New Year's Eve!

Wow, it's 2012!
I had a good flight back to London (there was a strong tailwind, so it took an hour less than normal)! I got in at around 5:20, inwardly smirking because I figured customs would be a snap that early in the morning, but unfortunately there was only one officer working so my plan backfired on me and 3 hours later I finally got back to my dorm room and crashed for a while.

When I finally woke up I went to the store with Sanjiv to get some basics for my fridge again and then made dinner. I was trying to decide whether I should go to a coursemate's house for New Year's or if I should try to head to the Thames for the fireworks. I found a couple other people in the house who wanted to go downtown, so at around 10 pm we headed out. The underground was supposed to be running later than usual, so we weren't too worried about how we were going to get back.

While we were on the train, several people were talking about seeing the fireworks in the past. "We'll never see them this year," one guy was telling his girlfriend. "If you wanted to see them we should have left hours ago!" Bummer! We decided to try anyway. They had closed the stop we planned on getting off on because of crowding, so we jumped off at Waterloo and joined the crowds of people moving towards the river. We were on the South side now, which was not supposed to be the best place to see the fireworks, but the bridges were closed off too, so we were marooned and determined to make the best of it. We got to a place where we could see the Eye and figured that was as good as it was going to get, but then the police released a barricade so we were able to move several blocks forward. Pretty soon, we were right underneath the Eye! There were lights and tons of Batman-style headlights pointing up at the clouds whirling and painting them colors, and a DJ from BBC1 was entertaining the crowd.

Finally, the count down! We couldn't see Big Ben from where we were at, but apparently while it was tolling midnight fireworks were erupting from it! We could see the fireworks that had been rigged on the London Eye itself as well as the ones floating on the river on barges. The show went on for about 11 minutes and it was absolutely insane. The artillery booms shook the ground and the lights were almost blinding in a few places, especially at the end. The Eye itself had been rigged with patterns of fireworks -- I have no idea how they kept them from sparking off other fireworks. The whole thing went off flawlessly. It must have cost 100K or more, I swear, it was enormous.

Here's a professional quality video I found on youtube of the fireworks. It will take my parents' connection a very long time to load, but I think it is worth it. Grandma, I don't know what your connection is like, but mom can help you try to watch it if you want!
London 2012 Fireworks

After the display was over, everyone milled around. The police still had us penned in and the nearest tube stations were closed, so we didn't really have anywhere to go.
Once they started taking down some of the barricades, we headed back towards Waterloo.
An ambulance was trying to get through the crowds, but having no luck at all because people physically couldn't get out of the way. A guy ran forward to the driver trying to get his attention and then pretty soon some people carrying a girl with a t-shirt wrapped around her head got to the ambulance. It looked like she had been hit by a glass bottle or something, pretty gruesome. I don't know if she's who the ambulance was trying to get to or not but they put her in the back.

A few hundred feet later (or 20 minutes, in slow moving mob time), suddenly a fight broke out, and a couple guys were going at it. They were quite a ways from me but I could see that everyone else had formed the typical ring watching them, but unfortunately it looked like one guy was getting really hurt. Three guys were standing around kicking him while he lay on the ground and nobody else was doing anything about it. I didn't want to be part of a psychological phenomena, so I grabbed poor Sanjiv and pushed through the ring. He didn't really want to have any part of it, so I let him go and was trying to decide what to do. Physical element of surprise, or vocal element of authority? I decided the latter one would probably be better for my overall health, and I gave a shout at the guys. Two of them kind of split off, although I don't think it had anything to do with me, but one guy stayed and was now punching the victim's face. All of a sudden a volunteer police officer broke through the masses, pepper spray in hand, so I figured that was a good time to rejoin the mob and move away, haha. I am not sure if I would have gotten physically involved or not had the officer not shown up soon, as my morals tell me it was a good idea but my predisposition for having a non-broken nose and all my teeth was telling me it was a bad idea, haha.

We kept going and found a station I had never heard of before, but it looked so terribly crowded we figured we'd aim for the next one, Elephant and Castle. Twenty minutes later, we were a bit depressed that it was turning out to be much further than it had appeared on the map, haha, but we made it there in the end. At that point, we were pretty hungry, so we stopped at a samosa stand. Samosas are a kind of Indian tart filled with peas, potatoes, onions, and meat. For a pound each, they were a pretty good decision!

We had no problems getting back once we were on the tube, and we had fun interacting with a lot of happy drunk people, including one fellow who told us he was the Smile Maker. He was basically doing a goofy standup routine the whole ride, and his friend told us that he'd been doing this since around 8 pm on the bridge where they had been camping for the show.

We made it back at around 2:00 am, which I figured would be okay because I felt tired enough to go to sleep right away. I was thinking if I woke up around 10 am after 8 hours at least I wouldn't be terribly messed up by jet-lag. I set an alarm, but the next thing I knew it was 3 in the afternoon, so obviously my plan backfired quite a bit. I worked on my code after I woke up and I can now proudly say that the homework for my architecture class is almost complete! Now I can work on my papers without worrying about my programming assignment not being up and running. You see, it is much easier to BS a paper than it is to BS programming, because if your program doesn't run, it doesn't run and that's the end of the story, haha. I would be very happy except that I've only been awake for around an hour and it is already dark outside...whoops.

Other updates: my plants survived my absence, although they did look pretty dry, and somebody from maintenance came in and fixed my faucet, which had been leaking. I also got word from the financial office that the second installment of my loan is on the way, which is good because while I still have around £500 left from the first installment, I need to pay housing and tuition for second term soon!

Happy New Year, everyone! I missed the parade this morning because I was sleeping, haha, but I had planned on tuning in on our illegal kitchen tv if it was on one of the few channels we get, haha.

Oh, and if I don't update soon, Go Huskers, etc. : )