Over the past few days,

Oh gosh what a backlog of things to update about. No thanks to the distracting snow. Hohoho.

On Saturday, it was Greenwich day! Ziwei, Huoyfen, Yinghong and I headed down to Greenwich to check out the place, and it's such a relief to see a place with such green green grass, that isn't too crowded, that has wonderful views. This was one of the days when the weather was starting to get cold already, and together in the face of adversity we climbed up the hill to the Royal Observatory where the Greenwich Meridien (the ZERO DEGREE LONGTITUDE) is located. So yes, I have placed one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one foot in the western hemisphere simultaneously (as Winnie aptly puts it, I was in liminal space)! So that was cheap thrill #1. Haha. But I really did love the area, just because the walls of the Observatory (where they trace the history of time -astrology, clocks, maritime issues with time) and surrounding areas are just brimming with history to be told to the world. Historical geographies anyone? (: It felt like the surfaces had just absorbed so much rich history that it emanated a very rich aura (either that or kudos to whoever chose how to represent the place).


And after that it was Michelle dearest's birthday!! :) Hope you had a great birthday my dearie Mich!! The first of us to turn TWENTYTWO! hahah.

Sunday was the day I got my fill of CNY atmosphere in Chinatown -things I'd ordinarily had found cheesy or annoying made me really really happy -lion dances, red lanterns, CNY songs etc! The place was crazy crowded, with many vendors trying to rip tourists off with their wares (like paper dragons with crepe-paper bodies on a stick), angmohs trying to be Chinese (we spotted a father and son pair in Chinese-vampire-looking caps complete with pigtail and a girl with a "huan zhu gege" headdress -as Huoyfen very accurately described) and we were expecting to see fireworks -except we didn't know where the fireworks were being let out from (well I guess getting to hear it isn't too bad). It was a snowy CNY ironically -the first time snow fell thickly enough to be captured by my camera.


And everyone knows what happened the next day right? :) SNOW! Being stuck in hall the previous night with nobody to play with, I made a playdate with Ziwei. Thank goodness the Northern Line on the tube was still working with only minor delays (phew. Delays on the other lines were horrible -Circle line was entirely closed, the District line was facing severe delays -Ziwei and I had to wait half an hour for a crazily crowded train), and thank goodness my place is walkable to a tube station! I went trigger happy and I swear there was a bounce in my step as I walked down the white blanketed streets with snow falling lightly onto my coat. Definitely a day to remember! The entire London seemed to become a giant playground, with open spaces sporting the usual snowball fights and snowpeople of all shapes and sizes. It was a nice atmosphere (except in various stations with people anxiously waiting for their trains) (:


And the day after, the snow on the pavement FROZE. And this is NOT good, as my walking speed slows by 3x and my heart is filled with trepidition for fear of unwittingly performing a complex ice-skating manouevre that will definitely not end well. Same thing for today, but thank goodness when I walked back to my room it wasn't as icey as before. It's amazing how much a landscape can change in few days. Despite all the inconveniences associated with snow, it's nice to be part of climate history in London and definitely a special time to remember. Whee!

Okay I need to sort out my life now, I feel like I've been drifting along the past month, and it's really time for me to get focused and work out how I'm going to make the best of the next few months, because I know time is just going to FLY.