ars poetica

no time to check this for errors, i gotta run!

---
monday

the day started with me missing the comfortable bus because i wasn't prepared to run - the one i got onto was sardine-packed; reading and grooving in the midst of all that squished humanity would've been fun if i hadn't had to be wary of corners.

the first class of the day:
ego boost: i was under the distinct impression that one of the cuter girls in class was making eyes at me - she even gave me a huge smile when she walked past to go outside.

studying john donne: most of the class was bored, and that boredom was infectious. later on someone inspired the following thought:
"would that discovering donne were comparable to finding america,
but his manuscript islands seem as elusive as they are fabled bountiful"

the teaching assistants for the class are unpleasant. "the register didn't make it to your side of class? tough. your signature is your responsibility."

i spoke to the lecturer about my concerns that writing both of his midterms on the same day might be a little much - "you'll be fine!"
i bloody hope so. that's a lot to recall :(

one of the girls somehow managed to leave her phone on my chair, and the group of those willing to help me return it joined me for lunch (they weren't familiar with the cheaper canteens).
one of them's a vegetarian, and we had an interesting discussion about the practicalities of the anti-meat ideology. "interesting" because she actually listened to what i had to say [scroll to the bottom]. and understood. you want animals to be treated well? *do* something. protest. attack farmers.

don't be passive-aggressive.

i accidentally sent a .) instead of :) - that would've been cooler if it had been a ?) - :P

---
i went to the campus job office, and gave the girl my details.
"i have something here... no, wait, it's not relevant. you've got a degree."
her co-worker and i both explained that they're looking for someone who still has a couple of years as a student left.
"no, no - it clearly states..."

i don't know how it is in other countries, but here we're in trouble. most companies go through people who don't understand the requirements. they force the applicants to lie just to get past them, and they filter out so many who'd be perfect for them because they're too damn lazy to go over resumes themselves.

they're shooting themselves in the foot, and keeping honest and useful members of society out of the workforce.

---
the second class was fairly interesting. i got to argue that america's take on incest isn't as hard-right as it used to be because that behaviour is practically normative if one looks at certain populations... like rednecks.
i couldn't help myself:
"come on! you haven't heard the expression [pulls out bad southern drawl] 'where your mother's your sister and your brother's your cousin'?"

---
the last class: poetry. with two arsim sitting in the back hitting (loudly) on one of the girls. after a couple of people had made shushing noises at them, i half-turned and indicated that they were bothering me.
"what can we do?"
"stop talking, perhaps?"
one of them was halfway out his chair, the other beginning to threaten me, and the girl raised her hands and claimed that "there's no problem, it's all good".

it wasn't all good - who are they to ruin our class and then become threatening when asked to keep it down? i was on alert for the rest of the session, which wasn't comfortable.

i know they have nothing to do with the course... i have a feeling that they don't even speak english. how do animals like that find their way onto our sanctified ground?

[you probably don't see what i did there: it's a class about "othering" and i just justified torturing them]

---
having said that: i'm not sure how much i enjoyed studying ee cummings.

i realized on my way off campus that i have an iphone / ipod quandary. my iphone doesn't have so much as a tiny bit of my ipod's storage capacity, but carrying them both around is much less convenient; listening to the ipod precludes being aware of incoming calls or messages on the iphone.

*sigh*. such problems.

work: i was distracted and agitated the entire night.

---
one of my coworkers (the one who asked me to take the test) is far further along than i am... it's never clear how much of our (usually negative) interaction is in jest and how much is serious. that came to a head over dinner, with me playing a long, snide, multilayered scene out (playing both parts, with her sitting next to me) intended as a joke... someone else was listening intently, and by the time we were done none of us could be sure if things that had been said were for real or not.

it was all very confusing.

---
i felt lousy - sheer exhaustion, i reckon - and was irritated when reminded that i had a doctor's appointment early in the morning that i'd forgotten about...

and of course, we had a busy night. i can't recall a quiet one - there's always some idiot who bungles a simple procedure somewhere :(

---
tuesday

i scored a ride home with the other guy on our development team... the back of his bike, in our cooling air, was freezing.

waking up

i stopped at cafesito to suffer the kindness of strangers: the french woman i sometimes see there brought me study guides to learn french basics :)

i discovered phototaxis: EXCELLENT. i really like their sound!

scrapper has us all doing finger pushups to prepare for the climbing wall... it's good incentive to do *something* a couple of times a day :P

i spent a couple of hours resting and reading melville, woken at intervals to answer calls from prospective employers.

at some point i figured out (i think) a study plan... a good thing too, less than a week before the mid-terms :/

i hopped over to urchin's for a french lesson and to play with her cat... crazy kitten. it was a war until just before i left, by which time he was tired out and having his savageness soothed by some good trance :)

i met up with aforementioned potential employer at levontin - an interesting hour spent gabbing and planning, but i don't think we're pulling in the same direction. quoting laing at the end may or may not have been appropriate for a job interview.

on my way home i received an apology sms from my aspie coworker - i called her back to explain, once again, that i'm not so easily offended and that if i do cause her real offense that she needs to say so, verbally. i hope we're all getting along.

i was bopping to groovy tunes and reading on the bus; the woman sitting across from me suddenly poked my knee. i looked up, startled, to see half the bus stabbing their index fingers in the direction of the window: a couple of friends had spotted me and were gleefully dancing and waving at me.
i hopped off the bus, and we went for drinks. we spent the evening psychoanalyzing (an entertaining and productive experience) and they walked me back to my place with a discussion on the trance scene and how they'd like me to introduce them.
both the girls were really excited to learn that i had a girlfriend :)

pg came over, and we skipped danny gilboa's performance and had a pre-roll rest instead. the route was tough, so that turned out to be a good idea. at 1am we returned, i stretched a little and chugged a can of tuna (okay, not literally) before showering and crashing. erm... i'd had some things to do online though, so that "crashing" only really happened around 3am...

---
yesterday
waking up at 7.30am to catch up on class reading? dedication. i was nicely surprised with the following wall post (my psychoanalysis victim): to your question: it makes me happy because seeing someone who gives up his own happiness for the sake of someone else's just on the base of an emotion from somewhere there in the back of his stomach gives me hope in the human race. That life is not just here by mistake and that there's a reason for everything. love gives me faith and without faith i probably wouldn't see a reason to live. now what?

to be continued :)

i sat with eidetic on the bus - four hours later we met for lunch, and i couldn't remember what we'd talked about...

why are the wafers stacked on top of the vending machine? they're the most crushable, so why not give them less distance to fall?

i consulted (pro bono) with one of my classmates, eventually advising him to prepare an nda and find himself a programmer instead of trying to suggest a brilliant, simple idea to facebook so that they can reap the benefits :P

the professor began the lecture with "one more thing about freud before we get going with aristotle and chapman", and we were all excited.
that "one more thing" lasted until the end of the session.
that sucked.
in the meanwhile, i read an interesting article on "inalienable rights". i'll post a link when i remember. [i remembered]

i was sleepy during the second, interesting class. we talked about chronotopes and that reminded me of michael chrichton - timeline... i was sleepy during lunch, too, and so i lay down on the grass before heading off to work. i was just getting comfortable (and dreaming, i think) when i was jump-started by a phone call. it took me the next half an hour to calm down and by then i needed to get going :(

the bus to work was horrible. i was feeling nauseous - the bus driver was playing with the gas pedal and throwing us all about :S

after a slow walk to work i found myself dead tired and barely functional... the report fault that i'd spent more than ten hours fretting over turned out to be a problem with another department, and it took a while before i realized that i wasn't going to manage the rest of the day without STRONG coffee.

aside from performing a code review and adding to our development procedures, i spent the evening frustrated with java and xml (more on that later).

pg paid me a domestic visit (she was going to read, but decided to clean my kitchen instead?!), i struggled with building a release version (twenty minutes to figure that out) of my flex demo (i finally fixed something that was driving me crazy), and then i *had* to get some rest.

---
today

what? seriously? you're getting up an hour early just so you can blog?

---
does anyone recognize these characters? can they *please* tell me where to find the one wearing the crash helmet?!

evangelion 1.11! i'd completely forgotten.