Library Madness

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"

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

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

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

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...

...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

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