Updating

The lack of constant internet access at my fingertips is inhibiting my ability to post to the blog. This is annoying me and I feel like I'm living in the dark ages. Nonetheless, I'll try to do an update from the last couple days.

Flatmates

After two blessed weeks, my flat finally has tenants. An Aussie woman moved in on Friday and a Brit moved in on Saturday. The Brit is a nice guy, relatively new to London and if he suffers from anything its from being too nice and sociable, which, since I don't have much time for chatting with every hour away from work being devoted to my thesis or Ms. Colombia, caused me to shut him down. We get along well; but I just don't have time to waste.

The Aussie is a bit different. Actually, she's really just a ghost. Most people, when they move into a new flat, greet their flatmates and are generally friendly. A, "hi, how are you?" works well. Well, this particular woman decided that dropping a gigantic stinky poo in the toilet and then not flushing was the best way to introduce herself to the flat. Then, after flushing, you realize that she's stopped it up and it takes at least 5 more flushes to wash away her putresence. Later, when you actually see her in the hall, you get a "gooday mate" as she goes into her room and shuts and locks the door. Nothing like politeness these days is there. Since then, I've seen her exactly once, although she did delay my morning shower on Monday by 40 minutes as she was in the bathroom for an excessive amount of time. I don't even know her name.

So, what have we learned? Flatmates vary. Women apparently do take poos.

Funeral/Prayer Session

I didn't realize this, but my former colleague who passed away last week was Jewish. The only reason why that's relevant is that we didn't actually go to the funeral, we went to an afternoon and evening prayer in his home (which has a specific name that I've forgotten because it's in Hebrew). At any rate, the entire ceremony was in Hebrew, which, I'm sure was significant to some, but was less so to me. Not understanding a word leaves one's brain to wander toward analysis, so here's the play-by-play:

In the beginning, the men are called to the front of the room while the women stay in the back. This, I was told by Eurotrash (who is Jewish) is in the Orthodox tradition. Filed away in my brain as institutionalizing sexism in religion like the Catholics and their male-only priests. (Hey, just because they have some sexism going on don't mean that it isn't "Godly" or spiritual. Just men corrupting things as usual.)

Then, a long series of prayers began. These, I must say, were utterly bizarre. It sounded to me like the Rabbi would begin the prayer with all the men joining in for the first few lines of text. Then, all the voices would drone off and everyone read the prayer to themselves quietly with the Rabbi waiting until they all finished to proceed. What's true weird about that, however, is that this process caused the Rabbi to peer around the darkening room and look to each man to see if he was finished. So, I'm standing there, not reading anything, and just watching this guy crane his neck to ensure everyone was ready for the next step because, as everyone knows, we all read at our own pace.

After an indeterminate amount of time, there was a pause. The afternoon prayer was over and we had to wait for the sun to go down before beginning the evening prayer. At this point, the son and brother gave short speeches about the deceased which were quite poignant and meaningful. He was obviously a well loved man who lived life on his terms (lived in South Africa, Australia, London, Toronto, and the US).

Then, the evening prayer. Repeat the above. I was really quite uncomfortable as it was stifling hot and I was the only guy there that didn't understand a word. But, I needed to be respectful, so I did my own little Catholic repression prayer thing. It struck me in the middle that as much as we all respected Dennis, it was mutual. He respected us as thinkers. He expected much out of us, even if we had no idea what he was really talking about. He did that of everyone, I think. But it really speaks to his character that he could so easily grant respect to people that he didn't know very well.

Finally, the service was over. We paid our respects to the family and departed.

Thesis

It's coming along. I have over 7,000 words now, so that's good. But, I realized over the weekend I'm trying to do too much and that's what's slowing me down. So, I've been narrowing my focus and trying to keep it within the scope of my proposal. I wasn't as productive over the weekend because I had errands to run (laundry!) and Ms. Colombia was sick (food poisoning, methinks) so I spent some time taking care of her as well. During the week, I'm trying to be productive, but it's difficult. Working 9 - 10 hours a day and then going home to put another 2 - 3 into a thesis is not what I call a good time. But, I carry on. I want to finish soon. I was hoping by this weekend I could be done and ready to send it to a printer/binder. But that may be optimistic. We'll see. I have to be clever in how I manage Ms. Colombia and the thesis because it has to get done no matter how much I want to spend time with her.