So has yet another term reached its end and another holiday is here (or, holiday on paper, revision in reality [for most of us]). I’m heading back to Sweden and have just spent the evening finishing my packing and tidying up my room. I dare say it has never been this tidy, not even the first day when I more or less came, dumped my bag and eventually just let everything explode everywhere. The room seems much larger, not too surprisingly.

Sport Imperial's cake to the fencing teams

Anyhow, Sweden. I’ll be there for two weeks, and I have to admit that it feels slightly strange. Not the length, rather the going back phenomenon. I look forward to it, and there isn’t too much happening here atm, but there’s still something that confuses me. Already last term did I find it a bit foreign going back, as if returning to a dream world, and this time the feeling is even stronger. The fact that I’m going from one home to another plays a big role, not knowing which I rate higher that the other. It’s also much colder. I’ve spent quite a lot of the past week, once the last assignments were submitted, enjoying the sun. To my great surprise I’ve even managed to get  a hint of a tan. I was considering to bring the weather with me in a jar, but gave up that idea. I’ll just have to become Swedish again (and also have a good reason to bring all my winter stuff back).

As mentioned in earlier post, the fencing teams took two golds during the BUCS finals, collecting in total 100 BUCS points for Imperial (about 1/5 of all IC points). This made Sport Imperial very happy and also very proud, so they decided to host a small party for us, where we got to meet the Rector and had some cake and champers. It was slightly surreal, but also very cool standing there. Head of Sport Imperial, Neil Mosely, had a small speech before we all started enjoying the massive cake and took yet another team photo.

ICFC W1st, M1st, coaches, IC's Rector and Sport Imperial's mascot

That was on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon I had submitted my last piece of course work and celebrated by walking to Hammersmith and bake chocolate cakes together with Richard, Olivier and Chris. I had got slightly surprised the night before when they told me about it, but it was definitely a great way to spend the afternoon. While waiting for the cake to bake in the oven we sat down and played Call of Duty, which I was pretty rubbish on but no one really cared. Overall, it has been a pretty good end of term though partly very intense (mostly due to fencing trips).

Finally they got to eat the cakes!

I will try to give you some type of update from Sweden, without ranting about how much I miss London’s spring weather

Also, if you just can’t get enough of Imperial Fencing:

Sport Imperial’s article

Hannah’s blog post

The article I wrote for Felix

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!

Thursday evening. I’ve gone through some work, cooked a little and been food shopping so I’ll survive the weekend. There’s another BUCS competition coming up, at Ethos. I’m only fencing on Sunday, but will go there on Saturday as well to support our teams. Feel free to come and join! We’ve been doing really good so far (4/4 victories for both Men’s and Women’s 1st teams) and we’re planning on continuing the same road.

So, competition preparation? The obvious: repairing my equipment. I’m one weapon down, which is very bad but otherwise everything is fine. Having spent some time in the labs on Wednesday to check my body wires I met up with Richard again to wander through the rest of Natural History Museum. It is pretty massive, and their interactive stuff are quite interesting sometimes.

Wednesday isn’t over yet. Since we’ve only got lecture/labs/study groups until 12, to allow sports and societies to have their trainings and meetings, I’ve got loads of time in the afternoon (my fencing is Mondays and Fridays). I’d decided to meet up with two guys from my course and cook dinner together. We met up to buy the food before walking to Willis Jackson and start the actual cooking. I had a recipe of a ratatouille my friend had cooked when I was in Sweden, and since it was straightforward and vegetarian it made a simple choice. As soon as everything was unpacked, and cutting boards and knives were placed on the tables the guys started asking for something to do. Lorenz happily took the task to chop all the vegetables while René positioned himself by the cooker to stir in the frying pan, and I ran around wondering what on earth I was going to do next. We managed to sort everything out without any fire alarms going off, and sat down.

Ratatouille and potatoes (that were supposed to be turned into croquettes, but we didn’t have the time so they ended up being just mashed potatoes) was a success. Happy and content we took the apfelstrudel out of the oven, filling every corner of out stomachs. It’s been ages since I had this much food in one go last time. Letting the metabolism do its work, we sat around and chatted for a while, Cat and Misja joined us and we more or less occupied half of the kitchen.

So, I’ve got my fencing competition this weekend. I would have liked to convince people in halls to come and support us, but there’s a trip to Amsterdam organized so quite a few will be gone. My room mate is still here though. She’ll be performing at East Meets West, which I’d love to see but it partly clashes with the fencing. Even though neither of us will spend much time in the room, we’ve got so used to having the each other around that it feels weird when one of us is gone.

I should try to get some sleep before heading to the gym before lectures tomorrow. If you’re an Imperial Student, or happen to have access to Ethos, come and support us this weekend!