On Tuesday 23 November, I started my day with posting some reactions on the Talk of Tomorrow website. In the afternoon, I went to the Understanding Strategic Management module. Every week, I got on the bus with my Chinese flatmate and another friend would get onto the bus at the third stop. During the lectures, we always sat together and my friend often gave me her iPad to play with. However, we did not use it to play games like the other students, who took for example their laptops to the lecture (I saw this happening a lot). No, we accessed the internet and looked for the slides on Blackboard. Unfortunately, my skills are not sophisticated enough to actually download these and open them with Excel. Of course, we sometimes played Angry Birds after the lectures unless we had to discuss strategic planning during the tutorial. In contrast to my expectations, most students did not ask any questions after the group presentations and I was usually the only one who attempted to ‘put the fire at their shins’.
The next day started with a lecture at 9:00 and at 11:30 I got onto the bus to the School of Management. I always enjoy the tutorials in Resource Planning, where I made two friends with sufficient mathematical knowledge to finish the coursework in a mere twenty minutes (what is supposed to be a one-hour assignment). Although I call them friends, I could not remember their names until they added me on Facebook near the end of the first semester. Indeed, I started to notice that it is impossible to know everybody’s name and with over seventy international friends on Facebook already, I realised that I would have to spend more time with those people who I would like to know better. I mainly enjoyed talking to people with very different backgrounds and who are able to tell me true stories about their culture. It happens quite often that people claim that their country is corrupted, has the best parties, and/or does not benefit from the EU, but if you ask further questions it turns out that they have but little knowledge about what is actually going on. In the evening, I had a drink with my flatmates and my Chinese friend taught me how to cook noodles in Chinese style. He put in many ingredients, including egg, ham, cabbage and crab. A great dish and I even drank the water in which we boiled everything (“the soup”).
A Dutch friend had invited me for a charity dinner held on Thursday at Bradford football stadium. I paid twenty pounds for a two-course dinner with pork and a dessert. Luckily, I got the opportunity to talk to a member of the committee and asked her why we had to pay twenty pounds for such a cheap dinner: “It must be a very good charity organisation.” It turned out that she did not inform herself about this very well and as I am always very careful with the money I donate to charity, this was really disappointing. Nevertheless, the evening continued with a fun casino and I had a try at the blackjack table. The atmosphere was great, but the staff did not know all the rules and was easily confused if something unexpected happened. Hence, one of the students offered to take over the role of dealer, which worked out quite well (especially for one of my friends, who won a lot of tokens after this switch). All in all, the evening could have been better, but it was a nice way to spend my time with the people I would not speak to regularly. I even promised a guy to help him with the bothersome statistics if he would set up his own company.
After my lectures on Friday, I went to Student Central at 17:00 in order to meet with my Chinese friend for a very special meeting. She was going to set up a Chinese society and invited most of her friends (all Chinese, except for me) to elect a president, treasurer and secretary and make the first arrangements for the next months. Unfortunately, and this was really sad, there were only ten students in the room when I arrived. We waited for another fifteen minutes, but only two other students showed up and my friend decided to postpone the meeting so she could invite more people. Personally, I would have argued that those, who were not present, were probably not interested in such a society, so why bother about inviting them? On the other hand, ten Chinese students meant only a one-digit percentage of them who showed up, so it was perhaps the fairest decision to postpone the meeting. In the evening, I cooked dinner for two friends from Portugal and surprised them with my BP dish: beans and potatoes. Thereafter, we cooked the Portuguese fried sugar balls (Bolinho de Chuva), which I enjoyed so much during the international dinner. We knew that my flatmate went to the main building on campus to play the piano, so we brought him some of the fried balls and in return he gave us the most beautiful live piano concert I have ever heard. When I got home, I worked on my exchange report for Nekst, the magazine of my study association Asset | Econometrics.
On Saturday 27 November, I made a trip to Manchester with a few Chinese friends. Although they were talking Chinese with each other most of the time, we did some great sightseeing. We visited a church, the town hall, and one of the many museums. However, my friends had a different objective as well: shopping. I was told that shopping in Manchester is a must, so I accepted my fate and went to the shopping mall. Luckily, I was accompanied by a few guys, so I could ask some interesting questions about female underwear in China and whether it would be appropriate to buy this for a Chinese girl. It seemed to depend on your own preferences, but you would be better off buying some nice accessories instead. In the evening, we went to a Christmas market and I had a hot chocolate with one of the girls. Probably the best part of the day was our visit to the pub afterward. Although most people wanted to go home, I insisted on going to the pub, which these Chinese students obviously never did, and we danced, talked and drank together before we eventually went home at 23:00.
On Sunday, I started working on my essays, which had to be finished during the week of 13 December (I had to write three essays in total). As always, it was difficult to keep my concentration and I decided to go for a walk outside. But this was not a normal walk; it was a snow-walk. It had snowed the day before and I now walked through the white streets of Bradford. It was quite remarkable to see the curry restaurant, the mosque, and the shop with Indian clothing in a world of snow. After dinner, I went to the pub with a few friends and we hoped to see a live jazz band. Unfortunately, the jazz band was unable to come because of the snow. We decided to have a drink anyways, even though the staff had a very restrictive opinion: if no live jazz music, then no music at all. It was a nice evening and I talked to an interesting British guy.
My next week began with a great snow fight in the evening. My friends of the Real Ale and Cider Society thought that it would be a nice idea to start a war against the Chinese and Dutch members of the society. In other words, two people against almost ten others. We defended ourselves like true men (insofar that is possible in a snow fight), but when the Chinese guy left me in the lurch, it became impossible for me to keep them off and I got hit several times. Next to this, we finally received our membership T-shirt, which we all wore with pride.
After my lecture on Tuesday afternoon, I went to the city centre with a friend in order to buy some new shoes for her. She told me that she needed “new boobs”, but I soon found out that she was actually saying “new boots”. We looked for the best price/quality product, but eventually she just chose some boots recommended by the sales staff even though these did not fit her initial requirement of being waterproof (and this was actually the reason why we went shopping in the first place). Thereafter we went to a huge supermarket and looked for a gift for the celebration of Saint Nicholas, which would take place at the end of the week. She kept asking me about whom I had to buy a present for, but I insisted on upholding the secrecy associated with this tradition. In the evening, I decorated a mini Christmas tree, which I bought in Newcastle the week before. While I was busy, I realised that I am one of those people who does not like to start Christmas time before Saint Nicholas is gone. Therefore, I put the Christmas tree away until we would have celebrated Saint Nicholas’ Eve on 5 December.
On Wednesday 1 December, I had to go to the School of Management at 11:30. What I did not realise, however, was that the snow created much more chaos in Bradford compared to Tilburg. The streets were a hell to car drivers, since most roads were not prepared for the snow and the hills made it even more difficult for the vehicles to flow efficiently through the streets. The result was that I pointlessly waited for the bus for a while before deciding to walk to the School of Management. It was a wonderful walk and I have to admit that I had a lot of fun watching the silly drivers trying to get up the hill. Walk versus drive to the shop: 1-0. Although I was incredibly late for my lecture, I received many compliments for my conscientious effort and I successfully finished the coursework within the available time. I also walked back to campus, this time with another Dutch student. When we arrived in the city centre, we ordered some noodles on the market to warm ourselves (in contrast to most Dutch markets, this was a permanent indoor market). Back home, I saw many people playing/sleighing in the snow, including some students for whom it was the first time to touch snow. I challenged my flatmates for a race downhill and we helped some other guys with building an igloo. Of course, there was too little time to finish it completely, so we promised to come back the next day. This was not necessary though, because the igloo was completely destroyed that same night. Even England has assholes… In the evening, I went to see some Italian friends and they served home-made pizzas and pastas. Most of all, I learned that a good pizza or pasta should not have too many ingredients. Instead, dishes with only a few fresh ingredients taste best. I would like to thank all my Italian friends for teaching me the secrets of cooking.
Because of all the snow, the university directors decided to cancel all lectures on Thursday as it would be too dangerous for both students and professors to visit the campus. Therefore, I spent my time working on an essay for ‘World Economy since 1945’ and writing a poem for Saint Nicholas’ Eve. Later that afternoon, I went to the Amnesty International meeting and took some newspapers and scissors with me. Why? We were supposed to create posters as a promotion for the so-called Amnesty Acoustic Night the week after this meeting. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the arrangement of artists and it looked like we had to cancel the whole event. Hence, we did not make any posters because this would be pointless if the event was cancelled. A few days later, I was indeed notified about the cancellation of this event, even though I convinced my flatmate to perform that night (he is a gifted guitar player). The communication within the society was never very smooth, since there was democracy during the meetings but at other times the board would decide about everything. Nevertheless, we could spend our time more effectively on our current campaigns by adopting this policy.
On Friday, we would have the possibility to have our essay for ‘World Economy since 1945’ checked. The lecturers would look at the structure of the essay and give some feedback after a quick look. It turned out though, that there was only one student who finished the essay by then. Unfortunately, this was not me. I already read a lot about the topic and I knew what I wanted to write, but putting the words on paper is a completely different story. Actually, this is what happens to me all the time. I would read so much that I start the writing process too late and finish the essays with too many words. Of course, I learned a lot from this. In the evening, I worked on a group assignment for ‘Supply Chain Management’. One of my group members started with a draft version of the report, but his contributions could not be described as ‘academic’. Therefore, I had to edit his draft completely and added a lot of extra information. At 2 am, I finally finished my work and could get some well-deserved sleep.
The next day, I picked up my sister and boyfriend (who came from London) at the railway station at about 12 noon. After we dropped off their stuff at my room, we went downstairs and met with one of my friends, who would join us on a trip to Keighley. I read somewhere that there were supposed to be beautiful ice sculptures in this ‘smaller version of Bradford’ and that everyone was going to celebrate ‘Keighley’s Ice Weekend’. As soon as we arrived in the city centre, however, the opposite turned out to be true. Nobody was celebrating; everybody was in the shopping mall. And the ice sculptures were near the shops making them look like some kind of expensive advertisements. Yes, expensive, because there was an entire team working on the project and I have to admit that the sculptures looked beautiful with primarily themes taken from fairy tales. After a quick visit to the local shoe shop (so the advertisements did work), we went home for a nice curry at my favourite restaurant in Bradford. In the evening, I played a game with my sister while her boyfriend was finishing a report. That reminded me of the work I still had to do: finish three essays in the upcoming two weeks.
On Sunday morning, I again played a game with my sister and after that, we went to Leeds by train to visit the Royal Armouries Museum. This was an idea of my sister’s boyfriend and I am glad he told me about this place. It is one of the hidden treasures of Leeds and we spent several hours inside. Besides, we took a wonderful hike to the museum: along the river through the snow. After a quick dinner at McDonald’s, we had to say goodbye again, since they had to travel back to London and I had to make the last preparations for the Saint Nicholas’ Eve. At about 21:00, we started exchanging the presents and it was great to see that everyone put at least some effort in buying a gift and writing a poem. Only one person did not buy anything, but apart from that I think everybody was very happy with the presents they received. After a while, my French flatmate changed the music from Dutch Saint Nicholas songs to French jazz and we continued the evening with playing games, drinking beer, and eating chocolate letters. Possibly the best combination ever…
More stories coming up next week, so stay tuned!
Yours truly,
Frans
SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
CHARITY DINNER
MANCHESTER
SNOW-WALK
BURACS IN THE SNOW
WINTER WONDERLAND
ITALIAN PIZZA
KEIGHLEY'S ICE WEEKEND
ROYAL ARMOURIES MUSEUM
SAINT NICHOLAS' EVE
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