Feeling Fabulous...?

Yesterday I went to the ULU gym, and upon leaving couldn't stop grinning because of the way the attractive man I'd talked to at the front desk kept smiling and flirting with me. I strutted down the street, feeling fabulous, feeling on top of my game. I then spotted my reflection in a window. A huge-ass tag was sticking out of my new jacket by my face. I realised he'd been trying not to laugh at me. Fml.


I need to stop thinking I'm the shit. I can't help it sometimes though. If someone's smiling at me I tend to take that as a good sign, and If I'm listening to good music, I'm bound to strut and pretend I'm cool. Getting into the coach today, I was listening to Swedish House Mafia and attempting a sexy walk towards the back. I strategically chose to sit near two guys my age, and, still thinking I was awesome, slinked into my seat. I hit my head hard on the luggage compartment above in the process and they burst out laughing.

Yeah, things need to change.

London re-beginnings

I wrote this a couple days ago, and only got to post it now. It's about time for an update!

And so I'm back in London Town!

The move in was chaos from the beginning. Because the London tube refuses to make all stations luggage or wheelchair friendly, we ended up lugging our bags up and down endless flights of stairs. My mother's smaller suitcase didn't like this too much, exhibited by one of it's wheels falling off, meaning we had to scrape it along the road from the station to my flat. I laughed at us the whole way home.


First impressions:

The 'U' in the 'Bucklebury' sign to our building was missing. Hmm... Ghetto much? Security to the building is pretty good though, I was impressed by that. The next thing I saw upon entering the building were the elevators. I have taken to describing our two elevators as ovens, which is the most apt description I can find considering they are small, entirely metal, with no windows or mirrors. The grossest thing I have found so far on the elevator floor is a well gnawed chicken bone. So yes, not a fan. I do however admittedly prefer a 30 second ride in those things to a five minute heaving and panting trek up the 18 flights of stairs it takes to reach the apartment, which I had to endure yesterday when the lifts were briefly out of function.

But anyway! I love our apartment. It is in no way a luxurious modern flat, but it's a very good size, we have a living room, two toilets and one bath, 5 bedrooms out of which I have taken a medium sized one and which I adored from the beginning, and of course we have a fantastic view over the city. (So good in fact, that for one split second when I saw a tower shaped building in the distance, I thought to myself 'omg, we're so high we can see the Eiffel Tower from here!' ... Yeah, no.)

We have also been left several interesting gifts by previous tenants. These include: Bongos, a few VHS tapes about the Quaran, a speech stand (people buy those?!), a million crappy clothes hangers, and three left footed shoes. Thanx guyz!


So one of the first things I had to do was transport all my junk over from C's house, where I stored half of it, and Connaught Hall, where I stored the rest of it because it couldn't all fit in the taxi. This was part of my supposedly brilliant plan to save money by not paying for a storage company, but which backfired supremely when the taxi fee turned out to be higher than the cost of the storage of one box for the summer. I'm just convincing myself that I still saved money because I would have had to pay for two boxes.


But anyway. LORD that was difficult. The first attempt at retrieving my stuff from C's house failed because after an hour of cramped commuting via bus where our very inappropriate discussions either highly amused or irritated people around us, we got there too late and the porter had left. (Yeah, did I mention she lives in High Street Kensington, Porterville). The next day we succeeded, finally, but only with a total of three more hours of commuting.


Getting my stuff from Connaught was also a serious mission, involving batting my eyelids at a builder in order to get him to help me excavate my storage box from the very back of the storage room, under a horrific ton of other boxes and bags. We managed to do this and pile all my stuff into two suitcases in only twenty minutes, my achievement of the week! Because it apparently costs 25 fucking pounds to get a taxi to drive me and two suitcases 1 km, which I obviously refused because that would have been even more of a fail in terms of saving money, I then slowly but surely lugged it back to the flat. Jesus Christ. Next year I am NOT doing that.

And so life in Bucklebury has begun! And wow has it been lively. In my week there so far, there have been perhaps 7 guests staying over in the spare rooms! I love it, I love having people over, I love being a social flat... I love impressing people with the view from my window. My mother was one of these guests, and she really helped me out with everything, especially in the food and money department! She left for Stockholm yesterday afternoon, before which she famously said: 'there's just one thing that worries me', and then proceeded to list about 10 things she was concerned over. Ah well. Mothers.


And now I'm on a four hour coach ride to Devon to visit my dearest H for a few days. I can't wait to get there!


Quotes of the week:
'I prefer hard, with a small head!' - I, concerning her preference of toothbrush.

Oh, and, a couple days later on the bus from C's place:
Me (after having laughed at the toothbrush quote, then continuing an earlier conversation about men's body types): Do you want to know what I like?
T: Uh, no, you don't have to tell me.
Me: Why not? Uum, I like O's. His is really good.
T (awkwardly): I don't wanna know
Me: What? Why not? I like yours too actually.
T (mortified): What!?
Me: What?
T: Are you talking about my toothbrush?!
Me: What? NO!!!
*Uncontrollable laughter*

Show Me the Money

So the financial repercussions of living in an amazing apartment in the middle of London for 155 pounds a week only recently hit me.

Last night I calculated how much money was left over for the first term once I substracted the cost of the absolute necessities (i.e. rent, bills, food, and tuition) from my student loan. I ended up staring incredulously at the figure on the calculator.

2700 Kronor. 240 pounds.

The fuck? How am I supposed to take the tube? Go to the gym? Pay my phone bill? (Including the 100 pounds I owe from this summer?!) Go out?! Buy a regular stash of tampons?!

I can't, that's how.

So here are a few things I am going to have to do in order to deal with this unfortunate situation.

1. Hare Krishna
   This is just too obvious. Free food! Every day at SOAS, Hare Krishna gives out free curry for lunch (to those willing to stand in line for eternity). I do not entirely understand the motive to this, and can only assume that they pity the poor souls of skint students such as myself.
   
2. Stop partying
   Hah, no. As if. I can however, chose to take part in more of the Ladies Night extravaganzas (free for ladies, 50 pound entry for men!), go to clubs early to skip the entry fee (hmmm), frequent house parties, and especially: continue to favour Moonies, UCL's favourite club! I'll save money via the mere 1 pound entry fee, and in the long term will lower my electricity bills! There is after all no point in charging my ipod for the five days following a night at Moonies seeing that the place always makes me deaf.
3. Skip the cloak room fee
   On the clubbing note: Why keep spending 2 pounds per jacket upon entry to a club? Just be wise and either a) strategically hide your coat under sofas, signs, large people, tables etc b) get a man to hold it for you, or c) go out without one, even if the line is an hour long, even if the temperature is 5 degrees Celsius. True story.
4. Not drink
   That's not a joke. I very very rarely drink on nights out, and intend to keep it that way. Even spending 15 pounds on drinks twice a week for a whole term adds up to about 450 pounds. And some people blow 50 pounds a night. Yeah as if I am going to drink my money away in such a manner. Only to barf it up again by 3am.
5. Buy in Bulk
   Cereal, shampoo, rice, washing detergent... This is a boring one to mention but important! Living as a five actually makes this one feasible! Otherwise...
6. The 99p Store
   This hardly needs a description. The 99p shop has everything from banana chips (my one true love from the dried fruit department) to six year old shampoo (Hey it's 99p for a reason).
7. Shower less at home
   No this doesn't mean I'm going to stink up the flat. Just that I'll spend less time forking out money for my water bill and more time showering at the gym where water is part of the package. I'm Swedish: I don't mind constantly showering with other women!
8. Walk
   I am a big fan of natural forms of transport. This incidentally can also be interpreted as someone else doing the walking for me, i.e. forcing a friend to carry me home, as often happens on the way back from nights out when my feet have become unconscious.
9. Be a gold digger
   No explanation needed.
10. Go anorexic
    Because chowing down 4 servings of Dal bhat for lunch, as I regretfully did today, really does not do good things for the wallet. Or thighs.
11. Get a job
    Oh right. That.

Ok so numbers 9 and 10 might be verging on dramaqueen, but they certainly have elements of truth to them. I used to refuse being paid for by men, whether it concerned a drink or an expensive taxi fare - I liked my independence! Yet I have a new found appreciation of chivalry, and now figure that allowing a man to occasionally pick up the cheque can be quite the reinforcement in terms of skirting a situation involving groveling on the floor to my father, begging for money. Which would be a slightly worse set back to the whole independence thing.

There will of course be the general scouting for free events, from carnivals to cheese tasting (oh please God let that exist), which will be part of my 'Do Something New Every Week' challenge. Although I am still in Stockholm, I managed to get a head start. This week I went to a talk by Hans Rosling on Global Health, and was absolutely blown away by his intelligence, passion, and the actual content of his presentation. I will possibly write more about him and my aspirations another time, but I will at least reiterate one thing he mentioned:

Poverty: living on less than a dollar a day.
Study-loan standard of living: 30 dollars a day. 

Put more visually, I find myself on the tip of the second hump on this graph of his. Even set to a logarithmic scale, it is staggeringly obvious how fortunate I am relative to the large majority of this world's population. Which evokes a pang of guilt for all the times I've moaned about being poor. I truly am thankful for my life and all its possibilities. I'm a lucky lucky girl!


But I am, mind you, still keeping an eye out for a sugar daddy.

The count down begins

I leave for London in 5 days.

So I have 5 days to make the best of Stockholm: its islands, its events, its people. And the latter especially includes some fantastic people who, despite us having spent years in classrooms together, I never managed to get to know until just recently. This summer has been pretty good for that, I must admit.

In fact in terms of making the best of my last week in Stockholm, the past few days have been pretty good. After a night out, a couple of friends and I found ourselves at Stadshuset admiring the gorgeous night view. It was 3am, we were in fact sober, we climbed over the gates, we looked out over the water... then we got caught by security and were (surprisingly amicably) escorted off the premises. We spent the next few hours sitting by the water, watching the sunrise and listening to music, and I came upon the pleasant discovery that V actually does not classify my Paul Desmond jazz as 'elevator music'.

Stadshuset by night

So, yes, pretty good times so far.

...But GOD London is going to be fantastic too.

Bad Words

I had a sort of bet last night with O concerning my mother's swearing vocabulary, specifically her knowledge of the word 'cunt'. Turns out we were both wrong.

'Mom, do you know what cunt means?'
*long pause*..... 'Fucking?'
'Urm, no not really but yeah ok.'
'Why, did you learn this last night at the pool place?'
'No, I was checking to see if you knew, that's all.'
'I saw the look on your face! You didn't know!'
'What!? I just wanted to know if you knew!!'

That went on for a while. Fine, I did not, admittedly, seem to have a strong basis for my questioning. But I couldn't tell her that the real reason was a bet, because a) She'd be insulted that I doubted her, and b) That would involve exposing that I could not possibly have picked up a new word from foul mouthed pool players, because I simply wasn't around any.

So last night was actually spent at O's place, and I won't go into too many details... but I do give the evening a very, er, positive review. The reason I did not tell my mother is rooted in the cultural differences between us. Being at the house of someone of the opposite gender till early morning does not acquire many Good Daughter points, especially by Filipino standards. I love my dear mother very much, and do not at all enjoy lying to her (especially when it gets complicated due to completely forgetting that the metro closes on a Monday night, thus lengthening my trip home by an hour and resulting in the vague 'There Was a Fight at the Billiard Hall!' saga). But I simply have come to the conclusion that some things are worth not mentioning because our opinions differ too widely.

Note that I did not start a conversation about what the word actually means. 9am laborious laundering with my mother really does not require a discussion of the multiple words used to say vagina.

Options!

Oh man oh man oh man I hope these options work out!

I'm so excited for this term, can it just start already!?

Contrast

It's funny how different day and night can be in terms of what we wear, what we do, and how we behave. (Er, well that last one just might possibly have more to do with intoxication level) This was quite aptly demonstrated just last Sunday.

Sunday afternoon, my mother and I ventured off to Vitabergsparken to watch modern ballet. It was a free show, meaning the place was packed and I had to recover my debating skills to ensure us a couple of seats. Now I don't want to be stereotypical or anything - I do love this country... but Swedish people omg. Examples of snippits of conversation:

'Well, you can sit here and your daughter sits elsewhere. You don't need to talk to each other anyway'
'No, I won't move up, I want to sit right here!' (Exclaimed by one of two women who sat in the middle of two free spaces. I asked if they could move up so as to have space for both my mother and me)
'Humph! Nu blir det lite trångt!' (when I finally convinced them to be reasonable)

Just before the ballet began

Anyway. They were alright in the end. Like the time that a nervous flyer kept screaming 'YOU WILL KILL US!' in response to my phone call just prior to take off, the first impressions subsided and my neighbours warmed up to me eventually.

The ballet was gorgeous, and I was pleased to finally be taking advantage of one of Stockholm's many free summer performances. I failed to take photos of the dance however because of the regulations not permitting me to (and, primarily, because the two women enforced this rule via snarling at me when I had my camera out). Even with the seat drama, it was a very pleasant, cultured afternoon.

Then later that night there was R's house. Oh god. That gin tasted like poison, and after a couple of drinks M and I were already rolling around on the floor. Literal ROFL right there. Much inappropriate behaviour, an extensive amount of regrettable conversation topics, and one 3am phone call too many. All those things however, definitely equated to a very very well spent Sunday night :oP

That would be M rolling on top of me. I don't know.