London's call

Library Madness

2006-05-02T19:20:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting here in the library to write a short post on my blog. Short bc I've still got loads of work to do today! Tension's rising here at LSE and it's going really crazy.

Since the beginning of Summer Term, last week, they opened the library 24/7. At any time a day and night you can come here now and still find many people typing, reading, taking a nap, getting stressed, hanging out, flirting and some even studying. At 7am it starts getting more crowded already, between 9am and say 6pm it's impossible to find a free pc or even a tiny study space, and until late at night, even in the morning, this place is buzzing. A little bit exaggerated if you ask me, and with spring in the air a lot of people are not only here to get some work done, if you know what I mean. The place just is not productive at all, too much distraction, noise, stress, too little space...

I try to avoid it as much as possible, study at home or at other places on campus, but when I want to take a break and grab a coffee I just go there; always some nice girls around to hang out with ;o)

LATEST HEADLINE "Disaster in the city! 3 Belgians gals spotted in Borough"

2006-04-27T14:12:00.000+01:00

LONDON From our correspondent- The security services in London were on high alert last weekend. They were tipped off by informants there was a high security risk since three suspects disguised as Belgian girls on a trip to London would make the city unsafe.

They've been spotted setting off alarm systems, disabling CCTV cameras, seducing innocent drunk boys, humiliating Eurostar employees, sabotaging all sorts of machines, behaving weird in shops (filling up a basket and then leaving without it), headbanging at metal shows and stalking an Italian bass player.

This blog managed to get hold off some exclusive photo material of this destructive tour around London!

The gang of 3, watch out for these dangerous villains! If you spot them: do NOT approach them under no circumstance. They are dangerous and armed with their charms!

Lies found herself a new morbid hobby; feeding dead pigs! 'Here piggy, piggy!'

Mmmmhm, so many nice thing to see, smell and taste at Borough market

Including a huge pile of brownies!! When the gals laid eye on that one, only one outcome was possible:

Mmmmmh!

A long working week and a destructive weekend in London kicks in. Lies in the sunshine!

Keep it quiet! Marjo is rehearsing to be the next cool bond girl! This weekend she had a licence to chill. Like in this picture of two classy ladies in a nice English setting, surrounded by LSE directors.

I took the girls up to the Shaw library, a classically decorated nice library on the 6th floor of the LSE's main building, the Old Building. After convincing the security guard that I just wanted to show my visitors around so they could see where I spend my year, we went up and took a tour around the building.

To go down I thought I'd show them a nice alternative passage on the 4th floor between the buildings so they'd have a nice view over Houghton street. We crossed the passage and took the elevator down to get outside again. But there we stood in front of a blocked door. I started saying: 'Oh, I didn't know they lock it on Saturdays', when Lies interrupted me 'Here's a button to open the door', pushing it simultaneously. It was an inviting green button besides the door, however, it had 'EMERGENCY DOOR OPENING' spelled out over it in big letters. When she pushed it, for a split second we thought we could go out but then the alarm went off!!!

WHEEEEEW WHEEEEEW WHEEEEEEW

Adrenaline started pumping, 'damn what now'. Instead of going through the door we probably opened, we rushed back in the elevator, back through the passage to Old Building. Downstairs we passed the security guards 'as if our nose was bleeding' while they tried to figure out what set off the alarm...

Lies suddenly got a rush of excitement and started climbing lamp post, and I just joined her jumping around like a madman.

Here you can see a gentlemen taking excellent care his female guests, serving them breakfast with scrambled eggs, huge capuccinos and oven-baked ciabattas. Everything to get 'em started for another long day walking and shopping in Camden market.

But it cannot only be fun in life, so Prof. L.J. Brouwers gave them a personal lecture in LSE's Hong Kong Theatre.

At night their musical horizon got broadened in a concert by the Italian emo-rock band Novembre and the Swedish progressive doom metal, depressive rock -or whatever you want to call it- band Katatonia.
Just an alternative way to have fun and rock into the London nightlife. So afterwards we dived into some cool indie bars around Old Street following the golden London rule to pick bars: no cover fee, lots of horny people inside (with preferably more girls than guys) and music you can dance to!

Of course, as tourists in London you can't miss out on Trafalgar square.

This is my Tube station in Borough, the gentrifying part south of the Thames where one W. Shakespeare once dwelled around as well.

See how happy their host(age) is when they're about to take the Eurostar back to the continent! ;-)

Royal visitors

2006-04-17T17:26:00.000+01:00

Last weekend I had some important visitors, here's some exclusive photo footage of their stay in London.

Tubewise

Yes, this is London indeed!

This is PJ reporting live from Clement House, LSE, London. Back to the studio

Peejay's taking a piss out of the pinguin, the LSE's new student mascotte

HARROD'S, South Kensington, London; the supermarket for the ridiculously wealthy and extremely ignorant about the cost of living. As if London's not expensive enough yet...
Of course I couldn't resist trying a £2 salmon cake; it wasn't even that good, bah, money doesn't make life better...

"Burberry, for a less-exclusive high society life"
(within seconds the staff at Harrod's came round to prevent us from taking further pictures, but we have enough material for our counterfeiting production in Malaysia)

Besides for Burberry Peejay also has a mysterious fascination for the number 63, or better for its improbable pronunciation in Dutch as the juicy "drieënsjestig"

Mum and dad at Starbucks, nowadays as much a daily life thing London town as queues, red telephone cabins, black cabs, etc.

As you can see I'm still not relinquishing to the crazy bus drivers of London

Two generations of Brouwers's in a small student room

My mums fascination for cats and jewels surfaces again in the British Museum

Thou shall pose and smile on the photo!

If you didn't know it yet: Yes, PJ is good for you

Da bros

Tate Modern fascination

Millenium bridge, St. Paul's and a photo stalker in the background

Amparanoia

2006-04-04T01:21:00.000+01:00

Saturday night I booked tickets for one of my all time favourite bands: Amparanoia from Spain. I 'discovered' them in a tiny club in Madrid in 2001 and ever since I've seen them 4 times if my count is accurate. Last year they won the BBC3's award for best European World Music act, which is quite an achievement. So I expected the show would sell out quickly but only 4 days before the concert there were still lots of tickets available.
Once again I forgot about an quintessential trait of the English: their Anglo-centrism when it comes down to music!

I went with a Spanish friend, Martha, to the Coronet on Elephant & Castlewhich happened to be only 15 minutes walking from my place. Strange, I never noticed a concert hall there before and I pass there all the time...
It proved that this place only reopened very recent and that was clear in their handling of the crowd. They just didn't know what to do with 1) people having tickets, 2) people with pre-booked internet tickets, 3) people who wanted to buy tickets at the venue and 4) people on the guest list. We were of the 2nd category and we were first sent to the queue 1) and 3)(about 50 meters long!), then they created a new queue for 1) and we were sent to that queue as well, after which they separated 1) from 2) again??? In short, it was really confusing and we had to wait a long time to get in.

Luckily the concert started way too late so we saw the magnificent Amparo Sanchez and her great band from the first rows. It was a good concert and steaming party as always, though I was a bit surprised about the guitar player who was introduced as 'special guest', he played ok and didn't make any mistakes or so but sometimes he played things I would not expect at those points...

...I got to talk to him later that night and he told me he was flown in that very day from Spain because the usual Cuban guitar player was refused entry in the UK. Those biased English coppers probably suspected his guitar case...

The second band on the bill that night was Ska Cubano and to be honest I didn't know them so I thought they were the support act but in fact they were top of the bill.

I was not convinced at first: a bunch of guys and a girl who all claimed to be from 'Cuuuuuba' (pronounce cooeeeba for Dutch speakers), dressed up in 3 piece suites from the 40s, white shoes and a big hat... Seemed a bit cheap. And then they started off the first 30sec. already with an exaggerated sax solo and trying to get the public jumping, dancing and singing along. Usually you first have to prove yourself a bit before you get me, and by extension a general critical public, to do such things. But when you go to concerts at the British prices you cannot be too critical anymore, you just make your money worth it and go along in the collective pretence...
But in the end I must say, they actually were pretty good. A lot of show, but certainly based on some sound musical skills. Though I found out afterwards they didn't all fly in from across the atlantic, but are all just living in London... That's the nice thing about a cosmopolitan city.

More pictures follow later

From the EU to Colombia

2006-04-03T23:44:00.000+01:00

No, unfortunately I'm not going on a trip to Latin-America, I'm only refering to the past weekend, but it was exciting enough as well.

Friday morning I had the pleasant foresight of a whole day of pre-selection exams for the EU institutions, better known as the 'concours européenne'. As it's the spring break right now my body was a bit resistant to getting up early that morning but I made it in time all the way up to the Wembley stadium in North-London.

I was expecting huge halls filled with thousands of tiny tables and an equal amount of pale candidates, like I was used to from the selections for the Belgian and Flemish civil service in the Heizel. The more because I read in the newspapers that some 41.000 people were doing that exam in the whole EU.

But I forgot this is the UK and it was an EU exam. Those two abbreviations don't go well together; it was quite pathetic. There were some 400 tiny tables provided (I estimate) but only about 25% of the registred candidates actually showed up to pass the exam. And a large share of them were French, German, I even met a Dutchman, pretty disappointing result for the whole UK.

The exam itself was tough. I had been informing myself a bit about it beforehand and so I knew the kind of general EU-knowledge and verbal and numerical reasoning questions they usually ask. A couple of hours on wikipedia and the EU website picking up some statistics and history on the EU prepared me for that. The main challenge was working against the time.
But then there were the specific questions for "administrators in the field of law". I had roughly been going through my course on European Law from 3 years ago in the days before the test but damn, I was by far not prepared for this!

It was all focussed on EU competition law and that was only briefly touched upon during my law studies (it was an optional course). The questions supposed that you knew a lot of the articles of the EU treaties and judgements of the European Court of Justice by heart, à la 'the Court of Justice judgement of 24 July 2003 in Case C-280/00, Altmark, cohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifncerns:'
or 'under article 216 EC a Member of the Commission can be compulsory retired on application by:' and then options a to d.

Okay, next time at least I know what to expect from that part.

Here's the Wembley stadium as a huge construction site. It's reopening is being postponed until 'sometime in 2007', due to problems with the roof.

After the exam I took the tube back to Oxford Circus where I was meeting Ruth my Spanish friend for dinner. We decided to go for some drinks in a nice wine bar in Soho and then we discovered a buffet-all-you-can-eat Thai for only £ 6.50! Unseen in London!!
Ruth is now among the top of the jetset crowd in London, that is to say she serves them... Having a law degree from Spain but still having some catching up to do on her proficiency in English, she's working in one of the top hotels of London for the moment. The likes of Claudia Schiffer, Pierce Brosnan and George Clooney are among her daily customers. Most of her colleages are non-EU citizens (Koreans, Latinos,...) going for the high wages in London or simply trying to improve their English.

So after the dinner we were going to hang out with her Colombian colleagues. One of them was throwing a house party in Bayswater, just next to über-posh Notting Hill. I now can officially testify that Colombians grow up with salsa in their legs and do not like jokes about drugs. For the record, it was told 'por un non-latino no bailas malo' and I didn't tell the jokes about the drugs ;-)

On popular request...

2006-03-23T19:50:00.000Z

...I will make an update to my blog about my London life. And it's about time this Amadeo guy gets off my frontpage ;-)

Last weekend I had two visitors over, the first of 2006: Maria and Nico, my Spanish friends from Brussels.

It was very nice to have them over for the end of term weekend, quite relaxing. I refer to Nico's blog (post 1 & 2) for all we've been doing over the weekend, you should be a bit fluent in Spanish though or click on 1 & 2 for an English version. It's far from perfect but you'll be able to get the picture...

One of the things we did was go on the London Eye, supposedly the largest Ferris wheel in the world (135 meters) and indeed the view is trully spectacular but you don't want to think too much about how much you pay for your 'flight' (it's exploited by British Airways and they actually call it a flight), nor how long you waited for it or how awfully touristic it is to do this. What the hell, I've seen the lights coming up over London by sunset and I'll just comfort myself by saying that's priceless!

On Sunday night we went to a bar around Old Street, still my favourite site to go out, the three of us needed a drink to get over the monetary disaster of the weekend, so we turned down the overpriced fancy decorated places and discovered a cool reasonably priced place with loads of drunken (around 7pm)English would-be artists, that's always a good sign...: The Bricklayers Arms. Where the three of us have been looking a bit too deep in our pint... whatever you understand by that :)

The Wetlands

2006-02-13T00:18:00.000Z

Ok, time to get my blog up-to-date a bit; I won’t bother you with all the crazy, amazing things I have done the last couple of weeks, nor tell you about the extraordinary, interesting and sexy people I have met. Why? Because I’m gonna tell it with pictures, and I don’t have pics of everything (and also because I don’t feel like typing too much ;-)

I’m starting to get the impression there’s a whole community forming here in London of people I knew elsewhere and who have come to live here. Since a month I share the city with Ruth –Russssssss for friends- and Mikko. Ruth is my old flatmate from my time in Madrid. She’s a very nice warm-hearted Spanish girl with this soft Southern accent from the Canary Islands. She followed her Finnish boyfriend Mikko to London. To rap up the whole love story: Mikko did an Erasmus in Madrid, hooked up with Ruth (I kinda linked them, I guess), they both went back to their homes afterwards (las Islas Canarias and Suomi -or something meaning Finland), had a difficult distance relationship for a while and then decided to get together somewhere in between.

They ended up spending a year in the middle of nowhere –which is: Delft (the middle) in Holland (nowhere)-, where Mikko could do his Phd. But there wasn’t really much to do there for a girl that studied Spanish law, spoke Spanish and just enough English to speak to a Dutch baker or supermarket employee. Incredible what love makes people do for each other. I went to visit them there last year with Soen (another Madrilenan connection from Belgium, currently residing in Mauritius), needless to say that their social and her professional life were a bit on the lower side.

Luckily, Mikko managed to get into Imperial College to pursue his PhD and thus they moved to London at the end of December. Ruth’s English is improving rapidly, she’s combining a couple of little jobs and is going to try to get something more promising as soon as her English is good enough.

Why all this information about people you don’t even know? Because otherwise you’d have no clue who the people in the next picture are!

Here you see Ruth, Sebastian and Soetkin Oh, yeah, Mikko is not in the picture, he was at the university that day, I think I forgot to mention he’s a workaholic. We went for a hike in the Wetlands (moeras-achtig iets), in Barnes-Hammersmith, some 10 km from the centre of London. Wow, I thought, that sounds nice, being outside of London for a day, in the nature,… You can imagine one needs that once in a while in a hectic city as this.

So we met up, I had a huge coffee from a nearby Starbucks (on Sunday mornings students most of the time do other things than hiking in nature -no further comments) and entered the Wetlands. It was the annual open door so instead of an incredible £ 7 we could go in for free. And I’m glad I didn’t pay for it! Nature? Yeah, okay, it was an old ‘wetland’ but those Londoners turned it into a theme park.

This is about as close to nature as we got.

I just wanted mud, grass, clean air, no people nor city. What we got was, hardened roads, multimedia explanatory screens imitating the sounds of birds and lots of people and still the London skyline on all sides.

Nevertheless we had quite some fun… making fun of the Londoners. I guess that’s the difference between a real city kid from London and people –like most of us- who actually played in woods and saw cows in the fields when we were kids.
A lot of those Londoners were dressed as if they were going on an expedition in Papua-New-Guinea. They all dressed to impress each other with hiking shoes from the right brand, a silly ‘adventurer’s’ hat, binoculars, and they were all that serious at it. The park was also a sort of protected area for birds, so you’d have lots of birds and… birdwatchers!!! What a great kind of people, getting up early on Sunday mornings, spending hours waiting for this one glimps of a nearly extintinct bird and then write epic stories on their community’s website about what a good look they had at… the bird. Sorry, I’m letting myself go here a bit. But, as they say, one image says more than a thousand words.

20 birdwatchers with photo cameras, some of which had about the size of a RPG, watching one heron (reiger).

Afterwards we went for a nice windy walk along the Thames,

had some drinks and then had dinner at Ruth and Mikko’s place. And Mikko was even there to eat with us, only to go back to university afterwards (Sunday 8pm…).

That’s it for this time

Coughs and bums

2006-01-15T23:03:00.000Z

Last week wasn't so exciting, I got a bit sick so I spent most of the time at home sniffing, coughing, preparing tea with honey, and other superstitious stuff that's supposed to get you better. So basicly I worked somewhat and didn't get better.

So after a week of screen-book-wall staring I got sick of all that and decided it was about time to go out again, regardless of that f***ing cold of mine. Friday night I first went for some drinks with people from my course at the Beaver bar at the LSE campus. A bar that has this kind of "cosy living room" concept to it, but in fact the interior is repulsive, but hell, who cares about it if the drinks are cheap.

Then I went to this opening night of a Mexican theatre week in Chelsea. I didn't go to see a play there, and in fact there was nothing more to it than a stereotype Mexican band playing live music and a lot of Spanish-speaking people. But I just happen to like both, and the venue was cool (Royal Court Theatre). I was meeting Soetkin and Sebastian there, the Belgian-Mexican couple with whom I stayed in my first days in London.
I also invited Ruth and Mikko there, a Spanish-Finnish couple. Ruth was my flatmate in Madrid 4 years ago. They moved to London 2 weeks ago so I thought I'd hook'm up with a couple in a similar situation to get to know some people.
In both those couples, the guys are doing their PhD in some engineering stuff at Imperial College and the girls came to London for love and are trying to find a job here. Soetkin worked for a while at the Belgian embassy, got bored with it and now she's volunteering at an NGO in human and woman's rights, and looking for a payed job besides it. Ruth studied law but is quite difficult to find something here with a Spanish law degree so she's gonna start working at MacDo while she keeps looking for something else.
It was nice to see them all back and I could brush up my rusty Spanish and practise all night (it still went surprisingly ok). Next weekend we'll probably go a bit to the outskirts of London walking along the river and in some parks. Now all we need is a baby carriage to push forward and we'll blend in just fine on a Sunday afternoon stroll... ;)

Saterday night's alright for party I thought, and I felt like getting some action to get rid of that cold of mine. So first I went to the National Film Institute with a bunch of people. We got to see the Ipcress File as part of a Michael Caine cycle. Nice flick, great cinematography, good acting by Caine and a surprising story line. It's kind of a anti macho James Bond espionnage film and it has this great sixties feeling to it that I just love in films.
Later that night me and my party buddy Max -the Dutch clubmonster- hooked up to some IR people to go to Old Street. We went to the Medicine bar, about which I had heard quite some already but it was disappointing: awfully quiet for a Saterday night in Old Street (a pitty of the entrance fee, luckily I had a reduction with my NUS card, damage: £4). So we managed to get the group moving. Of course Max wanted to go to a proper club, but none of us wanted to cough up £ 10 for just 1,5 hours till they would close around 3.
Back to one of my favorites then: The Legion! Good edgy rock music, crowded, nice birds and no entrance fee: guaranteed fun each time.
I don't wanne spare you one of the nice sights on our way home. The pics are not so good but I guess you can make something of it.

It's not freezing anymore but still far from warm, however some girls just don't care! Those thrashy English rock chicks, ah, just great to go out around Old St.

NY resolution: cut down on the drinking...

2006-01-07T13:55:00.000Z

You don’t have to be clairvoyant to know that the British are drinking too much, just go out on an average Friday after work in London and you know enough, but anyway, seeing it in numbers is hallucinating. Here’s an article from the BBC site and De Standaard.

Big rise in liver cirrhosis cases – BBC news, 5 January 2005

Excessive alcohol consumption is being blamed for a big rise in deaths from the liver disease cirrhosis in Britain.

While deaths from the disease are falling elsewhere, a Lancet study shows they have soared in England, Scotland and Wales since the 1950s.

Total recorded alcohol consumption in the UK is estimated to have doubled between 1960 and 2002.

RISING CIRRHOSIS DEATH RATES
1950s:
England and Wales:
Men: 3.4
Women: 2.2
Scotland:
Men: 8.2
Women: 6.1

2001:
England and Wales:
Men: 14.1
Women: 7.7
Scotland:
Men: 34.4
Women: 16.1
Figures are deaths from cirrhosis/100,000 people/year

Bucking the trend

In contrast, death rates for both men and women in other European countries declined by 20% to 30% from the early 1970s.

Between the periods 1987-1991, and 1997-2001, male deaths from cirrhosis in Scotland more than doubled, and in England and Wales they rose by over two-thirds.

For women, rates increased by a half in the same period.
(…)

(Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4581530.stm)

Britten drinken zich vaker dood – De Standaard, 5 Januari 2005

Britten drinken zich vaker dood. Het aantal mensen dat overlijdt aan levercirrose, door overmatig drankgebruik, is in de afgelopen vijftig jaar sterk gestegen. Dat blijkt uit een studie van het Kings College in Londen.
Terwijl in andere Europese landen het aantal doden door levercirrose met 20 tot 30 procent gedaald, is in Schotland het aantal doden door levercirrose onder mannen meer dan verviervoudigd. In de jaren vijftig overleden daar ongeveer 8,2 mannen per duizend inwoners per jaar aan de ziekte. In 2001 waren dat er 34,4.

Volgens deskundigen moet Groot-Brittannië onder ogen zien dat de Britse bevolking te veel drinkt en moet de regering snel maatregelen nemen om alcoholmisbruik tegen te gaan.

(http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF06012006_019)

New Year's Bunny

2006-01-06T03:54:00.000Z

I just returned to London after two weeks spending xmas and NY in Belgium. Nice to see a lot of people back, thanks for the good times.

The tiger bunny that I'm riding is supposed to be my New Year's card thanks to the creative efforts of the Brouwers brothers and mainly the Illustrator knowhow of Peejay.

You should have gotten this card already by mail or you will receive it in a while as I avoid to do mass-mailings and only do a couple of people a day.

As for the writing underneath, getting the most out of 2006 is definitly what I plan to do here in London. One of my good intentions is keeping you a bit more posted about it.

Cheers!

Two months for the prize of one blog

2006-01-06T02:46:00.000Z

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.

Halloween party

2005-11-02T00:10:00.000Z

Zaterdagavond had ik Soetkin en Sebastian (waar ik in het begin 3 dagen gelogeerd had) uitgenodigd om te komen eten. En daarna zijn we -ondanks alle verleidingen van de stad- gewoon hier op gds (great dover street, de peda waar ik woon) gebleven. Er was een Halloweenparty in de bar en daar zijn we dan maar gaan socializen met allemaal raar verklede mensen.

Wij hadden vlug iets geimproviseerd; een beetje politiek moest kunnen dachten we dus gingen we voor Guantanamo bay:
- Sebastian was een amerikaanse soldaat met helm (fietshelm met groene t-shirt over), groene jas en geweer (saxstaander),
- ik was krijgsgevangen een terrorist met streepjestrui, marokkaanse babouches aan m'n voeten, losse broek, gestreepte muts en dan een net van staalkabel over mij (de safepack van Huubs sax).
- En Soetkin was vredes-mensenrechten activiste met regenboog 'pace' vlag rond haar en pamfletten.

Maar er waren niet veel mensen die het snapten. LSE studenten zijn ook niet meer wat het geweest is. Er waren er die mij als vis in een net zagen en Sebastian als visser.

Iedereen had zo echt brave politiek correcte spullen aan, echt inspiratieloos. Er waren een hele hoop heksen, evenveel piraten, en dan heel wat meiden die graag wat bitchier door het leven zouden willen gaan: zeker 4 als kat verkleed en dan nog eens dubbel zoveel hadden horentjes op en wilden duivellineke spelen, pfffft.

Nog een kerel had een rol wc-papier rond zich gedraaid om als mummie door te gaan. Iedereen vond dat echt geweldig en zat constant aan hem te voelen. Echt origineel kon het echter niet genoemd worden maar toch heeft hij de wedstrijd voor het beste kostuum gewonnen (30 pond!)

Er was slechts 1 persoon op 70-80 of zo die ook iets politiek aan had. Ellen, een Zweeds-Iers-Frans-Zwitsers en ook Brusselse mix, was als poverty verkleed. Ze had een oude zwarte jurk uitgerafeld en aan stukken geknipt. Daar kettingen op geschilderd en woorden als, IMF, Shell, coca-cola enz. En dan had ze allemaal vuile vegen op armen, benen en gezicht. Ik vond haar wel goed, maar weeral niemand snapte het.

Voor ons is carnaval toch iets waar je lekker dingen erdoor kan trekken en politiek oncorrect kan zijn. Hier was men echt braafjes. Maar goed dat ik niet als suicide-bomber geweest was, dat was mijn eerste idee, maar daar ben ik wijselijk toch op teruggekomen. Hoewel ik en enkele vrienden hier het wel goed vonden, en ik vind dat zo iets moet kunnen, maar er heerst echt een dictatuur van het politiek correcte denken. Veel te brave mensen....

(als ik meer foto's heb van deze avond zal ik ze erbij plaatsen)

Boring lecture

2005-10-27T12:47:00.000+01:00

I'm trying to sit through a boring lecture, fighting not to fall asleep. Although the course seems interesting -Foreign Policy Analysis- the guy giving it is soooo dull.

Most English lecturers tend to be quite witty, making funny dry remarks so typical for English humour. But this guy is a German, so besides a horrible Schwarzenegger-like accent he really lacks every sense of humour. And besides, his whole lecture is put on slides and available on the web, so no need to take notes.

So I just put my laptop on the desk and pretend to take notes in an attempt not to fall asleep.

Oh yeah, you might think it's a bit ridiculous to sit in course with a laptop (I still think so as well in fact) but it's a very common thing here. Loads of people do it, and that way you can read the paper in a boring lecture without anybody noticing it, if they're not sitting behind you of course.

A weekend back home

2005-10-25T18:40:00.000+01:00

Last weekend was really nice, exhausting also because I had a lot to do, but I had a great time. After a month in London, I went to Belgium basically to get some more stuff over here to get through the year (and the winter!)

And at the same time I saw a lot of friends, really heartwarming to see you all turn up. Brussels really feels a bit like home after two years there. I just spent one day there and I already ran into several people by accident. Incredible! I just got off the Eurostar and I ran into Ruben. The next day I met Inge in the city with her two weeks old baby and afterwards in cafe Fontainas I Lore and Kristof suddenly came in (one of the things we talked on was this very good new tv series 'Lost', of course I had never heard about it, I'll get back to it later). How nice to see them all.

And then of course all the people that came to have dinner and drinks afterwards in the Monk and the Beurscafe; Joke, Soen, Maria, Nico, Delphine, Piet, Yin. There I also saw Ines, Dorien and a couple of others. It was nice to see you all back, although I've only been gone for 1 month.

Saturday I went to Hasselt to see my parents, brother and Indy (the cat). My father spoiled me by preparing delicious 'mosselen friet' for dinner!

At night I went for a drink with Pieter and Nele in Hasselt, and we were joined by the newly weds Marijke and Huub, and Saartje, Marijke's sister. It was very nice to go for a drink in good old Hasselt with it's nice cafe's and cosy nightlife.

The night still had a very nice surprise for me. I was talking to Huub about playing saxophone. I knew he also plays and told him that, as I am in London now, I can't rent a sax anymore in the music academy in Brussels. I've been looking around if I could buy a cheap or second hand one but all I found was far out of my budget or bad quality. So I just wanted to talk that over with a fellow sax player and suddenly he offers to lend his sax for a year! He had not been playing for over 3 years and the next year he'd would not have the time because of the works in his new house. And besides it's better for the sax to be played. I really couldn't believe it and was a bit hesitent as well, you know, the responsability over someone else's sax. So we agreed to both sleep over it and that I'd just come by the next day to see.

So Sunday I went there and we agreed on it! So I took Huub's terrific and beautiful Selmer tenor saxophone with me to London. It's a very nice sax with an incredible sound.
Huub, echt bedankt, ik zal goed zorg dragen voor "je kindje", hij is al veilig en wel in Londen aangekomen en ik heb er daarstraks al een uurtje op gespeeld, mmmmh.

As Huub and Marijke live just around the corner of Andres and Isa I taught I'd just try if they were home, and yes they were, so I went in for a nice coffee and to admire Andres' new dark room for printing his own photos at home.

Then I still had to go through my stuff to get everything I wanted to bring to London and pack it, it got a bit stressy as I still had to catch the train back to Brussels that evening. Heavily loaded with a backpack, two bags and a sax I took off. Thanks to the help of some nice people along the way I managed...

And then the next morning at a very undecent hour I took the Eurostar again. I was a bit afraid they wouldn't let me take so much luggage, but luckily they didn't say anything. In the train I checked out what my brother Peejay had been doing with my laptop all weekend. I came with almost nothing on the HD and I went back with 40 Gb worth of films and music. Wow! Thanks bro! Now at last I have some music in my room in London.
And then I saw he put almost the whole first season of 'lost' on it. So I started watching this series' Lore and Kristof were so full off in cafe Fontainas. Damn, once I started I couldn't stop anymore, I just HAD to know what happened in the next episode. So I saw them all in 2 days only to discover that the season was not complete on my laptop. Horrible!! It stops after episode 10 with an enourmous cliffhanger, damn, I really want to know what happens next ;)

Okay, enough typing, I've still got some studying to do today...

Some strange facts about the English

2005-10-25T17:58:00.000+01:00

You know the type of fast food joints that are seemingly alike and interchangeable all over the world. Here in the UK you’ve got those as well of course but besides those there are also some local chains, like ‘Subways’ for example.

So one evening after a long day of classes, I thought I’d do something what I don’t do so quickly, I went for some easy, cheap, fast food. And if I’m at it, I might as well do it properly and order the whole package deal, you know, hot sandwich, chips and a huge drink with loads of ice cubes.
The kind of deals you get EVERYWHERE, so you think you know what you’d get. Well, not here in England!

The sandwich was prepared before my eyes, fresh veggies etc. -so far so good-, the drinks I was supposed to get myself –great! I could take as much coke as I like without the watery cubes-, and then I was patiently waiting for them to come up with my damping hot, freshly baked, crusty potato chips… but I should have gotten suspicious earlier already because there was no ‘friture’ in eyesight.

So I asked for my ‘chips’, the man looked behind me and pointed at the stacked boxes with packages of ‘Lays’ chips besides the entrance. What the fuck!!! Okay, those things are also called ‘chips’, but I consider them as a kind of candy that happens to fill you up a bit as well, but not as chips as in ‘fish and chips’. ‘Des frites’, ‘French fries’, ‘frieten’ weet je wel! The kind we Belgians consider as our national pride and we so proudly claim to prepare in the best manner in the world. Nope, not the English, they weren’t that famous for their ‘cuisine’ and eating habbits anyway, and this surely doesn’t help either.

But I must be honest and give‘em some credit as well, London is a fantastic place if you like good food and a diverse palate of choices from all over the world. From Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanese to Korean cuisine, prepared in the most authentic ways. Italian, French, Spanish, Scandinavian and even several quite good Belgian restaurants can be found in this city. Really, you can’t imagine it and you can find it here… At least, if you have the money for it, I only now it from my guide ;)

Another one about food. At the LSE campus there’s this student restaurant (a kind of Alma for those who studied in Leuven), handy in between courses and the food is decent.

But… here they don’t serve food as one dish or meal for a certain price. Nope those English like to complicate things and make their menu and policy so ambiguous that you only find out the price at the cashier with all your food already on your plate.

So last week I took the “fish dish” that was on the menu for £ 3.50, that makes +/- € 5,25. Enough for a very decent meal at the “Alma” I taught.
Well no, for that I only got a piece of fish on my pathetic empty plate.
But then I moved on to discover that 2 meters further in the buffet they had a ‘great deal’: I could choose two extra items from the buffet for only £ 4.55 in total and thus upgrade my meal with potatoes and vegetables. Well, I had no other choice, did I ?

With a damping full plate I proudly and hungry went for the cashier. The woman looked at my plate as if she was putting an estimated value on it, and that seemed indeed to be what she was doing.
“£ 5.05” she said,
“Excuse me?”, was my surprised answer, “I taught it said £ 4.55 on the menu”.
“Yes it does”, she replied me, “but you took more than one scoop” (een schep in schoon Vlaams).
I beg your pardon!!!
I still tried: “I saw that price on the menu, how could I know”,
but she rebutted me with “You can go and see, it’s written underneath. And it’s only 50p.”, she added, trying to ridicule me.
I murmured something like, “Yeah, it’s only 50p. for everything here in London!”, but paid without further protest.

Lesson for the next time: also read the small print in restaurants (back home only banks and telephone companies try to rip you off through their small prints, you know).
My € 7,50 “Alma” meal filled me up alright but without any enjoyment. Paying per scoop, have you ever!
Next time I’ll insist them to count my peas, measure my steak and weigh my coke!

One more to get it over with. It’s about English sinks and water taps, you know the things in kitchens and bathrooms to wash up in. You would think those things are the same all over the world.
Yeah, they are, except for the English of course. Just like driving on the left side and sticking with the pound, they’re one stubborn people those Brits.

A lot of international students are surprised by the taps on the sinks here in England. Whereas in most developed countries most houses now have those taps where you can mix cold and warm with 2 knobs on the side of one tap -so you can have the ideal temperature-, the English have two separate taps on their sinks.
Okay, you can find those also in other countries, and you can also find those mixing taps here, but it is striking that the majority of the taps are of the non-mixing type.
So that means one steaming hot tap (it’s really hotter than in most Belgian households) and one freezing cold.

You might think what a trivial, stupid fact but a lot of foreign students here have noticed this and they ask themselves how the English wash e.g. their face. You can’t mix the temperature! So or you burn yourself or you get a headache from the cold water, or you have to mix it in the sink all the time. Really not that handy!

After the fun...

2005-10-16T18:50:00.000+01:00

I can't have you guys think the previous blog is representative for how I spend my time here. So in short: today it's study day (like most of the rest of the week).

The education system is quite different from what I (and most of you) am used to. A lot more personal study work and a lot of time to spend in the library. I'll get back to that more in detail later.

So now I am reading texts and books to prepare my seminar on 'Islam in IR'. Very interesting.

Oh yeah, next weekend I'm coming over to Belgium to get some more stuff over here (and to see you guys of course...;) Friday night I'll probably be in Bxl, the rest of the weekend at my parents place in Hasselt. Maybe till then

Laurent Garnier

2005-10-16T17:13:00.000+01:00

This is London and besides the British capital, it is also the worlds financial capital and... the capital of clubbing. So last night Laurent Garnier came over to play an olympic 8-hour set at the end.
We couldn't let that occasion pass by so me and my Dutch buddy, Max, went down there to find ourselves in a 45 minute queue to get in. Well ok, it wasn't raining nor cold and we already had some drinks so alright, we stood and watched the crowd around us. One lesson for next time; buy advance tickets well in advance so we can take the short queue.
You know, the English just love to queue, they're famous for it and it is true. Everywhere they form these lines and go and stand civilized one after the other, and whoo they who try to jump the queue. The bouncers see it all and or they pick you out of the line, or they'll just let you wait the whole line, only to send you back to the end when you taught you were finally about to get in (it's so much fun to see them being sent back!).

So after our long wait we finally got our full body search, could donate a vast amount at the poor cassier and could go down in the end! So there he was, the world famous deejay Laurent Garnier, approx. earning my whole savings in one single night. Laurent was playing great, a wide range of styles from trad. house and techno over rock-inspired pounding music to drum & bass and very jazzy stuff. You could see he was in the mood and we, 2 meters from him, were sweating in the masses, going where Laurent guided us.

One serious down-side: way too much testostero in the venue, it was about a ratio of 1 to 4, and most of the girls that were there... well, they could as well have stayed home as far as I was concerned.

That's the problem with the well-known clubs and a famous deejay. So we'll have to find better next time and go more underground.

Friday evening we had a drink offered by the school where we had a chat with the professors and our fellow students. After the necessary glasses of -fairly decent I must say- South African LSE house wine, we ended up looking for a place to go.
So first we, some 15 IR students, followed a french guy who claimed to know 'a cool place'.
I should have known, never trust a frenchman on music taste or for your nightlife. He took us to Covent Garden, seriously overprized and you can't get more touristic in London. I hope the guy will discover another side of London over the year.

After the group thinned out Sebastian (from Berlin) proposed to go to Bethnal Green, an area in East London that's coming up the last couple of years. I have been there already a couple of times and I really dig the area. People from Berlin are a lot more trustworthy for your nightlife. Bethnal Green kinda reminds of Berlin though. A bit rough, a higher cool factor and more underground. That's the way Sebastian and I like it.
So we took the lead and took Alex (americanized frenchman), Matts (americanized Swedish guy) and a Norwegian girl over there. Big mistake, 4 guys and one girl, never do that again in London. You can't get in any decent place (at least without entrance fee), "only couples" is the answer we got at the 'mother bar' (also here) and they see that in a very narrow sense. Only people from Liverpool are worse off, they can't get in anyway.
We didn't feel like paying 10 quid for a venue that we didn't know so we ended up in some place playing rock and old skool whitemen hiphop. The gig was fair enough, except for our Swedish friend, until Sebastians bag was suddenly gone.
Fuck!!! There were thieves operating in the joint. I had put my jacket on a bench besides me and some guy tried to go tru my pockets as well. Nothing worth taking but anyway I spotted him and he came up with some lousy story about his bag being nicked and he was trying to find his stuff.
Yeah right! But Sebastians bag was still missing, nothing in there except some books that are worthless for anybody but mean a fortune for an IR student. And luckily his iPod was in his jacket.

To shorten up the story, we turned the place upside down but didn't find the bag. Then we waited for people to come out and asked people with a big bag if we could see in it. They guy who I saw going through my pockets earlier got thrown out after being caught doing the same in some girls purse. At 3am the place closed and we watched everybody coming out. Finally, Sebastians bag was found at the other end of the place. Clearly the thieves saw there was nothing in there besides books and left it there.
No need to say how relieved Sebastian was.

My new home

2005-10-11T06:19:00.001+01:00

I'll quickly tell you a bit about my new home and so I can also lighten these pages up with some pictures.

My new cell, sorry room I mean, is in the Great Dover Street Hall of Residence of the LSE. That's in the South Bank of London, south of the Thames, about 3km from the School and more or less 4 km from Leicester Square or Soho, centre London. A good half hour walk, fair enough for me!

From the outside the building complex looks like this, though most of the time less sunny and theatrical (I just got these pics from the internet).

I'm in a little standard room in an ant hill with some 450 other students, most of them postgrads. There are pros and cons about it, and a couple of times the cons already took the upperhand but for the time being it's probably the best option.

And then this is the courtyard.

And then now some pics of my room, if you're interested. It's not my actual room and I do have some stuff on the shelves etc. but as all the four hundred and fifty rooms look equally dull I just took these from the net (in fact, the building next to ours is exactly the same thus it's even 900 identical rooms). So we have to differentiate us from the 899 others by our personality *ahum*.

This is the corner where I'll wear off my trousers this year, i.e. I'll spend a lot of time there doing what students are supposed to do.

And then, all the way to the other far end of the room is my bed. It's hard to capture it on photo as you can hardly distinguish it due to the enourmous size of the room. It's what they call "the loft feeling" in fancy magazines.

I've also got a luxury hyper modern bathroom for myself! It's designed for the rush of modern urban life. You can take a shower, take a leak and brush your teeth/shave at the same time. How convenient!

For those of you willing to admire this huge penthouse flat in the centre of the world's most vibrant and multicultural city irl, there's only one address: (or if you want to send me a package of reasonably priced and decent quality beer, bread and chocolate)

L B
Flat D309.1
159 Great Dover Street
Southwark
London
SE1 4WW
England

My private extension number is +44 (0) 870 7546905 (for the cheap bastards; calls on a fixed line)
Or +44 (0) 791 0465739 for those who call with company phones (my mobile)

If you'd like to come over to discover underground London at first hand, please contact me asap as the residence regulations are quite strict on the guest policy and I'll have to arrange things!!!

Cheap travels from Brussels:
www.eurostar.com (Brussels midi/South to Waterloo international station: 2h15 - fair prices on return tickets if you book on time and are a bit flexible)

and if that's not fast enough yet, why not try the Vlaamse Luchtvaartmaatschappij. Before you can finish your sandwhich and order your free drink you're in London. 1h from Zaventem Brussels to London City airport.
www.flyvlm.com

Making new friends

2005-10-10T01:30:00.000+01:00

Ok, it's been a while since my last post on these pages. But as soon as I got into my new home, a hall of residence of LSE (ne peda in schoon dutch), everything shifted a couple of gears and I got into the fast lane.
But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna keep this blog updated, I'll keep on posting stuff on an irregular basis.
The main thing I've been doing the last couple of days is: meeting people, meeting people and once again meeting people. I just can't keep track of it anymore... And I thought an Erasmus year or living in Brussels was alreay quite international, well here it's even a lot more! The last 2 weeks I've litteraly met people from every continent.

And at the same time, things are starting to get on speed at university as well, it's quite different here from nice and easy 'leave-me-alone-for-the-first-couple-of-months' Leuven student life. People actually come here to learn something, can you imagine! So as from the first week the library is loaded. Ok, I thought well what can you do in between classes after your 5th coffee and when you finished your magazine. Indeed, you might as well go and check out the library.

It's a huge and modern library and they claim to be one of the biggest in social, economical and political sciences in the world, and as I'm studying here this year and thus kinda identify with LSE *ahum* I totally agree with them. There's about 1200 pc, over 200 laptop point and most of the campus is also wireless. And still you have to queue for a free pc... Ok, a lot of these people are just checking their mail, are on msn or write blogs like yours sincerely, but there's a lot of people already starting writing papers, searching for materials. The first week of the academic year, while the freshers forthnight is still going on! This is unseen in my academic career in Leuven, Madrid and Brussels until now. Jeeeeez!

So it's all about finding the right balance, that's what we've become good at in all these years, isn't it? I'll tell a bit more about the other side of the balance next time. (now I'm off preparing my seminar for tomorrow...)

First night out

2005-09-24T20:46:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening I met up with Marta, a Spanish girl I know through Maria a good friend in Brussels. Like with all Spaniards it was kind of a fuzz to meet up ;-) but finally there I was in a crowded bar-restaurant in the North of London looking for a girl to seemed familiar with the pictures I'd seen of her. There she was, sitting with a bunch of (what later prooved to be) Australians and an Irish girl.
To get started with a somewhat homefeeling I took a pint of Hoegaarden 'van het vat', couldn't be too bad... Ok, at least it was cold and they put a slice of lemon in it but hell, it was a half a liter bucket, pressure-free beer that they filled it to top. So long homefeelings. And the worst thing is it's not the ignorance of the bargirl who served it, it's official Inbev instructions 'cause there's a little line 3mm below the top of the glass indicating untill where to fill it. But ok, I'm not a difficult person and it took away my thirst.

Afterwards we went to this Spanish party in the basement of a Spanish restaurant (a bit hidden because officialy they can't be open that late). Loads of Spaniards thus. It's funny how you can recognise them from a mile away by their haircut and clothes (boys even more than girls) even when they have been abroad for years. But it was good fun: loud Spanish classics everybody was singing along and "cheap drinks" or that's what they told me in advance. £3 for a simple beer, that's 4.5 euro!!! You can have a very good trappist for that back home in Belgium!!!
But the next day at least you don't wake up with a huge hangover (although a little one I admit), only with a huge leap in your budget.

Afterwards I had to find my way home with the nightbus system, busses and me that no good combination... I'll have to figure it out before I get my first visitors.

Ok, the internet shop's closing. Tomorrow I can go into my university flat where I should have regular internet acces. Now of to a Mexican party where I was invited to yesterday. Bye

Strolling around in the city

2005-09-23T18:00:00.000+01:00

With the most important thing for this week done, that is getting registred, I am taking my time to get around in the city.
Well, what a city it is, Brussels seems like a smalltown village next to it, London is huge, it is crowded and buzzing all the time. Now I'm still just going along with the crowdsm trying to find my way but I hope I can leave my little map at home pretty soon and start discovering the itchy side of London. So I can impress my visitors with the cool spots I discovered. But that's for later on.
Ik zal van tijd tot tijd ook eens bewijzen dat ik mijn Nederlands nog niet kwijt ben, maar bon, ik wil mijn Engels oefenen op alle manieren en zo kunnen degenen die het Nederlands niet kundig zijn ook af en toe eens meepiepen op deze blog.

So till now I stayed at Soetkin and Sebastians' place. The were living in a little house owned by imperial college where Sebastian is doing his PhD. Soetkin I know from the BTC course on development co-operation in June. She studied Germanic languages and International Relations in Leuven, and then a Master in Human Rights in Manchester. My kind of person thus. Currently she is doing somekind of a payed internship at the Belgian embassy 'cause they need extra people for the UK presidency of the EU.
Sebastian is from Mexico and he met up with Soetkin in Manchester last year, than he came London for his PhD (doctoraat in het schoon Vlaamsch).
They were kind enough to let me stay at their place for a couple of days, but tomorrow they have to move out because Imperial college only provides rooms for first year students. They had quite some trouble finding a new place but now they'll (temporarly) rent a room from a colleague of Soetkin some 8 km out of the centre.

So tonight I'm moving again with my two too heavy backpacks to Helga's place. She's incredible, I only saw her for the first time yesterday and she already gave me the keys to her flat. I know her through my cousin who lived in London several years ago and he got us into touch. After couple of very helpfull mails on how to get started in Londen she offered me a spare sofa-bed in her place. I saw her for 5 minutes yesterday, she seems like a very nice person, I'll get to know her better very soon. Tonight though she won't be in, so I'll even have her place to myself!

I should get somekind of a digital camera to freshen these pages up with some pictures of the people and things I'm writing on.

I'll leave it with that for the moment, time to go.

First day

2005-09-22T21:13:00.000+01:00

My mission today was to get registred at LSE. After a good night sleep -which I really needed after the last couple of weeks- I got on a bike, that Soetkin so kindly lended me, and took off to the city. As I'm quite into cycling as a means of transportation in cities, I was very happy to discover London on two wheels. In fact there seem to be quite some cyclists here, more than in Brussels though I think traffic is heavier and more dangerous around here. Not for the least because they all drive on the wrong side of the road (sorry that one's obligatory).

Currently, I'm kinda squating in Soetkins' and Sebastians' place, that's in the South West, near to Harrods, you know the warehouse. It was a nice biking tour to LSE through Hyde park, I passed the Queens' little residence (in fact I think Alberts' place in Brussels is nicer) and then to Trafalgar Square. There I had to step down from my bike 'cause I don't feel that confident yet biking in a reversed way with heavy traffic. And just a bit further is the LSE campus.

There I got registred alright, mission completed for today.

well, Soetkin wants to go to sleep, and I'm in her room, so I better take off. I'll fill the blanks later on.

Leaving my beloved Brussels - Arriving in the big unknown City of London

2005-09-22T10:56:00.000+01:00

September 21, 2005 - The day my new London adventure starts. I left Brussels as a wreckage
> working till the last moment, moving all my stuff, arranging all the necessary and of course goodbye dinners and parties.
It all teared me down but it was great, the best summer I have had in years and I didn't even leave the country. In fact, why should you, Brussels is really great in the Summer, with the right friends, a bit of sunshine from time to time and too many things going on, you already have an explosive mix for having a great time.

And then Summer ends, automn starts and thus I took off. Partly with mixed feelings, I was feeling great in Brussels, why would I leave?
But then again, I think you have to take advantage of the opportunities you get offered in life. I got the chance to go to London, to have a brand new experience, my moment had come. So I took off, I go with the Flo ;-)
I'll just see what this adventure brings me and of course keep you posted from time to time.

So I welcome you to my blog, hope you to visit it regularly and invite you to post as many messages and commentaries as you wish. London's Calling, here I come!!