Picos Gemeos

Mile End Tube station was closed this morning, with firetrucks and ambulances parked outside its entrance. Two underground staff members fended off people's questions, who typically tried to get into the station even though it was bleeping obvious it was closed. My immediate reaction, naturally, was to think "terrorist attack"; I called Kevin, who was still at home, and a few minutes later he let me know someone was under a train.

They really need to sort out the platforms on that station; it has been an accident waiting to happen (and, in fact, not too long ago someone did get pushed in front of a train). The problem is the Central line: too many people want to get on it, and the problem is exacerbated when the District line arrives and people from that train rush towards the other. If you are standing first in line, you suddenly feel the crowd pushing and pressing against you as the train arrives. However, maybe someone did jump in front of a train. Who knows.

I had to take a bus to Canary Wharf and join the Jubilee line there. I sat beside three children - two boys and a girl - who spent the whole time describing in graphic detail the pros and cons of pooing inside bowls and cups. They were having the time of their lives.

There's a giant Sainsbury's supermarket by Whitechapel. Since it's on my way home, I decide to drop by and purchase a few things. I'm in the pizza aisle when an announcement comes on telling us to remain where we are. Everyone stops for a brief moment, looks at their neighbour, then continues to wander around. The staff look as bewildered as the shoppers. The recorded voice message is on repeat, telling us to stay put.

I'm getting near the shampoo aisle when the message changes to a fire alarm. It's loud, interspeared with a message telling everyone to evacuate. I shove my basket above the nappies and head towards the exit. There's only about ten other people doing the same; everyone else stands around with a mild look of if-there-is-no-fire-I'm-gonna-keep-shopping. The staff have congregated by the door; they lift their shoulders and shake their heads to the few people who ask what's going on. It reminds me of an experiment I once saw on TV, where a man sat in a room filling job applications, little knowing that the other people with him were actors. When the room began to fill up with smoke, the actors didn't budge, kept on writing their applications as if there was nothing wrong. So the guy did the same, against his instinct to run away. The need to shop overrules the need to survive (for some.)

Sissy Jen called us last night with the news that she found a worm in her Tesco salad bag. She had just poured some dressing on her plate, so it was hard taking photos for evidence that distinguished the worm from the creamy sauce.

After Sainsbury's, I walk towards Bethnal Green Road. A beautiful black-haired young man comes out of the fire station's garage, spits on the asphalt, then strides like John Wayne to a payphone. One block away, a red double-decker bus rolls down the road, a big sign for the Respect political party hanging from it, Gloria Gaynor's Aretha Franklin classic track blasting through speakers: I'm about to give you all of my money, all I ask of you in return honey, is to give me a lil' Respect (just a little).

A car with young asian boys honks at the bus, and when the Respect members wave back at them the boys stick their arms out of the car and give them the middle-finger.

I think of Paris Hilton as the human equivalent of a Black Hole. Most people who get close to her seem to have their lives derailed, either developing anorexia, drug addiction or psychosis. Or maybe those problems were already there and P. Hilton simply sweats them out. She brings out the extreme in people.

But Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe, on TV just now, has greatly expanded my understanding of Black Holes. They are actually centres of activity in our universe; positive particles shoot from them when they are separated from the negative particles weighed down by the holes; solar systems are born; they are bundles of activity. Why do Black Holes take into themselves the Britneys, Lohans and Nicoles of the Universe? Don't know. Where do they go? Don't ask. What does it all mean? Who can say. Are the solar systems created around Paris Hilton the media jobs that feed off her image, the CD manufactures pumping out copies of her debut album? Or should we feel more hopeful about our culture and expect new life forms in the coming years? It looks promising.

Question to any astrophysicians and philosophers reading this: if we manage to simulate the creation of a black hole on Earth, how long do I have before we are destroyed? (or are we destroyed?) Will I have time to write my last Livejournal post, or will I be caught off guard on the No. 8 bus?

Blogs from some of the travellers in the first OzBus:

http://ozbusdiaries.blogspot.com/

http://ozbus.blogspot.com/


If any kind-hearted paid account users reading this wouldn't mind turning these into LJ feeds, I'd be eternally grateful. It can be only one of them, if you can't be bothered/don't have the time to do all.

Ta!

I just witnessed teenagers attack a group of men in the No. 8 bus. I was on my way home from Brick Lane (having left Kevin behind because he has a larger tolerance of crowds than me), staring out of the bus' window, when I heard a teenage girl talking loudly into her cellphone. She was screaming "how could I call you if your mobile was turned off?" If you've seen the Vicky Pollard skit in Little Britain, multiply that by a 100 and you get the idea.

She kept up the loud behaviour, enliciting giggles from her two friends, until a man talking on his cellphone described her as "trash". After some abuse thrown at him, because how dare him call her "trash", she seemed to move her attention somewhere. The bus then stopped, and as he leaned down to pick up a box of flowers he had bought, she said "take your flowers and go home." Understandably, he stepped on her foot as he walked away; she stood up with a scream and shoved him. His friend, looking completely bewildered, got two shoves and pushes from her, to the sound of her friends laughing. They were proper violent shoves that made one of the guys hit someone sitting up ahead. If that wasn't enough, she then stood up on a seat and tried to spit at them through the window, calling them "cunts".

As you can imagine, I desperately wanted to grab her by the hair and punch her face. Perhaps I'd be applauded by the horrified bus; perhaps I'd end up in the nearest police station. Honestly, with a trip to Brasil just around the corner, I couldn't take the chance of getting in trouble.

Who, in their right minds, calls a London teenager "trash" to their face? They were obviously new in town.

Yesterday was Buttoned Down Disco's Midsummer Eve boat party. I don't remember the last time I went to a BD Disco party; must have been years ago. DJ Dollyrocker still plays the same tunes, but that didn't bother me last night. I was just happy to bring together my new brasilian friends in town (Ricardo, Lila, Vinicius) with some old friends I hadn't seen in a long time (Silke, Claire, Pritti, Andy). The fact that we were on the guest list and were ushered in like V.I.P. only added to the night's enjoyment.

The boat was moored not too far away from Vauxhall tube station. Two understaffed and crowded bars, plus a rickety floorboard (that made my heart thump everytime the crowd jumped), made for uncomfortable times on the dancefloor. The water lapping against the windows never seemed too far away (except in the early hours of the morning, when the tide was low and we realized how safely grounded we were.)

Cameras flashed here and there, and I may have looked startled and ancient in some of the photos; perhaps the owner of the boat, playing the bouncer outside, was the only person older than me. I still had the energy though to dance through the dodgiest mash-ups, under a constant drip of sweat, in & out of cigarette smoke. We took our breaths and breaks on the cramped deck.

• Best song on the dancefloor: Daft Punk's "One More Time"
  
• Best song I missed because I was stuck in the deck's corner: Kylie Minogue's "Better The Devil You Know"
  
• Most annoying song with bad New Year Eve's memories attached to it: Junior Senior's "Move Your Feet"
  

A triptych of Suede, The Cure and The Smiths played just as we were leaving, 1.30 a.m. The God of Buses was kind and we didn't have to wait too much for our double-deckers. When we got home, Kevin wipped some eggs and ham into a deliciously spontaneous omelette. Head, pillow, sleep.

I'm inside the D6 bus, from Mile End tube to Roman Road, when the old lady in the front starts screaming. She tries to stand up and slap a hooded teenage boy with red eyes but her grandson pulls her down. He tries to calm her down in what sounds like greek. But she won't be calmed. The hooded boy slurs that she should watch herself, not dis-respect him. The bus stops, he gets out and makes a gesture with his hand that he will shoot her dead. However, he saves his most threatening stare for her grandson.

Two boys in the back of the bus laugh and say that "she's going to kill him". Har har har. A stop later, the grandmother gets off with her upset grandson. The boys in the back laugh some more.

The majority of the people in the bus are elderly or yuppies. I'm standing and I move to the door as my stop approaches. I can't help but stare for a brief second at the boy in the back. He's shocked. Under his breath, as I look outside, he says "you staring at me? I've got your face marked as well."

I want to say "what if that was your mother, your grandmother? How would you feel if you saw her being dissss-respected like that?" But I don't say anything -- like everyone else -- and I walk home wondering when will I bump into those little shits again.

I can't believe I danced to Tiffany's I Think We Are Alone Now yesterday. And I can't believe the crowd on the dancefloor started chanting "Kate Bush! Kate Bush!" until the DJ played Wuthering Heights. Weirdness. I took Henrique to Button Down Disco so he could get a taste of people dancing in their PJs, see girls with 1983 Princess Diana haircuts and drink tons of cheap Vodka & Tonics. The place never got too full, which was a nice change; we had enough space on the dancefloor, though the endless crunching of broken glass got annoying after a while. Silke got drunk and snogged one of the bartenders ("we exchanged ice cubes!"); some random woman grabbed my jaw and shook it as she walked by; one chick tried to pick up Kevin & Henrique but they pretended they only spoke Portuguese until she left them alone; Clare was depressed because of "stuff", then got happy with Henrique's magic tricks, then extra happy when I bought her a Jack Daniel's & coke, then extremely happy when a tall goofy blonde latched onto her.

The DJ wasn't the usual guy, but the music didn't deviate from the same stuff (a bit of 80s, a bit of cheesy rock, a bit of technoey/dancey stuff). I can't enjoy myself there anymore unless I'm drunk.

On the way home, we told Henrique to watch out for all the brasilians on the number 6 bus. And, lo & behold, a hoard of them walked in, shouting at the top of their lungs, and having the most hilarious conversations. I had to hold myself back from laughing. Henrique got depressed though when he realized how loud and obnoxious those brasilians were. We ate a pizza before going to bed and went for greasy breakfast this morning. We are now debating what to do with our afternoon.

On Friday morning, London police shot dead an innocent Brasilian man after they suspected him of being a suicide bomber. I still don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I feel sorry for his family, for the people in the Tube who witnessed his "execution", for the rest of us who are now at the mercy of nervous police officers; if a bunch of plain-clothed cops pointed a gun at me and asked me to stop, would I obey or would I think I was being mugged (and therefore run away?) If I lived anywhere near Brixton (like he did), the second option would have been more likely.

On the other hand, the Brasilian man had been living for three years in England, was supposedly a legal worker (and thus probably knew English fairly well) - why didn't he understand the orders to stop (I'm assuming the cops identified themselves as they pointed a gun at him.) Could there be another reason why he ran over the turnstiles and jumped into the train? Could his VISA situation in England not be as straightforward as they think at the moment? And what about the policemen who were surveilling the building he came out of, and who had to make a decision as to whether he was a terrorist or not? Do we want the police to make that kind of decision if it means that it might save the lives of countless other people on a train?

There are roughly 100,000 Brasilians living in London. Most of them live here illegally and don't understand a word of English. I've met many of them working in University canteens, or as janitors; they practically fill up the number 18 and 6 buses during rush hours, with their conversations about overcrowded houses they have to live in so they can pay cheap rent, the things they have to do in order to avoid getting caught and sent back to Brazil.

I once got a phone call from the lesbian ex-lover of a cousin of mine. She had arrived in London and she needed help with finding a hostel. She didn't even know how to say "thank you" or "please"; she'd somehow managed to "fool" customs officers into believing she was here on holiday. Soon afterwards, she got a job as a cleaning lady in a 5-star hotel; a few months later, I heard that she became the head of the cleaning staff and was living in the hotel (she saved a lot of money this way since she didn't have to pay for food or rent.) As soon as she made enough money, she went back to Brasil and bought herself some land. She's now "teaching" English in Cambui.

The way she managed to stay for that long in England was by getting herself a fake Portuguese I.D. It's something many Brasilians do so they can get work (though many places hire Brasilians illegally as well.) I wonder if the Brasilian guy who was shot was also working here for three years with a fake Portuguese document (eventhough his family has said he was legal here), and thus thought the police were there to kick him out of the country. It might be another reason why he desperately tried to run away.

My bus today was attacked by roughly ten Vicky Pollards. At first, they were screaming across our heads the latest gossip about Angel, Sarah and all the other slags in Marylebone. Suddenly, when one of them dissed the most vocal lot in the front, all hell broke lose. They lost their voice screaming, threatening to have their boyfriends beat the shit out of each other, etc. Then, just as sudden, they were quiet again and cheering each other on to turn the emergency valves and open the bus' door. Result: the driver couldn't move because he couldn't close the doors, people were pushing themselves in (more teenagers) and traffic had stopped behind us. After ten minutes of this, I gave up and walked home.

I also spotted two ex-Big Brother contestants. (Wow! I`m sure it's just a coincidence they are walking about when a new show starts in two weeks...) Check crapcelebrities for more info, if you so wish.

I worked yesterday and today for a charity group called Women and Children First. Nice lot. Job is done and now I await further news from my temp agency.