sunday:
i finished reading brave new world on the bus to campus: what a shitty ending to such a great book. the "civilized behaviour" of the final chapter is absurdly inconsistent with their conditioning and censorship, and i was so distracted by it that i think i missed whatever point was being made in the closing scene.
the first coffee of the day was bought from the unhappy people in our building's cafeteria because the coffee machine was bust. i scrawled and pasted a sign saying "i steal coins" and complained later to one of my classmates, who'd had the same experience half an hour earlier but hadn't thought to warn others :S
co-conspirator and wordsworth had put together the "poetry offering" that i mentioned briefly on saturday, and what they have produced is a short form of an epic poem covering the academic year. the ideas are cute, but the execution is horrible - a lot of the english is simply bad. they sent me a copy and asked me to go over it; so i did. i invested an hour or so reworking and massaging, and sent them back a vastly more polished effort that makes metric sense and retains, in my opinion, the intended tone.
they asked me to help out with shooting the readings of it, and i was shocked and offended to discover that they'd completely disregarded my version: "we wanted it to be bad," i was later informed. but you didn't tell me that when you sent it to me. and you didn't tell me that until i was being given my line, a decidedly stupid one that i'd hacked out and replaced with something actually funny.
not funny.
after an argument with wordsworth about an error that keeps cropping up in his writings, i came to the conclusion that he's either a hypocrite or an idiot. he's a hypocrite if he's constantly giving people lengthy advice on how to write better and not taking advice when he's given it, or he's an idiot for not accepting the word of a well-read native english speaker when he explains why his construct is not appropriate even when factoring in poetic license.
i spent the last poetry class writing the first half of my first attempt at a sestina while half-listening to exam advice, then had lunch with pg before heading off to work.
pg asked me if i was organizing tickets for south africa. *BANG*. it's time to make big decisions and figure out how / when to fly...
i went to work thinking depressing, cynical thoughts about my inability to affect real change in a country where convincing people to do things that are good for them is a sisyphean task. could it be that for all things political i'm simply the wrong man for the job? i'm beginning to lose faith in this country's potential to become civilized - everything here is one step forward, two back and a little skip sideways just to be difficult. i don't feel like fighting anymore.
i had just decided to accept my salary issues as "the way it is" when i walked into the office and had mmf sit me down to explain all the details: it turns out that it *is* better for me to have two jobs, and because it alleviates my gross costs to the company they're willing to bump up my salary on any months that i don't exceed my net target without interference.
in other words - i'm good. and i'll be even better when i rent out my apartment and have those costs covered.
work was good, even fun, and the drive back with the mmf was instructive and interesting. also, having private time with him outside of the office allows us to close whatever little gaps have grown between us since we studied together...
...
at the bus stop, a man stared at me for a short while before saying something jovially that i didn't quite catch. after two repeats, i finally caught the jist: he was complimenting my trousers. "oh! thank you."
pg suspects that he wasn't as interested in the trousers as he made out.
...
after almost two months urchin finally got back to me with a list of contacts for september's event... i guess i'll begin harassing people next week. i think i'm supposed to be studying and working, too...
pg and i hurriedly posted the notice for my apartment, i gobbled down the spaghetti she'd made with eruca sativa which got stuck in my teeth and made each bite... unwieldy.
the "white stage" was pretty cool, although i enjoyed last year's more. the sound rig outside was absurdly powerful - blasting bigger sound than the student day main stage, so loud that i had to gain about 200 metres' distance before my ears stopped hurting. i was joined by one of the girls in the poetry group, just as a performance was beginning in another building. the girls at the counter didn't make it at all clear that the performance was unrelated to the "white stage", and we had a very unpleasant argument before deciding that it wasn't worth the effort or extra cash.
the first show we saw was very the yellow wallpaper, an amusing story about a woman who shows up to meet a potential husband and has to deal with his mother instead. the second was quite sweet, concerning the relationship between an irritable old bat and her secretary, and we finished off the evening with a lecture on the perception of the torah in its feminine form - there were a couple of feminists in the audience, and the discussion opened up a whole world of possibilities for anyone interested enough.
between shows and lecture we discussed poetry, expression and other strange things. all in all, it was a fun night, from which i returned home on blades.
on the way home, i stopped by a supermarket to pick up an ice-cream. the woman working the counter completely freaked out, i don't think she's ever seen anyone on rollerblades before. it was weird.
monday:
i woke up early, painfully (both because i was tired and more specifically because i'd slept skew and my neck was killing me), to show my apartment. "no discounts?" he asked, disappointed. when all the big expenses are included in the price, and you're renting from a student - no, no discounts.
i called up hot and had my subscription frozen - the penalty for cancelled an internet subscription is at least half the amount the remaining subscription would cost you. if i was filthy rich and didn't have higher priorities, i'd definitely start a small provider who provided acceptable service for reasonable costs, and *didn't* try to screw the customer "because everyone else is doing it".
on monday morning i thought that i was taking out the last of my belongings, and mused on how complicated all the little things are...
the bus ride to campus afforded me an opportunity to stretch my neck; i'll pretend i don't know how strange my angles must have seemed to anyone who looked in my direction, and i wish it had helped as much as it hurt.
the coffee machine in our building was still bust, but i had time to mission to the better coffee shop and sit and read grace paley with my back arched while driving my right foot into the corner of the seat next to me for a matching sensation - it's the kind of thing that could make me suspect that there's something to reflexology: right side of neck in agony, center of my right foot as well... oh, wait. the reflexology maps all suggest that the trouble was with my solar plexus. never mind.
by the time i got up i had pins and needles in my leg. i couldn't decide if that was good or bad.
i called up netvision to freeze / cancel my subscription with them, but not only are their cancellation fees far worse than hot's, the woman i spoke to kept ignoring what i was saying so that she could pitch "better offers". in the end, she told me she'd freeze my account and pass on my details to the other division i was having a problem with - the woman who called me up about renewal? she renewed. the bitch.
during class, which was as exciting as usual, i completed my aforementioned epic sestina. i'm really pleased with it. afterwards i met up with the guy from the band from last week, and we agreed to give it a shot and see if we fit.
i do so want to write songs and sing them.
between classes i called netvision back and was mortified to discover that, yet again, they had done what i'd asked them - this time i got through to a guy who at first seemed to understand what i was saying, then screamed at me for being a bad customer while simultaneously (and still shouting at furious pace) telling me how important a customer and his opinions are.
after second class, just as i'd sorted out my lunch, i received a phone call back from the same guy. lunch wasn't particularly good to begin with, but being lectured by "i'm michael, thanks for asking" didn't make it any tastier. eventually he did prove helpful, though. a bit too personal for me, but whatever gets the job done.
on the way to work, an idea began to form...
work was tough, but fruitful. i got phone calls about the apartment - what a way to discover just how odd some people can be :P
the rollerblading group met on monday night because tuesday would be a holiday, and the route was brilliant - although really long. on the way back i decided to roll the entrance table across from my apartment, and it was extremely loud. by the time i realized how disturbing it was i had to choose between irritating everyone on the way, or taking it back and hitting those i'd passed twice :S
tuesday:
it was tough getting up early to show the apartment to a woman who didn't arrive. the second woman behaved very strangely. i think she likes it, but she desperately wants to see it at night before she decides. eh?
packing up took a long time - i mentioned earlier musing on the complexities of packing the last things: we moved what felt like half the apartment and there's still a bunch of things left to deal with. i'm definitely going to have to go through all my stuff and start dumping things.
i'm glad i have such a strong girlfriend. after dropping everything in the foyer i asked her to wait for me while i parked the car, and by the time i got back it had all been transported upstairs as if by magic :P
we discovered a decent humus place across the road, then took siesta. after i dragged myself out of bed i did a couple of hours of work, then left for training. i had completely forgotten that the training had been cancelled. swak.
i came back home, set up my computer, and went with pg to carry a giant chair that her sister made for us. we were left with barely any time to shower and dress nicely before returning to her sister's for a big-deal festive dinner.
there was plenty of food, even for non-dairy consumers like me. i was really tired, and not particularly interested in the conversations going around. when everyone got excited, it took me a while to understand that pg's sister's mother-in-law had taken her dog outside, and on coming back up the elevator doors had closed with the poor thing still outside.
that's a very lucky dog; lucky because its leash is surprisingly long and was around its belly and not its neck. when they went downstairs they found her hanging from the ceiling, a bit confused.
today:
we got home around midnight, and i was broken. we went straight to bed, and i woke up at 9/10am to some frightening sounds coming from behind the fridge. i moved it forward, thinking that gas was escaping, only to discover that the sounds were coming through the wall from the neighbours'. i couldn't put the fridge back because the floor is slightly uneven and i'd shifted it off the tiny cap that was keeping it straight.
so pg's wake-up was a bit bitter; after trying unsuccessfully to replace the cap i found a better solution, but it was too late to have started the day on the right foot :/
it's now more than four hours that i've been up and about, and i've barely done anything of value. time to work. or study.
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