If there is any good that come out of carrying a laptop everyday (apart from the possibility that if you fall over the laptop will crush you and you can end your misery quite quickly) is probably the fact that one has access to all the academic equipment one needs all the time. Nowadays textbooks are online, notes are online, you can take notes online, e-mails are online... and all of a sudden you find that carrying the 400lb textbook around is now out of date.

Except when the school interweb system, for some reason, decides to malfunction in some way and then you are in miserable level of Cania and you're trying to battle that Mephistopheles of that malfunction. Unfortunately, Mephisto owns you and you get beaten into a pulp.

Which is what happened to me today. I was trying to install a printer client onto my laptop so I don't have to log into the school computer EVERY TIME I want to print; unfortunately adobe decides to crash my spooler and then the damn thing won't even install properly at all, making me believe that this school is an EPIC FAIL (remember that phrase, anybody?) when it comes to tech stuff. Hell, even KCL managed to allow wireless printing from private laptops. I'm not asking them to copy KCL web system - it sucked, and I never had proper reception in my hall residence half the time, and bittorrent was decidedly blocked as if they were terrified that all the students would suddenly pirate Microsoft Office - but come on! I cannot be hassled to go and log in, wait for the client to appear, then find the document, click print, type in password, then wait by the printer, swipe card, type in password again, select job, and then finally wait for the product to come out. I'd rather watch sodium acetate crystals form on top of the arboretum roof (meaning that it will never happen).

So here is my advice, from a lowly undergraduate student, to the Loyola IT department: GET A NEW PRINTING SERVER. For Christ's sake, this school charges a ridiculous amount for the level of education it's giving (which is basically rote memorise, spit out on paper). It still does not have Office 2010 making it necessary for me to carry my laptop around, since 2007 and 2010 are NOT compatible. Furthermore, wireless printing from laptops do not work, for some bizarre reason a few computers have Linux installed with VMWare mounted on it (and on it, inexplicable, is a Windows OS), and it still has Internet Explorer as its default browser which drives me utterly insane. It also has useless crap on it that no one ever uses, while more useful tools like Mathematica are not there (I don't understand this. The extra credit problems in the math department must be submitted with a Mathematica file. I am not going to buy that $500 software just for extra credit. So how does one DO them without Mathematica on the school PCs?). The Lenovo Thinkpads that the school rents out to the students, for some reason, has oversensitive touch pads that make typing a pain in the ass. And to log onto the school network from Windows, you really have to select servers, type in passwords... it's all a confused mess. Evidently Loyola likes macs. Well, I am not a fan of it. There is no OneNote on macs and I can't handle non-right-click Microsoft Word. And forget about "well, if you press the command key on the keyboard"... no, that's not right click. That's just clicking while pressing the command key.

So after all this rant, what am I saying? That technology at all universities suck. Hell, even at MIT it sucks evidently; half the time JB gets kicked off while on-campus, only to come back 30 seconds later apologetically.

That reminds me, I have to study for Genetics.

So after two and a half months of living through torture hell of science, I am ready to call it quits. Oh, wait. I can't.

Let me explain. My current schedule is a bit hellish. Orgo lab should never be held in the evenings, mainly because the majority of the students have not eaten, or have not slept, or overexerted themselves from trying to reproduce while stopping the fundamental function of it. Inexplicably, they hold organic labs during the evenings. And it's THREE FUCKING HOURS. Standing through dissection bathing in formaldehyde was one thing, but sniffing ether for three hours does things to your mind and give you an undeserved hangover which is really unfair because all you got was the short end of the stick.

Anyway.

So I am enrolled in BIOL 282, which is a Genetics course with a certain geneticist who shall go unnamed because if he is for some reason looking up his name it will list this site on google. May I remind you that I have no interest whatsoever in X21? Yes, despite my aspiration to become a physician I really don't care for it. Despite that fact, my professor believes that X21 is the most important chromosome in the entire universe. And his notes really do not make much sense, since he jumps around faster than a bunny fleeing from a giant.

Organic Chemistry is a pain in the rear end. For those of you who are reading this and thought Phase I/Phase II biochem was awful, I beg to differ. That was like a needle up the UT; this is a fucking Foley catheter. My sleeping hours have officially been reduced to 2 hours or so every day. Not very healthy. And I'm still not finished.

So those two classes are killing me. And I know the med students over here will be saying "Well, it gets worse". Well, fuck off. Chemistry is not that difficult conceptually, and if so many kids are struggling that's because there is a problem with the teaching method, ie: I still don't know how to draw mechanisms (this must be remedied immediately). I can handle Physics and Calculus fine, but orgo is murdering my brain cells and possibly my vision as well. Coffee has ceased to work. Must I resort to meth? Is this what it boils down to? "You must consume organic chemistry to excel in it! Literally!". For those who are only taking this course as a challenger this semester, well, lucky you, I hope you die in med school. Really.

Now that the rant is out of my system, I shall be returning to my studies...

While talking about Univ. of Chicago...

JB: I went to the dining hall... Hutchinson, I think it was called... and suddenly I didn't know if I was back at uni as an undergraduate, trying to lie through my teeth that no, the reason my paper is late is NOT because I was getting drunk in London over the weekend while trying to cozen my ex-girlfriend back into my arms but because my uncle had a brain biopsy and I had to be there. I almost could hear Harry yelling that they were going to the Undercroft, thought that I must be at the informal rather than the formal because I wasn't in a jacket. Then I realised that I was in America, not Oxford. And that this is not Christ Church and I don't have to go back and write the paper in my room.

M: That would be because that dining hall is modeled after the dining hall in Christ Church.

JB: Oh my goodness! Christ Church is taking over the world!

M: You wish. I wonder what it would have been like to be a student there.

JB: It's no different from any other university, apart from all the pomp and the fluff they dress you with. Believe me when I say this: you do NOT want to take your end-of-year exams in that ridiculous gown. I nearly fell asleep my final year. You'd have your occasional stars - like Stephen Hawking, for instance - but otherwise half the students are drunk. Or too busy trying to evade the scientific way of creating life out of nothing and going the more orthodox way instead.

M: About Stephen Hawking, I have something interesting to tell you.

JB: This better be good, because I am on tenterhooks.

M: Did you know that Stephen Hawking is quite a ladies' man?

JB: No, I did not! How on earth can he?! He has muscular dystrophy! He can't even speak!

M: JB, darling, there are no muscles where it counts in what he does to be a ladies' man.

JB: Oh good lord...

But seriously... I know it's a s grandiose building and everything, but mimicking it thrice is getting a bit boring.

Second week of lectures is almost over, and one would think that by second week the schedule chaos would be turned into cosmos.

Evidently not.

During the first week, I was dishonourably enrolled in Biology 101, which is clearly an introductory class. After sitting all the way in the back of the lecture theatre and sleeping through most of it (it was early in the morning!), I went to the head of the biology department to complain. After running a check they had discovered that my class for Molecular Biology of the Cell HAD transferred successfully, which lists Biology 101, 111, 102, 112 as pre-requisites. Hence I had been dropped from the class and re-enrolled in Genetics. Which was fine with me.


But then, on Wednesday the writings lecturer for a mandatory writing class that all students must take came up to me. Evidently my essay regarding a certain reading assignment was so impressive (quoth the head of the writing program "it was graduate level") that it was unnecessary for me to take the class, it was waste of money and time. So I have now been dropped from THAT class as well, and am now in search of a suitable English class to take instead.

Of course, JB and IM had such a laugh about it. "It's rather silly", said JB, "for you to take a preliminary writing class. How many research papers have you written?"

"More than enough."

"Exactly. They should have acknowledged that. Every class assigns a writing assignment in Britain."

"Wow, they really underestimated you," said IM.

So that is where I am. And while I am pleased that I do not have to take the class, I am rather upset because the class I did want to take - Survey of British Literature - is currently closed due to full capacity. Having to register late is certainly not my fault and the other options are Chaucer (yuck), and American Literature (even more yuck). I never did well in American literature to begin with. I don't think I have the American mentality to comprehend what the author is trying to get at. I never read my reading assignments for American Literature back in high school thoroughly, resorting to cliffsnotes instead. So taking AmLit is NOT an option.

So here we are, and this is a mess. Goodbye, UCWR110.

So after two years of my tenure at what I'd call City Misery (I mean, seriously... can this city get any more miserable?), my transition is officially O.V.E.R (that's pronounced Oh-Vee-Ee-Ar). I'm not done with London yet because I have majority of my friends here, but I am quite permanently done with GKT. And a good thing, that is. I hated that school by the end of Lent term. I'm sorry, but that level of inadequate organisation is just appalling, and quite frankly, disturbing.

Mr JB is recovering quite nicely, for those who kindly inquired after his welfare. He rang up today... and when I informed him I was in Essex, he promptly responded "OH! You're in CHAVLAND!" as if I had informed him that I was in Disneyland Paris. I reminded him that's rather a derogatory term and quite frankly, not everyone there is a chav. But he did not listen. And it didn't help that I was in a bank and there was a sodden-looking bloke going "Oaight, ma'?" He called Chelmsford and Essex "Chavland" the entire time. Pardon me if I don't pronounce things the RP way, did not wear a top hat as part of my uniform and was not raised in the university city of Oxford. But I've NEVER said anything like "I' a bi' rainin', innit?" nor have I dressed myself in Burberry. Considering that two fellows I know from literature that were Oxonian were Algernon Montcrieff (which, quite frankly, is self-explanatory and rather unimpressive) and Nicholas Urfe (even more unimpressive) and Tom Brown (whose conducts at Rugby were rather questionable at times), whenever he says "Well, that can't be helped, I'm an Oxonian... truly, to the bone" I can't help but cringe. Does being at Christchurch necessitate one to be a pedophilic mathematician? Methinks not. But I am assuming that he thinks I'm a chav as well. I truly laughed when SB said "I say cha-v, not shar-v, because shar-v sounds quite posh. I think they'd like it". I never thought of it like that. (I've just looked it up and it is supposed to be pronounced cha-v. I never knew.) And although the Times had said:

"I soon learnt that sometimes, hilariously, it is not just individuals who feel chav envy but whole institutions — the Daily Mail, for instance, whose whole raison d’être would appear to be that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE IS HAVING FUN AND IT MUST BE STOPPED NOW! — naturally fears, loathes and envies chavs with a passion. The Mail gripes about their sex drive, their money and their laziness (go figure) but is particularly obsessed with what it sees as the sky-high chav birthrate, mostly to unwed teenage mothers..."

I think JB's disdain of them does have a merit, however. I've seen the lot of them and they can be quite unpleasant. Rude, anti-social and quite frankly, about as pleasant as a day-old vomit in the back street of Brick Lane. So when this fellow says:

The white indigenous English working-class is now the one group you can insult without feeling the breath of the Commission for Racial Equality on your neck, which makes it pretty damn cowardly apart from being what I call “social racism”

I must ask what on earth this person is on. Yes, chavs refer to the white working class, but if they weren't so full of themselves and obnoxious, they would BE called chavs, would they? It's because they have all the requisite characteristics that they are called chavs, and those include the attitude, not just the colour of the skin.

So. Chavs are chavs are chavs and that's the end of it. And I am quite pleased that I do not have to see them for a while...

ME: So I spent a good quarter of an hour hunting down my copy of Mary Poppins.
IM: Why on earth would you want to read that piece of shit?
ME: HEY.
IM: No, listen. That thing is filled with bigotry, biases, racism, and god knows what else.
JB: Methinks she wanted to read it for the cakes.
IM: PLEASE don’t tell me you wanted to read it for the cakes.
ME: Well, I did! I remembered the raspberry-jam-cakes and I was dying to know what they were, thank you very much.
JB: And plum cakes with pink frosting and coconut cakes.
IM: How on earth do you remember it in such detail?!
JB: When I read it, those sounded delicious. Until, of course, my dear mother deflated my childhood dreams by kindly informing me that the raspberry jam cakes that Mary enjoys so much are actually Victorian sandwiches with raspberry jam. After that all magic faded into oblivion.
ME: Oh! And the gingerbread. Don’t forget the gingerbread.
IM: … now you’re making me hungry. And please do realise that my mother, who has baked all those things throughout my life, are HOURS AWAY.

JB: I’m perfectly honest! Upon my honour as an Oxonion.
Me: As an Oxonian? Well, that inspires confidence.
JB: My dear, you’re too sarcastic for your age. It’s hardly becoming.
Me: And your patronising tone is starting to grate on my nerves. Since when are you Algy Montcrieff?
JB: Well, I can’t deny being Algy, can I? We probably attended the same college too.
Me: Oh dear lord…

Me: Apparently, IC decided to go to Australia.
Mother: Oh, really?
Me: Yes. Apparently, he was given the choice of this world, the next world, and Australia. He picked the last one.
Mother: I see. He must hate this world.

IM: I am NOT British.
J: Really? I can prove you are.
IM: Yeah? How?
J: JB said you were.
IM: Bloody idiot!
J: Told you.

JB: So I told the dean that my friend was very ill, and I must leave for a few days.
Me: Which friend?
JB: No friend, actually. Call me Bunburyist, if you like.

JB: London is lovely, as long as you don’t live in it.
Me: Yes, and if you do, then it becomes hell.
IM: You know what they say, one man’s heaven is another man’s hell.
Me: I wasn’t aware that London was any man’s heaven.
JB: It was for Charles Darnay.
IM: Which consequently got Sydney sent to the gallows.

Back when Margie Thatcher declared higher spending taxes and spending cut, Britain was in an uproar. People always go in a huff when what was theirs get taken away.

Well, history repeats, doesn’t it? Whenever a Tory comes into power, boom goes the spending and it preaches what used to be a British virtue – frugality. Germany is following suit.

And then after everything Thatcher had done, they tagged on the fruit of the work to Tony Blair. Poor Margie was viewed as the fiscal Nazi of the twentieth century.

James Bartholomew seems to have an optimistic outlook on British economic future. I am inclined to disagree. Has he seen the recent company value of BP? I think not.

British and the Germans were spending money when they didn’t have any. I think it’s time for them to start paying back or else default. (Actually, what is the primary export for Britain?! After all these years of being fed Economics, I still have no idea whatsoever.)

I’m pretty sure France is gloating over this…

I had an odd dream. In it, I was Lestat de Lioncourt; right after Magnus made him his heir, I guess. I was at Versailles, attending a ball, in which a maiden fair (or I’m assuming that was what she was) was pleading for my attention. I, on the other hand, was rather uninterested in courting such maidens’ pleas, and went off to a small room to sample some wine…

I’ve been reading too much Anne Rice and playing Vampire: Masquerade. Mayhap ‘tis time for me to stop.

“Oh, Louis, Louis… still whining, Louis… have you heard enough? I’ve had to listen to that for centuries!”

-Lestat de Lioncourt

I’d like to start of today’s post with something that is completely unrelated to the post title. I was talking with JB when the conversation slowly drifted to my obsession with my body (or as he put it, my abuse of) and how difficult it is to find a middle between very skinny and very err, chubby.

“Don’t you want me to be pretty?”

“Of course I do, darling. It always feels nice to walk with a beautiful girl.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, your self-esteem goes up threefold, not to mention the envious looks of other men. We really are a competitive lot.”

“So it’s like carrying a Kelly or Birkin bag.”

“I’m assuming that’s one of those bags that cost more than an average man’s monthly pay.”

“That’s correct.”

“Then yes, it’s like carrying a bag.”

“So I’m your Birkin bag.”

“You can say that, yes.”

I’m not going to go into the feminism approach of “JB is a chauvinistic bastard who thinks women are handbags”, simply because I always had a feeling the majority of the fashion industry strictly caters to men in the sense that women buy the products to cater themselves to men. If men all said in unison that they can no longer view any female with a waistline of less than forty inches to be female or desirable, I have a feeling Lays and Nestle and Mars. Inc would suddenly see their stocks skyrocketing. SO yes! It’s the men’s fault that I can now fit into a size double 0 and can wear a size 0 jeans on top of another!

Anyway, then we moved onto American obesity (although British women’s average BMI is more than their American counterparts’… who would have guessed?) when Jack mentioned this monstrosity:

If you want to know, that is not some kind of a monstrosity from the planet Mars, but rather, it’s supposed to be edible. It’s called “Kentucky Double Down Sandwich”, and instead of a bun it utilizes two fried chicken patties in the place of bread. The calorie isn’t awful – 540kcal, which is around the same as a Big Mac – but still this looks dreadful. My guess is that it’s about the size of my hand, but fried chicken, cheese, bacon, and then fried chicken?! I might need angio after eating this thing that masquerades as food.

Then:

“It was greasy.”

“YOU ATE IT?!”

“Well, I had to! IM did too.”

JB and IM ate this work of art… I’m not entirely certain what possessed them, because I won’t go near this thing with a three foot pole. After a steady diet of raw vegetables for nearly two months, just looking at this thing gives me heartburns. What on earth has possessed KFC to create this nightmare-ish food? I know that they cater to young men (aka JB and IM) but let’s see… carb, fat, protein, more fat, fat, fat, protein. Which, by the way, no one in the 1st world country is lacking, certainly not here. This baffles me.

I also fail to see why JB had to eat it. But anyway…

IC has officially gone down the drain. Or more like a ditch. Or a toilet. Or one of those very unsavoury places that I sincerely hope I’ll never visit. Not only was he a borderline alcoholic last year AND had an emotionally unstable girlfriend (MORE than me, which is quite a feat), he’s been doing drugs. Since… oh, god knows when.

Now, I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I certainly do not do anything that is not condoned. I don’t have tattoos. Even in the eyes of the Mormon church there’s not much they can condemn about me. And then this news.

May I say that I feel it was perfectly natural for me to panic? And there he was, in Ghirardelli’s, calmly sipping chocolate milk shake and telling me this as if he was telling me that he got a new iPod. I did not go into a new bout of hysterics, but at that moment, our relationship – or what was left of it – was O.V.E.R.

I don’t consort with druggies, thanks very much.

Here are the comments from my friends about this incident:

IM: He’s a fucking seaweed. Leave him alone.

JB: Just leave him alone. You’d rather spend your time with more worthwhile friends, wouldn’t you?

RB: You can’t do anything for him but pray.

J: Il est un connard.

I understand that my controlling nature is a problem as well, but his lack thereof is another problem by itself. One thing is certain: he will make a wonderful addition to my novel. People really do love to see someone who has everything have a mighty downfall and end up with nothing. Schardenfrude, as Germans say.

Apparently in Britain they take the BP incident as the US bashing Britain. I fail to see how. I have no doubt that if the US spilled a million barrels of oil in Dover strait, they’d be all over the place trumpeting about how un-environmental the US is.

It’s rather infuriating. Hayward blurted out that he “wants his life back”… right. What about the lives of those who died? Or perhaps the LIVES OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR JOBS BECAUSE OF THIS? Then some git commented on Reuters that “BP is a multinational company, why are the British the only ones getting beaten? ‘Tis unfair.” Umm, let me think… maybe it’s because BP is a British company. Hell, it even has BRITISH in its name. Or perhaps it now stands for “Barrels of Petroleum” [in the sea]?

Then: “Britain is a good friend of the US. Why is the US beating on its good friend?”

If you haven’t noticed, oh Britain, America befriends someone with MONEY. If Mexico suddenly became an economical superpower overnight, trust me, America would be sashaying over to Mexico in an instant. I’m not too certain what they are thinking.

I can say this: this is NOT America’s fault. This is NOT anyone’s fault but BP’s, since Deepwater Horizon was under BP’s control when it exploded into a fiery inferno. Not to mention they did not put necessary safety measures, despite several warnings from the US government.

Oh, and did I mention BP’s pipeline in Alaska rusting and causing severe trouble? I thought that kind of mishaps were too elementary to occur…

Upon my quest to return to my former part-time job (here’s a hint: It does not involve children), I had gone through many revelations, the foremost of which was this:

If men liked bigger women, we’d be bigger too.

In a simple matter of logic, here it is: we preen ourselves to be more attractive to the other gender. It’s a simple, biological impulse. Since we can’t really feather ourselves like a peacock or produce smells like other, more fortunate animals, we must dress and colour ourselves. Right?

So what if the clothes only flattered stick figures? More likely for men to pick the twig-made woman who probably has no time of the month at all. And hence… the stick figure models are born.

Most men say “nonono, we like full figures, like Sophia Loren”. Well, tough luck. If you lot didn’t hail Twiggy as the mini-skirt queen, we may not have 6 foot 100lb pre-pubescent girls strutting down the runway (which, by the way, can’t be healthy. But what can you say when a perfect Barbie-looking Ana Carolina Reston decides to starve herself and flops dead? Nothing.)

So the sample sizes shrank and shrank to the point that the waist size is tailored for 23 inches… and apparently, unless you went through some odd transmogrification (like me) or you have no ribs beyond the seventh, tough luck. And apparently, all women must aspire to looking like a model, because apparently now that is biologically possible. So size zero is the new “in” size. Everybody’s wearing it, from Daria to Gisele! (Actually, my guess is Gisele is a size four, but who cares?)

And then they persecute the hapless mannequins, who are completely blameless and are just trying to meet the requirements so they can make a living, that they are “bad influences” to the youngsters and they should gain weight. Never mind that those people who are saying these things WILL NEVER pay a model’s rent. Ever. So they irresponsibly say “here, you look unhealthy and there’s a twelve year old trying to look like you, so gain a few stones”, and then promptly ignore the said girl when she loses a shoot at Armani for gaining two pounds. World is a fair place, isn’t it?

In fact, if models are giving bad influences to the youngsters, why not sue Mattel? They’re making Barbie dolls, which have even more impossible measurements than a fashion model. She would be 5’9”, 110lb, with a waist of 21.5 inches (it used to be 18 inches…) , a bust of 36, and a hip of 33. I’m sorry, but you can’t be 5’9” and have a hip measurement of 18 inches. You are not Cathie Jung. It’s just not possible, unless you went through some sort of bodily transmogrification. But nobody’s shooting darts at them. It makes one wonder why.

Here’s a good quote from the ever-decadent (and ever-failing) Goldmund of the era, IC:

“You’re a model, ergo you’re hot.”

What? Since when? Isn’t that like saying even this synthetic leather bag must be of good quality, since it has a huge Fendi logo emblazoned on it? That’s just silly.

So there. Even those who are not brand-conscious are fooled.

Mais je vis.

Je mets au régime encore. J pense que je suis folle. JB pense que je suis stressé. Et IM… je ne sais pas ce qu’il pense à moi.

C’est difficile. Je pense cette est la tâche la plus difficile tout personne peut faire. Enfin, je  travaille contre la nature, et des gens anciennes penseraient que je suis stupide.

Mais cette faim! Je peux manger le repas de cinq plats. Mm, cela sonne bien… Hors-d'œuvre serait soupe de abricot, et salade niçoise, avec rôti de poussin, et truite grillé à la sauce  au groseille, avec mousse au chocolat pour dessert.

Beauté ou appétit? C’est un dilemme que beaucoup de femme doivent faire face.

… Apparently she has had plastic surgeries to resemble Angelia Jolie.

Now, the thing is, I can see why Jolie got plastic surgery. I can see why any media-worker would get a rhinoplasty or a facelift. I can get why some stylists get cosmetic procedures done. Half their jobs rely on maintained youth and attractive appearances.

But Octomom? Um, hello, she’s just a woman who gave birth to octoplets. She is NOT an actress, a model, or a designer.

No, nobody will appreciate you for looking like Jolie. Hollywood is currently flooded with Jolie looks and nobody needs another on the list. I’m starting to think that she’s just an attention-whore.

Putting BUXOM lip venom lip gloss is one thing. Trying to become Jolie’s twin is another.

J has a French accent. JB has Queen’s English. IM has Sussex. I have Essex. And we’re all losing it.

No, we are not losing our minds. But J is starting to sound Brooklyn, JB is starting to sound American, IM is starting to speak Changlish (Chinese English) and I’m starting to think in American!

Not good.

We happen to like our accents, thank you very much. J’s French inability to say “have” with the H sound apparently makes him sound sexy (although we have repeatedly joked that it just makes him sound gay). JB’s RP is impressive. He really speaks in Queen’s English. And IM and I like our accents, it makes us sound… well, understandable.

So we have made a pact not to lose it. It sounds silly, I know, but it helps to feel that there’s three other people on the same boat.

After a long hiatus…

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

J is, apparently, alive and kicking. He also rang up to inform me that he just had sex with an ex while being high on ecstasy. What a mind that boy has…

“What on earth possessed you?! Did you go to a rave?!”

“Yeah.”

“I wasn’t aware raves still existed. Please don’t tell me you have PLUR written on your body.”

He did. Apparently it is now smeared beyond all recognition after all the “exercise” that was carried out. He failed to mention where exactly the said exercise was carried out. I hope it was not someplace public.

All in all, I’m rather glad he’s a distant friend.

“Then he nodded again and drew something from his bosom and put it on his head. “Look,” he said. “Pretty.”

It was a beret of pillar-box red. Through the stupor that was slowly mounting and encompassing his mind Basil recognised it. Prudence had worn it jauntily on the side of her head, running across the Legation lawn with the Panorama of Life under her arm. He shook the old fellow roughly by the shoulder.

“Where did you get that?”

“Pretty.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Pretty had. It came in the great bird. The white woman wore it. On her head like this.” He giggled weakly and pulled it askew over his glistening pate.

“But the white woman, Where is she?”

But the headman was lapsing into a coma. He said “Pretty” again and turned up sightless eyes.

Basil shook him violently. “Speak, you old fool. Where is the white woman?”

The headman grunted and stirred; then a flicker of consciousness revived in him. He raised his head. “The white woman? Why, here,” he patted his distended paunch. “You and I and the big chiefs – we have just eaten her.”

Basil had just eaten Prudence, his lover. No more of this incident is mentioned in this book.

But according to JB, “She was forewarned, you know; Basil did say that he’d like to eat her and Pru did reply that he shall.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Of course it is. You can’t really blame me if I said I wanted to strangle you with your hair like Porphyria, and you said I shall, and then I did it, can you? I mean, I did warn you.”

“… are you planning to strangle me anytime soon with my hair?”

“Not at the moment, no, but I will do it if you wish, dear.”

JB has some serious sadomasochistic tendencies going on. I should probably feel frightened rather than amorous about this.

It’s back to 23.5 inches.

The only drawback is… I nearly keeled over in the bath. I’m not sure why.

After reading Nana by Zola, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (by Laclos), and a few works by Stendhal, I have come to the conclusion that French are sex addicts.

There are few types of sexual perversion, as far as I can see. There’s the clichéd “Italian”, who just loves women (Casanova, anyone?), then there’s the British kind where apparently it is acceptable to fornicate in the back street of Covent Garden against a wall (which scared the bejesus out of me when I discovered the said fornication at ONE in the morning on the way back from the library), and then there’s the French kind, who puts up some romantic excuse to err, “nique". Baiser, fouer, mettre comes to mind. As much as I love my French friend (who I have not heard from in months… why does he go AWOL whenever he finds a new “love of his life” which lasts about three weeks, giving me the impression that his life is actually three weeks and he goes through reincarnation every time he breaks up?), his behavior does nothing to plead against the case.

In fact, after reading Rouge et Noir, my mother and I have started to call Julien Sorel “The Ladder Dude”, since that’s basically all he does in his spare time apparently: put up a ladder against a girl’s window, climb up, and fornicate.

Unfortunately before I embarked on Stendhal’s works, I was engaged with Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, where the only romance comes from exchanging glances with Claudia Chauchat. Very understated and mild indeed. Then I was promptly thrown into the world of Ladder Dude climbing up the walls to err, get into a girl’s bed, and Fabrice Del Dongo sleeping with basically everyone in the village to avoid his aunt who’s coming onto him. At this point my head exploded.

I have been to Paris, known French people to a certain degree, and I’ve come to the conclusion that whoever thinks Paris/France is the city of flowers where perfume permeates the air, chansons stream through the cafes and every man you see is Alain Delon and Jean Malais is seriously deluded. I mean, come on. Chopin had written home when he had first arrived at Paris, and he had said fearfully that “[This] is a terrible place… there are advertisement posters for STD treatments all over the town”. The guy who looks like Julien Sorel is a British American, J’s black book is onto book two and when it rains the streets turn yellow from all the dog shit.

I love French culture. I really do. Their food’s scrumptious and I love their couture. But that’s not all to a ethnicity, is there? 

Apparently there’s a new fad or something that involves coming up with the most retarded, long answering machine possible. Here is the one from JB:

Hi, this is JB. Unfortunately I was recently blasted with antimatter ray beams and if I were to touch the phone the energy released from the contact would make the Bikini Island debacle look like an incident. So leave a message when my body matter is no longer anti.

Here’s the one by IM:

Hi, you’ve reached IM’s phone. Unfortunately I can’t find my phone, I think it eloped with my sock and my USB cable. So leave a message and I’ll try to bring them back. Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with them.

?!?!?!

Why can’t people just stick with “Hello, you’ve reached, --- ----. Please leave your message after the tone, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. *BEEP*”?

Still writing the new novel. I can’t believe I’ve already started with absolutely no plotline in my head. This is unlike of me, but at least I have characters in place; now I need them to move. Unfortunately I now do have a vague idea of what’s going to happen (it involves J being a little thoughtless…) but as to the path to get there, I actually have no idea. I’m just hoping this thing writes itself. I’m probably never going to publish it, but now that it’s online I have to write it, meaning I can’t just write the scenes that keeps pickling in my head then forget about it.

Writing all day is a difficult task. I kept getting stuck on a phrase, or maybe a character would say something out of place, or nothing would happen and my characters are stuck, frozen in motion, waiting for my next command. I got cramps above my shoulder blades and my brain was like a bunch of cotton after wrangling my head trying to keep the flowing, with nothing coming out. I might be hitting a writer’s block; unfortunately no amount of therapy will fix this. I just need to wait it out. But I do have a schedule and I do want to have the story somewhat finished by the end of this year! Argh.

It’s so much easier when you’re writing from 3rd person point of view, or already have established characters. Adding Arien and moving Reno around was very easy compared to this. Although the characters are based off of real, living people, the setting’s completely different (I don’t live with them, for instance) and therefore it’s harder to imagine what they’d be like if I lived with them. Apart from it being chaos and me the victim, I can’t really tell.

The website’s coming along okay; the target frame problem is solved, but the image for the background of the new C’Est La Vie became quite gory. And not really romantic. I’m starting to think I’m better off gun-blazing actions rather than realistic fiction, contemporary fantasy, or romance. Well, romance is a given; the one I wrote flopped so much that I never even finished it. But the original fiction I’m writing at the moment (contemporary fantasy) is much more difficult to write, since I keep imagining characters running around with guns in hands. Realistic fiction… well, I did start writing a Victorian tragedy but unfortunately I never got around to doing research for the Victorian times.

This fiction’s the hardest I’ve written so far; it’s always in first person but the speaker changes by every chapter, and making each character sound different is difficult. The main character and speaker two are easy to create, but toss in speaker three, four, five and I think I’m screwed. Maybe I should keep check of the real-life-counterparts’ speaking patterns… except it won’t work, because one of them is FRENCH and can’t speak decent English. I can’t make Jean speak Frenglish, because it just won’t work.

I also need to add female characters. I do have a few in mind that I can use, but I’m not sure how to tie them in… and I better come up with it soon.

Anyway, I should put up a writing schedule so people’ll know when to expect the next release…

So after four years of stewing over a tantalizing bit of plotline which involves my rambunctious friends, vampires, decadent lifestyle and pure silliness, I have finally embarked upon the journey to write a novel (again). This won’t be some Victorian tragedy like The Letters, mainly because while I can write about it, I can’t go all the way to Gieves to ask how much their suit cost back in the 19th century. So here it is.

The title is yet undecided, as I have tentatively tagged a word that vaguely sounds sci-fi, but I’m guessing this will be changing quite soon. Loada fashion-involving and J-induced innuendos in this one.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. Pseudo-realistic fiction isn’t really my thing, but considering that I’m just writing this for fun, what harm can it do?

There is an article released from Yale that states people with active frontal cortex are more likely to develop mental problems due to the fact that they are more prone to judging themselves critically. Which led me to the conclusion that while lobotomy had the completely wrong methodology, it had the right idea. Somewhat.

Then I came across the new healthcare reform bill, and I’m not entirely sure if this is Jesus or lobotomy.

First, the outline of the bill. The House and the Senate have yet to reconcile their differences, but the outline is the same. Here is a very very brief overview:

• You are now required to purchase a healthcare plan. The government does not care if you don’t make money at all or you are Bill Gates.
• If private health insurance is not affordable, the government has a version of its own. Obama says it’s significantly cheaper, but I don’t know if he knows what cheap means. I mean, come on, he’s not exactly from working class. Neither is his wife.
• The Congress projects the cost of this bill to be in the vicinity of $870 billion. When the said Congress brought Medicare into existence back in 1985, it was projected to be around $12 billion in 1990, inflation-adjusted. The actual cost was off by one digit. Greater.
• The IRS will be the health enforcer. Being so good at getting taxes from basically everybody (which I don’t mind), I’m pretty sure they’re going to enforce this bill with an iron fist. Which means fines until you get a qualifying health insurance, and possibly jail time (what?!).
• Necessary health-screenings may now not be covered. This would increase cancer screenings. (So what? They just die?)
• Rehospitalizations of sick and elderly are now out. They drain too much. Old people now are just left to hospice care. I guess you deserve death for being old in this country.
• Pregnant college students will get welfare benefits. While retarded people in twenties get money for not using protection, I guess old people get to pay for it and die off.

I’m sorry, but this just sounds like somebody had a huge plate of crazy for lunch. MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT INSURED ARE SO BECAUSE THEY CAN’T PAY FOR IT. Making it a national requirement to have health insurance then not providing it for free when you can’t afford it is just stupid. It doesn’t help that most people who sit in that building in Washington DC don’t have to worry about affording health insurances.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a democrat. I’m all for national health insurance… but this legislation is so incomplete this is like lobotomy. Good idea, but awful execution. But then again, communism was a great idea, and it never worked.

These kinds of major changes require careful planning from all angles; otherwise it’ll start fraying in half a century (like NHS). This sounds like whoever wrote the legislation just bunged it up together in a week. Not gonna work, babe. Implementing this bill might have been great if it was in 1997, but it’s 2010 and the economy’s in a slump ever since Lehman Brothers crashed through the ground.

So will this bill be Jesus or lobotomy? I’m not sure yet, but I’m leaning toward lobotomy. And like most great ideas that went terribly terribly wrong, communism and lobotomy are now defunct.

The show is about models living in New York. Sixteen, young, and fresh, and quite frankly, ready to be devoured by the industry. What the show succeeds to show is that yes, you need to be a size 00 to be a model, along with the height of six foot. And yes, drugs are rampant. And yes, you sometimes need to sleep with booker, photographer, basically anyone who will offer you a job.

What this show fails to show is that tricking the designer terminates your career (it does NOT matter if you are sixty or two years old), most of the models are living on salads that modelizers buy for them and heroin, they live in apartments with five to a room, rejection is almost the staple of life and this industry is easy to be bored, eats models then spits out the husks then moves onto the next victim without a thought.

And that is what irks me.

J is a survivor. He has survived in the Versace jungle for almost… a decade? Half a decade? Something like that. And for that he should be awarded something like “Long-living model award”. And I have seen the corruption that just permeates the industry; drugs to lose weight, drugs to make money, people with no sexual morals whatsoever, oral sex in middle of the bathrooms and people walking in on accident. All reservations go out the window, and most models spend what they earn usually on the walk back to their rooms. Photographers often believe it is their right to sleep with anyone he wishes to just because he’s giving them a job.

Modeling is not a beautiful life. It is a tough market and people get bored. It is hellish, with rejections after rejections, waiting for hours, getting up early, going to bed late, trying to eat right…

So after all, I can’t really blame J’s antics. The level of stress he goes through must be quite unbelievable; constantly being judged for how you look is rather agonizing.

I really wish someone would shed a light on what they are really like. But then again, it might end up being rated NC-17. So maybe not.

Set heures, le soir…

«Je suis finis! Je suis vraiment!»

«Pour quoi?»

«Vous avez Amy, la fille que je dormais avec?»

«Peut-être. Alors?»

«Son amant entra dans chambre. Alors que nous étions fiancés.»

«A ha! Alors tu es Vicomte Valmont. Eh bien, tant pis.»

«Tu es une femme cruelle. Tu ne garde que je suis dans la pétrin?»

«Err, non.»

Alors, il ressemble habitudes Jeremy ont finalement rattrapé avec lui. Tant pis…

Nous vivons vraiment dans le univers de Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Évidemment, je suis de Laclos, et J est Vicomte Valmont. Je ne sais pas qui est Danceny, et nous n’avons pas Cécile. Mais ce monde est dangereux. Si vous êtes le joueur.

And this pisses me off.

Everybody in my family speak two languages. My mother speaks about five in varying levels. I use Latin, English, Japanese, and (although still learning) French. Which makes my use of language rather diverse.

I think it’s natural for Microsoft to develop bilingual programs, especially Word processors and blogging tools. Word’s fine, as it is adaptable to whatever language setting you are currently using, but Windows Live Writer is another problem. This stinking program only allows ONE language to be used per program version. Meaning, quite frankly, that I am screwed.

I’m not even asking for a translator here. All I want is a spellchecker, since I switch keyboards quite often and this can get problematical. A grammar checker would be nice, but I’m not exactly demanding it.

Is it so hard to add another language to Windows Live Writer? Methinks not. Just allowing the users to download the dictionary files, saving them in the writer dictionary folder, and then maybe adding a macro or a button to switch languages seems to be sufficient. I wasn’t aware of the fact that while programming is quite beyond me at this moment, these said tasks can be excruciatingly difficult. Or that is what I am led to believe, since MICROSOFT HAS FACED THS PROBLEM SINCE BEGINNING OF LAST YEAR AND STILL HAS DONE NOTHING.

I ask you, just how much people in this world are bilingual? Well, let’s see… my German friend Fabian (well, acquaintance might be a closer term) is a trilingual. J is a bilingual (despite his total disregard for grammar). I am a bilingual (at least). My father is a bilingual. My other is a pentalingual (if you count being able to carry out daily duties in that language as a lingual proficiency). Half my friends are bilinguals. Half of Germans either have command of English, French, or both, and their own native language.

So tell me, oh Microsoft, why are you delaying this particular function? Does chief of the software developer team for Windows Live Writer have a grudge against bilinguals or something? I’m running out of patience here.

In the meanwhile, Microsoft developers are keenly adding useless crap – like twitter notification – while many multilinguals have to sit on their rear ends, patiently waiting for the updated version to come out (which might be in a decade, for all we know), or go through the tedious job of writing the 2nd language post in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, run the spellcheck through, the paste it into the Writer, all the while wondering if the unseen format codes in the said files will accidentally transfer to the Writer. Very inconvenient indeed.

I considered moving to Wordpress, but that just takes too much work. Not to mention that while I am considering hosting my own website (I do have a lot of half-written novels that I’d like to finish but can’t, since I keep writing sporadic scenes without finishing them), I have not started moving toward my goal. To be honest, I don’t even know if people’ll visit, and what exactly is the point of a website that remains unvisited? It’s like a book that is never read by anyone. Completely and utterly pointless.

So the problem remains. And I am at a loss…

My friends, it seems, seem to have rather odd interests. IM is VERY interested in Mobile Suit Gundam series, which appalled me. And now that the new movie came out, I stumbled upon another of their “interests”…

Sherlock Holmes.

Now, I myself am an avid Holmes fan. While the tricks detailed in his adventures are rather simple sometimes (The Solitary Cyclist case was rather easy enough to predict the outcome), I do love his mannerisms and well, his “flash of brilliance” as opposed to the very common John Watson. But never had I been a Sherlock maniac, as IM and JB are.

So when I inquired them whether I should go see the newly-released film, their immediate response was a solid, definite, “NO.”

“Why?”

“Because no American can do Sherlock Holmes. It is a sacrilege to everything Sherlock stands for. Only an Englishman raised in England during the Victorian era who attended Oxbridge can exude that kind of particular mannerisms. It is rather obvious that Sherlock would be clean-shaven, meticulous in his habits.”

This young man who said it, might I add, is an Englishman who, while not raised in the Victorian Era, had attended Oxbridge and is clean-shaven. I’m not certain what to think of this.

“Has to be an Englishman, hasn’t he?”

“Of course. A Scotsman has a rather different outlook of life. No, only an Englishman, I’d say; Jeremy Brett was Sherlock himself. Rupert Everett isn’t so bad either, but none shall stand up to Brett’s rendition of that detective.”

I should hope so. After all, Jeremy Brett spent his life doing Holmes.

“What about the game? You know, Sherlock Holmes VS Jack the Ripper?”

“That game is a farce. If Sherlock was kind enough to be charitable to the street urchins, I am going to eat my hat.”

“But, IM, you don’t wear a hat.”

“Regardless, I will eat my hat. That is no Sherlock. Sherlock is a cold-hearted, calculating, meticulous, observant bastard.”

“… why do those phrases sound peculiarly familiar?”

“Because, Gabrielle, they were used to describe you at some point. And me, now to think of it.”

“How pleasant, JB. I’m honoured.”

I do agree wholeheartedly, however, that no rendition of Holmes, no matter how much money had gone into it, shall beat Brett’s rendition of that detective who dwells in 221b Baker Street. Now to come and think of it, I do remember popping in at that particular post office which is around the corner of 221b Baker Street in the Granada Television edition.

Much is said about Sherlock, and so much more isn’t said; but as far as I know, those two shall always admire Holmes’ ingeniosity (which the word, by the way, apparently dos not exist according to my spelchecker). I’m just hoping I’m not Watson. Being above-average is one thing, but being the utter definition of “common” is quite another. I’m not asking to be the spark of brilliance here, but being the foil to the spark of brilliance is rather humiliating by itself.

We then went onto typing Sherlock. To me, Sherlock is an INTJ. He is meticulous, has his own little rules, introverted to the extreme (in fact, he only had one friend during the varsity years), uses his intuition rather often, and almost seems heartless. Watson might be… well, I don’t know if he’s an extrovert or an introvert, but he certainly senses rather than relying on intuition. He might be a J, but again, I can’t tell.

So there we are. Hollywood has messed up Sherlock (how dare they to think that they can match Doyle’s writing?) quite badly. Sherlock Holmes cannot become action, because he rarely does move until the very last minute. He’s a chair-detective, not an action detective, leaving all the physical exertion to Watson if at all possible.

But seriously, Hollywood, haven’t you anything better to do?!