My second day can be summarized by two words: walking and spending.
I met up with Tim at Tottenham Court Road tube station at 10:00 am and we started to walk west down Oxford street.
(A) is High Holborn and (B) is Tottenham Court: ~3 minute walk
BTW: Did you know you could click on these pictures to see them in full size??? I didn't.
Oxford Street is filled with small stores and shops that sell everything from fast foods, cell phones, and clothes to furniture, electronics, and more electronics. It turns out electronic stores seem to be the start up business of choice in London. Every block we passed featured at least 2-3 electronic stores that looked exactly the same except for their store names. The most memorable name was definitely "McDonald". Tim, who was not satisfied after one serving of sausage and egg McMuffin from an actual McDonald's restaurant a few blocks back, walked into the McDonald for seconds. Needless to say he was disappointed. On the to do list for my trek down Oxford Street included getting a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan and an Oyster card. Oyster card is a definite must for anyone wishing to use the London public transportation system, which can extend all the way to an IKEA way outside of the city. More on that later.
By the time we've crossed everything off of our imaginary to do list for Oxford Street, we had covered about ten blocks and logged about 1 hr of walk time. Walking back to Tottenham Court station, we decided to walk north up Tottenham Court Road towards Tim's residence hall (Passfield Hall) which was about fifteen minutes walk. Along the way, I saw many more electronic stores, purchased some bathroom products at a drug store, and withdrew some quid (British Pounds) from a bank. When we were about to reach our final destination, we found a poster sale near by so we decided to check it out. I was impressed by the poster collection, especially when I found a poster for my new favorite British TV show "Top Gear". At 4 quid a piece, I picked up a Beatles Abby Road poster and the Top Gear poster. Having never owned any real posters before, I was very excited and could not wait to go back to my room to hang them up. Little did I know I would not get to put up these posters until about 2:30 am next day.
Tim's roommate, Kevin, was in the room when we arrived at Passfield at 1:00 pm. After some quick introductory words, three of us decided to go do some food shopping and eat some lunch. We walked to the nearest grocery store, and not realizing that there was another grocery store much closer to my hall, I decided it was a good idea to buy absolutely everything I was going to eat for the next two weeks. This resulted in numerous really heavy grocery bags that I would have to carry all the way back to my room, which ended up being 20 minutes away from the store. Let's just say that I am very grateful to Tim and Kevin for all of their help. By the time we got back to my room, it was 2:50 pm. I have been walking for about 5 hours.
We attended a rather boring new student orientation meeting on LSE campus from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. After that, we went back to my room, where Tim and I parted with Kevin so we could check out Chinatown.
About 10 minutes from (A) High Holborn
First impressions of Chinatown: flashy, concentrated, expensive!
Unlike the Chinatown in Houston, everything was easily accessible by foot, but everything was also a lot more expensive. We decided to have dinner in a small restaurant that charged us 15 pounds ($25) for two small plates of dumplings and a bowl of noodles. The worst part was that the food was just ok. Verdict: not worth it. I also went into a grocery store to get some Chinese cooking sauces. I spent 22 pounds ($35) for a bottle of soy sauce, a bottle of cooking wine, a small bottle of fried noodle sauce, and a bottle of oyster sauce. Prices here doesn't sound so bad until I convert them into US dollars. I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this.
By the time we finished dinner, it was about 7:30 pm. Tired of walking, we took a tube back to Passfield hall. I don't remember why I agreed to it, but we decided that our rooms were still missing many essential things, and the best plan for the night was to go to an IKEA that was supposedly 30 minutes outside of the city by tube.
After carefully mapping out the tube routes, we set out on our journey at 8:20 pm with full knowledge of IKEA's closing time of 10:00 pm. It took about 10 minutes of walking, 20 minutes of underground tubing and one train change to get to the Neasden tube station which was as close as the London public transportation system would take us to IKEA. From the IKEA website, the Scandinavian home furnishing giant wanted to have us believe that the store was so close to Neasden station that the station and the store might even share some parts of their parking lots. Therefore when we triumphantly marched out of Neasden station expecting only to pass a few rows of parked cars, we were in for a surprise. Who knew? IKEA was no where to be found. And all of this was happening less than an hour before 10:00 pm.
We would start walking in one direction, get lost, stop to ask for directions, and get lost again. It didn't help that the store was about a mile from the station, and the only way to get there was to take a left, a left, another left, cross a bridge, make a right, cross another bridge, and climb a parking lot fence. It took us about 20 minutes to get to IKEA from Neasden. When we finally crossed the automatic doors, we only had about 30 minutes left to shop.
The good news was that the IKEA employees did not get too angry at those who kept shopping past 10:00 pm. The bad news was that by the time we got out of the store at around 10:40 pm,
the surrounding area did not look safe enough for us to hurl our purchases over the parking lot fence, climb over the fence, cross the second bridge, make a left, cross the first bridge, and make three rights to get back to Neasden. Tim, who has loads of city life experience, suggested that we take a bus to any tube station and go from there. Brilliant! That's what we did, and we did it so well that we made it back to Passfield just before midnight.
Upon arrival in Tim's room, I quickly dropped my things and passed out on an empty bed. I do not remember how I ended up back in my room two hours later... I think I walked back. Or maybe I took a bus. And Tim might have come with me. Who knows?
What was discouraging though was when I got back to my room, the room was a mess and I had a lot of nifty things like posters and desk lamps to set up around the room. I thought about ignoring all of that and just going to bed. After all, at 2:30 am, I have been out and about for 14 and half hours, most of which time I spent on my feet walking around. But how unsatisfying would it be to have worked so hard and have nothing to show for? This was not the way to end my day, I told myself. I needed to set up my room...
Ladies and gentlemen, without further delay, I present you my room!!!!
Here's the door to my room: 1001.
My room is right next to the suite kitchen. The suite has six rooms, which share this kitchen.
The kitchen is pretty nice. It's empty most of the time and is filled mostly with my stuff :)
It also has two fridges! Super cool!!
Now to the main attraction:
When you enter, you'll first see my roommate's bed and desk etc. He's not here yet, so I have this whole room to myself :) :) :) As you can see, I just couldn't stop myself from using his desk as storage.
When you turn left, you see my side of the room. I sit right next to the window with the great view. And to my left I have the Beatles and my bed to look at. Quite comfortable set up I must say.
This is my bed, overlooked by my Top Gear poster.
For those of you who don't know what Top Gear is, it is a very funny and entertaining British TV show about cars. The Stig is what the show presenters call their team racing driver. The show has been on the air for thirteen seasons, and no one yet knows who the Stig really is.
The bathroom is quite small. Apparently Brits make fun of you for saying bathroom. (Bathroom? What, you want to take a bath?) Notice that the sink has a faucet for hot water and one for cold water. I have yet to find a way to produce flowing warm water from this faucet configuration.
The shower is quite small too: functional at best.
When I finally finished with my room at around 4:00 am, I smiled and went to bed.
Then at 7:30 am, FIRE at High Holborn!? (click here for dramatic sound effects)
It was terrible. I was in the middle of a sweet dream, when fire alarms started going off at full blast. Here in the UK, fire alarms do not beep. They simply continue howling at the same frequency and amplitude until you realize that it is no use to try to ignore it, so you slowly get up, put on your jeans and a jacket, fumble around for your keys and your phone, open the door, be startled by the even louder hall way alarms, walk down twelve flights of stairs, wonder whether you would still be alive if this was a real fire, walk out the back fire escape on the ground floor, and stand outside in the cold for ten fifteen minutes.
Here's the scary bit. It turns out there was a girl on third floor who was cooking some eggs at 7:30 am when the eggs became engulfed in flames. The fire was small so they were quickly put out, but that doesn't change the fact that there was an actual fire! This put me in a dilemma because I couldn't decide whether to be angry or thankful for the fire alarm.
I went with angry, and here's why: because I was so tired from the day before and so rudely interrupted ridiculously early in the morning, after the fire drill, I went into a such deep hibernation that I did not wake up until 3:30 pm, the time for my study abroad orientation meeting. I arrived at the 75-minute meeting with about 20 minutes to go. I don't think I missed much though--when I entered the packed room, everyone seemed a bit bored.
The day only got worse. Tonight was the General Course boat party, where all of the international study abroad students are invited to go on board a boat on River Thames for free food and drinks. We were supposed to meet by the Tower of London by 6:45 pm. I grossly overestimated the capabilities of the London underground tube system by staying in my room until 6:25 pm. To get to Tower of London, I needed to get to Tower Hill station, which could be reached by taking a south bound subway down three stations and then transferring to a east bound train to go about six more stops. However, my southbound train was stuck at its first stop after apparently a train broke down one station ahead. Quite sure that the railway would be cleared in a timely manner, I stayed on the train along with many other passengers.
This was a bad idea. Fifteen minutes later, with my watching reading 6:50 pm, the announcer announced that we needed to vacated the train and find alternate routes. I have only been in London for three days, and the first time I took a tube was last night. The task of finding a detour was so daunting that I nearly considered the possibility of asking someone for directions. Then I decided to read the tube map. The map may look confusing at first, but upon further examination, it was one of the most straightforward subway maps I have ever read. I quickly found two lines that went around the southbound railway, and got back on track. The rest of the ride was smooth, but my heart was sinking every minute because I was really late. By the time I got to Tower Hill station, it was already 7:22 pm. I quickly called Tim, who was already on board the ship, to ask if there was still hope for me to make the party. The answer was "yes, but run!" So I sprinted down the sidewalk to the Tower of London, past the tower gate, made a sharp left at the river walk, zoomed past the Tower Bridge, until I reached a little dock beyond which parked a boat what looked exactly like the boat featured in the SNL "I'm on a boat" video. My heart was filled with joy and relief as I approached the boat, but when I finally made it to the boat entrance, it started to move! Oh no!
Confident of my jumping skills, I prepared myself to jump onto the boat. The boat operators had other ideas however. When they saw me, they shouted "no" in such a way that I felt sure that they were going to toss me out of the ship even if I make the jump. After that shut down, some of my classmates waved at me. I smiled weakly and waved back. It was a sad evening.
On my way back, I met a mother of one of the General Course students. She told me she and her daughter were also delayed in the tube and the daughter barely made it to the ship. She was very nice and sympathetic, and we had quite a pleasant conversation back home. I guess not all sad stories need to have a sad ending after all.
Going to bed tonight, I can only hope tomorrow, on the last day of September, I will be woken up more gently, at a more reasonable time.
I met up with Tim at Tottenham Court Road tube station at 10:00 am and we started to walk west down Oxford street.
(A) is High Holborn and (B) is Tottenham Court: ~3 minute walkBTW: Did you know you could click on these pictures to see them in full size??? I didn't.
Oxford Street is filled with small stores and shops that sell everything from fast foods, cell phones, and clothes to furniture, electronics, and more electronics. It turns out electronic stores seem to be the start up business of choice in London. Every block we passed featured at least 2-3 electronic stores that looked exactly the same except for their store names. The most memorable name was definitely "McDonald". Tim, who was not satisfied after one serving of sausage and egg McMuffin from an actual McDonald's restaurant a few blocks back, walked into the McDonald for seconds. Needless to say he was disappointed. On the to do list for my trek down Oxford Street included getting a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan and an Oyster card. Oyster card is a definite must for anyone wishing to use the London public transportation system, which can extend all the way to an IKEA way outside of the city. More on that later.
By the time we've crossed everything off of our imaginary to do list for Oxford Street, we had covered about ten blocks and logged about 1 hr of walk time. Walking back to Tottenham Court station, we decided to walk north up Tottenham Court Road towards Tim's residence hall (Passfield Hall) which was about fifteen minutes walk. Along the way, I saw many more electronic stores, purchased some bathroom products at a drug store, and withdrew some quid (British Pounds) from a bank. When we were about to reach our final destination, we found a poster sale near by so we decided to check it out. I was impressed by the poster collection, especially when I found a poster for my new favorite British TV show "Top Gear". At 4 quid a piece, I picked up a Beatles Abby Road poster and the Top Gear poster. Having never owned any real posters before, I was very excited and could not wait to go back to my room to hang them up. Little did I know I would not get to put up these posters until about 2:30 am next day.
Tim's roommate, Kevin, was in the room when we arrived at Passfield at 1:00 pm. After some quick introductory words, three of us decided to go do some food shopping and eat some lunch. We walked to the nearest grocery store, and not realizing that there was another grocery store much closer to my hall, I decided it was a good idea to buy absolutely everything I was going to eat for the next two weeks. This resulted in numerous really heavy grocery bags that I would have to carry all the way back to my room, which ended up being 20 minutes away from the store. Let's just say that I am very grateful to Tim and Kevin for all of their help. By the time we got back to my room, it was 2:50 pm. I have been walking for about 5 hours.
We attended a rather boring new student orientation meeting on LSE campus from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. After that, we went back to my room, where Tim and I parted with Kevin so we could check out Chinatown.
About 10 minutes from (A) High Holborn
First impressions of Chinatown: flashy, concentrated, expensive!Unlike the Chinatown in Houston, everything was easily accessible by foot, but everything was also a lot more expensive. We decided to have dinner in a small restaurant that charged us 15 pounds ($25) for two small plates of dumplings and a bowl of noodles. The worst part was that the food was just ok. Verdict: not worth it. I also went into a grocery store to get some Chinese cooking sauces. I spent 22 pounds ($35) for a bottle of soy sauce, a bottle of cooking wine, a small bottle of fried noodle sauce, and a bottle of oyster sauce. Prices here doesn't sound so bad until I convert them into US dollars. I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this.
By the time we finished dinner, it was about 7:30 pm. Tired of walking, we took a tube back to Passfield hall. I don't remember why I agreed to it, but we decided that our rooms were still missing many essential things, and the best plan for the night was to go to an IKEA that was supposedly 30 minutes outside of the city by tube.
After carefully mapping out the tube routes, we set out on our journey at 8:20 pm with full knowledge of IKEA's closing time of 10:00 pm. It took about 10 minutes of walking, 20 minutes of underground tubing and one train change to get to the Neasden tube station which was as close as the London public transportation system would take us to IKEA. From the IKEA website, the Scandinavian home furnishing giant wanted to have us believe that the store was so close to Neasden station that the station and the store might even share some parts of their parking lots. Therefore when we triumphantly marched out of Neasden station expecting only to pass a few rows of parked cars, we were in for a surprise. Who knew? IKEA was no where to be found. And all of this was happening less than an hour before 10:00 pm.
We would start walking in one direction, get lost, stop to ask for directions, and get lost again. It didn't help that the store was about a mile from the station, and the only way to get there was to take a left, a left, another left, cross a bridge, make a right, cross another bridge, and climb a parking lot fence. It took us about 20 minutes to get to IKEA from Neasden. When we finally crossed the automatic doors, we only had about 30 minutes left to shop.
The good news was that the IKEA employees did not get too angry at those who kept shopping past 10:00 pm. The bad news was that by the time we got out of the store at around 10:40 pm,
the surrounding area did not look safe enough for us to hurl our purchases over the parking lot fence, climb over the fence, cross the second bridge, make a left, cross the first bridge, and make three rights to get back to Neasden. Tim, who has loads of city life experience, suggested that we take a bus to any tube station and go from there. Brilliant! That's what we did, and we did it so well that we made it back to Passfield just before midnight.
Upon arrival in Tim's room, I quickly dropped my things and passed out on an empty bed. I do not remember how I ended up back in my room two hours later... I think I walked back. Or maybe I took a bus. And Tim might have come with me. Who knows?
What was discouraging though was when I got back to my room, the room was a mess and I had a lot of nifty things like posters and desk lamps to set up around the room. I thought about ignoring all of that and just going to bed. After all, at 2:30 am, I have been out and about for 14 and half hours, most of which time I spent on my feet walking around. But how unsatisfying would it be to have worked so hard and have nothing to show for? This was not the way to end my day, I told myself. I needed to set up my room...
Ladies and gentlemen, without further delay, I present you my room!!!!
Here's the door to my room: 1001.
My room is right next to the suite kitchen. The suite has six rooms, which share this kitchen.
The kitchen is pretty nice. It's empty most of the time and is filled mostly with my stuff :)
It also has two fridges! Super cool!!Now to the main attraction:
When you enter, you'll first see my roommate's bed and desk etc. He's not here yet, so I have this whole room to myself :) :) :) As you can see, I just couldn't stop myself from using his desk as storage.
When you turn left, you see my side of the room. I sit right next to the window with the great view. And to my left I have the Beatles and my bed to look at. Quite comfortable set up I must say.
This is my bed, overlooked by my Top Gear poster.
For those of you who don't know what Top Gear is, it is a very funny and entertaining British TV show about cars. The Stig is what the show presenters call their team racing driver. The show has been on the air for thirteen seasons, and no one yet knows who the Stig really is.
The bathroom is quite small. Apparently Brits make fun of you for saying bathroom. (Bathroom? What, you want to take a bath?) Notice that the sink has a faucet for hot water and one for cold water. I have yet to find a way to produce flowing warm water from this faucet configuration.
The shower is quite small too: functional at best.When I finally finished with my room at around 4:00 am, I smiled and went to bed.
Then at 7:30 am, FIRE at High Holborn!? (click here for dramatic sound effects)
It was terrible. I was in the middle of a sweet dream, when fire alarms started going off at full blast. Here in the UK, fire alarms do not beep. They simply continue howling at the same frequency and amplitude until you realize that it is no use to try to ignore it, so you slowly get up, put on your jeans and a jacket, fumble around for your keys and your phone, open the door, be startled by the even louder hall way alarms, walk down twelve flights of stairs, wonder whether you would still be alive if this was a real fire, walk out the back fire escape on the ground floor, and stand outside in the cold for ten fifteen minutes.
Here's the scary bit. It turns out there was a girl on third floor who was cooking some eggs at 7:30 am when the eggs became engulfed in flames. The fire was small so they were quickly put out, but that doesn't change the fact that there was an actual fire! This put me in a dilemma because I couldn't decide whether to be angry or thankful for the fire alarm.
I went with angry, and here's why: because I was so tired from the day before and so rudely interrupted ridiculously early in the morning, after the fire drill, I went into a such deep hibernation that I did not wake up until 3:30 pm, the time for my study abroad orientation meeting. I arrived at the 75-minute meeting with about 20 minutes to go. I don't think I missed much though--when I entered the packed room, everyone seemed a bit bored.
The day only got worse. Tonight was the General Course boat party, where all of the international study abroad students are invited to go on board a boat on River Thames for free food and drinks. We were supposed to meet by the Tower of London by 6:45 pm. I grossly overestimated the capabilities of the London underground tube system by staying in my room until 6:25 pm. To get to Tower of London, I needed to get to Tower Hill station, which could be reached by taking a south bound subway down three stations and then transferring to a east bound train to go about six more stops. However, my southbound train was stuck at its first stop after apparently a train broke down one station ahead. Quite sure that the railway would be cleared in a timely manner, I stayed on the train along with many other passengers.
This was a bad idea. Fifteen minutes later, with my watching reading 6:50 pm, the announcer announced that we needed to vacated the train and find alternate routes. I have only been in London for three days, and the first time I took a tube was last night. The task of finding a detour was so daunting that I nearly considered the possibility of asking someone for directions. Then I decided to read the tube map. The map may look confusing at first, but upon further examination, it was one of the most straightforward subway maps I have ever read. I quickly found two lines that went around the southbound railway, and got back on track. The rest of the ride was smooth, but my heart was sinking every minute because I was really late. By the time I got to Tower Hill station, it was already 7:22 pm. I quickly called Tim, who was already on board the ship, to ask if there was still hope for me to make the party. The answer was "yes, but run!" So I sprinted down the sidewalk to the Tower of London, past the tower gate, made a sharp left at the river walk, zoomed past the Tower Bridge, until I reached a little dock beyond which parked a boat what looked exactly like the boat featured in the SNL "I'm on a boat" video. My heart was filled with joy and relief as I approached the boat, but when I finally made it to the boat entrance, it started to move! Oh no!
Confident of my jumping skills, I prepared myself to jump onto the boat. The boat operators had other ideas however. When they saw me, they shouted "no" in such a way that I felt sure that they were going to toss me out of the ship even if I make the jump. After that shut down, some of my classmates waved at me. I smiled weakly and waved back. It was a sad evening.
On my way back, I met a mother of one of the General Course students. She told me she and her daughter were also delayed in the tube and the daughter barely made it to the ship. She was very nice and sympathetic, and we had quite a pleasant conversation back home. I guess not all sad stories need to have a sad ending after all.
Going to bed tonight, I can only hope tomorrow, on the last day of September, I will be woken up more gently, at a more reasonable time.
