Nice People Thread Part 9 - and so it continues

misskool

silvercar wrote: »

Agreed. That list is stupidly long. Student rooms have limited space- there would be no room to store all that, never mind transport it to and from home.

DS1 always said there were so many cheap eating places near his accommodation it was cheaper to eat out rather than cook. I guess the "curry mile" did more than curries.

I would say they need enough to cook pasta, a baking tray and spatula, a few plates and a bit of cutlery. Couple of mugs, glasses and bowls. Then once they have settled in they can buy more if they need it.

Remember that uni towns have shops! Far easier to stock up from the local shops than shlep from home.

I went to uni as an international student so I arrived sans household. You really only need 1 pillow, 1 sheet, 1 duvet (cover probably optional ). 1 mug, 1 saucepan, 1 fork and 1 glass.

That lasted me a few weeks until I found Argos (and my bank account was opened so I could pay in my cheque).

PasturesNew

All this colour talk.... I'm afraid I'm very much in the Boys' Camp. There are only about 8 colours

neverdespairgirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

I think it's a pity the Unis never controlled all the housing. Much easier all round. A certain standard of accommodation, easier for students, easier for students to even move rooms mid-term (or leave).... and spare capacity could be rented out on the private market. Unis could have set up an accommodation company and taken the profits/made little, with more security and less anxiousness all round.

Pretty grotty accommodation, IME.

My halls of residence at UCL had pretty small rooms, all dingy and shabby, and a communal bathroom / shower room / loo room at the end of the corridor, with 6 toilet cubicles, 3 shower cubicles and 2 bath cubicles in one big room, so if you were in the bath, you could hear (and smell) people going to the loo. That bathroom was shared between 32 rooms, and there simply weren't enough showers and loos to go around.

My best mate had an absolutely gorgeous room in St. John's College Cambridge, but she had to go through her neighbour's room to get to the loo, and neighbour had to go through mate's room to get out into the corridor.

The nearest bath or shower was down 3 flights of stairs, across a courtyard, along a passageway and up 1 more flight of stairs.

lostinrates

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Maybe it is time for FIR to grow a beard. All the cool kids are doing it after all, and it is very MSE as your razor blades last much longer. I have conducted scientific research and identified that beards might either increase or decrease your salary, or alternatively make it stay the same. The same applies for other factors like credit rating and social standing.

Firs beard would be horrendous. Left untended not only would he have a monobrow but his beard almost reaches his eyes, and his forehead gets stray hairs. He's like one of those wolf people. He is very worryingly hirsute. He wasn't when I met him....just normally on the hairy side...although he was the hairiest of my lovers. Now he's like cuddling a wolf hound in bed.

chewmylegoff

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Pretty grotty accommodation, IME.

My halls of residence at UCL had pretty small rooms, all dingy and shabby, and a communal bathroom / shower room / loo room at the end of the corridor, with 6 toilet cubicles, 3 shower cubicles and 2 bath cubicles in one big room, so if you were in the bath, you could hear (and smell) people going to the loo. That bathroom was shared between 32 rooms, and there simply weren't enough showers and loos to go around.

My best mate had an absolutely gorgeous room in St. John's College Cambridge, but she had to go through her neighbour's room to get to the loo, and neighbour had to go through mate's room to get out into the corridor.

The nearest bath or shower was down 3 flights of stairs, across a courtyard, along a passageway and up 1 more flight of stairs.

Ramsay Hall? I was in Ramsay, it was rubbish. It was also catered which I didn't want and only a tiny kitchen between loads of rooms if you didn't want the food (which you had to pay for). It was more expensive than the house I rented in the second year although to be fair it was just off Tottenham Court Rd so rather better placed for lectures than my house in Leyton.

Halls at UCL were very hit and miss. The houses on gower street were basically the best student accodomation it would be possible to have given the standard of the housing and the location (especially if you were in the life sciences faculty - 30 seconds to lectures!). Some of my friends were in a new self catering block just north of Euston road as well which was pretty good. The older halls were rubbish though.

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

Heat up a pizza. Although after some other twonk's done it badly you'd be shoving it on a bit of foil straight on the grubby wire racks anyway.


Also - to stand your pie on to heat up - easier to put a pie in/out on a tray than to wrestle with the tiny bit of foil on the side with a tea towel.

I was at the Oxford college with the reputation for the best food. Rumour had it that some elderly rich Victorian gent without family left his entire estate to the Merton kitchens on the grounds that his life had been wonderful apart from the food in college. Eating in college was cheap, plentiful and excellent. (We complained about the food, like all students, but our complaints were not entirely typical - for example that while there was usually plenty of bread when the starter was soup, there wasn't enough when it was salmon mousse.) I didn't cook anything other than toast until I was a graduate student, and then only very occasionally until after we got married and moved into a flat (heavily subsidised, college-owned, available only to married students at that college).

lostinrates

LydiaJ wrote: »

In the dim and distant days when I was a student, the shared kitchen already had saucepans etc, and I didn't have time to do anything involving a baking tray. I had (and needed) way more than a couple of mugs, though - often might have lots of friends round at once, all wanting coffee.

It depends on the person. We used to host parties a bit and did use baking trays...fr roasts, and for tray bakes of both supper and cake variety. We also had a huge stock pot for soups which got used for loads of things, and a sauce pan that got used as a cake tin a lot.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I think it's a pity the Unis never controlled all the housing. Much easier all round. A certain standard of accommodation, easier for students, easier for students to even move rooms mid-term (or leave).... and spare capacity could be rented out on the private market. Unis could have set up an accommodation company and taken the profits/made little, with more security and less anxiousness all round.

Part of the experience, post first year, is, IMO, learning to do this for oneself, knowing that its for a limited time period and that if you balls up you only have to suffer it for so long. Its a very good learning experience.

Some uni towns DO control lettings, and, IMO, its a bit pants. These are young adults and the babying through life is not beneficial longer term.

LydiaJ

lostinrates wrote: »

Part of the experience, post first year, is, IMO, learning to do this for oneself, knowing that its for a limited time period and that if you balls up you only have to suffer it for so long. Its a very good learning experience.

Some uni towns DO control lettings, and, IMO, its a bit pants. These are young adults and the babying through life is not beneficial longer term.

I'm sure you're right about it being a learning experience. I didn't have any trouble doing it when I left college, despite not having learnt it while at college, though. When I was at Oxford (late 80s) everyone who could live in did live in - you ended up a lot closer to where you wanted to be, and it was about a third of the rent of living out.

neverdespairgirl

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Ramsay Hall? I was in Ramsay, it was rubbish. It was also catered which I didn't want and only a tiny kitchen between loads of rooms if you didn't want the food (which you had to pay for). It was more expensive than the house I rented in the second year although to be fair it was just off Tottenham Court Rd so rather better placed for lectures than my house in Leyton.

Halls at UCL were very hit and miss. The houses on gower street were basically the best student accodomation it would be possible to have given the standard of the housing and the location (especially if you were in the life sciences faculty - 30 seconds to lectures!). Some of my friends were in a new self catering block just north of Euston road as well which was pretty good. The older halls were rubbish though.

No, Ifor Evans. Also catered Monday to Friday, and a tiny kitchen, and you were charged for the absolutely awful food at weird times of day (dinner at 6pm!)

OH was in Ramsey Hall, which was similarly grotty.

Our flatmate for several years was in halls in Gower Street, which were by far the cheapest of all UCL's halls, but were shared rooms, with bedsteads which dated from the time it had been used as a workhouse. I loved sharing a flat with her, but I'd have loathed sharing a room with her! But it was £32 a week, which was pretty cheap for WC1 and far cheaper than Ifor Evans or Ramsey.