Less Than Ideal

The thing is that you’d expect the New Year to start in a grandiose kind of way: with sparkling and dazzling fireworks which made a spectacular view along the Thames and the London Eye, all those people in the crowd cheering and shouting as soon as the countdown ends, together with the chimes of the Big Ben. Oh, the fireworks were sparkly all right… but only if you could see it.

I walked with a friend from Trafalgar Square towards the Thames but every way which we tried was blocked. We ended up in an area with a big screen instead, with the consolation view of the top bit of the London Eye. Imagine that, the TOP bit. Only. Which means that we also saw just a fraction of the fireworks too. Plus, it was raining to boot, albeit short and not heavy. Still, not the experience that I expected.

Oh well. To be fair, I know a certain someone who got this most excellent view of the whole New Year celebration from the Millennium Bridge but he got there at seven, so there’s a certain trade-off between the best view and the time needed to arrive there. I guess I’m just grumpy because I went to see the fireworks at around the same time last year (31 December 2006, that is) that I did this year and I still managed to get to the riverbank and have a full view of the London Eye. So when things didn’t turn out the way I expected I guess I got a little sulky.

In any case, it doesn’t really do to start the year with a negative note, so we’ll stop talking about it and move on to the next topic. Term is about to start (January 15, to be exact) and I’ve got an e-mail about next year’s room ballot. So now I’m thinking about what kinds of room should I live in next year. Two candidate places, really. The place that I live now, which is called the Blue Boar’s Court that has nice modern en-suite rooms; or the ever famous Great Court.

Now, for you who don’t know, rooms in Great Court are prized possessions. They are MASSIVE, and the people who tend to live there are scholars like me since we are placed on top of the ballot. Scholars can retain their room every year, but Great Court rooms are the exceptions. A Trinity College student can only live there for one year maximum of their studies*. That should give you an idea of how sought after it is. Apart from them being huge, the Great Court itself is a place that you can show to people with pride since it looks magnificent. However, most of the rooms don’t have en-suite bathrooms, which is a really important factor to me. Hence, I will most probably choose one of the Blue Boar rooms. But I really haven’t decided yet. And my ballot is number 21 out of 41 people, smack in the middle, so there’s a good chance the people above me will take the two Great Court rooms with showers that I wanted, but we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, happy New Year and have a good start to term!

Yaz

* Edit: Apparently the rulebook says that you can live in Great Court once throughout your scholarship. This means that if you chose a Great Court Room as a Junior Scholar, you can choose it again the year afterwards if you become a Senior Scholar, since those two count as different scholarships.