London: Surveying and skating in Jolly Old! Summer 2014: Day 6 5/15/14 (Revising the methodology, hair appointment, epic skating and groceries, I’m not lost?, Worcesterland party)

Good afternoon/morning/evening or whatever! Today has to be the first day where I actually felt half decent waking up! So that’s a win right there! Anyways I used one of those Nutella packets and had toast with cereal. After that we came to the office and started working on revising the methodology after talking to Peng Li. He told us that we are specifically focusing on just houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs) and not the entire region. We even developed a quick 3 to 5 question questionnaire to ask those people we talk to next week. Starting next week we will be walking around the area and knocking on doors. Before this we hope to talk to Katy and get our other surveys finalized. We also sent Paul Brohan an email since he lives in the Arboretum; telling him that we will be there in the future. Once we finished revising the methodology we developed a few strategies to use if there is no response at the house. It has been a really short day this far. I had couscous for lunch and it was really good although I’m still hungry from it. More food for after skating! After finishing the methodology we basically just chilled and surfed the web waiting for our Skype call. The Skype call was really quick and was really only to check that we had settled in okay and that the project was going okay (we are good on both counts). At first the mic for Ruiz and Shockey was not picking up anything so they had to call me on my phone and use the audio from that. After the Skype call we basically went to the hair salon…

So it was time for the hair salon. I was starting to question if I really wanted to have my hair cut or not. I mean I do have Thor locks, but at the same time my hair is unwieldy when it comes to skating in all directions. I also can’t just have my hair as it is for photos because it pops out like a peacocks tailfeathers -.-// So we rolled up there at like 5:15 PM (for a 5:30) and started waiting. Shoop, Stefan and I were all getting haircuts and Nick was going to pop by the Tesco market next door. Stefan went and got his hair cut first and it took about 20 minutes or so. Then came my turn. At this point my hair started tugging at me to leave but I solemnly walked to the chair and sat down in front of the 20s aged stylist with brown hair and a British gap. I made a few jokes as I normally do when I am nervous. She asked how I wanted it cut and I said basically just start cutting. She pulled out the hedgetrimmer and started mowing…Naw just joking. But seriously she took like a good 40 minutes to cut my hair. It was like a forest dealing with it. The last cut I had gotten was back probably in early spring of last year (way before Nicaragua). At any rate I chatted with her and she snipped away. Snip snip chat chat snip chat chat snip etc for the whole time. We talked about everything from skating in the UK to Greek life to expensive food to haircuts. It was rather chill. At one point I even looked like Draco Malfoy (-.-//////////////////////) but luckily my hair ended up much cleaner and less paigeboy esque. After it she only charged my £10 ($20) despite the fact it took nearly twice as long as cutting Stefan’s hair and his cost the same. The guy in the front was saying he was playfully upset that he couldn’t get a discount after how much it took to tame my lion mane. At the end up of it I ended up with a few friends too. Shoop woke up from his nap and got his hair cut. I then went to Tesco and bought bananas and some sweet peppers for tomorrow (going to cook some chicken and pasta)! Back at the university I cooked some more couscous for dinner and let Stefan and Nick in so they could cook some salmon and pasta jawn for themselves. I left for skating at like 7:45 PM and got back around like 9:45 PM.

So I planned to just skate down to the same patio area where I had been practicing on Monday and I did, but I took the other path on the University side of the river. This turned out to be a great choice as the road on this side is really flat and smooth so I could just cruise down there. I actually came to the bridge at the end of the path across the river and headed back up to the practice area. It had been taken over by some BMX kids with a piece of plywood over some steps and I skated past and did jam skating for like 30 to 45 minutes. I practiced mostly flatland stuff and then did some intensive practice of the grapevine. They liked my skating and told me to “keep on dancing” so I guess I did alright. Then I decided to head back to the University and went the same way back up the University side of the river, but I decided to break off on another road up the hill. This lead me past the co-op supermarket and then past Sainbury’s so I decided to stop and buy some chicken, milk, yogurt and tortellini (granted I had skated this whole way). So I popped my skates off and carried them into the store. I walked around and gathered up everything headed to the self-checkout. When I got there I rang up everything but the tortellini came up as £2.15 when I thought the price on the shelf said £1. So I talked to the dude overseeing the self-checkout and he talked to the manager who checked the shelf and it was actually a misplaced box for the more expensive stuff (it was pesto and goat cheese tortellini). So the manager lady had me come to customer service and honored the lower price because someone had misplaced the box! So I save $4 there! That was epic! So I was really happy as she did not have to do that at all! Anyways after that I grabbed my chicken and other goods and started to skate back. I skated most of the same path as when Shoop and I had biked back to the University, but somewhere I took a wrong turn or missed a turn because I ended up way past the University to the West of town. So I had to stop and ask people in a pizza shop directions then go around a road for some time, ask a cop for directions, skate some more around neighborhoods way up on this hill, nearly eat it because of the rough transition between roads once, go the wrong way several times to dead ends and finally ask one University girl before I made it back to the entrance. Success! Made it without spilling anything and without being rained on! Successful skate! I got back and stored my food and got ready for the Worcesterland party where apparently I will see this chick I am skating with tomorrow afternoon! Until tomorrow everyone! Later!