I still haven’t got a computer yet. I am writing from a special room at Cambridge, which has been set up for people on my scholarship. It’s a really nice room. There are couches and tables, free newspapers, wired and unwired internet, a foose ball table and a free drinks vending machine. This is the first time I’ve been part of something that has translated to ‘creature comfort privileges’. The previous scholarship holders tell us newbies that it is quite easy to pull rank here in Cambridge just by citing our funding body.

It sounds like my course is going to be intensive. I have classes from 6-8 PM on most Mondays and Thursdays. This wipes out many of the dance classes I wanted to get to. Oh well. I’m here to learn, not dance.

I’ve got some photos of where I’m living. I’m really pleased with the place. We have four people living in a reasonably large house. We’ve made friends with each other. In fact, I’m skipping a couple of social functions tonight so that I can hang out at home to cook with housemates.

Besides. I’m sick. I’ve got quite a nasty cold. A night at home will be better than one at The Cow, where there will be two for one cocktails.

This is my room. I have a ‘large room’ in a house, for which I’m paying about £90 a week. This seems expensive to me but there are others who are paying more.

Here is my bed in more detail. I brought the pillowcases, bedsheet and doona (‘duvet‘) cover from Australia and bought the doona at Argos. Argos is a catalogue store; it sells almost everything you can’t eat, at huge discounts to any other store. It can do this because it doesn’t display any of the items in-store. Instead, you look through a big catalogue, pick out the item you want, put in the form and the store assistants bring it out to you.

I commented to an English student that this was a bizarre concept. She laughed because Argos had been in business her entire life so it seemed quite normal to her. My housemate, Alex, is from Norway. When I showed him around Argos, he was quite delighted. This is a form of shopping particularly suited to men: know your target, hunt and destroy. None of this time-wasting browsing stuff that girls are often keen on.

This is where I’ll put the computer when I eventually get it. God, I hope it comes soon.

Note the Argos catalogue on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf.

This is where I keep most of my clothes. There isn’t much space for clothes. It’s a good thing I don’t have many (for the first time in my life, I am not crippled by choice).

See all the bathroom products on the chest of drawers? I bought most of those in the first week of arriving. I discovered that shampoo and conditioner are very expensive in grocery stores like Sainsbury’s. I am now a loyal patron of Boots, which is an English pharmacy superstore. I even have the loyalty card to prove it.

I brought quite a few pairs of shoes to Cambridge. I had an interesting time finding the blue pair during my second week here. I wanted to get shower footwear. In Australia, we call these ‘thongs‘ but in the rest of the civilised world, a ‘thong’ is an underwear/swimwear g-string. I am now required to call these ‘flip-flops‘.

The kitchen is our house’s communal space. We often stand around here talking to each other. For a week, we were limited to using the stove top only because none of us knew how to operate a gas oven. We ended up having to ask the domestic bursar. Quite a few people laughed at me when I told them this.

Because we’ve worked out how to light the oven, we’re going to cook home-made pizza tonight.

This is me cooking chorizo pasta. It turned out really well. As a result, my housemates think I can cook. I will see how long I can maintain this charade.

This is our first house dinner. Most days of the week, though, we go have dinner at the college dining room. Everyone at Cambridge belongs to a college. I chose my college because people told me it has the best and cheapest food. I have not been disappointed. It costs me around £2 to eat dinner at college (about AU$5.20), which is very cheap in England.

We have a big backyard, which has become a bicycle parking lot. I bought a bike a few days ago. I’m not sure I like having a bike. You have to park it, lock it, look after it. It reminds me of having a car. I haven’t had a car for more than a year now. Almost every student at Cambridge has a bike. As a consequence, there is a strong support industry in bike lock sales and bike insurance.

One evening, we pulled out the kitchen chairs and sat in the darkness of the backyard. Di lit some candles for us to sit around. There is now a pool of wax.

This is absolutely one of the best things about our house: location, location, location! We live on the ‘ethnic’ road of Cambridge. I have found three Chinese grocery stores on this road. There are also stores and restaurants featuring Indian, Algerian, Turkish, Greek, Brazilian, Korean, Japanese and vegetarian food, second-hand bookstores, wine stores, and supermarkets that open late. It takes me about six minutes to ride to the Engineering department, seven minutes to get to the centre of town and half a minute to the nearest doctor (who I visited this morning and who agreed with my self-diagnosis that I have a cold).

I took this photo early yesterday morning. Goodbye for now!