As Fi Bows to Peer Pressure

As I’ve said before, this London life is full of ups and downs and today was definitely a down for a number of rather stupid reasons:

1. We had a meeting about breakfast options last night, and it took ages and in some senses was very frustrating.
2. I went to bed with a lot on my mind and didn’t manage to get to sleep. I currently have serious sleep problems.
3. In order to get to sleep, I decided to watch the movie that came with my Independent on Saturday. It turned out to be quite a good movie, but just a tad depressing with the main character killing herself through arsenic poisoning. The movie finished at 2am but I was finally tired enough to go straight to sleep.
4. I woke up late, frustrated and feeling a little depressed.
5. London is a long way from Wellington, where my family and Dave are, and I miss them all a lot. Today was one of the days where I missed them a whole lot!
6. I don’t really have anyone I can ACTUALLY talk with about exactly what’s going on for me here and I feel a tad lost without the general help of my prayer4, Dave, Sylvia, Pete, Ruth, Reuben, girls group, and the countless other people who are always willing to go out to coffee with me at home when I need to just rant and rave about life.
7. I overslept and missed my first lecture. After deciding that I really didn’t feel that great, I decided to try and recharge my batteries and missed the rest of my classes for the day.
8. I hate missing classes . . . so now I’m frustrated that I was silly enought to miss classes.
9. I had no clothes to wear, but at least I’ve fixed that problem now.
10. I have got into the habit of not eating breakfast and then forgetting to eat lunch. Not good!
11. I miss my family and Dave (I think I’ve said that already).
12. Everything costs too much here.
13. I have an essay due on Friday and I am struggling to concentrate on the subject (religion and politics in Indonesia).
14. I have a presentation to do next week and I am struggling to stop procrastinating by looking at Jeffrey Sachs’ interviews on the internet. At least it’s vaguely relevant and I might use one of them for the presentation but it’s not helping me write the essay, which is due first.
15. I am going to miss my CU cell group this evening because I really want to get this essay planned out so I can write it tomorrow.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today is definitely a bad day!

Ok so here’s the dealio - I seriously lack NZ friends on Facebook because no one in New Zealand has a clue what Facebook is. I am therefore feeling very loser-ish :oP

Now they’ve just changed Facebook so anyone can register and use it, it used to just be high school/college/university students but they’ve expanded that to everybody.

Please please PLEASE register/join up and then look for “Fiona McKenzie” in the “LSE” network and add me to your list of friends. If you’re a Vic student, then you can register using your Vic email address and then be part of the oh-so-excitingly-full-of-international-students VUW network. Otherwise just register as a generally normal person (which of course is what you all are) . . . it’s a seriously addictive networking website and such a wonderful way of procrastinating.

I can not believe I am blogging about a lack of Facebook friends, this is definitely a new low for me :o)

Apologies if you received my insanely massively long email about life in London, I know it was too long. I shall try harder to communicate more often and with fewer words.

I have been procrastinating all day, tomorrow I must work hard. British Summer Time also ends tonight, so NZ will be 13 hours ahead of us. What fun! I get an extra hour of sleep :o) 

I could say something, but I think this video says it all.

Another thing to “add” to Huggies’ futreat post! Lots to be glad about today :o)

18 months ago, Scott Adams, who does the Dilbert cartoons, permanently lost his voice through a rather weird condition called Spasmodic Dysphonia. No one has ever been recorded as recovering from it.

I like cartoons and I’m very fond of Dilbert so I was thrilled to discover today that Scott was feeling particularly joyful yesterday because his brain “remapped” and his voice returned.  As David Farrar said, “a day doesn’t get much better than that.”

United Nations Day happens every October 24, and is a chance to reflect on what has been achieved and what still needs to be achieved. So here’s how things are going, according to Kofi Annan (you can see his whole speech here). These quotes are taken from the UN press release.

“Citing progress made since he assumed office 10 years ago, Mr. Annan noted that aid and debt relief has increased, the world is scaling up its response to HIV/AIDS, there are fewer wars between States than there used to be, many civil wars have ended, and more Governments are elected by, and accountable to, the people whom they govern.

“And all States have acknowledged, at least in words, their responsibility to protect people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity,” he said. “But there is so much that still needs doing,” he added, citing the growing gap between rich and poor.

He stressed that very few countries are on track to reach all eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to slash a host of social ills such as extreme poverty, hunger, maternal and infant mortality, and a lack of access to education by 2015.

Many people still face atrocities, repression, and brutal conflicts, the nuclear non-proliferation regime requires urgent attention, and terrorism and the reaction to it are spreading fear and suspicion, he added.

“It seems we don’t even agree which threats are most important,” Mr. Annan declared. “Those who live in small islands may see global warming as the biggest danger. Those who live in a city that has suffered terrorist attacks – like New York, or Mumbai, or Istanbul – may feel that confronting terrorism is more urgent. Others again may cite poverty, disease, or genocide.

“The truth is, these are all global threats. All of us should be concerned about all of them. Otherwise, we may not succeed in dealing with any of them.” “

This sounds awesome so I’m passing the details onto you all, since I have no chance of making it please go for me!

On November 11, join an all-star cast of Wellington musicians as they
turn music into medicine to aid the people of Indonesia’s Mentawai
Islands. Last year’s concert, the Sunday Session, was a massive success,
assisting the New Zealand Red Cross and SurfAid International in their
response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. This year, the organisers of the
SuperSession have an impressive line-up dedicated to saving lives in the
Mentawai Islands by supporting the work of SurfAid International. Join
Warren Maxwell - ex Trinity Roots - as he unleashes the sound of The
Little Bushmen, and Twin Set, Open Souls, OdESSA, the Ukulele orchestra,
and The Phoenix Foundation. Accompanying these will be the awesome
audiovisuals of the SuperVisors. The concert will take place on November
11, Wellington Town Hall. Tickets available from 11th October through
Ticketek and Real Groovy, Wellington.

So let’s go over that again:

What: SurfAid International are raising money to help save lives in the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia

Who: The Phoenix Fundation, the Ukelele orchestra (are you paying attention Katie?), OdESSA, Open Souls, Twin Set, and a man who was formerly part of Trinity Roots will be playing . . . and of course you will be going.

When: Saturday 11 November

Where: Wellington Town Hall

Why: It’s for a good cause, and they’re good Wellington bands . . . why not?

How: Get tickets from Ticketek and Real Groovy, Wellington, now.

I have to make this reasonably quick as I’m heading off to a public lecture at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). The Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs at the UN and a person from the UNDP Crisis Prevention Bureau are talking about the current state of knowledge, and policy options, for disasters and development. It’s the first one in a series on disasters and development (what a surprise!) and I’m going to go to all of them. Should be fascinating!

One of the things I’m loving about being in London is the number of public lectures/seminars that are available to attend. Heaps are on at the LSE each week, and then the ODI hosts quite a few as well. Last Thursday a group of us from Passfield and DESTIN went to hear Jeffrey Sachs and a Canon from Westminster Cathedral have a “conversation” about sustainability and development. It was vaguely one-sided, Jeffrey Sachs did most of the speaking, but really interesting. It seems quite surreal to have been to hear him speak in person, he’s not as charasmatic as I’d expected but still well worth going to hear if you ever get the opportunity.

For those who don’t know, Jeffrey Sachs is the Special Advisor on the Millennium Development Goals to the UN Secretary-General, as well as Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He wrote “The End of Poverty - How we can make it happen in our lifetime”, which I’d thoroughly reccommend reading if you haven’t already. It’s both informative, interesting and a book that’s hard to put down.

I went to All Souls, Langham Place, last night. It was another interesting experience. The teaching was really solid and I felt I learned a lot from the Vicar, who took apart Roman 8: 12-17 (always good when you can remember what he spoke about). The worship wasn’t really my thing though, and it felt sightly more “high church” than any of the places I’ve been to so far. I like having organised church but I’ve decided I like being suprised by what we sing. We were given service sheets at the beginning, which have all the words on for the songs we were singing as well as the general outline for the service. In some ways, though, it was nice to know what was going on.

The church was reasonably full, although it feels bigger than HTB so it’s hard to know whether there were more people there or at HTB. The worship was mostly older songs and the band consisted of a flute, violin, guitar, keyboard, piano and four vocalists (and a conductor). I enjoyed it but again didn’t quite click. I spent a fair amount of time thinking I’d quite like to go back to HTB, so that’s my plan . . . next week I will go back to HTB and I’ll see what it’s like a second time. I’ll also write a quick review of my first time at HTB later once readings for tomorrow are done.

P.S Thanks for the comments guys!

We’re having a potluck lunch for my floor at Passfield tomorrow, everyone’s cooking or bringing bits and pieces. I was going to try and bake stuff until I discovered that we didn’t have an oven, how did I not realise that until now? Anyway I though it’d be nice to bring something Kiwi-ish, and since cooking lamb was off my list of things to do, I toddled off to the Australia/New Zealand/SA/ Canada shop in Covent Garden and bought Tim Tams and Gingernuts. Insanely expensive but I figure this will be my once-a-term treat . . . I also bought myself some pineapple lumps, they really are so very very tasty!!

It’s kinda funny, I never thought of myself as a proper Kiwi until I moved here. Maybe it’s homesickness talking, but I definitely miss Kiwi culture, being surrounded by people who talk rugby, general laid-backness, and people with Noo Zulund accents. There’s a lack of Pacific Islanders here, no one talks Samoan on the buses and many of my fellow Passfielders can not for the life of them understand the Haka . . . which I refuse to do for them anyway (just imagine me doing any haka, does that not create the funniest mental pictures ever?)

It was oddly nice being in the NZ/Aus/SA/CA shop, it’s kinda like stepping into another land. I was surrounded by Kiwis, mostly from the Waikato, discussing who’d won the Air NZ Cup Final. I was the only Wellingtonian, and therefore the only disappointed one it appears. (Waikato played Wellington in the Air NZ Cup Final, the old NPC, and won for those that may have missed this news).

The thing is that I didn’t come here to hang out in a NZ shop, so although it’s lovely to know it’s there, I think I’ll probably experiment with UK peanut butter, cereals, biscuits and lollies instead of going there every week. To prove this I have some brand of UK peanut butter in my cupboard, I haven’t tried it yet but hopefully it’s good!

I think it took me a lot longer than I ever expected to settle in completely. I finally feel vaguely at home here, but it’s taken 4 weeks to get to this point. I’m actually back to being organised again, I think I’ve stopped losing things in my general confusion, and they’ve finally re-bolted my bookshelf to the wall so it won’t fall on me. I know when my essays are due, I’ve chosen my courses, I’ve organised my disability support bits and pieces, I have a bank acount and cashcards, a GP, and 5 new textbooks. I’m still vaguely church hunting but I’ve got a LSE CU cell group with very cool people in it, and the LSE CUers have been incredibly welcoming and fabulous to me. I’ve been on the London Eye with my parents and realised how HUGE London is. I’ve been to numerous very English pubs with new friends and not eaten very much exciting stuff. Life is good, I’m truly lucky to be here and amazed by the people that teach me, and by my classmates.

To sum up, God has been very good to me and I am constantly learning that I can rely on Him for everything. I think the first part of the song “Take My Hand” by Shawn McDonald sums it all up for me right now -

“Take my hand to the promise land
And on You I want to stand
‘Cause I cannot do it on my own
You’re what I need and I need to be
Right by Your side ‘cause I cannot hide
Lord, I know that I need You”

I had meant to write something resembling a sane blog post this evening however time has disappeared and since I can not remember the last time I went to bed before 11, I am going to be sad this evening and head to bed now. For the record, I got delayed by job/internship/voluntary work hunting and then Dave came online and we had a grand conversation using our webcamage . . . I am a new big fan of webcams because they allow me to see Dave and family and in return they can see me. YAY!

Bed time for me now but I promise emails and proper updates tomorrow and meanwhile here is me signing off for the night.