Of Roommates and Flatmates

I have done and spent very little of today awake. I woke up around 12pm (surprise, considering I went to sleep only with the aid of melatonin around 4am), and then dozed off around 2pm to 4pm when I was reading in bed. I have just finally managed to force myself into doing something productive, which was cleaning the kitchen. This time, rather than clearing the ledge with the plant, knife blocks and wine bottles, I opted to clean the oven door instead.

It was very strange cleaning the oven door. As I cleaned it, I wondered how long it was since the last person cleaned it. As I recalled further, I remembered that when we moved in, out of cleaning the entire kitchen, Ching and I didn't clean the oven. But since then, various people have cleaned the kitchen other than me (probably about a combined 5 times from both Ching and Zoe since we decided to specialize in our duties). Then there was the time I apparently put a styrofoam base into the oven under a frozen pizza when I thought it was cardboard. The story then goes that Christoph saw it and cleaned it up before I saw it because he didn't want to make me upset. Did he, or any of my flatmates clean the poor oven then? I don't know.

What was interesting however was that I realise the oven door actually isn't tinted slightly brown/sepia-ey. The moment my sponge and yellow rubber gloves touched the door, the brown gunk promptly stucked EVERYWHERE. The yellow sponge turned brown in a split second. I do not exaggerate. It's like it was just sitting there, waiting to be touched to be removed. I didn't even have to scrub very hard. As I gingerly scrubbed away with my sponge, I noted the dominant smell of the oven was of chocolate cake. I made chocolate cake last term around Week 5, which would've been early November 2010. It smelt the same as my chocolate cake, which was too chocolatey for its own good and collapsed under its own sheer density. It came out more like the richest brownie I could've ever imagined.

Anyway I digress. As I was cleaning the kitchen, I was thinking about the whole idea of flatmate-ing, and roommate-ing. One of my flatmates from this year was Zoe, my roommate from last year. You'd think living in such confined quarters together, that things would not differ from this year. They have. Now don't get me wrong, I actually really really care and like Zoe. But inevitably, as with all humans with their unique idiosyncrasies, people can and will grate on each other. An example is the issue of slamming doors. For some goddamned reason Zoe cannot close the front door silently. I suspect she even gets a kick out of slamming the door. On a scale of irritating behaviours, this is actually something like a 2/10. But depending on the time of the day, the mood I am in, that could rise on the scale very significantly. Then there are little stuff, like who throws out the trash (which I admit to being an extremely lousy flatmate for), suspicions that people are not doing their duties in turn. Another thing about girls is the hair accumulation in the shower, which I feel I remove very often. All these little irritants add up, and colour perceptions whether valid or not with each other.

Which brings me to my original point, regarding staying in the same flat with your close friends. It is not a good idea. On Weds when Jia and I met up for a lovely sushi dinner at Atariya, we spoke briefly about this. Little things that one finds endearing in a friend, might not necessarily translate to being a good flatmate. An example is about a house I know where a group of close friends stay. One of them is known for being self-interested. As friends, its something one can laugh about, since he does take the piss out of himself too. As a flatmate, it turns out he actually is self-interested. He takes and uses things without paying, never takes the initiative to purchase combined household items, and leaves messes in the kitchen without cleaning up. That translates into being a horrid flatmate. As for the group of them, their relationship is rather strained now. When looking for flatmates, its best to not look for how close you are them them sometimes, but rather how they are in their lifestyles, habits and behaviour. If you're a messy person, room only with messy people, etc. Little things like that can very much affect how much you enjoy being at home.

And the most important point: never move in with your boyfriend with other mutual friends. By this I mean for example, in a 3 person flat where you and your boyfriend have a room each. Don't be either party, the couple, or the third wheel. The couple will gang up on the other person if they work out, and it they don't work out the other person will invariably need to take sides. If you're in the couple that does break up, then you will be stuck with seeing the ex all the time. Either way at a given time, someone is miserable. Of course this does not affect all living arrangements, but it is a good rule of thumb. If you want to move in with your chosen partner, do it when its just the two of you, and not with a random other person. I've heard enough horror stories regarding this to look upon all such arrangements with a sense of dread.

Settler Aggression

This is ridiculous. I think I am less recovered from last week than I am ready to acknowledge. On the BBC website, I saw a picture of cricket fans stuffed into queues attempting to buy tickets for the cricket world cup. When I saw the picture, I instantly felt very sad because 1) they're passionate enough about something to suffer just to buy those tickets and 2) some of them might be disappointed because there aren't enough tickets available. 1) is because I haven't felt lively enough in ages, and that's what I was reminded of when I saw the queues, but 2) really strikes a chord because it's like I can almost feel the disappointment of not being able to get what you've really want, and worked so hard to achieve.

The last time a photograph had such an impact on my feelings, it was when I saw this picture from the Gaza Strip:


I will eat a banana, and then attempt to sleep again.

Coca Cola

I am yet again awake at a ghastly hour. Earlier, from about 8 to 10-ish, I feel deeply asleep. I had one of those deep sleeps which takes ages for the body to reawaken, yet you wake up more tired than before. It was one of those deep sleeps where you remember and (especially) have really strange dreams which feel very real, but are very strange. So instead of sleeping at a proper time, I am now awake at 3:26am typing away.

I had earlier lay in bed and attempted to sleep. While I lay there I thought of many things, too many things in fact. I started to feel distressed and panicky. Chief of these was the fact that I felt that I had lied to one of my government tutors about why I was missing for class today. Honestly, I had not done the work. I had seen the readings, but had missed the lecture the week before, and as a result I all saw was a bunch of incomprehensible statistics and probability formulas. But at the same time the reason I gave was valid. I did, and have been, running on about 5-6 hours sleep every night from Tuesday onward. Thursday, my day to sleep in was ruined when Camden Council decided to be maddeningly efficient for once and cut the damn grass at 8am in the morning. I was already starting to feel the effects on my body and my psyche yesterday evening, but had I have really wanted to go to the class, I could have pushed myself. I feel guilty because although my reason was valid, I knew I could've done better had I wanted to.

Which brings me to yet another distressing thought: more essays and mock exams. It's not so much the act of preparing and doing it that worries me (surprising, even to me), I realised, but the fact that I have seemed to be consistently under-performing. Today, while having drinks with the usual people at 5pm on Fridays, they spoke briefly about essays. One said the lowest he'd ever gotten was 59. The other said he was used to scoring high 60s on his essays. I did not participate in that particular conversation but instead smiled, nodded, and laughed as appropriate. Just the thought that I have been getting nothing but 58/59 for all my essays this year was enough to diminish any joy I had within me for that moment. Worse still, it was not something I felt I could allow myself to admit to other people. It makes me feel like a failure.

Last time, something like that would not have affected me to this extent. I am used to under-performing. The report books of my past are littered with comments like "is a bright girl... I don't understand why she gets the grades she does". Unfortunately this seems to be a 14 year rut I seem to be unable to get out of. No matter how much I try, seeing teachers, seeing writers-in-residence, I never seem to be able to break the barrier. I have no idea what to do. And the fact that I don't know what to do, the fact that it scares me so much, makes me go into denial and attempt to push the thoughts out of my mind. This means however that whenever I am reminded, my mood takes in instant leap into a void. I had hoped things would've been different in University (although it could be a British style education that doesn't agree with me in general), but its really the same as when I did the IB/O Levels/PSLE.

I had originally hoped to post about the very tasty Vietnamese food I've been having of late in the Clerkenwell area with Christoph, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

*Instead of drinking a pint today with the guys at 5pm, I drank a can of coke because alcohol would've put me to sleep instantly.

Tuesday, Week 7

Apparently there is no hot water at home again. I think I was the last person who had a hot shower this morning before I left for school. Wasn't my fault, I didn't break anything. In fact, someone (it might've been me, but the pettiness inside blames it on another flatmate) knocked off my shower gel and didn't move it back upright. The whole bathroom, much to my chagrin, now smells like Sanex Moisturising shower gel. I was upset to see what must've been 1/4 of the shower gel all over the sides of the bathtub, leaking out, when I got home to investigate the panicked texts of a flatmate (perhaps she was the one who tipped over my shower gel and didn't put it back upright!!!).

So anyway back to the investigation, after testing all the taps in the house I determined that the water pressure of all the cold water taps in the house was much much more lower than usual. Usually if you turn the cold water tap in the kitchen on the slightest bit, BOOM, your clothes are all wet from the intensity of the splatter of water. This has happened to me numerous times because the tap directions are a bit counter-intuitive. It did not happen this time. ALSO, after just going to the kitchen for my nutella sandwich, I have discovered to my chagrin that I am right, there is no more cold water coming out from the taps. It is a Camden Council problem after all, not of my dearly beloved landlord.

I suppose the perks of having freaked out so much last week is that I am oddly sanguine about this whole water business now. I've run out of energy to freak out. Well, that and perhaps because this is the second time in weeks that this has happened (I think it was Week 4 when the water stopped working).

-----

I originally wanted to blog about my day today, when I was eating a Wright's Bar sandwich (with salad, extra 25p) and was wandering around the East Building. I didn't want to disturb the calm of the History Common Room, and so went outside. There however, I was in a hallway surrounded by the doors of various professors and such of the History department. One door at the end of the hallway was open too, and I could hear talking from inside. Feeling a bit silly and awkward, I decided to move onto the staircase area. It was unusually cold because someone had left a window open (and today itself was a pretty chilly day) so after consuming one sandwich, I moved on to look for somewhere warmer.

My search for a warmer part of the building brought my downstairs, past rooms bearing more familiar names, and onto the link bridge of the East Building with the Clare Market Building where I found a warm radiator. I promptly propped myself against it, munching on my sandwich while hoping no one noticed me. This was because again, I was in a very weird and awkward position, eating a sandwich randomly outside offices. Of course as it always is with such situations when you hope you're not seen, two people walked by while I kind of shrank inwardly. Soon after I finished up my sandwich and scarpered back to the Common Room to continue my reading.

-----

I hope Camden Council fixes the water soon.

A Recount

Looking back at the comments written on previous posts by kind commenters, I feel guilty. Unfortunately it's guilt for feeling something that I felt, and therefore not quite something that I can change. I don't know. I am slowly feeling better. The weather outside is very gloomy today.

8th Feb, Tuesday, I went to the National Portrait Gallery with Shu Wen to see the Taylor Wessing portrait prize.

12th Feb, Saturday, I celebrated Dexter's birthday with some other friends at Tiny Robot. The food was good, but strange. We went back to Jon's and watch the remainder of Shaun of the Dead (which I had previously seen with Ianthe, Steph and Jiahui during Summer last year).

15th to the 16th, Tuesday to Wednesday, I skipped school and hid at home to lie low.

17th Feb, Thursday, I went shopping. I walked from school to Covent Garden, then to Leicester Square, cutting through Soho to reach Oxford Circus. It was a nice, sunny day.

18th Feb, Friday, I went for the Talking With Nazis talk by Laurence Rees, then I went to Kam Fung to eat dinner with Christoph.

Today, I'll be watching True Grit with Christoph at the Barbican, followed by dinner afterwards. I received the Calvin and Hobbes comic book I bought the other day on Amazon. I might go for a run. I ought to clean the kitchen. I am resolved not to do any studying today.

Que Sera Sera

Last night I attended an LSE Literary Fest talk by Laurence Rees (there seem to be various versions with regards to the exact spelling of his name) called Talking with Nazis. He was an ex-BBC producer of historial documentaries around the WW2 era (why the hell does that sound like such an awesome job, and why aren't there more like that to go around?) and did one of the first documentaries about Germany and the Nazis. As a companion to the talk he gave, which was on the nature of interviews and interviewees, we watched some clips of interviews conducted with old SS guards and a woman who denounced her neighbour. For the optimists, it's not a sob fest of the interviewees crying their regret, and for the pessimists it wasn't a straightforward denial (they did agree to be interviewed after all). Instead it was insightful listening and watching to their responses. It was just simple, plain, matter-of-fact recounting. I did it, but I won't tell you whether I have regrets. It was part compartmentalisation and part self-denial. It was an excellent, refreshing talk.

That wasn't really why I wanted to post about last night's talk, though I seem to have accorded it a nice paragraph without really setting out to do so. I went home and googled Laurence Rees, and it turned out he wrote one of the core texts that I used for my extended essay in IB. The fact that I had actually handled his work, read his words and seen his person (albeit retroactive realising) made me excited (retroactively), so I spent a solid few minutes bugging the hell out of a Philip Pullman-reading Christoph. That was exciting.

In other news, my digestive system seems to have gone completely haywire. Last night before I went to bed, I ate a pile of pasta and went to sleep straight away. 4 hours later I wake up, bloated and hungry and unable to sleep as a consequence. I spend the next 30 minutes eating all sorts of random things, toast, biscuits, slices of ham before I am full enough to go to sleep. I wake up 5 hours later, still tired, and now completely bloated. My stomach feels so sick, and its been like this for the past few days.

Week 6

After talking to some friends today, I realised that a lot of people have been burnt out from school too. However, their burn out manifests in less destructive ways, as my skin surely attests to.

Perhaps next week will be better.

I haven't wished this in a long time

but I wish I was dead now.

I am very tired of living, and attempting to live.

Pesce

Week 5 is finally here, and by extension A Week of Hell right after a week of Preparing for Hell. I am very tired.

Today I finally stumbled upon a good recipe which is fairly chinoise enough for my palate. White fish, cod in my case, marinated in a soy sauce-chopped garlic-brown sugar-sesame sauce mix. Tastes almost like the soon hook my grandma would always order in restaurants back home.

Thank God for valium and Yes Minister.

Fuck Internships

I don't know what to do with my life.

First off, my grades are crap. No one wants to hire anyone who's managed to fuck up her First Year in Uni and get a 2:2. Nevermind that I missed it by 0.666666 marks. Fuck the rounding up and rounding down system.

Second off, the things I actually am interested in are very hard to get due to numbers. The world has too many PhDs running around clawing at academia and think tanks as it is. Even working in NGOs is hard for the same reason, too many people and too little places.

Thirdly, I can't take a job that is high stress. I simply cannot cope with stress or insomnia (which is brought about by stress anyway), because at the rate my neuroses are going, I am going to end up dead sooner rather than later - and that's just with the stress LSE brings.

Lastly, and worst of all, I have no confidence in myself at all to even go out and apply for anything. Even rubbish like HR wants applicants to have a 2:1. In the eyes of the competitive working world, I am nothing even with my shiny expensive degree from LSE and intelligence.

I hate it when people ask me about the future, because presently, I have none.

Drei

Since I have not been doing this for some time, I have decided to write about 3 books that I have read recently.

Imre Kertész's Detective Story took a while to get a hold on me. At the end however, I was left with a fairly discernable impression. It was not enough however, to strike quite a resounding chord with me. A good read nonetheless.

Anne Tyler's Digging to America was highly entertaining. Jumping from narrator to narrator, I especially loved the bits the grandmother Maryam narrated. I even brought the book the school on multiple occasions to read when I was between classes. Still at the end, it seemed to lack a little something (or as Jia puts it, umami).

The best of all 3 however, was Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. The titular story did not impress me as much as the latter three short stories did. When it comes to a well executed and finished story, Capote is simply one of the best. The problem I usually have with short stories is that they ring hollow when they finish. Sometimes, you even wonder about the motivation for even wanting to write them. They tell something unsatisfactorily and answer nothing. This was especially the case for Enright's Taking Pictures and D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum. Capote however tells and sums up a good yarn.

Eating Animals

Apparently I am heartless. On Wednesday, I somehow managed to drag my hungover ass into the Old Theatre by 6:25pm (luckily, because at 6:45pm the lecture theatre was full), and listening to Jonathan Safran Foer talk about his newest book (albeit published more than a year ago), Eating Animals. As some of you might have recalled, I am a great fan of his writings. Every year that I have read them, every year they have made my list of Top Ten Reads (which reminds me that the 2010 one is still tardy :/) Going for a talk by him, even though I like my meat very much, seemed only natural.

So anyway I went and listened. He was very good and very convincing. Not everyone can go vegetarian he argued, but surely you can give it up for just one meal a week? And he's right. Unfortunately while my mind and my heart, arguably thinking organs, I am unable to reason with my stomach. 30 minutes after eating a satisfying meal of spaghetti bolognese (fine there was beef in it), my stomach started to bray for more food. As much as I like the idea of going vegetarian, and I do know of the health effects of eating too much meat, meat is still one of those stomach fillers that keeps it full for the longest period of time. And I am frequently hungry because my metabolism is completely out of control, to the point that it is detrimental to my health >:(

Thus today while separating the meat into single person portions, I realised I had 4 portions of pork chops for 1 person, 1 portion for 2 people (Christoph gets 1 more pork chop) and 3 portions of chicken for 1 person. Therefore I must conclude, I am heartless to the poor animals.

I need a life part deux

In my neverending wrestling with essays (!!!), this time with the Chinese Civil War, I often mentally turn into a mush pile as all my energies are directed towards dissecting, rephrasing and plagiarizing works of the Good Men. That and wishing I was playing CIV4 instead/getting a haircut/pulling out my hair strand by strand.

Therefore, my latest obsession: the waiter in the first part of Kelly Clarkson's I Do Not Hook Up. SO HOT.

Somedays, I just wake up feeling anxious and strained, and don't know why. Today is one of those days.

Wright's Bar, Tea and Me

So here I am sitting in the Govt Common Room, Book I Have to Read, next to me - and blogging instead.

My expressed purpose of bringing my Not Very Light laptop to school, was to do work. Instead I am procrastinating. I blame it on the earlier HY235 lecture, which is the academic equivalent of crawling under barbed wire in the mud while the enemy rains machine gun bullets over your head. The enemy in question in this analogy is my lecturer, who shoots Narratives and Facts at us, with no real Organisation, in a RapidFireRateMode. Instead of feeling refreshed, invigorated and stimulated by the material, one feels like they have just run a marathon where all you do is mindlessly scribble down Shite, because there is no time to actually process the material. Not like there is much analysis anyway. I hope no one decides to vanity google HY235.

So anyway to recover, I resorted to my old trusted activity: a good tea with sugar from Wright's Bar (45p!) while sitting outside the Old Building and People Watching. In front of me, there were two fairly wizened people handling out fliers and trying to detain people to harass. I caught whiffs of "cuts", "government doesn't care" and "near SOAS, Birkbeck". I sat there for 15 minutes as they floundered around, the woman managing to detain 2 people and the man detaining none. He also called an IHT around under his arm, probably nicked from the LSE reception. They did not once approach me, even as they stood, defeat by the unmistakable air of Apathy from passing LSE student hordes. I found that amusing, perhaps they decided by virtue of my race I was Apathetic anyway. I also saw some friendly faces, Filipe for one, and some other people I wanted to dodge, some people from my old dorm. I also saw a women walk by in a striking mustard yellow coat, with a deep plum dress and stockings. She really likes her colours I suppose.

I have now procrastinated for 47 minutes. I'm off to the loo, then I PROMISE that I will start work after.

OXON & BOOKS: a list

Yesterday I popped up North for a whirlwind visit to dear old man in Oxford. As usual I paid my respects to The Last Bookshop, £2 for all books, located near St. Aldgate's. The Last Bookshop stocks a delightful array of books, some exquisite photography books (for when I get my own proper flat and proper coffee table I presume) and general literature. There were loads of tempting buys, vying for my attention like Chabon's Kavalier and Clay (didn't get it though) and Nemirovsky. I managed to stop myself at 5 books though:-

Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion
Imre Kertesz - Detective Story
P. D. James - Cover Her Face
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
Bret Easton Ellis - The Informers

Along with the generous £25 Amazon voucher I got from Christoph's mum for Christmas, I also got:-

J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red
Edmund de Waal - The Hare with Amber Eyes
Anne Tyler - Digging to America
Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's

I am currently reading Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm.

I will finish and post the very delayed 2010 list next. I promise!

Boeuf de Tartare

The last dinner I had in Germany was a very nice beef tartare, homemade. The beef was excellent, and much tastier than the one I had a few days ago in Bürgerspital. Although that being said, the atmosphere at Bürgerspital could not have been beaten because WoHu joined us there, along with many bottles of wine and schnapps. We had a nice table, inside a large wine barrel. The service was very German though. The highlight of the night had to be just as we were about to leave, someone could not stand up because she had too much Silvaner (wasn't me), and I turned around to see a large chunk of the wreath surrounding our table MISSING because WoHu had ripped/pilfered a large keepsake just like the last time we were out. The sight of the missing chunk, complete with the fact that I had tried to take some earlier but found it superglued down, made ME collapse in giggles.

The damage that night (one spoon, two menus, the wreath, all the decorative nuts and apples on the table for the restaurant) was at least 4 glasses of Silvaner, 3 bottles of wine, 2 glasses of schnapps and 1 rustling for me: some €250. Needless to say everyone was very very happy. I was only happy by proxy though, since 3 completely happy drunk people make from awesome dinner companions and I was still recovering from my cold. At one point, WoHu started banging the sides of the barrel with his head, and I started hitting it with my fists. All the other diners were staring at us, two middle aged and two young people being completely rowdy and shouting, while ordering lots of wine. I think we completely ruined it from the couple seated near to us, who were obviously trying to have some romantic night out.

Yup. That's going to be a night I remember for a long time.

But like I said, the beef tartare Christoph's mother prepared today was simply par excellence. The size was very generous too. Now, while Christoph and his mum are busy walking off their dinners (his sausages and mustard, her's a beef tartare too), I am being a lazy bum and sitting on the couch half watching Viva (I have no idea why I am so fascinated with MTVs again, probably because it makes good background noise in a language that is not German) and half typing this.

Tomorrow, back to bloody London and the problem with the fucking landlord again.

*on a separate note, why the hell does it seem all the music popular in Europe is clubbing/dance music?

Silvester

The top song of 1996, apparently: 10 Kleine Jagermeister

-----

The first new years' I spent overseas, has probably been one of the best new years that I've spent. Namely because for the first time (well I do recall a class party in 2008/2009 that involved a group playing Mahjong in my dining room, and the rest of us watching The Shining in the living room - with Cheryl arriving late and scaring the bejabbers out of me), it was actually properly celebrated for the sake of New Years'.

We went to the oldest restaurant in Wuerzburg, had a really nice dinner for a very nice price, then we walked home. On the way back, we saw lots of fireworks as 2009 passed into 2010. There were lots of drunk people setting off fireworks, some in a rather alarming way best observed amusingly from a distance. One firework even ricocheted off a tree branh and bounced across a road, near to where we were walking. Towards the end of the walk, we crossed a bridge which spanned the Main, and watched the fireworks being set off in all directions.

Back at the house, we watched some trashy music television - some Boney M, some Genghis Khan - which was enjoyable in its trashiness. We even saw some countdowns of (goodness knows what categorization they used) that put O Zone's Dragostea din Tei at number 5, and Las Ketchups' Aserejé (The Ketchup Song) at number 6. Also some What a Feeling, sung by the original singer and some weird Swiss DJ. It was bad trashy music TV at its best.

I am now listening to Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way (1999) on the TV now, a new countdown that began with Roxette and The Scorpions in 1990. Good, good New Years' Day.

Top Ten List of 2010

First, I must state that this is not my usual End-of-the-Year Best Books Read list. Secondly, even as and when I shall publish the list (probably in early Jan 2011, because I do not have my usual texts with me), it will sadly not number 10, but 8.

Instead to end 2010, I offer a totally random list under a random set of categories.

Top Vacation of the Year - Vietnam

For the food (beating even France!), for the luxury and for the feel of raw exoticism, Vietnam was the best holiday I took in 2010. Even though the heat was like anything ever experienced, a living outdoor Sauna that beat even Singapore's weather, it was still memorable. And Oh My Goodness the food was absolutely wonderful. The meal I had the first night, in Danang, stands out as one of the best meals I've had in ages. Viet Nam, the name of the restaurant, was like an old dingy Malaysian style coffee shop with florescent lights and old wooden tables and chairs. No one there spoke English. But the beef, cooked in lemongrass and other lovely stuff (I tried to replicate it a few weeks ago and failed), the garlic oil salad and the beer drunken prawns, were just a joy to eat. As a certain friends would say, LOVES.

A close second was the trip I took with my parents to France-Belgium-Luxembourg. Strasbourg, Brussels and Troyes stand out in my mind and simply beautiful cities to visit and live in.

Top Uni Module of the Year - HY234

I love HY234. I love the teacher/lecturer, I love the content, I love the way it is taught. This, is the singular module that gets me through the week. This, is the only module that I would willingly overwork myself for. The parallels to the modern world are startling.

A close second is HY114, the Military Revolution module I took last year.

Top Album of the Year - The Arcade Fire's The Suburbs

A lyrical odyssey for the modern day Ulysses - the modern man who battles Tube Strikes, rude Bank Tellers and his Boss instead of mythical monsters. The man who fights against his consciousness and himself, in an era of existentialism. I adore this album and the way it stimulates my thoughts.

Top Bizarre Weather Experience of the Year - 18th Dec 2010

This was the day Christoph and I set off for Germany, as further documented here. We left the house at about 11:40am, for King's Cross St Pancras - the train was set to leave at 12:58pm. We stepped out into a howling wind, a large unprecedented blanket of snow, and a blizzard so thick that visibility was down to 20 metres. I was drenched after walking in the snow for 2 minutes, and then walking into the warm train station.

Top Growing Up Experience - Having the Landlord from Hell

As a person, I am usually unable to be assertive. I am completely conflict adverse, provided I feel that I have not been backed into a corner with no further course of action. My landlord however, is someone who would not do anything else one pays hard ball and fights against him. Latest news of why-my-landlord-is-a-shite: the shower heater has been spoiled since 20th Dec. It has still not been fixed, and there is no hot water in the house at all. Thank goodness I'm still staying in Germany till the 5th Jan.

I have also started to put my nasty letter writing skills - gleaned from all those legal internships, thank you very much - into good use. Damn this landlord.

Top Series of the Year - Dexter Season 4

I watched Dexter Season 4 with my Dad over the Summer break. Some nights, we even watched 2 episodes! It is by far the best, most thrilling, exciting and unexpected TV series I have seen thus far - beating The Pacific, which we also watched together during Summer.

I miss watching TV with my Dad.

Top Newly Discovered Awesome Thing - The Extra Computer Labs in Lincolns' Inn Chambers

Looking for a computer to work on in school is a nightmare. Thank God I finally got around to discovering the new com labs. Pity these don't seem to have heating though.

Bonus: Daddy Donkey's stomach-filling burriots, sold for lunch at the Leather Lane market behind my house

Top New Author - Marina Lewycka

The author of notably, a Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, I discovered her over the New Years celebration I shared with my parents on Sibu Island. The small resort we stayed in had a copy, and I devoured it within a day. Since then, I have sought out all her books when I am in need of a cheering. Her depiction of the failings of human behaviour, coupled with a very well and humous narrative, make her the best author I have discovered in 2010.

Top Game - Heavy Rain

I admit to have played like a grand total of 5 minutes of this. However the friends I played it with, JH, Steph, and Ianthe one crazy exasperating night from 9pm to 6am the next day (because they insisted on completing it, with the proper happy ending), make this a memorable game for 2010.

Top Skill I learned this year - Cooking

I cook. Not too badly too apparently. Woo hoo. Which is good because I am often hungry.

-----

Taa people, have a good New Years!

Käppele

In German the word for Nine, Neun (sounds like: Noin), sounds like Elmer Fudd from loony tunes saying "Nine". I just had to get that off my chest, because I keep thinking it every time I attempt to learn the numerals in German.

-----

Sunday, Christoph and I woke at 2pm, to eat a massive spread of breakfast. Dinner incredibly, was scheduled for 5pm, and was roast goose. Christoph, his mum and I went for a walk before around the area, and after she left Christoph and I threw snowballs at ducks and at poles. Then we had om nom nom goose at a pub nearby the house with his mum and sister. Not so om nom nom were the weird green stuff that had the consistency of creamed spinach, and the potato balls which were... chewy?

On Monday, Christoph and I went to visit the Käppele. It was a bad idea because the way both up and down was completely covered with 25cm deep snow. I fell down 5 times, got massively pissed off, stopped feeling my toes (which somehow started to hurt a while after I lost feeling) and became a massive grumpy bitch. BAH, the snow.

Afterwards, we went to the Christmas market in Wurzburg central and had a Bratwurst, before wandering around. Christoph bought me a cute palm sized polar bear there. For dinner, we went to a nice restaurant along the Main river, and I had sea bass. By then however, I was very tired from the chaos of the day and the previous few days. When the family friend, WoHu turned up however, I quickly woke up ("Hallo Herr Bundes chancellor"). He was quite a character, bursting into the restaurant practically shouting "Hallo my friends" and introducing himself as the bundes chancellor. All the other tables stared at us. It was as if God had rolled Joshua Cao and Alistair Chew together, into a German high school teacher who speaks excellent French and English, and had an academic interest in WWI and WWII military history. Later, Christoph's mum joined us. When we left, WoHu persuaded me to steal an ornament from the table, a styrofoam ornament that looked like a cookie with sprinkles. I think he took one too.

Yesterday, I stayed in and watched The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, because Christoph went to Heidelburg to visit his friend. It was an excellent film. At night I went out with Christoph's mum to town, to get some random items and have dinner in a very nice Franconian wine pub. She ordered a Rostling for me, which was very sweet and nice. We shared a platter of sausages, I particularly enjoyed the wine sausage and the potato salad which reminded me of a dish my grandma used to cook at home. Then I had a plate of beef tartare, which I messed up by putting too much everything - salt, capers, onions, gherkins - because I am an idiot. Despite the screwing up, it was still very tasty and we both ended dinner completely stuffed. Then we went back, and Christoph's mum translated the news for me for a while before retiring to bed.

Today I am just bumming, waiting for Christoph to come back. Meep.

Wurzburg, Deutsche Bahn and Eurostar

"Hello Mum and Dad,

Prepare yourselves for a very long rant against Deutsche Bahn (the German train company) and Eurostar.

So as both of you know, Christoph and I were 2 hours 15 minutes delayed because the train from Brussels was missing. Initially the Eurostar people kept saying the delay was due to "bad weather in France" which was delaying the train - but the Paris 1:30pm train came on time anyway. Fine. But from saying the train would be 30 minutes late, they increased it by 15 minute increments every 15 minutes until the train FINALLY came at 3:15pm - and left the station at 3:30pm. The final kicker was that the train we finally took to Brussels was't even the train that we were due to be on, they had instead given us a replacement train. God knows what the hell happened to the people on the earlier train from Brussels to London.

Now the problem was that had the train been on time, we'd have been in Brussels with a comfy 2 hours and 20 minutes buffer. Surprise! We didn't make the train. First the train went slowly due to bad weather (acceptable, I grudgingly concede), but SECONDLY the train stopped for 10 minutes in Calais FOR THE CREW TO CHANGE. The train was like 45 minutes into its journey, WTF?! On the train, a eurostar employee finally comes along trying to gather numbers for the people who needed to make transfers to Germany, and it turns out to be easily half the entire carriage. It's then that we meet Anna, another German girl who is a student in the UK who is headed towards Wurzburg too. The eurostar employee says that she'll come back with more information. She never comes back.

As the train pulls into Brussels, the train conductor lovingly tells us that we have missed our train to Frankfurt (thank you very much) and that if we want to head to Frankfurt, we should take this other totally random train that is, by the way, leaving in 10 minutes. Cue what must have been 100 people running from one train to the other, dragging/carrying large pieces of luggage. This is approximately 7pm local time, and I have eaten nothing since which was very light in London. When we finally arrive at the platform, I am extremely suspicious because for some reason I think Liege is in the Netherlands... and we're headed to Germany. Christoph asks the conductor, he says Yes Yes Yes! and I doubt he even listened to the fucking question. We get on anyway since everyone else is, and that's what the previous train conductor said. All the while there were NO EUROSTAR EMPLOYEES ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND, not when we got off the train, not when we boarded the new one. WHAT THE FUCK.

So we arrive in Liege, a town that neither Anna nor Christoph had heard of (surely this is not a good omen right?) and the place is deserted except for obviously German and former Eurostar passengers lost and completely wandering around. Great. There is still no food to be found anywhere, although some people seem to have found a Kebab shop in goodness knows where and people (including us) are staring at them enviously. There is again no one giving directions. Through deduction, the passenger mass realises they must then go to Aachen, which is some German border town I have never heard of. The train for that is 20 minutes late, and we all wait 35 minutes in the biting negative degree snowy cold, stomachs rumbling but with no food in sight.

When the train comes, we all pile on, overwhelming the poor train and its passengers. Somewhere on this train, we leave Belgium, enter The Netherlands and then enter Germany. I have taken a tour of Western Europe without even asking for one. That's great. At Aachen, same thing as in Brussels, everyone gets off and runs the fuck for the train for Cologne. Then from Cologne we run to catch to the train to Frankfurt, which it turns out is delayed by 1 hour 30 minutes. Do you see a trend here? Somewhere around this time I totally lost hope, become grumpy, cold, hungry (I think my stomach started digesting itself) and a total pain in the ass. Thank goodness Christoph is much more patient and cheery than me.

We arrive at Frankfurt at 3:20 am in the morning. I am totally pissed off and hungry. While leaning on our luggage and looking extremely pissed off, Christoph and Anna go to talk to the Deutsche Bahn people (FINA-FUCKING-LY) and they manage to wrangle money for an epic 127km (or somewhere around that figure) taxi ride to Wurzburg. There are amazingly shops open at the station, and amidst navigating among hobos, I FINALLY GET SOME WARM FOOD AFTER 12 HOURS. Throughout the trip, there was either no food, or no time to buy food. Anna, Christoph and I share the cab back, and the driver is an amazing ex-banker from Pakistan who speaks German, and English with an American accent because he studied and worked in Texas before. According to Christoph, he was driving very scarily because he was overtaking other cars. (*Note: the Autobahn had almost broken down into a one lane roadway because there was just too much snow for the snowplows to handle. You couldn't see the road at all, just snow.) I don't care/notice because I am honestly beyond caring/dead asleep by then.

We arrived at his mother's place at 5:30am in the morning, hungry. We were supposed to arrive at 12 midnight, with warm bellies. As predicted, his mother woke up (because all parents are like that around the world) and went back to sleep after being happy and satisfied that we had finally reached home safely. Shower, sleep, and we woke up at 2pm today.

Deutsche Bahn racked up a €200+ taxi bill, and they're refunding half our train ticket price. I heard eurostar owes us one free ride because the delay was due to technical faults. Christoph thinks this made it all worth the trouble. Me? I hope both companies BURN IN FUCKING HELL.

Love,
Your Daughter"

1,251

Writing from the quad, and freezing my fingers off (why the hell is this place covered but not heated again?) and eating my last Cranberry, Bacon and Brie baguette from the SU Shop of the term, I have just come out of an epic 1 1/2 hour discussion with my GV225 GTA regarding tomorrow's presentation that has already given me a panic attack.

1 more damned day to go.

Lead into Gold

Dear KLM,

Please stop sending me emails with "Have a European Winter Holiday! SGD$1,389 only!" I am getting an unintended winter in what appears to be the worst winter in years. Seeing emails like that makes me want to shriek and get on a plane and fly where the temperature never drops below 25 degree celcius, and the food never fails to make one salivate.

-----

Last Wednesday, I went for the Arcade Fire at the O2 with Jia (and on another tangent, fuck they played Modern Man the next night). It was awesomezzzly awesome and awesomezzzly fun. I could not have asked for a better companion. Well that and the two happy drunk Brit girls next to us.

Getting there however, to the O2 arena, was an adventure in itself. I'm quite proud that I didn't get a single panic attack, even though it was a decidedly good time to get a panic attack. After praying multiple times that there'd be no suicides on the Central Line, I managed to get my ass to Stratford without much incident. At stratford however, I got lost. When I finally found the Jubilee line, I got confused by the directions because it was a terminus. After asking a cleaning lady, I sat down as people began to stream in. However after 10 minutes the PA announced that there was a signal failure at North Greenwich, and the train would not be able to run -______________________________-

The concert tickets said 6:30pm, and it was currently 5:40pm. I was stuck in Stratford, a completely alien place, and needed to get to North Greenwich. If there ever was a good time to get a panic attack, it was at that exact moment. However somehow I managed to keep calm and ask for help and was directed to bus 108. After finding the right bus stop (which was a mess since all the commuters had been redirected), I managed to squeeze in. On the bus I started to feel a little worried that I would miss the stop/the bus would take too long, but I kept myself distracted by looking at road signs and landmarks, so I had a rough idea where I was. Outside, it started to snow.

When we finally reached North Greenwich, 3/4 of the bus got off. Then I went off in search of food. I ended up with some unsatisfactory Chicken Yakisoba from Wasabi since there was nothing else to eat. When Jia finally came, we raced to get in side, thinking we were late, when we realised we were very very early. Why print 6:30pm on the tickets when the actual concert starts at 9:10pm? GAHHHHH. Anyway Devandra Banhart came out at 8:00pm, so that was something. The rest of the time was spent chit chatting and stoning, as we watched the mosh pit swell in size.

The concert, when it did finally start, was good. I love Arcade Fire. Jia and I sang along, jiggled in our seats and stood up and danced towards the end. Exuberance ftw.

Getting back however, was a nightmare. There was a massive queue just to get into the tube station, and everyone was having a mass singalong to Wake Up, which was kind of cute. At the station, we got sandwiches from the shop and stood outside eating. We saw a Ha-Ha Road on a map. Twice, drunk men men shouted KONNICHIWA at us, and waved randomly. However when we walked into the tube station, we got separated by the mass of people and never saw each other again. Boo.

I ended up taking the tube to Southwark and catching 45 back home, after a chilly and snowy 5 minutes out in the cold. During those 5 minutes, I was insanely paranoid because it was Southwark at 11:45pm in the night, and eyed the few people around suspiciously. I question my wisdom repeatedly. However of course, nothing happened. Phew. I even took some pictures:

It's coming

This is one of the days I really just want to curl into a ball and cry. From my gmail getting hacked, to again a massive 5 week long spell of disrupted sleeping patterns, headaches, indigestion and general extreme stress, plus work assignments and the fact that I am weeks behind in some modules - I really feel like I don't know how to do it anymore.

I feel like I cannot go any longer, any further.

My insomnia is worsening

It's 2:35am, and I'm not tired or able to sleep at all. I really badly just want to sleep.

Rage

Why the hell does every single person that writes about state formation in Europe in the Early Modern period write like a fucking dickhead?! These people would totally fail in advertising with their massively long run on lines and usage of words that takes even me, 2 seconds to process their intended meaning.

I believe that anything more than two commas in a line makes a sentence unnecessarily hard to process, and renders it needlessly hard to comprehend. You're not writing a steam of consciousness Mrs Dalloway or Ulysses, which is done to convey an atmosphere. You're writing an academic argument that needs readers to understand. USE FUCKING FULL STOPS DICKHEADS.

Grab your mother's keys we're leaving

Today I had really yummy steamboat with Swan Yee, Alex, Christoph and Tom, a friend of Swan Yee's, at their place. It was OM NOM NOM and I really pigged out. Plus seeing as it's apparently -4 degrees Celsius now, it was a very apt meal to have. Perhaps I will demand one again, soonish.

After dinner we talked a bit about internships and the like again, and I began to feel very stressed. I still have no idea what I want to work in, but I know what I don't really want to work in. And what I don't really want to work in includes all direct financial services, which seems to constitue like 75% of all white collar jobs in the world (ok, I might be exaggerating this). This just makes me more stressed. I have my dreams, but they are pretty much unattainable as seeing I'm not a terribly good student, too cynical to buy into the 'let's do more extra curricular activities stuff to randomly bolster my CV' and too afraid to keep trying till I succeed. In short, I feel totally screwed as to the notion of my future occupation.

At this point of time, I am really crossing my fingers with the hope to doing a masters, so I can put off this whole thing for one more year. Failing that, I will probably end up returning to Singapore and either become a teacher, or doing the whole SMU Law Masters thing and become a lawyer... which I didn't really want to do in the first place and studied Government and History instead.

I feel so direction-less and not in control of my life, which just manifests in more all-round stress for me. This explains why at 2:23am in the morning, I have insomnia (again), am typing an entry and am contemplating studying a little, as I listen to the soft rhythmic snores of Christoph in the background.

Perhaps instead of playing the existentialist strains of The Arcade Fire's The Suburbs in my mind, I ought to play The Eagles' Take It Easy.

H-h-headache

Today, thanks to an EXTREMELY AWKWARD DINNER with my parents friends from church, I had to eat duck after not eating it for 9 years of my life (ok fine I ate some foie gras in the past few years because I went to really posh places and paid a bomb for a smidgen of the stuff as some side dish, but that doesn't count!). I was eating the crispy duck and pretending it was some really weird chicken, as my stomach convulsed in pain from gastric caused by eating late, and fine the duck was actually pretty good.

I had a duck when I was 11. My family ate it in front of me when they got tired of feeding it. I stopped eating duck since then. Before that I loved duck porridge.

AR*BC&$&@)($M)cX$*()N@

Also, this is the first week since Week 3 that I've gone for all my classes and all my lectures.

I watched Harry Potter last night with Christoph. Awesomezzzz, because it was a Harry Potter movie. Not awesomezzzz because I disliked the cinematography and felt the editing wasn't good enough and some scenes were unnecessary, like the shot of the tent after either a very skeptical Ron or Harry asks Hermoine where the tent is (it's in her bag, something the camera decides to zoom on). I also began fantasising what Harry Potter would be like if they unleashed all the cult directors on them. Stanley Kubrick's Harry Potter (let's forget that he's dead), Quentin Tarantino - Harry Potter and THE HALLOWS OF DEATH, Woody Allen: Harry Potter the neurotic wizard who has a 'why me?' complex. Baz Luhramm's Hogwarts. I don't know I can't think any more rubbish. I have a headache.

Equation Time!

Lack of sleep + pending essay + long day ahead + not free tonight (watching Oliver, of all things) = feeling extremely strained and close to a panic attack

I think I've felt strained since week 5. It's week 8 now, 2 more weeks to go till term ends.

The thing that keeps me going is cooking, for Christoph. Never knew I was so domesticated before, but I actually derive a great sense of satisfaction from cooking and cleaning. Perhaps I don't need this BSc anymore :p

Bishop's Celeb Jibe

Why I love The Sun:

"A bishop has branded Wills and Kate "shallow celebrities" whose marriage will last just seven years.

Pete Broadbent, Church of England Bishop of Willesden, London, labelled the Royals "costly philanderers". He called Charles and Diana's wedding a "disaster between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll." Nicholas Soames MP said: "He's so rude."

The Sun, 22/11/10

The Sun is only 20p

I actually feel fairly depressed today, from stress, from lack of sleep, and from disappointment. I bought The Sun as a remedy. The harder my work gets and the more life wears me down, the increasing frequency of The Sun I purchase. Well, that and other trashy female mags.

Ridiculous

I'm so tired but I can't sleep because I keep thinking of the work I need to do. Sigh.

But they're afraid to pay the cost, for what we've lost

Tonight on the tube back, for the first time in many months, I listened to Jason Mraz's Details in the Fabric. As I dashed out of Kong's house to get home my mind flittered between thoughts of the past, resisting the urge to shout down the phone to the person I was talking to, and the feeling knotting up in my stomach that Frangelico could not dissipate. All the nasty memories of the past, circa January 2010, rushed to my memory. I suddenly really wanted to be surrounded by my friends - Hadi came to mind especially - family, Christoph, anyone that I loved deeply because I felt that feeling of being back there and then again so acutely.

Even though it has been more than 10 months, I still feel that the pallor of that very painful relationship hanging about. Thinking about it now, I feel the fear surrounding the memories being as fresh as they were months ago. The fears are many pronged: that a break up like that could happen again, that I would have to spend months clawing my way up to normality again, and especially that I would allow my heart to be so readily and wilfully deceived once more. It makes you lose the trust that you have in yourself, that perhaps you might intrinsically know what's best for you. It makes you see yourself in a different way, because you have seen the depths of your sanity and soul.

I don't think (thankfully) that such things would happen to her tonight, or perhaps forever. But tonight in her pain, she reminds me (rather self absorbedly perhaps) of me.

A triumph of selfishness and/or stupidity

Today I witnessed something very depressing. I was trying to get out of LSE before the whole mob of idiots came to do their Freeze the Fees march, but ended up witnessing it anyway when I stepped out of Sainsbury after buying some groceries. I find the whole Freeze the Fees campaign utterly depressing for a few reasons, namely that to me it seems like a triumph of selfishness and/or stupidity.

Here's some background: The Brits are running a substantial budget deficit, and are making cuts in every single sector possible. Sectors big in the news are housing benefit and defence. School fees jump because well, I am in school now and surrounded by affected parties. The big stink seems largely to result from the LibDem's promise of no school fee rises, something which they are now unable to deliver.

Briefly:-
- Heavily subsided student fees are, like housing benefit, a massive strain to the budget. Take into account that 40% of all UK people are uni educated, the most in the entire of Europe, that is a lot of cash

- The 40% is ALREADY too much for the UK market to handle. While skilled labour like plumbing suffers and my landlord complains of getting raped £500 for a few hours visit by the repairman (but he's a dirty complaining pussy anyway, so I take that figure with a pinch of salt), graduates are studying liberal arts in substandard universities and hence unable to find any jobs thereafter

- Additionally, I find a lot of BRITS especially do not treasure their education. Of all the classes, the people who attend lowest percentage wise, are the British people. Why? Because university is not for studying, it's for hardcore partying. Most of the people who have to redo a year do so not because they're soft in the head, but because they've been partying too much. University, as a good, is not treasured.

- Going to university is seen as a right, and so does subsided fees. They are not. Freeze the fees reeks massively of the whole ME ME ME entitlement psyche. Why? Because there is still access to the same student loans given by the government. The difference is that when these people have to work later, they will have to pay more. There is still access available to whoever chooses to take up the offer. I bet the American kids and THEIR student loans are wondering what all the fuss in the UK is about.

- A common argument is that if the fees rise, they will not be able to attend university, or will seriously reconsider it. GOOD I say, because that is darwinism at work. If you fail to see the value of an education, then you really ought to be doing something else. I pay £14,000 in school fees alone a YEAR. Why? Because I see the value and the merit of studying. It is a good I am willing to pay that much more for. I could have stayed at home where my university would have been subsidised (and only because my government is running a very very healthy budget surplus), but I chose to go to LSE. Why? Because it is worth the cost.

- Furthermore, the argument that the rich bankers should subsidise students should be looked at from the other side of the coin: a man supporting his family, working at the local chip shop for £6 an hour IS SUBSIDISING YOUR SCHOOL FEES AS WELL. Now tell me, is that fair?

-----

Ah just fucking grow a pair and stop shouting about something that was no one's fault (well perhaps you could blame Labour and their over generous welfare spending, the Iraq War...), and just SUCK UP like the family that can no longer claim housing benefit.

The worst part is as EDUCATED UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, you should have realised that this is a necessary evil that no government wants to undertake. Your country, in a matter of simple economics, CANNOT SUSTAIN THE SUBSIDIES ANYMORE. France just endured massive strikes and riots because of pension problems, Greece collapsed because they were giving out welfare benefits like candy. This is just nuts. Money doesn't grow on fucking trees you know.

Plus, at the end of the big student strike, came the enticement for students to go: a party in LSE. It's almost like any attempt to appear thoughtful and politically motivated was just a thin veneer for more partying and hooking up, reinforcing the utter disgust and contempt I feel for the whole Freeze the Fees movement.

Just fucking grow up people. You're not the only ones suffering from budget cuts.

Russie

I just woke up from a very strange dream in which I made a Russian joke during a course in LSE, and the people listening all happened the be Russian. It was something like the Russian Society received the highest amount of funding of all the societies in LSE. I then joked that the Russian mafia must have come and beat it out of them in order to get the most funding. Then I became socially ostracised and they wanted to lynch me (never knew the Russians were so humourless), and I spent the rest of the dream trying to hide -____-

I think this is because I was reading D Lieven's Great Russia last night for school.

Adulthood

So last night I went to celebrate a friend's birthday party. When we went there, she was super pissed off because another clique she invited wasn't coming (though that made me glad because as we all rational adults know, multiple cliques = awkward party, as it stood the clique already there just looked at us and went back to talking amongst each other). So, she starting furious drinking, because she was unhappy (ladies and gentlemen, we have a future AA member here...).

Then, she passed out at like 12-ish am. Of course by now I've had some drinks in my system, and been mixing alcohol too, so this is all insanely hilarious to me - no wait it still is - the awkwardness, the passed out host, the fact that Crystal Palace's football team is abbreviated to CRY when watching TV... and wanting to make sure Nigeria goes to the world cup one day to compete against Germany (Dexter came up with that one).

I had a shitty week, and 80% of my friends went clubbing at UCL's Spectra earlier in the week because they could. This Miss on the other hand, had a presentation at 9am the next day, and submitted an essay on the day itself. Then, I had one more essay due on Friday. Also, I was going for a Yann Tiersen concert the next night. I was, as a responsible adult, obliged to stay in and work/rest. So I did. This however, made me want to eat (potato chips), drink and be merry last night.

On Wednesday, I walked 45 minutes to get to Koko way up in Camden, from my place. Wednesday was also the day of the 3rd tube strikes, though I've only experienced 2 strikes since getting back to London. It was crazy, I started walking at 6:10pm, and I've never seen so much humanity out of the streets before. Usually everyone is funnelled underground into little metal tubes that are shot around London, but for those of us who were too poor to take a taxi (and the roads were all jammed anyway because people living out of town had to take cars in), unable to take a bus (they were all crammed into full capacity), or cycle (and the bike lanes were JAMMED, never seen that one before either), it was back to basics with good old walking. So I walked, 1.7 miles apparently, to Koko. I walked through my old dorm area, and up Eversholt Street towards Mornington Crescent, past the old transexual shop and the area where I got scared last year and turned back.

However, Yann Tiersen was definitely what I expected. From the melodic (ahahaha) strains of the soundtrack of Amelie, to Rue des Cascades - Yann Tiersen as far as I knew - always had a consistent sound. Not that night. He spent 10% of time on the violin (which was mindblowingly excellent) and 90% on the electric guitar. It sounded like a Rammstein version of a Ghostbusters soundtrack, with tripped out synth bits. I was disappointed. Jia was disappointed. Jia's friends were disappointed. The rest of the crowd? They started thinning out after realising what utter shit was being played. It was like listening to someone's mid-life crisis, where he decided to go back and attempt to be the rockstar of teenage dreams. Objectively, the music was OK, but for Yann Tiersen it was an utter disappointment. Plus we had to stand throughout since there were no seats at all in Koko. On the bus back, I heard the other concert goers complaining and calling him "awfully self indulgent".

So with the only high point in my week destroyed by someone's new musical edge, I was really looking forward to last night's party. So I drank, happily. First a little Martini Asti, then a sip of Martini Apple (ew!), Stella Artois and it wad out from Chai's place to wait 30 freaking minutes in the cold for 188 to come -__- Finally at Steph's, we open the cava we brought, and I help myself to a tequilla shot which was damn nasty, and two cups of melon schnapps and sprite. I was a very very happy girl.

Chai walked me back, and we stopped at Chicken Cottage for a bit. I came back, ate some chicken cottage, watched an episode of the Simpsons and then went to sleep. 6 am however, I woke up feeling a bit sick. All the alcohol had rushed to my brain when I lay down, and my stomach was now grotesquely bloated and I wondered if I should puke. After a state of semi-consciousness in which my mind was going SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP and my stomach going I FEEL WEIRD, I got up and walked to the toilet to contemplate what I should do next. Then I thought I'd linger over the toilet bowl, and see if retching came naturally. It did. I was bitter and it burned the fuck out of my throat. I puked multiple times within the next ten minutes, feeling like greek fire and hell fire were pouring out of my throat. All while I was puking, if I wasn't sick from the sheer physical pain, it was thinking 'Dear God I just cleaned this toilet bowl earlier in the day!!! Now it's dirty again!' and that upset me more than the fact that I was puking hellfire.

So with that I concluded I am getting to old before my time. I drank a cup of milo, nibbled on some almonds and went back to sleep. Amazingly, at 10am, I woke up naturally without a hangover.

Ottomans: overkill much?

I have either been too depressed or to busy to write, such a pity since I've got quite a bit to write about:-
1) BFI London Film Festival
2) My Mama's visit to London
3) All the food I've been cooking

Yann Tiersen at Koko this Wednesday, can't wait. Went running yesterday and almost died from extremelybadbreathtaking asthma.

Meanwhile, much much essay and presentayshuns.

1,234

I feel very frazzled again today. I can't wait for this ill feeling to be over, seriously.

Ah Wiki

"A ramekin or ramequin is a small glazed ceramic or glass serving bowl used for the preparation and serving of various food dishes. The word is from French (as ramequin), and before that Middle Dutch and Middle Low German – see ramekin for details. They make good ashtrays."

In other news, I look forward to making some chocolately goodness for Ching's surprise birthday tomorrow *beams*

Bah, football

Today while googling the address of a friend's house to go to his housewarming party, I stumbled upon the Emirates Stadium which is, contrary to rational and sane thought, not actually in UAE.

This would explain why someone I knew could hop from the Emirates Stadium, to London in less than a day. That and he's not as woefully indulgent and a spendthrift as I originally thought - to hop from London to UAE just for a silly football match.

1,230

I feel a bit anxious today again, for some unfathomable reason.

I hope the trip to Angel dissipates this feeling a little.

Strange Little Interactions

Prompted by more Bailey ice cream cravings, I set off today after my lessons in LSE (the last one of which was actually quite enjoyable and engaging) to look for a pint - Tesco's only mind you since they have the £2.50 offer (God I love Tesco).

I walked down Fleet Street, half people watching, half admiring the scenery of old city London. I saw lots of lawyers as I bypassed the Royal Court of Justice, and random other office workers taking breaks in small eateries lining Fleet Street. The old city area of London is really quite pretty. However as I turned right on Farringdon Road, the area started to look crappy. Suddenly there was graffiti all over, abandoned office buildings, broken glass and a noticeable absence of any human traffic whatsoever. Right. It was really something like 10m from Fleet Street that everything changed. I suppose such is the ratty tatty nature of London which has really shit and really nice areas in pockets all over the place.

So anyway I went to the Tesco Express at Farringdon, since the one at Fleet Street did not have Bailey's flavour. To my disappointment, the Farringdon one didn't either. I settled for Vanilla, but I still felt quite unhappy as it wouldn't really quench my craving per se. Deciding to be indulgent because I felt a little unhappy about class today (like nervousspeedtalking my way through self-introductions in class and generally being totally social awkward), I wanted to get a Cosmo magazine (laugh, but there is nothing more relaxing than reading fluff - I usually prefer The Sun, but I already bought a copy of that earlier this week). This month however, Cosmo comes with free nail polish. I wanted to get the neutral colour, not some garish pink thing that they also had but the neutral was all out. I settled on some black thing instead, which I imagine would come in handy for halloween.

At the counter, now brooding about how there was no nice nail polish option and no Bailey's ice cream, I saw that Cadbury Roses were on sale for half price. Now this sounds silly but many years ago (1997 to be exact), I went on a tour with my Mama and Yeh Yeh to New Zealand. A goat tried to eat my gloves and someone's dad in the tour group ran around chasing all us children with his 'dragon breath' (condensation from the cold). On the tour bus, there was a box of chocolates and I had one, which happened to be a Cadbury Rose. I remember liking it very very much, and it remained in my consciousness since. Now after 13 years of thinking about that choccy I had in NZ, I decided to buy a box and relieve that time.

As I turned onto Greville Street to walk back, I bit into a random one, caramel. The caramel taste soon became infused with disappointment. It was not as awesome as I remembered it to be. I consoled myself thinking that they were cheap, and I could feed it to Jason, Jon Kong and Steph Yuen who were coming over tomorrow. Or my roommates. Just as I was thinking of ways to finish the lot (I'm not a big chocolate eater), a laughing man called out to me from a car, "Lots of Cadbury Roses are bad for you!"

I felt quite amused and went up to the car and said that they were on offer from Tesco, half price. Then he asked me if I was American (this seems to be a common trend, no idea why) and I replied that I was Singaporean. Then I asked if he wanted one, and he said, "Sure!". So I gave him one and went on my way.

For some reason, that random little interaction cheered me up more than any other self-indulgent item I tried to purchase today.

A good destressor

I made a lovely meal tonight, in exchange for the stress of today. It was extremely om nom nom-able.

Shaken, and stirred

Today I spent approximately 10-15 minutes inside the Holborn Sainsbury. Inside, I helped a little old Chinese lady pick a box of cookies from the top shelf, walked around an aisle because a handicapped lady in a wheelchair was blocking me and debated whether I should satisfy my Bailey's ice cream urge. However just as I was settling the bought items into my bags, I notice policemen outside, all on the High Holborn end, cordoning off the road.

I went out, and heard a man in the crowd say that they found a suspicious package. Indeed, I saw a cardboard box on the ground, about 20 metres away. Policemen were going about from building to building to evacuate people. An American girl came up to me and we spoke a little, said she was supposed to walk that-a-way, but couldn't any more. Then, I left.

As I walked further and further, the gravity of the situation hit me. As I walked from what was effectively the epicentre of shit, I saw that more and more police cars were arriving from the initial one or two, to what must be like a third of the entire police force in London. Holborn's Red Lion Square area was slowly being closed off, policemen were shouting in an attempt of crowd control trying to make cars go away from the site. More and more emergency vehicles were rushing to the scene, and slowly, a massive jam of confused and angry drivers were building up.

Then I came to Gray's Inn Road, almost 1km from the actual site. It was in the process of being closed off too. It seemed the lock down was spreading, radial-like. The fear, struck me. The thoughts of, "God this would never happen in Singapore" kept running through my head. This was for the first time, a very real and very acute fear of the world outside me. Of the terrible terrible things we do to each other, and the fear of such depths.

Now here in my room, the safety of a place I call home, I can still hear the road outside. I can hear the emergency vehicles rush past, I can hear the horns of frustrated drivers. I feel my heart race and a part of me shrink inside. I still feel like eating Bailey's ice cream.

It's getting colder

Today was the first day I wore my Ugg(ly) boots, to send Daryl to Chancery Lane tube station from my place. Winter is coming :/

I had a backache earlier, from sitting about all day

I have gone a bit stir-crazy from not leaving the house today as a result of being a sloth. Here's a dreamy/hipsterish/over exposed but still pretty shot of my newest acquisition, a pot of pink heather from Angel's Chapel Market, sitting on my window ledge.

In other news, I booked tickets today for the London Film Festival *beams*. At least I did something remotely exciting today, besides fighting with my washing machine again.

I'm a Methodist, please go away

I just opened the door, in my pyjamas, to 2 Jehovahs Witnesses. I opened the door because I thought the knocking was Chen trying to play the fool, as usual. What got to me was, HOW DID THEY GET IN HERE? Then I figured out someone in the block was probably a friend of their's and let them in, pfft.

I feel like such a resident of London now.

Inside and Out

For the past few nights, my dreams have been plagued with visions that make me feel anxious. Last night I dreamt of leaving my family to go to London again. The night before (and most interestingly in view of the recent allegations against a principal) I dreamt I was been the victim of a paedophile, a recognisable face, in one of that principal's old staff.

I pray for better dreams every night.

I'm getting a backache from lugging things about town

So the past few days have been spent visting friend's spanking new places. I've seen Chai/Chen/Ruben/Hardeep's place, which had a very excellent new bathroom and er, not much else to shout about. Then there was Chris Rowley who I followed back to his pad along Grey's Inn Road (about a 5 minute walk away) which is really quite nice but doesn't have a dining table. Today, I went to Aneesh's place which is INSANELY NICE. The bathroom is like a 5 star hotel's bathroom and they have new leather couches and all. Drool. The only thing not so awesome was the fact that Aneesh's room is probably the size of Harry Potter's room in the Dursley household. Apparently it used to be a storage closet... that is somehow prettier than the rest of my new apartment.

Oh well. Give some, take some. My flat might not be very nice or very pretty, but it's functional. There is an electric heater with hot water on demand (definitely beating Passfield and their boiler's roulette like game of hotcoldhotcold water), a dining table, and all the things I need to keep me happy at a bare minimum. I could probably use a shoe rack though, perhaps I should get one from Argos. The floor's a little cold, but it's not dodgily carpeted. The desk is old and the drawers look like something my grandfather bought when he set up his first printing business in Singapore in 1960s, but it's nice and big. Plus since all the furniture is so old, there is no way I can be accused of making scratch marks or damaging any of the furniture any further.

I guess I like my place-ish. Now if only I could stop accumulating so much shit, which clogs up the room, and then I'd be happy.

-----

The past week has also seen to some burst of West End activity. Last Thursday I saw Avenue Q with Dexter and Jon Kong, and today I watched Deathtrap with Aneesh and Nikki. Both were excellent and worth every bit of the £20/£25 I forked out. Avenue Q was a bit dodgy though since I noticed the audience did not laugh very much. Instead Jon, Dexter and I were laughing like mad, joined by the (rather obnoxious) group of extremely Singaporean Singaporeans. The Brits on the other hand, remained stoic. I suppose the usual time of In-Your-Face humour was lost on them. Pity.

Today was Deathtrap, which was really one of the best plays I've seen in a while. Sorry Singapore, after seeing The Lady from Dubuque and Blackbird, I have come to the conclusion that you are a long way from West End standards. Deathtrap cemented this idea in my mind, perhaps permanently. Well acted, with lots of twists and turns and sudden surprises, it was excellent from start to finish. Just when things started to look dull, something shocking would happen, giving one a fright. I jumped and grabbed Aneesh at least twice in shock. Lovely, lovely black comedy.

-----

Today I had lunch with Swan Yee at Cam Phat, a Vietnamese restaurant opposite Rasa Sayang in Chinatown. We wanted to order individual bowls of pho, and share a starter of spring rolls. When the waiter came to take our order, he said we weren't allowed to mix the lunch special menu (with £5.50 pho) and the normal menu (which had the spring rolls). If we wanted to order spring rolls, we would have to pay 50p more each for our pho, THEN get the ability to order spring rolls. This made absolutely no sense.

First off, the lunch special menu merely listed dishes from the normal menu at 50p less. The dishes were not different in any way, and the pricing is obviously meant to draw in the lunchtime crowd.

Secondly, it was not a set menu. They were merely individual portions of noodles.

Thirdly, by not allowing people to mix meals and trying to charge them 50p more for ordering extra food that they had to pay for anyway, they just took away all incentive to order more food.

I pointed this out to the waiter, but he just repeated monotonously that we only have to pay 50p more each for the privilege of getting to order spring rolls. I told him it was logically unsound. He ignored me. God, how the hell are these people still in business?

THE ARCADE FIRE IS COMING OMG

Apparently a few days ago a Singaporean girl was killed in a hit and run accident in London. Today, skyping with my mother for the first time since I've gotten back (for I've managed to set up the internet account only yesterday evening), she was asking me to take precautions, so I very nicely asked her if I should stop crossing roads. On the walk to school later, I balanced briefly on the edge of the pavement as there was a massive puddle in the middle as a car whizzed by the empty road (Chancery Lane on a weekend). I thought about what would happen if I got hit by a car at that very moment. The headlines would read: Girl laughs at mother's advice, gets hit by car anyway. Will now turn into that girl that parents tell their children about to get them to behave.

-----

Today I took a bus from the Royal Courts of Justice, outside Clement House, to Angel for grocery shopping. To my delight there was a nice busting market there selling fruits (vegetables I'm not too sure about) for insanely cheap prices. £1 for 2 pounds of pink lady apples! I ended up buying my fresh produce from there, then waddling over to Sainsbury to get meat and stuff. I was so overloaded by the time I was done with my marketing. I've hopefully, bought enough meat to last me for the entire week.

Also, the market stall holders were the nicest service people I've run into all week. God does this city have an unusually high percentage of nasty service staff.

The house is nicely cleaned up, and I've pretty much gotten settled into my house/surroundings. Now, for 2nd year to start. My timetable already looks like shite.

The First Day Back

I spent my first night back in London at Christoph's.

Never in my life has 12 hours ever felt so trying before. I've never come across so many incidents that make me want to break down, screaming and crying, in a row before. Part of it, really the largest part of it was that my new place was uninhabitable when we were first stepped in. The windows were missing locks, there was no electricity, the refrigerator was covered with mould and the bathroom taps/cistern was leaking water. Coming off a very tiring 14 hour flight (I did watch 3 movies though, on a lighthearted note: From Beijing With Love, Zwartboek and L'Arnacoeur. Zwartboek was VERY VERY GOOD.), it was immensely trying.

Then at the agent's, we find out that we need to pay off 73 pounds of previous electricity debt before we can get electricity, that the landlord who takes care of the property can only come in on Wednesday. I basically counted 6-7 very upsetting things yesterday when I recounted them to Christoph.

Then there was the nasty NatWest lady of eastern european extraction. God. Eventually it cumulated with me listening to the Neon Bible just trying to maintain a semblance of sanity. Finally towards the end of my snapping point, I managed to have a nice conversation with a Tanzanian-Indian shopkeeper around the corner of my place, WHO WAS THE KINDEST PERSON I MET ALL DAY. He told me to take it easy, hahaha.

Then in the silence of my flat (Ching was out with Hardeep and Chen at Argos), I started cleaning my windows and started screaming/crying incoherently.

I felt much better after that.

Gustard Noble

I am already preparing my list of top ten reads for 2010, for there are tomes that I must leave behind in less than 24 hours. My future beckons and looms at the same time, as I do my best to prepare for it.

Separation Anxiety

I have fears about leaving that can't be, and won't be augmented by anything in the world.

A Suburban War

Some people more than others, find it easier to let go of home.

All I know is, I'm not one of them.

I am so creepy

Bored, I decided to google the asiatic nickname used by an SC2 web commentator and found his blog. It is interesting in a strange voyeuristic manner as he talks in snippets, one paragraph things about stuff like his microwave breaking down to him moving house (and a video of his new house). It is a manner that is distinctly different from how I usually attempt to write here, but yet still captivating.

In other news, last night I watched Hadi's play, Unlike Other People. I must state that of the entire play, the only characters I did not want to strangle to death was Sam (Hadi's role) and Carol. I admit to feeling mostly irritated during the play. I also ran into Asyikin and her friend there. Earlier in the day, I met my uncle for lunch and went to cut my hair, and other little errands. It was a long, tiring day yesterday and I got back at 11:45pm.

Today I went out with Hadi and Cheam for brunch at Wild Honey, then Cedele. Wild Honey is an extremely indulgent place, ohhh the prices! But goodness does the appearance of the food whet the appetite. We wanted to go to TWG, but it was for some odd reason, steaming hot and stifling inside. We left before we even sat down.

-----

I'll miss those two when I go back to London.

There's a great black wave in the middle of the sea

I have just said "see you next year" to Paul, JLC and Chong Wee (for Daryl I will see in months), for the first time in truth - as opposed to the usual larking about when one is days from a new year. It is a most disconcerting feeling.

Viet Nam

It's been more than a week, and as usual I've been procrastinating about writing about the trip. I've been giving myself so many excuses, that I've run out of excuses. Out of a refusal to accept that I am a bum, I have finally managed to open this damn window and attempt to start writing, if albeit slowly and reluctantly.

Saturday, 4th, Singapore-Danang
We flew it on an early Jetstar flight and changed planes/terminals in Ho Chin Minh city. I was very thirsty in the terminal and wanted to buy a bottle of water, but had 17,000 VND and a 500,000 VND note. A bottle of water was 18,000 VND. The girl shrugged and took my 17,000 VND. Only in Vietnam are bottles of water in an airport lounge negotiable.

On TV in the terminal, there was a Korean movie, dubbed into Vietnamese playing. It was a horror, about some weird skinny ass guy dressed in his underwear brutally trying to kill a girl. As to why he was trying to kill her in his underwear, by hitting her with a wrench, was beyond me. He also missed a blow one time, and hit himself in the hand instead. One wonders if it was really a dark comedy instead. However was was notable about this was that good guy (who was trying to find the girl), bad guy (wrench boy) and hapless girl (who died by the way), all spoke with the same, high pitched, female voice. It's like they could not be bothered to put effort into dubbing and had the same female person speak all the roles, which absolutely no effort into trying to vary the voices. This made the show seem unintentionally hilarious, I mean, how do you take a male murderer who speaks with a girl's voice seriously?

For lunch was ate at a Chinese place, on recommendation from the hotel people. It was apparently one of the fancier places in town, and was probably one of the lower-end places if it was in Singapore. I had wintermelon tea there, which was like shit.

We first took a cab to the Ho Chi Minh military museum in Danang, which was very very old and run down. What was upsetting was not the state of the museum, but that the taxi driver had tipped himself 8,000 VND and refused to return it, so my mood was a little ruined. The run down state was attributable as Danang is not exactly a tourist place. It was then (well and the bigass Communist flag flying out front) that I remembered that Vietnam is still a communist country. From amusing propaganda articles, to even the titles of exhibits, it was gloriously propaganda-istic.

From there, we walked to the Cham Museum (a mistake, since it was far-ish, extremely hot, and the roads were not really walkable), to see sculptures and artifacts taken from My Son (an Angkor Wat like place). Then we walked to Han Market, which was the local market that sold both dry goods and wet ones. It was extremely chaotic inside, and the stores were all packed to the brims. My mother bought a pack of cashews, slightly salted, from there. Tired, we headed back to the hotel around 5pm and rested till 7pm.

On recommendation from Rough Guides, we went to a place called Viet Nam. It was filled with locals, and the waiters did not speak English at all. We ended up pointing at random things on the menu, struggling to ask for vegetables. It was the best meal we ate in the entire trip. The vegetables that came was a salad, with garlic oil dressing, which was wonderful. Then there was the cook coming out and saying beer beer beer, which resulted in her taking my dad's beer and giving him another one (before that she tried talking to me in Vietnamese and failed. This happened many times during the trip. I must look Vietnamese then.), and then returning his beer with like 10ml missing. It later transpired she cooked our prawns in beer... ohhhh lovely. But the best dish, was some beef which was braised in a lime-y, vinegar-y peanut sauce, with larges doses of lemon grass. The taste, was so so wonderful. I spent the rest of the trip trying to look for that dish, but was unable to, sigh.

Back at the hotel, I watched the end of Kung Fu Panda on TV and went to sleep early.

Sunday, 5th, Danang-Hoi An
Early in the morning, we took a taxi to Hoi An. It took about 45 minutes from Danang. We checked into Cua Dai Hotel, and then walked into town. We passed by a lot of tailor shops. We bought the tickets to allowed us to visit different locations, and went into random museums and old houses. Hoi An was very hot. It was the hottest day of the entire trip, and believe me Vietnam was much hotter than Singapore and heatstroke material. At one point I felt woozy, like I was going to faint.

We wandered into an Art Gallery, and there an old lady got up and asked me in English where we were from. I said Singapore, and she replied Xing Jia Po? (Singapore in Mandarin). I replied back in Mandarin and then she started to get all excited and happy. She said when she was younger, the family was all Mandarin speaking. She hadn't spoken Mandarin in years and felt sad about it. She was born when the French were still around, learning it for many years in school and even teaching it as a teacher. She was the 4th generation of Chinese in Vietnam in her family. My dad spoke to her the most, since his Mandarin was the strongest and my mother as usual, wandered off to go shopping. It was sobering for me, because it made me think about how I would never get so excited about speaking Mandarin as I did not regard it as my mother tongue, yet here was this old lady who was practically in tears at being able to converse in the language of her ancestors.

Hoi An was charming in it's sights, and architecture. But there was nothing outright significant about it. It's a place one goes to relax, and was probably the best stop of Vietnam. On Patrick's advice, I ate lots of Cao Lao (hahaha sounds like chao lao), which had all these glorious crunchy bits of what I think was fried pork skin or fat. My mother and I had items tailored there, and I now have a very nice black pencil dress which I am thrilled to bits with. My mother managed to tailor a 3 piece suit for USD99 (talk about a bargain!). I want to go back there again, before I start work.

For dinner, we ate at some place nearby the hotel. The food took ages to come, but was ok. The meal is memorable in that my exposed feet and 1/4 of leg was mercilessly bitten by sandflies while there. Now my legs and feet are all scarred up. The sandfly bites were also severely aggravated by the intense Vietnamese sun, ho boy. It was very terrible trying to not scratch.

Monday, 6th, Hoi An
Woke up early, to a really great spread of food provided by the hotel. Had very yummy pho. Then it was off to My Son for a half-day trip. The bus that picked us up was really weird, because there were no conventional seats but sleeper seats instead, the type that is totally reclined. It was incredibly strange. After a while however, they changed us to a normal bus which had other people loaded onto it. My Son was nice, but also terribly excruciatingly hot. The fact that the Americans had bombed large parts of it to bits helped a little, as it was very well that there was less to see since it was so damn hot. All one wanted to do really was hide in the shade.

Then we took a boat ride, with a small serving of rice and vegetables as lunch, and saw a handicraft village. Watching the wood carvers was quite something. Then the tour ended in the middle of Hoi An. My mum and I went to try on our clothes, which was disgusting since we were coated in a layer of sweat and grime. Then, all 3 of us returned to the hotel where we hid in the nice cool swimming pool for the rest of the afternoon. Night time, we returned downtown to pick up the clothes and had lunch at a nice place there. We ordered Vinegar Beef (again me hoping for the dish from the first night), and it came out as raw beef slices, with a hotpot to dip it in. It was quite interesting, but was not as tasty as originally hoped for.

-----

I feel lazy to type further. There are still 5 more days to write about. Time will tell if I every really do complete this.

I've probably mentally traumatised some kid from RJC

I've been putting off typing something totally witty and awesome about Vietnam, so here is the email I sent to one of my student mentees:-

"Dear V- (aha, another Wong! Except it is also one of the commonest Chinese surnames around and we probably descended from the same person 1,587 years ago.)

Hello, and welcome to LSE. I'm M- Wong, a 2nd year student, studying Government and History, and will be your student mentor for this academic year. My role is essentially to make the transition into university student life as seamless as possible. This includes answering all those questions deemed too silly to ask during department inductions (or questions perhaps not even relevant to academia), to simply being a friendly figure around an admittedly physically small campus (but nonetheless one teeming to the brims with people). If there are any questions I am unable to answer, I will be able refer you to the relevant departments and support areas in school. I can be contacted during the entire academic year through this email, helloiamanemail@email.com.

As your mentor, I'd like to arrange a meeting on [time, date and location]. Attached to this email is a campus map of LSE for further guidance. This would be to introduce myself and answer firsthand any immediate questions before school starts. Also note that this would be a group meeting with other new students in the Government department, so please let me know if you'd prefer a one-on-one meeting if you think it would be less awkward for you than a group meeting (I promise to try to be as un-awkward as possible in both types of meetings). Please do email me first if you do intend to come to the meeting on the [date] so I can know how many to expect.

For those that have read the email only after the meeting has taken place, or are unable to attend the meeting, also do email me to arrange another meet-up. I almost missed my own meeting with my student mentor last year since it did not occur to me that there would be any important emails sent before school started, so I throughly understand.

Hope to see you on the 30th!


M-


P.S. tiredness, and the hurrah of sending the last email has prompted me to type that odd greeting. If you don't reply I shall assume I have indadvertedly scared you off. Apologies in advance."

B52 Victory Museum, Hanoi

Footprint Vietnam by John Colet:
"This curious place is not really a museum (there is a museum building that always looks shut) but this does not matter because what everyone wants to do is walk over the wings and tail of a shattered B52"

That is the most excellent sentence ever stated on earth for the endorsement of a place of interest. I am so going there.