Sunday, 9th October

Today I woke up at 11:00, a rather optimistic proposition given the fact I went to sleep at 4, but I was trying the brute-force approach to solving the problem of being in the wrong time zone. I managed to stay up long enough to take a heart tablet and get a drink of water, when I made the foolish decision of telling myself that lying on the bed for a second would clear my mind.

The next thing I knew was someone was banging on my door. I got up, got dressed quickly, and headed out into the corridor to see if anyone was around. They weren't so I went to the kitchen, which was similarly empty. I found a bunch of people in one person's room apparently preparing to head out, so I asked if one of them wanted to talk to me about something.

Then Georgina came out of her room and started completely blowing up about me about something negative I'd said on my blog on the first few days. She'd associated them with her and Madeline, and told me they'd hurt and that I should say things to her face. I apologised, said I'd been warned this might happen, and explained I had troubles talking to people. I also added that I thought she was quite nice now, would post a retraction if she wished. She stormed off.

Anyway, at that point, I made a very, very, very silly mistake. I posted a very angsty message to my blog stating it was closed, and went off for brunch. By the time I got back I had so many comments of support I wavered, tried a few half-hearted attempts at puffing up my outrage, but eventually I gave up and wrote everything that had happened so far into my trusty Smultron window on the iBook. Maybe I was wrong about Marmite and it gives you guts in trade for being the effect of a ten megaton nuclear bomb on your tastebuds.

There is a feeling that I learned for the first time today, as well. It's the feeling that is the culmination of:

• I'm in the wrong timezone!
• I'm starving!
• There is nothing palatable in the cupboard whatsoever!
• I have a presentation on Mackie to write!
• My laundry has been left behind!
• I have lectures tomorrow at times earlier than I'm waking up!
• Costcutters is a 5 minute walk away!

This feeling I would like to name, 'bleeeurrrrg'. The only solution to 'bleeeurrrrg' is to not go back to sleep again, and to instead solve all of the problems in order. The order I decided upon was:

• To go to Costcutters to buy supplies and a premade sandwich from said.
• To set a timed shutdown on the computer so it'd switch off at 1:30AM no matter what I was doing.
• To ring up the person I was meant to be writing the presentation with on Skype.

I got a comment on my blog from Georgina and something in my mind snapped. I walked over to Georgina's room and confronted her, about my feelings for the first time and it went very well, in reality she's actually quite understanding albeit very feisty! I also apologised to James for a comment I'd made yesterday and we discussed how things were with the kitchen group as a whole. I really, really should have given these people more chance straight from the beginning. I actually do think I might actually be a bigot about some things, and I should change. But this is what University is for! I resolve now to never resort to hiding in my room unless it's a pre-arranged thing, as these people are really nice. I don't think I could have struck luckier. Plus Georgina gave me a cigarette lighter, and I'm hopelessly addicted to it like anything shiny!

I headed off to Costcutters and spent a tenner on foodings. Most of them were reheatable boring stuffs, but I did buy some onions and some fancy pasta so the bling-bling shopping spree should last me at least three days. I put my chicken into the freezer (look mum, first time I've frozen something!) and promptly talked a bit to the people in the common room before taking the refuse out. I felt proud at my attempts of reintegration into the kitchen community, in fact, proud enough to head back with my laptop in order to do some of my Mackie presentation.

Some people were doing Economy in the corner but got distracted by someone's ringtone being the Cillit Bang remix. I promptly showed people the original on my laptop. That thing is pure genius. I personally don't understand why Cillit Bang don't just use the remix as their advert, it's actually slightly less ludicrous than the original as it wasn't meant to be taken seriously! Then everyone disappeared to the cry of 'ice-cream van' (I guess they know their market!) and the rest (pretty much all of the girls) watched the X-Factor to cries of 'ooh! He's cute!'

I blast-reheated a Chicken Tikka I bought from Costcutters out of laziness, to see what £2.59 of chicken Tikka looked like. I can reveal it looked like chicken pieces in a spicy gravy on rice. Actually, this is what Chicken Tikka was originally for, according to rumours. Some posh person in a restaurant in Birmingham asked for gravy with their tandoori chicken. Unfortunately, there was nothing posh about this nosh, but at least it was filling. It tasted like generic salty spicy chicken gunk. Each mouthful was a fusion of E-numbers and preservatives. Mmm… At least it tasted nice after some reparative surgery:

• Salt
• Pepper
• Mild Chilli Powder
• Garlic Powder

I may have well cooked for myself! Still, after that it was actually quite nice, though the chicken pieces were stringy. At this point I saw Madeline shaking the DVD player in the corner like it was a hi-tech rattle. It turns out a DVD had got stuck into it. So I fetch my computer repair kit, earthed myself, and promptly unscrewed the thing and someone removed the DVD, and helped me with rescrewing it. It worked fine after that. It's funny that I was the only one in the room who thought of actually opening it. At this point I noticed on my email that a war had started on my Angsty Blog Post comment tree. I tried to quell the flames a bit but luckily the whole thing petered out.

I went upstairs to fetch the laundry I'd put in the night before, but there was a sign on the door saying not to use the laundrette. I figured I wasn't using it and went in to fetch the clothes. I phoned mum and talked to her for a bit, but I was so frazzled I only remembered two things:

• Get clothes dried tomorrow or mildew will ruin them.
• Dispute a debit card transaction.

I headed off into the kitchen to see what was up, everyone was watching a film. I cleared up my stuff for the morning and went back to my room, and pulled in for an early night.

: 09 Oct 2005 22:46 |  Comments (4) |  Report a problem