Accidents & Compliments

Today was Friday.

Technically it's now very early on Saturday, but shut up, that doesn't fit in a nice flow of prose.

I woke up at... no. The start was going to bed at some time around 2am due to a lack of tiredness. Awoken at some time near four with hunger, a small snack satisfied my primal need, and I was asleep by five.

I woke up at eight, battering my infernal alarm clock into a deathly silence. I knew the bell would toll another morn, but for now it was dormant (okay, it beeps, but a beeper doesn't fucking toll does it? Come on, I try to make this rubbish interesting, and it's just pick, pick pick. Go get some poeticness. Not a word? Get fu... anyway, tale). I did the normal morning ablutions, and prepared to catch the bus. Yes, the bus. I am reduced to such primitive transport as the uni, unlike the college and schools, is not within walking distance, rather it languishes or even skulks in the city several miles asunder of my home. Just as I was about to leave, my watch died. Hurriedly I grabbed the closest pocket-sized timepiece I could find. The one advantage of the Sega Dreamcast is the gimmicky-at-first-glance memory cards, featuring a small LCD screen. When not used for Soul Calibur savegames (although it still stores them), it has a handy little clock, with two-frame bounding puppies. This got stuffed in my already crowded pocket, and I caught the bus.

I mentioned before my height. This again becomes a factor on this area's positively Lilliputian public transport. The buses are worst. It is physically impossible from me to sit facing foward in a seat without the removal of the anterior row or seriously fractured femurs. Thus, I adopted a curious sideways position, with my knees pointing diagonally left over the adjacent seat, and my body twisted forward so I can look out of the windows and actually use some of the seat back. Today however, the patron saint of public transport (Shittius Plebbius is probably his name) decided that this heaten crime would not be allowed to pass unpunished. Halfway through the ludicrously long 45-minute journey (car takes roughly 15 including parking, but would cost way way more), some old dear on the way up to town to get her state pension and her humble shopping decided to ignore the hugely vacant seat across the aisle and try to cram into the seat my lower body was occupying. Now, I doubt anybody other than male OAPs really wish to have their legs rubbing against an old lady's for a full twenty minutes, so I was forced to attempt to jam my legs into the space that wasn't there between the rows. Over the rest of the journey as my tendons twanged and my patellas gained a permanent imprint of an angled Arriva-logoed seat back, this dear old pet transformed in my mind into a stupid old bag who was taking up any vestige of luxury the big tractor-powered metal box offered. When I could finally leave my seat at the bus stop, I felt as free as Willy the killer whale as he leapt the pier and unfortunately failed to crush that stupid little kid going 'lol free willy lol yay'. Anyway, I walked with a slight limp for the next half an hour.

I'd gotten to uni early, to register with the Student Union, for discounts and what have you. After a brief mildly embarrassing episode in which I totally walked the wrong way for a while, I arrived at the building housing the Union. Registration was overly complicated and utterly daft, involving online registration which played no part in any other steps yet was compulsory, then you were instructed to hand-write you details onto a card template and provide a passport photo. I assumed that these details and photo would be fed into a computer, and some peripheral would form and eject a lovely identity card. No. Some lackey simply taped the lot to a rectangle of card and handed it back, after charging a whole British pound for the service. She wasn't a bad looking lackey however, or unfriendly, and unlike Bob I actually pay attention to girls a year or so older than myself, and... whatever, back to story, I'm going slower than I hoped, no time to be bogged down. So, this high-tech and laser-fast process took a whole 20 minutes or so, and I was needing to hurry to get to the first induction session. To cut a long story short, I got slightly lost again, and ended up going the wrong way around the largish building I had to be in, and coming to the correct corridor last, even though it's right next to the entrance. Arriving slightly late to the room, I joined a simple session of the tutors explaining stuff about the course, discussion of a few games, and a bit of chatter, spawning the phrase 'seduce my bot'. The other students and tutors seem a decent lot, probably will be a good laugh. I might as well pause to mention my course, it's a BSc Honours in Computer Games Software Engineering. Basically, I get to play games, talk about them then make them. Oh yeah. The strange thing about the course is that out of the huge crowd of Computing-related students, there was actually a couple of, *gasp*, girls. Even more shockingly, there's one on my course. It's like 'zomg gurl on teh intarweb', but like, more zomg. The jury's still out, though there's favourable noises. D;

Anyway, this only took 40 minutes of the scheduled hour, so I wandered around town for a while. I returned for the computer introduction, which covered the very basics, which everyone knew, so after 35 minutes the class disbanded. It was barely 11:40, and the next activity, an optional game of Wolfenstein against some of the 2nd-years, wasn't until 1pm. I headed off into the main street for a while, and had a good long walk, eventually getting a sandwich. May I note that through the earlier wanderings and part of this, it was raining. Anyway, I found somewhere mildly dry to eat (a foot-long meatball sub is difficult to eat on the go) and, well, ate. By then it was still only 12, so I set off back to uni to register at the library. It was nice and simple, I just walked in, gave my details and they made a card (a proper one, not like the Union's budget shite). Ah, but wait. This is an educational establishment. Thus, it took a hundred and four minutes of sitting in a chair waiting, then a minute of sitting in another chair waiting for the card to be made. Long queue isn't the word for it. Well, it is. Although it's two words. By the time I escaped that boredom pit of hell, it seems the Wolfenstein game had finished, or I couldn't find the bloody thing, so I fucked off down the pub.

Homeslice and Laddo were already there for the normal Friday stuff, and there were games of pool and drinks and pool and drinks and jukebox playing and drinks. The Gurl wasn't coming because she was ill. Eventually, she turned up. Me and the Laddo rocked out to the Beasties' classic Fight For Your Right (it was now getting on towards 10pm and I was full of beer and vodka and two shots at a time), then it all fell into the shitter and got shitted, or maybe shitty, or generally not good. The Gurl and the Laddo had themselves a nice tiff despite not being married or even in any sort of relationship. Homeslice, the champion that he is, tried to moderate. He ended up frustrated by their continual bickering, and eventually popped off to get a burger. Now that I've typed all the uni stuff, which was going to be short, I can't be bothered elaborating on the argument, so I won't. Eventually it seemed just arguing for the sake of it, and I was also getting sick. After they separated for a while, they both individually calmed down a bit, and they headed to a club with Homeslice. By now it was about 11pm, and I was fucking knackered. I came home, slumped into this chair with a cold quiche and started typing. It's now just on the tip of 2am, so it's taken me a fair while to write all of this lark, all three parts.

For now, I shall sleep soon. I ache, from the bus and the walking and the drinking and all that. My throat is sore from the rapping and the loud singing and laughing and all that. I think 8am until 2am on three hours of sleep is a pretty nicely long day, especially with all the crap I've been doing. For now, it's time to settle into a uni life, luckily my days start at 10am and I don't have many lectures this term. Time to relax, probably build a new PC as this one is being a bellend, then whatever. Pondering the future is for suckaz.