old movies

did you know that "catarrh" (sounds like qatar, no?) means "excessive discharge or buildup of mucus in the nose or throat"? i certainly didn't.

another spring morning. it promised to lead on to a gorgeous day, and didn't fail. it felt good, smelled good; it was good.

i began the day reading emerson - i love his thoughts as much as i enjoy reading his full name - and then skipped past the bank to open up a credit line so that i can go into negatives. i'm not happy with this, but at least i finally got a (paying) job last week so i should be fine... i still managed to arrive early to class, which is a sure-fire way to not get any reading done :P

i intended to relate a funny story from class, where the teacher picked on me and i waited until after class to retort - but i still haven't reached a conclusion regarding my anonymity. one of the guys came in late, and a bit smelly, and sat down next to me. he promptly fell asleep. being a good neighbour, i elbowed him whenever he began to snore; he informed me he'd come in straight from a night shift. i've done that before - to worse classes - so i can identify. it took me quite a while to convince him to get up, get some coffee and splash water on his face. he disappeared, and didn't return. leaving his bag behind. while hunting for him between classes (before giving up and leaving the bag with the caretaker) i walked past the lecturer, and i think she invited me for coffee. awkward, although positive.

second class was fascinating as usual, but the classroom was cold! this was followed by a debate over whether (and when) to screen all the plays we'll be studying. can i have another few hours in the day, please?

after a standard lunch and a debate over the politic influence of the media* and the merits of a meritocracy as opposed to a blanket ban on politicians with families to take care of... ru55 called to inform me that the guy i interviewed with a couple of weeks ago has finally realized that he wants to work with me.

brilliant. i told him i'd be in touch if things don't work out with what i've got. how is it that after ten months of desperate searching, i finally find something and suddenly my inbox is overflowing with "hey! your cv is amazing, are you interested in working with us?" - thank you, murphy. no sarcasm. 'onest injun.

* if you want to change the world, through a medium of fear, become a journalist. it's frightening how much power they wield - they can frighten one into doing the most absurd things.

i read a bit of sir ronald harwood - collaboration, then called up the campus IT department to harass them about collaborating with me. the head of development sounds like a bureaucratic bumbler, and when i told him what i want to do he briskly informed me that a system like that already exists and there's no need to waste his time. so i visited our department secretary and asked her to show me this wonderful system, which has absolutely nothing to do with what i tried to describe and isn't at all useful to our administration either.

i think it's time to build something.

i was handed the cassette of the dresser and sent to set up. the caretaker wasn't too happy with me but we got sorted out in the end, and everyone arrived on time. altogether. all three of them - the department head and secretary, and an italian wearing a hat. awkward. not positive. good grief.

not the end of the world, though. we were just watching a movie, and it's a *brilliant* one. a great pity that none of the shakespeare class got to view it, especially after this morning's lecture about the difficulties in classifying his plays according to genre. it really is a tragically funny film.

moment: on the walk to work, i turned up a dark path surrounded by thick vegetation with a woman feeding many angry cats and panic ensemble - fear playing off my ipod.

work saw us (both developers) hating either flex (it was doing such very weird things, i'm so glad it was his problem) or apache / php installations. aspie was in, and loves that shit so she jumped in to lend a hand. our debate spawned this preachy post.

eventually she gave up, and we completely uninstalled. i left, caught the last bus home, and... umm... as usual, i've no clue where the last hour and a half went. this is becoming normal. not cool.

it's a matter of interest

i'm frustrated. particularly because i haven't done a stitch of academic work today, and theoretically i should have had ample time to get ahead of it. just because i'm at work shouldn't mean that i should be working, right?

it rained hard this morning, and for a long time. the best part of that was lying in bed, not having to get up, just enjoying the sound for an age. pg had left her boots at her place, though, so while she was getting ready i was taking a walk through the (of course) craziest downpour of the day. getting to her place wasn't a problem, but in the two or three minutes that it took for me to get upstairs, snatch up her boots and get back down again both sides of her road had become flooded.

i was trapped. gotta love israeli infrastructure.

once on the bus, the roads were so tied up that i had plenty of time in the cozy warmth to read (usually takes about five, maybe ten minutes at a stretch), and i still walked in to the office at an hour that was so unusually early that everyone there had to remark.

first order of the day: the company is willing to front me some cash if i find myself in dire straits, for which i'm quite grateful. after that i received an email from mmf informing me that he hasn't forgotten me - i hope that means that we might actually meet this week :/

i've begun writing design documents in the present tense so that they'll serve as documentation that can be copied and pasted into the internal wiki when we're done. am i efficient, or overly-optimistic?

break from work:

a) the english department has been designated for an innovative trial to improve our overall studying conditions. i've already sent in three suggestions :P

b) i went to the physiotherapist today, who hadn't read the report from the first meeting because it was too long.
"come on, just give me the summary!" - that's very professional. i wasn't particularly fond of her talking with her hands in my face, either. nor impressed by her decidedly unfunny reaction to my tongue piercing. nor having electrotherapy applied to my face; it may have been amusing from the outside, but it was downright uncomfortable from within.

then, for no apparent reason, my knee felt tender on the walk to the bus. i walked into the office only to be sent out to buy seeds - i thought it fair to be compensated with a couple of shekels' worth of peanuts myself. big joke, a song and dance by aspie girl in giving me a ten shekel coin... which provided me, it turned out, exactly the amount i needed for the purchase in total. if i hadn't taken it i might've found myself having gone all the way there for nothing :S

speaking of aspie - i forget. i'm sorry. i'm not good with communicating with a girl who seems all normal one moment and then suddenly explodes inexplicably. it's very trying. it's even more confusing.

it took a while to calm down from that episode.

i left in the evening for a doctor's appointment, and got stuck with the phrase "sun-set to stun". i arrived just in time for some angry birds, and couldn't decide whether the office smelled worse inside or out.

i've been ordered another h. pylori breath test, been informed that my army doctor who made me go through an awful test experience had done so because he's a complete moron, given a script for dry tongue tablets, and been informed that i don't need a referral to orthopedists for my back issues.

the rest of the evening at work: no time to do the "nothings" i had planned. we had problems, and i fixed them. it was a long evening.

i got home to find a personal note from our caretaker to remind me to pay him money that i've already paid because he ripped me off on the last bill. it bothers me that he always asks me to pay the full amount when he's supposed to know that only 2/3 is his due. his previous note slipped through my defenses... at least i caught it this time.

*sigh*
where are these days going? i feel like i'm not actually achieving anything.

gliding - part i

[post divided retroactively]

today being friday bears witness to the fluid, exaggerated nature of the last two days. i've just woken up - as usual more for some misguided biological principle than for having acquired enough sleep - to perform a review of the whirlwind's beginning before venturing to tidy up the next seven days.

---tuesday night: return to the group was strange and wonderful. there was a lot more talking than blading, which was only to be expected, but the route was fun and the chatter almost entirely pleasant. the only thing that wasn't pleasant involved one of the girls: a couple of us were talking to her when her contact slipped. she disappeared, we carried on talking, and only later discovered that it had torn, and that she'd almost been left behind.

i felt like a real heel.

by the time we'd completed the run i had to desperately drink a coke to prevent myself from passing out.

i had lots of material to catch up with before wednesday's classes - pg came over to finish watching the 60's, i cracked open a beer once we'd both settled in to our respective positions in the lounge and we ended up going to bed around 4am, both still with slightly moist cheeks from the movie. i've seen it a couple of times now, and so can be touched even with my back turned.

aside from the movie in the background, i'd spent the three hours unhappily discovering that the primary text with its insipid, awkward construction was nothing more than a long vent against a previous claim. i'm still not sure what the point being made was.

---wednesday:

it's not easy getting out of bed early when you're lying next to someone who you know is going to sleep late.

it's been a heatwave week, and the crowded bus was even hotter than the air outside. all of us clambered out of the sardine can sweaty and uncomfortable to drag heels up the steps to the university. first class with the professor? after the morning's ugly readings? great.

i kept a seat for stg - who arrived seconds before we began and aggravated the ta (the ta's own fault, though - she put her gear on the seat next to me when i wasn't looking). score one negative mark. stg then informed me that she'd sent a whiny email to the ta concerning the quantity of prep-work: score two. this ain't your animation campus kansas anymore, sweety.

and then she left class early, to the professor's ire and agitation. it was suggested that names will now be taken before *and* after class. jeez. and score three.

the next class was much more fun - totally my style. we argued plato's allegory of the cave; not a lot of people seemed to be getting what was going on. i, personally, now consider myself an "anti-plato" in that i agree with the allegory, only i understand that it is not the thoughts that come first. those initial thoughts are derived from our physical sensory input. the fact that we have absolutely no way to consider that input in a meaningful manner doesn't detract from their reality.

i didn't have much time to talk with pg before she had to get to class and i to meet for cheap lunch with comixer (the mongoose's real best friend) and lawn arguments with both him and eidetic concerning the nature of scientific thought.

---what is science? when we talk of the physical realm, we have a method of analysing our observations to extract hypotheses and then testing them to ensure that they are correct. as there is only one physical space with one set of rules, the results of this process can only be correct if they are consistent with everything else we know - or vice versa. [see quantum physics vs theory of general relativity]

as the psychology of a human is inherently contradictory and open to interpretation, no such limitation or measure of accuracy is possible. the method is the same, ie. scientific, but it is possible to determine and prove two contradictory results.

having said that, it is still possible to call "bullshit!" on a piece of literary criticism.

---the debate also touched on the function of a university and the "new model" of it being a place to acquire lists of marks as opposed to an education, but that's a big topic.

i had to leave on an unfinished note - to everyone's dismay, apparently - to get to work. on my way to the office urchin called looking for advice regarding an interesting opportunity: she'll have to pay for it, but i threw her a positive voice because, as i told her, we only live once :)

aspie, the girl i work with who's always giving me shit (but we seem to be friends, it's always fun and awkward to fight with her) was excited and wretched; the only thing i wasn't impressed with was a weird moment when she crossed a line by tapping my head with her shoe. otherwise it was all business as usual :P

i'd intended to catch up on readings during my shift. i got through a bit, but as i was the only agent on duty and the lines rang for most of the two hours i didn't do enough to be satisfied...

...

i was supposed to meet with the director after work but he called to say he couldn't make it - i'm disappointed. then i spoke to a girl who's looking for subjects for a colour interpretation study on campus, and i'll be paid to participate. this is almost like agreeing to medical experiments... i'm not far off, i tell you :P

pg and i took a bus to the barbie, arriving there on time and an hour early (depends on which way you look at it). we went off to find food - i don't know about the quality of the chicken livers i ate, but the meal hit the spot) and talk about the chest-leading scenes from donnie darko: i think i may be on to something.

balabusta surprised me with how good they were, but hatachtonim gave a *real* performance. as usual. they kick ass! and pg appears to have enjoyed it too :))

it being a few hours before a long day we took a taxi home. i was convinced to take part in messing with our driver by the other drivers hanging around; he got really upset at first but then calmed down and was quite amiable on the way home :)

i completed honore de balzac - at the sign of the cat and racket before realizing that i wouldn't be able to continue without sleep.

--- dead sleep ---
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