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.