As Fi Bows to Peer Pressure

Bear with me, this does have relevance - two and a half years ago, in Singapore airport, I wrote a rather random quiz instead of sending a massively long email about what I was doing. Unfortunately the quiz was never sent because my flight was called so you will never know whether I was looking forward to going to the Czech Republic or not.

I have decided that this is a much more fun (not “funner”, that’s not a word) method for my Christmas update so here is Fi’s Festive Christmas Quiz. There’s actual prizes (from London) for the person that gets the most right and the person who gets the most wrong so you’ve got until 11:59pm (GMT) on 31/12/06 to get those answers to me (post them as comments). Tralalalala and Merry Christmas to all!

1) I am spending Christmas in:

a) A quaint, little English village called Waresley

b)
Heathrow Airport because of the silly fog

c) A large, modern English city called London

d) A tree house . . . why not?

2) I have recently spent three days in:

a) Edinburgh

b) Bed

c) York

d) An airport

3) During my time in ________ (see above), I met far too many:

a) Crazy people

b) Kiwis and Aussies

c) People with funny accents

d) All of the above

4) I would thoroughly recommend visiting:

a) The Merchant Adventurers Guild Hall

b) The Fudge Shop

c) The Minster

d) The Richard III Museum

5) The term “Kiwi” to describe New Zealanders is believed by many on this side of the world to refer to:

a) The Bird

b) An Inner-Outer Mongolian sect of fish-loving people

c) The Fruit

d) The All Blacks

6) In the past few days, I have been:

a) To a carol service in a random little 600 year-old church in York

b) Carolling around the village

c) Walking Jessie (the dog) a lot

d) All of the above

7) If I could have one wish this Christmas, it would be:

a) To be home with family and friends

b) For Christians all over the world to be able to celebrate Christmas openly, wherever they may be

c) World peace (I am, after all, in the Miss Universe pageant in my spare time)

d) For there to be an end to absolute poverty

I miss:

a) Being surrounded by Dave, family and friends at Christmas

b) Street Cricket

c) New Zealand

d) Summer

9) I am:

a) House-sitting for family friends over the Christmas period

b) Going to North Wales for New Years

c) Confused by too many time zones

d) All of the above

10) I shall be spending Christmas day with:

a) A dog and a cat but otherwise all alone

b) Villagers who have welcomed me into their home despite not knowing me from a bar of soap

c) The Queen and the rest of the Royal Family

d) Celine Dion

11) This Christmas, I am particularly thankful for:

a)The hospitality of people who don’t really know me

b) The love of family and friends

c)Fog

d) Sleep

12) Christmas is about:

a) Presents

b) The birth of Jesus

c) Love

d) Eating turkey

And with that, I shall leave you all to have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderfully Happy New Year! Sending my love to all! I am very sorry I am so bad at keeping up with everyone, I hope to be better next year.

Love Fi

On Tuesday I will have been here 3 months and in many ways the last month has been both the best and the worst. I’m beyond the homesickness stage, although I do miss family and friends a lot (particularly now as Christmas approaches). I’ve finished my first term at LSE and it seems odd to think that I’m a third of the way through Masters, time is flying by. Excuse me recapping on things I may have said already . . .

I love London, living in the central city is fabulous and it means that I spend very little on the tube. I’ve started going to HTB, which is on the other side of the central city so I tend to catch the tube there and back but otherwise my life usually revolves around walking as far as I can. It’s great! We have little parks on both sides of Passfield, and even our own garden with grass and trees. Although it’s not something anyone is appreciating right now, I’m sure they’ll prove popular in Summer. It’s got quite cold here, although not as cold as I’d expected. It’s fun venturing out once the sun goes down (at around 3:30pm) with lots of layers on and seeing how far you can get before you realise that you’ve left scarf or gloves at home. I keep forgetting that evenings outside are going to be much colder than my nice warm room. We live in a very nice area of town and it’s reasonably safe, although I’m usually walking with friends after dark. LSE is a 20 minute walk away and is a completely crazy place. The professors are nuts, the other students are incredibly intelligent and focused and we’re surrounded by the Royal Courts of Justice and several other important places (I refuse to count the Australian embassy as an “important place” however).

Uni finished last Friday, and as is the way of things, all hell broke loose at Passfield over the previous two weeks culminating in a very odd extraordinary committee meeting on Friday night. I got almost no sleep for the two weeks, and somewhat unsurprisingly ended up with something resembling the flu by Saturday. I did, however, have a fabulous night last Wednesday though, I think it was Wednesday, the whole week went by very oddly and quickly.

Anyway Christmas . . . I’m heading to York, a fabulous little city in Yorkshire (makes sense really, doesn’t it) for 3 days of tourist delight on Sunday. I’m then going to a little village where my dad’s best friend’s family live and I’m going to spend Christmas with them. I’ll also, hopefully, find time to work on my Development Management essay there. I’m heading to family on the Welsh/English border for New Years and then back to London on the 2nd to work on my 2nd and 3rd essays. What fun! It’ll be nice when all the Passfield people get back on the 7th, I’m already missing their general craziness a lot, although I might see some of them over the break.

Time to fly, I have some final photocopying to do for Mum, the last parcels to mail and then packing to sort out. Fun fun fun, tralalalala! I’m sorry this isn’t a proper catch up, but then again if I wrote about everything you’d get quickly bored by the masses of paragraphs to read . . . must update blog more often :oP

Meet my new favourite band and current favourite song (well actually there’s three favourite songs but I’ll start with this one), thanks are due to Neerav for introducing me to this brilliantly fantastic band. Tomorrow I shall enlighten you all on what I have been doing :o) Missing everyone lots!

This reminded a friend of a lecture we had by my supervisor . . . just for those who don’t know, the Onion does not report factually accurate news. Well worth a read, click on the link to get the full article (silly blog.com is having formatting issues for this).

Rebels Immediately Regret Seizing Power In Zambia

LUSAKA, ZAMBIA—None of the blood that filled our streets nor the carnage that choked our cities could have prepared us for these pathetic annual GDP figures,” said former rebel and new head of state Uwimana Kowry.

Some have been wondering what I’ve been up to . . . well this explains the last 48 hours. Just to clarify, we are talking about a university hall . . . not the UN or any other exciting Parliamentary institution . . . and yes this is a real media release. I’ll leave the full story for another day :o)

Media statement
For immediate release
Monday 4 November 2006

Five members of the six-member Passfield Hall Committee would like to disassociate themselves from comments made by the President of the Committee, Orlando Bama, at Sunday’s (3 December) committee meeting.

As these comments were made during the committee meeting and in front of a Beaver reporter, we feel the need to ensure that the views expressed by the President are not taken to be the views of the committee as a whole.

We would like to clarify that comments made by the current President at the committee meeting about the behaviour of the previous interim committee, particularly regarding the finances of the Hall Committee, do not reflect the feeling of the rest of the committee.

We would like to express our full confidence in the previous interim committee and the work they did for Passfield Hall.

Sandra Rutova - Treasurer

Omar Gondal - Secretary

Jonathan Lim - Social Secretary

Martin Woolhead - Bar Representative

Fiona McKenzie - Postgraduate, International, General Course Representative