The Peg

I'm in Winnipeg! I promise I'll write a proper blog soon, I need a reliable connection to do that though and I know if I try to write a proper post now, I'll end up missing the reboarding!

Downtown

I made it to the hostel! Everything seems nice so far, although my hands are sore from the cases. The guy on reception is also English, happy times!

Skype is not working. Apparently the server is down or something.

:D

Yesterday I managed to play 'duck' in a game of online Scrabble.

Today I managed the same without using a blank tile :D

R.I.P. Jake

So, my uPass turned up today and Martin is leaving. But today has mostly been overshadowed by the news that Jake Staines died last night.

For those of you who don't know, he was in the year above me at Chavvy Heath and was part of the music crew. He was an incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist but was best at the piano. Although I didn't see him much after he left the school after his GCSEs, he was always very lovely and funny. The reports I have read on the accident names him but not the female passenger who was seriously injured when the car hit a tree in Brentwood, though I imagine that the passenger was his fiancee Holly Hayden who I also knew from the music crew.

Death is never pleasant but to die so young and at such a happy time of the year is extra sad. This is the second time since I left school that one of my peers has died in a car crash just before Christmas. My thoughts are very much with their families and close friends.

Signs of Chrimbo

I checked my post today and it was AMAZING. I had 3 envelopes! One I recognised straight off as being from my parents, one had their name on the back of the envelope and the other was a mystery. When I opened them up, I found 4 Christmas cards, each containing varying degrees of wordiness. I now feel kinda lame because my cards will almost certainly arrive late, my messages aren't nearly as interesting as some of the ones I received, and my cards are cheap and from Safeway. Yeah, Safeway still exists over here. Going from left to right in the picture, the cards are from Lauren, Ben, teh 'rents, Grandma, and Emily & Ross.

That's a cool bottle of coke, no?

Some things...

Facebook is back. Not because I want it back but because my email has decided to go horribly wrong. I've spent most of the day trying to access it, only to discover that I had no reply from the high commission. And now it won't let me back in again. So, Facebook is being used in lieu of my email account as at least it isn't broken. Yet. Twitter on the other hand will not be back, at least for a long time. Twitter was where most of the meh-ness was coming from anyway. Although I will miss talking to Suzanne and reading Stephen Fry's tweets.

I had my war exam tonight. I finished ridiculously early. So did a few people. I think it went ok. I got my journal back and it got a B. I'll probably get a B overall. I'm cool with that.

I am waiting for mother to appear on Skype. I hope she does soon.

This post contains a link to something nasty. Be ye warned!

So, last night was my leaving meal. I looked like Queen of the Skets, not because I'd dressed distastefully or had gone wacky with the fake tan, but because I was the only woman at the table. And I sat at the head of it. Due to exams/PVRA - RA stuff/me deleting my Facebook which deleted the event, there only ended up being five of us. And three of us were English. And two of us are on exchange from UEA. Ne'ermind. There was me (duh), Martin, Russell, Henry and Tom. It was fun. The general level of conversation was stuck very firmly in the gutter and this suited us all. We were trying to think of the most disgusting thing we could think of during dinner (I know, i r clazzy, no?) when Tom happened to mention munging. None of had heard of it and he refused to tell until he'd finished eating. But Henry whipped out his iPhone and told us. To those of you who do not want to know what it is, I commend your lack of curiosity. For those of you who want to know, I give you the wonder of Urban Dictionary.

Please do not blame me for any psychological scarring that occurs from reading that. I told you it was bad.

Once we'd finished dinner, we bought a bottle of rose and went back to my room for some drinks and some YouTube-ing. Many discussions were had. The 'Tom Sandwich' one being particularly memorable. I will not be repeating the contents of that on the basis that they were somewhat lewd.

Today I have been rocking out in the reserve section of the library before coming to find a 'study group' in the 5th lounge. I took the opportunity to pass the year abroad book around. People wrote nice things. Unfortunately, a lot of people decided to write on the same page as each other which makes it awkward when I put the pictures in. But I need to print those out first, which I'll get round to doing at some point before I leave.

In other news, the marks for Scan. Lit have been uploaded to my student page. Unfortunately, it doesn't give you the individual marks, only the overall mark. I got a B. It seems I ballsed up my final fairly badly. Ah well. It's a fair enough grade.

Social networking

I just deactivated my Twitter and my Facebook. Whilst these sites are meant to help people keep in touch, they have recently been a large contributing factor (I believe) to my general less than chipper feelings. I like you all very much and I'm glad that you're having fun and whatnot. However, seeing pictures and hearing about what I'm missing out on is not conducive to my stability at the moment.

I hope you can understand and respect my decision. You can still find out how I am by reading this or by emailing me, talking to me on Skype, sending me a text or writing me a letter (when I have a permanent address, that is.) None of you have been malicious or have set out to hurt me, this is just how I feel. Perhaps one day you'll find yourself in my situation and will understand why I have done this. Some of you will argue that I should reinstate my accounts as I will have greater access to my friends and family when I am feeling shitty. I argue that there's a tiny minority of people who take the time to see how I am on these sites and make sure I am ok. I suspect that these people will keep in touch with me in other ways. The rest of these sites are filled with political stupidity, ridiculous memes, and second hand accounts of how great my ex's life is. I'm glad that he's happy, I just don't enjoy not being part of that happiness. I hope this makes some sense.

There are some things in life you can change and some you can't. This situation wasn't making me happy so I have changed it.

I would just like to state that there was no single person or event that caused this, more an a accumulation of everything. I will miss Stephen Fry's tweets though.

u (shall not) Pass

So, today I was going to try to go to the aquarium. Grabbed my bag and was making sure I had the essentials - keys, phone etc - when I noticed that a very important item was missing. My uPass.

Now, I'm 99% sure I wouldn't have taken it out of my bag as I had no need to and the other items I didn't need last night were still in there. So I suspect that it may have fallen out when I took my keys out of something. The short of it is, somewhere between me getting on the no. 4 and me arriving back in my room, it's gone somewhere.

I went to campus security etc and none of them have it. If I were here for the whole year, I'd be getting my new one on Monday :( I have no intention of replacing it as I only have a fortnight left in the city. I'm just going to have to not go anywhere and hope that it turns up/go places that only require one bus so that I don't have to spend too much money/take the bus like normal and hope that there are no ticket inspectors.

Bah.

Gassy Jack

Today I aimed to go to the aquarium but got a bit lost, so I went to Gastown instead. Here I saw the steam powered clock and the statue of Gassy Jack. Gastown is named after John 'Gassy Jack' Deighton, an English bloke who ran the first bar in this area and was known for telling long-winded stories.

In other news, I got a response from Immigration NZ saying that they were unable to find my file :S and asked if I could provide an application number if known (no idea what it is, wasn't sent one) or my passport number. It was at this point that I was glad I'd had the common sense to photocopy the info page of my passport. Hopefully the will track it down.

Just had a little look on the UEA housing page as I was bored. The housing list is being released online at 10am on Jan. 18th. It seems a bit early to me, I could've sworn it used to be in Feb. Maybe I'm losing it in my old age. As soon as I post this, I'll get on with creating myself a little 'Fran needs a home' group on Facebook to start sounding people out.

Hey! It's an update!

Hello. I'm back. Here ^^^ are some photos of what I've been up to. As you can see, I have new glasses. I got them on Thursday and whilst I was waiting, I had my hair straightened. I ate my first banana and drank my first cup of green tea.

Friday was the LDOC jungle themed dance (hence why I have leaves drawn on my face.) It was certainly $10 that I could've spent on something better.

Saturday was the formal dinner. Meredith, an RA from SL invited me to sit at her table, which also had Reilly (the Tec 3rd RA) sitting at it.

Sunday I went to Capilano with Rachel, Sandra and Haitham. For reasons unknown, I found it all hilariously funny and thus spent my time on the bridge laughing my head off. As well as the Christmas lights we all saw some bald eagles and a raven. Raven :D I bought myself a pair of native design earrings and a duck finger puppet at the shop.

We'll not talk about Monday.

Today - Tuesday - I had my American poetry exam. I'm pretty sure I failed it. 3 hours, 3 sections, and I still didn't finish it. There was too much to try to remember and my brain completely failed me. I genuinely think I'd have stood more chance with a 4th year chemistry paper. Never before have I been faced with a lit. exam that I couldn't understand. I just sat looking at it thinking 'I have no idea what this is on about, what it's asking me or what I'm even doing here.' I got a B- on the 2nd essay which gives me 2 B+ grades for my presentations, a C+ and a B- for my essays and whatever I get on the exam and my participation mark. Proof that I suck at poetry and that your first degree level poetry should probably not be a 400-level one. I can only hope that I did better in the other poetry class.

Also, I got my first Christmas card. It was from my grandma. More cards are welcome :)

Ok. I've spent the afternoon looking at flickr etc and unfortunately they have tiny upload limits unless you buy a subscription. You'll just have to wait until I come home to see my photos. Well, maybe not. I am going to see if I can put together little slideshow videos and put them on the tube of you.

Also, is it just me or does Julian Assange look like a more sinister version of Simon Yaxley? Judging by the fact that Jess re-tweeted that comment, I'm going to say no.

OH! I've managed to start making little videos for each month. Here is the first.