Back into the Swing...
...of University this past week, semester two of the Second year. At least two of the modules seem very daunting, "Data Structures" and particularly the "Group Project", which involves a lot of programming, for instance building a compiler from scratch?! for the "popit" markup language. I've put the specs here *link removed - who really wants to see this stuff? ;-) 8/2006* . Pete, Alec and Patrick are in our group, so looks like Pete and myself will be busy...
Brian's learning to drive at the moment, last night was a night that's been a long time coming, but enjoyable once it had come (like that proverbial tree of life) as he drove Paul and me up to the Lion Inn, to watch us sup Old Peculiar on draught whilst he drank water. Which made the beer taste that much sweeter. The number of times I've driven Brian to pubs and had to watch him drink...well those days are gone, let's hope he passes his test soon (his test (first test?) is next Month).
A strange thought came to me whilst drinking with Bri and Paul last night, perhaps it was O.P. inspired, but we were talking about some event that had happened years before, and I came out with a typically pretentious statement (I don't mean to be), "where is that event now? In our minds? So what's the difference between that event and one that I've just imagined, one that didn't happen?" Paul said something along the lines of it DID happen, and I asked him to prove it. Well, I suppose we all REMEMBERED it, so there's the proof. What about the things that happen to us in private though? Or when your friends around you die, how can you say or prove a thing happened when you've no way of checking your memory? And when YOU die, who can say what happened to you at all, what happened in your life, or that you even lived at all, especially say a hundred years down the line when "the remembrance of you has been forgotten" as the wise man said? I suppose what I was really getting at was the old "each day becomes a box for a person you leave behind" statement I made in an earlier blog, as nothing other than the day you're living in seems to me to be "real" at all, or any more real than anything else contained in your brain.
Paul mentioned that Hilda Monahan died last week, she "had a good innings though". I hate that statement. Nobody has a good innings, because you don't go off and have tea after your innings, you go off into eternal non-existence (I hope not but there you go) and compared to that, no innings is a good innings. In fact the sum total of all the innings ever had is no innings at all compared to eternity: this reminds me of a silly line from In Cold Blood which I'm enjoying reading at the moment, where a bird is said to carry a grain of sand at a time across the ocean until all the sand from all the beaches has been carried: this would just be the very beginning of eternity. Life is not cricket.
Brian's learning to drive at the moment, last night was a night that's been a long time coming, but enjoyable once it had come (like that proverbial tree of life) as he drove Paul and me up to the Lion Inn, to watch us sup Old Peculiar on draught whilst he drank water. Which made the beer taste that much sweeter. The number of times I've driven Brian to pubs and had to watch him drink...well those days are gone, let's hope he passes his test soon (his test (first test?) is next Month).
A strange thought came to me whilst drinking with Bri and Paul last night, perhaps it was O.P. inspired, but we were talking about some event that had happened years before, and I came out with a typically pretentious statement (I don't mean to be), "where is that event now? In our minds? So what's the difference between that event and one that I've just imagined, one that didn't happen?" Paul said something along the lines of it DID happen, and I asked him to prove it. Well, I suppose we all REMEMBERED it, so there's the proof. What about the things that happen to us in private though? Or when your friends around you die, how can you say or prove a thing happened when you've no way of checking your memory? And when YOU die, who can say what happened to you at all, what happened in your life, or that you even lived at all, especially say a hundred years down the line when "the remembrance of you has been forgotten" as the wise man said? I suppose what I was really getting at was the old "each day becomes a box for a person you leave behind" statement I made in an earlier blog, as nothing other than the day you're living in seems to me to be "real" at all, or any more real than anything else contained in your brain.
Paul mentioned that Hilda Monahan died last week, she "had a good innings though". I hate that statement. Nobody has a good innings, because you don't go off and have tea after your innings, you go off into eternal non-existence (I hope not but there you go) and compared to that, no innings is a good innings. In fact the sum total of all the innings ever had is no innings at all compared to eternity: this reminds me of a silly line from In Cold Blood which I'm enjoying reading at the moment, where a bird is said to carry a grain of sand at a time across the ocean until all the sand from all the beaches has been carried: this would just be the very beginning of eternity. Life is not cricket.
posted by John Doran-Armstrong at 11:47 AM
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