Weekend in Durham, England – Part I

Friday afternoon:
Finished work at 12:30pm because I took half-day "study leave". Went back to hostel for a shower, did some last-minute packing, grabbed lunch and left to catch the 5pm train.

3.5hours and 1 train transfer later, I’m no longer in Scotland!

I went away from home to Aberdeen for studies. (By the way, thanx for the reminder that it's my 3rd month anniversary. Haha..)

Then I went away from Aberdeen to Irvine for a placement.

And now, I have gone away from Irvine to Durham, England for a "weekend getaway". This is my attempt at a nomadic lifestyle.

Meeting me at the train station was CJ, who is the host of my "weekend getaway".

A brief history of CJ and I: We met in college when we were classmates for the first year, during which we developed an extremely antagonistic friendship. Our friendship was based on mutual education (him trying to "educate" me on his perspective and vice versa) and constant debates. In fact, for some reason, lots of people in our class liked to debate with CJ because he would eventually run out of things to say (Imagine our surprise when he decided to read law!). Anyway, in 2nd year, CJ transferred to another class and our original class became much quieter and more peaceful. After college, we were only exchanging occasional MSN messages – I was caught up with my studies and he was caught by NS – and only met once (We had a "class reunion" before CJ left for UK) in the last 4 years.

Ever since I’ve been to the UK, however, he has been making a very commendable effort in keeping in contact with me and invited me to Durham for the weekend.

After we had dinner (KFC! Haha…ok, to be fair, it was not his suggestion. It was me! I had a food craving…), we went to his friends’ house to "socialize" (very fortunately, I was feeling rather sociable that night, so I was all friendly and smiley).

There were 8 of us, all Singaporeans except for one, all law students except for me. We ended up playing Monopoly and it was hilarious! Have you played Monopoly with a group of law students/lawyers before? Absolute madness!!

• Play halfway can start talking about property law.
• Banker can refuse to sell an unsold property because of some law made-up rule.
• Trying to cheat others of their money (collecting rent for property which is not even theirs)!
• Collaborating with another player so they can acquire assets more quickly and charge everybody else more rent!

In summary, they are going to make great lawyers.

Haha… Monopoly aside, they were great fun and company. The evening at the house ended about 1am and 4 of us proceeded to the supermarket to do some shopping (I’ve now officially joined the minority group of bizarre people who shop in the wee hours of the morning)!

Finally got back to the hostel and slept at 4am. Day 1 in Durham went very well! Yeah, I know it’s not actually A DAY. But when you go on tour, even if you arrive at 6:00pm in the country, that’s counted as Day 1 already right?

Day 2 is supposed to start at 8:30am. Haha… Very optimistic.