I always thought how quaint the Tube stations' names are: Parsons Green, Picadilly, Oxford Circus, Clapham Junction. They just sound so innocent and utterly English, like you can just stroll through the station with your umbrella tapping out a melody on the ground. Not true. Usually, that same umbrella is sopping wet. The stroll is in fact a mad dash from station to station, desperately ducking out of the mass of suits' way. Case in point: Clapham Junction. I supposed I assumed it was a junction of old lanes with a history of being where Queen Victoria would walk with her husband or where Cynthia caught the London Coach. I never thought of the vast network of rail work, hordes of uptight businessmen, and the stench of stale coffee. There were 18 platforms. 18! It was a stressful maze. But we managed to catch the right train (to Woking, as it happened). I truly felt British when we successfully transformed to another train to Southampton to meet with the dreaded Dr. Woods.
As it turns out (as things like this usually do), Dr. Woods doesn't actually bite. Or snarl or glare. He did sort of bounce off the walls a bit, but he was willing to sit still long enough to actually have a conversation with me. He was interested in my project, and worked with me on it by asking me questions while helping me answer the tricky ones. It was interesting–he was clearly the more intelligent one, but I was still in charge of my project. A good start for my statistics.
One odd note: Brits have a strange obsession with shut doors. The math building I was in was small (tall, but narrow) but each floor had at least four sets of doors for halls and staircases, and all the office and classroom doors were closed, making the halls very dark and claustrophobic.
Yes, I noticed their obsession with closed doors as I was trying to walk around and look for a place to read. I wasn't sure if I was actually allowed to walk into a classroom or not. Very disconcerting, as I might have already mentioned to you :)
ReplyDeleteHahaha, okay, I know I always talk about Brazil...but that was one of the things that was just plain WEIRD about Brasil -- people have almost no concept of "inside" and "outside". It's like it's all the same thing. People ALWAYS have their doors open or their windows open, and nobody worries about it or talks about it. People hate being shut up in their houses. Now, they do keep their gates shut--they keep them shut and locked, always. Even when those gates are made out of flimsy pieces of wood...but that's only in very poor neighborhoods. Anyway, more to the point, I guess growing up in America we crave this sense of being "sealed off" from outside because it brings us a feeling of privacy and security. Even during the summer. We just feel weird if our front door is wide open...as if a bandit were going to dash in and kill us all in the middle of our peaceful suburban paradise--just because the door was left open!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it's like that for everyone, but it's definitely true in my family, and apparently it's true in London too :) It may be even more prevalent here.