Foggy London

I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when I woke up yesterday morning seeing everything blurry in front of me. It did not take me long to realise that the infamous London fog had returned. Temperatures have wavered around freezing point last weekend and these few days. This heralded the early arrival of winter, much earlier than last year, and it’s forecasted that we might have a white Christmas in London this year, since Warwick and Nottingham have already snowed 2 weeks ago. There is seriously something very wrong with the London weather and seasons now.

Money

The desperate need for money has prompted me to sacrifice my precious time to engage in many experiments. Yesterday’s Economics experiment was the best so far - I earned 13 pounds in a short-40-minutes-span. Somehow I always feel better when I convert back to Singapore dollars in this kind of context - that’s S$40 in 40 minutes or an earning of S$1 per minute! The past two months had seen my bank reserves increased by 104.5 pounds for taking part in 15 experiments. That’s extremely easy money and I’ve two more coming up.

But I still need more money to live comfortably (read: to be able to eat Hampstead crepes every two or three days) and to cover my Peru expenses, and so I’ve decided to scout for part-time work around Hampstead. There are lots of shops looking for temp staff due to the festive season, so it shouldn’t be a huge problem looking for work. Hopefully I’ll be able to earn a few hundred pounds over Christmas and New Year.

Christmas Dinner

Yesterday night was Christmas Dinner as well. Everybody dressed up in suits and everybody thought the mandarin collar suit I was wearing was Singapore’s national dress, after which I tried to explain that Singapore actually don’t have its own national dress. All along I thought my suit was Chinese until somebody told me that my suit might be Indian instead.

Anyway, we had the aperitif as usual before the dinner, and then turkey for the actual dinner which I thought wasn’t that fantastic. Nevertheless, the red wine was very good. The dinner (and toasts) lasted almost two hours, which I thought was very long since it’s the traditional British dinner with only three courses. Then was a Christmas Show put up by some guys and in short, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously and thoroughly. I’m looking forward to Christmas in Hampstead.