My Mondays have changed drastically since last term. It used to be lectures non-stop 9am-1pm followed by labs 2pm-5pm, a timetable to make anyone dread Mondays if they didn’t already. Now it’s different though. I still finish at 5pm, but I now start either 11am or 2pm depending on week. Dreadful Mondays are nothing more but a memory.

Although, if I start at 2, I feel a need to do something in the morning, preferably catching up on work to free other time. Yesterday, Valentine’s day, was no exception. I arrived at uni a bit before eleven, which would give me two hours of work before I went for lunch. After about an hour in the library, longing for the sun, I went outside to see how it was. With a cup of tea in front of me I sat down by Queen’s Lawn and started looking through the notes. It wasn’t extremely warm, but warm enough to stay where I was. I really enjoyed feeling the rays of sun in my face. It has to be stressed that I’m used to have much longer winters, and whenever the sun actually arrives most Swedes go outside in an attempt to get some sunlight and cover up for everything we’ve missed. This was exactly what I did, but this time thinking of my home town and their temperature of -15 degrees Celsius. As a bonus to it all, a male choir stood on the lawn and sang a couple of songs. There I was. Monday morning, getting work done while enjoying the sun and a cappella performance. The week certainly got a good start.

ISE Bonding

It was a Monday evening. Around the corner from High Street Kensington there is a restaurant where a bunch of 11 or so guys and one girl are occupying a long table, eating hamburgers and drinking cocktails. Topics of discussion are ranging over most areas, and people refuse to only speak to those sitting next to them but also to those at the other end. This is the start of the ISE Bowling Night.

It is known that ISE 2 is a very social year, organising events and generally hang out quite a lot together. In an attempt to get the other years together as well, they started arranging an ISE-all-years Bowling event. Despite the reputation of Imperial, or of our department/course, there were about 20something turning up (about a fourth of the three years invited). Only 2 or 3 ISE3 students dared showing their faces, 5 ISE freshers were there and then the rest were ISE2.  There was some confusion in the beginning when everyone had to pay their share and get shoes, choose lane and a ball. Not that you were ever locked to your lane, the beauty of bowling is after all that you can walk over and chat to your neighbouring lanes while waiting to be called on when it’s your turn.

The ISE crew (minus me)

I was on a lane together with our year rep, Sam, and a bunch of ISE2 guys: Chris S., Olivier, Chris T., Richard and Nicolas. As I’m about to go for my first turn, Olivier reminds me that I’m after all the only girl on that specific lane, and ask me if I’m ‘afraid’. The statement was slightly demolished as I smash down as many as everyone else, and end up third in both games (for our lane at least, I think I came fourth overall). Something we hadn’t really noticed during the actual game was then whenever you scored a strike or a spare, a machine started printing small yellow tickets. For us it might have been because the machine didn’t work properly, so we got all the tickets at the end. Now, we did collect a fair amount of these tickets and saved them, to ‘buy’ an ISE mascot.

Before we started looking at the different options we had a second thing to do: bumper cars! They are hilarious already as it is, but add to this that more or less everyone around are people you know. As always, it was too short, but still extremely fun! Due to some problems with a few of the cars, some had to wait for the next round, but they seemed to have a good time anyhow as it more meant that they get to go two times, one whilst driving and one whilst just sitting next to someone else. Now, it was finally time to chose a mascot! It turned out that we had gathered approximately 320 tickets, so investigation on what we could get for it started. I stepped aside for a second, and smiled at the site. There were about 15 guys, leaning slightly over the desk trying to chose the best teddy bear. All really keen, involved and had opinions. Eventually, they picked a small white bear holding a heart, immediately planning on embroider “ISE” on the heart. The love for the ISE bear has started, and we’re looking for somewhere in the department to have it on display (it’s for all years!). If there are any lecturers or other staff members from EEE who happen to read this and have a suggestion, feel free to send an email or add a comment!

Looking for the right mascot

ISE Bear Love (click on it for larger version)

China Town

Chinese New Year has never been so present to me. One of my friends back home is Chinese, so I usually got to know when it was from her, but it was never a big thing. I can’t remember any major celebrations in Stockholm (though I might just have missed out), nor did other people talk very much about it. Now it’s different. At multicultural Imperial the CNY has been highly present for the past couple of days, discussing private and public celebrations. I went to the celebrations in China Town+Trafalgar Square with two friends from halls. First impression: tons and tons of people. I didn’t expect anything else, but than again it’s easy to forget how many people there are living in London, and how many tourists there are around. Once I got over that impression, it was really, really fascinating to wander around (or try to at least) and look at what there was. We tried some sweets, called pearls if I remember right, and admired the dance performance at Trafalgar Square. I would have loved to stayed longer (or arrived earlier), but had planned on cooking with friends in another halls fairly early.

The sweets I think they called pearls

Now, I know the blog is very much about cooking, but it’s a very good way of getting together. The guys I was cooking with this time, Richard and Ben, had prepared a big, oven baked chicken, baked peppers, stuffing and a salad. I brought with me a touch of Sweden in the form of ‘potato girdle cake’, also known as raggmunk (SE). Raggmunk/potato girdle cake is usually served with bacon and raw stirred lingon berries, and wouldn’t really be the optimal choice for chicken, but it didn’t really matter. Having spent about 1,5h in the kitchen preparing everything, we sat down and admired what we’d accomplished. There was three of us, and food for easily 5-6. I think we managed to finish half of the chicken, half the salad and pretty much all the potato cakes before we were full. As everyone knows, it’s normal to eat while cooking, and especially Ben and I had been using the salad dressing as dip for bread (Richard avoided it, not being too fond of chilli/garlic), and this didn’t really help us once we sat down. Though, it meant that I had lunch for the next day (and a very nice lunch as well!) plus another lunch box filled with only chicken. We couldn’t just leave half a bbq-chicken like that, and they guys said that if they kept it they would probably just throw it away, so I ended up removing as much meat as possible from it and take with me.

Dinner for three

Tonight is dinner and bowling with ISE people, so expect yet another blog post pretty soon! Also keep an eye on Chris’ blog for updates about this. And while I’m on it, I have to promote Hannah Bryars’  Olympic Training Journal, including several stories from IC Fencing!

When reading my blog, it seems as if I’m not doing much but cooking and fencing. I guess that’s basically what I do most of the time, when I’m not studying. And guess what, I’ve been cooking again! I had a Swedish friend visiting for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and she told me that she had started to make sushi quite often, that it wasn’t too expensive and actually pretty easy. As a gift from above, our newspaper Felix had an article on how to make your own sushi the next week. I decided to give it a go, and it turned out pretty nice, I have to admit! I had been really lucky, talking to a friend the night before who told me that I wouldn’t find everything on Sainsbury’s, but I could borrow his stuff. Actually making the sushi wasn’t too hard, the great challenge was to roll it tight enough and cut it into pieces. It probably isn’t too hard to learn though.

Now, I’m off to go to the Chinese New Year’s celebration at Trafalgar Square/China Town and then more cooking with friends!