Max's Rainy Garden Party

It rained all day on Saturday, just lots and lots of miserable pouring rain. I cleaned my flat and offered to the Tall South African that he could come down for dinner, but he decided he didn't want to go out in the rain. I didn't blame him, as the weather was really rubbish. I went and did some shopping, but otherwise it was a slow day.

The rain continued on Sunday, but today I'd promised Max, a friend I know through the club, that I would go to his garden party for his birthday up in Cambridge. I got a bit of a slow start, but managed to race to the card store and grab a birthday card, and then get to King's Cross to catch the 14:15 train.

I hadn't been to King's Cross in a while, and I kept thinking I'd somehow wandered into the wrong station, as I was so disoriented when I walked in. Bizarrely, it looked somewhat like Gare du Nord, and so I was baffled. Had I somehow come out of the Tube and popped up in Paris?

Yet, apparently they'd been doing some construction work at King's Cross for ages and had finally finished, and so now I was experiencing the disorienting results. I ran across a footbridge platform that took me into an unexpected part of the station, so I had to run back, find a ticket machine, buy my ticket, and finally find my way to the correct train platform. I suppose I will eventually get used to it, but I was definitely turned around for quite a bit there!

I made it up to Cambridge and found my way to Max's flat.  Turns out Max lives in a really lovely one-bedroom flat right around the corner from the train station, which explains why it is so easy for him to get down to London so frequently. The flat was really nice as well, not like your standard student flat at all, which made me a bit envious of it when I think of the places I lived as a student! In fact my own place now is nowhere near as nice, which makes me realise there are advantages to living outside of London!

Due to the rain, it was more of a "living room party" than a garden party, but we all made do.  It was a really good time, about 15-20 people in attendance, and a real mix of people from all aspects of Max's life: Food and Wine Soc people, people from his program, people who he'd lived at a fraternity in Tubingen with, and me, his friend from the club.

Max was the consummate host, putting on a fine spread of strawberries, cheeses, bread and pate, and punch bowls of Pimms, G&Ts, and some whiskey-and-ginger-ale concoction. In fact it was all so well organised, and his flat so clean and tastefully decorated, I was surprised to realise I was in the home of a bachelor, until I remembered that he's a bachelor with a lot of German influence. So I guess order and organisation are to be expected!

Good times as well hearing stories about living in a fraternity in Tubingen and reciting drunken German poetry to large groups of men, the trials of learning to understand Nietzsche, and how much Max enjoys the TV series Mad Men. I didn't leave until about 8 PM, it was such an entertaining afternoon on the whole. When I left, Max was asking me for updates on the Wild Welshman, and I realised I didn't have any.  So I spent the whole train ride home tapping out an e-mail update to the Wild Welshman on my iPhone. Given that I'd missed the fast train, it turned out to be quite the epic update!  He replied to me a few days later telling me how lovely it had been to hear from me, which makes me think I should do things like that more often.

Finally made it home a bit sleepy but glad to have made it a day out, it was such a good time to be back in Cambridge once again.

One Last Call

Today was another day of non-stop rain, and so I spent it mostly indoors working.  I had physio in the afternoon, where luckily my lack of work this past week didn't get too much notice.  However, I do think it's important that I get on that.

I texted a bit with the Tall South African during the day (and reminded him that it's Freedom Day in South Africa tomorrow), and then gave him a call later in the evening.  Missed him, he called me back, missed me, and we finally connected around 10 PM.

He sounded absolutely exhausted however, yawning and dealing with interruptions from work, saying that he was finding talking to friends tiring, as everybody had something going wrong that needed his sympathy.  He even seemed to think I was mad at him for not calling, which absolutely surprised me because nothing could be further from the truth.  When had I ever given that impression?  In truth, I'd been feeling guilty for not calling, imagining him at home with nobody to talk to, calling me while I was out painting the town.

Oh well, once again a reminder of how young he is.  Other girls are mad at him, so I must be grouped in with them.  He sees things a bit too much from his own perspective, so the reality of what is true won't change things.  But I did assure him that all was well with me, and then signed off telling him, "If you don't hear from me for a while, it's not because I don't care, but because I know you're busy."  I felt like I was saying good-bye for a little while, which I feel I need.

I was just struck how when we talk, it's not like the conversation I was having last night, or the conversations I have with the Young Dutchman.  It's just not interesting.  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder?  Maybe time to be absent from the Tall South African for a while until he gets more interesting.

Night at the Museum

In the morning, I had my follow-up appointment with my surgeon, to get some x-rays done and to find out the results from my MRI.  Alas, the news was that my MRI had confirmed my ACL tear, so it was time to schedule surgery. I want to go attend my cousin's university graduation in the US in May, and the surgeon wants me to do a bit more "pre-hab" before surgery, so we agreed on a May 28 surgery date.  It was a surprisingly quick appointment, where he took me through my MRI scan, looked at my knee again, and also showed me that my knee cap is kind of off-centre. Weird.

Interestingly, I would SWEAR that Samantha Cameron was sitting across from me in the waiting room. And then of course I was probably stupidly awkward and kept staring at her, because I was obviously stunned that Samantha Cameron was sitting right across from me. Although I suppose it makes sense that she's an ordinary person who might have knee trouble as well....

Then in the evening, it was Will Salter's birthday, as well as a party at Home House. It was a busy night for everyone, as there seemed to be parties going on all over London, as there were at least two additional birthday parties going on in London this same evening. I don't know what it is about April 20th that made everyone want to have a party tonight, but I don't think a single person tonight wasn't at least double or triple-booked. (We also did debate why so many people have birthdays at the end of April. What happens to people's parents at the end of August?)

My own triple booking happened when the Young Dutchman let me know that he was meeting some mutual friends of ours for drinks, and suggested I join. But he had a dinner first and they couldn't join until later. And other friends I was supposed to meet at the first party said that they were running late. And then Lotte texted to ask if I was out tonight. Screw it. When nobody else can get their plans in order, you've just got to follow along with your own. So I went to Will's birthday party at the East India Club.

The East India is not a place where I often spend time, but I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly the staff were. I arrived and was instantly greeted by my old friend Ali and his wife Nicola, who I had last seen the day I injured my knee when I'd gone to dinner at their house. Given that Ali is one of my nearest and dearest, and I see him far too little, I spent nearly all of my time chatting with them, catching up on various bits of news from here, there, and all of our friends.

The party turned into quite a crush, I had a good time chatting with Sophie and a few other friends, although I was constantly dealing with my phone buzzing, mostly with missed texts and calls from the Young Dutchman. Unsure of what the rules were at the East India for phones, I kept trying to surreptitiously send quick texts back, although then when he called, there was really no hope for it. Then on top of that, was getting texts from the mutual friends who were at the Lansdowne, as well as those who were at the party at Home House. And where on earth was Lotte?  Plus, on top of all of this, I'd almost never been able to make it to the bar to get a drink, even a glass of water, as I kept getting held up in conversation.

Finally Lotte did appear, although right before I realised along with a few others that we really needed to go.  The Young Dutchman had been saying to me for hours that he was 20 minutes away, so although a part of me wanted to wait around for him, I realised that I could no longer plan my evening around him.  I'd agreed to go to a party at Home House that evening which also started at 8 PM, although it was around 11:30 before two other guys from Will's party and I walked up to join the everyone at Home House.  After checking that I would be okay in my heels, the boys decided to walk the distance to Home House (not far, to be fair), and I had a fun time the entire way telling them bits and pieces of strategies of pick-up artists, from a relatively famous book on the subject.  The guys I was with are both two of the nicest guys I know, but I sometimes think a bit clueless when it comes to women.  So perhaps they need to know a a few pick-up artist strategies, if only to recognise when a girl is interested in them, more than anything else!  

The theme of the party was "A Night at the Museum", and it was all done up like the Natural History Museum in New York, with an amazing amount of attention to detail.  People everywhere were dressed up like Egyptians or cowboys or all sorts of things, and each room of the club was fantastically done up, with drag queens singing, giant dinosaurs, NASA space exhibits, or almost anything else you could think of.  The vibe was very much what I imagine a frat party would be like if they had unlimited amounts of money to do anything they wanted.

I really was struck by how different Home House is from your standard London club. I somewhat agreed with the assessment of others, that it seemed a bit "too cool" for us, with all the designer jeans and people talking on their mobiles. But at least that was handy when the Young Dutchman called me at 2 AM and the Young Scotsman assured me, "Go ahead an answer. It's not like it's a *real* club...." Made me laugh.  I got to chat with him for a bit while he told me that he was in a hotel room somewhere near Regents Park, which I found to be tremendously confusing.  Later I learned that he'd gone to an interview session for the Dutch arm of BCG, and they'd put him up in a hotel overnight.  But the dinner had run over terribly, which is why he'd been constantly texting me to tell me that he was 20 minutes away!  He sounded tired and I couldn't understand him that well (I was in the middle of a raging party, after all), so once the Young Scotsman had remarked a few times, "That guy has amazing hair!" I bid him a goodnight and hung up.

Finally at 3 AM, they played "New York, New York" (why is that a 'closing down a party' song in this part of the world?) and shut down half of the club, shuttling us all into the other half.  I was pretty sober and exhausted, and so I expressed my desire to go home.  I then had to absolutely physically drag myself out of the place despite the protests from the (Former) Head of Inter-Club and the others.  A nice night, but I desperately needed to go home and go to sleep!

Meeting with the Chairman

I woke in the morning to more texts from the Tall South African. He was tired, and so was I. How on earth are we supposed to survive our work days?

Still, made it through to the end of the day, where I'd agreed to meet the club chairman to have a talk about the Younger Member's Committee, the General Committee, and the upcoming year.  And I will admit, I'd agreed to meet him on this day because Doro had suggested that the "Oxford Mafia" would be there that evening, and it might be a good opportunity to "run into" the Magnetic Man.

I met the Chairman in the Committee Room, which was somewhere I'd never been before, and we had some tea and a very nice meeting where he spent most of the time trying to convince me that I needed to join the General Committee.  I'd really been meeting him to ask a bit about transitioning the Younger Member's Committee for the next year, but so you have it, there was the word on the General Committee too.

After I'd wrapped things up with the Chairman, I poked my head into the bar, where I spotted Magnetic Man and one other from the Oxford Maifa, and they graciously invited me to join them for drinks (as I rather knew they would). We were joined by 4 others, including JP, a chap I had once known from Magdalene.  Of course, the boys had some other funny nickname for him, and mocked me for calling him JP.  I think that might have been the first time I've seen him since Cambridge, but he still recognised me, which I thought was nice, and even bought me champagne.

Lot of talk about golf, although fun to hang out with the boys.  Magnetic Man continues to show no interest whatsoever, but I still like hanging out with the gang anyway. Even if he's not interested, he's still a nice guy, and so are his friends.  I did have a really fun time getting to know a married guy named Piers, who seemed to continue the general trend of the boys of that group (if not that of Magnetic Man himself), that I am a fantastic individual and one they'd like to see more of.  Such a pity Magnetic Man isn't more interesting, however!

Finally the boys headed into dinner, and I went downstairs to print out a few forms and chat online a bit with the Young Dutchman.  Once assured that he was well and didn't need me to stop by with any printouts, I made my way home, quite satisfied with my accomplishments for the evening.  

Running All Over To Get Nowhere

I was woken up at 7 AM this morning by a text from the Tall South African. "Hey stranger..." Indeed, we hadn't chatted in a while. I then texted back and forth with him for a bit, and then thought I might as well call him (we normally don't text so much), but he didn't answer, making me realise he was already in the office at work. How on earth do people do that? I have no idea... Hence continued texting until I realised I had to get up and going if I was going to make it to the lawyers on time.

My appointment with the lawyers was quite brief, as the guy came down, handed me my Biometric Residence Permit, and that was pretty much that. Kind of anti-climactic after all the drama leading up to it!

I then waited ages for a train back to the office, and as I left the station and was walking outside, I decided to give the Young Dutchman a call, since I'd missed a call from him the night before. Perhaps I should have thought about this before I called, as the whole thing turned into a much longer discussion than I anticipated, with me standing out on a street corner! Still, I do love talking to the Young Dutchman, and it was interesting to chat to him about what he wanted to do after he graduates from Oxford, as opportunities open up before him.

Finally, after nearly a half-hour on the phone with the Young Dutchman, I went into the office to try and find a desk. To discover, to my shock, that there were absolutely none. And not only no desks, but no tables in the common areas, no touchdown space, absolutely nothing. It seemed ridiculous to go all of the way home again after having come into the office, but what else could I do? So I took all my things, and left the office again to go home.

Once at home, I was pleasantly surprised by the Tall South African calling me during his lunch break. How sweet! In fact though, instead of one quick call, it turned into a series of calls, as he kept having to pause for some reason, and then call me back again. Probably talked to me for over an hour in total (not helpful when I had work to get done, but I hadn't talked to him in so long I did want to chat). Finally, only hung up with the promise that he would call me after work. I was a bit puzzled why he was so keen to chat with me today, but hey, I like talking to him. Not quite as engaging as chatting with the Young Dutchman, but still...

Survived the most endless conference call of all time (the Tall South African took to texting me halfway through, which was a welcome distraction, although he obviously wanted to call me while I was still stuck on this call), and finally once I was off the call, he texted, I revealed I was done, and he called me to talk some more.

This time the conversation somehow got onto politics, which was much more interesting than anything we've talked about lately. Told him that if I could vote for mayor, I would vote for Boris, and then talked a bit about the next general election and Conservative politics. I finally felt like we were talking about something real, for once.

Although I just about died when he talked to me about shopping for a suit, and realised that he had to go buy a suit because he didn't already own one, the classic mark of a young man just recently out of university. I must remember how young he is, even as I often forget.

Still, overall at least everything got done at the end of the day, and the Tall South African signed off with a promise to call me (again!) later, although I figured that was probably a bit ambitious and he wouldn't have time. (Missed a final text from him at midnight, checking if I were still up, I guess he would have called then too!)  He is awfully sweet to call multiple times a day, even if I have no idea why he does...

Mark de Rond Lecture

First thing in the morning, it was time for my first physio appointment, to get going on my "pre-hab" before my upcoming surgery.  I went to the office in Hammersmith to meet the physio, and she said I haven't lost any strength in my knee (but I had pretty strong legs to begin with), and she said that my range of motion is actually better than I think it is. She gave me a ton of exercises to do, and I'm determined to be a model patient (even though I'm not normally the best exerciser!) Apparently I should go to the gym and sit on a stationary bike for hours. I'm thinking I should get some books or load some movies on my iPad and just go crank away.

In the afternoon, realising that I need to learn more about ACL surgery if I am to have it myself, I made plans to meet Roofie's brother for lunch.  I hadn't seen him in ages (the downsides of of both of us being injured!), so it was a great opportunity to catch up, as well as learn a bit more about knee surgery.

We met at the Paternoster pub, which is right near where we both work, and also a good place to go as there's always places to sit and the food is quite good.  Roofie's brother was really informative about both his own surgery, and that of his brother (Roofie himself), as they both had ACL surgery done recently.

For both of them, it was their second surgery, as there had been complications with their first.  It was a bit scary to hear about the pain and how things can go wrong, and how he'd eventually had to have an allograph, where the ACL of a cadaver was put into his knee, instead of a piece of his own tendon.  Apparently the recovery has been much better this time around however, which was interesting, as I'd never even considered the idea of a graft from a cadaver.

Since he and his brother live together, they've even been rehabbing together, and he reaffirmed to me what the physio had been saying in the morning, that the stationary bike was a good idea.  At least now I've got some exercise I can do, as sitting around has been driving me nuts.

After work, I dashed out early to meet Doro at the club, as we hadn't had a chance to catch up in a while.  We spent a quick half-hour exchanging news, which from her was mostly about how she was planning on going back to school to become an orthodontist.  I found this a bit surprising, as I had never known about her latent passion for orthodontia, but apparently it was more of a financial decision than anything else.  Still it was an interesting discussion about how pay and lifestyle are factors in what we decide to do with our lives, and also how much her relationship is progressing towards a serious outcome, as she and her boyfriend discuss how they will handle her going back to school in Germany, and how they will make their lives going forwards, together.

Unfortunately the conversation couldn't go on for too long, as I'd agreed to meet my friend Sara upstairs for a lecture by my former strategy professor at Cambridge.  His speciality is "high performing teams",  and this lecture was about surgeons in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, which is apparently "the world's bloodiest war hospital".  He showed us some video which was totally amazing, as a soldier was brought in with his leg blown off, and much of his face as well, and the surgeons just reacted totally normally and calmly, talking to him and reassuring him, as they set about piecing him back together.  Quite a high-stress environment to work in, and quite impressive how much they could do there.  

After the lecture, Sara had suggested that we meet another girl for dinner, so I'd booked us all in, and we had quite a nice evening's conversation, although nothing tremendously interesting.  Still, a nice enough evening, and after dinner bit them all farewell, having had quite an eventful day!  

Melissa's Birthday

This evening was my friend Melissa's birthday drinks, which were being held at a champagne bar in Soho.

When I arrived, on the street I ran into my friend Gerald and his friend Mike, who were already pretty drunk, having been out at another party with some work mates earlier on in the evening.  We wandered around on the street a bit, trying to find the front door to the place, while Mike took quite a liking to me, and kept asking me questions while being all a bit touchy-feely.  Not a bad-looking guy, so I didn't mind too much, but we were obviously in very different states in our level of consumed libations!

We found our way in, greeted the birthday girl, grabbed seats, and then Mike introduced himself to me again as though we hadn't previously met.  That cracked me up, and he explained that it was me taking off my coat which had done it, but I concluded that as cute as he was, Mike wasn't going to be much use for the rest of the evening...

I made random bits of conversation with people here and there, but was relieved when Tory Lawyer Boy arrived, as he's one of my favourite people and so much fun to talk to.

He had me quite bemused when he related the story of how a mutual acquaintance of ours had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and then had been treating her male friends (including Tory Lawyer Boy) like boyfriends, people who she could make demands of.  This included when he recently couldn't make it to an event she was organising, telling him how "disappointed she was in him", not realising that you can't expect the same level of devotion from your male friends as from your boyfriend.  I know she broke up with the boyfriend, but there is a part of me that is still amazed that she managed to hang onto him for so long.

Finally I left right before midnight, trying to make it out to a local burrito place before it closed, but it turned out it actually closed at 11 PM and I was too late anyway.  Still, I was glad I'd used the excuse of rushing to get there to force my way out, and hence just went the rest of the way home to get food, as I was starving!