My Arrival, In Pictures

Tags: Family, York, News, Food, School, Flickr, Friends, Shopping, Travel, Events

[Because things have been so hectic, here is merely a quick rundown of the past week is the best I can do for now! Lots of pictures, and lots happening enroute to my new home in York!]

Day One - Food and Departure

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Too much food! Dim sum with Bachan, Mom, and Daniel. Claude decided to head over to the aquarium and got up close to some of his relatives. Off to see Patty and to ship boxes! (THANK YOU!) David cooked more food for dinner. Get squished by Daniel and David. Off to the airport with Mom and Dad.

The Flight - More food

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Hop on the Globespan plane - aisle seat, last row. Line up for the one functioning toilet is noisy and inconsiderate, meaning no sleep. Safety instructions in Icelandic. Free wine! And more food which makes me unimaginably full. After letting people off at Glasgow, I get a window seat for the highlands. And landing at Manchester Airport.

Day Two - Landing in York

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Take the train from the airport to York - nice scenery and musical fellow passengers. Finally get to York station from where I can see the Yorkshire Wheel, which I’ve yet to visit. My luggage and I somehow get to my empty room! Sure it’s a dorm, but Wentworth is pretty nice - block C from the outside. TONS of waterfowl on campus which for the short meantime I love. I find my new home at the music building where I pick up my enrolment pack.

Day Three - My First Trip to the City

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After thirteen hours of sleep and a fire drill, I make my way into the city for the first time - the River Ouse. The streets are amazing - I can’t believe I live here, but quickly am so tired and frustrated with having to set up that I stop taking pictures. Clifford Street. New flatmates Ros and Kai. Then me, Demitrius and Ros at Wentworth Karaoke. My room set up, with new bedding - the stuff that was supplied was utter crap!

Days Four and Five - Settling in

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More incredibly tame birds on campus. I’m eating well - see Mom? The first thing, the postgraduate welcome, mostly just emphasizing the fact that “we’re people people”. Chicken bacon and smoked cheese sandwich from Krusties in town. My first peek at the minster, but I’ve more errands - no gawking yet! My new mobile, which has been the cause of some problems.

Day Six - Back again, with Ros

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There’s more things to pick up so I go into town with Ros and can’t resist the Minster. Amazing foot traffic. Our first fish and chips is yummy! A peek of Clifford’s Tower. The room is getting there, with a reading light! (It’s such a fiasco without one!) And the famous Miquelrius notebooks - I FOUND THEM. Oh, and Ros is a stationery freak, too.

posted by Laura at 6:34 pm | Comments

My Punchbowl

Tags: Food, Events

For anyone who came last night to my party and wanted the slush recipe, here it is! I’ve never tried it with milk, but if you do let me know how that goes! The recipe makes about two and a half large margarine tubs.

New Year’s Punch

Boil 6 cups water and 2 cups sugar for 5 minutes and cool.

When cool, add:
1 48 oz can pineapple juice
1 6 oz can frozen orange juice
6 tbsp lemon juice
5 ripe bananas mashed

Stir and put in freezer. Will keep for 7 â€“ 8 months.

Serve with ginger ale or milk.

posted by Laura at 11:09 am | Comments

My New Design

Tags: laurakishimoto.ca, Website Design

And it’s here.

I spent the afternoon changing my template the the design I prepared for my new site, though I’m not quite sure why. I will be moving my blog to new webspace and be converting it to Wordpress, so why did I waste my time with my blogger template? Still not completely sure. Anyway, I’m waiting to hear about hosting from John. If I can’t get anything through v7n, no big deal and I’ll do some research. I really don’t need much - it’ll be a small site. But enough of leeching off whatever webspace I get through my school or whatnot.

Last thing, I made a tiny little change today, changing my Blogspot URL from lauraisageek to laurakishimoto. VERY dumb move. While I don’t care about SEO, I forgot that other people DO. Some bot or company took it up, with my design and filled it with spam crap. It pisses me off. I reported it for copyright, but apparently I need to file a paper copy with Blogger - I’m not sure yet if I’m willing to do that. So then I reported it for spam. I’m sure it will be removed, but my concern is that it will be replaced with another. I wish I could just undo my mistake, not to “regain my PR”, but to avoid spammy groups from taking it for themselves.

Fuck, I hate internet marketing spammers.

posted by Laura at 7:44 pm | Comments

My Bags

Tags: Travel, My Things, Shopping

As a gift for heading off to grad school (T-minus ten days!), my parents bought me a new luggage set. Because I only have a 50kg luggage allowance, we went on a search for ultra-lightweight sets. Keep in mind that this includes my carry on bag, which will have my laptop in it, and that I am essentially moving, so every ounce counts! After everything, I ended up with three pieces of softside luggage: large roller, duffel roller, and a (surprisingly spacious) tote for carry on. It’s a line from Roots called “Clouds”, but I can find NOTHING about it online. Oh well. Regular price? $550. With a sale at The Bay and my dad eligible for a senior’s discount, we got it for $213. My new cosmetics case will go within a larger piece for packing.

And because there was a group for it (what’s in your bag?), I took a picture of the contents of my purse nowadays. Between cream for my bug bites, pounds sterling, a card game, and Claude, I think it sums up my current life pretty well.