Letter Home (SHINE Competition Entry)

[This is something I whipped up for some international student competition a few months ago I wasn’t planning on entering but at the last minute decided to have a go at. Didn’t win anything in the end, but it was fun to write. Thanks to all of you who tell me my stories are entertaining, whether they actually are or not.]

 

Dear Mum and Dad,

Life in the UK is good (oh, I learned the difference between ‘England’, ‘Britain’, and ‘the UK’, by the way). More than good; it’s fantastic. My main source of information on Britain having been childhood literature like Robin Hood and Harry Potter, I had some pretty fanciful perceptions which I fully expected to be disappointed. They were not.

Sure, there aren’t wizards flying around on broomsticks (that I know of), but history and culture is positively oozing from every building I see. Before I left Japan, when I would tell people I was going to Bradford, aside from never once failing to have the link between my name and that of my destination pointed out, I certainly received a number of surprised looks from those who’d heard anything more about the city. However, the slight worry that began to stir in me was unfounded. It’s lovely here. As you saw, I couldn’t help but snap loads of pictures as soon as I arrived, and not just because of ingrained Japanese tourist tendencies.

I quickly took the opportunity to do a bit of traveling around West Yorkshire, which only served to confirm my amazement. In addition to modern city features such as malls and museums in Bradford and the nearby Leeds, there’s also wide countryside, rustic villages, massive ruins, the whole gamut. It might just be the faery-tale lenses on my eyes, but I think colours are more vivid here. The sky definitely is; it’s certainly not dreary grey as often as I was led to believe.

Speaking of added colour, since coming here I’ve expanded my vocabulary with words such as ‘rather’, ‘smashing’, ‘cheers’, and ‘yoright’, which basically means, “What’s up?”. I’ve also learned to spell properly, but it seems that I don’t pronounce things quite correctly.

On that front, however, I have had a kind of success. Like many others, before coming, I was guilty of assuming there to be a sort of ‘standard’ accent, like there is in Japan and, to a certain extent, the US. There doesn’t seem to be, or if there is, it’s certainly not to be found in Yorkshire, much less this uni. To the contrary, I’ve been surrounded by a mad swirl of different pronunciations since arriving, but am slowly starting to match accents to regions and cities. Fortunately, I picked up early on that no matter how curious I am to see whether my fledgling instincts are correct, I must never ask, “Is your accent Scottish or Irish?”.

Even though I had very little idea what I’d be studying in my chosen course, “peace studies”, this too has turned out to be excellent. I’m learning so much about, well, everything, and because we’re given a range of essay questions to choose from, I basically get to study what I want. One day I read all about the Chilean coup of 1973, the next day I went from knowing nothing about the British political system to having a much better understanding of it than either the American or Japanese ones. This culminated in getting to sit in on a Parliamentary session in Westminster, which most people would probably find boring but for me was, like all else, enchanting. It was a bit of a struggle towards the end of term to finish all my essays, but I was able to pull through and emerge into the sunlight of five glorious weeks of break.

I had the most amazing Christmas and New Year’s experience because I chose to spend a chunk of that break in London, the mecca of my magical expectations for this island. For twenty days straight I walked the streets, took in the sights, visited museums, and stayed at strangers’ houses thanks to a wonderful travel website called Couchsurfing. Between that, trying out hostels for the first time, and Megabus, I was able to have this entire adventure for quite cheaply; in fact, with my remaining few days of break I did the same with Edinburgh and was blown away, again. I’m absolutely chuffed to be making friends not only at uni but ‘all throughout the land’.

People ask me what my favourite thing in London was, and I suspect they wouldn’t be entirely satisfied with ‘standing amidst broad, old, tall, new buildings with my senses wide open, soaking in the the very spirit of the city itself’. But that’s the truest answer and also a pretty fitting description of my experience in Great Britain in general. It’s exceeded my expectations in virtually every aspect, and often I feel it’s almost unfair that my life should be so good.

I suppose this is what all those hours of teaching English last year really were for. And the complexity of getting academic transcripts and bank statements from both Japan and the US. And the scholarship essays. And the risk of committing three years to a place I’d only seen the website for. Well worth it.

So that’s been my first few months trying to convince the natives how great their country is, and I’m looking forward to what the next semester, and next few years, will unveil.

Love you much, and yes, I’ll try to be on Skype more regularly this year.

-Bradley

Day 19: Lift-Off?

Today was the big day, the day to embark on our journey to London. Today was the to pierce the shroud of mystery and awe, to climb the holy mountain, to scale the walls of the techno-literati citadel. Today was the day Christmas break would truly begin, in true romantic Dickens-plus-modern-wonder style.

Today was the day…but today was the day we missed our bus.

It was my fault. Not completely, but mostly. It was certainly my fault that I left until this morning a few too many odds and ends to tie up, including failing to finish off my food and so making it into massive BLTs to take along. I tend to do that – leaving too many things until the last minute, I mean, although I do a fair share of massive BLT-making as well. Without fail, the final touches of any project take far longer than foreseen, at least for me, because I am that fatal combination of ambition, perfectionism, and optimism.

What wasn’t entirely my fault was that the Megabus ‘station’ (turning out to be an unmarked point on the side of the road) was waaay farther away than it looked like on Google Maps. We counted on fifteen, maybe thirty minutes to walk there from the uni. It ended up taking closer to an hour, and that was lugging our big bags, mine being an oversized carry-on with a bum wheel that would only degenerate over the duration of the trip – in several inches of snow. It was pretty yes, but the scenery didn’t do much to stop our hearts from sinking when we came to an intersection we figured to be about halfway and were faced with a massive hill.

At long last, and me starting to sweat under my ample clothing (including a newly purchased coat I was happy to find could double as an everyday winter coat and a snowboarding jacket, wasn’t too bulky, and came in my favourite colour), we arrive at the top of the hill only to find that we didn’t know which way to go. We’d expected to be at the bus stop by then, but after asking someone and walking on, actually had to walk fifteen more minutes down the road to a much larger intersection. It was at that intersection that we saw our Megabus pulling away. It had even been a few minutes late. It passed right in front of us.

Our slight worry turned to despair, even more so as we called and woke up a flatmate and got him to check the Megabus schedule online, only to find that there were no more buses that day. We began the long walk back.

Graciously, my fellow adventurer was still in good spirits, an attitude he continued to exhibit throughout the whole experience. I admire that. I have optimism, but the perfectionism can be pretty critical, especially when I know something is very much my fault. On the way back, knowing Bradford’s reputation and a story from our other flatmate that he’d heard what sounded like someone trying to break into the halls a few days previously, we joked about the chance of us getting back to find our rooms already burgled. Fortunately, these jokes did not materialise into a significant plot twist for this blog (sorry guys).

Also fortuitously, we were able to cancel our hostel reservations for that night, and purchase Megabus tickets for the next morning, same time. With nothing else to do, we crashed until that evening when we went out with some of the few students who were still in Bradford (well, I say that because that’s what it felt like, but what’s probably closer to the truth is that there were plenty of international students remaining, who might very well remain over the entire break, most of them being, for whatever reason, Chinese, but they kept to their own spaces so the campus felt deserted). I had a whiskey sour for the first time – nice. I had mulled wine for the first time – delicious. I finished some of the food I’d had nothing to do with.

Stark reality v. challenger’s spirit: one-nil.

Day 18: Star Wars Marathon (Part 2)

Alright, where were we in my saga…ah yes. The remaining two movies came out, I duly enjoyed them, though I really don’t like Natalie Portman or Hayden Christensen and some parts were rather Hollywood-esque. Being older, I couldn’t help but notice the technical aspects a bit more – my youthful innocence-likeness replaced by the criticalness of age. But the story was still far more valuable to me. I even attempted to watch the animated series they made about the Clone Wars, taking place in between the second and third films, but that, I could not suffer through. The main character was a whiny American teenage girl, no discipline, completely went against the grain of Star Wars. Criminal. The Clone Wars books, on the other hand, are excellent, and I rue that I’ve only been able to get my hands on one of them (the video game was brilliant as well).

I haven’t read any Star Wars books in quite a while. I’ve accumulated a small collection of them which I intend to continue building on, but having moved around loads in the past few years, they’re boxed away and scattered across several continents. One day I’ll bring all my stuff together and have a nice flat in London that I return to every once in a while. Something like that. Would be nice if it had a music room as well. See, there’s my ideal life path, and there’s the actual life path which will be much better and may or may not incorporate aspects of my idealised version.

So that’s my story with Star Wars. It’s a big part of me, though I don’t access it as much anymore. I noticed again just how big it is after I got talking about it with a friend and realised I could go on and on (at his expense). If you could go on and on about it as well, I’d love to get together sometime. Just use this Grade A chat-up line I just heard on 30 Rock: (in a bar) “So, they make you leave your droids outside too?” Quality. I’d probably talk all night with someone who approached me with that line. I may use it. The reactions, at least, will be amusing.

My favourite character is Boba Fett. If you know anything about him beyond the films, you’ll know that he is straight-up BA. But with principles. And heart, way down. The best kind of BA. I actually did loads of research on him and Mandalorians in general at one point, drawing together every bit of info I could from the sprawling internets, organising it chronologically and classing it by level of canon (if you don’t know what canon is, I’m surprised you read this far; this is clearly not the post for you). Found so many stories, in addition to the ones I’d read in books. He took out an entire Imperial garrison one time, you know. He survived the Sarlacc, for crying out loud! (And you say, Twice!) And the whole multiple-encounters-with-Han-Solo-all-throughout-their-lives thing is just delicious.

So yeah, if you hadn’t already guessed, this and the previous post are devoted completely to my geeky side, because it’s definitely big enough to merit attention, and I think everyone should have at least a bit of a geek in them.

Okay, now the actual marathon. It was funny. We weren’t at someone’s home, we were at some community centre; I’m not sure what the connection was but it was a big room (and fortunately, a kitchen). Snacks, check (I brought some Japanese jellies that my parents sent over. Didn’t realise they would seem so strange here). Two projectors, check. Someone had brought a video games console with FIFA and the intent to play it, which was disheartening, but what can you do. The unfaithful ones.

It was freezing in there. Some had brought sleeping bags but there weren’t enough to go around, and even after I snagged one, it was chilly. It may’ve had a polarpoint presentation effect in keeping us awake, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable. Nevertheless, we began the challenge with The Phantom Menace. Man, it was good to hear those opening horn blasts. That tune will always get me pumped up. I used to feel the same way about the 20th Century Fox sound, and the THX vroom, until I realised those weren’t specific to Star Wars.

Despite coming dangerously close to dozing off in the middle of the later films, every time one finished we hurriedly popped in the next. I say that figuratively; one guy had them all downloaded on his computer. And thank goodness we had bacon sandwiches, though we nearly burnt down the building cooking them.

Tragically, with six films to get through it took longer than one night and we were forced to quit late Saturday morning in the middle of Episode V. Actually, ‘forced to quit’ is putting it forgivingly – a certain owner of the computer containing the gems decided he had to leave, and shut it off. To be honest, I wasn’t as engaged as I should’ve been. It’s hard to watch over ten hours of film and stay alert, all the more so at night after a pattern of nonexistent nighthood. (I watched the final two some time later.)

It was fascinating to watch them again; it’d been a long time and I was much younger then. Now I could see more underlying themes, like the imperialism of the Empire and the politics of the Galactic Senate.

One thing you observe when going from the new ones to the old ones (like I said before, we watched them chronologically, and though I was all for that, I’ve now been convinced that it’s better to go with the older films first, to not let them be shown up graphics-wise) is that the old ones have far fewer alien species and more ‘human’ characters, but less diversity among the humans. And while this is easily explainable considering the Empire’s anti-alien brand of racism, it does also reveal the evolution of film (I’m older, remember; I don’t have the luxury of taking in only the story – or being completely taken in, rather). Computer graphics are much more advanced, so aliens are easier to do without messing with costumes. Globalisation allows actors to come from all over for a big break at Hollywood, and it’s not so Cold War-nationalistic anymore (reference to the old Indiana Jones films which I also watched recently).

However, I am not a film critic; I am critical but I leave the review business to my friends. And I’ve delved deeply enough into my relationship with Star Wars for one (well, two) posts. Put simply, it was good to enter into that world again, and I do intend to one day write a Star Wars book. I have to become a good writer first, however, which is partly what this is about, though I really should be doing more fiction.

I didn’t do much for the rest of today; just finished up packing and attempted to finish off all my food, which turned out to be a bigger chore than I’d foreseen.

Going to bed excited about going to my favourite city in the world for the first time on the morrow! (Isn’t life wonderful when you decide that where you’re headed is where you most want to be? Or would it be: isn’t life wonderful when you decide to head where you most want to be?)