Beginnings

(reading London for Dummies)

Hello!

May this be the first post of many. I apologize for the delay-- I have finally settled in and taken some photos, and offer this humblest of beginnings to what I hope will grow into the journal of one of the most important years of my life.

Things are great here. Settling in was quite a task. I feel like I've been here for ages... it's certainly been a month longer than most. But now, somehow, the subtle transformation has occurred, and Bankside House, Room 533 feels like home. A Columbia undergrad lives a truly nomadic life, and we learn without knowing it how to pull this off... but, nevertheless, the pieces are in place for this to be a truly great year. Here I find myself again, getting acquainted with another immense and exciting city. It's a comfortingly insurmountable task, and one that I will thoroughly enjoy tackling.

I decided to spend my junior year at the London School of Economics for a variety of reasons. The idea of trading a year, or even a semester, of my time at Columbia for "the study abroad experience" (read: being academically idle somewhere beautiful) did not sit well with me or with my undergraduate goals. This became more true as I got interested in the confluences of Economics and Environmental Science, because Columbia is truly a haven for both subjects and their various interactions. When I decided to do the double major, I knew that I didn't have a year or semester to dawdle in Fiji. So, for me, this was a chance to keep my stride intellectually while diving head-first into a new big city, all over again-- for me, I doubt there's anything more exciting than planting myself down all over again, starting from scratch, and seeing what sort of a context I create for myself in the coming 10 months. I came to LSE to explore econ and environmental science from a European angle-- while Columbia is truly among the world's best universities to study things like sustainable development, global warming, and renewable energy, LSE benefits from the fact that it is situated in a city, country, and continent where these concepts are more mainstream and accepted in culture. In this regard, moving to London is like getting in a time machine-- it's not a question of if the USA will start to care about the global environmental degradation it causes, but rather one of when (the "when" will come about when people realize that they either have to trust people like me or assume that they know more about it than I do.) When we do, I imagine that New York will be to America much as London is to Europe: the financial nerve center of a vast, global economic engine, where efforts to make rational and scientific our interaction with the global environment are dreamt up, planned, and executed. It's really exciting in that regard. I also came to LSE because I saw it as a great chance to develop further my knowledge of these concepts by being exposed to alternative schools of thought. Columbia is fully entranced by "The Sachs School" of Sustainable Development, and LSE's Development Studies Institute presents very interesting challenges to Sachs and his conclusions, while still trying to achieve the same goals. hus




At the airport



There are other reasons I came abroad. I don't know if I'm going to stay in New York after graduation, so the idea of leaving for a year and then coming back appealed to me-- this way, I can come back with fresh eyes and with a list of the things that I really missed about the city, and I can enjoy those things thoroughly before leaving. I was attracted to the idea of starting over, all over again, and this time knowing more about starting over. It's just very liberating, the ability to pick up everything and move to another continent for a year, and I know that am less likely to be able to pull that off later in life. I decided there was very little I could do in 3 years at Columbia that I couldn't do in 4, and that the amount of life experience and growth I would achieve by subjecting myself to this shake-up would be far in excess of that which I would have had if I had spent junior year at home. LSE's schedule is very different-- you take 4 courses, which last all year, rather than an American semester-type system, so I'll get to explore some of these topics in depth. LSE additionally gives us a month off for Christmas, and a month off for Easter. This affords me the chance to travel in a way that I've never really done before. I'm currently planning to spend at least one of those months in East Africa with my best friend and roommate, Tim-- we've been dreaming of Cape Town to Cairo for months now. It looks like that's going to be in April, so currently I'm not sure what I'm going to do for Christmas. I've been invited to spend New Years in Greece, and I will probably end up spending a week there which will be delightful. Not sure what to do from December 8th to New Years, however. Might do a sustained stay in Spain, or might work my way from Russia to Greece, or maybe something else. The possibility of doing two sustained trips like that was another part of the reason I came.

So, academics:
I've decided on my class schedule. I'll be taking 3 courses that last all year, and my 4th will be split between a first-term course and a second-term course. In addition to that, I've gotten permission from DESTIN (LSE's DEvelopment STudies INstitute) to sit in on a few other master's level development courses. For those courses, I'll never do the homework and will only do the core reading, so that I can gain exposure to the topics (which I can't really study at CU).

Courses I'm taking:


Full Year:

Development Economics, http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/EC/2006_EC307.htm

International Economics,
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/EC/2006_EC315.htm

Industrial Economics,
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/EC/2006_EC313.htm



First Semester:
Concepts in Environmental Regulation (Masters),
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/GY/2006_GY465.htm

Second Semester:
The Anthropology of Southern Africa,
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/AN/2006_AN235.htm


Courses I am sitting in on (auditing):

Institutions and Development (Both Semesters)

http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/DV/2006_DV413.htm
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/DV/2006_DV415.htm

and Economic Development Policy (Also full year)
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/calendar/courseGuides/DV/2006_DV409.htm


That's my academic plans.

Trip plans: December 8- January 8, and March 16-April 20th or so.

I'd say that that's sufficient for background information. Allow me to take you on a photo tour:

1) My enormous, beautiful room
2) Photos of the walk to campus
3) LSE area

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Bankside House (My dorm):

See those rooms in the corners, with the big bay windows? Wouldn't it be nice to have the highest room with that kind of set up? Why, yes, yes it is


The door to room 533...


Looking into our room. Huge map of London on the right, and there's Tim at the back of the room.


My desk


Tim's desk, with the map of the world behind it


Beds and Dressers-- Map of Europe on my wall



You can't tell from any one photo, but our room is enormous. It's by far the biggest room in the building. People walk in and gasp.


The windows, which face Northwest



The view out the window-- that's the Tate Modern, and the buildings in the distance are across the Thames

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The walk from Bankside House to LSE campus. These photos were taken in the course of the ordinary walk, ie, there were no detours to take them... this is what I actually see every morning.



Step out of the building, looking north...


Head Northwest, towards the river, past these lawns and the Tate Modern




Bankside is only 1 building away from the water, so I hit the Thames within 2 minutes. This is Southwark bridge, which I walk under.



Looking back on the Tate Modern from the same spot.


Between Southwark and Blackfriars Bridge. I really like these columns. Blackfriar's on left, which I cross each morning.



Only eccentric instruments under these bridges-- xylophone and uhadi are featured highly, for some reason. One Reggae artist comes once a week.


Up onto Blackfriar's Bridge, and across.



Looking left, off the bridge, onto the Thames (walking across the bridge is beautiful, takes about 3-4 minutes


Looking right. Skyline includes the Gherkin and St. Pauls



Reach the other side and turn left, and stay on this sidewalk for about 6 minutes, always along the water...


View back at Tate and Bankside from other side of river.


Pass this beautiful garden, called the "Inner Temple" ??



And some really nice greenery and buildings.


Keep along the river until I hit Temple Station, where I hang a right...


...and head up this street to LSE. The building at the end of this street, dead ahead, is part of LSE campus.


The LSE area generally looks like this. Curvy streets, double decker buses, and nice wide sidewalks and trees. Expensive shops, important people.



Lots of statues as well.



And, as a final, sad note, I took this picture only 2 hours later as I was walking back to Bankside:

Weather changes for the worse very quickly here, but doesn't change for the better nearly as fast. At least, it feels that way.

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Images of LSE:
First two things I saw, right when I got to campus? A penguin and Columbia House. They heard I was coming!!


This sits outside the bookshop. I had heard of this statue before I knew LSE's mascot, and excitedly hoped to be a penguin for a year! A google-search and 0.012 seconds later, I was disappointed to find out that I had joined the ranks of the LSE..... Beavers.
The bar in the basement of my dorm (didn't I mention that?) is called the Belching Beaver. Classssssssssssssy



Told you.


LSE's "College Walk"-- Very small campus, because all the dorms are 10-35 minutes away

























Old Building. Some of these buildings have beatiful facades, some are hideous.





















Other main walkway on Campus-- every building in view is a class-building. LSE is centralized like Columbia, but unstandardized like NYU. It's refreshing.


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Views of my neighborhood:

The Globe Theatre, where I saw Antony and Cleopatra. Beautiful weather, fantastic cast. Much more dramatic and compelling than expected, and only 5 pounds for a student ticket. Students here are pitied, and they give us lots of discounts.



The Tate and Millenium Bridge, after a long evening at a bar called "Vodka Island." Good decisions made by everyone. This was, by the way, on Monday.

Defying all detractors, as well as most laws of physics, immediately after this picture was taken, I danced a continuous jig across the Millenium Bridge. Non-stop jig-athon, probably 5 minutes long, all the way across the Thames. There's a good chance I'm the first person who has ever danced a jig all the way across the Thames, despite the presence of bridges for over 1000 years here. If not, I am CERTAINLY the first person who has ever jigged nonstop across the Millenium Bridge. Tell your friends.






Southbank at Dusk-- That's the London Eye




Same beautiful scene, this picture is from Blackfriar's Bridge.

By the way-- when I go running in London, I run along the Thames. Cross one of these bridges and run back along the other side-- in other words, this is my backyard, and this is what I see when I go running. It's really nice.
























The Royal Houses of Justice. Also, I must say, a well-taken photograph.


Posting the photo-tour on here took me 3 hours just now, because of this websites inane design. I won't be doing this again, but will hopefully post other pictures later in an easier form. In any case, this should give you a much better idea of my current reality. Thanks for stopping by.

I'll leave you with some closing thoughts....
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Other notes, or: "Things that I thought you might find amusing"

1) Stoners from Liverpool. One of those great things you just had no idea existed... Really, after hearing a Liverpool accent it should be simply illegal for anyone else, other than Jamaicans, to smoke pot. These guys were born to smoke pot. They sound just like the Beatles, just like the Vultures from the Jungle Book, all the time, with that kind of lyrical, but not sing-song, rise at the end of every phrase: "These chips are really ^good^, mate." They were born to have their hair in their eyes, idle but not bored-- maddeningly clever people, they are. They're a delight.

2) Separate water faucets. Katy Steinmetz, a fellow Springfieldian-turned-Columbian-turned-Brit, has already humorously captured this, but it's true: this is the worst. My bathroom has 2 faucets on the sink. What's that? You want luke-warm water, you say? Nope. You get to choose between molten lava on the left and arctic snowmelt on the right. Really good for, say, washing one's face, or shaving. F-

3) No "door close" button on the elevator. This is annoying, but humorous: in the US, you take for granted the fact that you can press a button that hastily shuts the doors of the elevator. On one hand, I kind of like the fact that there's no option that allows such rude behavior, but on the other hand, I've already wasted at least 10 minutes, cumulatively, waiting for the elevator doors to close after pressing my floor.

4) Drunks here > drunks in NY. At any pub in London, you're guaranteed to find a few guys who you know have been there all day and have no plans to leave. Usually, they have UNBELIEVABLE hats on, big red faces, some sort of limp, and hilariously indecipherable accents. The best? When they're all sitting around the same table.

5) Immigrants with British accents-- yet another thing I didn't really expect, but that makes perfect sense now that I'm here. Especially all these Indian kids who grew up all over the UK. I was invited to a house party last weekend, which I attended. The hostess was a 5'2, 120 pound Indian girl in stilettos.... with an A+ hard-ass, unbelievable Scottish accent. Quite a shock, but really pleasant actually.

6) Peoplewatching on campus-- LSE is a great place to peoplewatch, because you have a great mix of students. There are the nice and categorically witty/cynical Londoners from middle class families, as well as Londoners from more upper-crust beginnings, but that's just the start. Students from every country in Europe are here, as well as many Asian and African countries. A non-negligable amount of the students from developing countries, just like any top-tier school, come from the extremely wealthy creme-de-la-creme stock at home. I'm sure some of them come from immeasurably wealthy families, drug lords, etc... it's like the Mafia "My dad is in the sanitation business" stuff, but exponentially more humorous. I've heard more than one kid from a non-European country say something along the lines of "My dad's a.... an industrialist"

A nice complement to this has been the peoplewatching in those graduate classes that I am auditing, because it is a veritable HAVEN for UECs-- untouchable european countesses-- the mid-twenties fabulous old-stock European contingent, "The Algerians that work in my vineyard are more cultured than you, George Olive," that are studying things like "Post-continental philosophical anthropology of gender roles in 1871..." It's like the extreme form of what any 20 year old guy encounters with the Jewish girls on the upper east side... you aren't even looking at them, and they shoot you a look like "you must be kidding." Fabulous!


I've walked home in the rain a few times, but perhaps the most humorous image of me I can leave you with is a few days ago, walking home in the rain in shorts and my Jesus (Big Lebowski) t-shirt, walking across the Blackfriar's bridge, eating a Banana and listening to Johnny Cash.

Thanks for reading
-George