Back in London

I am lurking in a London internet cafe because it's raining and nothing else will open till noon, apparently, not even Starbucks (and I have not yet had my morning caffeine fix.) When I left the hotel this morning the sky was so forbiddingly gray that I asked at the front desk if they knew the weather forecast, and they laughed at me. There is no telling with London, they said. (This computer won't do double quotes.) Could be rain, could be shine, could be both twelve times in half an hour. There is no way to know.

I set off,and it immediately began to rain. It looks like I will be having a nice relaxing day today before the big madness of the next week (two days of interviews, one day in the air, three days teaching at a workshop in Arizona-- Will and Emma, e-mail me so we can get together!) whether I planned one or not.

I forgot to mention that in Venice, at the frog fish tale restaurant, I accidentally set off the fire alarm while attempting to flush the toilet. Like keyboards, toilets do not appear to have standardized flushes. Some are motion activated, some are pull-handles, some are pull-chains, some are white push-things on the wall cunningly painted to blend in with the wall, some are tiny white buttons on the toilet likewise cunningly painted, etc. So when I looked around for the button and didn't see one, I noticed a chain hanging from the water tank, with a paper tag attached with an inscription faded into illegibility, but which I assumed meant, "pull to flush" in Italian. (Just figured out that you can do quotes if you hit the key reading @, and vice versa.)

I pulled the chain.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A great commotion began outside as well as inside. I had barely begun to search for the alarm turn-off when someone began pounding on the door. Clutching my pants to myself (there were no laundry facilities in Venice, so I was wearing the drawstring gi-pants I'd brought in case I got a chance to train as a gladiator, and a wild print shirt I bought at the Rome flea market, and looked like a clown), I opened the door, figuring that whoever was there would be more likely than me to be able to turn it off.

The waitress hit some invisible button, and the alarm shut off. She pointed to the tag. Peering closely, i saw that it actually said, "Alarm."

"Er... perdone," I said, wondering if that was even a word.

The waitress kindly shut the door on me and my pants. The flush button proved to be a very small and cleverly camouflaged one on the back of the toilet.

Incidentally, that same day I twice failed to successfully lock the toilet door, and had people open it when I was inside. As I said to Oyce, trying to manage plumbing in Europe makes me feel like a lab rat.

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I fled to a Borders with an attached Starbucks, and decided to browse and read manga until the weather got less cold and wet, as all my other plans involved a great deal of outdoorsiness.

I just spent the entire day in Borders. I have now read through volume 6 of Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura.Bautiful smudgy-pencil art, somewhat in the tradition of Lone Wolf and Cub (so is the story, come to think of it) but even better, or at least even more to my taste.

Last night I had some lovely flaky fried fish and soggy chips. The waitress asked me if I wanted "mushy peas" to go with it. My God! I thought, they do that on purpose! How horrible!

"Don't like the mushy peas," said the waitress wisely, before I could respond verbally.

I have been watching some of the Naruto anime that telophase was kind enough to send me before I left, and have some non-spoilery thoughts regarding language.

1. Apparently "Kakashi" is the best name ever to say in slow and gloating tones. It sounds really great when spoken that way, which is why all the villains who confront him tend to have dialogue like this: "So, Kakashi... I have found you at last... Kakashi... Heh heh heh."

2. Does "dattebayo" or "-te bayo," which Naruto uses so much, literally mean anything? Does anyone ever use it in real life, or is it purely a made-up character thing? It reminds me of Chichiri's "no da," which I think does have some sort of meaning but is basically just a speech tic. (Last night while at ish and chips the young Japanese woman at the next table, who was talking on her cell phone, ended half her sentences with "da yo!" It sounded similar enough (and her voice was pitched a bit similarly to Naruto's) that it really startled me for a moment.)

3. I had a 3, but I seem to have forgotten it. Hmm. Perhaps that Orochimaru sounds even creepier and more pedophilic when he has an audible voice than he did in the manga.

4. I think my all-time favorite of Kakasshi's lateness excusesis, "I got lost while walking the road of life."

ETA 5. I remembered 3! That thing Shikamaru says, "mendokusei," that gets variously translated as "how bothersome," "what a pain," etc. Is there a literal meaning?