Time and food

I have been wondering for a while, if time is moving faster her in London than back home in Norway. I just can't understand how I had time for all the stuff I did back then and still study enough. Of course this is a master and it should be more work. The thing is that I have less lectures now and use that extra time mostly for reading, but still I feel I don't even have time to make myself a proper dinner each day. I think the reason is, that I am more social here, but also they are giving us a lot of tough, long-termed course works. The system of the university is also a bit strange. They postpone all the exams to the spring, so everything I'm learning now, I have to re-learn it again the month before the exams.

I mentioned the food. I haven't been very creative when it comes to dinner. For the three first weeks I only had rice with mincemeat and sauce. It is easy and it doesn't take so long time. The last weeks I have upgraded some dinners with fried potatoes, meet and some vegetables. The two last Mondays however, I have joined Arne in the hunt for a competitor to the Norwegian Kebab. So far we have had two nice (low budget) dinners, but none of them looks similar to our Norwegian role kebab. The hunt continues.

Last weekend I met some Norwegian friends of mine. First I met Marianne on Saturday. We and some other people went for lunch. It was nice.

Sunday I met some other Norwegian friend. We went for sushi. I have never tasted sushi before and it has actually been one of the few things that I have thought I don't like. Now I know it is another thing that I like. We bought three plates with different stuff and shared everything. In addition we bought Japanese beer and sake. It was a funny evening.

The last thing on the food front is that I'm thinking of making rissole in the Norwegian way, for myself and some friends. I wish myself good luck..... 

The picture below which looks like a mix of a ham burger and something els, is apparently a Donner Kebab. It didn't look like that one the picture we saw, but it was what we got. 

Hyde Park by night

After a long day of reading, Sunday afternoon, I grabbed my camera and went to Hyde park. It starts getting dark fairly early now. I went from home at 5 pm and came to the park around 5.30. By then it was dark as the night. I was a bit unsure about the safety, walking the park in the darkness. I reckon the trolls over here must be way bigger than the ones we got in Norway, since everything els is so much bigger than what I am used to back home. Take fore example this park, I sincerely think it is bigger then my home town. 

So, ah well, it was pretty dark, so i decides to walk along the car road that crosses through the park. Because, at one point this road crosses The Serpentine, which is a big lake in Hyde park. I hoped to shoot some nice pictures there.

At the bridge I could stabilize my camera so it could take in the light it needed to make nice pictures. I didn't get the focus perfect, but still I'm fairly satisfied with some of the pictures I got.

The fall has come to London as well. It was cold outside and many of the leaves had fallen down. It was really nice walking by my self in the barely illuminated park, breathing in the fresh air (as fresh as you can get it in a city of 7 million) and shooting some pictures.     

 

Wings

There is always something happening on campus, but because of all the studies I can't get to do half of it. Yesterday it was chicken wing night at the bar on campus and I couldn't miss that, could I? In the beginning three of us bought 20 wings. Oh no, that wasn't enough. When another classmate came we bought 50 more. Lovely, greasy, chicken wings. We got it served in buckets. A bit later another two people came and we ordered another 50 more wings. The price was 10 pounds. The most craziest thing was that for the price of one bier at home we got a mug (4,5 pints = 2,556 liter) here. This is probably the healthiest dinner I have ever had...... 

Festival of Light

Friday evening Jatin, a classmate of mine, asked me if I wanted to come with him to a Hindi temple on Saturday. I love meeting new cultures, so I rescheduled everything els and went with him.

On 17th of October the Hindus celebrate the Festival of Light. It is just as our New Year celebration. This was the reason for us going to Europe's biggest Hindu temple. 

We came to the temple around 3 pm along with some other Indian friends of Jatin. It was a lot of security around the temple. High walls made it hard to take a good picture of it and it wasn't allowed with cameras inside. We had to leave our bags and cameras outside, in some kind of big wardrobe. Also we had to go through metal detectors when entering the temple. Before we could go further inside we also had to leave our shoes. Not allowed with shoes in the holiest part of the temple. 

The temple was an amazing view both from the outside and the inside. The whole thing is made of marble. Italian marble brought to India to get carved, and then brought to London and put together. Inside we walked around to the statues of all the different gods. Jatin told me about the different gods, but it was too hard to remember. Later on we also went to a big prayer session, held by on of the religion's great saints. It was in a really big room, more like a hall, where everyone were sitting on the floor (the oldest people had chairs). The session lasted fore about half an hour. Some of the saints went also around tossing rice and holly water at us (symbols of blessings). Even though I couldn't understand a thing of what had been spoken, and though my stiff feet were killing me, I felt kind of in peace sitting there. It was nice.     

From 9 pm to 9.30 pm the celebration finished of with a great laser and firework show. 4000 bombs made an amazing experience which just went on and on.

I am really glade I got to experience this. Thank you Jatin! 

Pictures: The Temple, The Fireworks and Some of the people I met.

"Green Men"

One thing that is not so great about London, are the way they are handling the traffic. They have both roundabouts and traffic lights. The roundabouts are okay, but one can really go crazy when it comes to their way of using traffic lights (look at the picture).

No, but really they have a lousy system. If you are going to cross the street, you usually have to do it in two operations. They have built up small Islands between each directions of the road, so you have to wait for the green man two times. On top of this the green man is not coming by a lot. You have wait for a while each time. 

 

British Museum

So on Saturday, me and Arne went to the British Museum. We didn't have any goal or any opinion of what we should see, so we just went going around looking on everything. I'll tell you, thats not a good idea. British Museum brags about having a 4 km big museum. I think, as a physicist, thats kind of a weird way to measure a display. The thing is, they are probably right, they can measure it like they want, because this place is huge. Of course it was interesting in some kind of way, but eventually we got kind of bored. It's just too much to see everything  in one day, or even in one week. Back in the days, Britain had colonies everywhere. So they have stolen a lot of stuff from these places and put it in their one personal museum. As a Londoner you don't have to travel anywhere you can just go to British Museum to experience the World.   

The picture to the left is of one of the statues from Eastern Islands. Kind of cool. Bee neat there is one picture from inside the Museum. This was just a small part of everything. So you get a understanding of how big it is. The two other pictures are of a sculpture looking like a tree. When we took a closer look we could see that it was made out of real weapons. To get rid of all the weapons lying around in some parts of Africa (after different wars), a company made an agreement with the village people. In exchange of bringing them weapons they'll give them tools, like f. exp a tractor. Then they'll get artist to use the weapons in their arts.  

Hitchcock

The Students' Union have over 180 different clubs and societies that one, as a student can join. I haven't gotten the time yet to check them out, but to day I went to the movie society with some classmates. For the small amount of 5 pound a year, they'll show you a movie a week. They have their own little movie theater (Hitchcock theater)  with good chairs. A good offer if you ask me. 

Isle of Dogs

On Saturday Monica (a girl from America), Arne, and myself went to Isle of Dogs. It's the more modern part of London, with high new buildings (kind of skyscrapers). As a Norwegian I'm not used to this, so it was quite nice to check this place out. Also there suppose to be a pedestrian walk beneath the Thames in that area. So we were looking for that as well. We didn't find it, but it was still a nice trip. Someone told us that it's called Isle of Dogs because some king used to have his hunting dogs in that area.

After we were finished strolling, we went to a restaurant in Soho. The area was kind of dodge. There was a lot of sex shops, but the restaurant was nice though. We ate a tree course meal for only 9 pounds. Thats less than you have to pay for an one                                                                                 course meal in Norway. 

British accent

One of my goal for this year is to get better in English, when it comes to speaking and writing. I probably will as well, but I also wanted to get an British accent. This may be a problem. The people I have gotten to know this far, are people from many different countries; America, India, Malaysia, China, Netherlands, Romania, and just a few Englishmen. So my accent will probably be like a pot of stew.

As from to day I'm officially a Queen Mary Student. 

Urban Animals

This morning me and Arne went for a stroll along the canal in Mile End Park. We wanted to take some pictures and to day it was a beautiful weather. It was the same canal that we jogged along the other day and it's really nice there. The fun thing is that we have seen more animals here, in the middle of the town than I see at a normal day in Norway.

First we saw a swan. It was very tame. Probably because everyone are feeding it. So it came pretty close up. Further on we saw a bird eating on a eel. There are also a lot of squirrels around. See theme every day. We also saw a heron, some fishes and a rat. 

 

Adapting

Here in London there is another electrical system. So i need an adapter so I can recharge my mobile phone and my computer. Some days ago we were to a big electrical store in the local area and bought a multi adapter that they told us would work. 20 min later we tried it, and no, it did not work. We got our money back though. So we went into the main city to look for another electrical shop. We walked along oxford street but could only find clothing shops. We then walked down another street and suddenly we were kind of lost. We walked around for another hour or so and then we gave up and  took the tube from where we were. But it is really nice to get lost. This way you really get to now the city. At thuesday we went onto a jog and we also got lost. Suddenly there was more than one canal, and we followed the wrong one................

After some advice from Anne-Marte we found adapters In the Boots store. Its a kind of a pharmacy that also got other stuff.

See you guys

Entering Campus

Airplanes, and their ability to move people over great distances in a short period of time, is one of the things that amazes me. This morning I wake up quarter past 6 in the morning and after some traveling time I sat in my room, at Queen Mary University of London Campus. It is a nice little room, with an even smaller bathroom, but it have everything I need. I even got a little fridge. It is 5 people sharing each kitchen, but I have not seen anyone of the people I'm going to share with yet. Far as I know, I got my own kitchen. 

Now I am just waiting for my friend, Arne. He was going to come by plane 7 pm. So he will probably be here in an hour or so. I bought a bread witch looked like brown bread, but it tasted just like loaf. I ate four slices, but four slices with air is like nothing. I have to buy something els to morrow.

So long

123-take of

Now it's only a few days before I'm leaving for London. I's not usual for me to have such a long holiday. So these last weeks I have started to get a bit bored, but now I have to do the last finishes before I can leave. It's a lot of stuff to fix before one can go to study in London. Insurance, banks, and airplane tickets are just some of them. The last and maybe the hardest thing is to pack my whole life into a suitcase of the maximum weight, yes, 15 kilos. Usually you can take with you 20 kilos, but since I'm going by plane from my hometown where the airplanes are a bit smaller, I can only take 15.

When it comes to traveling it's one thing I really hate; to pack my suitcase. So I have decided not to use a suitcase, but in stead use a big backpack. Problem solved.

I decided to try to get a mastercard, but without any luck. Of course you have to fill out this big scheme about who's your employer, how much you earn in a year, and stuff like that. So i figured out, it's probably no use. A friend of me told me some days later that he had the same problem. After he went to  a bank office and got them to help him with the scheme, they told him that he could get about 2000 kr in credit. So my dream of 50 000 kr up my sleeves will only be a dream. 

Some information

I have taken a three years degree in Energy Technology in Norway and I am actually from Norway. The people who are going to read this blog are also probably Norwegians, but still I will try to write in English. 

Why? If you are a bit better than me in English you will probably notice that my English is not perfect. So I will use this blog as an opportunity to practice my English writings.