Episode 646: Almost Home...

So practically all my stuff has been packed away. I'm just a bit nervous that my luggage to be checked in is overweight. I've stuff as much as I can into my carry-on, so if that inexplicably gets weighed (it's only happened once to me before and that was at Birmingham International), I am screwed. Otherwise, all is well. Had a minor panic this morning when I thought my bin hadn't been emptied because there was some stupid regulation about not emptying bins with excess trash bags piled around them, but it turns out they were just running late today. I've now binned all those trash bags and left the bin outside to be emptied again next week. There was actually another bin that I'd dragged out from the back garden and filled with trash bags as well, but the juniors must have wheeled it over to my neighbours down the road. It's because the number on the bin isn't actually the same as my own house, but it's the number for another house my landlord owns on this road. Whatever. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm now valiantly trying to consume all my junk food, having eaten up all the 'proper' food in the afternoon, and it's making me feel really sick. Might actually just toss that last bag of crisps, even if they are Sensations!

Episode 645: Cleaning...

I've always thought Enver Gjokaj a brilliant actor since I saw him in Dollhouse, so I'm quite pleased that he's just appeared as a guest star on Lie To Me. Don't think it's very original though, his character having such a similar story to Victor in Dollhouse. It's almost like he's being typecast. I spent the afternoon packing, and I'm practically done now. Worst comes to worse, I'll just chuck whatever's left in a plastic bag and dump it upstairs, rather than arranging it all properly. It does look, however, quite impossible to fit all of this into just one taxi when I come back in September! Might ask a housemate to do me a favour and meet me in Coventry and follow a second taxi back. I'd pay, of course. Have also sprayed the bathroom with bleach, and that's got rid of most of the stains, except for a couple of really stubborn ones on the grouting of the bathtub. I even found time to write a story for the latest Six Sentences competition, my story for the last anthology having just been accepted. David Tait's also given me a couple of online magazines to review, so I need to get started on those at some point. It seems like I'm not going to get any time to breathe during my weekends either! Am kind of glad now that my attachment projects sound like they definitely wouldn't require me to bring work home from the office.

Episode 644: AdHoc Slam

Packed schedule today! Popped to Westwood Campus to hand in my report, and along the way, I got a call from a chirpy lady canvassing donations for Oxfam, so had to spend some time on that, even though I was already late for meeting Bella. I did commit to donating, £15 each month, but I've got a month to change my mind because the direct debit only kicks in at the end of July. Will probably have to cancel it, simply because there isn't actually money in my account. Oh well. It was good to catch up with Bella, just chatting about stuff in general. Had a good chat with Lola too, when I got home from the AdHoc slam-cum-fundraiser. That went quite well, although I couldn't stay till the end. I don't think I've ever heard Sophie Mac play live, and I thought she was great! Would've liked to have stayed out with everyone, but I've got to continue packing tomorrow, as well as start cleaning the bathroom, so missing the last bus back to Coventry was sadly out of the question. I've still got far too much that needs to go into boxes, and I'm definitely over the limit for my luggage, so I'm going to have to leave even more stuff behind now. Argh...

Episode 643: Party At Sophie's

Managed to finish reading The City & The City on the way back from Sophie's, but I checked and found that there's already a review scheduled to go up this week, so I have some room to breathe. This week is turning out to be a bit more hectic than I thought! Spent the morning in church, so I got to see a couple of people one last time before summer vacation. Then headed to Sophie's place for the barbecue, where I saw the second half of the England-Germany match. As a non-partisan viewer, I had no actual investment in the outcome, but it was quite appalling nonetheless. Stayed until evening because I wanted to come home and write this review, but I had to wait about 45 minutes for the bus, and by the time I got back, all I could think about was packing. I've cleared some books, as well as filled my carry-on luggage, which I suspect is actually overweight now, but I'm going to risk it. I'd say I'm about a third of the way through my packing. It's mostly just separating out which books and clothes I want to leave behind in the UK versus which ones I want to bring back to Singapore. I'm mostly anticipating the problem of third year, when I'll have to bring every thing back at one go, so if I can lug more stuff back this year, I really should. Wish me luck!

Episode 642: Stupid, Stupid Virgin Media

So I miscounted, and we're actually short of one bill for our broadband, so I really am living on whatever's in my wallet. Virgin still being stupid and not sending the prepaid envelope, so I sent them a lightly barbed e-mail complaint. I really don't see why they can only send me the envelope after disconnection, when the whole point is that I'm disconnecting because I'm flying out of the country, a fact that I've made very, very explicit in my exchanges with them. Well, I can't imagine what they'd do if we don't send it back. I told them as much in my complaint, saying that they could go ahead and not send me the envelope immediately, if they didn't mind waiting until September to get the equipment back. Blockheads! We'll just have to see if my theory concerning customer relations here is right, i.e. you can pretty much get your own way no matter what by being a bully. Anyway, was meant to attend Will's birthday party, but I'd got started on the archaeology report, and was within spitting distance of the end when it was time to head to Leamington, so I made a responsible decision, and it's now done. It's far from good, but it won't fail because I've demonstrated sufficient understanding in my work, and frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. To reward myself, I watched the finale of Doctor Who, which showed this series to have a beautiful symmetry of construction, in its own way. Now to wait until Christmas...

Episode 641: Broke!

So after topping up our joint account in anticipation of another massive electricity bill, I'm basically broke. Technically, I still have about £15 for the next couple of days, which is manageable. I just have to stay at home and be a hermit. Anyway, I finished reading a collection of plays by Complicite, a British experimental theatre company. The plays were The Street Of Crocodiles, The Three Lives Of Lucie Cabrol and Mnemonic. I really like the company's philosophy of devising work, and the process produced strikingly different results in each of the plays. I think Mnemonic was probably my favourite, just because it had an amazing opening. Then I caught a film being screened in the Arts Centre, Catherine Allen's The Rotarians. I'd meant to see that the first time it was screened, and I even downloaded it off the Warwick website, but just never got around to watching it. It was interesting, as I knew practically nothing about the Rotarians before this, although having watched the film, it raised more questions in my mind than it answered. (Randomly, I just got scammed of about £9 while trying to complete a job on what seems the otherwise legitimate Short Task. Not amused at all.)

Episode 640: I Was Part Of Tennis History!

So I was lame and missed the redelivery. I literally peeked out the window just as the van was pulling away. Annoying. Have given up and decided to go into the city centre tomorrow to pick up the parcel. Then did nothing of use the entire afternoon, although I was part of tennis history because I saw a live streaming of the match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon, and actually saw the winning serve! The whole thing lasted 11 hours and five minutes, although I only watched today's part of the match, having become intrigued by all the buzz surrounding what has turned out to be a truly epic game of tennis. (On a frivolous side note, can you imagine a drinking game involving this match? Like a shot for every ace. Or consume a finger every time either player equalises. This could be fatal. Now when's the DVD of the match coming out?) Thankfully, the match ended when it did, or I wouldn't have made it to the launch of Polarity Magazine. Amanda Hopkins, or Kit as she calls herself when doing music, played at the start, and although I didn't think I would, I actually really enjoyed her songs. I liked the stuff that was read out too, but the people who really blew me away were the first-year students who read. Like, just wow. Would've bought some of the stuff from Nine Arches Press, but am a bit low on cash at the moment, so even picking up a copy of the magazine was stretching my wallet dangerously thin for the next couple of days. Oh well. The perils of bungled budgeting...

Episode 639: Lots And Lots Of Plays!

Got my hair cut today, although Michelle insisted there was no difference when I bumped into her outside Curiositea. Oh well. Borrowed a whole bunch of plays from the Library to read, now that I've just finished with Dove Release: New Flights And Voices, edited by David Morley. You've got to love Methuen for publishing their volumes of Collected Plays. It really is very handy. Bella and I both agree that plays are probably the easiest genre to read, and I for one find them to be so precisely because I don't actually study them on my course. (Well, I will next year!) Typed out some tweets for Evolve Journal in preparation for when I finally have time to tweet regularly for the journal, but I'm starting to think that 10-15 tweets daily is a bit unrealistic. Every alternate day seems more manageable to be honest. That and it's not that easy to find material that's actually worth tweeting to all our followers! I also thought of getting back into the submissions game, now that I've a bit more time on my hands, but too many of the places I'm planning to submit to have rejected me within the past month or so, so it feels kind of pointless to try them again. I did send off two anyway, receiving another record-breaking reply. This time, it was eight minutes between submission and rejection, and I sent four poems, so this editor gave each one about twice as much reading time as the last editor I wrote about, who gave each one less than a minute. I'm getting a bit grumpy about this, aren't I?

Episode 638: Little Bits Of Happiness

I'd planned to begin on that report today, but having looked again at what it's required to cover, I've realised that this report effectively calls for duplicating about half of the one that I did for the autumn module, so I've got less work cut out for me than I thought. Could probably get the whole thing done in a day now, if I set aside a few hours for it. This has made me very, very pleased indeed. Another thing to be pleased about was finding a promotional code for National Express and getting my coach to Heathrow at half-price! That was a steal. Anyway, I've begun reading for fun again, now that it's actually not guilt-inducing anymore. Read George Ttoouli's Static Exile in the early hours of the morning, and I really enjoyed the title poem. Will say that I found the collection more accessible than I thought it would be. Then this afternoon, I read Skipping Without Ropes by Jack Mapanje, which I found interesting as well, as Mapanje writes from a background which it's almost impossible for me to relate to. (I honestly don't think that I'm ever going to be imprisoned for my writing. Ever.) Am, of course, still continuing to make my way through The City & The City. Just finished the first part, so the action's switching from Besźel to Ul Qoma and things are beginning to get complicated.

Episode 637: Done!

Well, sort of, since there's still that report to write. I wrote a pantoum in the examination, as well as an essay about writing pantoums. Oh, and an essay about why I write. All this without once referring to The New Poetry! Promptly celebrated the end of the academic year by finishing a sizeable bottle of Smirnoff Ice, which has subsequently gone to my head and stayed there, apparently. Possibly drinking on an (almost-)empty stomach wasn't the smartest of decisions! Spent the rest of the evening watching The Golem: How He Came Into The World, which is a silent film, so we had a live band playing accompaniment. It was interesting, and definitely worked to accentuate humorous moments in the film, although I have subsequently discovered that Wikipedia calls it a 'silent horror film', which I personally find a bit baffling. As an introduction for me to German Expressionism though, it was more enjoyable than I thought it would be, even if throughout, I kept thinking that I want to re-read Stanislaw Lem's Golem XIV. (I have it photocopied somewhere in my room back in Singapore.)