These day I never have time to sit down properly and blog, reflect and tell. I'm always stressed, there's always a deadline on the horizon, academic or college-related or social. It's tiring, and I'm having a very hard time starting to work again. I think not having had a proper holiday over the summer really is hitting me, and now I have around three weeks to analyse all of my interviews, redraft the report, and write an extended essay. I am not looking forward to it, but now I need to get proactive. So tomorrow morning I will 'move myself' to my carrell in the library, and I will work.
Friday night was one of our formal halls, i.e. the more student based formal nights which Wolfson offers once or twice a term. With a limit of 150 guests, it's usually jam packed and even though the food isn't great, it's a fantastic social (and alcoholic) experience. You chat, you eat, you joke, you get pennied (a penny gets thrown into your glass - then you have to drink whatever is left in the glass as quickly as possible; an Oxbridge tradition, apparently), and are generally quite merry. After dinner, we descended upon the bar as a drunken mass, and proceeded to have a fantastic time talking about the most random things. I mixed and I mingled, even though I was quite careless and in my drunkness I didn't realise my guests left! I hear they had a good time in town though, so I'm not feeling too guilty. Needless to say, yesterday was spent recovering from the most horrendous hungover, which was somewhat helped by cleaning the bar which had been left in a complete mess. I ended the day with a glass of apple juice and some TV - the happiness!
Other than that, today I finally downloaded some pictures from my camera, and found quite a few good ones, especially of my current flat and our view.
The first two are of our bedroom; notice the bed cover from Camden, Chinese box which was a present from my father, my collection of boxes, the Pollock poster, cushions from Laos and lots of books; basically, all the things that make me very happy.
The second two are of the seating areas in our living room. I love our little collection of teapots and cups: the silver teapot/coffeepot/sugar bowl set comes from my paternal grandmother; the two green polka dot cups were a present from M (and have a long sentimental story behind them); the two white cups are from Ikea and we just thought they looked cute; the red teapot with cups was my Christmas present to M last year. The blue blanket on the sofa is my Indonesian blanket, which is I used to sleep with when I lived in Sigli. We have even more plants on our window sill now (even I cannot seem to get thyme to survive in this flat, and both my basil plants have got something weird going on - I am worried!), and I try and buy flowers every week, usually lillies because they smell amazing and look even better.
I am still rather unhappy with the furniture that was given to us with the flat - see the next photo of our desks, which are positively dreary. At least my mother bought me covers for the horrendous chairs which came with the flat, and I covered up the old carpet with a lovely Indian rug from my aunt (I have another one on my side of the bed in our room). I do love this flat, and I feel increasingly comfortable here. So comfortable actually, that I'm finding it hard to do any work!!! (which is why tomorrow I am moving to the carrell!)
Whilst I was organising these photos, I came across some very old photos of myself, mostly when I was looking of photos of my 'ginger phase' to show M.
In the first photo I must have been 11 or 12 at the most, in the other ones around 14 or 15. Please don't look at the terrible orange/green jumper I was wearing in the last (Christmas) photo - it was warm, and I was young and foolish. I like the colour of my hair in that one, and I definitely am considering going back to that. I feel like I haven't changed much since then. What shocks me every time I look at these photos is how skinny I was, and how much I thought I was fat (when I was a good 10 kgs less than I am now!). Sometimes I think I'll never stop being a teenager.
So now I've offered these little slices of life, I feel much better. It's been far too long since I've blogged properly, and I should really start again. It's enormously therapeutic, and I cannot believe I let myself forget it.