I'm terrible at titling entries.
I paid the price heavily on Saturday for sleeping at 3.30am. I couldn't sleep in that much due to the noise from upstairs, and I got up at 10.30am, had a long lunch, then went to the faculty. I couldn't stay there. I couldn't read. I couldn't do anything. I was falling asleep; I fell asleep; and then I gave up.
Today was kind of the same too. I woke up way later than I'd wanted to, and started my day late, and went to the faculty late, and I was bored, and I couldn't really be fucked with my paper even though I had to be fucked, so it was all forced, and I believe that it is simply not possible to force good writing out of myself, and I had no ideas whatsoever how to re-write the stupid introduction, let alone how to even start writing the conclusion; on top of all that, I was hungry, so hungry, at about 4-ish. In the end, I left at 5.10pm.
What a joke. What a travesty. What am I doing? My week was so unproductive and useless that I'm almost ready to go into self-flagellation mode, but then, what's the point of that? Why even waste time writing this ranting at myself when I can do better things with my time? Anyway, I am quite exhausted. For one, I'm sick of the law faculty. I need a change of scenery; ergo, I think I'm going to a cafe on Tuesday (the only day that I don't have to go to the Sidgwick Site) and have what I hope is good coffee and read stuff. The thing is, I want a book from the college library, but I don't feel like being in the college library. I am sick of libraries. It's nice to have a routine, but at the same time, it feeds into the boredom, it really does, and the restlessness, and what I think is my natural propensity to be bored - really bored - after doing something for a considerable period of time.
There's a research session on empirical research tomorrow. I don't even feel like going because I'm almost sure that I won't be doing any empirical research. I don't really understand the logic of making everyone sit through sessions on irrelevant research skills; it's not even the case of 'oh just in case your research takes a different direction and you need it'. I mean, if it's not clear by now what one's broad methodology is, something is quite wrong. Despite my having no clue what my thesis is really about, at least I know that it's theoretical and doctrinal. It's not empirical. Why am I going tomorrow? Ah, but I will go anyway just because I don't like to miss classes and it's already part of my weekly routine, so I should just do it.
*
Guy Fawkes night. I asked Barry to come along, and he did. At the end of the fireworks, it was just me, Barry and Dominic; everyone else (i.e. the rest of the MCR people; it was an MCR event) disappeared.
I found it very amusing to watch Barry and Dominic interact. They are as similar as night and day: Barry's in-your-face sense of humour versus Dominic's deadpan sarcasm; Barry's Northern (I think it can be described as such) English accent versus Dominic's rather polished German one; and so on. It was fun. We made some jokes. At a burrito place, Barry was relating the story of his most recent meeting with his supervisors and how it was so weird when, in the middle of the meeting and when Barry was in the middle of a sentence, some random unknown person entered the room and poured him/herself a glass of water. I said, 'Wow, that's so weird.'
Dominic said, 'That's not weird at all.'
He had his usual straight face. I couldn't tell if he was serious or not. Barry was stunned at what he said and exclaimed, 'Someone walks into a private meeting and you think it's not weird?'
'It's private, not secret,' Dominic said.
I hate to say this because I think it's wrong, both as a matter of principle and professionally, when a lawyer loses an argument to a non-lawyer; but I think Dominic won the argument with that point.
When Barry went home to pack for his three-week Hong Kong/South Korea trip, Dominic and I went to this wine place called Cambridge Wine Merchant. The service was questionable, but what was even worse was the tag on the table informing customers that the bar 'is table service', blah blah blah, 'thankyou'. The bad English was appalling.
Dominic regaled me with his pedantic speech about typesetting. In all honesty, and I'm not sure what this says about me, it was actually interesting, especially the story he told me of how optical text alignment came about (it's historical and therefore I don't remember the details). I also realised that I have quite strong views on the subject too. For one, I hate MS Word's default setting of putting a space after every paragraph, and literally the first thing I do when I open a new document on MS Word is to get rid of the space. For another, I hate unjustified text. There are more, but I'm sure the point has been made.
He walked me to my doorstep this time. The goodbye was awkward as always. The next day, I wondered if I should have been polite and asked if he'd wanted to come in for...I don't know, water or whatever. Clearly the invitation would not have been extended to my room, but well, I just wondered what would have been the polite thing to do.
On Saturday, after reading my message whinging about how I'd done no work and was going home, Dominic asked me if I wanted to have dinner since it couldn't make my day any more unproductive. I was really tired and the plan was to hang around my room until it was time to sleep and do absolutely nothing. But I thought, Why not? even as I also thought, Hmm. It was nice though. We went to an Indian restaurant and the food was pretty amazing. It was actually spicy. I mean, how shocking is that? The Indian food I've had in the UK have not been noticeably spicy, but the food last night was spicy.
It was funny how he tried to explain to me what 'briyani' was (except they apparently spell it as 'biriyani'). He had a few mansplaining moments, such as later on in the Castle pub when he said, 'A few years ago I went to Vienna, the capital of Austria...'
Thanks for telling me that Vienna is the capital of Austria. I didn't know that or anything. I'm doing a PhD in Law in Cambridge and I had no idea that Vienna is the capital of Austria. I told him that he mansplained, and I had to explain what that term meant. He was a bit embarrassed but it was quite cute.
When I told him that bad English had been a deal-breaker in my relationships in the past, and that when I received a letter from an ex-boyfriend in junior college, the first thing that I noticed was the bad grammar, he said, 'You have to have high standards.' He said a lot of other things before that but I've forgotten what they were, but that's the salient point of the conversation.
(Actually, it kind of bugs me when G texts me 'goodnight'. I felt like telling him on a few occasions that 'goodnight' isn't a word and that it's 'good night'. Still, I've sufficiently impressed upon him my pedantry when it comes to these things, so sometimes he corrects his own typos before I have the chance to.)
The pub closed at midnight and so we left at midnight. He took a detour via the maths department back to his place and said good night at the traffic junction. It was bit less awkward than on Thursday night.
We agreed to meet outside my front door at 7.30pm. At 7.28pm, I was already standing outside. Two minutes later, I saw this figure half-running towards me. He checked the time on his phone; it was 7.30pm on the dot. He was pleased that he was right on time. I thought it was cute that he was actually running.
Anyway. That was Saturday night. It was nice. I warned him about my possible bad company due to my being in a half-comatose (comatosed?) state; he said, 'I'm sure your company will be delightful as always!'
*
As usual, I haven't heard from G since the last time we texted about meeting in Germany. When he said, 'Let's talk more tomorrow', I almost wanted to laugh at him for his fluid definition of the word.
I'm half-looking forward to seeing him. I will be in full-blown excitement mode once we confirm the exact details of what we're going to do.
On that note, I am tired. I shall go to bed.
Today was kind of the same too. I woke up way later than I'd wanted to, and started my day late, and went to the faculty late, and I was bored, and I couldn't really be fucked with my paper even though I had to be fucked, so it was all forced, and I believe that it is simply not possible to force good writing out of myself, and I had no ideas whatsoever how to re-write the stupid introduction, let alone how to even start writing the conclusion; on top of all that, I was hungry, so hungry, at about 4-ish. In the end, I left at 5.10pm.
What a joke. What a travesty. What am I doing? My week was so unproductive and useless that I'm almost ready to go into self-flagellation mode, but then, what's the point of that? Why even waste time writing this ranting at myself when I can do better things with my time? Anyway, I am quite exhausted. For one, I'm sick of the law faculty. I need a change of scenery; ergo, I think I'm going to a cafe on Tuesday (the only day that I don't have to go to the Sidgwick Site) and have what I hope is good coffee and read stuff. The thing is, I want a book from the college library, but I don't feel like being in the college library. I am sick of libraries. It's nice to have a routine, but at the same time, it feeds into the boredom, it really does, and the restlessness, and what I think is my natural propensity to be bored - really bored - after doing something for a considerable period of time.
There's a research session on empirical research tomorrow. I don't even feel like going because I'm almost sure that I won't be doing any empirical research. I don't really understand the logic of making everyone sit through sessions on irrelevant research skills; it's not even the case of 'oh just in case your research takes a different direction and you need it'. I mean, if it's not clear by now what one's broad methodology is, something is quite wrong. Despite my having no clue what my thesis is really about, at least I know that it's theoretical and doctrinal. It's not empirical. Why am I going tomorrow? Ah, but I will go anyway just because I don't like to miss classes and it's already part of my weekly routine, so I should just do it.
*
Guy Fawkes night. I asked Barry to come along, and he did. At the end of the fireworks, it was just me, Barry and Dominic; everyone else (i.e. the rest of the MCR people; it was an MCR event) disappeared.
I found it very amusing to watch Barry and Dominic interact. They are as similar as night and day: Barry's in-your-face sense of humour versus Dominic's deadpan sarcasm; Barry's Northern (I think it can be described as such) English accent versus Dominic's rather polished German one; and so on. It was fun. We made some jokes. At a burrito place, Barry was relating the story of his most recent meeting with his supervisors and how it was so weird when, in the middle of the meeting and when Barry was in the middle of a sentence, some random unknown person entered the room and poured him/herself a glass of water. I said, 'Wow, that's so weird.'
Dominic said, 'That's not weird at all.'
He had his usual straight face. I couldn't tell if he was serious or not. Barry was stunned at what he said and exclaimed, 'Someone walks into a private meeting and you think it's not weird?'
'It's private, not secret,' Dominic said.
I hate to say this because I think it's wrong, both as a matter of principle and professionally, when a lawyer loses an argument to a non-lawyer; but I think Dominic won the argument with that point.
When Barry went home to pack for his three-week Hong Kong/South Korea trip, Dominic and I went to this wine place called Cambridge Wine Merchant. The service was questionable, but what was even worse was the tag on the table informing customers that the bar 'is table service', blah blah blah, 'thankyou'. The bad English was appalling.
Dominic regaled me with his pedantic speech about typesetting. In all honesty, and I'm not sure what this says about me, it was actually interesting, especially the story he told me of how optical text alignment came about (it's historical and therefore I don't remember the details). I also realised that I have quite strong views on the subject too. For one, I hate MS Word's default setting of putting a space after every paragraph, and literally the first thing I do when I open a new document on MS Word is to get rid of the space. For another, I hate unjustified text. There are more, but I'm sure the point has been made.
He walked me to my doorstep this time. The goodbye was awkward as always. The next day, I wondered if I should have been polite and asked if he'd wanted to come in for...I don't know, water or whatever. Clearly the invitation would not have been extended to my room, but well, I just wondered what would have been the polite thing to do.
On Saturday, after reading my message whinging about how I'd done no work and was going home, Dominic asked me if I wanted to have dinner since it couldn't make my day any more unproductive. I was really tired and the plan was to hang around my room until it was time to sleep and do absolutely nothing. But I thought, Why not? even as I also thought, Hmm. It was nice though. We went to an Indian restaurant and the food was pretty amazing. It was actually spicy. I mean, how shocking is that? The Indian food I've had in the UK have not been noticeably spicy, but the food last night was spicy.
It was funny how he tried to explain to me what 'briyani' was (except they apparently spell it as 'biriyani'). He had a few mansplaining moments, such as later on in the Castle pub when he said, 'A few years ago I went to Vienna, the capital of Austria...'
Thanks for telling me that Vienna is the capital of Austria. I didn't know that or anything. I'm doing a PhD in Law in Cambridge and I had no idea that Vienna is the capital of Austria. I told him that he mansplained, and I had to explain what that term meant. He was a bit embarrassed but it was quite cute.
When I told him that bad English had been a deal-breaker in my relationships in the past, and that when I received a letter from an ex-boyfriend in junior college, the first thing that I noticed was the bad grammar, he said, 'You have to have high standards.' He said a lot of other things before that but I've forgotten what they were, but that's the salient point of the conversation.
(Actually, it kind of bugs me when G texts me 'goodnight'. I felt like telling him on a few occasions that 'goodnight' isn't a word and that it's 'good night'. Still, I've sufficiently impressed upon him my pedantry when it comes to these things, so sometimes he corrects his own typos before I have the chance to.)
The pub closed at midnight and so we left at midnight. He took a detour via the maths department back to his place and said good night at the traffic junction. It was bit less awkward than on Thursday night.
We agreed to meet outside my front door at 7.30pm. At 7.28pm, I was already standing outside. Two minutes later, I saw this figure half-running towards me. He checked the time on his phone; it was 7.30pm on the dot. He was pleased that he was right on time. I thought it was cute that he was actually running.
Anyway. That was Saturday night. It was nice. I warned him about my possible bad company due to my being in a half-comatose (comatosed?) state; he said, 'I'm sure your company will be delightful as always!'
*
As usual, I haven't heard from G since the last time we texted about meeting in Germany. When he said, 'Let's talk more tomorrow', I almost wanted to laugh at him for his fluid definition of the word.
I'm half-looking forward to seeing him. I will be in full-blown excitement mode once we confirm the exact details of what we're going to do.
On that note, I am tired. I shall go to bed.