there's a saviour in my thermos

i'm really glad i remembered to fill my thermos (rum / hot chocolate / marshmallows) before leaving yesterday.

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i was reading the picture of dorian gray on the bus, and was fascinated by the thought that while good and bad may not be so easily read in one's physical aspect, youth and innocence can be. maybe not in such an extreme fashion as in the story, but i've become convinced that the reason i don't really look my age (or do i? is everyone just being "nice"?) is because i usually let my inner child hold the reins.

just a thought.

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the authoritative arab girl in my class had borrowed my copy of alice in sunderland, and informed me that she'd lost it when we walked in. my heart skipped a beat and i'm pretty sure i went white before she laughed and handed it back :S

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dante - al dente - pastafarian - "noodles" as opposed to "dreads" (censorship? really??)

i find it interesting that dante's purgatory was filled with poets and artists; that's disturbingly similar to our modern trend of incarcerating people for being "normally" non-conformist. the other conformists are imprisoned with television, money, sex, and work... oh, we're good.

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the girl next to me asked me to explain "proliferation", and the italian complained about us "always talking in the back row".
"that's why you get bad grades"

the cheek! i got bad grades because i didn't have time to read *everything* and i don't have an eidetic memory. and because you're a sucky lecturer. shit.

i had a super-fast lunch while finishing dorian gray, then joined the study group in an empty class we'd found. some of the session was productive, some fun, and i think we covered a fair amount. i was highly amused to receive a call from a blocked number halfway through to arrange a meeting with the head of the student union, and all i could think of on my way back was zim's "a secret mission!" :P

we were just finishing up when the caretaker walked in, and launched into an angry tirade about how our presence in the unused classroom is illegal and who do we think we are to take over classes without permission? i apologized, informed him that we had no intention of breaking any rules and that we wouldn't do it again... and he continued to shout at us. wtf?!

...

second class began wiiiiiiiiith... a herring! salzige heringe! i'd completely forgotten about talking to one of the german girls in our class about them, and her friend brought her back a packet for me :D

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i was struck by the thought that the post-modernist concept of reality is narcissism; the acceptance of a role does not preclude the necessity of that role's authority nor does it invalidate the appropriateness of the action.

it all means something because what you're interfacing with isn't just in your head.

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when henri bergson's name was written on the board, i couldn't resist: "isn't that the opponent of cartesian dualism who resisted the reduction of
psychological phenomena to a physical state and insisted that there
is no point of contact between the extended and the unextended?"

"i think so - what do you mean?"
"i'm just being facetious, it's a monty python quote. i keep it in reserve just in case i'm ever asked if i have any questions."

yeah, i wasn't scoring many points with him yesterday :P

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the poetry lesson was fun, although some of us got a bit carried away. when we got to mirror, i found myself staring at the words as if their form was the mirror, and that image was so entrenched when we finished reading it that i, in jest, quipped: "that's exactly what i see when i look in the mirror!"

"what, a young girl? or an old woman?" was the immediate response.

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i was shocked by the ars trying to wrangle extra credit from the lecturer after class; he seemed constantly on the verge of threatening :S

i went to meet with the head of the student union, and we sat for about an hour introducing each other and the socialist-democratic values of the union. the attitude of TAU's student union and the way in which things are run is really impressive, and i was shocked at how quickly the guy turned a general complaint about student employability and market control into a practical first step to finding a solution. i've since begun jotting down points, and am planning to produce a manifesto soon.

i caught the last half an hour of a lecture on the post-war russian clampdown on holocaust films and the portrayal of jews, which was interesting, then caught the bus (almost losing my phone protector) and began using my iphone's french lesson flashcards.

i spent the first forty-five minutes at work coaching the other guy, then about an hour correcting an xml problem and discovering a pre-existing flaw in our system that simply hadn't been detected until now :/

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i was on my way out when i discovered that the other guy had screwed up the trunk (our primary code branch) in the svn. after the horror of realizing that our svn has no rollback mechanism, we figured out how to manually rollback and i left him to it, irritated with him and hopeful that he's learned to work according to the procedure that we spent days putting together.

why is it so hard for people to follow the rules when they're in place to make their lives easier? [my irony-sense is tingling]

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i wasn't in the mood for anything intellectual after that, but the marvel comic app wouldn't let me download their free material without logging in and i can't for the life of me remember my account details :P

pg welcomed me home, i put down my bags, showered and went to bed. it was a "hard knock sleep"; we kept bumping into each other throughout the night and there was one point at which i think i almost bit my tongue :P
so we were both a bit under the weather when our alarms went off this morning.

all i had to do was post this, prep my iphone for studying on the go and head to the university to join a march on the knesset; but i got the times wrong and they've left without me :(
i feel like a right idiot.

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something reminded me this week of the concert my mother and i went to in central park - we were standing a few metres behind this camera, and it was INCREDIBLE!
and it was so nice to be surrounded by grown-up hippies :)

and on a completely different note: why worry?