Free to Be You, Free to Be Me

I have just finished my final interview in Britain and I'm feeling odd. The interview went extremely well; I couldn't have paid the man to give me better answers. As I sat across from him, drinking my coffee and listening to his responses, I felt very passionate about my work, which is a far cry from my attitude of late. Anway...so then why am I feeling odd? I don't have a bloody clue. I suppose it is because I'm leaving on Thursday to go to Greece. Dan is there for a conference and he invited me to visit him. I am very much looking forward to it. If the place looks anything like those calendars at Barnes and Nobles, then I'm going to be blown away. Sunday I went to Brick Lane. I met up with a hung-over Saladin and we proceded to eat our way through East London. Brick Lane is how I imagined the city to be. No posh white buildings with blue doors here. The place was alive, teeming with people and goods. I was in the Land of the Hipster. Ironically, I was also passing mosques left and right and the signs were in English and Urdu. Of everything I ate (and trust me, I ate a lot) it was the Bengali sweets that made the biggest impression. They were incredible! One was saffron flavored and very doughy; the other was made of fried dry milk. To balance this sweetness, I saw many "Trustfundarians."* They had to be because the prices on a lot of the goods were ridiculously high. Nevertheless, the market was such a sharp departure from the one on Portabello road. No longer were people haggling over vintage Chanel bags (::clears throat::); rather, it was whimsical dresses and fair trade leather messanger bags that were the objects of barter. I don't fit exactly in either world. I feel like I'm pretending in both. One good thing about this is that I manage to be inconspicuous in a lot of situations. I simply act like everyone around me. The drawback is that I STILL don't know who I am (and I'm 25!). Monday was spent in the Conservative Archives at Oxford, where I rummaged through old public opinion reports. One boasted of a regression analysis! Impressive if you think about it; it was 1965! Furthermore, the party research department cited Stokes. For all you political scientists out there, someone at some party HQ may be reading your stuff. As in right now. Yes, right now! Now I am off. I have to make it home in time to do RA work and watch Big Brother. Finally the claws have come out and there is no way I'm going to miss the action. *Saladin introduced me to this word. I love it because I once shared a house with a privileged bohemian (is there any other kind?!), though I don't think he listened to reggae (THANK GOD). In turn, I introduced Saladin to "douchebag." We went on a douchebag hunt at an outdoor festival. Here they are commonly known as "fops."