If you were looking forward to my third post, I would like to thank you for your patience. I admit it's been a while since my last update, so I will waste no time with introductions. Let's just dive into my week 2 in London.
My academic career was launched at 9:00am Tue, Oct. 6, 2009 with a lecture in Econometrics. Not much needs to be said about this course except that it feels more like a statistics course than an economics course, which can be good or bad depending on how much sleep you get the night before. Besides econometrics, I am also taking finance, operational research, and game theory. So far, finance=accounting, operational research=linear programming, and game theory=more theory than games (I was hoping it was the other way around).
Guess how much I like my courses.
Nope, you are wrong. My semester has never been so interesting and exciting! I feel like I'm learning something useful in every class, and did I mention how much free time I have now that I don't have to do CAAM problem sets? Over here, though there is a problem sets for each class each week, they tend to be light and are meant to be covered in one-hour mandatory review sessions. I've never had less stress in college before. I just love it!
"But Sean," you ask. "Do you love your courses as much as your new roommate?"
You bet! I don't know how you found out I had a new roommate, but this is how I found out.
It was a rainy Friday afternoon in week 2. I had just finished my classes for the day and was heading back to my dorm room from the LSE campus. I have been living by myself in a twin room for two weeks, and the thought of going back to my big spacious room, brewing a nice cup of tea, and enjoying the amazing view of the city from my window almost made me sing along to my ipod, which was featuring some very talented female vocalists at the time. What made this short walk back to my room even better was that I knew I was getting a package from amazon today, and I just love getting packages!
So after walking for 10 minutes, I entered my hall and was delighted that my package was already there waiting. I picked it up, went up the elevator, swiped my card to get into my flat, managed to get about half of the packaging opened, pushed my room key into the keyhole and turned the key.
Weird. The door was unlocked. Did I forget to lock it? I hope nothing is stolen... I slowly pushed the door ajar.
"Hello!"
If the greeting was not said with a Chinese accent, I would have jumped back in surprise. But there was the Chinese accent, so I didn't jump back. Inside my room sat two Chinese guys. One of them looked like a grad school student, and the other looked older, perhaps the younger guys dad.
"Hello?" I answered, slowly digesting this new development.
"Do you speak Chinese?" asked the dad.
"Wo shuo (I do). So you are my new roommate?" I asked the younger guy.
"No, Larry is your new roommate." The young grad student responded.
"Oh."
The full impact of Larry's friend's reply did not register in my mind until the friend went home, and it was just two of us sitting in front of our computers: I was sorting out some emails while roommate was trying to connect to the internet by clicking ferociously at the refresh button . A little concerned, I looked over to my roommate and asked what was wrong.
Larry sported a short but distinctively middle-aged Chinese hair-cut. He was about my height, thin, and looked quite comfortable in his short-sleeved, light striped shirt and dark gray khakis. When he spoke, his Chinese was fast and exact. (My inability to stop myself from mixing English phrases in my Chinese is the reason that our conversations are held only 99% in Chinese). Everything that he possessed--his books, pens, toothpaste, PC operating system, even his water bottle--was also in Chinese. Inevitably, every time I looked at Larry, one word came to mind: it starts with an "f" and ends with a "b", and it's not "firebomb".
Like many other students from China, Larry had some visa problems, which delayed his arrival to the UK for two weeks. He didn't seem too worried about school at the moment however. Once he gave up on the internet connection (my IT skills were no match for his Chinese PC), he was sound asleep on his bed with much of his things still peering out of his half-opened suitcases.
It has now been three weeks since that fateful Friday afternoon, and luckily, we seem to get along fine. Though he does have a few habits that I am still trying to get used to.
Like all relationships, this will take work and lots of it. In the past, I have been blessed with roommates who had a lot in common with me. With Larry, we shall see. Maybe he secretly has a man-crush on Roger Federer and is insanely good at Halo 3. These things I hope time will tell.
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Lol good post! Glad to hear ur still alive and slacking off.
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ReplyDeleteThanks! more posts to come soon.
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