusto Customer Service now. Callum and Zoe witnessed me pulling my hair out for hours while trying to figure it out.
Zoe kindly saved me from smashing my laptop in frustration by helping me find photos to make a Kamala Harris rainbow pantsuit mug, inspired by the Biden/Harris Pride Collection. My camera roll this week is primarily Kamala memes that I sent to Zoe. Is she a perfect candidate? No. Is she a competent younger adult? YES. Plus the memefication of Harris is going to be fascinating to read about in textbooks in a few decades. What can I say, I’m being influenced. We Asian women have to stick together. Anyway, so that’s how I ended up ordering a Kamala X Chappell Roan pride mug.
Tuesday 7/23
C: I decided to try the gym in Swiss Cottage to spice things up. It was glorious. Not only was it just four stops away from our place, but it also had four floors! And a digital studio. And so many more machines. Very fun.
Later, I got back on the work grind and FINALLY FIGURED OUT NONPROFIT TAXES!!! You don’t understand—this has been a month+ long endeavor and I was at my wits end. Shoutout to my parents and Mr. Dubelier for pointing me in the right direction/hearing me vent.
Z: I have no evidence of doing literally anything on Tuesday, but from what I do remember I sat on the floor of my bedroom and applied to jobs for like 10 hours straight. I have just remembered that I did leave my room every 30 minutes to knead a new loaf of Knead the Bread, which by the way turned out FANTASTIC. It was moist, light, and airy. I genuinely impressed myself. It did take two whole days to make, so not ideal, but I guess that is what I’m supposed to be doing when I don’t have a job.
Wednesday 7/24
C: It was a lovely sunny day, so we went to Hampstead to do some work. Along the way, I popped into Tesco to grab some snacks. At the checkout, an employee said quite loudly, “Welcome back, Tom Felton!” I glanced up and saw a man with some stubble wearing a hat and sunglasses smile and nod, then he kept his head down as he checked out. The employee was going above and beyond to help him, but Tom seemed like he wanted to be lowkey and get out quickly. I also checked out and left about the same time as him, but we were on opposite sides of the road. I didn’t want to bother him, so I just walked to the Heath.
Z: Our next stop was Hampstead Heath for some dissertation work in the park. I cranked out the rest of my results section, making some good progress. We then just sat in the park, ate lunch, and chatted. It was really nice and sunny, so it was a perfect day for the park. There was a child screaming like it was the end of the world on a playground nearby which was minorly distracting, but he seemed to get it together after like an hour.
C: I brought my laptop, which had been plugged in all night to charge before our work sesh on the Heath. Unfortunately, it seems my charger fell out of my adapter, so I turned on my computer to find it at 13% battery. I closed my eyes and contemplated my life for a solid 5 minutes. I wanted to scream with that annoying child. Then, I got my shit together, took out my notebook, opened Google Drive on my phone, and started writing old school. It reminded me of my youth handwriting IB high school essays in 90 minutes and fighting off cramps. On the bright side, I was more focused than usual because I couldn’t just open a new tab and fall into a Wikipedia rabbit hole as easily.
Thursday 7/25
C: My beloved dance professor from Conn, Rachel Boggia, came to town for vacation, so we met up for a 3 hour coffee catch up in Regent’s Park! She asked me about my research and screamed in excitement when I told her it was about football and dance. We spoke for about an hour about all things dance research, embodiment, the science behind different warm up techniques and their efficacy on people from different cultures and stylistic backgrounds, and generally nerding out about bodies. We stopped in a coffee shop by the water to wait out the rain, and we caught up about the US, family, Conn, life abroad, and future plans. At the very end, we had this hilarious tid bit of a convo (edited for length):
R: “Catja, one more question! Are you in love yet?
C: deep sigh “Nope. It’s rough out here.”
R: “Oh. Well, do you have any choreographer crushes? Or scholarly crushes?”
C: “Oh my god yeah, I fucking love Foucault!”
R: “...Catja, he’s dead.”
C: “I know and he’s also a gay icon but I love the panopticon”
R: cackles and shakes her head in resignation “This is the Catja I remember”
Z: Catja! Guess what?! I have been taking pictures all week!! As I have done nothing but work, they are all of my computer. You’re welcome :). Today I spent the day working on my dissertation…shocking. I wrote a chunk of my discussion, panicked for about an hour about how unqualified I am to be writing a psychology masters dissertation, had a cup of tea, and resumed working. That has basically become my routine. Probably not great for the mental health, but I am productive. I am writing this now realizing that I am writing about mental health for my project, so I should probably fix this.
Friday 7/26
Z: Catja and I have unlocked a new crafternoon activity…nail painting. It requires using my favorite tiny little brush and doing tiny little designs, which is my greatest skill when it comes to painting. We brainstormed some summer nail art ideas, but we required some more colors, so we walked to Poundland and Boots on the hunt for blue, white, and yellow nail polish.
C: Anna came over to join my work-from-home vibes, and we ended up chatting about a Bible literary studies class and a diluted discussion about Modern Monetary Theory, which was a new concept for me! We don’t know much about economics, but we were doing our best with what Anna learned from Jake and what I could glean from Google. We also vented about our mutual struggles with finding jobs and becoming more and more discouraged. But it was a cathartic and lovely hang out.
Later, I called my dance bestie Kasey for the first time in ages and caught up about all the mutual dance friends we have and everything that’s happened in our lives since May. I am also trying to convince her to get a gig at a London/European dance company so we can be closer together!
Later later, Zoe and I sat in the living room to watch the Olympics opening ceremony. It was longgggg and had its ups and downs. Some highlights included:
Boats! Fun concept, got a bit old after a while but I enjoyed it
Aya Nakamura singing “Pookie” with a bunch of old military musicians awkwardly dancing around her on a bridge
Mechanical horse on the Seine… for the first 5 mins, then we got tired
Celine Dion making a triumphant return!
Saturday 7/27
On this lovely Saturday we headed off to the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Festival at Chiswick House and Gardens. The festival included funfair games, live music, speakers, and of course unlimited ice cream! Below we have ranked all of the random things that we did/happened to us at the festival.
Ranking:
Corn hole: Corn hole ranks number one because not only is it the quintessential American game that every funfair needs, the women working the booth were SO nice. We helped them determine how close the boards needed to be and talked about how we thought there was something wrong because no one was able to get the bean bag in. Catja and I did tie with a lovely score of 0-0, but still very fun. - Z
Ice cream: Unlimited ice cream made me feel like I was living the dream that every elementary SGA candidate promised: free ice cream every day (that never happened for obvious reasons). But we tried so many flavors and kept cool all day. - C
Big chair: There was a really big fold out chair. It was difficult to climb on to the chair, however it was surprisingly very comfortable. See picture for evidence of chair. - Z
Cabaret: While waiting in line for corn hole, a man turned to us and said, “Quick question. Do you like cabaret?” My immediate instinct was to say, “Like, as a concept?” which made him guffaw. He said, “Oh well I love that energy!” and jokingly asked if I wanted him to recite a dissertation about conceptual cabaret, which I genuinely think I would love. He actually told us that his brother was performing a cabaret set nearby and asked if we’d go support him since the early crowds weren’t very full. We said sure, and he said, “Oh you are lovely, if I weren’t single… I mean, if I were… never mind you know what I mean.” He also said we both have fantastic hair. - C
Ball game: Ok, this game was extremely fun to play and I did beat Catja by a mile, HOWEVER it was the most sexist game I have ever seen. Every group in front of us was a couple with a tall man and short woman and Every. Single. Time. the man was able to so easily throw the yoga balls into this large tunnel (idk how to describe this game there should be a video in the album). We were hypothesizing that it must be a height and arm muscle thing but based on the fact that I am both shorter and have significantly less arm muscle than Catja, I don’t think that can be the case. Instead I have concluded that it was just extremely sexist. - Z
Spoon game: We played a game which involved hooking a wooden spoon with a metal circle around a hook (weird concept, bit boring in practice, but very annoyingly challenging). After watching several people struggle and fail, Zoe and I stepped up to battle each other. I picked up the spoon, swung it towards the hook, and hooked it on my first try. Beginner’s luck, but I felt so powerful. I promptly lost to Zoe. - C
Reggae adlib over hip hop music: After having our fill of games we decided to wander over to the main stage and listen to some music. The music however was quite strange. There was a DJ playing some basic hip hop and pop music, totally normal and not that interesting. However, he was accompanied by a man who was adding Reggae style adlibs. It was such a strange combination. Not bad, just weird. Kinda bad actually, we did leave after like 30 minutes to go find something else to do. - Z
Spinning wheel: After completing the different games, we got to spin a big wheel of prizes. We really wanted a blanket or a tshirt or even a poster with fun designs. Zoe went first and got a coupon for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s at any grocery store (Z:I feel physically ill thinking about using that coupon). I went next and landed on a section with stickers on it. I smiled because I like stickers! But everyone around me made a sad “Ohhhh” sound, and when I turned to the prize booth, the lady shook her head and said, “No prize. Moving on.” It was so demoralizing and almost ruined my day. But then we got more ice cream and I was fine! - C
Photographer woman: Immediately upon entering the fair ground we were approached by a woman with a camera. She asked if she could take a video of us walking in. Naturally we said sure, paused, and then proceeded to keep walking. Candid right? She was like “wait wait wait you’re moving to fast.” So we paused again and looked at her for a signal to walk. We then, in an extremely awkward manner, candidly walked at the pace of sloth down this gravel path. It was painful. We were mortified. I will never again agree to be filmed walking. -Z
Oat ice cream: There was a booth with dairy-free pints of ice cream sliced in half lengthwise, so Zoe and I went to try the oatmeal s’more flavor. I’d never had a slice half pint of ice cream before, so I was excited when we sat in a sunny patch near the live music and dug in. It was incredibly disappointing. At first, I thought I was just an ice cream lightweight and was having a sugar crash already. Then I realized there was something about the oatiness and the sickeningly sweet marshmallow-flavored layer that made me feel gross. I couldn’t finish it. But then I got chocolate fudge brownie ice cream later (full dairy) and felt so much better. - C
Audience participation: Alrighty, taking it back to the Cabaret man, we did go over to the stage to watch this man’s brother. The guy was a balding man with dyed pink hair and he was wearing a long white nightgown. It was giving Ebenezer Scrooge meets Joe Pesci in Home Alone after his hat caught fire. Upon our arrive he started talking to this man in the crowd (I say crowd, but there were like six of us). He was trying to get the man to sing with him on the chorus to the song, however he was rather reluctant. So instead of realizing that crowd work is not to be done in a crowd that small, the guy jumped off stage and walked up to the poor man with the microphone. Now my least favorite thing in life is audience participation, so when this man hopped off stage I looked at Catja in full panic. He then made eye contact and I WANTED TO DIE IMMEDIATELY. Not only did he make us sing his song, which was embarrassing enough, he also made fun of our accents. After sufficiently embarrassing us, he moved on to his next victims. While running after them the cord of his microphone pushed us running toward a tree. When I tell you I ran so fast away from that stage. I get you need to get out of your comfort zone, but put me back in it please, I don’t want a man with pink hair forcing me to sing for a group of people. -Z
Lactose intolerance: I was feeling great considering how much ice cream we consumed without any other food. Until 8pm hit. Then I suffered intense stomach cramps and frequent trips to the bathroom. I sipped on ginger tea in a fetal position on my bed and clutched my roiling stomach. Luckily, I felt fine in the morning. There’s something about copious amounts of British dairy that doesn’t sit well with me. But no regrets, will do it again. - C
C: After all of those adventures, we stopped by a quieter tent where they were hosting guest speakers to discuss various advocacy projects. We heard Lady Phyll give a 45 minute talk about her work establishing UK Black Pride, promoting the Kaleidoscope Trust, and working in the civil service. We didn’t know what to expect from an advocacy talk at an ice cream festival, but we were riveted the entire time. She was so inspirational, and so many of her quotes resonated with us. I nearly teared up when she confidently said, “I am amazing,” after listing her accomplishments and qualifications without arrogance. It’s such a simple statement that is so hard to genuinely say and believe as women.
We also really liked how she said that we should think of the Earth as borrowed from future generations rather than just inherited from our ancestors, which implies a sense of entitlement and often not thinking about the long-term consequences of how we treat the Earth and each other. Finally, she suggested that instead of asking people, “How are you?” which often leads to a superficial response (“Fine.” “Alright.” “Good.”) we should try asking a variation of that, such as, “How is your heart today?” This makes the recipient think about themselves from a different perspective, not just as a monotonous, routine nicety, but as a reflection on how you are actually feeling in the moment. Learning to be bravely honest rather than deflecting and struggling alone. I could go on and on about her talk, but it was the perfect way to end a sweet and sunny day in Chiswick Gardens.
Z: After getting our fair share of ice cream, we rolled ourselves home for some nail painting. We caught up on some of the Olympics while we worked on the nail art, learned what the rules of fencing are, and learned Adam Peaty’s whole life story.
Sunday 7/28
Z: As we do most Sunday mornings, Catja and I headed off to Lidl for our weekly shop. We got all the ingredients for our dinner and saw our favorite check out man. He wished us a good day and that we did have.
C: I made my favorite childhood comfort food, chicken adobo, for the first time, and it was sooooo good! I texted my mom for her recipe and cooking suggestions, then I got to marinating and simmering and stir frying. It tasted like home. Later, I sketched out yet another pretty house I saw around the neighborhood. Zoe requested to be in this painting, so I added her in the corner. I watched the Olympics and called Mikka for a bit while sketching, which made for a relaxing Sunday afternoon.
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