How to carve a Hallowe'en pumpkin - Step 1: Choose a nice, round, preferably orange, pumpkin... like this one!

Step 2: Draw a hideous design... or dotted lines for the lobotomy operation

Step 3: Carefully carve out its eyes, nose, mouth, pimples, warts etc.

And voila: You have your very own cute jack-o-lantern. This one was christened Cartman!

Yesterday was one of those, 'lets go out and walk about London' Saturdays. The weather was so tempting. Blue skies, sunshine, warm weather (and by warm I mean 15 degrees). You'd be damned to stay indoors (especially after 1 week of drizzly, gloomy weather).

So, thanks to the blasted suspensions on the circle & district line, we walked from St. Pauls (which is dissapointingly being renovated, and on top of that there is an entrance fee of 6 pounds... to see a church? Why??) to Tate Modern, across the Thames. Tate is pretty depressing, situated inside a dismally lit old power station. But the art is fantastic... not my favourite (except for the surrealists and andy warhol) but very impressive.

After about 2 hours of trying to make sense of all that modern art, we headed to Covent Garden, hoping to eat at Wagamama (2 for 1!!) but ended up munching on jacket potatoes and wandering around my favourite magical square in London, before taking the bus to High Stree Kent to meet the rest at the Wagamama there (2 for 1!!).

Upon reaching home, we realised Marvin had brought a visitor - Kristina!!! My ex-room mate! Thus Kristina joined us for the highlight of the evening - Pumpkin Carving! The household upstairs got 4 pumpkins, while we got 2... one of which has been christened Cartman! After carving all the pumpkins, we lit them up with candles, turned off the lights... and soon they looked like some tourist attraction, with cameras clicking everywhere and even tripods appeared! We then decided to arrange them on the staircase, for better effect, and finally at the witching hour we took them outside for a group photo (tripods and all).

Happy Hallowe'en!!!

The latest batch of Gamuda Scholars with 3 of us old foggies... this was taken some time ago in August... I'm so behind in my photos

And Charlotte returns...

... after a month's hiatus, 3 weeks of school, 2 weeks of classes, uncountless hours of MSoc and even more uncountable hours of NO SLEEP!

Thank heavens for tomorrow's Commemoration Day holiday (who knows who or what exactly they are commemorating as long as they order us to take a break from 9am labs!).

Oh well, here's a brief update of what I've been messing around with.

(Oh alright... I kid you... I can't remember a time when I've EVER been brief!)

Chronologically...
Arrived in hot, Hot, HOT London (after effects of sweltering summer...)
Moved in to my lovely flat (christened Emperor's Gate for obvious reasons!)
Spent at least 2 days unpacking, moving about boxes, searching for missing stuff (fluffy bedroom slippers and 'pink' scarves) and cleaning house (besides house training Yi Shan)...
My laptop got stolen from my own room within 2 days of moving in. Appreciated the police coming down to my flat and dusting for fingerprints, all CSI-like, but would still appreciate the damn thief returning my laptop and ALL my CDs (sobs... my patiently accumulated Tori Amos Collection, my Jewel albums, and all my new Third Day and City on a Hill CDs... bah!)
Welcomed a MSoc Comm meeting in my house, with the promise of Krispy Kremes from Chien Liq... of which I didn't get to eat a single one... sigh...
Ran around in the cold English rain (it's like a christening... a sign that you are once again reborn into the dreary English weather) and subsequently started the infection of the Fresher's Flu!
Set up a rather gawdy booth for Fresher's fair (which attracted more than its fair share of attention... but for the right reasons!) with only half of my wits with my due to the Flu, not to mention bodily fluid which had a mind of their own, and a voice that disappeared after a bout of being overly hyper...
Started lectures in a better frame of mind (had passed on the Flu to others by then...). Love my lecturers this term (save for the balding guy teaching us Digital... who IS he? I think I lost track of his name, and what ever he was teaching, in that first lecture when I fell asleep 15 minutes into it... and YES, it was the first lecture of the term... boy do I have a wonderful track record). My Statistics lecturer has some ISSUES! Of which she proceeds to rant about in class, but it does make probability and Exponential Distributions so much more interesting when she is telling us her problems with calling customer service for her cable plan (of which she is trying to obtain their quality testing stastistics)... and you KNOW you've got a real interesting quirk teaching you Stats when she proffesses to adore Laplace! My math lecturer (Jean-Luc) on the other hand is a Canadian Hobbit! It's quite an achievement for him to reach the top of the blackboard in room 407a! And we no longer QED our proofs... instead we BYU them, which translates to Bob's Your Uncle... go figure! We've got George again for Discrete Math (and I DO NOT gush about George! I really DO NOT!) and yeah, that wasn't a slight of the eye. I have 3 Math modules this term! Really sounds like I'm in the wrong course!
Followed up Fresher's fair with Freshers Meet, and was dragged around South Kensington by 7 or 8 freshers in search of Krispy Kreme napkins, low price Sainsbury's spaghetti and a photo of the dinosaur at the Natural History Museum. We need to rethink these scavenger hunts and the effects on aging seniors next time!
Next up - Pasar Malam! 3 days standing in the bitter cold and pouring rain (drama mama...) selling sarongs, batik, henna tattoos (i'm a certified henna tattoo artist now!), beaded bracelets, teh tarik and satay... but it was fantastic fun! Worth every back breaking minute of it! I can now gurantee that a sarong shawl is all you need to stay warm in 11 degrees weather... that and an infinite amount of adrenaline!
On the side, I'm taking Literature again... and I have the most artsy and faery-like Lit lecturer. She seems almost ethreal at times, and sticks out like a green alien in Imperial (we can be such snobby scientists...). Well it's Hardy, Conrad and Wilde for the next few weeks... whoopee! I'm being forced to READ!
I am also now in the habit of taking German classes on Thursday evenings. Guten ja? Amar you'd be so at home in my German class!


I think I've had enough of typing. I'm going to go look for the boys, who are glued to their computers somewhere around the house.