Philly cheesesteak - food of the gods

My apologies for the interrupted nature of my previous post. Having a supervisor around is in many ways a good thing, but does mean that things get a little hectic, especially when every time he comes down to the lab I get another job to do. These jobs are starting to pile up at the moment, and some are larger than others. The big one that I'm trying to ignore a la elephant-in-the-corner is writing the introduction to a paper that Karl (supervisor) is hoping will be submitted. This scares me somewhat, especially because writing a paper would imply that I am in some way a decent physicist and that I know what I'm talking about, both of which are blatant untruths. At least, though, I'm not having to work weekends and/or eighteen hour days*.

I realise that I haven't yet written anything about Washington DC last weekend. This is bad, as it was a major feature of this trip, making almost (but not quite) as much impact as the lack of kettle. But I'm not going to write anything today: we'll hopefully be going again next week to catch up on some of the stuff that we didn't have time to see last week, so I'll just have to write everything in one go. Besides, there has been much going on this week and I'm going to forget most of it if I don't blog it now.

The major feature of last Sunday was Zizou, bless him, showed his disdain for the normal footballing tactics of "wait til the game restarts and then take the *&"^£%) down" and decided to be a bit more creative. I think it was a shame that the game ended up going to penalties: given England's performance in penalty shoot-outs I do not have a very positive view of them in general anyway, but it seems slightly off that the whole tournament could (and did) rest on something as flukey as a penalty. I also think it was a shame that the final was between Italy and France, given that France were abysmal at the beginning of the tournament and that most of the Italian team should have been given Oscars. But I digress. It was fun to sit and watch football with a fair few folk from the dorm, especially as football was a new experience for many of them. At bit different from going down the Goose, but an interesting atmosphere nonetheless. Went swimming in the outdoor pool after this. It's a lovely pool and a relief to get into after sweating outside, especially as the pool and the air have probably got a similar amount of water in them.

Monday night a group of us went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Twas good fun, even if the film was a bit self conscious at times and starred Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley**. I managed to confuse someone (I shall not name him for fear of embarrassing him to the Amerikay community) by sending an email the following day including the words "ahoy there matey" "avast" and "arrrrrr". No, British people do not normally talk like that, it was because we went to see a film about pirates the night before. Bless.

The reason for this email was to encourage people to go and eat half price nachos and $2 margaritas at Klondike Kate's***, something which is rapidly threatening to become a bit of an institution. They are absolutely wonderful as long as you don't think about what the "cheese" is made of. It isn't cow juice for sure, nothing with the consistency of tar and the sticking power of plastic cement could never have occurred naturally. Nacho "cheese", Fluff (just don't ask) and cockroaches will be the only things to survive the nuclear holocaust/meteorite/alien invasion that will eventually finish off civilisation. The other thing semi-wonderful thing about Kate's is looking at the drinks menu. I get all excited when I see "Kate's Kosmo", "Kate's Spring Water****" or "Kate's Strawberry Daquiri", but then I'm disappointed when it turns out that, despite having my name on, I have to pay for them. Mind you, with really nice margaritas for $2 I can't really complain.

Wednesday we once more went salsa dancing, and it was as much fun the second time round as it was the first, once you discovered the ingenious tactic of dancing behind the pool tables so that you don't get your heels stepped on by fancy-dancing salsa ladies in spangly skirts and extremely pointy stilettos. I have now learned how to do five different moves, which is good, but have not yet learned how to let the bloke lead, which while being all very admirable in terms of equal rights and such is not too great in terms of actually dancing properly. I have also learned to be careful not to do anything which may give rise to gossip, given the amount of gossip that was going on among various Ray Street people about certain individuals.

Thursday and Friday, all very nice, especially getting pitchers of Yuengling (vaguely tolerable American lager, yes, it does exist) for $8 at Deer Park and sharing them with nice people who don't see me as some sort of alcoholic because I know stuff about beer. Yesterday, though, was cool for the food rather than the drink. A group of us, much smaller than the group who went to DC, went to Philly yesterday to check out the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and other such landmarks of freedom and democracy. With their associated x-ray machines, metal detectors and other terrorist aquisition devices, of course. It was very interesting finding out about American history, something I realise I know less and less about the more I am here. Also interesting going to the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities. Yup, medical oddities. Very interesting and I'm sure very worthy, but it did make me slightly uncomfortable: donating your body to medical science is one thing, having the pickled bodies of aborted babies and 19th century people only disected because they had noone who cared enough about their death to object, is another.

Philly seems like a cool city though, and is the home of the most indelicate delicacy I've every had: the Philadelphia cheesesteak. A long bread roll containing a big pile of very thinly sliced fried steak, topped your choice of cheese, onions, ketchup and pickles. Absolutely beautiful, even if you can feel your arteries blocking as you eat it. Whatever else Philadelphia may be like, it will be excused anything as long as I can have another one at some point.



*Priyan, complain! You are not a small Malaysian child making Nike trainers!
**Completely blank or slightly puzzled and pouting respectively
***Which describes itself as a restaurant/"saloon"
****Vodka, soda water, Sprite and lime: truly my kind of spring water