Bizarre Blizzard

Today, on the 28th of October 2008, there was a small burst of moderate snowfall in London. Yes you heard it here first folks (or on Kahran's Blog, one or the other). It accumulated for a while, and some people in the hall were playing outside in it, but now it has since melted and turned back into rain. Damn you London.

Yep, It's snow alright.

More Sights

Hi Everyone,
There is not much to say other than life has gotten mostly back to normal, and the work is beginning to pile up. I am officially a member of the Running Club and also Wing Chun Kung Fu. Everyone here seems to be utterly fascinated by the US elections; remember to go out and vote everyone--it will make you feel big and strong.

The weather really has been nice lately, so I decided to take some more pictures of the area around where I live. I apologize that they are taken with my cell phone camera, but most of them came out pretty well. I will have many more once I get my new camera and after I go to Ireland.

St. Pancras and Euston Road

Between Gordon Square and Tavistock Court

The Woburn Walk

The Rocket; a favorite pub of ours

The British Library

That's all for now. Cheers!

RACE! (?)

I felt good today (not sick anymore), so I thought it would be a good idea to go for a run with the XC team at the usual 1PM time on wednesdays.  Not being on the e-mail list for some reason or another, even after putting my name down, I was happy to still find everyone at the usual meeting place in front of the student union.

Then, I hear from one of the captains "Everyone has money on their Oyster Cards, right?"  Yes, I heard correctly, "Oyster Card".  Mine was way back in my room at John Dodgson House.  It turned out that today was not a usual run at all.  We were to get on a bus to travel all the way out (several miles) to a place called Hampstead Heath on the outskirts of the city for our run.  When we arrive, I hear that we are to run a race at 3:15 PM against rookies from other colleges of the University of London to compete for spots on the team.  Wait.  RACE?  I have not run a cross country race in over 2 years!  Also, what chance on earth would I have of making a team of 6 for a consortium of colleges with over 150,000 students?  Furthermore, I had been spoiled of the relative stability and non-severe slope of paved roads.  In other words, I was in no shape to race.

Boy, was I not in shape.

We were to do two 2.5-mile laps around a hilly course of grass, gravel, mud, and roots.  Brilliant.  Also, it turned freezing cold, windy, and rainy just before we began.  Needless to say, I realized how out of shape I was to run this sort of terrain and speed right away, as I immediately slowed my pace after cresting the first hill.  I made it through one lap and a bit before my previously injured foot from marathon season began to flare up, and I stopped; I was not about to take another 5 weeks off to heal like I had to back in February before the marathon.  I got on the bus and came home.

I had planned on going to Kung Fu again this week with Aaron, but that started at 4:30, and I made it back slightly bruised at 4:45, too late.  Oh well.

I do want to keep up with running, and the people are nice, but I suppose I should choose my battles carefully; I guess I should try to get on that email list and know what I'm getting myself into before the point of no return.

OMG NEW COMPUTER!!!

I am in ecstasy.

24 days.  24 miserable days of being cut off from the rest of the tech world.  Well my friends, those 24 days are finally over.

I am currently typing this blog post on my shiny, new, US-keyboard-equipped MacBook Pro.  I just finished restoring my backup from my external drive, so I am able to pick up my computing (almost) where I left off when the previous one got stolen, with all my previous music, photos, videos, and documents left intact.  Lucky me :D

I want to thank everyone for their sympathy about the theft, and the people here at John Dodgson House for letting me use their various PC's when it was just too unbearable to go down to the forsaken cluster room.

I am currently reloading my iTunes library back onto my iPod, talking to my brother on AIM, and listening to AC/DC's "Back in Black."  Life is good.

I also want to shout out to my New Haven commuter friends and thank Shelly (at least) for continuing to read this blog.  I will be back soon enough to visit you all!  I will be sure to post lots of pictures of my first trip on the Eurostar to Paris to make you all jealous.

That's all for now.  Please excuse me while I get my life back in order.

Cheers!

Shipped!

My new computer has shipped finally.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Future days of connected-ness are ahead of me after about a month of disconnected-ness :)

Seriously, how much longer?

I met with the insurance agent, and I should be able to get everything completely covered that was stolen from me (about £1,968 worth of stuff). The meeting was rather bizarre, taking place in a KFC-esque restaurant known as 'Chicken Cottage' in a small area of south London known as Tooting Bec. It was loud and full of screaming children, and a £7 round trip ride on the Tube, but hey, in the end it will probably be a good deal for me.

It seems to be taking forever for my new computer to get here, which forces me to use this boiling hot 'computer cluster room' in the basement of my hall; I guess it's not such a bad thing since it makes me want to spend as little time as possible using the computer, as they are also very slow and crappy, and without sound capabilities. Therefore, I am more likely to meet and interact with (gasp) actual people.

Just to give you a hint --> I can't even watch youtube since the movies are reduced to pixelated slide shows on these awful machines.

The way my class schedule has worked out is rather interesting: Since all classes last the whole year (1st and 2nd semester), I am taking both first and second year design and first and second year materials. This has allowed me to becoming fantastically bored in the first year classes and somewhat lost in the second year classes, but hopefully it will reach an equilibrium by the end of the second term, since I won't actually be assessed on anything until May or June.

I ran the intro practice with the XC team, and I think I may do the running club. I feel fat and lazy.

You'll also be happy to know that I voted in the 2008 election, having sent my absentee ballot back to the US just this week. Not to start any flamewars or anything, but the only republican I voted for was Ray Kalinowski of the 100th Assembly District of Connecticut, since he's such a darned nice guy.

Cheers,