Today after sending my parents off at Russell Square Station (circa 8:30am), I waved goodbye and watched them disappear behind a corner. Before turning to leave, I gave a weak smile to the tube station attendants who stood behind the barrier - sympathetic bystanders to my sadness at my parents departure. I heard one of them half shout "It'll be okay! You'll be fine!" as I walked off. I stood outside the tube station for a moment amidst the people rushing about (London always has people rushing about) and closed my eyes. I felt the cool windy air on my cheeks, drying up the little tears that were trying to escape from my closed eye lids. I took a deep breath and walked off, turning down to Russell Square.
A song kept playing in my head as I cut through Russell Square, so I took out my ipod and headed to a bench facing the main statue in the square to rest and collect my thoughts for a moment. Of course it being my luck, my ipod was out of juice. So no song. (I can't even pretend like my life is a movie because things like that happen to me. And well, if it was a movie that would have either been the ending, or a beginning - I still can't decide which was more apt.) I ended up looping about the statue and completely ignoring the bench, heading straight for my hall.
As I walked into the hall, I bumped into my roommate, Zoe, who was about to head out to get some semblance of breakfast. Instead I ended up going back to the room with her and giving her a museli bar instead. I then managed to set up the internet connection on my computer, mucked about a bit, unpacked completely, pushed half filled suitcases on top of the wardrobe (I really brought too much stuff! ): )
Around 9:45 am, Zoe and I left the room to walk to LSE for registration. We ended up bumping into some people she met before, from Passfield Hall, in the reception area. We ended up walking with some of the guys there to LSE. At LSE itself, the queue for registration was a nightmare. It was literally 'pai chang loong', and registration didn't even open up till 10:00am! In the queue itself, we also met other random people and started conversations. It really seems like everyone is on extra friendly mode now (thank goodness). We managed to leave the mess at about 11:30 am I think.
A few of us went to the quad (I think) to have lunch. The floor was damn sticky. It was like electrical tape lined the entire floor. As you stepped, you could feel yourself being glued to the floor, and rubber shoes like mine went SHICK SHICK SHICK. As you can tell by now, all you raging alcoholics, there was apparently an awesome party there last night and the quad people hadn't had time to clean up yet. The floor was a thick layer of spilled alcohol. Yay?
After that the four of us went to the Fresher's Fayre. It was a nightmare of crowd and heat. Too many goddamn people. We ended up getting separated, so Zoe and I stuck together. I ended up joining random clubs like the Hummus society (some sort of random social club that likes middle eastern food), Debate (didn't really want to, but the booth guy talked me into it. Must go to learn how he did it.), Afghanistan Development (apparently a middle eastern affairs group), Photography, Literature, Amnesty International and MMA (finally!). I kept looking for the group in the Student Union handbook called Post-Insane, but failed to find them after a 30 minute (CROWDED!!!) wild goose chase. Fail.
We left the Fayre and went to meet the 2 guys we got separated from for a few minutes before Zoe and I went to the Bank Fair briefly (her to set up and account and me to chase Barclays for my damn account). Then we walked over to Covent Garden and I bought some cheap (relatively) foldable shoe boxes from Muji. I fixed one just now to put my food and they are a pain to assemble -___- but I think I got the trick. Then we walked to Goodge and bought food from the Sainsburys there and backtracked to Argos to buy Cutlery (which is damn cheap compared to all the other places I've seen, don't get ripped off by the others fellow new UK-ers!). Then we walked back, cutting through Bloomsbury and past the British Museum and SOAS.
At 6:30pm we headed down for dinner (the interim of which I was sniffling away and feeling sad) and it was a sad lamb dish. At least the potatoes were nice. Even the veggies were sad. The broccoli turned a strange shade of grey-green and the peas were a vivid too green that they looked fake and dyed green. Sad sad sad. However the dinner partners weren't. I met a guy who turns out to be doing the same course as me. After he left this post grad came and sat in his seat, and we ended up laughing and giggling away so much during dinner about random things like unis, drunk people and weed. We both laughed so much that I think we got really high. After that I felt a bit sick, like someone sucked the air out of me, and my throat felt mucked up.
At 8:30pm, Zoe and I went to join a group of people, who for some odd reason all turned out to be South-East Asians that came from not very Chinese/South Asian ethnicity backgrounds. Basically what I mean is not the kind that you typically associate as being sticky to Chinese only. It just turned into a large coincidence. We walked down past Russell Square to a pub under Royal National Hotel (quite bad rooms, but cheap) and I had a pint of cider. The group split into 2 because of table arrangements, which was just as well since I prefer being in a small group as talking is easier. Then at 10:30pm, we left for the 5 minute slow walk back to the dorm.
And thus ends the first daye.
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