Any Colour You Like

I have such epic back and neck ache from leaning over a desk and writing with pencil and paper. I know computers are bad on your eyes and there are plenty of ways of getting RSI from them but I had no idea the old fashioned way of working was so painful. At least with computers your head is up and your back is straight.

Physical pain coulpled with mental strain and the fact I have postponed all exercise except for 1 hr per week mean revision is really taking it out of me. I don’t know if I can handle another 20 and a half days of this!

As a great day off from revision I went to see the Royal Philharmonic playing film music at the Royal Albert hall on Friday. It all started off a bit tentatively when the trumpet soloist royally messed up the Rohan theme from LoTR about 3mins in. But after that is was spectacularly good =)

We got all of the expected classics, the modern favourites such as Pirates of the Caribbean and a smattering of random Western themes from a conductor/composer in jeans with rolled up bottoms. I had never been before, what a spectacular building.

It is pretty dire when I have so little clue what an entire module is about that I have to resort to wikipedia to get an overview. It turns out, 20 lectures in, that my course on non linear behaviour of materials is actually an obscure treatment of solid mechanics. It would have been nice if he had bothered to tell us.

It is still terrifying though. Our lecturer is so much of a mathematician and so little of an engineer that even with liberal applications of wikipedia knowledge I am still struggling to link his maths back to anything tangible. Two weeks to go till exam and I will either get it by then and get 60% or not get it and get 0%. Not 30%, not 15% but zero. And the only book he sites is some dodgy russian maths book that doesn’t exist in the library.

I just can’t wait to finish. I can’t wait to go kitesurfing. And I won’t even complain that we don’t get motar-boards at graduation in Bristol if I make it through…

Two days from now I will get to switch from learning Spanish in order to blag 20 easy credit points to learning Spanish to say useful thing like ‘dos cevezas gracias’ in fabulous sunny countries. I had forgotten the school day tribulation of conjugating verbs and force learning conceited, supposedly professional sounding sentences for letter writing such as:

‘le agradecería que tuviese la amabilidad de informarme de…’

– litteraly ‘I would be ingratiated if you would show me the magnanimity to inform me about’. Apparently they genuinely do spurt such tripe in the average letter to their local job agency and newspaper. And haven’t they heard of email, where a simple ‘cheers for your help’ would do fine?