With my work, this week contained much of the same tinkering with methodologies and preliminary data-gathering that last week contained. As such, I’ll focus more on the side quests at work! As an intern, I was tasked with doing something I really enjoy: making deliveries! I’m mostly joking, this is not the usual task of an intern; rather, due to the work from home opportunities at the ISD, there were occasional times where I would escape the heat of my non-air-conditioned flat into the blessedly air-conditioned office only to find that I was the only one there for the day. On one of these days, the organization’s founder was flying into London and needed an item from the office delivered to her, and as the only one close enough to the office to grab the item without massive delays, I was asked if I could make the delivery. In keeping with my intention to explore more of London, I said “no problem!”

This week, I also went with friends to explore Canary Wharf, a newly built area in the East of London, as well as the Tate Modern. Canary Wharf was a host to many activities clearly suited for the young after-work crowd that congregated in the area’s beer gardens, one such activity included watching a vintage film on a boat! My friend and I watched the 1946 film, “A Matter of Life and Death,” which is now at the top of my list for films I love. But the real artistic star of the show for this week were Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals. These are paintings that I have been waiting to see for years, ever since I read about them in my 9^th grade art class. Though they are what people typically criticize with modern art – they are largely formless shapes of red and black on canvasses – what I had been hearing for years is that, when the murals share a room together, nobody can deny their overwhelming atmosphere. As it turns out, that’s entirely true. These paintings suffocate the viewer in the most interesting way, like how TV static can sometimes become hypnotic, even as it never lets up in its sensory abrasiveness. I loved it. 10/10, would explore London in these ways again.