Driving Home

Minister of our coming doom, preaching
On the car radio, how right
Your Hell and damnation sound to me
As I travel these small, bleak roads
Thinking of the mailman's son
The Army sent back in a sealed coffin.

His house is around the next turn.
A forlorn mutt sits in the yard
Waiting for someone to return home.
I can see the TV is on in the living room,
Canned laughter in the empty house
Like the sound of beer cans tied to a hearse.

- Charles Simic

Godspeed, soldiers.

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The Day After - A post I wrote the day after the Sept 11 attacks. Poetry - Schmoetry. Stuff that rhyme and shit.

Stone - Another awesome poem by Charles Simic. Back On The Bus - After the London bombings in 2005, I brave public transportation.

Books by Charles Simic:

British Invasion!

Catch up on the magic! Adventures awaited us in the busy streets of Soho, in the grand city of London. Where can you find the best Gay Food Porn? How can you discern a gay Londoner just by looking at the back of his head? How do you avoid Voldemort who apparently works in a booth in the Tube? Click on the icons above to navigate through the posts and find out!

Mystery Location!

PREVIOUSLY: Notes From The Underground

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Seen in Soho: 7 Meard St., Soho, London



UPDATE: More info about the owner of this door.

Notes From The Underground

PREVIOUSLY: The Harry Potter Experience

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The world is my oyster, proclaimed Shakespeare, but that was because he didn’t have to travel via the Underground, or the Tube, as the locals affectionately call it. And by affectionate, I am referring to the feeling one has for that relative that comes to every family get-together and causes fights, eats all the food and brings no presents; the one you wish you could invite to your mother-in-law’s parties.

Well, Shakes wouldn’t be able to get around London these days without a pre-paid fare card called the ‘Oyster card.’ Any one-way fare within a zone was £4. With an Oyster card, it is £1.50, but you have to shell out a one-time, refundable £3 deposit for the card. Easy enough decision, as any Asian can tell you. If you don’t understand the math, pull a nearby Asian aside and they will be able to assist you. We’re very helpful.

On day 7, we had decided to take the tube to check out the Notting Hill area, sort of a dry-run for our return trip to Heathrow, since we’ve previously decided not to take a taxi to avoid getting killed by the nefarious, you know, currency exchange rate, which right now is at about £1 to $2.

The trip started easy enough. After being in London several days, we had reached a level of comfort that allowed us to expertly count out foreign coins, bravely explore neighborhoods and confidently pee into bushes when we couldn’t find the loo.

We boldly went to a ticket counter and got ourselves Oyster cards, loading it up with £3 pounds each, enough to get to Notting Hill Gate station from our station, Tottenham Court Road, and back.

We quickly arrived at Notting Hill and spent a couple of hours in the area, shopping and exploring the pretty neighborhoods so that when we come back later that evening, we know which houses to break into. Shopping and casing out homes are two of my favorite hobbies, next to knitting.

Then disaster strikes. First, on our trip back, my Oyster card wouldn’t let me in at Notting Hill Gate station, even though there should be enough fare left. After several tries, I went to a ticket agent who took my card and told me that I didn’t swipe my card when I left Tottenham Court Road (I did, I swear) and now I am short. But my ticket agent, a nice young woman, after reviewing the activity on the card, decided to fix the situation by reloading my card with £1.50 so I can enter. Problem solved, Brian and I entered the station.

However, when we arrived back at Tottenham Court, Brian's card wouldn't let him get out. We thought, well, the ticket agent here can fix this. Boy, we were wrong.

The agent, an older dude, told us that the balance on the card was negative £1. After arguing with the agent about how we had loaded enough cash for our little round trip, he accused Brian of following someone in and not touching the entry gate reader with his card, even though we both did.

First of all, we were obviously tourists due to our expertly coordinated outfits, and since we took the effort to buy the damn card and then asking for help, wouldn’t you think we were on the up-and-up? Plus, if he reviewed the history of the card like the woman at Notting Hill did, he would’ve come to the same conclusion as she did, that this was an unfortunate mix-up.

But the old guy wouldn’t budge. The vein in Brian’s neck was just about ready to bust. But seeing as we weren’t getting anywhere, Brian paid the damn £1. That should’ve been the end of the story, but oh-ho, we found that he still couldn’t get out. We went back to the old guy who told us that the reason was that now the balance was £0 and we had to pay another £1.50 just to get out. We were outraged! We threw hissy fits! But apparently the old guy was immune to our gay super powers so we begrudgingly paid the extra £1.50.

All in all, Brian paid £5.50 for the trip, which pissed us off, especially since the old dude could’ve fixed it, if he so wished.

After we had calmed down, back at the hotel, we discussed how this could’ve happened to us, since we made sure to touch our cards to the reader. We concluded that the first entry gate had a faulty reader and didn’t trigger our cards. We also remembered that this entry didn’t close after every person passed, remaining open. Of course, we didn’t think anything of it then, but in hindsight, we should’ve paid attention to that oddity.

Mystery of the Blimey Oyster Card solved.


Gentle reader, I pray that you don’t encounter this old guy at the Tottenham Court Road station, whom I didn't summon by uttering Voldemort's jinxed name. I pray that if you travel to London, you have better luck than us with the Oyster card.


NEXT: The Final London Post. Mystery Location!




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The Harry Potter Experience

PREVIOUSLY: Slideshow

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SPOILER ALERT! Just kidding, there are no spoilers here. This post is not about Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows although I am currently reading it, which by the way, is fucking heavy. You almost have to be a bodybuilder to lift this book which is ridiculous because we all know that bodybuilders don’t read. Well, except the label of their food supplements, which they do very carefully with the help of somebody reading it to them.

This post is about our second hotel in London, the one I booked just in case our first hotel was a fleabag hotel. Believe me when I say that I didn’t expect this new hotel, The Hazlitts, to be a Harry Potter experience at all, but it did.

First of all, after checking in, we were led down to a room under the stairs. For a few seconds I thought that the door was going to open into a cupboard. But to my relief, it opened into the dungeon, ehem, basement. The stone walls were painted a bright yellow, I think to distract you from the quaint shackles hanging from the wall and the mace.

The room was called the Thomas Archer room, after some famous person I've never heard of. The color scheme looked like Colonel Mustard came in there and shot his load all over the walls. Ok ok ok, I exaggerate, as you can see in the pictures below, it wasn’t quite that bad, but boy, it was what Michael Kors would call ‘matchy-matchy,’ which is Korspeak for ‘burn the thing down.’

The room was dark. The window only provided a sliver of light from the street above. It was small, but you know me, I'm not a size queen. Ok, I am, hel-looo! but the size of the room was ample. At least the bed was comfortable and clean. The worst part about this room was the bathroom, which was only had a bathtub. I don’t know about you, but the last time I took a bath, I was still playing with rubber duckies, you know, when I was thirty-two.

There was no shower, but there was a hose with a shower head. However, since there was no shower curtain, you could only crouch in the tub to ‘shower’ unless you wanted to make a huge, wet mess. Plus, I sometimes pee in the shower and the first time I used the tub, I accidentally relaxed my bladder and peed in the tub while I was sitting in it. Peeing on someone else--sexy; peeing on yourself--not sexy, unless of course, you're being paid to do it, then very very sexy. Hazlitts, if you're reading this, you could install a shower curtain here and it would go a long, long way.

You know, I'm sure that the other rooms in this hotel are grand, light and beautiful and charming, just like all the pictures in Expedia, but not this room.

But I suppose, it wasn't too bad. Though I think, they should've thrown in an owl in a birdcage, a Nimbus 2000 and a house elf, and then called it the 'Harry Potter' room...now that would've been an experience...






NEXT: Notes From The Underground

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Explore Harry Potter's house.

Slideshow

PREVIOUSLY: Gay Food Porn

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Heyyyy, come in. Thanks for coming. We’re going to be starting very soon, but here, sit down. There’s chips and dip, some other little munchies over there.

Donnie, Aimee and Rob are already here. So are Joz, Michael Guy and Matty, they’re over in the sidebar chatting and commenting. Jade Park and Violet should be here shortly. Of course the always vocal, always crazy Jeremiah. I’m glad you made it though, the weather has been really bad, hasn’t it? You tell me--I stepped into a puddle with my favorite shoes, you remember, that brown pair with the stripes and the nice pink bow? That just blows, because it was a very very very expensive pair...that I shoplifted from Prada. Now it’s ruined. Oh well.

Sorry, the place is a bit of mess--we just got back from London you know--so the blog’s just a bit dusty, but we should have some new posts up soon. I have a new one ready to go--what’s that? Oh, yeah, London! It was wonderful!

I would totally live there! I would totally fit in because I totally love royalty, I totally love Stella McCartney and I totally feel superior to dumb American tourists, you know, like my boyfriend Brian.

We’ll get started with the new blog, but first, you should see the pictures we took! No no no, it won’t take long at all! Just sit down, it’ll be over before you know it! I promise!

click.





...and this one was when I was at G-A-Y club, completely drunk out of my mind--what? You have to go? But we haven’t even gone through the pictures from the second day!

Ok, come back again soon, I’ll have a new post up by then.

...aaaaaaaand we can go over Brian’s pictures!


NEXT: The Harry Potter Experience

Gay Food Porn

PREVIOUSLY: The Tipping Point

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On the bustling streets of Soho, the restaurants beckon you, tempting you, flashing their fare with displays in their windows, menus of their exotic specialties, and signs calling out their two-for-one deals: hey you, and your buddy, together--!

Like a sailor on shore leave, we were eager to sample what the city had to offer. No limits, save what our (designer) purses can bear.


Balan’s Café on Old Compton had a good deal on a great English breakfast: eggs, rashers, sausage, grilled tomáto, toast, sauté mushrooms and potatoes, nicely presented, all for £5.25. Watch out for their gregarious and friendly waiter, only known with the mysterious moniker “Babe.”

Just a few steps away, The Stock Pot, had a set English breakfast for £4.50. The set consisted of one fried egg, sausage, rashers, toast and baked beans. Coffee or tea is included. Serviceable, but nothing to blog home about, but a good alternative when you’re low on cash after binge-drinking. By the way, ‘rashers’ are not some sort of VD, but a sort of thick-cut bacon, more ham than bacon really.

We had some of the best Indian food ever at Punjab Restaurant on 80 Neal Street. Punjab specializes in north Indian cuisine, which is rare in Chicago so we had to try it while we were here in London. We started with Punjabi Samosa, which is a fried, crisp pastry filled with spicy potatoes. For my entrée, I had the Chicken Madras, a hot and spicy tomato based curry. Brian had the delicious Chicken Jalfrezi, with pieces of chicken cooked in ginger, tomatoes, onions, green pepper and other spices.

Our other Indian experience at the Palms of Goa on 4 Meard Street, wasn’t as exciting. The restaurant served south Indian food and boasted Goan specialties. We were eager to try this new Indian cuisine from Goa. For our starter, we ordered the Batata Wada, a bland variation of the familiar samosa: mashed potatoes, green chili and green peas fried in a gram flour batter. I ordered the Pork Mas, a Goan specialty of diced pork, cooked with vinegar, ginger and garlic and spices. I was pretty excited about it because I had never seen pork in an Indian restaurant before, but it turned out bland and the pork tough. Brian had the Chicken Tikka Tandoori, served on a sizzling plate. Tandoori is a style of cooking that involves barbecuing in a clay oven. This Goan variation seemed more lemony than similar dishes I’ve had and was pretty good.

We also had a chance to go to a couple of Indonesian/Malaysian restaurants, which is also pretty rare in Chicago. Indonesian and Malaysian food are the most similar to the type of food that I grew up with in the Philippines, due to its proximity. I was very excited to find these. I could hardly keep my knees together, I was about to come with excitement.

Melati on 30-31 Peter Street was the better of the two. We tried the Mee Goreng Istimewa, which is fried noodles with squid, beef and prawn, served with a fried egg on top and two skewers of satay covered in peanut sauce. Awesome! Brian had the tasty Ayam Rendang, which is chicken cooked in a hot spicy coconut gravy with lemon grass. The other restaurant was Bali Bali on 150 Shaftesbury Avenue. We started with the Udang Goreng Tepung, which is delicious prawn fritters served with chili sauce. I ordered the Nasi Goreng Special which fried rice with eggs, shredded chicken, king prawns, vegetables and chili which I enjoyed. Brian ordered the Semur Daging, which is beef slices cooked in Indonesian soy sauce. Brian loved it, but I thought it was a tad too sweet.

We had to try some English food so we stopped at this pub called Old Shades on Whitehall just south of Trafalgar Square. I had the fish and chips, which was beer battered fish and french fries. However, under the batter, the fish still had the skin on. I wasn’t sure whether this was a British thing or not, but it made me sorta gag, like a vagina. Brian had better luck with his sausage and mash.

Viet Noodle Bar on Greek Street had decent Pho Tai, a traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup with fresh greens and are you still even reading this b.s. or did you just skip to the end of the post. I thought so.

Then, there was this encounter with an enormous sausage, a twelve-incher on Charing Cross--after a night of heavy drinking at G-A-Y club. I was lured by the smell of sizzling meat. The smell led me to a street vendor grilling pale sausages, already turning a nice caramel brown; grilled sweet onions waited in a corner to be used as condiments. My mouth watered at the thought of that sausage at the back of my throat. With the munchies clouding my judgment, £3 had seemed reasonable. But I was quickly disappointed. The meat was tasteless, the skin was dry, and the bun, cold and doughy. It reminded me of my ex-boyfriend, but that's another story.

Finally, there’s Caffé Nero, a coffee shop, the one on Frith and Old Compton, smack in Bent Central is a good spot to boy-watch and while away some time, where I wrote this post. But beware of the back of the shop, where the acrid smell of piss wafts up whenever somebody leaves the loo, which is located downstairs.

Unless, of course, you’re into that sort of shit.


There were several other places we went to, but I started feeling stupid taking notes on all of them. I felt like I was blogging about my vacation instead of taking it. The short of it is that Soho had a lot of great food, all within a short distance from the two hotels we stayed in. Gays, you should definitely stay in this area.

NEXT: Slideshow

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MapEasy's Guide Map to London was essential to our trip! It gives you a bird's eye view of a city and makes it easy to figure out what places to go. It shows detail maps for Covent Garden/Soho, Greater London, Out-of-Town, and Underground. It is a location map and guidebook in one. Each hand-drawn Guidemap contains useful facts on hotels and restaurants, as well as information regarding shops, museums, and attractions. Plus, the map is made of a waterproof, tear resistant material. Check it out!

The Tipping Point

PREVIOUSLY: Counter-clockwise

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“Whatever you do, absolutely, do not, leave a tip,” advised my friend and sometime guest blogger here at NMP, Matt.

I was starting to think that he was having a laugh at our expense when I gave our taxi driver £60 for a £58 fare. The taxi driver’s eyes looked menacing as he bit out, “Is that it, then?”

“Uhh, okay,” I managed. I was actually expecting my £2 back, but his accent combined with his sharp tone confused me. It also made me pee a bit in my britches.

I did a quick mental calculation, converting the pounds into US dollars. The fare with my begrudging tip, was $119.4929 to be exact, or roughly $120, or $2 for every £1.

If you didn’t get any of that, it’s ok, I understand. This calculation only took 1/10th of a second for me because Asians are equipped with a built-in calculator in our brains, which is useful. Although I wished my parents opted for the upgrade package when I came out of the Asian Baby Factory and installed a vibrator in my penis as well.

After checking into our hotel, I quickly went on the Internet to check up on the local tipping customs.

What I found left me a little perplexed and unsure, but it seemed that there are three main rules: you do not tip a bartender or at a bar, even if there is food served; you don’t have to tip a waiter if a service charge is already added to your check; you do not tip the taxi driver, if you can run very fast and you’re not carrying any luggage, otherwise, it’s 15%.

Granted, the currency exchange rate is not exactly an enticement to tip, when everything you buy is implicitly double the listed price. When there is a choice between a nice Indian restaurant or, that place with the big yellow M where they serve 113.45 gram (1/4 lbs) hamburgers, served with chips (french fries) and medium drink for £4.45, VAT included, well, I’m lovin’ it...

Yes, if you do the math, that’s still $8.90, which is ridiculous. But what can you do? You make the most of it, try to skimp on some things, and on others, you just have to bend over and take it from The (British) Man. You just hope he’s kind enough to use some lube.

After spending $119.4929 getting to the hotel, I doubt if we would be taking a taxi back to the airport later this week. The tube will have to do. The money saved will go towards a noble cause: my vibrator implant fund.

Huzzah! Our hotel didn’t turn out to be a fleabag hotel at all! The Radisson Edwardian Mountbatten was located at the Seven Dials area, in the fashionable Soho district. It had free wireless Internet, which came in useful to do travel research. The room wasn’t huge, but it has nice decor, clean, comfortable and even had a gym equipped with treadmills, a step machine, a rowing machine and free weights. I booked it from Hotels.com. Location was amazing as we were within walking distance to West End, the theatre district, Leicester Square and other attractions. Lot of great shopping too!

Alas, because I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t going to be a fleabag hotel, I only booked it for half the trip. We will be switching to another hotel for the other half. More on that later.


NEXT: Gay Food Porn

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We will be heading back to Chicago tomorrow. Watch out for more posts about our London vacation and pictures!

Counter-clockwise

PREVIOUSLY: Packing Heat

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There’s a lot of free time waiting at airports. They tell you to be prepared for very long queues, because of the high state of you know, bitchiness, from the airline employees. You go a few hours early so you don’t miss your flight.

I find that there are two things you end up doing at airports to pass the time: one is eating and the other, people-watching. Since I didn’t bring my girdle--I was on vacation after all--I decided to do the latter. Time enough to gorge later when there aren’t so many people around. Also, I like to set the mood when I eat; I prefer a darkened room, softly lit by the lightbulb in the refrigerator, a gentle cool air wafting out of its open door.

So, I people-watched. I turned on my gaydar by flipping the switch hidden behind my ear, to try to figure out who’s gay, who’s straight and who’s simply given up on life. I know, I know--how boring. I don’t know why this is still so fascinating in this day and age of total gay world domination, but I find that it is. Maybe if I found one (i.e. a gay), we could go to the loo and do some clandestine, you know, gossiping.

But apparently, based on new and advanced, ground-breaking scientific research, it has been found that you can tell if somebody is gay or straight by the direction of their hair whorl. I had recently learned that if a person’s whorl goes clockwise, they are straight; otherwise, they are gay. This research was leaked to me from a top secret gay laboratory where they wear impeccably tailored white labcoats and use designer test tubes and beakers.

Brian and I checked the top of our heads and found that we both have counter-clockwise whorls. It must be 100% true with two snaps. I used this arcane knowledge on the people passing by: Straight. Straight. Gay. Straight. Total Beyonce-singing, Shakira rump-shakingly Gayyy.

However, this is very hard to do on people who are much taller than me. I tried standing on tiptoe to get a better view. If they turned around while I was on tiptoe, I innocently pirouetted away, throwing in a grande plié and a jeté to make it convincing. But being on tiptoe was useless, so I had to rely on more common methods, such as looking for signs of excessive dry clean-only fabrics or a garment bag.

This information comes at a very opportune time because it’s hard for a foreigner to discern if a Brit is gay because their accents make them sound swishy. And I’m talking about the women. The men sound like they are total flamers. It wasn’t hard to imagine them all having a collective hissy fit over converting their currency to Euros. It must have been pretty fearsome, since they’re still using the pound sterling. Plus, they have a queen on all their currency, how fabulous is that?

I hoped that this new whorl research would aid me in my search to connect with my own highly moisturized tribe.

But I am wondering if the research is flawed and the Brit whorls are reversed, like how in Australia the water flushes down counter-clockwise to our clockwise. There are signs of this: the Brits drive on the left side of the road; the steering wheel is on the right side of their cars; they think Victoria Beckham is a fashion icon. What? You’re not a fashion icon until the paparazzi have taken a photo of your pussy when you get out of a limo. In the U.S., Victoria Beckham would be like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And, she’s a mother of three; one more and she could start an orphanage.

On our flight, our gay flight attendant Curtis’ whorl was clockwise, which would indicate that he was straight. He was definitely gay because I totally, absolutely, do not find him attractive. I am attracted primarily to guys who look like they sweat for a living, you know, like aerobics instructors.

I am sending an e-mail to our top secret gay laboratory in hopes that they send me a solution to my dilemma spit-spot. I have a brewing emergency, something that only Gay Brits can help with, something that could be a life-or-death situation: I have forgotten to pack my moisturizer.

God save this queen.

NEXT: The Tipping Point