Monday, March 28, 2005

# Daddy's Visit

Daddy has come to London to visit, it’s his first time in UK and I wanted to make this good! Thanks to my friends’ frequent visit to London (from all other parts of UK), I have trained myself to be a seasoned local tour guide who can memorized the routes I take them for a tour in London.

Argh… I was lazy to describe the whole trip, but overall we had a great trip and have covered most places in London. Dad enjoyed the trip to Camden Town very much, and he loves the walk along river Thames. He got so comfortable staying in London that he started practicing his Tai-Chi in the morning in our neighbourhood and even got to know some stall owners in the street market. He loves the cold air much more than I do! Haha.

Next year both my parents will come for graduation and I guessed I have to start planning for a tour in Europe…

Friday, March 18, 2005

# Farewell Party

Big feast for the end of term for HF’s language course! We threw a farewell party for her classmates, and I was excited to meet them though I haven’t met most of them. We cooked bat kut teh, cocacola chicken, dumplings, pak choy, etc…(HF made sure the guests helped out! Hehe…) and the guests brought over some food too.

Met some interesting friends – a Japanese girl who is very good at direct selling, a Korean professor who still has such a young heart, a Japanese man who is very very polite and influenced me to pronounce ‘Yes’ as ‘Yesu’, another who seems to always day-dream, a Vietnamese girl who is always bubbly and a Columbian girl who is very sweet and friendly. Despite the language barrier, everyone had fun and could not stop chatting about everything under the sun.

Getting to know them is a valuable experience as I learn to understand the accent of different nationalities speaking the same language, English. It was entertaining for us to discover each other’s ‘strange’ accent of speaking English and try to decipher what the others are talking about. It is heart-warming to see everyone has an open heart to learn, trying their best to practice the language and trying to understand each other.

Some of them will return to their country soon and some will further their studies in other universities after the completion of their course. I will miss this bunch of international students much, and hopefully we will stay in touch.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

# Duan's Hair Disaster

Like other students, I grabbed the chance to get a free hair cut from hair-styling school in London, but I made a mistake of going to the modern hairstyling school instead of the traditional hairstyling school.

The experience was hilarious – I was allocated a student hairdresser who only speak Spanish, we cannot communicate unless with a translator. It was funny watching the teacher giving directions in English, while a translator translated into Spanish for the student to understand the commands. I was like a dummy sitting there waiting for my haircut, hoping to learn some basic Spanish in the process. 

The cut went on for a long time and I was feeling curious that many other hairdressers kept coming over to look at my hairdresser at work and some even took photos. Only after it was done that I realized he has done disaster to my hair! He has shaven the back of my head and left two strands of hair at the sides, making a false impression of me having long hair in the front, while revealing a extremely short hair at the back. My fringes were Japanese style and I looked a bit too cute for my age. He even put on some gel to make 3 strands of my hair stood on top of my head. GOSH!

I was dumbfounded. More interesting things happened – all the crew gave a round of applause and started to take pictures of my scary hairstyle. They actually thought that this WAS an achievement! I could not decide to laugh or to cry…

In the end, I have to go to another saloon to save my hair, at least, to get a more normal hairstyle… The hair disaster and the rescue activity was a funny, yet scary experience. And I think Ray would never let me forget the rescue trip in which he accompanied me until forever.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

# Walking Spree

I have to thank my housemate for dragging me into this. I was still groggy in the morning when she dragged me to walk to school with her. And mind you, it took almost 1 hour to walk from our house to school! I was halfway dreaming and walking during my first try, and arrived at school in a half-awake condition. But somehow I got addicted to this walking-to-school-disease and started to enjoy walking to and back from school.

There are always lots of things to see along the way to school – people rushing for work, window displays and even the busy traffic. One plus point is that our route to school pass by places of interests such as Tower Bridge, river Thames and St. Paul’s Cathedral and these beautiful scene never fail to awe me.

It took one hour in each journey but it was worth the walk. Almost everyday we manage to see some interesting or funny thing happen along the street, and we always have endless conversations about things we saw along our way. And certainly our stamina build up and I wonder whether I should go back to marathon again, hehe. I haven’t been running since I came to London and this started my ‘walking spree’ again.