Monday, February 9
The Events That Have Shaped Last Week And Thus My Future Existence (In Abbreviated Form)
I know that I haven’t posted since last weekend, but I’ve been very busy. Well, sort of busy, but that’s my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
I think the last thing I posted was about being quite (very) depressed on Friday night after Phase. Well, I’ve cheered up since then. In quite a big way, to be honest. I guess that it was just another one of my minor depressed periods, generally centred around my lack of a girlfriend. Oh, and my continuing frustration at said lack of girlfriend, and the accompanying enforced celibacy. Not that enforced celibacy is at this point in my life any different than it has been for the previous 20 years! And believe me, it is enforced, not out of choice. If only I had a decent amount of money, I would seriously consider heading over to King’s Cross on a Saturday night and partaking of a lady for that purpose. If only…
Anyway, moving on.
Why am I in a particularly good mood today? I’ll get onto that later, for now I'm delving into last week, and what I got up to.
Sunday was a bit of a wasted day. I dragged my lazy ass out of bed at a relatively reasonable hour (only just after midday), because I had been informed that we (me and Leigh) were going to play football at 1. We walked up to the King’s halls of residence a few minutes up the road to meet some other people that we were going to play with, but they weren’t there. It was well fucking cold too, which didn’t help matters. We figured that we were a little late, and that they’d already set off to the park where we play, so we started walking there. Unfortunately, the park is another 20 minutes worth of walking away, including a bastard of a hill. Suffice it to say that they weren’t there. We gave one of them a ring, and they said that they didn’t really want to play. Gee, thanks for letting us know before. Fuckers. Another 30 minutes to get back, and me and Leigh were very pissed off. Not to mention knackered from the epic (ahem) walk. We’re not old, we don’t want to go on Sunday walks!
To counter the lack of playing football, we went down the pub to watch football. Hurrah for football and beer combined. Heaven! Can’t remember what else happened on Sunday, so it couldn’t have been that interesting…
On Monday I had my German Law class, and for once I’d prepared for it. I’d read the textbook, and I’d even read the cases, both in English and German. That’s about the first time that’s happened. The problem with that class is that I have to concentrate so hard to keep up that if my mind wonders for a split-second, be it in German or English, I completely lose the thread of the conversation. Which isn’t handy. I managed to speak to the tutor after the class briefly, to explain to him that I knew that I didn’t contribute a huge amount in the class, but that I really wanted to just listen and comprehend what was being said. He told me that he could see that I was understanding what was being said, but that I found it hard to vocalise what I thought about the subject. This was weird, because I’ve always spoke better German than I’ve understood aurally. Meh, at least I'm improving generally.
What else happened on Monday? Oh yeah, I spotted an ad on the King’s College jobs board for a web design type thing. I scribbled the number down whilst I was there, and gave them a ring when I got home. It seems that they want someone who will work on a project-by-project basis, probably from home. That’s exactly what I want to do whilst I'm at uni. Getting paid to design websites would be a dream for me. I sent them my CV, but as yet I haven’t heard back from them. Such is life, the bastard.
And that about sums up Monday. Moving on now to…
Tuesday, this was another pretty good day. A few cool classes, including another one-on-one German language class. I also had a meeting with my personal tutor, another compulsory one. That went alright, and she gave me the idea of taking an evening class in German over the summer, so I don’t go for 3 months or whatever without speaking German before I go over there to live. A very good idea. I didn’t finish until nearly 7.30pm (fucking stupid Evidence class), and was walking home from the Tube station when I bumped into a load of my flatmates. They were heading down to our local (horrible) pub to watch the Arsenal game, and said for me to come along. I was originally going to go home and get some dinner before going to watch the second half, but peer pressure forced me to join them in the pub. I grabbed an enormous burger whilst I was there, even though my bank balance was as unhealthy as the burger itself. Damn that peer pressure. Needless to say, Arsenal promptly lost the game.
After that I did some reading at home for Wednesday’s Criminology tutorial, and installed this DVD ripping program onto my computer. It was unbelievably difficult and technical to set up, but it seems to provide some fantastic quality rips. I'm in the process of copying onto my hard drives the vast majority of the household DVD collection that aren’t mine, but it is going to take forever. For an average 2 hour film, I reckon it takes almost 6 hours to completely rip it. Don’t ask how long it took to rip Apocalypse Now Redux!
Of course, Wednesday’s Criminology class ended up being cancelled, which I only found out after getting up, travelling into uni and getting to the classroom. I was not a happy bunny.
In the afternoon I went to this forum organised by the King’s career service. It was a series of guest speakers on Broadcasting, Journalism and Publishing, and was really worthwhile. It gave me a load of ideas of what to do after uni, and also ideas for Easter / summer jobs. I don’t suppose anybody reading this works for a TV company who want a runner / researcher for 2-3 months over the summer? If so, give me a job!!!
Unfortunately, the forum overran by a little while, which meant I couldn’t make it to my German class (wow, it seems that the only classes that I have are all German ones, when in fact they’re the minority part of my week). On the plus side, I got home at a reasonable hour for once. It pisses me off how I don’t get home until 7 or later on 3 days of the week. Stupid timetablers. What pisses me off even more is how on a Wednesday and Friday I have a 5 hour and 6 hour gap respectively between classes. What sort of bloody stupid timetabling is that?!
Oh yeah, and on my way out of the forum, I spotted a poster advertising for the post of Web Administrator for the King’s Student Union website. 8-10 hours per week at £5.50 per hour, with a requirement of HTML skills and some PHP knowledge. That would also be an ideal job for me to do. It gave an email address to apply to, which again I scribbled down. Of course, I forgot to send an email when I got home, and by the time I remember later in the week, the posters had been taken down, which to my mind means that the position has been filled. I'm really annoying for myself when that sort of thing happens.
Thursday was the second day in a row where I got out of bed a whole lot earlier than I needed to. I forgot that my Advanced Criminal (see, not German!) class had been rearranged from 10am to 1 that afternoon. Of course, I didn’t remember this until I’d been sat in the classroom, alone, for about 10 minutes. I got there well early, because the Tube was running on time for once, so I figured that everybody else would get there soon. I just sat and read my newspaper for a while, before it suddenly clicked that the class had been rearranged.
I went to check my emails and to kill 2 hours before my next lecture, when I came across one of the circular emails that you get as part of being a King’s student. You get about 2 or 3 emails a week, asking if you would like to participate in various medical studies by different departments at King’s. Normally, I either delete them or am not eligible to take part (being relatively healthy and normal). However, this time some “control” samples were required for this investigation into depression, and the testing was being done that morning. I figured that I had 2 hours to fill, so I hopped on a bus and made my way to the King’s Institute of Psychiatry.
Once I got there, I had to sign a stack of consent forms, and then fill in these epic questionnaire booklets. All the questions were like “Have you ever suffered from depression?” or “Have any members of your immediate family taken anti-depressant medication at any time?” and all that sort of thing. There were also the standard “How strongly do you agree with the following statements?”-type questions, I guess as a bit of an insight into your personality. They took some blood too (the girl who did it was SOOOOO fit), about which I was complemented on being so calm and not at all nervous. Can’t understand why people get nervous about blood samples, to be honest. We’ve all seen blood before, especially our own.
What was quite weird though was that I’d watched Trainspotting a few nights before, and when the girl put a tourniquet around my arm, it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. I still have a bruise / wound on my inner elbow which looks suspiciously like where a needle has gone in to shoot some skag into my veins. Mainly because it’s right on a vein, to be honest.
I got paid £10 for my troubles, but I managed to miss the lecture because it overran a little while longer than I was expecting. I texted a friend of mine to grab me a handout (there’s always handouts), and she texted back, complaining at the lack of friendly people in the Law School at King’s. I quote: “u r the only nice law student.” Hurrah, a response from a member of the opposite sex. She’s really cool too, but I'm not sure if anything is going to happen there, what with my complete lack of self-confidence in that area.
Needless to say that Thursday was turning out to be a cool day.
Well, that is until I got home. Once again, the stack of washing-up on our kitchen table had reached Himalayan proportions, and it seemed as if there were no willing volunteers to get rid of it. I should take a picture of it one of these days, to show just how much there is on there. Once again, I cracked, and decided to get on and just do it all. For the fourth time (at least) in less than a month, I should remind everyone.
I grabbed a big set of speakers and a subwoofer from the living room, plugged my Discman into them and turned them up fucking loud. I really couldn’t give a shit if I was disturbing and annoying the rest of my flatmates, because they were really pissing me off by not doing anything. And I mean REALLY pissing me off. What didn’t help was that I had noticed that Full Metal Jacket was on the TV a little later, and I really wanted to watch it. It’s one of my favourite films ever, and I hadn’t seen it in a while. When I mentioned to Phil that it was on and I wanted to watch it, he responded by saying that it was unlikely that everyone else would be willing to sit through 3 hours of it that evening. That REALLY pissed me off because of the amount of work that I put into this household.
I take care of paying the bills.
I chase people up for rent money and get that paid on time.
I'm the one who talks to the landlord about any problems we’re having.
I'm the one who more often than not tidies the living room.
I'm the only one who will wash the big piles of dishes, even though my contribution to the piles is barely even a quarter of it.
I pay the internet bill by myself.
I pay the phone bill by myself.
I do pretty much all of the organising of anything concerning the house.
I do so much for this fucking house, and I get no response for it all. It annoys me so fucking much that I had to say something last night. More on that when I get to Sunday.
Anyway, I did this huge stack of washing-up, and it took me nearly 4 hours to do the whole lot. It wasn’t even as if I hadn’t got some other uni work to be getting on with. I do a degree as well, remember!
Phil came in and told me that they were all going to watch Full Metal Jacket if I still wanted to, but I was in such a bad mood that I couldn’t tolerate being in the same room as them for any length of time. They’re all so lazy and such slobs that I can’t stand it any more. I would rather be in my room, listening to some tunes and surfing the Web than be with them at the moment.
Which is precisely what I did, except for the surfing the Web bit. I went into my room, but my headphones on with a random CD, and read on my bed for an hour or so. I was reading Catcher In The Rye by Salinger, which I hadn’t read for a while. As an aside, isn’t it weird how your perception of a book changes each time you read it? The first time I read Catcher, I felt Holden was a fucking cool guy and a bit of an anti-hero. This time, I thought he was the very essence of a (to use his own phrase) phony. He tries to be intellectual, but fails, and is concerned only with sex, a character trait which he berates in all others. Fucking hypocrite.
But I digress.
I was just about to go to bed when I went into the kitchen to grab some juice. To my utter shock and surprise, there was a dirty plate, some cutlery and a glass or two on the table. It had been a matter of an hour or 90 minutes since I’d completely cleared and cleansed the entire kitchen, and someone was already being this lazy!!! To say that I was angry was to understate it greatly. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote on it “Why do I even fucking bother?” before placing it on top of the plate. I just couldn’t believe that someone would leave it there after I’d spent so long clearing it all. Utterly aghast I was. Fuckers.
Friday. Yet another early start. Except this time I didn’t bother. I went to bed quite late on Thursday, because I was ripping a DVD, and I just couldn’t stomach getting up at 7 in the morning. Hence I went back to sleep until 11. When I got up I had some work to do for my afternoon class, which I enjoyed doing for once. Usually I find that reading quite heavy going, but this was a good subject.
I was in a truly good mood when I got to the class, for the above reason and just generally. But all good things come to an end, which this did. Partway through the class I ended up having this little debate with the tutor over a questionable point. It was all good-natured, and I think worth debating. Then this fucking twat in the class tried to determine what it was we were debating, and ended up saying something like “10 minutes over that?! For fuck’s sake!” For some reason, that hit me like a ton of bricks, and I just couldn’t be bothered for the rest of the class. I think it was because there was this guy at school a few years back who always argued with the teachers over everything, and I didn’t want to be like that in any way.
I was in a bad mood when I got home then, unaided by the sheer chaos that was rush hour Tube travel. Everyone else was going out for the evening / night, but I couldn’t be arsed. I played on my computer for a bit, watched some TV and crashed into bed. I lead an exciting life, I know.
I think that Saturday was another washout, except for getting my smashed mirror finally completed. My smashed mirror is the project that has been ongoing for about 3 months in my room. I decided that it would look fucking cool on my wall if I smashed a mirror and then glued each piece up in its original position, with gaps between each piece. It’d been lying unfinished since before Christmas, so I figured that it was time to get it done. I was right, it does look fucking cool (mental note: take a photo), except for a couple of gaps where I ran out of pieces. Hey, it’s not rocket science to screw that sort of thing up.
For some reason I got a takeaway (fish and chips, munch) on Saturday, even though I really shouldn’t be spending too much money. I really need a job so that I can afford such “luxuries”.
This Sunday we at least managed to play some football. The walk to the park was this time not in vain, pleasant as the walk was by itself (except the uphill bits). It felt good to get a solid run-around, and to pump some blood around my body. It was just me and Leigh from our house, the rest being so lazy that they couldn’t even be arsed to make it to the park for a kickabout. Lazy slobby bastards.
On the way back, Leigh mentioned just how good it would be to have a massive roast dinner. We say this a lot, because we never ever have roast dinners. It wasn’t until we got home that we sort of realised that we could cook a roast dinner for ourselves. I popped down to the supermarket (unbelievably busy!) to grab a chicken and some veg, and we set about cooking a mountain of food. Roast potatoes, roast parsnips, mashed potato, stuffing, carrots, broccoli, peas, Yorkshire puddings, gravy and a pile of chicken, all fucking munch. We couldn’t even fit it all onto our plates, and had to use bowls for the veg. Fucking worth all the effort though, and there wasn’t even a huge amount of washing-up to do (I know, I'm getting a little obsessed about this subject), because we did it as we were cooking.
Not much to report from Sunday night, except that I finally brought up the subject of the internet bill with a couple of the others. Not to much response, it has to be said, but I think this is the start of me no longer taking any shit from them, and to get some recognition for all that I do for them all. Cue me retiring back into my shell by the end of the week, no doubt.
Well, that’s it all. Three and a half thousand words to describe one week in my life. If only I could just sit down and write that many words in one go without losing interest for the essays that I’ve got to do. If you’ve read it all, and got this far, well done. If you haven’t read it all, but are reading this, shame on you, but I understand just how daunting it might look.
