Miscellany — Last week of November, first week of December

Before I get into the week, I'd like to share this link to help explain my ochem veteran views on the natural food craze: Organic Water
It kind of revives my faith in humanity, or at least in people that aren't chemists by trade who still take the time to look up some definitions. It also reminded me of the chemical free salt from ochem last year.

My days are pretty boring. Since I don't have class before noon until wednesday, I stay up late and sleep in a lot. I have 8 AM water aerobics MWF in a couple of months, so I'll need to change that habit, but it's really hard to get up when there's nothing to do. There's no weekly homework, hardly any reading to do (and only for one class, to be honest; my lit prof doesn't really expect us to read beforehand, which is just as well because I don't like any of the assigned works and we read them out loud in class anyway), and no regularity to my schedule. Last spring was very structured. MWF, I ate in saga with my fellow ochem students, went to ochem, sat in the same seat next to the same every day, ate a piece of gum, spat it into the same garbage can on the same route to german, sat in the same seat every day next to the same people, went up the stairs to writing, sat in as close to the same seat as possible, next to pretty much the same people, had another piece of gum to keep myself awake, then went and got a cheese and tomato six-inch sub on italian herbed bread with olives and mayo in the cafe-thing, then kind of knocked around and did homework and stuff for the rest of the day, sometimes eating dinner in saga, with karate in the evening. TTh, I had a raspberry scone and a small white chocolate mocha for breakfast before arthurian lit, then went either to work or to lab, ate lunch (usually the sandwich described above), did homework, and probably ate dinner in saga. Weekends I went to church and winco and/or walmart. It's a testament to how regular my life was that I can remember exact details seven months later.
Now, I have to write down details of my day to remember what I did. I wake up as late as possible, and haven't gone to bed before 1 AM since time immemorial. When people ask what I did over the weekend, I have to think about it for a really long time.
I'm looking forward to getting a new routine, because eternal vacation isn't all it's cracked up to be.

On monday and tuesday, I didn't do anything of note. On wednesday, however, TWO things happened. First, the university and possibly public transportation had a strike, so I didn't have my history seminar. I'm a little bitter that they went and picked 30 november for the strike. 1 December is just as good of a day to strike. Plus, it would have got me out of my 9-5 class day... Actually, general consensus in the flat was that striking for pensions is kind of a stupid move right now, give the economic state of... everywhere. Would you rather have a pension or a job? This surprised me, frankly, since my flatmates all seem to be more liberal than me. Perhaps as a break from politics, we had english night. Josie made shepherd's pie, which I didn't eat because its base is "mince" (ground beef), and Adam masterminded 'bangers and mash' which is british for sausages and mashed potatoes. We also had peas. Felicity and I had vegetarian, um, 'bangers'. I keep forgetting that I'm not the only vegetarian at our communal dinners now, but I'll get used to it just in time to go live in a house of carnivores. Yay!

Thursday turned out better than I expected, other than accidentally sleeping very late because I couldn't fall asleep until very early. This may be due to my erratic sleep cycle. Sleeping in until after noon the day before was not my best idea. After miraculously finishing the practical lab work very quickly because I was unusually on top of things (I'm never on top of things in lab), we ended up analysing the GC data from last week, which took forever, but the software was incredibly similar to the software that whitworth uses for NMR spectra, which I used almost once a week last year, yay ochem. I think I may have restored some good will between the impossible little frenchman and myself by totally pwning everyone else in that area. Much to my surprise, I'm becoming rather good at the computer aspect of chemistry. Too bad they kept making us do hand graphs for everything else, and this practical isn't even assessed. Grumble.

Friday I made three trips to the post office to mail a package. I ended up mailing two, because one kept being too heavy and potentially costing three times as much as a package weighing 100 grams less. I also went to see Dream House with Freya (my pakistani-british friend from biochem), which I spoiled for myself before going because I really am not that big a fan of movies that bill themselves as "suspense/thriller". It was very good, though, and I didn't really need to spoil it.

Saturday was paintball! Jessi's friend who is now also my friend Keri organised a trip to newcastle's Delta Force paintball course. It was really great, and I had a really good time other than the bit at the end where my team decided that moving forward was not the best option and ended up lurking behind bunkers for the whole ten minutes while the other team stormed our castle in about five minutes and I was a sore loser. I recovered and still recall the whole experience very fondly; just don't put me on a team with a group of people including someone who looks like kim jong il. Yeah, blame the eastern asians. It's funny how much the non-oriental aisans dislike the ones further east, and I've had to amend my definition of "asian" from "formerly called oriental, before that wasn't politically correct" to "everyone who's from the continent of asia" and this causes some paradigm problems. Say "asian" and I think china, and not much west of that. I've got a pakistani friend who describes herself as asian, and I'm sitting there thinking of oriental instead of vaguely arabic. Anyway. I made friends with more internationals: Ramin (Azerbaijan), Hazma (Turkey/Germany), Vincent (France), Jenna (Germany, possibly Turkey), and Ricky (India). Again, my knowledge of everywhere except the western hemisphere plus a small amount of european history and eastern asian cuisine types (I can generally identify the american versions of generic chinese (I don't do regions), japanese, korean, thai, indian, and possibly vietnamese foods) was highlighted. What's the official language of azerbaijan, anyway? At least I've heard of the country, and kind of almost know where it is, so I guess it could have been worse.
I've got some annoying little bruises on my left hand and wrist, my merrills will take some tlc and a lot of water to recover from the mud, and I slept for almost five hours after getting back. In the grand scheme of things, I consider this a success.

Oh, and on monday 5 december I successfully made white sauce without any measuring spoons or cups and had a fairly delicious dinner of spaghetti, garlicky white sauce, and broccoli. For the win!

A long week of skipping class and getting stuff done, and Northumberland — Weekend to Friday 18 November

First off, I would like to apologise for the parenthetical abuses on Thursday. I'd also like to apologise for the soul-killing that happened Thursday. I just kind of need to get this off my chest, because I'm terrible at telling stories out loud and I don't want to foist this on my flatmates. There are pictures of Northumberland at the end! Hang on until Friday!

This weekend all I did was sleep. I did take a walk in the fog, but that was fairly uneventful except for the part where I didn’t know where I was. Not to worry, I figured out where I was and only ambled down one dead end before I finally got back to the road with the cemetery. 

Anyway. Monday, I skipped english literature in favour of writing my assignment, and I got to 1200 words that night because of it. Apparently nothing happened at all in lecture, so all I regret is the possibility that my prof might ask why I skipped. Not because I feel guilty about skipping, but because she'll try to make me feel guilty about not having started my paper until approximately three days before it was due. She is of the opinion that she gives us a lot of useful information in an awesome way that we can really use on our assignments (not that useful, not that awesome, and there was nothing AT ALL on the topic that I picked), and she would sound so offended if she thought that I thought that the two months she gave us wasn't enough time. Okay, we read for my topic about two weeks before it was due, but okay, sure. That was more than enough time. And I would end up agreeing that her module is, like, the best thing ever when in fact it's the most horribly structured literature class I've ever taken. I feel like there were better authors during the seventeen hundreds. I'm sure of it. There had to have been. 

Tuesday I skipped history to work on the lit assignment. I got a late start because I stayed up late the night before trying to write, but I had a hard time getting many more words in, anyway. I was also on an apple cider craving, and I haven’t really seen it here. I need to check again, but I think I’m down to my last few packets, and I’m saving them for the next assignment and my history assignment. 

Wednesday, I agreed to meet Freya, the girl with whom I did extensive work on our last lab report. Before that, I read for my history seminar, went to my history seminar, and finished my essay. Win! I think the main problem was that there simply wasn’t enough to say about the criminals portrayed in the play that was related to a thesis that I could write down. When we finally started working on the lab report, it went slow. Neither of us really cares that much about electrophoresis (I usually like it, but nothing much is interesting in this class), and the results were bad, and I, at least, didn’t actually attend the lecture in which we may have learned how to interpret them. I'm not sure if that lecture even existed; the only slides up on Sunspace were ones from the seminar part. Again, there wasn't that much to say.

Quickly, before I get into Thursday, I need to draw attention to the fact that I really, really do like biochemistry. It freaks me out sometimes, like when I get oddly claustrophobic thinking about how tiny biological molecules are, and the fact that they are in an aqueous environment, so how small are water molecules, which have air dissolved amongst them... How big are the spaces between molecules, and what is in that space? How many tiny voids are in a glass of water... Are in me?

At that point, I usually have to take a massive deep breath because I realise I haven't been breathing. 

An xkcd comic that just came out really sums me up. I'm just posting the part relevant to me, but you can click the link at the beginning of the sentence to see the whole thing. It's about the type of map that people like based on what they're like, and the Peirce Quincuncial is really my thing.

No, seriously, I really love looking at hands. They are incredibly cool. To wrap this up, I really do love biochemistry. Please, please, do not take Thursday as me hating biochemistry. And there are pictures after, I promise. You can even skip Thursday, as I wish I had been able to do, and I won't care.

Thursday I finished up the lab report in the nick of time after skipping both lecture and seminar. Again. I'm really, really going to go to both next week. Really. At least this week, there was a greater purpose than sleeping in... After finishing, I went to lab, which was billed as a revision session (revision equals studying and/or reviewing here, something that I just got recently). I had high hopes of being able to leave early after being left pretty much to my own devices for a while and showing that I knew what I was doing, as happened last time we had a workshop instead of lab. Distressingly, this was not the case. Instead of Monica, the condescending lecturer who says "lineweaver" as if there's an extra R (linearweaver), we had the impossible little frenchman. I almost hope he reads this, because I think it would really clear the air between us. Unfortunately, he still has to grade two more lab reports and my final, so hopefully he never sees this. To put this in a small amount of perspective, I'm writing this after having an awesome day Friday. The post gets better, and I'm not really bitter and hateful.

Fact: I was never awfully fond of him. Initially, his inability to really express himself in english put a damper on the possibility of me liking him as a lecturer, and his subsequent displays of incompetence in understanding what anyone else is saying clinched a vague sense of dislike towards him. Normally, I can overlook this and we got along pretty well. My lack of experience with this university's procedures and previous classes seemed to put him off a little, but he was generally reasonable. Today, though, he was in a rotten mood. He snapped at everyone who came in late, which he doesn't do when it's a proper lab and time actually matters, and was generally irate and condescending. When he collected our lab reports, he grumbled over my lack of staple. A whole one lab report of mine has been stapled, and that was done by the library staff when we did that weird remote turn-in thing. I put my name on every page, and it's never been a problem before. I'm also kind of trying this thing where I don't spend money, so I haven't bought a stapler that I will just have to leave here because I already have one in my desk in Pasco. I was in a pretty good mood, and commented that I didn't have a stapler. 

"Buy one." Instantly, I was on the offensive. I went from a little nervous about how short my report was to stiff and speechless with rage in about a heartbeat. It was like that time in high school when I was literally shaking with fury when some smug little middle schooler punk insulted a friend who was doing something right. I don't usually get the urge to "slap that smug little look off your (demi-or-straight up-swearword) face". In fact, I think this has happened about twice in my whole life now (in real life; that scene in King Arthur where the bishop tells Arthur to bring his men home if he wants them to get their freedom doesn't really count because it was designed to do that to people; I looked for a video clip on youtube but couldn't find it). Twenty one years is kind of a long period of time to have something happen only twice. I don't really know why the impossible little frenchman brought this out in me today over something as stupid as a stapler. I know I respond poorly to insult and the "wrong" tone of voice, and, on occasion, an irate eyebrow twitch in my direction, but I can't help myself when it sneaks up on me. I'm not proud.

I quickly determined that I was unlikely to get out early because the impossible frenchman explains in great detail every single aspect of some questions (he actually went into the properties of light when explaining spectroscopy, using terrible metaphors and analogies. It was worse than Dr. Gårdestig the swedish physics professor; he started off with a random green beach to talk about waves. I still don't know where the beach came into it. His accent made it slightly hilarious (because the long e sound gets kind of turned into a short i sound, haha, he said a dirty word), but not funny enough to excuse the fact that this isn't helping anyone.) while skipping over others completely. One of the questions involved an equation that we'd never seen before, which was... messed up. Unless they're handing out an equations sheet, I don't want to see this nonsense on an exam. We haven't used this ever before, so don't put it on the exam. kthnxbai. 

He'd been slipping in composure throughout the slightly too long time that we were given to work on select questions, but he lost it about two questions in. Two guys didn't seem to be paying attention (was anyone?) to his oddly detailed and unhelpful explanation, so he "asked" if they wanted to leave. Of course they wanted to leave. Everyone did. We'd all been plotting it every time he walked out of the room, which he did quite a lot. In any case, the atmosphere in the room was awkward and chilly as Adam (not from my flat) and Jedward walked out rather triumphantly (although they still looked a little embarrassed; getting kicked out of class gets kind of old after grade school). This didn't stop Freya, who was giving me a ride home, from trying to talk to the girls at the end of the bench. Things got more and more awkward as the class dragged on. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone. War was being declared on the impossible frenchman, who should have followed his country's historical precedent and surrendered. I did get a hint on how enzymes work, although I need to look that up sometime, but that was all that I gained from the class. That, and a growing sense of a firm dislike for the impossible frenchman, since the incredible rage and desire to actually inflict harm on someone else subsided pretty quickly. No more vague irritation (he really is the worst at explaining anything at all, and never seems to get when someone has decided that the topic would be best pursued with someone —anyone— else. All he does then is ask repeatedly "Do you understand" (left the question mark off on purpose; he doesn't really use it) until you give up on noncommittal grunting because you hate to lie and finally say "YES! I understand, and I really have to go now, I'm late for something, anything, please let me leave now." Sorry about the long parenthetical; I'll just end the "No more vague irritation" sentence now.). 

Another thing. Freya is the type of person who will interrupt boldly as a self-preservation and diversionary tactic. If she's bored, she just starts talking, whether over the person who's talking to her or to a person who's talking to someone else. She tried to save me from the frenchman last week when I was trying to figure out why I couldn't take an exam early, but nothing stops him when he's on a roll. In light of this, it's not surprising that she gave up listening to the frenchman in favour of talking to the girls at the end of the bench, although I was, at the time, a little surprised because the frenchman had just cracked down on Adam and Jedward talking. This is when I really started avoiding eye contact with everyone. I'm pretty passive aggressive; I'd have stayed to the end of the class no matter how irritating his voice was. Besides, he had already been short with me regarding the staples (and it still makes me angry a day later, wow), and I didn't want to make things worse, especially after I had almost inadvertently insulted his teaching style in a lab report and gotten a 0 on that particular section. It wasn't that bad, and the instructions really were scattered. How else was I supposed to explain the fact that our enzyme was probably cold because he just explained here and there that you were supposed to warm it up for a bit, and my lab partner for the day didn't hear it because she was already at the front getting the enzyme off the ice? It's not my fault that he's the worst at explaining. However, I was beginning to think that the animosity was not one sided, and that, like my former podmate hating me over the hair in the shower, he hated me for the lack of staples. I didn't want to make things worse, but it might have been too late. Frankly, I get the sneaky suspicion that he doesn't like any of us. Fact: no one in the class likes him, so it's unsurprising that he'd pick up on the low-level animosity at some point. We've tested this in karate, and multiple people directing emotion at someone does tend to affect the target. I was, in any case, on damage control, trying to make as few enemies as possible.

Freya, however, was going nuts. She hadn't eaten much all day, preferring to sleep over eating breakfast, and, as mood and gastrointestinal happiness levels are related, she was in a pretty foul mood. When the frenchman insisted on a break over the class's protestations that we'd rather power through the very last question and then be done, we made an attempt to sneak out. I do say we, because I wanted my ride and I'd already put my bag with my computer in her car. Impossible frenchman kept coming back into the room, though, and he asked Freya if she was going somewhere. 

I sensed danger, and kept my head down. Freya was all the way gone, though. She was hungry, she was cranky, she was tired, and she was leaving. And my bag was in her car, so I was leaving when she left. 

She replied that she was leaving, yes. She said something about her head and started around the frenchman, who had accosted her on his way in and her way out. I didn't see what he did, but I hope he didn't turn around when I hurried out the door behind Freya. I'm still a little nervous about how this will affect my grades. We signed the register, though, and he marked us down on some sort of personal register, so I don't think I can be counted as absent from lab. I'll be needing to keep my head down, though. No more skipping lectures, and I really need to study up on biochemistry stuff that will be on the exam in spite of never being in a lecture. Yes, I'm bitter about that. I'm trying not to be bitter at people, because I know myself, but I can be bitter about poorly constructed exams.

Friday! Friday! No more Thursday! If you skipped Thursday (and especially if you didn't), PICTURES!

Adam (from my flat, not the one who got kicked out of lab) had promised a week ago to take a few of us (limited by car space) to Northumberland. In the end, it was just Jessi, Felicity (whitworth senior art major from Clarkston, WA who lives next door who I had never even seen before coming to Sunderland), and me. 

We went through a tunnel under a river. Jessi saw a van coming straight at us on a skinny road and reacted by yelling "CAR! big!" This became something of a meme for us; why did she try to describe it? "Car! Big! Green!" "Car! Big! ...Uh, it has a white top!" (this was followed by "I was panicking even more because I couldn't tell if it was blue or white!"). Jessi was a pretty good sport about it. 

We picked up Adam's dog Lilligan (it always sounds like he's saying "Lillian") on the way to a castle with a beach. She's a jack russell terrier, which Adam had mentioned in his attempts to describe how hyper she gets, but she's also long-haired, which Adam didn't mention. I was expecting a dog that looked like wishbone, but she looks nothing like that unless she's wet. 

She does get very hyper. Adam's descriptions were a little bit over-the-top, but I think that he's trying to get himself out of the centre of discussion. Two of our favourite topics as a flat are Adam's dog and Adam's mum, one of whom he is very fond and one of whom he is rather embarrassed. I think he's out of danger from demands that we meet his mum thanks to introducing us to his dog. I think that it's because he's the only one of us whose dog and family are in driving range. Most of us feel that his mum would be pretty cool to meet, but Adam steadfastly refuses to accept this. This conversation regarding Adam's imitation of Lilligan happened, however, that really highlighted his feelings on his mum: 

Jessi: "It was hilarious!"

Adam: "I don't remember this at all."

Me: "You were trying to demonstrate how terrifying she is." 

Adam: "Are we talking about my mum now?"

Felicity: "I am so glad that that segue just happened." 

After getting Lilligan, we headed for the coast and castle Bamburgh, which took a surprisingly long time. When we finally got there, though, it was well worth it.

This is the Bamburgh castle.

There were a whole bunch of island-y things out in the North Sea. We never really figured out what was on them, except probably lots of birds.

The sky was really pretty, but my camera doesn't like doing cool sky pictures.

I had some striking memories of sand traps at golf courses as we tried to find the beach.

It was quite imposing.

Lilligan. She was moving pretty fast.

Pretty sky, pretty landscape.

Gorgeous sky, nice silhouette 

Beach! Finally... 

Lilligan had this thing where she would set her stick down, decide that it was buried, and start digging. The problem with this was that she kind of went backwards with the force of her digging.

It was a very clean beach. 

Imposing castle silhouette! And Adam's head in the front left corner there.

We all wrote our names in the sand and made fun of Adam's handwriting.

Jessi had fun with the dog.

Jessi was probably more fun to watch than the dog, actually.

That backwards digging thing again.

And the stick was in a tide puddle.

More castle silhouette!

We decided to storm the castle, but felt that this wasn't the best way to go.

Adam, Jessi, Felicity in front of Bamburgh village

Not storming on this side, either.

We saw a secret staircase and decided to climb it.

See that dark slit-like thing on the wall? That's where the stairs ended. There's a gate and a lot of pigeon poo in there.

I'm not sure why it has a fence around it, but it's a cool rock...

I think we tried to hop this part of the fence. We failed.

Behind the gates? Rubbish bins. Such a fancy enclosure...

In spite of our valiant attempts to scale fences and sneakily climb likely-looking walls, all the gates were locked and all the walls were either impossible for us to climb or were guarded by sneaky piles of grass clippings. After we finally gave up due to not wanting to get any more nature all over us, Jessi drove Adam's car for a while. We were doing pretty well until Adam yelled that she was turning into the wrong lane while she was turning (she wasn't), but she recovered pretty well. Felicity and I didn't get to drive because we don't know how to drive manuals. After dropping Lilligan back with Adam's sister, we went and had dinner at the pub in his hometown. The food was kind of weird, but we experienced some cultural things, like "pie" means "food with puff pastry set on top" and custard is something you pour over your food. Felicity also gave Adam some tips on how to pick up girls with his accent while he's in Maryland.

When we got home, this greeted us.

"Oh, and there's a huge spider there, if you haven't seen it."

I thought Adam was being mean to Jessi, who was up on top of the chairs on the other side of the room by the time he finished saying "spider", but it really was there.

Hence. Jessi hates spiders.

Don't worry, I killed it. Tomorrow we're going to a football match, so I'll have a new post for that.

Helpfulness and Cultural Sensitivity — Tuesday 8 November to Friday 11 November

Tuesday was the "be helpful" day. I started off by turning the bin back over after SOMEONE (flo, conor, felicity, and maybe adam) turned everything in the kitchen over. Chairs? Check. Stools? Check. Theme night bottles on the windowsill? Check. Speakers? Check. Microwave? Check. Coffee table? Check. Toaster? Check. Electric kettle? Check. Bin? Check. Recycling bag? Check. All the papers on the bulletin board? Check. The random hairspray bottle we have on the counter? Check. The basil and parsley plants? Check. My cup of dried out, perfectly good white tea leaves and a tea ball? Check.
I was impressed, if peeved. I turned the bin over, since I had to throw my teabag away.

Chairs and coffee table. Bob, significantly, was not turned upside down.

Stools.

Speakers, and the weird Christmas moose.

Microwave, kettle, toaster. The kettle still had water in it...

The bin hadn't been turned over yet when I took the pictures.

They had only turned one paper over, but all the others got turned over when they got back.

We actually had someone come in from the office and ask us to turn our furniture back over. Apparently it's a safety hazard.
Since it was raining in an irritably misty fashion, I decided that I needed a head covering. The high volume of practicing muslims on campus makes me leery of wrapping a scarf around my head, I didn't feel like wearing the hat I did bring, and I don't have anything with a hood that I would wear outside my own flat. Besides, hoods are difficult with my hair. They just don't like each other. I had planned to meet Freya, the girl who I'd helped monday, on tuesday afternoon, so I went to the library, got a book to read for history seminar, perfected my lab report, and went to H&M for a hat, all between 10:30 and 12:00.
I got a call from Freya (the lab report girl) as I was heading back from H&M. The guy with the neckbeard from biochem's computer had crashed, and could I email him a word document so he could redo his entire lab report? Thanks.
I would never leave a fellow biochemist in the lurch, especially one who is as baffled by the lack of mathematical education in this country as I am, and especially one with such an impressive neckbeard.
History lecture was the most boring thing. Usually, there's something that can be concluded from the historical records. Today? Nothing. We could only conclude that we really don't know what went on with literacy and education in early modern england, but first we had to go over what we might possibly conclude, and why it was wrong.
The high point was when a random australian who sounded oddly american came in and excitedly told us about a "summer abroad volunteer" thing. Delphine, the french lecturer who is also the least annoying lecturer I've had so far, looked a little peeved when she poked her head into the room, but allowed her to come in and bounce off the walls. There was a theory that she was some random street person who made up some fliers and put on an australian accent to mess with people.
The afternoon was consumed by biochemistry. Freya had just had a death in the family, so she decided to push her due date back while getting as much done as possible, but I had to figure out the library turn-in system. It was pretty easy; you just need your name, student number, module leader's name, date the assignment is due, date it was assigned, module name, module code, and the assignment title. I still felt pretty accomplished when I turned it in.
When I got home, I made crepes. I will never let a crepe tuesday pass me by. I still haven't quite figured out the way that the hob (stove) heats, because sometimes, 6 isn't hot enough, and other times, 4 is too hot. Whatever. The crepes were pretty good; I suspect that the few that Jessi didn't eat have either been hidden or devoured by the party downstairs.
I've been having trouble getting to sleep because there's literature assignment all over my bed making me feel guilty and there's thumping music downstairs.
Funny story. I got an email from whitworth a while ago with the registration schedule. I was all set to register at 3PM Wednesday, when I remembered the time zone thing. Panicked, I tried to remember when 3 PM pacific time was in london time, and convinced myself that it was at crazy early in the morning. No, it's not. It's at 11PM london time. I reset my google calendar, discovering a cool time zone feature along the way.

Wednesday, I really didn't want to go to class. I got to bed late on tuesday night (stupid lit assignment), and I had slept well but short. It was freezing outside my covers because I think Jessi opened the window when she got home, why I don't know. In any case, she didn't close it. After closing the window around 7, I went back to sleep until 7:45, when my first alarm went off. I then slept intermittently around my alarms, which I only seem to be able to turn all the way off when I'm still asleep. I seriously considered sleeping through my seminar, seeing as the sky looked bleak. It sounded like a good idea, and a perfectly valid reason, until I considered the fact that my professor can actually tell if I skip that class. I regretfully dragged myself out of bed.
After class, I helped Freya (whose name is actually spelled Freeha, but she hates that spelling and tells everyone "Freya" to simplify things, which sounds like my "I'm from oregon" modus operandi for identification here) with her lab report. I was starting to feel a bit used, but in the long run I'd rather feel used than mean.
I won at registration, and I got into almost everything that I'd planned to take. I resigned myself to intro to public speaking instead of interpersonal comm, and got a fitness-wellness gen-ed in the form of water aerobics (held monday, wednesday, and friday at 8). My next MWF class is core 250 at 10:25, so I'll have time to change and such. Win! I also got both of my 3rd year chemistry classes and their labs at reasonable times, and I think my core d-group is with a cool leader. I also have karate 2, which claims to have Sensei Canon (instead of the new guy that he called on to take over so he could get a new job that he liked better). I'm not getting my hopes up, but it would be awesome if he was back.

Thursday I skipped my 0900 lecture. I looked outside and it was all grey... I couldn't make myself get up. I did go to the noon part of the lecture, which was kind of interesting. I had a nerd freakout, though, when I was thinking about how small molecules of water and air are to fit inside cells and capillary electrophoresis tubes and that sort of thing. I was actually briefly claustrophobic because I was thinking about all the molecules that were completely filling the room and smashing into everything. I was in a huge room that wasn't stuffy or even that warm, with no one sitting right next to me. It was really weird.
Between seminar and lab, I called this haircut place called Sherlocks, mostly to see if they were walk-in or appointment, since I had a coupon and needed a haircut. They took walk-ins but preferred appointments, so I made one for Friday at 13:00 (1PM). The connection wasn't good, so I ended up giving my name as Anne because Raeann would have been too hard to spell. I may have also given my last name as Hudson by accident. I ended up nearly gaining a northern accent when I was giving my mobile number, the last three digits of which are 116. For some reason, my pronunciation was confusing, so I slipped from my fairly broad uh (wuhn) to more of an oo (woon). I hope I'll be able to pull this off in America. It will be nice being able to say "Washington" and having most people know that we're either there already or that I'm not talking about the capitol of the country. I'm tempted to switch to Anne anyway, just because of the wide range of spellings that I get for Raeann in America. I'll respond to it, so...
Lab was... pointless. There were only enough gels for 8 groups, which meant that one person got all the experience. Also, no one got all seven bands that we were supposed to get. Fail. I had odd flashbacks from senior year at PNNL, since that was my project for the last few weeks. I didn't actually learn to read the gels, but I was pretty good at preparing and running them.
While waiting for the gels to run (90 minutes), Freya and I went for coffee. Neckbeard tagged along, and I discovered his latent veronica capabilities. He doesn't seem to be able to stand silence. I also came up against the strangest instance of cultural insensitivity that I've ever witnessed. This could be because most white americans, especially in a study abroad situation or a university setting, tend to be really cautious about offending. Even if you think someone is dead wrong, chances are that you won't say a word.
A small amount of backstory is required for this to make sense: 1. Everyone in england smokes. Not everyone, but pretty close. There are cigarette butts everywhere.
2. Freya is pakistani, which I don't consider asian, as such, but I guess it really is. I think of asians as eastern asians (oriental is a type of rug).
Freya also smokes, and she did so on the walk to starbucks, which is right by an entrance to the bridges (so fairly visible). She commented on how awkward she feels smoking in public, because there is apparently an asian social stigma against asian girls who smoke in public. It's not considered a very, um, moral thing to do. Neckbeard, who is bulgarian, flipped out. He thought it was ridiculous, which it kind of is (let's face it, every culture has something that another culture considers ridiculous embedded in it), but he also thought that it was somehow offensive, and kept insisting that she didn't have to be sneaky about smoking. She obviously didn't want to be seen as a person of loose character by other asians, and kept trying to change the subject while maintaining that she doesn't like smoking in public.
The only thing I can really think to compare it to is this. It's as if someone moved to a place where general opinion was that underwear is all you need. Naturally, most (sober) people from the first world, at least, think that pants are also required. They're going to keep wearing pants because they're just not comfortable without them. Then someone who doesn't think pants are necessary comes up and belittles their insistence on wearing pants over their underwear. No one else in that society cares if they wear pants, and no one has really commented on it to date because it's not that big of a deal, but this local makes a huge deal out of it. Of course the pants-wearer is going to keep wearing pants.
Of course Freya won't just start smoking in public.
Geh. It rather soured the afternoon. Plus, neckbeard doesn't know how to shut up, seriously.
After having a frustrating discussion with the impossible little frenchman about exams, I went home and flopped into the kitchen, where I stayed for a few hours. It was very relaxing, not needing to do anything.

So, exams? Biochemistry modules all have their exams in june. Even the fall semester modules. Even the fall semester modules that end in december.
What.
And the exams are all accredited, so I can't have them just write up a slightly revised version that I can't pass along to my classmates to their benefit unless I managed to get the whole biomedical sciences department to back me on wanting exams in january.
Unlikely. And I'm probably not going to be able to just write an essay. Looks like I might have to go to a british embassy or consulate, where I am, in essence, on british soil, and sit the accredited exam five months after the course finished. I don't know what this means for my credits, and I'm not sure if I can choose to just not transfer them. I'm trying to not stress about it right now, since I still have an essay due in less than a week that I still haven't really started.
Of course, if my credits won't transfer... I have to wait until monday for a lot of things, like getting the exam schedule so I can look into going to london at the end of January, setting up a meeting with the ISEP lady here, and call iceland air to move my ticket up about a week. I'm thinking I might just go to London and leave from there, although the luggage situation would be a little tricky. I don't want to take what will likely end up being three suitcases and my bag on what will probably be the megabus, but possibly a train.
We'll see.

Friday I slept in until almost noon, for the win, and then went to get a haircut. Jessi came with me to get out of the flat and do some gift shopping, and Josie came to get a travel bag for Bob Diddyfish, who has been the subject of a few inquiries by the university. I was a little nervous about the haircut, since the plan was to get a rather dramatic shortening, but it ended well. I'm still in the confused stage between "My hair looks awesome!" and "Oh, it's so short! Where did it go?"
It's pretty short around my face, which is throwing me off when I try to move it out of the way of food or something because grabbing the ends means brushing it away from my face instead of tossing a lock over my shoulder. Lunch was around 14:30, and was obtained at Fatso's, which has jacket (baked) potatoes, soups, and salads. Possibly also sandwiches. I got a jacket potato, which sounds cooler than baked potato, with cheese and a smallish salad that came with it. We ate at Murray Library, where we ran into Flo, who'd just come from his first day at Liebherr, where he will pretty much be a translator between the Sunderland branch and the main corporation in Austria, which apparently refuses to speak english to its english branches.
When we got back, I got all my books for my lit assignment out, then fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was about to head downstairs for dinner when Jessi hurriedly informed me that Adam was about to go to Asda, and did I need anything?
Yes. I decided to use next week's food budget to stock up a bit, and as a result, I shan't be getting anything from Aldi next week. When I run out of milk, I'm out until the week after. Of course, I can just use everyone else's until then, so I'm not worried. I got lots and lots of fresh fruit, which was exciting, and a new container of flour for crepes. I may have gone overboard on the fruit juices and yogurts (sometimes pronounced yaw-gurts). I'm going to miss hazelnut yogurt a lot when I go back home.
I am a bit worried about the going back home situation, but I'm kind of trying to forget that over the weekend. I need to focus on writing that thrice-accursed assignment.

Tuesday 1 November to Monday 7 November

This post will be fairly disjointed because I don't remember many details from the week. Nothing too interesting happened, although my lab report still wasn't due (Nazgul shriek of rage).

It's a little quiet, crank your speakers for the full effect of how I felt.

Oh, I gave a presentation wednesday that wasn't too bad. I wasn't very pleased with the end result. I was having a hard time coherently connecting the primary source to the secondary sources while making the slides, but I thought I did rather well in the end. My professor asked me some questions that I knew the answers to, and no one had that glassy, "this doesn't make sense and I can't even understand her accent" look, which was encouraging.
Over the course of the week, I worked on that lab report (grumble), made up the presentation, got serious about my english lit essay, and slept in too much. I also started NaNoWriMo, the "write a novel in november" thing that I keep hearing about. The idea is to write 1667 words per day to get 50000 words in 30 days. I'm slightly addicted to updating my word count. I take my computer everywhere in hopes of being able to work on the story in my free time, since I'm still in the euphoric phase that I get at the start of anything. I'm also trying to build a buffer for when I have to do, you know, schoolwork.
I also got my first lab report back, and, well, I passed. Sort of. "Passing" is above a 39% (holy cow) and I got a 41%, so by my standards, I failed miserably. By comparing my grade to those of the other people at my lab bench (I've described some of them before; Adam and Jedward were the only two from my "usual" group), I pwned that assignment. I was the only one who passed, but I think they may have been kind to me on account of my internationalness. They won't go so easy on my second report, which was better anyway. I think it was better, at least; I can't actually remember what it was.
Hmm. It's the past now; I never look back. (ha)
I can't remember what day it was that I walked the accidentally long way back from the university. I think it might have been wednesday, but I'm not sure. I wished I'd taken my camera, because I don't have the motivation to take another random walk, and the area was starting to look a little sketchy. Not the area that I headed into so much; it was pretty residential. The street I ended up on runs parallel to Chester Road, which I have documented photographically in the past. I know this now, but I wasn't sure where exactly I was at the time. While it was nice, I was approaching a hill and had been walking for long enough, so I turned down a street that should take me over to Chester. It did, but not before making me afraid that I might have to bludgeon someone with my laptop. Relax, Mom and Dad, I keed. First, I didn't actually see anyone that looked suspicious. Second, I haven't seen anyone that looks that suspicious in Sunderland to date. I think it's the narrow roads and slightly rundown nature of most houses here. I saw a million "To Let" and "For Sale" signs in cute little houses, but I refused to let them influence me. (sigh)

On the weekend, I went to the Sunderland city library down the street to see if they had any books I could use for my lit paper.
I was disappointed. They might have a very small section on 18th century literature, but they mostly have modern, pop culture stuff.
I also got a very sneaky bottle of water that turned out to be flavoured. I was incredibly disappointed, and I think Jessi thought I was being irrationally so. Greggs has normal water and flavoured water, and while the bottles have some differences (like the flavoured one is pink, as Jessi pointed out), there are pink bottles of normal water in other stores (as I didn't point out because it really was my fault for not checking the label). I suddenly understood how the guys in the junior english class to which Meagan Bradshaw brought peppermint ice cream (which was delicious) were so offended by the fact that it wasn't fruit-flavoured. Sure, Meagan told everyone beforehand that it was peppermint, but they assumed that it was fruit or bubblegum and were extremely vocal in their disapproval of the gross deception.
That was how I felt. Imagine, expecting nice cold water and getting overly sweet raspberry cranberry water. Blech.
Sunday was Guy Fawkes Day, named for the main conspirator in the Gunpowder Treason Plot that attempted to blow up Parliament way back when. They were executed horribly either on the fifth of november or were caught on the fifth of november (remember remember the fifth of november) and Fawkes was burned in effigy every fifth of november for quite a few years/decades/centuries afterwards. In practice, it's like the fourth of july. Lots of fireworks, time spent with family, some old history revived, and fireworks. They also do a lot of bonfires. We didn't do much for bonfire night, since the place that had a fire was reported to be boring, so we stayed in and played with the Clanny Cat.
Also this weekend, I was finally able to get onto WhitNet and pick out the classes I want to register for, which was ridiculously exciting. All the classes I need and want fit into the same schedule! Yes! That's never happened before!

Monday, I helped one of my lab-mates with her graphs. I was starting to feel a bit used (how did you get this far in school if you can't even make a graph?!) until I found out that she has a lot of responsibility and stress at home in addition to being in one of the more intense majors work-wise. I figure that I can add a small amount of pedantry to my life to be nice. She did assure me that flapjacks are easy to make; all I need to do is look into "golden syrup", which I suspect to be closely enough related to corn syrup that I'm not worried. The one that I had today kind of tasted like honey, so I think the recipe is pretty flexible.
Now I'm blogging instead of working on my thesis. I'd like to thank everyone who reads my blog for giving me a reason to avoid my homework.

Macaroni and Rage — Tuesday 25 October to Thursday 27 October

Monday night/Tuesday morning was consumed by unexpected insomnia due to very unexpected sinus congestion (I couldn't breathe through my nose at all, and I hate falling asleep with my mouth open, so I lay there and tried to breathe through my nose for a few seconds before gasping and freaking Jessi out. This went on for at least half an hour before exhaustion finally set in.) Another potential cause of my insomnia was the fact that I had tea with sugar about an hour before trying to settle down for the night. This would not normally cause a big problem, but I usually have honey. Sugar seems to affect me quite differently from honey. Happily, I didn't have class until noon.
Class was fine. I got a dirty look from Josh the hairy, irritable southerner for working on my presentation more than three days before it was due, but I may have earned that. Worse things could have happened.
I made crepes in the evening, seeing as I had slept in so as to stay awake in class. It's a pretty good time to make crepes, since people are around and can help me dispose of them. Unfortunately, Jessi always tries to eat all of them. She suspects me of putting some kind of addictive substance in them.
We went to Asda, and while I found macaroni noodles sort of, we won't be doing American night for a while because people are busy or unable to make things in the time they have. And then we're all going to Edinburgh this weekend. With luck, next week. I bought coloured medium cheddar cheese just for this, so hopefully it lasts. I'll check the expiration date and freeze it before then if I have to.
Regarding macaroni:
Aldi and and Tesco don't have it. I suspect it's something of an american pasta. This is what I was looking for:

This is what I found (minus the "cheese").

So this is what I got.

Same basic principle (small tubular noodles with a bend or five). 

Before bed, we played a few rounds of hearts that ended up taking longer than I expected. However, I made a valiant attempt to do more of my biochemistry when I realised that I would have to do the whole report, with four graphs and several calculations, in one day.
It was all pointless. I couldn't figure out the equations we got. I eventually went to bed well after midnight.

Then there was a freaking fire drill that woke me an hour before I would have had to get up. They even timed us as we staggered out of the flat. Snarl. Cold and irate, we were allowed back in at 07:35. I turned on the heater to warm up the room a bit before I had to get up in about half an hour and learned a valuable lesson: the heater keeps Jessi up. She flops around, makes grumpy noises, and gets up to turn it down. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an "off" switch, so she tried to turn it down three times in the half hour before my alarm went off again. I was kind of too sleepy to move, but I did feel hideously guilty. I also felt that saying something would give her rage an outlet in me, so I stayed out of the way. I realised that night that she had experienced a sneaky hate spiral, and shared the hyperbole and a half post with her. Her laughter was very gratifying. The history seminar was fine; I took notes on the order of the presentation and suchlike. Then I retired to the library to try and puzzle out the calculations that were driving me insane last night. They didn't get much better.

I've almost attained A Beautiful Mind status scribbling capabilities.  Only a few steps left to full-blown schizophrenia.

There was this equation that I needed to get from the data collected to the manner of analysing it, and it had some random centimeter. I'm normally quite good at going from equation to equation, once I get warmed up and set on the right path, but this had me scribbling random exclamations and drawing arrows, crossing them out, and redrawing them. At one point, I crossed out my query of "enzyme?" before turning around and writing "enzyme yes" above that. I was going insane. I had reached that weird conjunction of rage and confusion that leads to madness.
The situation improved somewhat after I decided to just forget that the stupid random centimeter was there, since it goes away in its usual equation without affecting the answer. I hope it won't cause me to fail miserably...
Things got better after coffee, since my mood was vastly improved after an hour of drinking a white chocolate blended mocha from starbucks (it was worth the money) and thinking about something other than biochemistry (I outlined my presentation). They didn't get better after lunch, which was a fifteen minute break for a cold cheese and onion pasty and a juice box of ribena (long i and e, rye-been-a), because I switched to the uni computers to edit the graphs so I could print a nice, not-demented report. It proved easier than I was expecting, although trendlines remain the bane of my excel existence.
My calculations are ALL WRONG. Well, it's more like my data are ALL WRONG, which is true enough (*guilty cough*). I ended up attaching the full graph at the end while putting in an edited graph that makes any sense at all in the body of the report.
Finally, I finished it at 19:15, after 7 hours of work. I think it's actually my best report yet, thanks to my extensive explanations. My plans of going to Aldi for two flapjacks and an energy drink were scrapped because it was too dark to walk alone, and Aldi closes at 20:00 anyway.
I didn't get to do laundry, either, because I was too tired when I got back home ten hours after I left that morning. I need to to that Thursday evening or Friday morning, or I'll have to get new clothes in Edinburgh. While it's not an unappealing thought, I don't really have the money for that.

Thursday started off with a trip to aldi to get flapjacks and an energy drink. The weather today is nice walking weather: cool and cloudy, without noticeable rain while I've been outside.
The biochemistry lecture was much better, since the professor is an immunologist and also assumed we knew how to tie our shoes.
I printed my edinburgh ticket during the break and holed up in the library's very purple study room.

So much purple!

The second part of the lecture felt a bit long, but that might just be because I suddenly had a spurt of creative energy that could not be acted upon. Hence this blog as soon as I got out of class. I was going to eat my second flapjack, but I happened to look for the nutrition information. One of these delicious little bars has "457 kcal" (so 457 calories as reported by US companies. In fact, the calorie is such a tiny measure that kilocalories was quickly adopted as the standard for food, but the k in front turns people off of perfectly healthy food, so the FDA allows companies to report nutritional information in the form of "cal" instead of "kcal").

I decided to maybe save the flapjack for later and also look up less excessive recipes. 

Lab was irritating.

You recall that lab report that took me 7 hours and considerable frustration on wednesday?

It's due next week, and this week was spent in learning how to do the graphs for the report.

Yep. So I spent two and a half hours in lab rehashing the stuff that I'd already taught myself to do. I'm really, really good at Michaelis-Menten and Lineweaver-Burk plots now, though. Also, I was doing them right. Bam. No centimeter was ever mentioned by the lab instructor.

My frustration at rehashing was not helped by the fact that the lab instructor was the lady who talks to us like we're kindergarteners. Granted, she's better at explaining things than the impossible little frenchman, but she pauses in weird places. Her emphasis habits really grate on the nerves after about ten minutes of uninterrupted talking, and she lectured for forty minutes. She says Lineweaver (which I heard at least once as "linweaver" and therefore adopted that pronunciation) as "linear-weaver" and it drove me insane. My tic started acting up, which usually leads to RAGE. I powered through on the fact that I saved all my work to a USB stick and can refine my report based on the new instructions we got.

Things got better when I got home and had, like, five pieces of toast to try and use up my bread before we leave for the weekend. I did my laundry, and then got sucked into "a quick game of hearts." 

Five hours later, we finally finished the sixth or seventh game.

I shot the moon. Twice. This has never happened to me before, and I've only seen it done twice. It's a caveat of hearts — if one person gets all 26 points (13 hearts plus the queen of spades), then they get 0 points for the round while everyone else gets 26 points each. It's hard to do, because you need really bad cards that don't give you away right at the beginning. Both times I've done it were unintentional.

I felt like a champion... until everyone ganged up on me the next round and I ended up with 25 points while everyone else except one person got 0. Ouch.

I'll be in Edinburgh until monday afternoon, so I won't be responding to any texts, emails, or comments. I could take my computer, but I doubt that I'll have internet and it's not worth the risk of having my computer nicked from the hostel room, because I'm not carrying this thing all over edinburgh for three days. No. I will take my camera, extra batteries, and a notebook so that I can make good blog posts when I get back.

Monday 17 October to Thursday 20 October

Monday was pretty uninteresting. I mostly watched old doctor who episodes, and grudgingly went to class to discuss gulliver's travels. My edition was randomly abridged, and it didn't tell me. It cut out all the scatology, or discussion of awkward body functions and characteristics. While I don't mind not having the rather disgusting descriptions, I was irritated by the uninformed exclusion, especially when it's for a lit class. Gross as it is, it's a part of Jonathan Swift's writing style, and there's actually an essay question on it.

I had another successful crepe Tuesday, and it's become a recognised thing in the flat. "Hey, you're up early— Oh, yeah, it's tuesday." The day went downhill, as I was forced to discuss politics in history. This is topic that I try to avoid if at all possible, whether I'm at home or abroad, because politics creates artificial divides in casual friendships. Closer relationships, like dating relationships, should probably be based on a mutual agreement about the way the world works, but I'm not looking for that here. People want to talk politics with me because I'm American, and American politics are kind of related to everyone else's, but I don't like talking politics. The day was salvaged by a) crepes for lunch and b) the Early Modern Mafia.
The Early Modern Mafia is what my history professor called the general perception of the criminal underworld in Early Modern England. I want shirts of that, and I'm thinking about doing my final essay on it. It's pretty fascinating, the perception of crime versus reality versus how can we tell?!
Tuesday also included a ton of homework. I'm trying to get my history presentation going and my lit essay question figured out before we go to Edinburgh, since they're due either the week that we get back or the week after. I also worked on my lab reports, which were miserable. I had to explain to Jessi why I couldn't just drop my terrible data points that killed my results. It's a crime against science, and something that one does not do.
Tuesday night, we talked about prostitutes because Adam needs to interview one for his documentary. First, his plan was to wander around sketchy parts of Newcastle at night with his film partner, but then his mom (mum) set him up with the location. Flo made lots and lots of jokes. "Oh, are we going to pick up the prostitute now?" "What's your mom's name? I need some advice." Poor Adam is actually kind of nervous about this, because he doesn't want to seem like he's a, um, customer, but he does need to attract their attention so he can interview one. I'm hoping that he shares his documentary with the flat.

Wednesday was pretty uneventful. I mostly did homework, and then blogged instead of doing more homework. I also discovered Dr. Horrible, which is a short musical done during the writers' strike a few years ago. It's pretty much awesome. I would have stayed up later to watch more of it, but the internet was being flaky.

Thursday was lots of biochemistry, as usual. My lab partners were Adam, who I keep thinking of as Peter for reasons unknown to me — do I know any Peters that even vaguely resemble him? No.— and Jedward, whose real name is in fact Edward. The experiment was frustratingly repetitive and dull, and we were ready to go way before we were done. The impossible little frenchman was as impossible as ever. I'm really hoping that the class improves, not that I think it really will, because this sucks. The lectures are uninformative, the labs are tedious... I'm a bad scientist. Really all that I hate about lab is the impossible little frenchman and the tediousness of science without fancy instruments.

I switched to the new blogger layout, which has been around for a while, I think. I'm having some trouble figuring out the labels format, since I finally got used to the old one. This is what the old one should have been like, but now I have trouble with it. Go figure. I'm blogging now to avoid circulating Conor's birthday card, seeing as it would involve stealth, which is not my best quality, and actually knocking on people's doors.
You're probably still thinking about how bad of a scientist I am. So am I; but here.
I'll make you forget that I'm a hideously bad scientist by distracting you with pictures:

Cool wall!

Delicious!

More delicious!

EVEN MORE DELICIOUS!