Stuff and things
(this informative title brought to you by miss Alice White)
I see my internet traffic is slowly building up again as I actually begin to make blog posts, being somewhat out of the habit due to a serious lack of the internet. I have been embracing my inner nerd in a big way recently, who admittedly has never been that neglected, me being a mathematician and all. But I am roleplaying again, and here by roleplaying I mean the kind with dice and spotty people rather than... well you know. It's actually really quite a fun way to spend your time, as long as you are willing to deal with the knowledge that you've crossed the line into utter nerdom. Well actually there is a step up from that, called Live action role playing where you get dressed up and take to the streets, which is basically embracing your inner child I suppose. I guess you can always pretend you are a historical recreationist, until you start casting magic missile, which as far as I know was never used in any battle ever. At least not succesfully anyway.
To add to this I've also recently spent four hours playing railroad tycoon, a board game in which you must try and build the largest rail empire (I came third of six, but it was a close run thing..), and this sunday am going to spend potentially thirteen hours LANning at a local cyber cafe. Which is probably the limit of just too muchery.
Oh well, it's a fun way to spend the time I'm not spent doing work.... (or spending time with Alice, of course...)
Lectures lectures lectures
I am pleased to see that no matter where you go, lecturers don't change. There are always some that will bore the soul out of you until you become an empty pod person. People who go on in such a manner that an hour feels like 5, and a good day turns bad. I only have two lecturers like that, and they each only get one slot of my time, but both slots feel like they have taken a million years or more. It doesn't help that the second one has a three hour slot and every time she hands out the notes it looks like it should only take an hour.... Ah well, such is life. My time table is actually reasonably full, so much so on monday in fact that the only time I have to eat lunch is the 15 minute gap between lectures. Seeing that it takes me about 10 minutes to get home I generally have to bring sandwiches which inevitably get crushed as I don't have a sandwich box (although as I typed that I realised that that statement isn't entirely true....). Yes, life is tough.
I also had to recently do an essay, the first twenty minutes of which I spent trying to work out how to get a goddamn accent over a letter. You press ctrl and ' then the letter. It's that simple. I'm not entirely sure why it took me so long, but it's sometimes difficult to get the information you want. As much as it was interesting to see how to get spanish accents it wasn't exactly what I required for this instance- a little bit more than I needed really.... One might argue that I was spending this long merely to avoid the essay, and while there is an element of truth there, it rather underestimates the obsessive nature of my personality and need to solve challenges that I think I should be able to overcome.
Internet!
Finally I have the internet again, which is somewhat pleasing, although it took me a little while to get it set up, making me think I'd need to buy a new piece of equipment. But I prevailed over technology.
So southampton is going fairly well. My first week as an msc student is now done, and I've made a few friends here and there. The flat is pretty nice, and while we had an initial problem with damp I think it's mostly fixed now. Apparently there wasn't a lid on our boiler, which apparently causes condensation or something. Who'd have thunk it?
Southampton itself is... ok. It got bombed into teeny pieces during the war and the architecture that replaced it is not necessarily the best.... amusingly the tourist board focuses on the bargate, which will very pretty, is surrounded by ugly, so any budding tourist would probably be a bit disappointed. It's not really a tourist town- Portsmouth is the place to go I guess. Still, the area I'm in is pleasent and fairly studenty, with some decent houses, and even a waitrose nearby, which is a sign of quality. There are issues with shopping at waitrose, in terms of money, as there are so many tempting food optionsbut a recent cheque from Pfizer has solved those issues for a little while. Now we have the internet I might go so far as to claim I have finally settled in.......
The other issue with 'hampton is that it it is not necessarily designed for pedestrians. To get to any of the cinemas you need to cross some rather frightening roads, where there are lines supposedly designed for predestrians, but with no kind of crossing mechanism to get across. You essentially have to rely on traffic lights, but they have a filter on them so cars will unexpectedly turn and squish you into a pancake. Which is kind of unpleasant.
Still, I'm enjoying it here, it's just more fun to critisise!
