All entries for Tuesday 27 September 2005

Walk To Shops #4

I found I'd taken pictures of the walk to the local Supermarket, Tescos. Check the phone photos gallery on the left. All four in there are of the trip.

: 27 Sep 2005 22:18 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Day 4

Woken up by Dad at 8:30. Didn't answer in time as the phone was hidden under the bedcovers (??). Went back to sleep, and woke up again at 10:10, feeling really refreshed. Ah! What it is to lard around and not be commented on, but rather one to comment on the cat-draggings who saunter into the kitchen after a night of wild fun last night! I remember vaguely that I had to lock my door as one or two kept on accidentally opening my door at midnight and apologising for entering the wrong room.

I had a shower. Glorious! 5 stars! Instead of the dribble of water that's either freezing or boiling (I have to bounce between medium and low constantly to get the right, if sinusoid temperature) from our electric shower at home I get a big, manly WHACK of water at just the right and proper temperature. And no, the shower doesn't remember your setting and took another 10 minutes to figure out whilst I froze. Not so nifty. I went for breakfast in the common room, and everyone jumped and looked freaked, apparently someone had asked two seconds before where I was. I had breakfast, and they all scarpered after some brief conversion.

It seems that I'm the only person in the corridor who actually rejected Oxbridge and chose to come here. All the others either didn't apply to Oxbridge or were rejected. It's a bit annoying, as there does seem to be just that slight undercurrent of envy or even anger at the fact I decided Cambridge was a hot-house from hell. I tend to keep quiet when people ask about where people applied to now.

I then spent a while configuring Apple Mail to use the Warwick mail system. I eventually settled with IMAP SSL with password authentication to the host smail.warwick.ac.uk, and unauthenticated SMTP to web-relay.warwick.ac.uk. IMAP is generally better as it's design for displaying a remote mailbox as opposed to polling and downloading everything to a local mailbox. Id est, webmail won't lose the messages I download.

I got a panicked phone call from mum – apparently she can't comment on my Blog and has been talking to IT support here. They're investigating it. I've heard this seems to be a problem all over the shop. Sheesh! At least Warwick are investigating it… I hope.

I went off to town and met up with Olga. Amid discussion about the person I bumped into yesterday (we're both of the impression he was a bit of an arrogant tart, much like me I figure) we went to the Philosophy lecture after I bought a pad of paper and a sandwich from the Arts Centre, determined to give them a second try. The sandwich was actually relatively nice (Prawn Mayo) for the price (£2.00). Not as good as the sarnies I had at my Gap Year job, though.

We found the room for the lecture and got thrown out as we were 15 minutes early. That lecture then managed to go on 15 minutes late, and I got talking to people in the corridor. I found out that the people doing Introduction to Philosphy are largely Philosophers, though there were a large cluster of Computer Scientists as well. I met a couple who were discussing the games they'd been playing on the local LAN. I offered to play something with them, but they all have really powerful computers and play games mine would choke at. Not that I'm too bothered, it sounded like they were just playing bang-bang shoot-em-ups anyway.

The Philosophy Lecture was… difficult at first, but fascinating when bits of it clicked. It for the life of me just looked like common sense defined, with a spattering of random jargon. However the lecturer was certainly bubbly and interested in his stuff and made philosophic jokes than the audience actually got, such as the fact that colour is subjective, especially after drinking some of the stuff available at the dance last night (apparently called 'Baananorama'). I actually managed to make a fair few notes and definitely will look up the reading that was mentioned, a contemporary piece of Philosophy by 'Mackie'.

The lecture ended and I signed myself up to a seminar with 10 or so others, surprised to find wireless in the lecture theatre allowing me to access my timetable and email, finding that Computer Science had set me up with an account for their machines (did I mention Warwick seems to think centralisation is a political swing?). Olga and I left to the Computer Science building (the receptionists are using Macs, I discovered) and tried the computers. They're very well set up Linux machines. You can use any of them and retain all of your settings and so on between them, as they all have the same software (and oodles of it!).

I headed back via Costcutter, parting with Olga, and tried to find lamb mince or tissues. They had none! Nooo! I eventually found someone who wanted to go to Tescos with me and acquired the two items. The walk to Tescos took forever! 25 minutes! The scenery was absolutely stunning though, and I saw three tamish squirrels scurrying and digging, seven territorial ducks and something else large in the bushes that I'll fancy was a fox, but probably wasn't.

I bought the ingredients needed for spaghetti meatballs and chilli, got back and found that the introductory session to statistics had been rearranged, sadistically, to six PM! GAH! Culinary dreams dazingly dashed disastrously! Digging for delighful delicacies, I made Pepperami Noodles mixed with soup, and a French salad with a quick dressing. It was messy but pretty gorgeous! I hung around in the common room, waiting to head off, playing various games with the other such as wink murder and catch the plastic bag.

Anyway, I went to the statistics introduction which was largely pointless and just a way to get a handout and to laugh at the lecturer's jokes (and even more at her name). It looks like it'll be easy so I'll definitely give it a shot. We got back and found out that the meeting in the kitchen had almost finished, so went off to another kitchen to hear it. It turns out Arthur Vick has very strict rules on accomodation, but in return we get golden service. I settled down in the kitchen for a chat and (for others) a booze-up. It rather fell apart. Some random guy came up to me and said Macs were crap and I shouldn't use one, without me even saying anything. In return I told him he could play on the PS2 if he wanted, deciding to disarm with friendliness. He left and the rest just listened to pop, got drunk, discussed random pop-culture and I eventually left when I'd drifted so far into the background I became part of the furniture.

More surfing and an early night for this antisocial, and to read up on the philosophy. In the process I found the philosophy notes AND REQUIRED READING were in MS Word format, despite being assured it was in PDF, and they didn't work in NeoOffice/J or iWork on my Mac. Damn it! Why should I have to pay an MS tax to study? I wonder if I should risk talking to the professor about it.

: 27 Sep 2005 22:17 |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem