IGS

My deepest apologies for being an abscent blogger again. I blame exams! I've got another one today and then a week-long respite until the last one.

Elsewhere...I had an appointment with an international student advisor yesterday to discuss my contract/visa/legally in this country situation. Quite frankly. the whole process is a bit bizarre. I am currently in exams for my second and final semester of classes. The way the system is set-up, I received a 'postgraduate certificate' when I passed the first semesters exams. If I pass these (fingers crossed!), I will receive a postgraduate diploma and be allowed to proceed on to write my dissertation. If my dissertation is successful, I will receive a master's of science degree. While I will know in approximately a month whether I have qualified for a diploma, I will not really know about the full degree status until December or January. I keep telling everyone that the dissertation is due in September, and it is, but it is technically a draft. The powers that be will then pour over it and ask us to change things, and the final draft is due in December. But as the effective due date is September, this is when everyone starts working.

Okay, back to the topic at hand. To qualify for my government sponsored 12-month international graduate scheme visa, which recently replaced the science and engineering graduate scheme (SEGS), I simply need to have a certificate, diploma, OR full master's. Basically, this little caveat is going to make my life a lot simpler. If the scheme required me to proove I had my master's, I would not be able to get the visa until January or so, but if they are cool with diploma, I should be able to receive it prior to starting work in September. The advisor told me just to check with my personal tutor (who's stats test will push the limits of sanity next week) to see if he would be cool with writing a letter at the start of September saying that I have qualified for a diploma and the master's is still in progress. If he is indeed cool with this plan, I could then sign my employment contract with relative, ummmmm, piece of mind. The lady told me that I would 'definitely' qualify under the scheme. So I suppose that's one thing to sort of cross off the list for now.

And it looks like I'll be visiting at the end of June/start of July! More on this later...

Buying stuff.

I have started to recall all that was involved in getting set-up for apartment living after undergrad. Such as buying a toaster and a fabulous set-of dishes (which still haven't really been used...). And boat loads of wall art. Now I am faced with doing this all again. This seems like a lot of work. Not enough to convince me that it would be best to stay in the US and bond with my wall art, but enough to make me slightly displeased. There's no way a toaster I get here would be as cute and blue. Same with my canisters. I don't envision bothering to wrap-up a canister and put it in a suitcase to drag across the whole of North America and the Atlantic. Well, maybe the little one. Or the random one that has never been used for anything. But on the bright side I will probably invest in an English television and become a purveyor of all the BBCs. For some reason the regular watching of tv would be a huge piece of the integration puzzle. Or would at least give me something to chat about with people at work.

Tomorrow is another bank holiday. I think the Brits start to get a bit impatient for summer and vacation around May, hence the two bank holidays in one month. While I don't blame them, then rain makes this not too appealling. As does the presence of scary exam on Tuesday. And Thursday. It's nice that the holiday is shared with the US. At least we went so far as to name ours.

My apologies for being a bit dull. Exams are freaking me out!!!

The Library

Exams start next week, which basically means that I plus every other student at this university, shall be living in the library for the short-term future. Unfortunately there aren't enough seats in the library, so people generally will leave their stuff at a claimed desk when they go for lunch/to class/on 2 hour sun break. The powers that be have finally latched onto this and have apparently enacted a rule saying that you can only leave your stuff unattended for 30 minutes, after which they will toss your stuff in a dumpster. If you choose to leave your seat for any period of time, you must leave a note saying what time you have gotten up. It's ridiculous, I know. Today will be my first test of living with this new rule. It's designed to free up more desks so fewer people get turned away, but I think it will just add stress to a stressful time.

More exiciting topic...London times. There is a Whole Foods scheduled to open on the Kensington High Street this summer. The signs have been toying with me since the fall. It's cruel to promise such a thing for a so long and keep putting it off (it used to say opening in the spring). If I am working in Notting Hill, this locale is easily accessible for all my lunchtime needs. There are also approximately 700 eating establishments within a quarter-mile radius of this place (including 2 Starbucks), but I think Whole Foods may be all I require. Plus it's right by big Top Shop. Cupcake store is in the opposite direction, however, so I don't think a Whole Foods/cupcake lunch could happen.

Cereal guy is out!! I have not mentioned it before, but I often see this little Chinese guy eating cereal outside in his PJs. He lives in the building opposite mine and seems to enjoy the crisp morning air. I apologize for not having a better nickname for him, but I have tried to explain him before. Haven't seen him in days! Glad to know he's still keeping up with his ways despite today's cloud cover.

London offer!

I've received a job offer to work in London this September. This is big news for me. As this means I most likely will not be deported once September rolls around. And you know, will be able to work in London, and live at least reasonably close. Basically it's the somewhat twisted and disgruntled American dream.

While all of this is contingent on securing what should be an easily acquired visa (long story, but I'm special), I should be a tube-commuting London yuppy in a little over 4 months time.

I actually received this news while en route to the train station to go back to London for another job interview. It basically meant that instead of spending the 80-minute train ride being worried and nervous, I sat there with what was most likely a creepy grin on my face thinking of all that will be entailed in the upcoming adventure. I even momentarily considered changing the name of blog. It was also moderately exciting to be able to tell the people in the interview that I have another job offer. Hopefully this makes me look popular and they will want me, too. Although I don't really care as I only need the one offer.

At this point there is no way for me to know how long I am planning on staying in the UK. For all I know, I will despise the London ways and won't be able to escape quickly enough. Although I imagine the novelty will last for quite some time and I am looking forward to checking out the as yet un-seen little neighborhoods and hidden gems of London. If I have visitors I shall be able to provide good insight on what to do and where to go!

In totally unrelated news, when I returned from London this evening I went to my room and my lock has broken and I couldn't get in. Luckily a carpenter is on call and it should be fixed shortly, but I am still being forced to sit in a computer lab on campus while wearing a suit on a really warm day!

Mobile home

On the train back from London today I saw a mobile home. While this shouldn't be note-worthy, upon sight of the thing I realized how long it had been since I've seen one. This is most likely because I have just not been frequenting the mobile home parks of the south of England, but it also made me wonder where they were and how many they were in number. That lovely film Snatch taught me all I think I needed to know about the gypsy-style caravans, but those are obviously actual homes that are mobile, and not mobile homes. I like to think the English have realized that mobile homes are not cute and have done their best to prohibit them from being scattered about the countryside. I mean, as far as mobile homes go, the one I saw was pretty cute.

A non-cute sighting occurred yesterday. On my way into town, my bus was passed by a stretch Ford, ummm, Excursion limosine. I hesitate to say excursion because isn't an excursion just a stretched expedition? So who knows which one this was. You don't see too many limos around these parts, and you certainly don't see any Ford SUVs (cars, on the other hand, way popular), so to see a hybrid of the two was really something. It was also 10:45 in the morning, so who knows what exactly was going on.

After years of closure, the 5th floor of the library has re-opened. You can tell the chairs are new because they are not conformed to anyone's caboose.

Carnage

On Tuesday evening, in a peacable attempt to catch a bus into town at 6:30 pm, I was confronted at the bus stop by approximately 600 first years (frosh, as we know and love them) wearing ripped up matching t-shirts and the occasional lei. What, WHAT, was this? Apparently it was Carnage, a massive pub crawl that involves apparently thousands of 18 and 19 year-olds wandering from pub to pub to club to pub to club to club drinking alcohol and writing things on their matching t-shirts. Apparently this is a widespread phenomenon and it happens throughout the land at regular intervals. On Tuesday there was a massive flooding of buses by these pre-funked students trying to get to the first stop, so I literally had to squeeze onto the bus whilst about 30 were turned away, and the bus driver would not let anyone else on the entire way. Others who took buses into town that evening had similar tales of whoa. There was quite a bit of screaming on my bus whenever we sped up, slowed down or turned, and at one point there were also several attempts to get the entire bus involved in singing build me up buttercup.

In related news, my trip into town was linked with the watching of the away-leg of the Southampton FCs play-off match with Derby. Derby had won the first game 2-1, Southampton 'won' this game 3-2, but as that really meant it was 4-4 overall, there was a 30 minute OT and then a penalty shoot-out. Southampton lost the shoot-out and are now out of the play-offs. This is truly unfortunate. Perhaps if Paul Allen comes in and takes over they will be able to acquire some better penalty kickers.

Madrid!

What did you do this weekend? I hopped a short flight and checked out Madrid. This seems tough to beat. Here is a brief run-down on what went on:

Saturday: got up, went to campus, caught National Express to Heathrow (the trains like, don't go there), flew to Spain, was flabergasted by the Madrid airport, which is quite possibly the largest thing I have ever seen in all my life (including Grand Canyon and all kinds of mountains). You basically get off your plane, walk for two miles with no one around, find a guy at a desk who checks your passport, walk two more miles and hope your suitcase shows up, walk another mile to get on subway. Anyways, took subway to place we were staying, walked past place we were staying as didn't see entrance, and magically found Kari and Coco in our nearby plaza. Had an agua and checked out Plaza del Sol (which sadly was partially being constructed on), did a bit of shopping, sat around outside the Palacio Real, had some mandatorily late dinner, walked around a bit more and saw the happening night life plaza (Santa Ana) and saw a man twirling sticks of fire in another (Chueca). Learned that fire baton twirling is evidently a good ab workout.

Sunday: wandered streets looking for food. Finally got some jamon and cafe con leche, went to the modern art museum to see Picasso's Guernica ('the greatest painting of the 20th century'). Sunday was free entry day, but even other days it's rather cheap. Then we went to the Jardin by the Prado to look at some greenery and catch some rays, and earn some brownie points with the matron (we paid 2 entire euros to see plants, aren't you proud, Mom?). We then went to the Prado, again for free, to see priceless works of art. We totally scored by waiting until after lunch, as the line in the morning time was half the length of the building, and when we went it was about ten people. We didn't spend too much time at the Prado because all of the painting explanations were in Spanish, although I did spend some time trying to figure out who all the scary in-bred Spanish royals were (so first she married her cousin, then her uncle, but, as Kari stated, most importantly, what is up with her hair?). So we mainly tried to look at the Spanish stuff, which was a lot of Velazquez and Goya, and was lucky enough to include what 'may' be the greatest painting of the 17th century, which was one of the Velazquez deals. How often do you get to see the greatest paintings of two different centuries in one day? For FREE? Uhh, then we went to Plaza Mayor and tried to go to Zara but it was closed, so we sat at a sidewalk cafe for hours on end and had a Spanish sangria, found another place that had a beer tap built into the table which was ideal, but it was the end of the keg and was foamy and then ran out. Oh, had dinner at a place Hemingway apparently frequented, had some ice cream at fancy dessert place.

Monday: breakfast with Kari and Coco before they departed for the airport. Did a bit of shopping then went to the really, really big park in Madrid, then went to airport myself. Made it back into the country without incident (they even had two lines at customs for non-EU people, one of which was for visa holders, go me), even got on the earlier bus and got back to campus shortly after ten.

So what did I think of Madrid? Lots of cute buildings with cute wrought iron pseudo-balconies, lots of people wearing red, lots of stuff going on late at night, some neat museums and nice plazas and such. Although I'm not sure if I would spend much longer there than I did. But if you dig the 'doesn't open until midnight' nightlife, you may rather enjoy. Oh, and be prepared to eat a lot of jamon. By the way, the picture is 'blue steel'. We were going to go have magnum (ice cream bar), but as we all know, blue steel came first. The Prado is behind us.

General Election

As I'm sure it was front page news all around the globe, you must all know that Tony Blair is going to be stepping down at the end of next month. And to be frank, the whole electoral procedure over here is a couple realms beyond my understanding. Elections the first Tuesday in November, every November, make sense to me. Voting for Al Gore for president makes sense to me. On second thought, what they do here makes sense as well.

So Tony Blair is the leader of the Labour Party. It was said Party who decided he would be their leader. In an election, the people vote for which party they want, and in the last election Labour got the most votes. As the most popular party, their leader got to be Prime Minister. But ol' TB has been Prime Minister for ages and people are sick of him or something, so he's stepping down. It is expected that Gordon Brown will take over the reigns of the Labour Party. And to be honest, I still don't understand how a general election would fall into this, but at some point the Labour Party will vote for there to be one, and then there will be one. Interesting concept.

The Eurovision song contest is tonight. Needless to say, I am very sorry I will have to miss it. Alas, I will be eating tapas and drinking sangria on some sidewalk cafe in Madrid this evening. Times are tough. Very tough indeed.

Lots of photos and interesting Spanish tales come Tuesday!

Neal's Yard

As further proof that London is the cutest and full of hidden gems, I present exhibit A. This is a photo of Neal's Yard, which you would never notice if it wasn't in your guidebook and you had managed to accidentally stumble upon it. Conveniently located off Neal Street (just north of Covent Garden by the Seven Dials), this is basically a little courtyard with two alleys connecting it to the 'real world'. It's main appeal seems to be some sort of uber healthy eating establishment, so the courtyard may by chance be full of people eating cous cous and vegetables and looking, well, healthy.

In further uninteresting news, I have a group presentation tomorrow. My approach is to avoid thinking about it too much and hope for the best. 30% of our grade is based on questions we ask other people. That cannot go well. That means you actually have to pay attention to what the other groups are saying. For like, 3 and a half hours. And if anyone wants to trade places with me between 9:30 am and 1 pm tomorrow, just let me know....

Madrid is on Saturday!! It's slightly worrying how utterly unprepared I am for this journey. Tomorrow I shall work on that and perhaps get some euros and a map of Madrid, so I do not spend all of Saturday evening wandering around going 'Donde esta, um,' [and me pointing to the impronouncable hotel name on piece of paper]. And I am sorry if I have spelled the Spanish wrong. I took French, after all. I find it odd that I this will be my first venture to a Spanish-speaking nation. How have I never been to Mexico? I don't know. Well, I do. I kind of fear Tijuana.

Football game!

Today I went to quite an exciting football game. Some (aka, the announcer) declared it to be the most important game of our lives. That means ALL of us. To sum it, Southampton beat Southend 4-1 to secure a 6th place finish in the Championship League, meaning they will now enter the play-offs with the 3rd through 5th place teams to compete for a spot in the Premiere League, which contains the big boys such as Manchester United. The 1st and 2nd place teams in the Championship League get automatic upgrades, and the bottom three teams in each league get demoted. Somewhat luckily for Southampton, Southend is one of those teams for the Championship League, implying they are not good. So now Southampton plays Derby, who finished third, next Saturday, and the winner of that game will go to the championship game at Wembley Stadium the night before my tranportation management final.

Back to the game... it was a sell-out, with 32,008 in attendence. There was a touching tribute before the game for the recently deceased Alan Ball, including people on one of the main stands spelling out his name in silver placards. While there was a lot more falling down in this game than in many of the games I've watched on tv over the years, any short-comings in the quality of play were more than made up for by the entertaining and overly enthusiastic fans sitting around us. While I could not understand what they were chanting a good proportion of the time, I was able to decipher the general chants involved things such as 'when the saints go marching in', 'f*$£ off' (directed towards Southend fans), some random bad things about Pompey ('Portsmouth'), and other various happy things. While I have never seen so many police per square foot in my entire life, there was no hooligan-ism (sad, I know). And interesting tid bit...you can't take beer into the seating area. You can quietly consume your beer until 10 minutes before kick-off and from half-time up to 10 minutes into the second half. Perhaps this is to avoid spillage. Beer is sticky, you know.

Cinco de Mayo!

Today is a very special day to all taco loving Americans, the one day a year where it is practically indecent to avoid salsa for a full 24 hours. However, I don't think anyone here is big on Mexican independence day. Perhaps I will quietly eat some refried beans later. Although I imagine there may be festive-ness down at Chiquitos. Now if only they would put tacos on their menu...

Oh, plus today is a fun day because Americans and Brits write the date the same. 5/5. No confusion there! Although this happens once a month, so it's not too exciting.

Tomorrow is the big football game. Its a sell-out, which has not occurred at St Mary's Stadium in apparently quite some time. As I fear getting the exact details incorrect, I will not say too much about the situation, but I do know that Southampton needs to score more goals than some other team (NOT the team they are playing against, but I suppose them, too) who is playing at the same time in order to get into the play-offs. I think. And if all goes correctly, then the play-off tickets will go on sale AT the stadium at the end of the game. The potential for craziness is quite considerable, I think, so I'm quite pumped. If I don't update blog after this it is because I have been trampled in some sort of stampede.

7 days until Spain!

Vista

Good news! The free computer room in building 25, which has been closed since the beginning of Easter break, is not only back open, but it's stone-age slow-as-molasses computers have been replaced with brand-new uber-speedy computers installed with Windows Vista. So today not only did I get to print out a bunch of old exams for free, but I got to play with Vista, which, mind you, is really funky. Although Office was really complex and it took a long time to figure out how to print.

I realized this evening that with my weekend in Spain I am definitly on course to break my record of countries visited in a calendar year. The record, which currently stands at 3 (including the US), shall be met by this trip (UK, Netherlands, Spain) which guarantees that I will be able to hit four at least when I return to the US. Although hopefully I'll be able to go to Paris at some point so the US would then be number 5. Plus I will get to fill in another bubble on my world map, which I always enjoy in a sort of sad way.

I have also taken heed of the fact that many of the night venues in Southampton have random one word names. Like, we have mono, junk, tusk, ikon, um, other places I haven't been, and so on. Perhaps they are overcompensating for the often longer silly pub names like The Moldy Faucet (which I have just made up to illustrate a point).

There is a new album up on picasa from my road trips to Alton Towers and to Croydon. I didn't take my camera into Alton Towers because I didn't want to risk breaking it, but I totally took it into the tram headquarters building. Mainly there are just a lot of pictures of random people most of you don't know making weird faces and/or sleeping. It's a good time, really.

It's sunny and I am inside again

So the unnaturally sunny summer weather has returned (although it never really left). It is sunny and uber warm outside and while I could be getting a bit of sun....I am in the computer lab and will be until near the end of time.

In things to look forward to news (aside from all the coursework!), I'm going to a 'football' game on Sunday! It's right at the end of the 10-month of whatever season and there are things riding on this game that I don't quite understand, but we are hoping that Southampton wins and they do well and maybe someone else loses so we can get into the play-offs, and if they like, win the play-offs or something they could maybe get back into the premiere league. Or maybe Paul Allen can just go through with purchasing the team then buy them a bunch of new players and they can be really good next year. My fingers are crossed that there is visible hooligan-ism but that I am able to maintain a safe distance from it. I am also not going to wear blue because that's not how they role around here.

There is a crunchie wrapper sitting on the table across from me that a girl has eaten. Let's consider this a shout-out to Kari. They also have Cadbury bars with bits of crunchie in it. As I am not a fan of the styrofoam flavoring, I have not sampled this kind.

Week and a half until Madrid mini-break! Woo-hoo!