ok, here’s the short version.

got very ill on day of last exam. went for exam completely spaced out on home pharmaceuticals, went straight home and slept for next 18 hours.

would’ve stayed in bed longer if my sister weren’t coming back from york to come and sleep on my living room floor. so got up, went to the supermarket to stock up on food, tidied up the flat and downed lots of painkillers to try and deaden the headache.

effectiveness of painkillers meant i actually felt well enough to go to lahore kebab house for dinner, get stuck in a torrential downpour on the way to the bus-stop from said kebab house, and then get on a bus to go to guanabara to attend a classmate’s birthday party but we left after a couple of drinks.

yesterday was much more relaxed, although i keep forgetting that borough market is NOT OPEN on sundays. but still, it meant that we had more time than expected to traipse around tate modern and being overwhelmed, as usual, by all the art and all the concentration required to appreciate the art.

so, now the headache’s gone away but my sinuses still hurt and i’ve got a tickle at the back of my throat. we’re off to try and get through both the natural history museum and the V&A today. and even drop by harrod’s for a quick look-in.

i like doing touristy things.

now, seeing as it’s my last real academic exam of my life (i hope, until i decide to do a masters for some god-only-knows reason), i have been doing very much of nothing today.

of course i’ve read through my notes, once. and i’ve skimmed through the past year’s paper, once. and there’s a mcquestionnaire open on word which i really ought to get started on. but, y’know, tax isn’t my strong point and this exam is a whole lotta tax. and a whole lotta employment law as well. i mean, TUPE? what the hell is that? and more precisely, why is it making my life hell?

the only really interesting thing on the whole 3 month slapdashcrash-course in private acquisitions is actually coming to understand what private equity funds are about, and how the acquisitions are structured. and of course, it also gives me muchos kudos when i can explain to all my non-lawyer friends why exactly that man from KKR or whatever pays less tax than his cleaner. it’s to do with income profit vs capital gains tax, plus a bit of business asset taper relief on the side and an annual exemption. and it’s actually all about percentages, so while this Private (In)equity Gazillionaire pays less tax in percentage terms than his cleaner, in absolute terms, he probably pays a lot more. see, easypeasylemonsqueezy!

(in my opinion, what the government needs to do is to make the whole tax system more finely variegated, so that there are more tax brackets with smaller ranges and maybe a 2% - 5% difference in tax rate between them - but that’s just me, and i’m not the chancellor or a tax lawyer even, so whatever)

anyway, to the real crux of the matter: because tomorrow i shall finish my last exam in a long while, holiday plans are afoot today. and to motivate me further, i received my travel scholarship from the kind folks at my future employer this morning. yes, they’re giving me money to go on holuday, how cool is that? (i also think the cheques that come with spaces for 7 or 8 figures are amazing, but moving on swiftly…)

while i’ve already got july and august mapped out (london-hampshire for wedding-berlin for august-london-singapore), i don’t have any concrete plans for the duration of my south east asian holiday, which is troubling because i can’t stay/live in singapore/parent’s home for more than 2 or 3 weeks at a stretch without feeling like scratching my eyes out.

so, these are the places that i’m going to pencil into my calendar and hopefully some, if not all, will materialise:

• perth, to see my cousin
• krabi
• bangkok
• hong kong + shenzen/guangzhou
• shanghai
• laos
• vietnam
• pulau ubin/other offshore island

it’s not that many places to cover in the space of 3 months, so it’s definitely possible. now it’s just a matter of convincing friends and family to skip school / take leave / sacrifice weekends to come along with me. it’s probably going to take a charm offensive, but i’s gotta do what i’s gotta do, y’know?

right, now that i’ve gotten that out of my system, it’s time to get back to grafting. i’ve not got much hope for the exam tomorrow, but as i repeatedly tell myself, i just have to pass it and everything’s gravy.

i went jogging today.

it wasn’t a particularly long jog, or an intense jog. but it’s remarkable because i haven’t jogged for years, literally. the last time i remember going jogging was when i first started still living in elephant and castle, around september 2004.

anyway, i went jogging because i needed to clear my head and think about nothing for a while. it helped, i ran to stepney green, past stepney city farm and did a bit of a roundabout near the church, repeated the route backwards and then did a lot of stretching to try and alleviate the inevitable muscle ache i know will plague me.

it was fun, and i think i might do it again. sometime. i don’t know if it’s going to beccome a habit, but for now it’s still got some novelty value.

i’m tired.

all this going out and staying out till late before exams is becoming a bad habit.

it doesn’t help that i just can’t be arsed to revise security and credit support. i’ve read it so many times i’m so sick of it. but then, at the same time, do i really know it? do i give up now and take the plunge on monday, crossing my fingers and hoping for the best?

i don’t think so.

i’m too much of a scaredy cat to ever not revise for an exam.

last night we were at the pub till late, and a bunch of kids for some reason known only to them, came up to us and started chatting.

they’d just finished their a-levels, so they were about 18 or so.

it was fun, just shooting the breeze and talking crap while drunk (obviously, it was 1 in the morning and a birthday party to boot). but weird, so weird, as well.

it was difficult not to sound cynical and bitter, and i had a really hard time trying not to burst their perfect fantasy bubbles of what ‘keeping it real’ entails. although, perhaps, up in north london where they were from, keeping it real is slightly harder to do when your friends’ parents are judges and drive jaguars and drink cognacs.

i cringe now at what i must have been like when i was 18. or 20. or 21. i must have been such a pain, and rather amusing as well in my cocksureness and ignorance. and the language! words like ‘paradigm shifts’ and ‘dialectic’, they dropped out of my vocabulary long ago.

although, to be fair, even now, i’m probably amusing to someone older than i am and who’s listening to my (probably) half-baked ideas on changing the world and getting to the top of my game.

anyway, the point is, i miss the idealism of my youth. and the black/white-ness of most things, the grey being a tiny sliver in between. now, the grey is everywhere, and the black and white non-existent but for around the far edges of existence. now, nothing is so easy anymore. everything has to be weighed up against its myriad consequences, and indecision is my middle name. things were so easy back then, when i knew fuckall and couldn’t care less about it.

but, still, in all my idealism, i never wanted to live in a squat.

as you can see, i’ve painted my nails an orangey-red shade.

and when i type on my black macbook, i’m reminded of louboutins. which also reminds me that i read somewhere you can get a louboutin manicure, i.e. black on the top of your nails, and red on the underside. i bet you need pretty long nails for that to work.

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can you tell that i’ve got exams looming? IM-ing with my cousin, we figured exams + pressure = procrastination

but but but, i HAVE done at least some revision today. okay, i haven’t copied anything out or done some fancyschmancy mindmap/venn diagram/spiderwhatever, but i know what the hell is going on.

and if there was a question on what to do when a company wants to have an IPO, i’m going to trot out things like: changing from private to public company, amending the company’s articles to remove any pre-emption rights and nullify any existing shareholder agreements, change of name, increasing the authorised share capital, giving directors power to allot to the maximum of that share capital, blah blah blah blah blah. i also know that prospectus rules apply to prospectuses (prospecti?), and the criminal and civil liability for misleading, false, fraudulent statements and/or omissions.

so, while i don’t have anything to show for it, i’ve really been studying all afternoon and not, say, uhm… ebaying or flickring or blogvoyeuring. honest. to goodness.

revising is boring.

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it’s much more interesting gossiping about the gold-digging wives/fiancees/girlfriends that seem to afflict my male childhood friends. them girls, they flock to my friends like bees to honey, like smudges on the silverware. although, to be fair, if i didn’t know them as my childhood friends, and i got to know them and realised how minted they were, i’d probably try to get involved as well.

maybe.

probably not, actually. it’s a shame i have principles, else i’d be flaunting some serious diamond jewellery by now.

somehow i can’t seem to get to any blogspot sites. i get the same error message (server has stopped responding) every time. and it’s been happening for a couple of days now.

i’ve checked the blogger forums, and there doesn’t seem to be a problem, so i’m thinking it might be my isp. which is weird, because why the hell would my ips have a compatability problem with blogspot? i don’t freakin’ live in burma (or singapore for that matter).

it’s all very very strange….