Christmas has come and gone, and we all know that it is a time better spent with family, whether you celebrate or not. I nearly didn’t make it, although my journey home was probably not as eventful as Maciej’s.

I live in Brussels. Normally I come home by the Eurostar; it’s great because there is no hassle of having to take off one’s shoes before boarding. Door-to-door it takes me 3.5 hours. Despite all this, I feel fortunate that I didn’t book the train this time, or else I’d be spending the holidays stuck in the Eurotunnel complaining (and suffocating).

So my father recommended I go by aeroplane. Many american carriers have started this new flight path from London to Brussels (coming from the States), and they are actually quite a good price. My American Airlines flight was in the morning on the Saturday which meant I had to wake up earlier than I did on school days.

I am normally a morning person, and 5.45 am is no alien time to me (yes, I’m strange like that).

So can someone please explain why I did what I did next.

I needed to take the first tube of the day to Heathrow, via the Piccadilly line. I took it in the opposite direction. I think something in me was so used to going to King’s Cross (and that general area). By the time I realised my mistake I was at Leicester Square… I didn’t think I’d make my flight on time, and that would have sucked.

I made it just in time, at which I naively thought ‘Hey, maybe this day won’t be so bad after all’. That was before they refused to let me board. I am spoiled enough to travel in Europe solely on my ID card, and as I understand, it is an EU law that I am allowed to do so. Both London and Brussels are in the EU the last time I checked and my ID card is valid. American Airlines believed themselves above this law and required I had a passport. So I was waiting in the queue to lodge my complaint and ask for a refund when a man in front of me collapsed.

I don’t know why; perhaps it was a stroke or a heart attack, but immediately someone well-versed in first aid came to the rescue. I felt so helpless – I mean, a man was dying and all I could do was try not to stare. The AA staff were officiously trying to help out, probably worsening the situation. I daresay they were happy with any excuse to not have to deal with my issue.

I couldn’t do much so I went home to get my passport. At least there would be another flight the next day. Although another tip from my father suggested that there was a flight by United Airlines (another american carrier) that very afternoon. I took it, this time with my passport. When I arrived in Brussels I was surprised to see 10 cm of snow…! I shouldn’t have been though.

I decided to formally complain to the AA people via e-mail. I mean, they made me waste a plane ticket and 8.5 hours of my very precious holiday! All because I had an ID card instead of a passport… I was sure that they would write back with a very polite letter claiming that they have their ‘policies’ and they wouldn’t refund me. I was all ready to rage (sort of). So imagine how I felt when their immigrations officer replied with an apology, a refund and 5000 bonus miles credited to my account! Yes, I was annoyed but intensely relieved as well. The moral of the story is: EU ID cards rule! But don’t forget to carry your passport just in case.

The only conclusion I can draw from this whole incident is that the AA immigrations officer was replaced by Santa Claus. It’s the only plausible explanation.

I used to think I could predict the weather without taking a step outside. Why do you think this is?

1) I watch the news every morning.

2) I look outside the window every morning.

3) If it’s going to rain I start whizzing around my room like a goldfish in a bowl (or is that for earthquakes?).

4) If I’ve washed my hair that morning I know it’s going to rain.

5) Google Homepage

The answer is 4). At least, it used to be. Any morning I washed my hair, I could guarantee it would rain the same day and mess everything up.

That was true until yesterday.

Yesterday it snowed.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Apart from that, on Monday I went to Simon Singh’s lecture about Science and the battle for Free Speech. More about this in a few days, but the gist was that one could pay up to £140 million to express one’s views in London…illuminating stuff indeed.

And it’s not just engineering design - even solving equations requires imagination. Sounds crazy right? But imagine if you were solving a partial differential equation and you were stuck on what to do once you inserted the boundary conditions. You can’t get to the next step without thinking outside the box (or unless someone tells you the answer).

 Well I’ll keep trying to improve my imagination and creativity. Man, I’m beginning to sound like Einstein…

 But back to the more pressing issue – which one is me ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!

This has been an interesting week. I want it to end, and at the same time I want it to continue forever…(kinda like quantum mechanics).

Firstly, I was ecstatic to be selected at the university level for the exchange to California! So much is going to change next year, and I am really looking forward to it. Summer is going to be hectic in a good way. My summer holiday will also get ruthlessly cut as term begins end-August…

The euphoria died down when I realized that by the day after I had to prepare an inspirational speech for the Engineering Impact lecture.

This month’s EI lecture focused on student-led engineering projects. Imperial strongly encourages these projects through the EnVision department, who are really supportive and always keen to help. They asked if I wanted to talk to the first years on behalf on Women in SET, describing our activities and so on. I took the chance – when else can someone like me talk in front of hundreds of students? And besides, people like Jonathon Porrit and Lord Darzi have given these lectures in the past. This would also be the ideal way to find out how a lecturer feels! I had the task of making the presentation enthusiastic, inspirational and full of energy – the last thing I wanted was my audience to fall asleep, or even worse, whisper. I hope I managed that.

Although I did do something pretty embarrassing.

I was describing the disparity in numbers between girls and boys doing engineering. I then went on to say “This difference is a huge problem, one that concerns everyone, the guys as well”.

For some reason everyone starts laughing at this – you know the annoying way that guys giggle at the stupidest things? I was a little unnerved by this, still I persevered, proclaiming, “But it’s true!”

Only after it was over Alison (tutor for student-led projects) told me what had happened. Apparently the whole room had twisted my noble words, thinking I had meant that there weren’t enough girls for the guys… That made me giggle afterwards too, especially considering how serious my tone had been while saying that!

Then I went home and had ready-made microwavable pasta

The next day I went into uni and checked my outlook as usual. A strange e-mail entitled ‘A Winrar is You’ was lurking in my inbox. Initially I thought it was spam, but it turned out I had won a copy of Dragon Age: Origins! Yeah, that does sound like junk mail right? But I actually did remember entering that cometition – it was run by Felix. Even funnier was that the answer to the MCQ was written in the same paragraph (i.e. “The answer is B”). I have read some rave reviews about the game, so I’m looking forward to it. But first I will have to procure an Xbox 360…

On the weekend a good friend of mine came over from Warwick. We have known each other since the days I used to snatch building blocks from her chubby little fingers, so I was really happy to see her again. I showed her around London – where else to go than Trocadero? – and we met an interesting person.

He's a big soft toy

He snuck up from behind us quite slowly, but that was probably because of his/her huge head. Still, it shocked me and I let out a half-scream-half-’eee’. Nupura called it a ‘squeem’. The mascot then stopped slowly and lowered his hands – I could tell that inside the person had a dejected, sad face. I couldn’t see the person’s expression and yet I had felt really really bad about hurting his/her feelings. That’s why I asked the mascot to take a picture with us.

After that it was straight back to Racing Green and the Literature Research Project. LRP is basically a 30 paged essay we have to write in Mech Eng. More about all that later, but basically I just wish the holidays were here…