My room

The wonderful world of tabehoudai and sweets paradise

'Tabehoudai' was one of the first words I picked up when I arrived in Japan, it means eat-as-much-as-you-like. One of our guilty pleasures is to go to tabehoudai. Not too often, we aren't complete animals, but just once a month perhaps, when the new scholarship arrives, we will feast on tabehoudai.

There are various tabehoudai available in Japan. It's quite popular because I suppose, In japan at least, it's an effective business model. Japanese portion sizes are the equivalent of western entrées. That is, until a large group of westerners come into your restaurant and consume ungodly quantities of food. You can also get nomihoudai (all you can drink) but it's fairly expensive (about 4000 yen per head).

One Tabehoudai we found was a pizza one (very Japanese, I know!). You pay a thousand yen and eat as much pizza as you can handle. My favourite has to be Sweets Paradise though (also known as Suipara).

It's a cake buffet. They have some savoury things (like curry, soups, pasta, sandwiches, salads). But the real crowd-bringer is the cake. They usually have around 30 or so cakes on display (which are regularly replenished!) - cheesecake, mousse, berry cakes, baked banana cake, chocolate cake, chocolate soufflé, fruitcake, apple bake cake, carrot cake, tiramisu, pudding roll, flakey pastry and custard pie, crème brulees, choux puffs, puddings, lemon creams, jellies, chocolate fountains, ice cream, fruit salads, waffles - help yourself!

You pay 1400 yen and you get 70 minutes to pig out, then they turf you out. The best part is the frenetic, panicky music playing the whole time to panic you into eating faster, but the trick is to pace yourself.

This was (one of) my plates last year. Look at all that cake. No regard for presentation whatsoever. I ate five of these plates and I felt bloody FANTASTIC afterwards. Don't wanna think about how many calories are in that. It was decadence itself.

You know you've been listening to too much Two-Tone when you've bought yourself a hat

Rightio, haven't blogged properly in a while.

I have been going through a cultural crisis. Finding it really difficult to make substantial personal connections with people... I miss being able to sit over a pint and talk for hours and hours about music, films, comedy, politics. Its difficult to do that stuff without a shared cultural context between you. I know it's only been three months blah blah...

I've had simultaneously the best and worst of weeks. On the upside, my family came to visit me over christmas, and I love them loads and missed them loads and it was great to catch up and it was honestly one of the best weeks of my life that I'll remember forever. I miss my family so much SO HOMESICK IT'S UNBEARABLE. You think a year abroad will be amazing, and it is, but after a coupla months the excitement wears off - it's laundry days, colds, doing the washing up, commutes, buying groceries, doing essays - same old same old. The language and cultural barrier is really isolating sometimes. I think I'm just really feeling it at the moment because my family have gone back home and I'm all alone again. haha

On the downside, I lost my wallet, it had 8000 yen cash in it, and my banking card, and my gaijin card and my rail pass. I had to go through the stress of cancelling cards, reporting it missing to the police, declaring my gaijin card as missing and reapplying for them all over again IN JAPANESE.

Then when I thought I was kind of on top of things I've broken the valve on the rear wheel of my bike, and need to get that repaired but I don't have the energy at the moment. I'm staying in bed for now, I'll sort it out next week.

Every time I'm going to go and do something scary in Japanese (like ask for a bicycle repair or cancelling a card or reappying for a gaijin card), I spend a good couple of hours beforehand with my dictionary and a pen and paper writing out the questions and key vocabulary to expect in the conversation - usually it's quite helpful. I was doing this last night and realised it was 6.30am (whoops) and I hadn't slept, so I went for a run. First run in a long time so my time was awful, but it got the blood pumping, oxygen in my lungs to clear my head and some exposure to sunlight so it's all good for you right?

I reckon the rest of my day will be: Shower - light meal - nap.

Then wake up and finally get some work done, cause I have just conveniently forgotten the fact I'm at university over the last coupla weeks haha.

Okay I'll be the first person to admit I am completely, totally homesick.
It's difficult to type, my hands have all stiffened up from the cold. Just took a 30 minute walk to the supermarket with the ipod on, listened to some decent British music: Editors, Biffy Clyro, Manics, Enter shikari. That cheered me up.

Can't fucking type! stupid stiff hands

Had a really good christmas with my family. Then felt crazy homesick.
Then spent 38 hours in bed.
Then shaved part of my hair off.

Been a productive week.

Things I have learnt from my year abroad

IN PROGRESS!!!

1. Plastic chopsticks are more difficult to use than wooden ones.

2. Youtube videos don't play until they are entirely loaded.

3. Chocolate bars are less than 5mm thick! D:

4. All milk is full-cream milk. It's like liquid cheese, no semi-skimmed or skimmed business here. FULL FAT!
5. No diet coke here either. Full fat or coke zero, they just don't taste the same D:
6. Chilled gyoza are both cheap and awesome.
7. Yakitori sauce = instant chef skills
8. Bicycle riding laws here are insane. It's utter chaos. I fear for my life every time I commute.
9. Alcohol comes in jars.

10. If you don't have an oven, having a freezer is totally pointless. I waste so much electricity powering that thing just for ice cubes.

11. Cakes here are so much more fluffy! (they're like 90% air) - and come in all-you-can-eat style!

12. Wearing a blanket as an item of clothing is totally acceptable

13. No such thing as diet coke

14. Mushrooms taste like butter

15. Apparently, Christians in England worship the rabbit as a holy and sacred animal, (because Easter. Duh)

16. 100-yen socks are a surprising win!

17. OH GOD I'M SO INESCAPABLY BRITISH AND NEVER REALISED IT.

Unexpected life skills gained on my year abroad

Everyone clearly expects language skills to be earned on a year abroad, but what are the other, less expected skills that we can pick up?

1. Insane bicycle skills.

Yes, the 4 mile daily bicycle run (usually at top speeds because I'm always late) have toned my thighs into something even Chris Hoy would be envious of.

2. Incredible culinary skills, for example, how to use a rice cooker, or the ability to peel a potato without a potato peeler! Or debone a fillet of fish! Who knew?

3. The inner workings of a cistern. I am a qualified plumber now.

Procrastinating in a patriotic kinda way.

I have now been in Japan for 7 weeks. The first couple of weeks I was completely homesick, would cry a lot and missed my home country so much. But then I adjusted, I settled down into a routine, I found my feet. Classes started and I had a lot of work to keep me occupied and I was comfortable, you know, I still missed home a little but I was enjoying myself so much that it didn't upset me. I just appreciated the opportunity in being here.

One thing though, that has really been upsetting me recently is being told by old students from the programme that "You won't want to leave by the end of the year". Maybe they're trying to excite me when they say that, but it makes me feel really depressed. I don't want to be a person who doesn't want to go home. I love my home and my family. I'm incredibly lucky to have a strong family that loves and appreciates each other. Not wanting to return home makes me feel like a traitor to them.

And it's not a point to disrespect your host country. As amazing as any country could ever be, as breathtaking as any spectacular scenery or delicious as any new food, as fun as any new friend or as beautiful as any new language is - and believe me, they are incredible experiences - nothing can replace a family, surely? I don't understand how anyone's loyalty could be wavered from their family, especially after such a short time - 10 months is nothing, your family have been there for years and years.

I'm trying to articulate how I'm feeling, but basically I think what it is, is that I enjoy that feeling of missing home because it reminds me that I love my home. That aching longing in my heart for my family is there because I love them, and that's a good thing. So for someone to basically tell me "you won't have that feeling anymore soon, you'll want to stay separated from them in favour of this new place" just feels ...awful to me. It sent a chill up my spine.

Am I making any sense at all?

I met an old student from my university today, he went to the same uni as me, and on the same year abroad as me five years earlier. The year abroad ended and sure enough, he didn't want to go home. He returned home for a year to finish his degree then moved back to Japan (for realisies this time). I had expected to be really excited to meet another British person but he didn't feel British at all. There was something unrecognisable about him, his accent had changed and no longer sounded English, all his mannerisms were Japanese, but he wasn't a Japanese person. He wasn't one nor the other, just a halfway that didn't belong either place. And I'm sure he is a lovely person, but it's not what I want for myself.

I've realised that I was really happy this Summer in the UK. Absolutely everything was perfect and I was a contented and happy person. Have I risked jeopardising that comfortable stasis in coming here? Is it absurd to not want to change as a person? (Yes it is). But I'm genuinely worried that I might change and become someone who I don't want to become. You suddenly realise how much of your personality is contingent on your home country. There are so many aspects of my personality I can't express here, for example being British Working Class, that's part of my personality I don't want to relinquish, but it is completely meaningless here, so all the parts of your personality that doesn't translate are just lost.

Because I keep getting distracted,

On Friday mornings, I have a three-hour long Japanese session. I usually prepare the night before. So it's Thursday night, and I have been preparing for seven hours now.

This includes:

Writing a short essay in Japanese (just a side of A4).

Memorising 30 kanji (and all their onyomi/kunyomi).

Going through two pages of a handout on conjunctions, completing the exercises (so I don't fluster when asked the questions on the spot during class), and going through the worksheets writing translations for the words that I don't know (and there seem to be a lot!)

Going through another 8-page handout for speaking exercises, again filling out exercises and going through all the vocab in the page.

Filling out a sheet of vocab for a role-play exercise that we will do tomorrow.

Writing another short essay (just a side of A4) that was suddenly set as overnight-homework during todays' lesson.

It certainly is an intensive language class! But I'm really enjoying it.

On top of that I've also written a presentation (1hr30mins long) on a book we read for another module.

SO TIRED.

blah!

Sometimes I can't be bothered to blog so I just pointlessly update songs I like and stuff.

今こそ一致団結の時である!

How awesome is this?! no effects or anything, this is exactly how it came out on my camera!

I feel creativeness so I drew a big picture for my bedroom wall.

Since I moved to Japan, I have been using 'u' a lot in texts and emails. I do not know why. It's most unlike me. It is a mystery!

Student Halls in Tokyo

Initial observations!
1. Tokyo Dorms are crazy cheap!
Tokyo is supposed to be one of the most expensive places to live in the world right? However we've got a fantastic deal at the student dormitories here. Compare my old halls in England - You get a single room in a hall, communal toilets and communal kitchen: £80 per week (about 10,000 yen per week)  - so 40,000 yen per month. I only pay 15,000 yen per month in Tokyo, so it's a 1/3rd of the price. The Tokyo room includes a kitchenette and ensuite though! (An ensuite room in the UK would be much more expensive than £80 a week).

So yeah, the rent is FANTASTIC!

2. Friendly, communal atmosphere!
The dorms have a common hall, and many parties and gatherings are arranged by students and mentors to facilitate friendships and socialization in the halls. I am really grateful for this, and you don't see this type of thing at halls in the UK, perhaps it is because in Tokyo the halls have all years of student - 1st years to 4th years, so some students have been there for a while and can organise things for the younger students. In the UK everyone is a first year so you're all as lost as each other.

3. Much quieter and peaceful
No drunken girls running down the coridoor screaming "ALE ALEJANDRO ALE ALEJANDRO" at 4am here. Unlike in the UK......

4. So much safer
A general reflection of how safe Japanese society is. Bicycles are left outside and not stolen. Futons and clothes are hung outside on drying rails without being stolen. It's a very safe and peaceful atmosphere, and I don't feel scared at all walking outside to the vending machines alone at 11pm!

Are there any bad points? I don't know. Perhaps the individual kitchenettes are a mixed-blessing. In the UK the kitchen is a communal area where friendships are made and you can find someone to talk to all the time. because your kitchen is in your room here, that opportunity to make friends is not there.


So Anyway I have attached a few photographs of my room. It's a bit empty as I only really moved in a week ago! You might have noticed the mattress on the bed is very thin! It's not a western-style mattress, it's a futon matress. It's the same thickness as a heavy winter duvet really. A bit hard! But you get used to it fairly quickly, and I'm so exhausted after 12 hour days at university that I fall straight to sleep! I'm glad I brought my own duvet cover from home, as it saved me a lot of money buying sheets on the first night haha! And it reminds me of home :) Other students have a lamp installed in the bookshelf alcove by the pillow but my room didn't include one :(

I also have a Genkan - a feature absent from western rooms! A genkan is the area beside the door where your shoes go. You slip off your shoes and step up onto the wooden floor. So the floor always stays clean and homely. It's a sign of respect to remove your shoes before walking into someone elses room. It's nice :)

In the UK, having a fridge in your room is a luxury. Many halls in the UK ban them, as they're a drain on electric power. Having a fridge in my room means I can have cold drinks whenever I want! Yay!

I have also inherited a rice cooker. I have never had a rice cooker before! I never understood why all the international students at Warwick loved their rice cookers so much, but now I know! They're so convenient! You pop your rice in, then just leave it alone, and you get perfectly cooked, fluffy, glutinous rice every time! It's really moreish and delicious rice, nothing like the rice in the UK!

I also have air-conditioning and a radiator. So far the weather has been really pleasantly warm, so I haven't needed to use either. Apparently they drain the electricity very fast (and we pay utilities by the kilowatt here so it can be very expensive!) So I'll try to be economical with the heating when winter bites. That's an experiment for another day!!!

Accepting the shock of moving overseas for the first time

Usually every day I wake up feeling optimistic then by the time it's the evening I feel homesick. But the last couple of days I've dreamt about "escaping" or running home, or returning home. I blogged about one earlier today, but in another one a couple of days ago we were all out cycling (we cycle a lot to get to dorms) and we found a place that looked european, with all cobbled streets. I was so sure I was back in Norwich and started to get excited, then it turned out we had gone to a European city which was twinned with Norwich instead.

So anyway that's normal to dream of returning home anyway, right? I'm fine with that. But this has subverted the 'wake up happy, go to bed sad' thing because I'll be in the grip of a dream of returning home then I'll wake up and I'll be back in Tokyo again. So that happened this morning. It took me an hour and a half until I was feeling energised to leave the room.

I got my ipod on, took the garbage out to the recycling area, and walked to the local supermarket. I bought all sorts of gubbins, including my new favourite find: chilled gyoza. It's really cheap! I got a packet of 12 gyoza for 98 yen today. You just cook them and they're delicious! I also bought envelopes and letter writing stuff, so I'm currently writing three letters back home. Need to crack the mystery of airmail soon - I only just learned to use Airmail in the UK a month ago, now I have to do it in Japanese!

But yeah, after I returned I felt good. I had had a nice walk with some music and exercise, and I had a fully stocked fridge again. I've even prepared a packed lunch to bring to university tomorrow :D and for the first time, I felt like I had accepted that I have arrived here and will be here for another 10 months.

I didn't completely feel it, but I could just sense it, with the very tips of my fingers, out there somewhere the vague sense of acceptance and comfort. So it took two weeks for me to even register the shock of moving overseas. But yeah, I definitely feel much better today. Having time to yourself does help a lot. It gives you time to think things over in your head. I'm looking forward to university tomorrow.

Last night I dreamt I was out walking alone and I found a bridge over the ocean. It wasn't really a bridge, it was made of various bits of wood, cardboard and trash tied together, and it was bobbing on the ocean about to break apart any second, I started to cross it and my feet were so uneasy on the precariously wobbly surface that I could hardly keep my balance. At the end of the bridge it was incomplete, and suddenly stopped in the water, as if whoever built it had run out of things to desperately scrap together to continue building. But perhaps ten feet after where it stopped was the concrete slabs of a riverside, and beyond that London. So I jumped into the river and swam the last few metres to the other side, once I got onto land I started running to find a tube entrance, and from there I figured I'd get to Liverpool Street Station and go back to Norwich, but I woke up before anything else happened.

Comparing Japanese university and English University (part one)

It's still early days, so I've tentatively put a 'part one' as I feel I'll be adding to this later on. And of course my experiences are limited to the universities I have attended.

1. Far more contact time

'Contact time' is an annoying phrase. In the UK, many students demand more contact hours because they feel it is equivalent to better teaching, or more value for the high tuition fees. If you have low contact hours, your course is seen by many to be easier than a more 'demanding' course with high contact hours. This is correlated with sciences versus humanities, as sciences generally have more contact time than humanities, and is seen as more intensive by many.

Of course, this doesn't mean you do less study - humanities students are expected to top this up with independent reading and study. However I have never met anyone who seriously reads for more than 6 hours a week outside of classes (or reads effectively anyway, for six hours a week).

At Goldsmiths College I had 6 hours of taught time a week.

At Warwick university I have had on average 10-12 hours a week.

At Todai, Japan, I have 24 hours a week.

It's a massive difference eh?

Including the lunch hour and 40 minute commute each way (same as in the UK, except its a 20 min bike ride + 20 min train journey rather than a 40 minute walk), I'm at university for 8-9 hours a day on average (we get Wednesdays off though!), so it's much more hands on.

2. Grading methods are different

Usually, in the UK your grade comes from some kind of written assessment such as an essay or project, or a final exam, or perhaps some combination of both. In Japan your module score is heavily weighted to include attendance and contribution to class discussion. You must attend a minimum of 70% of classes to qualify to earn credits for it. You hand in a short 1-page written summary of the weeks reading every week. So there's no way for lazy students to not turn up/turn up without doing the reading and remaining silent. Personally I'd love it if this feature was introduced in the UK, as non-committed students are the bane of my existence.

Also I've noticed that oral presentations to the class feature heavily in Japan, something that's fairly uncommon in most uk degrees.

3. Reading lists

Obviously to accommodate the larger number of modules, the reading lists are much more confined in Japan. In the UK you get a massive sheet each week with perhaps 30 titles to read, one or two are core readings, 5 or so are highly recommended, and 20 are just optional ones to develop an interest if you like the topic or choose it for an essay topic.

In Japan the reading list for each week is just 2 or 3 titles, but you're expected to read them all, so everyone is 'on the same page' as it were.

This totally sums up how I am feeling right now.

Expectations

Okay so forgive the massive gap in posts, I have been so ridiculously busy, having 12 hour days at the moment!  Today was my first day to myself since I've arrived here. I was out at Karaoke until 4am last night. I checked my emails before I went to bed and my parents were online, so I had a webcam chat with them (which I really needed!), so I got to sleep at 7.30am, and woke up at 3pm. Haha, I've only been here 10 days and I've already messed up my sleeping pattern! Typical me.

'Typical me' - It's quite pertinent that I said that actually. You can move halfway across the world, but you'll still be you. You don't leave your personality behind at the airport customs desk.

Make realistic expectations


I said to myself I'd blog everyday but I've been far too busy, and judging from the academic curriculum I will remain 'too busy' for the entire year. I'll still try as much as possible. But I've had to reassess my expectations. I also thought I'd be taking thousands of photos, but I've taken perhaps... 150? in a week? It's not that much when you consider some people upload that many from a single night out. It's sensory overload. Everything is so different here, if you stopped and thought "woah that's so weird" and took a photo, you'd be taking a photo of literally everything around you. The sheer sensory overload kind of numbs you to it. That said I've been taking more and more as time goes on. I think it was just a case of settling in the first week, I was so busy that photography didn't cross my mind.

The biggest unrealistic expectation for me was language. I had hoped that I'd achieve some kind of proficiency in Japanese by the end of this year, but that's not looking too hopeful right now. However advanced you think your level is in any given language, half it before you move to the country. Everyone here has agreed that while we can usually understand what people are saying, as soon as you're put on the spot or asked a question your mind will go totally blank. Then there's a long silence and that panics you even more. You will embarrass yourself a lot. People are going to think you're stupid. You have to be prepared for that to happen. I thought it wouldn't affect me but it has, and I've found myself becoming more nervous about talking as the week has gone on, put off by some horrendously excruciating encounters in the first few days.

I started my formal lessons a couple of days ago though, so I'm optimistic that from hereon I'll be able to study a lot more and get talking more to the other students.

Don't hype it up beyond all reason

From now on, I've now decided to ignore people who say "X is the best time of your life!" - it might have been the best time of their life, but people are all different, and because you don't have the first clue where to start with your expectations you just take their word for it.

The best analogy to the year abroad experience is when I have been told that Freshers/first year at university was going to be the best year of my life. I've been a fresher twice now, and both times it was just you pot-luck stuck in a flat with people you may or may not get on with who all insist on drinking to camouflage the lack of mutual interests between you. You know, its fun. You enjoy it. It's a good experience. But it's not the best experience I've ever had in my life. Not pessimism, just statement of fact. C'mon.

By no means is this a pessimistic post, just a realistic one. When people say "oh it was the best year of my life!" take it with a pinch of salt. It is a worthwhile experience. It is incredibly rewarding. You will enjoy it a great deal. But don't take it to wild extremes. I am guilty of taking it to extremes, I think it was because the sheer prospect of moving abroad was so incredibly daunting that I was in denial about the whole thing, and didn't really want to be realistic about the difficulties and stress of it all, because once I started thinking about it then that's it: I'd be terrified to go.

I feel the first week here for me has been a bit of a bump down to earth, and already I miss my family, pets and friends a lot. The prospect of the next 10 months without them makes me really upset, and that upset isn't really being displaced by the exhilaration of being abroad.

So woke up today at 7.30am, I am NOT adjusting to Japanese-style futon mattresses well. My body aches so badly! at 8.30 we went to the city hall to register as a foreign resident, then we went to the Bank and opened a Japanese bank account, then we went to Softbank store and bought a mobile phone contract each.

I am getting more self-conscious about my Japanese language ability. I can understand perhaps 50% of everything spoken here. Administrative stuff and filling out forms is impossible in a second language. I am grateful for the tutors here for guiding us through the process. But it is very difficult, and you feel almost like a child for not being able to understand everything.

I feel a little worn out and spaced out. I can't really process information well in my brain. Maybe it's jet lag.

After all this we went to eat, and then me and two other students wandered the streets looking for stuff. I want to buy an electronic dictionary, but I am unsure whether it is too expensive.

Movin' to Tokyo and all that.

I'm sitting in my room at the moment (in Tokyo) entirely dumbfounded and overwhelmed. Maybe it's jet lag, I keep staring out the window blankly. The last two hours I've sat here at this desk and they've passed by in the blink of an eye. Yeah I think it's just fatigue, but I'm struggling to type.

So after months of anticipation it finally happened. Even in London Heathrow airport I was in denial, and it didn't 'feel real'. It was sad saying goodbye to my family, I'd had the best summer with them.

The flight was pleasant. Hardly any turbulence. I've booked a window seat for my return flight so I'll have a wall to lean against! I can't sleep on planes.

I arrived in Narita, and was greeted by many friendly Tokyo students who kindly guided us to a bus to Kichijoji, from Kichijoji more students took us to the halls by taxi, where we had a bajillion forms to fill out! The students here are so welcoming, they've helped me move all my stuff up and I feel so humbled and indebted to their assistance and friendliness. I feel like I was perhaps a little quiet because I was so jet lagged. So from now on I'll try my best to be upbeat and peppy and friendly to be around to make new friends :D

Oh god I can't believe I'm actually here... This is like a joke that has gotten waaayyyyy out of hand now.

Oh god I'm so overwhelmed with stuff. My language skills leave a lot to be desired. I've been able to understand a lot of conversation but replying is difficult. So exhausting!!! D:

Reading was awesome

I've just returned from Reading Festival, one of the UK's largest music festivals. It was four days and three nights of bands and camping. Absolutely fantastic. I was most excited about seeing Muse and the Bosstones, who were both brilliant live acts. I was pleasantly surprised with a few bands who I had never really listened to before but turned out to have incredible performances: Enter Shikari, The Bronx and Does It Offend You, Yeah? 

Anyway, four days of drinking and severe nutritional deprivation/sleep deprivation have taken their toll, and I have a stonking cold right now. I am looking fairly rough. So I'm currently sleeping that off and getting back into a lot of fantastic music .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaLjwSpZ6Cs

Last minute splurge of creativity before bed.

SPLURGE!

True story

My parents have recently acquired a new car so have decided to dig out the front garden into a little driveway so the car can be parked off road. Fairly natural a decision to make.  So it's 10am on Saturday morning and I am woken by the sound of a pneumatic drill tearing up the pavement in front of our house. Mum and Dad are both toiling away, filling a skip up with topsoil and rubble.

I pull on some old clothes and go out to the garden to ask if they want a hand. Mum says "You don't have to". This is a clever use of words - "you don't have to" is a very misleading phrase - I am not seriously believing that they'd rather toil alone while I sat indoors with a nice cold drink and a book. "You don't have to" here is actually secret code for "you couldn't if you wanted to, look at your puny arms! you are a feeble girl!"

So I protested "I'm not some weak little girl I can help!" and charged into the ever-expanding hole in our front lawn, spade in hand, and thrust the spade into the earth. It went in about an inch. The ground was incredibly tough.

Undeterred, I raised my left foot and stomped it as hard as I could onto the top edge of the blade to push it deeper into the ground. Except that didn't happen. Rather than the weight of my foot driving the spade deeper into the ground, the spade stayed put, and instead I drove my foot into the top corner of the blade. The sharp corner of the blade went straight through the rubber and leather of my trainers with a satisfying 'puck' sound, and into the arched sole of my foot.

So within 20 seconds of protesting that I wasn't a puny girl I had injured myself. Well, obviously I couldn't admit that aloud, what a complete embarrassment, so I said "I'm just going to put some better shoes on" and walked back into the house. I ran upstairs, gingerly removed my left shoe and peeled off my now quite bloody sock, and proceeded to have a quiet, private little panic attack in my bathroom. After I pulled myself together I washed the little wound and put a dressing on it. I put on some real shoes - some boots - and spent the next two or three hours quietly helping dig the garden. Later on in the day while we had a cold drink and admired our new driveway I admitted what had happened. I am an idiot.

Panic on the streets of London...

Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself 
Could life ever be sane again? 

 Haha, all Smiths Lyrics aside, the recent riots in London and other English cities is worth having a think about, so I'll write a very short piece with my thoughts.

Before I even begin, I need to draw a line between explanation and excuse. Many feel that an explanation of behaviour is a 'justification'. This is nonsense. Many historians have sought to understand and rationalise the social and ideological engines behind various wars and dictators. Does that mean they legitimate them? Of course not. To understand something is not to agree or condone it.

This conflation of explanation and excuse has led many to quickly isolate all blame to the culprits alone. Cameron called the violence 'criminality, pure and simple'. London Mayor Boris Johnson said "It is time that people who are engaged in looting and violence stopped hearing economic and sociological justifications for what they have done". 

Honestly I am really quite despondent at this attitude from politicians. Is it really surprising that the current government are rejecting any economic or sociological explanation for the rioting when it is directly their responsibility to maintain social order? Admitting any social factors behind a riot would be admitting their own failures as a government for catalysing (or at best, failing to deal with) social issues.

 So according to them we are supposed to believe that last week; hundreds of youths all made the independent decision to thwart social order and rampage in their own communities of their own free will, it just so happened by sheer coincidence that it happened now, and not last year, it's just coincidence that it was located in specific socio-economic demographics and geographies. It's just a coincidence that the rioting occurred in Hackney and Peckham, and not West Kensington? COME ON! Poverty and relative deprivation clearly served as a backdrop to the violence.

There's an interesting book called "The Spirit Level" which demonstrates, quite rigorously with statistical data, that rather than simply the poorest societies being riddled with social problems, it is actually the societies with the largest income inequalities that face social unrest. Healthy societies do not riot. There is no excuse for criminality, but this criminality is cultivated by an absence of rational connection between effort and reward.

There is a massive gulf between rich and poor in London, according to the Telegraph and Guardian, the richest earn 273 times more than the poorest. I'm not advocating equal incomes irrespective of work output, but is any human being actually capable of working 273 times harder? Does a banker work 273 times harder than a cleaner?! sure, maybe he works twice as hard, perhaps even four times as hard - but 273 times harder? That's an absolutely obscene amount for anyone to be paid. No one earns that. Wages have absolutely no relation to output. The lowest paid job I ever had (at £4.77 an hour) - working in a sandwich shop - was the most physically and mentally demanding, I would work 11.75 hour shifts and control all the day-to-day running of the shop, from serving the products and providing good service, to training new staff and estimating the need for and ordering in new stock. On the other hand I was paid £120 (over 25 times higher) an hour to be on a radio play once. Is whimpering into a microphone for one hour a day 25 times harder than manual labour in a busy shop? Hell no.

Anyway, I digress. Of course the rioters were criminal, and there is no justification for destroying peoples' homes and business and loot expensive items. But there is a reason why criminal behaviours come to exist. I feel a lot of what happened was exacerbated by the sheer scale of the disorder. You only need to look to Stanley Milgram's behavioural studies of obedience to see how conformism can turn a perfectly normal citizen into a hooligan when swept up in massive disorder. In many cases the rioters were in groups alongside their friends, family members, even alongside their own parents.

 And it's no coincidence either that the police response was so ineffective when the government plans to cut 16,000 police jobs? They insisted this didn't mean anything because the cuts hadn't happened yet - ignoring that the met are pre-emptively putting in place measures to prepare for this inevitability - those cuts are making an impact already.

I feel that certain pockets of society live in a state devoid of any connection to wider society. It is the governments responsibility to rectify this problem. Putting their heads in the sand and insisting that there's no social factors that lead to riots is completely unhelpful. I can't help but be reminded of Thatchers' famous epithet: "There's no such thing as society, only individuals and their families". WHY go into politics if you don't believe in the concept of a society?! That's like me behind head of the Church despite being an Atheist.

Governments have so much responsibility to society, they have the power to completely obliterate social order or reconfigure social structure. If you're militantly solipsistic that's fine, but politics is the wrong career path for you.

So unhelpful, you'd think it couldn't get worse. It can. Parliament reconvened for an emergency debate. They've decided that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and twitter was responsible for a large portion of organisation of riots, and they've called for powers to monitor and even 'shut down' social networking in times/areas of civil unrest. Where have they got this information from? Seriously. Do they have any figures supporting BBM/Twitter as a contributing factor to rioting? Or is this a knee-jerk reaction to total speculation, in a move to grant the government powers of surveillance and restrictions on freedom of speech through the back door?

 I am utterly ashamed of the rioters' behaviour. I am equally ashamed of how the political sphere has responded.

Cleaning

With results the year comes to an end and our rent contract expired so there was a massive operation to move all my stuff back to Norwich. Our house has five people sharing and three of them just left without doing any cleaning and leaving all their shit everywhere (we can't just leave it because we will get fined) so me and my other housemate had to wake up at 7am to bleach the mould off the walls, hoover and clean the entire house, make 8am trips to the rubbish tip, we were cleaning for 6 continuous hours!

So then a couple of days after we had moved out we got an email saying "We're charging you fines for leaving a mess in the property" - I thought "Fuck, they've discovered the toilet lock is broken". It traps you inside (not our fault though, it's always been like that). You have to phone someone from inside the toilet to unlock the door from the outside to let you out. God help you if you needed the toilet when you're home alone. Obviously if the house inspector has discovered the broken lock that means he must have been locked in himself. Brilliant mental image of the inspector phoning a friend and getting them to drive to the house and let him out of the loo... that or he kicked the door down.

But it was not the toilet lock. They sent a photo of evidence - they wanted to charge us to hire a professional cleaner to clean.... one drawer with a bit of dirt in it.

I was expecting a massive mould stain or a water leak or a trashed house, an insect infestation, a serious condensation problem, stains on the carpet, burns, smashed glass, a muck-encrusted oven, a freezer with rotten food left in it?

I spent six hours furiously scrubbing that house and then went to work and did a shift afterwards. They want me to pay to clean out a utensil divider? Pay a little work experience kid minimum wage to do that, he only needs £5.90 an hour, and it won't take a full hour to clean that. It takes 10 seconds to tip the crumbs out of that and give it a quick wipe with a damp cloth. How much does 10 seconds of manual labour cost at £5.90 an hour?

3p. Alright. Split that between the five of us. I'll pay 0.6 pence to have that cleaned. In fact my lazy ex-housemates can pay my 0.6p. I've already spent 6 hours cleaning their mess for them.

We replied to their email saying (more politely than this of course) "Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?"

They've repealed the fines. Ha.
But if we hadn't said anything they'd have charged us about £40 to clean that - and trust me, there are plenty of meek students who daren't speak up. Landlords and housing associations think they can exploit students because they don't know anything about their rights as tenants.

Students houses are bloody spotless. Especially if you lived with unemployed people. My housemate and I worked during the term. But our other housemate didn't have a job, so he became all maternal and housebound, and would clean during the day to make it seem like he had done something productive. I've been back in Norwich for 2 weeks and my family house is shocking. I found maggots squirming and festering in our bin a couple of days ago. My parents used to make out that I was the slovenly teenage cause of all the washing, but if anything it's got worse in my absence because I did the dishwasher when I was there!

Left work :(

Blogger has all changed! I'm all disoriented now.

Anyway, I got my exam results a couple of days ago. Personally I'm not one to broadcast my grades but I did better than I was expecting to get. So very happy.

I am really touched by my colleagues at work, we had a leaving smile with delicious foods and drinks, they made me a cake with my name iced on it :) and I got a card that everyone had signed wishing me luck. It was one of the nicest cards I have ever received. I will miss them all so much!!

Exams are over!!!

Now begins the painful 7-day wait for results.
Out comes the squirty cream.

DOODLING

I don't understand the premise behind 'Bad Teacher': who in their right mind would pick Justin Timberlake over Jason Segel? He's too attractive to make a believable 'underdog'. The verisimilitude is all off. Still going to pay to see it regardless.

Ugh I've had to finally hand in my notice at work. Life no longer has any meaning! :(

Pro's and Con's of an amazing epic year abroad. Will update as I think of more things.

Pro

• It's amazing
• It's epic
• It's a freakin' year abroad.
• It's funded!!!!
• It's in freaking Japan the country of all countries!
• It's at an amazing university with an incredible reputation.
• My language skills will be awesome upon return.
• The course looks really interesting and I will learn a lot.
• It will be a memory I will keep with me for the rest of my life
• I'm really lucky to be chosen to go.
• I have successfully delayed graduating for another year!

Con

• It's very far away!
• I'm worried my Japanese ability will let me down
• I've successfully delayed graduating for another year
• I won't be able to afford a visit back home at any point during the year
• I had to leave my job (IT STILL HURTS) :( :( :(
• I won't get to graduate with my friends, when I return back to England they'll have graduated without me
• I will miss my family and pets so much while I am there
• It's going to play havoc with my accent.
• My porcelain-white skin will melt away in a non-temperate climate.

The fear.

Urgh what a horrible feeing! I've suddenly got The Fear.
Yep, this year The Fear struck me at 03.14am. Wednesday 15th June 2011.

For those who do not know this phrase, "The Fear" is when you finally start to really freak out about your exams and results. I hope I've done okay this year... I'm really worrying now! I haven't done as well this year as I did last year. I know my grade will be lower this year. I am prepared for that. This year I have had a part-time job working 12-20 hours a week, I'm living 2 miles away and the 1.5 hour walks to and fro every day are exhausting (you really don't feel like working when you've just walked 50 minutes uphill in the rain!) I had extracurricular meetings, employer events, I was being sent back and forth from hearing tests and the pharmacy for antihistamines and applying for the year abroad involved writing another essay, preparation for the interviews and the ensuing paperwork, funding applications and visa applications after I was successful. So it's quite understandable that I haven't been able to really throw myself into my degree in the same way I was able to last year.
Fair enough.
I am mentally prepared for my results to be somewhat lower than last year: it's just a scary question of how much lower they will be, and will they be 'recoverable' if I did well in my third year?

In the first term I had been getting the same sort of grades as my first year, but around Christmas there was a dip where I couldn't get a good mark no matter what I tried. I got an essay back with a low grade because I hadn't cited enough and it was too abstract, then I got another bad grade because I had cited too often and been too dependent on the texts. From one extreme to the other. I had a terrible listening exam that I only just barely scraped a pass in (although everyone found it difficult, not a single person in the whole class got a 2.1 for that exam). But when you apply the percentage weighting it will only affect 0.25% of my grade, so I can't blame it on that.

In your second year you get into a lull. You no longer have the adrenaline of being in your first year, but neither do you have the terror of an impending graduation either. Output begins to slip. Now I am nearing the end of the year and have the benefit of hindsight I will accept that I overstretched myself this year. I took too much on board. If I manage to still get away from this year with a high grade I will be incredibly proud and surprised. But to do that I will certainly need to sign off blogger and do some revision!!!

Allergic to life

I am not normally a complainer, (sshh!) but I have just started to recover from a nasty cold IN JUNE. I am in a permanent state of phlegminess from allergies anyway. My housemate said he could tell that I was awake because the sneezing begins, that is, of course, unless I have woken up at 5am just to sneeze, which isn't a rare occurrence. I replied that I could tell he was awake because you hear a pepsi can being opened for his pepsi breakfast - true story!

But yeah! This was a actual proper cold, for realsies! I had chills and night sweats and headaches and tunnel vision and everything. I was laying in bed hallucinating that I needed to go to work again at 2am at one point. It wasn't the flu though, last time I had the flu I stayed in bed for 4 days eating neopolitan ice cream and lost half a stone through lack of appetite - (Illness is such an illicit way of dieting, I shouldn't be glorifying that.) Really inconvenient time to get a cold when you've accepted a ton of overtime. But I soldiered through it LIKE A BOSS. I've never had a day off work sick yet and I don't plan on having my first one any time soon - the average in the UK is like 3 sick days a year?! I'm like one of those people who has to break a limb or suffer a severe haemorrhage before I'll call in sick. That's either a good thing (for being super strong and committed) or, as is most likely will result in me contributing to infecting every human being I'll come in contact with that week. BUT GETTING PAID FOR IT.

Here is a handy nugget of life advice that I strongly suggest you commit to memory: if you are severely allergic to dust, do not get a job in a Library. I have definitely found this out the hard way. Why am I allergic to everything I love? It's like god is a malicious bully following me around, watching to see if I develop a fondness for anything, then he'll smite me with some biological intolerance for said loved object.

I like the outdoors! NO! HAYFEVER!

Oh well, being indoors is cool too, NO! ALLERGIES!

At least I have my doggies, NO! ALLERGY TO DOG FLUFF!

Well there's always some calming music, NO! DEAFNESS!

Maybe I can occupy myself with a good book, NO! MYOPIA! ASTIGMATISM! (Combo breaker!)

At least I can drown my sorrows with alcohol, NO! IT WILL MAKE YOUR FACE ALL ITCHY AND PUFFY!

I like cheese and yoghurt and milk, NO! DAIRY INTOLERANCE!

Being alive, NO! ASTHMA!

As I said, I don't complain much but I can't help but feel like I ain't exactly looking like a very lucrative catch for prospective males right now. It doesn't help that my nose is so bunged up that I sound like a female Ronnie Corbett, or that I cannot stop sneezing in a Library: one of the only locations where you specifically need to be silent (other than church services and military stealth operations) so now I'm the crazy TTTCHHOOOOO! Library lady now. People like me shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. I obviously have weak, recessive inferior genetics.

At least I have my feisty sense of boisterous and antagonistic humour, NO! YOU'VE BEEN BORN FEMALE, EVERYTHING WILL BE MISCONSTRUED AS IRRATIONAL EMOTION OR A FRAGILE GLOSS OF SELF ESTEEM!

I will blog about something serious next week I swear. I am revising for exams at the moment so my brain can't handle anything else requiring intelligent thought.

Go to bed!

I am all too aware that too many of my entries here are written at some ungodly hour in the morning. It's a habit I've bashfully kept alive for the last couple of years in writing this blog. I am terrible for keeping a good sleeping pattern, and it affects the (admittedly poor) quality of my writing. It's stupid. I have all these irrational feelings right now that I know would easily be solved by a nights' sleep but instead I am compelled to write 600 or so words of fucking... rubbish for the whole internet to see.


Ugh. 
Go to bed.
I don't want to go to bed.
But you're tired Holly.
Being unconscious is really boring though.


I am feeling really worried about my year abroad at the moment. I just sat up for three hours reading various blogs that other people with on the same exchange scheme have written while they're in Tokyo. Every morning I wake up terrified about going, then as the day goes on I become accustomed to the idea, as I rest my head upon my pillow last thing at night I am keen and excited to go. 


Then I will sleep a heavy, dreamless sleep, wake up in the same awkwardly unnatural position I fell asleep in, (on my back, legs straight, knees together and arms by your sides like a Barbie doll) aching from head to toe because I haven't moved in 8 hours, to start the process all over again - back in 'scared' mode. I am moving without seeing a change in the landscape, I am a swimmer lost at sea. 

It has been 2 years, 6 months, and 29 days since I started this blog. 940 days. It's strange to contemplate how much has changed in that time. I do feel relatively happy and secure in the choices I have made. Three years ago I was a much quieter person, I was so unsure of myself and so worried about the future. Now I am more confident but perhaps more impatient too. I wonder if I can make as radical a change over the next three years.


Okay I am feeling much better for typing that out. I should probably go to sleep now, need to do a lot of revision tomorrow.

Sat my Japanese exam today

AND It was a whirlwind of fragile emotions, euphoric highs and crushing lows.

Nah not really, it was just a 2 hour exam in a quiet little room nestled in Warwick University campus. It wasn't so bad. I was fairly lucky with the questions that came up being the things I had most recently revised. My brain is now totally mashed. I'm having an early night tonight I reckon.

Soon after leaving the exam hall, I spent my weeks' food budget on cosmetics. Vanity binging. Good for the ego once in a while - it's not often I buy mascara.

So with Japanese out of the way, tomorrow is my first ever day off in three weeks! I will be happy to snooze for a while. I've deserved it. I was chatting with a colleague of mine at the Library, and we both work a 7 day week, and agreed that "2 lie-ins a week count as a weekend". I can endure a 7 day week for a couple of years while I am at university (for extra income, to make savings, to get experience for when I graduate etc). But I don't think I could do it for an indefinite period of time. It's like running a marathon, you have to pace yourself!

I genuinely think I'm going mental.

I remember sitting in a lecture in my first year of university.

I wasn't supposed to be there. It was an engineering lecture. But I had a free period so I followed a friend to their mechanics lecture. Naturally I didn't understand a word of it, but I distinctly remember the opening dialogue, the lecture was about oscillation, and the lecturer began by describing with passion the natural oscillation in every aspect of our lives - love hate relationships, mood cycles, cycles of weight gain and loss.

What was I writing about again? Actually ended up embarrassing myself by drawing a caricature of the lecturer with an inexplicably long arm standing on top of the globe, and trying to trade it with the lecturer himself for a biscuit. Why did I do that? Ha.

Anyway yeah - oscillation: there's definitely a natural cyclical rhythm to life (not in an emotional, womanly lunar way). I have definitely been feeling that recently! After a lull, where you don't really.. know.. why you're doing anything - then that turns into a frustration, and now I'm in this place where I have such a massive energy and my heart feels like it is aching, I want to read Kafka and Murakami, I want to watch classic films, I want to paint, fill up diaries, take photographs, walk the coastline. I've got this massive impulse to create something.

But the problem is, it's the middle of exams. I can't really begin on a spree of artistic exploration that would gladly absorb hours, days of my time. By the time my exams are out of the way, this feeling will have passed. In fact I reckon that this is all a psychological mechanism to distract me from my revision.

Oh god and now its 04.10. I need to be up for work.

Get in!

You know how a couple of days ago I was moping because I couldn't go and see Stephen Merchant's stand up because I'd be out of the country? Well I got tickets for an earlier show! I was lucky enough to find a couple through getmein (a partner website) - Two tickets, a couple of rows from the front on the first night of the tour. I was absolutely chuffed to bits, I was even smiling about it at work today. It will be a great night of course, but it is extra special because it will most likely be the last time I get to see my a few of my friends before I leave them for 10 months. What a way to send myself off though! ha!

Anyway, I've been thinking about balancing between fun and living happily, and not being impulsive. (In hindsight, blowing a weeks wages' on stand up tickets is a poor example of this, but I still have no regrets.)

My boring day

That's a lie. It wasn't boring. It was pleasantly average. I went to work, sat at the desk putting stickers on books and suchlike (very official business) and took a photo to prove to my house-mates that I sit at a desk. They don't believe me. All good jobs involve a desk at some point, that's a fact. So yeah, the shift went by nice and quickly so that was good. Although I've been working there for nearly 6 months (in a week or so) I am still firmly in the honeymoon period where I actually quite look forward to going to work when I wake up. The sun was being bastardly bright and warm outside while I was sitting at that desk scanning books. But it was quite a nice moment in time to be. It's a good place to work, I'm a bit upset I'd have to give it up to go to Tokyo in a way.

Strangely, I really enjoy the walk to work. I have been moaning quite a bit about how we live over 2 miles away from campus, and the walk itself isn't picturesque by any means. But I have this cathartic thing about walking with my ipod on. I HAVE to do it. Even though it's a 40 minute walk (1hr 20 minutes to get there and back - this is 7 days a week). Even when my housemates offer to drive me onto campus I will still opt to walk, even if I am late. I have to have my walk. I need those 40 minutes of motion and music and time to myself.

Anyway, as I left work, and began my walk back home, I put on The Kooks (don't know why I'm in a Kooks mood this week) and snapped this lovely sight on the way home. Unfortunately in this picture you can't make out the half-dozen or so Canadian geese meandering about the water.

I like being at Warwick. I don't know why I've been feeling so down recently. Probably exam worry.

It's getting real!

So this week I attended this talk for people going on exchanges overseas next year. There were nearly 90 of us, and that's just the non-erasmus exchanges (so it doesn't include anyone going to Europe). It was terrifying. I noticed that everyone was sitting next to the people they would be with next year, it kind of hit home to me how I'd be the only person from my entire country on this exchange. I don't know, is that a bad thing necessarily? I'll definitely be out of my comfort zone, hopefully it will force me to interact with the local community a lot more - I don't want to become insular and isolated from my own peers in a little England bubble.

Anyway, they took this lovely photograph of us all:

Honestly, I seriously considered trying to photoshop my tiny 30 pixel face to look more attractive for a moment. That would be an impossible task though, (being able to do something with such a tiny photo - not that it's an impossible task to photoshop some attractiveness into me!)

My own vanity is appalling. hahaha So anyway on the flip side I am feeling awesomely sleep deprived at the minute. My sleeping pattern is so messed up. I'm dreading to think what my project reads like now. In less than 4 hours it will be submitted and out of my hands! Then I can just concentrate on exams and catch up on my sleep.

Oh yeah and Portal 2 came out last week - so good! - typically they picked the week before assessments are due in to release it! So the house has gone a bit Stephen Merchant mad - really wanted to buy tickets to see him at Warwick Arts centre but of course, I won't be in the country on November 8th so I couldn't go :( (Argh I'm getting upset just thinking about it now!)

Next Door's Baby.

Holly?! What are you doing awake at 7am on your day off?

When they built this house, I can only assume they run out of money halfway through, and decided to build my joining wall out of cheap plywood, fuzzy felt and newspaper. That's the only explanation I have for how thin these walls are. Bricks would be more soundproof than this. Thank goodness I am moving out in a few months. I don't think I have had an uninterrupted nights sleep here yet.

Okay, babies cry. That's about all they are able to do really. They cry and cry for no reason and there's nothing you can do to stop them. I can accept that. But here is the annoying thing: if you google "Next door's baby is keeping me awake all night" and you'll get thousands of hits, because there are literally thousands of innocent people being kept awake at night by screaming infants. But the response is always the same:

"YOU SELFISH BITCH. THINK ABOUT WHAT THE MUM IS GOING THROUGH, IF YOU HATE IT SO BADLY WHY DON'T YOU MOVE OUT"

I sympathise with mother. But this is her baby, and when she had that baby she should have been prepared for getting no sleep for the next three years. I am not a mother. I am trying to study for my exams. When I have a kid, I will gladly endure the sleepless nights. I do not need a 'trial run' now.

Well anyway, I am fairly used to being kept awake by this baby. But tonight there has been a new development. I can hear what sounds like a phone vibrating - as if it's ringing but on silent mode, so all you can hear is that VVVVVVVRRRRRT VVVVVVVVRRRRT. I thought it was snoring, but it's too quick, and too consistent.  Have they bought some kind of machine to mimic the snoring sound of a parent beside the baby's cot? Do those things exist?

Well yeah. Imagine it's 7am, the week of a massive 13,000 word project deadline. And someone's phone is vibrating against your wall for hours on end. Welcome to my hell. I am never having kids. Dogs are where it's at.

"You look really tired"

WHY do people say this? Tell me. If you have ever said this phrase, explain yourself, immediately.
I hate it when people say this to me, it's so annoying because they're trying to be nice. They say it because they are concerned and just want to make sure you're okay. So I can't hate them for it. But they are just essentially saying "you look like crap" to my face, and it hurts. I don't like being told I look run down - especially when I'm not! This has happened to me three times this term.

I have deep-set eyes, it's genetic, that is the unfortunate skeletal structure of my face, it is the same with my parents' eyes and my grandparents' eyes, and my great-grandparents eyes.

If I saw a friend, and they looked awful for some unknown reason. I'd ask "Are you okay?" in a sympathetic manner, if they say "Yeah I'm fine" - this means that they don't want to talk about it, or aren't terribly upset. If they reply "No, actually...." and then confide in me their upset, then I have been a good friend and everyone is happy. But DON'T say "you look tired" to someone. WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT? It's just an insult!

I've made a habit now, when someone says this to me, to make it as awkward as humanly possible:

So I was at work the other day:
Girl: "Are you okay? You look really tired"
Me: "Thanks! No actually I got 10 hours sleep last night, I'm feeling pretty lively actually!"
--- (awwwwkward silence - I relished every awkward second) ---


I knew the girl in question felt bad because about 10 minutes later she was really complimenting my top.


I remember last year I was sitting on my bed in my student halls, the door was open (I am sociable) I was just sitting on my own bed, in my own room, in my pyjamas, it was about 10am.

A girl walked past and said:

"Oh my god! Are you okay? You look really tired!"
"No, I'm not tired, I'm just not wearing any make-up - this is what my natural face actually looks like, but thanks for noticing!"


I know I sound like I am being cranky. But seriously. Do not say this to people. It's insensitive.
As I said, I can't hold it against the people who say it, because they're trying to be nice, they just want to ask if you are okay because they have noticed that you look disproportionately more ugly and hideous than you usually do.

AMAZING NEWS!

Today I had my interview for a kind of scholarship scheme run by the University of Tokyo in conjunction with my university.

I was incredibly anxious about applying, the competition is intense, as there is only one place available each year - I had kind of assumed the position would ultimately go to some high-flying economics or law student with a host of A* grades and a fancy internship at Deutsche Bank. I applied anyway with my fingers crossed. You have nothing to lose by applying, and nothing to gain by comparing yourself to an imaginary hypothetical perfect student. Anyway, a few days later I had received an email inviting me for an interview.

Those two weeks flew past and that terrifying interview was today. The time of my interview clashed with my Japanese lesson, I didn't want to miss the lesson so I went and paid attention and made my excuses to leave 20 minutes before my interview.

In hindsight, I wish I had left half an hour earlier, just so I could sit down and go over my notes and prepare a little bit. I went to the reception desk and they asked me to sit down and wait before the interview. My heart was pounding like a jack hammer. I was shaking! I don't know what came over me, I have had interviews just as scary as this one before and been fine, but for some reason I was in tatters. I had been sitting down for the whole of 20 seconds when I was called in for the interview.

I was talking so fast I actually had to stop to inhale! Nerves! I wasn't being as concise as I wanted to be and it was frustrating me. As I left the interview room, I instinctively knew I had messed up, I was certain that I had blown it. I met with a friend on my course, and I got it off my chest, she was a fantastic support for me and said "It probably didn't go as badly as you thought!"

Now here is a lesson that I will never forget - even if you think you've had a terrible interview, you might be wrong. A mere few hours later I was informed that I was successful. I will be spending next year at the University of Tokyo! I am utterly elated. gob-smacked, freaked out, shocked, speechless! It is going to be a fantastic year!

Nahfok

Just come back from visiting family, spent two lovely days in beautiful Norfolk. Loved it.
Since returning I have come to realize a lot of words I use are actually quite peculiar to Norfolk, and as such I must have sounded like a complete prat to everyone else since moving to uni!

So for future reference, here is a handy guide:

lugs = ears, if you have hearing problems or aren't paying attention, you're luggy. (As I have been recently diagnosed! There's a post for another day!)
rummun = an unfortunate or unexpected occurence "What a rumm'n!"
pingle = to pick about with food or snack. (In my family it is traditional, on Christmas day, to eat the traditional christmas dinner at about 1 or 2pm until you are stuffed, have a post-dinner nap, then at about 8pm we will lay out a shmorgasboard of little snacks (such as nuts, breadsticks, picked onions, relish, a selection of cheeses and biscuits, grapes, cold meats, pringles etc) to "pingle on".)
on the huh = at an awkward or jaunty angle, i.e. "That painting is on the huh" or "Have you seen him walking? He's a bit on the huh" you could also say it was skew wiff but I'm fairly sure that's used elsewhere in the UK too.
jiffle = to fidget or alternatively, to fudge about
dudder = to tremble, an unsettling scene might 'give you the dudders', you can say that old people "dudder along"
craze = to nag "craze mum for sweets" or "Facebook crazes me, I hate it!" - I'm sure I've heard this one outside of Nofolk though!
Get on your wick = to annoy you immensely.
put your parts on = have a tantrum, get all fussy and obstinate about something
blar = to cry, esp. said of children "blarhing on and on".

Also, although not words in themselves:

Thass = "It is"
Shew = showed
suffun = something

That's just the accent coming through :P


OH MY GOD NORFOLK

Ya dun goofed

Here's a bit of a lulzy update; turns out, I've been deaf for the past two years.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. I've had a very very mild conductive hearing loss (-25db in one ear, and -30db in the other, (decibels don't really convert to % perfectly but it gives you a rough indication!).

I'd never noticed because in Norfolk, everyone shouts. My family shout, there is lots of laughter and squealing and banter, my dogs bark, I am woken up most mornings by DIY, Petrol lawn mowers or music. However I have recently moved into a student house full of normal people, and for the life of me I can't understand a single word any of them are saying. Especially you Andy. Mumble mumble mumble. WHAT? SPEAK UP?

So I went to a doctor and he tuned me with a tuning fork, nice to know that I am in tune. Then he sent me to another clinic and they did a hearing test. They offered me a hearing aid, I laughed and said "not a chance" (have you seen how expensive they are?!) They think it was due to severe allergies, I've been given a steroidal nasal spray and I've bought a metric fuck-ton of cetirizine we're all good to go. A few weeks later and I have noticed a massive improvement, but haven't had a second test to confirm it. So glad I didn't buy that hearing aid! How dare they push it on me so quickly when all I needed was some anti-histamines!

So lesson of the day: you can be so allergic to pollen that your runny nose clogs your ears up. Isn't the human body delightful?

Essays: writing offensive

I am actually going to reveal my super secret essay method. This is top secret. So pay attention!

Okay, so you're an undergraduate, it's essay time! They give you that crisp, fragile sheet of paper, with a list of 20 baffling questions or statements from which to chose an essay title that you're gunna write about.

 RIGHT, which of these topics looks the most appealing?
You might see one that jumps out at you immediately, if it seems slightly more straightforward, or you feel strangely familiar with the kind of essay the question wants you to write. You're probably best to DISMISS IT, because everyone else will have chosen it.

You know those 'revision sessions' they hold two weeks before the exams, that no one bothers to attend? Attend them! Last year one of the more revealing, delicious chunklets of information given to me was in one of these session, where the tutor said "Every single year, everyone answers questions 3 and 4". Not that there is anything wrong with answering the same question that everyone else chooses, but unless you write something BLISTERINGLY good, the professor marking it will have grown wearisome of reading through 60 essays about the same thing, and any flaws with your argument will be really obvious.

That being said, you'll write a better essay if you pick a familiar topic, so don't neglect a topic you recognise for something you're unfamiliar with.

Okay, now for the essay writing. For most people the method is tried and tested: Introduce the topic, present points back up your argument, supplemented with evidence from texts, draw all evidence up in a succinct conclusion.

In my head, I am imagining what everyone else will write for that essay. So I can dismiss it in mine. I know it sounds slightly over-competitive and cruel. But I think you'll appear more intelligent if you make everyone elses' essays look stupid. I've used sentences such as "At first glance, one might be tempted to write an essay about " or "for many undergraduates, a gut reaction might be to write an essay about....." and then you go BUT that would be inaccurate for these reasons...

So essentially you insult everyone elses' essays. Oh I am so harsh. Be competitive and secretive and evil.
Don't worry and think that you're being psychotically over-competitive, because EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT. Here's an experiment for you: ask a random classmate what they are doing for their essay, THEY WON'T TELL YOU! They will vaguely outline the topic, or say some deceitful lie like "Well I don't really know what I am going to say". I've sat in seminars where the seminar leader actually tries to make people say what their project is on, no one would. They'd vaguely outline the kind of thing they were doing without ever saying what it was.

I had another seminar where you had to write down your essay title on a list, and even when it was a few days before the deadline, the list was empty. Not because students don't start the essay until three days before the deadline (although many do) - but because they didn't want to be the first to reveal to the whole class what their essay choice was. So secretive!!

What on earth is that noise outside? Am I being burgled?! It's fireworks?!

Anyway, so once you've got an idea in your head about what everyone else's essays might look like, succinctly sum up all their key points, and use them in the introductory paragraph, so it's as if the other students are just covering the basics, and your essay is going into real depth.

Of course, one massive drawback of this tactic is that you then have to generate an essay of points that they wouldn't have made. So you're going to have to write a good essay anyway.

Okay, so here is your revised essay layout:
1. Present the title question
2. Completely disagree with the title question, make outlandish and outrageous claims that the question is misleading and neglects vital aspects of the debate, sum up everything that anyone would have said their essays in a short paragraph, as if it is rudimentary and basic.
3. Back it up with quotes from obscure texts, and reinterpret core readings to say what you want it to say (chillax, that's how the academics roll!).
4. Conclude with an optimistic and progressive tone.

It was fun, but I feel like my luck will run out when one professor fails to tolerate my waffle. May I rue the day that ever happens!

Being students, we can't afford to use our central heating. So I'm keeping myself warm around a malty cup of Assam instead. Listening to Roygbiv by Boards of Canada through very large headphones (doubling up as ear warmers - getting my money's worth!)

And no - none of this is uni work, it's too cold, no one gets a degree in this weather!

Lollercoasters!

I have a phobia of Elevators. There, I said it.

When I was 12 years old, I would wake up every morning at 6am to do my paper-round before I went to school. One of the first addresses on my round was a flat on the 15th floor of a tower block, and I was too scared to use the elevator, so every morning I would huff up 30 flights of stairs with a massive messenger bag FULL of heavy papers to the 15th floor to deliver ONE paper. Just because I was scared of elevators.

Fast forward 8 years and I'm sacrificing my ONE day off a week to get up at 7am and go to Alton Towers for Jim's birthday.

Rollercoasters are just glorified elevators! It was a mega day out though!

my home-made greek salad isn't as moreish and delicious as the professionally made one from birmingham :(

Back to Uni

So today was the first day of term! I am now a genuine second-year student at the Universitaire de Warwick. I'm full of apprehension and excitement at the moment. I did well last year, but I'm determined to up my game this year. Ready to really throw myself into it and do as well as I can So in very very high spirits today! (How long do you reckon that will last?!)

Some mental bastard cloud decided to rain all of this week. Then it was suddenly scalding hot today. So hot and sunny I needed to walk to Uni in just a t-shirt!
Which was double ironically lucky because in the biting winds and freezing cold rains of yesterday, I got in touch with my inner-girlie and I bought some lovely SPF 15 foundation from Max Factor, and some SPF 15 moisturiser lotion as well; And lo and behold! Today it was mega sunny! That can't be a coincidence!

I got honked at by three separate cars on the 30-minute walk towards Uni as well, I reckon it's the new foundation. 'coorrrrr! Look at the clear complexion on her! *Toot toot!* her pores are so small!!! *beep beep!*' That's how truck drivers' brains' work. I reckon.

The reason why I bought a load of sunscreen in the freezing rains of October was because I am fast approaching the age of 21, and therefore I have recently developed a phobia of crumbling and becoming old. I hear the sun is responsible for 90% of visible skin ageing! So therefore I am sunscreened!

Speaking of ageing crumblies, Jim's birthday tomorrow!

Leaving home

D: eeek


I'm actually leaving home, moving out. In two days. Not just for a few months in student halls, but into my own home, with my own utility bills, and my own actual neighbours.
So many mixed emotions swimming through my mind right now: obviously there's excitement, for my new bedroom, my new garden and my new kitchen, and another great year at Warwick! 
There's sadness, I'm going to miss my family, miss the peace and calm, and the lack of stress, the company and my doggies.
There's terror: the new semester, the workload, the part-time job, the internship applications, they're all looming overhead. I know that once I'm there and I've started getting on with it, it will be manageable, but right now I am standing here and anticipating it, and it's terrifying.

I'm currently in the process of packing all my belongings into tiny boxes to move into the new house, underneath my bed I found a box full of ephemera that I had hoarded over my holidays last year. Including a small log that I kept of some of the days of my holiday. So I'm going to copy-type them up here so I have a nice digital copy!

Day 10: Takayama

Woke up extra early at 6.55 for breakfast at 7am, which was a very traditional Japanese breakfast of fresh fish, vegetables and very fluffy, glutinous rice (onomatopoeically described as 'fwaa fwaa' because it's so fluffy and sticky). The full-on Japanese style traditional breakfast was quite a shock to the senses, I suppose the Japanese tourist in England would be similarly confounded by the full English breakfast! 

At 9am we went to the morning market along the riverside in central Takayama, most stalls sold vegetables and fruit, but some had handmade wooden carvings and folk crafts, lots of nice scary Oni masks but they were too expensive, although in retrospect, I wish I had bought one. Strangely, whilst we were looking out onto the river because at the shoals of wild koi karp, we were approached by a man from the NHK(!) who was filming a documentary about the swans on the lake!!! That was a fantastic experience. We took a bus from Takayama to the hida folk village, immediately you are hit by the natural musk of the hearth fires: the thatched cottages were centuries old but perfectly preserved due to the fires they kept lit inside the house, which prevented rotting, decay and insect infestation, and kept the thatch dry. Very clever! each cottage was filled with artefacts, we were free to wander for a while, it was very peaceful.

Afterwards, we took the shrine walking course around Takayama, each shrine had a massive bell that you could strike with a suspended log! The noise was very different to an English Church bell, I can't even describe it, it was a softer, deeper, richer tone, less metallic. We stumbled through the residential graveyards and up into the woods, where there was the ruins of a castle, and climbed a massive tree-covered hill with a fantastic blue view.  Coming down the other side of the hill we found a park with a small cafe, I ordered some toriniku and ice cold green tea. Was very intimidated by the Japanese-style toilets in the park! We walked back through the inner city and finally back to the hotel by 4pm, where we rested. At 6.30 there was a fantastic feast of sukiyaki downstairs in the minshuku.  Afterwards we all sat around the irori hearth and chatted, watched some Japanese television.

You know you've gone nocturnal when...

... you keep accidentally turning the lights on when you leave the room. Because you're so unaccustomed to daylight, that you think the lights are on, and habitually hit the switch when you leave the room.

I have never seen a movie twice until now! INCEPTION.  I saw it today and I really enjoyed it, and that in itself freaks me out because I usually hate Hollywood blockbusters with a passion, it is very very rare that I enjoy an action movie. I remember being dragged to the shakycam-fest that was The Bourne Ultimatum, I never knew 3 hours of gun fights and explosions could be so monotonous! Kinda walked into Inception expecting something similar but BOY WAS I PLEASANTLY SURPRISED! I went with Claire, Jim and Andy after a nice BBQ Weekend.

With regard to the cinematography, it was aesthetically very well constructed, it was beautifully shot, you've gotta give Nolan credit. I liked the long cityscapes, the expanses of architecture, I thought it was a nice visual motif: although they are real locations, the mind boggling scale and complexity makes real locations seem dream-like. They were really inventive with the shooting of it and that is very refreshing. I love it when you can't figure out how they filmed something: the zero-gravity fight scene in the hotel corridor. (Not when Arthur was fighting in a spinning corridor as the van was rolling, but after the van left the bridge, and he was floating in zero gravity) how did they film that?! I know it was probably using wires, but I still just can't understand how they got the actors to move like that. When they use wires you can still usually tell the direction of gravity from their movement, but he was in proper free fluid movement in three dimensions of movement, the movement wasn't restricted to one or two planes of motion as you'd expect with wirework, ah I don't know, they swore the production crew to secrecy! 

A lot of people fault the chemistry of the cast, but I thought the concept of the film took precedence over the characters, nevertheless the humour of the supporting characters was a nice touch, I hate an action film that takes itself too seriously. I liked the Yusuf, the Chemist's sneaky finger to the attacking projections as he pulled away in the van near the beginning.

Ah I want to go see it again! the night after you have really vivid near-lucid dreams, which I have never experienced before! Trying to drag my mum to it with little success at the moment :D hahaha