Awful

Last night I spent a long time typing out a post on my phone, only to have it deleted because of a memory problem. I need to get that junk heap traded in. It was about 3kb too, and that's three thousand thumb presses.

Today, I haven't eaten anything. Well, almost. I woke up, met Qian and helped her register, attempted to drive Tsuka-chan to the airport (but was horribly hindered by traffic), had some chocolate milk at home and a small toffee crisp at Natasha's house. The group, which is me, Natasha, Dan, Helgi, Kelly and Vishal, hung out there until we went to sing karaoke at Southland's bar. It was not the same as Japanese Karaoke, as it the sound was awful, the song list was terrible, and the pitch was just horrible enough to strain my voice.

Anyhow, that was my day. I've started lectures. Two lectures on Tuesday are so horrible and boring that I only pray that at least the first one gets better. I woke up fifteen minutes after the start, so that was a wonderful beginning to this year. I managed to run in all the same, so it was ok. Software Engineering is dull and seems to be all theory. After that, Project Management is as awful as it sounds.

Today wasn't as bad. I just had Graphics, which is a lecture on theory, and then an hour playing with Photoshop. And I used the time designing a poster for the JCS. The meeting went ahead yesterday, but I was at a Junior Senior concert with Tsuka-chan, which was brilliant. There was an irritating man in a thick knit sweater who was intent on bumping me all the time while he became more over excited by the prospect of seeing Junior Senior again. The opening act, called The Objects, were actually brilliant. It restored faith in drum machines and Korg synthesizers. I think they could easily make it big.

The concert time was spent with Tsuka-chan and Akiko, and we thought of nicknames for each other. Aki-chan, Tsuka-chan, and Dame-cha (being me [being a reference to Shikoku dialect and the fact that my name sounds like tea]). I really enjoyed going to a concert with them. It was quite memorable. I hope Tsuka-chan returns soon (we're thinking February).

I spent far too long writing this. I have left out so many details of my life, I feel terrible. But I need to sleep.

I'm enjoying the insanely cool stylings of Pizzicato Five. Goodnight.

Registering

I should have ended that last post far sooner and gone home and slept. I set my alarm for 8:20 this morning, despite getting to bed at 4:30. It gave me less than four hours. After the alarm went off, I turned it off quickly and slept for another hour and a half. Meeting with Mizuki and Carlos at about 10, we all went along to print the postcard I made yesterday. For the first time, someone actually appeared to refuse business. He said he wouldn't be able to do as good a job as we wanted, and we should look online for a company. If it weren't for our necessity in time, we would have.

We drove back, and there was no parking. Right now, everyone going to the University is registering. That means that everyone has come to Roehampton, and parked in my parking space. I had to drive for miles and only through a knowledge of back routes and shortcuts could I find a semi close place to park. Annoying.

If this were any other blog I'd probably have a smiley in there, but rest assured, I won't.

I now have over 8GB of music. I have been getting about six or seven albums a night, usually in packs of four or five, and then a few individual ones. This all comes from BitTorrent and xdcc over IRC. I managed to temporarily destroy Emma's Japanese confidence by playing her Chinese Pop (CPop) and let her think it was Japanese. She was destroyed.

Proper Minor Update

I'm sorry about that last entry.

I still have to wait until early November to be online properly, so apologies to anyone who is delayed in receiving email from me. But this will end when I'm connected to Be internet, and that's just one month a few weeks.

The past few days, since the update, a lot has happened. Going into it would probably cause trouble, as a lot of it is personal to me and the people it involves. Let's say that one day I do come back and read all my entries, perhaps this is an episode I can remember perfectly well by myself.

But aside from a few disruptions, the weeks has been good. It's been a preparation for the seminal Fresher Fair, where we make all the new friends for next year from all the first year students. We had a kind of mini fair on Tuesday, which is just for international students. That was pretty fun, and I met quite a few new people that way. It looks like the JCS already has some cool new members. The big pulling point is the Japanese lessons, which has been promoted to the number one spot on the promotional postcard we have created (which I created today). So with a television and name tags and lots of people to help, we should be ready to pull crowds on Friday.

One thing I have an issue with is the layout of people. On Tuesday I raised the issue of Kaori and Mizuki sitting next to each other, and Carlos and I sitting next to each other, and I said that it would be a clear divide and promote segregation. My idea was dismissed, with Carlos needing to be near Mizuki as he is vice president, but for the actual reason that Mizuki and Kaori wanted to sit next to each other and talk Japanese. Fair enough, they want to talk, but exactly as I predicted, Japanese speaking people went to the right hand side of the table, English speaking came usually to the left. As far as I know, I'm still Public Relations officer of the society, and that means I care about appearances. To me, that appeared to be monocultural, not multicultural. And this exact feeling is perverting many circles in my life now. Increasingly, I am feeling extradited from groups as I am not Japanese, and not for the reason that I do not speak the language. While it would be foolish of me to put this down to one cause, I can say a contributing factor is the presence of Katou, who as you know is living in the house. He is in England, despite very little conviction to learn the language, and seemingly no desire to do anything but spend time watching Japanese television and speaking Japanese to Japanese people. Fine. He can do what he likes. But he's created a huge divide in the house, which, despite Mizuki's best efforts, has been ever present through his intimate relationship with Kaori. The segregation leads to a mini-Japan, excluding all gaijin directly, as their omnipresence makes them practically expendable. The actions taken by some have been highly offensive. It's an ongoing cry, "I want to make English friends," but clearly the desire is superficial to the ease and convenience of having Japanese friends. I'm usually not one to speak ill of people who do not tend towards evil, but I cannot wait for Katou to go home so I can get my friends back. Personally, I didn't mind him moving in, and I didn't object. But as has been raised, I wasn't asked if I objected. I found out afterwards.

Perhaps that was a digression based on my frustration at how flakey some people can be, and how it's perhaps a result of nationalism, which I thoroughly detest. Can I let people know now that I do not believe my country is the greatest country simply because I was born here. I think that assertion is ridiculous, and the notion of patriotism is one that can only lead to prejudice.

Oh, and also, today I made tacos.

This entry about my life is a stub. You can help quasiblog by expanding it.

I'm Not Dead

I'm really still alive. But every time I'm on a computer, I'm time limited. It seems like a whole chunk of my life is being left unblogged right now. I'm very sad about it, but I'll fill you in on the details.

I saw Adaptation again last night, it's still one of my favourite films. Yesterday we had the international fair, which is kind of like the Fresher Fair except just for international students, so I met a lot of new members of the society. Looks like they should be cool. Anyway, the Fresher Fair is in two days,m and I'm supposed to be making a postcard. I'm with Carlos and Mizuki, so I have to be quick. Southlands is full of people registering, and my logon won't work.

I'll update proper soon. Where did I leave off? Something about an iPod.

The Nerve of Some People

After Dan and I left Southlands today, we drove to Wimbledon to all go to Nandos with Julia. On the way, there is some traffic, so it all slows to 30mph. Dan points out there's a cyclist next to me. I suddenly realise that this cyclist has crept up in my blind spot and was going alongside me. The cyclist overtook me and went to overtake the next car, a Honda Accord. I saw it gave him almost no room, and suddenly swerved to give him room. I noticed that he also had a huge problem seeing him. This guy was wearing all black, with no lights on his front, cycling towards the end of the day. As traffic speeds picked up, I told Dan to lower the window, and as I passed him, I shouted, "You've very badly visible," to let him know that he was in danger of dying unless he got some brighter clothes. I drove on, and came to a standstill later. The cyclist pulls up on my side, and practically puts his hand through my window. I wind down said window and the conversation goes as follows:

"What did you say?"
"I said that I could barely see you, and I don't think anyone else can either."
"Well. You shouldn't be driving like a granny then."

At this point he cycled off without another word. I was stunned that a man who had just been told that his visibility put him in danger would put blame on someone else's driving. I had told him because I thought he was in danger of being hit, and I would want any driver thinking that of me to notify me. He took it as if it were an insult, and acted like a jerk. Honestly, the nerve of some people. I should have followed him and shown him the possibilities of poor visibility by killing him, but I was in a good mood.

Dan and Julia and I had a good meal, as it was the first serious thing I'd eaten all day, and then we went to his place and played around on IRC for an hour or so, inventing very simple ASCII art, and annoying chatrooms full of people in the process. Great fun.

I went to my parents' house, and have since been trying to fix my computer. It's half way through its third format of the night, but I have high hopes, as the first two were faultless. Maybe now I can get an actual working OS running, and start actually downloading stuff. I can't wait for limitless downloading. I won't fill up 400GB easily.

I think we'll have a 400GB iPod within 5 years. Or am I being stupid? I read about how the video iPod has had another sign, with video Podcasting now slightly supported by Apple. Should be fun. If they can get the screen bigger, I'm buying one. But for now, I'll lust and use my handy MP3 CD Player and an old fashioned sound system.

Curse the Flooding

The flooding of last week has meant that the Roehampton University library has been out of order. I can't print up any t-shirts, I can't go on the internet late at night. This means that the time that I most what to surf in must be spent doing something pointless instead, like sleeping. So I have been going to bed around 3AM quite regularly. It's awful.

So it's been another three or four days. That's not as bad as Ryan's blog, which I have been waiting for for months now. Well, almost months, but it feels like it. So anyway, the days have been spent being productive: The room that we were destroying, well, we destroyed it. And now we have rebuilt it. And it's amazing. Ok, we haven't quite finished yet, but it still looks stunning. My abnormal television is now in an alcove, and is out of the way. Half the room is pretty much devoted to the home cinema setup, with just the rear speakers needing wall mounting. Two sofas form go together, L-shaped, in another alcove, forming what Emma and I have dubbed the Love-Shack. My IB Art painting sits above it, between where the rear speakers will be, and I have to say that I am happy it has found a good home, with the wonderful magnolia just complementing it.

The other half of the room has the smaller TV in it, and a dining table, as well as my massive arm chair. We finished most of it yesterday, so I'm happy that it's over. Just a little sanding and one more coat of paint on one wall. That's been the focus of everyone while Kaori and Katou have been in Paris. They should return today.

That's about everything. Carlos flies in tomorrow and I'll go pick him up. When term starts again I'm sure we'll have a housewarming party or something cool to be getting along with. Dan's come around today, and we're both very hungry, so we'd better find something delicious or interesting enough to take our minds off it. He's made a whole desktop out of Shortcuts to the Recycling Bin, and I don't know if that qualifies.

Anyway, I've wasted enough of your time.

Oh, The Delays

The problems of not having internet access whenever, it's awful. Five days? I think that's the worst it's ever been. Maybe it's six now, I can't remember.

I found out that my scanning job that I was completing while updating last was only half of what had been left for me. I'm going to spend Monday scanning that in. That's a horrifying thought. It was bad enough. On Friday Emma and I took a trip to Kingston to stock up on paint and paint-rollers and wallpaper stripper. While shopping, it started to rain. And it rained properly. Heavily. I mean, it started pooling in the sheltered walkway we were in. Then the drains from below started spurting water, so Emma and I took refuge in Argos, where the same thing happened. The drain was spitting water onto the middle of the shop floor. I've never seen drains start pumping water upwards, it was shocking. The drive home was also slowed by the fact that Robin Hood gate was underwater by about forty centimetres, and so the traffic lights had failed.

The parking lot near Whitelands was under a metre of water, and at least two cars were flooded out. Apparently a Volvo was floating around Asda. Most of our road was also completely flooded, but my good old Peugeot held through, and the shortcut I took cut a lot of waiting time.

Ooh, I was a little distracted there (I stopped writing for about 40 minutes or so). Sorry, I'll continue.

After we returned, I cooked myself some ribs (with a bourbon BBQ drizzle, which was quite strong). Dan was on his way over, and begged for a lift, but the traffic was solid and despite his initial anger, he understood why I couldn't make it out. While he dried off briefly, and burnt his tongue on a very hot Kaori Curry, I cleaned up and the three of us, Dan, myself and Emma, went to Natasha's place for a housewarming party. It turned out that due to the flooding, we were the only ones to show up, even though we were slightly late due to the fact that we walked. But it was a very fun evening, where I met one of her flatmate's ex-boyfriends, who is a really nice guy. We watched some of Cruel Intentions, and we ate popcorn and discussed the benefits of not washing hands after using the toilet.

The three of us had a fun time, and after we walked home it was quiet enough to give Dan a lift back to his place. I felt bad, as I missed Weiwei's birthday party for it, and I'd really like to see her more before I go.

The day after, Saturday, we set about destroying the living room's decoration. We stripped the rest of the paper we hadn't taken off before, we went down to bare plaster in most of it, and we basically took it back to the 1950's mint green it was before it was papered and painted again. And since the students who have lived there for the past few years weren't proactive in decoration, we felt we'd really put the room back in time. We saw the huge crack in the kitchen dividing wall was more of a structural defect than a crack, and we'll set about filling it up soon. I went home to go online briefly, but it was brief (as in not enough time to update the blog proper). Emma and I had planned on going to central London for a week, and we really wanted to dance and party. But everyone that we'd asked had backed out apart from Kiwako, and she was already in central for a film. I gave Dan a bit of a hard time about it, because I thought it would have been great for him and Julia to meet some people and get some dancing out, especially after how much work they've gone through. But sadly, his excuses prevailed, and he didn't come along. We'd pretty much given up until a rogue text to Hosei received a reply. He was willing, and we instantly dashed towards central.

A kind lady gave us a travelcard when we approached the station, saving us about £5. We tubed it up all the way to Oxford Circus, where we met Hosei and a huge group of people at a pub near H&M. I met a girl called Yuko, who was from near where I stayed in Japan, and we exchanged Osaka stories until closing time, while Emma chatted with Hosei. Ki and Warren came half way through the evening after their film, and everyone in the group save Warren made along a route towards a club. The party was a goodbye party to someone I'd never met, nor did meet, called Hiro, as the group is from a Japanese teaching facility in London, that offers free lessons which I might partake in next year. Yuko is a teacher there. We all ended up at Bar 101, where I'd partied with Ki and Kyoko and Mizuki and Koji before, as it had free entry and free tissue (for earplug use). The music is never great there (though they played Galvanise), and Emma and I did the 'pointy thing'.

All the non Japanese guys still in the group were obviously in love with Yuko, and I watched them acting very pathetically around her. It was quite funny. No matter how desperate, I would not look like that. Since through most of the night Emma was distracted with an important conversation, I spent most of my dancing time dancing with Ki, and for a brief moment we went outside for a good old fashioned gossip. She was being pursued by a man trying to recruit a girlfriend for his boss, and whenever he showed up we made a humerous dash for the entrance/exit. Once back inside, I texted Emma in Japanese (and my dubious fluency impressed her enough to ask if I'd had help).

We started maing our way back, and after saying goodbye, it was just Emma, myself and Ki on the bus home. After getting to Putney, I drove Ki back to her place (with a stop off at Sainsbury's), and then Emma and I went to bed and collapsed. By then it was 4AM.

A note from Kaori for our return suggested that we leave at 11AM for a street festival (ref. Matsuri Festival). We laughed at this, but I sadly had to wake up at 12:15PM, and I was still tired, but operational. Emma and I trekked around trying to find a place to buy a bus pass, but eventually we took a bus to Hammersmith to buy one, costing us an extra £1.20 each. Great. But we took a variety of buses to Liverpool Street, which sadly seemed a but daunting to the tired Ki, who did not join us today.

We arrived after about two hours of bus travel, and various worries about directions, we arrived, and searched for the others waiting for us. It wasn't so much Matsuri as it was a market with art and a band and mostly Japanese people. But it was still fun and we still laughed and I enjoy the company greatly. We stopped for a sit down and some Indonesian food, and after we took a bus trip to one of Hosei's friend's house, and we hung out and chatted about bidets and rats. When it became late, we all made our journeys home, and it leaves me here. After getting back and having some cereal, I drove back to use the internet and check my downloads.

I have had some deep thoughts recently, but I'm really too tired to talk about them now. Sorry. Sometime I'll be able to update properly. The Univeristy Library flooded very badly and I think it's out of order, so no late night computer suite for now. I'll probably update again tomorrow, but for now, that's what's happened. Hope it was interesting. It was a difficult entry to make.

Post 101

I won't number them for long, I promise.

There actually seems like there's less to celebrate with this post. Rather than the symmetry of the post number, it's rather an average post. I didn't post yesterday, and that was due mainly in part to not being near a computer and having the time to post. I had a huge problem, as I had lost my phone. I was sure that I'd left it at Dan's flat, but of course, I'd put it on silent while I was in the library, so only the vibrating function of the phone was a clue to its whereabouts.

This caused problems, as I had arranged to meet Qian in the morning to work on programming. I emailed her from Southlands, but the chances of her checking her email were small, so I drove to her place and took her to Southlands, where I found that teaching C++ is harder than I thought. I had to describe memory allocation much earlier than I'd hoped, just to get started. But I got into the groove quickly, and she was understanding more than I was after several weeks after about an hour learning, so I think I can give her a head start in it.

We arranged to meet again in a couple of days, seeing as I have had to work today (and I haven't finished, I'm just taking sporadic breaks). I have been scanning the same motorcycle magazines that I scan just about every month, but I have had to do twice the usual amount seeing as I was in another country last month.

Speaking of the other country, I'm listening to iTunes radio, and the song that Yayoi sang at Karaoke is playing. A piano instrumental version, but still, it's bringing back memories. Just as a song that I downloaded today has been doing. Fairyland, by Ayumi Hamasaki, played just about everywhere I went, especially in Tokyo. So when I finally remembered the name, with a little help from Yukina, I set about looking for an easy download site. All the torrents were unseeded, and eventually I found a French MP3 site, which I could understand enough to get a nice 320kbps version from. I'll play it to Emma and see if she recognises it.

After I returned from teaching Qian, I put on a CD that Kumiko had burnt for me, another Icelandic band/composer. It was really interesting, and I enjoyed it enough to listen to it again that night. But after it finished, I fell asleep for three hours, so it was about nine in the evening when I woke. I spent the rest of my time watching an entire disc of Frasier, and then a quick trip to Tesco's at 3AM, to stock up on lemonade. After that, I think I slept.

But it was strange enough to disorientate me. My hours are suffering terribly, and I'll have to work them back to health.

This radio is almost unbearable. The music is great, but my torrents upstairs are taking so much bandwidth that it has to be 24kbps. Horrible.

I should get back to work. I hope you all the best. And seriously, those of you with blogs, update. Except for Hap, you've been good.

Welcome One Hundred

This is is the 100th post in quasiblog - technoculture. It has lasted well, considering I started it just before my birthday in April and it's now early September. I have kept it up, and updated often enough to alienate anyone who isn't dedicated enough to embark on a small essay each day or two.

I looked back at what I created a few days ago. I spoke about what I did, what I had done, and it rekindled memories, but I surprised myself with the lack of detail included, and that I could remember more details about the events I had written about than what I had written down. They acted as more of a subliminal reminder. However, I believe my level of detail has increased with time, and perhaps as my memory fades, this blog will step in.

I found myself, linked from a friend's band page, browsing some myspace journals. I would never do such a think usually, but you know, I thought about scoping out some of the abysmal sites people use to convey their depression and how nobody understands. I found one link that reminded me particularly of mow much I hate the teenager who believes that the sole purpose of digital cameras is to make sure everyone on the internet can see what they look like with their middle finger raised. SomethingAwful linked me to one site that had so many images of the owner and her respective friends raising their fingers that I had thought I had stumbled upon a KFC site with missing tongues. Either that or they really hated the person taking the photos, I couldn't be sure. But in the way I see it, it's another thing to add to the list of things stupid children do for attention.

These blogs have the purpose of sharing photos of either the group of friends: drunk, stoned, raising fingers or in the process of doing all three. They also serve as ways people can say how their life has changed because of the new Mars Volta album, or how their parents are too stuck in the past (only when compared to the parents of other children, and these kids are probably lying).

I'm not going to sit around blaming the children, they can't help it, they're just too young to realise how they're being played off from three seperate angles: corporations, their peers, and their superiors. Corporations push profitable images, peers push social ideal images (misinformed), and superiors push advantageous ideals (whether noble or self benefitting). And children are slaves to this. The entire Emo movement (popular Emo movement) is that of expressing individuality by acting identically, and then acting opressed when people judge them. But that's the image pressed by peers and by corporations. Image is so profitable.

Anyway, this is a terrible tangent. My initial point was that of the one MySpace which I read, the girl expressed her desire to go new places and meet new people. While this is hardly a unique thought, it made me think of what I want. Going lost of places and meeting lots of new people, it's a great idea, but I don't want that. I want to go to a few very different places, but meet a few people and know them well. While knowing many international people makes for excellent diversity, it also leads to an unsatisfying depth of relationship. This is why I will appreciate knowing a few people very well, and attaining a clique in which understanding is key. I don't know many people that I know well, nor do I think many people know me well, but I am discovering more and more that Chris Kiew-Smith's words ring true: it's not where you are or what you're doing, it's who you're with. Your surrounding social environment makes the most impact on your life, which is probably why my childhood felt so different and uneasy; the social environment was not suited to me.

I would love to meet many new people, but right now, I want to meet one person, and know them really well. From there, social interactions will spread, but certain ones are necessary. I feel terrible over the loss of some friendships, and I regret them frequently. And thus, my desire to experience other cultures through people leads me to the paradox: to learn of someone elses culture, you must spend much time with them, but people from other cultures are usually time limited. I wish I could have put that more eloquently. Let me put it in an example: at the moment I am speaking via MSN to Yukina, someone who left the country before I got to know them properly. I found her fascinating, not because of her culture, but because of who she was. But who she was was someone part of a different culture, and therefore time limited, and needed to return. Thus, the problem occurs.

Anyway, problems like this plague me every so often. Much like my HDD is plaguing me now. I'm so eager to perform a low level format, but I'm scared of never being able to retrieve the data that might not be retrievable anyway. I'm also finding out of the time it takes to compile Gentoo Linux, and it's a bit of a time burden. Apparently the whole kernel compile takes about 72 hours, and I need to know plenty of Unix commands. Which I don't. But, it seems like a project. I can get it running pretty smoothly if I study it a little.

Ah, perfect. My one hundredth post, and I include a diatribe of social commentry, and some hyper-nerdy talk. And it's a second post for today. Keeps you on your toes, eh? I plan to one day update more than Slashdot. Maybe I write more than Slashdot, I should check. I saw Natasha today, it had been several months and a few MSN conversations since I'd last spoken to her (she IMed me today and we chatted until I found out she was a couple of buildings apart). I saw her flat and met her flatmates and Dan came along later to make it a rather complete day with regards to English friends (save for Helgi, but I can't really count him as English). I'll say goodnight there, I'm going to go and listen to another episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and then collapse asleep once more.

Swedish Furniture

I'm starting to appreciate certain soundtracks I never gave much of a listen, and I thought I'd share a verse with you. I tend to do this sporadically, just inserting a verse of a song, and I know, it's a little blase, but every so often it works, and I know that I can come back to the blog and use it to reminisce.

Your face it dances, and it haunts me.
Your laughter's still ringing in my ears.
I still find pieces of your presence here,
Even after all these years.
But I don't want you thinking I don't get asked to dinner,
'Cause I'm here to say that I sometimes do.
Even though I may soon feel the touch of love,
I just don't think I'll ever get over you.

Last night, I put on Break of Dawn again, so that I could play along to Raven. But after it finished, I fast forwarded to the Garden State soundtrack, and I think I fell asleep to it. I woke halfway through the Sin City soundtrack, and then fell asleep until sometime during Surfing on Sine Waves. But that one particular song echoes with its simplicity, and I can appreciate it more in time.

I spent yesterday gallivanting around Croydon, in the Ikea shop. I always viewed Ikea as a kind of theme park in appearance, with a day care facility, restaurants, and the like. It's certainly a strange shop. Sadly, Emma is still in Wales, so she could not join us, but Mizuki, Kaori, Katou, Kiwako, Warren, Kumiko and Kumiko's friend. Hosei also joined us after we'd finished, as he was lost on the way.

I bought myself a rather nifty laptop bag, so that when I get a laptop running a nice, stable, networkable operating system, I'll carry a laptop around with me. Until then, it'll just have my CDs and CD player and my organiser in it. It's still nifty though. I also purchased some nice bitonal straws and an ice-cube tray that creates 'cubes' in the shape of doughnuts. The joys of Swedish ingenuity; the items are well priced and functional.

Computers are fun and useful.

After we returned how without Kiwako or Warren or Kumiko's friend, after a little looking at said items, I gave Hosei and Kumiko a lift to the nearby tube station, and left it there. It must have given a terrible impression of my driving, as in order to be saved several minutes waiting time for traffic to afford us a gap to enter, as I pulled out of the parking space, I sped into a short gap in front of the bus, and I did it at near full acceleration. It may have frightened them. Also, after dropping them off, I had to do an equally fast acceleration in order to get back in to traffic. I hope they don't think I'm a driving lunatic; the rest of the trip was managed without any real sudden or dangerous moves.

I drove to Dan's place in time to watch them eat, and then we discussed the creation of a hosting business. I won't go in to details, but it looks like fun. I then returned home, made myself some food, and fell asleep listening to music. But I think I already spoke about that.

My new shirt is being printed right now. When it's ready, I'll sport it to my trendy friends who can all admire it and it's amazingly witty logo on the front. I can't wait to let people chuckle at its double-entendre. For now though, I'll go and pick it up and admire it for myself, before returning home and waiting for Dan to come around.

More of Nothing

Despite trying in vain today to get my t-shirt printed, today has been pretty much me catching up on the internet. I feel almost as if the day has been wasted, as I have barely left my computer chair, and I have little motivation to do anything else. But then, I realise that I have absorbed information from computers around the world, and thus I am better informed of the technical world around me.

But aside from browsing Wikipedia (and nothing the lack of notable deaths in the past two days), I finally started looking at my hard drives, and started attempting to recover data lost many months ago. My former main drive, a nice little 120GB IDE drive still operates. I plugged it in, and despite all the data being corrupted, it still registers, and can still be read by less conventional programs. However I'm puzzled as to why it reads only as 80GB; this must mean that the 40GB partition in which I made my first Linux installation is still intact and operational and invisible to Windows. I'm puzzling over how to deal with that partition, I puzzled on how to get the data back from my drive. I have some work on there I really cannot lose, and I don't want to format it in case it is lost. But I'm getting impatient with this 20GB drive that I'm currently using, and impatient with this installation of XP that won't allow me to install anything with InstallShield.

The next thing to tackle is my pair of 160GB SATA HDDs. All my drives failed at the same time, and I attribute it to some kind of surge coming from a USB HDD that killed my computer a while back. They were operational enough to get data from, so I could save my music collection, and they worked at a slow pace until I low level formatted them, which never completed, and has made them useless since. I haven't tried that hard at getting them to work, but I'm starting again with my attempts. I want them to work so I can install all my preferred operating systems and finally has space to download lots of media files without having to back up every 4 gigabytes.

Yesterday was by comparison, eventful. After Emma left to go back to Wales, Mizuki and I started getting the preparations for the JCS Fresher Fair stall up and running. We wrote out a provisional calendar for the first semester, and then when we'd exhausted most ideas, went home. I received a call from Qian, who was moving in to a new house, so I picked her up from Asda and took her there, where we spent a large part of twenty minutes trying to find the way to drive there through the maze of estate dead ends and seemingly pointless walls. As her new flatmates weren't in, she had to wait with her shopping and I retrieved her suitcases stored in my house. When I returned, I dropped them off (having finally found the right road to get to her house), and re rearranged to meet on Monday.

As I was walking in to the house from driving back, Mizuki was leaving to meet Kiwako, whom I had intended to meet up with in Japan, but unfortunately did not. We went to th Chinese place that we always go to, and had a long chat about Japan and earthquakes and all sorts, and after eating we went back to the house and relaxed while Ki saw Kaori again and met Katou. Of the conversations, most were in Japanese, with Mizuki occasionally turning to me to translate whatever the topic was at the time. The most memorable part, for me at least, was when they were all talking, and laughing, and one particular word kept cropping up. I recognised it, and when Mizuki turned to me to explain how the Asahi building had an unfortunate arrangement of bubbles that led it to be known as the 'poo building', I informed everyone that I knew the word "unko". The group realisation of the fact that I had been picking up on every time they said the word 'poo' produced a wonderful reaction.

I offered Ki a lift back to her place, and she showed me around, and not counting the area it's located in, it's a nice place. It's suitably student-messy, and it felt a lot more relaxed (but conversely more limiting) than our place. I was slightly bemused to see she is using a very nice and relatively new Powerbook, which just adds to the repertoire of Japanese Mac users that I have been meeting recently. As it approached 3AM I returned home and finished watching the last of Ki's DVDs, and the end of Futurama. I have now seen every episode, and I am now angrier than ever that it met its end at the hands of a network.

A few days ago, while Emma and I were looking over Kaori's essay and correcting minor grammar mistakes, I noticed a misplaced apostrophe when referring to the ownership by something that is plural. When it was pointed out, Emma discounted it by saying that only an English teacher would notice that. What I find irritating about that attitude is that it contributes to the degeneration of language, as it slowly erodes into poorer and poorer grammar. I didn't expect this attitude from Emma, as she never seemed to me to be a grammar iconoclast, but if she takes that stance, then what hope do I have of instilling the traditional values of grammar. I feel the entire Lynne Truss movement is wasted, and the idea of good grammar has now become a gimmick. I'm further saddened by The Times adopting the American spellings of certain words. Perhaps in teaching English, I can correct some of these terrible crimes against literature.

Anyway, now that I have finished my tirade on writing, I'll use my spell checker and get along to bed (I don't proofread; most of my readers don't have time to read all of my entries, why would I?).

Bed Room

In all the excitement of breaking the rules yesterday, I forgot to talk about the excitement of the previous night. It was probably the most odd thing to happen to me for a while, but at, I think, quarter past four in the morning, yesterday morning, I woke to find Emma in my room, standing in the doorway, with the light on. I struggled for a minute to work out what she was saying, and to pull the bedclothes over my less than clothed body, but quickly I found out that wasps had invaded her room.

Not just a few, but loads. Not thousands, but enough to scare her and me and everyone we woke up. Which was everyone. Emma had heard the sound of buzzing, she'd stood up, turned the light on, and just seen a swarm, so she ran to my room. She did knock, for a while apparently, but I think I was in deep enough sleep to not notice her until she was practically standing over me with a bright light in my eyes. So we all went around the house, closing the windows. We'd noticed the wasps' nest a few days previously, but they'd never bothered us before, so it was a surprise. After an hour of deliberating over plans and occasionally sneaking into the infected area to snatch a necessary item, like her phone, or some trousers.

At eight in the morning, the wasps had all left the room, despite the closed window. Emma didn't get back to sleep before work, but she managed to call the landlord, who was surprisingly in Spain. I woke after she'd left, to find notes and stuff, but it's all too much to go into. For the rest of the day, I hacked with Dan and helped him revise for his exam. We also listened to the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, which was very ahead of its time. That brings us on to today.

Dan says he passed his exam fully, so that's our work out of the way for another month. Shortly after we got back, and had watched another few Futurama episodes, the pest control dude arrived, and it took him about ten minutes to spray the nest from out of the window and be out of there, leaving us impressed and with loads of time to hang around not waiting for him anymore. We had our telephone line connected in the meantime, and now with a phone, the house becomes more functional. It's also a wonderful lead in to the world of the internet, which soon enough, I won't need to go to University for.

Last night I was lucky enough to meet some of the people who had been practically living in "Emma House" while I was away. I had met Hosei before, but I hadn't seen him since my return (and he's far more open to me now), and I met Kumiko, who's the only girl I have ever been able to talk about really nerdy things with, and actually have her respond. We discussed the introduction of x86 chips into the new Macintosh computers, and then the technical requirements for the Tiger OS (she's a bit of a Mac fan too).

We all went out to Kingston to party with Emma's work friends, but the Japanese section of the group pretty much clung together, and while Emma thought this typical of them and a perfect way not to make English friends, I really didn't blame them. The library team that Emma works with didn't seem like the kind of people I'd get along with brilliantly, so I hung around chatting to Hosei and Kumiko.
Since last night Emma wasn't prepared to sleep in the wasp room, after we all returned, she prepared beds for Hosei and Kumiko (the two downstairs sofabeds), and not wanting to be left out of the fun of a sleepover, and not wanting to sleep in a possible wasp nest, I stayed downstairs as well. We converted a normal, living room into an actual Bed Room, with practically the whole floor covered with two sofa beds. The four of us slept well, and after meeting Dan for his exam, I saw our guests off and continued on with my day, which included Tescos and moving my free speakers into the house (I got free speakers from Dan's place [they have a "swap table" in the apartment block]).

I don't know how many of you read Slashdot on a regular basis, but London is finally getting the chance to have 24Mbps internet, and I'm signing up as soon as they enable my exchange. Just imagine that beauty, twenty four megabits of internet, flowing into the free ADSL2 router they provide...

I'm salivating. I thought 2Mbps was good. Although, Yukina is awaiting 100Mbit fibre optic internet, and that kinda made my awesome speed feel quadri-downsized. Anyway, laters my friends.

(Woah, no spelling errors.)