Merry Christmas and party on into the New Year!

I'm back in London and recovering from busting a big hole in my bank account with the unbelievable amount of shopping I've done. New York (and New Jersey where there are no taxes) has drained me of almost all my living expenses!

Do not judge me until the Harrods sales are on.

Will regale you with stories of Nine West shoes, frustrations of the New Yorks strikes and unbelievably stupid Americans later. Right now I've just gotta get my jetlag fixed.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas. And may it snow tomorrow. (Come on, just a little, pleeeease?)

Coming to you live from Chicago!

The funniest bumper sticker I've seen so far:

Nobody died
When Clinton lied

It's an average of -8C here and we're in my granduncle's apartment facing a very beautiful (and I might add frozen) Lake Michigan.

A quick run down of our last two days would be:
Heathrow - Charles de Gaule - JFK - New Jersey (CHEAP Cheena food!!! and NO TAXES!) - La Guardia - Chicago Midway - Vietnames Pho - High School Band concert (my uncle who's 16 plays the tuba which weighs 25 pounds) - Express tour around Chicago city in my uncle's warm car - Pompeii exhibit at the Field Museum (Charl: Who's Pompeii? Lionel: It's a place, not a person!) - Jazz band at the Green Mill club - Decorate real live Christmas tree while sipping mugs of hot chocolate and popcorn

And that's about it

Any last orders?

I'm leaving for New York on the 15th. Will be in Chicago until the 20th. Then back to New York and then back in good ol' London on the 28th.

This is a last call for addresses if you would like postcards/Christmas cards/Thinking of you in this freaking bitter cold weather cards!

This is also a last call for anyone who wants to meet up in New York/Chicago or wants presents from New York/Chicago! Nicole's birthday present is already on the list.

And a very desperate request for anyone who's able to house Lionel and I on the 15th for one night to avoid us having to spend the night at JFK airport, on transit to Chicago the next day. We sleep on floors, own a sleeping bag and are generally clean and well mannered.

Ah, the life of a backpacker on a shoe string. My granduncle sponsoring my air ticket and my EEE department tour guide income only just manages to cover my accomodation! How many more snotty A-Level kids do I have to entertain to earn enough money for a decent holiday? (Although in all fairness, they're not snotty... except the ones who would rather go to Oxbridge)

p/s: London folk - keep New Year's Eve free! And vote for a) Popiah party, b) Charlotte's various (and suspicious) finger food recipes or c) 2 mins in the microwave Iceland frozen food packs OR d) all of the above!

The Leader?

This so cracked me up in the midst of my coursework fury!

How a poem like this could be printed in a Pakistani school textbook is both a mystery to me and to the Pakistani government! We're not the only bumbling education system in the world, huh?

THE LEADER by anonymous

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he's right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear.
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved,
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

When the workload is piling and winds come a-calling and deadlines are here!
It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Does anyone feel like it's spring? After the last 2 week's worth of frost and bitter cold, this 'warmer' weather and the few trees that are still green are a welcomed change. Now THIS is what autumn is supposed to be like!

Let's paint a bull's eye on Queen's Tower, aye?

DSP coursework - compiled, proof read and printed an entire day before the deadline! Boy do I feel a smug look coming on.

In other news, I will be in Chicago on the 15th, then in New York on the 20th, then (fingers crossed) at Harrods during the boxing day sales with my hands on a good coat. Who says one can have too many coats? One cannot have enough coats in a lifetime. Nor boots.

Anyone noticed that Imperial College has been in the lime light recently? For all the wrong reasons! Thanks to the Rector's ban on hoodies, face veils and scarves that hide ugly braces we've become a nationwide controversy! We even appeared on the evening news! Everyone loves a good scandal.

Now it's not like anyone's really abiding by the new draconian laws. Sure the security guards tried to stop me once for not wearing my ID tag. But how much harm could I have caused? I was trying to leave the grounds, not get in! But that was just an isolated incident and since our own campus shop sells hoodies with the IC name proudly stitched on, no one's really bothered.

Except for the bunch of amnesty international and other monkeys from jobless human rights societies. There they were, right outside the Faculty building, protesting and waving placards calling the Rector out on account of Islamaphobia and Hijab-phobia and what not. And here we were in German class trying to understand genitive cases and adjectival nouns and not being able to hear a word of it due to the inconsiderate shouting outside.

Now, I think it's incredibly immature and petty. The rules were enforced two weeks ago. And it's taken 2 weeks to round up enough protestors? Come on, why wasn't this done when the bun was still fresh out of the oven? Most students don't seem to be affected by it, let alone feel strongly about it. My Malay friends, in headscarves nontheless, aren't the ones running around with placards. In fact they're pretty passive about the whole thing. After all it was a rule disallowing the wearing of hoods which hides the face from security cameras in the event of a break in or theft, which has been plagueing our halls and campus offices recently. No one even brought up the topic of banning headscarves.

But along come the do-gooders. Making something out of nothing. I personally think all this attention we're drawing is making us the perfect target for a terrorist bombing. Way to go Imperial. It's not like we don't have all the stuff to make our own bomb right here on campus!