Hipster Pics

Exam Season

That's right, folks. Once again, exam season is here, which can signify a variety of things.

1. As the threat of imminent exams looms over head, panic will soon settle into the hearts of thousands of uni students. Those who haven't listened to a word in lectures (or alternatively, those who have not bothered attending lectures at all) will soon begin to ponder the age-old question "Why am I here?" As will, most likely, everyone else in higher education that doesn't live and breathe their chosen subject.

2. Promises will be made that next year will be different. Next year, you will not be tempted to forego lectures due to powerpoint availability on WebCT. Then you inevitably remember that this was also your resolution 'round about the same time last year.

3. You start doing as many things as you can possibly think of to avoid actually studying. These activities include, but are in no means limited to the following: facebook, cleaning, making cups of tea, running to the toilet multiple times within an hour because of the tea you've just drunk, making more cups of tea to continue this cycle, putting on washing, waiting five hours for your washing to finish, staring at Ryan Gosling's abs, making lists of all the things you should be studying, pretending to study, filing notes you've already made, and buying hats for the upcoming Royal Wedding.

4. You remember that there is a reason "studying" is a portmanteau of the words "student" and "dying."

5. You realise that Prince William is laughing at you by deciding to have a wedding right at the beginning of the examination period.
Prince William (henceforth to be referred as the most honourable Prince William, future king of England, or simply, P-Dubs): You there, peasant, what would you normally be doing on the 29th of April?
Peasant (aka average undergraduate university student who did/does not attend Oxford, Cambridge, or St. Andrews): Um...I'd be in an exam, sir.
P-Dubs: Ahahaha! Then it is decided! I shall arrange for my wedding to fall on this day precisely!
Peasant: But why, sir?
P-Dubs: Silence, peasant! By having my wedding on this day, I shall be doing you a most gracious favour by kindly mandating that no exam should take place on this day.
Peasant: But that just means all exams will be pushed back a day, sir.
P-Dubs: [In an aside] Precisely... [maniacal laughter]

6. The weather will inevitably take a turn for the best just as you decide to imprison yourself within either your flat, or the library, neither of which will permit the enjoyment of such glorious sunshine as the normal school year has never seen before.

7. The pesky mouse that occasionally visits your flat (who may or may not be small, black and named Herbert) will decide that in the absence of three of your flatmates, it is perfectly acceptable to wander into your room and slink about, exploring areas of your horrendous carpeting unknown.

8. Cracked.com will have no new articles for you read, as its writers, just like Prince William, have decided it's more fun to laugh at struggling uni students about to take their year-end exams than to give them hilarious lists with which to waste their time.

9. The people upstairs will decide that now is the best time to throw a party.

10. The baby downstairs will decide that 4am is the best time to start crying.

11. Some fantastic twat from the eBay community will decide that instead of taking pity on the fact that university students usually have no money to spend bidding on items, they will outbid them on superfluous things (i.e. a floppy hat for the Royal Wedding or a set of tea tins) just for the fun of it.

12. You're reminded that anything is better than reading James Joyce, especially when anything involves looking up videos of husky babies on YouTube.

13. You're reminded that if you had but a husky puppy, your life would be complete.

14. You begin pondering the consequences of kidnapping the Marchmont cat for a few days in order to de-mouse your flat so that you may "revise" in peace (read: so that your 5am zombie story writing sessions go uninterrupted by small furry intruders that may or may not give you the plague). All that cat does is stalk people anyway.

Of course, the loom of exams can suggest a great many other things as well, I believe these 14 things to be of great importance.

7 Minutes

I have seven minutes to write this blog. Now six, actually.

In six minutes time, it will be nine o'clock, and I will officially have been awake for 12 hours. And what have I achieved in these 12 hours? Nothing. I have achieved nothing. I've wasted about three hours crying my eyes out because I'm stressed, but have done little else.

Why is it that nothing in the world seems to retain its light when you've hit rock bottom? Little things that you normally wouldn't give a shit about just seem to weigh down on you like a titan. Something as trivial as the line at Sainsbury's being a little longer than it usually is at four in the afternoon just sets your mind a-spin. The fact that people are coming over to view your flat seems to signify the impending apocalypse. And even though you know the world is not really going to end if someone's in a no-signal zone, it's just so hard to see past that.

So how do we get through it? Do we tell ourselves repeatedly "this too shall pass?" Or do we go cry in a corner wishing that life were easier? Well, both, I guess. I mean, in the end, you've really just got to do whatever will get you through the day, be it TapZoo or Facebook.

Besides, there's always the fact that no matter how bad of a week you think you're having, someone not-so-far away is having a worse one, and at the end of the day, you realise that things do get better. They always do, with a little time, and a little help from your friends.

Back in Black

So maybe all I needed was a hiatus, so I could sort some things out in my life, and in my head.

And now I've had that time, I can start writing again. But maybe instead of a project like writing about one new place a week, I should do something else. To be honest, the "project" idea was only appealing because every time I'm feeling depressed about my life, I watch "Julie and Julia," panic and worry for the first half hour that I'll end up working in a cubicle answering phone calls from 9/11 survivors, like Julie Powell, and then spend the remaining two hours thinking "I should blog. I need a project. I will blog about a project!"

So much easier said than done. Honestly, I would love to cook my way through Julia Child's "The Joy of French Cooking," but not only has that been done before, but I really don't have the time. I would, if it weren't for the fact that whenever I don't have an essay to write, I feel I need to catch up on the sleep I missed out on while I was writing my essay. So no, I will not be cooking my way through someone else's cookbook, hoping to find myself along the way.

And what about my Carrie Bradshaw dreams? I could write a "Sex and the City" type blog and then millions of girls will relate to my romantic woes! But no, just no. I'm sorry, but I really don't want to share my personal life with random strangers. Even if no one reads my blog, it's more of an issue of principal. Plus, I think to write a blog like Carrie's, you'd need to have some seriously promiscuous girlfriends, which I, quite fortunately in fact, do not.

See, the fact of the matter is this: my life, by all standards, is average. And you know what? I'm okay with that.

I love my average life, despite how much I complain about it. Because my average life has these extraordinary moments. Most of which are just me letting my imagination run away with me, but oh well. So what?

I went to Dundee to see my lovely bearded Scottish boyfriend this weekend, and he took me to this little Sicilian cafe, and I am almost positive that we were seated next to half of the Sicilian mafia of Dundee. It was amazing. At least I'd like to believe it was half the Sicilian mafia. And why shouldn't it have been?

Abandoning the blog.

Goodbye.

love, let us be true (to one another)

I don't know why I thought I needed some kind of project to justify a blog, or why I decided to abandon my old blog in favour of a new one. It's been about three weeks and I've only just become aware of this fact, while listening to sad indie hipster music that my boyfriend would most definitely not approve of (there you go, Calum, you get a nod in today's post).

But on the brightside, my sad indie hipster music - a playlist composed primarily of Bon Iver, Band of Horses, Beirut and Jose Gonzalez - is managing to drown out the mournful melodies of The Tallest Man on Earth next door. He's not really the tallest man on earth. In fact, he's not very tall at all. I know because I've seen him in concert. And as much as I do love that man, there's only so much of him I can take, and I think I've filled my quota for this month.

I think I've filled my quota for a lot of things already, actually. Like my snow quota, which has been filled since maybe about the first week of 2010's snowy apocalypse. I tell you, during those cold, cold weeks, people honestly thought the world was ending. They panic-bought everything in sight just incase, which resulted in a remarkable lack of product on supermarket shelves.

Regrettably, I've also filled my work quota, which is unfortunate, considering I've yet to finish any of my uni work, and I desperately need to do so. And in a similar vein, my patience quota is also wearing thin. It's pretty much been full to bursting point for weeks now, and I just know that one of these days, someone is going to say something that tips me over the edge, and I will blow up, like a large balloon, all red and puffy. I'll scream and shout for longer than is necessary, and for what seems like an eternity, because everyone knows that when a balloon is whirring around the room, just as it should never be allowed to do, all eyes inevitably focus on this sight. And it won't be until I've exhausted all my breath that I finally flop onto the floor in a heap of spent red ballooniness. When all the words I've been keeping trapped inside me have been said, I think I will collapse and wish I hadn't spent such a magnificent effort doing something completely pointless.

So no, I will not allow myself to whir around the room while everyone else stares at me. I will keep my words to myself, and hope that no one sends me into whirring balloondom.

I will hold my head high and trust in the confused words of Matthew Arnold, great English ponce.

"Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night."

Bisque

Whilst running through the last week in my head, I almost had a small heart attack, as I didn't think I'd gone anywhere new. And really, to fail within the first week of a project is quite sad, to say the least. My world went dark for a second, and my mind started to wander, as it has a habit of doing. "Am I really that boring?" I thought, for it seemed that my 'let's go to at least one new place every week' plan had failed spectacularly in its first week of inception. But then I remembered that a failed attempt to go the Links Bar for drinks last week eventually led my friends and I to the Bisque bar at Bruntsfield Hotel - a place I had never before set foot in.

It was a complete stab in the dark. The set-up: Thursday night, the Links Bar was closed, it was cold outside, and we were in dire need of drink. Hence, Bruntsfield Hotel, resting place for elderly tourists, became our best option (partly because Alasdair wasn't keen on walking to the Earl of Marchmont). And, after realising that we were the youngest people there by at least fifteen years, we sat down, and did what uni students do best: we talked about stuff with beer and Bailey's in hand.

The last time we'd gone out just for drinks was some time last semester, after seeing "The Social Network" at the Odeon. A few friends and I were walking home and one of us suggested sitting down somewhere for drinks. And so we found ourselves seated at Montpellier's, sipping £7 cocktails just for the hell of it. Ah, the perks of student living. It often comes down to choosing lavishly expensive and completely unnecessary things over lunch for the next week, but oh well. What fun is life if you can't treat yourself to a £7 raspberry cocktail once in a blue moon? Honestly. (The same code of conduct could be applied to homeware appliances, I've found. Yes, you're allowed to order a fondue pot off of amazon.co.uk provided of course you are ready to live without toast for the next week and a half. It's also okay to buy ramekins if you can dispense with hobnobs for the next fortnight.)

But whilst sipping a Bailey's on the rocks in the middle of this "old people's hotspot," I couldn't help but think that drinks are important in life. Not just because they warm you up when it's minus three degrees outside, but because drinks bring people together. There is a curious bond shared between uni students who clink beer bottles and highball glasses filled with vodka and orange juice.

It is the bond of "no, I cannot really afford to be drinking since I should be saving my money for food, but yes, I am going to anyway because I want to forget that I'm tired."

Ah the woes of uni students. We are always tired. We make up stupid projects for ourselves and then use the time we set aside for essay writing to work on our blogs instead.

Man, developed country problems are tough.

People are a funny lot

Never buy the big issue on Princes Street. Just don't do it. I am convinced that you will risk running into the same guy who took my tenner and then just shrugged when I asked him for the change. Eventually, he gave me £2 back. £2 out of 10.

I hate humanity.

They say the world will end in 2012. Maybe that's for the best. All the douchebags of the world will be wiped out that way. And if the world doesn't end? I'm gonna go on a douchebag-punching spree. They will pay for their crimes against humanity. I shall make them.

Project

Over the Christmas holidays, amidst my Disney movie marathon, which basically consisted of running "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" over and over again in the background as I feasted on pita chips and Jolly Ranchers, I watched two movies about self-discovery in foreign places: "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "Eat Pray Love." These two are pretty much the same film, only, "Under the Tuscan Sun" did it much better. It was funnier, Diane Lane's dresses were prettier, and the colour-scheme was much more vibrant. But that's beside the point.

The point is, as I watched Julia Roberts eat a plate of delicious-looking pasta in an almost agonizingly slow five-minute scene where she really is JUST eating pasta, and as I watched Diane Lane frolic through Italy in her various pretty sundresses, looking all sad and divorced, I couldn't help but think to myself, "I should totally just go to Italy to find myself. After all, I've been feeling lost and pathetically helpless for ages!"

So, what's stopping me? Well, money, for one thing. I have none, which presents a slight problem. I'm also going to uni, which is another problem, because I can't just stop and quit now. If I drop out now, I'll have wasted a year and a half of my life studying "the classics," and I'll also be forced to leave the country, since my student visa is the only thing allowing me to stay in bonny Scotland. These are two very large obstacles standing between me and sunny Italy.

But just as I was feeling sorry for the fact that I'm basically stuck in a rut and can't actually just pick up and leave, I realised there's little sense in doing so anyway. These women - Julia and Diane, let's just call them - left their lives in America and ventured to Italy (and India and Bali) because they were feeling probably just as lost and hopeless as me, if not more so. But they only left after their lives had fallen spectacularly to pieces back home. My life, as it currently stands, is not in such a dire state of dilapidation. I have been through no horrible divorce, my ex-husband has not robbed me of all my money, and I honestly have no desire to go to India and meditate for four months in order to cleanse my spirit (having said this, I would, at some point in my life, love to go to India. Just not to meditate). Perhaps if my life truly were in shambles, I'd want to leave Edinburgh, but my life's fine.

But that's just it. It's "fine." It's only really ever been "fine." And I want more than "fine." I want to at least know that someday, I will do something that's worth something to someone. To anyone. I want to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that in 10 years time, I will be happy. And I want to stop feeling so goddamn lost all the time.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel lost in the middle of her second year at uni, nor am I the first person in the history of the universe to feel as such. It's such a cliched concept, to be sure. The whole "I'm just trying to figure out who I am" done-to-death quest for personal identity. Who cares anyway? There are seven billion people in the world, and my story is no better than anyone else's. So really, why bother at all? Maybe I should just go to Italy and see if life gets better there. I've got nothing to lose, right?

Well, that would be all fine and dandy, save for the fact that really, Edinburgh's not the problem. It's not just a matter of where I am. I love Edinburgh. I love this city and have since the second day I moved here (on the first day, it was raining), so leaving makes no sense. I love the people, and I love the place, and let's face it, if you can't find yourself in a place you love, what hope do you have of finding yourself "out there?"

And so with this in mind, I start my new project for 2011. The "S'il Vous Plait" project, where I will visit at least one new place every week. A place I've never set foot in before. Most of these places will be in Edinburgh, and most of them will probably be restaurants, because I like food. But occasionally, you'll find me somewhere in Asia or the US, because my family does a lot of travelling (hence the tragic number of air travel mishaps I've had this year).

But anyway, what's the point of this? To find the best little place in the world. Solely because I believe that if I look in enough places, maybe I will find some clues as to what I want to do with my life.