A Year in Cambridge: Saturday, 17 March: London

We wanted to do something to celebrate the end of M*'s Lent Term at Judge, but he had less than 24 hours free. He has signed up with two non-Judge projects that often use-up the little down-time he has. Since my friend Alicia, who now lives in Pars but who I met during graduate school at UCLA, was in London for a few days of theatre going and Jessica invited us out Saturday night and to crash at her place, we took another trip down to London.

We're beginning to really like the area where Jess is currently living: Highbury/ Islington. We had a pre-dinner drink at The Alma. They had an interesting selection of New Zealand snacks in addition to a real menu, and their wine-by-the-glass list was impressive for a pub. The tables were large and, on a Saturday evening at 6pm, there was plenty of room as well as a few babies.

M* and I Tubed down to Piccadilly to meet Alica at Melati—a restaurant that features Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean food. Since Alicia is fond of this place and she is originally from Singapore, M* and I were really excited. The prices were good, but the food was below our expectations. I ordered the sea bass sambal—one of the most expensive items on the menu but I love sambal and sea bass. What appeared did not resemble sambal or sea bass. Alicia agreed that the sauce was more of a sweet chili sauce than a sambal, and we all were expecting a meatier fish. I'd go to Melati again, but with lower expectations and a mind to ordering a less expensive dish.

M* and I walked up towards Oxford Circus to meet-up with Jess and a few of her friends. We went to a 60s soul/ indie pop night at Phoenix. I felt that dancing to 60s soul, that I like but rarely listen to on my own, would make me a bit of a poser. Also, the dancing mass that was singing every word to a popular chorus but flubbing the words on the lesser known verses was a bit of a turn-off. I did appreciate their enthusiasm though. Luckily we scored some really comfy chairs by the dance floor, so hitting the dance floor occasionally did not take much of an effort. I do think that not being able to drink beer (damn the gluten issues!) makes going out all night less enjoyable—unless their is a kicking dj that can garner all my attention.

Before Jess would let us sleep, she made us watch a few episodes of The Mighty Boosh—another sketch-type, BBC comedy show. It was funny and often disturbing: the "Ugly Gregg" episode had a remote British lake haunted by a half-man half-fish creature with a mangina (also called a downstairs mix-up); the other episode had two band members deserted on an island that they populate with coconut "people"—one of the humans becomes a victim of spousal abuse (he married a lady coconut) and accidentally kills his "abuser." This is very Adult Swim humor.

M* and I were so happy to have a LA type brunch at Kiki in Highbury/ Islington before heading back to Cambridge on Sunday. There are no such places in Cambridge—no Le, La, Les or Cafe named breakfast places that I seemed to frequent.