Things

Happy things

1. My amazing macroecons lecturer, whom I adore! Because he’s so brilliant, eloquent, hardworking, sincere, has got a wonderful British accent, terribly charming, not at all arrogant, not preachy or uptight, well-dressed, knows how to grab and hold the attention of all of us (irritating rowdy paper-plane throwing ones included)…. My admiration is really not baseless or foolish ok. I really am very very grateful to have such a fantastic lecturer! (And I hope my daddy is as great a lecturer back home.) J

2. Frisbee, which I adore as well! Ok, I cannot play, do not know the rules of Ultimate, and have never even watched a proper game played out. What I do know, is that I have no flair for it, as is the case with me and most other sporting activities, but still really enjoy it, so there must be something worth hanging in there for! When I say enjoy ‘it’ of course, that really just refers to picking up the frisbee, tossing it only to watch it wobble through the air, and then staring open-mouthed at how others manage to make their Frisbees slice the air, before realising too late that there’s a frisbee headed right for my stomach or the ground near me, thus failing to stretch my hands out in time for any catch either. But yes, though it’s autumn, Hyde Park was beautiful, the weather glorious, and I just might go back to play again. We’ll see.

3. Work: I think I’m actually enjoying economics this year, even though it looks like it’s going to be much harder this year. Readings are interesting, textbooks are interesting, lecturers are alright (and one of them amazing!). And I’m really glad I chose not to take the math module in the end, not least because I don’t have as many 9am lectures!

4. Precocious, talkative, funny little boys and girls at C-zone explorers. That’s like Sunday school for the 7-11 year olds at All Souls, which I hope to go help out with regularly from now on. They really made my Sunday.

5. The great 20p student deal on newspapers, and the freebies that come with Guardian or Independent, like chocolates, dvds and even books! And, the little sudoku grid on the back to keep myself awake between taking notes in lectures.

6. The huge amount of chocolate in our house. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate truffles, chocolate digestives, chocolate Nutella spread, chocolate covered jaffa cakes, the list goes on…Actually, the jury’s still out as to whether this is a good or bad thing. The £3.99 Argos weighing scale in my bedroom tells me I’ve gained weight. Already! Hm.

7. Strawberries!!

Crazy things (or rather thing)

1. Last night, I dropped an envelope into one of those classic big red post-boxes. No that’s not the crazy part, the crazy part is that it was the sign up form for the London Marathon 2006. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to start running and hopefully someday run 42km!!! The thing is, I might not actually get in, 80% of applicants get rejected! Plus my having never applied before probably puts me near the bottom of the pile right away. And running for charity, which means looking for sponsorship, would be too insurmountable a task. Ha. Like running a marathon is not?!?! But I figure, after much persuasion from angela, that hey I have six months to train, it gives me a goal to run towards, something else to put into my schedule and force out some discipline…If anything, I will at least have a healthier lifestyle, and a fitter heart right? So, yes I know, horrible things have happened, people have died running the marathon. But, I’m going to start running and running and running and hopefully keep running and running and running so that I won’t. Remember that this is coming from me, who hated running the 2.4 for PE: Crazy crazy crazy.

Irritating nagging things

1. Internet has been down for over a week in our house now: It wasn’t AOL’s fault (this time) so the BT guy just came today, but couldn’t fix it, apparently they’ll have to pass it over to BT exchange, whatever that really means, so more waiting waiting and sitting around and wishing and hoping. Sigh.

2. AOL’s refusal to honour their promises! Promised a really good broadband deal, now have gone back on their word and are asking us to pay more. Grr.

3. Wardrobe still hasn’t arrived, thanks to most incompetent agent, who caused all this trouble (we think deliberately) in the first place, telling the landlady one thing and us another.

4. My labour economics textbook: which because of it being American spells labour l-a-b-o-r so that all these ‘labOr’s keep leaping out at me from the page, thus distracting me from actually reading and understanding it. The labOr thing was also the reason why I spent so long searching the UCLid catalogue for another book. (ok, that IS really trivial, but irritating all the same)

5. My application for a Student Oyster photocard got rejected! Their reason: my form wasn’t signed and stamped, BUT IT WAS! I am absolutely flummoxed (sorry I just like the sound of it) by the ridiculousness of this.

6. HSBC is still sending things back home to Singapore when I’ve personally gone down to the branch to make sure all the settings are right twice! And if I add to this the irritation over how rude I had to force myself to be to get the staff to explain why (they just didn’t know) I could not apply for a credit card, I might just swell up, puffer fish style.

So: patience, understanding, self-control, 忍. I wonder if my parents have to face as many instances of bureaucratic inefficiency, incompetence and plain untrustworthiness in settling such matters back home. Anyway, looks like there are more points under happy things than irritating things, and the happy ones are all not as trivial. (: Ok, back to readings and more readings.