The Mystique

Dated April 29, 2010

It's a deep rooted fascination that I myself don't fully understand. It's something so mentally and emotionally embedded in me - that thru time, while the minds and spirits of most people can slowly let feelings like this die, it - on the other hand - is a constant for me - neither festering nor dwindling, but just... there. There like breath, there like sunlight... there like all things natural in this world.

Many years have passed since I've allowed myself to embrace the memories of yesteryear... though each day I've lived in its becoming... so sprouted from a short-lived time in the presence of something so moving, so... perfect... that to this day, I cannot ration myself to move beyond it.

Oh how great things have been since its passing. But even then, it is my constant. Its reminder, both my joy and my sorrow... that even photos, past and present, are capable of producing smiles and inducing tears.

More Reasons Why Britain Rules

So much goodness going down in the British pop culture scene!

An end of an era in Britain it is! Tony Blair (a dashing, dashing man) steps down as Britain's Prime Minister, making way for the newly appointed (and far less dashing) Gordon Brown. David Beckham says 'adios' to Real Madrid, and promises to change the outlook on soccer/football in the states. Meanwhile, wife Victoria Beckham sets to embark on an 11 city reunion tour with the Spice Girls (like, who doesn't have "Wannabe" on their iPod?). Princes William and Harry host a successful charity concert in memory of their late mother, Diana Spencer, former Princess of Wales. Prince William and Kate Middleton keep us guessing: will there be a reconciliation or not? In even bigger news, when the heck did Harry become hotter than Will? Speaking of sexy Harry's, the new Harry Potter film will debut in less than two weeks! It's going to be the highlight of my July! I've readied myself by watching all 4 preceding Potter flicks during the month of June. I don't want to miss one single detail! And wow, that Hermione has sure grown into a little hottie. Click here for a spoiler!

LA Bound?

Doing dinner is great. It's even better when you're surrounded by a heaping of close friends, with whom you have absolutely no reservations.

Our good friend Travis (and Ivy League bloke from Harvard Law), is home for the summer - and Norma, Sandy, and I had a blast re-hashing old stories from London 2004. The best story being the time we were watching TV in our flat, to find that the boys upstairs (Travis and Mikey) had stuck their vacuum hose extension out of their window, and into ours - in the funkiest attempt to try and vacuum our carpet. Several seconds later, the hose detached and fell 4 stories down onto our lovely English garden. Or the time a soapy dish slipped out of Mikey's hand as he was doing dishes... 4 stories down onto our lovely English garden. I tell you, it's not wise to have an open window directly in front of your kitchen sink.

Anyway, our quaint patio dinner at Zip Fusion was followed by drinks at the Cha-Cha lounge. And in the early AM's, when everyone jetted off into the night sky, Norma and I went to the hood for Sopes - a place where drunk Mexican men began to harass and blow kisses at us. I even saw a roach crawl up the wall! But the Sope was delish - and time with Normatron is the best. She even played Justin Timberlake for me the entire ride back to Little Tokyo. What a good friend (and soon-to-be re-roommate).

January 2007 Highlights Part I

I can't believe January 2007 is almost past-tense. Despite the fact that 90% of my time 'awake' was strictly devoted to work (see two previous entries), I really can't complain too much... especially since time-worked sandwiched a hardy helping of time-spent with some of my favorite people!

Photo: Le gang

Forgive me if I can't contain all of my excitement, but look at this photo! It's almost all of my favorite single London Bedfordian loves-of-my-life! From left to right: Sandy, my partner in crime and bar ho; Mikey, my favorite boy from London; Norma, my favorite favorite; and Ace, who, despite being excessively mean in '07 (as shown above), is the best person to dance with.

We all met up in Beverly Hills for a lovely (and expensive) sushi dinner at Sushi Roku on the 21st of January. This was after unsuccessful attempts to meet up at Zip Fusion and Boss Sushi (we almost felt as though we were never meant to eat fish - long story). Sidenote: Norma, I'm sorry you didn't like the eel. We had no idea it would make you gag.

Photo: Mochi


Photo: We take the best pictures.


Photo: Mikey is flat out adorable.


Photo: Mean in '07, but so easy to love.

All in all, the night was lovely! Just lovely! My single friends are an A+, and I'm almost certain that there's a correlation between London and being single... because, well, I do believe they're the only single friends I have left.

Two Long Years Ago

I blame Kathy Kim for this entry.

I've always said that if I were forced to give away all of my belongings, but had the option to keep one thing - and just one thing - it'd be my leather journal. THE leather Journal. The one that started on my flight TO London, and ended on my flight back to LA. The journal that was blank and no thicker than 1 inch when I received it from my brother, and ended up being nearly 5 inches thick upon return. The journal that has every postcard, clipping, ticket stub, tube pass, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.. taped onto its worn and perused pages. The journal that kept me up on countless nights, accompanied me on every blessed journey, and absorbed my tears as they fell onto its surface.. The "travel" journal that could easily be mistaken for a romance novel to the untrained eye.

It chronicles, still, the most life altering experience of my life (for now).

It's because of this journal that I am able to take myself back precisely two years ago to date. September 18, 2004. I was riding a double decker bus when HE called. Yes, the HE whose name we never mention. The HE, who will likely remain, the only Asian man I'll ever have had shake-me-to-the-core feelings for. What an amazing memory that man is. Even though the feelings have long dissipated into the infinite abyss, I can still relive the way he made my insides do cartwheels.

Man, just thinking about London... I can close my eyes and remember exactly what the weather felt like on my skin. How it felt to breathe the coolness of the air. How the city smelled. How Norma would be making some dish with corn (haha). How my bed felt. How I'd hear the boys upstairs running around. My Michael. My Travis. My boys.

London was the best everything ever; and if we were there now, we'd be at Wetherspoons in three days. The one by Crawford Passage.

Photo: The Journal

If You Could Relive One Hour of Your Past

VERSION 1

Message: What time are you going to be there?
Reply: I’m here now.

Less than 10 minutes later, she saw him walk in. She noticed immediately that he had changed out of the shirt and jeans of earlier that evening, and into the gray blazer she often preferred him in. “Something more appropriate for the night,” she thought. He looked amazing. He held up his hand to signal “one minute” into her direction, as he was obligated to pause and converse with some acquaintances who had stopped him on the way in.

She wasn’t very fond of those acquaintances. Actually, she wasn’t very fond of one woman in particular, who had been vying for his attention during the past few days. She saw him pointing in her direction and was immediately perplexed, “Why are they all looking over here?” she mumbled under her breath. Her friends had been sitting beside her, trying to decipher body language and lip movement. And in an attempt to stop herself from watching him.. staring at him.. she got up gracefully and walked over to the bar.

“One Guinness please.”

“Hey Ro, what are you getting?” It was him.

He stood so close to her that she could feel her hair rise, as each individual goose bump began to form on her arm. He mimicked her posture as he folded his hands together and placed his elbows firmly onto the bar. So close that their shoulders touched, and by turning her head slightly to the right, their eyes tunnel visioned at point blank range.

“A Guinness,” she said with a smile.

As he told her how hungry he was, the bartender handed her a pint ~ to which she mentally chanted “Do not spill do not spill,” over and over again in her head.

"I'll see you back at the table," she whispered, as she took her hand and made a conscious maneuver to brush it down his arm. She could tell by his smile, that he had been charmed.

Her friends were eager for her return, as they sat dying to tell her that the woman at the other table stormed out of the bar after watching him stand beside her. Her friends learned that the reason for the “pointing” and “looking” that took place just ten minutes before, was because he was telling the woman, “I’m having dinner at that table with her tonight.”

He returned.

He took off his blazer… and she couldn’t help but stare at his arms, hands, face. “You looked like a lovesick puppy,” her friend told her later that night, “you both just kept staring into one another’s eyes, and the rest of us wanted to leave.”

She had to go now.

“I’ll call you when I’m done here,” he said with a look of anxiety on his face. He had to stay. He had to entertain new friends that just walked in. He did not want to.

“Okay,” she said, as she turned to walk away. She turned to catch one last glance at him and was shocked to find him already looking into her direction. “Nice,” she softly whispered, “nice.”

Later that night: She checked her phone… one missed call?

“I wish I could’ve gone with you tonight,” she listened as she stood outside the double doors of her place. She was biting her bottom lip, but her mind was doing cartwheels.

Anniversary

“December 11th..” she thought. What about this date seems eerily familiar?

She scanned one page.. two pages.. and then stopped. She realized what it was she was reading, and forced herself to cloak her eyes from the sheer cruelty of those words. It’s become easy to hide behind laughter, change, and time – but that did not mean that she was ready to examine what exactly happened on that night; even if the earthly, humanly part of her sought some sort of resolution.

Those words did not reek of insincerity save they were malicious in result. Those words, both said and written, felt so sadistic, so much so that she could almost taste their mercilessness. Her chest, while pounding with wild gesticulations, felt almost vacuous ~ an aftershock of all that had happened, making her feel the bit most insignificant. But she would not, could not, let the recollection of one night, go ebbing away at her spirit.

London Reunion 2005

The grace and laughter of the past is the ideal source for ultimate reassurance. It is the bungee cord tied to our waste, and the foam underneath our bare feet, giving us the heart to close our eyes and leap into the arms of tomorrow’s uncertainty. It is the memory of faces we’ve seen, voices that compose the tone of knee slapping laughter, and the souls of those who were on our side that serve as constant reminders of how important it is to never forget the path we took to get to where we are.

Venturing into the unknown could have been a risky and taxing habit on the mind and body, but we journeyed uncharted territories anyway, letting ourselves swim in choices that made ‘what was possible’ ~ real. So when reunited, it becomes so natural to stop for one night, look back, and relive the moments when we’d fallen in love (against our soundest judgment, it happened nonetheless), had a pint, then studied for finals.

A night to entangle ourselves on a platter of New Castles and Berry Mimosas, while allowing ourselves to look back and gain perspective on the choices that we made ~ acknowledging the shared understanding that the past is an intricate part of the present. Realizing that our time together wasn’t a fluke. We were a cluster of bodies destined to cross paths in a network of fate, experiencing emotions we were destined to experience… together.

Helen and I circled LAX a wopping 8 times. The final eigth round involved me sticking my "Shalom welcome to our home Jodi" sign outside of Helen's car, and obnoxiously screaming JODI JODI while we played #4 on Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten CD. After a K-Town feast, we presented Helen with her going-to-Japan presents, sang karaoke, and headed to Alcatraz Brewery to reunite with some London folk.

Picture

Reality, like the lurking serpent, had bitten back hard.

She sat there with a smug look on her face, trying to conceal the cold and epistemological truth that these pictures had taken all of her crimson-tinted illusions and thrown them away like ashes in the wind.

Funny how she discovers a final candid snapshot. One she herself had never seen before until now. Scanning the crowd in the photo, she saw herself, and the smile ~ so genuine, pure, impromptu ~ perched, not on her face, but his. And oh how every delicious emotion began to come back to her. He looked happy. She looked happy.

But she knew, that this photo, while true to time, was very outdated. She knew it was time to turn the page. That regardless of the passion backed by each savory bite, to continue to lust for him was tantamount to a delicious morsel of forbidden fruit.

And so, to rebel from committing a sin served only to betray herself, she began to dilute her thoughts with other things: career, material things. This is the start, she thought, of letting him go.

I Didn't Wanna Have To

With a slue of worldly experiences, it’s quite peculiar that I still haven’t mastered the art of moving beyond my physical attachments.

I’ve been sitting here for minutes mentally debating on whether or not I was going to write about London ~ and how it’s been one year. Even now, as I start to write about my thoughts on the experience, I feel a bit guilty that I’m making you read about it all over again.

In typical Rowena fashion, I’d make a top 10 list of my favorite Euro-memories, accompanied by my top 10 favorite Euro-photos. But since my experience there was frickin lovely without say, I’m going to write about Will instead.

London was straddling a cold October night, and the three of us piled on layers of clothing and winter accessories to make the five minute walk to the children’s hospital behind our flat. We washed our hands, took a deep breath, and there he was ~ Will Shin ~ so tiny and half asleep. As small as he was, he intimidated me ~ so fragile, so untouchable. So I lightly brushed his face and arm, and even sang to him a bit. Yeah, I cried. How could I not? He was premature and fighting for his life. It was then I realized the strong soul in Will, because even though all he did was lie there in his bed, he had the power to make me forget that my heart had been shamed just days before.

The story has a happy ending. Will and company are moving to America on Wednesday. I owe this post to him because I just finished reading Phil’s (Sandy’s brother and Will’s dad) post about saying goodbye to London ~ and well, what can I say, it struck a cord.

The #1 thing I learned was… to take way too many pictures.


Photo: Norma, Helen, and I leaving Cambridge.

London

Photo: A pic I took right after daybreak.

I almost threw up at the thought of London being bombed. The underground was our life. Kings Cross was one of our exits. The bus that was blown up was headed to Russell Square which was where I lived. My flat was around the corner. London was the best isolated four months of my mere (slightly under) 22 years on this planet... and it breaks my heart to be reminded of how evil some people can be.

A Song Stuck in My Head

I still can't sit through this Dixie Chicks song and not think of:

m&m's, fanta, stella, the movie, have you been here all this time?, there's one over here, help me, week eleven, the white shirt, the black shirt, he's jealous?, walk with me up the stairs, moment at the speakers, big rocks, blurry photograph, markings on the calendar, see i called you, christmas trees, crying hard, text messages, fight scenes, sit by me on the steps, you guys were getting mushy, gray, you saw me sleeping, spice girls, run to the printer hurry, oh he so did that on purpose, she stormed out of the bar, he came for me, stop staring at his arms, we have to go to the bathroom, quite smitten is not spelled quiet, the perfect card, look at another picture, that was the last time i ever saw him.

Every moment was worth it.

Postman's Park

Go buy Closer now! Stop reading this blog, go to Best Buy, and purchase the bloody movie! Why? Our park is in it! Norma, Sandy, and I were first to discover Postman’s Park in central London whilst walking to class at the Museum of London. Our fortunate misguidance led us into the serene, picturesque, and obviously movie worthy location. Empty in the mornings with the exception of construction workers (and yes, they were featured in the movie) and perkie English birds, we made the park our own. Little did we know that our weekly tiffs regarding what side of the grass to walk on took place on the former stomping grounds of both Jude Law and Natalie Portman.


Photo: Screen cap of Clive Owen and Natalie Portman.


Photo: Screen cap of Julia Roberts and Jude Law.


Photo: Screen cap of Postman's Park.


Photo: This is a pic I took of Postman's Park.

Closer's Plot: A silly girl who moves to London and somehow falls for a silly boy named Dan. Now where have I heard this story before?

While you’re at it, go buy Bridget Jones as well! BJ sites? Been there, done that. Bohra and I shopped at the famous Borough market, had a pint of Guinness at the well known Globe Pub, and took a mess of pictures in front of Bridget’s door (where Colin Firth tells her that he loves her, just as she is).


Photo: Her door is actually Globe Pub's back entrance.


Photo: To the left, typical English man. So posh.

From London to LA

Helen and I made the trek up to Goleta for a play date with Jodi, one of our closest girlfriends (and Helen's former roommate) from London. The weekend was, needless to say, mind numbingly out of control. It coincided with a mini-reunion of all folk Bedford, hosted by the lovely Stephanie of flat 14.


Photo: Ro, Jodi, and Helen


Photo: Sarah, Blair, and Jeremy

And in the spirit of all things London, I leave you with the last of London: photos from our last romp through the Ministry of Sound. I have to laugh a little bit when I look at these photos. Take notice at how the hottest two pictures of the night were taken with a 35mm camera. Vintage, very vintage.


Photo: Lovely ladies at Sarah and Bohra's flat.


Photo: I'm molesting poor Dan.

England

Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: Bath (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: Cambridge (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)


Photo: London (August 2004 to December 2004)

Farewell London

When I go back to California, many people will ask me, “Ro, how was London?” Really, how will I begin to muster the words? The looks on their curious faces will be replaced with expressions of hollow, happy-for-you smiles at the mercy of my reply, “It was the best four months of my life.” Sure, that’s what I’ll say out loud – but internally, I will want to say all of this:

I’m never going to look at another image of London in the same way. For now, these images are for me, a depiction of reality. They will portray a chapter in my existence that will always seem larger than life. London was dreamlike, almost magical – in every sense of the word. I will always associate a wild feel to the city because there was always something new to experience.

“The city blew the windows of my brain wide open […] I felt directionless and lost in the crowd, I couldn’t yet see how the city worked, but I began to find out […] London seemed like a house with five thousand rooms, all different; the kick was to work out how they connected, and eventually to walk through all of them.” Hanif Kureishi nailed it in his novel The Buddha of Suburbia. Leave it up to me to quote a bloody book when it’s completely unnecessary to do so.

I didn’t so much “discover” who I am – I already knew before I came. Rather, I was blessed with the opportunity to “redefine” and “grow”. The inevitable discovery of learning my own independence was obviously realized. As cheesy as it sounds, I did learn an awful lot about my strengths and weaknesses. Who would have ever thought I could get along with girls, let alone live with them? In all seriousness, I learned a lot. And with that said, I will gather all the mature knowledge I’ve acquired within the past four months and apply it to my life back ‘home’.

I take home with me a handful of new friends, great memories, and loads of souvenirs. I will come home to uncertainty – a mix of the old and a pinch of the new. It will be a bittersweet holiday season – I will see my family but will be missing my London friends. I’ll get to drive my car and blast my subwoofers again. I will get to drink my banana berry with a protein boost. I’ll return to my strict diet in an attempt to lose all the weight I’ve gained in the past four months (after I grub on Mexican food and in-n-out of course). It’s back to running the track and snacking on peanut M&M’s… then feeling bad for it later.

So now, as we all disperse back onto our California campuses, I know for sure that my slate is wiped clean. I hope that people are serious when they tell me that they will keep in contact. If not, there’s always the face book! I’ll be extremely sad for a few days, but I do know that just like the rest of life… in time it too shall pass.

Arrival – August 25, 2004
Departure – December 19, 2004
Residence – Bedford Place
Nearest Tube – Russell Square Station

Favorite Pub – Filthy McNasty’s
Favorite Bar – The American Sports Grill (good times!)
Favorite Club – Ministry of Sound
Favorite Restaurant – Thai Garden Café
Favorite Snack – French Fries and Ice Cream from McDonalds
Favorite British Song – Jamila’s Superstar and Call On Me
Favorite Clubbing Song – Lean Back
Favorite Teacher – Judith Toms
Favorite Class – British Museum
Favorite Historic Site – Westminster Abbey
Favorite Location – The West End and my room!
Favorite Visited City – Lake Como, Italy

Nicknames: Bab Bab, Starshots/LB, Greek God, Hoochie, Oe, Dirty Deltas, Chonies, Hott, Scary, 80’s party girl, FUBU, Woosh, Stofu, Massage Girl, The Aussies, Napoleon Dynamite, Crown Jewels, Abercrombie/Mr. Personality, Tsunami, Happy Pills, Negative, Bo Bo, Banana, Unibrow, Brocoli, iSpy, Frenchie, Trevor and Eileen (Burt and Ernie), Una Ceja, Gymnasty, Mr. Jazz