A Rushed Recap of Recent Events

Sorry for the delay in updates, all.

Italy was, in word, beautiful. It was the tail-end of the trip that sucked. I was all set to fly back to the UK from Italy on the 29th. This was all going fine-- Nony and I spent four days in Florence, followed by two in Rome, and all I needed to do was take a short ride from Roma Termine station to Rome Fumicino airport. I got to the terminal, and the flight was progressively delayed until 9-something PM...the scheduled time, by the way, was 4:15.

So I land in Heathrow at 11:30-- the exact time direct trains from Liverpool St. Station to Norwich stop. My only option now is take an hours-long bus ride all the way out to Norwich. So I pay 40 quid for a bus ticket, and make futile attempts to sleep as I wait for the bus to arrive at 1:50. Get off at Gatwick airport at 3:50. Catch another bus an hour or so later, and fade in and out of consciousness all the way to Norwich bus station. At this point, I should mention that half-wakefully listening to Nick Drake's "From the Morning" as the sun rises is really an experience in and of itself.

But anyway, I got to the Norwich bus station at around 9:30 AM and was back in my dorm just before 10 AM. Hopefully I'll have time to post a full trip summary before I leave.

I've spent the past two days typing up a 28-page study guide summarizing of all the chapters we've read for Film History that I highlighted during my first reading. The exam is the day after tomorrow, and while it's not going to be the hardest one I've ever taken, the sheer amount of material to be studied is a little intimidating. With that said, the associate professor has informed me that my paper grade was "exceptionally high."

In related good grade news, I got an A- on my final journalism assignment, worth 25% of the grade. I'm entirely sure this is also my final grade in the class, as I only got a B+ on one small assignment-- everything else was an A-. Awesome! I'm hoping I get my final Creative Writing story back soon-- I leave Thursday!

Meanwhile, I need to print out this study guide and go type up more notes for the exam. I'm excited to get home and get into summer!

Hurdles.

Only a few things stand in the way of my month-long spring break:

• 2,500-word Film History paper (I'm about halfway through)
• 1000-word Journalism assignment where I show and discuss the writing style, mechanics, etc etc of three different news clippings (will finish this weekend)
• Revised final draft of my 2000-word short story for Creative Writing, plus a 500-word critical self-examination (starting on it tonight)
• Annotations of the last round of three classmates' stories for Creative Writing (doing that this weekend)
• Reading 30-some pages for Film History (also doing that this weekend)
  

My spring break starts a week from Friday, when I'll take a train to London, meet up with Raf, and fly to Berlin with him, Sarah and Kellene to meet up with Kevin and check out the country for a week. Can't wait!

This Thursday I'm also headed to London-- Camden, specifically-- with Matt and Tom M to see Agalloch, a metal band from Portland, Oregon that only tours sporadically. I'm looking forward not only to the show, but also to hanging out with the band as I keep in touch with their drummer Aesop via his awesome music blog. One of the opening bands, Fen, also rules-- their recently-released Malediction Fields record is already one of my favorites of the year. It'll be a great night and I'm looking forward to spending a bunch on special tour merch.

This weekend and next week is mostly work, but oh well. Once it's over, the only looming obstacle is my Film History final on May 5th, the day after break is over. After that, it's back to the Northwest, where I have confirmed summer work with Avalara again-- a blessing in the current economy.

A small bit of silver lining, and more about why I'm done here

Today I discovered why the mail service here sucks so much. Apparently students are to check the mail room at least once a week on their own time; if your mail is left there for two weeks, it gets forwarded to your cubby in your school's office. So I'd just been getting my mail, a month late, from said cubby in the American Studies office. The mail here still sucks, it just doesn't take as long while doing so.

It turns out I not only had a package from my folks (thanks Mom and Dad), but also from beloved friend Alex. He wrote me a poem, a letter, and made several small custom stickers with his own multilingual phrases and funny characters. It all just fuels my drive to be back in the Northwest.

I began work on my sole Film History paper today by looking through several years' worth of Variety magazaine on microfilm for three hours. My paper concerns the marketing for two prominent noir films, 1944's Double Indemnity and 1947's Out of the Past, and save for a short review on each there was nothing else about either. It's the hardest thing to get myself to work. Whereas at Goucher, once I get started in Julia Rogers library, I'm in there for hours at night, biting my nails and wondering about the quality but working hard nonetheless.

Aside from this paper, it's just an editing of my recently-finished second creative writing story and 500 word accompaniment explaining the revisions, then a few more journalism assignments. Then, break (I still don't know where I'm traveling). Then a huge exam for Film History on May 5th. Then, home.

Here, have a song.

I've been trying to write you a letter
But I just can't help but feel
That the words that are me talking
Don't say anything that's real
I've been going 'round in circles
And it seems it's been a while
Since I've known the real reason
Why I've gone so many miles

I will not begin to tell you
About all the things I've seen
All the people, all the places
All the highways inbetween..
Even these words I'm using
Prove the effort was in vain
All I wanted was to know that
Things would always be the same

Now and then, I might remember
Mostly I try to forget
And right now I'm in the middle
Wondering if it's over yet
And I know it doesn't matter
'Cause the road will never end
So I won't write you a letter
I know I'll be home again.

Okay, time's up.

Just let me go home already. I can't find the motivation/focus to do my work in a timely fashion, I'm not meeting too many folks I like, and it seems I can't even fly thousands of fucking miles without Goucher drama's black tendrils still grabbing ahold of me. Oh yeah, and I'd sell a little finger to be able to play my bass again.

If I could, I'd be working full-time on Bainbridge right now and not have too think to hard about much aside from getting the job done.

Long time, no post.

Plenty has gone on. Friday I cabbed to yet another pub to meet up with the Toms, Matt, Emmsy, Luke and some other friends of theirs. When we moved onto the Wildman Pub, something crazy happened. A heavyset man with long, fringey hair strode quietly in. "That looks like Shane Embury," I said loudly.
"Hah," said Tom N.
Then I noticed the man's friend had a Morbid Angel hoodie on. Hmm. And the possible Shane Embury had a Repulsion patch. Yeah, it had to be him. Suspicions were furthered when a dude looking like Mitch Harris stepped in. So Luke and I went up and very briefly conversed with them. Nice dudes.

Did a whole lot of nothing Saturday, then tonight I interviewed bassist Alex Webster, of famed and controversial death metal band Cannibal Corpse. They came to UEA opening for Children of Bodom. Alex was a class act and a down-to-earth human being...we talked for an hour! Once the interview's properly transcribed, I'll post it on my music blog (which you should check out if you haven't yet).

Bad news: my tendonitis is acting up a bit. I found a great exercise program to help with it, though, so I'm doing that daily and am going to further efforts to keep myself off of the computer.

Fingers crossed.

Okay, I'll be real. British TV history is really looking a class that will bore the life out of me. Yes, it's important to British history and culture and blah blah, but I simply have no interest in it or television anywhere else (save for the occasional episode of South Park or It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia).

So per the recommendation of an upper-classman friend, I'm trying to switch into a journalism writing course. I'll have to do all the backwork, obviously, but I'm at the odd point and time where I want some homework. I feel like there's not enough to keep my mind going and I end up wasting time on the internet or watching friends get drunk. Neither is really productive nor entertaining. Oh, and I really like journalism.

In order to pull this last minute switch, I'll have to plead my case to Jeanette Pavey ("I'm an English major, can't you see?!") in the Taught Programmes Office tomorrow morning. Then likely another pleading to the course instructor. Fingers crossed.

There's not much to presently report, save for

• I'm attempting facial hair out of boredom
• My calves are burning from how long we held stance last night in Wing Chun class
• I have a reading to do for Film History but the temptation to watch a movie again is overwhelming
• DVD region codes are substantially stupid and pointless.
  

Wednesday, during which nothing fucking works.

Laundry was long overdue today, so I hauled my bags of it to the laundrette in the campus square. The loading/detergent process was difficult enough to do properly even with its written instructions. But the real topper was that the central pay slot started eating my coins-- not processing them, not regurgitating them in the change return, but simply absorbing them. I began to warn other unwary patrons that the thing was ferkakt (sp?) and got pen and paper from the Union Food Outlet next door and posted a sign. Calling the repair number listed on the pay slot proved little help; the guy hesitated and informed me with some reluctance that "we won't get to that for awhile." As I type this I'm sitting in my dorm room with three loads of wet laundry stretched and sprawled in every possible advantageous open space, hoping they'll be dry by morning. Then there's a completely unwashed load that I was about to put in-- and it was then that the slot stopped functioning properly

To add insult to injury, technology is failing me also. My little portable iPod speakers I received for high school graduation, having first lost the ability to charge an iPod, and then to play music from an iPod, are now hardly able to be used simply as auxilliary computer speakers. There's a lot of line hum/white noise going on whenever sound is put through them. Oh well... they lasted almost three years. Time to invest in new ones.

Further adding salt to wound is the slow death of my external hard drive. I love it-- it's an elegant brick that's quite portable and in over three years of owning it I've only filled up 60 of it's 250-gigabyte storage capacity. But now, whenever I open an item from it (usually meaning that I attempt to play a song from iTunes), the damn thing whirs and clanks for a good while "as if there were little men banging mallets inside" as my friend Max has said. It will ten whir down, and repeat the two-step process. Eventually the song will play or the file will be able to be opened, but ultimately the wait time is getting worse. I hope these things don't run too much...I NEED one in order to continue music and music management/playback while abroad. There's simply no room on my laptop's hard drive to hold my music collection.

One spot of good news: about to hit the gym at 3:30.

Hopefully not a prediction of the future

If for no other reason than not forgetting, I just want to note a pretty funny dream I had the other night-- or at least, funny to me.

Somehow, Bridget and myself were back in Gordon Stenerson's math class-- just the two of us-- and had gotten our recent test results returned. For some reason, I had gotten a B-minus and was bummed out at the fact (which is unrealistic-- I got C's in math during most of highschool, and would've jumped for joy if I'd gotten a B-minus). I felt myself frown and looked at Bridge.

"How'd you do?"

She looked at me really skeptically. "Really, really well."

"Well, shit."

Ups and Downs

+ Got a solid cell phone with pay-as-you-go plan
+ Got classes registered
-I have five days of class a week, while my friends average 2 or 3 days
+Most classes aren't very long
-Need to find source of good, organic food and stop scrimping and subsequently buying bad food
-It's below freezing outside
+I haven't gone outside my dorm hall today

Arrival

Got in last night at 7 PM here. It was and is really cold.

The flight Sea-Tac to Cinncinati was fine, as was the flight from Seattle to London, but afterward the busride from London-Gatwick airport to University of East Anglia lasted some sevenish hours. I hadn't eaten since the brief breakfast on the plane because 1) I'm an idiot and 2) I would've had to wheel all my baggage around the airport to find food.

I couldn't and still can't make any expensive international cellphone calls because my cellphone doesn't even get reception. Going to have to find a way to get a plan or new phone or both for such things. I'm also writing this from a library computer because I won't have access to internet from my computer/dorm till Monday or so-- I have to wait to register and get my campus card and other stuff.

Anyway, while on the bus, I befriended a first-year named Jonathan, who hails from Cyprus and was also onboard. He was nice enough to help me with hauling my luggage. There's construction going on on the main roads of campus, so we had to be dropped off the main drive to campus. We then walked some 15-20 minutes to the on-campus hotel thingy, Broadview Lodge, so I could spend the night there-- I called UEA from the airport and they told me I had to find accomodations there as my room wouldn't be accessible yet. But somehow someone in the Accommodations office had forwarded my key to the Lodge's front desk. Even better, the woman working there phoned security and I got a ride to my dorm hall, preventing another tendinitis-inducing luggage haul.

My room is pretty darned huge, which is nice (pictures to come). They provided a set of sheets, which aren't the most cozy but are quite warm. My bed is like a shortened queensize. The showers & toilet are just down the stairs. The shower is like a damned coffin; I can't even stand up straight.

I woke up jet-lagged at 5-something (the only way I can tell is by looking at my computer clock). Then I went back to sleep an hour later, and woke up at 12:50. I just spent £36.50 on food at the campus supermarket and I hope it lasts. Orientation is tomorrow, so hopefully I'll feel a little more secure about things then. For now, I feel very insecure and unsure of things... there's not really anyone I know and I've only now just contacted the outside world, save for a brief call home from an aiport landline.

Thanks and love to any and all who read.

Crunch Time.

My flight is this Monday, not Wednesday. Time to figure out what to pack, methinks, and figure out who to say goodbye to...