Back to Manchester

For the next couple of months... I don't think I get any more random weeks off, unfortunately. :( No English lectures or seminars this week though: reading week, apparently.

Knock?

Where in the world is Knock? All I currently know about it is that Ryanair fly there for 99p (plus taxes). Hmm, I think it's a google job.

Scholarship!

Heehee! Wooooo!

Fancy posting a hamster!

Yup... it's proof of my theory about super-intelligent people having less common sense than most ordinary folk. How can you not think it morally wrong? *shakes head* Silly Cambridge students. The tutors don't think to ask in interview what you would think of putting animals in envelopes and then in the post, do they?

Strange

This actually happened on Thursday, but due to mobile stress (as well as others) that evening, I forgot to blog about it. It also happened shortly before I met Kajal, which was very nice, indeed. :)

So, I was standing outside Starbucks in Golders Green at around 3.30pm, waiting for Kajal when along comes a boy I know, who similarly, has arranged to meet people at Starbucks in Golders Green, and is also waiting for them. Now, I've spent a maximum of three weeks with him on camps, all between August- December 1998, as well as having posted messages on a message board, in possibly what could be conceived as quite heated discussion with him.

(Aside to this story, but a comment about the same person: he one time actually said hello to me and used my message board pseudonym in so doing... in public. For this message board I use a nickname I had for a maximum of two weeks of my life, if not less, and he did not know me in this capacity.)

Anyway, we were having the usual kind of conversation, the what-are-you-up-to-these-days one, and so I said I was at Manchester University, and he said he'd just applied there. So I asked what he'd applied for, he told me, and then he said, "Let me guess, you've applied... sorry, are studying English." (He was in that post-application mode where it was still at the front of the mind.) I found this odd, as I couldn't see how he would know such a thing, but nonetheless I responded, "Good guess, maths and English actually, but pretty close, well done. How did you know?" (or some reply of that ilk.) So he said I just seemed like the kind of person who would study English. Now, yes, he knows I am pedantic about grammar to a high degree, but being pedantic surely does not mean that I am quite probably the kind who studies English, does it? Anyway, I was rather surprised and found it rather odd. (And no, I hadn't expressed literary views or the like on the message board. Conversations on there tend to be about religion and politics, or where you live (and being derisive about anywhere else).)

Lost numbers

My mobile has decided to become rather defunct, and thus I cannot reach any numbers (particularly mobile numbers: landlines tend to be recorded in address books, mobile numbers don't get updated nearly so often in there). So, if I had your number in the past (or you fancy giving me your number now), text me (you should know my number: it isn't changing, merely handset replacement), email me (address provided to your left) or 'phone me... but preferably after Friday, once I have a replacement.

200 posts!

This is my 200th post! I don't actually have that much to say, but I was fiddling with blogger and noticed that my next post would be post number 200.

*need to finish essay*

Knitting is detrimental to work progress

I've learnt to knit! The only problem, as you can probably guess from the title, is that I have work (essay and revision, mainly) that needs to be done, over the knitting. I'm trying to keep myself away from the knitting until after my exams (my last exam is on the same day as my essay deadline), and then I'm hoping to get far in the many hours I'm spending on Virgin Trains, travelling between Manchester, Birmingham and London. Fun. :)

Amusing

I bought some cheap eye-shadow the other week, because I wanted to increase the number of colours I had and the quality doesn't tend to affect my eyes in an irritating way, so I figured cheap stuff was just as good. Anyway, look at what it says on the box (and this is it letter-for-letter):

"Eyeshadow is shall colnage beatuy kindney and spirit eye,If your eye furthest able in the chips young blood spontaneous coruscate expression in one' seyes Usage and efficiecy:Eyes-hadow color to equably daub on fluate,have blow up lifelike's effect for your eye."

Reminds me somewhat of that rubbish you get in spam emails. ;)

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*