Anticipating the Move

More Portugal. Totally irrelevant but it's prettier than just text

I went into Cheltenham today and got the small pyrex dish, the chopping board, the knives, and the wooden spatula, from Robert Dyas, where I get most of my cooking equipment. It may be silly to have to pack them and take them all the way to London when I could just as easily get them there. But I know I've got them now, and if I want to use them on my first night (quite likely with the board and knives) I won't have to worry about going shopping for them after all the hassle of moving in. Still got to see about a mixing bowl, measuring jug and scales, among other things, though

Here's what I'm looking forward to about living in halls- and what I'm not:

Good things

• I can decide what to eat and when*
• I'll be in London- extremely easy access to shops, cafes, bars, restaurants, cinemas and general stuff to do, and with a great transport system that runs frequently and even through the night- though in the day time, for reasonable distances, I'll hopefully be cycling (if I can get my bike sorted in time)
• Being situated much more conveniently for meeting up with all but one of my friends, and to have them round for supper or to stay the night
  
• I can have a shower when I want- the noise of the shower keeps/ wakes Dad up so here I have to have one before he goes to bed at 10 or 11, when I'm not always ready. It wouldn't be a problem if I was a morning shower person, but I'm not. The thought of even warm water sooner than three hours after waking is enough to stop me getting up altogether.
  
• A fresh start as far as tidiness is concerned- currently, as it lies in wait for me, my future room is, I assume, tidy. If I don't take too much stuff (ahem), work out a place for everything, make everything vaguely neat before I go to bed, and have a proper tidy once a week, then there is some hope that I may be able to keep it that way. This will be good for my mental health, since I am an untidy person who dislikes untidiness and the inherent conflict has led to a certain amount of despondency. Ideally I'd like to leave my room here tidy so it will be nice to come back to... but I have a feeling that's not going to happen
  
• A feeling of independence. I'm very fond of my parents, but it'll be nice to feel that I'm living a proper adult life with all associated freedoms and responsibilities again.
  
• An assortment of new people, flatmates and hallmates, to enjoy meeting and living with. I'm sure they'll all be very nice...
  

Bad things

• No burning incense or candles- and I brought back some very nice incense from Japan as well.
  
• It is an apparently essential part of the halls experience that there should be at least one middle of the night fire alarm every two weeks**. When this happens, everyone has to get out of bed and wait outside untill the firemen have been and pronounced it a false alarm- everyone, even if they're ill, drunk, in the middle of an urgent essay or just very very comfortable where they are, thankyou. I seem to recall one fire alarm where my best friend had just come down with something, and had to be looked after by another friend, who found her somewhere to sit and something to keep warm in. I would have done it myself only I'd only come in a few hours ago and was still rather drunk...
  
• Late night loud music- I'm hoping this won't be such a problem among postgraduates (I expect I'll be put with other postgraduates), but I can remember several occasions in my first year where I lay awake trying to shut out the sounds filtering in from above, almost getting to the point of going and asking them to turn it down... and then there was the time, admittedly at a reasonable hour of the morning, though I hadn't been planning on getting up that early, when I was woken by a piece of music that was played not once, but something like ten times. I didn't even like it the first time- I think it was drum 'n' bass or something- and by the tenth time I very definitely didn't like it.
  
• Of course, I'll miss my parents, and my cat.
• The possibility of a flatmate with really aggrivating habits- actually to be honest, I think if I did end up with one, the enjoyment of resenting what they did and relating the outrageous things you wouldn't have thought anyone would actually think could possibly be acceptable would outweigh the unpleasantness of putting up with their behaviour.
  

*At home my dad likes to cook, and doesn't like to eat any later than about 7, whereas sometimes I'd prefer to wait till 8 or so. He also does all the shopping. I do cook now and then- but the rest of the time, if it's stir fry and I'm not in a stir fry mood, then that's just tough. He also has a different style of cooking to me- for example whereas I would not cook a stir fry that long, so as to leave the vegetables quite crisp, he cooks them till they're soft, and he includes leafy things like pak choi, and also beansprouts, which I wouldn't do (well beansprouts sometimes, but not very often)- and the leaves disintegrate. He cuts the onions finely where I would do them in large lozenge shapes (by cutting the onion into segments^, and he cuts peppers and stuff pretty small too, so individual vegetables don't stand out and what you get is a fairly homogenous mess where every forkfull is the same and you don't automatically know what you're eating unless you stop and think 'Oh yes, that's a bit of pepper there, and next to that some onion, and underneath is a bit of mushroom, then that floppy green thing is pak choi' Finally, he uses fresh ginger (I use powdered) which is very good for you, I'm sure, but is also unpleasantly firey when you chew a piece- and because there's a lot of it cut up small, you don't know you're going to chew it till you do. In spite of all this, I do consider my dad to be a good cook- just one with a different philosophy and ideas about things to me. After all, it doesn't end up like that because he's no good, he actually intends the dish to be that way. And in fact, after a couple of months without eating his food I do miss it. It's just that days and days of it can be a bit oppressive.

**Generally caused by people coming back drunk from pubs or clubs and trying to make toast- there's something about the manufacture of toast that seems to render it impossible to do while sloshed without producing a lot of smoke

^Or as we mathematicians say, sectors: segments is actually something else. If my recollections of year 8 maths are right...