FORTH TO VICTORY

我在中国 innit

2011-09-13T13:46:00.001+01:00

同志们好！

So yes this has been a shockingly long time coming, I'm sure I didn't have too many people losing sleep over my lack of blog writing but I was intending to be better at writing things than has apparently occurred. So if you were waiting desperately for some sort of news update about my life and times in the People's Republic, I am sorry to have kept you waiting and I hope this blog post satisfies your curiosity about my continuing existence.

Er, so yeah. I'm like in China now and stuff. Doing a masters degree (taught in English) at Tsinghua University, whose big news story on their front page is currently about rowing? That is irrelevant however, I am not rowing at the moment, I am studying International Development so I can get an excessively dry-sounding qualification (Master of Public Administration) to go with my excessively dry personality. I am also studying a bit of 中文 (Chinese) on the side so that I can intersperse my blog posts with superfluous 汉字 like the big douchey show-off that I so clearly am. The feeling of superiority this gives me helps to combat the sense of utter helplessness I feel whenever any spoken Chinese is required of me. So deal with it.

Enough of that however. I've been here a fortnight now and it's all been pretty good, although a large amount of time has actually been spent hanging out in my dorm room enjoying my own company, which has actually been very welcome if a little lonely at times- despite the obscene number of orientation lectures I've had to go to (mostly people from different departments introducing themselves), there's not really a freshers' week here as such, so meeting new people around campus is a little more effort than it was last time I had to go through this whole "university" thing. I've met some nice people both on the course and off though, and had some fine beer with some, and hopefully as I get more integrated into life here I'll get some good friendships/food-eating buddies to share profound IRL thoughts with.

Beijing itself has been smoggy and sticky, but is getting cooler and does have the odd pleasant day with visibly blue sky. The area (Wudaokou) is a lot of fun, with a very international feel- gone are the days of drinking sweet black instant coffee from fake McDonalds as a westernised treat back in Urumqi, here I have a reward card for the burrito shop just outside the main gate, and a very nice coffee shop selling latte within ten minutes walk (or two minutes' cycle) of my front door. There's also plenty of Chinese delights (and, er, "delights") in the approximately one bazillion on-campus cafeterias, although there is a slight tendency for most of this food to be covered in an inch of luminous orange grease. Alas, vegetarianism has quite definitely given way to flexitarianism, with a large dose of "screw it I'm going to eat this meat and I'm going to damn well enjoy it"; I am figuring out where I can eat a meal that is mostly not luminous dead creatures though. And the prices are good, and there are Cheerios, and I don't miss cheese, so I don't know what else I could really ask for. Ribena, maybe.

Here are some pictures of things. I don't really have a good way to link this up so yeah.

This is my lovely room. There are a few more things on the floor since I moved in for real.

And this is the "kitchen" which I share with my very shy Chinese "flat"mate (I'm not really sure this place counts as a flat but she doesn't live in the same room as me so she isn't a roomie. Who knows.)

This is the bathroom. The shower has hot water for 6 hours out of 24, which is the only negative thing about living here (apart from the lack of actual kitchen, but I'm used to that)

Chinese bathrooms don't really have shower cubicles as such; you just shower onto the floor and if the drain is unblocked then the water goes down it. If the drain is blocked... well then. Bad times for you.

This is a step up from my previous Chinese bathroom, however, in that it has a shower curtain to stop EVERYTHING in the bathroom from getting wet.

How to escape when the fire happens.

The view from the window on a reasonably good day. On a bad day (like when I arrived, or today), you can only see the brown-ish building site in the foreground. There's also a weirdly-shaped brown building which I think might be a church that's just beyond it, which is also usually visible in all smog levels. It was quite a surprise when I opened the curtains two days after I arrived and discovered that I could see skyscrapers out of the window that had been clouded over before; I then had a similar experience one day last week when it transpired there are MOUNTAINS beyond the skyscrapers. I probably won't see them again until this time next year.

This is the outside of my building. I live on the fifth floor (of eleven)

The next few are me walking from the dorms to the main gate, which is just over a mile away (think the distance from Wadham to midway down Cowley Road), because my bike was there for Reasons related to drinking and taxis and stuff. So this is the start of the journey. There is nothing else at all interesting about this picture.

This is C building, it has a supermarket and a bank and a post office and a copy shop and some nice people who gave me fast internet and is generally awesome. It's 3 minutes walk from the dorm.

The great bicycle superhighway of Tsinghua university. No bikes though because it's lunchtime on Sunday.

Further down the road, that's where everybody is! The pictures from the pavement don't convey how green this road is- it's pleasantly tree-lined the whole way down and feels a bit like cycling in a forest at points.

We're at the other end of the very long tree road now. Here is main building, courtesy of the Soviet Union in the early '50s.

And here is... a quad I guess?

More trees. This bit of the journey is the best bit on a bike because you can cycle either way down any of four similarly sized "lanes" whilst dodging other cyclists and pedestrians who may also be walking anywhere at any point. Luckily I have lots of tourist slalom practice from Oxford.

Tsinghua number one cow, I don't know. There are a lot of silly sculptures around here.

This is my department! Except there are some trees in the way.

And this walk ended when I found my lovely bike. It cost me 160 yuan (£16) which is cheap for a bike here. It's not very good as far as quality is concerned (it squeaks horribly when I pedal and the handlebars moved around until I got them tightened...) but it is red and it goes fast when I pedal it fast and I have only lost it among the literally thousands of others on campus once. <3 bike. <3 Tsinghua bike culture as well, even the bits where you almost crash into a million people at crossroads with no marked right of way for anybody. This is a nation of people who would laugh in the face of anybody who pulled that bullshit "it takes longer to unlock and lock your bike than it does to walk to places FOR ANY GIVEN DISTANCE" line, and I love it. Well OK, they wouldn't laugh at you, they'd be very polite but very confused. Same difference.

What else? I don't think I really have any tales to tell yet, apart from observations about Russians and British duty-free (they LOVE it, I have never seen so much shopping go on an aircraft as I did on my Aeroflot flight from Heathrow to Moscow) and obscure pride points like discovering a bus to the absurdly far-away health centre for my I'm-fit-give-me-a-visa certificate rather than paying hundreds for taxis there and back. I start actually studying stuff tomorrow, which feels a bit odd as I've had nothing to prepare for my classes and am therefore anticipating a totally different system to Oxford's "learn everything ever then come do a tutorial about it" approach. I've also been doing Chinese language classes which are fun both in themselves and because (for obscure reasons best known to my subconscious) I'm doing them at a place across town, so I've got an hour commute each way which will probably become infuriating but right now is a lot of fun. The distances around this area alone are so huge I fear I'll be forever stuck in one area of Beijing, afraid of venturing more than one subway stop away in case I get a burrito craving that can't be satisfied within half an hour. Doing something in Dongzhimen may help this. Who knows.

Anyway I'm rambling, so I'll leave off with an observation about recent Doctor Who (yes I can watch it here, I'm good at the internets): Why didn't Rory just say "top button"? Surely the existence of two buttons was obvious enough for that to be important? Tchuh. Also Strictly appears to be crap, and I don't know how its taken me three years to work that out. Anyways. Later, all!

Blue blue caravan

2011-08-04T15:15:00.001+01:00

Yeah, so of course I didn't write for the rest of the year in Oxford. There's something about that place that makes blogging a bit yawn.

To recap, here is my year.

First this happened:

Then I did a term, and then some nonsense related to this:

Winter, and a term and a holiday of trying to write a thesis, then a blanket fort:

And then some more shenanigans (mostly in the library), then exams and simultaneously this:

And this:

Then this:

And finally this:

(I hope no identity theft shenanigans can happen if I put that there. Your vague curiosity is satisfied, masses.)

And now I have a BA (Oxon) PPE First Class, which is pretty sweet.

Since then, I've been surfing, festivalling and mostly sitting at home playing Okami and Command and Conquer and getting into Game of Thrones on both computer screen and Kindle screen (Sean Bean! How could you?). It's been a riot of a summer, let me tell you.

My Chinese visa application went in the post yesterday. My flight is booked for Monday August 29, which is a week after registration closes but I am assured by the university that this is fine and I can register late, just please come we love you so much &c. &c. I wonder if they will still love me when I get there and they discover I am lazy and difficult. Time will tell!

Anyway, just wanted to kick off the habit of writing on this again, seeing as I will soon be writing from more interesting locations again. Until next time.

Academiaaaargh

2010-11-01T15:50:00.000Z

It is strange and fabulous to be productive. On the surface of it all, writing a rough title and 100 word summary should not take that long, but I have put it off for several months and so actually having done it (even if it does need changing) is a wonderful feeling.

This thing's actually gonna happen. Be afraid, be very afraid. Then I'm going to become a software developer, slowly turn amphibious and go and live in a pond and eat your children.

Also I wrote an essay with 10 different citations. 10! That means I actually remembered where the facts I was writing about came from! That means there were actually facts in the essay! These are interesting times indeed.

Pond. Children. Raargh.

Just a wetter version of the skies...

2010-10-30T20:14:00.000+01:00

I am trying to tidy. Those who know me know that this is always a deeply, deeply flawed experiment and this time is no different. I have managed to minimise my washing up at last (this year it lives in a plastic washing-up bowl that I keep under my sink, which is great in that I no longer have mouldering dishes in the same place that I brush my teeth but makes it oh-so-much easier to ignore...), but the overflowing laundry basked and large scattering of graduate recruitment leaflets are going to have to wait. I am going to blog rather than getting my life in order- it seems to be the right way around.

Speaking of. Getting a job. This terrifying, horrible thought that I have been instinctively saying "AAGH NO" to for the past 3 years is now horrifyingly close at hand, and for once it's not concerning me *quite* as much as I thought it would. Maybe I am being brainwashed by these terrifying propaganda-like glossy leaflets that promise fun work with frisbee playing at lunchtime! and other such strange things, but... there's actually some pretty cool stuff out there. I probably won't ever get to do any of it, but still, it turns out that those crazy things like working in an office and having a salary might temporarily be quite a good idea. Until I get together the funds to jet off to a language school and get Chinese fluency then come back and study Sinology until my brain bleeds, that is. This thought process is brought on by the Oxford Careers fair, which was both over and underwhelming at the same time. On the one hand, it was depressingly predictable in that all the careers that I, as a PPEist, am supposed to want to do (O HAI BANKS) look horrifying and wrong, and all the ones that look sort of hip (working for Peter Molyneux? Huh...) require a skill set that I, as a pansy social science graduate, am unlikely to get. Emily and I wandered around this minefield chatting to the folks in charge of the few fun things- mostly involving charity, sweeties and in my case a free Rubik's cube- before despairing of life and escaping to Mission, where I availed myself of their version of the sweet potato burrito (for the record: it's good, but not THAT good. Vegan recipe with mustard is better.)

<3 cube. It's one of those ones with a pattern where it kinda matters which way around the middle piece is, which makes it simultaneously fun and INFURIATING. Mostly the latter, actually. I basically stopped mid-conversation with somebody earlier so I could get angry with it and how it wasn't working out for me. Damn cube. Also it comes from people called Metaswitch who want me to learn software programming with them and live in one of their company houses and go to the pub with other employees every day and play frisbee every lunchtime and do team building events. I'm not going to lie, it sounds suspiciously like a cult. I'm seriously considering an application. (ALSO THE HAT THE HAT LOOK AT THE HAT)

VSO haven't got back to me yet for Youth for Development. I really do have a year's professional experience, guys, pleeeease want me! Then I can stop thinking about which cult I want to join for at least a year.

This week has otherwise been pretty good. Still enjoying Taiqi, although I had a work crisis on the Wednesday night where I had specifically booked out of dinner so I could do an extra class. Being in third year has made me work harder when I actually get down to it, but it's also apparently made me boring already. I got Professor Layton and the Lost Future last week (just after the announcement of the BEST GAME EVER Layton vs. Phoenix I am so excited I might pop) and finished the storyline on Thursday night and the game proper last night- it was the usual Professor Layton thing of setting up a supernatural contrivance where you can pretty much suspend your disbelief (mysterious disappearances and lost treasure, vampire town, time travel), then "solving" it at the end with some ABSURD "scientific" explanation (HALLUCINOGENIC GAS, ANYONE?), with the added fun of some hardcore Downer Ending right at the close- I played this through whilst drunk post-crew date and thus was openly whining as Bad Things happened- all good fun. Then of course they unlock a bunch of other puzzles which tend to be sliding blocks, which I should really stop myself from playing after 10pm, otherwise all I think about when I eventually do try to sleep is moving bricks around. Jolly good fun though, highly recommended. And I am getting damn good at those block puzzles now.

What else? Oh, some direct democracy but let's not chat too much about that. Suffice to say, things are happening in this country which are bad enough that I am now willing to actually try to do something about them. I have political convictions at last! It's been a long time coming but I am not going to quietly fail to disagree with any more right-wing libertarian morons any more. Hurrah!

...What am I saying, of course I will quietly fail to disagree when I am talking to them. Arguments suck unless you are drunk or not face-to-face. But in all seriousness, one day I will sit down and thrash out a sensible "wot I believe" post and the world will be better for it. Or something.

There are motion sensitive lights in our hallway and every time I walk past one I feel the need to do jazz hands in its direction, otherwise my movement might not be obvious enough to turn it on. Is this normal? You decide...

Enough for now. Cleaning Essay, Logic work, travel grant report, NWF entry, cross stitch and episode of the Apprentice are all crying for my attention. Who will win? What a mystery!

Oxonia, 'tis for thee

2010-10-23T18:58:00.000+01:00

Dude, a blog from Oxford! What an exciting thing!

Ssooo I need to avoid the pitfall I normally fall into when I don't write anything for a while, which is "oh boy I need to write about all the things I've been doing for the past 2 months how will I ever catch up". This would be foolish, because there is simultaneously a lot that I *could* say about the past two months, and very little that I *should* say about them. I spent a month at home getting my head straight and avoiding work, and then the past three weeks have been getting back into the swing of life back in the bubble. They have been, by my standards, pretty stable, which is sooo very definitely a good thing.

(I also got a haircut and regained my peripheral vision on my right hand side for a couple of weeks, but it's gone again now. Side fringe I freaking love you so much more than my old fringe but you don't half make it tough to cycle sometimes.)

Anyways. A lot of silly and odd things happen to me in Oxford, so it seems stupid to not talk about them even if I can't remember half of them for more than an hour after they happen. But here goes some Stuff that may or may not be interesting:

I have three more tutorial essays in total left in my Oxford career. Oh god, where has it all gone.
I live on a big awesome staircase with fun people. It is so incredibly relaxing to not have inner tension every time people walk past my door. I also live in an incredible barn room that I need to continue to appreciate otherwise I will become boring and rubbish. I do miss Ben though (ARE YOU READING THIS, BEN? GET OFF SKYPE AND COME VISIT ME SOMEDAY). I would also miss Amyus but I see him ridiculously often. Ubiquitous smellyface.
I'm a vegetarian now. Although I have averaged one "oh fuck it" meat meal a week.
I have given up every single thing I did last year apart from sorting out the Moser Store. Amusing discovery of the week was finding out that the Wadham Conference Assistant, who was previously paid to manage bookings to all the rooms except the Moser Theatre, now ONLY does the Moser- that's a job that I used to do alongside rowing, writing and putting on my own plays, managing academic affairs and the occasional bit of degree work. And now they're paying someone to do it solely. As far as I know they have made no effort to sort out sound and lighting systems, so GOOD LUCK all those people I booked in last term. Lolz.
Also I'm stage managering something cool later this term. And I have now officially done every job available to students in the Burton Taylor- acting, "stage managing" (i.e. standing behind the scenes and panicking), lighting, sound, watching and now Box Office. The last one got me an hour of enforced work time (necessary) and a free ticket (awesome) so good times all 'round.
To fill the void left by the above giving-up-everything, I have taken up taiqi. So don't act surprised when I kick your arse with it.
I still want to gossip about rowing and the SU despite having NOTHING TO DO with either any more.
I am amused by the Supermarket Wars. "Big" Tesco is starting to lose its shine a bit though- it's not *actually* that big compared to Tesco Metro back in Cowley. I don't miss most of living in Cowley (proximity to the Covered Market makes up for lack of proximity to Cowley shops) but I do miss Tesco and their 10 types of beans and being able to buy things and then cook them without ridiculous amounts of forethought. I also just generally miss having a proper sink for filling kettles and washing up in; the tiny basins we have here are impossible to get a kettle under and I now have coffee grounds on my toothbrush. Tch.
I have made a poster of all the relevant library opening times in my life...

So that is all good. I have also tried to take up hourly comic making, but I forget to do it when I don't have paper to hand and when I do, there is paper everywhere and it looks messy. Frankly I think that I have taken up enough new regular things without trying to draw on a regular basis as well. Particularly as I really, seriously, can't draw. Proportions are something that happens to other people.

Soon I will have to fix my post-Oxford future. Right at this moment, I would like a scholarship to language school in Taiwan and a full set of scuba diving equipment so I can spend the non-language learning times in the subtropical sea. But it will change by next week. And then again the week after that. Also some day I will have to make money and pay back £20,000 to the government (PLUS INTEREST; THANKS A FUCKING MILLION, BROWNE). But not until the future, and by then I will have a jetpack sooooo. Yes.

This has been short and nonsensical but hopefully it'll get me back into writing down more Shit That Happens (and next time it will be anecdotal and fun, promise!) In the short term, though, it is just so fucking nice to be stable. And happy. Focus on that, and the rest will sort itself out... maybe.

Tupperweather

2010-08-24T23:59:00.005+01:00

So after two months of near constant heat and humidity, Washington has finally decided to behave itself and has produced a day of overcast, dry mid-20s bliss. The kind of day where the grey in the sky improves the colours of everything else, rather than washing it out and making it dark all around. I was given this day to walk 4.6 miles around the city on a tour of some of its historic residences, and despite the realisation in the evening that it was also the anniversary of the burning of Washington- oh wait, tangent time!

Hells yes. Although this picture is terribly inaccurate, both historically and geographically. Then again, given that the portion of the world who even remember the war are completely misguided as to who actually did the burning (note especially the presence of Tony Blair 3 minutes into that video... fuck the what guys) so the presence of men in boats and the British burning the Frigate Colombia aren't exactly a big deal, relatively speaking.

Also let us not forget that the national dish of said portion of the world appears to be cheesy chips. 'nuff said.

Anyway, what was I talking about. Oh, yes, I got a solo field trip day to see some historic houses, which should have been postponed to a non-historically-important anniversary but never mind, there's always tomorrow (which I hereby declare to be "British-running-away-with-their-tail-between-their-legs-because-a-hurricane-terrified-them-off" day, unless you can think of anything catchier). This meant I spent a lot of my day ~~playing Simcity 4~~ wandering the gloriously beautiful neighbourhoods of Georgetown in my boots and a nice top, enjoying the complete lack of sweat forming anywhere on my body (I did also play Simcity 4 a bit but shhhh! I also toured 3 historical locations, walked 4 and a half miles and read 40 pages of a grown-up novel so *justified*).

Where did I go? Well, first up, Tudor Place, from where Mrs William Thornton watched the Capitol go up in flames (she was at the window just to the left of the pretty column thingy):

This is about the right weather, too. Like I say, tupperweather (I can't remember who initially coined that phrase but by golly I am going to use it so often now). That's the weather you would get if you were enclosed in a Tupperware container, for the uninitiated. And no, Americonians, I don't care if you don't call it Tupperware. Look it up if you're not sure what I'm talking about. You're on the internet for crying out loud.

Erm yes, Tudor place. I went on a house tour with a lovely guide, a nice lady and another lady who despite being nice was also everything that gives Americans a bad name in international tourist circles. Gushing over any tiny little thing that George Washington touched is bad enough, but must you do it whilst asking stupid questions and occasionally even contradicting the tour guide? And also we don't really care if you had that particular kind of sink in your 1950s New York home. It's a farmhouse sink, my parents still have one at home and it's not noteworthy. Pipe down.

Another interesting fact about Tudor place: for a very long time, its owner was an American lady who had the distinction of being named Britannia Wellington Peter by her parents (one of whom was George Washington's granddaughter, hence all the Washington paraphernalia in the house). Given that she was born in 1815, that must have been quite a fun name to go around with for 96-odd years. She had sisters called Colombia and America too. Fun times.

Enough nonsense about that place. I also went to Dumbarton Oaks (not Dumbarton House which I should have gone to, really) which was like a very small boring version of the British museum with a load of old stuff in it and also I sassed the security guard and got away with it.

Then I went on a walk to OCTAGON HOUSE! The most badass place that you have never heard of.

(Incidentally, all this stealing pictures off Wikimedia commons and then having to resize them in the HTML is working wonders for my division skillz.)

The most exciting thing about Octagon house, according to anything you will ever read about it, is that ZOMG IT'S NOT ACTUALLY AN OCTAGON. It's built on a kinda triangular lot, and they reckon it's called Octagon House because blah blah circular room building it's all very yawn.

More interesting things about Octagon House:

- Designed by Dr. William Thornton- as was Tudor Place and, for a while, the Capitol (until that whole burning thing came along). He liked doing architecture in his spare time, because hell, who doesn't? It was his wife who watched the burning up above (and that is historically interesting because she wrote a diary about it, by the way)

- Lived in by some mates of Washington who bought into the whole "THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST CITY EVER" thing (for most of the 19th century it was actually a godforsaken malarial swamp; opinions are divided as to whether it's improved since then. It was gonna be a big industrial centre with its own CANAL but then oops railways guess that thing you sunk millions into building ain't gonna bring in that much business after all)

- NOT REALLY AN OCTAGON oh wait yawn

- The guided tour would like you to believe that it got saved from burning because the owner moved the French ambassador in for the duration of the British occupation (24 hours); this was during Napoleon's first exile so the British had no interest in irritating the French by torching their representative. Actually the British only burned one privately owned building and that was the one that the American militia were shooting them from and thus reasonably justified in the grand scheme of things. They were specifically told not to burn or loot private stuff, so it's really no mystery at all why this completely private building survived, Frenchy or no.

- After the presidential mansion got a bit singed, Madison and his charming wife came and hung out here for a bit. This is where the Treaty of Ghent got signed, which ended that all important war of 1812 for good.

- Now the architectural college have taken it on and thus a lot of the guided tour (one of these MP3 do it yourself things) is talk about how wonderfully efficient and ventilated the house is and how thoughtful Dr Thornton must have been when designing it. Which I guess must be very interesting, if you are an architecture student. Just like the fact that it's NOT REALLY A- oh whatever.

What else? Oh yes. TEAISM. Which is my new second home and which I will miss terribly when I leave Washington. I went to a different one to usual, which was less characterful but smelled better and gave me a nice big mug to drink my tea out of instead of the teeny tiny ones that I get at Dupont circle. Also their Jasmine tea is epic as I discovered today.

Hasn't this been a good entry? I shan't spoil it by talking about the weekend and the people who left. I have retired from the social sphere of the house now, which is sort of sad I guess but I'm feeling way more relaxed at the moment than I have in a long time. I can identify the cause pretty well but again NOT RUINING THIS.

Interesting things I have learned recently

2010-08-20T18:44:00.004+01:00

Here I am at work, the day after everyone has left (well, there are a couple of interns still around but they appear not to be in the office today... alas). I am reading an interesting piece of work called "Everyday life in the 1800s" which is not so informative about the events of the war of 1812 but which is generally interesting. As there is nobody around to tell the facts I learn from this book, y'all will have to do (some of these are not from the book, as you may note as you read them):

Graham Crackers (like digestive biscuits, but AmericaniZed) were originally convieved as a cure for "carnal desires", particularly the sin of, er, self-abuse. Apparently blandness stops you from wanting yourself. Who knew?
American housewives liked to wash their hair in rum and use honey and charcoal to clean their teeth
American ring binders, and thus American hole punches, have three holes- one at the top, one right in the middle, and one on the bottom. This means that the hole punch is an enormous thing unsuitable for any kind of portable activity (not that hole punches are ever *that* portable I guess...)
Tomatoes were widely considered poisonous up until the end of the 19th century
"Bungee cord" is the same in both languages
There is such a thing as too much Kate Rusby, although what I actually think it might be is too much time spent with headphones in. I really want to spend some time alone somewhere where I'm allowed to make noise without it being pumped directly into my ear...

I have tried to write this blog three or four times now, but each time it starts off with moaning and then moves on to me worrying about people disliking me and then being sad that everybody is leaving. This is the kind of thinking which makes me even sadder because I feel like I haven't made enough of the opportunities I've had. Even though, with the exception of academic work, I've done all I can and more besides. Such are my thought processes, tiring things that they are.

Much good stuff has happened this past two weeks- met my hero (not elaborating here), finished writing the second play, completely finished redrafting the first and had a reading out in the wilds of Maryland (I need to stop referring to places in Maryland as the wilds, to be fair... but it's fun, Washington suburbs are so much greener and more open and all the houses are actually pretty; I still dislike the prevalence of driving where I see it but it's nicer than a British housing estate). I went to the Holocaust Museum which was really good in a heavy way, didn't go into the same league of horror as some of the memorials in Europe itself do which left more opportunity for the human side to come through. Hats off to the Danish and the Italians and the people of Budapest, you did good it would seem.

Ten days left here, then off to recharge back in the Shire for a couple of weeks before it all kicks off again with a vengeance. I also have a play to write. Again.

Also did I earlier say too much Kate Rusby? No such thing.

But that was Wisconsin; that was yesterday

2010-08-08T21:57:00.004+01:00

OK, I am uploading a MEGA-ALBUM with this entry! It's gonna be on facebook and awesome. I imagine that all of my readers come from there anyway, so if you want photographic evidence of my time here then you should go and check it out. Or just go lol at how bad my skillz are. Or if you'rs an ISH-er, you can worry about how awful the photos I took of you are. Jokes.

So I just got back from the beach, and I am resolved to have a Week of Productivity this week so that starts now, with BLOG. I have little to say about last week, which was not so good on the mental health front but which I survived intact and without any lasting psychological damage. My second biggest woe at the moment is definitely culture shock, which is compounded by the fact that I tend to spend a lot of time with Americans or seasoned US residents who don't quite seem to clock that America can cause culture shock... one of the fellows I went to the beach with apparently did an exchange at Oxford a while back (followed by a B.Phil, clever bastard) and was given a leaflet on cultural things including the instruction "Do not assume that British people all want to be American. They are happy being British". Which is amusing but also sums up the unconscious assumption that actually what goes on here IS better, that the way Americans speak is correct, that not having drive through banks is a reflection on the backwardness of the country without and not the quirkiness of the one with (car culture is not normal. The overwhelming majority of people on this planet do not live in a car culture. They are capable of walking to a cash machine.) I like this place, I would happily come here to do a masters or a PhD, but it's unapologetically strange (as opposed to China which is self-consciously strange) and it bothers me more than I think I've ever been bothered by a place before. It's all just very uncanny valley I guess. Which means I am reacting to America in a way analagous to how I would react to a human corpse. Mmmm.

But yes, aside from the inevitable mental wrangling, I had a fabulous time at the beach. We went camping, which has now given me a lust for "real" camping- the kind where you actually do go and hang out in a forest indefinitely and bring torches and camping food and maybe do a walk or something. Perhaps I'll bugger off to Wales for a bit when I get home, then I can take some pictures whilst I'm there and discredit the whole "BRITAIN HAS NOOOO NICE BEACHES" assumption. If I go to a beach, that is. Anyway, it was nice to camp except for one reason and another I couldn't shower and ended up absolutely revolting and covered in salt and sand and moaning endlessly about how disgusting I was which went down well (although to their credit there are some very good knee-jerk "NO YOU LOOK FINE" reactions out here. I am impressed and amused.) Also, the beach was in Delaware.

Buuut nobody I was with knew the reference. Also nobody I was with had ever seen the film "A Clockwork Orange". Do you understand where I am going with this culture shock thing now?

Beach itself... what is there to say about a beach? It involved being in a bikini which is sort of OK for a while but then you realise that whilst there are a lot of very big people around none of them are as young or pale as you (one pregnant woman had suntanned a smiley face into her baby bump, presumably using a cunning application of suntan lotion. I'm not kidding.) and also bikini lines let's not elaborate on that but they are a pain. The sea was awesome even if the waves were enormous, and we did some general chilling. The sand was incredibly hot and there were a fair few gay people around.

The evening involved eating a bison burger and then going on an immensely unsuccessful bar crawl. The guy in charge of our trip, Dan, had been told by a 40-something that the beach was awesome in the 80s and what seems to have happened is that the same people have kept returning since then, meaning we felt a bit young and also one bar was frankly disgusting and the other did not have good enough dancing music and was completely lit up as if you'd want to see the faces of the people dancing next to you. We then went to make our own fun by bringing the grape juice of the very old grapes (or "J-VOG". That is now a word. Use it all the time.) to a railway track to look at the stars. The stars were not as good as we'd hoped, but the conversation was good. I did not like sitting on a railway track at all, being as I am from the East Coast Main Line, but nothing came in 90 minutes so I guess that was fine.

Most of these folk are leaving next week. I will miss many of them terribly. And I will have a couple of big, big regrets. Such is life.

Talking about last week is less interesting. I saw Inception, which I enjoyed but which frustrated me artistically because I didn't really like the way they revealed the world, and it did feel like they kept changing their own rules when it suited them (SPOILERRRR: introducing "you can't die in dreams" almost immediately, and then following that up with "oh but we CAN die in this dream cause we'll lose our minds and that will be as bad" and then following THAT up with "oh but people have died and we brought them back sane despite what we said would happen happening" just wound me up no end). I really liked the ending though, I thought that was very clever indeed. I do think he was in the real world though. What can I say, I like seeing happy endings even if I never intend to write one. I also started working on mah thesis which it seems will actually happen, which is definitely a good thing even if it's gonna be stressful to squeeze most of the work on it into the bit of summer I'm going to have left when I get back. I'm just looking forward to having a lot less additional stuff to do next year so I think I'll be OK.

There is little else to say. Three and a bit more weeks, a historical re-enactment, a couple of interviews, a lot of goodbyes, a puppet show and a possible trip to North Carolina await me, and then I will be home again and ready to throw myself into a final year of fun. This is a good thing.

Boredom is not a literary device

2010-08-04T03:22:00.002+01:00

The most vivid memory of *that* term, the one where everything pretended to come together, is taking the walk home. In particular, the permanent puddle between buildings is jammed into my mind, because it was always the moment of walking where the emotion of the moment would hit the hardest- happy frustration, usually, then barely concealed elation for a while and then the days where it turned into crushing disappointment and the realisation that it had never been what I expected. It doesn't really matter if things are going well or badly, it's still that walk away where all of the bits of emotional junk that have been ignored for the duration of socialising sneak up on you and leap on top of you and make you forget that your internal organs are just to keep your cells fuelled and your temperature regulated. The boy (and the feelings) which first made me think this is(/are) gone forever and the walk is different but even with distance and perspective the experience flattens me more effectively than anything else that anyone can inflict on me. And it's after that moment, the Walking Away from the night out or the weekend away or the day at work or the evening walk (Blockbuster, screw you for not renting to foreigners. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOUR SHOP IS IN THE EMBASSY DISTRICT), that I get the chance to tell y'all about what I've been up to. Which makes it hard, usually.

Wah. I'm in Washington living it up and I'm a bit sad, pity meeee. CRY CRY. Blah.

RIGHT.

I wrote in a margin last week what my favourite thing was from Friday, and then I promptly forgot about it until yesterday where my rediscovery was compounded with the resolution to tell everybody that I'd written down a thing to tell people in the margin of my notebook. The thing itself was an observation about the Metro here, which I am now a pro at (a mixed blessing; it means getting from place to place is easy and I'm regularly not on the most crowded train carriages but it also means I get irritated very easily at people who aren't pro Metro-ers) utilises real people to give the announcements in all the train carriages. The awesomeness of this is not to be underestimated; at worst, it means that the moments of my day where I would otherwise be spoken to by a clinical British voice (calling London "Blundon" and Huntingdon "Cuntingdon"... gotta love First Capital Connect) are instead spent listening to a bored southern American accent, and at best it means I get some of the best dialogue of my day. Irritated women tell people to stop being such morons and crowding onto one door of a departing train and just move down the platform or get the one in two minutes time like a normal person. Calming older men start every message with a "thanks for riding" before slowly drawling the name of the next stop in such a way that you're there before they've even stopped talking. Some speak in a manner completely unintelligible to me, or forget to say things and have to reannounce, or hold on to the button for too long And just occasionally, you get days where a voice will announce to you "there's a train in front of us... and a train behind us. We are between a rock and a hard place" and everybody on their miserable morning commute to the centre of Washington will catch each other's eyes and smile for just a second.

"Next station Farragut North, Farragut North next station". Gotta love it. The voices, not Farragut North.

This weekend involved a very long and pleasant day of wargaming with my boss, which has in turn spawned a lot of tiresome jibes about the mild oddness of this situation compared to the relationship most other interns have with my boss. It's not my fault that they don't express a polite interest in wargaming at the right times. I then took a spin on the Potomac with my new sculling skillz on Sunday- charming but it takes a very long time to get anywhere new and interesting on that river. I wish I had the confidence to take an MP3 player out with me, but I know that that would be tempting fate to an unreasonable degree so I'll remain without it. On a more painful note, sculls are not made for people with thighs as disgustingly enormous as mine and as I don't have shorts long enough to cover them up adequately, I end up with massive grazes on the tops of both of my legs which then get disgusting and start sticking to my jeans and are generally unpleasant. Too much information maybe? Well, whatever. I go back to the house in time for Sunday lunch and then wait for a planned museum trip with a couple of housemates; one does not materialise, one does and then pussies out because it is drizzling. I am disgusted by this and inform him never to emigrate to England or he will never leave the house. Well, actually, what I say at that point (when he is wavering) is "I am going now, come or don't, bye" and then I walk away and when I am not followed or called in the next fifteen minutes I think the above and I then say it at a later date. Anyway, with a mild and largely unjustified sense of injured pride and annoyance I head over to the Air and Space Museum, and am promptly snapped out of my mood with THE BEST MUSEUM EVER. Sure, there were too many kids and some bits were a little dull, but there was PHYSICS and PLANETS and THINGS TO TOUCH and ROCKETS and AEROPLANES (interestingly, one of the exhibits in the "early aviation" bit switched rather gratingly between "airplane" and "aeroplane" in its text, with the latter being used for headings and the former for the body. It's more jarring to see the two together than it is to just look at one the whole time...) My favourite was the photography of planets bit and the telescope bit and particularly finding a video in a corner of the telescopey bit playing a rather strange animation of a man ice skating through the known universe whilst the Galaxy Song plays in the background. Oh and I liked the Wright Brothers exhibit too. And the World War I bit was presented extremely well- basically bombarding you with "LOOK AT THIS STUFF WE MADE ROMANTICISING THE AVIATION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR IT IS UTTERLY STUPID IT WAS A HORRIBLE WAR", which started off being mildly affronting when it is "oh the British thought this was going to happen with the planes but instead they all died oops silly British" but then became understandable when I got to the part of the exhibit where they treated American involvement in exactly the same way. Anyway, it was awesome, and I bought a magnet. The End.

Screen on the Green was significantly less enjoyable this week and led to me coming home in a Right Old Mood. Not sure how that happened. And by that I mean "I am sure but I sure as hell ain't telling you nothing". Bonnie and Clyde turned out to be a very odd movie.

What else? Trying to be cheerful and objective and entertaining in writing is either therapeutic in some way or it just has the same effect on me as spending time with people does, in that I don't feel nearly as whiny as I did at the start any more. I've little to report on the work front; I'm now thoroughly bonded with the other interns which is great but my productivity has taken a bit of a nosedive which is not at all great. A lot of people are leaving in the next couple of weeks which is going to massively change the dynamic of what's happening there, but for now it's nice. We had War of 1812 beer tasting this evening which was one of those events which wasn't as well attended as it could have been but which everybody who was there enjoyed; I tried to get housemates (pl) to attend and ended up persuading one, who I should probably refer to by name more often and whose name is Brendan. This must be considered a success, as it's both unusual and good for him not to be at work past 6. Together we formed the full complement of people not impressed by the establishment of the United States as a major naval power after the War of 1812 (he is a Canadian) and we got to chat to strange and beautiful people and drink a range of good beers. Aaand then we went to return some video tapes (REFERENCE!) and then went on from the awful Dupont Circle video store (/glorified porn rental place) into the heady heights of Kalorama and tried to go to Blockbuster but they wouldn't allow us on account of being foreign as hell. And that is where we left off.

It's good, here.

Age is not important (unless you are a cheese)

2010-07-27T00:18:00.006+01:00

Speedblog, deploy! I have to go to Screen on the Green (movies on the National Mall (not a shopping centre) ) very soon but I really want to start this beforehand so that I have something to come back to. This is a very good time to start because the epic yo-yo that is my mood has been stolen by a retarded kid who doesn't know how to yo-yo and has thus spent the last couple of days spinning stupidly at the bottom of its string and getting tangled up and annoying everybody. Is that a good metaphor? I like that metaphor. Let's stick with it. The point is that now the yo-yo is back in the hands of some kind of experienced yo-yo geek who knows how to do more with it than just fail at it all the time, and so normal service is probably resumed

I know better than to be surprised about the above, incidentally. It's been a month, and this is a classic time for the away-from-home frustration to kick in. Plus now I know people well enough for their actions to bother me. And I am very worn out by this insane hidden language barrier (Recent ones are waistcoat = vest; vest = tank top/wife beater; fancy (v) = hilarious; bin = hilarious; accidentally saying "soccer" instead of football and "real football" instead of American football = offence worthy of exile). The answer to the latter is to stop fighting it and just call taxis cabs and the Metro the Metro (instead of the tube) and everybody will be happy, but... this language is all I've got, and I don't want to lose it even temporarily.

But this is now, and that was then (and now I'm interested in smarter, employed men...). You know what's more interesting than emotions? NEW YORK! Which is where I was for three days. In all honesty, it wasn't quite the magical cultural experience I think people are supposed to have when they go to New York, but it was still really fun even if I was not with a group of people who wanted to go to Toys 'R' Us (or indeed the Pokemon store. But I totally swung that one. And I got to go and show off my Bad Badger t-shirt to all the Nintendo folk and it was awesome!) I just don't like cities much is all.

Some pictures of stuff:

Several bottles of white wine and a pot of yoghurt, and no fridge in our horrible dirty hotel room. What ought we to do? Construct an elaborate pile of objects in front of the air conditioning, that's what.

My personal spoils from the Pokemon centre. MAMOSWINE SEZ HAI

A reference. Do you get it? If not, I don't recommend travelling with Brendan and me. Not if you value your sanity.

We went to the Guggenheim and the MoMA. This is the latter. The boring, 40s-70s part of the latter. The less boring parts had Van Gogh (starry night <3)>

Terrible, terrible graphic design (you may have to click to the full sized picture to see why). Still, two birds with one stone?

There are things which were not photographed (or, more accurately, which were photographed but not by me and have not made it to Facebook yet), notably Saturday night which involved wine and vodka and attempted thievery and dancing to Mr Brightside in a club where nobody knew what the song was and a brief thunderstorm, all in a rooftop club overlooking the empire state building. On the way home, I started kicking up a fuss to the taxi driver because I had convinced myself he was going the wrong way, and then we bought burritos and I forgot the buying of burritos and got very confused when I woke up next to one the next morning. It may be a comfort to you, dear reader, to know that my drunken moods are a rare constant in an ever-changing world.

Also, we went to Central Park and saw a sculpture of two eagles eating a goat, and as we were looking at it a middle aged guy with a suit and a backpack started talking to us about it as well. We knew nothing about the statue then, but I do now.

Yeah, we the eagles and prey and we BADASS.

Work is going well. I've been in the office a lot recently and have started to appreciate the atmosphere in there a lot, due in no small part to the fact that I now know quite a few of the Oxford interns and we form a significant minority in the face of the American masses. Thus we can discuss words like "hench" and "fit" and "bare (adj)" and "well (adj)" and particularly "bender". "Bender" is a recurring topic of discussion because apparently the film "The Last Airbender" (which I did not intend to see, but may consider watching just because of this fact) uses the descriptive term "bender" extremely regularly with no homosexual connotations. I find this brilliant. I have done a second draft of the play and have just now (it's now Tuesday, I went to Screen on the Green already :P) been to Maryland to talk to some historical re-enactors about language and stuff. It was awesome, they bought me dinner and we talked geeky stuff like Doctor Who and War of 1812 and they invited me to upstate New York (can't go, will clash with my wargaming) and to come to the re-enactment of the Battle of Bladensburg. I am SO THERE. We might do a reading around the campfire with the other historical re-enactors, it will be fantastic in an awesome geeky way. I think I need to embrace geekiness more than I currently do, especially here. I need to seek out other geeks and we need to geek out together.

But no, I never shall. Because I am but a surface geek, who can geek out a little bit about a huge variety of things, but who will probably never pursue anything deep enough to truly ascend into the ranks of geekdom. I will always be an outsider to all true nerds, and I am definitely never going to get to hang out with the cool kids. What does that make me? Probably "quirky" or some other depressing adjective that only seriously gets used by 14-year-old morons to describe themselves. Alas.

What else has happened? Well, we went to Screen on the Green, which you kinda heard about; we watched "12 Angry Men" and drank wine and then afterwards briefly went to a salsa night but everybody was far too good for us to be able to join in properly. Last week I bought some new dresses from a vintage store, where one was expensive and one was free and I kinda hope that balances out but it doesn't currently feel like it. I tried and failed to tidy my room-space. People I have become friends with are leaving the house and I feel depressed that so many more will be gone in just a couple of weeks' time. I have not been rowing since I finished my course and I desperately hope I will have time on Thursday morning before my tour of the pentagon.

I feel that there must have been so much more to say than this? I could talk about commuter trains (MARC ftw) or say more things about New York (cuban bar = :/) or muse on bugs (how can anybody get used to seeing fireflies? They are AMAZING) or long distance buses or contemplate my own fundamental inability to be content with anything that happens in my life... but no. There is only one thing left to say.

Weather. Hottest day in 20 years on Saturday and I MISSED it. Epic thunderstorm on Sunday and I missed that too. I am a failure as an Englishwoman.

A stranger with your door key, explaining that I'm just visiting...

2010-07-21T02:24:00.006+01:00

Yeah, I stopped picking up random people' s conversations a while ago so I can't start things with crazy shit people on the street say any more. So we're going back to the tried-and-tested song lyric title. Yeah I'm uninventive, so shoot me.

There is less to say, these days. That is probably a good thing. Back in Xinjiang, when I tried to do regular weekly updates, I found that the amount I could write about a given week was usually inversely proportional to how personally satisfying the week was. The less I feel the need to express myself to people back on the island, the better I am usually doing where I am. That's how these things work, I guess.*

Erm. So. What did I do this week, and why am I having so much trouble thinking of it? I did a whole bunch of stuff, the most major of which is write a full draft for my first commissioned play. It's not a very good draft, granted, but I'm still chuffed to bits that I've got it out there. What comes next is a couple of weeks of talking to historical re-enactment folk and the like, getting an idea of what the dialogue and tone should be like. I also am probably going to end up reading some Sharpe novels or something. This, and the fact that I am wargaming next weekend, means that I am going to have plenty of time to get in touch with my masculine side, which is no bad thing. There is nothing wrong with man-fun**. Interpret that how you will.

And when is this masterpiece to be performed, you ask? Well, the scheduled date for the grand pyrotechnic spectacular is August 24, 2014. Yes, that is four years and a month away. Yes, the world may well have ended before then. And I'll be 25 AND PROBABLY TERRIBLY FAMOUS ALREADY DONCHA KNOW (ha!). But on the plus side it'll be a brilliant personal time capsule. I suspect there may be advance performances before then, so hopefully it won't just be sitting in a drawer gathering dust for four years. Or maybe it will? Time will tell.

(There are a huge number of helicopters and sirens outside. What on earth could be happening? This happens on a surprisingly regular basis, although it might just be a byproduct of living in the middle of a big city with functioning emergency services, which I have never done before)

I should probably recount some witty anecdotes now, shouldn't I. Errr... well, on Thursday I went to a gay bar and it was really good for a while but then creepy men started getting the wrong idea. Why is it that the ONLY clubs where I get attention from (invariably male) strangers are gay clubs? Maybe they were just dancing but... man. I have developed a Thing about grinding, which is that I do not want you behind me full stop no arguments I do not care who you are even if I am attracted to you I do not want you expressing yourself like that thank you. Front is absolutely fine (unless you are REALLY creepy) but back... eugh. Eughhhhhh. No.

Are my parents still reading? Good... I also now have my grandmother on my Facebook, so she might be here too. If you are around, this is probably as naughty as this is going to get, I promise.***

Sidetracked again. This is ADD blogging again... anyway, erm. We'll gloss over Friday and Saturday (drinking, horrible security at a club, went to Spy Museum, went to sculpture garden and sat with feet in pond for a while, ate Thai food, watched HORRIFIC movie) and go to Sunday, which was slow as Sundays here always are, and largely revolved around trying to go to the swimming pool with a bunch of people. We got there mid afternoon to find it busy but not uncomfortably so, and obligingly hopped in and appreciated not being in the disgustingly hot air for a few minutes; conversation revolved in part around the insanely smug life guard kid, who was clearly enjoying the power trip of his summer job and kept wandering around blowing his whistle and getting people to stop doing inane things just because he could. After fifteen minutes, however, our fun was ruined by aforementioned kid coming along telling us all to get out of the water. We look confused, but obey (1 British, 1 American, 2 Catalans; therefore a 50/50 divide between people with a reluctant but largely unquestioning obedience to authority and those without...); however, the whistle blowing soon turns into a shout of "clear the decks, clear the decks!" This apparently means leave the pool. We look bemused, as does every single other person in the place, and refuse to move. The kid continues, now backed up by some slightly more authoritative looking folk. Eventually, someone does the obvious, and shouts: "Why?"

"Thunderstorm", the kid tells us, with an insanely large grin on his face. We look up into the CLEAR BLUE SKY and grumble. Then we all leave. These people are not so different to the British after all, no matter how many weird words they may use (my personal favourite at the moment is "penmanship", meaning "handwriting". The kid in the library I went to today was like "I apologise for my poor penmanship, ma'am" to the librarian when handing her a form, which has to be the poshest way to say "Sorry about my handwriting" I've ever heard in my LIFE. He was my age...)

The blue sky persists all along the walk to the frozen yoghurt shop (DELICIOUS), continues whilst we eat our frozen yoghurt, maintains itself once we get back to the house and even manages to stay around for several hours, which we spend sitting in the garden talking until dinner time. At around 10pm, there is indeed a storm, and it is the most terrifying one yet, but it was not a reason to leave the pool. Except it was. Bloody life guard kids and their hallucinations.

Monday night is salsa night. It's great fun, except it requires a lot of concentration to keep your arms and your legs moving simultaneously. I am forced to leave for toothache related reasons earlier than I would otherwise have liked. I have a wisdom tooth intent on suicide right now, which is beyond infuriating...

One last thing, then I'll go. I've been at a brand new library again today (I took a picture but my camera is not within reach whilst I am sitting down...) and with new libraries come new exhibitions that I can pop into during my impromptu lunch breaks- this time, I spent a bit of time across the hall from the library in a small modern art exhibition. It was a fairly odd mix of stuff from one lady- some of it I really liked in a sort of "oooh, what nice colours in a nice pattern" way; a few were "ooh I can tell what that is meant to be and it is a nice representation of it", and then a lot were "oh. some colours on a canvas. Nice."

I am halfway through the process of sorting paintings into the three categories, when a woman comes up to me, with a bright "Hello, I'm the artist."

Oh fuck, I think. "Oh, how lovely," I say. We converse enough for her to clock the accent, and then have the obligatory "yes I'm from ENGLAND what did you think I was a South African or something?" exchange (I actually did get mistaken for an Australian once. Bleh.) When she discovers this, she looks excited and exclaims that I will REALLY appreciate this one painting she has done. She then promptly drags me over to a large painting which appears to be a set of squares and triangles in yellow and green on a black background.

"This one's called 'The Tate'. It's of the Tate." She stares at me, expectantly. I stare at the painting, desperately, trying to think of something, anything to say about it that will get me out of this horrible parallel world where I care about modern art and have something to say about it.

"Oh. Wow. You know, I really like everything with bright colours. i get dragged in by them" I say (truthfully. This happens basically every time I go clothes shopping; as soon as there is a bright thing in a window or just inside a door I AM THERE). I give her a still slightly desperate smile, and hope that this is an acceptable answer; she sort of smiles back but her expression indicates that clearly I have failed some sort of modern art test I didn't even know I was taking. After showing me to her guest book, she wanders off to annoy somebody else.

I return to staring at the painting. It's just some shapes on a canvas. It doesn't remind me of the Tate AT ALL. I'm not even sure what part of the Tate it was supposed to evoke. Maybe I was supposed to ask her this, but I can't say I care what the answer was. After a few seconds more of "appreciation", I go to look at the pretty ones of beaches again. In her guestbook, I write that I like the colours, and that I'm glad she liked the Tate. And that I hope I never see her ever again.

Nah, just kidding. That would have been rude.

-----------------------------------------------------

*Related, I found this vaguely interesting. Specifically the whole "body interpreting depression as infection and isolating you" thing. All the lifestyle shit is bloody obvious- sleep, eat well, don't think too hard about it, get some sunlight, do you really need a book to tell you that'll make you less depressed? Come to think of it, you probably don't need a book to tell you that your depression is making you avoid those things and thus locking you into a vicious cycle, either... anyway depression is for losers and I'm just a fake poser depressive who's never been on a med in her life so whatever.

**You know what? I am even going to give up on the conviction that some films that other people like and I don't are only considered classics because they're boy films. I'll officially concede that Pulp Fiction is a gender neutral classic film, and I just don't like it for the same reason I don't like Catch-22 or Mozart. Or... you know, some girl thing I don't like despite it being classic. Like. Um. George Eliot.

*** And yes I am being safe and sensible and not spending more of your money than is strictly necessary to keep myself in the manner to which I have become accustomed etc. etc.

Yeah I had to teach this Oxford guy how to row, and he kept calling them "bow side" and "stroke side"... how stupid is that.*

2010-07-14T01:40:00.003+01:00

So there is something that I just cannot wait to say which is of great importance in the understanding of transatlantic relations. It is nothing to do with language or culture or anything like this, but it's the biggest and strangest difference between countries and I also noticed it way back in 2004, back when I used to talk shit in top-secret notebooks rather than on the internets (I really ought to burn some of those, come to think of it. I know that in theory I'll look back on them some day and be enchanted, or somebody else will find them awesome, but... no. I've spent enough time the past couple of weeks looking at stuff other people have left behind to know what I want to leave behind, and it is not that). It confused me then, and it still confuses me now.

It is, of course, the movement of squirrels. I am not inventing this, grey squirrels ACTUALLY move differently here to the way they move in the UK. Back at home, they all bound around like big fluffy letter "m"s all the time, except when they are actually climbing vertically and have to hold on; over here, however, the things SAUNTER. Seriously. They either walk or do a sort of power walky jog, but it's one back leg one front rather than hopping. Needless to say, I think this is the root of that whole old memey "LOL SQUIRRELS ARE GOING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD" thing that still occasionally pops up. Back home, it's an unfunny juvenile thing to say about a cute fluffy mammal, but here it actually has grounds in the way the fuzz-rats walk about like they own the place. And since last time I noticed it I was in a forest near one of the Great Lakes, it can't just be a regional thing. Squirrels genuinely do move differently in different countries. There is your fact for today.

Ho hum, what else is going down... I'm too listless to upload pictures so no visual aids for you today. I been doing variations on a theme, except now I row as well- I've spent depressingly little time in a boat so far given that I'm paying quite a bit of money for classes, but I think that's due to change tomorrow provided I can get up in time. I'm also bemused by the people I'm in a class with- there wasn't much need for conversation yesterday, but today I was with a father son combo who not only made no effort to talk to me, but did not even SMILE BACK at me when I greeted them on the dock. I know it's early in the morning, guys, but there's reserved and then there's just fucking rude. There's so little class interaction going on that I'm pretty sure most of them don't even know I'm British, which sort of puts me out a little bit. I want the attention from being different so I can complain about it D:

I have also got the phone number for one of the payphones on the Metro so I can try ringing it every time I go past and see if anybody answers. Not quite sure what I'll do if they do... probably hang up in terror. This may seem like a stupid thing, but actually the fact that I wanted to call a Metro payphone yesterday meant that I figured out my phone was lost whilst there was still a possibility of recovering it. This event was the highlight of my Monday, which probably shows you how dismal it was. Today has been better, though, I made a list and then did everything on it which is an anal but immensely satisfying way to feel like you've achieved something even when all you've done is spent about 3 cumulative hours in a library and then gone to the post office. Things are good though even on bad days. I'm not sure if it's the new location or a natural progression away from the general negativity which was second year, but I'm thinking about things in a much better way than usual, which is a welcome change even if it's probably temporary.

I am, as an old acquaintance would have said, "growing up". Always always growing, that has to be a good thing. Maybe not "up" though. maybe sideways. I am "growing away" and "growing towards" and maybe even "growing out" of some things that it's about time I grew out of***. This is a good fact which requires recording.

It occurs to me (or, you know, occurred, in the past. At the Capital South metro station, to be exact) that I have a very high opinion of the low opinions I hold about pretty much everything I am and everything I do. I should work on rationalising that one. Or, you know, using it as a motive to not be such a self-flagellating perfectionist all the time. We'll see about that.

*ROWER TALK: this was not actually said about me but it was said with the intention of me hearing, before the instructor realised I was British (he still doesn't know I'm an Oxford rower too no less). Right after the conversation, we got on sculling simulator things, and he came up to me and was like "yeah, you're a sweeper... you row port, right?" and I had to break it to him that I had NO FUCKING CLUE what that meant because I am a stroke sider. I then explained the whole "it's stroke side because stroke rows on that side" thing, to which he responded with "what if you starboard rig** the boat?" and then "you British have weird names for everything". True, sir, but we also win all the medals. I think tomorrow I'll teach him about "easy oar"- here it's "wain off". WTF.

**MORE ROWER TALK: "starboard rig the boat". I KNOW. WHAT. It's called "bow rigging". Plus calling them port and starboard when you're sitting backwards is just unnecessarily complicated.

*** by this I definitely do not refer to Pokemon or Twilight or Mortal Engines or ANY of those awesome cultural things for kids I love. More... oh I don't know ask me in person and I'll tell you if I trust you enough. It'll be a nice test of our friendship.

"Attention all Metro passengers with baby strollers: do NOT use your child to block the closing doors. Thank you."

2010-07-12T02:20:00.008+01:00

Anglicisms people laugh at me for, part 1:

"Jumper"
"Gran"
"Ring" as a verb. e.g. "I'm going to ring this payphone and see who answers"
"Post" as a verb e.g. "I need to post this letter"
"The hash key" i.e. on a mobile phone
"Mobile phone"
"Toilet"
"Posh" when applied to a person
"Prat"
"Properly"
"Bah-throom" as opposed to "bay-throom"
"Sick" as a... actually, what is that? As in "I'm going to be sick".
Doctor Who

I am VERY ENGLISH, it is a constant observation. There is no way out of it, as soon as I open my mouth all these strange words and sounds come out that make me strange and quaint.

Something too much of this. This is taking me a million times longer than usual to write because I am in a food coma having eaten a very large amount of Ethiopian food, which is actually a very common ethnic cuisine in Washington. Ethiopian food basically consists of a lot of different types of meat (similar to curry) and vegetables (reminiscent of Chinese) and pulses, all put on top of this delicious soft pancakey type bread. You are then brought more of the bread and you use this to scoop up the food (sort of by pinching it with your fingers, but with the bread in the way... you know what I mean) and eat. It looks like this, if you're interested. Bloody brilliant but the sheer quantity of bread means that you get full really quickly. We also had some honey wine which was sort of a cross between desert wine and sherry. The meal was made exciting not only by the epicness of the food but also by the power cut which happened just as we'd finished; turns out this is a fairly common occurence in the city, and had happened to the restaurant for 4 hours the previous day, so they got out candles fairly quickly and everything went on as usual- the power came on about ten minutes later so luckily they didn't have another electricity free business night. On the way home we ended up stopping at an ice cream place where you can choose stuff to "mix in" to your ice cream, something which is reminiscent of being eight years old again and making "ice cream soup" in your bowl with three different flavours and chocolate sauce- oh wait, was that just me? Can't have been. Anyway, they have that here and its a legit way to eat ice cream. Brilliant but now all the blood is in my intestines and I cannot stay awake.

What else has happened to me in the last couple of days? I went on a "field trip" on Friday again, but as it was just me and one other girl we didn't really stick to the plan we'd been told to follow. I spent a fair bit of time in the buildings museum, which is this insanely large late 19th century thing modelled on Renaissance architecture which was actually originally planned as the War Pensions office by a... well, by an egomaniac. It spent a large chunk of its career first as a pensions office and then as a temporary space for lots of different public offices before getting closed down, almost torn down and then reopened as the buildings museum. The building itself is epic:

Unfortunately, the exhibits are all in this sort of vein:

Carparks: an artistic masterpiece. There was a very large carpark section. We all heart carparks do we not.

After this I went to an amazing small science museum and got roped into an infectious disease demonstration with a bunch of school kids (and also talked at by all of the staff for being ENGLISH oh so very English also I know lots about the history of vaccines thanks to the Medicine Through Time course back in GCSE history, so that won me brownie points too). I was supposed to be at the post museum, which I'm sure is *great*... but nope.

Then, home, playing Monkey Island 2 (finished it... fabulous game, obviously; loved most of the update but still uneasy about the way they changed Guybrush's model. The retconning of his character to fit in with the Dominic Armato loveable moron just didn't work as well, what with him actually being a MASSIVE DICK basically the whole way through this game, more so than in any of the others. I did really enjoy it though, especially as some of the puzzles in this one are much more tricky and less memorable than the SOMI ones, so I actually had to use their hint system a fair few times...) and then dinner and drinks and spilling wine all over Janina's wall and then out to Eden for another roof top party, which coincided with a rain storm hitting D.C. Danced through all but the very worst of it, and even that I only backed off from because my passport was in my bag and I didn't think it was a bright idea to get that soaking wet (especially as one of my most important visa documents got wet the other day and the stamp saying when I entered the country ran and is now illegible...). Brilliant night.

Yesterday a group of us (me, Janina, Stefan, Deborah, Enikő and Celine, to be exact... I know all those names mean so much to you, dear reader*) went to Philadelphia for a day trip, which was also fit. We were only there for 5 hours so we didn't see everything, and in particular we didn't get to go pose outside the museum steps where Rocky got filmed (this is probably a good thing for me actually... do I really want *that* quoted at me any more than it already is?)

Anyway, maybe it is just because I was only there during the day but I thought Philly was one of the best places I've been to in the USA. Big skyscrapers right next to pretty historic buildings which are themselves right next to charmingly run down streets full of small restaurants and shops and bums getting angry when you don't listen to them... yeah, I am under no illusion about how charming I would find those districts after dark, fear not. Crime capitals of the United States are not to be over romanticised. Not even when they are also regular capitals of the United States, like this "home" of mine is. But I'm an Urumqilik, I've seen my fair share of run-down but awesome places** and I love them all as long as a certain amount of personal safety is present. We saw the Liberty Bell and some halls and a random square full of chess pieces and dominoes and ludo counters and ate Philadelphia Cheese Steak.

PICATURES (will be uploading lots to facebook as soon as I have enough decent ones to make an album worthwhile... which will be a LOOONG TIME.)

This photo is like one of those old school portraits where everything included is symbolic in some way. I think. (luckily, the jeans which spent the entire day halfway down my arse because I didn't have a belt on are out of shot...)

I am listening to Bruce Springsteen AS WE SPEAK.

Cheese steak. Delish.

Notice that everything is grey. This is actually a GOOD THING- it rained all Saturday morning which made for a long bus journey there, but it had stopped by the time we got there and the rain meant that it was cool enough to be comfortable walking around. High 70s is such a relief when you're spending your life at 90+ (By the way, UK heatwaves? PSSSSH. I laugh at you both because here is hotter and because we have air conditioning.)

And here is a professional lying down game man.

And courtesy of Janina, who is a far more adept photo-taker than I (mostly due to her ability to get people to take photos for us at every opportunity), here is The Crew:

L-R: Hungary, Netherlands, UK, Puerto Rico, Germany, France. We should form some kind of intergovernmental organisation.

Work is fine too. Frustrating. Have still found nothing new. I despair of ever finding something new.

And now, far earlier than normal, I go to bed... oh by the way I'm ROWING at 6.15am tomorrow and every day next week. WHY DID I THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA? I just don't know.

*That's reader literally in the singular, I suspect. Hello mother.

**Not Huntingdon.

Cheesy chips? Is that like nachos?

2010-07-06T23:00:00.006+01:00

So it hit 100 today, in weird temperature. It's quite apt that that's such a milestone; whilst no, the water isn't ACTUALLY at boiling point, it damn well feels like it. The humidity in the air makes everything prickly and sticky and burny, and the heat itself is... well. It's 100. Bloody boiling, innit.

But enough weather chat. After a pleasant long weekend, it's now back to work, or what passes for it. I've spent today in the library of congress again, this time in the manuscript room, where the restrictions are extreme and the room is boring but the staff are very friendly and respond to thanks with either a curt "yup" or a long, drawn out "mmhhhmm". I absolutely love this, once I get used to it. I have found absolutely nothing of use today but I did get to read lots of people's letters from the original, and at one point I found a guy's atlas from 1822 which was really ripped up but totally awesome (of particular interest to me: the Asia page has both Xinjiang and the entire Himalayas region subsumed into the "Chinese empire". Along with "Corea" and a really big chunk of Manchuria. On an unrelated note, it also labels the north of Canada as "New South Wales"...). there were also loads of memoirs from a chap called Herman Sawyer, who went deaf from cannonfire in 1813, got captured by a guy called Captain Falcon (lolz) in the great lakes and then spent the later years of his life writing out his letters and cutting out newspaper clippings that mention him as a war hero.

*24 hours later*

OK, I just said no to salsa so I can play Monkey Island, but I realise that I must complete this before I play Monkey Island or I will be forever a failure.

(Incidentally, my facebook profile is awash with the cries of a thousand people who think its a travesty that this opening is not in the remake:

I am one of them. Undoubtedly. This thing is nostalgia crack. Although maybe that makes it a good thing that they didn't remake it, I dunno? The bit of the MI2 remake I have played is good, although I don't like the way they've updated Guybrush's facial expressions. His pixely ones are soooo cute. And so is his beard. The only beardy man I will ever love, and you can quote me on that.)

Anyway, enough Monkey Island. My past self spoke about the manuscript library; in the present, I have just spent my day at the National Archives which was a singularly brilliant but frustrating experience. Brilliant because what I read was fascinating (two folders of letters from 1850-ish basically consisting of workers denouncing each other as "Know-nothings" or asserting their Democrat loyalties or whining about being fired... there was even one which was addressed to the president, asking him to find the sender work at the Navy Yard. I guess it got forwarded on to the right person so he was on to something?) frustrating because EVERYTHING is irrelevant. Nobody wants to talk about that time Washington got torched, and still fewer want to discuss the Navy Yard in particular. All records have a telling gap between the middle of August and the first few days of September, after which one mention is made briefly in a letter of the "disaster" and then that's it. TALK, MEN. Or WRITE. WRITE is better.

Also, I believe that it is our collective duty as members of the human race to take pains to improve our handwriting. This will be difficult, especially if you write like me, but it is important. Bad handwriting makes so many records so painful...

Washington is unseasonably hot, I am told. 105 is not normal. Yes oh god that's 40 UUUGH.

Anyway, my long term goal here is to talk about Independence Day and put up pictures, so lets do those two things. Independence day first. On July 4th, we celebrated America's 233rd birthday, which was very nice for them. After a lazy morning in which I missed all parades and readings of Declarations of Independence and all that other shit, and a nice sit-down dinner, we made the long walk down to the National Mall (not a shopping centre) to spend an afternoon chilling out and wait for the fireworks. The "we" I speak of refers to these fine people:

And no matter what Kayla says, this photo is made MUCH better by her misfiring camera. The sky really was that pink. Honest.

The park was epic good times, we sat in the shade and I ate far too many biscuits and blueberries. I also angered a crazy lady by sitting a little too close to her whilst somebody else spread a blanket out, which caused her to rail about "my space... you know, my PERSONAL space?" I think you had to be there, probably. There was also a band, who alternated between playing great songs which I loved and patriotic American songs which I am not so hot on.

And then, at 9... PSSSHOOOM! or some other such fireworky sound effect.

Michelle's photo. Big big fireworks. Happy Joy.

(Fun fact: I am having more trouble with my surname here than I have ever had back home. People get confused EVERY SINGLE TIME I show them ID, and the woman today assumed my surname must be Felicity. Even my official intern registration apparently calls me Joy Adrienne. Fuck the what, America.)

Anyways, that was then and this is now. Now I work much of the time, although sometimes I do not go to it until past 11, because I am too busy checking things on the internet. Although most of the internet checking relates to work... honest. I work in buildings that look like this:

Library of Congress' Madison building, horrible younger sibling of the Jefferson building:

Jefferson has a lovely reading room that feels a bit like the library from Beauty and the Beast (although not nearly enough shelved books. What's with that?) Madison is like what would happen if George Orwell and Jean Paul Satre's books married and had a love child. Horrific massive columned exterior, interior is a bunch of identical corridors with identical- but colour coded- doors, behind each of which no doubt lies some sort of drawing room with a letter opener and a bunch of pretentious folks torturing each other with their existence. And the lights never go off.

This is a nice National Archives building with insanely high security. Don't destroy history, folks! America's only got a few hundred years of it and they're guarding it jealously. Seriously, 7 billion bits of paper is a pretty hefty number so I guess I'd hoard that too if I had it.

And now for something completely different: BISCUITS OF LOVE

OH OH AND WHAT COULD THIS BE OM NOM NOM NOM NOM

Uhm uhm what else do I want to say. A million things. I want to share every tiny observation that comes into my head every moment of the day, but nobody is there most of the time and if they were I wouldn't really want them to be. Oh how tiresome it is to be a person.

It's hot. Did I mention it's hot? It's really rather hot. I live on the other side of the room to the air conditioning unit, and right next to our big bay windows, which means that the heat is seeping through the windows and attacking. Also i went to the bathroom without sandals yesterday and it burned the soles of my feet. That's 105 for you...

Boy is this long. And now done! Laters.

Stranger 1: You're really pink! Stranger 2: Yeah, I'm a Maine Lobster. Rarrr.

2010-07-03T23:06:00.003+01:00

I'm a bit on the morose side, but I will try to keep this interesting despite that.

I spent last night partying on a club rooftop, just down the road from the White House. After some frustrations trying to get up there in the first place (which basically entailed following the savvy people around trying to get a stamp, and then waiting for the goodwill of the completely ridiculous bouncer who accepted other people's stamps but apparently not ours) and the continuing annoyance of being short-changed $10 for a Vodka Red Bull (although... I LOVE that making a vodka Red Bull here just entails pouring both into a glass simultaneously, none of this measuring out a shot rubbish). It was warm but not hot, crowded but not quite the crush of Babylove or Kukui or any of those other Oxford establishments I remember I hate 10 minutes after I get in the door. Dancing with your bag is somehow much less frustrating than the same experience at any of those establishments, so cloakrooms are unnecessary. Oh, and there are live bongo drummers accompanying the really rather good DJ. I am with a group of people who represent at least 5 continents (Australasia is in doubt), some of whom I know, many of whom I recognise and all of whom have made significantly more effort to put nice clothes on than I have. In my defence, I have put mascara on and thus also feel quite dressed up. I am dancing with people who dance better than I do, and I am also watching a couple of people in the corner trying to connect. She is attractive, he less so (I base this judgement mainly on his being about 5'4". You know how I roll). He has gone in for a kiss so many times I lose count, and each time she somehow manages to escape; and yet she doesn't walk away. I feel a great sense of solidarity with my fellow wrong-man magnet; my own encounter with the odd short Frenchman on the roundabout last week has luckily come to nothing but I keep worrying that he will track me down at a world cup game or something and start chatting about how cute I am again. It's a big city, I guess. Hopefully I'll get away with it.

By 2, I am standing by the wall with Kayla from Oklahoma, about ready to go. We are, unfortunately, in the way of pretty much all the "traffic" going from the bar to the rooftop tables, so people keep bumping into us with various objects. At one point, the crush from the dancefloor proper pushes a guy (6'2" or thereabouts, a bit stocky) into me. He glances, apologises, then looks back at me with an odd expression on his face and shouts "You're really attractive" into my ear, before walking away with his friends. I left very shortly afterwards, but not before an additional burst of energetic dancing. I think he must have been my soulmate. Maybe one day I'll meet him again, and it will turn out that he loves Ace Attorney, Doctor Who and Jasper Fforde and wants nothing more than to find a mentally unhinged immature Brit to travel the world with. Or maybe that chance has passed forever. Alas...

Seriously, though, I can't gloat enough about how much I love being 21 in this place. Honestly, I don't know what underage people do with their nights here but it can't be nearly as entertaining as mine. Hell, I don't even LIKE clubbing 99% of the time... but this is different. We'll see how I feel about it in a couple of weeks though, I guess.

A week has already gone by since the ball, and almost a week has elapsed since the day of plane journeys. I am now able to explain to tourists how to use Metro ticket machines. I have a phone. I have a Library of Congress reader card. And I have a new word for corkscrew ("Wine key". It's brilliant, except it sounds quite a lot like "wanking".) And I have friends, which is always a big step in the right direction. People here are by and large brilliant, charming and interesting. Life is good.

I went to Arlington cemetery today, on a mistaken assumption about where Thomas Tingey is buried (he's actually in a DIFFERENT riverside cemetery, one which was around before the Civil War). I was also hoping that it would be a nice spot for a green wander, although I had been warned by a Canadian transhumanist sympathiser that a lot of the grass is forbidden to walk on, and the sub 90 temperatures didn't actually materialise in the way they were supposed to (side note: I understand Farenheit! sub 90 is anything under 32, and actually splitting temperatures into 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s etc. is significantly easier to work with than having to work with"mid 20s" or "low 30s" or other Celsius measurements. Seriously.) In fact, I hated it for a good long time. The whole place is absolutely enormous, which is not bad in itself but that fact coupled with the shuttle buses, the fact that you can't walk to the graves and must therefore follow the roads around the front, and just the sheer weight of tourists excitedly wandering from one famous grave to the next (or even sitting on a shuttle bus and having the general direction of famous graves pointed out) without even considering the other thousands of people in there just made it really distasteful. My opinion changed when I got over the hill to the slightly older graves, where people aren't buried with identical headstones and you CAN walk on the grass. There, it felt like any other cemetery, although no other tourists bothered to venture this far down. I did try and get enthused about the whole famous people thing again after a while communing with the boring dead, but it didn't work and in the end the only famous person I saw was Ted Kennedy (which I guess makes up for him cancelling on the Union...) I didn't even find Thurgood Marshall, which genuinely is quite depressing. Maybe I'll go back on a rainy weekday or something.

Meh. I guess that when you don't have historical diversity to make your city monuments, you have to go for scale and quantity. And that is definitely the D.C. strategy. Lots of big ostentatious marble things everywhere, quotes carved into everything, and shuttle buses for when you get tired of hauling your ass around manually. I fucking love the American Dream.

Speaking of, 4th of July tomorrow! Maybe fireworks at the Mall or maybe a rooftop party. It depends on if I get on the right guest list or not. But it's nice to have people putting me on guest lists in the first place.

Blueberries still have me enthralled. Getting served beef stroganoff for breakfast does not.

"I'm Obama's cousin, and I'm a Rothschild so you can just imagine what HE is!"

2010-06-30T20:47:00.005+01:00

Most important information first: I just ate the last of the awesome biscuits* I bought from Wholefoods the other day. This is a sad day indeed for biscuit** fans worldwide. Until I go back to Wholefoods to buy more, that is. But who knows when that will be?

Anyway yes. I am home early from the National Museum of American History, which is what I did today instead of going to work. Due to a forgotten purse this involved a very long walk in sandals which means that now my legs hurt. I was in sandals in the first place because the shoes I wore on my first day have effectively eaten my heels (not as much of an exaggeration as I am usually prone to). I forgot my purse because yesterday my water bottle leaked all over my bag (including my visa paperwork) and I had to dry it out. As you can see, things are going well. Actually, that is unfounded sarcasm. Being here is great, even if I am already exhausted and just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a day to sort myself out. It's not Washington's fault that I'm a disaster.

I held off on blogging for this long because I wanted to have photos to put up when I started talking about Washington DC. Unfortunately, I work on a military installation and my photography skills are special needs at best, so all of them are both irrelevant and rubbish. Let's not let that stop us, though.

Erm. Where to begin. OK, well for the next two months I live here:

This is the International Student House. Inside, it is basically more Oxford than Oxford. Here is my (wood-panelled!) room (it's actually a quarter of a room):

I share with three other people, all of whom have a similar set-up going on. They are all very nice and the set-up means that the privacy loss isn't too bad, although one of them did turn the air conditioning off last night which made for a rather sticky wake-up this morning.

Speaking of, the weather here ranges from bearable to horrific. When I arrived, it was 95 degrees (that's 35 in real weather) and humid as hell; this persists long after the sun goes down and didn't even shift after the big thunderstorm on Monday afternoon. Luckily, yesterday was cooler and it's now somewhere in the 80s (high 20s) and a bit breezy, making it really rather pleasant in the shade and not too awful in the sun either. Weather gets discussed a lot here, mostly in an "oh god how are we still alive" sort of way, but I'm glad that the hell of Sunday and Monday isn't *that* normal.

In order to work, I must take the Metro, which is a couple of blocks away from the house. here are some facts about the Washington Metro:

1) The system is potentially pretty good.

2) All the stations are big and identical and industrial looking and are probably built with nuclear fallout in mind.

3) D.C. trains don't have sensors which check to see if you're in the door or not. Well, they do, but they're sadistic sensors which only open under great sufferance. Trains leave a minute after they've got into the station and if you're only halfway in the train at that point that is your own damn problem.

4) The tickets have pandas printed on the front and escalator safety tips printed on the back. I thought the escalator safety tips were hilarious until I discovered that people actually used to regularly die on Metro escalators 'cause they didn't have those big red safety buttons until recently.

5) The trains are late sometimes and it is infuriating.

6) Crazy people sometimes ride. And talk. Nobody else talks, only the crazy people.

Here is a picture of Dupont Circle, the stop close to my home, courtesy of Wikimedia commons:

When I have ridden the metro sufficiently and arrived at the Navy Yard stop, I then have a ten minute walk down to the gates of the navy yard, where I get to chat to the security guard, show the A5 piece of paper with permanent marker scrawls that counts as my pass (apparently the machine that makes real passes broke in January and they don't intend to fix it. The bureaucracy here defies belief. And I say that having lived in CHINA for crying out loud). For my first couple of days, I have been working in the back of the Navy Yard Museum:

The museum itself is all perfectly nice and well presented, and thus reminds me of the ancient capital museum in Anyang, China- one of the best museums I ever went to (i.e. well captioned and full of human sacrifices), languishing in one of the least touristy parts of the country. I mean, who honestly puts the naval base on their list of things to see in Washington? And the visitor entrance is in the most far-flung bit of the base! It's crazy. But I digress. This museum is cool, if a bit out of the way. And I work in an office which looks like you would expect an office to look, except everything is all very informal and most people who work there are also unpaid interns so the work ethic is much less stressful than it might otherwise be.

So. My job. I am presently employed in researching and then writing about the burning of the Navy Yard in 1814, when the British invaded and burned down most of the capital. The Navy Yard itself was actually burned by the Americans first to stop it falling into enemy hands, and the story of how it got burned down is quite exciting and melodramatic so that's what's going to be turned into a pyrotechnic extravaganza by yours truly. It's only going to be half an hour long, which is a mild disappointment as I could otherwise have spent a lot of time exploring the build up and particularly talking about William Jones, the secretary of the navy, whose job basically involves writing endless terse letters to ship captains telling them what they should be doing. Love you Will. But no, Jones probably won't make an appearance in this- instead, I shall be dealing with Thomas Tingey, the burner, and Mordecai Booth, his clerk, who has a pub named after him and who may find himself written with serious homosexual undertones for no reason other than that I can. Translating the events into an interesting play which isn't just half an hour of "OOOH BURNING AAAH AAAH" will be a challenge... but love will find a way.

Ooh, and I am also going to be involved in bringing in acting companies and all that jazz too, which will hopefully be exciting without tapping into my undying hatred of auditions. And then once I'm done with this, I will be writing what my boss keeps referring to as a "Punch and Judy show" about the build-up, which will be comedic and involve puppets and hopefully the reading of lots more entertaining letters and most importantly WILLIAM JONES. and that is what I have to do. It's... well, I should be more fired up about it than I currently am, but to be fair I am tired and I've only been at it for two slightly disorganised days. And also the above paragraph probably indicates that I am way more fired up about it than I think I am.

When I am not busy being employed, I am hanging out back in the house. At present, being here is like being in a souped-up freshers' week, where all conversations revolve around the holy question trinity of "What's your name- where do you come from- what do you do". The difference here is that the answers are actually interesting, but it's still a bit tiring. Luckily I am getting past that stage with people now, and hopefully my jet lag is going to be worn off enough to do some genuine socialising tonight. I tried to play football yesterday but the Blisters of Death precluded it. Oh, and the food is pretty nice. I have eaten more fruit in the past three days than in the last year put together, mostly blueberries because blueberries are the food of the GODS. Epic love for these things, especially the slightly underripe ones.

The final thing which I must write about or the world will implode is my day at the American History Museum. When we were walking in, I had a conversation with one of the girls I went with which went like this:

Person: So... this is going to be a stupid question, but...

AJ: Fire away (I did just ask you which building was the Capitol, I'm stupid too)

Person: So we've been around a few hundred years, and we teach all our history in grade school, and everybody sort of knows it, but you British have been around for AGES- how do you learn it all?
AJ: ... well.

(Answer I gave was actually "We don't care about most of it." Which is true. How much do you know about pre Tudor British history that isn't either the Romans or 1066?*** Exactly.)

With this in mind, I was intrigued to see how America manages to fill a very large museum with its own history. This is done very simply, actually, by defining EVERYTHING that happened in the past as history. Michelle Obama's 2009 inauguration dress is in there. So are costumes from the Lion King musical. So is Bill Clinton's saxophone. I think there was also some Iraq war memorabilia in there somewhere, although I skimmed most of the war bits after the Civil War. There is also a very large section (i.e. a FLOOR) devoted to science and particularly the link between invention and toys, which I would happily have spent hours in if there weren't so many kids hanging around and ruining it. Most of it was awesome though, especially the transportation section (cars! trams! Other things!) and the lady teaching nonviolence stuff outside the Greensboro sit-in bench. I lost my two companions right at the very beginning and never found them again (well... never looked either) so after getting bored at around 2.30, I wander out into the National Mall to take some generic Washington photos.

Generic Washington photos:

A statue of George which allegedly made children cry when it was unveiled.

War memorial. Sign prohibits any sort of nice activity that could be had with fountains.

The American dream in 3 easy steps.

It's the White House! With an oddly familiar bus in front...

And that is what has happened thus far. There is other rubbish going around in my head about language and bureaucracy and other mini exciting things about the city, but this is long enough for now and I would quite like to play the piano before dinner, if nobody else is down there. It's a rather nice grand and everybody else who plays it appears to be a super awesome classical virtuoso, so I'm perversely enjoying subjecting it to Eurythmics and Elliott Smith chords and half written Adrienne-songs.

*Cookies

**Cookie

*** Question does not apply to historians. Shush.

"If I have to get my stage manager on the phone to prove it to you, Mom, then I will"

2010-06-29T00:32:00.002+01:00

My head is swimming with a load of random tiny observations and no coherent narrative line to string them together with. The last 72 hours have been some of the most hectic and insane and brilliant of my life and I should probably be adding to the magic rather than sitting in my room writing about them, but I completely suck at meeting people and I've reached my limit for now so... they can wait. They'll all still be here tomorrow. As will the most important of the things I have to say about today, I should think.

I want to write about how I got here, so I should probably start saying something about that and see how it goes. Wadham Ball was immense, there is really no other way to describe it. I didn't see half the stuff I wanted to and I still had an amazing time, it was that good. I also told people far too many personal things (or rather the same few personal things far too many times... sigh. When will I be tactful? NEVER.) and probably drank too much. I haven't had that much fun staying up since the all-nighter in Beijing airport (BEST. AIRPORT. EVAR. And maybe one of the only ones in the world where the security people will smile and wave at you whilst you're racing each other on trolleys instead of forcing you to stop and kicking you out). And then, at 6am, after making it to the survivors photo and almost puking at the sight of a pastry (seriously, what is it about pastries in the morning that makes my stomach churn?) we walked home. Most hung around for a bit and then slept.

I pack. I vacuum my room. I double check important things are in my rucksack. I wonder if my rucksack is going to be under 20kg and realise I have no way to check. I ring my father to double check a few logistical points. And then I walked out of the door to get on a bus to Heathrow. I sleep for a bit on the bus, in that very odd unfulfilling sort of way where it doesn't feel like sleep at all, just like losing an hour of your life. 24 hours, 23 awake.

Odd thing one about this trip is how nice all of the airport staff are in every location I go to. The check-in lady is chatty and pleasant as I drop my bags off, and I get some loud, slightly odd but ultimately friendly ribbing from the security man about my "Free Hugs" t-shirt- although he doesn't seem to see the word "hugs", as he keeps going on about me being free. I am in no fit state to argue, so I just smile and mutter something about sleep deprivation. Oddly, though, I'm functioning fine apart from a horrifically underperforming digestive system, which is par for the course for anything that makes me even slightly nervous. Anyway, I think, there's a plane ride coming soon and I will totally sleep for that, right?

Wrong. Apart from 45 minutes of lost time on the runway (one moment, we're being told there's a ten minute delay, next thing I know it's 2pm and we've still not taken off), I end up oddly wakeful for our entire transatlantic trip. I mess around with the in flight entertainment for a while, but it's frankly one of the worst systems I've ever had to deal with; a bit like trying to entertain yourself with somebody else's IPod for 6 hours. I do watch "How to Train Your Dragon" which was a pretty awful film plot-wise but which had really cute dragon designs. And I listen to some kinda rubbish music and watch a poor episode of Glee and get most of the way through Fight Club, too. Oh, and I listen to "At the Bottom of Everything" on my MP3 player far too many times.

At last we touch down in Ottawa, 32 hours since I last slept. I'm still feeling oddly fine, although I know this is an illusion that is going to fail on me at the worst possible moment. Ottawa airport, however, is stressful enough to keep me wired on nerves for the forseeable future. How the Canadians could POSSIBLY think this travesty of an aiport is appropriate for their capital city is beyond me. My impression of it begins to take shape when the captain tells us on the plane that we won't be able to get off after we dock (or whatever it is that planes do) because another flight has arrived and customs can't deal with two flights at once. We eventually are allowed to leave, only to discover the whole place looks and smells like an old people's home. The most frustrating thing, however, is that the place appears to have been designed by somebody who is annoyed by the fact that nobody wants to be there and is thus determined to make the transfer procedure as difficult as possible for anybody not staying. In order to catch my connecting flight, I therefore need to legally immigrate TO Canada by going through all the customs procedures (the charming young man at border control tells me he'd totally take me up on the free hug if he weren't at work), get my bag, carry it to the OTHER END OF THE AIRPORT, wave my boarding card at the authorities, fill out a bunch of U.S. customs forms, drag my bag onto the final conveyor belt myself (frankly I'm surprised they didn't make me personally load it onto the goddamn PLANE). I then find myself at US border control- seriously, what is it with these people and ostentatious exclaves? Anyway, the man here is also obscenely nice- I get a little thrill when he writes "Playwright" in the occupation field of my paperwork, and upon elaborating on what I'm going to be doing he spends most of the rest of the time humming "Rule Britannia" and telling me snippets of 1812 history. He finishes, is satisfied enough to let me in the country and welcomes me to the USA.

All very well, but I'm still in Canada really. I hang out in the airport for another 90 minutes or so, still sleepless, listening to all the announcements about cancelled flights and flights with passengers who refuse to leave (seriously) and smirking at the awful French of the bilingual announcer. Eventually, we are allowed to board the plane, which turns out to be a miniscule 50-seater with ridiculous electronics restrictions, meaning that I can't listen to music.

It's been 38 hours by this point, and going back in time and extending the day in that way has started to take its toll. I drift in and out of consciousness for most of the flight, start hallucinating that I'm on front quad, shiver uncontrollably for a while and accidentally refuse the free peanuts. Eventually, though, we start descending over Washington (an experience made terrifying by the way that turbulence gets magnified in small planes)- I get a glimpse of some of the massive buildings as we touch down. Luckily, nerves kick in again and propel me through the airport (no customs- thank God for ostentatious exclaves), and after picking up my bag it's easy to hop in a taxi and give him the address. The taxi driver is the last in the series of charming public service figures- I don't understand too much of his English, but we nevertheless manage to talk politics and gun crime. Bill Clinton is the man to beat, in his books. Good for him.

I arrive at my hostel at around 9 (2am Monday morning GMT), and am taken up to my room by a charming Taiwanese girl. Somehow, I get a last desperate burst of energy and manage to unpack my stuff and meet two of my three roommates before finally succumbing at about half 9. Sleep, dear sleep, I never intend to go so long without you again.

And then there was 6.30am this morning, and then there was going to work, and being at work, and coming home and being here and going to Wholefoods and walking down these streets and how totally immense and brilliant it is, but... that can wait. As can the tale of my budding love for this man:

William Jones... be mine.

Blogging with attention deficit

2010-06-25T23:14:00.002+01:00

Ben's room in the flat, evening. ADRIENNE enters, exhausted from a long hard day of swimming in the river and lounging in Port Meadow eating Doritos. BEN is in his room after a day of dicking about in a lab or whatever it is he does to waste time these days.

ADRIENNE:

(semi naked)

Hey Ben, where is my shower gel? It all appears to have been used by a person who isn't me.

BEN:

Oh, yes. About that.

ADRIENNE:

Am I going to have to buy more?

BEN:

... uh- oh, no...

(He goes to the wardrobe and searches. Moments later, he reappears with a girly white bag.)

Merry Christmas.

(He hands the bag to ADRIENNE)

ADRIENNE:

This is a massage set? Why do you-

BEN:

Yeah, I've had it all year. I'm sure there's a women's shower gel in there...

ADRIENNE:

Well, great. Also, you used all the shampoo... don't suppose you can fix that?

BEN:

Actually...

(He returns to the wardrobe. Moments later he returns with a large stack of Herbal Essences sample packets. They are designed for highlighted hair but otherwise usable.)

Will these do?

ADRIENNE:

You- these- what the fuck.

BEN gives the shampoo to ADRIENNE

BEN:

Well, enjoy.

ADRIENNE:

Uh, yeah. Thanks, I think.

Since that last insistence that I liek totly hate shoes, I have bought some enormous dominatrix heels for the bop. 11cm, to be exact. I normally hate heels with a passion because they mess with my sense of place in the world (i.e. most men are taller, most women are shorter, nobody is too far either way*) but at the same time, I seem to have fallen prey to the idea that I must look nothing short of amazing for this event and anything I actually DO pull out of the bag somehow won't be enough. Hence the shoes. I will wear shoes because it is the Thing to Do.

On the same note, I had a massive dress panic due to the wasting state of my muscles and the growing state of my upper body fat. It turns out that I don't normally slouch, though, so testing what I look like in my dress whilst slouching was a little... pointless. I should be OK. It's not like anybody expects me not to look fat...?

I got my reading lists through for doing Chinese politics next term, which has put an end to two years of worrying about the whole "oh my god you'll have to ballot for that course it's soooo popular" thing that all of the PPE handbooks have going on. China's going out of fashion, so I'm assuming everybody else on it is as specifically China-faggy as me. I'm probably the only one with a massive academic hard-on for Xinjiang though. My thesis preparations are still awfully unprepared, but apparently I need to Not Panic.

I'm leaving in two days. Don't Panic.

My hair is getting blonde bits in the sun, and I don't like it. Although... maybe I should go blonde-ish for a change (blonde blonde would be sick and wrong). I feel like I've let go of hair dying too quickly. Or I could try purple again and see if it actually works this time.

I got one more night in 126a. It's best I don't summarise that year or I'll break my no-angst promise. Let's just say that next time I have to choose housemates on six weeks of knowing them, I'm going to make sure they're all gay, camp or charmingly coupled men under 5'10. Oh and that I actually DO know them.

Speaking of housemates, I hope That One is gone from the kitchen so I can go steal the Other One's biscuits.

*falls apart in China, alas

Shoe person

2010-06-24T10:31:00.002+01:00

I always insist I am not a shoe person, and most of this time this is true. I don't really understand most shoes- sure, they look great, but you can wear most shoes with most outfits and not look stupid enough for people to comment on*, and high heels are just pain and death and I hate them with a passion. To exist, I need some trainers, some normal shoes, some sandals and some posh shoes. And I'm flexible about the sandals.

There is, however, one weakness in my carefully built up insistences that shoes are something that happen to other women, and that becomes apparent when we get to the subject of Doc Martens. 'cause I maybe sort of own five pairs. And I love them with a passion that I rarely manage to muster for any other animal, vegetable or mineral. I couldn't care less about most shoes, but show me a shiny ankle high work boot and I am SO ON THAT. It's a bit ridiculous.

This obsession began Back in the Day (year 11? I think) when my mother was clearing out her wardrobe and discovered a pair of dark green ones that she'd never managed to wear in. I pounced on them, and after getting more than a few comments from friends about how they preferred me in Converse (lol teenagers) and these looked like wellies, I eventually managed to win them over to my beautiful boots of majesty. I also put weird colourful teeny laces in them. They were, in short, majestic, despite their habit of mashing up my feet if I wore them too regularly. And I believe it was these that I was wearing when I discovered a pair of black ones in my size at a car boot sale for £15. I bought them immediately, and it was then that the addiction truly began. I owned more than one pair of Doc Martens. It was only going to get worse from here.

Next came a pair of pink ones which were, for some reason, not made out of the same shiny stuff as the rest of them. They were also slightly bigger than my other boots and thus caused foot destruction at a much higher rate, making them my least-worn pair (but they were PINK! And they went with a lot of my sixth form outfits. So I think they did well out of that). In the meantime, I had painted orange stripes on the black ones for some sort of fancy dress thing, which made them cool for a while and then not so much. I also at some point inherited a pair of dark blue snakeskin ones which went a bit unloved at the time but have been my second year boot of choice.

All this was in the heady days of sixth form, when I was experimenting with fashion in ways which probably shouldn't ever be repeated by any sane person. I have never since had more than one pair of Doc Martens in use per year. And it was this habit that was started by my fifth and most marvellous pair- the cherry reds.

I bought them to wear to China, and despite the fact they were completely impractical in both winter and summer (no grip on snow and not much air circulation in the warm...), I wore them to death and loved them more than any boot before or since. However, as they are new and thus not from the old school made-in-England-will-survive-nuclear-attacks-but-will-never-stop-skinning-your-ankles strain of Docs, they began to wear much earlier than my other pairs (barring the pink ones). The toes lost their colour from banging them against the stairs up to my flat in order to get the snow off. The sides began to fray from where my foot bends. The laces went fluffy and difficult to tie. The eyelets started coming off the lace holes. My cherry reds were no longer the shiny new things of 2007. They were starting to wear.

And I, shamefully, began to see these imperfections as reasons not to love my boots any more. I wondered with annoyance why my greens and blues and blacks could stay new and shiny indefinitely and yet this pair, supposedly the best Doc Martens I would ever own, had to grow old so quickly. And after getting back to England in August 2008 I put them in the cupboard and got out my greens instead.

Two years go by. I wore green in 08/09, and blue in 09/10. My reds were left forgotten and dusty in a cupboard. That is, until this week, when in a fit of travel nostalgia, I opened my cupboard and found them, looking distressed but beautiful and holding all the memories of a year bumming around the People's Republic. I would otherwise have taken my blues, or no Doc Martens at all (!), but something made me pick up my Reds and pack them into my rucksack, "just in case".

I get the X5. I get off. I spend Tuesday in sandals. And then on Wednesday, I need some slightly more practical footwear to go cycling in. I unpack the cherry reds which I have not worn for years... and it is hard to describe the sensation which occurs next. The year of hard wear may have made them look old, but it had also softened them in ways which, having never compared before, I had never really realised. Putting them on was like having my feet hugged by... two really small fluffy puppies or something, I don't know. Walking up and down in them, they give just the right amount of support and give- powerful for kicking people (useful when you're going to a party with Zac), but without any risk of the blisters which all the others will give no matter how much wear they get. They are, in short, majestic.

And they have not judged me. They still love me as much as I realise I love them. Forgive me, cherry reds. I will never forsake you again. We are meant to be together for as long as you live.

... although I do kinda want to wear my blacks next year.

*actually, it always worries me that this threshold is much higher than I usually think. Then again... who cares?

Roll bus roll

2010-06-23T11:16:00.003+01:00

Back in Oxford again, staring hopelessly at the combined debris of a packing effort and a tidying effort. This is what packing and tidying look like when you're me:

That used to be my bed. The theory is that if I put it all on there, then I will have to tidy it up before this evening 'cause otherwise I won't be able to go to bed. But we all know that come tonight I will have made no progress whatsoever and will thus just throw it all back on the floor. And thus the cycle will continue. Also, I thought that maybe putting everything on the bed would help me to find my Oxford University travel grant cheque, but... no. That is apparently somewhere hidden in one of the several large bags of stuff I've had taken home over the last couple of weeks. We'll see if it resurfaces, shall we? At least I never throw out paper so it's unlikely to be in a landfill somewhere.

It's certainly not all bad though. The weather is beautiful (certainly more beautiful than I am expecting DC weather to be... 35 degrees and thunderstorms, apparently), and the week is theoretically packed with exciting activities for we lucky many who aren't being examined on our knowledge of Stuff. Swimming and Italian food yesterday, brunch and swimming today, palaces tomorrow... it's like being back travelling in China or something again. It almost makes me wish I was hanging around here for another week or so, but then I remember that I'm about to go to WASHINGTON FUCKING DC and it's going to be immense.

Facts pertaining to me being in Washington in summer:

- it's fucking hot and sticky and nobody likes the weather

- I'm staying in the gay district

- most of the good touristy stuff is free

- the gay district is not in the dodgy murder district.

- their fringe festival is the last two weeks of July

- their independence day celebrations are immense and next week

- it's only a couple of hours away from New York and there is a POKEMON CENTRE in New York

- I could seduce a congressman

OK, the last one is not really a fact so much as it is a thing I wrote to be cute. Still, it could happen. There is always the hope that my love life might take a turn for the existent this summer. God knows it's never going to in this town.

Then again, I'm staying in the gay district. So maybe not, after all.

I wanted to write something about the X5 bus, but I don't really know how to link that in to my love life, as the two are about as mutually exclusive as it gets. I also don't really know what I want to say about the X5 bus other than that it is without a doubt the single worst bus route on the planet. Believe me, I've taken some shitetastic bus rides in my time, but the ride from St Neots to Oxford tops them all. I'm not even sure what the highlight is, there's so many to choose from- is it the fact that for the first/last hour, the entire route is based around Tesco superstores? Is it the tour of every roundabout in Milton Keynes? The ten minute stopover at Bedford Bus Station, arsehole of the universe? Or perhaps it's the abnormally high number of complete fucking crazies that tend to ride with you... then again, actually the old lady crazies often are a genuine highlight. Also, a very nice boy gave me his seat yesterday (and by that I mean "he let me have the last space on the bus and waited for the next one", which was really very nice and also made me think twice about judging all scene kids as fucktards on the spot) so I guess I shouldn't lump them in with Bedford. I should pretend to be fair occasionally.

I leave you with this fact: People READ this shit. Only yesterday, a mysterious person called "Bella C." (lolz) e-mailed me saying I was great and I should join her fashion site. Yes. Me. Her fashion site. Turns out that the whole dress-sock-converse look is the kind of thing that teen Twilight fans want to see more of... and frankly, why wouldn't they.

Later, bitches.

Just a huge manatee

2010-06-20T17:15:00.005+01:00

So, I set myself the target this weekend of trying to sort out the huge messy dump of files that Rubato, my external hard drive, has turned into, mainly so that I can just take my laptop (whose name is Fortissimo, but it seems a little overly faggy to KEEP referring to my technology by name...) with enough music on it to keep me going and not have to worry about leaving important things behind. Unfortunately, I was not counting on two things: the sheer scope and implications of my messiness, and the nostalgia which looking at old computer files brings.

The messiness is probably the bigger problem, to be honest. Whilst I imagine that most people quickly learn that saving all of your documents to the default location with the default save name is not a clever idea, it's never quite sunk in with me. This means that I have 3 separate folders (2 on Rubato and my current hard drive) which are just basically large disorganised time capsules with every single document that passed through all mixed into one. There are *attempts* at organisation (usually by labelling a folder "wank" and throwing everything older than a certain date into it) but they don't stretch very far, and really only amount to labelling a folder "wank" and then throwing a few old things in it. Oh, and there are some schoolwork folders, but yawn.

And as for nostalgia... well. The first folder starts in year 13, and into China, including several frankly painful letters to people written around November when things got Bad, and also the infamous MSN conversation between Jenna MacBitch and her retarded friend. Incidentally, a hint for the future: if you're going to tell outrageous abusive lies about your housemate on their own laptop, *don't* save your chat logs. Second one, after the Great April Crash and subsequent Day of Fun in Chinese Computer Lab, starts with the photos off the back of the trip (I wasn't writing anything by then, too busy living), into the drafts of We'll Meet Again (working title: Alternate Ending), hits my break-up with Alex and the subsequent outpourings of rage, and then has all the Network and Sequel (my kinda rubbish NWF entry) drafts and most my NaNo novel. Then Cadence the wonder-machine breathes her last, and I mature in time to start filling this hard drive with slightly less morose wacked-out crap and significantly more dubiously titled DOS games. That's maturity for you.

Also, my 17-year-old self's Livejournal is saved on the first one. God help us all.

Anyway. My point is this: if I were really to refile all of this, how would I even start? Either I could put EVERYTHING into one big file labelled "wank" and let the 18-year-old relationship drama rub shoulders with the culture shock and the early drafts of apocalyptic Hull without any real regard for filing, or I'd have to devise some sort of epic filing system to ensure that everything is preserved in context for future incarnations of me to periodically look back and wince at- livejournal entries and all. Given that Rubato's not the quickest of machines, and everything is saved either as the first line of the file itself or as something cute like "a letter of wankiness" with no clue as to which aspect of wankiness we are talking about, the latter would take a long time, but the former... well, I'm just not sure that counts as tidying, really. No matter what I may keep telling myself. So, Rubato is staying as is, and I will survive on the music of my 4-gig MP3 player for the duration of my DC stay. Better to preserve history and be musically challenged than the alternative... and besides, I survived on nothing but China pop and High School Musical after the first Cadence crash. All will be well.

(Incidentally, there is no spotify in America, is there? Shit.)

From one sort of nostalgia to another, I have rediscovered my camera after a photographic absence of about a year and have been using it to record deeply exciting stuff like "where I live". Or, more accurately, "where I've lived". Alas for the realities of past tense.

(These pictures are small 'cause that's how they uploaded them. And it's not like you would get much more out of the bigger versions...)

Here is my lair, before I had to take all the posters down in order to bring them home (which I spectacularly failed to do... oops). Looking tidier since the piano left. Also I took all the lightbulbs out of the bed.

And kitchen. Daniel Craig is visiting with his tiger, as you can see.

Next I decide to go for the whole "knock on people's doors and take surprise photos of them" thing. Amyus reacts well...

Alex: Did you really knock on my door and come into my room and photograph me whilst I was sleeping, or did I just dream that?

Adrienne: No, that happened. I'm going to upload it to the internet!

Alex: Great. Thanks.

Adrienne: *True to her word*

Despite appearances, Ben actually prefers me bursting in his room to take pictures to all the other things I burst into his room to do. Like running in, screaming "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" and jumping on his bed. He doesn't like that one much at all.

And of course no album about the Greeks would be complete without a corridor shot.

Back in Offord, on a *proper* river. Because the Great Ouse is a proper river and the Thames is not. That is the truth of the matter.

Dog walking for Father's Day... I love you Cambridgeshire. You and your brown scrubby pancake flat fields.

Keah does not like to be photogenic. In this way we are alike.

Soggy doggy.

Aaand here is where I spent my teen years before I fucked off to Xinjiang. It has been Tidied, which makes me vaguely uncomfortable. And I will not be spending enough time here this summer to sort it out again. I am slowly but surely Moving Out... what an odd feeling. Soon my parents will probably paint it yellow and refer to it as a guest room.

I leave you with this fact: Philip Reeve brought out a new book and it is great so far. I love him. The End.

Logicians be craaazy...

2010-06-18T22:25:00.004+01:00

So, it's summer and I have nothing to do for a week and I can therefore read for pleasure again! To celebrate, I stole Scumface's copy of Logicomix, which is as the name suggests a comic about formal logic. Hence (or otherwise) it is rather brilliant. It mostly focuses on Bertrand Russell and what a total fuck-up his life was (I mean, the guy got taken to live with his grandparents when he was young because his parents had "gone away"; he didn't find out for a looong time that they were actually dead and his gran just hadn't told him. And it just gets worse from there...), and occasionally branches out to show Russell meeting other logicians, showing what fuck-ups their lives all are (and occasionally what fuck-ups he makes their lives into *cough* Whitehead *cough*) and just generally being pessimistic about the whole thing. Poor logicians and their inability to not be completely crazy.

Goedel (umlauts are for the weak) is the worst, of course . Grows up, permanently destroys any hope of a complete system of logic with his incompleteness theorem, gets paranoid and ends up starving himself because he's convinced people are trying to poison him. Poor chap. Plus, look at him. I just want to cuddle him and give him a puppy and read bedtime stories to him until he cheers up.

And the saddest part of all, Mein Herr, is that I am too stupid to be able to appreciate your theories fully and will therefore never be studying you as part of my Formal Logic course. Nope, I'm stuck with Turing. You know, the guy who did all that code cracking in World War II and then got injected with oestrogen after being convicted of homosexuality 'cause it was the only alternative to a prison sentence. God it sucks to be a logician.

(Hmm. I wonder if logicians have fucked-up lives because they are logicians, or if people with fucked-up lives are more likely in some way to become/have become logicians because of some quality that fucked-up people share?)

My other uses for free time include cycling to Sandford, reading "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (a copy of which mysteriously arrived in my pidge from 4Chan earlier today...), wandering around looking like a vigilante, playing Jazz Jackrabbit on DOSbox and finding new solutions to my snake cube. What an exciting and varied life I lead.

Oh, and I'm back in Cambridgeshire for a couple of days tomorrow, which will be nice. If my cycles around Oxfordshire in the last week have taught me anything, it's that I bloody well LIKE being able to see for miles when you get to the top of the only "hill" in the region and the Thames valley just can't deliver when it comes to that. Rolling pastoral countryside be damned, I want a fen. Well, not actually a fen. Huntingdonshire. And my prayers will be answered. Tomorrow.

Rebooting in preparation for country exit

2010-06-17T14:32:00.003+01:00

So I'm leaving in, like, 10 days. I should probably write about it when I'm there, it will be good for me. And that means I should probably give this place a bit of a facelift beforehand.

Sooo. Yes. As years go, I've had better. Much better. I guess it was always going to be a survival year, and I did totally call the whole "lol I'm going to break down in Hilary" thing last year so no surprises when it actually happened, but even the warm fuzzy glow of being right about stuff doesn't really counteract the fact I'd rather it just hadn't happened. Still, that is the past and I get further away from it every second, in theory.

Leaving the country will be a good thing. I miss being elsewhere.

Anyway, I am supposed to be talking about interesting things here instead of moaning about my emotional crap. Err. So yess, it is Thursday of 8th week and I am almost finished with Middle Eastern politics (:D) and Formal Logic (:S). Both have been good in their ways but my work ethic has been awful this term for one reason or another, so I haven't devoted as much time as I'd have liked, especially given that I'm now doing subjects I actually *want* to do rather than stuff that the syllabus is forcing on me. The play went well, rowing threatened to go out with a whimper and actually ended up going out with a... well, a sort of fizz, maybe. Not a bang as such... anyway, that's all done now. And maybe next year will see me ushering in a new golden age in Wadham drama, although that's, uh, doubtful.

I'm getting obsessed by double dactyl words and phrases again, mostly because a lot have suddenly sprung themselves on me at once. Metamathematical, computability, plenipotentiary, absolute monarchy, pre-revolutionary... primitive recursive is almost one, but "recursive" has the wrong emphasis. Still. Great phrase. I wish I wrote more...

And now I'm going to go away and play with colours and links and stuff and make this look presentable and maybe hide some of the old wank that's in here. Hmmm....

I should either

2010-05-12T22:42:00.003+01:00

Not link here or write some charming witty happy things.

Liiike...

"sdfsafaweefgawefgtawgt the new gen 5 starter pokemon look like CRAP"

Yeah, that's charming, witty and happy. Hmm. Ghost Trick looks good. That's all I got.

weight

2010-03-16T09:34:00.001Z

Interesting how fat seems to fall off me as soon as I get depressed. My skinny jeans have gone from on-the-verge-of-too-tight to 1cm of spare space since I last wore them. Clearly I can either be a very sad person with no weight problems or a happy fatty. I know which I intend to choose...

A premature objection...

2010-02-21T13:13:00.002Z

to something nobody who would even stumble across this would know anything about, but still.

Ace Attorney Investigations, case 2, makes very little sense. Why does Edgeworth go to such great lengths to prove a woman guilty when all the evidence immediately points to her, apparently for no more reason than that she's quite nice and was helpful earlier? It completely doesn't fit with his prosecuting style, and there's not nearly enough evidence at that time to make it sensible for him to continue investigating like he does.

At least a reference to "oh God, Phoenix is rubbing off on me and making me trust people I probably shouldn't, wtf" might have been nice, but then we've already had one of those. Really I shouldn't whine too much about the mechanics of this game anyway...

Vegan Day 1

2010-02-17T21:46:00.002Z

Breakfast: toast, baked beans, vegan sausages, BBQ sauce

Lunch: kong pao tofu, flatbread

Dinner: Toast with orange spread, 2 x vine leaves

Snacks:

Coffee (x much)

Tea (1)

Ginger dark chocolate (om nom nom)

14.5!

2010-02-04T10:50:00.002Z

You would have thought that room choosing might make me obsess LESS over rooms, not more. As it stands, no.

I made gongbao jiding last night, and apart from almost killing Al^2 it went exceptionally well.

still fat, still weird, still socially awkward

2010-01-29T22:33:00.002Z

I would very like to write about how morose I am right now, but honestly it wouldn't achieve much except a slow slide for this blog back into all those damnable one-liners.

International Law is quite fun. In a weird way, so is singing Elliott Smith and feeling like an interpersonal failure.

Foodie 2 and essay dramz

2010-01-27T15:45:00.004Z

Further to my last post, it appears that food is now taking over my life. I came home this afternoon knowing that I had a large quantity of chopped and nearly-rotten vegetables which needed cooking that very moment or else throwing away, and was thus cruelly forced to spend an hour of my life making a vegan-ish* Shepherd's Pie when all I really wanted to do was eat cold couscous and stress out over my essay... how is this even happening to me? It's like I've become some sort of... stereotypical woman, or something. I even realised that I was thinking of whether or not to go out tonight in terms of whether I would be finished cooking that evening. Fuck it.

At least the vegan-ish shepherd's pie is made now. And it looks pretty tasty. I emptied basically an entire thing of oregano into it, so it damn well better be tasty...

In other news, Descartes is killing me. Actually going to die of Descartes. I DON'T KNOOOW about this meditations shit and I need to write paragraphs with substance but I don't know what the substance is going to be so I just keep writing the first bit and then going on to the next one. And the final argument is just walking into a giant pitfall. Sigh. I want to go to the SSL and read all these International Law books like a real student, instead of just hanging around my bedroom all the time like a strange loser.

Now I have a blog, I can stop writing so many Facebook statuses. This is a start.

*Vegan-ish = it would be vegan if I'd got around to buying actual animal-free margarine yet. But I haven't.

Foodie

2010-01-24T13:18:00.003Z

It has come to my attention that I am sliding very speedily down a slippery slope towards being a real live "foodie".

How this happened is slightly mysterious. I've spent 20 years of your life using kitchens for nothing more exciting than a simple pasta sauce. I cooked a total of 5 or 6 times on my gap year (restaurant food is SOOO GOOD and SOOO CHEAP in China). The biggest thing I made last year was a Mars Bar cheesecake. And yet, suddenly, I'm making meal plans and marinating foods. MARINATING. Incidentally, I did just look that up. Marinate is a verb, marinade a noun. I am officially marinating chicken in a tikka marinade. Oh, and when I say tikka marinade, I mean spices and juice I put into a bowl with chicken, not a bottle of stuff. I have also taken to buying beans and then SOAKING them and buying peanuts and SHELLING them in order to GRIND them in order to put them in a mixture with SPICES and make a food out of them... sure, that recipe was a slight disaster but the diagnosis remains the same. I am a foodie.

It gets worse. After getting back to the house at the beginning of this term, I decided to reorganise my stuff into one "small" corner of the cupboard. This small corner turned out, at the time, to be about a quarter of the cupboard that six of us officially share for putting non-refrigerated and non-canned foods in. Phased for but a second, I then went to Tesco's last week and ended up with another several bottles of different herbs and spices. Oh, and cider vinegar. And balsamic vinegar, and gram flour, and... you get the point. The point is that I have taken in a big way to Cooking, with a capital C. I have no idea how this happened, and I have no idea why other people don't do it, and therefore I am handling it in my usual gracious way of denying any sort of difficulty or oddity in the situation and just thinking other people are a bit pathetic for not being able to marinate food. (It's not actually that hard to marinate a food though. Just saying.)

This is, of course, going to get even faggier when my veganism kicks in for Lent, although I'm still cautiously optimistic about how well I'm going to cope with it. There are certainly plenty of recipes I can make, although it might descend into curry and potatoes by week 3... I cling to the hope that vegan chocolate will be awesome and tide me over.

What I learned at school today

2010-01-20T10:08:00.002Z

Jonathan Bennett is FIT. Fit as. Not literally, as he's about 80, but philosophically the man is a god. I heart you, Jonny. If only I had the impetus to read your book for more than five minutes at a time. I wish I were determined this term that my notes will be clear ad detailed, but I just know this will only last two weeks. It takes a very long time to be detailed.

I am reclaiming this blog again from all the whining and one-line entries. That's why this entry will have at least two lines, as proved by this sentence (at least it was until I added some more stuff to the above paragraph). Ideally, I would like to write a blog where I chat lucidly and wittily about all those wacked out philosophical and political things that I tend to wax lyrical to confused housemates about, but I don't think that's ever realistically going to happen. Time and indolence make a fool of me where writing is concerned. Never mind.

I am, as always, tired of knowing better and the fact that people know I know better. For someone half as smart &c. Self-awareness be damned, I'll listen to my music through these fabulous speakers whenever the mood takes me.

suppressant

2009-10-26T18:36:00.002Z

because the thing is, when you suppress your inhibitions you don't make up new stuff, you just let existing stuff leave. That's why it's so embarrassing the next day- everybody knows that you meant everything you said, you just didn't mean to say it.

There is no escape from living and there is no way back from self-awareness and there is no changing facts.

Love

2009-06-25T16:40:00.001+01:00

Is a sadness with a face.

It's like fireworks

2009-02-27T21:09:00.002Z

Fizz fizz. Yeah?

One bump away from blades. COME ON.

I am in my third decade

2009-02-05T23:07:00.002Z

So you would think I would be able to escape all this fucking teen drama.

You'd think, wouldn't you.

Ha ha ha.

I has a coffee

2009-02-03T21:36:00.003Z

A coffee with gingerbread syrup in it.

Mmmmmm.

I can't believe I'm only two days into third week and already the work is killing me. Man up, Joy. Man. The fuck. Up.

(Also I may or may not suck at politics. If I do suck at politics, we have a problem. It's my favourite one. I really really hope I don't actually suck at politics.)

The possibility of universal collapse

2009-01-15T14:15:00.002Z

I have been semi-lamenting my rather unique set of interests recently, specifically that I don't know anybody else who is studying Microeconomics AND loves Phoenix Wright. This has led me to wonder what would happen if I met another person who liked all the same stuff I did.

I have come to the conclusion that it would not end well for any of us. Let's pretend I never thought about it.

Well, would you look at that.

2009-01-09T11:33:00.002Z

I just found my pen drive after 3 months, in the pocket of a pair of trousers which have been washed at least once since I put it in there. And it still works! I love technology.

I am going to Paris tonight, and then to college on Monday. Excitement is mounting.

I am well, apart from being in the Void Year. 2009 wtf.

Soon, precioussss

2009-01-08T23:15:00.000Z

I wish I could justify just buying Spore and whiling my life away on that rather than actually going out and living it.

Oh dear

2008-11-30T17:43:00.002Z

I've turned into one of those insanely successful people who win everything.

God I hate those people.

(I don't hate winning Christ Church Regatta, though. Not even a little bit. AAAAH!)

Holding out for a Hero

2008-11-22T14:13:00.002Z

Crazy, masochistic week of drama was rewarded with places on two award shortlists!

We are the awesome. Fear our win.

In all seriousness

2008-11-14T11:59:00.003Z

I am SO freakin' tired of myself. Everything is an internal battle. YAWN.

Life is over.

2008-11-13T14:05:00.002Z

I will never be even a tiny part as talented as Alexander Petrov. What is the point of existence?

Oh, by the way, I'm miserable and mucusy again. Wahey!

You know that feeling...

2008-11-11T13:49:00.001Z

Where you find something which you already know is going to be really bad, but it appalls you how bad it is just the same?

That's how I feel about this.

Must kan shu.

2008-11-06T11:17:00.001Z

No more internets.

On the plus side, I got my groove back for now. No more morose whiny AJ for at least ten minutes.

I want to crawl inside something and die quietly.

2008-11-05T17:39:00.000Z

Winter is poo.

emplooooyment

2008-11-03T15:51:00.003Z

it is 4.00 and Waterstones have not called.

Why have they not called. Waterstones, why have you not called? I am not a happy bunny. Call. Give me a job. I will carry your books and you will pay me £900 and then I will live like a Queen for another semester. It'll be a match made in heaven.

I am floating in and out of reality.

Oh for heavens' sake.

2008-11-02T19:59:00.003Z

Here we go again.

(Incidentally, if social skills were textbooks mine would not be written by Hal Varian. Make of that what you will; I personally am very depressed about it.)

It is a sad state of affairs...

2008-10-28T16:42:00.002Z

... when the only things keeping my intellectual sanity alive are propositional logic and the German political system.

If I wanted to study Maths, I would have picked the degree CALLED Maths.

2008-10-27T23:05:00.002Z

(The more astute among you will note that I picked the degree called PPE. HENCE. Unhappy.)

I'll allow for logic, though. Logic is HOT.

If you know what I mean.

A contingency plan for climate change

2008-10-22T19:22:00.002+01:00

OK, so some other PPEists (and E&Mists, and Economics and some other rubbish-ists) I went to a lecture on the Political Economy of Climate Change, because we're awesome like that. And it was pretty cool, but it was also deeply deeply terrifying.

The basic message? We're fucked. Even if we set ourselves targets we probably won't reach, we'll still be well within the boundary for catastrophic climate change. It might not happen, but it probably will. The End.

Soooo, in light of these facts, and the fact that we probably have until 2050 to enjoy the world, I have formulated a Cunning Plan:

1) Die before 2050. This is probably the most instrumental part to avoiding ANY responsibility for how screwed up the world is.

2) Before this time, spend most of my life building an underground bunker full of important cultural relics, many of which will be created by me and many of which won't, but which I'll ascribe to myself anyway. This bunker will contain copious references to my good self, including plenty of missing and/or conflicting biographical details, in order to create an air of mystery. I might rewrite a couple of epic poems to be about me anyway. This bunker will then be sealed against all natural disasters, and the location encoded in a load of clever but not impossible clues (hopefully scattered all around the globe, probably on tops of mountains to ensure against rising sea levels.)

3) Probably not reproduce. I don't know, kids would be fun but then I'd be responsible for bringing them into a very bad world and if they pass down REAL details about my life, that will spoil the fun.

4) Years after my death, after most of the population of the world has been wiped out and civilisation has regressed etc, my bunker will be discovered by some clever archaeologists/scientists/plucky kids with too much time and money on their hands and VERY neglectful parents. They will then find the tools to rebuild society using things they attribute entirely to me. Hopefully this will start, if not a religion, at least some kind of worlwide following where I am considered the epitome of pre-global warming society. I shall be famous in the best possible way (i.e. the mysterious, biographically inaccurate way) and I will have not only escaped climate change, but capitalised on it to ensure I am remembered for thousands of years.

... it's times like these when I wish I wasn't an atheist who didn't believe in an afterlife. Then I could look forward to seeing all this first-hand.

Also, one of the first things I will steal will be Volker Halbach's Logic Manual. Just giving you the heads-up there. It's gonna be mine in the future.

On narcissisim.

2008-10-21T16:36:00.004+01:00

I'm probably one of the least genuinely narcissistic people I know. I mean, is there anything I think I CAN do? Not as such, no. Probably, therefore, my rush to constantly define myself as the best person in the world is yet another symptom of my deeply ingrained emotional and psychological problems. Probably.

What am I going to do about this revelation? Nothing. I'm too awesome for change, remember?

PS. how is it I came to university with loads of great plans for doing lots of things among which rowing did NOT feature, and suddenly I'm in freshers' first VIII and technically out on the river at 7am? Oh dear.

Matriculation

2008-10-19T10:44:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, I matriculated. This is an event which involved getting up early in the morning (well, 8.00), dressing like a penguin, taking photos, having photos taken, going to the Exam Schools, standing in a room, listening to an Australian speak Latin and then an Australian speak English, eating brunch, going to Sainsbury's, buying wine, drinking wine (I personally had 2 bottles in 12 hours, and would recommend the fairtrade red but definitely not the fairtrade white), going punting, being punted, going into bushes on a punt, coming back, ordering pizza, changing into normal clothes, eating pizza, whining, celebrating a moral victory, going to a house party, playing I Have Never, telling strangers personal things, coming home at some point, failing to get into my (unlocked) room because I couldn't find the key in my pocket and finally falling asleep in the "women's room" next door.

Today involved waking up in the women's room. And then moving, sleeping and now the internets. I also have to row and do some SERIOUS hard work, but... ehhhhh...

Is death particularly funny?

2008-10-15T14:33:00.002+01:00

Possibly, the answer to this question is "no". In which case, I have not written a very funny sketch for Friday.

Still, nobody ACTUALLY dies, so maybe I am on the right side of scandalous.

I feel I should write a bit more about what's actually been happening to me. Well, things have got a bit quieter since last week, by which I mean I have been in my room before midnight every day since Friday. Buuuut I have still been doing plenty of things- Saturday, I went to an auction being filmed by BBC1 for daytime TV at the Oxford Union, which was surreally awesome and meant I now have a fun painting of a garden which I wouldn't otherwise have considered owning. Earlier this week, I saw Josie Long (writes for Skins, was apparently on Never Mind The Buzzcocks recently) at the Free Beer show, which is this tiny venue which (also allegedly, remember I know nothing about most culture) has lots of fun semi-famous comedians in a really intimate setting, and which was brilliant except the room was hot and I had to stand up and she dragged a bit at the end. I already have my tickets for Reginald D. Hunter next week, who is (ALSO apparently, I should stop believing what people tell me) a legend.
Then yesterday was an open mic at the college chapel which was SUCH a cool location for it, the acoustics were lovely and it was really fun to be in this old old building with only candles and really low electric lights listening to some very intimidatingly good people playing and singing songs they'd written. I came back early though to blitz this ongoing mysterious audition thing, which I can EXCLUSIVELY (that is not an exaggeration, of course news regarding me is exclusive. It's not like anybody is going to tell you except me) reveal is for the Oxford Revue. I don't have high hopes, but if it did come off I would be a very very happy bunny.

I am learning to be a rower, and going to the gym. I am currently right on top of the workload, which is brilliant. And tonight is a big free chocolate fountain at the Oxford Women in Politics (OxWIP) freshers' thing, so life is generally still very, very good.

Oh, all except the dinners here. Those suck balls. But at least it means my diet is better than if I were cooking for myself, particularly if you are of the belief that courgettes are a special food group all of their own and you need to eat them at least once a day. Then I'm a paragon of health (except for the chips I keep eating for lunch. Yummy!)

This place is still a big slice of awesome pie.

2008-10-14T23:55:00.003+01:00

However, I have now made an executive decision to subject myself to at least one audition, and now I am wishing I were intelligent enough to unmake it. Auditions are Not Cool. I ought to do lots of things that I don't need to be good at to do... like... the internet. Not things that people have to do well.

This is a recipe for disaster, and more importantly, whinging. Hence, blog! Wahey!

I have developed a strong aversion...

2008-10-12T19:31:00.002+01:00

... to being by myself.

Seriously, this room is DULLL, where's the peeps at.

FREEEEEEEE NELSON MANDE-EE-LA!

2008-10-11T11:32:00.003+01:00

I'm still SO FREAKIN' HAPPY about everything that's going on here; never in my life have I had the opportunity to meet so many pleasant, friendly, intelligent, open-minded and fun people. Clubs were found, IDs were lost, Bops were had, drinks were drunk. It has been very, very win.

Of course, now I have a loooot of work to do, so maybe I won't be saying this again any time soon. But right now, I am most chuffed. Wadham till I die, yo.

12 HOURS TO LIFT OFF

2008-10-04T21:25:00.001+01:00

I'm calm, collected and cool as a cucumber.

ZOMG WTF SDFSDFSDFSDFSDFSDFWOEgiuhsreogeahggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

Sex-sex-sex-s-s-s-s-s-sex crime! crime! cr-cr-cr-cr...

2008-10-03T19:38:00.003+01:00

I am going through a glorious phase of Annie Lennoxing right now, and that involves a lot of listening to this clearly beautiful song. I love how ridiculously uncharacteristic of the book and film it is, and yet all the Eurythmics music actually IN the film is pure win and awesome.

Actually, we're allegedly getting a new movie of 1984 (in case you didn't figure out from the previous paragraph that that's what I was on about- in which case YOU MORON and also yes I am talking about 1984 and the UNREPEATABLE beauty of John Hurt and Richard Burton and whoever the heck that semi-emaciated woman was) in 2009. I will be there, watching and heckling. Or maybe I will be impressed. The second is far less likely.

Oceania, 'tis for thee. You and your New Zealanders, and your dubious status as a continent.

(I'm sorry that my last few entries have been poorly expressed rubbish about TV and movies, but it's far better than poorly expressed rubbish about "oh my god I want to be at university", honest)

(Also, guess who I met working on reception at LA fitness? Lisa Molyneaux! It's amazing the people you forget exist, really.)

I am surprised...

2008-10-02T14:25:00.003+01:00

About how much fun House was this week without Wilson.

Don't get me wrong, if Robert Sean Leonard leaves forever I will forever be sad about Hilson never happening, but it's nice to have a break from well-established relationships for a while. Season 4 spent too much time trying to slot in cameos of the old team and doing the whole CTB thing and not enough time developing the new, and now we're actually getting to see them (AND more Cuddy last episode, hooray!) it is revealed that they are in fact pretty fun. And so is the PI guy.

There will be no shark jumping on my watch...

2008-10-01T21:52:00.002+01:00

Eh. So, I just watched the first episode of Heroes on the BBC (I would do a double dose but my bro wants to watch Fonejacker at 10 so no episode 2 for me until I torrent it). I watched it with the aforementioned sibling, who has never seen an episode of Heroes before in his life, and... well, it was a struggle. Each character got about 2 minutes of screen time to do something that they were probably building up to in the second season but that I'd forgotten all about by the time we got there. I sat there trying to give information about the characters to my brother and quite frankly, it has all got a bit too insaaaanely complicated. There are a bazillion quests and a bazillion hang-ups and mysteries left right and centre and quite frankly it just made no sense whatsoever. I am unhappy.

I'm hoping that this is fallout from the writers' strike and the fact that, if some Hollywood bums hadn't wanted more money, this would have been the second half of Season 2 and therefore things would have been built up in the first half of that and it wouldn't just be like "hmm, we need to kickstart all these storylines now. OVERLOAD!" Maybe episode 2 will be better. It BETTER be better, quite frankly, because despite the high quantity of attractive males I can and will stop watching if this continues. Besides, where did Claire's tall hot flying sort-of boyfriend go? I swear, her male teen friends have the longevity of a mayfly. First her so-not-gay best friend's actor gets cold feet about being gay, and now... no fitty.

Therefore. Meh meh meh.

Romance, crocodiles!

2008-10-01T16:48:00.003+01:00

I would talk but oh my god VIVA PINATA

I wish I were cool enough not to be obsessed by a glorified gardening sim.

Meanwhile, in the Quarantine Unit...

2008-09-29T15:11:00.003+01:00

At the insistence of my brother, I finally got around to playing Halo 3. Cue a few days of swearing, dying and one very sleepless night caused by horrific cold (unrelated) and constant worrying about the part of the level I couldn't do. In general, I approved of the whole thing, although the plot really passed me by this time. Oh, and I had to wiki to make sure he didn't die in the end. Which, if you are good enough to play Legendary (ahahaha), you discover he didn't. Grand.

I am tired and very ill. Hopefully I will be better in time for my LA fitness induction on Thursday. Failing that... I'll think of something.

I am limited only by the closure of the universe

2008-09-27T20:59:00.003+01:00

That, and a horrible sore throat.

Oh and by the way

2008-09-26T18:10:00.002+01:00

My argument in the post below makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever. Ignore it.

The Great American Chip-on-shoulder

2008-09-26T17:58:00.002+01:00

I am so addicted to Star Pirates it's not even funny.

I am also reading my third Philip Roth book, and am enjoying it. It was, however, touch and go for the first 30 pages or so for the simple fact that I am SO DAMN SICK of Jews in Newark and Roth's carbon copied heroes and their carbon copied childhoods. I mean, OK, Zuckermann is your alter ego, and therefore he had a similar childhood to the Philip Roth in The Plot Againt America with the notable omission of sinister Nazi overtones. But oh my god does my face need to be rubbed in it EVERY TIME you write a book? Do I really need the opening pages of "oh and by the way JEW" in order to fully appreciate the rest of your story?

Actually, I can think of a lot of 20th century American writers who do exactly the same thing. Well, I can think of Kerouac and Vonnegut and Brett Easton Ellis, anyway, and extrapolate from them (what can I say, I'm startlingly poorly read in some respects). Parallel autobiographies and fictional alter egos are common, and they're usually quite entertaining, and I do have to concede that every semi-serious writing attempt I've made has also generally been a parallel autobiography so I can't exactly whinge about them being a waste of space. But. If you've got a chip on your shoulder about your national or racial identity... write Trainspotting. Or a Hundred Years of Solitude. Or the Kite Runner. Or, quite frankly, anything that isn't about your Jewish New Jersey wartime childhood. Please.

Yarr!

2008-09-25T18:56:00.002+01:00

I'm a star pirate!

Also, I am reading Brideshead Revisited. Also, I just got paid £20 for absolutely nothing. Hooray!

Madame Malcontent

2008-09-22T22:44:00.000+01:00

I am malcontent, morose and miserable. I have also fallen so far into my pit of meaninglessness that I am no longer able to articulate the reason for being malcontent, morose and miserable other than making strange groaning noises. I can talk about anything under the sun, as long as I have no emotional attachment to it, but when it comes to anything I really mean I am unable to say anything. This is probably a terrible thing, and perhaps something that I will have to Get Over in the future. On the other hand, I am officially a blogger who cannot whinge endlessly about pointless parts of my own life. This is undoubtedly positive. I will quite happily trade my emotional wellbeing for a more readable blog- I am a child of the internets, after all.

I have 15 versions of Joni Mitchell singing Big Yellow Taxi. 15 DIFFERENT versions, including the 7 minute 53 second "NYC Cab to Club" mix. I am not sure how I feel about this fact. Other things I now own include a kettle, a wooden spoon, a wok and a 12 piece Tesco dinner set.

I just had one of those moments...

2008-09-21T16:37:00.000+01:00

... where you realise exactly what your life goal is going to be.

And my life goal is to be an interviewee on one of those TV nostalgia programs. They will ask me things about the nineties and noughties, I will respond and people will laugh. It will be the best moment of my life EVER. When it happens.

Your stupidity is going to kill you

2008-09-20T21:39:00.000+01:00

I was going to write a one-liner about how I am not going to write anything until I have more exciting things to say than "Oooh I am living in a random staircase" or "Oooh I read the Affluent Society, it was very interesting". But not only would that be pointless and self-defeating (as clearly I AM writing about those things), but it would also be false.

It is false because I would also like to say that I watched some random BBC three program about people getting beauty treatments GONE HORRIBLY WRONG (yes, I did theoretically have better things to do. Yes, I watched it anyway. Deal with it.) And I would like to say right now that I am very glad that I am not beautiful in any way, shape or form because... well. What the fuck. Eyelash perms? Daily tanning sessions? Fat injections? Back facials (Oxymoronic AND moronic!)? And my earlobe piercings have never given me strokes. So I am obviously generally superior. Although to be fair, they could show the horrific dangers of armpit shaving and I'd be sitting there going "haha I win!"

On the minus side, my hair is probably going to fall out from dye and I am seconds away from developing horrific bunions. And I am fat and unfit and my armpits have hair*. So even I lose. Tear. Still, no strokes yet. And I am not having to dream up methods to smuggle my non-existent hair straighteners into Oxford, and can thus spend my time thinking of imaginative alternatives to blu-tack. Hmmm...

*I refuse to say "I have hairy armpits", because that would be a lie. If I had shrubbery down there, rest assured I would be removing it. I don't, so I don't. Hooray for logic!

Quote of the Moment

2008-09-17T13:53:00.000+01:00

"We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn to be irrational in a reasonable way"- from Island by Aldous Huxley.

I wrote that down last month whilst reading Island, and now I just randomly found the piece of paper it is on. As I am chucking the paper, I thought I ought to retain the thought.

But don't worry, I'm not serious.

Girl Anachronism Rapes Pianoforte

2008-09-16T21:03:00.000+01:00

If I did not like Amanda Palmer's solo album, the above is the kind of thing I'd say about it repeatedly. Unfortunately, I can only use it this once, and worse still I have to qualify it, as I do like over 50% of Amanda Palmer's solo album. In fact, I would say I love 33% of it, namely Astronaut, Guitar Hero, Oasis (OMG Oasis) and Point of it All. I like Leeds United, Blake Says and Another Year, which takes overall likeability to 7/12ths. I can't be having with percentages of that, but it's over 50%, like I said. A significant part of the remaining 5/12ths is a bit shit, but heck, you can't have everything. Not even Harvey Danger have made an ENTIRELY brilliant album, and they are clearly the benchmark of awesome.

I am currently downloading a full Joni discography, which is going to take a while on this damnable connection. What I did not notice before I started downloading is that one of these albums is in fact a Joni tribute with lots of assholes singing her songs. Worse still, this part is the part that is furthest along in the download. Bah.

I am in my final stretch of home life before I disappear up a dreaming spire. This should involve packing lots of stuff, sorting out my bedroom at last and generally getting myself in order. Instead, thus far, it has involved reading two Lemony Snicket books, taking a bath and moping about minor tooth pain. To be fair, though, I've only been back a few hours and I did have a painful mix of hangover and travel sickness when I got home. Also, did I tell you my tooth hurts? Yeah.

OMG OMG OMG

2008-09-15T18:32:00.000+01:00

Ice the Gladiator went to Hinchingbrooke School!

And now for a little bad taste

2008-09-15T15:25:00.000+01:00

If you put a gun to my head and gave me a choice between blowing several weeks worth of food money on this or eating my own fourth digits, I know what I would choose. Somebody pass the kitchen knife.

Then again, the more people with sanity who say this, the more unique, memorable and collectable yours becomes. What a tough choice I am giving you...

GTFO of my cinema, woman.

2008-09-14T19:32:00.000+01:00

OK, double post today, but for good reason: There was the most ANNOYING WOMAN EVER in the cinema when we went to see the Duchess today.

At every single dramatic moment, she would say "oooo" or "eeeeh" or something, in a really flat northern accent. When there were drawn out conversations, she would answer questions before the actors onscreen did. And when Kiera Knightley was getting raped by Ralph Fiennes (yes, this was a 12A film; it also contained breasts, male nudity, two other major sex scenes and lesbian erotica), she sat there going "oooh, what a family, eh?"

DIE IN A FIRE. Seriously, fuck. the. what.

Other than that, it was a really good film. Although I hate that in modern culture, a story like that ends up having a "sad ending" because she didn't end up with her One True Love ever (sorry for ruining it but it's not like divorce existed, yo). She had a load of children she loved, she found some sort of equilibrium with her husband, she was friends with everyone and had a really fun political career! How does lack of sex turn that into misery? I'm not currently getting any and I'VE never felt more awesome. So there.

An official warning

2008-09-14T12:13:00.000+01:00

I am still at Hannah's.

Things Hannah likes:

- Shopping for tights
- Topshop
- M&S sandwiches
- Juno
- Some random In Shanghai waiter

Things Hannah dislikes:
- Me changing her wallpaper to pictures of micropenes
- M&S not having a supermarkety section
- Me laughing at blind people in the street (they were funny! And they couldn't see or hear me)
- Me laughing at pictures of facially disfigured people
- Her dumb internet connection.

Just so you all know.

Newcastle = awesome.

2008-09-13T16:37:00.000+01:00

I am with Hannah in Durham, city of students and roundabouts and other things. It is entertaining.

I think I have written too many rants about regions and people of the united kingdom recently, so I am not going to go into how listening to Geordies speak carries EXACTLY the same level of initial intelligibility as listening to Polish people.

Northumberland: like Poland, but gayer.

A slight miscalculation

2008-09-10T12:50:00.001+01:00

The more astute among you may have noticed a slight amendation to my persona. Yes, I made a mistake. Once. Ever. Just now. I don't intend to make a habit of it.

Moving swiftly on from that, you know what really annoys me? When something utterly retarded that nobody else has to deal with happens to you TWICE. Like, the Chinese police don't go to kick other people out of their sleeping areas at ridiculous hours of the night, but it happened to me in Kashgar and again in Kaifeng. I met a random Australian who called Uighurs wiggers and then somebody did it on debriefing (although to be fair they didn't press the point like the first arsehole did.) And yesterday I discovered a second person who believes that the best way to learn about a culture is to have sex with somebody from it. Yeah, way to get my grudge against you upheld for another five years- although that was what you were angling for, wasn't it. Moron.

I have a lot more perspective than this time last year, honest I do.

Dentists go home

2008-09-09T14:49:00.000+01:00

I am going to start a racially insensitive campaign to get dentists out of this country, I swear. Racially insensitive because, let's face it, ALL dentists are from different countries to the one they practise in, even my new "British" dentist is from north of the border (which, I have discovered, means that in the English language she really IS from a different country i.e. Scotland not England: it's called a "constituent country", apparently.) Even when I lived in the southern hemisphere, the people drilling through my teeth without anaethetic (NOT KIDDING) were not homegrown Aussies, oh no. So, racism it is.

I am going to do this because I have now had two dentist appointments in two days and frankly I have had it with this whole "teeth" thing. Yes, mine suck, but I don't need that rubbed in my face now, do I? I don't need you to poke and prod around in my mouth and make cryptic comments. I certainly don't need you to tell me you need to extract my wisdom teeth in the distant future but won't do it now because you might paralyse my face, so now each time I am going to go in terror of your big stabby knives. Which may or may not stab me at any given time. My mental health is always questionable and you, dentists, may just tip me over the edge. In short: Forget being healthy, I'd rather be in denial.

I started playing the Sims 2 again yesterday, and now I am sensing that it may become my life again. I deliberately called my new town Macondo so I don't have to worry about aging everybody roughly at the same time- it's magical realism, yo! Clearly this is a better way to spend my time than working my way through "Logic".

SIGN ME UP FOR THE PARALYMPICS

2008-09-07T10:44:00.000+01:00

I am officially a cripple. Over 24 hours of not being able to walk properly definitely affords me the honour. What a pain in the... well, the leg. I suppose.

I am now trying to figure out how to fill the next month of my life. Theories include reading a minimum of two novels a day, getting on with the Clever Books, writing my own autobiography, painting my bedroom, terrorising Durham or, my personal favourite, wandering from room to room of my house sighing like furnace and telling anybody present how bored I am. Perhaps I shall start some Facebook groups, that'll be interesting.

At least I'm not tired any more.

London Stanstead: Bare Sick, Innit.

2008-09-06T13:25:00.000+01:00

I think I am going to start a petition to make the above the official slogan of London Stanstead, to reflect our colourful local language and cultural heritage i.e. Scene music and Chavism. Granted, I am basing this assumption on Bishop's Stortford being a more south easterly Peterborough, but I think there are more places in the world which are a geographically different Peterborough than would like to admit it. I genuinely think it is the way forward...

This reflection is brought you to by Glasgow Prestwick's slogan: Pure Dead Brilliant. That's just the kind of thing I think would give non-English speakers (or sorry, non-Scottish speakers) the best possible impression of my "country" and inspire trust and friendliness in the local population. Although actually, being patronising to your customers seems to be the way forward for most businesses these days. I can't even buy a bottle of juice without it giving me nursery school flashbacks. I would frankly prefer "fuck off and die" brand juice to all this innocent rubbish telling me it'll return its library books and that I can visit it for a nice chat and a cup of... well, juice I suppose.

Oh, I came back from Scotland, and it was in fact Pure Dead Brilliant. But the airport wasn't. And I am tired and can't walk.

Lies, all lies.

2008-09-01T17:00:00.000+01:00

So, I organised my reading for the next month. It turns out I'll have to read just over a book a day if I want to get through everything on my shelf... not too tall an order for the awesome. Well, OK, maybe it is. But it's not like I have anything else to do with my life other than absorb knowledge. And trawl Facebook for people I might meet in October, that's important too.

I have packed my things for debriefing (i.e. getting over not being in China any more) up in Scotland, now all I have to do is go there for five days. I am flying, which is a mixed blessing as it means time goes quicker but also gives me a lot less time to make a dent in the aforementioned reading, shame. And also I have an afternoon to kill in Glasgow. Sweet Jesus no. Personally, I don't think going to Scotland is the right way to get over not being in China any more. I mean, I'm going to a minority area peopled by angry sounding men who wear silly clothes and may or may not stab me. In what way is that not regressing back to Xinjiang?

Incidentally, after listening to a woman in Huntingdon call her daughter "India" this morning, I have decided that my girl children are going to be called Antarctica, Patagonia and Xinjiang. This is to go with my boy children, Ghengis, Milo and... I can't actually spell the third one, but it's Italian, designer and dumb. Plan or PLAN?

Also on the subject: I have vague plans to firebomb Next and their ridiculous sizing. I have NEVER been a tight size 14 before walking into that shop, I swear. Tight size 12, sure, but that's only to be expected in a curvaceous future leader like myself. Now I just have to hope none actually GET firebombed and I live to regret making that clearly throwaway remark. Hmm.

I have to read Economic Philosophy before the world ends. It's going to be a close one.

Blah

2008-08-30T19:51:00.000+01:00

What on earth am I going to do with myself for five whole weeks?

The DLR is where it's at.

2008-08-29T17:57:00.000+01:00

Last night, I had a dream where I found a book full of extremely important criminal evidence, except it wasn't very interesting and then it was full of Mars Bar ice cream and I ate the ice cream. And then I felt terribly guilty about eating evidence, so I ate donuts. When I woke up, I was incredibly relieved that all this was just a dream, otherwise I'd be a lot fatter by now...

Today, I went to London, for the purposes of my Pokedex (not kidding). I got to travel on many railways and listen to many languages being spoken by the citizens of our glorious capital. I also went to Matalan, which I am very impressed with. I am less impressed with all the other fashions around at the moment, for the simple fact that they all appear to have come from Xinjiang and I wasn't exactly Xinjiang fashion's biggest fan. No frills for me, thanks. I'll have that nice knitted vest though.

Good gracious

2008-08-28T17:37:00.000+01:00

I appear to be bored out of my excessively cultured mind.

DEUTSCH

2008-08-27T21:18:00.000+01:00

The real reason I made a new blog was so I could share things like this with an imaginary audience.

Oceania, 'tis for thee

2008-08-27T19:29:00.001+01:00

There comes a time when one must move away from abstract numbers and towards interesting things. I have decided to make that time now as regards this blog, otherwise we will be talking about my Pokedex forever. 486, by the way. I have 486 Pokemon. 95% of the Pokemon-aware population probably never even knew there were that many of them.

It is impossible to find the soundtrack to the 1984 (1984 edition, none of this modern shit) for torrent. I'm not sure why I care about this other than as a sort of vague follow-up thought to that title, but it bothers me now. The only way I get hits for 1984 at all is by typing in "Oceania"; then I can have an e-book. But I don't want an e-book, I want the Eurythmics. Is that so hard to understand?

My days are not exactly filled with excitement. I finished my China scrapbook/"community report", which is beautiful apart from a glitch on the penultimate page I designed. I can't believe I went so long without sticking the text in the wrong order, and then I screwed it up so many times on that page it defies belief. Afterwards, I retired to my other favourite activity- reading and drinking alcopops left over from my party weeks ago. Currently I am reading "The German Polity" by David Conradt, which is not as dull as it sounds, though that doesn't mean much. I also read the second in "A Series of Unfortunate Events"- those books currently take me just over 45 minutes a piece to digest. They do appear to get thicker as the series goes on, however. I am waiting for my copy of "Aberystwyth, Mon Amour" to come from Amazon Marketplace, then I can get on with reading the ones of those I have. And the rest of the German Polity, too.

Whilst committing spider genocide last night, I was reminded of a thought I had where the afterlife involved getting killed in all the ways one had killed creatures during life. Which makes me wonder if I would rather be squished or sprayed, really. Anyway, I think I lifted the idea from Crash Bandicoot which makes it even more disturbing a concept, really. I wouldn't particularly want eternity to be based on a Playstation platform game, even if it was one I was pretty good at.

My mother bought the DVDs of the things I was torrenting. She's so helpful like that.

I thought it was about time...

2008-08-26T20:26:00.001+01:00

... I started blogging again. Life is ongoing, after all.

Currently, ongoing life stands at the following statistics:

Pokedex: 483
Scrapbook: 34/36
Clever books read: 1.25
Torrent Progress: 25.9% but NO SEEDS. WHY ARE THERE NO SEEDS. hnng.

As you can see, I am in a state of transit.