Behind the scenes at the CIA. Yes. Water and fruit. There was a lot of it.

I managed to spend the whole weekend in my pyjamas, dozing, sleeping, or playing scrabble. Which means I am excessively behind on my work and the kitchen is a hellhole becuase I couldn't face cleaning it up. I couldn't face doing much at all. However I'm feeling clear-headed, finally, although I still need to do something about getting my hospital appointment brought forward.

Tomorrow I'm getting gloves sent down with a father. Hurrah!

* posted by nat 11:38 PM

Saturday, October 29, 2005

People are letting fireworks off all over the place. Why can't they wait until next week? And why do they have to let them off exactly so there are trees inbetween me and them?

The game on Wednesday was loads of fun, despite a few people with egos. We all got ultra-involved, and as the CIA had their own little secure office, we got to vent during the game without any fear of being overheard. It also meant we got all the information early. Hurrah! I appointed myself secretary, barricaded myself in the room with a couple of bottles of mineral water and the fruit bowl, and wrote up posters of "evil groupings" ie people who didn't agree with us while everyone else rushed around outside yelling at the people who didn't agree with us. Which was pretty much everyone, because they hated us for getting our own little room that we refused to let anyone else into. I suspect it's probably true to life to have someone storming back through the CIA doors fuming that "Everyone in the State Department's a moron!", "The President's such a bitch!!", "If thingy from the DEA comes round one more time I swear I'm going to punch him!" and confiscating the crisps for good self-congratulatory measure.

I was halfway through writing up the main points for our policy brief when one of the girls on our team suddenly asked me "Are you a man-hater?"

"Excuse me?!" I said, writing down more reasons to extradite Don Berna, which were not true, as we were refusing to tell even the President the truth.

"You don't get on well with men. Have you got a notepad?" she said, and I gave her my notes.

"It's the way you write your 'y's," she explained, helpfully.

I said, "What?"

She said, "You're quite sexually frustrated, aren't you?"

I said, "I've got five minutes to write a policy brief so James can give a speech!"

This did not shut her up. She proceeded to tell me that I like to think about things a lot, but also I am not particularly analytical; that I am direct when speaking, and yet am rather reserved; I'm not very confident, and that my middle section is quite developed (goodness only knows what that means).

I said, "So basically you're telling me I'm schizophrenic?"

"Nooo," she said. "It's just your capital letters aren't very big and you don't have any upstrokes or downstrokes and you miss out lots of letters in the middle of words.

I felt like telling her, in detail, what it's like to have to hold a pen and scrawl when your fingers are numb and your skin is all prickly and your wrist is clicking, and that maybe this explained far more about why my handwriting was the low-maintenance mess it was, but instead I said "Have you noticed that 5 out of the 9 people on your team are left-handed?"

Which is obviously another reason why we were so cool.

Afterwards we went to the pub and fought over who got to buy each other drinks.

*

On Friday there was much Turkish seminaring. We mooted the idea of just going down to the airport and getting on a plane to Istanbul. It'd be nice...

One more week until reading week and I really need the break! My diet consists of energy bars, lunch at Planet Organic, and chocolate in the evening. So there shall be sleeping, cooking, and maybe even a couple of forays into Kent - I need a castle or something, if they're open this time of year. Inbetween a pile of reading, that is...

But for now, it's my usual happy Saturday of scrabble, chocolate and dozing. And fireworks that I cannot see.

* posted by nat 7:48 PM

Monday, October 24, 2005

Despite a really restful (bed and scrabble) weekend with plenty of good eating, today it has been almost impossible to move. The weather is cold and wet and heavy, and I missed my train this morning becuase I couldn't get myself to move to the station fast enough.

I haven't told anyone on my course yet, although some of them are beginning to notice that stairs are a problem (they were a huge problem today, but the SOAS lifts in the main building tend to get packed out at peak times so stairs it is). But still I am managing to fend things off pretty easily. Although I'm going to have do something about where I sit in lectures pretty soon as cramped up in the desks is uncomfortable to the point of pain. Working on it.

I did my half of the presentation on the Inter War period and blabbed on about Realism excessively. It seemed to go all right. So that's both my presentations for this term out of the way. Although on the way there I managed to lose one of my gloves. I now have NO pairs of gloves. But lots of single ones so I can mix and match them, like socks.

Came home, made dinner, picked up plate, dropped plate, dinner went all over the floor in the hall (which would be bare floorboards). I dusted it down vigourously and salvaged what I could. The hall now smells of eau de moutarde. Super.

I have just gobbled a whole packet of wine gums while researching for the Crisis Game on Wednesday evening, and now I'm not sure if I feel better or worse. (I'm one of the CIA directors, gosh, mwhahaha. Now should I play competent or incompetent, just for kicks?)

* posted by nat 10:21 PM

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

So in ilaw seminar, we get to the end and the tutor (tall, bearded, excessively intellgient bod from the FO) says, "Anyone got any questions?"

Other people ask relevant things about opinio juris.

I blurt out, "Why is your phone pink?"

* posted by nat 10:42 PM

Friday, October 14, 2005

Gosh. I am being a very active person.

I have finally stuck to my original course choices of World Politics, International Law and Diplomatic Studies & Practice (I'm still a little leery of the 'practice' part - crisis games are fun; simulated media interviews in the studio are not.) So that's Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday taken care of. Then the rest of the week is for fun (if you are mental like me) - translation class on Thursday morning and Pilates and Turkish Politics on Friday afternoon.

The weather has gone all cold wet and nasty so I am a bit stiff but somehow still keeping going (I did Pilates today, took a 5 minute rest in the middle - no push-ups for me obviously, but I managed most of the rest) with a lot of fuel in the form of lunch at Planet Organic all the time (cheaper than eating in the refectory AND always me-friendly, what's not to like?) and the discovery of the comfy sofas in the light-filled post-grad common room.

Yesterday I managed to leave the campus before 4pm for the first time since-I-can't-remember-when and met up with El for birthday goodness, culminating in eating far too much dosa at Rasa. Also I have been introduced to the godlike creation that is beetroot curry. Yum!

* posted by nat 11:49 PM

Saturday, October 08, 2005

So today I have eaten lunch, made many smoothies and read six pages of reading. Out of about 50, and that's just the required reading for one class (got another 100 or so of recommended - ha ha!)

I blame Dead Ringers, Mustafa, Wanderlust, yesterday's Pilates class, and the New Statesman (although possibly not in that order). I am also having to spend far too much time with the English Dictionary for my liking as a native speaker, although Lovely-John-who-translates-Swahili has admitted to having the same problem. Obviously it's the stress of learning other languages that causes you to forget all these insane words. I almost think teleological is one of the 500 most common words now...

So, in my insane world where I think I can take five classes (although my current plan is to give up Turkish translation after Christmas, when the novelty wears off and I remember how much I loathe translation!), I got to Turkish Politics and Government on Friday to discover that it's being taught by possibly the world's only nervous self-deprecating Turkish man. However despite the mad attack of nerves he is a wonderful teacher and the other people in the class are super, and collectively we are all about the ideology and very supportive of his inability to work the photocopier, so I'll be back next week.

I said as much to him on my way out: "But maybe I'm only coming to audit."

"Oh, take this class," he whispered. "We will be so much better than other classes!" He has a point. Also it MIGHT be a non-exam class, which has enormous points in its favour, unlike the law class which looks more frightening by the hour.

Something tells me I'm going to be taking up a lot of people's office hours next week!

* posted by nat 7:04 PM

Thursday, October 06, 2005

I have finally worked out where the computers are at SOAS and have started remembering what all my passwords are. I am recovering from two happy hours spent in Advanced Turkish Translation which was spent arguing over one paragraph. More fun than it sounds (well, if you're me it's fun, anyway). I'm recovering mostly from the train journey in, which took 50 minutes instead of 20 due to signal failures at Lewisham. The joy.

Yesterday I had a birthday (22 again!) which I celebrated by staying in bed til midday and feeling lousy all day, although a vast bean-filled lunch and a fruit smoothie booster from Planet Organic enabled me to deal with library fines (whoops) and an hour and a half of diplomacy lecture in the evening. Then I went for a drink with a lot of German people. And ate Malteasers.

Tuesday evening was far more birthday-ish seeing as Jess had us (by us I mean Kat, Vanessa and me) round for dinner at her new place in Streatham which is lovely. We giggled a lot and life was good.

Off now to finish the Sudoku, go swimming, have lunch, and then I might get some reading done before the economics lecture (which will hopefully be the only economics lecture I have to go near!)

* posted by nat 12:12 PM

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Having been overloaded on papers and papers and more uninformed rubbish masquerading as comment, I just get bored and start looking at the pictures.

For example, Le Monde has pretty pictures of people waving Turkish flags. Very red. Unfortunately no-one looked close enough at the picture to notice it was taken during the 2002 World Cup, but captioned it about Turkey being a Muslim country anyway. Le Figaro goes for a much more artistic (read: snobby) picture, just to reinforce this fact it's impossible to read this paper without a dictionary (I got stuck on a political article last week which talked about "avaler des coulevres", for heaven's sake*). FT Deutschland goes for the silly picture that provers that Erdogan knows who he is; El Mundo trumps with a picture of Jack Straw looking like a Muppet. Frankfurter Allgemeine wins on this front as it manages to fit in no less than four pictures of various politicians striking silly poses. Rzeczpospolita , firm in its belief that Turkey is evil, puts pictures of Austrian woman in only. The Independent has columns. Columns?! Yet more scrolling, sigh... And Dagens Nyheter seems to want to be the Economist, which wins the prize for the most ridiculous illustration of all.

Right. Now I shall open my book on International Law. Or I might go swimming. Hmmm...


*Literally "swallowing grass snakes", but it seems to be an idiom for being gullible.

* posted by nat 1:13 PM