Saturday, January 24
Greetings
A big hello to my Singaporean (is that the right way of saying it?) visitors!!!
I was checking my site stats earlier, and I see that a very large number of my visitors are from Singapore. No idea why, although I'm guessing that it's tied in with being linked to by Faeriestars. So yay to Xue for linking me.
Today I've done, erm, fuck all. Again. Still haven't started that stupid German essay yet, even though I really, really should get it written. Dammit, I just can't be arsed.
At least the house is calm and serene. Everyone's still in bed after last night's exertions, by the looks of things. And yes, it is half past three in the afternoon. They're all lazy, lazy gits. He says, after not getting up until after twelve himself...
Man, I'm bored. Sitting here, watching the football scores update themselves at SportingLife.com and generally doing fuck all. I could go do some washing up, but strangely enough it just doesn't appeal. Strange that, what with there being an enormous pile of it to do. I fucking hate doing washing up.
Jeez, this is a random post. I live such a boring life that I'm just typing here for the sake of it, with no structure and no plan as to where and how I'm going to end each sentence that I start. Pure creativity (ahem) flowing out of my fingers and onto this blog. Or something like that, at any rate.
Right, that's it. I'm spent, and I'm gone.
I'm Worried
For 2 reasons:
1. My blog is first on the search results page at Google when you search for "I'm knackered after my orgasm".
2. Somebody actually searched for that on the internet.
3. Better make it 3 reasons: Somebody searched for that on the internet, and came to my blog. It worries me that that sort of person is reading about me.
Anyway, I'm tired and I'm going to bed. No doubt to be woken around 4am when my housemates roll in from drinking all night at Phase. Oh well, I'll get my own back with some loud music tomorrow when I get up. Mmmmmm, vengeance.
Friday, January 23
Uninspired
Can't really think of anything at all interesting that has happened today. Really, there's been fuck-all. I think the highlight was beating Hindle at darts earlier. What a highlight, right?!?
Seeing as everyone is out of the house tonight, I might do a few things to this site. Such as finding a couple more blogs to read every day, seeing as my favourites seem to have stopped posting for ages... Boo, hiss. Oh, and I might put up a Cast page as well, with quick bios of all of the people in my life. Don't worry, there's not many. *cries*
Thursday, January 22
Fucking Well Fucked
What a bastard of a day!!!
I finally finished reading this really heavy article about homicide in the English Criminal Law at about 1 last night, and promptly crashed into my bed to fall asleep. My alarm (fucking alarm clocks. I HATE them) went off just after 8, leaving me plenty of time to get to my 10am class. Except that I fell asleep again within seconds of turning the alarm off. I still haven't learnt to put it on a sleep mode, so that even if I fall asleep again I'll wake up in time.
I woke again at 9.20, instantly regretting falling asleep. To put this into perspective, I usually leave my house at 9 for a 10am class. Admittedly, I usually get there about 15 minutes early, but meh. I prefer being early than late, although I'm always late for everything that isn't a class. Literally "everything".
This morning I actually bothered to get up and try to make it into the class, because it was my favourite class of the week, Advanced Criminal Law. Anything else and I just wouldn't have bothered. Cue a mad dash around my (tidy) room to find some clothes, throwing them on and running out of the house. Luckily, there was a bus stopped at the traffic lights right where I live, but the fucking cunt of a driver wouldn't open the door to let me on, since it wasn't an official bus stop. CUNT!!!
I managed to get the next bus, then ran into the tube station, only to just miss my tube. I had to wait for a couple of minutes, and then the journey seemed to take much longer than usual, just to rub salt into my wounds. Again, I ran through Westminster station as I changed lines, but this time I caught a tube just before the doors closed. Hurrah for me. Nervously glancing at my phone to check the time as the tube pulled into my stop, I realised that I was already a couple of minutes late. Fuck's sake.
However, these fears were allayed after I speed-walked up the hill, into my uni and found my classroom. The tutor was only fucking late as well, wasn't he? He walked through the door within seconds of me collapsing into a chair. Git. I guess all of the effort was worthwhile, because it was a half-decent class, and I managed to learn something.
My other lecture was cancelled, so I hopped on the tube to come home, after forgetting to go to the Careers Service office (again!). I really need to go have a chat with someone there pretty soon. Oh, and the tube ride home was much more leisurely, no pounding heart and adrenaline flooding my bloodstream.
That adrenaline was soon flowing again though. I figured that I had pretty much nothing to do this afternoon, so I would go for a run, even though it was pissing down with rain. Hare-brained scheme, anyone? I hadn't been on a run in a while, and playing football on Sunday made me realise that I am well unfit, so this might be the start of my new fitness regime. Or, my new Regime Of Pain, as I like to call it.
Suffice it to say that I got drenched, as well as being called "Mad as a hatter" by some builders up on some scaffolding as I ran past. I was out for half an hour, and I'm pleased that I only had to stop to walk once, on this bastard hill towards the end. I ran a fair distance too, which was a bit of a surprise. I was expecting to collapse by the time I got to the other side of the road.
I ran myself a huge bath (see what I did there? A great pun...) when I eventually got back to the house, dripping and shivering. Ain't nothing like a big hot bath to soothe away your aches and pains. I love just lying back in the bath, reading a good book and forgetting that the rest of the world exists. Such a great feeling.
Since then I've done, erm, fuck all. That German Law essay will just have to wait until the weekend... I'm slowly working my way through this big pile of mp3s on my hard drive that a mate gave me over the summer. I like to make sure that they are in fact the right songs, and to update all the tags properly. Yes, I'm anal on things like this. It's worth it in the end though...
Alas, my inspiration for writing is almost at an end, save for informing you all (all, erm, 3 of you) that I'm off to a lecture being given by the legendary Desmond Tutu next Thursday. He's an alumnus of King's, and is returning next week to give a series of lectures. The one I'm going to should be pretty good, since it's about the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which aimed to put right crimes committed under apartheid, without the involvement of the criminal courts. Should be good. But probably very long...
TTFN
Mmmm, Tidy...
The one good thing that results from me settling down to actually do some work is that my room gets a lot tidier. This is because my subconscious is doing everything it can to avoid doing any work, and so tells me that there is no way that I can work in such an untidy environment. It just isn't conducive to a positive studying atmosphere. Therefore, I tidy my room for ten minutes before I get anywhere near my textbooks. Hurrah!
Oh, and I always find something that needs doing on my computer, from running a virus scan (then sitting and watching the status bar creep its way across the screen) to tidying up the tags on my mp3s. There's just always something to grab my attention. It's even worse if I'm already online, since the entire WWW is just a double-click away. I should set up a "Work" user profile on my computer to stop me getting distracted by these things. But then I'd just spend ages trying to hack the system to get round it and prove how clever I am. I think I might have ADD or something, only about 15 years too late...
Wednesday, January 21
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Nein? Ich auch.
I say this (in German, duh) because of a class I had yesterday. My first class of the week (well, my 3rd officially, but one was cancelled and one was early) was a German language class with this new teacher guy. He's a jolly German type, with a weird, not-funny, sense of humour, but he seems pleasant enough. Anyway, I was the only one in the class, not bad considering there's only supposed to be two of us anyway, but at least I made the effort to attend (well, that class at any rate).
We chatted for quite a while, in German, about all manner of things, including a long bit on the English legal system. This being the first time he'd ever heard me speak German, he wrote little notes as we went along, and in the second hour we went through them, highlighting the things I do wrong when I speak. A few of them I knew already, such as my quite drastically limited vocabulary, but a couple of other points were enlightening.
The first was that I am very fluent when I speak, in that I get my meaning across all of the time. However, this is often by accident. Basically, I use the wrong words, but they are still sufficient to get the meaning across. For instance, at one point I said "Ich habe es am Fern gesieht." I thought that that was how you said "I saw it on TV", but it turns out the correct way is "Ich habe es im Fernsehen gesehen." Now, my first attempt was grammatically wrong in one area ('am' not 'im'), had the wrong word in another ('Fern' not 'Fernsehen') and contained an incorrect derivative of a verb at the end ('gesieht' rather than 'gesehen'). However, the meaning still came across, if imperfectly. What I need to improve on is picking and using the right words at the right time.
The second point came up because at one point I said "zu bekommen" as the phrase "to become." Of course, the correct word is just "werden". I have no idea why I said what I did, but I mentioned that the mistake probably came about because I was translating too quickly in my head. My teacher leapt onto that point (not literally) and told me that I needed to train myself to actually think in German, not to translate. Now, I know for a fact that I have got better at that in the past year, but evidently I'm not good enough yet.
He then took me to this place in my university called the Open Learning Centre. It's in the Modern Languages department, and I didn't even know it existed. It's a cool big room, with a load of computers in the middle, each with headphones attached. There's also a row of TVs along another side, each with headphones again, and a number of foreign language channels available. They have video players with a wide selection of films to watch, and many foreign newspapers and magazines. Basically, it's a room with loads of resources for studying foreign languages.
My teacher recommended me to take a blank video in there and record some German news programmes from the TV. I should then watch it a lot at home, in order to get used to just hearing German all the time. Umm, yeah, I might get round to that eventually. Got more important things to be doing right now, such as, erm, doing nothing. Hurrah.
What else has been happening? I've started to get on top of the work which I was behind on from last week. One and a half weeks into the new term, and I'm already behind. That's a new personal record, I reckon. And I've still got that fucking German Law essay to write. I'm promising myself that I will either do it tomorrow afternoon or over the weekend. At any rate, before Monday. Likelihood of success? Minimal. What with my intention to do nothing. Not quite sure how the two are going to meet each other.
I almost forgot: I went to an Arsenal match last night. My first in about 6 years, almost to the day in fact. A match which we promptly lost. Fuck's sake. I reckon I'm a bad luck charm. Either that, or it was the fact that we had a team of youngsters on the pitch. One of the two, methinks. That'll probably be the last game I make it to for a while, what with it being impossible to get a ticket, and it being so goddamn expensive. Stupid capitalism invading football. Grrr.
That's about all I can think of. Oh, go join RAGE. Best decision you'll ever make. And it's oh-so-free!!!
Monday, January 19
Convalescing
At least that's what I'm doing if my German Law teacher asks you. I kinda skipped my class this morning, and I've got to email him in a bit and tell him that I've got a heavy cold / flu or something. Unfortunately, I can't email him until I've written the essay that I was meant to hand in at the class. I'm such a disorganised layabout. I do enjoy my German Law classes, but I always seem to need an extra lie-in after the weekend's exertions. Of course, I could just go to bed a bit earlier on a Sunday night, but where's the fun in that?!
Yesterday was a weird day, to be honest. I dragged my ass out of bed just before midday, to be informed by a few of my housemates that we were all off to play some football at 1. I knew that I was supposed to write this essay, but meh, football is more important. I even abstained from watching the Arsenal game at the pub in order to play. How's that for dedication to fitness? Not that I'm fit. I was in goal for the first hour or so, barely having to run, but for the second hour I was out on pitch, running around like a madman. I was fucked by the end of it though, absolutely knackered. Damn, I need to get fit.
I did end up with a peach of a bruise on my thigh though, from where me and this other guy collided pretty full-on late on in the game. His knee must have connected squarely with my thigh, because my leg went pretty dead, and now there's a nice purple patch on it... Very sore too.
Anyway, on the way back it was decided that there was going to be a massive clean-up of the house, once we'd all cleaned our muddy selves up. I didn't have much of a say in this, and Pete pissed me off when he said that I shouldn't be exempt from doing the washing-up. This may seem like a very minor point, but I'm the one who always ends up doing any huge pile of washing-up that builds up. I know that I'm partly to blame, because I'm terrible for not washing my own stuff up as soon as I use it, but nor does anyone else. At least I eventually get round to doing the whole lot. A couple of Fridays ago, my first one back in London, I spent nearly four hours just washing up. I was doing it alone, and the rest of the house were in the living room, watching TV or whatever. I think I mentioned this a couple of posts ago with Alex saying thank-you.
Anyway, what Pete said pissed me off because my point is not that I should be exempt from washing-up full stop, but that I should be exempt from doing a big pile of washing up. I was really pissed off that my hard work was still not being appreciated, and I pretty much sulked in my room for the rest of the evening. I had no idea whether any cleaning was actually being done, and nor did I care. I don't make as much mess as the rest of them, and I'd done more than my fair share for the past few weeks.
I've no idea how I killed nearly 5 hours last night, just listening to music and surfing the web. I didn't even post here! I spent a bit of time on NFL.com, watching the live updates for the two conference games, as well as reading an incredible amount of news. I also stumbled across the Graduate Opportunities page at Reuters, the news agency, and realised that working for them is exactly what I want to do. They require fluency in a language other than English, which I've pretty much got now, and will definitely have this time next year (I'm going to be living in Germany...).
The only problem is that I have absolutely no experience in the field of journalism, even though it's the only career which I am seriously considering right now. I was going to pop along to the Careers Service office at King's today, after my class, but I guess that it will have to wait until tomorrow. I also keep meaning to go along to the office of the student newspaper, Roar, and see if they have anything that I can do. I'd much rather do something with them than spend hours online, doing fuck-all every night. But, we'll see. They'll probably tell me to fuck off and leave them alone. Ain't nothing like a pessimist view.
Right, I'm going to write this essay, even if it kills me. At least I have an Arsenal game to look forward to tomorrow night to keep me going.
Sunday, January 18
Hangover Time
I was out drinking last night, got smashed, and had the worst hangover ever today. I didn't make it out of bed until 5 this afternoon, but my head was still pounding. It's still got a dull ache now, at 1am.
I know that it was entirely self-inflicted, but I'm still going to moan about it.
It was / is one of those hangovers where you feel just completely bleh. You know, when you can't find justification within yourself to do anything except to do nothing. Lounging in front of the box and reading the newspaper was pretty much all I accomplished today.
How long before science turns to a useful project and finally develops an instant hangover cure? I'd be first in line to buy any actual hangover cure, and would probably pay pretty good money for it. Why don't I just give up drinking full stop? Now where's the fun in that?!
Anyway, I’m now embarking on an undefined period of sobriety. This could of course be ruined by going to the pub tomorrow to watch the arsenal game, but meh. I need some detoxing, I reckon. He says, having ordered a takeaway pizza this evening...
