Sunday Curry

My cold hit with full force today, so I spent most of the day simply lazing about and blowing my nose. My flatmate was out-of-town for the weekend, so at least I got to leave piles of tissues everywhere without worrying about what she'd think of the "den of sickness" that our flat was turning into. Luckily I remembered to race out and pick up some cold medicine before the shops closed at 5 PM (the UK isn't like the US with it's 24/7 convenience stores!) and some orange juice too.

I then managed to get my act together to trek across town to meet my friend Rob for dinner. Rob and I actually went to high school together, and through the magic of Facebook reconnected when we found out that we both lived in London. In truth, I'm probably better friends with Rob now than we were in high school, and he's always good company for a meal. Particularly as I'd just missed Rob's 30th birthday party, it was time to catch up and discuss how we felt about being older and (not necessarily) wiser.

Admittedly, I'm starting to feel a bit like a caricature of someone described on the list "Stuff White People Like". After having gone to dinner on Friday with a gay couple, watched the movie "Milk" on Saturday, and then had dinner tonight with one of my gay best friends from high school, I'm right up there with #88 on the list, "Having Gay Friends."

Yet at least I was friends with all of these people before I knew they were gay (and in the case of the friend from high school, before even HE knew he was gay), so hopefully I can avoid being a checklist caricature, and just make the point that I like nice people. Although it does make me glad that in the biological lottery I turned out to be straight, for dating is hard enough as it is without being restricted to just 10% of the population! Maybe gay people are better at it, but since I have absolutely no gaydar, I would constantly be running around saying, "Whooops, sorry! Thought you played on my team!"

Seriously, I would make such a bad gay person.

Rob and I had a good dinner catching up, he offered his sympathies and encouragement on my recent redundancy, and we laughed about how we were now too old to go to any of the raves that we walked by while looking for a good restaurant to have curry.

Finally at the end of the evening, I left Rob's place, only to remember: Rob doesn't exactly live in the best neighbourhood. Shoreditch and the area around Brick Lane might be considered "up-and-coming", but it's still bretty dodgy. As I left Rob's place, there was a really threatening-looking group of youths making their way menancingly down the street, and so I was walking as quick as I possibly could to get out to a busier road with more people. When I made it to the end of the street, I actually had a woman stop me and ask, "Are you okay? Were those kids throwing things at you?"

I assured her that I was okay, but I was incredibly glad to make it back to my nice, safe neighbourhood of West Kensington as soon as possible!!