the plane ride to london was relatively uneventful. no drunk people, no hold-ups, no crying babies, no unconsiderate farters. apart from watching hancock and eating, i essentially spent the rest the time drifting in and out of sleep. even though it was a 13 hour journey, time passed pretty quickly and it wasn't long before the captain announced that we'd be landing soon. Another point he added was that the ground temperature was 5 degrees celsius. 5 degrees. that's shit cold.
serendipitously i managed to locate the imperial college singsoc (icss) people at heathrow and decided to hop on to the shuttle bus with them instead of taking my chance with the tube and navigating independently to the hall. downside is that it costs 15 pounds and i had to pangseh hc and justin in the end. the bus brought us to the doorstep of wilson house, saving me the trouble of lugging my luggage around the london underground.
in retrospect (since i'm typing this 5 days after i touched down), this decision greatly influenced the course of the first few days and probably the rest of my exchange trip as well. something like the butterfly effect eh? life would certainly have been much different if i decided to operate independently from the start. for better or for worse i don't (and probably will never) know but i'm glad things turned out the way it did.
i was led to my room by one of the hall seniors and was pleasantly surprised by its condition. it's rather spacious, with high ceilings (around 3.5m), a wash basin, lots of drawers and (exclusive to wilson house only) a mini fridge! all that goodness for a modest fee 104 pounds (SGD270) per week. this may sound shockingly expensive to some singaporeans but this is after all london and rent prices are definitely higher.
subsequently for the rest of the day the bunch of wilson house singaporeans (me included) were led around by the icss seniors to orientate ourselves with the surroundings. we were brought to eat authentic fish and chips, the quintessential british fast food. except that it wasn't very fast given that we had to wait for 12 mins for our fish to be fried. at 3.60 pounds, this is probably one of the cheapest (albeit not the healthiest) meals you can get around. best seasoned with liberal lashing of salt and vinegar to enjoy it brit style. and the vinegar was pretty strong too, as i discovered when i took a whiff of my fish and chips and choked on the fumes.
following which we walked around to get some settling in stuff (like duvet and pillow and water filter) and pay the accommodation fees. dinner was supposedly some BBQ organised by the hall seniors. except there were no BBQ pits, nor BBQ fire/charcoal, just BBQ-ed food. the peculiarities of the english culture never ceased to amaze me. beer was the most plentiful beverage at the dinner, which i suppose is a testament that the brits really love their alcohol.
on a more unrelated note, below are some pictures of my room.
pre unpacking
post unpacking
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