La Boum

Time Series ended yesterday. It was the first time I'd been since missing about three in a row, but it didn't seem too incomprehensible- hopefully I'll be able to catch up with what I missed sometime before the exams in the summer. I'll need to find someone to copy the diagrams from though- although we're expected to print out the notes from the public folders and follow along, the lecturer deliberately misses out the diagrams to encourage people to turn up to the lectures.

The lecturer didn't give out any feedback questionnaires. I assume he just forgot- I think we're supposed to get them for every course that finishes this term.

After Time Series (which finished a whole hour early this time since we simply covered the whole syllabus ), I made my way to Leicester Square where I was meeting my brother. I went via the London Graphics Centre (between Covent Garden and Leicester Square) where I bought some little blank cards (blank as in they were just folded pieces of coloured card) and tiny envelopes, and a sheet each of gold and silver paper, and also via Topshop*, where I got some things for the President of People and Planet's birthday party that evening- a present for her and a pair of tights and a lipstick for my outfit. I thought I'd have no trouble finding her something there as I reckoned I had a pretty good idea of her taste, and it was similar to one of my friends from UCL's (one that I haven't seen for years, and whom I wasn't particularly close to though we were part of the same group of friends on the Maths course), and I always used to find jewellery in Topshop whenever I needed to buy her a present. But this time the styles were all rather glitzy and ostentatious, rather than chunky but simply coloured or wooden, and it took quite a lot of looking. It was also made more complicated by the fact that I thought earrrings would be best in terms of her taste and style, but I couldn't quite remember for sure if she had pierced ears. So I felt the need to get something else as well. In the end I found a bracelet of large wooden beads in shades of grey, white and black, with one bead having a pattern of flowers on, and some long silver leaf shaped earrings.

I wanted fishnet tights for my outfit- the dress code was 'So you think you're trendy?' and I wasn't quite sure what that translated into in practical terms, but thought that the silver dress I made last year could work with the right accessories, which included a pair of red canvas high wedge heeled espadrilles that I got last summer. When I found the fishnets, though, I caught sight of a pair of leopardskin tights that just seemed even better. So I got those and the fishnets too (well, they might come in handy) plus the brightest red lipstick I could fine, which wasn't really that bright at all.

My brother and I went to Pizza Hut. Even though I know it's not great quality and certainly not very healthy, I have something of a fondness for the Pizza Hut buffet. I like the pizza, but the best part for me is the potato salad, with the smooth roundness (I know, I know, they probably use horrible chemicals to skin them) and always properly waxy texture of the potatoes, and the pasta. My brother, on the other hand, couldn't care less about the other stuff and went for the pizza only buffet. He is really rather extravagant about Pizza Hut- yes, for a restaurant, it's cheap, but when he's at home he often eats there if he goes into town shopping, rather than just get a sandwich or something, or eat before or after he goes, and he told me that while he's at uni, if he comes into Piccadilly to go to a comic book shop he often goes to Pizza Hut afterwards because he's too hungry to wait to eat till he gets home. But it's his life and his money!

Back at LSE, I had a few hours which I could have used to make a start on the individual project or catch up on the vast piles of work I hadn't done as I went along. I chose to spend them making Christmas cards. A lot of people that I wanted to give them to would be at the party in the evening, and I probably wouldn't see them after that before term ended, or not to speak to anyway. As well as the stuff I bought in the London Graphics Centre, I had some Japanese patterned origami paper, and I managed to come up with three designs. Surprisingly, the one I thought would take longest, and which I therefore left till last, turned out to be the quickest. What really took the time was the one with snowflakes, as I was cutting the snowflakes out of folded paper. I broke off halfway through to go to the Union shop before it shut, but it turned out that it sold silver and gold pens only in my mind. So I had to use pencil to write on the black card and paper.

I made it to French Connection (the French Society)'s showing of La Boum just before it started. They had some refreshments as well, including a very very nice quiche with blue cheese which I would love to know where they got from**. The film was about a fourteen year old girl's first party and first boyfriend, but it was a comedy and it was also about her parents' farcical lives. There weren't English subtitles, but luckily there were French ones- I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have managed without that as I couldn't make out the words they were saying though I understood them all written down. It was a pretty good film.

It was the first event of French Connection's that I'd made it to- everything else had always been at a time when I had something or other else that I was already going to. But I couldn't hang around afterwards and get to know people as I had a boum of my own to get to- it started at the time the film finished. I did get to talk to one girl, who was also apparently going to an event of theirs for the first time***, and also was not a native French speaker, for about two minutes as we went down the stairs, before turning off to the first floor loos (which have the loo and basin and mirror all in one room so you can lock yourself in while you do your make up and there's plenty of space to get changed). I emerged in my silver dress, red shoes and leopardskin tights feeling rather self conscious, and went to find out about the buses at one of the Aldwych bus stops.

In the loos, after changing.
I made that dress myself, you know!

After taking the bus in the wrong direction, hanging about on Waterloo Bridge for ages in the freezing cold waiting for one going the right way****, and getting a bit lost going from Old Street to Shoreditch High St (the President had given me great directions from Shoreditch High St but it wasn't obvious quite where that was though I'd thought it would be), I arrived about an hour and a half after the party started, to find the basement of the bar, which had been hired for the party, containing about five or ten people. Being an hour and a half late, I apologised, but the President said many people hadn't come yet. This turned out to be very true- I didn't realise how true at the time, but an hour or so later there were more than 50 people there.

It was a very good party. Probably the best I've been to in three years or more- but then I haven't been to many parties this year, and last year I was living at home and didn't go to any at all, and before that I was in Japan. I spent quite a bit of time chatting to F, the People and Planet Fundraiser, whom I hadn't really talked to much before but had always thought was really nice. Unfortunately she had a bad stomach ache. I also danced a fair bit- the music wasn't that melody driven, but, unless it was the alcohol distorting my perceptions, I seemed to finally have worked out how to dance to it and was really getting into it. And I also got to talk to quite a few People and Planet people (though R wasn't there), and some non-People-and-Planet people that I'd never met before (including the Students' Union Treasurer's girlfriend, who's not at LSE any more- I confess that I was ever so slightly disappointed to have it thus confirmed that he does have a girlfriend. I'd seen pictures of them together in his office but thought she might be his sister). And give out my Christmas cards, though that wasn't easy. I handed over the ones for the President, for F and for the Residences Officer fairly simply, and eventually got to talk to the Secretary and another girl and give them theirs. And I also wrote a couple on the spot for people I hadn't been sure if they would be there***** whom I saw in the distance (including the Students' Union Treasurer, whom I felt a bit above-my-station giving a card to, but decided it was ok because he'd been in the Sutherland campaign and I had spoken to him a few times, but he was very nice, and if he thought it was inappropriate or presumptuous he didn't show it) and eventually managed to hand those over too. In the end I was left with CMCC's- I'd seen him when he and the Residences Officer first arrived, and came over to our corner, and I gave her hers, but CMCC started talking to some other people straight away, and I didn't get a chance to even say hello then, nor later, when he was still talking to people every time I looked his way. In the end, when I bumped into the Residences Officer in the Ladies', I asked her to take it for me as it would probably be simpler. But she wasn't having any of it, and took me up to him and told him I had something to give him. I did then also manage to have a conversation with him!

I only planned to stay till midnight, but I was having such a good time that I stayed till it finished at about 2. Since Shoreditch is so close to Spitalfields, I then walked home, down Commercial St, though I took a very long way round, as I remembered coming on Commercial St while I was lost on the way, and so went back there, although if I'd just carried on down Shoreditch High St, it would have become Bishopsgate, or I could have turned off it onto Commercial St a little way down. It was quite a long walk, and it was cold and raining, but it would have felt a lot further, colder and wetter had it not been for the excessive amounts of alcohol in my bloodstream.

I had every intention of going to my nine o'clock lecture today no matter how tired or hung over I was, but I didn't actually manage to wake up to make that decision. It was 9.18 when I did wake, and so I thought as I'd missed the lecture I might as well have a bit more sleep, though in order to be sure of being in college in time for the UGM at 1, I set my alarm for 10 (that would allow for wanting half an hour more when I woke up, and for getting up very slowly). Unfortunately, I fell asleep after typing in the digits but before actually pressing 'ok'. So I next woke up at 1.35. It would be annoying enough to miss the UGM in the ordinary way of things, but today there were to be motions of censure against the Students' Union officers who took part in the Sutherland protest, and they needed as many people as possible to come along and vote against. So I felt guilty for not having been there to give them my support (as well as missing what must have been a very interesting meeting, and getting to see the debate and the vote). Fortunately, I heard later that the motions had fallen.

After a trip to Tesco's and a slow lunch (I was too hungover to do anything productive), I went to the Have Your Say meeting in the common room, which was where one of the second in commands from LSE and someone from Shaftesbury Housing, as well as some more bods who I didn't know who they were******, and we got to air our concerns. The second in command went on at the beginning about how they wanted to hear our views and problems, not just so they could deal with them, but also for future reference when making decisions about halls (or something like that, I think that was the gist). The first people had problems like the excessive fire alarms, getting Sky TV, or the price of laundry that were quite hard to deal with, but the reception was sympathetic (well not to the price of laundry thing- for a moment I was back on the Civil Service Fast Stream Assessment Day as the second in command forcefully pressed the poor guy who brought it up for details: he had suggested that it could be subsidised by the School, and the second in command asked 'Who exactly do you mean by the School?' and the guy had obviously no idea what possible options there were to choose from on that one (no more had I), and the second in command asked if he was suggesting that the laundry for people in the hall be subsidised by people not living in the hall, and it was exactly like the individual interview on a hypothetical scheme at the Assessment Day, except there the interviewer was only pretending to be fierce for the purposes of the interview). So I thought that my problems, which would involve no money, would be met with, at the least, 'Ok, well we'll bear that point of view in mind in the future while making similar decisions, or if this policy comes up for review', and hopefully 'Ok, we'll have a look at that and consider changing it'. I wasn't of course expecting them to just turn round and say 'Fine, we'll do it your way'. But what I got was a whole load of reasons why things couldn't be otherwise, and a lot of pointing out that there were other opinions and if they did as I wanted then another group of students would complain, as if I was just expecting them to do it. Apart from saying that the system of flats that only those from that flat can get into led to an unsociable atmosphere, and that corridors accessible to all would be better- and explaining that I knew nothing could be done about it now but that it might be something to consider for future halls, my two points were that the new policy of not allowing posters on doors round the halls was bad, and so was not allowing even white tacked posters in rooms. I also spoke when fire alarms were being discussed, to say that I didn't understand why they had that particular type, that could be set off even by normal cooking rather than actually burning something, and that meant you couldn't boil a kettle in your room. In support of that and my point about the flats vs corridors argument, I mentioned my experience in UCL halls, but the second in command guy pretty much discounted this and talked to me about security concerns as if I was an idiot- of course I realised that was an issue, but I didn't think it would be as much of a problem as was claimed, based on my experience at UCL (there were some incidents, but then the door to our block from the outside was never locked, so what do you expect? And there weren't that many). He also said on the subject of the posters that he couldn't dictate Shaftesbury policy, and I explained that I raised the point for the Shaftesbury people in the room and didn't expect him to do anything about it, but he still said that a bit. The Shaftesbury guy explained that it was because if people start putting things on door it's a short step to putting things on walls. I pointed out that people had been putting things up for some weeks now without being tempted onto the walls, and also, (after being interrupted by the second in command who related how LSE had agreed with the Students' Union to unofficially tolerate posters on Houghton St provided they were nowhere else, but how the posters had begun to reappear in other places after a week or so), that as we'd received no emails about the policy and I only knew about it from asking if it was ok to put a particular poster up, most people were going to continue putting things on doors as before totally unaware of the change while only people like me who asked first and were less likely to put things on walls were going to stop using the doors.

There wasn't any 'Ok, that's one point of view, but we'll make sure to consider it in the decision making process even though of course we may still have to decide the other way at the end'.

I came back and had supper (while watching Clueless)- a frozen Goats' Cheese Tarte Flamme; a treat I didn't really deserve given my record this past week, plus some garlic marinted cucumbers that Flatmate 7 made the other day, which were very nice and reminded me of stuff I'd had in Japan. Then I went to see L, who was packing as she's off to Korea tomorrow. I hadn't seen her in quite a while, so it was nice to have a chat.

On the way back, I stopped by the laundry to get some washing I'd put on while I went to see her, and got some stuff from the vending machine. But a packet of Minstrels got caught and didn't fall down like it was supposed to. I went to see the night guard on duty at reception in case he could help, and he said I should tell the day staff, and they'd get a refund from the vending machine company. On the way back, I saw someone with some Maltesers from the machine and decided to go and see whether their use of it had dislodged my minstrels- then I wouldn't have to bother with asking for a refund, and I would have the Minstrels. Indeed, they were no longer caught. But nor were they anywhere to be found. Someone (not necessarily the person I saw) must have caused them to fall when they bought something and taken them as a bonus. So I'll have to explain that to reception, and they may not be able to give me a refund since the company did actually provide them to somebody even if it was the wrong person. It's annoying, but it's only 50p and while I begrudge that to a company, I suppose if I'm calm and rational about it I don't really begrudge it to another student, or at least not so much. And I'm sure they didn't realise they had been paid for by someone else and that they were getting what I'd forked out for- otherwise I don't believe they'd have taken them.

I bought another packet.

*Of course, speaking of going from Aldwych to Leicester Square via Oxford St is using 'via' in rather a loose sense

**No, that doesn't sound right, but I think it would be worse with an 'it' in it

***She hadn't made it to any other events because she was in religious halls with a curfew

****I took the opportunity to get the cards written (hadn't quite had time before the film) leaning on a handy wall

*****Again the grammar's off

******What is it with today that I keep picking sentences like this that just can't be written in a way that sounds right, no matter what you try?