Day of reckoning (literally)

Yesterday, our second full day of classes for the term, led off with Finance & Economics. It's bad enough I have this completely irrational fear of F&E (read: effin' E) at the best of times, but the hall's Junior Olympic Morons were at it again the previous night, slamming doors and shouting and generally being their usual odious selves rather late into the night/early into the morning. Right now you're probably thinking: oh no, here we go again. But you must understand that my frustration is partially fueled by the fact that most of my flatmates, who happen to be Indian, tell me that life is a (very loud) 24-hour-a-day circus in Mumbai, and it is a matter of the purest Darwinian survival that they have developed effective coping mechanisms. These allow my flatmates to sleep deeply and unperturbed through the most unholy of rackets, such as those committed by the Second Floor Undergraduates' Tragic Waste of Skin and Oxygen Brigade on a nightly basis. In fact, they tell me, the din raised by Harrow Hall Q88's barbarians is positively pastoral by comparison. Therefore it's difficult, if not impossible, to arouse sufficient sympathy for some sort of concerted action, let alone a half-decent lynch mob.

Not that I'm keeping score, of course, but in the nearly three weeks that I have been in the U.K., I believe I have enjoyed no more than a grand total fo three nights of more than 4 hours' consecutive sleep. Small wonder everyone is very quick to tell me how bloody awful I look. This, incidentally, is a perfectly thoughtless and shitty thing to tell someone. I mean, would you walk up to a cancer patient and say, "Wow, you look like you're at death's door"? I hope not. So why on earth would you say something equally inappropriate to someone who is chronically sleep-deprived? Let me spell it out for you all now, once and for all: NO MATTER HOW TIRED OR ILL SOMEONE LOOKS, DO NOT TELL THEM SO. THEY ARE PROBABLY WELL AWARE OF IT AND YOUR ASININE COMMENTS WILL ONLY MAKE THEM MORE DEPRESSED THAN THEY ALREADY ARE. Got that? If you absolutely cannot keep your stupid fat gob shut, the proper thing to do is to ask, in a caring and concerned voice (even if you have to fake it), "Did you get enough sleep last night?" or, "Are you feeling alright?" This will give the unfortunate soul the opportunity to whinge about how tired or ill they are, if they so choose.

Anyway, back to accountancy (which you'd think would be a perfect cure for insomnia): Rather than being completely "in the moment," as they say, and being receptive to what was on offer, I resisted mightily -- for a while. I actively dreaded the class, no disrespect to Cliff, our kind and gentle lecturer, intended. Eventually I relaxed into it and recognized that perhaps opening my mind wide to the valuable lessons of managing money might be a good idea. Who knew?

Welcome them as I did, the concepts simply did not penetrate quite as well as I would have liked. Sleep deprivation aside, I think my comprehension was hampered by the fact that we began with a step backwards into basic double-entry bookkeeping. At one point in my life I thought I'd understood double-entry bookkeeping; apparently this is not the case. As a result of yesterday's lesson, I began to suspect that everything I thought I knew on the subject was completely and utterly wrong. Alas, things make even less sense to me now than they used to.

Sometimes it's just better to let sleeping dogs -- or accountants -- lie.

Eventually we muddled through and it was time to move on to Issues & Challenges in the Creative Industries, which as a subject of study is far more exciting and stimulating to me, even though the foremost challenge in my mind at the time was the F&E shit. Those three hours flew by.

Naturally the session and day closed with everyone moving over to the pub for a pint. (If this trend continues I will either need a liver transplant or another line of credit.) I stayed long enough for just one pint of Guinness, even though the accounting stuff could easily have driven me to more determined purpose-drinking. To my relief and delight that single pint -- no doubt coupled with severe fatigue -- was enough to help me lapse into a comatose unconsciousness quite soon after hitting the bed. This, I should add, is not necessarily a good thing since it suggests that self-medication is a way to overcome my, ah, recurring problem.

I have spent this morning actively seeking additional texts, readings and tutorials on double-entry bookkeeping. The phrase "get a life" comes to mind.