Onward!!

Oh boy. I’ve done myself in now. I got myself an account on Facebook. Finnish universities have nothing of the kind, and I doubt it would take off anyway.

More than regretting putting a load of information about myself online I somehow regret flicking through the profiles of a few old schoolmates from years back. Seeing their names and faces brought a ton of memories back, but that’s not what I want to talk about (yet).

The heartbreaking thing is that most of these people have graduated already. They’re either grad students or in employment, whizzing around the globe to meet each other. I’m 23 and still (or rather, again) where they were four or five years ago. I’m doing the things they’ve already done. I feel like the odd man out, because I’m doing a second bachelor’s. The friends I have in school now are letting go for the first time, experiencing the awesomeness of being in University. Looking at them, I feel I never had that – the freedom, the unwavering hope in the future, the chance to network and connect.

I don’t want to be the odd man out. I don’t want to feel like I don’t belong. I want to go wild and enjoy my time, as these years aren’t coming back and I sure as hell am not getting younger. I just don’t know if I can ever get back into the loop. All I can do is try.

Do, or do not. There is no try. So I better Do.

The sentence in the title is a quote attributed to Henry Kissinger, and it rings very true. The weekly LSE Students’ Union General Meeting, besides being a barrel of laughs and heckling, is a stage upon which the most amazing scenes of taking things personally take place.

This week’s UGM was more dramatic than usual. After the student body had shot down a motion, one of the editors of the student newspaper, the Beaver, climbed up on stage and announced that he wanted to no-confidence the Constitution and Steering Committee, whose responsibility it is to ensure union rules and laws are followed. Someone tries a vote of no confidence probably every two weeks, but usually it doesn’t work. This time was more serious, though. Apparently, this was because the Committee had given airtime on the student radio network for some candidates in this term’s elections, because they had complained of defamatory treatment in a satirical weekly column of the paper.

To clarify: The editor was angry that the committee had compensated the complaining candidates by giving them airtime on the radio station, which is broadcast in several student locales where campaigning is explicitly not allowed. This, he felt, was unjustified as the paper could have printed an apology and withdrawal in next week’s issue. Forgetting all decorum, the meeting disintegrated into a howling mess of yelling for and against. Eventually, in a vote, the union members (ie. us students) voted to no-confidence the Steering Committee. As the chair of the meeting said that she had to adjourn for the day as there was no committee to monitor the proceedings, some members of the C&S marched out yelling, “you stupid wankers, what have you done!”

See what I meant about taking it personally? But it gets better! The offended were then locked in a yelling contest between the Beaver editor and some others, with cameras and microphones being flailed around them. It was like a car crash – you just couldn’t look away.

The comments in the newspaper column? Calling a student officer ugly: “[She] wore a veil, though sadly not the kind that covered her face,” and jeering at a prominent student politician: “JCesspit (…) a Champagne socialist…”. All this in a satirical context, though on election week. You be the judge.

We get this kind of entertainment free every week!

After the disappointment that was Robin Hood, I wasn’t expecting much of the BBC’s other new show, Torchwood. Not only is it a spin-off of the new Doctor Who, but it’s a series about alien hunters in contemporary Britain. Scary.

It wasn’t bad. The pilot was a pretty standard story of “confused woman (Police officer Gwen Cooper) runs after a mysterious group only to be turned away once she catches up with them, but not deterred, she finds them again and is invited to join” but the general atmosphere seemed different enough. It’s filmed and set in contemporary Cardiff, which means that it’s refreshingly different from stuff filmed in Hollywood. Aside from the unnecessarily American Captain Jack Hartnett, all the main characters speak with a cute Welsh accent, accentuating the realism underpinning a fantastically-themed story.

I admit that at the time I’m writing this, I still haven’t seen the new Doctor Who series, which apparently is very similar in visual style. Based on that, I feel I can evaluate Torchwood for its merits alone. It feels like it could be the kind of series I would have hoped for as a teenager, when I felt the indecision and running around in circles of the X-Files was frustrating and too dark. It aims to be a little more gritty than “teenage” series (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or similar), with copious swearing and violence, but clearly the producers have understood that swearing, blood and sex is exactly what attracts a teenage audience.

Torchwood clearly doesn’t have a massive budget, but it gets its dynamic down by using everyday settings influenced by fantasy/sci-fi elements. For example, the second episode features an alien taking over the body of a teenage girl, and feeding off of sexual energy of males, killing them in the process. Not only does the show feature an intimate sex scene in a club toilet, but also shows the club owner later masturbating to CCTV camera footage from said toilet (and witnessing the death of the boy). Oh, and the line, “I guess he came and went,” which had me in stitches.

I don’t get why they had to film so many shots on the rooftops of buildings. I guess they had plenty of money for the pilot and chose to use it to rent a helicopter. Hopefully they’ll get down to the serious meat in subsequent episodes.

It’s light, sci-fi fare for a distinctively young audience, with some believable – if fantastic – characters, and humour interspersed with violence and sex. Nothing amazing, but definitely not dreadful either. Sort of like a European Buffy the Vampire slayer, with grownup characters. I don’t know.

After a woefully unproductive day at school, I sat myself on the bus next to a Jamaican lady with long fingernails. She sang to herself constantly, interspersed with blessings and comments about the driving. At the Waterloo Imax roundabout a biker passed the bus from the right side rather dangerously, and her hand shot up and at the direction of the biker. “Power of the Lord, no accidents for you tonight,” she declared.

She returned to her singing, humming a tune and two lines “I’m not afraid/I have the strength” over and over again. After a few minutes, she grew frustrated with just the two lines, and exclaimed, “Lord Jesus, give me more lyrics!”

Made my day.

I guess autumn is here, judging by the amount of rain. The temperature is a pleasant 15 degrees celsius even at night, though, so the rain doesn’t feel all that chilly. I just hope it will clear up by the weekend, as I’ll be attending a field course somewhere in Surrey, and wouldn’t want to do it while getting soaked.

Waiting for the bus up in Holborn at eight pm tonight, looking at the glistening streets and black cabs whizzing past made me think about living in London. Even then, a couple of London Prides downed with people from my department sloshing inside me, I really didn’t feel like I lived in this city. Yeah, I’m staying here. I’m starting to know my way around. I’m beginning to pick up bits of the accent and manner of speaking. It nonetheless feels like I’m just visiting, though.

It wasn’t planned, but we took a stroll through the drizzle to the local, “Jack Beard’s at the Plough”. Aside from some old chap we were the only customers, and obviously not part of the usual clientele. The landlord’s big dog growled at us from behind the bar, but was quickly silenced. I noticed they were serving Greene King IPA, so I asked for a pint. “It isn’t IPA, but it’s real ale, my friend brought up a cask from Hereford, from a microbrewery” he replied. I obliged, and he gave me a generous taster to make my mind up – something I very much appreciated. It wasn’t bad stuff: “very hoppy” in his words, quite sharp to my unaccustomed palate. Went down easy enough, though. Something called “Awed Bull” or something.

So there we were, the only customers in a little corner pub with Chartlist TV blaring top ten hits from the last ten years, enjoying pints and playing some pool. Not a bad way to spend an evening.