If you still don’t believe me about the level of geekiness, then have a look at that:

This was taken last week during my practical. I had to go to do some flow cytometry in Flowers Building. You might be wondering what’s wrong with the picture? Well, look at the warning at the bottom. What language is it? It’s not Mandarin, not Japanese, not Georgian. It is Klingon - an artificial language from Star Trek. The only people who use it, are people who watch Star Trek obsessively - namely, the geeks. I personally never watched it, and recognized it as Klingon only because I read about it on Wikipedia when I was bored some time ago.

After my discovery, I spent half an hour trying to translate the warning into English, even though it was quite obvious what it meant. Someone here has too much time…

One of the first things you might have heard about Imperial is how geeky it is. It is a stereotype. But it is a true stereotype.

Since I am on my second year, I though I know my friends quite well. But recently, I learned some random things about them. For example, they all played excessive amounts of Pokemon. One of them still does, and has all the episodes of Pokemon TV series. Another friend of mine watched 150 episodes of some anime series in 4 days. I don’t even mention how much computer games all of them play, and how much they talk about that. I’m also pretty sure that most of the guys at Imperial would say that they are not very good with the opposite sex, and it usually has nothing to do with imperial girl to boy ratio. A perfect example of geeks, right? Try calling them geeks then - the answers will always be the same, and you probably have a good idea what I’m talking about.

Now, I am a proud member of IC Wine and Fine Drinks society. I remember that during the first meeting, at the beginning of the tasting somebody complained on how many geeks are at Imperial and how bad that is, of course claiming not to be geeky at all. After a couple glasses wine, the true colours came out. Firstly, people started talking about science, which is perhaps not that surprising. The debate, however, took at least 20 minutes, and some people even took some paper out of nowhere and started to draw explenations of their theories. On the next meeting, which happened quite recently, a very similar thing happened. Talking to people around me, I mentioned that I am currently reading Solaris. Unknowingly to me, my speaker appeared to be a part of the Sci-fi Society committee, and did not hesitate to give me all kind of recommended books and films. What’s even more interesting, 5 other people turned out to be the members of the said society. After all, Imperials sci-fi library is allegedly, the biggest (!) library in Europe dedicated solely to science fiction. Then, I heard them singing the song that appears on end credits Portal - a very geeky computer game. I actually had a song on my mp3 player, so everyone enjoyed the situation even more. Scary stuff, isn’t it?

What I don’t understand, is what’s so wrong with being a geek? I consider myself very geeky, according to the official Geek Test which I took today, I am a ‘Super Geek’, and I fairly certain that many people at Imperial would score much higher than me. I even see plenty of similarities between me and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. After all, what’s wrong with being interested in science? What’s wrong with video games? What’s wrong with coming books? What’s wrong with Star Wars? I could give infinite examples, but they are all similar. Contrary to popular belief, you CAN be a geek and be very sociable, go to normal parties and even drink alcohol. You don’t have to be overweight and stay in your room for 24 hours. Here, just look at the list of sexiest geeks of 2008, you won’t be dissapointed.

Try beating me...

What I want to say, is that the geeks are everywhere, especially at Imperial. Your friends, your lecturers, even yourself. They might not look geeky, they may appear to be as normal as possible and you might think you know them very well. Well, you’re probably wrong. But have no worries. Being a geek is a lot of fun.

Today is undoubtedly the most entertaining day of the year so far. Yes, you guessed correctly, it has something to do with snow. But the fact that we have snow in London is not that fun – it’s the reaction of people that’s priceless.

The beginning of the end?

The whole thing started with my flatmate not coming back after a weekend spent home. He said he is snowed in. I looked through the window, and saw mere 10 centimetres of snow. I asked him again, just to get a confirmation that I heard correctly. Indeed, he could not go back, because the roads are covered in snow and trains stopped operating. When I woke up today, I was therefore prepared to check TfL’s website, and as I expected, there was no way of getting to Imperial from Putney. For a moment, I thought of walking there (a good exercise, even though it’s over 4 miles), but there was no point – all of my lectures were cancelled anyway.

I absolutely don’t have a problem with the situation though. No lectures today, possibly tomorrow as well. I finally have time to send an email I was supposed to send in October and maybe do some work. I also took advantage of the absence of my flatmates and did some karaoke singing. I hope my neighbours weren’t home.

As I already mentioned, I come from Poland – a cold country in the East, where polar bears wander on the city streets. Of course, that is not true, and Poland is not that cold either – weather in summer is usually much better than in UK, and - most importantly - it doesn’t rain that much! That being said, winters are usually colder, and the country very often looks like a winter wonderland. This Christmas for example, we had over 50 cm of snow, and the temperatures reached -30°C. You could expect that the country was totally paralysed. WRONG! Number of cars on the streets was normal. Trains operated normally. Airports were open, and most of the flights had no delays. Okay, I have to agree that people in UK don’t usually have winter tires equipped because they’re usually useless, and people are not experienced enough to drive in these conditions. But what about trains? A railway track is a track, they are mostly similar, and the railway network in Poland is much more extensive than in UK. Closing the airports is another mystery – I’m quite sure that both pilots and the planes can easily handle some snow in the runaway, especially that pilots fly to many places which where snow regularly occurs.

What is funny, is that a terrorist attack could not paralyse a city. Nor can a natural disaster. But some snow can. I have been reading a couple of news stories, both in Poland and UK, and looked at discussion forums. Some people refer to this as a cataclism. I would prefer to call it winter.

Have fun with your snowmen and snowball fights. Do it while you can. I got bored of it 10 years ago