so many faces

life in london be so schizoid that it's difficult to imagine life outside it. friday, sitting in claridge's bar with sarah, watching people sitting around as if they had been alexander techniqued since they could crawl. i tried my damnedest to not laugh at the italian suit hitting on her but this was hard as the free bubbly kept going to my head so i just sat back and watched as she subtly insulted him under the radar of his deaf arrogance. i was about to tell him to go away but then he said he was a sicilian and i backed off because, well, i don't cross sicilians. this followed by 2 polish guys soliciting us to enter a club with them because they couldn't get in alone. had to leave when one of them kept saying how much he loved palak paneer and KKKG as a way to hit on me. this AFTER he swears to me that poles aren't racist. twat.

and then yesterday, a chill dinner with soas classmates in brick lane, a neighbourhood bordering shoreditch and the city, extremely casual and young and loud but not too loud with things to do and people to see but where no one really gives a damn about being seen. the whole thing reminded me of those niche aiesec gatherings - an american-born indian, a paki from karachi, a bengali-raised norwegian, a brit-born indian, and a dublin girl, each one of us with our peculiar accents and not 2 minutes goes by without a 'huh?' or 'what?' entering the dialogue. we walk along the street, chatting about the last book we read for class, the coup in nepal, the differences in northern and southern dublin accents, the ways to say 'cheers' in norwegian and polish and spanish and bengali and irish, the south asian obsession with cricket, the shared refusal to support england in any national sporting event, the meaning of 'chav' and 'to be biscuits'. someone suggests we invite our prof the next time. the only moment of silence in 4 hours.