Confession time

I have a dirty little secret to share with you. Oh, the clever clogs among you already know what it is; some of you have suspected it for a while; and the rest of you might be really pissed at me when I tell you. But I had my reasons.

First, I must pause and take a moment to acknowledge myself for completing my MA thesis. It was handed in today. That's it, done. Over. The last year of my life culminating in the click of a "send" button. It's all over but the shouting now.

I'm exhausted. I said I wouldn't do it, but I wound up having to pull an all-nighter to meet the deadline. So I'm off to bed soon. It still hasn't sunk in; as I was saying to someone earlier today, I know I should feel elated, proud, relieved or SOMETHING, but I'm just kind of numb. Maybe it's the exhaustion, maybe it's knowing that my book isn't finished yet and I still have lots more work to do on it. But I'll save that for another day.

And here's my dirty little secret: I've been back in Vancouver for a couple of months now. Since mid-April, actually. After I had a sort of nervous breakdown I decided that once the course work was over at the end of March it might be a good idea to return home, where I could get necessary medical care and attention and perhaps even a good night's sleep. So I flew home and continued my work from here (Vancouver) without telling anyone but a select few that I had returned, so that I wouldn't subject myself to the temptation to goof off, hang out with friends I hadn't seen in a year, or otherwise spend time doing anything other than write my thesis/book.

Which doesn't mean to say that there weren't distractions. Oh, there were -- plenty big ones, too. Like moving house, for instance. Within two weeks of arriving home we had to move from our house on 20th Avenue to a smaller, 2-bedroom apartment nearby. Prior to leaving for England I had already packed up most of my worldly possessions thinking D. would move house while I was gone, since technically our lease was up when I left for the U.K. anyway. But work on the house kept getting postponed and our lease kept getting renewed month after month, until in a fit of impeccable timing we were told the property was finally going to be redeveloped in May. So we upped stakes and moved a few blocks away.

Even though I was already living out of boxes (and had lived out of a suitcase for the previous nine months), moving was still an enormous pain in the ass. I hate moving; I've done it often enough to know (about 20 times in 25 years, I think). We had to downscale our crap quotient radically, which is not necessarily a bad thing; we jettisoned several rooms full of stuff that was weighing us down in more ways than one. But it took time and energy which were in short supply. Two months later and we're still living amid boxes. What was supposed to be our office has become a storage room, crammed to the gunwales with stuff we haven't had time to organize yet. Soon!

Then, three weeks ago, Captain Klutz did it again. While playing basketball (hey, a guy's gotta do what he can to stay in shape) I tore a muscle in my calf and landed myself in hospital. Stop laughing. Ever torn a muscle before? It's painful, trust me. I've broken bones before and had loads of other injuries, but that's nowhere near as painful as a torn calf muscle. So I've been hobbling around on crutches since then which is a bitch because I'm already accident-prone as it is (apparently), and that's when I'm 'normal' and on two feet. Put a pair of crutches under my wings and I'm a slow-motion disaster area. Everything takes five times as long to do, too. Taking a slash requires careful advance planning. (Sorry if that was TMI.)

Anyway, this week was supposed to be a celebratory holiday for me in between finishing my thesis and starting my new job as of July. I was hoping to go camping, but the leg has kind of put the kibosh on that. Ah well. The weather here in Vancouver has been mostly craptastic anyway.

I'll offer my apologies to anyone I've inadvertently offended by not calling since my return, but believe me when I say it was a matter of sanity preservation and hard-nosed focus. At least I didn't lie to you. (I told everyone before I left for London that I'd be gone for anywhere between 8 or nine months to a year, which was exactly right.) I simply neglected to tell you that I had come home.

And now I have to drag myself off to bed.

Nearly over

The countdown has begun, which means I really ought to be typing up my thesis introduction rather than another blog entry, but there you go -- as I began, so I apparently intend to continue. But I've made some phenomenal progress in the time since my last entry. Seriously. I've written a few hundred -- yes, hundred -- pages worth of manuscript. Mostly first draft, of course, but there's some revision.

Bottom line: Deadline is this Monday the 25th at 6pm, which is 10:00AM for those of you in Vancouver, or 1:00 PM for those of you in Montreal. (Everyone else can figure it out for themselves, sorry.) So I'd better get cracking.

Wish me luck. More in a few days, once the deadline passes.

Hooray! Draft one finished, plus...

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/214109

Panel pushes vote overhaul

A government-appointed panel of citizens officially recommended today that Ontario overhaul the way it elects politicians and usher in a new system that would better distribute power in the legislature.

The panel of 104 members voted to endorse the mixed member proportional voting system, which would have citizens vote twice – once for a local representative and once for a party to govern the province.

Advocates say the new system would make the balance of power in the legislature better reflect the overall vote.

The legislature would be made up of 90 members representing ridings and an additional 39 seats that would be distributed among parties to help ensure that popular vote numbers reflect the overall balance of power.

In the last four provincial elections, all governments won a majority while receiving less than 50 per cent of the popular vote.

To crash, perchance to get up and at it again in 6 hours

Been a while, wot? Just submitted the (very rough, even more incomplete) first draft of my thesis slash dissertation slash final project, or whatever the crap they call it here. It weighed in at 44,700 words (approximately) and 167 pages, although as indicated I'm really only about 35-40% done so I'm confident it will top the 300 page mark, before appendices etc.

All of which means it's not exactly worker's playtime just yet. I've got another 6 weeks of hard slogging to go before the final draft is due, and I can't afford to wait for feedback from my mentor before plunging onward. So I'm going to crash out for a short while after pulling a near-allnighter and get right back on that horse in a little while.

In other words, see you in six more weeks. Unless by some miracle I zip through the rest of it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

The real work begins

Okay, I've had a bit of a break, I got out of town for a while (even got to visit the old ancestral home), recovered from a bit of a breakdown, but now it's nose-to-the-grindstone time. My thesis is due in just a little under one month from now.

And it's a big one.

Not content with simply writing and submitting the usual 10,000 word paper, I've decided to write an entire textbook for the course that I teach back home. In just a little under one month.

Needless to say I probably won't be blogging as much as I used to...

First draft is due May 14, so expect only sporadic entries until then. The final draft is due June 25.

Wish me luck.

Things I will miss

1. 'Mind the gap'.
2. The constant but reassuring sound of trains.
3. Magpies. (Yes, I know most people despise them, but I think they're actually rather beautiful creatures.)
4. This is a much shorter list, isn't it?
5. The miniature United Nations that is the MA-MBM cohort 2006-07.
6. The miniature United Nations that is Flat 88, with representatives from Palestine, India, England, the U.S.A., Ireland and Canada (among others).
   
7. The extensive selection of surprisingly delicious "FreeFrom" (gluten-free) products from the local supermarket.
8. Waddles the Penguin on my coffee cup.
9. Harrow-on-the-Hill and St. Mary's.
10. Tom, the campus cat.
11. Northwick Park.
12. The commute to Baker St. and Marylebone Road.
13. The Wednesday evening pub sessions.

Three more sleeps

It's been a while since I posted, and frankly it's been a while since I've felt remotely normal enough to post. So here goes nothing.

I've spent most of the last couple of weeks recovering. Not that I'm back up to 100%, of course, but close enough that I feel up to blogging (briefly) and I can go out and about playing tourist for the last few days of my stay in London.

I still feel lightheaded on occasion, kind of hovering on the edge of reality. It's an odd sensation. I don't know what causes it, whether it is a physical or a psychological side effect, but I am willing to bet it's the former; it probably has to do with my body adjusting to my new way of breathing, which to be honest I haven't quite mastered yet. So an ongoing imbalance/changing balance of CO2 and oxygen in my lungs is probably making my eyes wobbly, and my head as well. It comes and goes and there seems to be very little predictability about it; mostly it happens in the morning when I wake up, and lasts for a few hours until noonish, but then sometimes it just seems to happen of its own accord, like right now (it's about 8:15 pm GMT as I write). Maybe I'm just dehydrated and need more water, too.

Oddly enough I feel in full control of my faculties, and I'm not taking any drugs (though I was given a prescription last week in case of emergency) so it doesn't feel like a psychological thing; that's why I assume it's physiological.

As I wrote in an e-mail to my team yesterday:

On the plus side, the panic attack has been a wonderful demonstration of how crippling my addictions to safety, security, control, 'normalcy' (whatever that is), etc., are. I am using this experience to conduct a deeper inquiry into the way I am.

So my stay ends with a bang, at least, and not a whimper!

The next two days -- my last in London for quite a while -- will be very busy, as you might guess, seeing off friends and packing and and sight-seeing and generally preparing to leave on Saturday.

On the plus side, I'm down to 1 cup of coffee per day

One of the happier consequences of, ah, the episode as we shall now call it ("pardon me while I have a strange interlude"), is that I can barely drink more than my first cup of coffee in the morning. By strange coincidence I had decided earlier in the week to start limiting my caffeine intake to two cups (down from my usual three), so this is kind of an unexpected bonus. See, I can be Pollyanna-ish and unreasonably optimistic if I want to be.

I also wanted to cut down my food intake, and eventually increase my exercise regimen. Right now the latter is down to near zero, as it has been since roughly February, due to an assortment of injuries that just wouldn't heal. (Getting old sucks.) Just about the only exercise I'm getting these days is walking, although I'm doing plenty of that. As for the food, well, I'm back to my one standard sized bowl limit, and I'm using my chopsticks to make sure I don't wolf it down too quickly. (I find this trick works especially well with things like soup or custard cream.) Even though I normally love food to excess, "the episode" has curtailed my appetite considerably. Chalk up another benefit for nervous breakdowns.

I noticed that the portentous previous blog entry was never followed up. It wasn't meant to foreshadow Saturday's entry, trust me. (How could I have even suspected things would go as dramatically pear-shaped as that? Although in hindsight there were signs... but I digress.) There was supposed to be some meaningful exposition in between then and now.

Anyway, I don't mean to keep you in suspense because I do intend to finish that tale eventually -- it's a good 'un! -- but I really don't have much energy or enthusiasm for it at the moment. Especially since Digital Village Idiot is leading the War on Data again, stomping out any remotely useful bits and bytes of throughput at every opportunity, fearing that the Westminster student community will eventually wise up and realize what a thoroughly useless sack of shit their halls ISP is -- and then post it to the interweb for all to see.

Panic in the streets of London

Some of you will recognize the title of this post as a line from a Smiths song. But for me it was a real-life event, although it felt much more like a hallucination. A very nasty one at that.

Saturday night as I was on my way to Sainsbury's to get some groceries I had a panic attack. Not just any old garden variety panic attack: it was a whopper. Not that I have a lot to compare it to; I've only ever had one prior to that, and it was about six or seven years ago now. At that point I had no idea what was happening, having never lived through such an unusual experience before, except I assumed that it was all the chemical badness that I had ever ingested during my rock 'n' roll years come back to haunt me, all at once.

If you've ever had a really, really bad trip, it was kind of like that, only you haven't taken anything for donkey's years and you're perfectly straight when it happens, so it's that much more bizarre and inexplicable -- which of course makes it that much more frightening. It's not like you can just console yourself by saying, "Bummer. I'm having a real bad trip. But I'll be okay in a few hours." Because you have NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT'S HAPPENING TO YOU, except maybe you think you're losing your mind, and/or you are dying, and/or the world is coming to a horrible end. Or rather, you're certain of it. And that certainty increases as your oxygen supply slowly dwindles, and you feel dizzier, and all you want to do is throw yourself off the railway bridge and onto the third rail or under the oncoming Routemaster double-decker bus to end it all, and quickly.

Saturday's panic attack was something like that. But worse. Much, much worse. Because it lasted for hours, not minutes. And I'm thousands of mile away from my own country, my wife and family and friends.

Luckily I was able to get Danika on the phone and she talked me in for a rough landing back at the residence, where even more luckily fellow Canuck and Harrow hall resident Amy and her fiance Adam were home when I knocked. Adam, you see, is a physician in residence at Cambridge University, and he happened to be visiting Harrow this past weekend (they alternate visits). So when Danika had to go, Adam and Amy came to sit with me and keep me breathing.

And as if that doesn't make me the luckiest cat in the hat, I also happened to have a couple of Valiums (Valia?) left over from when a kind colleague took pity on my chronically sleep-deprived self and laid a modest array of pills -- some herbal and some not -- on me a few weeks ago. Preferring as always the natural route, I'd left the heavy-duty stuff well enough alone, but was ever so grateful to have it handy Saturday night. If nothing else I was able to get a good night's sleep, which I desperately needed.

To cut a long story short, I've spent most of the last few days recovering because the whole episode took a great deal out of me, physically and emotionally. I also spent a couple of days bouncing from doctor to doctor, making sure that there wasn't anything more insidious going on, which there doesn't appear to be (thank god).

I have another visit to the school shrink scheduled for Tuesday, and a full exam scheduled with my own family GP when I get back to Vancouver. Which is mercifully very, very soon.

Just when you think things can't get any weirder...

...someone turns up the 'melodrama' button.

Due to circumstances beyond my control I will be away from the blog for a few days. Not that I think anyone out there is holding their breath or anything, but for the one or two people that actually read this and care (hey baby!)... a little heads-up.

Lord, give me strength

Rude awakenings: 11:30 pm, 12:00 AM, and then roughly every 5 minutes or so thereafter until about 4:15 AM.
Internet connectivity: SOD ALL, mostly.
Days to departure: 17.

The tease is the worst part: you get one or, if you're really lucky, two nights of 6-7 hours' sleep. But then it starts all over again. Worse than ever. Like last night.

Of course there is a pattern to this, and it correlates with whenever the hall's miserable little shits are absent. Those turds happen to live in 88D (Stroppy), 88I (Frenchie) and whatever that other room across the hall is (I can't be sure, because I've never seen him; I only hear him in the wee hours of the morning). As it turns out, all were away for the weekend, probably at home with Mummy and Daddy, being spoon-fed and coddled, having their nappies changed and getting a decent night's sleep. Which accounts for my own delicious, 8-hour sleep on Saturday night.

But they returned yesterday, with a vengeance. My first clue was the noxious cloud emanating from Stubby's room across the corridor. My second clue was the incessant ringing of his phone. My third clue was the very loud gathering that began -- BEGAN!!! -- at 11:30 PM last night, when Snoopy hosted a drinkfest as a prelude to going out for the night.

It was at that point I knew we were in for rough sailing. (Too bad I had run out of booze.)

All night long we heard doors slamming, loud conversations in the hall, people bouncing off walls, stomping and running down the corridor. Oh, and constant knocking on doors. Followed by more slamming of doors.

I also heard poor Kate, who had a job interview this morning, get up several times to knock politely and tell them to keep a lid on it. Naturally they all put on their best cod-macho poses for the petite blonde and said OK, but went right back at it the moment the door was closed. The security guard came and challenged Snobby over having so many unregistered guests in his room, but naturally the slimy little bastard lied through his teeth and said "We're just going out." Like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

Of course, he knows full well that he can get away with anything and everything, because there are never any consequences here. Like Never-neverland. The worst that will happen is another Tersely Worded Caution Letter will be unceremoniously slipped under our doors, and life will go on as usual. Another valuable life lesson learned at university.

Needless to say I do not have two functional brain cells to rub together this morning, when I need it most to complete my FINAL ASSIGNMENTS, so I can move on to my dissertation. Today I am utterly useless, intellectually. Once again I will effectively lose one more day of my life trying desperately to get some rest, thanks to selfish little pricks like Snippy, who will continue to float through their days utterly oblivious to the basic human rights and needs of any sentient being on the planet. (I almost wrote "any other sentient being" but that implies they too have functioning sensory apparatus.)

I am also filled with a variety of mixed emotions, one of which is a strange, free-floating sense of being carefree and weightless. This is probably due to the natural high one gets from sleep deprivation. Or maybe it's finally sinking in that I am leaving this hell-hole in 17 days.

Another is a profound peace that comes from the decision not to have any children. Knowing that people (and I use the term in its loosest, most generic sense) like Stumpy are the next generation to run the planet reminds me that we have made the best possible choice; I would not wish my worst enemy to experience that, let alone my own progeny. That these spoiled, self-centered little oiks are now old enough to vote (but, thankfully, probably neither smart nor motivated enough) positively frightens the stuffing out of me. Global warming and other man-made disasters are bad enough as it is without pillocks like Stuffy further adding to the misery. Gasoline, meet match. Match, meet gasoline.

Then as soon as such thoughts enter my head I get a sudden rush of exhilaration: "Yay Mother Nature! You go, girl! Wipe 'em all out! Starting with residents of Q88 who are loud of mouth and bereft of intellectual capacity! Bring it on baby!"

And then I want to go to sleep and wake up to find it was all just one horrible, extended nightmare.

* * *

Given the craptastic, uh, "quality" of our internet connectivity, I cannot post any of the beautiful photos I've taken over the last couple of days -- sunny, springy shots of Green Park and Hyde Park and other oases of calm and natural beauty in the heart of London that I have been indeed fortunate to enjoy over the last couple of days.

So blame Digital Village Idiot if you get nothing but grumpiness here.

* * *

UPDATE: I found out the cause of this most recent late-night/early morning disturbance. Oh boy. Hang on tight, this could be a bumpy ride.

Si si je suis un rock star

Rude awakenings: N/A. (Might've had to do with the entire bottle of Aussie cabernet-shiraz I downed last night. Yes, booze IS the answer.)
Days to departure: 21. Three (count 'em, 3!) weeks.

I am a fucking rock star.

Or at least that's how I should feel after yesterday's relatively fawning treatment by the Powers That Be in the Harrow halls. After filing two more complaints earlier in the day I had two separate visits not just by the night desk clerk but also from one of the student Residential Assistants, as they're called, last night. Both wanted to check in and let me know they were on the job. Which I appreciate, of course. Then again, maybe they came on suicide watch. (If I were a little more paranoid -- and in the last 48 hours I've been marginally more lucid than what constitutes 'normal' of late -- then I'd say someone's found out about my blog and is getting concerned with the tone and timbre of some of my recent rants.)

But it's sad that it's come to this; my life is now one constant intrusion. The whole point of my rabble-rousing was quite the opposite: to restore a modicum of peace and sanity for the meagre amount of time I have left in this place. As I told Jason, the RA who came to visit last night, I really don't care if Stubby across the hall is dealing drugs; it's not as if a lifetime in the music business hasn't inured me to these things. I just wish the fuck he'd do it discreetly.

I mean, if you've got to have a parade of shady characters trooping up and down our hallway at the rate of one every ten minutes after 1:00 AM, then do it quietly. When your 'clients' duck in for their dope, tell them close the door gently; letting it slam in the usual fashion is only advertising your illicit enterprise to all and sundry. Ditto for when they leave. And tell them to shut their fat gobs while they're at it. Shouting the odds down the hallway is not a particularly clever way to avoid detection. Nor, for that matter, is the pungent cloud of skunkweed smoke filling the corridor in the immediate vicinity of your door.

Therein lies part of the problem. The long-lasting nocturnal parties themselves have died down (in the last 48 hour cycle anyway; I'm sure it'll pick up again, as it always does). But that still doesn't mean that my neighbours and I aren't woken up by people coming in and going out at all hours -- the noise is simply more transient. It's harder to catch them in the act, so to speak.

And of course my neighbours have been disappointingly silent on the whole affair; despite their grumblings and general agreement with my occasional jeremiads, they have remained resolutely inactive. Whether that's because they are too tired, or timid, apathetic, fearful of reprisal, simply resigned or what, I'm not sure. But up until now I've had to carry the can and do all the dirty work. I mean, someone has to do it, and whether that's simply because I have a lower bullshit threshold, it might as well be me. But of course after I'm gone things will just get worse again, and they'll have no one to speak up for them.

Which leads me to another thing that has me almost feeling like a rock star -- or at least an older, more curmudgeonly version of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables* (Hugo's version, not the wimpy musical; all these years later and I still can't hold a note). Yesterday I hosted an impromptu political rally in the kitchen at dinnertime. To cut a long story short I was trying to tell everyone that their damage deposits -- which they may get back once they are safely out of halls and thus out of the country! -- are likely to be forfeited due to the unfortunate cooker incident prior to Christmas (which I have yet to relate here). They seem to have forgotten about it, or at least they harbour a naive faith that we will not, in fact, be charged for the alleged damages. But I have serious doubts, particularly since all my enquiries -- four written requests to date -- have been studiously ignored by halls management.

In those few minutes, I felt like I was making progress. Especially when they realized their money was at stake, never mind their academic standing, their honour, their criminal records, etc. I felt I had their attention. I felt we were as one, together, fighting the good fight for the common purpose. And almost in unison they shouted, "Yes! We agree! We must not be denied justice by the oppressive corporate-bureaucratic regime! Let us rise up together!" And then we marched out of the kitchen and down to the halls management office, which we proceeded to storm and occupy until the press arrived and made our democratic fight front-page news across the land.

Well, that's how the scene ends in my fevered imagination, anyway.

What they really said was, "Oh, okay. If you write something up we'll sign it."

[Sobs silently, pounding head repeatedly against desk.]


* At this point the more imaginative writers in the audience will detect the imminent and plausible, Hollywoodesque plot twist, wherein our aging hero spontaneously throws himself into the current student elections just to "show the kids how it's done." At first considered little more than a curio or novelty, the old man on campus is at first championed out of sarcastic if somewhat good-natured student japery -- which then turns into a serious expression of support as our hero wins one crucial battle against the evil educational regime after another . Eventually, carried along on a tide of popular support, Ken Clean-Air System must face off against the laissez-faire stooge candidate planted by the opposition, whose sole platform plank is "cheaper beer in the student union bar." In the student union presidential debates our protagonist launches an impassioned plea to the newly emancipated students and he declines to run, urging them instead to think for themselves and to stop blindly following fashionable trends or leaders. Naturally they do. The stooge changes sides and takes up the rallying cry. Oppression is vanquished; the students are liberated; Ken goes home to his lovely wife; and all live happily ever after. The End. Roll credits.

This time it's personal

I submitted two more written complaints about noise and smoking in halls today. One was from back in February, the one I was about to file when asked to meet with halls management. I hadn't forgotten about that one; I merely let it lie, foolishly thinking my meeting would result in affirmative action. The other was from last night, when Stumpy across the hall -- who, I now have reason to believe (judging by the number and duration of his late-night visits), is dealing drugs from his flat and not just smoking them there -- kept up the parade of slamming doors well after hours.

Oh, I have no illusions that anything is going to be done about it. Despite there being clearly identifiable parties at fault here, about whom many complaints have been filed (and not just by me), the inept halls management utterly refuse to act in any meaningful and appropriate manner, preferring as always to blame the victim. I filed the report for appearance's sake more than anything. If this whole stupid situation goes as far as legal action, which it might well, then I will need a paper trail to help demonstrate their utter incompetence and negligence in dealing with a persistent problem.

Having been stymied at every turn in my attempts to seek justice -- or at least the right to enjoy my place of residence in the relative peace that is theoretically due to me according to the terms of my lease -- it has now become personal.

Although I am still going ahead with a visit to the Citizens Advice Bureau, my legal research to date has left me feeling deflated, defeated, utterly powerless. The cards, as you would imagine, are stacked against the tenant at all times. (Apparently I was sunk from the moment I foolishly signed my lease, naively believing that things would be as advertised. Ha ha ha!) But as any student of psychology knows, it's a dangerous thing when a desperate person -- who has been suffering the debilitating effects of chronic sleep deprivation -- begins to feel powerless.

Not a good combination at all.

Update re: "Victor: the Victor Davis Story"

Just got this from Mark Lutz, the writer/star of the film:

"Hello All,

Due to the recently announced provincial election in Quebec the airdate of "VICTOR - The Victor Davis Story" has been postponed.

Obviously, the election date conflicted with our premiere, and because the CBC has a mandate to cover all elections, we got the bump.

Rest assured, once we have a new airdate, you'll be among the first to know. In the meantime, we encourage you to check our new website at... www.myspace.com/victordavisfilm

If you're already a member of MySpace, please give us an 'add' and pass along the profile. If you're not a member, the site has all kinds of goodies on it, including a trailer for you to enjoy. Please pass along the news."

Consider it done.

Why they are called 'universities'

Rude awakenings: Too many to list the various hours.
Fire alarms: 1 (false, yesterday).
Days to departure: 23.

Angry Alien Phone-Shouter was at it again early this morning. I took my life into my hands and tiptoed around the hallway to find out which room that horrible, freakish noise was emanating from. And I was right: it's that tiny little creature across the hall and down one door! My god, I can't believe such a ferocious din erupts from such a small body. She/it is definitely from another planet. Which, incidentally, is why I now call her Angry Alien Phone-Shouter; in case you missed my footnote the other day it's because she sounds like the titular monster in the Alien series of movies, and it is emphatically not because she is -- like me, after all -- a foreigner on these shores.

* * *

It's enough to make a grown man want to bang his head against his desk repeatedly.

This week I've had a further two e-mails from the University alerting me to Things of Great Interest and Import to Westminster University Students. The problem is, of course, these events happened a couple of days before I had received my e-mails. So there are several possibilities here:

1. Whoever is charged with publicizing these events is asleep at the switch and chronically late in sending out the messages. (These were by no means the first such tardy alerts.)
2. The publicist is actually on time, but the IT dept. person charged with sending them out on his or her behalf is way behind, and also fails to read what he or she is posting, i.e., doesn't realize that the messages are out of date.
3. The people are fine, but the system itself takes forever to propagate and get the mails out to the several thousand students on campus. However, I am a strong believer in the GIGO principle -- Garbage In, Garbage Out -- which means that a computer program is only as good as the human instruction behind it. Therefore I find this the least plausible explanation.

Of course it would be too much to ask to have a little text at the bottom of said e-mails providing human contact information so we could alert those responsible to these errors. But no. Hitting 'reply' only bounces back a message from an autoresponder saying, 'Please do not respond to this message' etc. And they wonder why they consistently get such poor turnout to their events.

Good thing I am utterly disinterested in 99% of what goes on around here anyway.

There are exceptions. Like yesterday, I received an e-mail notifying me of an event that has yet to happen -- hallelujah! -- namely, a trial for a new series of psychometric tests. Now, I've only ever been asked to write psychometric tests for a job once in my life. I had been unemployed for nearly a year and was getting desperate. So when I went for this particular interview at a division of a Well-Known Canadian Ad Agency, instead of being introduced to the interviewer I was asked me to go into a room and write a test. I promptly declined. Not being quite that desperate, I got up and walked out of the office, saying that I don't work for computers, I work for people; and if the computer wanted to interview me, fine, but it probably wouldn't be able to read my handwriting.

But the sad reality is that many companies are turning to psychometric testing. Why, I don't know. Anyone who's ever had to write something under duress -- especially when you arrive at an interview and expect to be, well interviewed -- knows that the results of these things are completely unreliable. But still, companies are doing it, probably because Other Companies Are Doing it, and Psychometric Testing Software Companies are really good at the selling their digital snake oil to other companies who hate to be left off any bandwagon. But I digress. So anyway, I figured I'd try my hand at the psychometric testing just to see the results, because I have no idea what they even purport to test, or how, or why. Besides, there's 20 pounds in it for me. So I read the attached flyer. And re-read it. And read the e-mail again, several times. But I could find absolutely no information on where and how to sign up, except a link to the main Careers page on the uni web site.

To cut a long story short, after much surfing and searching I sent an e-mail to the Careers dept., asking if they could point me to the right signup page. I received an e-mail back telling me, in long descriptive prose, where I could find the link. Sort of. (The e-mail never actually included any of the words I should have been looking for in the first place.)

So I wrote back and said, "Thank you for the information. It may help recruitment in future if you were to SIMPLY COPY AND PASTE THE DIRECT LINK TO THE APPROPRIATE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION IN ANY E-MAILS AND ANY OTHER MARKETING MATERIALS YOU SEND."

I used to wonder why they call them 'universities'. I now know it's because they hire the stupidest fucking idiots in the entire universe to run them.

* * *

Speaking of universal morons, let us pause to marvel at the astounding waste of skin and oxygen that is Sonny, the bloated sac of protoplasm that lives across the hall.

As I type this I am once again listening to his mobile phone cum alarm clock ringing incessantly. At least once a week on average, since the beginning of the school year, he has left his room and 'forgotten' his mobile phone, which he has set to go off at 10-minute intervals. When it does, it rings for a full minute, then stops for another 10.

You can only imagine how annoying this is when one is trying to concentrate on a paper, or sleep.

Good thing his battery lasts only 8-10 hours.

And before you say anything, YES, we have ALL complained about this repeatedly -- to him, and to halls management. The former only apologizes (sometimes) and promises to never do it again, and the latter never does anything, period.

Things I will not miss

1. Sonny, the unnecessarily loud piss-tank across the hall.
   
2. Pig-Squealer.
3. Doors that slam instead of click gently closed.
4. Kitchens and hallways that reverberate like echo chambers.
5. Weeks-old crust and slime coating various cooking and dining surfaces.
6. Industrial strength, chemical-based toxic cleaning solvents.
7. Kidiots revving their engines, doing doughnuts and/or cranking their pointlessly loud sub-woofers in the parking lot (especially after 3:00 AM)
8. The view of the back wall of the sports complex.
9. Furniture designed for maximum discomfort and spinal deformity.
10. Angry Alien Phone-Shouter.
11. Fire alarms (false and real).
12. Ever-changing weather (especially since I'll get plenty of that back home).
13. The French Contingent and their late-night revels and hallway relationship dramas.
14. Coronation Street*.

* Seriously, I will not miss an episode when I get home because I have missed every single one since arriving in the U.K., not having a television. How's that for irony? By odd coincidence, I will arrive home at approximately the same historical point in the show that it had reached when I first arrived in the U.K., thereby executing some strange sort of time travel thing. All without a Tardis.

Of vital importance

Rx is still in effect:

1. My e-mails may not be getting through to you. Some bastard(s) is/are spoofing my e-mail address and I have been blocked by some, though fortunately not all, ISPs and their spam filters. If you have been expecting to hear from me but haven't, please ask your ISP whether my domain -- and in particular my e-mail address -- is being blocked. Fortunately my domain host has put an SPF in place so hopefully that should limit the problem, but meantime the damage is done.
2. Chances are one of you out there has a faulty firewall and/or a trojan, worm, virus or other problem with your computer, and it is being hijacked as a spam-slave. Please download and run Spybot and have your anti-virus updated & run immediately.
3. Because it's been raining a lot over the last 2 days or so, Westminster halls' "service" provider Digital Village Idiot has caught a cold and so I have been unable to post due to lack of connectivity. Too bad, because there were some crackers. But there is a backlog of them coming soon.
   

Harper's Tories: the second-best government money can buy

Rude awakening: 7:00 AM. (Thanks, Angry Phone-Shouter.)*
Internet connectivity: Acceptable.
Days to departure: 28.

Don't know if you followed the news about Bev Oda, Canada's Minister of Culture, who racked up some serious eyebrow-raising expenditures at the Juno Awards in Halifax last month. Then she had the gonads to say she repaid $2,000 of it, as if a $3,500 limo bill -- in a city you can walk around (never mind ride in a cab) in less than 30 minutes -- is that much more acceptable.

But wait, it gets better.

Then some bright spark posted an inevitable parody (to the tune of Lola) on YouTube. (I won't link to it here because frankly it's disappointing and mildly amusing at best, and only for the first few seconds at that. Search for it yourself if you must.) BUT THEN the odious Oda goes and posts a defense-cum-tribute to herself from Peter McKay (because, y'know, that baloney merchant has so much more credibility than Oda). See, by posting on YouTube, she gets to show off how unbelievably cultured and hip she is to the high technology. Right kids?

But here's the best part: her henchmen disabled the comments function.

This, my friends, is typical of the Harper has-beens. (Don't even get me started on King David Emerson, who believes that anyone who was offended by his defiantly anti-democratic, self-interested and opportunistic defection -- meaning the majority of his constituency -- is not worth listening to.) Oda's posting of the self-serving claptrap, minus comments features (which is after all one of the democratizing features of YouTube) symbolically says: "We tell you what we want you to hear, and aren't the least bit interested in what you have to say." That's Harper & cronies for you -- the second-best government money can buy. (What more can you say about a government that names as its national Minister of Public Safety some bozo who reportedly believes that dinosaurs and man roamed the earth together at the dawn of creation 5,000 years ago?)

I'll defer to Michael Geist on the specifics of the far-too-cozy relationship Oda (rhymes with "odour") has with the major record labels. But, dear friends, she is not alone in this. As Geist also appropriately observes, Industry Minister Maxime Bernier "has no time to deal with [major and more pressing concerns like] spam, spyware, privacy, or net neutrality but commits to legislation on behalf of the organizers of a sporting event?" (i.e. trademarking the word 'winter' at the behest of the Vancouver Olymp-dicks). Oops, will that get me sued for trademark infringement?

Utterly abhorrent. But sadly, not unexpected.

The good news: a spring election looks nigh. Then we can VOTE THE BASTARDS BACK TO THE STONE AGE.

* In a remarkable turnaround, halls have been awe-inspiringly quiet over the last two days -- relatively speaking, of course. I still wait up a few extra hours until most of the rabble-rousing dies down but have managed get two consecutive nights' semblance of uninterrupted sleep. This may be due to the Sternly Worded Notice that was finally sent around (yay, another piece of paper to ignore!) or it may be coincidence. Probably the latter. Anyway, now that I'm finally able to sleep a bit it's jarring to wake up to the sound of Angry Phone-Shouter doing what she/it does best. Because I now realize her rapid-fire cackle sounds remarkably like the Alien in the eponymously titled film. With PMS.

Introductions

Let me introduce you to two characters who will be featured shortly in upcoming posts regarding things I will and will not miss when I move out of halls at the end of this month.

Actually, one of them you have already met -- sort of. Or at least I have mentioned her on one or two prior occasions. I call her Pig-Squealer. As you might guess, her moniker derives from the fact that she can frequently be heard up and down the hall because her high-pitched voice seems to carry like a bad farm odour on the wind.

I don't begrudge her innate enthusiasm for seemingly all things, which I think is what causes her voice to rise the way it does and which is otherwise kind of endearing. It's just that voice I can't stand. Kind of like nails on a chalkboard, only instead of nails it's a dentist's drill. And not just on any chalkboard, but one layered with Styrofoam. Only it's as loud and insistent as a pneumatic jackhammer.

This, strangely, is a dramatic change from her usual speaking voice, which has all the sing-song lilt of a three-year-old on Christmas morning babbling excitedly to her new, retarded puppy.

The second flatmate I will call Angry Phone-Shouter. If I haven't mentioned her before, it's not for lack of annoyance factor; in those terms she ranks right up there with Pop Idol/American Idol/Canadian Idol (etc.) and strangers' farts in enclosed public spaces like elevators and buses. Relative to some of the others in the flat, however, she's perhaps not quite as obnoxious, which tells you how annoying they can be.

Another reason I may not have mentioned her previously is because she's a bit of a mysterious figure. I really have no idea who she is; it's possible I have never seen her. Given her accent I have a vague notion that she is Indian/South Asian; I'm not even sure it is a woman, to be honest. (It could be a man with a very high-pitched voice.) I have an inkling of whom it might be, since there is really only one or two that fit that description and who live on this side of the fire door. Which is odd, because if she is indeed the one I'm thinking of then she normally seems like such a quiet, shy, self-effacing type. Mind you, they're often the very ones you need to worry about most.

Once again you can fairly imagine the reason I have pseudonymously called her Angry Phone-Shouter. But to get the full effect you have to appreciate several facts about her 'conversations':

1. They take place in one of the Indian or South Asian languages, at high speed and high volume. Not unlike German, this particular dialect makes even the most harmless pleasantry sound like a harsh insult, particularly when delivered at high velocity.
2. My guess is she rarely utters harmless pleasantries.
   
3. They invariably occur late at night (midnight or thereabouts) or very early in the morning (around 7-8 AM), their stark contrast with your hitherto peaceful sleep enhancing the overall dramatic effect.
   
4. They are mostly monologues, or should I say harangues, of the type one would normally reserve to berate willfully snotty British bureaucrats, although how many of those are receiving calls at anything other than bankers' hours I do not know.
5. They are delivered with a force and conviction that is positively alarming, particularly as I imagine them emerging from such a small body. (Picture Linda Blair in The Exorcist, only instead of the gruff, burly devil's voice one hears the sound of 1,000 homicidal chipmunks on crystal meth, amplified through a tinny loudspeaker.)
   

I can only suppose that she is having an ongoing disagreement with her parents over something like school funding, her imminent career choice, returning to the homeland once her studies are complete, a doomed arranged marriage, or radically redefining her sexuality to challenge her deeply traditional/orthodox religious background. On a related theme, perhaps she is having a sustained tiff with a distant lover, a poor, half-deaf sadomasochistic bastard with a fetish for diminutive, bespectacled ball-busters. Or perhaps the woman is simply out of her flaming gourd, randomly spouting off into the ozone about nothing in particular, throwing raging wobblers every time she forgets to take her meds and the lithium wears off.

Thankfully, we may never know.

(Note to Kate: if you ever tell anyone else on our floor about the existence of this blog I will write something nasty about you, too.)

Forward... March!

March 1! The end is in sight – literally. I look on my Western Canada Wilderness Committee calendar and can see the departure date, March 31, clear as day. That alone feels good.

The fact that I managed a full night’s sleep (!!!) and woke up quite naturally at 8:00AM also makes me feel good, as does the beautiful sunshine. Today I am filled with a hope and optimism that I have not felt for quite some time.

Light at the end of the tunnel (unless that's a train coming)

Got a lovely and very supportive e-mail from Lynne today (thanks, much appreciated!), very insightful too. Few can know and understand the quirks of the Clean-Air System clan like another Clean-Air System.

We discussed the virtues of assorted drugs (of the legal variety -- stop that), and I told Lynne that despite the fact that many sympathetic friends and colleagues here in London have kindly loaded me up to the gunwhales with assorted packets of Valium, sleeping pills, etc., I always prefer the non-medicated route wherever possible. For one thing I don't ever want to get hooked on those insidious things, and for another it's only ever a temporary relief -- albeit potentially enough to get me home in one piece until I can actually get some proper rest and get proper medical or psychiatric help.

In short, I prefer to meditate or do breathing exercises or whatever. (I've had to stop the yoga as the pain prevented me from doing any of the postures, much less sitting still.) But as the nurse said, if you're severely sleep-deprived all the strength of will in the world won't stop your mind playing tricks on you, because your mind simply winds up doing in the daytime what it would normally do at night -- if I was allowed to sleep, that is.

I've basically stopped working over the last couple of days, partly because I simply couldn't focus anyway and partly to give my arms, neck and shoulders a break. That seems to be helping enormously. Mounting the laptop on a box and dropping a USB keyboard into my lap have definitely cut down on the upper body and extremity pain. (Here I pause to acknowledge myself for the amazing intuitive insight that allowed me to self-diagnose that particular worrisome problem.) Now, if I can just figure out what those pains in my chest are all about and get them to stop too, all will be peachy-creamy.

* * *

I had a meeting yesterday with the halls management, finally. It seems you only really get attention around here when you start threatening lawsuits; funny, that. (I suppose one of the advantages of being constantly mistaken for an American is that the locals assume I am congenitally litigious.)

One of the many ironies of the situation was that I was summoned to the meeting by a phone call that woke me up in the middle of the first protracted period of functional sleep I'd had in the previous 24 hours.

But I wasn't in much of a laughing mood when halls management feigned ignorance of previous complaints. I mean, it's not like neither I nor other residents haven't complained before. Oh, I managed to write off most of the first term; I reckoned the guilty parties would eventually tire of their antics, get beaten up by someone with less patience, or die in tragicomic circumstances due to their own monumental stupidity. I even said that I did not come to halls totally naive, and I expected a certain amount of rambunctiousness and disobedience, even from fellow postgraduates. (I was alarmed to learn that the main miscreants in question are allegedly postgraduates, although I have serious doubts about the veracity of this claim.) Once or twice a week, especially on weekends, was easily forgivable, I said. But once the crepuscular disturbances accelerated early in the second term, to three or four nights per week and usually in midweek, the gloves came off. I decided to play hardball. Within the span of the first two or three weeks I had filed at least four or five written complaints, and several others had been called in overnight to the security staff. Of course halls management denied all knowledge of these.

"Don't your night and weekend staff take reports?" I asked, incredulously. I almost followed that up with, "And don't you know how to INTERPRET THEM?" The response seemed to imply that I needed to physically write and submit multiple complaints about a single particular offender in order for any action to be taken whatsoever. Apparently a general complaint about massive parties breaking out at ungodly hours of the morning and bouncing from room to room simply isn't specific enough. I don't know how -- perhaps it was because I was too tired and lacking in energy, having been so recently awoken out of a modicum of sleep -- but I managed to maintain my cool and did not so much as raise my voice. (Fortunately I had rehearsed the conversation several times previously, just to ensure I did not undermine my own credibility or haul off and slug somebody.)

To cut a long, painful story short, I was promised that decisive and effective action would be taken! (Of course there was no mention of the false accusations of cooker vandalism, but that's another story I will save for another day.)

Later yesterday afternoon, as I was lying on my bed trying to focus on my books, a little frisson of excitement ran through me as a notice was slipped under my door. I assumed this was a stern -- and final --warning to all potential troublemakers. Triumphantly I practically leapt out of bed to snatch the paper up and read it.

It was, of course, a notice (with headline written in extra-large, red font) indicating that the window in flat 92 -- the one broken two weeks ago when some intellectually impoverished twat tried unsuccessfully to burn the place down -- was to be repaired, and would we all kindly keep our windows closed so as to not allow dust and debris to enter the building.

I am so overcome with... I don't know, gratitude hardly seems the word... that I want to somehow repay halls management's graciousness. Perhaps I will do this by saving them time, money and trouble. Perhaps while the repair crew is still on premises and the warning letter is still in effect, I may just decide to throw myself out of my own fucking window.

It is February 28 today. D-day -- for Departure day -- is exactly 31 days from now.

Laugh? I'm dying

Rude awakening: 3:15 AM.
Internet connectivity: Minimal.
Days to departure: 33.

I remember not so long ago images on television of a disheveled Manuel Noriega emerging from his villa after several consecutive days of unrelenting bombardment by light and noise. Confused and disoriented, he finally succumbed to the psychological warfare waged by U.S. troops and gave himself up -- the former Panamanian general's opinion obviously being that anything, including captivity at the hands of American troops, is better than constant barrage of the senses.

This is how psychological warfare works: don't' let those under siege sleep. Keep them awake and on edge. Grind them down. Eventually they will beg for mercy.

That's how I feel. I am worn down. At wit's end.

Except I won't beg for mercy. Because if I did, no one would listen anyway. The Harrow campus of the University of Westminster is a lot like outer space that way: a complete and utter vacuum in which no one can hear you scream, except of course the good and gentle folk who are trying to sleep. The other arseholes are too busy making the noise to be able to hear, and those who enable them -- hello, halls management! -- are far too ineffectual to do anything about it. Or perhaps they just don't care. Evidence is strong on the latter.

As a direct result of all this my body and brain are at war with each other. I don't know if it's my fragile mental health that makes me more vulnerable to the strange new pains I feel, or if it's those new and worrisome pains that are aggravating my rapidly deteriorating mental condition. But every day the panic attacks increase, more frequent, more terrifying. And every day the pains in my arms, neck, chest and elsewhere become more intense. And there are more of them in odd places.

As I told the school nurse last week, the irony is that the school work itself -- were I able to actually do it -- is the least of my concerns. I am quite confident that I can handle it and have, under the most difficult of circumstances, made rather heroic efforts to stay on top of it. I'm actually excited about and looking forward to writing my final project (if only because it means I'll be out of here). So I'm not at all stressing about the work. Far from it.

A second irony is the fact that if I were forced to withdraw from the school because of failure or for any other extenuating circumstances, I would have the balance of my rent money cheerfully refunded. If it weren't for the fact that I have already invested roughly $40,000 and have come this far, I would withdraw tomorrow. This kind of abuse simply isn't worth it.

Here's a funny one: this morning I went down to the laundrette and, passing by the halls reception on the way back to pick up yet another complaint form, engaged in this conversation with the receptionist:

"Another complaint? But we had our night crew patrol almost every hour on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night."

"Well, this latest violation didn't take place on the weekend. It was this morning, Tuesday morning, at about 3:15."

"Oh."

"Yes, it was strangely quiet all weekend. "

"That's good, isn't it?"

"Of course it wasn't quiet enough to allow me to work or sleep. And the only reason it was so quiet Friday and Saturday night was that the extremely obnoxious and arrogant little shit across the hall who makes most of the worst noise ran home to mummy and daddy for the weekend."

And another thing

Help me to understand this. Please. Clearly there is something I must be missing.

Why, when otherwise well-meaning people hear my (true) tales of woe, do they say things like the following:

"Have you tried sleeping with earplugs?"

"Couldn't you ask to be moved to another flat?"

"Have you tried Valium?"

(ad nauseum)

...hmmm? Any takers? Because I'm stumped. I mean, WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DO ANYTHING? I'M THE INJURED PARTY HERE. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO HAS BEEN DRINKING HIS POST-PUBESCENT PUSS OFF AND LOUDLY CRASHING ABOUT UNTIL INHUMANE HOURS OF THE MORNING, ANNOYING THE LIVING SNOT OUT OF EVERYONE ELSE.

Asking me to put myself at even greater discomfort when it's the jumped-up little twerp across the hall who should be fucking moving? Hello? As far as I'm concerned he should have been executed evicted long ago, but halls management are far too ineffectual to do anything. I don't see why it should be my responsibility to further inconvenience myself because some intellectually short-sheeted twat is pathologically antisocial.

And before you say it, no, I don't like being in my righteous indignation. I'd rather just have an end to the anxiety attacks and a jolly good night's sleep. If that's an unreasonable request, by all means, tell me.

But c'mon, the craptacular little pimple across the corridor signed the same lease that I did. (Probably with an X. In crayon.) We should both be bound by the same rules -- not just me.

Change the channel, I don't like this movie

Rude awakening: 3:30 AM, until 5:00 AM or thereabouts
Fire alarms (false): Two, while I'm in the shower (naturally)
Days to departure: Far too fucking many

The good news is that I went to see the school nurse today who told me that my increasing anxiety attacks are probably "just" the result of severe sleep deprivation, and that the numbness in my hands, the pains in my arms and the sore neck are probably nothing fatal.

Thinking that the latter are probably symptoms of incredibly poor posture (i.e. too much hunching over a hot laptop), I went out and bought a cheap USB keyboard today so I can at least drop my hands into my lap instead of keeping them up at an artificial angle on the desktop. Now if I can just get used to the damn spacing, particularly the shift key which for some reason on U.K. keyboards is a whole extra key away...

I also took the box that used to contain the inflatable bed -- see, there's an upside to being a pack rat sometimes! -- and have used it to prop up my laptop, so the screen is now more or less eye level. I don't have to look down anymore, I'm pretty much looking straight ahead. Let's see if this helps alleviate those worrisome symptoms. I can't wait to get home to a proper, ergonomically designed chair (as opposed to these cheap-ass medieval torture devices I'm sitting on now), proper desks, proper monitors, the lot. Oh yes, and more than two hours of sleep per night.

Honestly, these days I feel like I'm in some sort of race against time. Will I make it home before I'm driven utterly mad? Or die of some tragic, wasting illness? Or, driven to a homicidal rage, rip someone's head off and shit down their neck (prime candidate being that miserable little shit Sonny who lives across the hall)? Only it's nowhere near as fun as the races against time you usually see in a movie. 'Cause at least you know that for all the ups, downs and near-misses, it'll turn out okay in the end.

The countdown begins in earnest

Rude awakening: 2:30 AM. (Miserable dicktards.)
Internet connectivity: Dial-up slow.
Days to departure: 41.

Booked my return flight today for Saturday, April 7. It's at a sensible hour, too, so I don't have to get up too early, nor do I get into YVR too late. I am genuinely excited, particularly since our seminar group (Group 5) has made good progress on our two assignments and we had our one and only exam for the term (in Innovation & Technology) yesterday. Progress! I now turn my attention more fully to my individual assignments, for which I've done the bulk of the research; now all I really need to do is sit down and write. Which for me is usually harder than it sounds, although much of that difficulty exists -- where else? -- in my head.

I am also hopeful that I can avoid paying the last portion of the rent, since it is due at the end of April and I shall be gone long before then. I'll find out soon enough as I have left word with the housing officer, but even if I can't it's a small price to pay for returning to civilization and peace of mind.

Had a good commiseration with Meagan at lunch today. Meagan is my next door neighbour to the east; she lives in room M. (Kate, my neighbour to the west, lives in K. And I live in L. Which makes it harder to remember than either of theirs, since it's not my initial, but I usually manage to find my way home OK. Although it makes me wonder what the L stands for.)

Meagan is very sharp; she can produce an insightful and instantaneous, post-modern political-economic critique -- on virtually any topic -- at the drop of a hat, as she did today. I have a lot of time for Meagan. We have a lot of values in common, not the least of which is our mutual respect for sleep -- hence our commiseration, following last night's hallway shoutfest. We are both finding it marginally easier to take, even though we both agree it's getting worse by the day, because we are both taking off like bats out of hell as soon as we can. She's going back to her native Washington, DC, whereas I am going to take a couple of days off to visit Scotland and Ireland before taking a direct flight back home.

Part of me actually wants to skip that and just go straight home, but I'd be remiss if I did not take this one last opportunity. It may be the last time I'm in this neck of the woods for quite a while, although I'm thinking of using some frequent flyer points to get me back here at least for the weekend of the graduation ceremony this fall (though I'm not sure exactly when it is). After all, this is kind of the culmination of a longstanding dream for me. So I'd like to celebrate it, officially. We'll see.

Kyoto Protocol? That's a sushi joint, isn't it?

Better yet, let's just burn Gordon Campbell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_DXOTYKy_g

UPDATE: On second thought, Campbell's hot air contributes far too much to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions anyway...

Happy birthday Danika!

Rude awakenings: N/A*
Internet connectivity: Yesterday: None whatsoever. Today: slow.
Days to departure: 43.

* This doesn't mean sleep was not lost. Au contraire, it simply meant that I stayed up long enough so that the noisemaking died down enough to allow me to sleep. Thursday night wasn't too bad (it mellowed out around 1:15 or so) but last night was much later, around 2:00. It was a Friday night 'n' all, and I'd had a long, productive day (working until about 1:00) and it was hard to be upset because some of the louder ones were the very same people who bought me a cake earlier in the evening to help me celebrate the 4th (!!!) anniversary of my wedding to Danika (in absentia).

Still, I was very tired. So I put on the headphones and listened to soothing music on my iPod until the noise abated. But that meant rousing myself from a near-slumber to remove the 'phones around 3:00, so my sleep was somewhat disrupted.

But a day like today makes it hard to remain bent out of shape for long. It's gorgeous. Sunny. Warm, springlike. I'm going for a walk soon, while it's still light out.

Got an e-mail from Tony Wilson today. This is extremely exciting -- imagine getting an e-mail from one of your most-cherished role models (and you know how inured I am to celebrity) -- although I wish it were under happier circumstances. We wish you a speedy recovery, Tony.

Next, the proverbial cat is out of the bag and henceforth I'll have to watch what I write. Sarah (a/k/a Stripey Amoeba, or L'Aurora) is a friend and fellow journalism student of one of my flatmates, Kate. She also happens to have a blog. She found out about mine -- more specifically, that I've been using it to keep a meticulous record of the way things are around here lately -- and she has indicated that it might make useful source material for an expose on the (mis)management of Harrow halls. I'll consider myself warned. And I'll have to remove those things I said about Kate (just kidding).

Oh, and happy belated anniversary too baby!!! xoxoxoxox

Classic literature: read it. Live it.

Rude awakening: 2:40 AM.
Internet connectivity: Minimal.
Days to departure: 45.

Woke up (the second or third and final time this morning) to the atonal, nails-on-a-chalkboard sounds of Ms. Pig-Squealer down the hall. As per usual she was squawking about nothing in particular to no one in particular. Like the fire alarm, one day something evil will befall her and no one will come running to save her. How on earth did these people every manage to get accepted into university? It's not as if they've ever read their childhood cautionary fables, apparently. More on those in a moment.

Frenchie passed me in the hall without so much as a grunt this morning, which means either he’s hung over again (so it may have been him and his knuckle-dragging, mono-browed, mouth-breathing friends who were bouncing off the walls at all hours this morning) or he’s found out that it was I who formally lodged a complaint against him with the halls management. (I doubt it’s the latter, though, because they really don’t give a shit about much of anything and generally don’t do anything about the complaints received anyway.) Either way, it works for me. I won’t have to talk to him now, and/or he’s developing a dim awareness of the fact that we have a limited tolerance for his puerile undergraduate shit. (And I do mean the royal "we.")

There are thieves among us. Day by day, more things are going missing. First it was food, then it was kitchen implements, now it’s even broken kitchen implements like the pot I (used to) use to make my porridge.

This place is becoming more and more like Lord of the Flies every day: things are constantly devolving into a state of anarchy. What better way to study classics of English literature than to live it, right here on a university campus?

* * *

On the bright side -- and it's always bright when I'm away from the halls -- Ian took me to see a production of the Ramayana at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith last night. I quite enjoyed it; the pace never flagged, even though it was 2.5 hours long (including a 15-minute intermission roughly halfway through). Having attended live theatre and familiarized myself with a sacred Hindu scripture simultaneously, I feel doubly edified.

My bloody Valentine

Rude awakening: 3:40 AM.
Internet connectivity: S... l... o... w... and my mail server's been down most of the day.
Days to departure: 46.

Managed to get some work done today, which is little short of miraculous given how tired I am. Ian took me to see another show tonight in Hammersmith, which I'll write up tomorrow -- assuming I manage a night's sleep.

If not, look for me in the morning newspaper headlines. I'll be the one described as the crazed Canadian who flipped out and committed unspeakable acts of violent horror on his flatmates, but who was exonerated because no jury in the world would convict him, given the circumstances...
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Nil illegitimi carborundum

Rude awakening: 2:35 AM.
Internet connectivity status: Nonexistent.
Days to departure: 47.

There can be no doubt about it: instead of feeling younger for being constantly surrounded by all this youth, I have aged disproportionately to the time I have spent here. There is no shortage of people who are keen to tell me how terrible I look on a daily basis. When I dare glance into the mirror, even I notice the changes that would under normal circumstances be imperceptible. My colour is grayer, my skin saggier, my wrinkles deeper. Injuries that once took days to heal now take months. I wish this were the setup for a joke; there isn't one. I wish I could say this is an exaggeration. It's not.

This whole experience has taken a dramatic toll on my health. Most, if not all of this, I ascribe to lack of sleep. Sleep is how our bodies and minds restore themselves; and I have been chronically deprived of it since my arrival here. Looking back, I doubt that I have slept more than one full, 7- or 8-hour night -- without the benefit of artificial aid, of course -- per week. This is not a particularly healthy ratio. How is a body supposed to repair itself without the thing it most desperately requires, next to food and oxygen?

Fortunately, despite their best efforts (stealing food, smoking cigarettes and lighting the halls on fire) the bastards have not yet managed to deprive me of those necessities.

Bullshit level: excessive

Rude awakening: 1:30 AM.
Internet connectivity status: None.
Connectivity in library to essential resources: Nil.
Nerves: Frayed.
Days to departure: 48.

If I had a hammer, there'd be no more undergrads

Today's rude awakening: 3:45 AM (The French undergrads.)
Internet connectivity status: Dodgy.
Days to departure: 49.

Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life here

Today’s fire alarm (false): 5:25 AM.
Internet connectivity status: Unavailable.
Countdown to departure: 50 days.

Eerie

Fromage de la semaine: Shropshire Blue.

It's quiet around here. Too quiet. It's very spooky, unnerving. (If you've followed this blog at all in the last little while, you'll know it's anything but quiet around here at the best of times.)

It could have something to do with the weather; it's cold (though still above zero) and grey here. Maybe everyone's just hibernating. Or given that we're a month into the new term (!) everyone's hitting the books. Either way it's snowing lightly -- big, wet flakes -- but it's not clear if it really wants to rain or snow. Much of what we had yesterday (see photos below) has already melted, but then it froze overnight, so most pathways are icy and bumpy, not easily navigated. Maybe that's why it's so calm out there: no one wants to venture outside.

In this regard London reminds me very much of Vancouver in the winter time. When it snows with any significant accumulation (i.e. over 2-3cm), as it does on rare occasions, the whole city freaks out. No one seems prepared for it. Few drivers have winter tires; few homes or businesses have shovels, salt, sand or other snow removal gear. The transit system can't cope and trains run slowly if service isn't completely disrupted. Chaos ensues.

Here's what we woke up to yesterday:


It's interesting to watch all the international students -- that is, those who aren't from places like Canada or Minnesota -- react to the snow. Especially the ones from the warmer climates that rarely, if ever, see the stuff. They were like little kids, only on tequila and beer and spliffs.

Actually it was kind of funny seeing the wonder and amazement on their faces. Naturally, snowball fights erupted everywhere and the snow was perfectly suited for making snowmen. I should have taken more shots of the fields of Northwick Park -- they so were filled with figures it looked like a standing army dressed in winter camouflage. One group of enterprising youngsters rolled a massive ball right up to the portal leading to the underground station, nearly sealing it right off.

Gratitude

It's been an eventful week, what with fire alarms -- yesterday's two false ones, and the real one from the day before -- and the continued disruptions to my precious sleep cycles. But today, as tired as I am, I have a lot to be grateful for.

Having just met with the course leader I have been given the green light to:

1. Come home once the course works is over, i.e., at the end of March, and work on my thesis from home.
2. Write the music marketing textbook I have always wanted to write and submit it as my thesis.

You can't imagine how happy I am at this very moment. And you certainly can't see the resulting tears in my eyes. But they're there, and they're real.

Darwin's waiting room

Not to put too fine a point on it, the intellectually challenged See-You-Next-Tuesday across the hall -- Sonny, or Sammy, or whatever his name is -- partied like it was 1999 last night. Or should I say this morning. Ho hum.

The real story of the day (because being awoken 2:30 - 4:30 AM on a nightly basis is no longer news) is that the fire alarm went off just now. Twice. In a row. And of course by now we've become so inured to the false alarms that no one wanted to leave. Least of all myself, who was in the shower at the time.

Except this time there was a real fire. Naturally.

Apparently some arsehole on the 4th floor decided to light a candle and put it in the window sill, naturally in direct contravention of the terms of the lease. And naturally the dickwad's curtain caught fire, but the scum-sucking, mono-browed, knuckle-dragging mouth-breather had covered over the smoke alarm (naturally in contravention of the law, as well as the lease terms) so as not to get caught doing something she/he/it shouldn't have been doing in the first place. Hence the fire. Resulting in the eventual arrival of three big-ass fire trucks and everything.

Welcome to Flat 88, Harrow Hall of Residence: Darwin's waiting room, where we engage daily in experiments in adaptive living to determine the fittest of the species -- who will survive and who will race to extinct themselves by acts of the sheerest bald-faced, dim-witted, numb-nutted stupidity.

Let's hope they don't accidentally drag some of the rest of us with them.

Semi-improved

To follow up yesterday's post regarding the demolition on the grounds of the neighbouring St. Marks and Northwick Park hospitals: I stand corrected. Only one of the smokestacks is now gone. Completely and utterly gone. The other one was still standing as of today, and in fact earlier this morning was observed emitting smoke.

Oh well. One smokestack is better than two, I suppose. The view -- and the air -- is better already.

Home improvements

I was quite surprised the other day to find that workmen had sealed off Proyer's Path and the shortcut to the Northwick Park and St. Mark's Hospitals the other day -- in order dismantle the two unsightly smokestacks next to the Harrow campus. Hooray!

I strongly suspect they were, at one time, used for burning biohazardous waste or some such, so all the more reason to be happy to see them go, although they haven't been in use since at least some time before I moved in here. Anyway, the one chimney stack that's being dismantled right now is actually a metal tube of sorts wrapped around three separate, but equally ugly, pipes, full of rust and filth and dirt and death. So the workers are cutting open sections with oxyacetylene torches, then the crane lifts the section off; from there they remove the inner pipes (though how that is accomplished I haven't seen yet). I suspect they just knock it over, since little is salvageable. Not sure how they'll tackle the other stack; it looks like it's made of brick, and they may need to just knock it over or implode it. More later.

Below are a couple of "before" shots. In the first one you can see them starting to lift the outer steel section off the core; in the second shot it's been completely removed and is about to be set down on the ground, exposing the pipes underneath.

I'll post the "after" shots after the thing has been fully demolished.

A dish best served cold*

* (To be bellowed aggressively and drunkenly in the hallways after 4:00 AM, through a rented bullhorn, during the week of undergrad final exams, to the tune of "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart):

Wake up maggots, you know I've got shomething to shay to you
It's 4:15 and before long you'll be back in school
I know you're probably tired, but I'm just getting wired
Oh maggots you don't know the pain you've caused...
You disturbed my sleep more often than I care to count.

Your puerile stunts and hangovers really show your age
Inconsiderate prats, in my eyes you're wastes of space
You laugh at all your own jokes, you burp and fart and smoke
Oh childish brats you're Darwin's evidence...
Wiped off the planet soon, a slow and painful doom,
A hopeful thought that keeps me going strong.

All I needed was at least one night of restful sleep
But you pinheaded twisted pigfuckers, you wore me out
Stumbling in shouting the odds
at all hours and slamming doors,
Oh assholes you couldn't have tried anymore.
You woke me from my sleep 'cause if your brains were TNT
You lot would not have enough to blow your nose...

(to be continued)

How did it get to be February?

Currently grooving to: Mazarin, Watch It Happen. (Thanks, Vinita!). I know Baby will like it; imagine a sound somewhere between Magnetic Fields and Modest Mouse, only nowhere near as annoying as the latter. With admirers like me issuing crap comparisons like that, it's no wonder they've called it a day. (I love it that Gracenote returns "folk" as the genre when I fire up iTunes.)

Can't believe we are now already into February, the shortest month of the year, and that there are barely 8 weeks left in the course. Which throws me into a mild panic, considering I spent most of January poking the proverbial pooch (academically anyway) and trying to decide -- unsuccessfully, as it turns out -- what the hell to write for my thesis.

Yup, the problem persists. But I've just got to pull my finger out, make a decision and stick to it. Because the other assignments are starting to pile up behind it, and they won't write themselves. I've got an outline due on Monday; maybe the Fear will put the wind in my sails.

I should be so lucky.

Actually, let me contradict myself here on a couple of points. One, I haven't exactly been slacking off; au contraire, I've been reading like a man possessed. On average I've read 5 books per week since the Christmas break. Unfortunately none of it has helped shed light on what to tackle as my thesis. If anything, it has only led me further down the rabbit hole and into a warren of dead ends.

The other thing is that I misplaced an entire week of my life somewhere. I now appreciate -- with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, of course -- that I was terribly ill, but did not realize it at the time. I came to that conclusion after (a) remembering that one night during my week-long bout of insomnia I actually fell asleep but woke up shortly thereafter, completely and utterly drenched in sweat, head to toe, as if I had taken a shower while sleepwalking, and (b) hearing everyone I know talk of this mysterious ailment that has been circulating recently.

Things are much better now. Oh, I still don't sleep at night; my entire spinal system is so contorted and wracked with so much pain that I keep getting jabbed awake by stabbing pains up and down my extremities, thanks to the medieval torture devices they call beds here. But at least the quality of my catnaps is getting better.

Getting old sucks.

Must-see television: "Victor: The Victor Davis Story"

I am ecstatic to be able to tell you that an airdate has now been set for VICTOR: The Victor Davis Story, written by and starring my friend, fellow Montreal native and former housemate Mark Lutz.

Mark also happened to be a friend of Victor's, why is why he was incredibly driven to make this project happen. (The story of the making of the film is almost as inspiring as the Victor Davis story itself, though of course this one clearly has a happier ending. ) The show airs Monday March 26 at 8 pm on CBC. Write it down and program your VCRs, PVRs, TiVos, and whatever else you care to set up.

Please pass this on to anyone and everyone.

How far down the rabbit hole do you wanna go?

For me, a card-carrying ENFP, the inherent challenge of academia is always: how far down the rabbit hole do you wanna go?

I mean, I get sidetracked easily at the best of times. Most of you have, at one time or other, received some dumbass email containing a link to a goofy animation somewhere on the interweb and know this already; the internet is a dangerously distracting place. Throw some halfway interesting shit at me and see how long I can go without surfacing for air. But it's even worse for me with books. Because with the Web, you can get up, leave, and come back and dick around between sites. You get the occasional between-click breather.

But books are a different story. They are far more absorbing. They demand far more of my attention.

I'll probably grow old and sad like Meredith Burgess at the end of that episode of The Twilight Zone: finally, I'll have all the time in the world to read (because, like a cockroach that simply refuses die no matter how much bug spray you use, I am doomed to a hell of outliving you all, except for maybe the kidiots who live in my flat and who make cockroaches seem like a bevy of Playboy bunnies for house guests in comparison). But like Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone, my glasses will break and I won't be able to read them.

Anyway. Everything leads to everything else. It's all interconnected. I grok this.

That's why I've changed my thesis topic, oh, about seven times in the last week alone (whittled down from a shortlist of about 43 -- I kid you not). I've been drawing up this list of Really Big Questions that I've wanted to pursue for years now, but have never had the time or the incentive. Of course now I have the latter in spades, but nowhere near as much of the former as I'd like. And it's why I'm trying not to panic even at this very moment. Because the temptation is great to read more, get wrapped up in something, then reckon it may not be the topic for me after all.

See, these research questions always lead to bigger, more all-encompassing and all-consuming questions. Such as: Am I wasting my time? Is there something juicier waiting for me? Will this lead somewhere useful? Will this eventually benefit mankind? Or is my head so far up my own ass that what I am seeing is actually the view from my own navel?

You get what I mean.

Thunderbird migration

After weeks of nagging by Eudora, I finally made the switch. Apparently the version I currently use will no longer be functional after March 31st for reasons I'll explain in a moment, so I figured I might as well deal with it now and avoid the last-minute panic. Oh, I took the usual precautions; I dumped all my Eudora mailbox files and folders onto a backup CD, just in case. And although I've deleted the icons from the desktop and the startup menu, I haven't actually uninstalled it yet. You know, just in case.

I should point out that I didn't make the change lightly; I'm an electronic pack rat (I keep everything, even though I know it's bad for me) and you all know that I'm the personification of the term "creature of habit." I've been using Eudora (sponsored mode) for, gosh, probably a decade or more, and I've stored up about 400 MB worth of e-mail (much of it unread, I hate to say, but I swear SOMEDAY I will!!!...), and I've really grown accustomed to its interface. But alas it appears that Qualcomm is more or less winding the so-called sponsored mode down in the next few months and turning it over to the open source community. To which I say: Huzzah Qualcomm! Nice one. Initially I was sorely tempted to simply download the "new" version (7.1). That would have been the easier and probably less anxiety-inducing route. But I already had Thunderbird installed -- I use it (very efficiently) for all my RSS feeds -- so I figured, what the hell. I've been a fan of Firefox and have never had any issues with it, nor it with me, so I figured I'd give it a try. And the migration seemed fairly easy & straightforward, so I went for it.

It's early days yet but so far, so good. I've had to add a couple of extensions, like MagicSLR, so I had an easier way to "send later" instead of being forced to send my e-mail out immediately. (Sometimes it needs to steep a little longer, or age like fine wine in a cask; sometimes I just really need to rethink some foul-mouthed rant before I let someone have it between the eyes.) And I installed another one to help migrate my address book over, because Thunderbird doesn't like the way Eudora handles contact information, or vice versa. There's some other functionality I'm missing, like the ability to change sig files on-the-fly. (If anyone knows how to do this already, let me know; I haven't seen any in the Mozilla forums.) But the mail conversion and file/folder transfer went smooth as buttah, and mostly it's been a pleasant, and fairly uneventful, transition... he writes, with fingers crossed.

Not sure why I'm telling you this, except it may be some sort of manifestation of an averse psychological response to reviews of MS Vista and its creepware functions. Open source is good. Open source is free! (Although I donate modestly to the cause.) Now, I just need to work up the courage to install Open Office and finally do away with MS Office.

Essential link

A long-overdue shout-out to Will MacCallum at Climb Your Ladder. I can honestly say that without Will's expert coaching, chances are very good that I wouldn't be here today (at Westminster, I mean, doing my MA) or be this close to running my first full marathon, among other things. Check out his site here. If you're in need of a helping hand to get clarity on your goals, or you need to get motivated and stay on track to achieve them, you could do far worse than to invoke some Will-power (sorry, couldn't resist). I'm putting Will's link in the Useful Stuff box at right, although in this case that's quite the understatement.

Broadcasters in political censorship scandal

Here in London, the environment & climate change are constant front-page headlines. I guess that's what you'd call a classic "good news/bad news scenario." The media in Canada may finally be waking up to reality too, from what I'm reading; I just found a very interesting story in the Grope & Flail which I'll get to in a moment. Basically it says Canadians now rate the environment as their #1 issue, even ahead of health care and security. Interesting.

What makes it all the more interesting that the broadcast consortium airing the Canadian federal election debates -- the English networks being CBC, CTV & Global who, by the way, make their fat private profits from the very public airwaves -- are signaling that once again they do not intend to allow the Green Party to participate in the next federal leaders' debates. And an election could be called at any time.

This wouldn't be nearly as galling if they had a set precedent or at least a consistent policy of "no seats = no screen time." That was the excuse they tried to use last time. As usual, the broadcasters didn't do their homework; in 1993 the Bloc Quebecois was invited to the debates, despite having zero seats in parliament -- and despite running only 72 candidates in Quebec alone. This, of course, is in contrast to the full slate of 308 candidates run coast-to-coast by the Green Party in the last two federal elections. On that score alone this arbitrary decision by the broadcasters is utterly indefensible.

So I need to ask you to take 30 seconds (or, if you're really ambitious, maybe a few minutes) to make our broadcasters more accountable and, dare I say it, more democratic. You don't have to be a Green Party supporter; you just have to believe in fairness and democracy to sign an online petition to ensure the Green Party's voice is heard in the next federal election leaders' debates. (As you've probably heard, environmental lawyer Elizabeth May -- from Cape Breton! -- is the new GPC leader. She's as smart as she is funny, or the other way 'round, so she'll make mince meat out of Stephen "Humorless" Harper, Smilin' Jack Layton and... oh yeah, Stephane Dion. I keep forgetting. But maybe that's why they're afraid to have her on?)

If for no other reason, you should be pissed that Canadian tax dollars partially fund the GPC (and other parties) after each election and therefore the broadcasters are denying you, as a taxpayer, the right to hear what the GPC has to say.

If this strikes you as being eminently reasonable, please take 30 seconds (or less!) and sign the online petition at:

www.demanddemocraticdebates.ca

If you feel really energetic, write a (polite but firm) e-mail or letter to the editor of your local newspaper asking those very same questions. (If fact, feel free to copy this post & paste it into a new email or Word, document, editing and/or adding your particulars as required.)

Okay, here's that story I was telling you about:

Climate concerns now top security and health
BRIAN LAGHI
Globe and Mail Update

OTTAWA — Anxiety about environmental change has climbed so quickly within Canadians' consciousness that it now overwhelms terrorism, crime and health care as society's greatest threat, says a poll that kicks off a major Globe and Mail examination of the issue.