London Calling (I really ought to listen to this song)

Partly copied from a message to Daryl because I am lazy:

"1) It's important to get a windbreaker for here because its very windy. Without the wind its not too cold. Mine was some Black Diamond thing I got real cheap from the New Jersey Costco. Try Queenstown.

2) There is Milo and Datu Puti (remember the Pinoy vinegar?) here. I even saw a guy selling Rendang and Nasi Lemak, like a REAL malay dude.

3) Immigration: have your documents ready on hand. There is a special queue that moves at a snails pace for first time students. Look for it (though spotting it shouldn't be too hard). When I came the est time was 3 hours+ to clear the queue. I think this is largely dependent on when your flight comes in though, because I came in at 7pm here. If you take the 12 midnight flight on SQ, you come it at about 7am when the airport first opens. I'm thinking that this means the queue to clear immigration will be substantially shorter.

4) Spend at least half a day at the Tower of London. Also wait for the guided Yeoman tour at the side entrance because it is worth sticking about with a mass of humanity. The yeoman guides are quite amusing and dodgy. I'm sure you'll get a huge kick out of it."

A few points to add on:-

5) I watched 5 movies on the flight here. Death Note (I kept lol-ing), 300 (Finally!), City Island (Loved it! Highly recommended for everyone taking SQ), Flirting Scholar (Early Stephen Chow, also highly amusing, making me giggle often) and a dodgy HK movie called Alls Well Ends Well (which I didn't really like. Some mash up of Alls Well Ends Well and Taming of the Shrew).

6) I watched 2 episodes of How I Met Your Mother for the first time. I think I might start watching the series for real. I like Barney's character.

7) Hadi, Cheam, Paul, Yihang, Ying Hao, Steph and Ianthe came to send me off. Thank you guys! I really appreciated it. Especially Hadi who had to rush to his hotsexmeeting next.

8) Immigration wasn't that bad for me in actuality. Thus begins my long grandmother story. I had earlier booked a cab for an airport pick up for 8pm without expecting the nightmare of immigration. As the queue was going to take about 3 hours+, we were frantically calling the company to either cancel the cab or to ask them to waive the waiting charges. Finally after about an hour, my parents decided to go off and take the cab themselves first, dump my stuff at the hotel and then my dad would take a train back to Heathrow to pick me up after I clear immigration. Thus they left me and went to the All Passports line. About 30 minutes later my dad came and pulled me out of the line to their own immigration officer. Apparently my mother had told the guy our dilemma and he decided to help us by passing me through. This turned out to be highly fortuitous because awaiting at the Student Immigration line was a nightmare of stern no-smiling-grilling with lots-of-document-pulling for at least 15 minutes per student. Best part? Our immigration officer looked like a real nasty fellow too, and we kept thanking him but he gruffly ignored us. He is awesome personified.

9) LSE is really really small. You can walk from one end to the other in about 7 minutes. I guess this beats sprawling campuses where you need to run from one end to the other to make classes.

10) I found the most awesome place to stay next year, but it's 213 pounds a week. Oh dear God. This makes me feel very sad. I really really need to get a job.

This is all I can think about really. For now.