Night Life

I am on a 43 bus from London Bridge (Monument, in fact) going to Holloway to change for the N29. I've already travelled about a half hour on the 133. I figured, given some past experience falling asleep on night busses, it would be prudent to write a blog post - mainly as a means of keeping myself awake, so that I don't fall asleep and wake up in Friern Barnet!

Photo found here - thanks!

I was mistaken in my belief that the 141 bus was a 24-hour service.

I should have just stayed in Brixton.

When I travel through London on night buses, by myself, I'm always battling a deeply-hidden "desire" to explore the streets of London, on foot, at night. The 133 took me over London Bridge, from which I gazed in wonder and awe at Tower Bridge and picked out other London landmarks on the horizon.

Tonight I am lucky that I haven't lost any of my possessions. In fact, I am travelling home wearing someone else's jacket (which has a lovely sea shell in the left side pocket), and my favourite blue jumper draped across my shoulders - a jumper which, a mere two hours ago, I had fancied lost in the night, in a dingy, badly-lit pub in Brixton.

Unrelated to all of this, in 3 days I officially will become a student - again!

I seem to recall writing a blog post, maybe 18 months ago, lamenting the fact that I probably wouldn't be able to take on Masters course in an exceptionally long amount of time - mainly due to the high price of tuition fees - but I suspect also because I did not hold out much hope for being accepted onto a course given my 2:ii ranking at BSc-level. I have been fortunate enough to stumble upon a brilliant employer and a brilliant opportunity which has blown all this out the window.

So, what do I know about Economics? Admittedly, at 5am on a Saturday morning - probably not a lot!

Tell you what though, I'm pretty sure I'm contributing to every single globalisation stereotype you can think of, having just got myself a pancake & tea breakfast from McDonalds!

Cookin'n'China

I'm typing furiously on a tiny, tiny Netbook at Heathrow Terminal 4, with blocked sinuses and ear drums fit to burst at any given moment.

HOWEVER, I am less than 24 hours away from a 4-week spell in China!

So, a brief update on last week's abstention:

Cooking. Perhaps not traditionally something that one would think would be difficult to abstain from. But I love cooking! And although I don't cook every day, I do try to make an effort to hunt down different recipes. When my sister was staying with me, we used to have "Breakfast Saturdays" (or, depending on any lingering hangovers from a Friday night, "Breakfast Sundays") and we covered a whole host of breakfast foods, including blueberry pancakes, savoury pancakes (just like the blueberries but with an assortment of cheese instead of berries) and, my proudest achievement, eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce. Poached eggs are actually quite tricky, but hollandaise sauce is just a load of butter and egg yolk and vinegar.

Anyway, what did I learn from my cooking-free week? That the mere definition of "cooking" can cause disagreements! My housemate and I spent a good 15 minutes debating whether the microwavable soup I was eating was a "cooked meal" - in my eyes, definitely not - putting a pot into a microwave for 4mins and stirring half-way through is the equivalent of shoving a pizza in the middle of the oven. But apparently my "no cooking week" was misleading, as my housemate assumed I'd just have to live off takeaways! This would not have been financially viable. In fact, no cooking meant very little expenditure in Morrisons. Instead of wandering round the aisles looking for different ingredients and inevitably buying a cheese board, my purchases were limited to (the aforementioned) soup pots, fruit, and a load of bread. Definitely ate more apricots last week! No ready-meals made the list - maybe if I shopped in M&S I wouldn't be so put off by them... And I was not averse to accepting others' cooked foods, so I visited my parents for dinner too.

All in all, definitely decreased calorie intake - although that wasn't really the point. And found out that Sainsbury's have great reduced items if you go past 10pm.

I also inadvertently didn't drink alcohol for a week due to a course of antibiotics for an ear infection. This was slightly more difficult as last Friday was quite a draining day, both emotionally and physically, and I would have appreciated a drink to relax with - but life goes on, and I found solace in Mafia II on PS3...I had to play the first mission four times because I'm shockingly bad at video games.

Next few posts will be dedicated to my China trip - hurrah! I'm not sure whether or not blogger is a blocked site there - only on way to find out, I suppose..!