Wow, my last post dates from Halloween, that’s way too long to keep you uninformed about things on the other side of the channel. Well, I have been kinda busy –main reason for not posting a lot. Life just got in a faster gear here with loads of work for school and then a lot of activities to compensate for that…
On the
school side I'll be short: I had my first presentations to give in English. For every course we’ve got seminars and every week somebody has to present a certain subject. That means reading up on it , make a hand-out to give to the other students and then presenting it and discussing it in class. Also I had to write several essays, and that keeps one busy as well.
Furthermore I dived a bit into the
London nightlife, that means home parties, concerts, pubs, clubs and crazy stuff.
For the Belgians amongst you, I went to the London gig of
dEUS.
You know, 3 times sold out in the AB and 2 times in Forest National in a record time, so no way get hold of tickets nor seeing them in a relaxed way in Belgium. But here in London, they’re only known by the in-crowd. I went there with Julien, another Belgian, Andrea, Italian fan of Belgian music, and Costis, Greek and also into good music, and we had a great show! Tom and Mauro still had to make an effort to convince the public, and yeah they did, though Mauro still stays in the shadow. I’m looking forward to the first songs he really writes with dEUS.
I’ll post some pics here from some parties. I still don’t have an own digital camera (after mine got stolen in Berlin earlier in 2005 - damn the German bastard who did it) so I depend on other people’s pics.
First there was
“Jason’s party”.
Jason is an American from my program who lives all the way up in Islington, North London and he knows how to throw parties. He's the guy is suite and moustache on the picture.
If you’d wonder why everybody’s dressed so silly, this party was for Halloween as well. I went as a reporter. So I put on my leather jacket, improvised something that looked as a press card and brought my huge analogue camera with flashlight on it and annoyed people by directing my tele-lens at them. I didn’t develop those photos yet if you’d wonder where they are, and anyway those old fashion machines don’t offer the ease of a USB-connection to put pics on my blog, so forget it (again: damn the bastard who stole my digi-cam).
Anyway, it was a great party, decadent and late, just like they’re supposed to be.
These two are Mats and Bea, both Swedish and in the same program as I am.
Here you have Sebastian from Berlin, Emir from Teheran, Mari from Norway and again the Swedish giant Mats who shows he'd rather be black, making hip hop, money and calling everybody "decadent bitch". He's doing good in the last field... They all are in my department.
Finally there's Alex and his brother, both a French-American mix, Emir from Iran again, and then some Belgian bloke who tries to keep his blog updated.
Then I also had 3
visitors already, so that means three weekends that fill up easily as well. Joke, Piet and Wim came by in London and I also met with Elsa and Walter who were on passage in London. Elsa studied here last year and helped me out a bit getting around in the beginning. It was very nice seeing all these people and knowing people in Belgium didn’t forget about me yet ;).
The weekend Wim came over was the end of term, so after 10 weeks of hard working that meant all breaks loose. I went to pick him up at Waterloo station and straight to the
christmas party at GDS (my place). The plan was to start off there and then to go on to “Jason’s end-of-term party”, after the first one I didn’t want to miss out on the second one… But everybody went crazy after all the built up tension of 10 weeks LSE, so we kinda never made it to the second one…no comments -*ahum*…
People dancing inside
Two crazy Belgians. "The Belgian legend" Gerald, world famous for his hockey play and his ability to turn beer into other substances, and Julien, known for the Greek connection, losing every single thing (including clothes, mobile phones, his girl friend's rucksack, a shoe and even his visitors), and equally renown 'connaissance' of 'bonnes bières belges'. Co-founder of the infamous and unofficial Belgian society at LSE. Together with me we aim to introduce some Burgondian 'savoir vivre' into the British society.
Wim and me, apparently having fun and steadily getting wasted
The GDS girls rehearsing for their cheerleaders act. Ellen or the French-Swedish-Irish-Brussels connection, in a state she'd rather not see herself published (let's see if she finds out about my blog- if this pic disappears you know why). Willy or the hope for future Canadian politics practising her colgate smile :)
And then the girls in white, Lea and Talia, or the French-Israeli and the South American-Israeli link. If you see these you'd wish for immediate peace in the Middle East and like to fly off to this earthly paradise. But don't be mistaken: Do not mess with these girls, those looks can kill! (and 2 years of training in the Israeli army also helps of course)
WYSIWYG
Ellen, Stella, Lieven and Wim
Furthermore there also was a hot Mexican party on a crowded boat on the Thames.
A “red-theme” party (everybody dressed in red, and giving red presents - don’t ask me where they get the idea) in someone’s apartment in a basement in Notting Hill, with lots of Latino’s dancing and some people starting to play live salsa.
Nights in the old street area, Brixton, Brick Lane, DJ’s in theatres, concerts of
Stellastar* and
The Sounds (check them out!) in KOKO (a 19th century style theatre Camden, really nice venue), concerts at the Cargo club, etc… Just the first things that come to my mind but too bad: I don’t have pics of these nights.
I also had my first experience with the
NHS, the National Healthcare Service. The good thing about it is that it’s completely free and that a GP (general practitioner or a normal doctor) is very accessible. But once you need some specialized care you have to wait for ages. Don’t worry I didn’t have anything serious. What happened is that I wanted to do some sports at the beginning of term, and when I saw there was a Karate club on campus I thought I’d pick it up again. I did it for 7 or 8 years until I went to university and I wasn’t that bad back then. So I brought my kimono from Belgium and started training 2 times a week. Although I had a lot of catching up to do, it all came back quickly and it felt great!
But the club was a bit more aggressive than what I was used to in Belgium and I guess my old brown belt got people a bit confused about my level. One training I got such
hard kick on my chest, I bent double. At that moment I still continued training and was ok, the next days I still felt it but I didn’t think it was anything because I was used to be all bruised and blue for a day or 2 after training. But after a week I still felt it and I started worrying.
So I went to the doctor on campus. She diagnosed a possible rib fraction or dislocation, but she couldn’t really tell. I could choose to have x-rays taken and I just wanted to make sure. That same afternoon I could go to the hospital and have pictures taken. I was really impressed by the efficiency and speed of the British healthcare system. Until… I had to wait 10 days for the results! What if I had something serious! I didn’t have any other options but to wait and trying to rest my chest (which is really not that easy; you move it all the time when you breath, talk, walk,…) Finally it turned out there was nothing to see on the x-rays. Probably slightly dislocated and anyway nothing you can do about it. So I just took care not to do things too active with my chest and the pain gradually disappeared after a month or so. Don’t know if I’ll go back to that karate club.
