snapshot

After long weeks of thoughtful deliberation and contemplation of the ramifications of what I have said, I'm taking the opportunity of the public exposure that this blog affords me to recant an earlier statement. I might carry little packets of gel in transatlantic airliners, but I am not a terrorist.

I had said it in jest and no one took me seriously. The MI5 hasn't paid me a visit, and I haven't been expelled from the Queen's bosom. However, in other activities, which didn't even involve transgressions of the law, I have, by association, been suspected of being a terrorist. Allow me shed some light on the issue.

Over the last years, London has grown increasingly paranoid of an imminent terrorist attack. It seemed that with every day the catastrophe of 2005 receded into the past, the alert level increased on the official danger-o-meter. In a sad way, this great city felt like a one-horse town trying to increase its self-esteem by masochistically overestimating its vulnerability. The most normal and innocuous behaviors were suddenly deemed unacceptable as they carried imagined dangers.

London is the destination of over fifteen million visitors each year; yet one of the prime occupations of tourists, photography, became associated with the devil. Central London is a gigantic carpet of sights, attractions and stimuli, but those trying to capture the visual splendor were often approached by police, stopped and questioned – under a particularly harsh and sweeping section of the Counter Terrorism Act.

The aggressiveness against photographers has not only baffled tourists but especially annoyed locals passionate of the shutterbox. While I haven't been at the receiving end of any police idiocy, I've listened to plenty of aggrieved complaining when meeting with fellow photographers. Thinking of oppressed countries like Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, I've been wondering how far people are happy to relinquish their freedom to gain an illusion of security.

Not too far, apparently. The stories of harassment and intimidation have become so common that the situation has become untenable. The other day, even the BBC took note, and the issue exploded. A few days later, a directive was sent to the chief constables of England and Wales's 43 police forces, instructing them not to abuse the provisions in the Counter Terrorism Act and not to give photographers and unduly hard time, as revealed by The Independent.

A good year after Google finished photographing the entire city to near-atomic detail and put all the photos online, someone has finally realized that a tourist with a digicam is no more of a danger than a granny with a cell phone. It is good to see that, for once, reason has prevailed.

mindless

Today was the second Sunday of Advent, but I nearly missed it, missed it as much as I had missed the first. Time as defined by others passes me by, and for me, there is no Christmastime until there's Christmas and I'm in Germany with my family. Here in London, I do my work and live my life, and don't see much outside that.

There is too much to my life already; more, it seems, than I can juggle without dropping bits. At the moment, nearly all energy outside work is devoted to finding an apartment. In two and a half weeks, I'll be homeless. I face the prospect of selling the Big Issue in front the Shepherd's Bush Station, frightening if it weren't for the temporary escape of a flight to Germany to celebrate Christmas and forget about the bridge that's waiting for me, for me to sleep underneath.

I don't want to sleep rough. It's cold, wet and miserable inside a cardboard box, even when it's generously stuffed with the Evening Standard, which has recently changed its distribution model to give-away-for-free. Before, after and, increasingly, while at work, I scour aggregators of rental properties for flats new to the market that might live up to my lofty standards.

I have seen nearly a dozen properties. Some were atrocious, others simply not right. Some were nice but in the wrong place or in the wrong price bracket. I've had to tell all those hard-working agents that drove me around with hope in their eyes that I won't submit an offer because I will only say yes when I know the place is right. That hasn't happened yet.

Outside of looking for apartments, my head is submerged in words. Books wanting to be read haunt me like ghosts, and my blog starts snarling at me when I don't add a post at least once a week. I've been silent for twelve days, and I haven't read a single page. The worst is that I don't really know why.

The apartment hunt, for all its terrifying urgency, doesn't take up much of my nights. I'm aware that Christmas is coming up, but I have no obligations. I need to buy no presents nor write cards. No particular problems worries me, and yet... Convoluted thoughts stream from my head in twisted strands, leading nowhere but clogging the system.

I feel the need to clean my brain, rediscovering priorities and recovering strength that seems to have been lost under crossing layers of possibilities, options and contingencies. When everything happens at the same time, nothing gets done. It's even worse when all that's happening are the distant promises of opportunities.

Last week, a friend from the old days came to visit me. We had shared a room in a sheltered dormitory when we both attended high school nearly two decades ago. Our lives have diverged over the years, but we had stayed in contact. I was curious to see how we would get along and looking forwards to a few days filled with diversions and fun.

The first two days, despite hanging out in pubs, chatting and reminiscing together, I wasn't quite present. My mind was still musing pointlessly about, as far as I could tell, nothing in particular and distracting me greatly. By now, though, I have regained control.

We spent today in town, going to a concert at lunchtime and then enjoying the long shadows of the December sun in Regent's Park. It was a day for fun's sake with no musing, thinking or contemplating. Back home at night, I rescued the Räuchermann from it's silk paper-covered cardboard box where it sleeps throughout the year, lit an incense cone and two candles, and started the festive season. Nothing on my mind for now.

cooking science

I was digging in the dark underneath the desks in the office, threading category-five cables around table legs, splicing them into thick braids and plugging them into the battery of jacks in the wall in an attempt to stop the networking from not working when a sudden commotion of feet almost hurt me fatally. Chairs were pushed back simultaneously, and people leapt up and ran off, chattering agitatedly. After diligently connecting the last cable, I resurfaced with a questioning look on my face. The lab had gone for a talk, I was informed by one who had stayed behind, on cooking.

Any other day, this answer would have completely mystified me. It's not as if Imperial had much to do with gastronomy. But today, upon hearing seemingly incongruous words, understanding clicked in my head. The talk in question was given by Hervé This, director of the molecular gastronomy group at AgroParisTech and developer of some of the crucial concepts of molecular cooking. I had booked two tickets for the talk a fortnight earlier. Now just five minutes remained to make it across to the auditorium.

When I got there, it was nearly packed to capacity. Professor This was obviously popular. I had never heard his name before but I had encountered the term molecular cooking, in reference to two acclaimed restaurants – The Fat Duck a few leagues outside of London and El Bulli on a deserted stretch of the Costa Brava – and their way of whipping up culinary wizardry. I had mostly been skeptical and had gone to the talk to see what was behind the hype.

Hervé This had set out, in the 1980s, to discover and understand the processes at the interface of chemistry and physics that take place when a dead cow is transformed into a juicy steak or an egg into an omelette, or when milk, sugar and flower join hands to create a cake. In the process, and over the years, he had learned how to modify seemingly pedestrian systems to create the most startling effects.

The talk was a Powerpoint presentation generously interspersed with practical demonstrations that were live-cast onto the big screen behind the podium and workbench. This whipped egg whites up with water to create voluminous foams, but he wasn't a pastry chef. He was a scientist, a devoted physical chemist full of questions. What determines the maximal volume one egg white can be whipped up to? What happens if you use orange juice instead of water? Or coffee? What if you heat the foam in a microwave?

He demonstrated the last one. The water bubbles trapped in the foam come to a boil. Evaporation causes the foam to expand; heat causes it to solidify. After fifteen seconds, he knocked from his beaker a fluffy cylinder that wouldn't taste like much but could be the carrier for anything, the above-mentioned orange juice, for example. More can be done with eggs, all to answer the question, What if? Whip them up with oil and heat them, fry them and uncook them with a strong reducing agent, or poach them in alcohol.

The last experiment was done with laboratory-grade ethanol, but any strong liquor would do. This claimed to be using Scotch Whisky, which was oddly fitting given that it was St. Andrew's Day, the Scottish national holiday. Outside the fair island of Great Britain, it has probably not registered, and it doesn't matter, but Scotland aspires to be an independent nation. Breaking free from from the yoke of England is the goal of the Scottish National Party, the strongest party in the Scottish Parliament.

My opinion matters even less than Scottish independence, but I'm all for it. It would make a bunch of funny-speaking people very happy, and the only difference for me to notice would be a lighter tax bill. And if the import of Scotch Whisky were suddenly taxed, I'd buy the Irish variety and could poach an egg just the same.

The ovular overture set the stage nicely. The experiments could be admired by people without any scientific background. However, This insisted that this was not fun. He kept posing questions, the answers to which he happily admitted not knowing, and made the audience think. Why do we cook, why do we cook the way we cook, and how could we prepare food differently for maximized taste and texture? More chemistry and physics are needed to contemplate these questions than you would ever imagine.

Take a dish that a famous chef and friend of This's cooked, smoked salmon with grapefruit jelly. The salmon smells but the jelly tastes. How to give the dish the taste of smoked salmon but the fresh smell of grapefruit? This kind of reengineering is called molecular cooking. Taken to the extreme, it means extracting exactly and only the desired flavors and recombining them with appropriate carriers to give bite and shape. This is what's happening at The Fat Duck and El Bulli, if I understand correctly.

I won't find out soon because I don't have a reservation for either restaurant, but I am motivated to try my luck with foamy eggs infused with foreign flavors. I hope to have a microwave, which I'd need to give these dishes structure, in the kitchen of my new apartment. Of course, I'd have to find an apartment first. Good thing the network is back up.

hunting house

Two weeks ago, I sent notice that I would vacate my apartment right before Christmas. The decision took shape when increasingly desperate appeals for necessary maintenance and upgrades of the apartment were met with something worse than a deaf ear. For months I heard sweet words of projects just about to start, and would I just be a little bit more patient?

My patience had run out. The flat is still nearly as nice as when I moved, but it also still has the same flaws, notably broken windows and poor thermal insulation. In addition, increasing amounts of humidity have recently crept in, threatening not only wallpapers and carpets, but also my clothes and my electronics. With the landlord refusing to take action, I had to.

For about a week now, I've been on top of the rental market in the W12 and W14 postcodes. The experience hasn't been in the least satisfactory. I have called a number of agencies and viewed a handful of properties. They were all advertised, without fail, as spacious, nice, and good value for money. All were disappointments.

On Thursday I caught a brief glance of a one-bedroom at the tail end of fashionable Portobello Road. The tenants hadn't left yet and clearly resented the invasion of their privacy. The agent was aware of this and very considerate. We didn't spend more then thirty seconds in the flat. This probably made the tenants happy, but didn't give me much time to look around. The only impression I could form was that I was being rushed. I chucked the property off my list before I even left it, about 27 seconds into the viewing.

On Friday I saw two more places, on one which I had pinned high hopes. It was in a desirable area, dating back to Edwardian times when building standards were considerably higher than during the Victoria period that preceded it. In Victorian times, London's urban poor were moved from the slums they inhabited to quickly constructed cheap hovels meant to last for a few decades. They stand to this day, a hundred and twenty years on, their decrepitude only poorly concealed under thick layers of heavy paint.

The Edwardian building I rode up to looked nice, the agent drove up in a Mercedes, and there was space to park my bike. I was ecstatic. When the door was unlocked and opened, I entered the paradise that had formed in my imagination – and was rudely yanked from my dreams. The kitchen was relatively large but old. Someone had shoved a sagging sofabed next to the fridge to create the illusion of a living room. Where I would put a painting or some art from my travels hung the boiler. A generous storage closet was filled wall-to-wall with a bed. This was the bedroom. The surface area of the entire apartment was hardly more than twenty square meters. My disappointment was almost physically painful. Wincing audibly, I left. I ran.

And yet, what I had just seen was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing was obviously broken or rotten. Spacious accommodation is rare. Kitchens turned to living rooms, deceptively called open-place kitchen reception areas, are quite common. I had my own ideas, though. I don't want to see dirty dishes when I kick back to watch a movie, or hear laundry slosh around the washing machine. I also need space for books, clothes and stuff accumulated over the years. I fear that it's going to be a tough slog to find the right place.

Hope comes from an encounter I had three weeks ago, while I was still only toying with the idea of terminating my lease. I wanted to see what was out there, get an impression of what could be expected in case I make the jump, and saw two apartments. One was on the second floor of an Edwardian building in a quiet side street. Large and empty, it was nearing the end of thorough overhaul. The carpet was brand-new. The kitchen had just been redone and contained all new appliances.

It was clear to me that I had a good deal before me. What kept me from putting a hold deposit down there and then were the cracked windows and the lack of furniture. That, and the fact that I was holding a lease to another flat. Now it feels like something of a missed opportunity. With less than four weeks to go, would another brilliant place please come up?

ethics in words

Over the last two years, I've been quite happy to amble to the Oxfam bookstore about once a week, to check out their latest arrivals, and I've been a good customer. Of the twenty-one books I've acquired this year, a full seventeen have been handed to me in return for a small donation (and several have found their way back onto the same shelves after I was done reading them).

Oxfam is unlike other bookstores in many ways. It is run by a recognized and respected charity and sells books people donate. Each store is small – with the exception of the flagship in Marylebone – and carries a very limited and totally random selection, which for me is part of the appeal.

Of course it's nice to get what looks like a brand new copy of a recent bestselling paperback for two pounds, three pounds at most. Of course it's pleasant to do good while you spend, sending pounds down to Africa to help people endure the atrocities of tribal warfare or the famines caused by corrupt governments just a bit longer.

But before the altruistic and thus highly satisfying action of handing over the money that I'm not going to miss comes the thrill of discovery. My eyes expertly scan shelves they have seen countless times, looking for a difference, a spine that wasn't there the week before, a name imprinted on the to-read list in my head.

Never has shopping felt so good, and I could have easily turned my brain off and settled into the bliss of smug self-righteousness. But I can't help thinking – and I like to write – and I made a disturbing connection. It occurred to me that buying books second-hand is not much different from downloading music illegally or copying chapters from a friend. The unsurpassable prices come at the cost of no compensation for either creators or publishers. How ethical is that?

There are a hundred arguments that this is no problem. Buying new is no necessity. The capitalist system might be dependent on excessive and ever-increasing consumption, but that doesn't mean everyone is forced to buy in. There's nothing healthier than people giving away things they don't need anymore, and a business model based on the facilitation of redistribution is a natural extension of that attitude. Looked at it philosophically, books, like ideas, should travel and spread.

And yet, quite a few arguments can be made against the Oxfam stores. With their volunteers and the free stock they drive commercial second-hand book sellers out of business. They also, eventually, reward need and not ability by siphoning money from writers into the bottomless financial bogs of humanitarian aid.

As so often, there are many sides to this story. I've decided to rediscover the one that's less familiar to me. This weekend, I'll break with tradition and buy a book in a regular bookstore. Good thing Foyles offers 15% off.

more sleep

A zombie is traversing town, dragging his heavy body through narrow lanes full of tribesmen billowing to the sounds of the shopping dance. He staggers down an alley with stiff legs, as if walking on stilts. His gaze is firmly directed at an infinity that is eclipsed by the urban landscape. He is a world of one, oblivious of the bustle of heated commercial activity, a mechanic man in a soup of floppy toys.

I notice him when he bounces into a flock of elderly ladies with silver hair and shopping bags of nauseating fluorescent beige. I raise my head and look through the foggy windows of a cozy teahouse when I hear the dull chatter of subdued anger, an emotion that the British are masterfully adept at expressing stealthily. A scene of minor mayhem unfolds outside.

After smashing into the first two ladies and nearly spilling them onto the wet cobbles, the zombie just marches on, not noticing the hot hisses of reproach behind him. A few moments later, he is gone, engulfed by the Sunday-afternoon crowd that fills the space between the shops to either side most efficiently. The physics are bewildering.

Crowd displacement is a science that is poorly understood and incompletely reconciled with the fundamental laws of nature. The motions of individuals in a sea of people cannot be modeled and the ramifications of two streams of people on collision course cannot be predicted. Immobile object add another level of complexity. Outside the coffee shop remains the gaggle of lady shoppers, bewailing the cruel attack they have fallen victim to. While they are still collecting themselves in a way that, again, only the British are capable of, the crowd sweeps them up and washes them away, towards the lights of Regent Street.

Darkness set in hours ago, swallowing the skies overcast with sadness, but it is not night yet. Star-shaped nets weaved from points of light stretch between the buildings on either side of the street. A constant blue twinkle dribbles sluggishly from the swaying meshes, replacing distant stars invisible behind invisible clouds.

Darkness has contracted the space above the pre-Christmas rush. Façades are lit to the third floor at most, and beyond the carpet of light that blankets Regent Street, the void of space remains unseen. The town has been compacted into two dimensions, oppressing anyone who attempts to walk with his head held high.

I look up again. The zombie is still there, but the window is different this time. Warm clothes for the Scottish gentry are draped over boxes of sienna and ochre. I'm outside, looking in and realize that I stare at my reflection. The zombie is me. Cold, wet, cross-eyed and dead-tired, I've been erring through Central London for the past hour and a half. I've been looking for a coffee shop to warm up and for a quick nap, but all tables were occupied and all seats taken.

Now I'm left with Tartan vests and cardigans. Suddenly, a 94 screeches to a halt next to me, yanking me from my textile reverie. With a terminal effort, all that I'm capable of today, I climb aboard, struggle upstairs and slouch into a seat. My head, already unconscious, bangs against the window with a thud. While the bus takes me west, I dream of sleep.

early morning

My alarm rang at 7 this morning, loudly, but not piercingly enough to cut through the thick layer of sleep shrouding me from the world outside my dreams. Nearly an hour later, I jumped out of bed in a mad frenzy of the body, though my mind was still suffused with soporific lethargy. I hopped on my bike and rode to College to meet a friend for a writer's breakfast.

Note that I said writer's breakfast, not writers' breakfast. My friend is not only astonishingly skilled with the pen but also a rich reservoir of creativity from which the most unexpected thoughts spring freely. She had just come back from a creative nonfiction writing workshop and was eager to put some of the strategies for increasing output and productivity suggested there into practice.

Ours was a variation on the theme of morning pages. Traditionally, one would sit down every morning and write two or three pages of random stuff, not with the intent of publishing but simply as an exercise. Like a fictional diary or a rough blog that no one will ever read. I guess the idea is to write profusely about anything that comes up and to collect material that might later come in handy when penning larger pieces. Creating your own source material, in a way.

This is quite a bit different from how I use the blog, though quiet similar to what I had initially intended. The blog was supposed to be a writer's laboratory, an incubator for originality and an immediate workshop for the training of my paltry skills. Write often, quickly and spontaneously was to be the motto. Improvement will inevitably come with practice.

I write often and sometimes spontaneously but never quickly. It takes me as long to edit a post as it takes to write it in the first place. The reason is that I write for an audience, though I'm loth to admit it and never planned to. Over the years, the only change I've noticed in my writing is that it's become more prolix, with a-thousand-page posts nothing out of the ordinary. Something clearly went wrong. I took this morning as a change for redress.

The problem is that I am not very creative. Sitting down behind the bluish screen hovering above my coffee, I chose the most straightforward and predictable topic conceivable. Staring into eternity beyond the white wall of the library café didn't inspire my imagination to run circles around reality. But at least it got me to writing, out of the blue, with no preformed thoughts in my head, in less than thirty minutes, a few paragraphs that I'm not afraid of showing. That's surely worth getting up early for.

on my way out

When I opened the door to my apartment this evening, a smell of cold, wet leaves greeted me. There's nothing wrong with such a smell on an autumnal walk through Holland Park, on an early Sunday morning before the sun rises above the mansions flanking the park's eastern boundary. But the wet slap hit me while pushing my bike into my bedroom, to its place of shelter for the night. My apartment is rather damp, with tendency to become positively dank when it's rainy outside.

It didn't rain, and yet the smell was there, fed by moisture creeping through floorboards sitting directly on the cold ground below. When I had moved into the apartment, two and a half years ago, all had seemed fine. The first winter was ok, besides some rather cool nights. During my second winter I noticed a drastic deterioration in the habitability of my residence. There's no point drawing out all the details. Suffice it to say that I vowed not to spend another winter here.

I've had all the time in the world to take the appropriate steps. Months upon months have passed, but I am still here. Early in the summer I contacted my agency to ask what it would take to end the lease and see how they would react. They didn't. They just told me. I was surprised. I had assumed the efflux of people cause by the recession and the return of migrant workers to their home countries had turned a highly dynamic place like London into a buyers market.

It had. A month after my initial call the agent called back to wonder that he still hadn't received my notice. I told him I was still wavering, whereupon he asked why I wanted to move out and what it would take to change my mind. We reached an agreement quickly and settled on a decrease in rent of nearly ten per cent. I figured that some extra money in my pocket wouldn't be all that bad, and winter was still far off. I was also happy to stay because I was about to leave for North America for three weeks and my lease would have ended during that time. With the renewal signed, I could sleep (and travel) without worries.

Over the last six weeks, summer has turned into a mild fall. I'm still happy about the money I'm saving each month on a very competitive rent. But I'm also upset that my concerns about windswept windows and moist walls haven't been answered, and I'm remembering my vow. Not only that, I've actually acted on it. This Tuesday, somewhat on the spur of the moment, I gave notice of my desire the end the tenancy agreement. The decision was a bit rushed because a month hence on that day, I'd be leaving for Christmas in Germany. It was literally my last chance.

I wasn't sure whether it had been the right decision. Moving is always a pain. It's not so much the leaving of a space I have grown fond of and become familiar with – I'm too much of a drifter to care about this – but rather the physical pain of moving all my stuff. Then there is the struggle of finding an apartment I like in an area that's convenient for cycling to work. And there is the substantial financial burden of a new deposit, a higher rent in all likelihood, and potentially overlapping leases. Should I have stayed on and braved the conditions?

When I opened the door to my apartment this evening, and a smell of cold, wet leaves greeted me, I grinned broadly and my spirits rose. It became blatantly obvious that I had done the right thing. I was filled with happiness at the thought of getting out of this damn place and finding something nicer, dryer, warmer, fresher. Now I just have to start looking.