Now, now, subconscious, that wasn't very nice. Yesterday was a fairly good day, and when I went to bed, while waiting to be whisked off to never-never land, I diligently contemplated the next day's work. But I went on to dream that I didn't get any Ph.D funding and one of my lecturers at UKC was sexually abusing me. The only nice thing was that York University had turned into a lighthouse which looked nifty and was only five minutes' walk from the railway station.
My morning was quite productive, until I started searching the Internet for the answer to "Can you use a British laptop in Australia without it exploding?" I proceeded to get distracted at this site, drooling over all the countries I want to visit. That took a lot of saliva, I can tell you. Fully aware of the number of full-colour brochures for nearby lunatic asylums I will receive for saying this, I really really want to visit Afghanistan.
Just so you know, there is no history of terrorism in the British Antarctic Territory, but you should be aware of the risk of indiscriminate terrorist attacks in all countries of the world against civilian targets in public places. But does Antarctica have any public places?
Then, I felt inclined to find out more about The Faroe Islands, and wow!
Major Life Goal #55: Learn Faroese.
Major Life Goal #56: Move to Faroe Islands.
Major Life Goal #57: Get Iron Maiden to do a gig in The Faroe Islands.
This afternoon I learned about ray tracing (which is a simple way of detecting whether a point is in a polygon, for the one of you that might be interested). How happy was I! Now I get to use and spoonerise the phrase ray tracing in regular conversation!
In the evening, I went to see "Kill Bill" at York Student Lecture Theatre Cinema. I took the sensible precaution of arriving an hour and five minutes before it started to ensure I got a ticket, and then made notes on yesterday's incomprehensible lecture while I waited. Lecture theatres masquerading of cinemas definitely have their charms.
I really wish I hadn't seen the film though, because I liked it so much it'll be months before I can enjoy another film. Was it good? Who cares? It had a psychotic Japanese schoolgirl in it! I was tempted to stay for the next showing (yes, ha ha, they were having a double Kill Bill bill!) but I've got to make some efforts to be sane.
Bad things:
Today, I spent ages looking through the mail for residents of my college whose surnames begin with W-Z. Since about half the people in my college are Chinese and there's about a zillion Wans and Zhangs. Was the messed up industrial album (by a band reviewed in the demos section of Emo Hammer) I ordered randomly from the Internet among it? Nein.
Yesterday, I wrote to Australian supervisor man asking if I needed to learn any more programming languages for my placement. I asked this to appear professional and obliging, assuming he'd say no, four is quite enough. Sadly he said yes.
Aeons ago, mercenary Zed offered to mark first years' homework in exchange for postgraduate wages, as they are more than twice as much as I earned as an undergraduate teaching assistant. Today, I got an e-mail telling me I have four days in which to mark ninety five pieces of it.
