[	kimochi	|	content	]
[	ongaku	|	Philip Le Breton - Magical Encounters	]

The Update:

- I went camping the weekend before last.  It was...not quite what I expected.  I expected a nice leisurely stroll through the beautiful landscape and abundant nature of Dartmoor, reasonable climate, nothing too hard, and then sleeping out under the stars.  How romantic.  HAH!  More like, an 11 mile trek over rough, hilly terrain carrying heavy equipment, new shoes that cut into my feet, no wildlife for miles but sheep and cows, and it rained like hell when we set down to camp, and the next morning.  Hrumph.  At least I took my variety packets of cereal, which kept me happy.  and now I can say I've been and gone and done it.

- My ill nanna has made a decsision.  Sort of.  She no longer wants dialysis, she wants to just receive pallative care until she dies.  Well, she's old, she's not happy, and she's had enough, so most people could understand that.  But, this is not a simple problem, because she's a deeply religious Catholic, and she's worried that deciding not to have any more treatment counts as suicide.  Which will land you up in Hell according to the Catholic faith.  She's spoken to the Catholic priest at the hospital, who's assured her that no, it isn't suicide, but she still isn't sure so she wants to see the minister from her own parish.  But he's on holiday at the moment.  And, we're worried, because he's a very strict Catholic, who values the sanctity of life over the quality, so he might tell her that she must have treatment.  It seems very hard to think that somebody could say that to an old, sick woman on what is essentially her death bed, that she would go to Hell if she wants no more medical intervention, but the whole purpose of religion is to provide a guideline that stops you from being "clouded" by emotional judgement, so God only knows what he will say.  Literally.

As you can imagine, this isn't easy on my Dad, or my Mum, who's still grieving over her own Dad, and is reminded of him every time she sees my nanna - and how she never had the chance to say a proper goodbye.  I still think that the way he went was definately for the best, quickly and diginified, but she still regrets not having that last chance to say goodbye.

- Umm, on a more positive note, we've got cool new MP3s on the Spiral website, only £3.00.  Even if you don't buy them, you may as well try out the free sample tracks: http://www.spiral.org.uk/acatalog/Celtic_New_Age_MP3s.html  And who knows, you may well decide to buy an album!  

Actually, when I say "new," they're not really.  Most are from the early 90s.  But, they're seriously good - very unique, very atmospheric, in some cases incredibly Gothic (in the classic sense of the word), and have stood the test of time well. I still listen to all of them, and enjoy them (they're very nostalgic for me, too).  You see, my Dad owned a sort of miniature record company before he started selling jewellery, so I got to know all the artists personally and even listened to some of them recording, when I was a mere wee thing.  I know just how much work and inspiration went into them. 

I can particularly recommend "Magical Encounters," "The Green Man" and "Celtic Labyrinth" :)

- I'm going to a wedding in a fortnight's time.  I don't actually know the couple, should be interesting.  And will give me lots of ideas for my own wedding.

[	kimochi	|	fine	]
[	ongaku	|	London After Midnight - Bloodspice	]

I forgot to mention in my last entry that I got my exam results.  Overall a low 2:1, but with an overall of a 2:2 for my core Japanese modules.  I only got a 1st in one module, although I was expecting three.  Rather disappointed, because it means that 1) I've gone from being the top student in 1st year to an utterly mediocre student 2) There's no way I can get a 1st next year.  Not really.  I'd say that 60% of my efforts went into my core Japanese modules, which were the ones I did worst at.

But.  Anyway.  No use moping.  I'm probably going to be self-employed/freelance in the future, so no need to get an awesome degree anyway.

Oh, and I did this other Goth Stereotype ages ago:

Goth (stereo) Type No. 8: The Perky Goth

I had a lot of fun drawing these ones :)

Been pretty busy lately...

- Exams are OVER, and have been so since Friday.  Yay!  The last exam, Chinese oral, didn't go particularly well though, so I thought it would be a good idea to start drinking as soon as the exam finished.  At 10.00am.  This turned out to be a really bad idea because, after drinking champagne at home in the evening and then go out for Kisako's birthday that night, I had really drunk too much alcohol for my liver to cope with.  I was so hungover the next day I ended up collapsing on the floor after trying to help Jay do the clearing up.  Doh.

- Phil's here.  At the moment, he's asleep.  Awww.

- There was a Durham v Teikyo football match on Sunday.  Normally, I find football the most boring game in the world, but this match was really exciting.  Unfortunately, Durham lost :(  We had a great social afterwards though at Varsity, at which the Teikyo students finished off their trophy bottle of champagne in 15 seconds, as most of it was sprayed all over the bar.  I don't think they really understood how expensive the stuff is...

More news to come...

[	kimochi	|	cheerful	]
[	ongaku	|	Mediaeval Baebes - Miri it Is	]

Quick update on what I've been up to:

- Japanese exam was hard.  Very hard.  There were several things that came up that I really had no way of knowing they would.  Even more scarily, everyone else seemed to think the exam was fairly easy.  Ah, well, I'm glad it's all over.

- Been revising a little bit better recently - I've been going to the main library, Trev's library and Teikyo library to study, which is much better for concentration.

- I've got Chinese, Classical Japanese, Translation, Japanese Culture and Society and Chinese Oral still to go, in that order.

- Most of the house is currently addicted to Beauty and the Geek- Richard downloads a new episode every day and we watch religiously, at either 9.00 or 10.00pm.

- I recently bought a pricy Collide album off Amazon, only to discover it was a rather uninspiring remix collection (which was not stated on the Amazon tracklist).  Doh!

- I've lost my claw ring AGAIN.  Only this time, I'm certain it's somewhere in the house, so is likely to turn up at some point.

- I think that's it for now.

[

kimochi

|

guilty

]

So, coupled with other stuff like daily living and ever-present distractions, I feel like I've got hardly any revision in at all!

If this was me about two years ago, I would be panicking and freaking out about how much little work I've done.  Yet, despite the importance of these exams, and despite the amount of revision I really need to to on account of how badly my grades have slipped between first year and this year, I feel strangely unmotivated and reluctant to work.  This really is a problem.  I need to work, goddamit!

But first, sleep is necessary.  Yes. 

[	kimochi	|	I hate revision	]
[	ongaku	|	The Cure - The End of the World	]

...revision is SO BORING.

All day I've been trying to revise Japanese vocab, and getting distracted every 5 mins because it is so infernally dull.  And there's so much of it to learn too.

And, I've lost my favourite ring (apart from my wedding ring, don't worry, that's safe!) - my big chunky silver claw ring :( :(  



Where art thou, lovely ring????

It's been missing since yesterday, I've been looking all over the house for it today and I can't find it!!  It's one of favourite items of clothing, I always wear it, I've had it since I was about 16, I haven't got much in the way of fingernails so I need it to open things goddamit!

I spent the whole day shopping in town yesterday, so there's a chance I lost it there.  In which case, I'll never see it again...WAAAAAGHH!

Well, on a more fun note, yesterday Richard and I tried an interesting experiment involving a scanner, Photoshop and a £5 note.  We wanted to see if rumours that Photoshop would not print money were true.  Read all about what happened on Richard's blog here!