so, basics.

I have no idea what is up with me and the need to abbreviate all my words. It's like all of sudden, once I've gotten out of Catholic all-girl schooling, all its impact has finally revealed itself and now I'm stapling the hems of all my skirts and whipping my head 'round every time a boy walks past.

Jokes.

I had my first lecture this morning, whatwhat. Gene Expression with one of my all-time favourite professors from last year. It looks like it's just going to be a much more in-depth study of molecular genetics and DNA transcription and RNA translation and proteins and all that good stuff.

Then I went to the Student Services Centre to figure out if my loans were here so I can actually afford going to school but they said to come back tomorrow as the financial team was out and my loans weren't showing up on the database. !?!?!

So I went back to Gabs (bought my mum a birthday card from Oxfam on the way!) and decided to lounge around till 2.30pm when I would head off to meet a friend to go to another PASS training session. Becca sat on my laptop and stole my internet because their flat doesn't have internets yet and that's the only reason she's still my friend.

Jay kay jay kay.

But luckily, she went on facebook only to find one of my friends had left me a comment saying he'd heard our Thursday lecture had been moved to Monday due to a timetable clash and would now be at 1pm .. aka in 20 minutes. So off we went -- to Stopford, which is only a 10 minute walk so that was convenient -- and I had my first Behavioural Neurobiology class which was alright. Seems like it's going to be an in-depth study of last year's Intro to Brain and Behaviour class. As usual, Phineas Gage was the main topic. I am so sick of Phineas Gage. Yes, a shaft went through his head. Yes, he survived. Yes, his personality and everything about him completely changed, opening our eyes to the vitality of our frontal cortex and its role in who we are, we get it! Now will someone else please have something spectacularly and yet safely impale their heads so we can get a little diversity? Jeebs.

Then I sat around with some friends until 3pm when I had my PASS training session which was really good again. The only sad thing about these sessions is that I always meet the nicest people (and the cutest!) and yet each and every one of them is doing a different discipline and so there's no way we'll be paired up to lead PASS sessions together. Damn you, adorable mathematicians!!

Went round Anisah & co's flat to see their shopping results and then realised I was late for dinner, walked back to Gabs, ate some crap, chatted with the girl from Hawai'i, enlightened a first year on her lab timetable (and she said, you're called Noor? They named you right (noor = light), I smiled) and went back to my room for some decorating.

From right to left: Star Trek and schmexy Kirk's (AND SCHMEXIER SPOCK'S <3) smouldering stares, a map of the world, an In'N'Out place mat, PAREEEEEE, Arctic Monkeys, Dwight K Schrute's face in typed symbols and letters, and Van Gogh's Sunflowers.

Ugh, someone is having a reunion right outside my door right now and THEY WILL NOT SHUT UP. Go inside someone's room! There's no living room for you to be standing outside in, jeebus.

Sorry. Also, I've just got an email saying that the 1pm lecture clashes with loads of people's labs so to sort this whole deal out, they've scheduled the Monday lecture for ... FIVE TO SIX PM. OH JOY. Especially since dinner starts at 5.45 and it'll take 15 minutes to get back and by then all the good stuff will be gone and/or turned into poop, yaaaaaaay. Mondays are so excellent. In at 9am and then not for another seven hours! My life is so awesome.

(while proofreading this, it seems I've made a large jump between topics but it made sense in my head: annoyances in class --> annoyances in life --> annoyances in dorms.)

I've realised what bothers me the most about my living situation is that I feel like I live alone and it's really ... lonely. I never see anyone else in my flat, I just hear them occasionally. I hear the stupid water rushing through my walls like an ocean every time someone flushes a toilet or uses the shower. It's grand. I just can't live alone right now. My room always feels so empty because no one can just waltz in, no one is ever sleeping in my bed when I walk in, my bed doesn't smell like other people ... You know what I mean. My room will show signs of me and only me this year. Maybe a few things from people last year but that's about it. Anisah and Becca and Kat have constant interaction, watching tv, walking into the kitchen, lounging in the living room up until 6am being delirious. It's too much effort for them to come here whenever and I can't just go there whenever and Amina lives so damn far away. It just feels, I dunno. I don't like it.

Usually, I'm not bothered by alone but this alone is so lonely, it's hard to handle. I've already created my own personal space in my head but this feels like I've extended it to every corner of my flat and it feels so exclusive of the rest of the world and not by my own choice. It's weird to have my quiet mind space realised so fully and completely physically. We'll see how it goes.

Last night, I'm not really sure what happened but I think it fully hit me that I was back. So I walked out of the party, round the side of the building, sat down and cried.

Damn you, hormonal adolescence. I'm all better now. For now.

James Morrison - Wonderful World

flatmates & the housing sitch

I don't know why I always feel the need to use the word 'sitch' for situation but it reminds me of Kim Possible every time.

Back at Gabs but I now live in Woodthorpe, Flat 1, wooooop. I've not taken any pictures yet but there's a pretty one on the website I think. Let me find it.

Kinda small photo but you get the gist. It's cute and pretty. I live on the ground floor although, after last year's basement deal, I would have liked to live somewhere a bit further up. Oh well.

So there are three other ladies living with me, one of whom is a third year Indian-via-Kuwait and lived in the basement too last year except I didn't even know she existed until Aamna said, MEET MY NEIGHBOUR. (I miss Aamna.) And then another Pakistani (I think?) third year who I met a few times last year and she's very sweet. The last resident is a first year from Taiwan who seems really cool so far. She knocked on my door the other day when I'd finally moved in so that was nice of her.

Speaking of moving in, I've sorted out storage and got my stuff back but I definitely had to pay an extortionate amount on the taxi. The cab driver was really nice and gave me a student discount even though I didn't have the proper card for it and he spent the whole of the drive feeling bad that I had to pay to get my storage and telling me his heart cries for Palestine and that we're both Muslim so we're chill. I'm likethis with my cab drivers, wootwoot. And he helped me carry and move all my boxes so I gave him a big tip. Which kind of defeats the purpose of him giving me a discount but whatever, I was feeling generous.

ANYWAYS. So now I have all my stuff and I can finally get to settling in properly. Tomorrow is hopefully still the IKEA trip so that'll be helpful.

Did some more PASS volunteering, took a tour around the "Experimental Grounds" or "Botanical Grounds" which I didn't even know existed at the University until I signed up to lead the tour. Good job. Luckily, I was with another PASS leader who knew where it was so that worked out. They gave us free plants at the end of the tour, wheyy! Saw a friend, ran back to Gabs, taxi'd to the middle of nowhere to get my storaged, had some dinner, and now I'm here. Anisah and Becca want to go out to Slems tonight for their "beach party" and they'll kill me if I don't go so I guess that's what I'm doing tonight. Amina is back! In Manchester that is but I've not seen her yet and I really really want tooooo!

Last night was fun, I guess. I met a guy named Tiberius. No joke. Another guy cut his head open and dropped blood all over the place and I'm pretty sure he has every STD known to mankind so I hope we don't die due to exposure. Typical Slems-involved party. Including the bit where every time this guy would walk by, Anisah would yell 'PHIL!' because she honestly thought that was his name and the third time she'd done it, he turned around and yelled, "WHO'S PHIL? YOU KEEP CALLING PHIL BUT I'M JUST SO CONFUSED." Turns out his name is Josh and he's pretty swell.

Anisah and Becca have just come for a visit and party-dragging-to (what?) so I'll get back to you LAYTAH.

----

LAYTAH: What really sucks about this year's housing deal is that I'm not actually living with any of my friends. And the food is crap. And even though Anisah and Becca and Kat are a short walk across the road, that space makes all the difference. Instead of running down the corridor or up a few flights of stairs, I've actually got to go out and go across the way to see them all. And since we're all busy on our own schedules, even in the last three days, I've felt a massive lack of them in my life already. And Amina is all the way down on the other end of university which is simply ridiculous. I'm very very frustrated with how these things turned out this year and I think it's just one more setback that I have to push through to make uni some good years. I really didn't need any more setbacks, but I guess someone thinks I do.

arrival numero dos

So, I'm back. wheyyy.

I arrived in London Heathrow around 9am GMT after a very annoying 10 hour flight as I was sat right next to a very flabby lady who kept putting her arm down on my remote and switching the channel as I was watching movies ("Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" (crap) and the second half of "The Proposal" which I've already seen) and I had to keep poking her arm flab to get her attention TO GET THE F OFF. I had this problem because once again my personal tv, while being lovely and high tech, did not run the normal entertainment programme where you can actually choose what you want to watch instead of having the channels just play the same crappy movies over and over. Also, I was sat in front of some girl who seemed about my age who kept poking the back of my chair, right around where her front pocket / table would have been. She was taking things out and in ALL FLIGHT LONG. Or she was just curled up and kicking at it whenever her foot slipped, which is highly possible because I definitely had her dirty socky foot graze my elbow every now and then.

ALSO, I thought I'd be smart, cheat the system, choose my seat behind an exit row because exit row seats can't put their chairs back and for once I wouldn't have someone's stupid chair trying to impale my face. The online plane diagram lied. I was not behind the exit row. I was a whole other row behind the exit seat and oh boy, did the old fart sitting in front of me have a problem with sitting up straight like a normal human being. He definitely shoved it all the way down even through take-off and landing and there was a flight attendant sitting right in front of him and I was glaring at her throughout the flight because SHE NEEDED TO FLIPPING DO HER JOB.

So I slept. And watched a bit of Planet Earth on my laptop which I had to squeeze between my lap and the stupid old man's seat in front of me. The food was crap, I was cold, couldn't fall asleep because it was horribly uncomfortable -- you know those "personal well-being" videos they play to teach you how to do yoga sitting down or something? Screw those, it's a fricking yoga exercise just fitting into economy. I shot daggers at all the business and first class seats as I walked out.

Then I had a 3 hour layover in London, which was fine. I peed, sat on a bench, and put in my UK sim card and texted the 4 people who cared to know I was back in England. Then I called Becca and talked to her for a good 45 minutes which was nice. I'd missed a bit of some outings and adventures but that's alright. We'll have plenty more to come, I'm sure.

Then I decided to call my storage company to ask them when they could drop off my stuff back at Gabs (the delivery which I have already paid for as it's in the overall payment) and the lovely man on the phone told me that the next available drop off date would be Thursday, October 1st. Not, tomorrow afternoon Thursday (as in, today). No, a WEEK FROM TOMORROW (today). I actually laughed in the man's phoneface and he said that what most students are doing is taking taxis to the place and picking up their stuff. Seven medium sized boxes of storage in a hired cab? Yeah? No.

Also, I checked them out on some maps and turns out, of course, they're in the middle of fecking nowhere. How expensive do you think it's going to be to go all the way there and back? It's probably as far if not further than the airport and that's about £20, so £40 to pick up my stuff that I've already paid to have delivered?

LIFE IS SO FLIPPING AWESOME.

So I have nothing. I have the clothes I arrived with and essential toiletries and my laptop. No sheets, no pillow, no towels, lamps, comforter, DEODORANT (because I thought, hey I have a new one waiting for me in Manchester, I can leave this one in LA! Dumbass.), random things needed for existence. Oh and the mattress pad I bought and was storing in my wardrobe? No where to be seen. Score. Which means last night, after my 10 hour flight to London, hour flight to Manchester, bit of running about, I slept on a very hard spring stuffed mattress with two hoodies as my pillow.

Luckily, Becca kept a suitcase of mine and in it I found a very warm blanket and A TOWEL! SO I CAN SHOWER! I don't remember if I stored my shampoo but I bought new bottles (& deodorant) anyways and now I can live like a normal clean decent human being.

I also bought a new cactus (named Maeby, pictures to come) and some posters (gorgeous black&white Paris and STAR TREKKKKK). I've yet to start decorating however as all of my sticky tack and other posters and such are in storage.

As for arriving in Manchester specifically: I got to Gabs, brought in my stuff, no one was in reception so I waited around a bit and a first year walked in and turns out she's from HAWAII, yaaaay. And she was really excited to meet me (so were her parents, who quickly gleaned all the information they possibly could off me). Oh, and she's doing a foundation year in Life Sciences! So she's even in my faculty and she's really nice.

I had to go over to another hall across the way to get the receptionist to get my keys so eventually I got into my flat (1) and my room (3) and it doesn't feel that much bigger but it's longer and the ceiling is lower and the WINDOW IS AT NORMAL HEIGHT and I have built in shelves which is nice. I'll show you pictures when I take them.

I visited Becca and Anisah and Kat's flat which was strange. Fun but strange. It's really weird that they're not at Gabs. I don't have anyone to sit with at dinner. So that's fantastic. The new fresher's seem nice though and participative (word?) so I'll eventually get to know them through various events. Like tonight where I have to attend some Heroes vs Villains party because I'm on the hall committee. Woohoo.

Today I had to rush to North Campus to go to my PASS (Peer Assisted Study Scheme) leader training so I can mentor little firsties! It was ALL DAY LONG which was alright but I missed the last day of Fresher's Fair so make that two years out of two that I've missed the Fresher's Fair. Third time's a charm? I met some nice people though I'm not going to be working with them as they're all in different courses. Oh well! I thought I had another training session tomorrow morning but thank goodness I don't but now I've got to sort out some other crap like financial registration for which the line is, I've heard, two hours long. Excellent.

Anything else? This is quite long as it is. Anisah's good, Becca's good (and back to blonde!), Kat's good, Amina is not back yet ... and Aamna's not coming back at all. :(

:(

:(

A moment of silence for the sadness. Luckily she's still in the country so she can train it up whenever she wants / can afford it. But I'm already missing her. Sigh.

I can't believe I'm back in Manchester. Feels like I've never left but also like it's been forever at the same time. But mostly like I've never left. I hate that summer already feels like a distance blip in my memory and I've just got to hanker down for a very very long year. This is going to last ages. But there's something different about this time and I think it's just because I feel like I've picked up right where I left off so I'm not starting over, which is nice.

This Saturday we're planning a trip to IKEA, woop! Best place in the world! Hoping to get some good stuff, make my room more homey, etc etc. Hopefully, I'll get going on my decorating because I honestly won't have time once classes and labs and PASS sessions and tutorials start up. But it'll be good. Ooh, I should get fairy lights!

Oh, dear, gotta run to that party! Hope you're all swell this semester!

ps

(me)

(me&friends)

On the eve of my departure, I am rather detached. It doesn't feel like I'm leaving and yet it's hit me several times over the last few days, sending me into a steady stream of tears.

I'm not ready to leave. I still have a year of summer left in me and I cannot believe it is that time already. It does not help that I cannot mentally put myself in the now because I have to hit the ground running the minute I step off the plane in Manchester. I am not excited for the coming week.

Registration is right now (2am my time, 10am there) so that's just dandy. PASS leader training sessions begin the morning after I arrive, 9.45am on the dot. In between, I will be trying to see my friends, contact the storage place that has all my stuff which I really need right when I get there and have no idea how that's going to work, get Gabs hall committee stuff sorted, somehow attend a bit of the Fresher's Fair to sign up for some societies, check out any posters and potted plants, and whatnot. Mind you, that's all pretty much Wednesday afternoon.

I can check-in in 3 hours, during which time I plan to be asleep, regaining my strength so I can awaken and slap packing across the face. Yes, that's right, I haven't even started packing yet. My flight is around 3.40pm tomorrow (today) afternoon. I don't even know what I'm packing. Clothes? Books? Stress.

I am not ready and I am not excited. This is not good.

eid ul-fitr

Eid Mubarak, everyone :)

Also, where does summer go? It's here and then it's gone, whipping you with the flailing tail of its last few days, and suddenly it's class time again. Come back, please.

Seriously now? Seriously? Everyone I know except for me? That's cool.

Balls.