Apparently, this is when I'm going to die. At the age of 76. From Cancer. I must remember to verify this when I draw my last breath.
Try it for yourself.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Lift off...
First exam, Maths (or to give the course its proper title, 'Quantitative Skills for Pharmacists') earlier this morning, and the feeling is good. To be fair, this module wouldn't tax anyone with an aptitude for the subject, and I'm expecting a high mark. Then off to the pharmaceutical analysis lab to collect our lab manuals for the next semester. Lots of gripping stuff like assays for sodium bicarbonate, aspirin, and ferrous fumarate (whatever the hell that is). I can't wait. God, I'm such a nerd.
Chemistry this day week. To be fair, this will tax anyone with even the most advanced knowledge of the subject. I'm dead.
Lastly, a little something that made me laugh. Right Click/Save Target As...
Chemistry this day week. To be fair, this will tax anyone with even the most advanced knowledge of the subject. I'm dead.
Lastly, a little something that made me laugh. Right Click/Save Target As...
Thursday, January 13, 2005
U-turn
Well, I had a presentation to give on Tuesday on skin rash, and all things considered, it went well. Then there followed two days drinking from which I am only recovering now. With the exams less than two weeks away, I've decided pubs are out until they are finished, and I'm attempting to give up smokes as well. From now on, alcohol is relegated to special occasions only. Let's see how long it lasts...
On video, I saw a Japanese film called Audition the other night, which was disturbing in a way that I haven't seen before, unless you like seing people being tortured relentlessly, such as by having pins stuck in their eyes. At some level, it could be thought of as thought-provoking, but it was just a bit too much for me.
I also saw Supersize Me, which was engaging enough, though similar to what another blogger said, if you don't know that fast food is bad for you, you really shouldn't be allowed out in public without adult supervision. Some of the points made were already known in anti-corporate activism circles, Morgan Spurlock just made them that bit more entertaining. And he hasn't been beaten too severely about the head with the ugly stick, which helps. I thought that it was a bit of a laugh that his girlfriend was quite subtle and restrained throughout the film right up until it came to describing their sex life (or lack of it), where all of a sudden, the floodgates were not so much thrown open, as blown to smithereens. But I liked. And when I have a boyfriend, I want him to be able to cook for me too.
Form an orderly queue there please, gentlemen...
On video, I saw a Japanese film called Audition the other night, which was disturbing in a way that I haven't seen before, unless you like seing people being tortured relentlessly, such as by having pins stuck in their eyes. At some level, it could be thought of as thought-provoking, but it was just a bit too much for me.
I also saw Supersize Me, which was engaging enough, though similar to what another blogger said, if you don't know that fast food is bad for you, you really shouldn't be allowed out in public without adult supervision. Some of the points made were already known in anti-corporate activism circles, Morgan Spurlock just made them that bit more entertaining. And he hasn't been beaten too severely about the head with the ugly stick, which helps. I thought that it was a bit of a laugh that his girlfriend was quite subtle and restrained throughout the film right up until it came to describing their sex life (or lack of it), where all of a sudden, the floodgates were not so much thrown open, as blown to smithereens. But I liked. And when I have a boyfriend, I want him to be able to cook for me too.
Form an orderly queue there please, gentlemen...
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
The best days of your life?
Well, back in the apartment in Brighton and now in the library, trying to re-engage myself with the college experience.
My last few days in Mallow finished up rather nicely, and I ended up going out for a few the night before the flight. Everything fine there, though I bumped into someone I knew in the club and, after spending some time catching up, she told me something that made me rather depressed.
When I was in secondary school, before I decided I dug men rather than girls, I had a girlfriend called Patricia. How we met was stuff straight from a matchmaking textbook: People who knew her also knew people that I knew, and before you know it, the match was made. This girl had a reputation around town for a being a bit eccentric, a mad genius if you will, so when the match was suggested to me, my curiosity was piqued and I agreed.
Patricia was pretty cool in her own way, and had interests that were also held by me (including The Cure, an essential pre-requisite in those days for us ever getting on together), but she had a disposition that was, to put it mildly, rather nervous. It was hardly surprising, as at that time she was a bit of an outsider, and had put up with quite a bit of bullying from the people with whom she went to school. I only fully saw this when she took me to her debs (the Irish equivalent of the American prom) and witnessed how some people in her class reacted to her. I still hold it against them, and I really don't think you'll find a bigger nest of vipers than a female single-sex school in this day and age. They really need to be phased out in favour in co-eds, but that's another story.
One of the rumours doing the rounds about her was that she was a lesbian. Her sister was, so that was all the proof that the silly 17 year olds in her school needed. I could never tell myself, but figured that if she was, she would eventually come out in her own time.
We broke up after a while, and I began my ill-fated first attempt at college, whereas she took a year off after getting her leaving cert to get her head together before heading off to college. She is, by all accounts, very talented at writing, and has the A in leaving cert honours English to prove it. I remember wondering about her shortly afterwards, and hoping that she'd succeed in whatever it was she went into. At the back of my mind, though, was the niggling doubt that she was carrying baggage from her schooldays that would impede her progress for quite some time, and it proved to be founded.
Last weekend in that club,talking to that girl, I was told she had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital near Mallow for quite some time. I attempted to ascertain if she had at least finished her degree (a light in the middle of the dark, so to speak) but the other person didn't know.
This sort of thing also happened with someone who was a few years ahead of me in school, and in spite of the fact that he got close to straight A's in his leaving cert, and a degree in computer science, he has since been unable to work owing to behavioural problems on his part. Again he was targeted by bullies in school. Coincidence?
There is Conor, an ex-classmate of mine, whose then rather poor social skills drew unwanted 'attention' on him. He left school with close to all A's as well, but floundered in university, only barely graduating when he should have aced it. He went onto have a massive nervous breakdown, and while I think he recovered eventually, he is now working in the civil service, in a job that I have no problem in saying is a waste of his ability.
And then there is Rob, brother of my previously-mentioned friend Kate, who was also a nervy guy who got bullied in primary school. He escaped it in secondary by joining the school rugby team (Christ, aren't packs of teenagers so predictable?) but it didn't fully leave him. He since went on to do rather a lot of ecstacy and then developed schizophrenia. While a connection is now established in the medical world between the two, I can't help but think that his life would a bit better now if it had been a bit better when he was younger. And it's not good now. He's after leaving for New York on a whim, and is currently there with very little money, and most likely even less of his faculties.
I'm sure there are other similar stories out there.
Myself, being gay and hating football even then, I had some idiots in school to deal with, but they didn't really represent a threat, and I emerged relatively intact. One of my consolations (and this may seem smug, but it's just fact) was that I knew that I was smarter than 90% of my class, and I derived some sense of satisfaction from the fact that quite a few of them had to resit their leaving cert because they didn't get the college offers they were looking for, while I did. It was mentioned by someone in another blog in the same context that the best revenge is a life well lived, but it could also be said that the best revenge is a success more substantial than theirs. But I've long since forgotten about them.
The one other substantial beef I have with my old school was that, apart from being shit at helping students score at a level that befitted their ability, its ethos sucked. The headmaster (my physics teacher) was an pig-ignorant bully who only valued you if you were on his rugby team, and his values filtered on down through a lot of the teachers in the school. The English teacher was the one I disliked the most after the principal, someone who never taught me anything while I was there and often would use a carefully placed smart remark to inspire the class to pick on one or two students (he openly referred to one of my friends as fat in class) and very nearly turned me off writing for life. Nearly.
All I can do is hope that the above pattern of harassment/depression is broken at some point, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Especially for that place.
All I can say is that schools need to stop being a microcosm of the animal kingdom, or there will be more ruined lives and quite possibly more disasters along the lines of Columbine.
Here's to Patricia. Get well soon, girl.
My last few days in Mallow finished up rather nicely, and I ended up going out for a few the night before the flight. Everything fine there, though I bumped into someone I knew in the club and, after spending some time catching up, she told me something that made me rather depressed.
When I was in secondary school, before I decided I dug men rather than girls, I had a girlfriend called Patricia. How we met was stuff straight from a matchmaking textbook: People who knew her also knew people that I knew, and before you know it, the match was made. This girl had a reputation around town for a being a bit eccentric, a mad genius if you will, so when the match was suggested to me, my curiosity was piqued and I agreed.
Patricia was pretty cool in her own way, and had interests that were also held by me (including The Cure, an essential pre-requisite in those days for us ever getting on together), but she had a disposition that was, to put it mildly, rather nervous. It was hardly surprising, as at that time she was a bit of an outsider, and had put up with quite a bit of bullying from the people with whom she went to school. I only fully saw this when she took me to her debs (the Irish equivalent of the American prom) and witnessed how some people in her class reacted to her. I still hold it against them, and I really don't think you'll find a bigger nest of vipers than a female single-sex school in this day and age. They really need to be phased out in favour in co-eds, but that's another story.
One of the rumours doing the rounds about her was that she was a lesbian. Her sister was, so that was all the proof that the silly 17 year olds in her school needed. I could never tell myself, but figured that if she was, she would eventually come out in her own time.
We broke up after a while, and I began my ill-fated first attempt at college, whereas she took a year off after getting her leaving cert to get her head together before heading off to college. She is, by all accounts, very talented at writing, and has the A in leaving cert honours English to prove it. I remember wondering about her shortly afterwards, and hoping that she'd succeed in whatever it was she went into. At the back of my mind, though, was the niggling doubt that she was carrying baggage from her schooldays that would impede her progress for quite some time, and it proved to be founded.
Last weekend in that club,talking to that girl, I was told she had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital near Mallow for quite some time. I attempted to ascertain if she had at least finished her degree (a light in the middle of the dark, so to speak) but the other person didn't know.
This sort of thing also happened with someone who was a few years ahead of me in school, and in spite of the fact that he got close to straight A's in his leaving cert, and a degree in computer science, he has since been unable to work owing to behavioural problems on his part. Again he was targeted by bullies in school. Coincidence?
There is Conor, an ex-classmate of mine, whose then rather poor social skills drew unwanted 'attention' on him. He left school with close to all A's as well, but floundered in university, only barely graduating when he should have aced it. He went onto have a massive nervous breakdown, and while I think he recovered eventually, he is now working in the civil service, in a job that I have no problem in saying is a waste of his ability.
And then there is Rob, brother of my previously-mentioned friend Kate, who was also a nervy guy who got bullied in primary school. He escaped it in secondary by joining the school rugby team (Christ, aren't packs of teenagers so predictable?) but it didn't fully leave him. He since went on to do rather a lot of ecstacy and then developed schizophrenia. While a connection is now established in the medical world between the two, I can't help but think that his life would a bit better now if it had been a bit better when he was younger. And it's not good now. He's after leaving for New York on a whim, and is currently there with very little money, and most likely even less of his faculties.
I'm sure there are other similar stories out there.
Myself, being gay and hating football even then, I had some idiots in school to deal with, but they didn't really represent a threat, and I emerged relatively intact. One of my consolations (and this may seem smug, but it's just fact) was that I knew that I was smarter than 90% of my class, and I derived some sense of satisfaction from the fact that quite a few of them had to resit their leaving cert because they didn't get the college offers they were looking for, while I did. It was mentioned by someone in another blog in the same context that the best revenge is a life well lived, but it could also be said that the best revenge is a success more substantial than theirs. But I've long since forgotten about them.
The one other substantial beef I have with my old school was that, apart from being shit at helping students score at a level that befitted their ability, its ethos sucked. The headmaster (my physics teacher) was an pig-ignorant bully who only valued you if you were on his rugby team, and his values filtered on down through a lot of the teachers in the school. The English teacher was the one I disliked the most after the principal, someone who never taught me anything while I was there and often would use a carefully placed smart remark to inspire the class to pick on one or two students (he openly referred to one of my friends as fat in class) and very nearly turned me off writing for life. Nearly.
All I can do is hope that the above pattern of harassment/depression is broken at some point, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Especially for that place.
All I can say is that schools need to stop being a microcosm of the animal kingdom, or there will be more ruined lives and quite possibly more disasters along the lines of Columbine.
Here's to Patricia. Get well soon, girl.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Au revoir 2004.
A hectic schedule this week.
Tuesday: Meal & drinks.
Wednesday: Brother's engagement party.
Thursday: Farewell Meal & drinks for Kate.
Friday: New Year's Eve (need I say more).
While Christmas itself in Mallow was a bit comme çi comme ça, new year's eve was definitely better. In a pub last night that had just the right atmosphere and right amount of people, and for the countdown, each table was given a bottle of champagne on the house! Nice one, Albert Lynches, I'll definitely be going back to ye next year.
Sometime after the countdown had finished and the back-slapping had begun, I was still struggling with the cork (it's not as easy as it looks in the Formula One events) but I finally got it off and then sprayed my table. Aaahhh yes. I forgot to check if it was Cristal or Chateau Neuf de Formaldehyde, but it did the job.
Kate, a long-term good friend of mine, is going travelling for a year. South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia are on her itinerary. I hadn't seen much of her in the last while, what with 'life getting in the way', as she would put it, but she will be missed, and I have a feeling her junket will last longer than a year. Twas good to see her on Thursday.
So with 2004 at an end, what are my thoughts?
I'm useless at definitive lists like these ones, so all I can say is 2004 saw the folllowing take place for me:
1. I ditched my 'career' in software testing, moved to another country, and commenced a new programme of study. Not bad for a day's work.
2. After a false start or two, I started weight training in the gym and am now starting to see gains slowly but surely appear.
3. I navigated my diet in a direction that was substantially healthier, and lost almost 10kgs.
4. I came out to my parents.
5. I bought a turntable so that I can build up a collection of vinyl. I never actually posted about this originally. The turntable is a little portable thing, but will suffice until I have money, years later. to buy an audiophile one. This first one is still my baby, though, and this is what it looks like.
The last two points need to be dealt with separately. When I worked in a company called IT Alliance from October 2000 to July 2002, music downloading software had reached the peak of its popularity, before sanctions against it limiting its functionality began to appear. During this time I was casually introducing myself to new artists on a daily basis and loving every minute of it. Now that's changed (Audiogalaxy, once by far the best of the lot, is now a shadow of its former self) and it's been a while since I've introduced myself to anyone. This was apparent at Oxegen, where there were plenty of bands who I knew of, but had never heard any of their songs. Examples? Kings of Leon, Keane, The Rapture, and the Libertines. It's time to get my ass in gear again, John Peel style. I haven't lost the habit of sticking with a band once I know I like them, but I could be more adventurous when it comes to discovering new stuff.
As an aside, I think the above point I made about introductions knocks the argument against music downloading on its ass: Once you get a taste for what a band sound like, you're more than likely going to go out and buy the CD to support them, which is what I've done to a large extent with Sonic Youth, whose back catalogue I explored on Audiogalaxy, but whose new releases I've since always bought. And I'm not the only one who follows that pattern.
So, no 'best of 2004' album list, because I simply don't know what came out this year. But I'll change that from now on.
Going back to Brighton on Monday. Not a great deal of study done, but it's better than nothing. Christmas itself? Not bad this year.
Tuesday: Meal & drinks.
Wednesday: Brother's engagement party.
Thursday: Farewell Meal & drinks for Kate.
Friday: New Year's Eve (need I say more).
While Christmas itself in Mallow was a bit comme çi comme ça, new year's eve was definitely better. In a pub last night that had just the right atmosphere and right amount of people, and for the countdown, each table was given a bottle of champagne on the house! Nice one, Albert Lynches, I'll definitely be going back to ye next year.
Sometime after the countdown had finished and the back-slapping had begun, I was still struggling with the cork (it's not as easy as it looks in the Formula One events) but I finally got it off and then sprayed my table. Aaahhh yes. I forgot to check if it was Cristal or Chateau Neuf de Formaldehyde, but it did the job.
Kate, a long-term good friend of mine, is going travelling for a year. South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia are on her itinerary. I hadn't seen much of her in the last while, what with 'life getting in the way', as she would put it, but she will be missed, and I have a feeling her junket will last longer than a year. Twas good to see her on Thursday.
So with 2004 at an end, what are my thoughts?
I'm useless at definitive lists like these ones, so all I can say is 2004 saw the folllowing take place for me:
1. I ditched my 'career' in software testing, moved to another country, and commenced a new programme of study. Not bad for a day's work.
2. After a false start or two, I started weight training in the gym and am now starting to see gains slowly but surely appear.
3. I navigated my diet in a direction that was substantially healthier, and lost almost 10kgs.
4. I came out to my parents.
5. I bought a turntable so that I can build up a collection of vinyl. I never actually posted about this originally. The turntable is a little portable thing, but will suffice until I have money, years later. to buy an audiophile one. This first one is still my baby, though, and this is what it looks like.
The last two points need to be dealt with separately. When I worked in a company called IT Alliance from October 2000 to July 2002, music downloading software had reached the peak of its popularity, before sanctions against it limiting its functionality began to appear. During this time I was casually introducing myself to new artists on a daily basis and loving every minute of it. Now that's changed (Audiogalaxy, once by far the best of the lot, is now a shadow of its former self) and it's been a while since I've introduced myself to anyone. This was apparent at Oxegen, where there were plenty of bands who I knew of, but had never heard any of their songs. Examples? Kings of Leon, Keane, The Rapture, and the Libertines. It's time to get my ass in gear again, John Peel style. I haven't lost the habit of sticking with a band once I know I like them, but I could be more adventurous when it comes to discovering new stuff.
As an aside, I think the above point I made about introductions knocks the argument against music downloading on its ass: Once you get a taste for what a band sound like, you're more than likely going to go out and buy the CD to support them, which is what I've done to a large extent with Sonic Youth, whose back catalogue I explored on Audiogalaxy, but whose new releases I've since always bought. And I'm not the only one who follows that pattern.
So, no 'best of 2004' album list, because I simply don't know what came out this year. But I'll change that from now on.
Going back to Brighton on Monday. Not a great deal of study done, but it's better than nothing. Christmas itself? Not bad this year.
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