London Baby!

Hello everyone! I am alive, in case you are wondering. Where have I been? I've been to London to visit the Queen. Well, not really but I did see a glimpse of the Queen in all her glory walking from her car to the Parliament house wearing a gorgeous yellow gown. I still can't believe it. The last ten days were clearly the best days of my life so far, except for the day when I visited the Taj Mahal. I'd love to tell you all about it, but it's so long, so I'll do three different posts about the people I met, the places I went to, and how I felt about it all. Here in a nutshell, lemme tell you about the trip.

Remember me going to Youth Leadership Program (YLP) last year? well, we wrote this essay and nine of us got selected for a study tour of ten days to LONDON! We went around to different places of importance to democracy and learned about issues that we as youth need to be concerned about. We met with lots of different and very passionate people who does great work and all of them are inspirations to become better and to be the change. We met organizations, saw their work. We went to fun places like the London Eye, and me being the HP fan, I had to nag Naafi (who BTW is amazing. She is one of the people who works for an NGO here called Democracy House which works for Democracy and participates youth in its work.) several times to take us to Kings Cross to see Platform 9 3/4 and finally on the second to last night of our stay, we managed to get our chaperon Alex to take us there. IT WAS MAGICAL. I could finally say that I've been dreaming of that moment for my entire life and mean it. It was not what I expected, but yeah; a lot of people did tell me to lower my expectations. Anyhow, it was worth going and I would have regretted if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

So now that we're back, we've learnt a lot from the people we met, and from UK in general with the nice and polite people with their good discipline and friendliness. We now hope to build a platform for the youth to create something that would give back to the community, both at separate individual level and at a group level.

For now, I must get back to my life, which is calling me with an exam in about 2 hours and an assignment due in two days time. I also have a bad case of cold and I think I left my voice in London, cos it's not there. ha! I hope you guys had an amazing time as well.

ALSO Blitzy (my laptop, who's battery died last month) is back on track with a new battery and is doing splendid.

PS I also finally developed a BRITISH ACCENT! How does it feel? Brilliant!

And life goes on

Apart from being too excited about the UK trip (we will be staying quite near to Kings Cross, and even if they don't allow us, WE ARE GOING TO SNEAK OUT AND GO TO KINGS CROSS STATION TO PLATFORM 9 3/4 EVEN IF WE HAVE TO WALK ALL THE WAY! That would be the most magical thing ever.

image credits

Classes are pretty boring, but now that Sir S, my favorite teacher is back it's getting better. It's sad that he won't be there next semester so I can't choose him as my supervisor. My classmates are so fun these days, I am so gonna miss all this next year. On Friday, I went to Kuda Bandos on a  FMC Student Association trip, since this is my last year I wanted to participate and it actually went better than expected. Mostly I missed YLP and the trip to Kuda Bandos through it, but the feeling you get when you are at sea and looking at the clouds is pure bliss! I should go moodh-ing more often, preferably at night, so I can stargaze while floating. 

I also went to the Novelty book fair with the Galhees and Nawaf, which was too crowded in the evening. SERIOUSLY, NEVER GO IN THE EVENING UNLESS YOU WANT TO SUFFOCATE AND DIE. So we near the beach and talked and talked. I love these people! Later, we went it at around 7 30-ish and the crowd was gone. The collections are pretty nice this time, and the special offer table was my favorite. Hisherm scored THREE poetry books, two of which I found (super regret giving him the one by Aditya, it was so beautiful!), and I scored pretty pretty sketch books for designing and a great book of selected poems for just 5 bucks! Total bargain. ^^

image credits

This week is going to be hectic, since I have an exam and an assignment due on the week that I come back, so I won't have time to study thus I have to study this week, and have a LOT of people to meet with, and lots of shopping to do. The only thing bothering me is HOW THE HELL I AM GOING TO SURVIVE IN THE FREEZING COLD. I can't even tolerate 20C so I can't imagine how I would do in 13-8C. 

I hope you had an amazing weekend dear readers.