Christmas Consumerism

YES!! Success with Django! I managed to grab Amon Tobin’s Bricolage at $8.99 before anyone else got to it. Yay. :)

My Christmas consumerism is beginning to alarm me, not just because of the absolute amounts I’ve been spending but also because of the way I justify everything with “Oh well, it’s Christmas and I deserve a little treat.” To take things further, those nasty retailers know the devastating damage a sale sticker does to my self-restraint and fiscal discipline, so lots of things become not just A Little Treat but an Absolute Must-Have At This Low Festive Price!

But more on this at another time – now I have to get to a friend’s house so we can enjoy the chocolate rum cheesecake I bought at £2 off at Iceland…

Back From Madrid

Man, it’s good to be back in freezing foggy expensive London again…

Yup, we’re back from Madrid, which was enjoyable, but more because we made our own fun than because it was fun in itself. I’ll write a little more about it in the near future – right now my backpack still lies replete with unpacked clothes in my room, my mail is unread in my pigeon-hole, and my dinner is unchosen, unbought and uncooked in Tesco’s.

More notifications came from Django in my absence. And, of course, they’ve gotten snapped up now. Guess I’ll have to wait a little longer for Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump and Beck’s One Foot In The Grave.

In absolute shamelessness, maybe I should give pointers to my Django wishlist (to view it, enter my email address as found on this page) and my Amazon wishlist, just to lend a grasping helping hand to anyone who has a burning desire to buy me a Christmas present. Of course, apart from the items listed in these, anything else from someone who takes the trouble to select a gift for the specific entity that is me (as opposed to generic catch-all type gifts like chocolates or toiletries) generally earns them much love and brownie points.

End Of Term And Everything After

The term is finally over, thank God. I only handed in 2 of the 3 essays I was meant to hand in, and it worries me that I don’t really care. Oh well. Put it on my tab at the New Year’s Resolution pub.

I was feeling a little down last night – walking home alone at 11 pm on a Friday night in London at Christmas somehow has that effect. Everything and everyone seemed either incredibly bleak and unChristmassy, or so overwhelmingly Christmassy that I missed Singapore, where Christmas is no less commercialized but a lot prettier, at least in my opinion. But! When I got home, Ruth and Chris were dancing to Waterloo on the table, Avril was red and giggling, Michael was being high-pitched and Scottish, and there was Cointreau. Lots of Cointreau. It’s amazing how different I was feeling after a while.

I go to Madrid early tomorrow morning, but we’re spending tonight at the airport because our flight is too early in the morning for us to get there on time otherwise. It’s me, Avril and Russ, which should hopefully be a merry band of wanderers and not too dysfunctional. I’m slightly worried about language problems since I learnt everything I know about Spanish from Sesame Street 15 years ago, but things did go all right in Italy, and my very helpful hallmates Samer and Noelia will be available if we do run into serious trouble. I don’t quite have a specific agenda of things to accomplish there – the Spain in my head is the Spain shown to me by Salvador Dali and Picasso, but the realist in me generally prefers not to overly romanticise a place before going to it, because I’m scared of disappointment. We’ll see how it goes.

Funny moment yesterday, in a conversation with a slightly stoned Nick about Madrid:
Me: Pop quiz. Name a Spanish terrorist group.
Nick: EDTA?
Me: I think you’ll remember when you’re coherent that edta is a chemical compound thingy that we learnt in A’level Chemistry. But nice try anyway.

Music randomness:
I really should remember to remind Gareth to return me the CDs he borrowed. Last night I had this craving for that escalating guitar riff in Aneurysm, and couldn’t satisfy it. (This is was probably a result of the Westlife that followed ABBA on the songlist during the Cointreau tabletop dancing sessions…). I had to substitute Cross The Breeze (Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation) instead, which is at all other times anything but a substitute due to its absolute fanf***ingtasticness. I also have to get Maxinquaye back so I can lend it to Nick in exchange for more Thievery Corporation albums. Matt just returned me what he borrowed, which is good because Marten wants to listen to XO. Esther still has Mezzanine and From The Choirgirl Hotel. I should probably do something about the increasingly distributed nature of my CD collection before things get out of hand.

Defending The Whole Damn Mess To The Death

Oh, I forgot to say: I got through to the next round of of the senior mooting competition. The best two from each moot go through, and I somehow managed this despite the fact that I arrived late with only half my submissions written, and wrote the rest while the person before me was speaking. Which is a lot tougher in mooting than it is in debating, because you need to be far more precise with what you’re saying when the judge can interject at any time.

In his feedback to us, the judge said my strongest point was the fact that I wouldn’t take any crap from him. This is probably due to the fact that once I finished the stuff I’d actually written down, I was pulling everything else from various orifices, and thought the best policy was to just defend the whole damn mess to the death. Seems to have worked.

The judge in this one was extremely good – he was pleasant, but obviously understood everything that was going on, and questioned all of us thoroughly. If I hadn’t gone through, I’d have accepted it, firstly, because he definitely knew his stuff, secondly, because with my dismal preparation my arguments probably had holes in them, and thirdly, because it was the highest standard moot I’ve ever been in and my competitors all seemed better prepared. This does mean, however, that I have to go through the whole damn rigmarole again in the next round. This is so ludicrous. First I whinge about having to do the moot, and it being difficult. Then I get through, and I whinge about having to do it again. If I’d lost in a way I thought was unfair, I’d whinge about that too.

Guess there’s just no satisfying some people…

Mooting Malaise

My brain hurts. I’ve just spent the last six hours trying to figure out what to argue for my moot (mock trial) tomorrow, and given that it’ll entail arguing about criminal law topics we haven’t even covered yet in front of a practising barrister, I’m figuring that no matter how wretched I feel right now, the actual moot might quite possibly be worse.

So here I am, sitting in the library typing away on a stone-age computer at 9.30 pm. I haven’t had dinner. The library windows are rattling with the strength of the wind outside. It’s the last week of term.

And again I ask myself why the hell I bother doing something which I don’t actually enjoy. I detest having to sit and listen to people using too much legalese and too little brainpower blather on about things that I am incapable of finding interesting at 6 in the evening. I resent the intrusion of moot preparation into my already packed and badly managed schedule. The only part of the moot I actually find enjoyable is if the judge challenges me and tries to throw me off – that’s when it goes into the realm of the unscripted, and that’s where I most enjoy the cut and thrust of argument. Unfortunately, a fair number of judges I’ve had are either incapable or uninterested in getting involved in this.

And again I ask why I do this…I guess the answer is, simply, that I’m too damn arrogant to pass up doing something I know I’m good at, even if I don’t enjoy doing it all that much and it comes at the expense of other things. And it’s good for the CV, obviously, as sellouty and un-rock’n’roll as that may sound.

Rishi and Mickey, two other people in the moot tomorrow, have given up and gone home in disgust. We had a satisfying kvetch about our collective misery. I’ll probably venture out into the wind and rain soonish as well, go get some dinner, and hopefully find some suitably mindless TV programme or conversation to eat it over. I suppose a good frame of mind to be in now would be to think of all the poor starving children in sub-Saharan Africa etc. etc.

And on that note, I shall trudge.

Just So You Know

I just want to take this opportunity to say to anyone reading this who ever sees themselves doing anything remotely related to land in the UK, for God’s sake register it. Register the land, register whatever interest you have in it, and employ the best damn legal advice on the planet so that you don’t screw up, because at this point of time I hate everyone and everything ever connected with land registration, and if people didn’t keep making mistakes, I wouldn’t have to read all about their cases.

Oh yeah. If you ever fancy becoming a judge who judges land registration cases (you sad bastard), just kill yourself now. I recommend a blunt spoon, doused in sewage. Be creative.

As for the people who drafted the Law of Property Act, Land Registration Act and Land Charges Act, I curse you with acute and chronic acne, a lifetime of bad hair days, and a virulent case of the crabs. May every toilet you use have a floater in it. May your children speak with the eloquence of whoopee cushions.

Yes. I have completed one of the three essays. It was about land. It took the entire weekend. Saturday was sunny. I am bitter and vengeful.

Pre-Christmas Paralysis

All these emails keep arriving telling me about all the activities my various swing dancing associations (LSE Swing Dance Society in London, Jitterbugs in Singapore) have planned for the festive season. I can’t actually go to any of the ones in London, because they’re scheduled at bad times for me, and end of term work panic has me in its bone-crunching grip. I can’t go to any of the ones in Singapore for obvious reasons. Those are the ones that really sound fantastic, and all the people I had so much fun dancing with over the summer seem to be living it up back home.

Meanwhile, the struggle is whether or not to worry about all the law work and debating preparation that I haven’t done, or to just shrug it off and enjoy life as it should be enjoyed before Christmas. There are Christmas cards to be written, presents to be bought, and the wanton desire of frivolous shopping for the sole reason of self-indulgence. There are trips to Madrid, Manchester and Glasgow. There is also the looming spectre of academic failure. Oh, the perpetual dilemma…

Waster

My ears are ringing, I feel generally rather dazed, and am pretty damn stressed out about the realization that I not only have to get my law work in order but also have to prepare for the World Universities Debating Championships later this month, as well as start organizing our UCL IV for next year.

Last night was the UCL Boat Club’s annual black-tie dinner thingy. This being a jock thing :P I would obviously never dream of attending it under normal circumstances, but Russ (who won his first rowing medal on Saturday!) wanted the company. Despite not knowing anyone else there except him, the brussel sprouts battle and general drunken antics were all ample sources of amusement for me, so it was reasonably enjoyable. The trip to Hombres after that was hell on my feet (damn those pretty shoes) but, I suppose, worthwhile just for being able to say that I have now been to this legendarily cheesy club. As I said, my ears are still ringing from the experience.

We came back around 3, had another of our marathon conversations, got about three hours of sleep and woke up just in time for me to sneak him into breakfast. After that he went off for his lecture at 10, and I generally wasted a great deal of time until I had to meet Nick at 3 to get our debating asses in gear. Between now and the Worlds, we have to acquire enough knowledge between us to be able to debate based on actual information instead of the random suppositions we currently pull out of various orifices and wave about in front of judges. We also have to start work on organizing the UCL IV for January next year, and make sure we do a much better job than our predecessors.

I now sit here in considerable shock at the various tasks and responsibilities ahead of me, and the fact that I’ve wasted all of today. I’ll probably go back to my room now and try and get some work done, then make some sort of dinner with the meagre provisions I have, and eat it during the X-Files. Then work work work. I hope.

Mace / Father Swan / Nine Ladies Dancing

Another weekend, another debating competition, another one of my hall priests stripping off to give a ballet performance…

It’s really annoying having to write this on the Monday after, because after three hours of classes on a dismal day, it feels as if the past few days are already the stuff of sepia-toned nostalgia. The debating competition was the John Smith Memorial Mace, the pirouetting priest a performer at my hall Christmas party. As a result of the above two events, the past three days have been somewhat surreal.

The Mace is meant to be prestigious, and I assume that’s why lots of teams flock to it. We go to it because it’s in London, meaning we save on transport, and also because the entrance fee is amazingly cheap. Unfortunately, with those perks comes the downside that we find the debating part of the competition incredibly unfulfilling. The motions are dull and uninspired – This House Would Adopt an Open-Door Policy for Immigration into the EU, on a Friday night. This House Would Renationalise The Entire UK Rail Network System was another real thriller. It is, though, a cause for some sort of optimism that out of 6 rounds we were only badly judged once, which is better than what we’re (Nick and me) used to. We came in 3rd and 4th in the first two rounds, and deservedly so, because we were appalling. The 3rd round was the annoying one, especially when we came out of it and the only other team there who knew their stuff was convinced it was between them and us for the top two places. Then we talked to the judge, who was convinced that the clear winners were the team who everyone else thought came dead last, and the clear losers were us.

After that stunning three round success record, we got chucked in debates with the rest of the people who had done as badly, which meant we won the next three rounds very easily. So we’ll probably look as if we did quite well when the official rankings are out, but that won’t really be a fair indication of our performance, given that our wins were easy and two of our losses deserved.

The social side of it was somewhat more satisfying. Apart from the usual sights of Aaron, Vikram and Wu-Meng, who I only get to see at debating tournaments, there was some good bonding between our 4 UCL teams and reasonably generous free drinks on Friday night with the usual meaningless but entertaining social interaction that comes with all that. Our mood of profound depression at our dismal performance lifted somewhat on Saturday with the three wins, and after a while we just stopped caring about the debating, and scooted off to retoxbar in Covent Garden with other like-minded souls instead of watching the semi-finals. Another lift to my spirits was when I found out that Russ and the rest of the men’s novices crew had seemingly defied all odds to win a rowing competition. And, in line with our usual practice when the wine is flowing freely, Nick and I embarked on a mutual affirmation of our intrinsic worth as individual intellectual beings, as well as our solid and satisfying debating partnership. So all of that operated to give me a smile on my face as Nick, Vish and I were walking home from supper at Chinatown, despite the bad debating, which I suppose should be the focus of entering a debating competition.

So I woke up on Sunday still in a reasonably good mood, which, as I’ve said, is far from what usually happens when I don’t do well in a competition. And, as thoroughly cliched as it may sound to say this, when I went down and saw everything decorated – a little tree in the reception area, a nativity scene in the dining room, lots of other nice touches here and there – I did actually feel all happy and Christmassy.

For the party at night, we’d all signed up to do skits about days in The Twelve Days of Christmas. I still don’t know who put my name on the Nine Ladies Dancing list, but I’m not complaining, since it could well have been Geese A-Laying or French Hens. I increasingly realize that the great thing about the people in this hall is our willingness to make fools of ourselves in the name of fun. When the time came for Father J to do seven swans a-swimming, he got up and talked for a bit about the all-male ballet production of Swan Lake earlier this year in London. I didn’t quite realize the extent of the link he was making until he stripped off his dinner jacket and clerical collar to reveal this filmy white robe (which, I suspect, came from an altar vestment) and started his hysterically funny ballet performance. I thought his stint as a face-painted Chinese opera jealous husband for our Charity Night earlier this year was something to remember, until Sunday night’s performance left that one gasping in the dust.

Our nine ladies dancing skit was good too. I say this especially because it was my idea. :P The basic premise of it was that we were a dance troupe, booked for two parties at Newman House, and we’d got the dates mixed up. So we were halfway through a strip routine for what we thought was a 21st birthday party, and then one of us began to “serenade” the birthday boy. We then suddenly realized that we’d mixed it up with our Christmas party booking, where the organizing priest, in making the booking, had left specific instructions that we waltz to classical music, with no touching, no eye contact, no hip-swivelling, and most importantly, no fun. So, following these instructions, we then rendered that performance, and awkwardly waltzed out, to much applause and general hilarity.

Routine Avoidance

It’s worrying when you realize the only parts of your life that are everyday routines are:

– being temporarily woken up at about 10.30 am because the cleaning lady comes into your room to clear the wastepaper basket. In an attempt to force yourself to wake up earlier, you’ve purposely left the basket inside so she has to come in and wake you up. Despite these noble intentions you then go back to sleep and don’t wake up until it’s at least noon. You chastise yourself for this every day, but none of that makes a difference when you’ve got a snuggly duvet and you went to sleep at 6 am.

– reading The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Times plus all their little subsections, for no reason other than the fact that they’re there in the common room, and textbooks are up in your room

– putting on specially chosen music which you’ve decided is suitable for falling asleep to, when you switch off the lights and get into bed (last night: Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out). At 6 am, as I’ve said…

These are pretty much the only things I do without a doubt on a daily basis at a specific time each day. Meals no longer have definite names that correspond to their time of consumption or substance, and work is a four letter word.