Saturday 8th October

I woke up at 13:30 and felt really well for the first time in ages. I hauled myself up and promptly vegetated in front of the computer for a while, fiddling with a mondo idea I had to get around the Resnet's incredible slowness (idea with-held to avoid it getting slower). Look at me! 700Kbytes/sec! NYAH!

I then went onto the CompSoc chat server for a while to chat, and ended up in a horrible flaming argument with someone whom I took offense to calling something crap without justification, and whom took offense to me calling him a troll/close-minded for not considering external arguments. Fun to be had by all. I felt proud that I could continue until he couldn't be arsed to counter me whilst doing around 4 other things at once. Argumentation is so reflex I can do it without any effort at all. Is that a bad thing?

I ended up talking until well-gone 16:00 with a friend online, at which point I had to excuse myself to go do laundry, which was probably about the most untypical thing I could have done. I went to the central kitchen and found the kitchen completely packed with Anika and apparently a bunch of friends and the living room completely full of people watching a football game. It was packed! I found a bin-bag and asked if I could borrow it for laundry, but Will said it was best not to and instead to gave me two carrier bags, which was really kind of him. He also told me that the machines take one pound and two twenties, though one is broken and may go for free. The drier takes two twenties and a ten. I thanked him and packed all of my coloureds into a bag, figuring I'd have to go for a coloured load and a non-coloured load.

I had to ask Anika to take me up to the room. There were two washers and two driers, capable of taking two bags' worth. I managed to shove in whites in one and coloureds into the other, and set them going. Interestingly the washer on the left was broken and didn't need any money, you just whacked it in the right fashion and it went off. I didn't have the foggiest idea how much powder to put in without a scoop, but there was a very friendly English student there who showed me the right amount by sprinkling in the powder. I headed off to my room and fiddled around on the Internet whilst the machines rambled.

When I got back every single machine was in use and there were two Law students and two Maths. students packed into the small space. Apparently the driers had been just set off, so I bided the time buy buying a drink from the drinks machine in the room and chatting to the people about the subjects they were taking. There was a bit of a scramble for the drier on the bottom, but it turned out the lint filter was absolutely disgustingly filthy, and in return for taking the plunge and cleaning it I got to put my loads into the drier first. It was getting close to the buffet dinner that the pride were putting on, so I figured that I'd have to come back some time in the evening to pick up my dried washing. I still have another load to go! I should really get into the habit of doing this weekly instead of daily.

I got to my room and just as I got in my mum phoned me on the computer. The network was too clogged down to actually talk and I couldn't reroute Skype to get around the Resnet's speed deficiency, so I sent a message instead. I got rung on my mobile, and chatted for a bit, but got interrupteed. I can't mention any names or specifics, but someone was shy and needed someone to walk with to the Pride welcome buffet. I was honoured, and I went there with them.

The buffet had party food and lots of odd, though friendly, people. I generally talked to people about where they were from and experiences they had, and got on quite well with the person I went with (though he disappeared shortly after) and a few other people from different cultures. The only annoyance was that a lot of people kept on asking if I was going to Rainbows and when I said it wasn't my thing got really, really loud and almost sounded insulted. There were a few other conversation strands:

• Experiences as a child (parents, etc).
• Travel, and experiencing culture-clash.
• What courses people did.
• Clubbing scene, though I largely stayed out of it. For some reason, most of the people I talked to weren't interested in dating or relationships at all.

I ended up talking to a very nice young looking boy about a multitude of different subjects, before I found out just before she left that he was actually a she. Dementia arrived just before I made that mistake and I couldn't get over it. Eventually people started filtering away from the buffet to go to Rainbows (the local gay bar) and Dementia and I wandered back to my room for a while. I put on some chill-out music and he almost ended up falling asleep, so I started playing him some of the more ecclectic parts of my music collection, including:

• Tipsy — Kitty Takes a Ride
• Oingo Boingo — Queen's Revenge
• Queen — Flash

We headed off to the Computing Society gaming session where we largely chatted. We got bored pretty quickly (1 o'clock) and left, and I headed back to halls to my room. I was about to go to sleep when someone knocked on my window from the outside. I heard noise from the kitchen as well and I headed over there, the windows were open, there were strangers outside the window. I asked them who were the prats knocking on the windows and they said there had been some youths running past with shopping trolleys. Just at that point a bunch of strange people walked into the kitchen followed by Will looking very confused and tired. They looked around, laughed a lot and went off. I suggested we get the subwarden but I was overruled by James because 'they weren't causing any harm… we could always lock the door.' I headed back to my room and messed a bit on the Internet some more before heading to bed, knackered.

: 09 Oct 2005 02:21 |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem