hello from the land of kings and queens.

Yes. I am in the Great Britain, for a couple of weeks now. Actually, it’s nearing my third week here. Can’t believe time’s moving on so fast.

Before I get all freaked out about the time, I think I should just talk about some other stuff.

Life has been… crazy insane? Well, certainly I’ve been having some experiences I would tell my grandchildren, and some that I would probably not. From the first steps I took outside Heathrow Airport, until now, settled in my warm dorm room in Loughborough… Every day has been a brand new experience.

Sorry for sounding so cheesy, but it’s true. I can never stop being fascinated by every little thing here, like the light. Maybe that’s why nice Tumblr pictures mostly come from this side of the world (Europe, I mean). The light lends radiance to the tiny people of this earth, and makes everything look twice as beautiful.

I spent a big portion of the first few days getting lost in the city of London. Honestly, London is what every nation’s capital should aspire to be (well, in my humble opinion). It’s not only buzzing with life and commerce, but it’s also bursting with culture. Granted, London has had hundreds of years of experience, but you can never deny that this city has a certain charisma that can never be duplicated anywhere else.

Talk about charisma, I’ve been looking out for that Jamie Oliver sort of charm from the folks in here, but to be honest I have not seen much of it. Perhaps I haven’t had the chance to really indulge in the locals, since I’m always surrounded by my very Asian classmates, but we’ve seriously had plenty of racist encounters here. No one got hurt or anything, and it was never anything dangerous, but in this day and age, I’m surprised some ignorant blokes would still call out “YOOO CHINAAAAA!” to you in a pub. We are totally embracing our Asian-ness, though. I even was baptized with my new Asian name by my good mates, “Hu Flung Dung”. Now if that ain’t charming I don’t know what is.

Living in the dorm also comes with a thousand kinds of perks. The super ultra thin walls don’t help either—you can prolly hear your next door neighbour breathing. Wait, okay, that was an exaggeration, but that is not far from the truth. You can hear everything, so you are always alert, and it makes you always curious about what your friends are up to (or at least I am—curiosity would probably kill me before it kills the cat). And even though we live within a 5 meter radius of one another, we’ve been skyping each other every other night. This is totally not helping to get any work done!

Oh, and have I mentioned the boys dressed in red velvet jumpsuits running around the dorm rooms? No. Maybe another time. My self-diagnosed-ADHD is making me jumpy. I gotta find something else to do.