Hustle and Bustle, Pack and Clean
As of today, I have five days left before I step onto a plane and go back to Patience. It's a night flight, so it'll be six days before I arrive home. So far I've been advertising it on my MSN nickname (14 Days! 12 Days! 10 Days! 7 Days!) but now that it's less than a week to go, I'm getting a bit nervous. After all, there're so many things that can possibly go wrong!
I refuse to dwell on the possibility of missing the flight or getting lost in the airport or missing luggage or any such dismal thoughts. Homecomings are supposed to be happy times, not times when you exclaim, "Oh poop! I've gone and forgotten my toothbrush." Of course, it depends on your actually arriving safe and sound and in one piece.
And besides, I've still got plenty of things on my itinerary. There's the exams (English essay tomorrow and Chemistry some time this week), hostel fee payment (I'll rant in depth on this later), and of course the packing itself.
So far I've already planned the packing: my parents have entreated me to travel as light as possible. In fact, the original plan involved me carrying nothing but books over and living in my father's left-behind clothes for the next two months. Unfortunately, I'm much narrower than my father is, and (in a friend's words) I swim in his clothes. Well, it's a little more ethically acceptable than on-the-table swimming but it's decidedly not aesthetic.
So I've decided to pack two bags. One bag full of books and various study aids (my pencil case among them) and toiletries (I have three rolls of toilet paper, sitting almost untouched on my desk). The other bag will be full of clothes: half of it clothes that I plan to wear, and the other half clothes that I seldom wear, if ever. It includes my entire collection of buttoned shirts, mostly unworn because I haven't a clue how to iron them without an iron, and I refuse to wear them crumpled.
I've told Gene that I plan to be late for Wednesday's class. It begins at 11.00 am--shock and horror from my friends in KK!--but all the same it's not late enough for my purposes. Basically it's due to the bank's indolence: the bank in question doesn't open until 9.30, and it takes half-an-hour for me to get from my room to it. Plus I need to obtain a bank draft to pay the hostel fees with (they refuse to accept cash payments due to various reasons, which probably only make sense to them), and that transaction will probably take at least half-an-hour, so even optimistically, I'll only get back to the hostel around 10.30 am.
Which, of course, is not enough time to change, grab a bite, and go off to school. (The journey from my room to the class takes 15 minutes.) So as a result I'm going to have to wake early on Wednesday, rush hither and thither, and probably still arrive late for class, sweaty and disheveled. What a pretty sight I'll be!
I did try to get it done on Saturday, but the bank was closed because it was the first Saturday of the month and it was the day after the Rayon Day celebrations. Behold the marvelous laid-back-ness of our beloved insitutions.
By the way, I read a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales over the holidays, and I found that not a single one of them ends in "...happily ever after". In fact most of them end in duh statements like "...if they haven't died, they're still living" or "...they lived until they died".
And I managed to pull a few Golden Rules for Living A La Grimm out of them.
1. If three people try to do anything, the first two will die in the attempt.
2. Out of three people, at least one is an idiot.
3. All stepchildren are evil, conniving, and ugly.
4. All stepmothers are witches.
5. If anyone asks you a riddle, go ask their mother the answer.
6. All important speeches are made in rhyme.
7. Any animal that speaks should be followed completely.
8. Kings have enough free time on their hands to spend months and months doing nothing except courting.
9. If there is only one girl in a family of boys, the boys will inevitably be turned into birds and the girl will have to sew jackets in silence.
10. Giants are always male, but are able to breastfeed.
11. There is an unlimited supply of trees around to be destroyed.
12. If you ever have an insoluble problem, sit down and cry. Somebody will appear with marvelous gifts to help you while you sleep.
13. Anybody who doesn't smile is an evil murderer.
14. If a witch or demon chases you, throw whatever is in your pockets at her/it. The item will change into some sort of obstacle at once.
15. It is always advisable to be nice to old people because they will give you wishes, magic items, or other good stuff.
...now if only I lived in ancient Germany.
I refuse to dwell on the possibility of missing the flight or getting lost in the airport or missing luggage or any such dismal thoughts. Homecomings are supposed to be happy times, not times when you exclaim, "Oh poop! I've gone and forgotten my toothbrush." Of course, it depends on your actually arriving safe and sound and in one piece.
And besides, I've still got plenty of things on my itinerary. There's the exams (English essay tomorrow and Chemistry some time this week), hostel fee payment (I'll rant in depth on this later), and of course the packing itself.
So far I've already planned the packing: my parents have entreated me to travel as light as possible. In fact, the original plan involved me carrying nothing but books over and living in my father's left-behind clothes for the next two months. Unfortunately, I'm much narrower than my father is, and (in a friend's words) I swim in his clothes. Well, it's a little more ethically acceptable than on-the-table swimming but it's decidedly not aesthetic.
So I've decided to pack two bags. One bag full of books and various study aids (my pencil case among them) and toiletries (I have three rolls of toilet paper, sitting almost untouched on my desk). The other bag will be full of clothes: half of it clothes that I plan to wear, and the other half clothes that I seldom wear, if ever. It includes my entire collection of buttoned shirts, mostly unworn because I haven't a clue how to iron them without an iron, and I refuse to wear them crumpled.
I've told Gene that I plan to be late for Wednesday's class. It begins at 11.00 am--shock and horror from my friends in KK!--but all the same it's not late enough for my purposes. Basically it's due to the bank's indolence: the bank in question doesn't open until 9.30, and it takes half-an-hour for me to get from my room to it. Plus I need to obtain a bank draft to pay the hostel fees with (they refuse to accept cash payments due to various reasons, which probably only make sense to them), and that transaction will probably take at least half-an-hour, so even optimistically, I'll only get back to the hostel around 10.30 am.
Which, of course, is not enough time to change, grab a bite, and go off to school. (The journey from my room to the class takes 15 minutes.) So as a result I'm going to have to wake early on Wednesday, rush hither and thither, and probably still arrive late for class, sweaty and disheveled. What a pretty sight I'll be!
I did try to get it done on Saturday, but the bank was closed because it was the first Saturday of the month and it was the day after the Rayon Day celebrations. Behold the marvelous laid-back-ness of our beloved insitutions.
By the way, I read a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales over the holidays, and I found that not a single one of them ends in "...happily ever after". In fact most of them end in duh statements like "...if they haven't died, they're still living" or "...they lived until they died".
And I managed to pull a few Golden Rules for Living A La Grimm out of them.
1. If three people try to do anything, the first two will die in the attempt.
2. Out of three people, at least one is an idiot.
3. All stepchildren are evil, conniving, and ugly.
4. All stepmothers are witches.
5. If anyone asks you a riddle, go ask their mother the answer.
6. All important speeches are made in rhyme.
7. Any animal that speaks should be followed completely.
8. Kings have enough free time on their hands to spend months and months doing nothing except courting.
9. If there is only one girl in a family of boys, the boys will inevitably be turned into birds and the girl will have to sew jackets in silence.
10. Giants are always male, but are able to breastfeed.
11. There is an unlimited supply of trees around to be destroyed.
12. If you ever have an insoluble problem, sit down and cry. Somebody will appear with marvelous gifts to help you while you sleep.
13. Anybody who doesn't smile is an evil murderer.
14. If a witch or demon chases you, throw whatever is in your pockets at her/it. The item will change into some sort of obstacle at once.
15. It is always advisable to be nice to old people because they will give you wishes, magic items, or other good stuff.
...now if only I lived in ancient Germany.
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