Hello freshers. And non-freshers. I am officially back.

Wow, it’s been a while. What have I been doing, you might ask?

Well, my holiday was of variable quality. For the first month, I participated in UROP. That is a pretty cool thing for all new students, as it allows you to do some research during your holiday. Of course, you might do that in your labs or practicals anyway, but a) you will definitely not get paid for this (and it’s possible to get a bursary for UROP), and b) you have no chance of publishing a scientific paper. So I worked on something in the Biomedical Engineering department (a.k.a. The Pink Cube), and it was pretty interesting.

Secondly, I went to a place I wanted to visit for a long time - Hong Kong. It was my first trip to Asia, and hopefully, not the last.
Then I briefly came back to London, with my main intention to move to a new place. I succeeded in doing this. The little downside is that my new, um, apartment is of a size of the bathroom in my house. But hey, at least it’s practically on campus

Lastly, I went back to the home country of Poland. Nothing special there - life as usual. Except I did some hiking in the nice Czech mountains. I returned to London last week - after a bit of an argument with Ryanair and Wrocław Airport staff (come on, my luggage was only 4 kg overweight ;)).

So here I am. Sitting in my second home - the library (I still have no internet at my flat - and none of my neighbours uses unsecured wi-fi), trying to think what to do. My current ‘to-do’ list has 12 items, hopefully, will be done very soon

My office/home... Soon yours, too.

From now on, expect frequent posts. If you have any ideas what should I write about - please contact me. Also, a reminder - follow me on Twitter - maybe that will make me twit a little bit more.

And remember - if you want some Magic in your life, read my blog

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