Happy St. Patrick's Day!

On St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish! And, apparently, 19 years old. We went out with Brenda to Twickenham to celebrate with some other friends of hers from Ireland. Twickenham is all the way out in zone 5; it's probably not even officially London.

We got shamrocks painted on our faces (with eyeliner and green glitter nailpolish) and people were eating green vodka jello, something I don't think I've seen since I was in college. We listened to The Pogues and The Dubliners and one of the Irish girls even did a bit of dancing. Maybe next year we'll get Brenda to dance for us.

My favorite part of the evening was the bus ride from our hosts' house to the pub. There were some Irish guys on the bus who commiserated with our group about Ireland's rugby loss earlier in the day, expressing outrage at the obviously unfair calls made against the home team. Being St. Patrick's Day, this led naturally into belting out Irish songs on the upper deck of the bus. It was good craic.

I had been joking about how we would end up at an O'Neill's, which is a chain of Irish pubs in England. (Although America is the king of chains, we don't seem to have pub chains.) The pub we usually go to is an O'Neill's across the street from our office. Brenda complains about it for not being authentically Irish, but passing itself off as such and also because they're not generally the nicest pubs around, though they're cheap and relaxed.

In the end, we actually did try to go to an O'Neill's last night, but there was a huge queue out the door and down the block, even in sleepy Kingston. We ended up instead at a Wetherspoons, which is another pub chain and the only pub Brenda likes less than O'Neill's. They're even cheaper and tend to be cavernous, so you can usually find a place to sit. On the other hand, there were a lot of very drunk kids to contend with.

We finally got to meet Alicia's boyfriend Eric, who is studying in Nottingham. They are both from Mexico, and this was their first St. Patrick's Day. I think they should bring it back with them to Mexico when they return.

The Knowledge

A woman in my Chinese class told me about The Knowledge, which is what you must have if you want to become a licensed taxi cab driver in London.

You may be licensed either for the whole of London or for one or more of the 16 suburban sectors. The "All London" licence requires you to have a detailed knowledge of the 25,000 streets within a six mile radius of Charing Cross with a more general knowledge of the major arterial routes throughout the rest of London. If you wish to work as a taxi driver in central London or at Heathrow Airport you need an "All London" licence.

25,000 streets! Julie, who was telling me about this, said that the test might not be as rigorous anymore, since they all have GPS now. That's rather sad, since this is really impressive and makes taking a cab possibly worth the price. (Here's the official site.)

Petition

Avaaz.org continues their attempt to do internationally what MoveOn.org has been doing in the U.S.. Their latest petition will be presented in person to the German Environment Minister, who is chairing an international meeting on climate change this week. Sign on! If enough of us clamour for action, maybe even the U.S. government will listen.

I got a Flat Stanley!

Flat Stanley arrived safely last night after a long and tiresome but uneventful journey. He's still a bit jetlagged and cramped from the flight, but hopefully he'll straighten out soon.

I can't wait to take him around London, but I'm afraid Sarah may have overestimated the excitement of my life here. Her class might be disappointed when he comes back with a series of photos alternating between Flat Stanley at my office and Flat Stanley at the pub across the street from my office (where hopefully he can avoid the dreaded fate of being used as a coaster, or "drink mat" as they say here). Actually, last week at the pub we met a guy who does origami, a hobby that must really put the fear of God into a fellow like Flat.