Riding the bus

I've become proficient at riding London's big red buses, which is a big step towards becoming a Londoner. Three of my friends (Lee, Molly, Mia) are pictured.

During busy hours you want to stick with the Tube (subway) because the roads have bad traffic. But otherwise, the buses are the way to go.
1. They are cheaper; 1 pound vs. 2 pounds for the tube, or 5-10 pounds for a taxi
2. You can see where you're going as the bus travels, giving you your bearings
3. Buses travel to more exact locations, places that tubes do not, so there is less walking
4. Buses run 24 hours, while the Tube closes around 11:30pm - 12:00am
5. Buses are often faster for short trips, since changing trains and all the station stops add a lot of time

Today I too a bus to meet up with someone I haven't seen since high school! Colleen seems to be doing great, she is a guru at helping out with business pitches. And we had Spanish tapas which were, at least I thought, pretty good. Though my opinion is not harmed by the three chocolate desserts that we split! Good times.

Eloquent!

We had a debate in Ethics recently, and just got back some feedback. I did pretty well! The point about French was part of my rebuttal.

"...Peter French (and nice reference, by the way)... Joshua in particularly made an eloquent argument."

- Josh

London nightlife

If there's one take-away I would offer you from the picture above, it's the hundreds and hundreds of people. This is how London spends its time at night. Everyone goes out to huge nightclubs, spends a fortune on cover (generally 15 - 20 pounds; about US $30 - 40), and drinks cocktails. People dance all night, primarily to house / techno music.

This is a huge contrast to the style of nightlife in Atlanta. In Atlanta it's quite rare to pay entry, and if there is a fee, it's minimal. Drinks inside are relative cheap due to competition. The biggest difference is that Atlanta is primarily a scene with bars, rather than clubs. The emphasis there is on socializing, talking, and bar games (pool, darts, foosball). Most people seem to drink beer, and there's relatively little dancing - if anything, a small area would be devoted to dancing. I'm getting more used to the London scene, but frankly, it's not my preference! I'm more of a talker than a dancer.

Trini Barbeque night

London is a truly international city in a way that Atlanta never was. This night was no exception. My roommate, Mark, knew a girl from Trinidad. She invited Mark to a barbecue and I tagged along. It was south of the city - farther south than I had been before, to an area called Clapham.

The short list of things I didn't know ahead of time: absolutely everyone else was from Trinidad (of all places!), and it was a themed party (so everyone was wearing a costume that started with the letter "B"). Needless to say, I was a little out of place! But I felt welcome to be there.

Some of the better costumes included Bob the Builder, a Biker, Barack Obama, Betty Boop, and...

A Beefeater! Definitely my favorite costume. The fact that he was tending the grill (including beef sausages) was too perfect. They served some of the best chorizo I've had in London. The weather here, despite advance warnings to the contrary, has been really nice over the past couple months. I could count on one hand the number of times it has rained, with only two legitimate downpours. Most days I'm in a t-shirt and jeans. And yeah, I've been here two months - today is my anniversary!

Morris Dancers

I walked out of my flat (apartment) the other night for a quick pint with my flatmate Mark. We walked just around the corner to the local (you call the bar that's nearest to you "the local") and saw a few dozen people participating in what looked like Irish dancing. It was kind of like a Lord of the Dance show, but with less spring in their step, and more hitting of large sticks together.

Apparently this is a traditional English dance called Morris dancing. And it is thoroughly entertaining to watch people with bells on their knees dancing and knocking sticks together while you grab a beer. We're thinking of hiring them for our next party. On a related note - I love that England, and especially London, is oozing with culture. I run into little surprises like this everywhere - like the Queen's uniformed guard that rides on horseback past the business school each day.

The new apartment: my bedroom

Now that I'm semi-settled in my new apartment, I think I'm overdue for providing some pictures. In general, I spent three weeks looking around, and I think I finally found the "holy grail" of apartments in London. The search was painful and involved looking at tons of places. But I think it was worth it, in the end.

We'll start with my bedroom. Oh - first of all, this is a furnished apartment, which is fairly common in London. So it came more or less as-is, with the exception being that I bought the sheets in this picture (really nice ). Relatively for London this is a big bedroom, with a double bed and a good amount of extra space. In general, the furniture is fairly modern. You can see blinds in the left corner of the window; the window lets out into a very small "courtyard"-type area that is private to the apartment. Near the window is a built-in wardrobe, and when combined with the set of drawers that you can see, I've got plenty of space. The marble floors run throughout the entire apartment. Also you can't see the lighting, which I could add an entire post about, but it's dozens of Italian small lights set up on a central control for dimming (it has different light programs / settings).

To the right of my bed is the bathroom. You can just make out the black sheets of the bed in the mirror's reflection. It's a good-sized bathroom and very modern looking.

The right hand side of the bathroom has a walk-in rain shower (the water all comes down from the fixture on the ceiling). My roommate's shower is similar, but his also features a steam shower. Actually, if you look in the glass in the shower door, you can see some of the bedroom lighting that I mentioned (several smaller lights, maybe 10 - 20).

House warming party

I promise, I swear, this is the last post before I start taking / adding lots of pictures to the blog.

Last night I had an open-invite housewarming party and it went off without a hitch. I would guess that we had 100 people throughout the course of the night, with maybe 75 at the peak, and we were up until the wee hours of the night. I love to host events for people and this was a great way to socialize with my new classmates.

Tomorrow is a big day. The first day of school! Ok, so there aren't any classes or work to do, and I've already met 50% of the other students. But I find out who my stream is - we're divided into smaller sections of maybe 75 people, to make it more manageable, and these are the people we take all our classes with. I hope I get a bunch of my friends! Even more exciting / intimidating is the prospect of a study group. We'll have a lot of group projects to do among a much smaller team of 6 - 7 people. Groups are randomized by nationality, prior work experience, and gender, among other factors. Getting good study group members can have a huge impact on your first year at school. So a lot is riding on tomorrow!