Knock, Knot, Knackered

It's 1:39am; in about 10.5 hours I will meet the Gobbler for lunch, and then we will probably discuss the merits and demerits of the Macintosh; but it will inevitably end in me giving him some money which he will use to buy a Macintosh for my father, who wants one for whatever reason. What will happen to the current laptop is anybody's guess. It'll probably go to one of the siblings currently living with the parents. Personally I disagree with the decision, but it was made without my input; not that I'm a great supporter of Bill Gates and Microsoft, but Apple isn't any better, and in fact is quite often worse. But it's not like my father will do very much on it anyway.

I spent most of yesterday and today out of the room. Yesterday I spent a good 13 hours out at the local closest-equivalent to a beach with a couple of friends--well, one was a friend and the other was a friend of the friend. We spent, I think, a good four to five hours in the water; as the two of them refused to go in the sea we went in a pool of one of the seaside resort-thingies (I'm not sure what to call them: beach-side enclosures?) which unfortunately only came up to slightly below the shoulder. So now I'm sunburnt on the shoulders, and the shoulders hurt.

It was an interesting sort of experience; I felt very... hm. I don't know. The two of them apparently travel frequently, and travel far; it was, I think, the sense of being a pauper in the company of the wealthy. After all, I don't travel, I shop very little, and most of my experience of the world comes secondhand; I can hardly discuss such things as whether the first-class of Such-and-such airline is better than the business class of So-and-so airline. It was an odd experience. I'd like to think I held up my end of the conversation and was just as sparkling and witty as either of them, but evidently I have no way of knowing unless I were to be told so; and even then I'd worry that it'd merely be because they might have read this and it'd influenced them somehow. I have a deep-seated mistrust of compliments, except the few that I've accepted really are true about me. Well, maybe more than a few; my ego inflates and deflates like a bull-frog's air sac. But it was an interesting experience; I'm still sorting it out myself. It was.. how does one put it? It was different. Possibly I've become used to a certain mode of behaviour in the people around me. It might be the fact that one of them had an uncanny vocal resemblance to the Pig. It might simply be that I'm not used to calling other people "peasants" and "commoners", or that I'm not used to people breaking out into song and dance in public--I know I have often expressed the wish for life to turn into a musical, but it's supposed to mean everybody knows the song and comes on in sync, and the lyrics and tune shouldn't be forgotten, mashed, jumbled, or mistaken!--, or that I'm not used to the company of wealthy people. Money always throws me off.

Which--the vocal resemblance, I mean, not the money, though he does have lots of that--reminds me; I talked to the Pig for a bit last night. He was about to watch Toy Story 3 and decided to call me up while waiting for the seating to start; we've been trying to catch each other online for some days now but for some reason he keeps leaving offline messages at 4am when I'm most definitely asleep. It's almost a year now since I was in Patience with him; how time flies! I want to visit again; perhaps in mid-August. His classes will have already started, though from the way he talks about some of his professors, sleeping in might actually have more educational value than attending the lectures.

We--I and the friends from the beach, I mean--watched Toy Story 3; I quite liked it. It's a lot different from the first two installments (and the first installment came out what, 15 years ago? ye gads, I'm aging!) in a good way; less comedy, more drama, but that's to be expected from a plot that primarily deals with getting left behind. What comedy there was, was good, though; and even the closest thing to a Deus Ex Machina that the movie had was at least justifiable. But it still has horrific implications... It made me wonder what became of all the toys I had when I was little; I have at any rate very few photos of them, but I remember them.

Today I was out with Herr Robson and the ex-coursemate he's currently living at the house of; we went to Minds Cafe, which apparently has a free flow of drinks between 2pm to 6pm on weekdays; in four hours we played Settlers of the Stone Age (I won), Lost Cities (Herr Robson won), and Attribute (I won); Attribute was the only game I chose and it was definitely the most surreal game we played. The time was fun, though; maybe we'll go again on Monday. At any rate they were certainly more enjoyable than, say, Monopoly.

I've seen the assistant professor concerned and he said I'm on the list for the project I'm interested in; I should know by next week if I'll actually be able to do it. I hope I can. And in nine days I have to register for next semester's modules; electives and all. It's just going to be a lot of time-juggling again; I'm not looking forward to arranging classes and what-not; it's always a bother.

This bit of time between the end of the internship and the Cambodia trip is turning out... interesting, eh? It's both busier and more leisurely than I'd expected. At any rate I'm certainly not bored; I've so many books to read, ideas for doodles and maybe-short-stories that I've made notes of and might/might not ever actually set down; a whole room to inventory and boxes to obtain and start filling up; a medical checkup before next Thursday and vaccinations; a bit of shopping for a military-grade haversack and perhaps a new belt as the current one's starting to show signs of wear and tear; ah! there is much to do. Epatant! these holidays are not times in which one can just sit back and loll around.