Whoa. Another update. Within a week. Look at me go.

This past week has been pretty awesome but just as always overseas, filled with ups and downs. Last weekend, I went to France for three days, which was really fun. I got into Paris on Friday night and after I checked into my hostel which was actually this reeeally nice apartment in the Montparnasse, I met up with Ed, a friend from Redwood City doing a term in Paris. Unfortunately, neither of us spoke French too well which led to some hilarious interactions when ordering drinks and getting a cab home (missed the last Metro by mere minutes — bahhhh). Still, a pretty fun night where we roamed through the area by the Louvre, the Oberkampf (this artsy, indie neighborhood), and attempted to club at Champs-Elysees but a 20 euro cover doesn’t sound particularly enticing at 2am. The next day was a glorious one in Paris: the sun was shining, the sky was a perfect shade of blue, it was just a really beautiful, life-affirming afternoon. I wandered around various parts of the Left Bank aimlessly — mostly St. Michel and the Latin Quarter — and had way too many crepes. Then, I took a train down to Lyon from Paris to meet up with Shaye & Deepti, two friends from UCLA. I had a really great time in Lyon, actually, and I’m really glad I got to use another day on my Eurail pass (I had bought a 10-day train pass and travelled at least twelve times on it while gallivanting through You-rope, but only got checked five times, so I wanted to make use of it at least once more before it expired next week). The city itself is gorgeous: situated on two rivers with really impressive old French architecture. I spent Saturday and Sunday nights at Shaye’s apartment right in the heart of the city (thanks again so much Shaye! you were the most hospitable host ever). A lot of the museums in Lyon that weekend were free so we hit up a few cool ones: a Textile and Design Museum, a museum on the Lumiere Brothers, the founders of cinematography, who were from Lyon, and I went to the Musee des Beaux Arts the next day, and LOVED it. Such a great collection of ancient art and artifacts as well as 19th & 20th century art. It was also really nice to see friends from back home and experience life in a more traditional French city. Lyon is still quite big but it doesn’t draw nearly the same tourist crowds that Paris does so it’s retained much more of a traditionally French vibe. This is both good — I had the most delicious food there for practically every meal — but can be trying sometimes when everything is written/said only in French. After your hundredth “Desolay, je ne parle pas francais. Parlez vous anglais?”, you almost start to long for the multilingual internationalism of tourist holes like Paris.

Henyways, after a cultured and relaxing jaunt to France, I jetted back to London on Monday night. (Flying, by the way, through London is an almost pleasant experience, and I HATE flying. London is a hub for every major budget airline basically so there’s tons of cheap flights and getting to the airport is very inexpensive too. Plus, everything in Europe is no more than a 2-3ish hour plane trip away. Paris was less than an hour and I got from Lyon to London for like 35 pounds. How crazy is that?) On Wednesday, my Affiliate student program at UCL fiiiinally started, which has made my experience feel far more legitimate. As well as wayyy more nerve-racking haha. Although I had a bunch of issues to deal with when I first arrived five weeks ago, there have been a ton of new ones to tackle now that I’m officially a student. I won’t bore you with these details but let’s say that getting a bank account in particular has become such a mish because of such a minor little detail that it’s beginning to drive me nuts. All these problems will soon be solved, I’m sure, but they just require a lot of decision-making. Which phone account do I need — the one with cheaper int’l calls or cheaper local calls? Which classes do I want to take — do I even want to take classes at all? I’ve been placed in a pretty legit situation where I can decide exactly what I want to do with my time but these decisions aren’t necessarily easy.

This is a good place to explain what it is I’m actually doing in London, as I don’t think I covered that in my last post. Basically, I’m working on a research project with a UCL statistics professor I found while in LA. The research is actually much more atmospheric science/climatology than it is number-crunching — or at least it has been so far. We’re using a 3D atmospheric model (a computer program that tries to simulate the entire atmosphere on a computer; not a small feat) to see what’s going on with the ozone layer. As many of you should know (or so I hope!) the ozone layer is way up high in the sky in the stratosphere and helps keep shit like UV-B rays and other nasties away from humans down at the ground. Buttt, as we tend to, humans have mucked things up in the stratosphere by emitting a lot of compounds that contain specific kinds of chlorine and bromine, which can get up to the stratosphere and eat up ozone like hotcakes. This leads to things such as the development of a massive hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica during springtime (ie: the infamous ozone hole), where a perfect storm of meteorological and chemical factors leave absolutely no ozone to protect the ice underneath from melting, which raises sea levels, kills baby seals, leaves Santa homeless etc etc.  Sooo, the international community in all its wisdom, decided to limit how many of these ozone-killing machines we allow into the atmosphere. The Montreal Protocol in 1987 was the first big global policy (for developed countries, at least) and was followed by a bunch of amendments and now we emit far fewer CFCs, which are the biggest culprits to the ozone damage. But are we actually seeing recovery in our poor ozone layer? Well, that’s precisely what this project I’m doing is checking out. What’s especially cool about the model I’m using to verify the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol is that its 3-dimensional (ie, it takes into account altitude, latitude AND longitude, unlike most other 2D models which only look at altitude & latitutde). So, we’re hoping it leads to a more realistic picture of what’s actually going on 15 km above us.

So yeah, its a pretty interesting project at least on a theoretical level. Practically speaking, it’s faaar more computer-oriented than I had imagined and has entailed learning a lottt of computer languages, programs, stuff like that. It’s been pretty tough especially cuz I’m not inherently that good at these uber-technical things and I also have no one really helping me. My professor tries as much as he can, and he’s a really nice, supportive guy, but he’s always busy as professors tend to be and although I had imagined there might be grad students scurrying around that might mentor me a bit, that hasn’t been the case. There are positives and negatives here for sure: the negatives obviously that it’s kinda solitary and frustrating when Unix totally refuses to cooperate but the major positive is that I’m entirely in control of the whole project, and of everything I’m doing in London, really. My work is by nature independent and I’m getting academic credit for it when I go back to UCLA, so I’m not even forced to take classes at UCL, actually. But after I’m gonna have to drop at least 4,000 pounds on tuition here, I feel like I should make use of some of the more interests classes offered. Soo yeah, I’m still deciding on what exactly I’ll take, but I think there will be a few interesting classes thrown into the mix.

But life in London is not all frustrating computing & worrying about ozone (thank god!!). Especially now that the Affiliate student program is underway, I’ve met tons of cool people and having been having quite a bit of fun. We had an orientation program for all the international students on Weds-Fri of this week and I’ve been meeting awesome people from every corner of the globe. The past few nights, I’ve been hanging out with a great mix of people: girls from New York, southwest France, Vancouver; guys from Prague, Cyprus, and Bulgaria. Friday night was this (admittedly lame) scavenger hunt through UCL campus (think Carpe Noctum during UCLA orientation) that was actually a great way to bond with people, especially when you have seven of you trapped in an uncooperative elevator in the Health Center. that was followed by a quiz night at one of the pubs on campus — there are like 6 different pubs on campus! There’s even one across from my res hall here. It’s amazing. I’m really digging the pub scene in England, not gonna lie. It’s the epicenter of social activity and a truly democratizing institution: you’ll find people of all ages, ethnicities, backgrounds at the same pub. It’s pretty cool. Thennn last night (Saturday) a few of us hit up Ministry of Sound, which is this legendary superclub in south London. It was their 18th birthday celebration so it was just that much more epic. After some major pre-gaming, we got in kinda early to score cheap tickets and partied hard for like six hours, getting home around 5am. It was a ricockulously fun night and the music was INSANELY good. Electro, drum&base, and trance oh my! The headliner of the night was DJ Sasha who I had never heard before but was told was super good, and he definitely lived up to hype. All in all, a very fun time! Met some crazy kids and made a love connection or two good times.

OK folks this is getting way too long. If you’re still reading, you deserve a plaque or something. I’ll get on that.

Will update more frequently from now on so check back soon!

Peace, love, ozone,

Max

1) University College London, the wondrous institution that I am doing my research/courses at this fall. That was drenched in sarcasm, I hope that’s apparent. I thought when I left UCLA for UCL, I’d be cutting out the assholes but unfortunately beaurocracy reigns just as strong across the pond as it does in the States; stronger even, I would say. What does this have to do with my lack of blogging? Well, because I arrived at the end of August, a full four weeks before the start of fall term, I haven’t been considered a student of UCL at all since I’ve been here. This means that I’ve been denied a number of the lovely student perks we take for granted, such as library access, the ability to open a bank account, and that sweet sweet wireless internet I have lived for some long without. Thus, I haven’t had any steady Internet access at home, which means no blogging. I tried my damndest to reason with different administrators and ran through the entire beaurocratic regime at UCL, but bitches be strict here. That’s definitely one of the first cultural differences I’ve noticed between London and California. Here, there’s this pronounced respect for the rules that I just don’t see back home. That is, people feel inherently bound by the systems that are in place around them; there is often tons of red tape surrounding even the smallest discretion from set standards and very little budging on the rules by those who make them. As most of you should know, listening to rules has never been something I was very good at/ And in fact, that’s how I got to London in the first place. I decided what I wanted to do while abroad (research that combined statistics and atmospheric chemistry/climate issues), determined my ideal location (London), and managed to make it work. I had to color outside the lines a bit, but I got what I wanted and I think a lot of that had to do with how much more freedom there is in California do one’s own thing. Anyway, the second reason I haven’t had internet access is:

2) The British Royal Mail. First, a little backstory: so I’ve been living in UCL student accommodation, which has been quite nice actually. I’m in a single room in a pretty quiet dorm-type setting (think UCLA’s De Neve buildings) with a communal bathroom and kitchen. The people around me are mostly master’s students who were just finishing their dissertations when I arrived and are now about to leave for different places. But there’s another undergrad in my corridor: Linh, a Vietnamese dude who grew up in Ukraine actually, so we get to practice our Russian together. He figures in to the lack of blogging because he actually hooked me up with this way to get wireless Internet for wayyy cheaper and more immediate than it would be through UCL. It required ordering this “dongle” (hee hee hee… I’m sorry, I’m 12 years old) that takes a wireless internet SIM card and gets you on the web. However, the postal service decided that the perfect time to go on strike would be right when I ordered this dongle and thus, it took me about three weeks until I finally received it. Oy vey.

OK, enough about Internet foibles. How about London? Basically, all minor complications aside, I am in love with this city. Seriously and truly and for so many reasons. Firstly, I live in by far the coolest part of town: Camden. It’s this diverse mix of mohawk-sporting gage-eared punks, ethnic immigrant families, and students/young professionals such as myself. Things are super eclectic, dynamic, and always entertaining. A sample of the shops on Camden High Street (the main road that’s a five minute walk from my room): a second-hand clothes store that donates proceeds to fighting poverty; a Lebanese café selling delicious doner for three pounds; a Chinese herbal medicine shop specializing in sex potions (no joke)… and that’s not even getting into Camden Market, where five different markets sell alternative clothes, unique trinkets, and just tons and tons of crazy interesting items. So, not a bad place to call home, if only for a few months.

The rest of the city has a bunch of super diverse neighborhoods that I’m slowly getting to know. I particularly like the East End for their laid-back/indie/trendy Old St. bar scene and the Indian joints on Brick Lane, where the store proprietors stand on the street and shout discounts at you as you pass by (“20% off all curry dishes!” “Free drinks all night!” etc etc. My friend Christine visited me last week and we got free beers with our cheapo but delectable lamb madras curry! Legit.) then there’s the West End, that also has loads of cool bars and ethnic food, but it’s a bit more upscale & stately. I was hanging out in Covent Garden and Soho my first few weeks here with Mr. Brett ‘The Noble Voice’ Noble and his London School of Economics buds. A lot of fun clubs in Soho, for sure, and just a generally fun-loving, youthful, urban vibe there. It’s by the big theatres of the West End too so you got that touch of class added in. I’ve been checking out South London a bit as well, on random occasions (a house party in Streatham at Michelle Ulivi’s boyfriend’s place; spontaneous walks along the Thames, rain or no rain; the delightfully random Thames Festival, that had by far the weirdest and most unrelated performances/art installations/exhibitions I’ve ever seen and also the first place I tried Pimms! which is basically English sangria and fuckin TASTY). It’s a cliché but there’s SO FRIGGIN MUCH to see and do here and the diversity of experiences available is unmatched. One Saturday earlier this month, I awoke in South London, then got a lunch of kangaroo burger and sangria at Borough Market, the biggest and coolest farmer’s market I’ve ever seen. After crossing the Thames, I walked from the East End all the way across town, passing two pro-democracy marches (for Zimbabwe and Iran, respectively), til I got to Hyde Park, one of the many amazing green spaces in London. Later that night, I had excellent Thai food in Covent Garden with the LSE people, went to a traditional pub  and finished at an exclusive members-only lounge in Soho an LSE lady got us into. This was ONE day in London, people. Pretty awesome. So yeah, this city is vast and beautiful and has so many different neighborhoods that I know I won’t be able to get intimate with the whole of London… it’s a shame I’m only here 4 months. I had a moment where I really considered extending my stay, which wouldn’t have been too hard with the type of work/study I’m doing here. I don’t think I’m going to do that but I can easily see myself coming back here after I finish up at UCLA, either for grad school or in some other capacity.

It’s funny that I’m producing my first post on London now because I’m not even in England at the moment. I’m actually in Lyon, France, where I’m visiting the wonderful Deepti and Shaye (and hopefully Dalia!) for a few days before coming back to London. Unfortunately, my compy is about to run outta battery so I will write more later. This week, I’ll be finally starting the Affiliate Student program I’m under and meeting the other Affiliates, so there should be plenty to write about. Ima do my best to write at least weekly and that way y’all can get a better picture of what my day to day life is like here. It’s a bit hard to compress four weeks living in this wild town into one coherent blog entry, ya know?

Hope all is well in California (or wherever you’re reading from) and that everything doesn’t catch on fire and stuff :/

OK, peace out world! More later.

-Max

Baaaasically, I am supremely excited to be on my way out of here  and onto greener pastures in Europe, and particularly London! I love California more than anything else — the people, the lifestyle, the freedom, the WEATHER — but now is as perfect a time as any for me to get some prolonged distance from my home.

Also, I am really quite thrilled about fifteen hours of sleep straight on the plane. Yay.

Mmk folks. I probably won’t update this guy until I actually get to London. I have a sweet little travel journal (I know, how 20th century. Pah.) that I’ll be writing in during my Euro travels. But if you love me and want me to continue writing this shizz, comment on it so I know I’m getting some readers! Haha.

Anyway. Keep it gangsta, California, and I’ll write back soon.