i think they should extend reading week to become reading fortnight.

i’ve so far already missed two of my morning lectures and i really can’t be arsed to go for the seminar at 2.

perhaps it’s the third-year boredom setting in - i know what they want, it’s so predictable, and i also already know what i’m gonna get so just let me get on with all the other things in my life.

in other news, i think spring is finally about to arrive. there have been showers. not drizzle, but proper rain, though not proper proper like monsoon season kind of rain. but still, shan’t complain.

i think to celebrate my skiving, i will go to the supermarket and buy ingredients to make me a pot of beef/lamb stew.

the last ever house party at searles road

and the not-yet-but-close-to-last one at torrens road

this weekend there was funk, there was gabba, there was drum n bass. there were west african drummers and animation video projections. there was much too much alcohol. there was a door busted out of its hinges and frame, there was general disorientation and a kid swinging from a sarong-hammock hung from the beams of the ceiling. there was also waking up to a quiet house and holding hands, and gardening. and lots of tea, orange juice, the weekend papers and laughter to soothe our befrazzled hungover nerves.

yesterday found me cycling from elephant and castle to commercial road on my little bicycle. this morning found me reverse-tracing the route, and also found me battling winds that threatened to blow me, bike and hat away and into the thames.

the ride is quite scenic, especially over the bridge, but can be rather built-up and concrete-jungly for a lot of the rest. i’m rather enjoying the whole act of cycling, getting the wind in my hair and swooshing down the roads, realising how much faster i am on a bicycle as opposed to on my feet (i dawdle, apparently), and jostling with the rumbling cars and trucks for lane space.

it’s also nice to actually get some form of exercise every once in a (very long) while, although my thighs are killing me right now.

but anyway. not everyone’s interested or vaguely excited about me and my cycling escapades in central london, so i’ll leave it at that.

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more media-friendly a topic would be: how i spent valentine’s day.

if you really really must know, it was spent mostly reading about secured creditors and bypassing the principle of pari passu with regards to an insolvent estate, and about civil society and its incarnations in different contexts.

there weren’t any flowers or candles. dinner was delivered by a man in a michelin-man suit (but in black), and was rather good chinese zhr char (cook-fry?). dessert was strawberry cheesecake that wasn’t for me, and the best gift i got the whole day was a free 1.5L bottle of 7-Up from the place we got dinner delivered from.

i also watched CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, and Prison Break. and then i read ‘hideous kinky‘ by Esther Freud, and fell asleep.

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i had thought about posting a poem that was particularly fitting for the day, but my excitement over going cycling got in the way.

my excitement also caused me to forget to bring several important things like the tv aerial wire, so in order to watch tv we had to dismantle an old aerial that was stuck on the balcony, cut the plastic cover off the end of the cable and stick directly into the wall socket - i’ve never watched tv with such clear reception ever.

but i’ll put the poem i had in mind up anyway. because it’s not only for lovers. because it can be recited to so many different people at so many different times of the year. because it’s funny and sweet. and because this is my party and i’ll write whatever i want to.

Giving Up Smoking
There’s not a Shakespeare sonnet
Or a Beethoven quartet
That’s easier to like than you
Or harder to forget.

You think that sounds extravagant?
I haven’t finished yet -
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette.

- Wendy Cope

see, i told you. i bet you at least smiled when you read that. don’t you just love good poetry that causes physical and/or emotional reaction? it’s so primal, really, even though poetry is about the most rarefied literary form one can hope to achieve.

hope you all had a good one yesterday, and remember the rebel that was st.valentine.

i realise now that i can’t decide between writing it as ’soy milk’, or ’soya milk’.

or maybe i’ll be better off writing it as ‘tau hway chwi’.

i think i’ve missed the chalky sweet taste of it, which explains my sudden conversion.

all those childhood memories of pouring tau hway chwi out of a plastic bag bought from the market, still warm to the touch. and the big plastic containers with green borders at hawker centers, half creamy white and the other black-brown and slithering with grassjelly. and those white and blue packets of vitasoy.

some of my cartons say soy milk. others say soya milk.

right now, i think ’soya milk’ looks more aesthetically pleasing.

In another series of firsts, I’ve

• voluntarily called my mother up for a chat, that ended up lasting something like 2 hours;
• switched to soy milk instead of cow milk for coffees, teas and other milk-requiring foods;
• sent away 3 rolls of films in the post to be developed and printed and then sent back to me;
• skipped a class and made up excuses to the teacher for not attending because I couldn’t face giving a presentation on an incoherent and really lousy lecture topic that I chose at random (I know, I’m such a saddo in so many different ways); and
• begun arranging a holiday for myself on my own to somewhere only I (and perhaps 2 others, just in case I go missing etc) will know.

Yes, it’s been interesting the things I’ve been getting up to (or not).

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I think reading week is installed only because we would lose our sanity otherwise.

I know last term I was desperately craving a break 5 weeks into the whole routine, but didn’t get it. This term, I’ve got it, but somehow I don’t feel as if I’ve been putting in as much effort – perhaps it’s the skipping presentations, and the fact that we do have a break now, mitigating the stress.

But it does give the law students a nice stop-gap to let us come up for air and take in some surrounding views of the land beyond our textbooks. Only law students get reading week at the LSE, but also only because we are the only course that has 2 lectures per subject per week and at least 1 class per subject per week – all other classes get 1 lecture, 1 class, and reading lists about half the length of ours.

So anyway, reading week is fabulous. It’s an extended weekend right smack in the middle of our ten-week terms, given to us by the grace of those above so that they can take a break from our blank faces, distant gaze and slack jaws. It’s also a week where most of us will do anything but reading – except the minority (like me) who have essays due on the Monday after.

Barring that fact, though, reading week means I get to wake up later than usual, potter around the kitchen and in my room, finish reading Weight by Jeanette Winterson, and dismantle my room in bits for transportation to Whitechapel.

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Everyone should grow chives in cans. Or even grass.

It’s exciting watching little green things sprout and grow and lean towards my ultra-bright daylight-simulating fluorescent tubed desk lamp. And they look very silly while doing it as well, providing me endless pleasure and distraction.

The hyacinths no longer hold any appeal for me. Having burst into pinkish-purple blooms, their sickly-sweet cloying scent has resulted in their banishment to the kitchen and also into the cold cold cold outdoors.

Chives and grass are much better.

it’s like everytime i sit down to write an essay i get waylaid by the hyacinths i’m growing in jam jars on my desk.

and everytime i start typing, i get distracted by the hundred thousand other things that are relevant to the topic i’m writing on in general, but absolutely useless to the essay question i’m writing on in particular.

but this is only because i’ve had 2 months mental preparation of an essay deadline that is today, and because i’ve spent the last 2 days doing mostly nothing but lying in bed with a hangover, a glass of water and several nurofen.

and then i blog somemore, and halfway through writing this i realise that my essay question is so philosophical it can be about everything and nothing at all.