Election Night

It’s now after four in the morning, and I’m in bed watching live election coverage on CNN.com. (The BBC’s own coverage is open in another tab, but it’s not quite as interesting to watch.) The curtains are drawn, and behind the big window I can see a mini-skyline of London… the local rooftops of Bayswater, with piped chimney stacks, domes, and the treetops of Hyde Park. Other than myself, only Janis is awake; unable to sleep, she’s on her own laptop in bed, too.

My absentee ballot was faxed in on Monday. I won’t reveal any of my votes here, but I will say that I was quite torn for different reasons on both candidates. CNN has just announced that Obama is the projected winner. I’ve gotten so used to all the election coverage, both in the US and here as well (it’s amazing how much of it goes on here; British people are just as informed about it as Americans are) that it’s strange to think the momentum has finally reached a climax and, very soon, a conclusion and a new beginning. I wonder what George Bush is doing right now… Is he on a sofa, watching all this, too? Are any of his things in boxes already?

Ugh. CNN’s already hyping the race side of all this… There’s singing, sobbing, Jesse Jackson, and talk about Martin Luther King… It’s all too sickly sweet. Not to diminish the significance of black history in the making, but I’m finding it all too overdone.

…And now McCain has made his concession speech, and music reminiscent of a 90s action movie is playing as he, Palin and both their spouses exit the stage, forcing smiles… So… that’s it? People are still voting in some states, but really their votes are a formality at this point. The commentary continues, and presumably Obama will be making a speech very soon. I’d like to watch that speech, and then try to sleep… I’m a little tired of watching coverage now, though.

Darn… They’ve just said that it’ll be another 25 minutes before Obama takes the stage.

I seem to be zoning out a bit… I’m watching a bit of both the supporters’ parties. They’ve just shown a few seconds of Oprah at Obama’s party and there was some woman screaming after her (brings to mind a certain SNL skit!). Maybe I’ll wait it out, if I don’t fall asleep meanwhile.

He’s approaching the stage now… Well, that wasn’t so bad a wait. Not likely to be any surprises rhetoric-wise, but I’m curious to hear it all out anyway. Lots of thanks and pledges of hope, I imagine.

…Wow, amazing speech. Really, really amazing. Sort of makes me less apologetic to be an American abroad, too.

Well, on that note, I think I’m going to quit typing and go to bed in a couple minutes.

Oxford Street: A First

I’m barely awake… The late hours have been adding up, and my day was quite exhausting anyway. Basically, I spent some hours at BUNAC making phone calls, sending emails, and signing up for flatmate-finding websites. Around 2:30 I decided to seize what I had left of the day and go shopping. I went to Primark, on Oxford St., as per a fellow BUNAC-er’s suggestion a few days ago. It was huge, it had a lot of great stuff, and it was definitely well priced. The only thing wrong with it was the huge lines to the fitting rooms & checkouts. And I still hadn’t figured out the UK version of my shoe size. I also got Abby a birthday present at Borders, on the same street. (Side-note: I can’t believe there are THREE H&M stores on Oxford Street, and all well within a mile of each other. I like H&M, I really do, but do they really need three?!)

Getting home was more of an issue than it should have been… It began with taking the normal route from Blackfriar to St. Albans, only this time the end of the line wasn’t in St. Albans. I was alternating reading my new book (just got it from Borders – Dead Funny) and the free papers they’re always thrusting in your face in London (they’re really quite good for variety), and I was listening to my iPod. Thank goodness Gill called me after I passed Luton, or else I wouldn’t have noticed it any different. I would have been in for a surprise when I reached Bedford! But, I did go to Bedford. The only way to correct it was to get off and take an opposing train. By the time I was in Bedford, my phone had just run completely out of minutes (£10 really doesn’t get you too far, apparently), so I had to borrow a stranger’s for a minute to give Gill an update. I wound up taking a Luton-bound train to Harlington, and then from Harlington to St. Albans. Between stations, I was shivering on a bench, almost entirely on my own (I spotted some shadowy figure at a bench on the other side of the tracks once… and eventually some girl in a black trench and dress shoes crossed my path); I fiddled with my phone’s camera and read my new book to pass the half-hour that kept me there until the next train. I admit I wasn’t comfortable at all, but I’m mostly sorry that I inconvenienced Gill & Kevin to that extent… Gill had waited at the station for a half-hour during the original time I was to have arrived, and Kevin drove to the station to meet me when I was finally off the train in St. Albans.

So that’s the short version of my day. There actually was quite a lot more wandering about London around Oxford Street, but I’m going to slump over my computer any minute if I don’t get to bed.