I've got a paper I SHOULD be working on, but obviously this, and probably getting a ticket to go visit Dublin, Ireland for a bit are more pressing matters than the "definition of development." I mean, please, right?
While I've been complaining a whole lot recently about the amount of work I have to do, I do heartily understand that I really did bring it on myself, and I'm sort of glad I do have quite a lot of work to do. Of course, when I looked at schools, I looked at the name of the school, "University College London," and I just figured that I really wanted to go there, much like I did with Ohio State. It was just like "Oh, I really want to go to Ohio State," and "Oh, I really want to go to University College London." Only after applying did I look it up and find that, oh dear, University College London was 9th in the world in terms of universities (it has since moved up to no. 4, behind Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale...thus ahead of Oxford, people).
So I know I'm getting a damn good education, which was kind of the point, right? Of course, I'm getting to go to London, where I've always really wanted to go to, and I get to go to tons of places in Europe, which is also awesome, but I'm still a student, so, well, I should do work. This touches upon my second point. I was talking to some other students studying abroad here, and they nonchalantly talked about "Oh, yeah, we just go out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday" and I was just sort of baffled that, well, at the no. 4 school in the world, you spend the majority of the time going out instead of doing homework. (Granted, my grades are transferring back for actual credit, so I have to try to do really well while some people only need to pass). But then she went further and said that some of her British friends apparently went out and got drunk every day of the week. Like, really?
Some of you know my stance towards drinking, at least on my personal level, but if not, here it is: I drink because I like the taste of beer. I don't need to drink more than, like, five beers (US terms) in a night (and usually never even close to five, more like one or two), nor am I actually drunk after a maximum of five beers. There's a natural limit to how much people can drink, and it's there for a reason. Your body is, well, a fragile vessel, so don't screw it up. Of course, I'm in the minority when it comes to this, but honestly, if you need to black out or get drunk off your bum to have a good time, I feel like your approach to "having a good time" may not be a very smart or correct approach.
In this sense, I'm glad I have a lot of work, because while I certainly know that if I had a lot more time on my hands I wouldn't be going blackout drunk or anything all the time (not that I have, ever), but because I know I'm being busy and not, well, bored. There's plenty to do, and there's not necessarily a terrible rush to get it all done within the first couple of weeks (what else can you do after that?), so putting them off to later (also, when it's warmer) is not a bad decision. So the first few days were super boring with little to do. But with work (and the procrastination that inevitably accompanies it), it's less boring.
/end rant
But this weekend was fun. We visited the Tower of London, which has loads of stuff going on. I like this "before entering" picture:
Much of the tour was the guide, a "beefeater," talking about various dignitaries that were held there and/or executed there, such as couple of Henry VIII's wives like Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, among others, like two child Princes whose murderers are still unknown to this day. One thing I didn't know was apparently they raise official ravens of the Royal House there. Yep, the Royal House of London raise ravens. I'm going to assume that they used to be effective carriers of notes in the pre-iPhone age, hah. But yes.
The Crown Jewels were shown there too, but, um, taking pictures of them amounts to treason, apparently. I mean, it was a really tough call between pictures of the craziest headdresses and silverware known to man and being sentenced to death, so it really came down to a coin toss.
There were other exhibits, like the ones geared towards kids (about weaponry and being a knight back then) which I found incredibly amusing and enthralling. Being kind of a weapon nut (from all sorts of video games in my youth), it was pretty sweet.
You can find photos on my Facebook or on my Flickr if you want to see more, but I do particularly like this photo of the Tower of London at dark the best:
After that we all went and got some food, wherein I had my first round of traditional British staple of "fish & chips," wherein there were fish bones when I certainly did not expect them. I probably ate a couple of fish bones.
That was essentially my weekend, and classes have been keeping me busy otherwise, as in, I should really get back to work.
Cheers (this is apparently a commonplace British phrase),
-e.
NP: Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
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