Monday, January 14, 2008
Happy New Year to all!
Well, a
new year has befallen us, so I suppose I should mark the occasion by summing up
what happened to me during the last bit of 2007. During the last week of term,
I was rushing to finish up my two essays that were due just one day apart from
one another. I finished the American essay with no problems, but was having a
very hard time motivating myself to even start the War & Society one, even
though it was due the next day. Luckily, as we were talking at the pub (our
lecturer took the entire class out to the pub and bought everyone a drink,
which I thought was very nice of him!), our teacher Aly
mentioned that even though the essay was due in on Thursday, he wouldn’t take
off any points for essays turned in on Friday. Woo! That was like a
get-out-of-jail free card for me! So, even though it almost killed me in the
process, I did manage to research and write that essay in record time, and
turned it in with just ten minutes to spare! Whew…that the best procrastination
that I’ve ever done! Lol. So, once all my coursework was finished for the term, I
decided to take it easy…a bit too easy, that is. I did absolutely nothing for
the next few weeks, and found myself going to bed at 8-9am each morning and not
waking up until after 3-4pm in the afternoons. It felt like I was working the
overnight shifts at Meteorlogix all over again!
Eventually,
Christmas rolled around (which I was not looking forward to, as I was beginning
to feel lonely without any family around me), and I went over to my friend Charlee’s house for the day. She had a few friends from
home over, and made a very delicious traditional Christmas dinner. Before we
ate, I got to pop my first cracker! Crackers are these little hollow tubes
filled with prizes, really bad jokes, and a paper hat…you simply pull both ends
and they ‘crack’ open (imagine that!). Crackers are quintessential Christmas
fare in
After
dinner, Charlee and I exchanged presents, and then we
just chilled out in front of the telly, laughing and
talking and generally just having a nice evening. Surprisingly, I didn’t even
partake in any alcoholic drinks! This is unexpected, seeing as how I was
feeling depressed about the whole lack of family thing. Eventually, I headed
home. Things were really boring for the next week, except for the fact that I
continued to practice on my guitar, and learned to play four really easy songs
by memory: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (the first song I ever learned on the
violin when I was 9 years old, so I wanted it to be the first song I learned on
guitar as well), Happy Birthday (which I learned specifically to play to my mom
on Christmas Day, as it was her birthday), God Save the Queen (which is exactly
the same tune as My Country ‘Tis of Thee…the
Americans stole the tune of the national anthem of Britain for their own! Bad Americans!), and Auld Lang Syne
(which I was practicing to play to myself on New Year’s Eve). So,
besides that, I was sooooo bored! Finally New Year’s
Eve rolled around, which was just like any other day for me, and I decided not
to do anything this year. Charlee and her boyfriend
were both sick with this horrible virus going around Britain at the moment, and
I couldn’t be bothered to drink or dance or join in the festivities, so
basically I just watched TV until midnight, played my song on the guitar, text all
my friends, and then went to go read a book. Whoopee, quite the beginning of
the New Year for me!
I did
manage to drag Charlee to see the movie P.S. I Love You
one day. Gerard Butler was in it, hence the whole reason I wanted to go see it.
However, as we were waiting for it to begin, Charlee
started telling me about how the end of the month was going to be bad for her,
as it was the anniversary of her mom’s death some years before, as well as the
anniversary of her best friend’s death the day before that! It was really sad
and depressing to hear her tell me about all of that, and then once the movie
started, I felt really bad, as the whole movie is about a husband dying and how
the wife tries to cope with it! Not really the right movie for Charlee’s frame of mind at the time. Nonetheless, it turned
out to be a really good movie, albeit very sad…by the end, everyone in the
theater had tears in their eyes!
Finally,
a day came around where I could actually leave the flat and do something really
productive: Charlee and I went to view some flats. Charlee was moving anyway, and had been looking around for
one bedroom flats, but after giving it some thought, I decided that it would be
better for both of us if we moved in together, as I was starting to get a bit
lonely living all alone, and it would also help my finances not to have to pay
for a two bedroom flat and utilities all by myself. I was really excited about
the place we found, as it was new, modern, was fully furnished in a really nice
style, was huge, and best off all was in exactly the location where I wanted to
move: down by the beach, and only 5 minutes’ walk to the university! We looked
at two flats, and fell in love with one of them. We decided to go the next day
to fill in an application and pay the deposit.
By the
end of that day, I was exhausted, as I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately.
I couldn’t go to sleep at all on that Wednesday night/Thursday morning, so by
the time that I finally fell into bed on Thursday night, I had been awake for just
over 30 hours! Needless to say, I slept for nearly 12 hours the next day…and
boy did I need that! So, on Friday, I dragged myself out of bed at around noon
and I went to pick up my War and Society essay. Unfortunately, I only got a 15,
but I suppose you only get what you put into something, and as I waited until
just hours before it was due to actually start writing it, I shouldn’t really
be complaining! After that, Charlee and I did indeed
fill out the application form for the flat, assembled all of our references and
whatnot and went to put a deposit down on the flat. I hope everything goes well
and that we get it, but I’m a bit scared though, as my landlady is in
Friday
is going to be a busy day, as I have my first, and
only, exam on Friday morning at 9am. I am so not ready for it,
having just started revising a day ago (my procrastination comes into play yet
again!) But, if I work my booty off over the next few days, I should be as
prepared as I can be for it…even though I perform horribly in exams, and this
one is a doozy: 60% of our grade and it is 3 hours
long! Scary. Well, speaking of that, I suppose I
should start doing some more revision now. I’ll update this later on in the
week if/when they decide to give us the flat, and to let you know how bad I
flunked my exam (oh, uh, I mean how great it went!). Adios.