easter weekend

run. jesse is going to blog about contentment (cf. previous post on challenging boundaries etc etc.)

i am convinced fast food and convenience meals exist for a reason. they are there to feed the shapeless masses who really prefer to have a book beside them while they are eating. don't knock me, i actually cooked yesterday only because statistics was far worse than thinking about how long to leave the potatoes in and chucking random things into soup and running all the way to another kitchen to cook rice because my kitchen only has a single powerpoint. i need a new flat. soon. preferably somewhere without fire alarms so i can burn in my sleep (saves hell the trouble). parents called from semarang... i could hear the dog in the background. living it up in indonesia... but yeah it was nice hearing from them on easter, all the way from indonesia too.

i started on economic history today. i gave up on stats because there was no computer around, i couldn't do all my minitab analysis etc. so i thought it would be fun to do economic history. you know. read about how a bunch of neanderthals learnt to start making tools. migrated through the known world, ended up in britain and sparked off sustained economic growth. a tad anglocentric, although that's really the start of the course after that the course loses itself in the details of s. africa, soviet russia, china etc etc. but anyway there's a shitload of reading. all the notes i've taken through term occupy 130 pages. and thank god i am in britain the readings are full of dry humour. on malthus advocating moral restraint to curb population growth : " moral restraint against the desires of sex. is it any wonder malthus came to the conclusion he did?"

yah i walk around with my liverpool jacket nowadays cause it's warm enough prompting comments from arsenal fans hoping it'll be their year. good for you. the sun sets late, i'm beginning to love london (the brick and mortar shit again) and my exam stress borders on a kind of resignation that i'll have to go through it anyway. maybe it's the eye of the storm kind of thing but last week has been pretty good.

and you know... just thought why don't they save all the trouble and just give prizes away like they do for ms world. like ms hardworking, mr attendance at lectures until i realised no one gives a shit like they do about ms congeniality, ms personality etc. so we have exams which have all those factors and then imagine (for a marker), like i was once a long time ago, how faceless these people are. ok, occasionally an exam script shouts effort!, but so many apparently ill-conceived answers were the product of blood and toil too. but in the end, it's easiest just to decide on ms world. but it's just my little tribute to the hardworking people out there. the faceless nameless people who dwell in shadows behind table lamps better suited for interrogation purposes, creating their own sunlight. the world remembers. be thankful, this is my nice thought for the day.

jesse.