Day 8 (Saturday)

Still no network access, so a day late, again.

I managed to out-do myself today. I woke up at 13:36. That's really impressive, I managed to miss an entire morning. Still, I dragged out of bed and felt really sore, so I checked myself in the mirror. I seem to have cut myself in a load of places and there are angry red marks over my chest that hurt. Must've happened as I was stumbling around with the fire alarm.

I headed to the kitchen and there were four people. One was trying a fry-up, with moderate success, and another was Kate, a nice young lady who asked after me, how I felt, what I was doing. I replied that I was probably just going to vegetate as most of my friends weren't available today. I made myself six slices of toast and munched on them, when Kate decided she'd buy a TV license for the room and anyone willing could give her a £10 contribution. I said I was in though I may have to wait a bit to give her the cash.

By this time it had reached 14:30. I crawled out of AV and headed off to the library, deciding to surf the web a bit on their wireless connection and to post the day before's blog entry. I also re-worked a lot of my CS coursework to make it work as the text expected. So much for being a smart-arse with my coding! I wasted the while and headed back to the AV common room at around 17:00, where people were playing on the PS2 and cooking. I played around with them for a bit but I noticed a really strange, almost stab-like wound/rash on my stomach. I decided I should see what the subwarden thought of it as she had first aid, but she wasn't in. I tried to find the tutor but I heard voices from the room, so headed back to my room to check if any network access was working. It wasn't.

My rash/wound was hurting quite a bit so I tried the tutor again and he was in. He was very friendly and helpful and said it was probably an allergic reaction, maybe with the wool in the linen. He phoned NHS direct and they said they'd ring in an hour or so and when they did he'd ring my mobile, so I went back to my room and washed the wound a bit to see if it got rid of any possible allergen. He also talked to me about life in general, how things were, what I did today and suchlike whilst waiting for NHS direct to answer. The sub-warden and tutor are both really, really nice people! Pity they have to be so strict when reading out admin stuff.

I went back to the kitchen and told people about my rash and that I should probably stay put with a few people. Then they all went off to see if anyone was around in other kitchens, so I distracted myself by putting on some music and reading a girl's magazine that I found on the floor(!). It was really banal, here were some of the subjects:

• Someone's ex-boyfriend slashed her face with a razor when she dumped him.
• Charlotte Church is a stuck-up rich donkey.
• Someone hit his head and forgot how to love people.
• Sending raunchy picture/video messages is a form of foreplay.

Some other people returned to the room from shopping and started cooking, and we got talking. We talked a bit about travel, and one lass was talking about her experiences of Holland before one stuck-up cow interrupted and started going on about her experiences and told her to shut up. The interrupted one looked really upset and left-out, so I invited her to talk about where she'd travelled. I couldn't help feeling jealous, she'd been to everywhere from Poland to Egypt!

Then some strange lad came in and started swearing at us and telling us off for not going to other kitchens to socialise. He then told us about a poster, but confused us completely so we went to see the poster. As we did, he ran, tore it off the wall and took it to the sub-warden (what the hell?). Apparently it was a joke poster inviting people to a compulsory 4AM pyjama party. Probably seemed like a good joke at the time. They also told us that student computing services had said the Internet wouldn't be fixed until Friday at the least. That has to be a joke. When I was working at a research establishment of at least 2000 people a complete virus outbreak took a day to recover from.

I got pulled aside by the sub-warden and she explained that the tutor was so tired he'd gone to bed early, so she was the one waiting for a call from NHS direct. I told her if they hadn't phoned by around 11 I'd sleep on it, as the rash didn't seem that bad, but it'd be nice to get some medical opinion on it. She told me to speak to her if anything happened and I went back to my room to escape some of the mayhem.

I installed Max Payne 2 (a gloriously cheesy game that plays like a film noire) at a whim on my Linux box to see if Cedega handled it. To my surprise it did perfectly, and I banged away at that until around 23:00, when the sub-warden popped around to say there hadn't been a call. I decided it was nothing and told her to just phone up and cancel, and apologised for being a bother. She assured me it was fine and that I was welcome to talk to her if I needed to discuss anything over. I don't think I could've been any luckier with these residences, they're really very nice places.

I continued playing the game until I got bored, and at 01:19 wandered over to the kitchen/lounge to see if anyone was still up. I got in and everyone was in sleeping bags on the blimmin' floor, watching a movie on the PS2! I was completely stunned and walked out. Then, thinking, I grabbed my sleeping bag and pillow and headed to join. The film was cheesy and entirely predictable from start to finish, a generic straight romance (boy meets girl, girl drops boy, girl loves boy, boy loves girl, boy is not famous, girl is famous). It was called Notting Hill.

I pinched a bunch of chocolates that'd been left on the table and headed to bed, probably to just be woken up again 3 hours later… I wonder if the fire alarm goes off enough whether people will sleep through it?

: 02 Oct 2005 14:27 |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem