Title suggested by Michael. ;P
In which the past few days have contained classical civilisation, notes, regrets, good weather, bad weather, love, bad music, snow, myspace, a lack of college and much ranting.
I’ve been meaning to blog for ages, and therefore I’ve got a lot of stuff to write about. Since I’m awake so early (I’ve been awake since six) for the second time in two days, I thought I’d take the opportunity to. This week, I’ve only been to college one day, but for wonderfully legitimate reasons rather than my sheer laziness. Monday I can’t really remember, which is why I should write these damn things on the day that they’re about rather than four days later.
I’ve just been interrupted by three people, all arriving within thirty seconds of each other. The first of these was the postman, the same one who I talked to yesterday, delivering more mail that needed to be signed for. The sheer amount of mail my house gets is near unbelievable. I’m a compulsive internet shopper and pen-pal, I and my parents subscribe to something like ten magazines between us, and we get lots of mail from banks, of course. My mum has also recently started running Ice Skating competitions held at Romford, so for the past week or so, we’ve had even more mail than usual; averaging at something like twenty pieces per day, some of which needs to be signed for. As soon as I was nearly into the living room after collecting the postman’s mail (I do feel sorry for him, having to lug everything around all the time), a woman stuck a letter through the mailslot and then decided to ring the doorbell, just so she could tell me that she had done that. Yeah, clever. Do one or the other, but not both.
So, again, I get to the living rom door, my arms full of mail. The doorbell rings again. I go to answer the door, and there’s a woman standing there holding a carrier bag and a letter. She looks at the amount of mail I’m holding with an incredulous look and starts to blabber on about how her daughter borrowed a dress from Alice and sorry for the delay and there’s a little gift there and here’s an entry form, before playing it on top of the rest of the mail and looking incredulously at me. I suppose she did have a reason to; there I am, hair messy, not looking too happy, holding a massive armful of large letters, wearing pyjamas at eleven am. I’m a student that seems to be turning into some kind of secretary- come- doorperson, what with all the signing for mail, answering phones and dealing with generally ridiculous enquiries.
Anyway, where was I? On Tuesday, I wasn’t at college due to going on a lecture day on Virgil’s ‘The Aeneid’, which I’m studying in Class Civ at the moment. It was actually quite surreal to see so many classics students in one place, and I did notice an amusing predilection for scarves, ties, blazers, glasses and Parker pens. I guess that nobody can blame it on a personality fault of mine that I like these things; it’s obviously a trait shared by almost everyone interested in the ancient world. None of the lectures were that amazing or interesting, but some good points came up. It was pretty annoying that most of the quotes were in Latin, although the longer ones were printed with translations, since my Latin has returned to only basic status. I wish that I had revised it more, to be honest, since I’ve wasted the knowledge I once held. One thing that stuck in my mind about the day was the annoying professor from reading who did the last lecture. He was the only professor not from Oxford, which I’m sure nobody but him cared about, but he felt the need to say this at the start of his lecture; “How can I follow three Oxford professors? Well if Oxford won’t take you, Reading will”.
Leading on from this, Wednesday was spent visiting Reading university, which I’m thinking about putting as my conditional choice. The university wasn’t too bad, but I wouldn’t put it as my top choice, like most of the people there were intending to. In the evening, I went round to Matt’s house, as his shiny new MacBook pro had just arrived. We spent a few hours geeking out on the internet, playing flash games, looking at stupid caturday pictures, chatting and drinking green tea. It’s always nice to spend time with Matt, and it was good to relax for a while.
Yesterday, to my great suprise, it snowed enough for college to be cancelled;
I love it when it snows because even places that look horrible look so gorgeous and delicate. I was awake since six am that morning and since I wasn’t going round Michael’s until midday, I had loads of time to kill. I talked to Matt and played I <3 Katamari for a few hours. I managed to roll up the Eiffel tower and the Statue of Liberty, some pyramids and eventually a lot of land. 1000 km! In my stupidity, I managed to leave it round Michael’s though, which is probably a good thing because it means I may actually get some coursework done.
I went out wearing my massive coat, and walked all the way to the bus stop before realising that my pass was in the pocket of the usual coat that I wear, so I had to walk all the way home, and then back to bus stop. Luckily, I left early and the buses were all delayed, so I still managed to get there on time.
I think that I look weird in this, due to the big fat ski coat, the tied back hair and the pink face. You can see the scarf that I love and practically the rest of the wold hates though.
For the record, this is more what I usually look like;
Sexy, non? ;P
Anyway, I had a really great time round Michael’s, just relaxing and playing Katmari and browsing the internet. Even just spending time with him not doing anything much in particular makes me happy. Kind of soppy, but most definitely true. I left his at about eleven, I think, and watched television for a while before going to bed at about one, which probably explains why I’ve been waking so early lately.
I was about to post this when I remembered that there was one more thing I wanted to write about. Earlier on, I was standing in the kitchen, talking to my mum. The radio was on, and they started talking about myspace. Apparently, and this is from memory and while my mum was talking over the top of it, a group of families in America have got together with the aim of attempting to sue myspace because their fourteen/fifteen year old daughters were sexually assaulted by people that they met from the site. Although it’s horrible that someone, especially of such a young age, should have to go through that kind of experience, one cannot help but think that at least some blame should be put on the kids. At age fourteen or fifteen, I know that I wasn’t that naive, and there wasn’t even all the fuss then as there was now about kids being warned from an early age not to meet people they met online, not to give out private information, etc. If you’re going to meet someone that you don’t know, it’s common sense to meet them in a public place, so that if they don’t look like their photo (after all, there’s a slight difference between eighteen and forty) you can simply leave, and they’d be unlikely to make any unwanted advances.
I’m not that suspicious though, by any chance. I’ve met a fair few people from the internet; two of my closest friends I met online, I’ve been in a relationship with someone I first met online. Nobody i’ve met has lied about their age, or who they are, and they’ve always been great people. I think that everyone is way too suspicious of people lying about who they are. The vast majority of people don’t, and if they do, it’ll be something like saying they’re slightly prettier than they are, or aging themselves up by a year or so. I always used to lie and say I was older, purely because I feel as though I got more respect that way. Who wouldn’t respect a seventeen year old’s view over a fourteen year old’s? I’ve always been mature for my age, especially online, and I know where appropriate limits are. I don’t see why people can’t just exercise a little commonsense, rather than blaming a website. No offense to any Americans out there, but America in general has a horrible habit of blaming other people. Nobody can bear to say that it’s their own fault that they’re fat, that they’ve behaved like an idiot, that they’ve made a mistake. It’s ridiculous that people are willing to take someone to court because of this. It’s money-grabbing idiocy.
I got a little ranty towards the end there, but it did concern two things that really annoy me. Anyway, that’s my “week” written up. Congratulations if you survived until the end.
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