But what about now?  Sure, I’m not old, and I don’t hate going out.  That’d be absurd!  Don’t jump to conclusions, now.

I think I’ve realised that I’m now glad of the time to relax at the weekend.  I’ve just woken up.  In the afternoon.  And it feels great.  I’m not worried: when time is stretched out, when you’ve got control of your own [more often than not: expansively free, 21st century student] timetable it all seems so much more manageable.  But you know what?  I’ve got some of those same commitments.

Yes, I take on responsibilities and obligations that I don’t have to.  Sure, people might think I spread myself a bit too thin.  Yes,  I hardly live the party-hard student lifestyle and yes, I don’t have a real job (yet).  But my course, my SURHUL stuff…it all adds up, and my calendar tends to get pretty busy pretty quick.

I don’t think I’m explaining it very well.  Pop psychology?  Go on, then.  Nicholas enjoys the weekend because it allows him to regain a small amount of control (feeding his egomania) that he hypocritically enjoys losing during the week (so as to allow excuses for his underperformance).  His adaptation to university lifestyle results in him noticing and musing on changes in his behaviour and reflections on the world, especially when he feels that his head might explode due to exponentially-increasing stress.  Honey, life ain’t easy: that’s lesson one.

When things get on top of you, it’s nice to know there are still those two days in a week that you can do what you want with.

I think I need to reboot, restart and

This Saturday, I’m going to have to write my assessed essays, prepare for my seminars, freak out about my exams, plan for editing the SU publication next year (including revamps to administration, marketing and publishing the thing), plan the radio show, take my photo for the day and maybe get some more sleep not going to change out of my pyjamas.  I’m going to catch up on TV programmes from my Slingbox.  I’m going to eat ready meals and chocolate.  Not necessarily in that order.  And I won’t be in a bad mood come Sunday.  I promise.

I spent a week-end fixing that laptop with the “broken soundcard”.  As it turns out, a small cable on the motherboard had fallen out of its correct socket, and I spent £50 for Disking Godalming to tell me nothing could be done and I bought an external soundcard, after taking it inter-railing with me.  However, the minute I have some spare time when I get back, I can fix it.  I want my money back.  Computer specialists my arse.

No fewer than 96 hours had I been in the UK, I ended up being invited to tea at The Ritz by my family, which was posh.  Nothin’ like some scones and cucumber sandwiches for three hours.  It certainly makes up for budget-pizzas in Belgrade.

Ah, and I went up to London on my own to get a 16Gb white iPhone, something Carphone Warehouse and O2 Guildford have never even heard of.  I then proceeded to screw up putting on the ill-fitting invisibleSHIELD, while my number was transferred a few days later.  Apart from my dirtily rough edges, it’s a great phone do-it-all device.  Apart from the dodgy 3G coverage, the lack of MMS, a built in tasks app and the learning curve on the keyboard.  Actually, the keyboard exceeded my expectations, so I’ll hush my mouth.

My friend Nick Manners’ surprise birthday party went without a hitch, too.  Unless you count him getting paralytically drunk and vomiting on people a hitch.  A good time was had by all, even the comatose.  Racing around the streets of Guildford in my newly-repaired Fifi rounded off another week.  Fifi being my car, and no, I didn’t break it, there was a manufacturer’s fault with the doors.

Seeing as I’m having a bit of a rant (I started this blog on the 14th and it was to be an eloquent, mildy-philosophical piece of web poetry, but now I’m tired and ratty…), I’d like to have a little bit of a go at the NHS.  I had an eye check-up appointment with my lovely doctor at the Royal Surrey County Hospital.  Except, I didn’t see my doctor, because due to some administrative cock-up, she wasn’t allowed to work.  I don’t know.  Anyway, I get told that I need to have my pupils dilated (something that I haven’t had since I was a short-sighted fidgety five year-old.), which is a non-negotiable procedure (good job I didn’t drive to the hospital, wasn’t it?) and I see a stand-offish doctor and another, unintroduced man in my examination room.  What is he doing there?  Why wasn’t he introduced?  I hardly had time to bring this to the attention of my “doctor” (well, I didn’t see any qualifications on the walls…) before my pupils were the size of dinner plates and the fluorescent lights felt as though they were burning into the very centre of my retinae.  Even quicker was my examination, a few more painful lights shining into my eyes and I was told that my prescription had worsened.  By almost two dioptre.  Psh.  He didn’t even do the “Number one…or number two…” bit.  No “red or green?”, no “which line can you read?”.  And my pupils didn’t go down for nearly three days.  First thing Monday morning I went to a reputable Guildford optician, and had my examination re-taken.  This time, only a difference of -0.5.  Well there we bloomin’ go, that’s better.

What else happened?  Er, I went to a “Monster Mash”, I enjoyed the Olympics, my Sky+ box got fixed..?

Oh, wait, yes.  Results day.  That was it. Refreshing the UCAS system ’til 3 in the morning while watching BBC Three late-night crap/comedy gold/crap (delete as applicable).  Well, that didn’t prove very fruitful, as no-one from UCAS seems to actually operate in the small hours of the morning (they haven’t outsourced to a non-GMT place….yet.), so I groggily drove myself to school at about 11 am.  I got an A in English, an A in Drama & Theatre Studies, a B in French and a B in Spanish.  If you’re an Edexcel Drama A2 practical invigilator, I now detest you with a passion, given that my favourite performance piece, for which I had the largest part, garnered a module-crippling C.  Cheers, love.

Anyway, these results mean I comfortably got into RHUL.  Cue lots of enrolment letters and an online ‘campus-connect’ registration. Funky. I’ll meet my fellow captains of industry on 21st September.

In between all the exciting university correspondence, I went to Reading Festival 2008!  My third year at Reading, I saw lots and lots of bands, as to be expected from a music festival….but I also met Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, The Teenagers (exercising my A-level French) and We Are Scientists.  And made some new [Facebook] friends in the queue.  I’ve already booked for ’09.  I love student credit cards.  Credit crunch? Is that a cereal?  Turns the milk into….debt?  Repossesses your bowl?  Okay, okay, I’ll stop.

You’ll be pleased to hear that I’m off to Cyprus from 3rd-10th September, but hopefully I’ll start blogging more regularly than once a month, or in this case, once every two moths.  These late-night/early-morning sessions don’t seem to be good for much, sitting at home watching TV and rambling on the internet.

Bugger.  I’ve just taken a break from watching the US Open (it starts at 4pm and ends at 4am, coinciding with my new sleeping pattern…) to see Manchester Utd (yay!) get beaten by Zenit St. Petersburg (boo!) in the UEFA Super Cup.  Hear that?  That’s the sound of no-one, apart from me, caring.

I’m preparing for uni at the moment; buying exorbitant amounts of books but not reading them, looking at bed linen and crockery but not buying anything…actually, I’d better get on with some of this.  Time to get the next chapter of my life kick-started.

The first time is the next time
This time is the last time
And this time is the last time
’cause this time I’ll fight.

Ah. I didn’t factor in Freshers’ Week, did I?

I’m not going to have my laptop (it’s only just been repaired – it’s not going anywhere.), therefore I’m not going to have the internet. Okay, get all the “teenager-can’t-live-without-internet-what-has-become-of-the-youth-of-today” complaints out of the way, I get it. But I’m not going to have my camera (my Sony DSC-T1 packed up on me), although Dad’s found some old (read: rubbish) cameras from work. I’m also not going to have my iPod, because THAT decided to give Spain a miss, too, what with it not being able to load music without resetting itself until the battery runs out – this is greatly distressing. True story.

I’m at that stage where all my once cutting-edge technology has decided to fail on me. Nick the consumer says: I’m not impressed. I think it influences my purchases, too. I want to buy a dSLR – the Sony Alpha series looks good, but after my camera’s screen went all purple and blurry after only four years (only? Can I say that?) and the service was sub-par, do I take the plunge with them? Back to the epic Canon/Nikon debate for me, then. As far as I can tell, the Canon kit lenses aren’t great. I personally like the Pentax K10D, but I can’t really find a decent stockist ’round these parts. More on that soon.

So I’m sitting here packing some books (*gasp*) and a Canon PowerShot A460. I’m also dabbling in charging my phone, which is convinced it’s November 2003 and I have an unread voice message. Sometimes I think technology’s not worth it. Then I play with my Mac some more.

(I’m going away Saturday 29th – Tuesday April 1st)