Somewhere Else, Not Here

It's been a few weeks since I filled everyone in. I'm aware of that, and I know what I have done. And I'm sorry. Worst of all, I betrayed my travel-blogger roots, by going on holiday and not writing about it every day. But I'm going to write about it now.

Where am I? I'm home. Where have I been? Ireland.

As soon as University finished, my cousin, who has arrived from Canada, met up with me, and we went, with Yunhae, to Ireland. That's where my grandmother lives. And We drive, and took a ferry. It was a road trip. Only, this time, I was driving.

And I had fears that we'd all start grinding on each other, all argue by the end, but we fitted together perfectly. It was a great holiday. Stressful, and all organised at the last minute, but great nonetheless.

We drove on Saturday the 16th all the way to Pembroke in a few hours. I hit 120mph again, with 3 people and a load of luggage in the car. If I'm all alone and have a long enough stretch, I think I can go to 130mph or more. Maybe later though. I wasn't very nice to my car once we got to my grandmother's house. She has a field I was allowed to do doughnuts in, and I practised a lot of drifting. And part of my car broke off during. I'm not sure where it's from, somewhere under, but I kept it for later.

We drove to Dublin, and tried to meet with Ellie, but there was little time for it. We stayed in a very cheap Youth Hostel (14 Euros a night), a shared room and everything. Dublin has this amazing needle sticking out of it, it's huge. And I was introduced to it by driving up next to it, and realising it went quite high, and then being almost unable to see the top from within the car. I used it as my base point from there on in.

Roan (my cousin) and Yunhae eventually managed to get me to taste Guiness from Dublin, which was partially tastier than Guiness from anywhere else, but I still didn't enjoy it. We drove back to my grandmother's house and the next day started our drive home. We hit repeated warnings of horrible frozen fog that was rolling over England and Wales. Yunhae described it as "strong foggy". Despite this, I decided to stick behind someone I could trust, and that was a BMW 530d, the drive of which was confident enough to drive most of it at 90mph, despite close to zero visibility. I stuck behind him from getting off the ferry almost all the way to London, and by then it was clearing anyway. I did feel tired during it, and while I didn't fall asleep, I did begin to hallucinate a little. But I was fine after I woke myself up. When I arrived back in London, the front of my car and the wing mirrors were coated in ice crystals. That's how cold it was outside.

Since being back, I had a day off where I saw my family and slept, and then a day with Imogen, Becky where Yunhae cooked for us. It was delicious, and we had a fantastic time doing drive by chavving (Becky's invention) and McDonalds (after Imogen had been taken back home).

On top of al of this, yesterday was Christmas. I did guess my main present beforehand, and it's of the caliber I'm not used to: extreme practicality. But when I receive it in a few days time, I am sure I will appreciate it. I spent the day with my family, and Emma came along as well, which was great. We had an amazing meal (Christmas dinner is becomming more and more appreciated as a get older), I made a gingerbread house, and we watched Evolution and Ricky Gervais. It was a very family oriented Christmas, plus Emma or course, and I will remember it as a very fun one.

Still no snow.

Lost is back on, but only the first season, because I'm watching it again in the wait for Season 3. Emma seems to be racing me for watching the most. But it's ok, I study it more. I'd watch more Lost Podcast if it weren't so full of spoilers. Good though.

I'm so cold, I'm going back to bed. And watching Lost.

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas, and hope that your day was shiny and filled with cold wind but no snow. It's so cold here that my rev counter freezes on zero for the first 10 minutes of any trip.

43 days to go. See you all soon.

Something I Forgot

I totally forgot to mention the awesome thing last Tuesday.

Yunhae and I went to the theatre, like we were meant to before but couldn't, and we saw the Tom Stoppard play, Rock'n'Roll. It was very good. It was much more complicated than I was anticipating, and due to finding out about the tickets about an hour before the curtain was due, we missed the first section. It was about how rock music had a roll in changing the world, and the people it changed directly, along with their dying philosophies.

But it was very good, and as was mentioned in the play, it told the story of the music, not just what was happening because of it.

After the play we went for a great meal in Chinatown. And due to a minor miscalculation on my part with the bus and train times, we walked back from Putney to Roehampton, which was really fun. Plus I learnt the Korean for cooking. It's the same as the Japanese.

As I said before, I handed in my work, and I took a day off from working yesterday. It turns out, others didn't, and I am a little behind in XML. Which irritates me as I have to hand it in tomorrow, because I'm going away Saturday. It'll be good to get away for a while, and it'll rock to see Roan again. We have tons of catching up to do. Tickets are booked, times are set.

I feel terrible I missed Sarah and her texts, so a big hug for her. But I'll see you soon, you know I will.

I need new shoes. Or at least need to repair these ones. Superglue just isn't doing the trick.

56 Days

I just woke up from 18 hours sleep. That felt very good. Why? Well...

I have had a few deadlines the past couple of days. Monday and Tuesday, to be precise. Monday, my Development Project had a massive essay to be handed in, and yesterday was my 3D Animation. Needless to say, of course I handed both in on time and perfected.

But I have been working almost solidly the past week. Rendering is hard to do, especially when people keep turning off your computers, but that's what happens in public computer rooms. Plus, security lock up the only room you can use, because "there aren't security cameras in it". That makes getting a degree far easier, guys. Thanks.

But aside from fighting with security guards and battling my tiredness, I worked almost solidly from Wednesday to 18 hours ago. I worked everyday until Saturday, which was my father's birthday party, and I refused to miss his 60th birthday, even though I did leave early to go and write another 2000 words, but since 1PM Sunday until 2PM Tuesday, I only slept 4 hours. I spent the rest at Southlands trying my hardest to finish my work. I didn't sleep Monday night. And you know what? I finished it brilliantly.

My 3D Lecturer came to my animation's premiere, as well as a couple of other people. I showed it on a projector in an unused classroom. The animations were defined as "at least 10 seconds". Mine was 2:44 in total. As soon as I recode it into another bitrate (it's 500MB as is), I'll get it onto YouTube, so everyone can see. Just as the credits finished, my lecturer turned to me and said, totally deadpan, "I'm going to have to fail you on that.". I feel I might be on to a first.

Aside from having to work really hard, last week was one of the worst weeks I've had in a very long time. For various reasons. I won't go into details, but I quit my authoritative position at the JCS. As well as that, all of my housemates have managed to hurt and alienate me in several other ways. But now that I actually have some time to think, whereas I have been working solidly since the beginning of the month, I can actually react.

Luckily, I got to speak to Sarah about this. She called at the perfect time. I think I missed her yesterday though, as I was sleeping. If you tried to contact me, I'm sorry. You would have had more luck waking somebody in a morgue.

My father also had a wonderful party, where I met almost all of his friends I knew growing up. I've never seen a more profound collection of people I knew from being a child. And Ray played a fantastic Blues set with his band. I filmed it on my phone. The sound isn't great, but it never is, but I'll put them on YouTube too at some point. I also had a fun day with Imogen and Becky. LOL.

Completing such an arduous task has left me feeling very satisfied. I have to get going, since I'm usually asleep at this time of the day anyway, my body clock is telling me to rest. I'm also going to comment that ClassicFM played some amazing music to work by, with two Christopher O'Riley songs from True Love Waits. I was very happy to hear those.

I'm going to browse the net briefly, shower, and then see what the day is like from 8:30AM. Good day to you all.

13 Weeks

Yay, comments. Hey guys.

What an eventful week! I had a Karaoke party on Tuesday, and another Japanese lesson, a dinner party, watched Lost with Dan, a movie to publicise and 35 pages to write. And of course, my 3D animation to finish. Which is looking like it won't get spoken lines. Or at least no animated lines. But other than that, it looks great.

The party on Tuesday was Yunhae's party. We sang songs and ate delicious food. To clear things up, Yunhae is a friend of mine in the second year, and she provides interesting conversation. I've mentioned her twice before. She's also the person I misjudged previously. I invited her to come and see a play tonight, but she couldn't make it.

Which leads me on to what I did tonight! I saw a play! With Dan! He called up, we went out to London for cheap, and we saw Love Song. It's a new play, very funny, and it deals with a simple man and his love. It had a great soundtrack, and was sad as well. It wasn't very long, only an hour and a half, but I'm not complaining. I thought it was excellent and would recommend it. It had the bad guy from Red Eye in it, and Sally from 3rd Rock from the Sun, as well as Neve Campbell (you know, Scream). So cast wasn't an issue. And there was some really good chemistry going on.

Last night I went around to Qian's house, and I had a wonderful home cooked dinner. And I met with Lin again! I hadn't seen Lin in a year and a half, not since my 20th Birthday party. I met her with Weiwei back when they put makeup on me and Xing put on a bra with oranges and ran around Southlands. Memories.

All you lazy sods who don't email me or comment, take a tip from Erin, who is awesome enough to email me and join GMail because of me.

I'm going to Ireland. I may have mentioned it, but I say again, I'm going to road trip to Ireland before Christmas with my cousin and Yunhae, and we're going to party and drive across the country. Maybe if I find some nice roads, well...

Driving back from Qian's house yesterday, I drove past Whitelands, and where the road from Whitelands joins Roehampton Lane, you turn right then left onto the main road through traffic lights. As I hit the main road, still turning a little, I went to second gear and I lost all rear wheel traction. My back end slid out and when I let off the power it snapped back. It was frigetening. Frightening enough to go around and do again. Bring on snow.

My arm hurts, and I can't think why. Maybe I slept on it badly, maybe I strained it in quick gear shifting, I can't tell. Weiwei put her herbal medicine to it, and it felt better, but herbal medecine takes a long time for healing. I hope it gets better soon enough. Enjoy your update, peons. It'll probably be the last before I hand in my work. I love and miss you all.

Misjudgement

A couple of major things came to mind today. Firstly, never before have I felt that I completely misjudged someone before. I don't think I have been in a situation where my opinion of someone could change so much in such a short space of time. I mean, I misjudge people on appearances, which is why I am careful about judging by appearance (but it is a natural thing to do), but I knew this person beforehand, and I judged them on having spoken with them quite a lot, and spent some time with them. And then I spent more time, and I spent more time with them and my opinion flip-flopped like John Kerry*. Basically, I completely underestimated someone.

It feels very good to realise that I was wrong about how I felt, and my opinion, and it leads to several values I hold coming in to question. But hey, what doesn't these days?

I also did something very fun. Something Natasha once said was amusing; I told her that Qian and I were talking about something or other, and she said something along the lines of, "Oh, you and Qian talk about things other than work?". This was amusing, because more often than not, Qian and I spent ages chatting instead of working, and just having a fun time. People often misjudged our friendship. Anyway, tonight she called me, and while she usually calls me to arrange to meet up, she called me today because she was feeling down and wanted to be cheered up. And we chatted for half an hour about all kinds of crazy stuff, mainly what we'd done the last few days and our friends, and we laughed about various situations I was in. She even offered to split up Rika (the masseuse) from her boyfriend and give me her number. Thanks Qian. I don't need guilt. But for someone who hasn't quite mastered the English language, she certainly has a very humourous grasp of sarcasm, a trait most Americans can't handle. And she used it very wittily to mock me for a while, and had me laughing very hard. It was our longest phone call, and the most fun. And at the end of it, she told me how much happier she was because of it. And without realising it, the same had happened to me. It's put me in a great mood all evening.

As it turns out, my 3D Animation lecturer is a big Lost fan. After a short discussion, he informed me that I should take a Degree in Lost. If only they offered it. Helgi's catching up, I hope. And Dan has told me he's watching Season 2 properly again. Thank goodness. In that vein of though, I'm going to start reading The Third Policeman.

*I don't mean anything against John Kerry, he is a great man and deserved a place in the Oval Office. But it's a great simile and confuses the politically ignorant readers.