The trick to finding long t-shirts:

Buy men's t-shirts! Still tight-fitting or however you please and they actually cover the midriff! (I found a jumper too... the joy of shopping in the sales.)

I've realised that recently my posts have deteriorated. Or, at least, I think they have. Not necessarily the frequency of posts, as that was never a regular thing and I think I probably still have the same spurts of blogging that last for a week or a month, or however long they last (I don't particularly like statistics and have never analysed my blogging frequency, but rather have merely commented on long absences or the like). Rather, I think the quality of my posts has reduced somewhat: both content and style. I'm not completely convinced for a few reasons: (i) I was thinking about this immediately before I dropped off to sleep at some strange hour this morning and so I was not necessarily in the best frame of mind to consider such things; (ii) I used to ramble in my posts to a ridiculous length (I was going to say for a ridiculous amount of time, and then realised that it is space, not time on a webpage); and (iii) surely my writing must have improved after over a year of blogging? Perhaps I've relaxed more into the habit and style...

Anyway, those were my thoughts for a few moments at some point over this festive season.
Felicitations to you all, whatever you celebrate, even if you aren't doing so at the moment.

Home

Came home on Sunday... they locked the front door to our flat before I had taken all my stuff out! So I went and hunted out the key to retrieve the last few bits 'n' pieces. :) Other shenanigans also happened including people locking their car keys inside their car and then driving off with other people's car keys... not wise things to do.

My birthday tomorrow!

Hmm... what else is there to say?

So. Simon was here Monday to Wednesday eeeeeeeeeeeeee :D Was lovely to be with him again after six long weeks (why do we commit to so much stuff and make ourselves too busy to see each other for an age? Why?)... we didn't do overly interesting stuff, apart from seeing Narnia, which neither of us were very impressed with. I personally didn't find it magical and sparkly enough (it's a children's fantasy story and just wasn't... that fantastic. We also went to the market and I (somewhat amazingly... I still don't quite believe it) managed to look through the entire book sale and not buy anything. First time, I believe. Normally to stop myself spending I have to avoid looking in the first place. (I have some self restraint!)

Annoyingly on Monday, our seminar tutor hadn't yet marked our essays (mine was on Endgame: it was either that or some rap/hip hop/popular culture lyrics by Naz... I preferred the Beckett somewhat) and so we now have to go tomorrow afternoon to collect them... grargh.

Tuesday brought some good calculus test results from our mid-semester test (worth 20% of the unit), which made my day a bit brighter, although it was already rather bright what with Simon being here.

And tomorrow? Well, I'm going to my flatmate's cousin's for Shabbat, since absolutely no-one is in Hillel for Shabbat (most have gone home: term ends tomorrow) and it's a bit of a scary place to be in on your own, since it was broken into last week. (I forgot to blog that, didn't I? We had a brick through a window for an attempted burglary the night after someone had tried to climb through the same person's window which had been open.) It's pretty empty here already, but as I've already mentioned I've an essay to collect tomorrow afternoon, never mind the lecture in the morning.

Home on Sunday!

Exams grargh

So I have three exams in January, which I knew already. And there are two weeks in the examination period. Fine. All my exams are in the first week. Fine. Good, even, since I then get a full week off afterwards. But two exams on the same day? Grargh. Four and a half hours of writing... and I'll be tired by the afternoon exam (which is an English one where I have to write properly and coherently) from the morning one (a maths exam). Although at least the maths one won't tire me out as much as the English one would have, had that been first. Meh. Mrrrraaarrgghh.

Ah, democracy.

MJS (Manchester Jewish Students) committee elections this evening, running an hour over expected time, which I expected given JMT (Jewish Mean Time). Somehow it takes 3 hours to elect 9 positions.. or something absurd like that.

Event of yesterday morning: falling down tiled stairs.
Result: bruising (and hopefully nothing more serious).

Why???
Damn water fights the night before. Although the stairs had dried by the time I went down them, I reckon the water had made them more slippery due to all the dirt and grime having been washed off in the course of the fight. Hm.

Eventful Shabbat, shall we say.

Woo! No more essays due until after the winter break. :D

Snow!!!

It's been snowing for most of the day! It settled to start with, and then turned to mush. :( I tried to take a photo of the snow falling in big fat flakes and looking really pretty, but the snow didn't show up in the photos... damn mobile that's unable to spot such detail. (On a similar subject, the other day it was really foggy so I tried to take a photo, but the fog didn't show up either. Something about weather not showing up in photos. ;))

In other news, I got back my first English essay of the year today (which counts towards passing the unit and year) and I got a strong 2;1, which I'm happy with. :)

Rock Trial went well and was good fun. :) The last night after-after-show party was good too, with cheesy music crazy fun... the only problem was the small amount of sleep that morning, especially with wind orchestra recording on Sunday afternoon, followed by the JSoc ball last night, which was also really fun.

Yay! Power!

My new laptop power pack arrived this morning! :D Naomi is muchly happy. And tired from writing her medieval essay (which she did using her flatmate's laptop mainly... thank you Natalie :)). If you didn't know it was missing, that's possibly because I couldn't blog when I had no power. Plus the internet here has been down since last night and has been restored in the last hour or so... so yayness all round. :) Happy and tired Naomi. :) *yawns*

Lower frequency in posts...

...due to malfunctioning of my laptop power pack, and so limited battery. Procrastination is therefore not through a computer (and so lessened... which is good for my work, at least) and time on internet is also limited. I'm currently on Adam's computer typing up my mammoth medieval essay on The Dream of the Rood about symbolism of the cross and why it's important to the Christian... funfunfun.

*must not procrastinate*

Woohoo!

Essay finished and handed in! :D Only two more to go before the winter break!

One test down, one to go!

WorkWorkWork

I've realised I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks, but well, the title kind of gives away the reason.. that and procrastination and not too much exciting stuff happening. Ah well.

Everyone come!

Silly tutorial group

Right, so for one of my modules, we have to submit comments on to an online discussion board, and our comments are assessed and it all goes towards our mark for the unit. So we're supposed to have an online discussion on the internet about various literature.. Except the rest of my group seem to be either computer illiterate (which I highly doubt), have no views on literature or very shy. Or perhaps lazy. Admittedly I only post about a day before we meet, but still, at least I post! And the main reason I haven't before that so far is due to Jewish festivals taking up so many days when I can't use the computer etc. And also the lack of discussion on there, and so the absence of anything to further discuss after one post. Meh.

I was bored

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey
Name:	Naomi
Birthday:	21 December 1986
Birthplace:	Kenton
Current Location:	Manchester
Eye Color:	Blue
Hair Color:	Blonde
Height:	Not sure. Around 5'4"/5'5"
Right Handed or Left Handed:	Righty.
Your Heritage:	Umm my parents, duh.
The Shoes You Wore Today:	Flat black ones most of the time, trainers the rest.
Your Weakness:	Pedantry.
Your Fears:	Being unhappy for a long time.
Your Perfect Pizza:	Oooooo good question. Loads and loads of cheese, lots and lots of vegetables, and you mustn't forget the artichokes.
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year:	Being happy?
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger:	okies or indeedy.
Thoughts First Waking Up:	What's the time?
Your Best Physical Feature:	My upper body, blonde hair and permanent smile. :)
Your Bedtime:	Variable.. often after midnight, sometimes 11.
Your Most Missed Memory:	If I miss it how do I know what it is?
Pepsi or Coke:	Coke. But it better be diet.
MacDonalds or Burger King:	Neither.. ranching, deforestation, globalisation grargghh meh mrrrrrhhh
Single or Group Dates:	Single
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea:	What's Nestea?
Chocolate or Vanilla:	Vanilla.
Cappuccino or Coffee:	Coffee, more to drink that way.
Do you Smoke:	No.
Do you Swear:	People normally say "that's the first time I've heard you swear" when I swear.
Do you Sing:	Yes.
Do you Shower Daily:	Yes.
Have you Been in Love:	I am.
Do you want to go to College:	I am at uni... does that count?
Do you want to get Married:	Yes.
Do you belive in yourself:	Yes.
Do you get Motion Sickness:	No.
Do you think you are Attractive:	Not overly. I don't see myself as majorly ugly though either.
Are you a Health Freak:	Not really, although I do love vegetables.
Do you get along with your Parents:	Yes.
Do you like Thunderstorms:	Yes.
Do you play an Instrument:	Yes, clarinet (and most woodwinds amateurly..)
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol:	I have drunk alcohol, yes.
In the past month have you Smoked:	No.
In the past month have you been on Drugs:	No.
In the past month have you gone on a Date:	Yes.
In the past month have you gone to a Mall:	Yes, a shopping centre.
What Do You Enjoy:	Being happy... too much to list individually.
In the past month have you eaten Sushi:	No.
In the past month have you been on Stage:	No.
In the past month have you been Dumped:	No.
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping:	No.
In the past month have you Stolen Anything:	No.
Ever been Drunk:	Tipsy, yes. Drunk, no.
Ever been called a Tease:	No.
Ever been Beaten up:	No.
How do you want to Die:	I don't think of such things, but preferably happily.
What do you want to be when you Grow Up:	Don't know yet.
What country would you most like to Visit:	Australia or somewhere in Africa.
In a Boy..
Favourite Eye Color:	Anything worth looking into.
Favourite Hair Color:	Not blonde.
Short or Long Hair:	Short.
Height:	Taller than me.
Weight:	Not too much less than me.
Best Clothing Style:	Something that suits them.
Number of Drugs I have taken:	None.
Number of CDs I own:	Lots (although according to many not enough)
Number of Piercings:	None.
Number of Tattoos:	None.
Number of things in my Past I Regret:	Umm.. never really counted.

I feel like I haven't blogged for ages, and yet I haven't had anything majorly blog-inspiring happen to me, so I haven't blogged. But I have intended to, I just haven't had the inspiration!

We've been set all of our English assessment essays.. and the first one, due in in November is on 'The Whitsun Weddings' by Larkin, which has made me ever so slightly rather happy. ;) One of the other essays is a choice between the opening of 'Endgame' and some rap lyrics.. I do find it funny how we study hip hop and rap this year.

On Saturday night some of us went bowling, and I managed to come third in my lane! Even if we did have bumpers... (oh and there were five in a lane)

Hmm.. I think I should get back to the worky work attitude, although I do love to procrastinate. ;)

Caught up!

Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) meant I missed two and half days of lectures and things, which I've now finished copying up notes from! Hoping I understand the maths and it looks like the English lecture was just talking about "medieval" films and from the seminar today as well as the notes doesn't seem like I missed too much.

Was down in London for Rosh Hashana, and it was nice to be back home for a bit. :) At the same time, it was nice returning up here too. Despite having only been here for a couple of weeks, most of us still missed the place for the couple of days we were all away (everyone went away for the new year).

Free concert!

I went to the Manchester University introductory concert this evening; Bernstein's Overture Candide, Ives' Tone Road No1, Mendelssohn's Symhony No4 and Britten's St Nicholas. The best thing was.. it was free! Good orchestras, although they did sound like they were a bit rusty.. I thought the winds were slightly out with each other (and obviously therefore at least a few were out with the orchestra) and the person I went with thought that the strings weren't getting all their notes. The second half (the Britten) was very well done, with excellent and beautiful music.

Home tomorrow afternoon for Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year).. after three hours of lectures and seminars.

Heat! Hot water!

Yay they've fixed the heating and hot water in our flat! :D Our radiators are now fully functioning and we actually can get hot water out of the hot taps (before the only place to find hot water was out of the shower..) so there is a slightly warmer outlook for the winter. :) And more hygienic for that matter too..

Went to MUGSS (Gilbert and Sullivan society) last night, which was fun.. We're doing two productions this year: Rock Trial (a modern version of Trial by Jury) in November and a modernised Utopia in March. Fun! After last night's rehearsal, after Harry's Bar, we went to the Fab Cafe, which is a really funky and groovy bar. It has a dalek! And Betty Boop on the TV screens! And Tin Tin on the walls! And Doctor Who stuff! And the original style space invaders! (Okay, I think you get the picture.. the exclamations could go on for a while.) Down side (part of an up side though) was that I came back stinking of smoke from the smoke machine.

Book sale!

Woooo! There was a second hand and new book sale in the building that I had my lecture in today so I went book shopping! Squeeeeeeeee. Oh I am such a sucker for book sales. I spent £7.50 on three books: some Ibsen, some Stoppard and some Armitage. Yay! :)

My room stinks of smoke

And so does all the stuff that isn't in a cupboard or drawer. Grrrrrrr.

The story: one of my flatmates decided it would be really nice to have a chocolate evening here, and her plan was to melt chocolate and then we could dip fruit in it and everything would be lovely, fine and dandy. (The next is all what others have told me and I can guess, as I was actually out throughout the whole of the next bit at wind orchestra.) So my flatmate breaks up the chocolate, puts it in bowls and bungs it in the microwave. And then (I've no idea how long it was left, but any sensible person knows you should check it every 30 seconds or so anyway) there was loads of smoke billowing out of the kitchen (which I omitted mentioning is adjoining to my bedroom, and no others) and out the windows and she called the fire brigade and a whole load of fire alarms went off. Anyhow, the main result is that my room is basically the only one really affected, with most of my clothes stinking of smoke and nearly everything else that was out (I haven't checked stuff in drawers). Humph.

Textbooks

So, I went and bought my maths textbooks today, and boy am I glad that my hall is close to the bookshop. One was really huge, really heavy and really expensive, the other was half the price and didn't even approach a similar size or weight. That's a lot of money for two textbooks, but at least Manchester's School of Mathematics is kind and gives book tokens to those who get AAB (and lots of money to those who get straight As, but that ain't me).

Moment of randonimity: I have decided that fizzy mango stuff is not the way to go. Still mango juice is incredibly yummy though.

Back to normality (if there is such a thing for me..)
Lectures properly started today (I had a couple of introductory maths ones on Friday), with an English lecture and a tutorial for the lecture, and two maths lectures, one for each of the modules. One thing's for sure, I'm glad I did further maths, even if it was only to AS. It's sooooo useful and means that all the would-be confusing stuff doesn't fly whoooosh straight over my head like it has been for quite a few. I suppose we have textbooks to help us along now though. Nice heavy ones. ;) Good thing with my English units: part of our assessment is through what they call WebCT, which is basically an online discussion board/forum thing.. anyone who knows what I'm like and how I get addicted to those will know why I say it's a good thing. Only bad thing is that I seem to be unable to log on at the moment. Doh.

Strange

I was just finishing my lunch today when I received a phonecall from Ms Fink (English teacher from school last year) telling me how the exam board (EdExcel) want to use my English coursework from last year as a model for something or other and they need me to sign a form.. well of course when I'm in Manchester I'm not going to be going past HBS (in London for those who don't know) at any point this week, so she's posting me the stuff. Strange and random phonecall all the same.

Freshers' fair today (everywhere seems to have the apostrophe before the 's', but to me it seems mad, given the fact that the fair is for more than one fresher etc etc), and I picked up a whole load of freebies, including cinema tickets, whistles and food, including food I can't eat but ah well.

I'm in Manchester!

If you want my address in order to send me funky post, postcards or just a random letter, then please email or phone me (my mobile number didn't change in the end) and I will give it to you. For obvious reasons, I'm not posting it here.

So, for the time being I have a double room to myself, which is good as I have lots of space (too much storage space to be honest), the nicer furnishings and the kitchen attached to the room. However, everyone in my flat (two other people at the moment) have keys to my room in order to get to the kitchen. No worries at the moment though.

Registered today, meeting some nice maths people and getting my uni card with a cheesy grin style photo of me on it. Grabbed some freebies, more to follow I'm sure.

My timetable seems to give me nearly every afternoon free, which is rather nice, except at the moment I haven't got the times for my English stuff, or at least one of the lectures was written on my timetable as 'tba', so I'm going to find that out tomorrow.

Anyway, off to get ready to go out etc and meet some other people now...

Gosh, I'm tired.

Very tired. And yes, I realise that very doesn't really quantify how tired I am.

Yay books

My books from amazon arrived today. :) WHSmith are rather useless and despite the book being "in stock" and supposedly only taking 2-4 days to arrive to my local store, I ordered it over a week ago and it should be arriving in store on Friday. Lucky I've read the play I need to read before, eh?

Met my grandparents and sister for lunch today; my grandparents gave me a big bag of food and stuff to "start you off" at uni.

This afternoon has been spent drinking lots of liquid (it's hot, or at least, I have a headache), collecting books to take up to Manchester and decorating the Tribe bag I got free at the weekend. Woo for dolphins and fish and fabric paints. :D

copy copy copy

So, I'm sitting on the floor of the lounge copying all of my dad's CDs onto the laptop I'm taking to university- to be honest, I've been meaning to copy these CDs for ages and haven't got round to it. I think copyright-wise I'm alright, as I'm not profiting out of the music in any way (monetary-wise anyway) and it's all for personal use, so all should be good. After that, I'm going to finish copying all my previously bought music from the PC over to the laptop. All copying fun. Woo.

Put some stuff into crates this morning. New phone arrived too, number hopefully not changing, will keep you posted (although if it does change, I won't post the number, for obvious reasons). This top arrived this morning, having ordered it the other day. The pink is slightly different, less bright I think, to how it appears in the picture. Still awaiting book deliveries, although I have now read everything on my reading list. Although Manchester's English faculty haven't put up any of the compulsory joint honours units, I know the titles of them and used that. I'm just hoping that all the times up on various bits of the site aren't all correct, since I'll then have two compulsory lectures at the same time for different subjects, which would be a bit difficult. Hm.

Last night it was Kajal's birthday celebration. A little early, for my sake I think, since I'm one of the first of my school friends to be starting university, and I'm going out of London too. We went to Pizza Express. Rather funny series of events. Kajal booked for 20 of us, and then lots of people couldn't come, and there were only seven. So instead of being upstairs and being able to make lots of noise, etc they made us come downstairs, which we didn't mind overly apart from the fact that there was actually a really nice seven seater round table upstairs and they had no such thing downstairs. So we went downstairs, like they asked. Being a group of teenage girls, we were bound to be noisy, especially since it was a birthday. And yet the waiter decided to come over and ask us if we could be a bit quieter.. and then told us not too quiet as they still wanted to have some atmosphere! It's not like we were their sound machine or anything! If they wanted ambient chatter for their restaurant they should invest in such a CD or some such thing.. if it exists. If it doesn't, shotgun it's my idea. And then, to top off the whole evening, despite having written in their booking that it was an 18th BIRTHDAY, they still managed to not put a candle in Kaj's dessert. I thought that was terrible. I mean, come on. It was in the booking.

What a wonderful life, eh?

So, Spain was lovely and hot and sunny, and a week away from everything else and now I've returned (well I did on Sunday night actually) and have oodles of stuff to do before the 17th, when I go up to Manchester. I'm afraid very few photos were taken in Spain (we weren't about to take a photo of the random Israeli who chatted up my sister, were we?) and all old-fashioned stylee, so none that are digital and I doubt many worth scanning either. If I had a scanner, that is.

Manchester in 10 days, which is rather scary but exciting at the same time. Still don't know if I have a single or double room in halls- hoping for a single, of course, but everyone hopes for one of them I think.

Finished the sarong late last night, and off to the airport for Spain for a week at around 11 o'clock this morning. Won't blog for about a week, so see you all in a week's time!

Work in progress

Well, I've hemmed one side of the sarong (the extra pair of hands was busy when I wanted to pin other bits though) and I have done some red painting. The paint isn't as transparent as I thought it would be, but that doesn't matter as the bikini I plan to wear the sarong with is red, so showing red doesn't matter. I don't quite know how long the paint takes to dry though.. anyone?

More accommodation forms and info arrived in the post today, asking for three passport photos, money and signatures. Hopefully all should be fine. The first of many sets of passport sized photos to be taken very soon...

Squeeeee I bought material and fabric paints to make a sarong with! Yay yay yay! :D The fabric is golden yellow (sooooo wonderful and lovely) and I bought transparent red and blue paints. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. :D

I bought lots of other things too, but those, to me, are the most exciting. :D

Shopping, shopping and I wonder what else?

So, shopping two days in a row, and I'm planning on a proper full-day shopping spree in Watford tomorrow.

Yesterday I bought a thin summer top from per una in M&S in the sale and two tops from Dorothy Perkins for £3!! That's three pounds for both tops altogether, not each! That shopping was in Brent Cross. I was also really surprised because I went at around 1pm and I managed to find a drive-through space in the Fenwick car park almost immediately, and normally it takes forever just to find a normal space..

Today saw me at my grandparents' in the morning, sorting out their computer troubles and helping them to send photos of Joshua around the world, or at least Europe. They fed me lunch too. And the photos were very cute.

This afternoon I went to Harrow in the pouring rain, so didn't do the full circuit as I was soaked enough from what I did do. Bought some boots for £13.49 in Shoe Zone (just normal walking type camel coloured boots, I needed new ones as previous ones broke), some cropped trousers in H&M which I may not keep and a cheap thin hoodie in Primark (woo for reductions in Primark.. they practically pay you to take the stuff away!).

Off to help with double baby bath-time!!

And the grades..

I managed AAB in my A2s (maths, chemistry and English in that order) and AA at two more ASs (music and further maths). Woo!

I've got into Manchester!

Squeeeeeeeeee! :D Don't know my results yet but UCAStrack and the UCAS letter of confirmation I received in the post this morning tell me that I've got in. Wooooo. :D

:(

I missed the free vue tickets on the connexions site today. :( At least I still have one that's valid, I suppose.

Last day of work tomorrow! And then.. results on Thursday! Argh!

Fasting always makes me cold

Even if it's warm outside. Which it isn't today, by the looks of it (all rainy and bleugh it would appear). Anyway, today is the ninth of Av, the day on which both temples were destroyed (obviously in different years). So we fast for twenty-five hours, no food no drink. The one good thing this year is it ends a little earlier as we had an extra month due to it being a Jewish leap year, and so all the festivals etc are late when compared against the Gregorian calendar. The fast is still 25 hours, but you sleep the evening off (it started at 8.27pm yesterday) and then it's the main day bit that's normally a little harder. Anyway, goes out slightly earlier this year and it's not blisteringly hot either, which is always a bonus.

Sportspersons always recover quickly

Like the Australian cricket team. I don't even follow the game that closely, but I know that a couple of weeks ago, if that, McGrath injured his ankle and it was said it would take a minimum of 6 weeks to recover. And guess what? He's out playing today. How strange.. Why can't we be superhuman and recover that quickly, eh? Life's certainly not fair.

Woo, I've just realised my long rambly posting is back. :) Heehee.

Realising I hadn't blogged for a while, I figured I possibly should. Not necessarily a catch-up: Simon's been away (back Sunday!) and I haven't done too much interesting stuff in the last week. Cried, laughed, chatted, joked, worked... the usual run-of-the-mill stuff.

I've realised I tend to be fully conscious about 40 minutes after my alarm starts in the morning (I use the radio, but I think I'm going to change station soon. Any suggestions- London or national UK stations and I don't have DAB in my bedroom- are all very welcome.) I think this is odd and also quite worrying: it clearly shows I sleep deeply, especially since I've slept through alarms in the past. This is, in essence, a good thing, however it makes me worry that I might miss something one day. I wonder if it would be resolved if I went to sleep earlier. Hm. ^_^

On a completely separate train of thought (chugga-chugga chugga-chugga choo-choo!) I was rather disappointed on Sunday as I went shopping with the intention of buying summer clothes and things for holiday, and in reality came home with new hair bobbles (all bright colours!) and 'Brighton Rock' by Graham Greene, which was in the clearance in WHSmith. (Woo for book sales!) Why are all summer dresses designed for B-cups or less? And why can't any have sleeves? And, on top of that, do long sarongs no longer exist? I think (if I can be bothered) I can sort the sarong issue by buying fabric and dye and making my own, but I'm not a dressmaker! Going away on the 28th.. hopefully I'll find something by then.

Spray more, get more

Or not.

Yes, lynx does smell nice (along with many other men's deodorants and after-shave and smelly things) but that doesn't mean that the more you spray, the better it gets. To me, it seems like it would be more like a bell curve.

Obviously some is required to overcome bad smelling body odour, and possibly to even make one smell a bit better (say, up to the peak of the curve), but you can have too much. As with most things, what goes up must come down, except this time it isn't any of Newton's laws, or, in fact, anything to do to do with gravity at all.

As soon as the amount sprayed hits a point where anyone more than about two seats (preferably less) away can smell what you have on, well that's bad. I don't know how many people have experienced the door-to-door salesman who thinks that putting a whole bottle of aftershave on before each door will win him customers. Lose them, more like. Or been at a party, or social gathering of some sort where all of a sudden an almost noxious smell suffocates the room (and this is NOT from the food) and you look around and find (aside from all those dying from being starved of oxygen) that there are a couple of extra people in the room. (Before any boys go up in arms about this, I know the overuse of women's perfume can also be suffocating, but at least it isn't advertised with "spray more, get more".)

I'm not against boys using deodorant, or anything, oh no. And used to a reasonable degree it does smell nice. However as well as the above argument, included in this should be the way in which some boys think "oh, I don't have to shower, I'll just spray oodles more deodorant on instead and all will be fine." Well, funnily enough, all will NOT be fine. Yes, I realise that the not-showering thing is probably more of a phase than a permanent fixture, and I suppose we should think ourselves lucky that people do realise that if they don't shower then they start to smell bad, but that doesn't mean they should just hide the smell, but rather that they should wash!

And yes, I do realise that the adverts are exaggerated to the absurdly ludicrous, but the slogan is the slogan is the slogan, and it still seems wrong.

The slogan is at the end of this. (You have to select your bandwidth first, and then wait for it to load.) It was after seeing the same advert (which has been banned on some channels I think) 3 times within about 20 minutes that provoked me to write this. Teaches me to watch TV, eh?

ISBNs are expanding to 13 digits..?

Apparently so.

I suppose it must mean that there are really that many books that it's required. Until January 2007, then, I guess ISBNs will be irregular.. and does that mean all old books are going to be republished?

Anyone know a good intensive hand moisturiser?

My hands are all rough from dragging ten very full secure disposal sacks down flights of stairs. :( But the good side is that that means I don't have to do that on Monday. :) And I got to leave early today, merely because I'd finished the last thing at about ten to five, when I finish at five, and he didn't have anything else for me to do before I went. :)

Had some people round last night and we watched 'Death of a Salesman' and I made oodles of pasta (too much, in fact).

And I received a belated birthday present. :D Thank you. :D

As an explanation (given confusing questions asked in response to a previous blog), the packing things up was packing up stuff into envelopes, jiffy bags and boxes at work.

Finished packing stuff up and now I'm sticking all the stamps on!

Other news: having people round on Thursday night to watch 'Death of a Salesman' on DVD. If I haven't invited you and you want to come (and I know you), comment, speak up somehow and I'll give you details.

Joshua was all cute and smiley on Friday morning, so Daniel took lots of photos. :D He's soo cute! (Joshua, that is.)

Jeez, hold songs are annoying. Don't ever phone mobile companies.. or if you do, beware of being on hold for a long long time.

Again

Two weeks later, London's transport system gets hit, this time one less incident (only three), and more minor, with one reported injury, in contrast to 56 dead from two weeks ago.

Reunion

Out tonight with the people I went to Venice with (minus one I think) and then tomorrow night I'm going to a birthday party. Woo I love the summer. (Apart from working.)

Tricky crossword today too.

Fire

Big chemical fire in Wembley this afternoon. Trains weren't running from Wembley Park (although I wasn't getting the tube anyway) and thick, grey-black smoke could be seen for miles around. Woah.

How many times...?

Okay, I know it's a good idea, but really, how many people have to send me that ICE (in case of emergency) email about putting contact numbers in my phone? I received it a few times yesterday, and now a few times today grrrr. Alright, I do realise that it is a worthwhile thing and not as annoying as getting the "if you don't forward this to at least 50 billion people in the next two seconds you're going to die" forwards ten times over, but still. I've had it sent to me, everybody, alright? And also, for your information, I've had "mum" and "dad" saved in my mobile under those names ever since I've had my first phone.. and if they aren't my next of kin, I don't know who are, so is there really point in repeating their numbers under "ICE" too?

Other annoying thing that I know my dad dislikes, and it's annoying for privacy too (although it's handy when you want to find out someone's email address, that's the precise reason that it's annoying) is when someone sends an email and lists 1000000001 people under "To:" so everyone can see everyone's email address. (Before the pedants strike, I know you can't put that many under "To:"; what's more, few people know 1000000001 people.) I suppose it's worse when it's a group email to all people who have a certain account, for example, or applied for the same job and not just people everyone knows anyway.

First day of work..

And I get lots of fun filing to do ;) Hoping for the shredder tomorrow.. yay fun! (And I'm proud: only two cuts!)

I (well actually my mum- thanks mum :)) collected my photos from Venice today! They also have photos of Joshua and my leaving party in the packs. Yay yay yay! And people have started putting digital photos of Venice up too, which multiplies one's number of photos :)

Thursday

Following Thursday's tragedy in London (I was in Venice when it happened, and found out about it by text), I thought it wise to let you all know that as far as I know, all my family are safe and well, although the reality of what happened is very scary.

Back from Venice

And it was wonderful. Yummy ice-cream and rather yummy food, amazing sites and all easily walkable! (Apart from going to the islands, of course.)

We were in a good hotel in a really good location- ten minute walk (if you don't spend ages in each shop on the way, that is) to the Rialto Bridge.

Took lots of photos, although on normal 35mm film, not digital, so need to be developed and scanned in (and I don't have a scanner). And I think I took less photos than everyone else for some reason... I took about a film and a half (54ish?) and the others either took loads digitally or used LOADS of film. Hum. Ah well, we're going to share all our photos anyway, so it shouldn't matter too much.

It was a rather jam-packed few days too, since we were only there for a short time we did things quickly and didn't queue in the ridiculously long queue for the Basilica and things like that.

Quite expensive place, Venice is.

Venice today!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! We're going to Venice today! And we've been sent directions of how to get there and it should be lots of fun. I also know how to ask where the toilet is. Always useful. :) What comes from going to weddings the night before you go away. ;) And the wedding was lovely. Beautiful bride, and really pretty lights on the ceiling in the hall. :) (And pretty flowers, good music, good dancing, it can go on for a long time.)

Banquet on Thursday night was really fun too, despite really tiring. (My legs ached for a while after ;) I think I dance a bit too much maybe..)

And Laura's belated birthday party on Wednesday was good too.. although we didn't plan as much for Venice as we had hoped to.

Went shopping on Friday which was muchly good :) Bought lots of things, without spending too much money... I love sales. :D (Biggest bargain (probably): Gap jeans, £9.99, down from £48)

Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Wheeee! Finished exams and freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! :D

Trends and Patterns was good this morning, I thought, transition metals alright, possibly could have been better.

Then we went to l'artista for lunch and off to the park.. :D :D Yayyy.

And now I'm freeeeee! Well, until I start work that is..

6 days 'til Venice!

Awwww....

Baby Joshua Jack is rather cute. :)

Chemistry units 4 and 6

I think overall it went well. Possibly didn't think properly for a few questions in unit 6, but I think it was okay. I worked out that the gas given off was SO2 and not S2 or N or something weird like some people thought.. but I mainly worked it out from the reactants.. I suppose that's the point in the fact that it is unifying concepts.

Organic (unit 4) was alright- I was glad that they didn't ask for too many reagents and conditions, as they often get confused. Although I'm not sure I knew completely correctly how to use Tollens' reagent, but it was a decent guess. I tried to recall our lesson in the lab where we did about 5 tests at once and so they all get jumbled in my mind. But only one produced a silver mirror. Anyway, it should be okay. Or at least I hope it will. Now I need to learn lots for Tuesday, which is by far the hardest chemistry paper, if only for all the stuff that requires proper learning.

Found a new site for image hosting if you don't have anywhere to upload an image to, but want to show it to someone: www.imgfreak.com

Just came across, thought it might come in handy for some people.

The poem from yesterday

The Landscape near an Aerodrome

More beautiful and soft than any moth
With burring furred antennae feeling its huge path
Through dusk, the air-liner with shut-off engines
Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing tall
To point the wind. Gently, broadly, she falls,
Scarcely disturbing charted currents of air.

Lulled by descent, the travellers across sea
And across feminine land indulging its easy limbs
In miles of softness, now let their eyes trained by watching
Penetrate through dusk the outskirts of this town
Here where industry shows a fraying edge.
Here they may see what is being done.

Beyond the winking masthead light
And the landing-ground, they observe the outposts
Of work: chimneys like lank black fingers
Or figures frightening and mad: and squat buildings
With their strange air behind trees, like women's faces
Shattered by grief. Here where few houses
Moan with faint light behind their blinds,
They remark the unhomely sense of complaint, like a dog
Shut out and shivering at the foreign moon.

In the last sweep of love, they pass over fields
Behind the aerodrome, where boys play all day
Hacking dead grass: whose cries, like wild birds
Settle upon the nearest roofs
But soon are hid under the loud city.

Then, as they land, they hear the tolling bell
Reaching across the landscape of hysteria,
To where larger than all the charcoaled batteries
And imaged towers against that dying sky,
Religion stands, the church blocking the sun.

-Stephen Spender, 1933

*And yes, since yesterday I have discovered that he wrote lots about industrialism and stuff and that would really work with the poem, but the exam is over now, and I just have to hope for a kind examiner and that I may have done okay enough to get a B (although an A would be preferable).

M2

That was a tricky paper. And, rather evilly I thought, they put the really tricky question penultimately, so if you weren't careful you didn't finish the paper. Naaaasty. But I moved on and left space, finished the rest of the paper and went back. :) Still didn't get it right, I'm pretty sure, but what the heck.

All maths and English is finished now!

Major chemistry cramming tonight in preparation for tomorrow.. lots of reagents and conditions to learn, plus phrases for those silly (or probably more correct, annoying) QWC questions.

English unit 6

So, the poem they gave us was 'The Landscape near an Aerodrome' by Stephen Spender, 1933. A little odd, with an inverted image of the church, but I think my essay for that was alright.

The synoptic question (which I prepared 'Translations' and 'The Tempest' for) was a choice (as ever), but (as always) I can't remember the question that I didn't do. I did one that was talking about "...power-real power- ultimately doesn't lie in physical strength or emotional pressure, but communication", or something along those lines. A very similar oneappeared a ew years ago, just minus the emotional pressure, so I was quite happy: I'd written an answer to the past one, so had an idea of what I was writing, but wrote different stuff all the same. I hope I did alright in that paper. I kind of need to.

Last night we had over 60 people in our garden for baby's pidyon haben (no, he still isn't named... photos when I'm told I can, and when I remember and have time to find a cute smiley one). The weather was good (we wouldn't have easily fitted that many indoors) and the whole thing was very nice. :)

On to M2 this afternoon and chemistry revision for tomorrow! (I must learn more about arenes I think.)

The music of the primes

I've just found the coolest mathsy site! It shows you waves of violins and clarinets (and tuning forks of course) playing! It's exciting and cool. It tells you about Gauss and Riemann and prime numbers and music and how they relate! Naomi is excited. :D Oh yes, it's here. *bounces and jumps and squees*

M1

Was easy. Well, not overly tricky anyway. Which is good. Unlike with the past papers I did at home, where I finished it in half an hour, I finished the paper with half an hour to spare (the paper is an hour and twenty minutes), so it did possibly have more things to do.. or maybe I took more care with my diagrams and things like that and so it took longer. Not that much of it took long to work out. There were seven mark questions where I really couldn't understand where all seven marks came from, but that's life I guess.

Anyway, on to revision for next week's exams.. funfunfun! ;)

'Othello' and Chaucer

Well, it's over with a muchly aching hand. I finished both my essays, spending exactly an hour on each (I remember finishing the first one at 10.10, when we started at 9.10 and the second one I finished and then they said "put your pens down" a few seconds later). Okay, so not that great technique in that I didn't have time to check or read through either essay before handing them in, but I did notice mistakes while writing the essay and corrected them there and then, for example writing Shakespeare's contemporaries in my Chaucer essay and the like. But I realised that and corrected it straight away. :) I don't even quite know why I wrote it in the first place, but I did. For anyone who is interested, I did both (b) questions on Shakespeare's 'Othello' and Chaucer's 'The Merchant's Prologue and Tale', the Chaucer one was about the Tale appealing to the modern reader due to us recognising our own world of deceit in the Tale, whilst the Shakespeare one was something along the lines of "In 'Othello' Shakespeare creates a similar world to that of our own: one where stupidity is more destructive than evil." How far do you agree? Or something like that. Both were quite good for putting in lots of context, the Chaucer more so as I talked of modern, religious and Classical morality and modern and contemporary readers etc. I don't remember the other questions for the life of me, so don't bother even asking. One thing I do know is that I didn't like the other questions and that my hand ached lots by the end of it. One of my fingers clicked during the exam! (Naomi's fingers don't often click.)

Anyway, on to revising mechanics, synoptic English, reading random poetry in preparation for unseen (haha, what an excuse! Oh I love it) and I suppose lots of chemistry too, which is all still to come. I think I mainly need to do lots and lots of organic revision for that. Unit 6 is fine.. it's all mathsy and so I can do it: lots of calculations and the like. Transition elements and trends and patterns is last and I'm thinking of leaving the bulk of that revision until I have finished all the other exams, since I have about four days of no exams before that. Should be okay. *hopes*

M1 tomorrow. Easy I think and hope. :) Yay.

Right and I'm now back on the computer for continued babbling.. woo :) lucky you.

At the moment I can't quite understand what the obsession various people have with hi5 is- it's some online community thing I reckon, which I'm signed up, have had people join me as friends and people have written testimonials about me (along the lines of my pedantry, yellow, chickens and other random things), and yet I haven't actually discovered the point of it. I sign on so that I can say to Kajal (or Yog or Christina, but generally it's Kaj who actually asks me if I've read it) that yes, I've read her testimonial and (I guess) to affirm my friendship with her (who knows what might happen if I didn't.. probably nothing really, but I guess it's a good thing anyway). I'm reckoning it's a handy procrastinatory tool. I'm also reckoning it might be something similar to Orkut (another online community) which I managed to get into, joining communities and posting lots of messages, engaging in arguments and the like. The only thing is, people are much younger on hi5. I'm informed by Indian friends that it's an Indian thing to be addicted to, but I know plenty of non-Indian people who are also addicted to this, so I'm not sure about that theory. I've also not yet managed to find any communities that sound appealing or interesting to me, so I haven't joined any. I fear they will be worse even than the Orkut ones.. and those got hijacked by Brazilian people in Portugeuse! (Nothing against Brazilians or Portuguese, I just can't understand, speak or write in the language and so it's a bit hard to hold a conversation with them.) Yes, I know I was mad for joining, but then at least I don't get every two weeks an email telling me all the people who I know who are on there (or, to be more accurate, who know me) and that I really really should join because it is just the coolest to place to be. (N.B. I know that it is not the coolest place to be.) So instead I get bugged every time someone who knows me finds I'm on it, but I don't get reminded about this again and again and, quite frankly, I can ignore the emails and let them all filter through to junk mail if I really want.

By the way, the randonimity of today's babble probably would not have all gone into the one and same email: I doubt many people are interested in this much rubbish. I've just decided to vent my thoughts and ideas on various random things I have been pondering.

In between this post and the last one I've been planning an essay arguing whether Chaucer creates humour in 'The Merchant's Tale' through his satire of religious and courtly ideas. It's great fun. :) Chaucer is (or should I say was; his Tales are) funny, so an essay on humour is quite a good one to happen upon to write: you find some funny images, if possible connected to the statement given that you're arguing against and write about the irony and satire in it. I'm also pondering discussing other humourous attributes to the Tale to show that humour is not only created through the satire, and I'm also being careful to distinguish between Chaucer and the Merchant. Funfunfun.

Hopefully the weekend will bring more workyworkiness before my readathon that is Shavuot. I've realised that chemistry may need some attention, but am also aware of the fact that English exams come first and so surely they should be practised and worked on first? Maybe I'll wait til my first English exam is over and then will start on the chemistry a little more intensely. I did do some chemistry at the beginning after all and made lots and lots and lots of posters (a wall and a half's worth is that much). I also reckon that chemistry-wise I should be fine with unifying concepts (unit 6) but might need to do more organic work, learning lots of reagents and conditions, and possibly cramming them the night and morning before, since they are the things I forget very quickly. (Those are the first two modules. The other ones: trends and patterns and transition metals are my last exam and I have four whole days before them with nothing in, so reckoned I could work on them then. Hm, well that's what the main plan is anyway.)

Please tell me how many boats you think there are in this painting. I think there are three, but others think two.

Other news: my abilities at procrastination have definitely increased this week. :S I think this is rather obvious considering the amount of posting.

I'm really in the mood for writing a really long email to someone, but I just don't know who, so I decided to alleviate the urge to babble nonsensibly (or at least just randomly) by writing a delightfully long random babble on my this here blog.

My revision is moving, particularly in the maths and English departments: I've been doing lots of quick maths past papers (M1 is my next maths module and I can complete one of those papers in about half an hour, when we are given 1 hour and 20 minutes to do the real thing) and quite a few essay plans, as well as lots of criticism reading (most of which manages to stay in the head for a while as opposed to going in one eye and out the other). My intention for this Shabbat and Shavuot (Monday and Tuesday, the Jewish festival of Pentecost) is to re-read 'Othello' and 'The Merchant's Tale' in entirety, visually recall it (that's how my memory works.. I know where on the page and where in the book the particular quotations that I want to use are located) and possibly also start 'The Tempest' again.

This babble will continue again soon, but other people want to use the computer for the time being, so I'm off.

Exams yesterday

So yes, P6 was rather scary and horrible I thought, but I managed to write answers for all of it, which I thought was a good sign. Whether these answers written are complete gobbledegook, I don't know... a lot of it felt like I was doing certain methods through some kind of instinct without being able to properly back up the reason that I did what I did. Ah well, the answers looked reasonable and not too strange, so I reckon I should have got a good handful of marks in it.

P3 was easy (or for me it was, before anyone starts commenting with "no it wasn't! It was impossible!"), and I managed to finish with a good 40 minutes to spare.. about half the time given for the whole exam. This differed quite a bit from P6 where I finished with about 5 minutes to spare, if that. There were no trick questions, and they were even kind enough to say that we didn't have to express p explicitly in terms of t, which meant we could pretty much leave it how it integrated to without doing much to it. Lucky that. It would have taken an awful lot of fiddling and manipulating to get it into an expression of p= and not p/(1-p)= or similar. Well, not that much fiddling, but more fiddling anyway. In fact, I've just sorted it in my head, but still they didn't ask for it, so I didn't give it. I was a bit silly at the beginning writing x.2x=2x, but then quickly corrected that when checking through (I always make silly mistakes in the first question or two) and also realised whilst doing another question (because I came out with an impossible answer) that I had written lnp + ln(1-p) instead of minus, so had to change that, but that didn't make too many problems.

I'm also glad I was allowed to do P6 first and then P3... we only finished our second exam at 4.44pm, and struggling with P6 that late would have been a nightmare. I'm glad I effectively had lots of time to rest at the end and did the harder one first.

Now, enough procrastinating and time for me to go and do some English revision methinks..

Scary

P6 tomorrow... and I'm still scared of vectors. Everything else is fine, but I don't like vectors. P3 I'm not worried about, just P6. Scary. And vectors always come up. Mrrrrrh. It's not like I haven't practised them either: I've done all the questions in the book and all the past papers, and I still find them hard! Mewwww.

I have a summer job!

Woo and yay. :D Means I'll have some money for holidays (or won't feel so bad going into savings before I work for money for Venice, as I should be able to replace it). *grins*

the joy of study leave

Study leave is surprisingly unexciting, which hopefully will explain the absence of overly regular blogging. This unexciting blogging is made more exciting by Simon and also my baby nephew (who is still unnamed, photos may follow, but email me if you want to see one sooner). Saw 'Garden State' on Sunday night and ate pizza with artichokes (mmmm... artichokes), also saw baby on Sunday morning (he's so gorgeous!). Am getting steadily more and more bored with revision (what a surprise!) and am also in need of the January 2005 P6 OCR paper, which I wasn't given at school and I know is around. If you have it, please please email it to me! Or at least let me know you have it and a website where I could find it... please? This is an everything-in-one-paragraph mushy blog, as I'm clearly not thinking straight. English dinner that was planned for tonight is not happening tonight, as not enough people contacted Ms Fink to find out what was happening.. or something like that. If anyone from my English class is actually bothering to read this, and you still want to go and do something as a class, then email Ms Fink and let her know. Possibly email everyone, so we can all mull it over too, I guess. So, instead, I'm going out for dinner with my mum and sister, which should be nice (anything to get away from revision is rather nice, although I don't like the word "nice"). Ummm... any more unexcitement from study leave? Hmmm.. I'm not sure. I'm sure I will update again soon.

Spot me in the paper

The Jewish News, this week. Photo. Have a look. Ain't a great photo, but hey, what can you do?

Auntie Naomi

As of last night, I'm an auntie to a little boy. :) Very exciting news, and mazel tov to Daniel and Rachel (I think you sometimes read this, anyway). :) Photos, names, news etc will be posted as soon as I have/know etc. (In Judaism, baby boys are named at their circumcision, which is at least 8 days after birth. Photos are just as soon as I have digital ones.) Exciting wheeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. :D

Happy birthday to Netta, and I hope the cake was yummy. I wasn't up for hanging around for two hours for cake, when I could go baby present shopping and stuff. :) Hope the day wasn't too bad. :)

First exam today, P2. I thought it was a nice exam. Lots of "show this=this", so you know when you've got the right answer. The last question required a couple of minutes thought before writing, but wasn't too bad. (Would have been better if I had realised that t was time in days, not seconds. Doh. Ah well, all the maths was correct so I should get the marks.*hopes*) In usual HBS style, one of the maths teachers couldn't tell the time and so told us we had 5 minutes left when we actually had 15. That was funny. You'd think a maths teacher would be able to tell the time. It's worse than the history teacher last year!

Rather surprisingly (or, at least, we were surprised), the Kenton Youth Board won the 'Volunteers are US' award for young group this morning. We received a badge and the Chief Rabbi's new book. All very exciting. :)

First exam tomorrow morning: P2. Not overly worried, considering it's a retake and I've since taken P4 and studied for P3 and P6, so P2 has been seeming rather easy when I've been revising.

Not much is news, really. I had a nice Shabbat, where I left the house at 9.15am and returned at 9.05pm, having gone to shul (the synagogue) in the morning, out to a friend's for a really nice girly lunch, back to shul for BA (the youth group I lead at) and then back to the same friend for se'uda (evening meal thingy on Shabbat). And then I went home, only to discover that Simon had beaten me to it to getting there. :S Ah well, I arrived only two or three minutes after him (or so he claims). Very very very nice evening, which was goooooood. :) :) Thank you you. :) And then this morning we went off to this awards ceremony thingy, where we surprisingly won in our category. Anyone would think I don't have an exam tomorrow.

Oh, how procrastinatory I am. Lalilalilalilaa. *whistles*

Oh, and I've remembered that I wanted to grumble a teeny bit about the leavers' party- or more the fact that I left with my hair stinking of smoke :( which isn't nice, and makes me angry. Grrr. Damn (anti-)social smokers. Silly things.

It's strange. Often, I have the inspiration and the urge to blog and I'm all "ooooh I want to blog that", and then by the time I've switched the computer on, it's loaded and managed to connect up to the internet and I've logged into blogger, the inspiration just disappears into thin air. *puff* Which could explain the infrequency of blogging.

Update since my last post: well, I've had my last lessons at school, and am now on study leave, the boredom of which is being relieved by this here blogging and other things. We had our leavers' party on Sunday night at Cubana, which was good. They serve very yummy cocktails there. :) Photos from my last week and the leavers' party may well follow, as soon as I have a scanner or find one to use. I've got back photos from my last week, which are a mixed bunch, mostly nice, with several copies of the huge one of the whole year.

I'm currently being annoyed rather by certain friends whose exams start a good two or three weeks after mine, and yet seem to think they have the need to revise "crazily". *rolls eyes* Silly girls.

I tried revising in the garden this afternoon, only to discover that the sun kept going behind the clouds (okay, yes, I do know that it's actually the clouds moving in the line of the sun, but shhhh) and making me all colllllld, so I went back inside after a while.

Revision is happening, with plenty of maths and getting stuck on one question for ages and then giving up and stopping... I really shouldn't do that. And when I say stopping, I mean stopping revising that module and starting on something different, like reading some literary criticism or making more chemistry posters or doing a different past paper. But then, that's the joy of still doing three subjects with lots of modules.. I can switch when I get bored. (It's also a reason I like the idea of joint maths and English next year.. I shouldn't get too bored with either, as I *hopefully* won't do as much of both.)

Anyway, I've just been called down for dinner, so off I go to eat. Followed by revision, methinks. Chemistry tonight. w00t.

Last week

Headache is still resisting disappearance, and wisdom teeth are starting to make an appearance. Extra pain. Woo.

Reminded by a comment, although I was going to blog on the matter anyway (of course, don't doubt it), this week is my (along with all other year 13 HBS girls') last week of lessons, and I suppose what they call last official week of school. That translates into a week full of random flashes (there are way too many cameras around, although I shouldn't complain too much, considering mine is one of them, but I don't take that many photos), message writing (and mine are long.. it took me about an hour to write in Laura's book, I think), crying (okay, that hasn't overly cropped up yet but I'm sure it will and people are bewailing leaving and things like that), parties (yay two today- science party at lunch time and Ms Fink brought food in as well as a couple of others in English today), games of hat (a game similar to taboo, except instead of a word, it's a famous person or character, and there are no words underneath that you aren't allowed to mention, just the name), little work (like we would do much work in our last week.. although some people have been claiming they had four mocks this week, which I consider rather evil. I have had the one) and looking through the year book (which was around today, but everyone is receiving their copies tomorrow, I think, only a few were around today. Apparently I have the "Most funny laugh". I didn't realise it was that amusing, ah well). There are probably many other things too, but I forget simply because there are so many.

Off now to do a little work. :)

That "1 comments" thing that blogger does still bugs me. Mrrr.

Annoying headaches that last for a long time (whoever heard of a 3-day headache? It might even go on for longer, who knows. Anyway, I've had one for three days so far) also bug me. Especially when I'm the one suffering from it.

The majority of the weekend was spent in bed due to aforementioned annoying long-lasting headache. Funfunfun. :)

*shock*

Before I start, Simon, that does not count in the tally! It isn't spoken. ;)

(Just in case I consider reapplying if I get really good grades in the summer,) I was checking the Manchester University site to see if they are offering Maths and English to start in 2006... and they're not! *shockshock* (That doesn't count either. Please.) So that would mean either going to do Maths and English and getting money (yay I love how they give you money for studying there if you get good grades and do a rare subject) or reapplying without the possibility of going to Manchester to do the wonderful joint honours course. Gah. Gah. Gah.

Polling day

A delightfully memorable date, handy if your kid is born today or you get married- nice easy anniversary that is hard to forget. Also a (possibly memorable date for an) election. I was rather amused by the Labour bus, which passed me this afternoon when I was crossing Finchley Road near the O2 centre, megaphoning "Labour, Labour, Labour! Vote Labour! Don't let the Tories in by the back door! Vote Labour!" It amused me, anyway. My dad informed me that Hampstead and Highgate (or that constituency, anyway) is quite marginal, so that may have been the reason for the bus.

Surprisingly few posters and "for sale" type placard sign thingies supporting the various parties in my area. A few Labour ones spotted on the way down to the polling station and a fence that had Conservative (aren't I good? Nah, we all know them as Tory) posters pinned on to it.

Hopes for the outcome? Well, it would be rather nice if Labour did have a lower majority (come on, we all know they're going to win, or at least they're the better of the two evils), but at the same time I don't want Howard to have gained too many extra seats. I think it'd be good if the Lib Dems gained a few more seats (which they're expecting, I believe, although obviously not enough to be the Opposition or win or anything silly like that) and I think it'd be nice if the Green Party won that seat that has been reported that they may well win (Brighton somewhere, I believe. People walk down the street and shout across the road to the Green candidate, "I'm voting Green!". No Green candidate in my constituency, though).

Yesterday's school mock election was just funny, with the choice of candidates (well, not the individual candidates themselves, I rather mean the parties they represented) being rather... different, shall we say. In true Communist style, Anna (the Communist candidate) rigged it, voting many more times than she should have, and was consequently disqualified. Rather amusing idea, though. April and I were apparently the only year 13s to vote (we were heading out of the building, and I suggested going via the hall, so we did), and we both voted very differently to how we did today. Not that I know how she voted today, but she said yesterday that it would be very different.

Which reminds me, happy birthday April! :) (Eat lots of chocolate. :D)

Curtains, postcards and films

As promised yesterday, here are some photos of my new curtains and postcards:

[edit] I've just updated the photos with clearer ones: I fiddled with the camera a bit and realised they didn't have to be quite so blurry as before.


The curtains.


The detail on the curtains.


My postcard wall.

Right, and the film. Well, it was disappointing when compared with the book, but then few films live up to the book (or radio plays in this case). However, it was better than all the damning reviews made it out to be. And despite Marvin's physical appearance being really really wrong, I liked his voice. And the voice of the computer of the Heart of Gold. And the appearance of the Vogons. Arthur Dent was alright, but I didn't like Zaphod. He was full of himself and smarmy enough, but his heads were all wrong. I mean, there weren't two separate ones! Yes, it would have been difficult to have two completely separate heads, but video trickery and what-have-you these days must be capable of it. And how is one head meant to be able to talk to the other? Or lean on two separate headrests at the Restaurant at the end of the Universe? I liked Stephen Fry (the voice of the Guide) lots, and was thoroughly amused by the singing dolphins. Catchy song, too.

New Curtains!

Excitement of the afternoon is that we put up my new curtains, which are lovely. A photo will follow as soon as I can be bothered to find the digital camera and take one and then put it up on here. But it will. And at the same time maybe I will take a photo of one of my postcard walls, which has new additions. :)

Going to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tonight; my opinions (if it causes any, which I'm sure it will because I already think Marvin looks all wrong) will follow, I'm sure.

Pesach (Passover) is over, which is nice, mainly because of the fact that I can now go out and don't have to take all my food with me, being unable to buy much apart from fruit and some veg. Although I've been eating Pesach biscuits today, as they are rather yummy. And we have a surplus of yummy fruit juice in cans, which is good for the school front. Mmmmm. 8 days of lessons left at school! Scary!

Poetry, discounts and cloudy parks

Yay. Oh how I love student discount days in Borders and Books Etc. 20% off! Yay! Bought some Dylan Thomas, which is good and happifying too. For your information, the student discount days started yesterday and run until tomorrow in nearly all Borders and Books Etc. stores in the UK, which is great.

Went to the park again today, despite the cloud and ate Pesach food there. Funfunfun. :) The ducks were intriguing if not slightly scary when biting each other. I wondered if ducks would find it amusing if humans were biting each other and fighting. Simon thinks not.

Concert last night went well, especially Haydn's Nelson Mass, which sounded so cool. I'm hoping it was recorded, 'cause I want to listen! (Yes, I know one can buy professional recordings, but I want to hear the one I played in!)

Trying to kill time in a double free in the afternoon before our final rehearsal before the concert tonight. Funfunfun. Hence resorting to blogging.

Weather has been changing between horrible thunder and lightning and beautiful sunshine (yay I love sunshine) just within this hour and ten minutes, which is rather odd in itself. Anyway, it's sunny now. The weather must know Naomi and Simon are seeing each other today. :)

Had a deathly boring chemistry lesson this morning, which was much fun. Yes, of course it was. *twiddles fingers*

Anyway, off to orchestra now. Yay! Time killed!

I like the park.

Especially when it's sunny. Yes, that's about it.

Update

Talking to Simon last night, I realised I hadn't blogged for a while. A week now, to be precise. I haven't found any more overly amusing articles in the newspaper (and am annoyed that I didn't get one yesterday *grumble* although I did catch a lift to school, which was the upside to it), but there is a good one about Douglas Adams in today's Indie. (For those who don't understand, I am referring to the newspaper, The Independent. ;))

What's happened in the last week? Hmm. I bought a really pretty pink floor length summer skirt, which made me happy as I've been searching for a long long skirt for a while now. I also went to half a study day on 'The Merchant's Tale' by Chaucer, where the first lecture I heard was half decent and the second one was the randomest thing in the world, and it seemed like she hadn't really prepared it.. or maybe she had, but only the night before. (And still managed to change her mind since preparing it.) I went babysitting last night and Eli actually woke up, and then fell asleep again by the time I returned upstairs with some warm milk. I've seen Simon twice and spoken to him and texted him lots. :D *waves to Simon* My book still hasn't come in at WHSmith (and before you have a go at me, the only reason I ordered it in there is because I was given vouchers and wanted the book and needed to spend the vouchers. I have been wanting the book since at least December) and I don't think much (if anything) of this week's free single on iTunes. They have appointed a new Pope, who is only slightly younger than the deceased Pope if I am correct and so I thought it a bit odd. Election gubbins is well underway everywhere, although I am still not aware of a local Lib Dem candidate leaflet in my house. Whether it was shunted out before I saw it (like nearly happened with the Tory one- oh, sorry Conservative: mustn't call them Tories any more- not that anyone explicitly says who they vote for in our house, oh no) or they just simply haven't got round to putting one through the letter box, I don't know. I have received my polling card, and I've also submitted my student finance forms for next year. I've replied to UCAS to say Manchester firm, Leeds insurance, although I still can't see any possibility of missing Manchester's grades and getting the ones for Leeds, but there you go. We finally finished reading the text of 'The Merchant's Tale' in English and are now having an extra triple lesson every week, and so I am not worrying as much, although I do still worry. I'm currently avoiding maths revision for an M1 mock tomorrow morning and any other revision for general revision-y purposes and summer exams. Awaiting a phonecall and also avoiding the chunks of extra English reading I have planned, but I may go and do very soon.

Well, that's an update, not sure if I've missed stuff out, I no doubt have. If you think of anything, feel free to comment or just respond to my random and rather normal activities.

Deborah Ross

She does write rather wonderfully. :)

Today: "Honesty is the best policy, by all accounts, but dishonesty is said to be considerably less damaging to the ozone layer." The rest of the same article is great too, that was just a rather wonderful quotation.

New look Indie

And it has Su Doku! Naomi is now happy and has even more things to amuse her on the tube, bus and in boring lessons... (no, mum and dad, of course I never do the crossword or the like in a lesson. I pay attention all the time, honest. :))

Shakespearean tragedies are...

"like muesli, they are boring, fruity and full of indigestible roughage." Fintan O'Toole, 'Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life'.

Been re-reading O'Toole this weekend, thinking it probably worthwhile, considering one of my exams is on 'Othello'. Read that right at the beginning and laughed lots. :) I don't agree fully, but it is a great quotation. :)

I'm rather disappointed with how all the school computers don't show the 'Make Poverty History' white band in the corner of the screen. On any sites with it on. It's really bad. I first thought it may have been on IE, but then I came home and checked and it wasn't, which just indicates that we have really really rubbish computers at school if they don't recognise that or can't show it or... oh I don't know why it wouldn't show, but it wouldn't. It disappointed me rather.

Having just blogged, I realised I hadn't blogged for quite a while before then. Apologies for that, I guess I just never had the impetus to blog. Strange, that. I'm normally happy to babble away, even if it is only at a keyboard and my fingers are doing the babbling.

And now I've got carried away chatting to Malka, so it's actually 22:04 as opposed to 21:29, as the post will claim. How time flies. *whoosh*

The last two weeks have been the Easter break, over which I was supposed to do lots of work and start my revision. Thing is, one never fits in as much as one hopes. Plus, it is difficult to begin revision when one hasn't finished any syllabuses. Mrrrh. I've done lots of work, and finished all due in written at school, I believe. And we had an English note-pooling day, which was rather productive. Similarly to last year, we made lots more notes on 'Othello' than on 'The Merchant's Tale'. (Similar to last year in that last year we made many more notes on 'Hamlet' than 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. The similarity merely lies in making more notes on Shakespeare.) Discussed lots too that I can remember, but didn't write down at the time. (I have a strange incredibly poor short term memory to the extent that I can't remember something someone said 10 seconds ago that I wanted to write down, but I'll remember it when I get home. Nevertheless, I always make notes in lessons. I'm just scared I miss other stuff when writing the notes down. But I would look silly not taking any notes.) Re-reading all my English texts at the moment (have managed two and a half, which isn't too bad, I thought. Still going strong with one and a half more to read. Woo). Done several maths and chemistry past papers, realising how much I hate chemistry essay questions (yes, I know chemistry essay sounds rather oxymoronic. Or at least it does to me). Especially the ones that give you three pages to write an answer on, with extra marks for "quality of written communication" and yet all they ask you for are equations and calculations and the determination of various compounds. How does one make an essay out of that? Grargh.

The two weeks have whizzed by, similarly to time this evening. Much spent watching TV late into the night (Alice is in the final three!) and talking late into the night (5 hours isn't a long time to talk to someone pretty much non-stop...). I've also been to the cinema once, shopping a few times (I don't like to count that one) and done some work (did I mention that one before?).

There was Purim too, and we had the murder mystery (which was fun and we ate yummy shwarma). We found enough drivers and people to act. :)

The Pope also died today. Not that it affects me so much, being a religious Jew, but you know, he was a good man I'm sure. But old and ill and I think it was good that he was left to die at home and not taken to hospital again.

In the two weeks we've also had lots and lots of sun (particularly on Saturdays for some reason beyond my comprehension) and lots of rain (which I don't like so much. I like snow and I like sun, but not rain). Back to school on Monday. Funfunfun. :)

(Oh, and I'm finally finishing the post at 22:59. I am distracted pretty easily.)

Was I cruel?

Walking home from spending the afternoon playing with Eli (the 16-month-old I babysit), a kid (well, probably a 13 year-old, but he looked like a kid and I like referring to him as one. Quite cute looking, blonde, not unattractive, but cute in the young and baby-faced sense) approached me, clutching a whole load of small change and asked if I could go and get him some cigarettes, as the shop wouldn't serve him (by the way, he didn't already smell of smoke, indicating it was the first packet for an hour or two at least I reckon). Anyway, I said no. A few grounds, some to do with religion: a) they were only young (he had a couple of mates hanging around too, who clearly had chipped in with the few pounds clutched in the kid's hand); 2) one isn't supposed to use money on Shabbat (buy or sell things); d) one isn't supposed to carry on Shabbat. I only thought of that third one afterwards, but the first two struck me straight away. The third reason is still valid though. Anyway, I refused. And the kid just walked away, no shouts, explosions, questions, re-asking, mates asking instead or anything. I suppose there are some kids in the area who are reasonable apart from the fact that they smoke. They weren't like the scary ones who hang around on the rape bridge, anyway. (The "rape bridge" is the footbridge at the end of my road leading to the nearest tube station. Not overly safe for a woman to walk over on her own in the dark. Especially when the light isn't working or one can smell fumes. Or see and hear people.)

Shopping and working

We broke up for the Easter break last Friday, and so since I have been (putting off) doing work and shopping in the main. I've done lots of pure maths (both P3 and P6), as I find that maths is a thing that can very much start and stop and doesn't require a long long time to think and then write up, like English does. Although with maths I tend to think that, and then do just a couple of questions, and think, oh that can't have taken too long, and then look at my clock and realise it's about 20 minutes or half an hour (or even an hour with those horrible questions that take forever to go through all the right processes, although they happen to be really obvious and easy. I hate them, just because of the time they take to write out) after I'd started working, and that it was, in fact, much later than I had originally thought. And so maths doesn't take much less time than, say, writing an essay, but writing an essay isn't as conducive to doing in small(er) chunks. Or so (psychologically) it would appear to me. Not that I have many essays to do, and I think I have lots of maths. Although consolidating English notes would be a good move, perhaps whilst re-reading the text too. Maybe I'll dig out my big post-it notes for sticking in the texts when I discover something cool to think and write about. And of course having a pencil with me at all times, but that happens anyway.

Ah yes, the shopping. I went yesterday (briefly) to Harrow; bought a skirt (such a lovely lovely pretty denim skirt, just below knee length), a bag, a book, a CD, and um, a couple of other things. Went to Watford with Laura today and I bought some trousers (linen summer ones), shoes (summer ones again, but I badly need more shoes), a funky hairband for Purim, finger paints, glue sticks and silver card. There may have been other bits and pieces, but I forget. I will update if I remember or can be bothered to. :)

Can anyone help?

I'm running a murder mystery on Saturday night, a kind of belated Purim thing (well, it's motzei Shushan Purim, which will only really mean anything to about half of you I reckon) and I need 5 or 6 people to act as suspects: I think I currently have about 3 people, so I only need a couple more. We may charge you for food (I can promise it's good stuff), and I'll let you know exactly who you are acting as and what's happening. Except no-one will know who the murderer is until the end apart from me (and even I may not know, I haven't quite decided). 8.30 til 10.30 Saturday night, this weekend. Let me know ASAP.

I had my hair cut this afternoon: this time it feels shorter (in the same way that it did last time, when I complained lots, but I don't mind it so much this time) but it doesn't look overly shorter to my eyes, which is strange. It feels short though. And smells yummy. Mmmmmm.

I handed in my chemistry coursework yesterday afternoon (I actually stayed at school in the afternoon to finish it off and hand it in- it had to be handwritten under the supervision of a teacher, don't ask why as I have no idea as thought it ridiculous myself); it was like a weight lifted from my shoulders (although I still have the plan to do over Easter... :S) and now I merely have to worry about the fact that we have not finished a single syllabus yet and we break up tomorrow for Easter. Mrrarrgghh.

New delightful photo of me up on www.totallyjewish.com from Rabbi Black's induction (I was doing a reading in the photo) last Sunday.

Jewish driver in London?
We're looking for as many people as possible to help us deliver 300 michloach manot (food packages) for Purim to poor Jews across the capital (mainly north, north-west and north-east I believe). If you can spare an hour at some point between Monday and Friday next week, or any time to deliver as many or as few of these as you want, contact me and I'll let you know where to go and what to do. They can be picked up from the BA bayit from Monday night, along with maps highlighted as to where to go.

Alternatively, if you don't drive, but want to help package up the mishloach manot, this Sunday, from 11 am in the Kinloss Suite, Kinloss Synagogue. Every pair of hands warmly welcomed.

Rargh *general annoyance*

I dislike the way MS Windows XP thinks itself so clever that it tells me before I have logged in that I have "1 new email message"...when I DON'T. It thinks it is so clever, and yet it can't seem to update itself that I actually read that one email message many weeks ago, and have had numerous since. What's more, I don't particularly care about that email address, as no-one really sends anything to it. (Please note that I don't really check my funkychickens... address very often as I dislike hotmail. If you don't know the full address, this doesn't concern you.)

I also dislike having to write chemistry coursework under timed conditions. Especially when one is not given enough time.

I also dislike it when conductors are supposed to change from beating in four to beating in two don't change and you have to play fiddly bits which are impossible if not being conducted correctly and clearly. Sorry, that was annoying me. I know she's young, and not a professional conductor, yadder yadder, but still!! And then to have a go that it wasn't played correctly... Mrrhgghreohgsndogahbnbeoahhrrhhgghh.