Another Weekend, Another Country

I'm off again (actually RIGHT NOW!) to Germany for the weekend! I'm going to be in Munich and Fussen, to see the famous Neuschwanstein castle.

I'll be back in London Sunday evening, and I'll have finally one weekend in London next week!

Cheers! I gotta go!

Nice

Flights are so cheap in January. It only cost me £10 to buy an EasyJet flight from London to Nice, right in the heart of the Côte d'Azur, or French Riviera. I had just visited Florence the week before, and had already booked my trip to Munich the next weekend, so I thought I might be traveling too much, making three trips on three consecutive weekends. I felt that I might be neglecting London and my flatmates and my studies. However, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to escape the dreariness of London in January for the (hopefully) sunnier and warmer South of France.

And I'm so glad I went.

Back from My Nice Weekend in Nice

Just got back from another weekend in another country! I was in Nice, France, and visited Monaco and Cannes. It was spectacular. Some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. I definitely recommend visiting the Côte d'Azur!

I'm really tired now, as is expected for a travel day, so I'll try to update with details of where I've been soon!

Pisa and Firenze

I'm back from my weekend in Italy. It was beautiful, interesting, full of art, paintings and sculptures galore, and I got a good sampling of Italy.

But I went through an ordeal getting back from the airport! It was just a series of setbacks, and I was tired, stressed, angry, totally exhausted, hungry, dehydrated, dirty, and sleepy, which doesn't make a good combination.

Flew over the alps. Arrived at Pisa's Aeroporto Galileo Galilei.

First impression? Interesting.

Photos: 2 Weeks Since Returning to London

Click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Recent Explorations of London

I really enjoying the university class schedule here in London. 3-4 day weekends every week and only 2 hours of lecture during each of the other days has provided me with so much free time, which in theory should be spent studying and for self-betterment; however, I choose to engage in a more exciting form of self-betterment: Exploring London with every chance I get!

And for the sake of thoroughness, I hereby present a summary of what I've been doing recently, organized day-by-day:

Last Tuesday, January 8

• The second day of classes, but I don't have any classes on Tuesday.
• I was still recovering from being sick (British - "ill") over the weekend. I stayed inside.

Wednesday, January 9

• Economics class early, 9 to 11 am. Doesn't seem too hard. But it's econ, and the professor has a noticeable accent (Italian I think). What is it with economics professors coming from foreign countries? I guess filtering the lectures through a foreign accent is one way for the university to make economics somewhat challenging ;)
  
• Finished class at 11 am. And that was it! What a good feeling to be done early. However, I again stayed inside for the rest of the day, occupying my time with games and online distractions.

Thursday, January 10

• I had my German Business class from 12-2pm. Even though it was totally in German, and many students in the class are native German-speakers, I could understand most of what was going on (for now).
• It was Thuy An's birthday! And it was about time to get all the EAP people together for a mini-reunion of sorts. We ended up having dinner at Brick Lane then heading to the Hayfield afterwards for drinks. A good evening was had.

Friday, January 11.

• No class today! So I just sat around lazily.
  
• But I then decided to get up and do some exploring before it got dark (i.e. before 4 pm--though the days are beginning to get longer now). I ended up walking to Roman Road, which is about half a mile from my university. There wasn't that much to see, just a street lined with small stores. It's East London, though, so the stores weren't exactly charming. But it was nice to see the area at least. There were some new housing developments nearby though, so it wasn't all old and rusty, either.

Saturday, January 12

• I explored Hyde Park, Mayfair, and Marlyebone. It was a sunny and crisp January day, and there was a protest against the U.S. taking place at Marble Arch. Hyde Park had a good number of people enjoying what was left of the sun, and I walked around and took some pictures.
• Mayfair, just next to Hyde Park, is a very posh neighborhood. There are exclusive boutiques, expensive car dealerships, clean but nondescript flats, and several embassies (including the U.S.'s). It did feel very stuck-up, though.
• Then I walked north of Oxford Street to explore the neighborhood of Marylebone (I'm really not sure how to pronounce it but I think that's how it's spelled). It was just a neighborhood--some shops, some pubs, a church here and there. It was pretty nice, and it's definitely in a good location. I was getting tired, and it was nearing the 4:00 sunset, so I headed back and didn't do anything in the evening.
  

Sunday, January 13

• Another adventure on foot! I left my flat around 2 in the afternoon and started walking down the Regents Canal, following the path that hugs the canal. I walked all the way down to Limehouse basin, where the canal meets the Thames. I then walked along the Thames all the way to the Tower of London. That's over a mile, I think. It was nice, though, seeing all the new buildings being put up along the waterfront, as well as the older, shipping-related buildings too. And I just kept going, to see what was beyond that next bend in the river. The thing is, there's no continuous path along the Thames at that point, so I had to keep zig-zagging from the street to the river to keep my track. It was rewarding, though, to reach Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, before it even got dark.
• Getting back from the Tower of London involved dealing with the closure of the tube station at Tower Hill (yet again, "planned engineering works"). So I hopped on the DLR and took that back to Bow Church and walked back from there, picking up a chicken sandwich and fries from Fast Food Corner for dinner.
• Back in my room, I continued planning out my travels for this semester. I ended buying my tickets to Munich and Nice, because there was a sale!
  

Monday, January 14

• German seminar in the morning. We just learned about the history of Austria in a nutshell from 1800 to today. No Arnold Schwarzennegger mentioned, though, so I feel jipped.
• Lunch, baked some frozen fried-chicken breast and ate it with store-bought coleslaw.
• Then I was off to my first field trip for my architecture class. We visited the Houses of Parliament and analyzed the exterior elements of the building. It was pretty interesting, and another excuse to see more of London!
• After my class finished, I met up with Uncle "Boy" Sam and his wife Lillian for some dinner at Pizza Hut (which, here, is more upscale: it's actually a restaurant!) in Westminster. It was good, and nice to go out to eat!
  

Today, Tuesday, January 15

• Woke up around 12. Oh, boy, I like to sleep!
  
• I went to Sainsbury's. Bought some squash (I like the high juice, what can I say), meat, milk, snacks, and ingredients for mexican food! Maybe tomorrow I'll make a mexican meal.
• Did some more "planning" of trips (mainly looking at destinations and prices) -- I might end up spending every weekend away from London! Almost.
• Played some Roller Coaster Tycoon. Yeah, it's sort of an old game, but I brought it back with me from home and I've sort of become addicted to it in the past few days.
  
• Had some leftover pizza from yesterday for dinner.

Okay, I have to be up and about in less than 9 hours, so cheers out for now.

January 7: A Hectic Start to the Semester

Busy day today. It was the first day of classes for the semester, which meant I had to frantically scramble from department to department to confirm/drop classes and to figure out where the classes meet.
That itself isn't too bad, but add on top of that the fact that I am recovering from a bout of illness (a strong cold, maybe even the flu?!), and that I had 2 (!!!) essays due today. These essays counted for the majority of my grade in the two classes they were for. In total, I wrote over 5500 words in these essays. I poured all my energy this weekend into them (though my illness took most of my energy before I could use it).

But things just didn't seem to be going smoothly today either. I woke up groggy, sick, and tired, having stayed up until 3 to finish my papers. I forced myself to eat and shower, triple-checked I had everything essential in my backpack and headed off to get the registration form from Harry Gibney. He wasn't in his office, but I luckily tracked him down upstairs. I got my form, then went to the Econ department (up 3 flights of stairs! remember, I'm sick and weak), but there were no advisers there. I then went to the Arts building, where I changed my German classes and attempted to find the timetable for History. Turns out there is no timetable; I had to ask a departmental adviser. I was wandering the halls of the Arts building for probably 15 minutes, looking completely lost.

I then went to my first scheduled class, German (Austrian) Literature. I went to the classroom, but no one was there. I waited for another minute or so, double-checked the assigned room, then noticed a bulletin board saying that this class would not be meeting the first week. Doh! So I left and attempted to print out my essays.

I say "attempted" primarily because of my linguistics essay, which has caused me almost as many heartaches over the past week as its word count of 4098. First, I had to make a recording of American English and burn it onto a CD. Then there were these forms that I had to sign because the recording involved outside participants, etc. Then, the paper itself was really long! 4000 words--it turned out to be around 14 pages! That qualifies it as the longest paper I have ever written. But the problems didn't stop when I completed the essay late last night. I had to find a way to accurately display linguistic symbols, which required changing the font of the symbols to Lucidia Sans or whatever. Anyway, the computers in the library (where I went to print out my paper) didn't have this font installed, so none of my symbols showed up! It wouldn't work to change them to Times New Roman. So, I went back to my room, with about 5 hours left before the submission deadline, and tried to see if my flatmate with a printer was in so I could use it. She wasn't there. So I began to re-edit my paper, changing the linguistic symbols. But then I got the idea of converting it to pdf. After finding a site that converts files to pdf for free, it worked! I was able to print out the pdf of my paper and submit it with the CD of my recordings.

So my two big papers are done. Huge burden off my back. And suddenly I don't feel so sick anymore! It's amazing how stress really can affect your health.

I had another class today that actually met: The history of Architecture in London, from the Victorian era to the present. It seems like an interesting class, and it definitely will help me immerse more into the culture of London. The teacher warned us, though, that some of the readings are really dull and dense. But every other week, the class takes a field trip to analyze buildings firsthand! I'm excited. Next week we'll be looking at the Houses of Parliament (from the outside only; I already got to go inside, though :P)

After my hectic day of class scheduling (I went to the Econ department a second time, and they referred me to a certain professor's room, but she wasn't in... strike 2!) and paper-submitting, I was perfectly fine just wasting the rest of my evening, mostly on the web. For some reason, I was craving tomatoes today: I had tomato soup for lunch and I made some spaghetti for dinner. I also ended up spicing things up with some Cholula sauce. I really love the sourness and pungentness of it all.

I don't think I have any classes tomorrow... yay! Well, actually, not so yay, because I don't have a 4-day weekend anymore.

But I'm tired (as I often have been over the past few days, since I've arrived back in London), so I can sleep in! Good nite!

Home for the Holidays

I've come home for Christmas! I arrived last Tuesday night, so I've been back in California for nearly a week now! It's been good. I've been able to see many of my friends so far, but I'm looking forward to spending more time with them during my next (and last) week home. I only have two weeks of Christmas vacation! I fly back to London right after New Years! I'm wondering whether I should have just stayed in Europe... but it would be too long without seeing any family.

The Tube and the Metro

This article is from about 10 years ago, but it does highlight many of the differences I picked up in my travel experience in London and in Paris.

PARIS DAYS: Le train now arriving is cheap, efficient and smells
John Lichfield

The French railways have produced an entertaining leaflet. It shows the Eurostar route through the Channel tunnel as an outsize Metro/Tube line linking the underground systems of London and Paris.

If this fantasy is ever to be realised - boarding the Tube at Piccadilly, and alighting at Charles de Gaulle-Etoile - one hopes, for humanitarian reasons, that the trains will be run from the French end.

As a once daily victim of the London Underground, now removed to Paris, I wish to pay a glowing tribute to the Metro. It is clean; efficient; safe; frequent; cheap; and rarely breaks down. It also has that wonderful smell - a blend of sweat, perfume and burned rubber - which has defined Paris to generations of foreign visitors, as much as, say, the view of the Eiffel Tower. My problem is that I can find few Parisians who agree with me about the Metro. They are convinced that their underground system is dirty, inefficient, expensive and dangerous. In other words, despite the Eurostar, few of them have been to London recently. This is a perfect example of a French tendency to protest too much. The French have some reasons to be anxious about their future but not as many as they think they have. They have some reasons to be sour about the Metro - for instance, a tendency for bombs to explode in its younger, bigger, dirtier sister, the RER regional network - but not as many as they believe they have. On my nightly struggle home in London, it was a common experience to wait 20 minutes for a Wimbledon branch train on a menacingly crowded platform at Earls Court; or to wait in tunnels three or four times on one journey. In four and a half months in Paris, I can remember stopping between stations only once, and that on a day when the Metro line 6 was "perturbed" by industrial action. In daytime, you generally wait no more than two or three minutes for a Metro train. Late at night, you wait ten minutes, at most. It costs eight francs, less than 90p, for a single journey, anywhere within the city of Paris, broadly equivalent to zones one and two of the London Tube system, where a single journey costs pounds 1.50. If you buy a carnet of 10 tickets, as most Parisians do, the cost falls to Fr4.60 a trip - around 50p. A monthly ticket in Paris costs Fr243 (pounds 26.40), compared to pounds 60.30 for zones one and two in London. How does the Metro do it? It starts with some advantages. The Metro (leaving aside the RER) is a denser network than the Tube and does not reach out as far into the suburbs. As a purely urban system, it is more intensively used - five million passengers a day, seven million including the RER, compared to 2.5 million on the Tube - which reduces the cost of carrying each passenger. Since the Metro was built later than the Tube (its first line opened in 1900), and has fewer deep tunnels, it is structurally cheaper to maintain. Beyond that, the Metro-economics are confusing but instructive. The public subsidy for each tube journey in London is around 35 per cent (and falling). The public subsidy for each Metro journey is 50 per cent. Thus the real cost of the pounds 1.50 single tube journey is around pounds 2.35 (based on figures supplied by London Transport). The real cost of the 88p single Metro journey is pounds 1.76 and the real cost of a 50p carnet ticket is pounds 1. In other words, the Metro is not only efficient; it is genuinely good value. The RATP, unlike other state-run operations, such as the main- line railway system, is not a licence for tearing up francs. It faces, none the less, demands for new "efficiencies". As France struggles to reduce its budget deficits to qualify for Economic and Monetary Union (Emu), all public services are being squeezed, including the Metro. Some of the clever young men in the Finance Ministry have started to ask if it might not be possible for passengers to wait three or four minutes for a train instead of two. Journeys were still about 5 per cent down last year on pre- bomb-and- strike levels of 1994. Parisians are turning more to their cars, to taxis, even to bikes. There is an element of snobbery here: even racism. You hear better-off Parisians say that they never use the Metro any more: it is unsafe and unclean. By this, they seem to mean that there are more brown and black faces down there than they see at street level. Robberies and assaults on the Metro are, in reality, rare. (The RER, which links Paris with some of the poorer banlieues, is a different matter.) Surveys and anecdotal experience suggest that Parisians are also offended by the intensive panhandling which afflicts the Metro. On one short journey I made this week, there was an almost choreographed French farce of entries and exits. At consecutive stations, three panhandlers got on and off through different doors, giving the same rather formal speech beginning: "Excusez- moi de vous deranger, mesdames, messieurs, mais . . ." No one else on the train found this funny. All three were trying to sell the same small booklet, produced by the French equivalent of the Big Issue. It turned out to be a well-written guide to the history and meaning of the station names on the Paris Metro. Partly drawn from this publication, here is a brief quiz. Which two stations on the London Tube have the same names as stations on the Paris Metro? Answer: 1. Temple (District and Circle line and Metro line 3); 2. Arsenal (Piccadilly line and Metro line 5). The second, I admit, is a cheat. The Parisian Arsenal station, next to Bastille, closed in 1939. If you got one station right, you win a ticket on the first through Metro train to Wimbledon.

Copyright 1997 Newspaper Publishing PLC
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Work!

I just had my first shift today working for a catering company. It went better than I expected! The event was a Christmas party for a big law firm, but there was no sit-down food service, just one big reception. So I spent most of my time refilling people's sparkling wine, carrying trays of glasses, and cleaning up afterwards. We got fed, which was good too. It's crazy how much food they throw out at events (and restaurants too).

Anyway, I had a good time during my first day at work. I didn't break anything or make any big mistakes! Whew! But I still haven't done a dinner service, so I'm not a catering master yet. The people I worked with were cool though, some lively mates who were friendly. I wonder if I see lots of the same people at jobs I'll be at. I doubt it though, especially now that there are so many jobs to sign up for every night.

I'm tired right now, and I'm going to be working tomorrow too, not to mention I have to prepare for German class :X OK, I'm out. Good night!

Exploring Natural History

Today, my study-abroad friend was visiting London (she's studying in Ireland) with her housemate.

We went to the National History Museum. It was big; we spent nearly 3 hours there and barely saw half the museum. Not to mention that the Science Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum are right next door!

After our museum visit, we walked to Harrods, which we explored for a bit, but we were overwhelmed by the store (it's size, it's depth and breadth of choices, and the crowds of people touring it/doing some Xmas shopping), so we left after barely seeing one full floor.

We then walked through Hyde Park (which was having a Christmas "Wintertime Fair," featuring a ferris wheel and a haunted Christmas house) to Piccadilly Circus, where we tried to track down a Whole Foods Market that they had seen yesterday. After some walking around unsure of where to go, we found the market and had us some organic salad bar.

We walked up Regent Street from the Piccadilly area, and explored a large toy store. I forgot the name, but it might have started with an H. Then, we walked through Carnaby Street to Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road, and turned down into the West End. Then, after heading through Leicester Square and ending up in Trafalgar Square, we tried to figure out who could join us for dinner. Turns out, no one could. But we got a recommendation for an Indian restaurant in Brick Lane. So we got on the bus to Aldgate and found the restaurant. We had some good Indian food. Not insanely expensive, about £9 a person. Then we walked to the Hayfield and met up with a fellow classmate. Now I'm back in my room, exhausted from another day of exploring and lots of walking. I think I will get a good night's rest tonight!