how are you doing in London?

short answer is that i am fine. If you took a statistical average of my moods over the past 3 months, running the gamut from urban wonder to gutter depression, the average, with a high degree of variability, would be "just fine." Of course, i don't think that i have been "just fine" since i got here, owing basically to the fact that London is both the perfect and the worst city for someone like me. Somedays i am working crazy, devising psych experiments and reading papers, writing on consciousness and what memory might look like in the brain, and then i come home and stay up all night with Greeks and Indians (london is full of greeks and indians), drinking and telling stories in ways that only cross-cultural groups can enjoy. Like a benetton commercial.

Some days are not so good, and they typically involve money, because most anything in this city involves money. London is, by far, the most expensive city on this earth. Never mind the crappy (and getting crappier) exchange rate with the dollar, just getting across the city can cost you $2 (bus), $4 (tube), or $10 (taxi), and that's just from my apartment to school. And i havent even mentioned my program, which is sort of a great example of why i have been sticking to neuroscience rather than psychology; my program is in the psych dept, and it's no surprise to tell you that psychologists are roughly 95% of the time full of horseshit. I don't know if it's a mark on the greatness of my New College education, but i learn little in the classes. The saving grace is the project i'm doing, which is good and is with good people, who are neuroscientists and not psychologists and like facts and socially relevant information.

What keeps me happy, what keeps me delighted and amused, is the details of history and the people around that i cannot help but become audience to. I live in an apartment within stone's throw of Harrod's, the hugest department store in the world, and also the poshest. Right now i sit in a hall 10 feet from the preserved body of Jeremy Bentham, the original Libertarian. People here speak in British accents ALL DAY LONG. How could i not be constantly amused?

The key is not to be lonely. Scratch that, the key is not even to be alone. I used to think there was significance in the difference between the two, but living in London is all or none, you're in or you're out, right now, join the party or suffer. So i'm trying to join the party, trying to date Finnish girls and Swiss girls, trying to drink half as many pints as my British friends and still be able to walk home.