100 Years...

It doesn't matter if we all die

Over and over
We die one after the other
Over and over
We die one after the other
One after the other

It feels like a hundred years

Such uplifting lyrics filled my ears today, and made my legs feel weak, as I walked from the bus stop to the train station. This Cure song, 100 years, comes from their early, nihilistic period, you know, the period in which they wrote their best songs. I've always loved this song, and the idea it contains: 100 years is enough to contain a man, and all men, and it doesn't matter - nothing matters - because this is the case. I swore to myself in the hospital today, as an old woman, mouth sagging wide, unconscious, was pushed past me down the corridor. Her lease was up, I can tell you. She was about to be evicted from her body, for being the bad tenant we all of us, even the good tenants, are doomed to become - and as death the bulldozer passes over her and onwards, a new tenant will be found to move into a new body built over hers - she never was, I'll tell you how much she never was: as the smoke from the hospital crematorium blows over the maternity wing and disperses so thinly until it disappears, that's how much she never was.

I can't seem to shake the "big" perspective that I've always had, and I don't want to shake it. I want to come to terms with my nonexistence, past and future - I want to believe that I will be as dead as I was before I was born, and if that has the negative effect of marring this short tenancy, so what? It doesn't matter, does it? I try and figure out what to do on this placement, yet the old woman is being pushed down all the corridors of my mind, even those ones that are in the "computing" section! She is me: she is a parent, she is a child, she is alive today, she is not tomorrow. Who knows the meaning to all of this? Will the real God please stand up? Anyway, I'm reading this absolute gem of a book, the Sirens of Titan, by Vonnegut, and I found a nice review of it on Amazon I want to put here:

"SIRENS OF TITANS is startlingly mature for a novel written in 1959 (...). The insights about life and reality which one finds all the way through TIMEQUAKE already are fully developed here.

What insights? The ones obvious to those with ears to hear: that life is governed by accidents rather than the will of divinity; that the concept of "hell" is hideous and wrong; that humans are capable both of great kindness and great depravity; that irony seems to rule the universe with an iron fist; that despite the pains and hardships of life, there still is an astonishing richness of beauty, of wonder, and much to laugh heartily about. When one finds these last three, one might do best by paraphrasing the words of Vonnegut's dad: "If this isn't nice, what is?" "

Pieces of Paper...

Today I got my results for last semester, and taken together with semester 1, I have an average mark of 74 for each lesson, which is the equivalent of a first class degree (if I can keep it up - which depends what I choose for, and how I do on, my final year project!). I'm able to program fairly well, but not great, as is confirmed by the feedback received on the group project module: I tend to go via z to get from a to b (that wasn't the feedback, but the gist of it!) , so I may rework (as suggested) my work on the group project, "simplify" it so to speak, which is after all what good programming is all about, keeping things simple. Hey, but 91 for OT2, I must admit I'm pretty chuffed with that! Last semesters results are the bottom 5 on the image below.

Joni drew this amazing picture just after dinner this evening, Becky did the round (base) of the circle, but then Joni drew two eyes, hair, and a mouth - it's the best piece of paper I've seen all day!

Money Money Money...

...or the lack of it. As I have to wait until the end of the Month to get paid (if the hospital have sorted it by then!), our tanks are really running on empty - relatively. We're not going to starve, but as (cleverly) housing benefits and the like stop as soon as you start work, we're not buying takeaways either! Hopefully we'll be OK, a bit better off even, as soon as the money (the tax credits/loan/pay) is sorted. I hate waiting on things like this. On the money subject (one of my favourites, to Becky's constant irritation), I've realized that I can get (from September) a student bus pass, for about (just over) £5 a week! This represents an amazing saving over the train/bus that I'm now taking, of about £15 a week. It actually takes me about an hour both ways at the moment, and I don't think there'll be much difference if I just got the bus - as much as I hate them, and one service in particular, being the one I'll have to use, the dreaded 62. I just love the part where it goes up into (a local town) New Marske, drives around it, then comes right back down the same road. If anything is more of a waste of 10 minutes of life, I'm hard pressed to think what it is. So I may give the buses a trial run, and see whether I can get to "work" on time.

And "work" it is, because to be honest, there doesn't seem to be that much of it. I got out at 2.40 on Friday, after having maybe done 10 minutes work the whole day (apart from going to a meeting for an hour, but I don't think talking about a works night out counts as work? I'll be going on it though, next Friday, perhaps we'll be working then?) which was actually me trying to come up with ideas for what I can do across the year. The current placement student Michael seems to think I should wait on "orders" though he freely admits these may not come for a while, if at all? I don't know. I feel guilty taking their money off them, surely it would be better spent on patients! Shouldn't complain I suppose, all I know is I'm ready, willing and able to do whatever they want me to do (well, ready and willing anyways) - if they don't use me it's not my problem.

Did my first 7.5 mile jog today! Ever since doing it, there's been this big vein sticking out on the side of my head, and my body feels like it's been in a car crash (in which I was killed). Honestly, I can't see me being able to run further...I did todays run in 1hr 15, so that puts me on target for about 2hrs 15 for the Great North Run. Bloody hell, not long to go, but I feel like I have a long way to go physically to reach that sort of time/distance. These new shoes aren't helping, I KNEW I shouldn't have got cheap Reeboks!

Placement...

Well, today was the first day of my placement, and it was...so so. Rhonda, a current placement student (from Alabama!) said that it will be "what you make it", and it seems that that's going to be the rule of the day, or year (and two weeks) to follow. As it's not a placement within the I.T. industry as such, and as the placement students seem so "out on a limb" (a good and bad thing) within the hospital, geographically and organizationally - our little room is a good 5 minutes walk from the main hospital buildings, and hence the hospital staff (are distant also)- it seems that my self-motivation and creativity hats will have to come out from the back of the cupboard.

I want to be able to have something to "sign my name to" as Michael (the other placement student) put it - I want something to show for my year. From what the students have said, I'll get little help or ideas on "projects" from staff - and finding myself learning how to use the photocopier today, my first impressions are very mixed. It's OK if you know what an employer expects, then you can (try to) deliver that, but what if you don't know? Rhonda asked me "what do you want to do (this placement)?" - when I was expecting to be TOLD as much! Very strange. Some people would relish the freedom, I'm going to have to cultivate a taste for it.

The best part about today was, you guessed it, the traveling and lunch hours, when I continued my reading of "Facing the extreme". Such a marvelous book that shows morality doesn't go "out the window" when horrendous events come through our doors. I'll sum up all the good bits in a later blog (hopefully).