I haven't really stayed in a flat before, except obviously on holiday and things like that, and I must say that the lack of stairs is an interesting and overall brilliant feature. Me and Bexxer were staying at my parents' flat down in Portsmouth all this weekend - I say "all this weekend" but what I mean when I say that is Saturday night, Sunday night, left on Monday. It very much has been a floating weekend, and I feel that Friday was absolutely ages ago, as if this weekend has been very much set apart from the rest of the summer so far. Why? I don't really know. I suppose it's the way time works. Watched Brasseye last night, the SCIENCE episode - "they managed to isolate and blow up a fortnight" - very funny. Maybe this weekend past has been elastically stretched by bad science and turned into wobbly matter, and I'm floating around passing heavy water. There's a little metal Buddha in front of me, sitting on my laptop. Much more relaxed than I ever have been. I have also recently, as in an hour ago or something, had lunch. Yes, lunch. I made it as well. Butternut squash and roasted red pepper soup. With onions in as well, some vegetable stock, and a lot of pepper. It was very tasty, at least I thought it was very tasty, and it is my mum's favourite soup (she told me to make it for her) and she said it had too much pepper in it, could feel it at the back of her throat a bit in fact. Well, maybe I just like spice too much.
But the weekend was an interesting thing. It was the GRADUATION BALL! £35 a ticket, so I, and all of us, were expecting something sick. Sickly good. Bek, me, James & Sophie stayed at the flat (which is my parents' flat they bought, but rent out to some students who are not saying in it for the summer, which is why we are allowed to go down there so much), and we all got ready and whatnot, and I must say I do not ever want to wear a tuxedo again - 'black-tie' my arse, too much cummerbund that doesn't even bloody stay up, baggy baggy trousers... the only decent thing I was wearing was the shoes, which were mine. Enough about suits, though; everyone there was wearing the suit and looked a vague concoction of stupid and smart: we were all in the same boat. The same, very, very surprised boat. Surprised, because the Union at Portsmouth did not look at all like the Union inside. Well, of course the rooms were the same shapes and everything, obviously I wasn't getting lost in a stupor of bad-tasting rosé champagne, tripping over 3' x 3' sparkly dice, set up around these rooms which I didn't know, slipping over the hearty vomit of whatever and so-what... No, nothing like this. I knew where I was. It was just that the red carpets and white 'curtains' put up round the walls, and the streamers and whatnot - this all made the place look very swanky. We therefore proceeded to swank it up. We were such swankers that night. Me and James ran into a group of swankers actually, who called us swankers, for dancing. Please. Just because they think they are too cool to skank it up to the Cream DJs upstairs, just because they are so woodenly terrible at dancing, just because they were not drunk enough, just because they were swankers themselves. Deary me.
But honestly: it was a brilliant night. Well done Portsmouth, I can almost forget the brain-baking incompetence of the graduation day itself. Oh well. I'm sure I will remember the better things; who wants to remember queueing? I will instead remember the Graduation Ball. There were a lot of things to do that night. There was a helter-skelter, prompting me to sing "helter-skelter! dananananana!" every time someone mentioned it. There was a food area, with a carvery, a BBQ, a noodle bar, a pizza counter? Yes, all of that. Plus the helter-skelter of course. There was a silent disco (which was so funny - I had never been to one before, and the madness of bopping around to Jay Z and then turning around to see people doing the macarena was too much for me, clearly). There were loads of different little bar areas. Each one of these areas had a theme, however: the overall theme for the whole thing was "Seven Deadly Sins". So, there was a bar where you could sit down and chill out, which in the daytime is usually a coffee place called Via Lattea (though still attached to the Union), and that one was Sloth. I suppose because people were sitting...? Gluttony was the food area. To be honest, I didn't pay enough attention to signs and things to work out which areas were denoted by the other five sins. Shame. Even the cocktails were themed for the night, "the proud student" for example, and other things similar like "the lusty banana", "the jealous foot" - I don't know, I'm making them up, but they ran along those same, rickety lines. Oh, have remembered two other places: Envy was the silent disco (I presume beause there were two channels on the wireless headphones, and you'd get 'envious' of other people listening to the other channel? A bit tenuous), and Pride was the place where you first walked in, filled with mirrors and gold. The other three I don't know, but I imagine Lust was a quiet area near the toilets or a secluded area outside, or behind the helter-skelter. Not that it would be the official area, however. Just a lusty place.
Oh, and we saw N-Dubz play. I would say it was shit and rubbish and that it pointless and I'd rather have seen so-and-so play. I mean, luckily I have been listening to Radio 1 recently and have had ear-worm of N-Dubz tunes for longer than I would have liked. But aside from all of that, it was pretty decent. They did win the MOBO award for Best UK Newcomer, so any haters can refer themselves to that. Definitely glad I saw them. What did bother me though was that Number 1 isn't even their song - it's Tinchy Stryder's, and I think Dappy just appeared on it. Who am I to know about pop politics, though? I'm not particularly a pop person so perhaps in mind of the peradventure propping up this current subject I shall pop off. The article covering them on Wikipedia is nice and comprehensive, however: N-Dubz!
Sunday was spent lazily (me and Bek didn't get up till 2), wandered into town, cherished the new Burger King in Portsmouth (one had been closed for more than a year, which saddened us all), and then wandered back and went to see James, Josh & Jack in the evening. I had a terrible pizza from Domino's Pizza (tandoori - never, ever get it, it will set your arse on fire the next day). Slept. Monday, wandered about, clutching my stomach as the tandoori worked its terrible business deep into my bowels. I was unhappy about this. And then we left. And now I am sitting here looking out into the drizzle, wondering whether it will ever be sunny again. Will it? August is supposed to be nice. The man who cut my hair the other week told me. I saw it on the front page of a paper at the weekend, backing up the local knowledge of the barber. Fantastic. Roll on August, then. Oh, and I have done nothing for my new project since I mentioned it last week. I even emailed the creator of CRIMSON ROOM, Toshimitsu Takagi, but as of yet I have had no reply. I've read two Sherlock Holmes stories as well, or have I told you that already? Anyway, if I have or not, whatever, I found them to be very underwhelming and overestimated. Perhaps there are better stories than the two I read. Perhaps this week, or in a second, I can do some more on it. I just want it to happen right now, but my horoscope said you do have to walk before you can run. You can't just start flying before you're even born. You can't be a tree before you've been a seed. You can't step in the same river twice. Don't do this while doing this unless you want a certain other thing to occur. You must close your eyes before you can open them. Leaves only fall down. Try but do not try too hard. Learning is a key to the door of understanding. Talk in riddles and you will be muddled. All of these kinds of things. I only trust clichés, so if you want to talk to me, speak to me in clichés.
Showing posts with label portsmouth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label portsmouth. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Did I hear the Gaudeamus?
I have graduated. I won't talk about Tuesday because Tuesday was a day of nothing-much and research that I will always come back to for a while, so it isn't important. Wednesday, yesterday, however, is another matter entirely.
I am not quite sure whether the day went well, or if it went badly. I am in two minds about the whole thing - negative and positive. I suppose there are essences of these two things in everything.
I think that the graduation, not just the ceremony itself, but the whole day, just highlighted the absolute disorganisation that haunts the very foundations of the University of Portsmouth, like the spirit of termite who forgets how much it eats and ruins the very fibre of what the University stands on; it is eaten from the inside by disarray and confusion. Firstly, we arrived at the Guildhall in Portsmouth and walked down to the Park Building, which is right behind it - here is where we picked up our gowns. To say this is understating the matter entirely; the wait was lengthy, weighty. But this wasn't my main gripe with it - I didn't expect to be able to get things yesterday without queueing. But then again, should we have to queue? Perhaps if the University had organised itself better, there should have been less standing in line (as is English thing to do - we queue patiently furious).
'Line' is not the right word. We arrive and there is no one at Park to direct us anywhere. There are two purple stands in amongst a bustling throng of people, on each it says Graduation Enquiries - these are people, I thought, who are just queueing up to ask questions. So instead I followed the sign saying "return gowns --->" on the Park Building. Obviously, it wasn't where you picked up the gowns, but they told me they are in a big room at the other end of the corridor. Anyway, it transpired that the Graduation Enquiries thing was actually the queue for gowns. Should it have not said "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE", or perhaps "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE" - but I think
PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE
would have worked much better. I cannot believe that University didn't have the ingenuity to specify where exactly we were supposed to pick up the gowns. Perhaps it was the final intellectual test, an initiation for the ceremony later; if you can't find the gown-place, you don't graduate. I imagine it was just stupidity on the University's part, though. I said that 'line' was not the right word, because the crowd that was moving as one thing with hundreds of shuffling feet near the "graduation enquiries" was a queue for gowns, but it didn't particularly look like a queue, or a line. It was the complete antithesis of a line: a mass, a blob, a quivering scab, which bottlenecked as we found out that it did turn into line when we had to be filtered down through a stairway into the belly of Park. Here the queue was a line. The effect, however, was one not dissimilar to trying to push a cube through a smaller, triangular hole. A bloody mess.
This was done, and we got our gowns in time. We were missing mortarboards. Another queue. Why did we bother wrapping tape measures round our heads? The mortarboard collection point was in a gazebo set up in a car park, with lots of cardboard boxes full of the stupid hats. Mine didn't fit. When I asked the girl helping me if she had a different size, she said 'yes, one'. One other size. So, like I asked previously, why put myself through another potentially complex-forming thing like head measuring? Now I think I've got a big head. 60cm circumference. Is that bad? Do I now need to look up 'average head measurements' on Google? Best not; people would think I was starting up some phrenologically-based eugenics scheme. Instead, I will just retain the image of my head as one which is big and misshapen. Asteroid head. I know it's not, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.
The ceremony itself, in Guildhall, was possibly one of the most boring things I have sat through in all my life. It was absolutely interminable. It was also very hot and stuffy in that hall. And, though the names of graduands and diplomates were read out quickly, it seemed to be a rather prolonged experience, during which I suffered:
Bum-ache - a terrible aching in the buttocks resulting from sitting on cheap seats for too long; cannot be dispelled by 'shifting'
Paranoid mortarboard syndrome - in which the sufferer can do nothing but check the mortarboard they are wearing; one notable symptom is constant tassel arrangement (or CTA)
Actual catastrophic tinnitus - an ache in the ears, occurring when in close proximity with loud, often piercing noise; patients often report that girls sitting directly behind them 'wooping' and the onset of ACT occur at the same time
Yawning - a large intake of breath, indicative of apathy; thought to have a 'cooling' effect on the brain and body
Restive indecision in the lower limbs - in a resting state of mind, the constant moving of the legs into different positions; causes are unknown
I'm sure I suffered a number of other pieces of annoying behaviour while I was there, but they are so annoying that I can't remember them.
I must say, though, that it wasn't really that terrifying going up onstage to shake the vice-chancellor's hand. Sheila Hancock (she is the Chancellor the University, how brilliant) was out of action for hand-shaking because she had hurt the wrist of her right hand, or just the right hand itself. She also made a lovely speech afterwards, saying that us students - graduands I suppose - should be very proud of ourselves, because if we can do this horrible walk, up onto the stage, and then all around the hall for everybody to see, we can do anything. Well, if I wasn't that scared of it, does that mean I won't be able to do that much of anything? We'll see. She also said that we are the educated "elite" - that we have been to university, and therefore are 'worth' a whole lot more than the "vacuous celebrities" on the red carpet wearing "borrowed designer dresses"; she went on to say that us in Britain have an "obsession with the mediocre", or something like that. Her speech was very nice. I think I might order a DVD of the ceremony, not to watch me raise my eyebrows to the camera onstage (one of the more minute forms of horseplay on the stage - one person purposely tripped up the stairs onto the stage; though Sheila Hancock said she enjoyed the "pratfall", I just thought it was a prat falling over), but moreover to listen to that speech again. It was inspirational.
The evening was filled with curry (I had a madras), drinking (I stayed and went out with Alex and Mark), walking around (we met the most indecisive people from the Film Studies course), and a failed botch at visiting a strip club (£10 entry does not bode well for the price of drinks therein). We went to bed when it was light. So that was good. The day ended well, despite the fact that it did not particularly start as if it would be a barrel of laughs. And to think I was toying with the idea of not going to graduation at all! Yes it was awfully boring, loftily so, but no: it wasn't all that bad. All you need is a little tolerance to get you through the day.
And there was no group on the steps of Guildhall, throwing their mortarboards in the air, smiling, laughing, kissing each other, and breaking down into a postgraduate orgy that wouldn't dissolve for hours. That's illegal in Portsmouth.
I am not quite sure whether the day went well, or if it went badly. I am in two minds about the whole thing - negative and positive. I suppose there are essences of these two things in everything.
I think that the graduation, not just the ceremony itself, but the whole day, just highlighted the absolute disorganisation that haunts the very foundations of the University of Portsmouth, like the spirit of termite who forgets how much it eats and ruins the very fibre of what the University stands on; it is eaten from the inside by disarray and confusion. Firstly, we arrived at the Guildhall in Portsmouth and walked down to the Park Building, which is right behind it - here is where we picked up our gowns. To say this is understating the matter entirely; the wait was lengthy, weighty. But this wasn't my main gripe with it - I didn't expect to be able to get things yesterday without queueing. But then again, should we have to queue? Perhaps if the University had organised itself better, there should have been less standing in line (as is English thing to do - we queue patiently furious).
'Line' is not the right word. We arrive and there is no one at Park to direct us anywhere. There are two purple stands in amongst a bustling throng of people, on each it says Graduation Enquiries - these are people, I thought, who are just queueing up to ask questions. So instead I followed the sign saying "return gowns --->" on the Park Building. Obviously, it wasn't where you picked up the gowns, but they told me they are in a big room at the other end of the corridor. Anyway, it transpired that the Graduation Enquiries thing was actually the queue for gowns. Should it have not said "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE", or perhaps "PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE" - but I think
PICK UP YOUR GOWNS HERE
would have worked much better. I cannot believe that University didn't have the ingenuity to specify where exactly we were supposed to pick up the gowns. Perhaps it was the final intellectual test, an initiation for the ceremony later; if you can't find the gown-place, you don't graduate. I imagine it was just stupidity on the University's part, though. I said that 'line' was not the right word, because the crowd that was moving as one thing with hundreds of shuffling feet near the "graduation enquiries" was a queue for gowns, but it didn't particularly look like a queue, or a line. It was the complete antithesis of a line: a mass, a blob, a quivering scab, which bottlenecked as we found out that it did turn into line when we had to be filtered down through a stairway into the belly of Park. Here the queue was a line. The effect, however, was one not dissimilar to trying to push a cube through a smaller, triangular hole. A bloody mess.
This was done, and we got our gowns in time. We were missing mortarboards. Another queue. Why did we bother wrapping tape measures round our heads? The mortarboard collection point was in a gazebo set up in a car park, with lots of cardboard boxes full of the stupid hats. Mine didn't fit. When I asked the girl helping me if she had a different size, she said 'yes, one'. One other size. So, like I asked previously, why put myself through another potentially complex-forming thing like head measuring? Now I think I've got a big head. 60cm circumference. Is that bad? Do I now need to look up 'average head measurements' on Google? Best not; people would think I was starting up some phrenologically-based eugenics scheme. Instead, I will just retain the image of my head as one which is big and misshapen. Asteroid head. I know it's not, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.
The ceremony itself, in Guildhall, was possibly one of the most boring things I have sat through in all my life. It was absolutely interminable. It was also very hot and stuffy in that hall. And, though the names of graduands and diplomates were read out quickly, it seemed to be a rather prolonged experience, during which I suffered:
Bum-ache - a terrible aching in the buttocks resulting from sitting on cheap seats for too long; cannot be dispelled by 'shifting'
Paranoid mortarboard syndrome - in which the sufferer can do nothing but check the mortarboard they are wearing; one notable symptom is constant tassel arrangement (or CTA)
Actual catastrophic tinnitus - an ache in the ears, occurring when in close proximity with loud, often piercing noise; patients often report that girls sitting directly behind them 'wooping' and the onset of ACT occur at the same time
Yawning - a large intake of breath, indicative of apathy; thought to have a 'cooling' effect on the brain and body
Restive indecision in the lower limbs - in a resting state of mind, the constant moving of the legs into different positions; causes are unknown
I'm sure I suffered a number of other pieces of annoying behaviour while I was there, but they are so annoying that I can't remember them.
I must say, though, that it wasn't really that terrifying going up onstage to shake the vice-chancellor's hand. Sheila Hancock (she is the Chancellor the University, how brilliant) was out of action for hand-shaking because she had hurt the wrist of her right hand, or just the right hand itself. She also made a lovely speech afterwards, saying that us students - graduands I suppose - should be very proud of ourselves, because if we can do this horrible walk, up onto the stage, and then all around the hall for everybody to see, we can do anything. Well, if I wasn't that scared of it, does that mean I won't be able to do that much of anything? We'll see. She also said that we are the educated "elite" - that we have been to university, and therefore are 'worth' a whole lot more than the "vacuous celebrities" on the red carpet wearing "borrowed designer dresses"; she went on to say that us in Britain have an "obsession with the mediocre", or something like that. Her speech was very nice. I think I might order a DVD of the ceremony, not to watch me raise my eyebrows to the camera onstage (one of the more minute forms of horseplay on the stage - one person purposely tripped up the stairs onto the stage; though Sheila Hancock said she enjoyed the "pratfall", I just thought it was a prat falling over), but moreover to listen to that speech again. It was inspirational.
The evening was filled with curry (I had a madras), drinking (I stayed and went out with Alex and Mark), walking around (we met the most indecisive people from the Film Studies course), and a failed botch at visiting a strip club (£10 entry does not bode well for the price of drinks therein). We went to bed when it was light. So that was good. The day ended well, despite the fact that it did not particularly start as if it would be a barrel of laughs. And to think I was toying with the idea of not going to graduation at all! Yes it was awfully boring, loftily so, but no: it wasn't all that bad. All you need is a little tolerance to get you through the day.
And there was no group on the steps of Guildhall, throwing their mortarboards in the air, smiling, laughing, kissing each other, and breaking down into a postgraduate orgy that wouldn't dissolve for hours. That's illegal in Portsmouth.
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