We had a social event with the new-grads from N today, including the non-IT people. What I’ve realised from tonight is the following:

1. I apparently don’t look J
2. Once that it’s been accepted that I am pure J, it doesn’t matter that I can speak E at all.
3. J speaking foreigners are cooler than E speaking J.

I’ve realised that I’ve only ever been told that I’m “kakkouii” from guys for being able to speak E fluently. I think girls prefer J speaking gaijin. Despite highlighting my foreign routes, having a very typical J name makes it extremely difficult to appeal through that route, especially with people involved with foreign companies.

I’ve also been told, for the first time, that I have this “majime” (serious) aurora. It was the first time I’ve been told so frankly that I look serious but then again, they didn’t say it was wrong or a bad thing. Admittedly I cannot deny that I am more serious than anything else. I really don’t know how to react to that.

Fwhhhh *sigh*, how I do go on from here… I think my only selling point is that I’m BBJ, and that doesn’t seem to be as amazing as I thought it’d be. Being surrounded by gaijin J speakers makes it very difficult to use that.

Tonight, Manchester United were crowned Champions of Europe. Along with winning the English Premier League 10 days ago, that makes them double winners. The match tonight started off as a classic encounter between two heavy weights of the English league with an enthralling first half of end to end football. The Reds dominated possession and the ball for large parts of the first half but a lapse in concentration and some unfortunate deflections left the score drawn at half time. The second half was all Blue and my heart stopped with every wave of attack by Chelsea. It didn’t look like Man U were likely to score, but thankfully, I also believed that with each clearance of another Chelsea attack, neither were the Blues.

So, the match went into extra time with some weary legs out there, and clutching my red squishy cushiony thing (I don’t know the technical term for the squishy cushiony thing I have) I watched extra time. Things were turning ugly with fouls, tempers flaring and a lack of beautiful football. An altercation between some of the players ended up with a number of players yellow carded and Drogba sent off. Penalties was imminent.

Anyway, as most of you will no doubt have read the reports or watched the game live, I will stop with this commentary. Suffice to say, I had a feeling Ronaldo may miss but I have never thought of Terry as a penalty taker and so it proved. Along with the fantastic save by the great Dutchman (not quite a Great Dane), the trophy was ours! Woooo~~

Barraged with a lottery of text messages from various parties, some celebratory and others slightly hostile, I sit here in the afterglow of another entertaining night of football. I can’t wait until the Euros!

1999 was a special year. A treble winning season and those two spectacular late goals, is a feeling unmatched. I have to mention the legend that is Ryan Giggs. He didn’t play a massive part in tonight’s game but he is one of a kind. It’s a shame he’s Welsh but along with Paul Scholes, they are truly Manchester United. Many great players have pulled on the red shirt over the years, Cantona, Solskjaer, Schmeichel… the list goes on and all were great players of the past decade but no one can say that Giggs has not played his part in shaping the history at the great club. ….woooo football is awesome!!!

Walking back slowly from the station home after an evening out celebrating the end of our finals, a number of thoughts passed through my mind. I have always been a pretty serious minded individual and the things I think about really do reflect that at times; it feels completely different after a few drinks.

I was feeling somewhat jaded after the exam and not really in the mood for drinking but luckily my mood picked up. Anyway, I’ve always found it difficult to comprehend the thoughts and actions taken by others whilst under the influence, and today was no different. I won’t go into the details and swiftly move on to commenting on these thoughts.

I realised again today how amazing this city is. I really do love London. Being born and bred in this great city, it is difficult to imagine living and loving another place. The months I spent in Tokyo last year were definitely a life changing experience but nothing compares to the depth and strengh of attachment I have with this beautiful capital. People talk bout the culture and the people of a place but tonight I saw the beauty of the city itself. Walking down the South Bank, the beauty of this wonderful city was nearly overwhelming.

I leave in mid-August and I’m away for most of July, meaning I only have around 2 months in London. There are so many things I want to do in this city; so many sights to soak up before I depart. I know I’ve talked about this so many times before and no doubt I will again, but it really is a topic so close to my heart. Not many things move me but at times like this I realise…. this city will always be home.

After a long days work of revision, I thought I’d share my wonderful revision techniques with you:

1. Use colour for visual stimulation:

I suggest different colours to emphasise different points. Another technique is layering so once the initial notes have been made, add more scribbles to highlight key points. In my case, I just write the key points with a big red highlighter pen.

2. Cue cards/post-its also help:

I suppose it helps if the cue cards were for the relevant module.

3: Regular breaks prevent brain fatigue, so I take a look outside:

It’s amazing how interesting the London Eye is. I also saw 2 Chinooks, 3 RAF fighter jets, possibly Typhoons, a few regular helicopters, and private jets on their approach to City airport, a few birds and a man out that window today. The man was a surprise – not being on the ground floor it isn’t everyday that people walk by your window. There is a walled ledge though – design feature or maintenance practicality?

4. Drink plenty of fluids, preferably non-alcoholic.

5. Sleep, which is what I’ll be doing soon ^^

is there something wrong DoC email or is it just me. I’ve received over 200 spam in the last hour.

I read today that the Royal Mint has decided to roll out a new design on 7 out of the 8 coins of legal tender from this summer; the first wholesale redesign in 40 years. According to the BBC News article linked below, the Mint held a competition for the redesign and decided the new design will all bear part of the royal coat of arms. My first impression of the new design was not spectacular. I did not like the lack of overall symmetry in the placement of the designs. I know that none of the coins now are symmetrical but they do all have their various designs placed centrally; the new designs don’t. With the series of coins each featuring a part of the coat of arms it would admittedly have been difficult to fulfil that criteria, which leads me to think that I don’t really like the redesign.

I have no qualms against a redesign per se, and I have no strong objection in the removal of Britannia off the 50p coin, but I do feel that I would have preferred some more variety across the coins. At least they’re not taking the current coins out of circulation and by the time the new redesign is in full circulation I will most likely not be in the country!

Another small point, the 50p is also going to be the other way up now with the point facing downwards rather than upwards.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7326491.stm

** may contain spoilers **

So, I just watched the pre-mature season finale to “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”.  It definitely ended on a massive cliffhanger and I was definitely not expecting it. I really do hope that it’s not the first casualty of the Writers’ strike and returns for a full second season. The show definitely had a strong religious undercurrent with Agent Ellison quoting passages from the Bible throughout the series. It gave the series an extra dimension along side the gripping action sequences of Terminators and humans busting some moves.

Some memorable moments of the short 9 hour chronicling of Sarah and John Connor’s lives include references to the Terminator trilogy, such as Cameron wearing the Police biker uniform + shades a la T1000. Direct conversational references to past characters, such as Kyle Reese and John’s foster parents and so forth. Further, the time-travelling nakedness remains true to the films with the super strength and bizarre trains of thought by Cameron being equally intriguing.

The show started off a bit slow after the premiere but had definitely picked up to a good pace with the plot unfolding very nicely over the past few episodes. I’d be lying if I said I understood everything that has gone on… but I’m not lying when I say I’ll be damned peeved if it does end up being terminated!

On a similar note, today was my last ever day of lectures. With the spring term of my fourth and final year at university drawing to a close, all I have stretching before me are exams, project work and then graduation. I was somewhat overwhelmed with excitement prior to my final hour of lectures; it was a Distributed Algorithms lecture, which is not the most exciting of topics. I believe the expectation of the occasion outstripped reality and it ended up being somewhat of an anti-climax. Boredom, playing games on my phone, and lack of paying attention ensued.

Anyway, it’s over. Apparently university has taught me all that it needs/wants to. I don’t really know how I feel to be honest. I can’t say that I’m exactly looking forward to graduation but neither do I wish to go through it all again from the first year, or even do another year of studying. I think it’s been just about the right length of time.

Tomorrow is iNite day. Rehearsals from early in the morning and the actual performance in the evening. I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll get a chance to do any work tomorrow…

but yeah, a lot of things haven’t really sunken in of late….

• moving to Japan
• end of university
• iNite tomorrow
• project work
• other stuff…

Ok, I just got bitten on the arm by some stupid insect thing, the kind where it leaves a lil pin-head red mark where it sucked out my blood. Anyway, I thought I’d do what all animals do in “the kingdom”, lick it. It didn’t taste very nice. Not gross gross, but just not exactly fresh n tasty… i.e. there are people in this world that are far more lick-able than I am.

Anyway, on to today’s main topic.

For some bizarre reason I haven’t really advertised the fact that I’ve finally decided where I’m going post graduation. I suppose having not actually sent off the contract nor informed the other firms of my decision, it hasn’t quite been made official yet. I sort of want to celebrate with a big dinner or something. I also will most likely figure out something closer graduation date and when I embark on my life beyond university.

Anyway, I went to the library yesterday and I realised something…. there are so many people at the university I go to that I’ve never spoken to, met or even seen before. If I list all the people I really know, I doubt I’ll even be able to list one person from every course available. I doubt I’ve even spoken to anyone from some of the courses. Reflecting on this thought in the library – whilst hunting for references for my individual project – I realised that earlier that day I looked around the computer lab in my department and didn’t recognise a majority of the people there any more. I suppose it makes sense as all the people I’ve encountered over the years I’ve been in the department have been from years above n possibly the year below. All these new faces, be it first or even second years, just reminds me how fast time can really go by.

I’ve had these moments that make me realise how big the world is, and how much older I’ve become since starting uni, have come more and more regularly in the past months; I suppose ever since my return from Japan back in September. The most recent moment was in the pub yesterday when the conversation turned to how young the people at the Union were compared to us. 17, 18 year olds compared to our 22, 23… that’s nearly an age gap of five years! A quarter….. wait, not even a quarter of my life any more….

Thinking about that has just reminded me of another conversation I had with some Japanese friends. In Japan we have era names beside the traditional year, with a new era traditionally starting on the ascension of a new Emperor. It is currently the 20th year of the Heisei era. The era before was known as Showa. I was born in Showa 59th year of the Showa era.  There are 64 “years” in the Showa period, although the 64th year is actually only 1 week as the previous Emperor died in the first week of January and therefore the first year of the Heisei period started from that point onwards.

Anyway, besides that short cultural interlude, my point was that there are now people starting university that are born in a totally different era to I am. Now that is a scary thought!

Despite my recent inability to let myself relax, the draining of confidence in my own abilities and the immense pressure of expectation I have built around me, my mind keeps turning…

So, as my time in this small closed world of childhood and student life draw to a close, I find myself staring at an immensely wide horizon feeling slightly older…. yet I also feel amazed and energised by what the future and this big big world will bring forth…

I want to talk about two main things in this entry – firstly the house move and secondly advertising. I know the two topics are totally unrelated but I’ll explain in a bit.

Anyway, the house move; I moved into the house on Sunday. If you remember, I was being very negative about this house but my negativity was misplaced. I can’t say the house is amazing or that I love it here, but what I can say is that it’s not as bad as my first impression made it out to be. I was surprised to find that the second time I looked at my room, this Sunday, I found that it looked bigger than previously. I’m still glad I took my first impression seriously as it did mean I got rid of a hell of a lot of crap that I was going to bring up. I did have around 7, 8 boxes of stuff excluding clothes but I managed to cut a few boxes and in the process also throw out a lot of junk that was lying around the house too. I may have mentioned this previously but I somehow do end up collecting a lot more junk than most of my family and specifically amongst us three brothers. So yeah, this is the start of my 2nd full day here. I think things will be ok.