I've had a good day, but now I just feel like I don't want to do anything. I have choir now, and I really need to go and get my sheet music, but I'm really tired and just cannot be bothered. I will go, though. I have to.
Kempo was great today. I did have to get myself up for 10am on a Sunday, but it's good discipline, I suppose. It was a three-hour training session, with more emphasis on the philosophy of Kempo and (this week) getting our footwork perfect. I was often paired with black belts, so I was pretty awful compared to them, but I thought I learned something. At one point we had 10 minutes to come up with a short demonstration of one of the 5 opportunities to take someone down that we had learned. I did mine with Niamh, who is absolutely lovely, and I did the talking when we demonstrated it, and was the only junior to do so, so I was quite proud of that.
After training we went to The Crown Inn for lunch. They have a table booked there every Sunday lunchtime. I hadn't been before, so Owen and Natalie were telling me that I HAD to get a Crown Inn Burger with bacon and cheese, which I did. It was only £5.80, and was delicious. We stayed there for a couple of hours, then I went back to the Union and bought a PAU card (basically insurance for getting to and from choir rehearsals and during concerts), then went to Sainsbury's and spent all my money. Came home, had a shower, did the washing, and now I can't be bothered to eat or go on the forum or go to choir (though I will) or do anything.
Sunday 30 October 2011
Monday 24 October 2011
Kitchen's lookin' better
We have a new cooker! And the extra freezer is gone! Hurrah!
The kitchen looks a lot bigger and clearer now, and the new oven is actually kinda snazzy. This evening I cooked myself bacon, baked beans and fried potato (SO HEALTHY), because I'd had them all for perhaps too long (the beans were leftovers in the fridge), only I defrosted the bacon too much and had to cook all of it, and since my potatoes were going soft I chopped up four of them, so I had a massive dinner. I'm not going to need to eat for a few days, I suspect.
Today, today... Today I had Maths, Maths, free hour, Maths, then I went to the library for 3 hours and did as much work as possible. Which still wasn't as much as I could have done. Ah well. At least I got started on looking for a topic for my presentation (it has to be on a "current marine issue"), and I did a lot of revision for Biogeochemistry.
So, what do I have to do?
Maths worksheet - 31/10
presentation - 14/11
750-word Critical Review of my language learning - 28/10
library orientation programme - 25/11
various French work - 28/10
Biogeochemistry revision - 3/11
probably other things I've forgotten - TOMORROW, TODAY, THREE DAYS AGO
ETA: Gosh and darn it, I've just been given more. Maths coursework - 12/12
ETA2: I now also have to complete a declaration and quiz about academic integrity - 25/11
I've just finished talking with Amy, Laura and Georgie (who is in Liverpool for a bit) on Skype. They were dying Laura's hair blonde. I miss them! They were the people who I knew I really would miss. *sadface*
The kitchen looks a lot bigger and clearer now, and the new oven is actually kinda snazzy. This evening I cooked myself bacon, baked beans and fried potato (SO HEALTHY), because I'd had them all for perhaps too long (the beans were leftovers in the fridge), only I defrosted the bacon too much and had to cook all of it, and since my potatoes were going soft I chopped up four of them, so I had a massive dinner. I'm not going to need to eat for a few days, I suspect.
Today, today... Today I had Maths, Maths, free hour, Maths, then I went to the library for 3 hours and did as much work as possible. Which still wasn't as much as I could have done. Ah well. At least I got started on looking for a topic for my presentation (it has to be on a "current marine issue"), and I did a lot of revision for Biogeochemistry.
So, what do I have to do?
Maths worksheet - 31/10
presentation - 14/11
750-word Critical Review of my language learning - 28/10
library orientation programme - 25/11
various French work - 28/10
Biogeochemistry revision - 3/11
probably other things I've forgotten - TOMORROW, TODAY, THREE DAYS AGO
ETA: Gosh and darn it, I've just been given more. Maths coursework - 12/12
ETA2: I now also have to complete a declaration and quiz about academic integrity - 25/11
I've just finished talking with Amy, Laura and Georgie (who is in Liverpool for a bit) on Skype. They were dying Laura's hair blonde. I miss them! They were the people who I knew I really would miss. *sadface*
Thursday 20 October 2011
Kempo training
I feel a LOT better today after training than I did last time I went [see description of panic attack in previous post!]. I think it was that I wasn't the only not-very-fit female complete beginner there this time. Me and this girl, who was lovely (though I forgot to ask her name), were partners quite a few times, and we were about the same fitness level and both weren't very good at holding the descriptions of moves in our heads, so it was quite funny at times. I was partnered with a green belt girl a few times, who was also really nice and didn't make me feel like I was completely stupid for not being able to get the moves.
I really am bad at Kempo, though. I know I'm just a beginner and shouldn't expect to get everything first time, but it feels like I'm the only person who the seniors have to correct ALL THE TIME. It's so embarrassing, and I do really try to improve my stance or my punching or whatever we're doing, but I'm just awful.
Guh.
I really am bad at Kempo, though. I know I'm just a beginner and shouldn't expect to get everything first time, but it feels like I'm the only person who the seniors have to correct ALL THE TIME. It's so embarrassing, and I do really try to improve my stance or my punching or whatever we're doing, but I'm just awful.
Guh.
So!
I'm in university now! Shock horror... I suppose I'd better tell my rabid readers (in this context, "rabid" means "nonexistent") what's been going on.
Well, I left the island on the 23rd of September. Dad and I caught the boat to Heysham with the car full to the brim with my stuff, plus Mum and Dad's suitcases for going to Menorca after they dropped me off and saw Grandma. Boat journey: uneventful. Most of the drive to Sue's: uneventful. Dad took the wrong motorway at one point, which he was most surprised about ("I have never done that before! How odd!"), but I navigated us back to the right one, so that wasn't too bad.
The next day we picked up Mum from the airport, then went to buy out IKEA. SO MUCH STUFF. Mum would keep picking up things and saying, "This would be useful.", and I would have to keep reminding her that I only had one room and limited kitchen-cupboard space to store all this crap.After IKEA has yielded its treasures to us, we went home, and me and Mum ventured out from there to a giant Tesco to set me up with food for the first couple of weeks. We also went into a small hardware shop to get a doorstop, and the man behind the counter was subtly but incredibly rude to my mum. Bastard.
I finally moved in on Saturday the 25th. We got there really early, because I didn't want to be the person who turns up late when everyone else in the flat has already become best friends with everyone else (I needn't have worried about this, for reasons you will discover later). So, I got there at 8:30am, which was the earliest you could move in. I went and got my keys, then Dad and I went to inspect my room.
My room is actually pretty decent for uni accommodation. It's quite big, and I have a large space in the middle (which has been covered with clothes and/or crockery pretty much since I arrived). I'm on the ground floor, so I don't have to go up millions of flights of stairs to get to it, which is good. I have a bedside desk with a drawer; four large shelves above a spacious desk; an ensuite bathroom with a shower (off the floor!), loo, sink and mirror; large wardrobe with lots of storage space.
The kitchen is okay. I'm sharing with five other people so we have one main oven, one top oven/grill, one microwave, one fridge, one freezer, one hob with four rings, and one sink. In the first two weeks, both our freezer and top oven broke (a flatmate came home drunk and left the freezer open, so it defrosted and wouldn't refreeze; and the knob for the top oven just kept turning round and round without turning the oven off, so that was a bit worrying), so now we have two freezers, and an extra little microwave-looking oven with two hob-rings on the top of it. The other day the new freezer broke and no-one noticed until I went in to get something and found that everything was defrosting. We managed to save most of our food, though.
Back to the sharing with five other people: there's me, Bonnie, Ruffy, Ali, Akbar, and Dom. Bonnie is doing Geophysics, and is absolutely lovely - we get on really well. Ruffy is also lovely, but doesn't come out of her room much. She's doing Maths and Actuarial Science, and is from Zimbabwe. She says she wants to cook us some traditional "Zim" food soon. Ali is doing Physics and is from Iran. He's nice; also doesn't come out of his room much, though I hear him through the wall talking to people on Skype quite a lot. We hardly ever see Akbar - he's either out with his friends or in his room with his girlfriend. He's doing Medicine. Dom is nice, but not particularly considerate. One night this week he woke me up at 3:30am with obnoxiously loud FIFA games and obnoxiously loud friends, and also left bacon fat all over the hob when he came home drunk and cooked bacon, and also was the flatmate who left the freezer open all night. Ah well. He's doing some kind of IT course - I can't remember the exact one.
I've joined quite a few societies: a martial art called Shorinji Kempo which will hopefully get me fitter, and improve my self-defense skills immensely; SUSAC, the university dive club - I'm doing my BSAC Ocean Diver training with them, and start my theory lectures this weekend; the Southampton Anime and Manga Society, which is AWESOME. I've met loads of people I really like there, and the anime they're showing at the moment is wonderful; and SUSingers, one of the choirs, who seem lovely.
My lectures have been going okay. I have a Maths lecture from 9am to 11am on Monday, then a Maths tutorial at 1pm. For three of the weeks this semester I have a tutorial down at the NOC from 5pm to 6pm. I originally had French from 11am to 12am and 3pm to 5pm on a Monday, but it was impossible to get from Highfield Campus to Avenue and back again in time, and I wouldn't have been able to go to my tutorials at all. So, I went to the timetable people and got them to change it, so now I have French from 1pm to 2pm and 3pm to 5pm on a Friday (plus for three of the weeks I have a lecture on how to learn languages effectively from 2pm to 3pm, making it four hours of French on a Friday afternoon some weeks!). Tuesday, I have Maths again, then "Introduction to Biogeochemistry" for two hours. Wednesday - completely free! From time to time I'll have a random thing on in the morning, but generally I have nothing. I like Wednesdays. Thursday, I have two hours of "Ocean and Earth System" and a three-hour chemistry workshop (though we're allowed to leave whenever we want, so I generally go after about 40 minutes). Friday, I have OES again for two hours, then all that French. Our lecturer for OES is hilarious - he's very witty, and also loathes George Bush and Rick Perry, and will take any possible opportunity to slip digs at them into the lecture.
I was quite homesick for the first three weeks. I cried alone in my room quite a lot, which sounds pretty pathetic, but was actually really horrible. I also had a panic attack at one point, which wasn't nice. I had been to Kempo training, so was out of breath from that, then I found out that I have a 5%-of-my-marks listening test on the last Friday of the term, which I will be MISSING. I had alreayd booked my flight home before my timetable changed, and because I was finishing at 1pm I booked it for 2:50pm. I got very panicky about missing it, even though rationally I knew that I would just be able to explain to my teacher what the situation was and ask to be put into another class for that week. Then I was missing home, and I started hyperventilating and couldn't stop. That was really scary. It went on for about half an hour, with me trying various techniques to calm myself down that would work for a couple of minutes but then fail utterly.
I hardly got drunk at all in Freshers' Week, which is most unusual for a student, I believe. I went out once with a bunch of people - Dom wedged the door to our flat open, put his speakers on full blast, and waited for people to turn up. We all sat in our kitchen for a while, pre-drinking (I drank an entire bottle of wine by myself), then headed to town to go to a club called Orange Rooms which most of us had tickets for. We waited in line for about half an hour, only to be told that it was extremely unlikely we were going to get in before it closed. We wandered the streets until we found a grotty pub called Clowns, where we sat for a few hours playing drinking games. We then got taxis back to halls and went upstairs to someone's flat. Me, Bonnie and this girl called Cate dragged the mattress from their empty room into the kitchen. I felt awful the next day.
I met a girl called Kathryn doing Marine Biology who's lovely. We have most of the same lectures so we walk down to the campus together every day. Me, Kathryn and Bonnie seem to have formed a little group; we went to the cinema together to see X-Men: First Class which was great. I've also met Tania, Ruth and Maria through SAMS, and they're awesome, Tania especially. I'm hoping the boys I met from SUSAC will be nice, because I don't seem to have many male friends at the moment.
That's pretty much it so far.
Well, I left the island on the 23rd of September. Dad and I caught the boat to Heysham with the car full to the brim with my stuff, plus Mum and Dad's suitcases for going to Menorca after they dropped me off and saw Grandma. Boat journey: uneventful. Most of the drive to Sue's: uneventful. Dad took the wrong motorway at one point, which he was most surprised about ("I have never done that before! How odd!"), but I navigated us back to the right one, so that wasn't too bad.
The next day we picked up Mum from the airport, then went to buy out IKEA. SO MUCH STUFF. Mum would keep picking up things and saying, "This would be useful.", and I would have to keep reminding her that I only had one room and limited kitchen-cupboard space to store all this crap.After IKEA has yielded its treasures to us, we went home, and me and Mum ventured out from there to a giant Tesco to set me up with food for the first couple of weeks. We also went into a small hardware shop to get a doorstop, and the man behind the counter was subtly but incredibly rude to my mum. Bastard.
I finally moved in on Saturday the 25th. We got there really early, because I didn't want to be the person who turns up late when everyone else in the flat has already become best friends with everyone else (I needn't have worried about this, for reasons you will discover later). So, I got there at 8:30am, which was the earliest you could move in. I went and got my keys, then Dad and I went to inspect my room.
My room is actually pretty decent for uni accommodation. It's quite big, and I have a large space in the middle (which has been covered with clothes and/or crockery pretty much since I arrived). I'm on the ground floor, so I don't have to go up millions of flights of stairs to get to it, which is good. I have a bedside desk with a drawer; four large shelves above a spacious desk; an ensuite bathroom with a shower (off the floor!), loo, sink and mirror; large wardrobe with lots of storage space.
The kitchen is okay. I'm sharing with five other people so we have one main oven, one top oven/grill, one microwave, one fridge, one freezer, one hob with four rings, and one sink. In the first two weeks, both our freezer and top oven broke (a flatmate came home drunk and left the freezer open, so it defrosted and wouldn't refreeze; and the knob for the top oven just kept turning round and round without turning the oven off, so that was a bit worrying), so now we have two freezers, and an extra little microwave-looking oven with two hob-rings on the top of it. The other day the new freezer broke and no-one noticed until I went in to get something and found that everything was defrosting. We managed to save most of our food, though.
Back to the sharing with five other people: there's me, Bonnie, Ruffy, Ali, Akbar, and Dom. Bonnie is doing Geophysics, and is absolutely lovely - we get on really well. Ruffy is also lovely, but doesn't come out of her room much. She's doing Maths and Actuarial Science, and is from Zimbabwe. She says she wants to cook us some traditional "Zim" food soon. Ali is doing Physics and is from Iran. He's nice; also doesn't come out of his room much, though I hear him through the wall talking to people on Skype quite a lot. We hardly ever see Akbar - he's either out with his friends or in his room with his girlfriend. He's doing Medicine. Dom is nice, but not particularly considerate. One night this week he woke me up at 3:30am with obnoxiously loud FIFA games and obnoxiously loud friends, and also left bacon fat all over the hob when he came home drunk and cooked bacon, and also was the flatmate who left the freezer open all night. Ah well. He's doing some kind of IT course - I can't remember the exact one.
I've joined quite a few societies: a martial art called Shorinji Kempo which will hopefully get me fitter, and improve my self-defense skills immensely; SUSAC, the university dive club - I'm doing my BSAC Ocean Diver training with them, and start my theory lectures this weekend; the Southampton Anime and Manga Society, which is AWESOME. I've met loads of people I really like there, and the anime they're showing at the moment is wonderful; and SUSingers, one of the choirs, who seem lovely.
My lectures have been going okay. I have a Maths lecture from 9am to 11am on Monday, then a Maths tutorial at 1pm. For three of the weeks this semester I have a tutorial down at the NOC from 5pm to 6pm. I originally had French from 11am to 12am and 3pm to 5pm on a Monday, but it was impossible to get from Highfield Campus to Avenue and back again in time, and I wouldn't have been able to go to my tutorials at all. So, I went to the timetable people and got them to change it, so now I have French from 1pm to 2pm and 3pm to 5pm on a Friday (plus for three of the weeks I have a lecture on how to learn languages effectively from 2pm to 3pm, making it four hours of French on a Friday afternoon some weeks!). Tuesday, I have Maths again, then "Introduction to Biogeochemistry" for two hours. Wednesday - completely free! From time to time I'll have a random thing on in the morning, but generally I have nothing. I like Wednesdays. Thursday, I have two hours of "Ocean and Earth System" and a three-hour chemistry workshop (though we're allowed to leave whenever we want, so I generally go after about 40 minutes). Friday, I have OES again for two hours, then all that French. Our lecturer for OES is hilarious - he's very witty, and also loathes George Bush and Rick Perry, and will take any possible opportunity to slip digs at them into the lecture.
I was quite homesick for the first three weeks. I cried alone in my room quite a lot, which sounds pretty pathetic, but was actually really horrible. I also had a panic attack at one point, which wasn't nice. I had been to Kempo training, so was out of breath from that, then I found out that I have a 5%-of-my-marks listening test on the last Friday of the term, which I will be MISSING. I had alreayd booked my flight home before my timetable changed, and because I was finishing at 1pm I booked it for 2:50pm. I got very panicky about missing it, even though rationally I knew that I would just be able to explain to my teacher what the situation was and ask to be put into another class for that week. Then I was missing home, and I started hyperventilating and couldn't stop. That was really scary. It went on for about half an hour, with me trying various techniques to calm myself down that would work for a couple of minutes but then fail utterly.
I hardly got drunk at all in Freshers' Week, which is most unusual for a student, I believe. I went out once with a bunch of people - Dom wedged the door to our flat open, put his speakers on full blast, and waited for people to turn up. We all sat in our kitchen for a while, pre-drinking (I drank an entire bottle of wine by myself), then headed to town to go to a club called Orange Rooms which most of us had tickets for. We waited in line for about half an hour, only to be told that it was extremely unlikely we were going to get in before it closed. We wandered the streets until we found a grotty pub called Clowns, where we sat for a few hours playing drinking games. We then got taxis back to halls and went upstairs to someone's flat. Me, Bonnie and this girl called Cate dragged the mattress from their empty room into the kitchen. I felt awful the next day.
I met a girl called Kathryn doing Marine Biology who's lovely. We have most of the same lectures so we walk down to the campus together every day. Me, Kathryn and Bonnie seem to have formed a little group; we went to the cinema together to see X-Men: First Class which was great. I've also met Tania, Ruth and Maria through SAMS, and they're awesome, Tania especially. I'm hoping the boys I met from SUSAC will be nice, because I don't seem to have many male friends at the moment.
That's pretty much it so far.
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