Still London

Third Day
The third day was a good day in London. I spent half of the day in my hotel room, sorting out the Danish affairs: calling, e-mailing SMSing etc. Then I wend out, heading for Soho. My first appointment was at 7:30 so I just wandered around and entered a “sport bar,” a place full of machines for various types of game. I had only seen such places in the movies before. There were lots of noises and colored lights and shooting and racing: everyone was fucking their money like maniacs. There was a particular gambling machine that drew my attention: Penny Fall. It’s so pathetic; you’d drop pennies into the machine and the machine accumulates them and when it’s piled up enough coins, the some would fall off machine and you’d take the coins and drop it back to the machine again! How much fucking sense does that make? I hope I can see one the bigger sport bars some day, one of those I’ve seen they have in Japan or US. They’re very inspiring.

In the same building, there was a shop on the first level where one could get dressed like a cowboy or a upper class nineteen century lord and take photographs against “wild west” background! You can find all sorts of weird stuff in Soho.

Then I went to Odeon Theater, bought the most expensive ticket I have ever bought for a movie and saw Scorsese’s The Departed in the biggest movie theater I have ever been at. The theater was almost empty, but the film was great. The movie doesn’t look much like Scorsese, yet has some his great touch. The sound and the picture was superb. Now I understand what doubly surround sound is for and why the heck you should keep cleaning your camera gate after each take. If you don’t the audiences are gonna see it on Odeon Theater’s screen!

Having seen a good film I rushed to the Leicester Square station while the can of backed bean was jumping around in my back-pack. London is full; London is intense, it attacks you. I can’t find time to eat. I eat in the morning at the hotel and then have the meal for the rest the day, in case I’ll find time between to things to eat a little.
I got off at the Oval Station where I met Sndra Buch. We went the Blue Elephant Theater to see 22 Death Scenes. I knew the Blue Elephant Theater through Mikkel Harder, the director of the Danish Royal Theater who had introduced me to the former director of the Blue Elephant. The guy is not there anymore, but I met the duty manager of the theater after the show. He was very welcoming and nice and wanted me to contact them later. The performance was also interesting. I am glad that I can see so many different aspects of London’s cultural scene in just a few days.

Forth & Fifth Day
I was waiting for a package from Amazon.co.uk but figured out that the mailman just left a note and I have to go to the post office to pick it up. The package contains Augusto Boal’s Games for actors and Non-actors and a DVD collection of three Sergei Eisenstein’s movies. It’s been ages that I wanted to have this DVD. (Now I got it! I went and picked up my stuff at the Royal Mail this morning.)
After lunch I left hotel to meet Paul, one of Ur-Hamlet actors. I made a mistake and went to a wrong address and then also got off at a wrong station and everything got pretty much complicated. Now I think it is very easy to go around in London, because the underground is just greatly planed. But yester I gained the experience of how awful it could be to be fuck-knows-how-many-meters-under-the-ground when you are just not on the right track. I met Paul 50 minutes later. We had coffee and a nice chat and then went to the Warehouse Theater to see Love and Human Remain which turned to be very cheesy. But again I am happy to be able to see all these different stuff in London and meet different people.
Before the show began, Paul and I sat in theater’s bar for a drink. It was my first drink since I left Denmark. Actually I do not have the need to drink in here. It was fine yesterday to have double Gin-Tonic just for refreshment, but I can do without drinking as much as I do in Denmark where it seem compulsory to drink all the fucking time because there isn’t any other thing to do.
Anyways, the bar at the theater was too bloody smoky and with the little bit of a cold that I had it was torturous. However I lost my voice and I think it is due to last night’s smoke. I can hardly speak or the sounds I am capable of producing at the moment has little to do with human voice.
After post office, I went to the supermarket and then to the pharmacy and bought some Voicezone pills that is supposed to clear my voice up. So far I still sound like that fucking kinky creature in the Lord of The Rings.
I was gonna meet an Iranian friend this evening, but guess I’d better stay in and watch El Mariachi since that doesn’t require any talking from my side!