Roots

More on the topic of books (i should really be reading textbooks at the moment and not these kinds of books) my mother recommended a few books on the history of the Persian Empire. i've ordered them both and they are, or will be soon, en route to me. They are:

Darius the Great: Ancient Ruler of the Persian Empire
Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War

Two books i hope to read very soon and I'm quite eager to do so in fact. There is also another on the same topic which is by the same author of other popular history books such as "Rubicon" on the Roman Empire, namely Tom Holland. Should be an interesting read:

Persian Fire

None of these books i actually have the time to read right now! /cry
but hopefully i can bring them along to Thailand this summer and read on the plane and on the beach. Aaahh...summer...

(＾＿＾)/〜〜

the cookie has gone bad!

Reading a truly fascinating book at the moment that deals with the very essence of our being, our consciousness and its origins. I'm infamous for totally destroying any description or story i attempt to tell so i will not try to explain what it's about but let me just say after reading a few chapters of this book you will start to rethink everything you know or think to know about human experience, history, religion etc etc...

It was recommened to me by a truly superb lecturer at the University of Leicester, an intelligent and great man, although abit eccentric (but isnt that a part of what makes good people great? :)), by the name of Julian Boon. He is a legend in his own right among psychology students here and it's great fun and always rewarding to be in one of his lectures. The book he recommends is part of the Psychology of Love and attraction module which he teaches. I'm yet to fully grasp the link between love and attraction and the subject matter of this book but im sure it will come to me when i start to read through the textbooks.

the book, if you are interested in reading it, is called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and can probably be found at your local book shop if not you can follow the link i provided to get it from Amazon. I bought it from our Uni bookshop here and it cost me £5 so i can't imagine it costing that much on Amazon.

I can safely say that those £5 are the best £5 i've ever spent!

bogtown

Of late, done several things list below, one of which is untrue:

- been to paris for 5 days
- had a haircut for £22
- finished lectures
- bought iPod Video
- bought iMac G5
- bought PSP

who am i kidding? they're all true

Take my money away...i have no in my fridge but i still go and buy gadgets, the most recent a total impulse buy. Im happy with it though. Very interesting "thing".

Sketch #2

Sketch #1

Never was good at taking notes :)

*sigh*

How bored can you be before your head explodes? :/

exams, dissertation deadline, oral presentation for dissertation and essay deadline....*SIGH*

too much play no work makes for an unsuccesful bum

*pinch*

The chief export of Chuck Norris is PAIN!

Check out the latest fad, the infamous Walker Texas Ranger is back and he's coming for you, read up on him before it's too late. Don't be a victim!

For your own safety please read up on these random facts about Chuck Norris. They could save your life!

LOL :D

The Pillows & Co

One of my favourite japanese bands, The Pillows, have released a new album "My Foot"(!) Got it the other day and had a listen. It's got a few true gems and is overall a damn good album. I like the title track especially (my foot), as well as "Third Eye". Those are the ones that get played most and are likely to be put on repeat quite often. Check them out, a brilliant rock band from japan.

On other news, been starting to think about my plans for after graduation and have my eyes set on continuing my psychology studies in Sweden. That's if i'm accepted to the course. Hopefully i will. If i do get accepted, i will study for one term until jan '07 then hopefully have enough money (either scraped from studen loan leftovers or charitable donations from my overworked doctor brother :D). Once you get settled in and get a job money isn't really an issue, but it's just the settling in part that can be quite expensive. Getting an apartment isn't always easy and once you do, there are some fees that must be paid, fees such as a deposit (which is usually the equivalent of 3 months rent) and key money, which is a one-off payment to the landlord (another months rent) who has been so gracious as to let you live there. So as you can see it all adds up and before you've even set foot in your home for the next year you've paid for almost half your time in it. Crazy huh, but that is the way of the japanese and one must follow the rules or be without a place to live, which isn't really an option :D

"hopefully" it will all go to plan and i can gradute -> start studying in sweden -> go to japan for 1year+

after that god knows what will happen!

iPod

Finally got my student loan today! Chi-ching. And what is the first thing i go and do? Straight to the local apple retailer and buy a new ipod :D Got me a 60gb Black (sexy as fuck) iPod Video and my god are they lovely. The video bit has proven to quite a mission (encoding for ipod format etc) but its all good. Especially impressed by the photo bit. The quality is amazing.

Well well, no time to write. gotta go drool abit more over my latest gadget, and maybe some more on the one before that (the new swedish keyboard arrived the other day as well free of charge, courtesy of Apple, so now i have two keyboards yeay)

ba-bai

never ever

Uni has started again and that means new things to study and more lectures to attend. I have 4 lectures a week with wednesdays off. Not much new going on at the moment. Have discovered a new fun pasttime and as usually im abit late to get on the bandwagon. What i'm talking about is Podcasts from iTunes (or other places now). One particular podcast i enjoy is MyExtraLife. Just a bunch of guys, geeks and talented webcomic artists alike, chatting about anything and everything that is geeky, dorky or in any other shape or form, female-repelling. Very funny in other words :P Movies, games, webcomics etc etc, those are the usual topics anyway. Great fun!

A crush

Can you fall in love with the sound of a voice? I think i just did...It's so weird. Got a call from Apple about an order i had cancelled. I missed the call so she had left a message and as soon as i heard that accent i was a goner. I'm really quite worried :) I think i'm moving to Australia...!

Powerless

So some quite interesting things have happened here lately. Late on friday night, 23:50 to be more precise, the power and water went off in our flat. I was out with my brother visiting a local drinking facility at the time but i received a text from our flatmates telling us what had happened. I thought, as you would, it was some small affair to be fixed within the hour and they shouldn't worry too much. It would probably come back on by the time we were back, which would be after 2 hours give or take a few minutes. To my astonishment my brother and I were met with a pitch black court and malfunctioning magnetic lock systems. Everything was off (apart from the two or three rooms that for some reason were being supplied). The power came back for a few minutes around 3 am but went off again shortly thereafter. And they were to remain off until about an hour and half ago.
Now, being without power and water for a few hours is not much of a hassle. If we would've had atleast water it would be another matter. Being without either for 1day and a half does become slightly problematic. Then there is the problem of light. After sundown you're pretty much forced to stop any work you were doing, can't read, can't use the bathroom (since you can't flush) and other things. So we were pretty much forced to go out and entertain ourselves. My brother and I went for a burger and to have a chat with the people outside now hard at work trying to fix a major problem even for them who are used to fixing powercuts etc.

Finally, after 36h we have power and water back. Though the water might come and go at times they tell us, as it's a temporary meausure. We'll see what happens, i'm just happy the power is back. And we have £50 each coming our way as compensation from Central Networks (the power company), hope we get to see the colour of that money sometime soon, you never know with these things.

New Year in Gothenburg

I apologise for the size of the image, I'm gonna get my site up and running soon and there will be much more for you guys to look at there. For now this will have to do. A panoramic city view on new year's eve 05. The stitching isn't perfect as i did this rather quick, might do a better one at some point.

Of Late

Some stuff has happened that hasn't really affected me as they should've perhaps. Broke up with the girl, which I've been waiting to do ever since I pretty much started to dislike her when she came to Sweden over Christmas.

Mental note to self: never invite a girl back to Sweden when you don't really know her, bad idea.

Now that I think back on it I don't even know why, or how even, I started going out with her. She was ok looking, cute. Petite, skinny even. Very white skintone, no haircolour to speak of (though if had to choose I would probably say it was...the colour of..washed out brown, oversaturated brown even, not something i'd prefer). I'm more into full, dark brown or other full colours.
After a few encounters with her in the beginning it becomes obvious that she is a pretty shy girl, which at first is sweet but comes to be slightly annoying.
When she arrived in Sweden, i will not lie, i was late to the airshed (as i have decided to call Gothenburg City "Airport") because of a slight misunderstanding between myself and the itiniery. My parents were in the car and it was all good, the first day passed without any problems to speak of.
I think the annoyances started on the second day, can't remember exactly what started it. A variety of factors i would say. Her extreme politeness, as much as to pur herself in discomfort for the sake of not being rude (my mum gave her some clothes to put on as it was pretty cold outside, -10C, but she was too hot but when i told her she refused to take anything off), now people say that's very English, in my opinion that's very stupid. I just gave up trying to convince her my mum just wants her to be comfortable.
Another point to worth noting before i wrap this up is her unwillingness to engage in any kind of discussion, all she wants to do is drink her tea and watch tv or something. I even tried playing the devil's advocate a few times to get her engaged but it didn't really work as i'd intended. She asked me why i always wanted to argue, and i replied i wanted to have some, ANY, kind of discussion or debate with her, but my cries fell on deaf ears.

So those things and alot more contributed to the fact that we just ain't meant for eachother. She was raised in a small town outside of colchester in a strict, conservative family while i've been raised, for the majority of my life, in a city in a open loving and very liberal family with close-knit ties to one another. It was bound to fail.
For some reason though i think i had to get this out of the way, now i feel my next choice for a girlfriend will be much wiser and last hopefully more than the last ones have (2 months to be precise).

On a lighter note, I LOVE my new iMac G5! Very recently the new iMacs with Intel processors were released and i couldn't return it for one of those but i've been told, reassured even, that that was for the best at this stage. And what a beauty it is, the perfect personal computer. I also got the extended Apple Care package for it so i won't have to worry about anything after the first year has passed. It's usually £140 but if you purchase the Protection Plan at the same time as you order you get a massive discount (50% i think it is). So my new computer i bought for £850 including Apple Protection Plan and another £73 for an extra 1GB of RAM purchased from Crucial.com.

design

not much to write about really. discovered that the uni computers can be used for p2p and i will be taking advantage of that to the fullest. Mostly to download the weekly episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Rome and American Dad. I just realised what i've been doing, i hardly ever watch tv anymore. What i'm doing now is just watching what is best on tv and cutting out all the crap. Obviously i'm also weeding out some of the unnoticed good stuff, like the occasional interesting documentary or so. i think at one point in my life i actually thought tv was super...now i don't. i guess ive just found other ways of wasting away my life.

And won't be getting a new psp. still considering getting an ipod video, now that the battery life is 20h what used to be the only flaw with the ipod is no more :) could be better but 20h (up to 20h!) is good enough for me...especially since my model (3rd gen) was only 8.

The time to make a choice for my dissertation title is drawing near and i think im just a tiny bit closer than before. Went in to talk with my supervisor on monday and he gave me some ideas and here i am, reading up on linguistics. It's very interesting. honest. :D

also been taking more photos and hitting the darkroom alot more. i stopped before mostly because i didn't have access to one but now that my flatmate has shown me the DMU darkrooms i'm in and out more than him ;) and its great fun. Been to a few places and i'm quite happy with the results to be honest. i think if this whole psychology thing falls through i will give my photography a shot, or even if i continue doing psychology. would be interesting to see how far i could get.

will be putting up a new website with all my work soonish, will see when i can find the time to finish what i've started on it. spent 3h thinking of ideas for the layout and design and changed it so many times, i ended up with a simple text with my name.

you can find what i've done sofar here. If i ever get it up and running i will get a domain name sorted.

moving from A to B

My iPod has gone from bad to worse and im in need of a replacement. I was looking at the new iPod Nanos but i'm not really sure. The new sony psp's look alot nicer and you can do alot more with them. Watch videos, listen to music, play games and alot more and getting one imported works out cheaper than getting one here, plus the sleak white ceramic coloured ones aren't available here yet (see picture).



All in good time, found out today that my student will be arriving on monday next week. Add another three days for wiring the money from sweden to UK i should have it by wednesday next week. Then i can look at things from a more serious POV. There are a few from eBay but i'm always abit suspicious when buying stuff from there. If i get it myself and get it sent here i know its not a scam and all that.

I'm falling ill again! damn you arvin!!! >(

return

hello

Long time ago i posted. Thought i'd keep you up to date with stuff that has been happening lately. Will keep it short as not much has happened. Ben and Myles came up last week for fresher's week and we all went out a couple of times and got totally smashed which was great fun. We went to the student union one night which i don't recall but it was fun by the accounts of the others that were there. Had an incredibly bad hangover the day after. On that monday we went to Zanzibar which wasn't bad owing only to the fact that i had one of my oh-so-emil-specific near-hits with a girl. The story goes as follows.

boy dances with friends
boy sees girl, girl smiles
boy smiles
boy goes to girl
boy and girl chat for awhile
boy gets good vibes from girl
girl tells boys she likes iranian guys
boy gets more good vibes
girl pinches boy
boy thinks this cannot go wrong
boy and girl go to bar and get drinks
girl goes to bathroom
boy waits
girl doesn't come back
boy looks for girl only to find girl with another boy
boy gives up and goes home
boy sad

so that's pretty much what happened, the whole scenario stretched across about half an hour or so. I can't really say how long, to me it felt like alot longer. But what can you do eh, life goes on. Suppose i should concentrate on my studies more this year as i barely made it past my last year.

What else, no internet as of yet in my room so i have to come to the library or go to a friend's place which sucks. How can you live without the internet. it's ok for a few days after which you run out of things to do and watch. My computer feels so lifeless without it.

Also watched the last few episodes of friends last night. I'd forgotten how funny it was. One of the few shows that can make me laugh out loud when watching it alone. And that is quite an accomplishment.

A long time ago

I used to write quite often here but recently i just haven't had the time nor energy to. The reason? It's summer and i'm enjoying myself...now if i had said that i would have been lying. The truth is that i'm just busy revising for some exams i failed earlier in the year. I totally deserve this so i won't complain.

While studying i've also been doing other stuff, socialising with friends not being one of them, but that's beside the point. Anyway, what have i been doing i hear you ask. Well, a number of things. First i have been listening to my brother's advice and about 2 weeks back i acquired (by means that are not of relevance here) the american tv show Lost . Anyone who's seen the show 24 and knows of it's addicitive potency should easily get an idea of what Lost is about. I'm not going to give you a synopsis here, just follow the link i provided for that, but i can honestly say that this show is the best thing i've seen since...since ever. 24 was a great show and is comparable to Lost but i the latter is in my opinion the better show. Not by far mind you. You'll just have to get hold of it and watch it to know what i'm talking about.
I even got my mum watching it and she's as addicted as i was. Unfortunately i finished watching it in a week or less so now im left with the withdrawal, and it's killing me! Luckily the second season starts airing in the US 21st September so the wait is not that long, thank god. What makes it such a good show? A great storyline, awesome characters and the layout of the episodes (mainly present time with flashbacks of each character's past leading up to the present, each episode deals with one or more characters) combined with great cinematography and a soundtrack perfectly tailored to fit the mood. Man, i sound like a movie critic or something. Bottomline: watch it :)

What else has been going on? Well i've been discovering some new music. Firstly, James Blunt. I heared one of his tunes on the radio driving back from the gym the other week and made a mental note of the name for later p2p checking. Didn't get around to it until a few days ago and was immediately mesmerised by the melodies and lyrics. This is totally up my street.
The other is a iranian-swedish girl (born of iranian parents, raised in sweden...and a bit in russia i think too) called Laleh. The site is both in english and swedish (i believe). She actually went to my highschool which is abit weird i think :) she was in the same year as my brother but in a different class. I also went to see her play here in the city last week and it was, to say the least, highly entertaining. Not just listening to her music but also the in between chitchat. She's quite goofy and crazy and as i'm often identified like that myself it's always nice to see a fellow goof make it :D I think you can listen to a few of her tunes (streamed) on her website, mostly notable is "Live Tomorrow".

Check it out!

Exam frenzy (again)

Now is the time to start thinking about exams again. For those of you who didn't know, i am one of the lucky people able to attend the resits in September for my two january exams. For this privilege i have had to cut my summer vacation short by about 2 months. I wouldn't change a thing. My life is perfect (sarcasm in all its glory)
I hear you ask why, well. I have in my life never failed an exam (except for that one physics exam in high school :D) and the ones i failed in january failed to light my arse on fire (much like the failed physics exam did). Usually what a failure manages to accomplish in me is to awaken this incredible passion for study and learning that unfortunately only lasts for a couple of days, one week tops, after which i return to normal. This time however i have acutally come to realise the seriousness of the consequences if i am to fail these exams. 1) I am kicked out 2) I am "allowed" to redo the year. Out of these two alternatives i naturally dread the former. The latter allowing me atleast a second (technically third) chance. Suffice it to say that i will be spending the next 7 weeks with my face buried within heaps and heaps of books about child development, intelligence, memory, visual perception, abnormal and other types of psychology :D wouldn't you just love being me right now??..huh??

Japanese is going good, my latent learning method has proven useful for this period of inactivity as i really haven't forgotten much since i was last in Japan. Listening to music and mailing friends in japan is keeping me updated and learning new words. I had planned to finish my textbook during the summer but due to recent events i don't know when i'll be able to. But i will ganbarimasuuuu (do my best) :D

Happenings of late

Story: there's a girl (girl A) living in our flat now who's from afghanistan. My dad picked up her sister (girl B) from the streets in gothenburg one night when he was working his taxi shift (she had just been smuggled to sweden and that's where the smuggler left here, seeing this poor girl my dad picked her up and brought her home to us!). she then lived with us for a while (this was about 2-3 yrs ago i think). Now she is married with some dude and lives in another city about 1h away from here.
Anyway, that's beside the point. Her sister (girl A) came from afghanistan a year or so ago and now lives with us as she helps my mum in the cafe and with other household stuff. She has an "arranged marriage" husband that lives in holland. She now sleeps in my old room and i sleep in the computer room (which is perfect if u think about it :D) So when i came home that night from the club, pissed off my face i went straight to bed, still drunk. I sleep and wake up around 7-8 am. That is the time when my mum and the girl are usually going downstairs to start opening the cafe. So i get up to get some water and go to the toilet, half-sleeping. I go out of the toilet and instead of going back to my room i for some reason or other go into the other room. I sit down on the bed. A few moments later when i turn around to lay on the bed im met by two eyes scared shitless. I hear a loud "GET OUT" and im on my way out...i realised what i had done and went back to my room to sleep. I met my mum on the way out who asked what had happened and i explained in my dazed state what had just transpired and her exact response was "oh...ok". I go back to bed. I wake up around 11 am again. I go downstairs to have some breakfast and as i get into to the cafe my mum tells me to apologize to the girl...im like what for? Oh for going into her room? I was like "ok...i suppose i should". So i did. To me and my family (and everyone else?) this was a minor incident, no biggie. But to this girl it was a huge deal. She thought (i kid you not!!!) i had come into the room to rape her. No joke! i was like..."what the fuck" :D...is this girl for real or what. Me?Rape someone? hehe...

This is funny to me.