A foggy day in London town...

Saturday, 9 October 2010

Last Minute London!

At some point during the week commencing 26^th September a few of us in the flat decided to do a last minute dash to London for the night. What originally started out as a large group ended up just being two of us, the others realising how much study they had been putting off! We headed down Friday 1^st October around lunch time and headed back Saturday night about 8pm. We were short on time because we had booked a trip to Manchester for the Sunday!

During our brief stay we managed to see Legally Blonde: The Musical (great show), Platform 9 ¾, a lot of the Southbank area, Tate Modern, St Paul’s, Westminster, Covent Gardens, Harrods and Regents Park. A jam packed two days with very little sleep!

Platform 9 3/4
I'm not a Harry Potter fan...but when in Rome...

The Savoy Theatre
For all those old Savs reading this!

It's not snowing...mixture between dust on the lense and some light rain!

Incase my law career fails...now I know where the headquarters are!

Tate Modern
Picture the exhibits at GOMA placed inside the Powerhouse

Outside the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
Obviously not the original one!

Oustide Westminster Abbey

10 Downing St...I think he was home!

SQUIRREL!

Harrods has its own bank
This is where Harrods customers bring their oil reserves and swap them for store credit!

The Veuve Clicquot Champagne bar INSIDE Harrods
I think this one tops the St Pancras International Champagne Bar...
...sorry Matthew

University of Leeds fast facts:

- The University of Leeds was chartered in 1904 but has been operating as a medical school since 1831

- During the 2009–10 academic year, over 32,800 students were attached to around 560 different first-degree programs and approximately 300 postgraduate degree programs

- Leeds is the second largest single site university in the United Kingdom.

- From 2006 to present, the university has consistently been ranked second in the United Kingdom for the number of applications received, second only to the University of Manchester

- The University Refectory is the University's main canteen during the day, serving a range of hot and cold food whilst in the evenings it is converted into one of Leeds's largest music venues, having a 2,100 person capacity for live events.

- Many famous bands and musicians have played at the University Refectory throughout their careers. These include The Who who recorded Live at Leeds at the venue (originally in 1970, and then returned in June 2006 to recreate the original show), Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and more recently Muse (recorded and played on MTV), The Strokes, Bloc Party, Manic Street Preachers, K.T. Tunstall, Arctic Monkeys, The Coral and Paul Weller.

- The university was ranked 85^th in the world in 2010 by QS World University Rankings. (Australian National University ranked 20^th)

- The university library houses special collections ranging including locks of hair from the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

- Further collections held include William Shakespeare's First Folio (Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories. & Tragedies) published in 1623 and valued at around £15 million.

- The university also holds Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published 5 July 1687 and Oscar Wilde's manuscript of The Duchess of Padua from 1883.

- There are 9,000 personal computers available across the campus.

- The union is one of the largest student union operations in the UK.

- Notable alumni include former Prime Minister of Mongolia, Mark Collett and their BIG TICKET item, former serial killer Harold Shipman.

The Parkinson Building
The main building of the university

The Emmanuel Centre
Chaplaincy Department of the University of Leeds

This once was the longest corridor in Europe...somewhere in mainland Europe took the title recently
It's long!

Outside the Student Union building
Most of the clubs are underground!

Courtyard outside the Great Hall

The Great Hall where graduations take place

The Brotherton Library
I consistently get lost in here because there are no corners to get your bearings!

The University of Leeds Business School
Buildings previously belonged to boys grammar school

The cemetery behind our residence building
The girls get the view out on to the tombstones!

A Fresher Experience...

Freshers’ Week is the name given to the Orientation week and it runs from Saturday 18^th September to Saturday 25^th September. The term Fresher is derived from the American's "Freshman" meaning first year uni/college students.

The week is organised by the Student Union and is basically one non-stop party! During the days are society fairs where you can join different clubs and various poster sales/2^nd hand furniture and appliance sales. At night you can choose from one of the 2 pubs or 4 clubs located on campus…in the same building! Or you can choose from the hundreds of clubs in town if you feel like walking in.

The Student Union building is huge, containing all these night spots plus a grocery store, numerous food outlets, newsagent, merchandise store, hairdresser, bizarre clothing outlet, refectory and a large theatre (high school gym style). The Union runs the uni almost!

Each night of Freshers’ Week provides you with the choice of numerous events held on campus and in town. Some crazy times were had and a lot of interesting people were met! As the sober guy I seem to remember each night a little more clearly than those I was with…just means I can blackmail them later if I need to.

By the end of Freshers’ Week we were all thrilled to just sit at home and stare at the table in the kitchen because we were far too tired to strike up any intelligent conversations.

An epic 11 nights!

Pre-drinks with the Freshers

One of the few quieter nights...drinks at The Library (pub right near our flat)

Halo nightclub
An old church refurbished into a great nightclub

Back-to-School night!

Name, rank and serial number!

Thursday and Friday (16^th and 17^th Sep) were filled with orientation classes, inductions, tours and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of registration forms where I continually repeated my name, address, student ID and enrollment details as all of the international students wandered around the campus getting used to their surroundings. By Thursday night everyone else from our flat had moved in and we started eyeing each other off - working out who is the neat freak, who is the rebel, who is most likely to steal my food, who I would have to share a bathroom with and who was the secret axe murder with a very short fuse? Some of them may be reading this so I can't tell you who ended up in which stereotype.

The United Nations

General Assembly

The Security Council (chore setters)
Despite the large amount of money I spent on campaigning I still didn't make the Security Council...oh the irony!

Kira being domestic

My first cooked meal in Leeds

Some hooks that we hung. Everyone was very proud of this moment!

Our hallway...I'm 3rd on the right.

Chasing Leeds

Wednesday 15^th was D-Day! The day I moved onto campus. Martin and I drove up through some pretty miserable weather to find the temperature in Leeds significantly colder than Rugby…GREAT!

I found my room and started carrying in my things from the car. The room itself is a perfect size and nicely furbished. The bathroom leaves a little to be desired! It isn’t a bathroom…it’s a wet room. This means that the shower and toilet and sink are crammed into the space of an area slightly larger than your average toilet cubicle. Showering involves straddling the sink and the toilet bowl. So, as my uncle Pete so eloquently put it, I can multi-task when I’m in the bathroom and Skype at the same time because the door opens on to my desk!

There are 8 other rooms to my “flat” and a common kitchen which is nice and big with a good sized sitting area for all of us to eat at. There are also 3 fridge/freezers so plenty of storage space for everyone.

Our flat is basically the United Nations…we have people from all over the place (they obviously lumped all the internationals together). It’s a great bunch of people and we all get along really well!

The building is the Henry Price Residences and is right at the top of the campus. The best part about the location is that the distance from the front door to the Law classrooms is about the distance from the driveway of 34 Cranston St (my home) to the corner of Duncan St. For those unaware…not even 50 metres! Perfect location and all on a slight downhill slope!

The first night I hung out with a girl in our flat from Philadelphia and some friends that she already had in Leeds. We hit the town pretty hard that first night…and it’s all gone downhill from there!

Before shopping and unpacking:

My view - beyond the trees is a big park called Hyde Park

(There's a Hyde park in almost every town!)

Post shopping and unpacking:

One of the two GIANT pin boards in my room!
Items from Australia in aid of filling these are accepted.

My bookcase...yearning for more books!

My other love...the heater!

Sunday, 19 September 2010

No Place Like London: Day 3

Given the crazy amount of running around on Sunday (and the fact that I stayed up late watching Shakespeare in Love on TV in my hotel room) I indulged myself to a sleep in on Monday. I was off on the road by mid-morning with the Albert Memorial as my first stop for the day. Immediately behind the memorial is the Royal Albert Hall: performance venue to some of the biggest acts in the world (The Beatles and Queen shared the stage one night). When I was walking out of the box office door I saw a familiar face! I can’t recall his name but he was a pianist for QYC’s VoiceWorks at one stage. There was a glimpse of recognition between us and a nod and ‘hi’ but his name escaped me and he was in a conversation with someone. You travel 12,000 miles and run into someone you can’t remember the name of...brilliant!

Around the corner from the Royal Albert was the V&A Museum which houses the collection previously held by the Theatre Museum in West End. In the collection were some original librettos, programmes, banners, costumes, sets, models and props from various productions over the past 100 or so years. An interesting exhibit.

I met up with Andrew and another friend, Missa, at Covent Garden for lunch. One overpriced and over-stuffy meal later and we wandered around the markets watching some of the performers. Andrew and Missa headed off for the museums and I stuck around at the Gardens. I stumbled across a string quintet busking away so I felt that it was necessary to order a hot chocolate and sit and watch them.

Aunty Viv, Uncle John, Aunty Elizabeth and Uncle Ken you made a wise investment!

Once the quintet finished up I headed over to the Tower Bride and Tower of London to get a few pictures of the landmarks and the River Thames. Entry into them is on my list of things to do on my next trip down to London!

By now I was pushing it for time to get back to the train station. I raced back to the hotel from the tube, grabbed my bags then headed back to the tube. Halfway to the tube I decided I wouldn’t make it to the train station in time given the number of line changes I had to make on the tube. So I completed a quintessential requirement of visiting London. I hailed a London cab! It was an exciting experience and I followed our route on the map thoroughly to make sure he didn’t rip me off…I’ve heard stories!

I made it to London Euston station on time, jumped on my train and said goodbye to London…for now!