archive for March, 2002

caffeine

how to not get over jetlag
or
the dangers of drinking
or
bridget jones’ diary

wednesday 4pm miami time
board british airways flight after being awake for 24 hours and dancing my tits off at tenaglia’s set

sleep on flight

thursday 6am london time
flight arrives into heathrow airport. by 8am i’m back at my flat, and after a bit of unpacking, i’m in bed by 10am. i sleep for 6 hours, waking up at 4pm.

thursday 4pm
journey into soho to pick up contacts. meet atif for “coffee”. i consume one regular mocha from cafe nero on old compton street. “i’m so incredibly knackered,” i tell atif.

thursday 5:55pm
atif & i get seated for dinner at balans. i’m a bit groggy still, but it’s happy hour. that means one pitcher of greyhounds, and one pitcher of woo woos. these are consumed along with a bottle of wine with dinner.

thursday 8pm
a quick trip to the friendly society for a few vodka tonics.

thursday 9pm
we make the fateful mistake of entering the escape bar, also known as the center of all that is unholy, also known as the place where eric always *always* gets into trouble. 7 smirnoff ices and 1 shot of tequila are consumed.

thursday 11pm
i arrive back at my london flat, incredibly tired and a bit tipsy. after chatting with flatmate felix who is departing for australia, i fall asleep around 11:30pm.

friday 3am
i wake up, a bit drunk, a bit hungover, a bit ill. i go into the kitchen and heat up some leftover curry and eat it. i make myself a cup of soup and eat that. i open up two leftover snickers bars smuggled from the usa, and eat those. i realize i’m sober and wide awake.

friday 4am
failed attempt at slumber. i do some work and finish unpacking.

friday 6am
failed attempt at slumber. i take a shower and do my ironing. watch some bad television — still awake.

friday 8am
have some coffee.

friday 10am
some more coffee.

friday 11am
meet with colleague simon. drink some coca cola.

friday 3pm
decide to completely reorganize home office/bedroom area.

friday 7pm
after writhing on the floor untangling 1000m of wires, and doing lots of lifting, unpacking and tossing, my reorganization is complete. i have some coca cola to celebrate. i’m exhausted.

friday 8pm
leave to meet atif, helen & angie for dinner. plan to meet up with ian for drinks afterwards if i’m still alive. likewise with mike, who laughs and says i should collapse by then.

friday 8:30pm
meet atif at the lesbian bar, where we enjoy a vodka & red bull — it’ll give me wings.

friday 9pm
we enjoy a cosmopolitan before dinner, followed by a glass of red and a diet coke. for dessert i enjoy a latte.

friday 10:30pm
we sneak into the new sweet suite bar and have a vodka cranberry.

friday 11:30pm
we arrive at popstarz, and consume the poptastically refereshing drink of smirnoff ice. pop a few of those back in the r & b room where it’s pleasantly dark and sweaty.

saturday 1:00am
a few more upstairs in the loungey area with our new friends derek and jason and the swedish girl.

saturday 2:00am
dancing in the main floor

saturday 3:00am
dancing in the rubbish room. enjoy a red bull sans vodka, on ice.

saturday 4:00am
sweating like a monkey while breakin’ on the r & b room. loving life, feeling peppy and busting moves and breaking hearts.

saturday 4:10am
atif & i leave popstarz, and decide to walk to soho.

saturday 4:40am
atif & i arrive at old compton’s cafe in soho, and have a latte. my brain is no longer properly processing inputs or connecting words together.

saturday 5:20am
atif & i reacquaint ourselves with central london as we wait for the tubes to open in the morning.

saturday 6:10am
atif & i make it to green park where victoria line services have just started running. i’m cranky, he’s tired, we bid adieu.

saturday 6:40am
i arrive back to my flat. brush my teeth, wash my face and strip down for bed time. decide to post an entry to evijhserf.

my plan — to sleep for 6 hours (after only sleeping 4 hours in the past 3 days) and then go to the gym, do some work, and then head out for saturday night — my favorite night in london. i have to factor in the time change in addition to my jetlag tho.

7 years, 11 months ago
0 Comments

plus one

i’d like to presume that living in california for 6 years has caused me to live my life in a chilled-out, relaxed, unpretentious sort of way. even when i was in los angeles, i think my pasadena sensibilities caused me to care more about the palm trees and jamba juice than having a tan or dinner at spago.

london, like the rest of england, tends to enjoy easily defined class barriers. these divides permeate throughout most aspects of life in england, but are easily ignored by a foreigner such as myself. it’s easy for me to say that, as an ignorant american, but also i firmly reject notions of class and status. celebrities, name dropping, wealth, background, pretentiousness — these are all things that i abhor. in a generically utopian sort of way, i’d like to think that, at least when it comes to meeting someone and having a conversation, we’re all equals, and there should be no great divides between two people when they’re doing something recreational.

the winter music conference in south beach, miami has an incredibly frightening class system. the notion of self-worth is tested around each corner. some examples:

“are you on the list?”

“i’m sorry, members only”

“are you staying at the delano? these are for guests only”

“do you *think* you’re on the list?”

“who are you with?”

as we traveled from club to bar to beach to club to limo to club to beach to club, i was incredibly impressed with my [new york] friends’ connections. everywhere we went, i found myself cruising past long queues of people, nodding to bouncers as they lifted the velvet rope and sailing past the cashier as one of my friends would motion towards me and say “plus one”.

at several points i felt like i was in some poor studio 54 reenactment, and, well, i guess that’s precisely what was happening. tons of [probably cool] people were lined up to pay incredible amounts of money to get into whatever club was designated the best club/party/event for that evening/morning/day. thousands of partiers from all around the world had flown into miami to celebrate music, clubbing and the deejay lifestyle, and here they were standing in long queues just to try to get into the “best” party.

wanna hear a secret?

most of these amazing parties that i got into cuz i was a vip/on the guestlist were crowded, lame, and, unsurprisingly, filled with a whole bunch of overweight 45yo losers who could blag their way onto the guestlist, or buy their way into a vip pass. i hate to say it, but, sadly, record company executives, club promoters, and the other “industry” folks inside these clubs seemed out of place. not to do a blanket diss, but i like to surround myself with happy, dancing, music-loving people, not stuffy, namedropping, well-to-do status mongers.

i’m not bitching. the scene was excellent. what was fun?

checking out the “live girls nude” show, featuring crazy new york electro acts and live strippers doing their thing

having the sun come up as i came down from an excellent night of new experiences with new friends on the beach

rocking in the cabana at the free party at nikki beach, where the venue took me back to ibiza and the vibe took me back to san francisco

dancing, jumping, smiling, hugging, freaking in the incredibly dark main room at space, as danny tenaglia brought out yoko ono and mixed her into his incredible set. yoko exclaiming “take off your shirt and pants! i want to cum all over you!”

hours later i find myself sitting at the airport. sweaty, sandy, and loving being classless. status, riches, celebritydom — no thanks.

7 years, 11 months ago
0 Comments

yfitnedi

although i’ve already had several midlife crises, i feel that, now that i’ve hit the *cough* *cough* quarter century mark, i’m allowed to have a proper fit of confusion and delusion.

a year ago at this time, i found myself in san francisco, my home of nearly two years, surrounded by an excellent assortment of excellent friends. talk about diversity — i had friends from every walk of life sitting at the dinner table with me. i was touched, and emotional, and very truly happy. i’m a pretty independent, pretty solid individual so, when i say i was touched, i really mean that.

so, that was just a year ago — my 24th birthday. life seemed simple, on track, happy, and i was contented. at this moment, i find myself in san diego (huh?) on a business trip, far from my home of london (wha?) where i’ve started working for a magazine (huh?). i mean, on paper my life seems pretty much on track, successful, whatever, but right at this moment it all seems a bit too random, a bit too disconnected.

birthdays are bound to trigger some introspection and reflection and a bit of panic. if i could somehow represent my life of the past year in a diagram or picture or flowchart of some sort, it would be very dramatically stretched in 2 or 3 different directions. there would be few significant connections, and tons and tons of smaller, random connections.

like, boys in tijuana. archnemeses in london. like, friends from san francisco. like, me being san diego at this moment. connections, but not quite connected.

7 years, 12 months ago
0 Comments