Almost the end of term

I am so ready for work to be over ... so close, I'm almost there. In a couple of hours I should've finished basically all my work to hand in this term, which will be a very very good feeling. 


(About 10 minutes later: have made more progress. Just want this to be over. But soon it will be.)


Lots of exciting things coming up towards the end of the week :) Chris is coming to visit on Wednesday, which will be brilliant. On Thursday there's the last Christian small group meeting of term, at which we will be ordering in pizza which is always a good thing ... and then there's all night board games (Friday night), and an all night film night (Sunday night), plus a Christmas meal with friends on Friday evening. 


Yay for having lots of exciting things to do! The end of this week and the weekend are going to be wonderful time off. And then next week I need to get stuck in to coursework.

The lolcat bible.

I don't know who came up with this idea, but it's brilliant. Absolutely bloody brilliant.

Some words of wisdom from James chapter 5:

"Be payshunt nd wait 4 teh Ceiling Cat, he brings yu teh cheezburgers soon.9 No fighting whiel yu waitz, or Ceiling Cat bringz teh lazer eyes. Teh Lazer Eyer is almost here!"

(cf the NIV: You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near. ⁹Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door! )

Go read it here

All I want for Christmas ...

I've been asked by several parentals what I want for Christmas ... Chris's family have always done Christmas lists, and while our family's always been a little more informal about it than that (interrogation, rather than formal list making, if you will) now that I've flown the nest etc there's more communication by email and that sort of thing ... so I thought I'd muse on here and see what I can come up with.

For Christmas, I would like ...

• Skillet's latest album (Awake - deluxe edition if possible!)
  
  
• Zendo pieces (Icehouse pieces). I have 4 packs of normal and 2 packs of Xeno, so some more Xeno would be good but so would just more in general. You can play about 50 million games with them ... having said that I've only played Zendo.
  
  
• Book vouchers - I've been wandering through bookstores a lot recently and wishing I had vouchers to spend. I really enjoy wandering around, making a selection of books, working out how to milk any offers (especially 3 for 2s) for all they're worth, and then finally ending up with new books that I want to own. Things I'd like at the moment ... Remember Remember the 5th of November (but Chris has this so I might just read his copy), A Very Short Introduction - the New Testament as Literature / The Old Testament / Paul ... and there's lots of Agatha Christie, and now Dorothy Sayers, that I'd love to own.
  
  
• Awesome stuff from Firebox.com. In particular I really want this: it's an alarm clock with Stephen Fry waking you up in character as a butler. How awesome is that? (Deluxe - Good Morning Madam version, so as to be gender-appropriate ...)
  
  
• Things that would make my life easier ... sadly I can't think of much that would fall into this category at the moment. Maybe I'll think of something later.
  

Work

It Just. Doesn't. End. The end of term is soon, but I have a lot that needs to be done over the vacation (normal work, revision, and coursework), so although I'll take a day or two off (and once I'm home I won't be working as hard) I probably shouldn't do much more than that.

I can take Christmas Day off, right?

(For anyone who's terribly worried: This isn't me burning out, or at least not yet ... the thing is that the constant Bloody Hard Work is the lesser of two evils, the other one being slacking (with guilt) and then a few weeks later absolutely crashing and burning because I haven't put the work in.)

Books to Rule the World

See previous post

Books I purchased yesterday. They are:

• War and Peace (Tolstoy)
• Women, Work and the Art of Savoir Faire (Mireille Guiliano)
  
•  Straight Talk from the World's Top Business Leaders:
• Managing Your Career
• Managing Conflict
• Executing for Results
• Sparking Innovation
• The first Ten Books (Confucius)
• Tao Te Ching (Lao Tsu)
• Fear and Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard)
• Utopia (Thomas More)
• A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf)
• On the Shortness of Life (Seneca)
• The Inner Life (Thomas a Kempis)
• The Koran: A Very Short Introduction
  

And one I accidentally left out of the photo - Harvard Business Review: On Managing Yourself

I am not claiming that these books are a good enough guide to rule the world, by any means. But they're the next step that I need to take from here. I need to expand my horizons, to learn how to think, and all manner of things like that.

Bought the books yesterday at about 3:20pm. So far I've read over half of On Managing Yourself, virtually finished A Room of One's Own, and read the first third of On the Shortness of Life, which isn't bad for about 30 hours given I've been going to lectures and working too.

They are certainly making me think.

Don't do it

Don't give in. Don't become a flat, 2D character. Don't become a caricature of yourself. Don't feel that because you've always been this way, you always have to be this way. Don't limit yourself. Don't hold on to prejudices you think are irrational. Don't be conventional for the sake of being conventional. Don't be strange for the sake of being strange. Don't tell yourself you can only have one circle of friends, one set of hobbies, one set of interests, one area of expertise.

People are so much more than that. So, so much more. People are amazing and diverse and unpredictable and just when you think you have them figured out and start taking them for granted something turns up that makes you realise how wrong you've been.

Be yourself. But not in a Disney way. Be really yourself. Be OCD when you feel like it and not when you don't. Watch the movies you want to watch even though all your friends hate them and look at you funny. Wear nail polish and walk barefoot in the rain and stay up all night and order pizza - or go to bed at 10pm because that's what feels right.

Don't break the mould. Ignore it.

Negative aspects of mathematicians' culture

These are all probably a little exaggerated. But I've been sort of thinking about them, and articulating them might be useful. Most are general prejudices that make themselves gradually felt, rather than things that are said outright. I'd be interested to see how much other people have picked up on these and whether they think of any others.

• If you're not hugely stressed you're not really working
• You will be stressed all the time. This is normal.
• Girly things are bad. Or at best completely pointless and trivial and unworthy.
• Other subjects are pointless and trivial and unworthy, except for maybe Physics and posssssibly Chemistry. If we're feeling generous.
  
• Mathematicians are superior to everyone else (no, guys, we're really not).
• People who aren't mathematicians are in some way mentally worthless (no, guys, they really, really aren't).
• Depression is normal.
• Being Asperger's* (by which we mean: obsessive, OCD, socially crippled) is normal. In fact, there's probably something wrong with you if you aren't.
• What, you want feedback? On how things are going? Hah. We don't need your wimpy feedback. We bloody well soldier on even if it's pointless and unproductive.
  
• You will struggle. You are here to struggle. Shut up and deal with your damn struggling already.
  

The reader may note that many of these traits could be termed traditionally macho.

*This is bad use of the term asperger's, I know. But it is used.

Things I like:

• People who listen
• The colour purple
• Shiny new pink leather recycled flower brooch!
• The Children in Need song - Wombles!
• A good cup of tea
• Having enough of everything I need
• Thai food 

Things I dislike:

• Systems that don't work how they ought to
• Systems that are unsupportive
• Having to tidy my room ... it needs it, but I just don't want to
• Being cold
  

On Ruling the World

If I'm going to rule the world, I'll need to know something about management.

I think I shall go to [undisclosed major bookstore] tomorrow, and collect some of what I need in order to become 1) a properly educated citizen of the world and 2) ruler of the world.

'A trouble shared is a trouble halved'?

This has the right sort of sentiment behind it ... although as a mathematician it does make me think that one can make one's troubles arbitrarily small by telling a large enough number of people. When awkward things happen and they need sorting out telling people does help ... I find it sort of vindicates. Other people being able to support. It's irritating when irrational things get to you.

New Year's Resolutions, Part I

And so we come to the end of another year ... no, really. Today is the last Sunday of the Church's calendar year; today, at the feast of Christ the King (which sounds ancient but was actually set up by Pope Pius XI in 1925, in response to growing secularism) we remember the majesty and the mystery of Christ's Kingship. Readings today included some of the really quite strange bits of Daniel and Revelation.

Next week, we enter into Advent, which I generally think of as a season of darkness and waiting (historically it was also a season of fasting, like lent) and quiet hoping. Time to stop, and repent, and be still and ponder this mystery - that God should have chosen to come here, to our world, to us. For us.

_________________________________________

Now, I really like New Year's Resolutions, and see no reason why I should limit myself to the calendar year's changeover to make them (I usually make resolutions for the calendar year and the academic year, but would consider: the church's year, my birthday, our wedding anniversary, and anything else that seems vaguely like a new start to something important). I want to think about how I want this year to go ... the first thing that's come to mind is the prayer of St Richard of Chichester, or rather, the version of it I heard via DC Talk performing Day by Day (which I believe is a redone version of Day by Day from the musical Godspell) - Godspell version (which is a little more prayer-y):

Day by day
Day by day
Oh Dear Lord
Three things I pray
To see thee more clearly
Love thee more dearly
Follow thee more nearly
Day by day 

(DC Talk version:
Day by day, day by day
Day by day, day by day
Oh dear Lord, three things I pray [one, two, three]
To see thee more clearly [day by day]
To love thee more dearly [day by day]
To follow thee more nearly [I got to take it]
Day by day )

More more via email

So this is kind of cheating in my blog-a-day project ... but they're also reasonably interesting. 

25 Truths of Life

  1. If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out.

  2. Don't worry about what people think, they don't do it very often.

  3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

  4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

  5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never  tried  before.

  6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

  7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

  8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

  9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.

 10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.

 11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

 12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so  good.

  13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

 

  14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it! 

  15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.

  16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand. 

  17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist  change places.

  18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming. 

  19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before  you need it.

  20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

  21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a  mistake when you make it again.

  22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

  23. Thou shall not weigh more than thy refrigerator.

  24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world. 

  25. It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat!

How To Look Good Naked

... is now available to watch online on msn video player ... so that's what this evening has been spent doing (alongside graph theory questions, honest). Fab, fab show. Although I do now want to go shopping ... but don't have the time :(

I think the thing I like about it most is just seeing the participants' confidence really take off. There's something very life-affirming about seeing someone become happier with themselves. And I am very much into things that are life-affirming.

The other thing I like very much about it is that the attitude to the woman involved is different from other similar shows (What Not To Wear, 10 Years Younger - the latter I am watching for the first time at the moment) - Gok is way, way less harsh. There's none of this gossiping about how tragic the person looks behind their back, which I find really distasteful.

(Have just stopped watching 10 Years Younger because of the way they were treating the woman in question)

Brief Update

Life is good. Tiring, but good.

Work progresses quite well ... I need to keep my head down and keep thinking and prioritising work, but so far is going pretty much to plan. I'll also need to do that over the Christmas holidays :( I'll have work to hand in at the beginning of next term, as well as coursework to get done.

I've received the copy of 'What Colour is Your Parachute? (2010 edition)' in the post today - ordered it from amazon. Am hoping that this will be useful for trying to work out what I want to do - I know I don't want to go into Investment Banking, Government Statistics, Programming etc (see previous post) so working out what I actually do want to do would be a Good Thing.

Food, glorious food

 

Mmmmm toastie ... that one had baked beans and cheese in it (photo from a couple of days ago). Delicious. First time I've used my toastie maker all term. Must do that again.

And have a look at this sweet Alice in Wonderland plate!

It's melamine, which is terribly practical and it was free! (There was a whole lot of stuff - mostly kitchen bits and pieces - left outside a house near where my lectures are that had a big sign up next to it saying 'please help yourself'. So I have a new plate, frying pan, colander, sieve, and mug :).

Carol approves of toasties and of free plates.

Everything's coming together

I am in a Good Mood. Everything's going rather well, which is always a lovely thing.

• Had a cool discussion about The Year Of Our War with friends this evening, which was neat. I also find myself thinking about Ata Dei a lot ... she is formidable, and I very much admire the way she marshals her resources and works out how other people will react to things (though I do not condone her general manipulation and lack of morals).
  
  
• All the assorted society stuff that has been niggling at the back of my mind is basically sorted out, which is really welcome news. Just little bits and pieces which seem to all be resolved satisfactorily.
  
  
• The Waters of Mars - watched via a projector with friends, this is always good :). I really liked Adelaide Brooke. More formidable women (but this time very much with morals). I thought the ending was very *right*.
  
  
• I'm feeling motivated about work, and work is going quite well. This is awesome. I need to keep up a high rate of work, though.
  
  
• I have realised that I don't have to go into a Career for Mathematicians. This seems really obvious ... and yet I hadn't really thought about it on a subconscious level until a few days ago. I'm not applying for jobs to impress my peers or my lecturers ... I should be applying for jobs in fields that interest me, not that look like something that A Maths Graduate Should Do (i.e. Investment Banking, Consultancy, Govt Statistics, GCHQ*, Actuarial Work)
  
  
• I am starting to feel that I have the freedom to slim down my commitments further and concentrate on my studies more - and this is really quite empowering. All that stuff that I want to do but often simply don't have the time to - reading around the subject being a main thing - I can start to do that. I can say no to more random things, and so focus more on the things I want to do. I really don't like doing things less-than-excellently, and excellence takes time ...
  

*This would actually potentially be Quite Awesome, but I'm not British enough.

(Counts as Sunday 15th, and I'm on target)

More Via Email

These are actually genuinely good.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

  Plato:
  For the greater good.

Karl Marx:
  It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavelli:
  So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken
  which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but
  also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend
  with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the
  princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates:
  Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida:
  Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the
  act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is
  equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned,
  because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada:
  Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary:
  Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would
      let it take.

Douglas Adams:
  Forty-two.

Nietzsche:
  Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes
  also across you.

Oliver North:
  National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner:
  Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium
  from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it
  would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to
  be of its own free will.

Carl Jung:
  The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that
  individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and
  therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre:
  In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the
  chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
  The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects
  "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which
  caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein:
  Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the
  chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle:
  To actualize its potential.

Buddha:
  If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Howard Cosell:
  It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to
  grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian
  biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement
  formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a
  remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali:
  The Fish.

Darwin:
  It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson:
  Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus:
  For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
  It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann Friedrich von Goethe:
  The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway:
  To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg:
  We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it
  was moving very fast.

David Hume:
  Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein:
  This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite
  justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Jack Nicholson:
  'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic:
  What road?

Ronald Reagan:
  I forget.

John Sununu:
  The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation,
  so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the
  opportunity.

The Sphinx:
  You tell me.

Mr. T:
  If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Henry David Thoreau:
  To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain:
  The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Molly Yard:
  It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea:
  To prove it could never reach the other side.

Pretty notebooks!

One of the things that the UK lacks is a wide range of exercise books. I think it's because mostly schools provide their own stationery (as in, you get given books by your teachers) rather than having to buy them yourself like back in NZ.

I wanted to have some quad-ruled books to do maths in, but the option is either cheap flimsy ones from WHSmith which cost less than £1 each and are quite small, or big executive "I'm an Important Person in an Important Meeting" type ones which cost something like £7-£10 each (um, I think not). So I've been wanting to cover the books I've got for a while, make them a bit more pretty and a bit more durable.

So here's what I started with:

• Coloured papers - I used to have a subscription to Scrapbook Inspirations, which sent 8 free A4 papers along with every magazine. Consequently I have lots of quite awesome scrapbooking papers that I don't have any plans for.
• The actual exercise books
• Cutting board, metal ruler, and craft knife

Also under there somewhere is thin-ish card for reinforcing the covers.

Step 1: Cut out cardboard to fit, and glue it on:

Note the glue-spreader. I bought 2 of them a couple of weeks ago. I now love glue-spreaders :)

Glue card on, wait. It should fit exactly.

Glue paper on - I did a different colour over the spine partly because it looks cool but also because a piece of A4 paper was a couple of inches too short, so it was a necessity. There were a few mm of overhang in all directions, which I left on to trim off later.

I'm covering 4 books, take a look:

After that, trim down the paper overhang carefully (metal rulers and craft knives are your friends). Then add card for labelling them:

The final step is to cover them with clear plastic, which I haven't quite finished yet. But I might come back and add a picture when I have.

Aren't they pretty?

Via Email

These are old, and many of them are flawed. But they're sort of comfortingly amusing, I find. Does that mean I've been on the internet for too long?

The complete compendium of truth:

  Save the whales; collect the whole set.

 A day without sunshine is like, night.

 On the other hand, you have different fingers.

 I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.

 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

 I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

 Honk if you love peace and quiet.

 Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

 The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

 I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

 Support bacteria. They're the only culture some people have.

 Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your week.

 A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

 Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.

 Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.

 Always try to be modest, and be proud of it!

 If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.

 How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand...

 How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

 If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked

 something.

 When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

 Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.

 If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

 What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

 I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.

 I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

 Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

 Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell

 happened.

(I particularly like 'Plan to be sponteneous tomorrow')

Wednesday

Today has been a happy day :). I declared the afternoon to be the weekend, which was brilliant and gave myself licence to go and wander around the shops and read books and generally relax. Had a very successful trip into town - I bought 3 skeins of Mirasol K'acha (orange, a wonderful golden yellow, and a purple) to start log-cabin-ing with. I also managed to get jeans (black, straight-leg, and they fit really nicely - at least so far, we'll see how they go in terms of wear and stretching) for £8, some new hairclips, new giant purple flower thing (hairband/brooch), and big thermal pretty patterned socks. So all in all very successful indeed.

It's basically been the first properly genuinely good day since I was feeling miserable about a week ago. So this has been very, very welcome.

The Year Of Our War

Before we start ... this is not at all going to be a critical review. This is entirely biased and not making any attempt to be fair (usually I at least make an attempt to be fair, although of course people may disagree on whether I end up being so or not ...). It's also not going to attempt to summarise the plot in any way, shape, or form, and as such probably won't contain spoilers, really.

So I'm rereading The Year Of Our War, by Steph Swainston. Now, I read this and really liked it, and then ended up talking to other people whose opinions I do generally respect, and they didn't like it. So then I started doubting myself and wondering if it really was any good (NB not blaming you guys for that). But later, I decided that hey, as I read chick lit that I think they would disapprove of I really shouldn't care if they disapprove of the fantasy I read ... and so am rereading this entirely looking to thoroughly enjoy myself and not care about literary merit.

And I am indeed enjoying myself ... it's a heady book. Full of things that push most of my buttons - I mean, the main character can FLY. And is constantly pushed to the limit, and mostly just about coping (coping mechanisms incuding cat, a drug), but then crashes and is entirely reliant on other people. And he's young - I mean, he's 23 (I think), has been so for years and years ... but you can totally, totally see the way it comes through in his interactions with people. And that's something that I really enjoy as well - he looks at the world with a 23 year old's eyes, even if he's been that way for a few centuries. As opposed to Lightning, who really is old and immortal, or Ata who I believe is frozen at 35. His youth and his hope (or sometimes lack thereof) and ability to cope under pretty immense pressure, but at the same time immaturity - it's all there. And I love it. Have you noticed me identifying with this character yet? 

Also, there are lots of places in the book where I feel like Swainston is just revelling in creating your ultimate 8-year-old's fantasy world. She probably wouldn't approve of that, and probably didn't do it knowingly, but things like the descriptions of the Castle, some of the armour and flags and instruments and everything - it's just unbelievably luxurious (and yes, when you live forever that does sort of make sense) and just feels like an 8 year old discovering an Aladdin's Cave. Hm ... then again, maybe a 13 year old girl: Jant wears eyeliner, and sometimes leather trousers (recreationally, as it were, as opposed to leather armour for battle although there's some of that too), and occasionally wanders around topless.

I feel there's some of the fanfic writer's guilty pleasure flowing throughout this book - the feeling where you know the characters deep down and it's just kind of uber-awesome to put them into silly positions, or awkward positions where it becomes totally clear that X has the hots for Y but will never say anything ... that sort of playing with characters. (You know, like Liz should *totally* be with Michael, because that would be *awesome*, and moreover Max should be put in awkward situations where he finds out that they're together and ... yeah okay. I'll put away my Polar fandom now ...) I feel that sort of glee in parts of the novel. I think it makes sense, given that this is a world that she's been creating in her mind since she was pretty young (8 ish?). And I can roll with that. There's something infectious about it. It makes me happy. I started rereading it this morning, and I'm virtually halfway through - huzzah. Probably going to finish it tomorrow :)

Log Cabin Quilt

This afternoon whilst being frustrated by Algebraic Geometry (trust me - it's very frustrating, mostly because everything seems really tricky to decode and then quite trivial once you've decoded it - this is because we're doing a very basic course in it, so we're only doing fairly trivial things, but it's still so much work to work out what on earth's going on) I ended up looking at knitting patterns on the internet, and I came across this log cabin pattern.

It's a really simple idea. And a log cabin cushion was one of my first sewing projects, in Year 9, so the shapes feel kind of familiar and soothing. And I really like the texture of garter stitch in it - which is kind of strange, because I don't usually like how garter stitch looks.

So this might be my next knitting project. But wait! I hear you say. You don't have time for a knitting project!

Well no ... not really. But I could make time, right? Knitting something like this will be wonderful, fairly mindless relaxation. So I can knit whilst chatting with friends, whilst on the phone, whilst waiting around between lectures and that sort of thing. It might happen.

SOUP

Contents:

-Carrots

-Celery

-Spring onions (not necessary, just they were in my fridge and needed using up)

-Chinese dried mushrooms, rehydrated and quartered

-Fish balls
-Vermicelli (the mung bean kind, that goes clear when you cook it, not the mini-pasta stuff)


I made lots of soup a few days ago ... the carrots and celery really needed using up, and as my wonderful parents had given me fish balls and mushrooms, this seemed a really really good idea. If I'd had more room in my saucepan, I would've added dried bean curd as well - but it wasn't big enough (I would really like to get a super-large pan for making soup or cooking for large quantities of people, if anyone knows where to get fairly cheap ones that would be really useful). For lunch on Saturday I reheated some of it and added the vermicelli and some extra water, and then soy sauce.

(Counts as Sunday 8th, and I'm up to date)

On Weekends (or the lack thereof)

Oh, for a weekend

Where one could be tired and free

Instead of all these demands

It doesn't let up

Where one could be tired and free

To sleep, perchance to dream

It doesn't let up

The mill grinds on

To sleep, perchance to dream

(fat chance)

The mill grinds on

Sink or swim?

(fat chance)

- of having much time to yourself

Sink or swim?

Swimming is preferable

Having much time to yourself

well, that's a bit of a dream

Swimming is preferable

And you gradually get better at it.

Well, that's a bit of a dream

but there's always the summer holiday

and you gradually get better at it -

sometimes it seems normal

There's always the summer holiday

only 7 months to go?

sometimes it seems normal

then you realise you can handle it.

only 7 months to go?

Still an awfully long time ...

then you realise you can handle it

though want to sit and be still

Still an awfully long time ...

oh for a weekend

to sit and be still

instead of all these demands

(rattled off in 10 minutes, so please judge it as such, rather than anything finely crafted!)

I could really do with an extra few hours ...

... so what I really want is an extra 3 days to fit into this weekend. (If you're thinking 'but you've got the weekend!' then think again, I have lectures to go to, and shedloads of work to do). But I'd settle for one day. Heck, I'd settle for 12 hours. No? 4? Please ... please please please ...

But failing all that, bits of socialising to keep spirits up and get moderate amounts of misery-free work done are a great help. Thanks for coming round guys :)

Also extra thanks to Will for providing me with a place to sleep between lectures today ... and then a cup of earl grey (2 sugars. The correct amount for That Sort of Day). You're a star.

Lighten our Darkness

Not the best photo, but:

(Successful blogging before midnight!)

So today ... interesting.

I should try to blog before midnight, really. That would be neat.

Today has been ... interesting. Feeling okay now. Too much work to do, but I might end up pulling an all-nighter to get it done ... we'll see. It's been too long since I saw 5am. From either side.

Have been able to sit and chat with people a bit today, which has been really good.

(Counts as Nov 4th)

Life's too short ...

Some time ago, Chris and Sarah were having a conversation. I forget what it was about - probably cleaning the living room or something. Chris ended up saying something like "I guess the point is to work out what life's too short to do" (this may have been wrt keeping rooms spotless, etc). I think that this can be a useful and informative way of thinking about life ... and so here goes.

Life's too short to:

• Watch everything people say I should watch on iPlayer. Sorry guys, I know the programs are interesting, but will I really be very much impoverished if I miss them? It's not that I don't listen to recommendations, and if I do end up with a spare hour or so then I'll go and look, but to be honest, it very rarely happens.
• Go to all the movies that look interesting. Movies are expensive ... and again, the time issue. They're fun, but usually only when used as time to socialise as well and so on. Plus, DVDs are easier.
• Read all the books I ought to read. I'll try to prioritise and keep something on the go at any given time (currently reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers), but I'm not going to beat myself up about not having read all the world's classics / best SF / best fantasy. It's okay, I don't have to prove my geek credentials by reading everything ever. What, is there going to be a test?
• Add applications and do quizzes on facebook. Yes, seeing other people's results is amusing. But I don't actually think that not knowing which Pope facebook thinks I am is a problem.
• Try to correct People who are Wrong on the Internet, unless I already have some stake in the discussion.
• Edit Wikipedia. I'm sure there are other people who can do so better than me. 
• Play all the games people say I should play (e.g. Portal, Braid). I am sure they are awesome. I even now own Portal, and have played a bit of the basics of it (it stopped getting on with my laptop - think it's the graphics card that's struggling - which was an extra hinderance). But the time involved ... that's usually prohibitive.
  
• Dance dances I don't like.
  

Life's too short not to:

• Pray. This is really crucial, and something I'm still not very good at, but improving. Getting the chance to talk to God about what's going on is an immense privilege and one I should stop taking for granted. 
• Spend time with the people I love - especially this year. Life and academic work and just everything that needs to be done is starting to get in the way, and I need to make sure I make time for people. Friendships and trust and things like that don't happen by accident - or even if they do, they still need to be mindfully sustained after that point.
• Dance dances I enjoy. Dance and maths both hit points for me when they feel like flying. And that is one of the most awesome feelings ever.
• Speak up when something needs to be said. On my behalf (I'm getting better at that one) or on someone else's (if I can try and do it tactfully).
  
• Organise my time efficiently. If you can do this, it's like having a time-turner - certainly I pack an enormous amount of living into every 24 hours of term time. See below for a quotation about that.
• Commit to things. I don't want to get to the end of my life and realise I left everything half-done because I never really gave my heart to anything. 
• Read the Bible. Similarly to praying. 
• Clean. Living in a mess makes me an unhappy and stressed person, and I don't want to go through life unhappy and stressed. That's a bad idea.
• Not be happy. Note I didn't say be sad, that's quite different. But being happy every day, perhaps not for very long, but still being happy for some instant - that is a practice worth cultivating. Mostly I manage it. Probably the number of days in the last year in which I have not been happy at any point is less than 10.
• Ask for help when I need it. This one also I am still learning. But it is inching in the right direction.
• Listen to the music that lifts my spirits. I don't know anyone who shares my musical taste; that's fine (so I keep telling myself). Music is an important source of joy and form of self-medication, and I do myself a disservice when I forget that.
• Donate to charity. I am immensely blessed; for example, I have access to essentially unlimited clean water about 3 metres from my room. I have about £50 which needs to go to a charity, any suggestions?
• Take care of myself - trying to eat well 80% of the time, exercise (having trouble with this one in some respects ... I have plans to do one of the 10 minute workouts from my DVDs daily but haven't managed to get that embedded yet, I should be able to do so from Thursday though I think ... but I still do well over an hour of walking daily so I'm not a couch potato), and keep an eye on my mental health and stay balanced. This improves quality of life immensely and equips me to look after other people better.

Right, so these lists are not exhaustive, but that's what's coming to mind right now. What do other people think? I'd be really interested to read what my friends would put in such lists ... could be done as facebook notes or as a few individual tweets on Twitter or something ... just an idea.

A few snippets:




Cornelius - by the Newsboys. Pretty neat lyrics, and a cheery song. 'And every generation knows - the doers do, the posers pose ...'  

- actually there are loads of lyrics in this song that I like (Come up and see the world stripped bare - the free indeed, they breathe a rarefied air ... yeah, they got spirit, yeah, they got game - and some get christened with a righteous-sounding name ...)

On time management:

"And just as the string theorists keep claiming that those little strings can be made to uncurl and show off their hidden 64 dimensions (or is it 256 this week? Or 512? A Gig?) so if you uncurl ordinary civilian time, you will find that hidden in the canonical 24 hours a day are a whole bunch more hours. If you make use of those extra hours, you can get some more sleep and still have time to get three more problem sets done each day, and have enough time to be poisoned by canteen food and go to another party and fail to pull, yet again. Until you find those extra hours, you will find it very difficult to keep up with life."

-Unattributed because if I told you who he was you'd be able to find me. People who know him will recognise the style.

"This is your life - are you who you want to be? This is your life - are you who you want to be? This is your life - is it everything you dreamed that it would be ..."

-Switchfoot, 'This is your life'

Gone - Switchfoot.


Switchfoot have a lot of good stuff on living life ... cf Dare you to Move, New Way to be Human ... maybe I'll buy some MP3s of their stuff if I can find it on amazon.

Counts as Nov 3rd - I haven't gone to bed yet.

Thoughts sparked off by Unseen Academicals

(minimal spoilers, if any)

I've finished reading Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld book - and I think it's very, very good. I think the fact that I like and identify with both Nutt and Glenda quite strongly is very much to do with this. I was talking to Ed about it last week, and we agreed that Glenda is an interesting Pratchett character because she is supremely competent (this seems to be a recurring theme - cf Esme Weatherwax, Lady Sybil, Adora Belle Dearheart) but she also has doubts. And life isn't precisely how she believes it is and she gets to see that. I could take Glenda on as a role model. She's pretty cool.

And learning how to bake pies would also be pretty awesome.

Other good things about the book:

-You get to see the wizards from the point of view of the servants, which is pretty neat.

-You get to see that the wizards aren't all silly old fusspots - well, they are, but there's a lot more to it.

-The Watch are vaguely referenced, but not made a big thing of - which I think is great. It's lovely to see them worked into the background of a city that works, rather than as A Big Thing. I think the Watch have pretty much come to the end of their story arc - the Watch is pretty sorted. It works, and it's really cool, and it now makes up some of the fabric of Ankh Morpork which is great.

-The emerging fashion scene in Ankh Morpork is just great. It's hilarious, it feels real, and it's wonderful to feel the city changing - which is just what Ankh Morpork should do, because that's why there is an Ankh Morpork - whenever something threatens the city, it just sort of merges and absorbs the new stuff.

-You get some other rather neat characters, like Pepe.

-The Librarian as goalie. And Rincewind as a football player in the background - it's neat to have him in a book where the point of the book isn't to be all about him. It's been very well done though - the characters like Rincewind, the Watch, etc who aren't main characters - it doesn't feel like it's name-dropping just to reference them for the sake of it, it feels like they really do live in this city. Of course they're here.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. A super book.

P.S. This counts as a blog post for the 2nd of November. People can get ahead on Nano, I can get ahead on my replacement a-blog-post-a-day challenge.

Societies, and doing the small things correctly.

Student societies ... they're a lot more fun when you don't have to organise them, or feel responsible for them. When you feel that you can take them or leave them, show up if they meet your needs, else walk away.

Whilst I'm not having trouble with societies as such, there are things that are starting to get on my nerves (partly just because I'm now a jaded 3rd year (and super-l33t-jokes, for example, are a lot less funny once you've been exposed to them lots), and partly because of course societies ebb and flow and change). And responsibility is really good for one, and encourages maturity, but is still something you have to carry.

Everything feels so much less laid-back than it has done over the last 2 years. I guess it's partly that now, we're in the 3rd year - we're it. There aren't that many people who've been around for longer who know how everything should work - now we are those people. And of course, having responsibility coupled with a strong, strong belief that things should be done properly, forces restraints on how you can act. Think that the discussion is excluding people? Okay, you've got to find a way to try and steer it round to become more inclusive - or perhaps make a call that the people who are being excluded now were being really tactless and excluding others earlier, so actually it evens out to be fair play. See new people who need welcoming? Go and talk to them. Have events which people should know about? Start publicising.

Mixing belief with action (hey, this is relevant to what we've been studying in the Bible recently - James chapters 1 and 2) is an awesome thing, and really really does grow you. But it's also a LOT of work.

Ah well. Nobody ever said living right was easy, hey?

"Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves."
Dale Carnegie

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."
Mother Teresa

I need to do this. Mostly, at the moment, I think I achieve it. But I need to make sure I don't start slacking, because once you start to slide it gets a lot harder. And I need to work out how to look after myself, how to get enough energy, how to keep on keeping on without burning out.

And I think that that's going to look like coming to even less society stuff than I have been so far this term. There are 2 things that come under the broad heading of 'societies' that I see as being real, long-term commitments for the rest of the year, and a 3rd which is sort of a runner up. But there are another 3 or so that are just going to be cut, I think. They no longer fulfil purpose for me, and it's only by letting go of the things that were good once that you free yourself up for the new things that can be good now.

I think life might also start to include more having friends round for tea / cake / dinner / chat. The sort of gathering where it isn't anyone's duty to keep an eye on steering the meeting, the sort where you can just relax and properly talk, and properly listen. And connect.