London Bridge is Falling Down

After all this longing and waiting and after suffering through my OB/Gyn rotation, I figure London is about due. Doggonit, I am going to have a grand old time.

The flight here wasn't too bad; six hours in all with no crying babies or three-year-olds running up an down the aisle you want to strangle. I heave my impossibly large carry-on into the overhead compartment and settle next to an older couple, whose female half was rather fidgety. Just as the plane was about to shimmey onto the runway, the older woman gets up. Being that I occupied my seat by the aisle, I had to get up as well. I look around bashfully as a 100 pairs of eyes stare back as the old couple disappear into the back of the plane, compelled by the large incentive of a row of empty seats tucked near the lavatory. I was overjoyed at the prospect of having the row of 3 economy class seats on British Airways all to myself, having had a sleepless night listening to my Brazilian roommate having sex (and what sounded like a night of wild donkey rides) with this man she had met over the internet. But that is another story.

There was about 1 1/2 hours of peace. I was actually waiting for breakfast to be served before I lay myself down to sleep. Just as I could smell the full English breakfast in the cockpit recycled air, the man in the row behind asks if one of them can sit in my row for a while. I scowl, should have said no but the stupid chinese nature in me I sometimes want to stuff a sock into, acquiesces. From behind lumbers a protuberant belly with a mop of blond hair. I get up again, now, for the second time and allow the Queen from the Land o' Plenty into the seat by the window. There was a lot of heaving and heavy breathing as she settled in. And then, just as things sort of calms and the fat sort of settles, the man in the row behind starts to pass Miss Piglet her personal bag of potato chips and coke.

I am truly annoyed.

Breakfast is served. Our trays come down and everyone is sort of happy, I guess, that the smell of food is in the air. Queen o Plenty has her tray almost down. Her coke can and cup of juice is perched precariously on an incline because she can't quite get that tray past her belly to lay it flat. She reaches over for her full English breakfast and almost tips over her Bloody Mary.

I roll my eyes upwards on the sly and tried not to telepathically transmit bad thoughts.

After breakfast, I read a little, trying to enrich my knowledge about the coldest city on earth, somewhere in Siberia, where temperatures can reach to negative 45 degrees Farhenheit when I hear the undeniable sound of snoring. Queen o' Plenty has fallen asleep, potato chip in hand.

I am very truly annoyed.

Since sleep was a little out of the question, I took out my Apple and popped in a NetFlix DVD and tried to enjoy Sideways Men. Towards the very end of the movie, Queen o' Plenty, I assume, is woken up by her own snoring. She rustles about and finally asks for me to move because she has now decided she would like to go back to the seat she was originally occupying. I pause my movie and for the third time in three hours, I get up and this time, I am nonplussed and there is annoyance written across my face I did not bother to conceal.

After this, I wasn't too sure about laying down. If I lay down and put my head where the Queen had sat, I risk smelling her butt and that thought was enough to make me regurgitate my food. If I lay down where I was sitting, I risk smelling my own butt, which may or may not be better. I wasn't too keen on rediscovering myself in that way. So, I moved to the middle seat and stretched out my legs, a compromise that was better than smelling butt and finished the rest of the movie.

Ten minutes short of the end, my crap Apple battery died.

When we finally landed, I scrambled out of the plane only to hurry and get in line behind the millions of folks who all seem to want to visit London the same time I was visiting. It's hot in the imigration line and by the time it came my turn, I was ready to go.

"State the purpose of your visit," asks the immigration officer.
"I'm here to visit my sister," I beam and then for the life of me, an action I still am unable to fully comprehend, I add: "And I will be working in King's Hospital."
"Working? Where is your visa?" says the immigration officer.
"My passport doesn't require a visa and its not really working," I said. "It's more like an internship."
"Where are your education papers; what proof do you have of this internship?"
Papers? What papers? I am now scrambling for some answers in my little head, trying to remember if Nathalie Collin Smith had somehow forgotten to tell me that there were Education papers I had to fill.
"I was not aware that I had to fill out papers."

My little gravepit is steadily getting deeper.

There is a long heavy sigh and he asks again: "Why are you here in London?"
I look up at him and say: "Besides visiting my sister?" But I guess humor escapes him.
"Where is the proof that you will be doing an internship at King's?"
"I have proof in my computer," I said earnestly. "However, my battery has died on the plane."
The immigration officer looks up at me with the corner of his left eye. He doesn't look pleased.
"Can I plug it in somewhere?"

The gravepit is probably a little over six feet deep.

"I have never heard of such rubbish," he says in his perfect uppety, British accent.
"Do you have a number we can call at King's?"
"Yes, yes!" I cry. "... it's in the computer......whose batteries have just died." Gulp.
There was a very long sigh, almost unbearable.
"If I went to America," he begins to say in his almighty-I-am-about-to-give-my-white-man-lecture-to-the-inferior-race voice in his towering immigration booth that dwarfs a little asian who looks like she is about twelve, "and I gave such a ridiculous story, do you think I will be let in the country?"

You win, almighty immigration officer, you win and in my head, I was saying to any divine entity who was tunning in: "I will never call anyone fat again."

At this opportune time, his co worker motions for him to look behind me. An ever enlarging crowd of people was slowing growing, snaking their way up to the imperial immigration man.

He furiously writes away at my white card, setting in permanent history the proof of my ridiculous tale. I sweat a little but still have my wits about me and my cool. Not in one moment did I fluster to the point of jibberish, as I am prone to do. I suspect it had something to do with the Bloody Mary I had on board the plane, one I had to mix myself the vodka with tomato juice, which I neglected to stir vigorously and subsequently drank a shot of vodka in one go. Without looking at me, the imperial gate keeper says to me: "Frankly, I am too busy to bother with this nonsense so I am letting you in but next time, try to be more careful with your documents."

I took my passport and entered England with my 6-month tourist visa stamp in hand. Phew.

Excuse me, I think I am going to Baarf

Child birth is supposed to be happy, touchy, feeley time where the "aww's" and the "aahh's" come cooing out of people and tears start rolling because humanity is being revitalized with new stock.

It makes me sick like the time after drinking too thick, hot chocolate in a cute little place behind Union Square.

I gag, not at the thought of the gore and the blood and the excretions that make childbirth a little too reminescent of our animalistic past, but because of the poor ventilation in a hospital that, until recently, was destined to be closed as a result of financial ruin, and has antiquated equipment and ventilator fans that aren't working too well. The smell and the heat have put me off childbirth entirely.

Childbirth has put me off sex entirely. Now, with each act of passion, I will forever be mindful of the numerous women with protuberant bellies, who have entered through the pearly gates of Labor and Delivery and were told to bear down and push like they were making "kaka".

And some of them do, much to my dismay.

I try not to make faces, especially when these women have come in through the clinic for their prenatal visits and think I am the most patient and kindest human being known to man.

I try not to scratch my head and look puzzled as I stare at the female genitalia in its many varied forms, too embarassed to ask if what I was looking at was normal, too disturbed in the head because I cannot stop myself from asking: "And what animal is that?".

And to top it all off, I was told today that I should be an Ob/Gyn doc.

Are you kidding me?