Couple that with the huge load of reading I have to do everyweek, and almost 3 full days of classes every week – London is becoming quite exhausting.

Still, I still feel optimistic as people around me remain bright and cheery, and my classmates are equally positive and opportunistic. We’ve started getting into group assignments this week and everyone has been contributing some awfully good stuff into the work.

There are a bunch of us who have started doing poker nights, and I’m thinking of setting up a gaming night for board games and for us just to hang out. There are a bunch of us who has played Settlers and someone in the group wants to play Risk.

Anyway, London is really great for walking because there’s just tons of stuff to see on foot. The buildings are really old and they never grow higher than 5 floors, which means it just keeps spreading wider eastwards, westwards, northwards and southwards. I’m staying at the northern end of London just at the tip close to where the countryside begins and there’s still tons of stuff to see and do out here.

This is probably what keeps housing rates so darn high. It’s almost impossible to get a decent place to stay that’s affordable.

We’re going to Borough Market tomorrow to see if we can pick up some fresh food and other stuff we can eat over the week. It’s quite a fun place, and we hope to avoid the crowds that usually come on Saturdays and Sundays.

The duck I tried at Bayswater wasn’t as great as I thought. It’s good…. but, I mean, no big deal. I’d probably go back there for duck rice, sure… but I’m not sure I’ll have a craving for it very often. I may be overzealous by comparing it to some delicacy duck dishes I’ve tried back home, but I think I’m being fair. Then again, maybe I went to the wrong restaurant, because there seemed to be at least three or four on the same row.

I’m waiting for my debit card. Due to arrive any day now.

I am dead tired from being out the whole day, but I just had to satisfy my curiousity and find out what the big deal ISOP was all about.

I’m glad they separated graduates and undergraduates because otherwise it would have caused a massive traffic jam and people wouldn’t be able to identify their peers.

I was pretty much alone for the most part. I saw a lot of groups of people who seemed to hit it off real fast, and did everything together. Maybe they were from the same halls or something.

Anyway, when I got there in the morning they handed to us blue packs with stuff in them that were quite useful, like a London guide and a UCL Union handbook.

I must say that there’s a lot more going on here than there was at KU, but I guess with a city like London, there are bound to be tons of things to do.

There’s even a Trip to Ikea on the Give it A Go list. What the?

I had a lot of time to waste after the formal introductory speeches by the Provost, Deputy Dean and UCL Union sabbaticals. I found a quiet little corner at Gordon’s Cafe at the Union, got a latte, and proceeded to sift through the stuff from the blue pack for an hour or so.

I thought to myself – one year is going to fly past like it was yesterday. I suppose that’s what a blog is for.

Anyway, it was hardly 12pm when I got done with the pack, and I decided to wander up and down the Union. Then, I decided it was time to check up on Barclays and kick their ass for delaying the opening of my account.

After 15 minutes of utterly pointless conversation with the Barclays rep, my phone credit exhausted, and we got cut off. They still demanded red tape treatment so I gave up. Anyway my credit was nil so I had to get up and go find a T-Mobile store.

I was getting really tired by then.

I tried looking for a free wifi hotspot, but failed. The Tottenham Court McDonald’s did not have free wifi even though there’s a sticker on the entrance that says they do. I wasted £4.90 on a sucky chicken sandwich meal to find that out. I should have just gone with a quarter pounder, but I thought I’d sample one of those “healthy” McD options we don’t get back home.

I even tried to pretend shop at PCWorld, just to google for a list of free wifi hotspots. None of their laptops had an internet connection (unlike Regent St.’s Apple).

So I gave up again and went back to UCL and found a bench to sit on, and after catching a breath, decided to read an ebook and listen to some music. I realized I could only do that for an hour and a half, which is quite long, and then I needed to take a break.

I wandered around the South Cloisters, and then East into some obscure locations, up and down stairs, and then back to the South Cloisters and south onto Malet Place and into the Engineering building to check out where the UCLIC offices were. The door needed ID and I didn’t want to buzz anyone in there, so I left.

The view on the 8th floor was amazing though. It’s got a nice view of the church roof there, and the east parts of London.

I went into Waterstones, found out that Don Norman has written a new book called The Design of Future Things, and found another book on interaction design there which was £24. Geez. As usual, I didn’t buy anything and left.

By then, it was 4.45pm, and I had killed about 2 hours just by wandering around and doing nothing. I decided to walk to Gordon Square and do more nothing, and wait for 5.30pm to come when the ISOP reception would begin.

I sat down on a bench where a young lady was, took out my moleskin and decided I should try and memorize the map of London.

I realized that the Thames starts with a “U” on the west where West Brompton is, and then makes like a step upwards towards Chelsea, and then another towards Covent Garden… where it tapers southwards past Tower Bridge towards Wapping where it tilts northwards into an upside-down “U” where the Limehouse DLR is.

After I had done that I realized I was crazy, and the young lady must have thought that as well because she left.

So I decided to get up again and walk to the South side of the gardens and relax on the grass. For some reason, everyone was hanging out at the corners on benches, but no one was sitting on the grass. I felt that was a bit weird.

Anyway, 5.30pm rolled by in no time, and by then a huge crowd of international students had gathered at the giant tent.

I walked in with the herd and found myself completely solo, amongst pockets of people who were chatting away about random things. I felt really out of place without any friends or acquaintances, and I attempted to gain eye contact with at least one human being in that big crowd.

I managed to creep up in between two Americans’ conversation and introduced myself. We chatted for a bit, and I found out we didn’t have anything in common, took the queue for my empty cup and made my exit.

After I had returned with a new glass of apple juice the Yankees had relocated, so I wandered around again for a fresh pair of eyes. A Chinese professor found me and we made idle chatter for a few minutes. I can’t even remember now what we were talking about. It must’ve been quite insignificant.

Anyway, he too decided the conversation reached its end and decided to walk away. So I went my way, and found this Korean guy who was there by himself.

For some reason we hit it off and we were sharing our stories with each other. Apparently, he married a Spanish woman and has been working in Spain since 2002. He decided to come to UCL to pursue his Masters in globalization, even though he has a background in Unix administration.

We talked a great length, and we were joined by another Masters student, a Japanese, and we exchanged contacts. The Jap majors in urban planning in politically unstable areas like Afghanistan. I told him my wife thought of doing Urban Planning once, but realized she didn’t want to travel too much.

By that time I had one glass of white wine, one of red, and I had sampled all the juices they put out on the table. Somebody came on the microphone and said it was time to leave.

So the Korean guy and I walked to Kings Cross Station where he had to catch a bus and I had to buy National Rail tickets for our trip to Colchester this weekend.

I didn’t think it was a bad night, especially since I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone at the reception.

Tomorrow I might meet with someone else I haven’t met before – a new classmate I might end up working with this year. Strangely enough, we met on Facebook.

Anyway, I hope I can enrol tomorrow. I want that dang student ID card, and the perks that come with it.

what’s in my bag / flickrversary, originally uploaded by superlocal.

3 suitcases. 60kg.
1 knapsack.
1 camera bag.
1 ladies’ handbag.

I’m not sure I can fit the September issue of Topgear. I heard it’s got a review of the latest Ford RS (300bhp in a 2L engine?!).

I’m going to miss my GHM family. I’ll miss the children I teach on Fridays and Saturdays. They’re such fun and I really learn from them as much as I am teaching.

I know kids are intelligent. I don’t speak baby talk like “do you want to mum-mum”. A friend-couple’s 15 month old baby loves to press buttons – remote controls, ATMs, keyboards, you name it. He’s not supposed to, and he knows it. At 15 months, he can distinguish what’s right and wrong, and learns discipline and obedience.

Kids are intelligent, bright, and have such potential. But they need all the help they can get to be the best that they can be. So let’s give it up for children. They’re a blessing in our often cold and convoluted world.

Anyway, the children grabbed a whole bunch of stuff we wanted to give away. Decorative cups, led flashlight, clothes, sandals, coasters, journals, little knick knacks.

I’m reminded of an article I wrote recently about giving. Sometimes I wonder how we justify how much we own and how much we lose. But really – there’s no point about it. If you own something that you don’t enjoy – is that really owning? If you give away something that cost you more money but means more to someone else, who really deserves to own it more?

Giving helps break down those boundaries. And I know money isn’t always part of that equation. Because money comes and goes. Relationships shouldn’t.

And that’s the thing I’ll miss most – my family and friends. I’ll miss the boardgames, the conversations and the fun stuff we do together. I’m hoping the future will be brighter, and that there’ll be more chances to meet then.

So that’s my hope, that the future will be brighter. That there will be more hope for all of us. That I’ll have good things to report to everyone.

Our flight leaves tomorrow night at 8pm. I’ll need the rest I can get now.

Royal Opera House, originally uploaded by jaremfan.

LL and I are moving to London.

I am attempting to diversify my career into the area of Human-Computer Interaction, which I have grown more fond of over the last few years. So, I’m planning to pursue a HCI-E MSc at University College London for the 2008/09 year, and see how it goes from there.

To cut the long story short, the decision was made sometime around March. I kept things pretty low-key, and kept the news to a close circle of friends and family.

Since that time, we’ve been preparing ourselves mentally and looking through the necessary details of moving. LL and I asked ourselves a whole bunch of questions… and I think we’ve come to terms with our decision.

We’re both looking forward to the change.

Allowing ourselves to move to a new place is as much an exercise as letting the old place go. Still, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience we’ll find out for ourselves.

And I think that’s the best part about life, sometimes… looking at it as a journey rather than a destination.

I’ll be keeping this blog active through the changes. Stay tuned.

“Before Tsunami, everything chaos. After Tsunami, peace. Because after Tsunami, both sides no more” - local Acehnese who worked for the United Nations mediating peace sanctions between separatists and the Indonesian government before the Tsunami in 2004.

“On Google, a lot… YouTube” – Acehnese van driver, after being asked where they published photos of the Tsunami disaster, assuming a heritage site or a museum.

“Half of the people on the AirAsia flight you see come from Malaysia after hospital. In Malaysia, after treatment, no problem. In Indonesia, you go hospital, pay a lot of money, the problem fix, but maybe another problem happen. No guarantee.” – ex-UN Acehnese, on how Indonesians frequently travel to Malaysia for affordable and better medical treatment and surgery.

“10 meter” – Acehnese van driver, on how high the waters came up to in the towns, during the Tsunami.

“I have a sister in Seremban. She has a business there, with license, selling jewelry and women’s accessories. She ask me to go there, but I don’t want. I like it here, near the beach. Simple life, you know?” – ex-UN Acehnese

I took a photo of this hornbill at feeding time. The photos I took this time around came out a lot sharper because I’ve started using F-stops around 5.6 and 8. I used to open it up wide at 2.8 or 4. Plus, in bright daylight, a faster shutter speed around 500 works really well to grab all the colors.

I’m still a noob, but I’m getting the hang of this.

I went to Macau recently, and finally got around to posting the photos on Flickr. It’s been a long delay – so I’m now trying to make up for the investment I made in the PRO account. Hope you enjoy it. I’ve posted a few of my favorites here for you.

Here’s the link to the set: link

The landscaping is done very nicely, I must say. It makes for walking around a lot more pleasant, which is a good thing – since you don’t want to drown in the sea of shops all day.

Maybe I’m just tired of the plethora of shopping experiences. Isn’t there anything else beneficial to humankind that can be enjoyed that doesn’t have to be directly driven, supported, or fueled by open markets and capitalism? What ever happened to state-managed open parks, zoos, museums and art galleries?

I mean, we could certainly get some really smart guys behind some of the marketing of these, and get the word out. We ought to be challenged to look beyond consumerism. Maybe we could start by meeting in the middle – have the retailers sponsor a no-spending day, for once. Everyone just goes out and run in fields or admire the landscape, watch some performing arts, I dunno…

It’s one of those things where I just want enjoy being around – and not have to spend money all the time. Every time I walk through shopping malls I feel guilty because I know the landscaping is all pruned to a fault because they respect me as a consumer – just that I don’t want to spend the money.

I’m also partly wary that we’ll all get into a cycle of expectation that we don’t all have to play the buyer/consumer all the time. Why should plain water (not bottled branded drinking water) have a price tag? I mean, haven’t we all arrived at the understanding that the price we’re paying is for the experience and not so much the commodity? Is a (free) glass of water too much to ask?

The reason why we pay for restaurant food isn’t because we need food – it’s because we want the experience that comes with the package.

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