Oh London Bridge...

Due to my flu that has confined me to bed for the time apart from lectures, I am actually updating my blog while sneezing and cursing my throat for being so irritated. Anyway.

During reading week (AKA next week... horray), I swear I'll update the Japanese version of my blog. Swear to God, Mum!

Okay, now that's said, I would like to move onto... my college life.

Since none of my readers (except my mother) has been here, let me explain where I live. First, this quote from Wikipedia...

"Next to Stainer Street, off Tooley Street is Weston Street. Both are among the gloomiest places in London. They are simply tunnels. In the early nineteenth century, before the station was built, John Keats lived in Weston Street, at that time called Dean Street. It was here that he wrote the poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".

Yes, I live on Weston Street. No, I do not live in the tunnel (by the way, the picture of the tunnel is actually Weston Street... ). I live on the extension of the tunnel, but it's still damn gloomy.

Go down Weston Street, you get to a junction. Go right toward Bermondsey, which connects to Elephant and Castle (don't ask me where they got that name) where it leads to... THE TRASHIEST PLACE OF LONDON. Well, maybe not. But I haven't seen much worse.

Go straight, you get into Weston tunnel. Go through that to get to Tooley Street, where London Dungeon (which costs me 20 quid... god knows when I'll ever visit that place), Hay's Galleria (yey Boots), London Bridge Station's one of numerous exits, The London Bridge (which is just a bridge), St. Olaf's House, who apparently was some hotshot during the medieval ages and whatnot, e.t.c.

Go left, you get to... another London Bridge station entrance, Starbucks (which closes at 7:30, therefore no longer qualifies as a true Starbucks), a newsagent, some sandwich place where I've never been in, bunch of hospital buildings (I told you I live in a damn hospital), McDonalds (in the Student Union of Guy's Campus, AKA Guy's... basically where medical training takes place for the first few years), Boland House where Guy's bar (see left), Blackwell's (where they sell ridiculously expensive books that can be bought for half price in Amazon), Student Union. It also leads you to the actual Guy's Campus via colonnade, Hodgkin's Building (which is probably as old as the elevator in my dorm... see picture below the orange creepy one, it's the ivy-covered one in the back), New Hunt's House (the orange creepy picture to the right) and Henriette Raphael Building (which look new to impress the candidates who are insane enough to want to come here), and... I think that's it. Anyway, go past the main gates which look NOTHING like the main gates (it's this weird parking lot with steel gates with the Guy's logo on the top where no one can see it... oh, and throw in Thomas Guy's statue randomly standing in the centre). Go past that, you see the place where Keats lived. Unfortunately, nobody around here knows who John Keats is. Believe it or not, he even went to my school (no, not Fenwick, he's a British, he went to GKT). Go figure. (Yes, that plaque is approximately 2 minutes away from where I live.)

Go down more, you hit Borough High Street, where the famous Borough Market is. Apparently it is a world-renown food market, but unfortunately I only buy vegetables from there, so I'd have no clue. Turn left, the street also houses Ryman's stationary (thank God it's close to my dorm), ANOTHER exit from London Bridge Station (see picture to the left), Sainsbury's which is too expensive for me, and... I think that's it. Oh, and a HUGE Natwest branch, which defies logic because there's a branch two minutes away. Oh well.

Then go right, walk up, you hit London Bridge (not the station, the actual bridge, right below). Cross it, you hit Monument Station, (seen in the picture to the left), where there is another shoddy branch of Boots, Natwest, and... Tesco's!
Yes, I walk 10 minutes to buy carrots so that I can save 4p. Now shut up.

My lectures are actually at three campuses. Two days I'm at Guy's, right at London Bridge... two days I'm at Strand, another at Waterloo but I never go there anymore because I don't want to repeat Sophomore chemistry again.

The Strand Campus is the heart of KCL (which is NOT Potassium Chloride as I thought at first). It is at... Strand, which is across from the Aldwych Bend, where LSE is. Turns out I walk the same street to get to my campus as Dad did. Coincidence much? Anyway, keep walking from Strand and you literally hit Savoy, Covent Garden, the attraccion de tourista where I have no business. Turn left right away and you're onto Waterloo Bridge.

The thing is, the Strand Campus isn't actually a campus. It's more of a "what used to be bunch of buildings which Kings College London bought for the sheer lack of money and sheer need". While LSE got prettier and prettier, KCL just took turn for the worse... for example, The Norfolk Building isn't ACTUALLY a university building. It was a FREAKING HOTEL. Macadam building fares no better... actually, it's kind of hard to see that it's a university unless you know where to look. They say they'll renovate it, blah blah, but I'd probably be dead of old age by the time they start.

Of course, we have a pretty chapel to show off (since we are the only London University affiliated with the church). I never go in there, because well... I probably should have been one of the Godless Scums of the Gower Street (AKA University College London). I have no faith whatsoever. I'm an agnostic.

On the other hand, the Maughn Library (left: the entrance, right: entrance details) which used to be the Office for Public Records (or something) is palatial, and also confusing as hell. It has about 4 floors, one mezzanine, and the place is an utter mess. I still get lost in it. Outside looks pretty and about as British as it can be. But then, so does the inside door of Kings College London, which I did not know it existed until a week ago I wandered over to that direction by accident.

Waterloo... fares no better. The James Clerk Maxwell building, which still remains a mystery to me as to its location, USED TO BE A POST OFFICE. You can still see "POST OFFICE" faintly on the building.

The Franklin-Wilkins Building, which I used to call it as "Francis-Wilkins Building", is actually mustard yellow. It's literally down the street from the Waterloo Imax theatre, which I will never go to for the price. Across from the building is Stamford Street Building, which houses the Student Union and apparently a dorm, but that is yet to be checked.

Okay, so you get my campuses, and my surroundings. Here is my dorm:

Yes, it's a CONCRETE BOX.

Each floor houses a flat, which I have no information about since I've never been in there before, and a corridor. The corridor houses a kitchen (you will hear about the kitchen in a minute), three toilets, two showers, and one bath. It also houses 14 people.

The stuff in the kitchen never works. For example, the stupid microwave always manages to cook a part of meat and leave the rest of it to completely frozen state when you try to defrost it. The fridge (we have two) are missing bars. The only thing that actually works is the stupid freezer. We have two cookers; the hubs work fine, but one of the cooker's oven door just comes off, the other oven spits out black smoke whenever you use it. Fire hazard, anyone? Additionally, the radiator spits out water whenever it is turned on, and the faucets spurt out random bursts of water when you use it for too long.

The bigger shower fails to work properly as well. Basically, what happens is you take shower with lukewarm water, and just as you're getting out it gets warmer. The other shower is no better, as it is a shower STALL, constantly has a puddle the size of Noah's Flood on the floor, has molds on the ceiling that vaguely looks like human faces when you are high on caffeine and has not slept for more than four hours total for the past two nights, and what's worse, the shower head is approximately an inch away from my face (I'm 5'9") and so to get water on my head I have to lean back. The catch here is that the stall wall is approximately six inches away from me, so whenever I lean back too far I smash my head against the plastic. Ow. For bonus, because the other shower does not work the 14 of us are sharing one shower.

The toilets defeat logic. There are eight on the south side of the corridor and six on north side (my side). There are two toilets on my side and one on the other. The toilet seats on my side (don't know about the south side) slips out of where your rear end is when you sit on it, successfully landing you onto the rim of the toilet bowl where some drunk idiot had probably pissed on the night before. Screams and grossness ensues. Fun fun.

My room is relatively decent, but the duvet they provided probably will not keep a hot money warm in middle of Chicago August. It's literally an quarter of an inch thick. The bed is about as soft as tofu, generating back complaints. The curtains have cigarette burns in them, the windows have this restrictor on them so you can't open it all the way... understandable, since I'd probably kill myself in this dingy hole if the restrictors weren't on the windows. A sink, a VERY tall closet, a cabinet with three drawers, one wall cabinet, a mirror by the sink, and a shelf on top of the radiator that is slanted and therefore makes my books fall off completes the suite. Oh, and a corkboard which is painted a yucky hospital blue to match the walls.

The residence office managers are evil, end of discussion. And the security guards are basically wasting our money, since all they do is take naps and listen to music in their little cubicles. They even have "Out - back at" sign, when they're NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The laundrette harbours many hatred from the residents of our dorm. The dryer just never works... it's 20p for one session, and you have to invest 80p to get your clothes dry. 20p just warms your wet laundry. Ew.

Despite all this, I am actually enjoying my life at Kings College London.

Yey college!

The Sexiest Man Alive

Well, he's kind of dead now, but...

No, he is NOT Hugh Grant (that's what I thought at first)

He is...

JFK JUNIOR.

OMG. (that was my reaction too)

Introduction to University Class - Lesson 2

Personally, I don't have a clue why ANYONE would want to go to med school. A month into it and I've already visited the doctor three times, bought 3 jars of coffee and nearly finished with the second one, have used over 320 sheets of looseleaf for notes, on four kinds of pills, sleep-deprived and love-deprived, yelled at, and sick. If that doesn't scare you away, you're a masochist so STOP READING MY BLOG.

Anyway, since I did the classmates last post (which was a while ago), here is lesson 2 - the PROFESSORS.

The Walltalker - with the IQ of 2000, an appearance of an alien and a very bad speech pattern, this guy is a genius. Unfortunately, since he had never experienced any problems in school he can't understand what the general population goes through in his lectures - constant hypnosis and disrupted sleep patterns via unplanned naps. He talks INTO the wall, thereby inhibiting the class from taking decent notes. He also is a complete tech idiot, and does not plan his lectures, throwing the avid note-takers into utter confusion.

The Hyper TA - this guy isn't a TA, actually. He's a full-fledged lecturer... unfortunately he has an appearance of a second year college student and is just juvenile in every way possible. Braces? Check. Nerdy smile? Check. Much awkwardness around single female species who just crowd around him so that they can get the extra points in the exam? Check. He is also constantly hyper compared to the more somber fellows, thereby giving an impression that the only reason he got to such an educational status at such an early age is because of overdose of cafffeine and sugar. Which is most likely the case anyway.

McGonagall Reincarnate - If you thought the deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was a figment of imagination, think again. SHE EXISTS. This bitch has an amazing tendency to start class on the dot despite the fact that half the class is still rushing among the throng of businessmen or stoned and in bed. She is also strict as hell, has WAY too much time on her hands which will be spent on hunting down students who were too tired to show up for class (hello, it's university, not kindergarden). She also has one of the primary school teacher handwriting, talks in a typical middle-class British accent, is organized to death, and will expect you to be the same. So, no late-night drinking on Tuesday nights, fellas.

The mad scientist - THIS GUY IS CRAZY! He's a great guy, great teacher, but something tells you that he kind of slept through "Common sense 101" during college. As the result, he's a wacko. Oh, and he sort of remembers safety procedures, but sees it as a a guideline, not rules, sending you into utter horror, increased by the factor of one trillion by the fact that he has an innocent smile on his face.

The Evil - This guy is just damn evil. He doesn't intend to, oh no. But see, that makes it even worse. He likes to give long-ass lectures on Fridays when everyone's ready to dash back to catch up on sleep, party, work, or just plain stuff. He also is in desperate need of speech classes; his lack of ability to speak properly in the public sends you to utter hell, because this disability prolongs the lectures by the factor of four. Oh, and he also always have a congenial smile, then fails you with the congenial smile still on his face. Simply put: he's a lying bastard.

I hope you enjoyed my observations. Now I have to go read 100 pages (literally) for cellular biology for tomorrow. And I haven't even started.

Craaap.