Rethink

The Dracula costume (on its own, costing £20) is the lamest thing I have ever seen: A genetically modified nylon/polyester disaster. The only thing I can do is compensate with make-up. Dracula in drag? 'Dragula'?

The 'Solpadeine for Headache' tablets have been bought and are nestling anticipatingly in my cupboard.

Nnnnnggggggghhhhhh!

Hello, would you like some information on a free food waste digester?
'No, thanks.'
Excuse me, would you like a leaflet on our free food waste digester?
'Nah, you're alright mate...'
Sorry, would you be interested in learning about the free food waste digester?
*Quickens pace and almost runs past*

Repeat, ad fucking nauseum.

I applied for this job a while back and started it today, promoting the green cone free f*@$ing food f*@$ing waste digester outside Tesco. The 'role' is somewhat different to what was originally described on their employment website. There, I was only supposed to be hoisting things around, but now I have to approach people and try and get them interested. I cannot communicate enough how much this goes against my personal nature. The money is decent enough for this kind of job, but I had visions of working with data entry/filing/typing, not this kind of shit. I need to find an alternative, and fast.

On a different note, there is a big gay halloween bash tommorrow night (Wildfruit at the Creation nightclub, which is supposed to fairly legendary). Brighton LGBT are doing a meet up for it, the only catch is that it's fancy dress! So being the understated soul that I am, I went out today after work and spent £27 on a full vampire cape and make-up set. God help me! I have a recurring fear that I'll arrive at the warm-up bar before the club as the only person who actually dressed up! Time to pray...

Not much else in the last couple of days. Got trolleyed Thursday night and ended up chilling out at the pad of the venerable Danny. After tommorrow I'm in hibernation until Christmas.

A Shame

He was the man.

I like The Fall's idea too. That's nearly what I'd want at my funeral.

As for this, I'm delighted.

"Signor Buttiglione ... sat stony-faced through Senhor Barroso's speech this morning as MEPs cheered their victory."

And he has 'Butt' in his name. And the fact that Berlusconi is under pressure as a result of this makes it all the sweeter.

In other news(!), I had a presentation to give yesterday on Influenza. I think it went OK, but then I had to leave the room while they got the knives out, so to speak. I had a follow up meeting this morning, and some of my faults were pointed out, but overall the consensus was that it was good. Thank fuck.

Roll on the new year, when I have to give a detailed presentation of a case study, which will be marked much more clinically than this. I cannot wait...

Also, the grant authority in Ireland that I referred to in an earlier near-hysterical post have actually admitted that they made a mistake and are going to 're-examine' my file. The only thing is that they are threatening to request individual self-employment receipts from the year 2003. Which I don't have. And the related stuff of which is in Ireland anyway. I did get my loan this morning though, which means I won't be evicted from my halls just yet. Now I must go and check out Mac laptops. That and the f*@#ing laundrette that's on-site. 3 washing machines between more than 10 apartments. Bloody hell!

I also have mid-term exams in Bio and Chemistry in about 3 weeks. The Bio should be OK, but the chemistry course is such a bastard it would make Mendeleev himself weep. Some serious work is going to have to be done.

So with that...

I like

Rebel rebel

This Friday just gone, we had a lecture (no, really!).

In it, the lady of the moment was talking about personalities that are often associated with certain professions. Incredibly, pharmacists are generally known as conformists, and are not recognised as a group for throwing up wild characters.

My subconcious mustn't have liked that, because that night I went out and got trashed, staying out drinking until 5am, and then last night I cruised gaydar for an hour before meeting a willing participant in Brighton, going back to his house, and having sex with him.

That'll teach her.

Uurrrgghh!

Nursing the hangover from hell today, although I still made it into lectures (granted, they didn't start until 2, so I got up at 1:50).

I went to a GAA raffle held in an Irish pub, and met all the Irish students on my course. I swear, it is possible to take a look at someone's face, and know instantly that they're Irish, before you even engage them. I think we all share some nationwide resemblance at some level. In spite of the fact that it was seriously ghettoised (birds of a feather, and all that) and Irish songs were being sung at high volume on the bus into town (in the UK) I enjoyed myself. I got absolutely shit-faced in the honey club and then fell home at about 3am. In spite of all my moanings in the past about noise in student residences, I was making enough noise last night to wake everyone at 4am. Oh well, what goes around comes around, as they say...

Cell biology today and I just sank deeper and deeper into the seat. If there is a way of fast-tracking the mechanics of DNA replication into my brain, I'd love to know about it.

I got an e-mail from the guy who is in charge of promoting the food waste unit. It's not looking very lucrative, as most of the work days are on Thursday and Friday, which I wouldn't be able to do. First day is at Tesco, on the 30th of this month. I'm not sure if I want to do this, but I need the money so I'll press on. Hopefully it'll be fine.

Thanks to my indecision about two upcoming LGBT events, I looks like I have now forfeited my place on them. Dammit! Denis, you are going to have to be more proactive!!!

I still have heard nothing back about the grant yet. I'm ringing them tommorrow. I also have to get onto accommodation and ask them to give me another week before I hand over the first installment of the fee. I'm already two weeks behind. They're going to love me in that department, I can tell. Thanks to someone's absent-mindedness, I won't have the bank loan until next week.

Joy sunshine rainbows and pink fluffy things...

Shit

I got a letter from the Irish Grant Authority this morning (well, I didn't, my father did, but for the purpose of argument...) and it contained news that very quickly eclipsed every other issue I currently have or have had.

The authority said that they were not awarding me a grant for this programme of study. They said it was because I already had a degree in Engineering. I very quickly e-mailed them and told them that I did not actually finish the degree (I dropped out in third year) and as a result I came under the heading of a 'second-chance student', i.e. five years have passed since I was last in college, and I can now start again with a clean slate because I didn't complete the first course.

It's an error on their part from where I'm standing, but now I'm nervous. What if, for some reason, they ultimately decide that I'm not going to get it? I would be SCREWED. For those of you who don't know, this is worth about 3000 euros a year, i.e. 12,000 euros in total for the four years of the course. If I don't get it, I'll have to work a whole load of extra hours in some part-time job to pay my way (thus putting paid to any interests I might feel like pursuing while I'm here) or else get a huge loan (most unlikely, as the bank were reluctant enough to part with money this year for the few essentials I needed). Alternating between constant study and a shit part-time job would be the worst possible way of doing this.

I had a discussion with one of my flatmates recently about the costs of college (she's Canadian) and she seems pretty reconciled to the fact that by the time she finishes her course (also Pharmacy, she already has a biology degree behind her) her parents will have spent about half a million in total on her education. The whole thing about sky-high education costs is nuts. If I was facing the tuition fees that most Americans/Canadians face, I simply wouldn't proceed to third level. It wouldn't mean that much to me.

It got me thinking about how whether the general public is entitled to a free third-level education. The cost of it has to be paid in some way, and some economists compare the education of students to that of a consumer buying a service. Why should they not pay for it?

Well, here is another way of looking at it: At last check, and I'm talking about the Irish government here, revenue from taxes was not being spent in a way that yielded tangible benefits for even a substantial minority. Sweeping generalisation there, I think you'll agree, but one such example that springs to mind is the health service. These days when I see a shot of the inside of the Mater (hospital, Dublin) on television, it looks no different to an ad-hoc clinic quickly thrown together to deal with casualties in the middle of a war zone in a developing country, and the finance minister at the time (who has since been shipped out to the EU commission) has gone on record and said that the service was so inefficient he refused to put money into it until it was reformed. Well, that's alright then. That leaves a whole lot of money unspent on one of our most important but also most financially demanding services. Anyone got any ideas about how we can spend this money instead?

Paying to help people and institutions realised their full potential would be a start. By that I mean free fees. Institutions need money to continue to thrive, and the main way they do this is by charging for their services. So far, agreed. How should they get it? Well, if the government isn't spending in any noticeable way for our benefit, then why not let them pay?

Well, they are, for now, so that's fine. But they have made moves in the past to try and abolish this, and if they attempt to do so again on the pretext that the state coffers can't accommodate it, you would be well justified in asking

'Well...eh... where has all our money gone then?'

Because it certainly doesn't seem to have been spent on anything else. Interestingly, fees were not universally paid for by the Irish government at a time when income tax was at it's very highest (70's and 80's) in Ireland. I wonder where that money went? Well, Mr. Charlie Haughey, you detestable, rapacious crook? I'm waiting for an answer....

Sarcasm aside (I'm not genuinely suggesting that the government prioritise free education over a decent public health service, though the latter should closely follow the former), it makes sense that the government help their citizens realise their full potential. Hands up the authority figure who wants a nation full of frustrated, unchallenged underachievers? The cost of educating them can always be claimed back through the extra tax collected on their enhanced earnings over their lifetime, and they'll put more back into the economy in the long run anyway.

This doesn't really address the situation in other countries though. For a start, I know that American universities (especially the top ones) charge a small fortune on a year-by-year basis, the standard reason trotted out for this being the one of the economist above. One small problem: The consumer/service analogy breaks down here, as we are talking about people, and something that will not so much enhance their life, as define it (yes, yes, I know your job isn't everything, but you spend most of your waking life doing it, so all things considered, it pretty much defines a substantial part of your existence). Yet, any American I know just shrugs when it comes to this subject, as if to say, well, that's the way it is. Maybe it's just my socialist streak coming out again.

One other thing I have to wonder aloud about: If universities and other institutes of higher education are being paid in the way that they always were, why, now more than ever before, are they getting into bed with big business for the sake of sponsorship? This wasn't always the case, but now it looks like they're trying to have their cake and eat it. And also, why are almost 7o% of places on some university degree courses, such as Medicine, being set aside for foreign students, thus driving the required points for Irish students sky-high. Is it because they pay, in one year, roughly twice as much as an Irish student does for the entire degree?

Lastly, I'll readily admit that the sight of a group of overprivileged, self-centred, pretentiously accented shits protesting outside the Dáil would induce the most liberal leftie to vote for charging them to the hilt, but there are those of us out there, believe it or not, who would attract more sympathy. Don't forget that.

Anyway, here's hoping I get my grant sorted.

Really hoping.

The weekend has come and gone...

..and as usual I have done f*$@ all for it. No studying and no partying. There is a rule somewhere stating that when you are a student, if you're not doing one, you should be doing the other, and I just broke it. For the last time.

One thing I did fit in was the cinema. Went to see Inside I'm Dancing, made by those of 'East is East' and 'Billy Elliott' fame. I quite liked. It was shot in Ireland, with pretty good dialogue, and most of the actors (including the two principles) were relatively unknown, which I always prefer. If you have the time, go see. 'Saw' has been recommended to me as well (thanks J), so that goes on the 'next' list.

I've never really referred to the harmony of the living arrangements up until now, as they've always been fine, but it now looks like cracks might be appearing. When you throw six strangers together in an apartment, it's inevitable that something somewhere will be done by one person to piss off another person, whether by accident or design. For once it has very little to do with me. Hopefully it'll all pan out well. Time will tell.

Just out of curiosity...

We had a lecture today about communication skills of pharmacists (again!) and the speaker made one or two points that piqued my interest.

The first one was about speech patterns. Apparently, when it comes to accents and dialects, Irish, amongst others, speak relatively quickly compared to the English. No surprise there, going by my experience so far, but then he pointed out that in a survey done on the correlation between regional accents and perceived social status, Birmingham came out the worst. That is, if you have a brummie accent, people think you're way down the proverbial ladder. Interesting/damning piece of trivia. For any English people reading this, is that really the case?

Secondly, and what would seem extremely debatable, is the 'olfaction' of people. In other words, how they smell. The speaker maintained that Japanese people don't eat dairy products, and because of this, are much more sensitive to the smell us caucasians emit: The smell of sour milk! This I have to verify. If there are any japanese people reading this, feel free to comment and tell me if this is true. I would love to hear from you. He also maintained Indian people smelled of curry as a result of their diet, which seemed a bit puerile, so the next time I see an Indian person, I'm going to go right up to him/her and have a good sniff around. Or not.

There are pictures of me up on realbrighton.com, when I was out on the gay night last Tuesday. I was going to post them up, but I look like absolute shit in them (being 150,000 sheets to the wind didn't help), and I can now draw two conclusions. One, I have not lost all the weight around my face that I thought I had, and two, I have lost a lot more hair from my head than I originally thought I had. Bah! ;_;

I'm not sure what I'm going to do this weekend. I should study, and try and break the addiction that this habit of blogging has become. Or maybe I'll just go to The Bulldog and chance my arm.

Hmmmm.

Mmmmmmm.

Bear cub.

This isn't something that I've seen Hollywood attempt already, and damn, some of those men look good.

Note to self: Check this one out.

Not a lot to say...

Had my induction at the gym yesterday and then got on with breaking a sweat. Will do the same again tommorrow. A programme for making my build a little less like Kate Moss will follow in about 2 weeks, the instructor said. Some of the equipment is a bit ropey, but the treadmills are the Rolls Royce of running machines, and that is what I'll be concentrating on for the next while.

Today a practical. It involved not real patients, like I initially thought it would, but just actresses. I avoided getting picked, and it was interesting seeing how the four 'volunteers' each dealt with their consultation. It was funny in parts, seeing how each individual dealt with the quirks of each 'patient'.

Some of us went to a brief welcome ceremony held by the British Pharmaceutical Society this evening, in Brighton Hospital. It was all rather understated, but there was an interesting presentation on the history of the profession (going right back to the cavemen days), and there was free wine and finger food. My own personal jury is still out on whether or not this is the right thing for me to do, but I will stick with it. I reckon I'll be better off with this than without it, regardless of what I end up doing.

Tommorrow I must attend a demonstration of a food waste composter in action. This is not college-related, but for a job that I may end up doing at weekends. I will be present at places like shopping centres to provide information on this gadget, and promote it where necessary. What in God's name do I think I'm getting myself into?

Lastly, there has been an oversight with the bank and they have agreed to loan me more than they had initially declared. This means that a laptop could be within my reach. I could just repay the excess immediately, but I could also compromise and get a G4 Mac without all the extras like Office and an iPod, which would cut down the cost by a third. We'll see. I have to store my mp3s and my pictures of big hairy men somewhere.

Word, man.

Yeah, whatever.

I went to an R n' B club last night with all the other flatmates bar one. The club was called Core, and it was 'Mo' Money' night. Even though 50 Cent and Beyoncé were the order of the day, I quite enjoyed it, the atmosphere being very chilled and one of the bouncers looking rather tasty. I was struck by the amount of black guys weighed down with chain necklaces and baseball caps on backwards. A good night was had, and there was no crushing queue for pizza after, we got it within 10 minutes. One thing I've noticed about Brighton thus far, is that the city is pretty relaxed after the clubs close. Even all the people coming out onto the street doesn't render it very threatening. At home, fast food places have started closing before the nightclubs because they can't deal with the zoo that ensues there afterwards. Even when there was a slight mix-up over whether or not we had jumped a taxi queue (we hadn't), the matter passed off without any disturbance of the peace. If that was Dublin, fists would have been flying in two seconds.

I've just out that I have to do a five-minute presentation at some stage soon, and get peer-assessed by my class afterwards. My topic? Influenza. Oooh-er. But then, we're all in the same boat. I also have mid-term exams in about 6 weeks. And on Tuesday, I get to do a practical which apparently involve dealing with real patients, and if I'm lucky, I get filmed while doing it. I'll be the one skulking at the back, praying I don't get picked...

Induction for the university gym tommorrow. £97 for the whole year is very good. It'll be good to get back in training.

Rant

"No deity that men have ever worshiped is more ruthless and more hollow than the free market unchecked...".

From 'In the strawberry fields', from 'Reefer Madness and other tales from the American underground', by Eric Schlosser.

Well, that's another essay down, with 1 to go. 2, if you count the epilogue-type one at the end. Where the first one was an eye-opener, the second one was just plain depressing. This essay concentrated on the use of illegal (and mainly) Mexican immigrant workers during the peak of the strawberry-picking season. As is often the case with these things, the corporations involved exploited the fact that the labourers in this case were desperate for work and would live in almost any kind of conditions while doing it, and as you'd expect, they were grossly underpaid. Interesting how some bigots see Mexican immigrants as little more than vermin, when the latter are doing at least as much for the economy of the West Coast as anyone else, albeit unwittingly. I could go on about this more, but I recommend you just buy the book instead.

This got me thinking about my own principles in this regard. I'm now firmly in the money-isn't-everything camp, but that wasn't always the case. Right throughout secondary school, I had dollar signs in my eyes, and my career of choice at this stage was going to be law. Some of this was probably down to the glamour that is traditionally associated with the profession (all you crime dramas out there, take a bow) but the main motivation was the money. In one sense, this ideal was a good thing: Law has always had competitive entry requirements and I was a lazy bastard at school. I would never have made myself do honours in everything if there hadn't been some reason behind it other than the advice of my parents and teachers. But then somewhere along the line, I think about halfway through my leaving cert year, I had a change of heart. I ended up putting Engineering as the first choice on my CAO form, and went down that route instead.

What happened after that is the long and not always uplifting story of my first attempt at college, but somewhere along the line I stopped caring about money in the insane, trample-all-over-the-little-folk way that I did when I was younger, and all things considered, it's just as well. One guy that I used to live with who had studied economics for a while made the point that capitalism was the law of the jungle applied to human society, where the so-called weak are moved to the bottom of the hierarchy and the 'strong' to the top. I discounted this at the time, but now it makes perfect sense, and would go someway towards explaining that while financial success still means something to me, how I or anyone else comes into it is also as important, and it also highlights why I am no longer automatically impressed with wealth in other people.

So yup, I am now a committed semi-socialist leftie and proud of it.

Lastly, two essays that I like on the internet, which are more or less in the same vein as what I was saying above:

Kurt Vonnegut: Cold Turkey

Julian Edney: Greed

Interestingly enough, in the second essay, the model of Smithian economics being rebutted by John Nash Forbes' theory of equilibria is only given a passing mention, and could be used as an example in the section 'The Nuts Game', at the end. As far as I know, Smith said that 'what is good for the individual is good for the group', i.e. if each member of a group pursues the goals that are best for itself, then the group as a whole prospers. What I think Nash was saying was that each member of a group must do what is both good for itself and the group, and the equilibrium that is reached between both of these is known as a Nash equilibrium.

Ok, wank over. I think I'll look into this more though.

Update

Well, the last few days have been normal enough. Monday on my timetable is completely free, which is cool. I paid to join the gym, £97 for the whole year, and I have an induction on Monday coming. Time to get back in training.Tuesday saw us have our first practical for the course PY131/2: Respiratory and dermatological therapies in Pharmacy. The lab was basically a 'communications workshop' which saw us doing role playing, story telling, and a game that resemble musical chairs (Don't ask!). Our supervisor sounds uncannily like Anne Robinson from The Weakest Link, but not as bad.

That night, I went to the LGBT Brighton-Sussex association meeting. We basically went on a big gay pub-crawl, which was cool, though for some reason an inordinate amount of the bars that we visited were for lesbians. Go figure. Everyone seemed to know someone else (either that, or friends were made in record time!) so I really had to put myself out there, but everyone seemed grand. There were one or two slips on my part (when a girl talked about her partner, I asked 'Where is he from?' DUH Denis! Not clever!), and of course, the night would not be complete without me making a toe-curling attempt to chat someone up ('Can I steal a Kiss?' Urrrgghhh!), but everything went down well, though I didn't pull. The only fly in the ointment was that I was hoping that Hot Greek Guy would be there too, by magic, but he wasn't. I fear he may be straight. Sniff ;_;

There is another international students night tonight. Maybe I'll gatecrash it and find him there. But I'm hungover, so I might not. We'll see.

Thanks to the boozing, I overslept and missed three lectures this morning. First and last time, Denis!

Lastly, my bank manager won't lend me enough to buy a laptop, in addition to my other borrowings. It's probably for the best in the long run, but I would have liked a G4 powerbook with an iPod. Now it looks like it's going to have to wait. Oh drat and bother! Maybe I'll get a turntable and build up my vinyl collection instead.