110 posts tagged “rants”

Can't concentrate. Tired. Why tired? Had sleep. Had plenty of sleep.

Turns out my room faces east. At 8am the sun's rays shine directly onto my face; a delightful natural alarm clock. Love it. Will be great at the weekend.

It's three weeks into term and I haven't gone swimming as I'd planned yet. Tsk.

Tired. So tired. Why? Didn't do… I am repeating myself.

Had a lecture by Joseph Nye earlier this morning. Interesting, but lost concentration halfway through. One hour later and I'm losing it in an economics lecture. In the best of times I can barely make it through an economics lecture without nodding off.

Pity.

So much wrong with my head.

A quick talk with fellow students reveals what I'd been dreading: that my standards are horrendously low. Horrifying; I was satisfied with 60s and 62s on my essays; others consider those scores to be the nadir of their academic career. It would seem that I have some catching up to do. Same tutor, mind you, so at least the measurement is consistent, if depressing.

Some work to do.

Longish day today; things to do. Alan Rickman coming to the Union? Okay, but I'm not really that interested. If that bug-eyed guy who played Mister Pink in Reservoir Dogs came, maybe I'd give a hoot.

I will spend a while sorting out my calendar for the rest of term. And figure out a way to drag myself from bed to go swimming in the morning. Gaah.

Sleeping on time is an indelible ingredient. Perhaps if I got everything ready the night before, so I could just get up, grab a bag and throw on a shirt and go, rather than actually have to stumble around half asleep getting the stuff I need, it might be easier…

Right now: still tired.

Expectations are important. My expectations of myself, if I were to be brutally honest, are very low. I am capable of more; I have done it before. The problem is, expecting little, I produce little; there is no pressure, no motivation to produce more than I have to. How can I raise those expectations so I drive myself to give more? Questions, questions.

I mean, I'm as good as any of the blowhards around me. Why, then, am I performing so frickin' badly? All things being equal, it is therefore likely to be a problem with the most overt variable: myself.

Visited Windsor Castle today, as symbolic of the anachronism that is the British monarchy. They are rich; more than the usual rich, of course. And privileged. A rather convincing argument for egalitarianism as an ideology; such privilege! Nevertheless, there was much of interest in the palace; many paintings, and a lot of history. As much as I find the excess and privilege displayed by the monarchy distasteful, they are an undeniable part of history, and there is much that can be learned from a quick traipse through their quarters.

I have doubts about the endurance of the monarchy as an institute. There is much respect for the current Queen, but her heir has a decidely smaller reservoir of goodwill. And the rest of the family's mostly tabloid fodder. Still, as a source of foreign exchange in the form of tourism for the UK, the royal family does have its uses.

So, I have an essay due in about 8 hours, and 3 lectures in that time - which translates to 4 hours of time, give and take a few minutes. I definitely shouldn't skip the lectures, but those 4 hours would probably be very useful and make the difference between me being extremely stressed and me being highly stressed.

Mmm. Decisions, decisions.

(It's the first week and already I can see my term being flushed unceremoniously down the proverbial drain.)  

Today is the last day of the year. It would seem that this is as good a time as any, being an artibrary day in the year, to reflect on the year; it is after all the last day of what seem to be artirary divisions in time, which is itself understood by most of the world to follow a form of calendar which is completely meaningless anywhere off-planet. In short, I'm going to write the customary year-end reflection.
Every year, I do something like this. Most years - at least the years which I bothered noticing - I was playing a video game to usher in the new year. The only game I remember actually playing is SimCity 2000, way back when I was in middle school, probably around 2002.
What was notable about this year? I finished my first year in college sometime in mid-June - by the skin of my teeth, yes, but I finished it - and travelled without my family for the first time ever (and survived!) I almost got a girlfriend, or at least I think so; looking at it another way, I was as close as hyperspace travel is to reality. I had my first paying job, though it was just an internship (and I think I was rubbish at it, but at least I know that).
That's pretty much it. How have I changed? I'm very much the same person I was at the start of the year - possibly a little less optimistic and a little more wary, but the same person nonetheless. The question brings up interesting issues about personal identity, but that's not what I'm going to be writing about here.
I've felt a little blasé about everything since the near-misses in the middle part of the year, taking everything as they've come without too much complaint either way. My priorities seem to have been warped a little - a lot of the time I find myself seeking as much short-term gratification as possible with little regard for long-term consequences. My hedonism-mode switch has been permanently soldered to an "on" position. It's terrible for my health and any kind of long-term thoughts I might be having, but I (obviously) can't help myself. The question is whether I'm ever going to snap out of it - if I do it will have to be soon. Something to think about on the way to London later.
Random meeting with a cute British-Hongkonger whose face is a bit strange and yet possesses vast amounts of cuteness while queueing to get cheap tickets for Ian McKellan's King Lear a few days ago. She's so cute she makes blood spurt from my ears. Ooh. She's got a bit of an odd name, too - named after the hospital she was born in, some saint I've never heard of. Oh, well, better a crush on some faraway chick I'll never meet again than the troublesome type which come with crushes on nearby people.
I also watched Avenue Q on Boxing Day. It's lovely - classic quotables from the play include, "Grab your dick and double-click!" and the Bad Idea Bears. Hehh.
That's all for now, I've gotta sleep.

19/12/07 17:13

On the bus to London, and this definitely isn't the usual route they take. It's actually through one of those little towns, like the Singapore-Penang route used to be.

19/12/07 19:20

Now in the Starbucks outside the Tottenham Court Road Station, 07876 1nd it's bloody bloody annoying.
Can't believe they took 1.5 hours to get from the bloody town (was it Wycombe?) to here! Heard someone mention on the bus that they'd closed the M40, which was why we were taking that horrible little detour. God. Normally it's a pleasant enough ride but this time it was gruelling. I'm not really looking forward to the return journey one bit.
Mmm peppermint latte.  I wonder - maybe I'll visit the Starbucks in town a little more! Yes, I'm really buying into the whole writer-grabs-a-cup-of-coffee and goes-to-a-coffee-shop thing. Maybe I'll get some peppermint flavouring for my coffee at home, it'd be way cheaper that way. Or something. The library's a nice place; on the other hand you can't bring coffees into...

20/12/07 0:32
It's been a relatively quick ride back into Oxford from London, as smooth as it gets really. Good thing. I'll be seeing another friend tomorrow though I don't think she's really a friend unless one's definition of friend is unjustifiably broad. It's more of a I-don't-actually-know-who-she-is thing. :p Weird eh? Seems most of my friends are like that.
Hurhur. Oh, and the play - "The Mousetrap", by Agatha Christie - was actually good. It's literally a minefield of  murder-mystery clichés, but you can't accuse it of that because it's really one of the originals, the one which blazed a now-very-trodden trail. Nice twist too. Don't wikipedia the play if you ever intend to watch it, but if you're a fan of murder mysteries in general and are located in the UK I'd recommend it. Also, go for the TKTS offer; I went on a Wednesday evening and it was maybe 40-60% full. Shouldn't be a problem getting discounted tickets. I suppose after 56 years and 22000 performances, it's getting a little tired. Anything would, really.
The second-hand Dana I bought from eBay has worked a treat so far. Most of the use I've gotten from it is on the bus rides to and from London, but it's worked as well as one would hope. Granted, there are plenty of design adjustments I'd stick in if I had the chance - for example, you can't even choose a default font on the included word processor, and it seems to switch on by itself quite regularly because you can't lock the keyboard and the on/off key keeps getting pressed when it's stashed in a bag - but I think ultimately, as a way to extend my productivity from beyond my room, it's probably going to work reasonably well.
I still hate Parcelforce, however, and I'd voodoo them to death if I had the opportunity.
My stop's coming up, and I've gotta go.

20/12/07 1:38
I lost my phone - LEFT IT ON THE BUS. My day has suddenly gotten much, much worse.

So I ordered one of these little babies (AlphaSmart Dana) because I don't like lugging a £1000 laptop around in public and it's got pretty good reviews from its users, etc. Also I can't be distracted by random web tidbits while using it because it's not a full-fledged web-capable machine. I got mine for what I thought was a reasonable price on eBay. (Turns out it was reasonable, but I have a sinking feeling that the vile tax regime that is the British Customs Office is going to do its best to make it as unreasonable as it can.) In any case, that was about a fortnight ago.

The seller sent it via USPS, which said it'd take about 5-6 working days. Fine. I asked for it because it was a balance between mortgaging my house and waiting until Doomsday for the parcel. It's two weeks later, and after eagerly following developments on the USPS website ("left Chicago O'Hare International Airport" - it provides play-by-play accounts of the parcel's movements!), it suddenly stalls. Guess where? Yep, British Customs. Lovely.

I don't know what they do there - maybe drink tea and eat scones and flounce around with their union rules all up in the air. How can it take 6 bloody days - fine, 4 working days, but still! - to decide how much tax they want to levy on the damned thing? Use a calculator and a bleeding marker pen for Chrissakes. You know, one of those things with buttons that can fantamagically do math for you? Bloody hell, it's just a bleeding PDA, it's not a @£$ dirty bomb.

(Please don't kill me, scary Homeland Security-type people, it's just a hypothetical example and I don't even look faintly Arabic/ Muslim/ whatever it is you Brits shoot these days without checking to see if they're really dangerous.)

It has to be the Customs people because I've ordered other things from overseas into the UK before which came really quickly - but all of those items were valued below the tax-liable level (around £40 or £50), so Customs didn't mess around with those. What is wrong with them anyway? A bit too much clotted cream with your scones, dearies?

I think the biggest gripe I have is that it's a simple job and should have been easily done and my parcel - which I'm really looking forward to getting, by the way - should have been here by now, if not earlier. SOMEONE'S not doing their job and I hope something nasty happens to them soon! Maybe an attack by a rabid hamster or perhaps they could choke on a particularly nastily-shaped fishbone. Then maybe I'd get my parcel.

What am I doing here? I spend inordinate amounts of time simply avoiding what needs to be done. This is quite disgusting and leads to stressful situations every Tuesday evening when I rush to get my essays done so I can submit them on time the next day, even though I actually have 5-6 whole days (usually) to finish them.

And then there are the people who study here - these people are so incredibly talented and motivated that I really have no idea what I'm doing here. I'm intelligent but I'm as lazy as hell and don't particularly care what happens really. It does seem a bit of a waste of this God-given intelligence to not want to do anything with it, but it takes so much effort and time to make something of it that it doesn't seem worth it. But I'm already in deep - think £30000 deep - so there's no real going back unless I decide to prove to everyone that I'm a heartless, selfish, worthless asshole. (Which I am. I just haven't proven it yet.)

In any case I have about 13 hours to get two essays out (well, more or less), and I've done about 20% of the total reading needed, so basically I'm doing what I do every week. Why in the world do I keep fucking myself over like this? It also provides a justification for myself to not leave my room, so "I can do my work". RUBBISH. If I managed my time properly I'd be able to do as much as everyone else is doing. Perhaps THAT'S WHY I'M NOT DOING ANYTHING! BECAUSE I'M TOO AFRAID TO DO THEM! I think my subconscious is screwing me over so I don't have to face the prospect of failure at all. If I don't do anything it'll be impossible for me to fail. Sure, there's the flip side of the coin, where if I don't do anything it'll also be impossible for me to succeed; but I don't think logic's really playing much of a role here. It's FEAR, dammit.

Now, how do I get rid of that fear? How can I make myself get out there and make something out of me? It's not too late, not by far, but it will be soon if I keep sitting here on my ass DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

So I gotta do something. When this essay cycle is over - that'd be Thursday evening - I'm going to go AND DO STUFF. The first thing would be to go for that salsa class on Thursday. I couldn't dance worth a damn the last time I went, but I've already paid £10 and at least I have a small chance of improving if I DO go as opposed to the ABSOLUTELY ZERO CHANCE if I don't!

And then we'll take it from there. The term's only half over! That leaves another five half-terms (and two vacations) where I can get STUFF DONE.

(It would probably help if I knew what I wanted me to get done.)

Home is where the heart is, it is said. A metaphorical heart.

An interesting symbol, the heart. It has so many uses that it is, as a symbol, tired and worn out. What does it mean when a person uses the heart as a symbol? Laziness, among other things. Too exhausted, perhaps, to make up their own symbols. The heart is to symbols what Hallmark is to greeting cards; artificial, fake, and meaningless. And convenient, of course.

It is forgotten, sometimes, that the heart is bloody, and prone to malfunction - no heart has ever lasted more than 200 years. There are other things, as well; there is so much that can go wrong with it. It can be clogged with fat, it can seize up, it can break. Why attach so much romanticism to such a flawed symbol?

War is a far more interesting symbol. There are so many things one can do with war; one can fight it, lose it, be engulfed in it. One can drown in it, wage it, have a Pyhrric version of it. History tells of countless wars; it is, alongside love, the other quintessential human activity, but the far more interesting one. There is a relentless directness about war which is greatly appealing. Unfortunately, it is also very convenient, and very much overused by the fourth estate. When people start waging war against silly things, like Facebook alterations, it is cheapened.

Anything is cheapened if it is too easily got. That is often overlooked; some marketers err, believing that giving away their samples free increase their market share. On the contrary, if their wares are priced at a premium, people clamour for them, thinking their prices indicate quality. Both a sign of man's ingenuity - and man's foolishness. Paradoxical? Not really. As long as there is a room with at least two people in it, there will be a fool within.

School uniforms are interesting. Oxford's is perhaps one of the more historical, and there is an odd solidarity one feels when crammed in a room with three hundred other black-and-white-clad students, each armed with a single white flower. It practically bursts with symbolism. Some traditions should be kept.

Ray Charles was a genius. His voice is so incredibly sincere, for lack of a better word. It resonates with emotion, with soul, with sincerity; one almost thinks that he is singing for the listener, personally. Except, sadly, that he's dead.

In the long run, we are all dead. And nothing matters, really. Wherein lies meaning, in dust?

What day it? It is the last day of the last week of the last term of the current academic year in Oxford. It would normally be a good time for reflection, I think, but this year is special. I will be sitting for my first examination in 3.5 years. And I have not prepared well for it; my tutor's remarks for the term, in fact, are, while exceedingly polite, undeniably negative.

Wabbit's essays have shown some improvement... However, he is still very quiet indeed during tutorials and so it is difficult to work out where his interests lie.

I don't think there'll be a problem with passing prelims, but I hope that next year he can show some more interest in his studies, evidenced both in more engagement in tutorials and longer and better essays.

Ouch. Here's the other one.

Wabbit has continued to work solidly this term. He is often rather quiet and I'm not sure how interested he is in philosophy. But he understands the basic material, and should do fine in Prelims.

That was... iffy, I think. The first one was quite pointed. Ah, well. The only thing I can offer up by means of explanation is that I was distracted. By a girl. No, it's not an excuse, and excuses are moot at this point. It's also a thoroughly discreditable sort of excuse, if it were one; I wouldn't mind if I'd been saving lives in Darfur or finding the One True God in a dank cave in the Amazon, but no, I was being hedonistic, indulgent and very, very silly. The exam will tell all, and quite embarrassingly. I wonder if it's not too late to ask the university not to publish my results publicly? Ah, well, I should have taken that into consideration before not studying hard for it.

I wonder if perhaps I'm not cut out for it? This is a question I asked myself before I came here, and after a year here I'm not sure about the answer - or perhaps I am, but I'm not willing to accept that the answer may be that I'm not. What if another girl happens along in March 2009? Am I going to throw my studies and my sanity aside in another mindless pursuit?

Knowing that I am in the company of many otherwise esteemed and dignified men in throwing it all away after the pursuit of a femme fatale is no comfort; after all, these men were already esteemed and dignified, and I have nothing to my name. No examples, no; it would improve this entry immeasurably, but I am lazy. Of course.

Two more days, and I will be done with 66% of my exams for the next two years. Two more days. They stretch out as a long desert road, lined with perils and paved with interminability. There are doubts, of course. There are always doubts.

They say it is difficult to fail the course. The last time I heard that was when I was in the army, and that is a very... different organisation from Oxford, or at least, I hope so. 

She wrote me, again, finally. I am having the slightest bit of trouble letting go, of course. Distancing myself helps, as does forgetting, slowly, what she looked like, how she sounded, how she smelled. Time eats away at memory. Usually, it'd be sad; but I find it is imperative that time does its work quickly, in this instance.
I am utterly bereft of inspiration.

Spent the last 6 hours just playing a couple of silly games - Tradewinds was one of them. Admittedly it's fun, but it's pretty mindless after a while... What am I doing? This self-destructive behaviour is not out of character, but it's definitely stupid.

Today will be different: or it will, once I'm awake. 8 days and the exams begin. That is... sobering. In 10 days I will have left Oxford behind for the summer; and I am glad.

Moving on gets easier and more plausible each day. I should take notes so I can avoid the same pitfalls that plague me every time a pretty girl happens along - to avoid forming habits of thought which become so very difficult to get out of. Like wheels which, spinning in place, have formed ruts in the muddy ground, which stick and suck. And you can't move.

Silliness. Silliness.

You know, you'd like to think that you're both in all this pain, but really, they're just, Hey, I'm glad you're gone.
- Jesse, Before Sunrise

I didn't just like to think it; I actually thought it, for a while, when I was starting off, probably until I was 18. It was inconceivable that such depths of passion and feeling within me could not be felt and returned by the other. But that they are not felt or reciprocated are patently clear to me now. Jesse's words are the truth - the hard, painful truth, but there they are. Now, for example - she decided that it was a bad idea, and that was that. And I'm left there, heart in hands, with no-one standing there where she was a moment ago.

Cue the camera zooming away, leaving a long, desloate, bleak landscape, with a single solitary figure in the centre of the barren screen, hunched over, a posture that screams for mercy and/or deliverance.

It's things like these that harden peoples' hearts.

To sleep. When I wake up I will be better.