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.