October 25, 2001

People keep telling me that things will look up from now on, well, I’m still waiting.

I got a letter from the computer company that I brought my computer from, they are being difficult and still wasting time to replace my monitor that is unrepairable and still under warranty.

I’m still waiting on a call from the insurance company about what they are going to do with my car. Insurance companies have no conscious. I can’t believe that a accident where I could have smashed into a tree, just because an idiot wasn’t looking where he was going, I have to suffer consequences when it wasn’t even my fault. It will be ages before I can drive again, while the perpetuator of this incident gets to drive off. I have a witness and the police that all know that it wasn’t my fault. Yet I am the one with out a car, and with the prospect of having to fork out cash to get a new one.

When I found out how grim this situation looks, I go on e2 to describe my misery and frustration in a day log, hoping to get more xp considering day logs do pretty well, and I thought people might have some sympathy for my troubles and would upvote my day log just to make me feel better, how wrong I was! More bad news, I loose a lot of xp. I don’t understand. What was so wrong with venting my depression in a day log that people dislike it so much?

I wish I had some kind of explanation for things.

I guess I shouldn’t let things bother me, I have an exam on statistics to study for and at least my parents are letting me use their car so I can see my boyfriend tonight. He can stop me from crying.

* continues to wait for the bad news to stop reeling in*

This is the last straw. I can deal with not using the ofuro(not once in over 1 month!!!). I can take being yelled at. I can stomach being ignored. I can accept parental negligence.

I can stand for almost anything, but my stomach is my weak point. My problem is not that I have difficulty eating the food my host family gives me, but rather that I like eating it too much.

Yesterday evening, while eating dinner with my host family, I was informed by my host mother that I would only be allowed to eat 2 bowls of rice with dinner. This was the latest in a string of efforts by my host mom to starve me.

Some background information: I am tall, but thin. I have always had a big appetite, but I never gain any weight. My appetite is particularly large when I engage in regular exercise, as I do now. My host family is required by the school to give me two meals per day on weekdays. I buy lunch and snacks for myself. I am not trying to take advantage of my host family, so normally I buy the largest lunch I can, plus at least 2 onigiri during the day, so that when I go home I will not eat too much of my host family's food. This means that when you count drinks, I am paying out upwards of 1000 yen per day out of my own pocket for food.

Now, 2 bowls of rice sounds like a lot; however, the problem is that if I were to eat until completely full, I would be able to eat at least 4 bowls of rice (it is a small bowl, only about 5 bites)- out of politeness I have been eating only 2 bowls.

Now that this has happened, I am basically going to try discussing it with them and if there is no progress, I am moving.

i cannot listen to myself speak for any length of time. it creates this incredible sense of horrible insecurity i need to know that you aren't sitting there nodding and smiling i deserve more than nodding and smiling.

such peculiar things happen in this life and i have no idea what's going on right now at all. broken broken broken broken broken broken broken broken broken.

how i feel is like a...

so don't hold me to anything. i can't remember half a second ago or maybe i don't want to. this is just hard lately. things are crumbling and holding and falling and perfectly wrong.

Today I went to a seminar in the lounge of my residence hall called 'Sex on the Pool Table'. It was a generic lecture on making safe sex fun and an intaresting excercise in social masturbation. It was a strange comentary to watch the ways in which people were vocal about their sex lives. I think that a lot of people spent a whole lot of time trying to hide their insecurities by bragging about their own performance in bed. I am not saying that they don't nessecarily have anything to brag about but I remember my own bragging and although I have always felt that I was at least good enough in bed my bragging didn't reflect reality at all. But now I am in a different place in my life and I don't feel the need to brag, even though my technique has only improved I say less. Americans are really strange about sex; it is my understanding that countries like sweden don't make it the kind of taboo that it is here and as a result they have a lower teen pregnancy rate and people are safer about diseases. I can only speak about America from direct experience but I don't like the way people are about their own sexuality here. I don't think that it is emotionally or physically healthy. I am not trying to make a comentary about promiscuity here; I think that as long as all involved parties are consenting (and I mean realy consenting) then there is nothing wrong with sleeping around a bit. It is more about the atitude that people hold towards sex. Americans seem to have a lot of sex that they don't really want to because they feel obligated, because they feel like they aren't allowed to say no or because they aren't given the facilities to think critically about their own sexuality before they are in the act and they don't know what they want.

My god, what a shit of a day.

I won't go into the details, but 5 and a half hours to fix one problem is not an enjoyable experience. Especially when you have next to no idea what you're doing, and the one person who does is on leave for 2 more weeks. Exciting.

Thank god I get to go home to my gorgeous girlfriend, whom I haven't seen since Tuesday afternoon! I mean, that's two days! Damn that bastard who hit her car...

Still, at least the cab trips killed some time, and the day went fairly fast, as it does when you're trying to nut out a frustrating problem. Watching god knows how many reinstalls of Unicenter TNG is not fun though. But it's over now, I get to leave in 20 minutes, and then there's only a driving lesson stopping me from ravaging the body of my loved one. Ooh yeh.

I don't particularly enjoy driving lessons though. Everybody always gasps in horror when I tell them I don't enjoy driving, but really, I don't. I'm getting my license because it's practical, it'll get me places faster (once I get a car), and I can drive Anna back to my place if she doesn't feel up to it. (Meaning I'll get to see her more. See? Practical.) But no, I don't particularly enjoy driving. Takes too much concentration to not hit stuff, and stay alert of my surroundings. I mean, I'm sure it'll get easier once I get used to it, but even then, I'm sure it'll stress me out like it does now. I come out of driving lessons with the back of my shirt soaked in sweat, not because I'm necessarily afraid I'm going to hit anything, just because I've been concentrating so hard and stressing out a bit.

I suspect I have a minor phobia of driving, actually. I have semi-nightmares about it sometimes. So, yes. That's why I'm getting my license nearly 3 years later than I am legally allowed to, hehe. At least I'm not alone, a fair few of my friends still don't have theirs either, so it's not like I'm the last one.

I have to re-enrol this week, for my last year of uni next year. (Yay! I'm nearly qualified for... stuff!) This is the first year I actually get to choose electives, which is cool. Unfortunately, I also have to enrol for the Summer Semester, because I failed one subject of Maths in first year. Meaning I have to take days of from work without pay. And I like pay.

Oh shit, I also have to do my taxes.

And, with the mention of taxes, this daylog is officially dead.

Back to October 23, 2001 | on to ???

Well, my last cigarette was now consumed 27 1/2 hours ago. It hasn't been easy...especially seeing as there are seven left in my last packet. That really surprises me actually...that I could quit, without finishing the packet. The last couple of times I've tried to quit, I waited until I'd finished the packet. Told myself 'no, you don't need to buy another'.

Now after 27 1/2 hours, it's still not easy... But I think I can do this. And I know...that there's a person out there, who I care about deeply...and she's proud of me. That makes all the difference.

My little band is starting to grow. Doug, (the guitarist I've been singing with), and I, got together with a drummer last night. It was great - for the first time, it's looking like we might actually go somewhere. Not that I'm looking at conquering the world - or even my own town. But it feels great to think that there's a good chance we'll get to perform these songs we've written live, to real people. Rob was great. He seems like a really nice guy, and was pretty damn good on the drums. I'd have been happy to say to him, then and there, 'you're in, if you want to be'. However, we've got another drummer / bass player combo to have a look at yet. I'm not too confident that they'll work out...on meeting them, to give them a roughly recorded cd of the songs we've written up to now, they seemed arrogant...I can see them wanting to take control. I've always wanted to be in a band that operated in a democratic fashion - I don't think democracy is how these two operate. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

So for now, I guess I just keep writing songs, playing my guitar (as best I can!), and generally anything to keep my mind away from heading out the back, and lighting up. I can't wait for a couple of weeks to be up, so I can see if my singing voice improves, if I can actually make some more progress, and nail the tricky things that trip me up now.

The only reason I've gotten this far, is that I know I don't have to do this alone.

Looking at this daylog, I thought it could use a slightly happier tale (everyone who had a bad day, go find someone to give you a big hug, never fails), so I give you this, my first attempt at day logging.

I got one step closer to having my own darkroom today, the enlarger, print trays and print dryer all turned up in a huge box yesterday. I bought it from a nice lady in London for £20 and it cost that much again to send it up to Aberdeen. I felt really bad when I first phoned her up, she had only advertised it in a local free ads paper (the Internet is a wonderful device) so expected someone local to come and pick it up, she did not expect a crazy loon from Aberdeen to make her wrap it all up in 10 miles of bubblewrap and take it to the post office. But it arrived in several pieces yesterday and I managed to reconcile them all into one big German enlarger (a Durst A300 if anyone cares). At the weekend I will go shopping for blackout curtains, a safelight, chemicals, paper and a grain focuser (I will let you know if it all works next week).

Since the weekend, I have been suffering from University withdrawl symptoms. I visited my sisters who are at Uni in Durham and now I want to be a student again. They have just moved out of halls into the strangest house I have ever seen, it seems to be built on about 6 different levels, apparently it used to be a coal merchant. I love my job and wouldn't change it for the world but student life kicks ass, I will have to do an MSc or a Doctorate or something soon, or maybe I will just do another degree in something different (like Maths).

Everything2 is cool, I have been reading it for ages now, and decided a couple of weeks ago to get an account and start contributing. I made level 2 yesterday, so I have been busy this morning, dutifully playing the part of the all powerful vote machine. I never realised you could see an article's reputation after you had voted on it, it leaves the problem of wanting to vote on something just to see what its rep is. I will try and resist this temptation and vote in a responsible manner, I will even give responsible noding a go (*winks* at Klaproth) ;-)

I just watched an Episide of Shipwrecked III, which is one of those survival reality shows that I normally avoid like the plague.

I've got to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will probably keep watching. From someone that can state quite honestly that they managed to watch less than 2 minutes of Big Brother.

The show started out with a bunch of Brits and 1 (one) Italian guy trying to set themselves up on the island...
...they failed.

There appear to be three or four women who seem incapable or unwilling to perform simple tasks like.. gathering firewood or searching for food. There were however three of four people who tried to get everything in order...

Then the Aussies arrived!!

It was actually three aussies and three yanks who arrived three days after the brits.. they kicked arse!!

The guy from the outback and the italian are going to be the people that keep everyone fed i'd say.. both are really energetic, both seem to know what they're doing and arnt sitting around whining..

It looks good..

Another day in the life of a subsitute teacher, what a great life. So I show up to class already to teach and find out the teacher has 1st Hour planning peroid, which means I didn't have to be here at 7:15 this morning. What a waste of time, I could have been still in bed asleep.

On another topic, a personal rant.... CNN, the Clinton News Netwoork, the nations most liberal news source in an already liberal media is talking about how maybe we should not use the word evildoer when talking about Osama bin Laden. I think we should be able to use the word, after all wasn't it evil that was committed by his followers? If blowing up two buidlings and killing thousands of inocent victims is not something that is evil then what exactly is. Do we have to wait until another Hitler or Stalin wipes out a whole people group to make that person an evildoer?

It must be a rant day for me, partly cause I'm sorta pissed.... Who cares about all this Anthrax crap? Not me for one. Also how come no one has ever asked how I feel about the whole Anthrax Scare, but the media insists that America is afraid of contacting the disease. I'm not scared, I'm just pissed at whoever did this and would love to get back at them.

Hmm well maybe the rest of the day will be better....

Damn, my arm still hurts. Well actually, it hurts a bit less now - I think it's numb or something now. It was a while ago that I decided, once and for all, fix all my problems by wasting valuable energy and consequently resources - lifting weights for the sole purpose of lifting weights. So I got to work. I started with an exercise plan from NYT magazine. But damndest! They required rubber bands for most of the exercises. Not to be set back by this major obstacle, I collected my courage for a couple of days and then conspiciously sneaked into a sports/fishing-hunting/electronic appliance store after I had made sure nobody saw me. To make sure, as a cover I first headed to electronic appliance area and grabbed myself 10 dollar (or maybe I should 10 euro... the day is coming, and only now I'm starting to realize that markka is gone, and it's never coming back) head phones. Then I put them down, sneaked back, exited the building, hesitated, cursed myself, walked back in and just walked to the damn shelf, looked around for a while and then bought myself the band. And headphones.

After surviving this venture unscathed, I dutiously started following the directions (and very unlike me, not slipping in the schedule), but over all I felt silly and bored. I mean, if I'm going to exercise I should feel it, right? After a couple of weeks I decided to try a more usual method of just lifting heavy things. 2.2 kilograms and some 300-400 hundred lifts - afterwarsd, besides intense pain in every muscle of my arm, I found my arm wouldn't now straighten. How nice, I thought, I bet this means I'll be arnold schwartzenegger in no time; two days later, I would feel intense pain if I tried to straighten my arm. Nice. Right now, I don't - because after another similar excercise, my right arm is too weak to lift into what they call a "nazi salute".

So much for the body, I'm sure I'll find this rant amusing in ten years, supposing I'm still alive then. On the mind department, after a lengthy stagnant period, I'm undergoing some advance. I started playing go in the summer but only now, as I started playing against humans, I'm actually learning to play it properly (playing against gnugo seems to be more harm than good...); of the four games against two persons today, I won the last two. Fascinating game, that, though now I see buttons circling each other whenever I close my eyes. Guess it's better than seeing rockets flying at me or dreaming about baldur's gate, I suppose... damn, sometimes I think I need to get out more. I once tried to pause life but couldn't find the space key.