Its six pm on Sunday and I’ve just woken up. Slowly, I drag myself out of bed and put the kettle on. At this very moment, silence is truly golden, the emptiness of the house cherished. I haven’t been here in over a five days, staying over at my numerous second homes instead. That’s what happens in London- too vast to go out somewhere and return home in one piece, you end up building a network of crash-cribs.  But my web will soon disintegrate. The purpose of my five-night carousal was one big farewell fiesta to all these places: my hosts have just graduated.  They’re bidding goodbye to the good old student times, and moving on. First to their parents and then to the future.  Many conveniently regard the economic meltdown as a cue for travelling; who doesn’t like the idea of a holiday while the world works to get back on its feet? Others have skipped the travelling and gone straight to work- only further from London than expected. Now I have beds in Germany, France, Holland, Greece, the Czech Republic…

And there is the second set of mates, who graduated with me last year. Uninspired, we chose to remain students.  The scientists took law conversions, PhD programmes, internships in exotic lands or timeout for masters applications.  In the meantime I am finishing mine. This Friday I have to face the working world and I typically haven’t given it much thought.  So I’ll be unoriginal- I’ll celebrate, I’ll say goodbye, I’ll travel, I’ll go home (to the parents), and only after some weeks will I consider searching for serious jobs. But I don’t expect my Sunday sleeping habits to change.

From having had virtually nothing to say about uni it seems I have now approached the other extremity. A whole hoard of experiences accumulated and now there are too many to impart in a single lesson. Suffice to say that the hard work prevented me from visiting the union (except for when Liverpool played, of course) and hindered my ability to free gossip from the traps of beer-loosened lips. My occupation was rather unconventional. There were the odd essays, certainly. But the black-holes of time were a radio package and a documentary.

London is not London without its iconic red buses. As of this year, these red buses have become icons for another article altogether: the battle between religion and the unbelievers. This time through advertisements. There probably is no God, There definitely is, There definitely is not, There probably is… It’s an argument with no agreement, yet they all agree in one respect- to stop worrying and enjoy life. This seems like a futile effort given that the British are a worrisome lot, but then again London is not England. It could easily be the second largest city Greece, Bangladesh, India, Colombia, Russia, and any country connected to the Eurostar. Returning to radio, I chose my project to focus on the Atheist bus campaign. This meant having to trudge around Victoria station interviewing born-again Christian bus drivers, fundamental atheists and liberal spokesmen of the Church of England. They could have made my work more simple. How was I going to reduce two hours of conflicting conversations into a coherent 7 minute show? By making it even less understandable…obviously. I enjoyed the hours poured into these precious seconds of experimental radio, but a side of me does pity my teacher who must now grade a concoction of simultaneous natter, sounds and music as objectively as he can.

If you’re planning to get into producing media, you’d better be prepared to sacrifice your sight. You will blind yourself prematurely. Staring at sound-waves for days on end makes you see things differently, quite literally. Ironically, its not the radio material that makes one sound like a broken record, but the documentary. By the end of editing, you should be able to quote everyone and everything and laugh at the jokes no-one finds funny. It’s a sad and endearing thing to see, let alone experience. I did so repeatedly. We began filming back in January and have only just finished. That’s a lot of time, but then again we produced 20 minutes when we were only asked for 10. It was a risky move- for we either doubled the pleasure or tripled the torture (I find that the agony of boredom accelerates at a higher speed than joy). If, however, the latter is the case, we can at least rely on our subject matter to relieve some of the stress. One can fantasize over the fat-full morsels on display. Brick Lane Beigel Bakery was our chosen topic and it delights the eye with donuts, strudels and cheesecakes; though the salt-beef beigel is the star attraction. Incidentally, a friend once told me that cows are sacred, but too tasty to matter. I thoroughly agree, but I would add pork to the category. You see I may lack spiritual faith but I worship food most faithfully. Bagel Bake is a microcosm of multicultural society. It also manages to integrate the many men who went bonkers and stayed in their hallucinogenic trips down Brick Lane.

The project was wonderful to make, despite the fact that with two Mexicans and a Sardinian it was a highly embellished affair. Thankfully we relied on our English counterpart to bring us back down to earth. Now that I don’t sit next to them 7 hours a day, I have begun to miss their presence. But I find solace in the fact that we will all be re-united tomorrow in celebration, at the union of course.

Me and me mate up at dawn sliding along the slippery, snowy road

It rarely snows in London. Personally, I have only witnessed three white days here. But when it does, it’s a holiday. An excuse for people to skip work and go play in the park. Even the bus drivers celebrate. At least they must do, because when it snows, only three lines operate. Some of their colleagues in the underground probably deem this unfair, and decide to join their party, for the tube slows down too. You cannot travel anywhere. The Circle line is closed, the District line is closed, the Hammersmith is closed…and half of the other lines too. Oh. And they arrive at 30 minute intervals. The only guy who didn’t think snow meant bunking off the day is obviously a workaholic who had to be American. No Englishman (or Frenchman, we are after all, living in one of the largest French cities) would have bothered. This American is nevertheless a living London landmark, and is easily spotted at Victoria station. His accent is incongruous. Not that you don’t hear Americans in the street, they just don’t ask you to ‘mind the gap’, and certainly not in city’s French territory. Walking is not an alternative. You’ll just slip. Like I did. A lot of times. As a result, my bum was blackened with bruises. Trust me, you don’t want to take that risk.

2am fights are great for fun and colds

I understand that many of you will love to go out and harass the poor defenceless bicyclists with rounds of snowballs. Maybe you even turn these missiles towards your friends. If you’re really keen, you were already doing this at 2am. I bet you felt a cold coming in the morning… right? Well guess what- when you go to Boots, you’ll find it closed. Because even though you can see all of the staff inside- apparently they can only open when a qualified pharmacist is present (who is surely at the park). Still, it seems an excessive measure to take, bearing in mind that I can get Lemsip across the road at TESCO’s. But rules are rules.

What I do like is seeing people fall. And having a justified reason to wear pyjamas. Or when you do go to the park, and roll life-sized snow stones and carve rabbits that look like they’ve popped out of Alice and Wonderland. But the best bit is that you make friends with strangers, adult cynics sport around together and actually enjoy talking to people they would scorn on any other day. Most of them end up buying each other drinks at the nearest pub with a fire.

eery snowrabbit carvings

Still, snow makes me grumpy, given the choice I would have rather bathed in the sun.

Reality TV doesn’t get any better than this. I could not peel my eyes away from the 360 take on America’s new president. From fashion decisions to star-studded balls and sly slanders directed at Bush, I barely moved from the screen. But I had to. I had another appointment: and I’m not ashamed to say that I was equally excited by the prospect of my Twilight ticket.

Yes. Twilight. The best teenage trash I’ve seen in a long time. It’s cheesy enough to laugh at its almost burlesque nature (which gives it a comic value) and squirm with joy at the uncompromising beauty of…eh… forgot his name…the leading guy anyway. I obviously paid little attention to the actual narrative, I simply gawped at and drooled over the hottest vampire I have ever seen. But my crush on a creature is probably of no interest to you. A far more useful discovery is that CineWorld costs £5.60 for students, wonderfully cheap by Londonian standards. I went to the one in the Trocadero mall. This is a three-story tourist-trap near Piccadilly circus. It’s loud, it’s cheap, it’s got a sports bar and an arcade. But before you decide to never visit it, note that it’s got House of Dead. Last weekend I gladly spent an hour there invalidating my previous intellectual effort of admiring the beautifully shot Hunger at the Prince Charles cinema (the cheapest venue I know of- £1.50 if you’re a member!). My post-Hunger depression was cured after killing zombies and not being the last in Mario Karts for the first time ever. In fact I think my age regressed after the games. Selena and me remembered our witchcraft skills and convinced Roger McGough to cast a spell with us. We wrote a verse and everything. Humming and Haaaing we asked the mother ghost to help someone’s girth to rise higher. After a couple of days and a lot of giggles, we found out, to our amazement, that the world of spirits was still willing to hear us. So for all you sexually frustrated readers out there- get out your pots and pans, frogs legs and fish eyes, close the circle and pray to the full moon.

After gagging over the physique of my pale-skinned fiend, I delighted in transferring my appreciation to a different (and darker) kind of actor altogether. And this time it wasn’t all superficial- I treasured his intellect. Viva BHO!! Did you get shivers during his speech? So epic and over-the-top! Hope! HOOOPE! You have to give it to the Americans. They say hope with fervor. Hope for them actually means something, you hope for a better tomorrow, hope for improvement, hope for things to happen. As opposed to the British who hope that things won’t materialize…like rain. Less than a week in office and there is already much to thank him for. Not only because we can finally say goodbye to Bush. For three days the newspapers have been exceptionally captivating. I’m a Guardian reader (yes, Bloomsbury pretentiousness I’m afraid) and have refused to even hold a Metro in my four years here. Oh but ‘change’ made me change my mind… temporarily. Attracted by hopeful headlines I gingerly picked the tattered paper and ended up sharing a good chuckle with neighbouring tube readers. Apparently, the tradition asks that the out-going president leaves a note for the incoming one. We’re not allowed to know what it says (state secret I guess); but a psychic Metro journalist broke into Dubya’s brain (shouldn’t be too difficult I presume) and reproduced it for the benefit of London’s travelling millions:

P.S. The novelty of vampires and black presidents have worn off and so I have now moved on to gay activists of the 70s (i.e. James Franco)

I suppose I must explain my ‘deeply superficial’ description. It’s quite simple really. I love gossip. Not London Lite’s latest whining on the Moss/Winehouse scandals. Whatever happened to the classic star system and worshipping the celestial ground on which they stood? When did we begin to libel their fun on Friday nights? We would have never defamed the Grecian Gods; which our modern-day celebrities are simply replacing.

RBD ('rebel') super-hit teenage soap-opera cast. I know of no 17 year old mexican dressing like that- mind you girls, partying in central London do, though i have no idea how they take the cold.

No. I’m a lover of the common people’s drama. I guess it’s a legacy of my Mexican upbringing. My parents tried their best to prevent me from absorbing this culture, but what was I to do? There is nothing else on TV. The channels all tailor telenovelas to all ages: at 2pm is the kid’s version, and is always church oriented (which for some reason always had a ridiculously hot priest). At 7pm there is the teenage sing-along, whose entire cast look like plastic californian dolls who wear ridiculously short skirts- how they’re supposed to represent the Mexican youth remains a mystery to me. Oh and there are also those that cater for the bored housewives, while they wait for the husbands that cheat on them.

But I’m digressing- I love gossip and I hear loads of it. So I’ll probably let the cat out of the bag at some point. However, to maintain the anonymity of my beloved personas they will be referred to by pseudonyms. More specifically I’ll use the name of poets: Blake, Larkin, Yeats, Elliott – who famously divulged with the vision of poetic authority that “Life is very long”. He was 37. He hadn’t even lived half of his life yet. (This is by the way courtesy of August: Osage County on at the National Theatre, a play which I thoroughly recommend. It is laden with jokes which lighten the heavy theme of family relations). Anyhow. Poets. Alternatives are Shakespeare and Wilde; in which case I might as well add characters because I’d rather use Dorian Gray as a substitute name. But that seems unfair to musicians and actors, so add them to the list of options. Oh but hang on, one of my best personages is Selena-like (from Underworld) and she’s from a video game. Let’s just generalise it into ‘personalities’: fictional and real. Selena is a sexy (obviously) vixen who has been dating…David Hasselhoff (I’m basing this on his body)… despite this, something is not working. When they get jiggy-wiggy his jimmy wont sprout if you know what i mean… oops I think I just said too much.  I’d better end this post.

By the way, if you hadn’t yet noticed- my mind wanders, but don’t worry, it never ambles further than I want it to.

I don’t pray to God, though I do practice my own little ritual every night. I’m committed to an idea, and it all began with a pledge. A pledge I made when I first came to London three years ago and embarked on an undergraduate course. I was to study the human genetics at England’s “Godless University”, UCL. Little did I know then that I would learn less about the material of life than life itself. Fast-forward heartbreaks, triumphs, meltdowns and laughter (all accompanied by a severe lack of sleep) I’ve still managed to stick to it. Despite being warned that ‘it gets harder with time’, I’ve found it remarkably easy to remain faithful. I’m loyal to the promise that I can never end a day without being able to name something new that I’d done (or heard). It doesn’t have to be life-changing, it can take the form of a useless fact- so long as it adds to the experience of learning. Take yesterday’s example: cats are lactose intolerant. People even purchase (and consume) their milk because it is lactose-free! But at the moment cat-facts are one of the many enumerations accumulating in my bed-night list. I probably gathered enough these last 7 days to last me the entire year. And who would have thought it would be thanks to repeating an event? That’s because my two Freshers weeks have nothing in common: except for feeling lost, being late, and going with the flow.

If we take Sunday as the inaugurating day- things went by fairly quiet. Not that it wasn’t exciting- its not everyday you get to meet two Nobel laureates of literature. I’m a steward at the Shakespeare globe and though the season ended- they decided to make an exceptional opening for the world premiere of ‘A Burial at Thebes’. Written by Seamus Heaney, staged by Derek Walcott and composed by Le Gendre, it was a promising opera. But despite an attempt to spice things up with a Caribbean setting, a voodoo dancer and a rapping king, the evening didn’t rise above the mundane. The poor tourists endured the boredom ninety minutes, but a Shakespearean audience would have probably thrown tomatoes.

But if Sunday lacked excitement, Monday was overcharged. Intellectually, its all new, interesting, and also baffling. You see, to be trained a scientist doesn’t train you to be a humanities student. So although I love discussing ideas in class- I’m still trying to get my head round what the teachers want. Nevertheless, getting Simon Singh (the guy who wrote ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’) as your first seminar guest is promising for the course. His advice was helpful, but the gossip-girl in me couldn’t help wanting to hear about his recent lawsuit instead. Finally, class in the classroom ended at 6… to be transferred to the union. After six hours of pints and curry I was ten friends the richer and happy to hug my bed.

Now I don’t have a lot of lecture days, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t much to do. I mean, one’s got to sleep for the first half of the day- which means I then have to complete my tasks twice as fast. It doesn’t help if you’ve scheduled a visit to the registry. Whoever hasn’t yet paid them a call should- if not for the sake of us who know everyone’s name in the queue- then for acquiring a great ice-breaker for their next Freshers party.

Its now Saturday, and after meeting all these new fabulous (and some not so fabulous) people, experiencing all these new activities, and learning loads of useless trivia- I think its only healthy to not forget the former, to still revere and love it, and so I’m off to a get-together of my old uni friends.