El is back from South Africa - going back out again at the start of November for two years (maximising visiting time) - so we met up on Friday and stuffed ourselves with Chinese, and then on Sunday morning I dragged Ian up to Stoke Newington so El and Mo could finally meet him. Then I scared him further when we all went up to Fran's to meet the newest additions to the family, rather small twins (born September 10) Fred and Soren. And gosh they are cute. Managed to get Ian to even hold Fred, the smallest - Fred obligingly slept through the whole thing, while I explained to Ian that babies, unlike cats, do not need stroking(!) Bless.



Stuart was also down for a visit, so El and Ian and I took him off to lunch - scrumptious pizza with plenty of wine and tiramisu almost as good as mine - then into the Irish pub for Guinness and whiskey, then back to El and Mo's for more drinking. Ian and Stuart geeked about planes, which left El and me free to get on with nattering about everything else.

* posted by nat 7:19 PM

Thursday, September 21, 2006

A quick check back home proves Beryl is still happily weaving webs in the bathroom and not trying to suicidally take a shower with me.

Wednesday has been renamed stupid coincidence Wednesday, as at lunchtime I popped into the nearest Starbucks - tucked away just off the Thames pathway and not particularly noticeable from any direction - looked around and thought: that looks like Krishna.

It was Krishna, freshly back from the States that morning and searching for WiFi (that was his excuse, mine was that this place is the closest to work). So we sat and had a natter, which was fine, except then the door opened and in walked Marco and Thuong! Which meant that about 1/20 of CISD was sitting in a random out-of-the-way Starbucks. Insane. Took advantage of the fact to angle for an invitation to Vietnam (I now have more invites to places than I can visit... I should really get down and book something.)

Later I met up with Kaoru and Jom for dinner in Mangosteen and hours of chat in Cafe Libre. I got the 453 home from the stop just after Regent Street, and sat opposite two vaguely familiar looking Indian men all the way home. Once I was in the lift with them - they live on the first floor, Ian on the second - I understood why!

* posted by nat 4:57 PM

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The sun is out, and after two parties in two nights it is good to be able to flake out on the balcony and better to not even feel guilty about it, not the tiniest bit.

Mmm, breakfast time.

* posted by nat 1:18 PM

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Yay!

* posted by nat 4:06 PM

Friday, September 15, 2006

The magnum opus* is finished clocking in at 10,047 words including the abstract, epigraph and tables, none of which I suspect are supposed to count but I don't care; I have just spent the better part of half an hour playing round with spacing on the title page. Sorry trees.

I am off to offload it, and then there will be drinking (probably chai, in a comfy sofa, followed by snoozing). This morning has been busy: I also had to rescue Beryl** (she is ok, not happy, but ok); more about that later. It was all the more daring because I had a totally frozen shoulder, which I have been trying to ignore for the past few days but now I have finished the magnum opus, it has rapidly assumed preoccupational annoyance no.1 in zivot Natalky.


* It's actually called "Empowerment by Numbers: The Reduction of Women's Empowerment to Girls' Education in the Millennium Development Goals", which makes most of my classmates go "Wow, that sounds amazing!" which is code for "What the hell is that about, then?"

** The bathroom's larger resident spider. The smaller one, Terence, I have not seen around in a couple of days. Perhaps he has made a break for freedom?

* posted by nat 10:26 AM

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

The dissertation, which I do not like much right now, has bottomed out at just over 8,500 words, so I am eating wine gums and scribbling over a printout of it, then I will shoehorn in some quotes, and with a little bit of creative word-counting all will be well.

In other, slightly more exciting news, I went out into the garden to pick tomatoes, noted that my peppers have finally turned red, and in all the excitement stepped - barefoot - on a slug.

The slug was not impressed, but as I didn't have any shoes on I realised before I put all my weight on it that was something squidgy underfoot. I told the slug it could expect that kind of treatment if it hung around my plants. The slug sat there and radiated hostility. So I left it alone.

* posted by nat 8:42 PM

Monday, September 11, 2006

I have now written 7,504 words, so I'm three-quarters of the way there, two sections more to write, two that need beefing up, so I should be okay. Hopefully I will get most of this done this evening and then have tomorrow and wednesday to edit it into something coherent (at the moment it veers off into rants, which are all very well but are unlikely to score highly). Hopefully I can make it a more reasonable rant, and then I will be free - free to read trashy novels, swim every day, have time to cook and plan some travelling. Eventually I will work up to less trashy novels and job applications.

It is not really helping that I still have the flu and a terrible headache, although the headache is caused as much by overconsumption of chocolate as by (my? by?) sinuses being stuffed up. And that I still have not exhausted the list of things to do that make me feel better than dissertating. Nevertheless, I plough on...

* posted by nat 6:45 PM

Monday, September 04, 2006

If only my word count were expanding as fast as my waistline as I go through mounds of chocolate (Co-Op is selling 200g bars of Cadbury's almond and honey for 65p, why?!) while obsessing over a semi-colon when what I should actually be doing is obsessing over number of pages written. I have very creatively created seperate documents for each chapter, none of which are particularly well expanded, because I keep going off on rants and then deleting them. Must stop ranting.

On Friday coming out of work I ran into Arjun in Borough Market who fed me Sachertorte. It is always good to know that other people are not dissertating either, and Arjun can always be relied upon to restore my faith in the knowledge that out there, at least one person on my course is doing less than me. Which is silly, because I have done a whole heap, it's just translating it into something that is actually relevant, and not ranting.

I am now going to sleep on Ian's sofa because it is far more enticing than the swimming pool, which is where I should be. I spent today at work half-asleep and not achieving much, which helped my case when I said I might as well not bother going in tomorrow, or indeed any other day this week. 3000 words down, 7000 to go. It should be easy, right?

* posted by nat 5:52 PM