Mahiki!

Happy Sunday everyone!

I began this post on Thursday and am having the odd experience of changing my tenses and dates to today. Lesson learned: start and finish posts on the same day. It's been quite a while since I posted, so I'll get you up to speed. On another blog related note, I am forgoing the tracking of my footsteps. I found wearing my pedometer and tracking the totals was becoming more cumbersome than beneficial. So you'll just have to imagine the walking I'm doing.

Last Saturday I took it easy and enjoyed a delicious brunch in Passfield. It's the best meal of the week by far. I wish they made breakfast for dinner some evenings. I then went to the University of London Senate House library with Ryan and some other friends. It's so beautiful! I finally can consider it my place to study. It's 5 minutes from Passfield, historic, beautiful and quiet. It reminds me of all the best qualities of the Knox library. I sat in the 5th floor overlooking St. Pauls and the City.

The Senate House Library.

Ok I didn't take this picture myself, but it's pretty true to the overall atmosphere.

Afterwards Ryan and I ventured to Bloomsbury gardens on our way home and visited the Bloomsbury Festival. It was so cool! I wish I had my camera. There were cultural events of all sorts scattered throughout the neighborhoods and gardens. With my ankle still being sore I decided to stay in and get laundry done. We did get dinner at Benito's Hat, which is a Chipotle spinoff, and it was good until a bug crawled out of my chicken. Not so pleasant. But the 2 for 1 margaritas helped me let the incident slide.

Passfield (D) to Senate House Library (B) to Bloomsbury Festival (C), back to Passfield, and dinner at Benito's Hat (E). 2.5 miles. 

Good news came Sunday when I confirmed my ankle was NOT in fact fractured. I was very relieved, because after the initial injury Thursday evening the bruising and swelling got significantly worse. I waited for a few hours in the A&E (accident and emergency) which is the not so glamorous sibling to an ER in the states. I passed the time reading some interesting WSJ articles and people watching. My prescription was to rest for a week and keep my ankle iced, compressed, and elevated.
After I left the ER I heeded advice from my mom and bought a chick lit book in a nearby Waterstones on my way home. I ended up spending over an hour browsing the stacks and getting mesmerized in the travel section. I bought a map of Europe and posted it in my room. I like to think of it as travel inspiration! So far the Pregnant Widow is quite good. :)

Monday brought a solid day of classes and work on campus. We're beginning an emissions trading game in my environmental economics class, so I'd have to put that as my highlight.

Tuesday morning was another glorious rest day. I don't have class until 5 pm on Tuesdays, so I can get good work done during the day, and also sleep in. I skyped with Aimee and we threw out ideas about a trip to the south of Spain in early December. So excited to finalize them! Then I had my termly call with Dr. LaHurd in the Kemper Foundation. We got to skype because of the international calling hassle, and it was so good to touch base with the incredible organization. They just won an award too! And right before signing off skype I had an awesome mini catch-up session with Kari, one of the amazing girls I lived with over the summer in Chicago. Kemper was great, I think of everyone so often!

Loves of my life.

Then I got changed, and went to Mahiki! Mahiki is a great club in Mayfair, which is one of the ritzier parts of London. Mahiki is a tiki themed club with super creative drinks and fun music. Rowley and I ventured over there with freshers from Passfield, and quickly figured out we'd have to think of a good way to beat the quene. His friends were already inside. After a little bit of waiting our opportunity arose, and soon after we were inside. I'll show you some picture highlights.

Stefan, Rowley and I.

We discovered Stefan is a TKE, so reminisced about Greek life for a bit.

Outside Mahiki.

One of the lounges in the basement where we took over and danced in for a bit. Such a fun night!

Wednesday was a lazy day in bed, further reinforced by no class at all. I had a 9 am originally scheduled, but was able to move to Thursday at 10. Whew! One productive thing I did was buy throw pillows. My room is becoming more homely by the day. Wednesday night I decided not to go to AU night, which was Pub Golf. I saved myself 40 quid and a guaranteed hangover Thursday. The premise is you dress like a golfer, get a scorecard with 9 pubs on them, with 1 or 2 drinks listed for each one, and make your way back to Zoo Bar. I don't do well with mixing drinks, so that night could have been particularly disastrous.

Thursday was a strong academic day for me, with 2 classes and one lecture. I went to communion at the LSE Chaplaincy, and learned about the St. Paul's Cathedral Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser stepping down in protest of the Cathedral's decision to seek legal action against the Occupy London protesters. St. Paul's Cathedral has been closed since last Saturday, which is the first time since World War I. I really enjoy the communion service at LSE. They're pretty basic, so different than being in worship. But it's convenient, friendly, and a great way to share lunch with folks. After the service there are sandwiches and tea.

I then pre-registered for the Management Consulting and Strategy conference which was beginning the next day. I ran into Allie in the library as I was touching up my resume, and we chatted about a trip we're going to take next term. Originally we were going to go to Monte Carlo in Monoco, but realized it would be a little out of our budget, and also cold in February. So task of the moment is researching vacation spots that are warm enough for swimming/tanning in February. It's proving harder than we thought if we hold Europe as our region.

Thursday night was the LSE Careers Internship fair, hosted in the senior dining room. It was focused on investment banks and consultancies. I am quickly learning the differences in recruiting between the US and UK, and realizing getting my summer internship is going to be a lot harder than expected. Reps don't take your resume, or CV as they call it here, and won't give you their cards either! It's not really networking. It's essentially telling you how to apply online for their opportunities. After asking all the consultancies to take my CV, Proctor and Gamble (not even a consultancy) was the only firm to accept it. Cool. So I have a new action plan, somewhat, and will begin making my online apps next week.

After the internship fair I ran into some other General Course friends, and one of them had just won President of the General Course! Celebratory drinks were in order at 3 Tuns, the bar on campus. After that Rowley, Andrew Maxwell and I ventured to The White Lion in Covent Garden to share a few drinks and laughs with Allie and Kelsey. I was the lone Midwestern-er as everyone else either goes to Georgetown or George Washington. Haha not that it matters. It was fun night, finished off with much needed Dominoe's.

A shot from outside the pub, clearly not mine since we were there at night.

Friday was an early morning for me, and the start to the 2 day LSE Management Consulting and Strategy student conference. I heard about this event before coming to London and was sold instantly. It seemed like a great opportunity to learn more about consulting and to network with Representatives from top tier firms. I don't want to bash the conference too much, so I'll focus on the positives for now. Great location. Day 1 was held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center in Westminster. Very cool getting off the Tube and seeing Big Ben and the Abbey.

Diverse delegates. There were 400 delegates from over 120 institutions in 20 countries, selected from a batch of 2,200 applications. I was sitting with preeminent business leaders from all different countries and cultures. Interesting keynotes. Some of the keynotes were particularly fascinating, like Luke Johnson's talk on the merits of entrepreneurship. I am re-thinking all of my plans to target a large consultancy this summer, and am going to perhaps shift focus towards a start up. This is the book Luke was mentioning in his talk. I chatted with him afterwards and am still awe struck.

The rest of the conference was slightly more disappointing. It was severely disorganized, with all events running between 45 minutes to an hour and half behind schedule. The organizers kept trying to take away the scheduled coffee breaks in the programs to make up time. They should know better! The pain of a loss is much more powerful than the thrill of a gain. The head organizer is in my marketing class and we just read that the day before! Dinner was not included either day, even though the events spanned the time, and lunch both days was a cold sack lunch containing a boxed 1.5 piece of bread vegetarian sandwich, and then your choice of EITHER water, apple, or chips. What?? We did pay £79 for this. The networking events were poorly managed and designed, with the ratio of students to tables being over 75 to 1. If you waited for an hour, constantly pushing your way close, you could MAYBE get 2 min of face time with a rep that would first not take your resume, and then just tell you how to apply online.  At that point my group was dejected and decided to enjoy one of the few perks of the event, serviced wine. Oh yeah, here's a picture on the stage, which was actually pretty cool.

Stefan, Derek, Eric and I.

After the first day, we went to a pub for a much needed full meal. I essentially had 300 calories and lots of caffeine up to that point. Both nights the conference had promoted after parties at posh clubs. We assumed since they were conference sponsored they would comp us the entry fee. Nope. Each place was £15 cover, and then £10 drinks, minimum. Haha, another one of the many maddening factors during the w\eekend. After dinner I retreated to Passfield for much needed rest.
Day 2 of the conference was the case competition. I was working on a team of 7, imitating an analyst team at a consultancy. The organizers did a decent job of trying to make it realistic, but again were off in delivery. I made a pretty cool spreadsheet doing a CB analysis on the different off shoring and near shoring options Consilio was considering in their HR strategy. We did not win, which was more than okay with me.

After the awards ceremony we went to dinner at Kimchee on High Holborn. Joon, a friend in Passfield, enlightened us on many types of Korean food. I ordered beef bibimbap, which was delicious. I also got a Soju red to drink. Soju is a Korean grain spirit. My drink had lots of fresh raspberries in it, and it was amazing!

The interior at Kimchee. We were sitting more in the back. We decided it had a very 'Kill Bill' atmosphere.  

Joon and John. They had beef dolsot bibimbap, which is a Korean standby kept warm in the earthen ware pots.

Eric had a pork dish, and I had the Soju Red, which now you can see, and the beef bibimbap.

After dinner we ventured to McDonald's for ice cream (we are American after all) and into Covent Garden for a relaxing pub crawl. We started at The Spice of Life which is really in Cambridge Circus, then moved to The White Hart. On our way to the White Hart we discovered a sweet underground bar that we will definitely check out another time when there's more space. The White Hart is the oldest licensed establishment in London! I had a blue lagoon there. There were many people in fancy dress celebrating Halloween. I'm still trying to work out my costume. If anyone has ideas please comment! All in all, it was a great way to end an exhausting few days.

John Rowley and Eric. We found such comfy couches!

I am finally back up to the present. Wow, it's crazy what happens in 8 days here. I am doing laundry, updating my blog (obviously) and working on my finance problem set that's being collected Tuesday. It will be my first assessed work since May! I am skyping with my parents later, and still racking my brain for Halloween ideas. I have a costume for AU Halloween on Wednesday. I'm going to be Black Swan, but I don't want to repeat my costume if it's not necessary. I was going to find a cool library to work at today, but found that so many of them are closed or have inconvenient Sunday hours. A day in Passfield it is!

Oh one quick note. Last night was daylight savings here, and it doesn't happen until next week in America. For everyone's refernce, I am 5 hours ahead of Chicago now, not 6! This really doesn't matter, except for skype dates. And to give you a quick peek into my week, I have 2 nights of Halloween (Mon and Wed) and will be off to Paris Friday! I'll be there all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so if you have suggestions on things I should do please post them!

With that I'll let you patient blog readers move on with your lifes and enjoy all the fine things. Thinking of you all!

Cheers!
Hannah

PS I want to Congratulate the fabulous ladies of Eta Kappa for winning Sigma Chi's DERBY DAYS! It's a big deal we won, and I am beaming from abroad. So happy for you all! Here's the video from the talent show. It was a spice girls/ backstreet boy/ lady gaga rendition. Enjoy!