In hindsight: On comfortable friends

Big topic.

So the last four years have been a little bit of a rollercoaster - intensely good times followed by silence. There were years where I was completely disillusioned and disappointed (mostly with myself) with those seemingly faithful promises of friends forever made way back in high school. They didn't materialise in the way I expected them to, which sucked at the time. I've probably seen them more this year, even if it's only on football nights, than in the previous three years put together, which is pretty pathetic. I blame it on the great Zone 1 divide - it was them and us. It is definitely very embarrassing that Zone 1 only covers about thirty to forty blocks lengthwise, and we still can't make that distance to see them - only Londoners would understand. This year though it was made a little smaller by a direct bus that goes from outside our door to theirs.

They're still great to hang out with, comfortable, y'know, like pyjamas, but whether we're ever going to get that level of closeness back, that "I so knew you were going to say that" intimacy is going to take a lot of work it seems, not helped at all by our impending careers.

It used to bother me, an anger that at one point translated into not wanting to see them at all - which was easy once the invites stopped coming anyway and the excuses flowed better. There were people who fought hard, but you run out of energy after a while. But I suppose even the strongest of friends grow apart, it had to happen so I finally let it go. It sometimes bothers me now that maybe I let go too easy, that the only way to find out a little bit of what they're thinking or going through is by reading the messages on their Facebook walls from other friends. It sucks, but again, things are getting easier and easier to shelve away, and if they do well-up again, well there's always Facebook for general stalking purposes.

I suppose here's the where the advice starts, only I won't be giving any because it feels like I haven't done well at all, sitting here regretting all the lost time. I only hope that in the years to come, our jobs don't take us too far away. Then again, it might just make us fight that little bit harder to make time for the occasional football match and dinner together.

In hindsight: Intro

I think hot showers inspire me. Standing under the running water, doing an 'emo shot', as Cheryl likes to put it, gets ideas going. I figure that since I'm going to graduate and effectively close another chapter in my life, I think I'm going to write a series of posts, hopefully it won't end up just being this one, about what the last four years have taught me about the last 22 years of my life. So much change has happened, I hardly know where to start. I think I'll go with whatever occurs to me as and when it decides to rear its ugly head, although the lack of structure is almost too much for my orderly engineering thought process to handle. So in no particular order of importance at all, the first one should be right after this.

A little here, a little there

I've had this post window open virtually all day. Logging in was an overly optimistic gesture, the same way saying that I'd get back to blogging regularly again was also much too ambitious. I suppose updating twice in a month is still better than twice in three.

I've been distracted by Facebook, by guilty thoughts about the next exam that is fast approaching, by cravings that I'm trying very hard to suppress.

I have yet to find an epic fantasy series. The Belgariad, Mallorean, and Pratchett - well nothing can compare, quite frankly, not yet anyway. I'm still waiting for someone new to blow me away.

Hello, old friend

You know it's bad when I start blogging again, overwhelmed by the pages of derivations and facts that I have to be able to regurgitate by next week. Algebra is twisted that way, letters that aren't used to form coherent words and flowing sentences as God intended, but are instead forced into a mathematical framework that seemingly has no end or purpose. Nature cries out.

I was so desperate to share this with you that I sat through about a half hour and 15 pages of being redirected as Blogger tried to show me how easy it was to move my account to Google.

I would say I've taken procrastination to a whole new level, but I think Weng has beat me to it. We've further doomed out exam/revision period by starting a three player game of Civ4. Yes, if we're going to fall, we're dragging Cheryl with us.

The building management have kindly decided to erect scaffolding across the entire block, front and back. I think it's a scam. They rent miles of steel pole, several square feet of wood board and plastic sheet, thousands of clamps, and hundreds of manhours of cussing, posturing workmen, and then charge the landlords a margin on top of that for a service provided.

My concentration span is hovering around three minutes at the moment, which means frequent breaks and a growing worry that I won't be able to pull through an entire 3 hour exam - it's a marathon. Surrounded by things like broadband, fast food, 30 second advertisements, high impact workouts, and crash diets, three hours is a lifetime.

Then again, the rest of life seems to be going by far too quickly. How ironic.

Oh, new page layout and Frederick the Hamster has died from negligence.