How I Came To Know "The Internet"

The first memory I have of the internet is that horrible dial-up sound, that scratchy, robot-rolling-his-rs-sound. The internet was that thing my parents did for work sometimes.

The next memory is one of third grade, when it became known to my through my good friend that an e-mail address was a cool thing to have. She was moving back to Korea the next year, so it wasn't all that difficult to convince even my anti-new-things-for-children mother to let me get a hotmail. AOL IM, unfortunately, was a different story.

My next significant internet experience: Neopets. Neopets Neopets Neopets. I probably have seven or so Neopets accounts floating around out there with numerous Acaras, Shoyrus, Aishas, Usuls, and especially Xweetoks doomed to eternal starvation.

During late elementary school and some of junior high, my (other) good friend would e-mail me links to entertaining things on Newgrounds, Homestar Runner, Albino Blacksheep, and various other sites. I have a distinct memory of working very hard to get to the end of the Impossible Quiz (which I never did because I realized there may be more important things in life (I may have been mistaken)).

In junior high I also had a massive crush on a boy (big surprise, I know). Being thirteen, inexperienced, and terrible at human interaction, I took to stalking his Xanga page (I didn't have one) and leaving comments anonymously. Because that is obviously how you get a boy to like you. Spoiler: it didn't work and I forgot about him rather quickly.

The final part of the largely insignificant portion of my internet experience is playing Gaia Online. It was certainly fun, but I got bored quickly and realized they wanted me to pay them real money. I just always liked making those cute little avatars.

Now then. Onto the important stuff. The three more defining parts of my internet experience.

#1 - Webcomics.

Sometime in junior high school, my best friend Allie said "You should check out sluggy.com". I did. And I was hooked. I read the entirety of the nine or ten years of Sluggy Freelance that had passed. Then I discovered QC. And Shortpacked! and xkcd and Real Life Comics and countless others that I eventually gave up on or forgot or decided weren't worth it anymore. My current line of bookmarks includes xkcd, Sandra and Woo, Roomies! Redux, Shortpacked!, Dumbing of Age, Buttersafe, Real Life Comics, and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. And yes, I am an avid David Willis Fan.

Look, RLC even did a comic about my hometown (I swear we aren't Nazis)!

#2 - songstowearpantsto.com

It may seem strange that a single website could be so significant in my internet story, but songstowearpants to was my first experience with online communities and how the internet can and has changed the way we interact with the world around us. For anyone who doesn't know, Andrew Huang (the creator of the site) was looking to make some money and posted some eBay auctions for personalized songs. It ended up being more successful than he expected, so he launched the website and it has since been his job.

He recently moved to YouTube and found even more success there, specifically with the hit song Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows. Since YouTube, he's been able to work on stuff he wants to, not just fan suggestions and commissions. And the fun part for me is that I've been able to watch him all the way.

But this is the other significant part of Andrew Huang for me - he was kind of the reason I started doing the whole YouTube thing. Which brings us to the obvious...

#3 - YouTube

Last fall, a funny chain of events occured: Andrew Huang brought me to Gunnarolla, who brought me to vlogbrothers, who brought me to nerimon...and there is where the chain stops, because I became so curious and so enthralled with all these worldwide communities that had existed for years within my reach but out of my sight. I'd seen a lot of these people's videos before, but I'd never wanted to look deeper. So I stopped letting myself be sent places and started sending myself places instead.

I'm not sure if I'm so interested in the kind of interaction that online video has created because I'm interested in how technology and the internet have changed and are still changing the ways we communicate and exchange information, or if it's vice-versa.

But hey, here I am, spending part of my free evening writing a blog post for people I only met a couple weeks ago, and not even in "real life". And it feels like one of the best things I could be spending my time on.

Oh, and here are my thumbs:

Exciting, am I right?

Excuse me, I need to go revise.

Sunday. A day with no obligations.

Oh- it's not supposed to be a work of fiction? I'll start over. The current theme asks for a "fairly detailed" account of my day; so this is going to start in minute detail and get progressively more cursory as the day progresses and I tire.

So I get up to go to Church. There is no other reason to get up at such an early hour as 1015 on a Sunday morning, but at least I don't need to get up for the 0845 mass back home. I stumble into the university chaplaincy at 1030 on the dot and manage to find a place to sit on a bench at the back. Why's it so crowded all of a sudden? I suppose I can't complain if going to mass suddenly becomes popular.


So mass proceeds as it always has (and when I say always, I mean for the last ~1600 years) and the priest gives a sermon about how the church never changes. In fact, he recited a parody of a verse from the popular hymn "Onwards Christian Soldiers":

Like a mighty Tortoise,

Moves the Church of God,

Brothers, we are treading,

Where we've always trod,

We are much divided,

Many bodies we,

Strong on holy Doctrine,

Weak on Charity.

I don't understand why a militaristic hymn is still popular in an age where war is as unpopular as it is- I've always felt uncomfortable singing this song. I'll take this version though; it's always nice to hear a priest advocating change. You'd think that with the number of priests I know who want change something would have filtered through to the top. Oh well.

Mass ends, I stay for coffee. Chat to a few people. I stay for lunch. I speak with a seminarian about the sacrament of confession and how to use it. Suffice to say that going to a priest and giving him a list of sins isn't the way to go: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned" is a lovely phrase for TV characters to use when they resort to religion and end up gratuitously finding it as hard and unyielding as the audience always suspected (I'm looking at you, House season 5 {I'm not up to date with TV}), but it has no place in the real world. Lunch is nice, I excuse myself since I need to go and revise for a mid-sessional exam tomorrow (and still do- but writing a blog post feels vaguely like work, so I don't feel guilty).

Walking home I make plans for revision. The Costa underneath the Waterstones is cosy- and likely to be open longer than other coffee shops, so I settle on that. Get home, grab work (check Facebook, Twitter, Our Pants etc.) go to back to Waterstones and settle down with a coffee to work on some Electronic Circuits.

An hour later I have a slightly better understanding of diodes, and the girl at the table next to me who is talking about the short film she's planning (about a girl called Ruth, and there's a boyfriend who leaves her for someone else, and there are dream sequences and...) is getting on my nerves so I decide that I need to find a more productive spot. I remember reading that all UCL libraries are open 24-7, so I cross the road and go to the Engineering floor of the Science library and settle in to learn about metal on semiconductor field effect transistors (actually really fascinating). I decide I've had enough of that module for one day, and that I need to do some electromagnetism.

It is now time for dinner, however, so instead of studying I go and eat. Then it is almost 1900, and what happened on Sunday 18th of November at 1900 GMT? The American Grand Prix of course! So off to a friend's room to watch that. Hilarities ensue- the Californian girl who actually knows about Formula 1 (I'm the next best knowledgeable, but she actually knows people in the sport, and has career ambitions... basically I know nothing) starts routing for Hamilton (whom she despises) because he could make things easier for her man Alonso (when I said hilarities... you had to be there... you still wouldn't have found it funny, but we did ok?) Spoiler alert (anyone who cares already knows) Hamilton won, the season remains undecided, but Vettel looks ready to win.

And again I excuse myself because I need to go revise: so here I am. Writing a blog post.

So if you'll excuse me, I need to go revise...

The day I turn twenty.

Wake up in the morning feeling like P.Diddy, Grab my glasses... wait. that's not right. 

Okay let's start again. Friday morning. My alarm rings at 8 but I blissfully ignore it until my mother wakes me up half an hour later telling me to get out of bed. I'm out of the house 45 minutes later to run errands with my mother before sending her to work I'm suppose to be going to practise dodgeball (There's a competition coming up - I don't know why I joined) but it was one of those days where all I wanted to do was sleep so I bailed. I go back home and take a nap because the weather was gloomy and because I can. 

My friends call and I have to fetch them, so I grab a bun and the car keys and head out. I get them, we come back to my place and proceed to watch The Walking Dead for a couple hours while we discuss the fact that logic is essentially thrown out the window when watching the show and wonder whether the rest of the world was also undergoing the zombie apocalypse. Eventually it's around three and its time to go to the hotel. My dad drops us off in the city, we check in and then melt into the bed under the covers watching X-men until it's time for dinner. 

We catch a cab to this almost-100-year-old restaurant that we suddenly decided would be fun to go to since most of us haven't been there since we were children. We get there and the place still looks old as hell and right out of a Country-Western movie. We eat. Food wasn't as great as it used to be. I had grilled fish. I like grilled fish. Everything tends to taste better when it's grilled. We finish eating. We go to a grocery store to stock up on coke as mixers and then go back to the hotel. 

It's still pretty early and some of my friends weren't there yet, so we get back under the covers and proceed to watch The Perfect Catch. Typical corny-as-hell chick flick, but we're a bunch of girls so we still watch it anyway while remarking how young Drew Barrymore looks in the movie. Finally, the last two friends arrive and they show up with cake. CAKE. A real one. Not a watermelon one like for my 18th birthday. they pull our party hats and we put them on. They sing, I sit on the floor holding my cake awkwardly. We take pictures, I blow the candle and then we eat cake.

The drinks start, and we failed to pace ourselves. I put on this video - which I discovered a couple weeks ago and we all agreed would be the central theme of the night. The kiki. Dancing occurs. Old school 2000's hip hop and pop songs are played. Terrible singing occurs. More drinks.  Somebody decides we don't have enough alcohol and goes and buys beer. Cardinal rule of alcohol consumption, Don't mix drinks, thrown out the window. By then, everybody is declaring their love for each other and there's just a lot of high fives and hugging going on. People are rolling on the twister mat or on the bed. 

Then I decided I need to puke, so I do that. I later learnt that out of all my friends, I am the best at puking because I aim well and can do so unsupervised. The little successes in life are the best. I alternate between lying down on the bed and puking until I eventually fall asleep. I wake up at 3 am to see my two friends sitting in the dark on the floor discussing how shit faced everyone is so I make a cup of tea and join them. I stumble around looking for my glasses, put them on and then check my phone.  This is when I discover the drunk dialling that I did, and the 40 or so text messages that my friend sent to some of my other friends.I read them and laugh uncontrollably for a good 5 minutes and then decide I want to sleep so I grab a pillow and sleep on the floor.

And that was my day. Not exactly the typical day in my life, but it happened.

Introduction: Hilde

Hello everybody,

First of all, let me just say that I am thrilled to be a part of this. I am really looking forward to getting to know you all.
My name is Hilde (which is unpronounceable in English, I’m sorry), I’m 19 and I live in the Netherlands. When thinking about the Netherlands, most people are instantly reminded of our drugs policy, the Red Light District and our national football team, but I grew up away from all that. I am from a very small town near the coast, with just one set of flashlights, a population of about 8000 and no high schools. We have five wind mills to compensate, though. My town isn’t the kind of idyllic, pretty place you might expect when you hear those characteristics. It’s kind of average-looking and there is not much to do, but I really like living here.
As you can probably imagine, it was quite a shock for me to start university in Amsterdam.  I had visited a couple of times, of course, but swerving through a city you don’t know all that well, while trying to get to class on time and having tons of new experiences was very different.  I really wasn’t used to being in a city at all. For instance, I am somewhat ashamed to admit it, but when I had my first class there just over a year ago, I rode a bus for the first time in my life.

But I have to say, the last year has been amazing. I got used to Amsterdam within a few months and I made some awesome new friends. Most importantly, I was (still am) really excited about my choice to major in Ancient Greek and Latin (As you can see in my picture, where I am geeking out over a bust of Augustus). I chose to go into this field, because I am fascinated by languages and, in my opinion, Ancient Greek and Latin are the best ones. I love that every single sentence is like a puzzle you have to solve to unlock some secret meaning behind it. And beside all of that, we learn about the cultural aspects of the people that spoke those languages: their history, their religion, their philosophy, their architecture and their art. It’s pretty fantastic.
As to what I want to do after I finish university, I am not really sure. The options in my field are kind of limited. Most people become teachers and that seems like a good option to me, but I’m also thinking about doing something that has nothing to do with my degree and just work for a charity. But then, imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.

Just to tell a bit more about myself, I thought I would rip off all of your introductions and answer the same three questions.

To start with, what do I like? I love Harry Potter (I’m a Hufflepuff), Nerdfighteria and, like I said, languages. Although, for a person who likes languages as much as I do, I can speak very few. It goes without saying that I enjoy watching YouTube. My favourite channels are the Vlogbrothers, HankGames, elmify, hayleyghoover and MyHarto. Beside that I have some pretty uninteresting hobbies: I like to read, write, draw, play saxophone and ride bikes (very Dutch of me, I know). My favourite writers are J.K. Rowling, John Green, J.D. Salinger, Ovid and Vergil.

Secondly, what do I dislike? I am overall a positive person and I don’t get annoyed easily, but there are a couple of things that can  drive me a little crazy. For example, I don’t it when people complain about public transport. Maybe even more annoying are the people nodding their head fervently in agreement and repeating all the same arguments . It also annoys me when people don’t at least try to understand each other. I think it would help if we all imagined ourselves into other people’s places every once in a while, because I don’t like when people refuse to step out of their own set of principles and believes to learn more about other people.

And finally, what are some random facts about me? When I find money on the street, I add some; I always have to wear socks that match the t-shirt I’m wearing and my favourite Harry Potter character is Minerva McGonagall. Also, I have never done drugs in my life, I stay away from the Red Light District and I know absolutely nothing about Dutch football. I am, however, a supporter of both the Swindon Town Swoodilypoopers and Liverpool Football Club.

 

DFTBA and best wishes,

Hilde

Introducing AJ

Hello everyone! My name is Alexander Johnson, also known as AJ. I'm a 20 year old student studying Electronic and Electrical Engineering with Computer Science at University College London.

This is the first year of my course, and I am taking my time adjusting to city life. I come from a reasonably small commuter town outside London where I have lived for as long as I can remember. Before I can remember I lived in, of all places, Detroit; where I was born to an Austrian mother and a British father. How they ended up there is a story for another time.

How does one write an introduction? I have started with some basic facts that allow you to broadly place me, which have come with a couple of side notes to moisten that otherwise rather dry morsel. Do I delve into interests? I have many, and no mere mention of an interest will do- I cannot, for example, mention that I enjoy sailing without mentioning that I have been sailing since I was 7, normally sail an obscure dinghy class called a Heron but while at university I sail Fireflies which is a pretty standard boat for university competition. Can I possibly leave out the notable achievement of coming 2nd in the Heron National Championships this year? Or that my home club boasts an Olympic medallist among its former members? Had I left it at the word "sailing" it is possible that your thoughts would have jumped aboard larger boats; you might have thought me a leisure sailor or someone who ranks sailing equally with everything else on the long list that contains my interests.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself that such slight misunderstandings are generally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things: that if I had erroneously stated that I sail an obscure dinghy class called a Miracle your understanding of me would have been no different from what it is now that I have given you the correct information. This is, of course, true. What have you learned about me from how I've presented myself however? That I view sailing as my primary hobby? That I like details to be accurate irrespective of relevancy? That I overuse the rhetorical questions?

I once got a birthday card on which Holmes and Watson went camping. Holmes wakes Watson and asks him to look up and say what he can see. Watson answers that he sees the sky and many stars. When asked what this tells him, Watson embarks on a long and complex diatribe on constellations, the phases of the moon and likely weather patterns for the coming day. He returns the question to Holmes. At this point I opened the card and read the words: "Watson, someone has stolen our tent."

In this introductory post I have fed you a moist morsel of basic facts on my position in this world. I have discussed the correct level of detail that an introduction should reach. And in all this I have failed to give you many of the obvious facts about me that you could otherwise use to categorize me. I have discussed the nature of the universe, but I have not mentioned that I am currently sitting in the middle of a field somewhere freezing my balls off because some bastard stole my tent.

Now this is the part where you may judge my character. And not just the character of the type of person who fits into that fandom, watches that show or enjoys doing that thing (I trust that sailors are so absurdly stereotyped that no one actually believes me to have an anchor tattoo, eat spinach and smoke a pipe). The fact is that I want to be imagined complexly. John Green has it damn right on that. I want to be seen as an extensive maze containing many interesting wonders. You may learn some routes quickly, tread others often- but you know that to learn all the maze's secrets would require the study of a life time. It is fine, of course, to not want to enter this maze, or to be content with some of the simpler routes near the entrance. There are 7 billion mazes in the world and I don't want some blurry aerial photograph to be considered all there is of this one.

My apologies if this is a little dense- I can get rather philosophical at times. As time goes by I'm sure all my hobbies and interests will come out- and in greater detail than I could possibly have covered here, as they will have entire posts dedicated to them. Also- pretty pictures from wikimedia commons (what, you didn't think I would source them myself did you? Oh, the one at the top? Yeah that's just some random guy).

I also like sarcasm. You may want to remember that. The picture at the top is of me- I'm doing one of my very favourite things. But that's just going to have to wait for another time.

See ya later, and DFTBA

Exam day

8:30 am. My phone alarm goes off. Technically, today started when I went to bed last night after midnight, so half eight is not ideal. So I ignore the alarm. Twice.

At half nine I finally drag myself out of bed. I have an exam this afternoon. I'm normally not a fan of afternoon exams. I end up spending the morning worrying, and I'd much rather get it over with quickly. This was kind of an exception. I really needed the sleep-in.

Shower. Yoghurt and muesli. Tea. Traditional Afternoon. White, one sugar. Hot. Laptop. Lectures. Last minute revision. Get distracted, watch Youtube.

This stream of consciousness thing is fun.

For lunch I think I'll have... guacamole. On toast. Yeeaaahh. That's the stuff.

Okay. My exam is at two, which means I should probably leave at 1-ish. I'm really, really underprepared, but at this point there's not a lot I can do. I can't stand those people who sit outside exam rooms panicking and and reading notes and textbooks and stuff. I tried that for my high school exams. All it did was make me stressed, and actually forget stuff. If you don't know it by five minutes beforehand, there's not a lot you can do.

(I got new sneakers, by the way. They look like this. They're awesome.)

Well, that went... okay. Two source analyses from... Odyssey book 4 and Aeneid book 12. Essay question on Greek guest laws in the Odyssey. And an essay question on Aeneas' piety. Here's a tip for you though: if you get a question in the exam which is the same as the question you just spent six weeks and 3000 words answering, it's probably not a good idea to try and refute the same argument in three pages and thirty minutes. I pity whoever gets to read that mess.

Seriously, that's all I've done today. I wrote some good essays, and some bad essays, and then I went home. This really is the worst possible time for this topic to come up. My life is all studystudyprocrastinatestudystudyEXAMstudystudyprocrastinatestudyEXAM.

Speaking of procrastinate, Star Trek is on. (Seriously, best thing about digital TV: one of the stations fills all their new programming space on Thursday nights with three straight hours of Next Generation reruns. And Saturday is Voyager reruns. It's brilliant.)

Gigi: An Introduction

A wild newbie appears!

Hello, all :) My name is Gigi. Nice to make your acquaintance.

I'm a semi-small-town girl from a semi-large-small city in Yolo County, California. Yearning to get out and away, I graduated from high school in 2011 and moved my life all the way out to the bay area to become a Linguistics student at Cal. Or, rather, to become an undecided and indecisive student at Cal. The Linguistics part came later.

As one might guess, I currently live in Berkeley, California. It's certainly an exciting place to live. There's always something going on; whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know. But the most beautiful part for me is this: if I take a walk East for fifteen minutes or so, I reach hills where I can hike to the top and see the whole bay. And if I take the bus West, I can sit at the marina and enjoy the silence and the ocean. It's easy to get away here.

If I'm being perfectly honest, one of the first things that drew me to studying Linguistics was that Cal only requires eight classes for the major. This means I have space, I have time, I have freedom to study a lot of different things. And I've so far been taking advantage of that time. This semester I'm taking one Linguistics course, one Italian course, one course about insects and one on written musical harmony. Variety is certainly the spice of life.

And if I'm being perfectly honest, that wasn't the only reason I chose my major. I took my first foreign language in high school: Japanese. Three years straight of one subject and I loved it. Language is beautiful. By learning (a little bit of) Japanese I opened myself up to communication with almost 130,000,000 new people on the globe, and that's just counting Japan's population. So now I'm learning Italian as well, and planning to pick up Japanese again next year. To be fair, though - Linguistics is not a study of foreign language. But a love of foreign language was what led me to it. And though I'm not very far into the major, I'm loving it so far. Two of my (legitimate!) sources for the homework assignment I just finished were Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Urban Dictionary. It was about the historical semantic change of the word 'wicked'.

Career-wise? I'm going to become a librarian. I decided this last year pretty much on a whim, and after volunteering at a library and talking to some people, it seems like a better and better idea all the time.

Things I think are wicked cool: Books (kind of a requirement for a would-be librarian). I just finished At Swim Two Birds, which I highly recommend, and I'm currently slowly getting through Ulysses, which was forced upon me by my boyfriend, but which I am so far enjoying. I'm a huge Douglas Adams fan. I haven't read anything by John Green yet, unfortunately, but it's coming! According to my parents, when I was little I would sit in my room reading for hours, and then come back out and ask why nobody was paying attention to me. So I suppose attention is another thing I like. 

I also very much enjoy cats, a "like" that I'm sure many others can relate to as well. I doodle at times, so those may show up here. And as with anyone, I love music, and some particular favorites are Pink Martini, Aqualung, Tom Milsom, Alex Day, Andrew Huang, CAKE, POTUS, Don MacLean, and Talking Heads. I also enjoy making music; I'm a decent singer, I can do some basic guitar and uke, and I recently bought a pennywhistle, which I've quickly learned has one setting: obnoxious.

Fun fact: one of my thumbs is a hitchhiker's thumb and one is not. So I am not perfectly symmetrical. Oh well.

I'm very much looking forward to this. New experiences, new people, new opportunities! New = good :)

DFTBA!
Gigi

My (not so) exciting life

I said I'd blog today, so I am doing that. I actually wanted to take pictures, but forgot (of course) so you just imagine everything, okay?
The theme says 'fairly detailed', so detailed you get:

My alarm (which is Poker Face) rang the first time at 7:15. I'm a snoozer, so I hit snooze and continued sleeping until 7:23 or something. iPhone has random snoozing times, sometimes it's 7 minutes, sometimes 9 minutes, you never know. My second alarm rang at 7:32 and that's when I really have to get up.
I was super tired because I couldn't fall asleep until 3 am or so. I have a bad cough and even though I'm taking codeine, it wouldn't let me sleep.
Sleepily I brushed my teeth with my purple electric toothbrush, at least you don't need much brain activity for that. I put in my lenses and went downstairs to make tea. Mischa demanded to be fed, so I gave her some Whiskas. I'm home alone at the moment because my father is in Egypt for two weeks, so I'm the provider for the cat.
My mother picked me up at 8:00 on her way to work and because the hospital is close to the court, I'm usually driving with her.

There was some traffic, so I reached university at 8:20, five minutes too late. The first two lecture were orthopedics, it was not really anything exciting, but it was also not too bad. The third lecture was pharmacology which was a bit boring. Overall the lectures were a torture for me because I'm taking acetylcystein so that I can cough up the mucus. That works nicely, but I can't exactly cough in university because a) it's loud and b) it's a pretty disgusting sound. So half of the time I was about to suffocate, the other half I had a hiccup from not coughing.

At 11:00 I had my first elective course - emergency neurology. It's always quite interesting and the professor tells so many stories of his life. The main subject is what to pay attention to (neurogically) if you have an emergency patient. After that, at 12:00, there is tropical medicine with the same professor. It was about Malaria today which I don't find particularly interesting. It's until 13:30, but I decided to leave at 13:00 so that I have a bit more time at home to rest between courses.

So I went home by bus, watched an episode of Dexter and ate some chinese food we had in the freezer. I had to leave the house again at 15:00 to take the bus back to the hospital for my neurosurgery course.
At least that was quite nice, I was just super tired. It's bedside teaching, in that case it means that our professor gets patients to the seminar room and we can examine them. First there was a woman with back pain, but it was hard to examine her because everything caused her severe pain. The second patient was an old guy with a chronic epidural hematoma, he will be operated tomorrow. They don't really know why he has it, probably he hit his head somewhere. He just went to doctor because he had a headache for a while now.

At 16:30 I went back home, watched one episode of Friends and drank some tea. Now it's 18:30 and I'm playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 online with le boyfriend. We're getting our ass kicked by the enemies, but we're not losing yet.

Now it's 22:30.

I got hungry and because I was too lazy to go shopping, I had literally nothing to eat at home. So I decided to drive to McDonald's (that's the main reason why I have my driving license), got a Big Mac menu and raced home. I hope they did not measure speed because I was 20-30 km/h over the speed limit. Hey, my fries were getting cold!
I ate while watching Friends.

When I was sitting on the couch downstairs watching Castle, Mischa was misching around and suddenly I saw a mouse running across the floor. Mischa doesn't seem to have any intention in catching that mouse, she's sleeping on my pillow now. Guess I have two pets now. Yay?

Now we're playing Heroes again, but we're about to lose. I showered and will download Bones to watch before sleeping. I decided not to go to university tomorrow, but rather stay sleep long and try to cure my cough.

And that's about it, welcome to my exciting life!

Samurais Are Funny

A day in my life:

Monday.

I started my day by waking up at 8:00AM. Feeling disoriented, I managed to shut off my alarm and even open my eyes a bit in the process. It was still dark outside and having slept for only three hours, I felt too tired to go to the 10AM class, which would have been ethnography. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to lull towards sleep once more. I was interrupted by my mother, asking when my classes would start. She had planned on catching the same bus as I on her way to checking out local flea markets. I muttered I would go to university by noon to let her know I was going to skip the first class and then went back to sleep.

I woke up around 9:30AM even though my alarm was set to 10AM. I cursed the fact that I had woken up but my bladder demanded access to the bathroom. I complied. Mom was still home, preparing to leave and I asked her to let me know if the roads were slippery so I’d know whether I should bother with my winter shoes or not. She thought this was unnecessary and informed me it had been raining for hours so there wouldn't be any ice left. I disagreed on the possibility but putting on my winter shoes is always a hassle compared to my sneakers so I was hopeful enough for slush free streets to accept what she said as truth.

After I got out of the bathroom I turned on my laptop and spent my time browsing Tumblr and Our Pants until 11AM, at which point I had to get dressed. I threw on my brown suede jacket and slipped my feet into my sneakers, happily leaving the winter shoes behind. Walking down the stairs of our apartment building I ran into some men who were discussing something in a rather loud fashion, I do not remember ever seeing them before but, yet again, I don’t tend to look at people. I can only recognize one of our neighbors and I've been living in the building for four years. I walked past them and once I got outside I discovered it was raining. I let out a deep sigh, cursing the fact that I hadn't noticed this before leaving the apartment. I didn't have a rain coat or an umbrella with me and I didn't have the time to go get them either. My suede jacket would have to endure. Again.

On my way to the bus stop I found myself staring at the burned wall of an apartment building again. Few weeks ago two cars parked next to it caught fire, bad, and burned some of the paint and plaster off from the wall. I wondered how I had missed the emergency vehicles, we had heard no sirens when it had happened. I managed to stroll over to the bus stop on time. Even had to wait for a while, which wasn't so nice when the rain drumming on my shoulders constantly reminded of the fact that my suede jacket was suffering. I love this jacket. It was my mother’s, I think it’s about as old as I am, and I've used it for years.

I was at the university slightly earlier than I had expected, which I was pretty happy about. It meant I could stroll over to the lecture hall instead of acting like I was a speed walking race participant and everyone who got in my way deserved an elbow in the face. Outside the lecture hall I met with my friend (Let’s call her Pete) who provided me with the handouts from the ethnography class. He informed me that on Thursday our class would go visit the local Provincial Archives -  they hold records of government authorities and private individuals in the area. We tend to use them for research. Pete and I wandered into the class room and took our usual seats, discussing the fact that we needed to find a place to do out ethnography project. We are going to study social interaction occurring in teacher’s lounges, which means we need to go spend a day observing people in a teacher‘s lounge. We had already gotten turned down by one school and another school hadn't responded to us yet though we were starting to run out of time. We planned on emailing a third school our ethnography lecturer had suggested and I said I would email the principal of the second school too if he hadn't responded to us by the end of the day.

We then moved on to discussing other, more entertaining matters. Like the fact that “London Bridge Is Falling Down” has been stuck in my head all morning because our other friend (let’s call her Carol) started to sign it when we went to have Chinese food together on Saturday. We then wondered how late Carol would be for the class. Pete bet 5 minutes, I bet 5-10 minutes. She entered the room the second Pete made his guess. She asked why he looked so disappointed and I explained that he lost a bet on how late she would be. He cheered up visibly when he realized I lost too. Then our class began. It was a course called The Samurai - Myths And Reality In The History of Japan. This course has been fairly entertaining and it has given me many ideas for amusing short comics. When the lecturer mentioned how particular samurais were about looking good so that the enemy wouldn't mock how ugly they were if they happened to get their heads chopped off, we all chuckled. Trimming nose hairs was mentioned for comedic effect. I leaned over to Pete and whispered “why the hell is it that every time I attend these classes samurais keep getting funnier?”, he grinned and nodded as a response. I then focused on listening to the lecturer again but after a while I heard Carol quietly talk to Pete about something. When I looked over I realized what she was doing: She was busy making homoerotic fan fiction of the comic on the cover of her notebook and explaining it to Pete, who is not a fan of slash fiction. I grinned at them, happy she managed to corner him to tell him about her notebook cover theories. She had cracked me up by suddenly springing them on me at the end of another class few weeks earlier.

After the class we talked about video games and some topical news stories for a bit but then I got all antsy about making it to the next class, The Intellectual History of The United States. There are a lot of participants and it can be hard to find a seat after a certain point so I wanted to get there early. Carol rubbed in the fact that she didn't have a class to attend and that she could go home and take a nap or browse the internet. Pete fake-punched her with his backpack and when we left for the class, he told her not to have fun.

In the class room we found a fellow archaeology student (let’s call her Nina), who motioned us to sit with her: “We archaeology students need to gang up in the middle of all these history majors.” I laughed. “Yes, we must establish a territory and defend it.” We chatted about thesis matters for a moment - she had been suggested she would make hers about certain kinds of bone-carved spoons (which I would be 3D scanning, actually) - and then we talked about the class and how confusing it was. Mainly because the lecturer kept jumping from one subject to another and had the tendency to assume we were familiar with a lot of things we really weren't familiar with.  I've come to the conclusion that this course on the intellectual history of the US might just be the most difficult course I've attended in university so far. I've also concluded that Jefferson was kind of a nice guy, maybe. Okay, maybe not that nice. But sort of? And now I won’t be completely confused if some American makes the mistake of listing John Locke as one of the Founding Fathers. When the class was over Nina sighed that the spoons were starting to seem nice after that lecture.

Pete, Nina and I parted ways and I went to wait for the bus. It was still raining and I cursed my lack of umbrella again. I luckily didn't have to wait around for too long. I had planned on going down town to shop for new winter shoes, ones that I could just quickly pull on. Simple boots with no laces. Unfortunately I wasn't sure what the route of the bus I was on would be down town. I was hoping it would take me close to the super market I had planned on visiting but, of course, it didn't  Instead it turned the other way and I ended up further away from the super market than I had hoped. If only I had gotten off at an earlier stop. The rain had become heavier too and I was pretty sure it was ruining my jacket but I briskly walked on, trying to ignore the fact that it was rush hour too.

Eventually I got to the super market and I headed straight for the shoe section. The selection for standard winter boots was terrible. There were these horrible pink boots that had a metallic shine to their fabric and the boot had a collar of black fake fur (I think there may have been other colors too but I was blinded by the horrible pink). I couldn't help but to stand there for a while, wondering who the hell would wear them. I then shifted my attention to the regular boots next to them. These boots were expensive, which is usual for a valued Finnish brand. I looked around for other boots but there really weren't any of the kind that I was looking for. Except for the expensive ones in front of me. I tried a couple of pairs on and settled on boots that were only ankle-high. I had trouble with the longer ones not being able to accommodate my calves. Regardless, I was pretty happy to have finally accomplished my mission of finding new winter shoes. I then stopped by at the super market next door to the one I bought my shoes from. I was getting ridiculously hungry at this point and they had a Subway. I was surprised by how quickly the line moved, they had several sandwich artists working at the same time, I don’t think I've seen so many of them behind the same counter before. After I got my sub, I went to wait for the bus, the rain briefly turned into wet snow.

I checked my phone and saw that mom had texted me, asking me to get kibble for the cat. As I got on the bus, I weighed whether I should pretend I didn't see the message. I was tired, wet and hungry, I didn't particularly feel like going to the grocery store too, I just wanted to go home. After a while I decided that despite my annoyance, I would get the kibble and some other stuff. The store I went to is going to be closing for good soon so they are running out of products. To my dismay they were almost completely out of cat kibble. “Of course,” I thought and grabbed one of the bags that were still left. It was some fancier brand and didn't seem to be too plentiful but it would do. Then finally, around 6PM, I headed home.

At home, I took a warm shower and returned to the comfort of the Internet. I checked my email and noticed that the second school had finally replied to us about the possibility of spending the day at their teacher’s lounge. To my humongous relief, the principal said that most of the teachers had been okay with the idea so the answer is yes. I do not need to email other schools and this is now one thing less to worry about! I proceeded to do other internet things and after discussing with a fellow archaeology student, I decided to give Viking knitting a try. I will just have to find the time to go shop for supplies. I should have worked on my thesis too but by the time I got home, I was too tired.