Vonfuse(d) Me

Just to finish off the story, I did eventually hand in my essay at 16:51, when it was due at 17:00. After a series of printing problems and one more intermediate draft. Overall I am happy with the result, although I have a feeling that I don't really manage to bring my arguments across very well... it will be exciting to get the result :) . And it was very nice to walk back early in the morning as well, after a long night of work. By the sea, and seeing Mars bright red in the sky straight ahead of me.
Here is a picture of what my little workspace looked like once I was done, just before packing everything up...
And this post is completely pointless ;) ...

Current Music: Eläkeläiset - Hotelli Helpotus

I defeated the beast! It is early, and my first all-nighter is coming to an end. Will go and have an hour of sleep now, then revise my essay, go to class, rewrite my essay, another class, revise and reprint my essay. And then wait for my grade...
Interestingly enough, I came across many new theories as I was writing. Some incredibly interesting and just so suitable. I have a feeling that once I am awake again I could learn something from my own essay ;) . If I get marks taken off for bad style and inaccurate information (I really don't know if my RCN Human Rights notes are such a good source, considering how often they were edited, changed, and never checked...), I hope I'll at least get extra points for finding the weirdest theories! Or maybe they are perfectly normal, and I'm just too tired...
Anyways, enough rambling. Back to my beautiful room to have a drink and a few crisps, sleep an hour, wake up happy. With a first draft in my hands! And it is even a bit too long :D!
It still isn't the same though... but I am too tired to be sentimental now. And I am hyper when I am tired anyways ;) .

Current Music: Air - Sex Born Poison

Every minute I spend writing this entry will be one minute less I have to write a 1500 word essay for International Relations, due in a bit more than 17 hours. And I still haven't managed to write a word of it.
And yet my mind is everywhere but the essay. I'll only need 5/20 for the course to pass anyways.
Gosh, I am tired, and it is before midnight and I slept a lot last night. I don't have anything to drink with me here in the computer room. And no candy. It just doesn't feel right. Oh, and so many people, but no fjord. That just about sums it up.
And yet this is the first serious piece of work I have to do. The first of three in this week, the other ones not started yet either, of course.
It is now 23:52, one Sunday evening, and the desperation of writing an essay is all that keeps me sane.



Current Music: The Wish You Were Here Album by Pink Floyd over and over again.

It's a quarter past 2 in the morning. I had a nice time at a nice party. Being with people I had wanted to see, and ectually having something to celebrate as well (pre-Halloween and the result of the rectorial elections here). And then a phone call, that my roommate is "being sick" all over the room, and that I better come. By the time I arrive, his stuff is already in the laundry, some carpet tiles are drying and he is sleeping, still being sick every now and then. A few vodka shots and a bottle of wine.
I'm up now to make sure that he is alright. When I will have to get up at 08.00 tomorrow to go to a kayaking fair. And when I still haven't really done much for my IR essay, due monday.
In a way I am glad to be gone all of tomorrow. To get away from here, now more than ever.

Current Music: Filter - Take a Picture

At the moment I am sitting in a computer room that I have only just discovered. Many computers, very few people. Right in the city centre, and yet very quiet because at this time the building isn't used for anything else. It is calm, bright, and very "work-a-holic-ish". Nearly as much as the computer science room, where I spent one evening with a friend while he was programming his assignment. Those are the classrooms where you take out crisps and drinks when nobody is looking. Reminds me of camping whole nights in some other computer rooms ;) .
And I am trying to take apart a four page arguement about increasing wages by Marx for logics class, for the second time now, and I still don't know where I am going.
Before this I had the weekly Film Studies screening, this time Rush Hour was on. That was absolutely hilarious, such a fun waste of 90 minutes ;) . The topic is acting/stars. Right. In the last lecture on the same topic we watched an excerpt from Knight Rider and kind of agreed that David Hasslehoff's acting is great, because it suits its purpose. Hmm...
Right now I am listening to yahoo launch, haven't done that for ages, but my iPod ran out of batteries. And just now some song by "Emiliana Torrini" (I think that was her name) came up... such a beautiful song, and no chance to play it again. Does anyone know her music? Does anyone have any? It's been a while since I've last considered getting a CD after listening to only one song... Imagine the music like Tori Amos, but less whiny, and like Björk, but more melodic and much, much less strained/intense. Or maybe like a single, female version of the Kings of Convenience? I don't know any more, need to listen to it again......
And get back to Herr Marx and his "exchangeable values of commodities" ...

Current Song (until my iPod stopped playing...) - The Decemberists - From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)

PS: For those of you who are studying in the UK and the US (and Canada as well?) - if you aren't on the facebook.com yet, get online there. A great waste of time, but very amusing. It's basically like friendster, myspace, hi5 etc just more serious, and only for people at university and colleges. Talking about it being serious, my roommate added all people with his last name (about 750) and all with his first name (another 450?) as friends. Within 16 hours, about 150 confirmed, he received some 25 messages, and 30 people wrote on his wall. And all along the lines of "do I know you", "hey, this is cool", "are we related? My ancestors are from..." and "we rock"...

I've finally managed to get a semi-decent Panorama picture of our room together. It still has a couple of things overlapping; I will take better pictures next time. And it is our old layout... pretty much exactly a week ago, we changed our room layout so that we now both have our desks in front of the windows. Hopefully soon I'll have a better panorama of the new layout ready :) .

Now off to bed, finally...

Current Music: Pink Floyd - Echoe Part I (Live at Pompeii)

PS: Hmm, just realised that you can't see so much on this version... my desk is the one to the very right, underneath the poster which reads "Peas on Earth". My bed is the one to the left. The window on the left faces the golf course, the one on the right the sea and the one in the middle has a view over the clubhouse and the wide Links Golflands of St Andrews. Just in case you really want to know, my cupboard is the one on the right ;) .

Right. So I just melted a small chocolate candy in the same pocket as my phone. Now I have a chocolate-coated phone case, and a naked phone left.

Today I discovered that so far I have only met people from the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and Finland here (and maybe one or two other countries that I can't think of right now). It's a bit sad that the "international" University is so international mostly because of the 20% American students...

And I discovered that nationalities are often easy to spot. Especially with the Germans and Swedes. Sad to say, but it's usually easy to tell by their rather overdressed or posh appearance, the fact that they have a very confident expression on their face and that they usually hang out in their language groups. And they tend to have gone to private high schools in the UK before coming here.

That confirms two stereotypes I had of St Andrews before I came: Many people are here, or have been sent here by their parents, for the name of the university only, and do everything they can to show that they are something better because they have a lot of money and St Andrews is meant to be the place for them. The other stereotype is that many people who aren't accepted at Oxbridge or decline their offer there come here. Me being one of them...

On a final note: We can share our music for listening through itunes over the hall network here, and with a program we can also download it now. I should have music to listen to for the rest of the term now. And still I always come back to the same old songs...

Time for me to stop blabbering in this very random and disconnected post and either go to bed or get some work done. Or to get that darn chocolate off my phone case so that I can put it back together...

Current Music: Paul Oakenfold - Southern Sun

• About 40% of the people living in St Andrews are students.
• There is one pub for every 340 inhabitants, or one for every 140 students.
• 18% of the students are from overseas, that is more than twice as many as non-UK EU students
• Only 2 out of 19 UWC graduates at St Andrews did not study International Relations at some point.
• About 20% of all first year students take International Relations.
  
• Mary Queen of Scots was the first woman known to play golf — in 1568 (in St Andrews, of course...)
• In the 1840’s, St Andrews was nearly bankrupt. The land for the golf courses was used to raise rabbits for a number of years.
• A guy called Old Tom moved the 18th hole by 55m so that it was closer to his golf shop.
• Locals pay about 200$ for a year's access to the course. Guests pay about 218$ per round. 40% of players are guests.
• One quarter of the people who graduate from St Andrews will have met their future spouses here.
• One quarter of the people who graduate from St Andrews have an alcohol problem.
• The residence I live in has been sold for 29 Million Pounds to become a hotel - that is about 50 Million $.
• Using the washing machine costs 1,50 Pounds, and drying another 20 pence per 10 minutes.
• Drinks are measured in pints, distances in yards, liquids in litres and mass in kilograms.
• If three students wearing their red gowns cross a road, cars have to stop.
• Our bookshelf is called "Flärke" and our cabinet "Stolmen". Go IKEA.
• Some people don't have classes on Wednesdays, that is why today is "Boozeday Tuesday"
• At the same time, half of the people I know are off alcohol for one week.

Current Music: Pink Floyd - Hey You

Not much now. It's the end of a weekend that involved unusually little alcohol consumption. But also very little work. As usual, though, I'm left with a heap of reading to do the last minute. And still I know that I wont start it until much later tonight.
Sometimes it feels as if "Le ciel lui tombe sur la tête" here, as Asterix would say. As if the sky drops down on one's head and nothing goes anywhere. Maybe that is just me being weird, maybe that is just me being weird with the people around me, but when that happens I become very vulnerable.
So what I usually do is get away into my music and be annoyed at everyone around me, until they leave me alone eventually. Once I have calmed down, everything is normal again, for the moment.
And now I really only wanted to post to put online a picture of us pierwalking this morning... a bit ironic, but that was great fun. Most of the weekend was fun in some way. In case I haven't said it before: The pierwalk is a traditional walk along the St Andrews pier for students in the red robes on Sundays after the chapel service. You go out on the bottom part, climb a ladder, walk around a lantern and walk back on the narrow (and in storm dangerous) top part. Apparently that is a tradition from long ago, and it does look reasonably fancy if many people do it. Some people say it was introduced to greet the incoming boats. A more likely theory is that it was a good way to spend time between the service ending and the pubs opening...



Current Music : The Grateful Dead - Bird Song (Live)

PS: Odd Børretzen just came up by random on my iPod. I didn't realise how much I miss the sound of Norwegian...

That is the time until the dryer will have spun my laundry around for another 60 pence, and will probably still try to tell my that my damp clothes are ready to be put into my cupboard. 30 minutes to waste while waiting. Nice feeling though, being in an empty room that has just been completely rearranged. Hearing slurred speech all over the hall and knowing that you've once again escaped getting wasted just because you didn't like the taste of your Absinth any more after a beach walk (but for the better?). Knowing that these will be the last 30 minutes of today, and alone that makes them worthwhile.


Ever since leaving Flekke I love waiting. No matter whether there's something at the end of waiting, there'll always be an end, and at least that is a fixed something to look forward to.
20 minutes of sanity left.
Time goes by so incredibly slowly if you wait and think about waiting, and so quickly if you wait and forget that you're waiting. Yet once you acknowledge that, you know you're waiting again, and those precious moments seem to slip away again...
I better clean up the mess in the room now. Spoons, hard alcohol, sugar, many used glasses, a chess board with figures all over the place and a lighter don't really make this room look very healthy.
And then I'll escape this place at least for one more night, and see whether the green fairy will take me by the hand and lead me back to the beautiful place where I don't actually have to enjoy waiting...
15 minutes of sanity left...

Current Song: Robbie Williams - The Road to Mandalay

PS: No Comment...

It is late again, and I have a tutorial in horrible logics tomorrow morning at 10.00. Sitting on my small, messy desk with a small lamp (it does actually look a bit like the academic workaholic scenario I had imagined at some point) listening to Neutral Milk Hotel over and over again. I tried to do the logic exercises, but it seems my logic diagrams are more creative than correct. So now I am sitting here again late one night, wondering whether I should catch up on the people around me who got reasonably drunk with some of the Baileys I have left or whether I should rather try to write up my philosophy notes neatly so I have some clue tomorrow...

---

Last night was the big Charity Opening Ball. Apparently some 1550 people went there. It started off with going there in a group, then losing one another and finding one another again one by one eventually. It ended up in one huge mess, how glad I am to have left early. 27 Pounds for a little bit of live music, a little bit of Ceilith, and a lot of drunken people puking all over the place and expensive drinks at the bar. And bad music to dance to. A nice occasion to wear a fancy suit and to mingle with other fancy looking people, all as superficial as I haven't seen for a looooong time. At least we got a breakfast bag at the end of the night to take home. Sponsored by some clothing store that doesn't even have an office anywhere near here, with a croissant, a chocolate croissant, an evil-looking apple, a bottle of water and a condom. And apparently much less than 1550 bags. How glad I am to have avoided drunk fancy-looking people fighting over breakfast bags as reportedly happened later by leaving early.
It was after all better than I am making it now and I am glad to have gone, and I am happy on the picture ;) . But I doubt that I would pay 27 Pounds again for something like this in the very near future. But at least I got fancy pictures of myself ;) .

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That's what we did today, building towers, or rather, sandcastles. There was supposed to be a sandcastle competition, organised by the S.A.U.T.C.W.A.S. (The St. Andrews University Tunnock's Caramel Wavers Appreciation Society mentioned a few posts earlier), just that nobody from the society showed up to actually hold the competition. We built our creation anyways, competing against one other team that had showed up and was just as confused. Well, their castle was probably more like a classical sandcastle, but nothing could beat the sense of art in our creation! The picture shows the marvellous creation "Scottish Figure Garden", with a four-sided pyramid, a square, a dome, an inverted cone and an authentic Scottish Figure. All enclosed by walls. Represening birth, apparently, somehow. And all in less than an hour.

But now I better really do write up my philosophy notes. The Baileys I'll keep for this situation the next time around, it shan't be long till then... And then I'll hopefully have something more creative and exciting to write about than me and my weekend...

Current Music: Neutral Milk Hotel - The King of the Carrot Flowers Pt. 1

PS: Why did the fish blush? Because the seaweed.

So I've finally discovered that I can add pictures to my posts... So here is one of the coast of St Andrews, taken from the pier. Well, St Andrews is an incredibly old town, with the University being founded already in 1410 (or around that time, noone is really sure of the exact year). So St Andrews also has a humongous cathedral, but it is only left as a ruin. You can see parts of the towers in the middle of the picture. To the right you can see a bit of the old castle of St Andrews as well. And the whole picture was taken from the pier, on which students walk in their red gowns on Sundays following the chapel service in the traditional "Pier Walk".
I guess that was today then. I had planned on going on it, finally, after seeing it only as a spectator last week. I must have missed it. In general I didn't do too much today; I spent most of the time in my room. Sleeping, playing chess and watching the grand finale of the Dunhill Links. Two players being tied up to the very last hole, so a lot of exciting right out our window. In fact, let me add a second picture to show this :) .

Right in the front is the 18th hole, and the golfers are just about to tee off from the very back. Since this was the very end of the tournament, a lot of people had come to watch and there were TV teams everywhere. Interesting, to say the least ;) ...

No I better go and get some food. We don't get dinner on the weekends, and if I want to get anything a bit better than fried stuff from some takeaway, I'll have to consult Tesco within the next 45 minutes. How little I want to get up and do anything...


Trauriger Tag (by Sarah Kirsch)

Ich bin ein Tiger im Regen
Wasser scheitelt mir das Fell
Tropfen tropfen in die Augen

Ich schlurfe langsam, schleudre die Pfoten
die Friedrichstraße entlang
und bin im Regen abgebrannt

Ich hau mich durch Autos bei Rot
geh ins Café um Magenbitter
freß die Kapelle und schaukle fort

Ich brülle am Alex den Regen scharf
das Hochhaus wird naß, verliert seinen Gürtel
(ich knurre: man tut, was man kann)

Aber es regnet den siebten Tag
Da bin ich bös bis in die Wimpern

Ich fauche mir die Straße leer
und setz mich unter ehrliche Möwen
Die sehen alle nach links in die Spree

Und wenn ich gewaltiger Tiger heule
verstehn sie: ich meine es müßte hier
noch andere Tiger geben

Current Song: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here