Panthera Sapiens Ellipsis: The Blog

Technically speaking, I'm on my holidays now. Thank God for friendly people! I met a guy on the road, and during conversation with him I remembered that the College facilities stay available while any students at all are having classes. Which means that even if I don't, the Diploma students do, and so the computer lab is open, and so I'm here typing this post. I just changed my handphone number, and spent at least three bucks SMS-ing everybody on my list about it. Fortunately now my father is financing it, so I don't have to worry too much about the spending. Herr Robson has been nagging me for months about some forum the school has that he set up. I've visited it, spammed it, and now when I check, it's like a ghost town. Nobody ever puts up replies to my messages except Herr Robson. I can only suppose my typings are a little too sharp. Then again, I've been described by other people as 'blunt'. As in, I have absolutely no tact at all. I usually tel...

Today was the day of the biannual Mass Call event, when the College is invaded by hundreds of furious and ravening freshmen, including yours truly. Not that I'm furious or ravening, or even that I invaded it today. But it wasn't too bad on the whole; for listening to a few hours' lecturing on the school and its properties (all of which I already knew), I got a T-shirt (with 'Proud To Be TARCian' emblazoned on its back) and a thick file full of papers singing the school's praises. Oh well, at least it's something to read. I'm dreadfully bored at the moment. I often am these days, especially on holidays, because then the school's computer lab is closed and I get to spend the day staring at the ceiling. I think that I shall ask my dad for a laptop or something to while away my time usefully. Of course, whether I get it or not is another matter. I have become something of a senior freshman; quite an oxymoron, isn't that? Basically it means that I...

Well, this is my second post from my new school, typed in the third week of my stay here. I'm not going to bother counting any more, because it's going to get tedious if I do so for the next year and a half. Basically, nothing much has changed in my life since the last post; I'm still scouting around for cheap stuff (right now my list has 'sugar' on the topmost bit. I ran out of it several days ago) and I've found some places that give students special prices. It's very rainy now in this area, and I've decided that bringing two umbrellas along with me wasn't that bad an error of judgement. Even with my hair (it's so densely packed that it's waterproof), I still get soaked to the skin. And believe me, I'm not pretty soaked to the skin. In fact I'm not pretty at all, but that's another matter. A lot of people are coming out of the Torture Camps again, and this time they're all flocking to my class in droves; in the last two week...

I'm typing this from my school's computer lab, where I just signed in as the latest user so far. Considering the incredible prices I've paid up so far for my tuition fees and school books (did you know some of my textbooks cost up to 150 each?), it's a bit of a consolation that I've got 500 hours of free time here per year. It's not too bad, and I don't really mind it, except that I don't think I'll be able to use it all up with exams constantly hounding me. I've settled into my own comfortable routine; I wake at 6.30 every morning (my handphone has turned out to be a most efficient alarm clock stand-in) and sleep at about 11 (my parents phone every other day or so to make sure). I drink Milo every morning and eat some crisps (I know, I know, not healthy, but I've not much choice here) and occasionally vary the routine with oats and buns. (The first time I tried the oats, I made a resoluton to buy a few kilos of sugar. So far I haven't ...

I have lived in my hostel room for one week. Enough to get to know my room-mate very well indeed. He's a very quiet person, collects comics like dust, and doesn't mind sharing anything I want to borrow except money. Not, of course, that I've asked for any. I'm adjusting quite nicely, I think, to college life. I can deal with no curfews quite nicely--I went out last night for supper with a few friends and only got back at 1.30--and the washing's not too bad with a coin-operated machine available. However, I'm going to need to brush up on my geography, because I find I keep getting lost when trying to get around the college itself. For example, I got lost twice on my first day. On the average day, you can see a medium-height kid wandering around the campus with a blank look on his face, a map in his hands, and a very worried frown. That's me. I'm comfy here, anyway. I've met a lot of my parents' friends (who, when seeing me, go "Oh, you...

I am typing this from a cyber cafe in my hostel. The rates are quite ruinous so I'm going to have to take my speed typing to a whole new level, obviously. It's not too bad otherwise. I have a new handphone, several years out of date, which is how I like it. Lower odds of it getting stolen. And besides, it works just fine except for a few minor glitches, which I plan to iron out as soon as I get a hand on the manual. I think I'm going to like it here, except for this keyboard. The keys are too soft, and I keep hitting the wrong key by mistake. It's slowing me down lots. Hate it. Anyway, I left all my classics back at home, and I'm beginning to regret that, because it's gonna get quite boring here without them. At least my room-mate, who is nothing like the one from hell, has a whole stack of manga for me to leaf through. Unfortunately they're all in Chinese. So this is my first post from my new environment. I think I'm actually going to like it here.

There’s a charming little black spiritual called ‘Old Black Joe’, and it begins ‘Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay…’. Please remember that this was before ‘gay’ acquired its second meaning. Anyway, it could be the theme song of the last two days or so for me. I’ve just come back from a church youth group (not my own), and it just hit me that I’ll never be able to just walk right in to it again. At least I’ve been freed from a certain little dental bond that I’ve been carrying for two years: my braces. I’ve been wearing them and wincing every now and then at stuck food and such for twenty-four months or so now, and let me tell you there is nothing quite like eating noodles for the first time in so long without worrying about little stuck bits dangling around your teeth. However, the retainers I’m now wearing have their bad points too; I’m still trying to adjust to them, and they taste like garlic. I don’t like garlic in great quantities, let alone fastened to m...