Well! Looks like I'll be spending May - August in Melbourne investigating seed dispersal then! Yaaaaaay!

Once again, bridge_troll hath appeared in my dreams. This time he had green skin.

I blame yesterday, which was filled with messed up imagery: the computer game "The 7th Guest" (all-out disturbing), many episodes of "Dragonball" (apart from a ridiculously short 500+-year-old-woman who flew around on a crystal ball, this vampire dude that produced beeped up otherworldly music when he danced, there was a tiny pink ghost! Wearing a sunhat! ARGH!!!), Bryn who was visiting for the weekend wearing my bright pink satin pyjamas and looking far too much like a member of Queen for comfort, and, while we're on the subject of classic rock, Harry Potter book 5, which contains a phrase along the lines of "before being swallowed by the darkness."


Tuesday 3 February 2004

Spent yesterday and today doing beeploads of work. Went to Creative Writing Society yesterday eve, and as always, I returned to my room filled with inspiration, and wrote a short story, v. different stylistically to everything I've ever written before.

This evening, after a week of failed attempts to find a vacant and functioning washing machine, I sneakily went to the laundry room (or "wash and dry energy station") while most people were having dinner. Mission accomplished. Yes!

Here is an insight into the minds of one of my classmates:

"I bought all vegetarian food this week. Not because I care about animals-" (despite being a Mathematics In The Living Environment student) "-but to force myself to do more interesting things with vegetables. Next week I might buy nothing but meat."


Wednesday 4 February 2004

Oh dear. Last night, I spent far too much time sending silly e-mail, so today I vowed not to touch the Internet until after 11pm. I did loads of Dutch, wrote to my supervisor-to-be in Australia, thought deeply about my future laptop ownership, and formulated two horrible equations.

But I also spent about two hours making two of my Sims rich enough to buy a hot tub and then made them lose their jobs so they could becoming professional gnome-makers instead. I did finally get to see my first (and second) gay Sim kiss though, so I suppose this activity wasn't wholly in vain.

But Scriptwriting Guild was v. dull. Last term, there were lots of Major Issues to discuss, such as "Is Henry sucking out everyone's memories, or just those of our hero?" and "What A Levels did our hero's corridor mates do?" This term's film poses no such problems though. I spent most of the session drawing an anarchy symbol and Miro-esque pictures on the desk with a chalky blackboard duster.

I'm tempted to stop going, since my boredom rendered me too depressed to do anything afterwards other than read the earliest entries of some friends' livejournals, the ones they made before we friended each other. (Why has "friended" become a valid enough verb, when "befriended" serves the same purpose?) This isn't a bad activity as such - it's very enjoyable and it helps me get to know people better - but timing, Zed, timing. I have to read a paper by tomorrow and be able to disagree with it, and I have Much Other Work. When will I ever learn? I like working, I'm just regularly too distracted or distraught to do any.

Everyone agrees I'm too hard on myself. I just found out I got 95% for one of last term's modules (70% being distinction territory), so I must be doing something right. But I have to be. I have big goals (like getting Iron Maiden to play Darwin Dining Hall? You don't say!) and I've been having nightmares every night for months now. I haven't been recording them, but last night I dreamed I was lost in Essex (Britain's Chavviest County), which doesn't reflect well on my mental well-being. And they make it really hard to get up in the morning.

But I'll be good tomorrow. Not that I have much choice in the matter, since I have six hours of lectures (five of them all in a row) and I have to write a two-page report on "what we've done in our group project so far", which will be hard, since all we've done is make some pretty spreadsheets and graphs.

Ah well, life is not all is bad. Australian dude has just offered to pay for my travel insurance and sent me an outline of my placement which looks less scary than I thought it would be. The inlay card of the album I'm listening to smells lovely, just like the pages of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" used to smell. And the paper of dume's about applying the poisson process to fish!

(I acknowledge that the delight induced by this will be entirely lost on anyone who hasn't done A Level Maths (or the equivalent) and some French, but trust me, nothing could be better.)