June '11

I have been telling myself for the past few months that, come summer, I shall do something productive. What this is has variously been learning languages for Graduate school in America, working on business ideas or starting writing again. However, now that it is ACTUALLY summer, I'm being the lazy lazy person that I naturally am.

So. Needless to say something needs to be done about this, but what, exactly? Well, I'm continuing with the anki flash cards to improve my French and Latin vocab, have started noting down more ideas for longer fiction and continue to think up design ideas. I also think it prurient to get into blogging a bit more, so I've been considering buying a domain name so I can present it all a bit more professionally.

Exams.

Exams again soon. Though I haven't updated here much, I hope to in the near future. Didn't I post something similar before? Perhaps, though typing is so tiring. A shame. More books are due to come tomorrow, I hope to read a few before the summer as I have quite the list to get through during the holidays.

Pasta and freedom.

Sat here eating pasta salad, listening to belle and sebastian whilst sipping earl grey while trying to track down 300 year old editions of the Spectator. Why, you may ask. Well, Steele in issue 251 of The Spectator argued that the character of Dorimant is 'more of a coxcomb ... than Fopling' and that he was wholly unsuitable for the role of a comic leading figure as he lacked the qualities of a 'fine gentleman'. Obviously I want to use this as part of my essay tomorrow, but I'd like a bit more background information than the reference in the book I read provided. Nothing turned up on jstor, but I don't really have the time to go through the electronic resources of the library, nor visit there. Hopefully the internet'll provide something.

Setting up a non partisan liberty league up here with Becky from the lib dem group. Very excited about it, it's a contentious issue and one that deserves more than almost anything to be fought over. Hopefully we'll get some support up here, and I'll be able to make a difference before I move back down south for postgraduate study in 18 month's time.

flu

As the title hints, I've finally been struck down with Fresher's flu. It's ridiculously annoying because it's affected me just when my CFS has been playing up, so it's a double whammy. I'd at least like to be able to read, you know? So I could do some sort of work while being knocked for six.

University

Well I haven't blogged here for quite a while, mostly due to laziness and internet trouble cursing me for the last two weeks.

So, in the last two months I've arrived at University in Liverpool, spent three weeks in Halls and have started to get into the swing of University life. Been out a few times, done the obligatory early morning tutorial hungover and read an awful lot. Mostly university reading, which means I don't have time to read the smallish stack of books I brought up here to read recreationally. At the moment I'm having to get through about 2 plays, 2/3 secondary texts for Drama and I'm aiming for 2 books a week on Philosophy of Language.

The largest shock here has, I suppose, been living in Halls. The noise and the constant demand to socialise has been the most difficult to accommodate as although I'm usually reasonably sociable, I do enjoy peace and quiet. It's generally quiet in the mornings though, the compulsory student hangover kills any early birds that may be lurking within the halls.

Talking of birds, there's a lovely stream visible out of the kitchen and my bedroom's window that's populated by a few moorhen and duck families. As the path going by our block doesn't get used much (ours being the furthest in this direction) they often come up to right under the window. It's a lovely sight to see.

As I've mentioned before, I was without internet for 10 days. Internet being rather essential to the modern student, with all our tutorial, timetable, lecture and workshop materials being on VITAL (the student blackboard system) this necessitated frequent trips to the University Library. The Library being a 15minute bus ride away, my cfs kicked in with the frequency of the trips. Not fun. Not fun at all. It seems to be mostly fixed now, there's just the occasional outage.

Back.

Back from London and Great Missenden. I'll give a short overview.

Cocktails, Alex James nearly running me over, meteors, ridiculous amounts of wine, SaTC, Tapas and Harvey Nics.

I miss it all already.

Oh golly gosh

Do you think by starting like that I sound like a massive pretentious arse? I do, you say? Excellent! It's always good to keep in character.

I noticed I hadn't updated this in around 20 days, and that seemed a bit bad considering that when I started this, I had the intention of keeping it fairly updated. Such a gap can't be tolerated. In my defence, nothing that exciting has been going on in my day to day life. I think I've updated you all on the medical 'OH GOD THERE'S SOMETHING PRESSING ON MY EYE' problems that're going to be checked out. I should probably be terrified about that, but it doesn't seem particularly real.

On a more positive note, I'm off to London and the country in just under a week. Exciting stuff!

Air hockey,

Air hockey is surprisingly fun. Met up with James around 1.30, him being a few hours late after Harwood overslept, the lazy git. Drunk a lot of coffee and played some long neglected pool. I'm still a flukey bastard. After that, well I managed to successfully decline bowling and instead played some air hockey for the first time. It's pretty fun, certainly requires deft hand-eye coordination, which is not particularly my forté, though I won more games of that than I did pool.

Also bought a few new books as I had a few hours to spare before James got into town. At least that's my excuse. If you're interested, they are:

The old man and the sea

A handful of dust

Labyrinths.

I'm planning on taking a module in Modernism in the second semester of the coming academic year, so I can sort of excuse the buying of the second text with that. I do think, however, that at the current rate of buying a few books every time I go in to town, I'll soon be broke, so I'd better slow down. However hard I'm going to find that. Don't blame me, they're addictive!

Illness

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of spending around five hours in a terminally hot Hospital in London. Packed to the brim, there wasn't really anywhere to sit down, let alone in any sort of comfort. Still, the air conditioning worked, if you were close enough to it. What was the outcome of this expedition to Moorfields you may ask? Well long story short, with a brief mention of ultrasound scanning of my eyes, it turns out I need a scan to find out why exactly one eye is tilting a way it shouldn't be. Yes, that does have the implication you think it does. I can't pretend I didn't have a few hours where I worried a bit, but I've had so many MRI scans, or other scares in the past that I feel surprisingly pretty relaxed about this. I'm finding it more stressful to sort out the damned appointment than any prospective results.

On a side note, that hospital was featured in the day of the triffids 60's film adaptation.

Pointless entry,.

Bored, tired, 2am. Should probably be sleeping, but the effort of walking over is too much.

Apathy.

Finished applying for university accommodation last night. Gone for the two halls on greenbank, hoping I get into the SC ones, as I rather like my strange mealtimes, thankyouverymuch. That and the whole vegetarian thing, there's always the risk that vegetarian food served is going to be a) tasteless or b) awful. I shouldn't really have to worry, I guess, as Universities usually are pretty good for veggies, but you can never be sure.

Alas poor yorrick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest.

Started reading DFW's Infinite Jest last night. I'm about 50odd pages in, and really enjoying it, the only gripe I have with it so far is the notes are at the back in the appendix, where it would really have been useful to have had them at the bottom of the page, as in an essay. When you're tackling a tome of 1000+ pages, to have to keep flicking back and forward to a mini-essay at the back to be able to fully appreciate a paragraph, it does get on your nerves a bit.

In distinctly non-literary news, new shorts arrived today! Of course, I then awoke to a grey morning. It's the same thing that happens whenever I think about getting some sort of sun cream out so I don't burn to a crisp, leaving me with the ultimate decision between burning like the ginger I am, or freezing to death outside. I of course opt for the burning.

The X files.

Found all the series on iTunes. Thank goodness for the external hard drive, eh? Should fill up some time, watching all five series. But first comes the process of downloading. Even on my reasonably quick connection, it'll take at least 30 hours. Cripes.

In other developments, pretty worried. I mean, there's only so much you can do, right? But god knows I'll do what it takes to help all I can.

9/6/10

Feels odd to write 10 for the year, as if I have a nagging feeling that it shouldn't be that year. As if it should really be prefixed by a 0 or something. I'll get used to it, probably by the time the year's nearly over.

Summer is upon us. When I say 'us' I mean me in particular. I've been out of exams for around ten days and am already pretty bored. Usually around this time of year I flee the country (not for any illegal reason, you understand..), so the wanderlust's building up. I have a sort of urge to go away somewhere nice for quite a few months, but that usually involves heat, and I have stuff to do that requires email access, which'd be a pain in the arse to organise. Thankfully europe appeals just as much. Milan, anybody?

Moar exams and stuff (p2!)

They're all over now. Four months free, will mostly consist of playing video games, reading, writing, brushing up on Latin and a few other modern european languages.

I reckon I'm getting to the end of disc 2 on FFXIII, pretty good so far. As I've found with the other FF's the malaise around the battle system is present, picking what characters to form the party with is trickier than the negotiations surrounding the hung parliament. Got Red Dead Redemption arriving tomorrow, though I want to get to the end of FFXIII before I start on that.

Going to see a play the end of next month, I think. Though the whole drama surrounding it is ridiculously stressful. The sort of drama we're talking about here is 'might as well fuck off out of the country to bypass it' sort. Yeah, that bad. Oh well, i'm sure it'll all go smoothly, it's just more stress I don't want to be dealing with after I've had the wonderful experience of revising hard for exams for the past month. I though I was able to relax now, but the metaphorical gods have decreed otherwise.

Speaking of fleeing the country. I usually do a couple of weeks away in June or July. This year I was going to start off in Norway and travel down to Israel, but with Israel decided to be absolute arses today, I'm guessing the whole region's going to be destabilised for the year. Well, more so than usual at least.

I guess I could avoid it, or just go to SE Asia, but heat doesn't agree with me, and I'd originally been planning that route for a while now. I suppose the risk is worth it, I just won't continue down to Egypt through Gaza. That'd be asking for trouble, and my picture alongside an article about a stupid student that's gone and got himself injured/kidnapped isn't really what I want my print debut to be.

Other things to do over the summer include attempting to get my exercise levels up. I'm going to attempt to continue activity twice a week, to replace getting in to University, lest I sink back into minimal exercise levels. That wouldn't boost my chances of managing University come September energy wise. What I was thinking of was a bit of biking and swimming, it's moderate exercise and I can increase the length biked and swam accordingly.

Examssssss

In the middle of them. They've gone okay, second question of my Tragedy I was under insane time pressure, which went along with exhaustion and didn't really produce optimum performance. Pretty happy with the first answer, though I felt clarity in places was a tad dodgy. Intro to Literature 2 exam tomorrow, and then I'm free for the summer!

Moving.

Spent about half an hour attempting to move a couch through the back door so it can go to the skip today. Failed miserably, for two reasons. First, that thing's bloody heavy. Secondly, I swear the doors have shrunk..

Essay, study, tea,

Last two essays are pretty much done, just editing left now. Literary theory essay I'll be handing in tomorrow, but my history essay'll be edited a tad, then handed in on Tuesday. The lit theory essay, a 2500 word..ish mass of Woolf, Butler's gender theory and Germaine Greer has actually been a fun experience to write, even if it was somewhat frantic. The history essay, however, was a little more frantic. Considering I haven't actually written that many history essays in the course of my rather convoluted schooling, I not only had the subject matter to wrestle with, but the completely different structure. Nevertheless, I got through it, despite the added inconvenience of a mere 1000 word limit. It had the added plus of fitting into revision for that module.

These essays being mainly out of the way, exam revision can get into full steam. I've reread Slaughterhouse Five (so it goes) and made extensive notes on that, and I'm currently rewriting my notes on Eliot, Wordsworth and Keats. History wise, Enlightenment and Renaissance areas I'm pretty confident of my knowledge in, having covered them rather well in my research for the aforementioned paper. English Civil War wise, I have a brief outline, but somewhat shakey in the details, and the same goes for the Reformation.

Completely unrelated, the 1971 SlaughterHouse Five film adaptation, which Vonnegut was rather pleased about, not once had the phrase 'so it goes' uttered. Terrible, right?

Back to the earl grey.

Exams approach.

As the title hints, the grim spectre of exams loom ominously on the horizon. By the time my two final essays are handed in on the twelfth, there'll be at most two or three weeks before I sit my first lot of University exams. As such, revision mode'll be engaged and I'll revert to the scholastic hermit persona for a while, to ensure I'm adequately prepared.

Paris (again)

I don't think I'm ever going to get bored with it. The more I travel there the more the city begs me not to leave it. You know when you go somewhere and feel 'at home', well that's it right there. Somewhat related, I realised yesterday on the train back that I know more about the nightlife in other countries than I do here. Though to be fair, I learned many a year ago that the nightlife in Peterborough is inexcusably crap.