Episode 171: What Shall We Do With A Drunken Student?

The lecture on Freud this morning kind of flew over my head. I'm sure it would have been great on paper, but listening to it and trying to make notes was a bit hard. Oh well. Jim had chocolate biscuits during his seminar! Yummy. I did a spot of revision for French before I went to sleep last night, as I had to spend the free hour between the seminar and my French test sorting out the cash refund for the Paris trip. It's the third time the paperwork's had to be done, so this time, Phill and I went about the SU to get it done in person. So I've finally got my £10 back! The test itself went well, I think. It's really a lot easier here than it was in Singapore, e.g. for the listening comprehension section, we can replay the audio track as many times as we like within a certain time limit. Did I mention we can use a dictionary too? Now I just need to get through the oral presentation next term, and the final examination will be a snap. This is me, pretty much making up my mind to do LL209 French 5 next year as one of my option modules.

Got back to my room at about 4.30 pm, but I had to leave pretty soon after to get to Keegan's surprise birthday party. Shen Ting's planning skills are a bit wanting, I'm afraid. Like, no cutlery? Haha! Peng Kun's tiramisu was lovely though, if somewhat drowned by cocoa powder that got on my clothes. Left with Samantha, and because we bumped into Vanessa walking outside Social Studies, we ended up back in Samantha's room, just chatting to while away the time until Claire Lim's games night for charity started. Wound up playing two games of The Big Taboo, which is kind of fun compared to regular Taboo, I must admit. Not the kind of thing that I could get addicted to though. Bought some of the food since it was all for charity anyway, and I wanted to clog up my veins with some fried batter. Told Sophie to give me a text when she was headed to Varsity, and she actually came all the way to the Library to find me. Bless! Didn't quite work out though, since she was at the gantries on the first floor and I was coming out from Lib 2 on the ground floor. Talk about crossed wires!

Anyway, tonight was the last Varsity gathering for the next five weeks and we had a good-sized bunch, a mix of regulars and newcomers to the group. (Eugene, you really should have been here this week instead!) It wasn't all that cold, compared to the past couple of nights, but somehow I found myself getting colder as the hours wore on. So much for drinking to stay warm, huh? I think everyone had a fun night, all things considered, although there was a point when a couple of girls sitting on the other side of the window were coming on by turns to me, Dan and Matt, which was kind of funny and creepy at the same time. I mean, they were basically blowing kisses and signing hearts at us, and they were really into Dan, which weirded him out, I think. Can't blame them though, since Dan is well fit. All in all though, still a fitting way to send out the term! Nothing like a good bet to spice things up for a change, yeah? Missing all of you for the next couple of weeks and hoping everyone doesn't get too drunk while you're on vacation...

Episode 170: The Last Of England

I just got back from the Alternative Film Society's screening of The Last Of England, which was really intense. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, to be perfectly honest. Was having a few drinks before that with some of my coursemates, as good a way to while away the afternoon as any, you might say. It's good fun though, trading stories and gossip over alcohol. It's the last week of term, and hardly anyone's in the mood for actual work anyway. If we keep this up all the way through vacation, we'll pay when Summer Term begins. I definitely need to get my act together, so I'm treating this last few days of Spring Term as my last bout of madness before I get down to some heavy academic work, which will be very possible given that the usual friends won't be around to distract me, e.g. Thursday nights will actually be used for something other than drinking. Haha! We also went to see Maureen Freely today to get our fiction portfolios back. I'm okay with my mark, although I honestly expected it to be a bit better. I can't really complain about what I got though, so it's just my nature to be dissatisfied. The day began well enough, for I won the poetry slam during our seminar. I am aware that this turn of events had more to do with the order in which I chose to read out my poems than their being actually better than everyone else's. I honestly felt some of the stuff read out today was way better, like Annabella's.

Episode 169: Domination

Just got back from the Good Food Society's social at Chico's in Leamington Spa. The food was pretty good, but the service was fairly dismal for an establishment that automatically includes a service charge in the bill. I mean, I can accept lousy service in Singapore since the staff don't have to work for the GST anyway, but over here, I expect some standards. Anyway, I played Domination again for a good part of today, which is sort of like a desktop Java version of Risk. It's pretty cool because someone designed a Middle-earth map, so that's what I've been playing on obsessively. Curiously enough, the strongest starting position is Mordor. As long as you can secure that, you're pretty much set for the rest of the game, especially since the AIs have only two tactics, as far as I can tell, even the hard AIs. One, they attack until they run out of troops, i.e. they are purely expansionist. Two, they will always try to break your hold on a continent. It's starting to get a bit boring though, so I'm thinking the next round that I play, I'm going to set five hard AIs against one human player, with random starting positions. Have not written anything new for tomorrow's slam session in Peter Blegvad's seminar, so I will just have to get by with stuff I've written previously. Am feeling lazy anyway, since it's the last few days of term! Must study a little for my French test tomorrow though, even though I think it's not going to be much of a problem for me.

Episode 168: To Buy Or Not To Buy?

I got an e-mail from YOOX informing me of an additional 15% discount on menswear, so I hopped over to the site to check it out. My bill at the moment stands at £282, which I don't mind paying, but I want to let my parents know first, as even though it's my money I'm spending, I want to get their open (dis)approval first anyway. I have until Wednesday to decide if I'm getting the stuff or not. I will almost certainly get at least one or two pairs because those are really a steal, but if I'm going to start buying G-Star RAW, I might as well get a good start with five pairs. Lest you think all I've done is contemplate online shopping, let me say something about this morning's visit to WarwickPrint. We got to see how The Warwick Review is printed, step-by-step. It's really quite interesting, especially lithographic printing, the skill and technique required to get things right. Kind of makes you sorry that the digital age is slowly killing off so many trades. I'd never really thought about the amount of work that goes into getting something like a book or literary magazine from idea to page. Doesn't mean that I think the cost of books these days is justified though, since the industry is becoming so profit-driven, it's frankly very distressing/disturbing!

Episode 167: I Got My Groceries At Last!

Title is self-explanatory. Anyway, I am so not cut out for communal living. At least not as it is practised in my hall. I went to the kitchen today to make lunch, to discover both my dishwashing liquid and sponge have been appropriated. I took the sponge back to my room and wrote the dishwashing liquid off as my gesture towards making the world a better place by sharing and caring. Yeah right. I'm annoyed. So to console myself, I've spent the day since coming back from church watching episodes of Charmed and Demons. Was on Skype for a bit with my family, which is pretty fun in its own way. I should probably be reading something, but I'm feeling lazy this weekend, so no reading. At least not for my essays. I might read that collection of Paul Celan's that's been lying on my table for ages. The ridiculous thing is that there probably isn't a lot of text per se to get through, but I always have this sense of inadequacy when I read anything, as if I'm somehow not doing the writing justice with my reading. I wouldn't say it's paralysing, just sort of a very convenient psychological barrier to aid procrastination! Just one more night of slacking, and I'll be really assiduous on Monday. I promise!

Episode 166: New Music

Woke up at 1 pm, and since then, have spent most of the day watching television on my laptop. The fourth episode of Dollhouse was a bit of a disappointment, as it felt like filler, and it's far too early in the show's season for an episode like that. I'm glad Gossip Girl is finally returning to finish the rest of its second season and that it's been renewed by The CW for a third! Natalie's managed to send me the two seasons of Carnivàle, so I might finish those over Easter break. Have been watching a lot of Charmed recently too, and although I still like it, I can't understand why my sisters and I were so keen on the show when it was still airing. Our parents wouldn't let us watch it, of course, because of its content. So I've basically spent all day in my room, except for a couple of hours when I went to the Library to get another couple of books, and then doubled back to Humanities to attend Vanessa's farewell party. Heard a song while I was there, 'Deep' by Binocular. It was quirkily good, so I've gone and searched for the album. Somehow, after finding it, I detoured into looking for albums by Blake, David Garrett, Teatro and Will Martin, none of whom sound anything like Binocular. Now it's approximately three hours after I first started typing out this post, and I really should be sleeping...

Episode 165: Preliminary Research

I just had a fun time calling up various companies to cancel the memberships I was automatically enrolled in when I bought a 'trial' of the product. In theory, it means I won't be charged for anything beyond the trial's shipping cost, which I'm fine with. I will, however, by monitoring the charges made to my credit card over the next few weeks, and as soon as anything suspicious pops up, I'm going to do everything within my power to hammer them. Just to be safe, I'm not going to use my MasterCard for the next month or so. Shall switch to Visa if I need to use a credit card to pay for anything, which is unlikely to happen anyway. Am feeling foolish now for not being more careful and doing my research. I also forgot to go down to pick up my £10 refund from the French Society. Sigh. Hope I'll be able to get it on Monday with no problems, although the secretary has assured me that if I encounter any, I shouldn't hesitate to let him know. In other news, I am feeling good about myself, academically speaking. The Stoppard essay turned out fine, although my inability to get anything other than 74 is starting to make me wonder if I'm an intelligent mediocrity. I have also picked out the essay topics I want to do over Easter vacation for three of my modules, and have made tentative attempts to research them, at least enough to pique my interest and generate some vague ideas about the directions I want to take the various essays. Shall have to do some serious reading tomorrow, I think...

Episode 164: Die Welle

I am loving my new haircut. Seriously. I think I'm not ever going back to Chaplins at Cannon Park Shopping Centre, will just stick to Thompson & Murray on campus, especially since the latter charges less if you're not getting a full cut, which is what I would like to do in order to maintain my hairstyle. Anyway, I braved the dark streets of Canley last night when I walked home from Mel's place at about 1 am. Eugene stayed over because he wanted to sleep in later and you can't do that here when the cleaners come around at 9 am. That and Mel could take him shopping and show him around Coventry, whereas all I had to offer was a boring lecture on subaltern studies, a somewhat strange seminar on 1960s literature that was more song lyrics than typical literature, and a French class that would have bored him anyway. So I brought him to Leamington Spa after my class, and I showed him the Royal Pump Rooms before grabbing a quick bite at Vialli's. I can't decide whether to be surprised that the guy taking orders recognised me from last Saturday, when I went there before Twelfth Night. I do love the Vialli's hot sauce though! It tastes sort of like chicken rice chilli.

Then we came back to campus to watch Die Welle (The Wave) at WSC, this being, once again, Lucy's idea. A good one though, as the film was excellent. It's based on true events, although relocated from America to Germany, which made it just that little bit more chilling, since whatever criticism you might have of the former Bush administration, the Third Reich was still way higher in the scary stakes. One teacher, over the course of a week, basically grows a neo-fascist movement out of nothing at all. We get both sides of the story, in the sense that the students do flourish and develop a sense of purpose through their involvement in The Wave, but at the same time, they become blinded to the negative aspects, like their exclusionist behaviour. It all ends tragically, but I won't spoil it for people who've never seen the film before. Suffice to say that like the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments, the events of the film bring home just how darkly humans can behave, given the right set of circumstances.

The Varsity group was a bit small tonight, although Eugene still did get to meet some of the usual figures. It was awfully cold though, and has been for the past couple of days, which is really crazy. Just when it was getting warmer too! So there we sat, outside under the heating lamp, which we had to repeatedly switch back on because the silly thing apparently has a self-timer with a very short limit. At least now we know how it works. Or else where would we be when Alex isn't around (and he wasn't tonight)? Seriously though, what is the point of having a heating lamp that doesn't stay on? To keep away random vagrants, who would find it hard to compete with the patrons for its use anyway? Am now staying up, looking for Girls Aloud songs because 'Something Kinda Ooooh' was played in the pub (yes, we eventually went inside), along with various other dancefloor-friendly tunes that made me realise again how I'm a weird person who loves that kind of music but doesn't really feel comfortable dancing in public. Haha...

Episode 163: The Vagina Monologues

Had already decided I wasn't going to see The Vagina Monologues today because I had to pick Eugene up from Cannon Park Shopping Centre, but he got caught in traffic and missed his coach, so I ended up going to the performance with Mel. Can't say I regretted it because it was really enjoyable, and no, before you ask, it wasn't uncomfortable being a man in the audience. I thought the cast as a whole was good, just thought one of the monologues could have been delivered with more conviction because I felt the actress was rushing through her lines a little. Mel said she preferred the version she saw when she was in Cambridge, but I've never seen The Vagina Monologues performed before anyway, so I'm just glad I've finally seen it at least once. After that, we did a bit of shopping at Tesco, picked Eugene up from the bus stop, and then Mel made this lovely risotto for dinner. I've more or less decided that over summer, I'm going to get some cooking practice at home, where my mum will be on hand to help clear up any disasters and the rest of the family will be there to eat up whatever I make, however horrible it tastes. Haha! Eugene had brought rum butter with him, so we had that with pears because I forgot about looking for apple pie at Tesco. We've spent most of the night just catching up on gossip really. That's been good fun! If only, I didn't have a lecture tomorrow morning...

Episode 162: Doubt

Went to see the film version of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt this evening because Lucy suddenly suggested it after the EN121 lecture. A Catholic priest is suspected of sexually abusing the new black student, and Meryl Streep's character goes throughout the film absolutely convinced that he has had improper relations with the child. It is never explicitly clarified whether or not this was the case, but then again, the whole point of the plot is that it is driven by Sister Aloysius's conviction of Father Flynn's guilt, regardless of there being no evidence. In contrast, Sister James is more prepared to accept his explanations, even though there is something a little dodgy and Philip Seymour Hoffman does look kind of creepy. The film has uneven pacing at times, but it is nonetheless redeemed by Streep's strong performance, particularly in the final scene, when she breaks down and finally confesses, 'I have such doubts,' thus revealing that her single-minded campaign was in part a means to reinforce her own faith. Now I'm stuck staying up late to finish the radio play for Wednesday's seminar! I think I've got two separate endings in mind, but I can't decide which I like better, so I'm just going to write lines for both, since they'll just be for a few seconds anyway.