![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenBig fat meme dump of doom, because I do memes in notepad windows whilst procrastinating from my essays and promptly forget about them.
In which I ask my iTunes questions, and make it randomly select songs in answer.
1.What do you think of me, iTunes?
Coldplay - Clocks. Um... I'm always late for everything? That sounds right, actually.
2.Will I have a happy life?
Ani DiFranco - Gratitude. Ah, that's nice, I think.
3.What do my friends really think about me?
Travis - Dear Diary. They think I write too much in LJ, possibly? That I am one of life's chroniclers? Both true.
4.Do people secretly lust after me?
Placebo - Centrefolds. That's a yes, then!
5.What should I do with my life?
Magnetic Fields - I Shatter. Aha. Profound.
6.Why must life be painful?
Counting Crows - Blues Run The Game. Life is painful because of country music. Someone's got the causal relationship mixed up, methinks.
7.What do you think happiness is?
Snow Patrol - Chocolate. AHAHAHAHA. Perfect answer.
Next,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gamesiplay gave me interview questions weeks ago, and I've been doing them very slowly. She wanted to know:
1. How old were you when you started writing fiction, and what's the first piece you remember writing?
I was three. Pedar taught me to read and write very early on - in fact, I rather think my written English was a lot better than my spoken English for a time - and I have a very clear memory of cutting up a piece of paper into eight pieces and trying to use them to write a "book". It was about a hedgehog and a kettle, I remember that much. The kettle got left too long on the fire and melted. If we mean "proper" fiction, I tried writing a novel when I was twelve. It was very bad. Later attempts were, if that is possible, worse; my first fanfiction, written when I was about thirteen, wasn't much better, but it was a start. The rest, I think, is history. I think my fiction starts turning into something that, while I don't like much, wouldn't burn, round about 2003 or so.
2. Favorite Beat author, and why?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and here's why:
Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning
There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
on the freeway tonight
as a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
and sinks into the sea like the Titanic all lights lit
Nine minutes later Willa Cather's Nebraska
sinks with it
The sea comes over in Utah
Mormon tabernacles washed away like barnacles
Coyotes are confounded & swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
and bass players float away on their instruments
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhatten Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
buried masts of Amsterdam arise
as the great wave sweeps on Eastward
to wash away over-age Camembert Europe
manhatta steaming in sea-vines
the washed land awakes again to wilderness
the only sound a vast thrumming of crickets
a cry of seabirds high over
in empty eternity
as the Hudson retakes its thickets
and Indians reclaim their canoes.
3. What's the most frightening thing that's ever happened to you?
I don't think many frightening things have happened to me. I mean, I've had moments when my varied phobias have kicked in, but I don't think they count. In case they do, the most violent manifestation of one of my irrational fears was maybe a couple of years ago, in India at Christmas, when my family and I went on a collective day-trip to Haridwar. Haridwar is the closest Ganga-mata comes to Delhi; it's a site of pilgrimage and is correspondingly full of tourists, sadhus and hawkers. Just after we'd got there and were wandering down to the water, one of these hawkers opened up a basket and out came a snake. As one might expect, I freaked. I hate the irrationality of it, because it's really not something that can be reasoned with; I screamed and screamed and I'm pretty sure the pilgrims round about privately decided the place was going to the dogs, but I wouldn't stop until the man was given money to go away. Still. one of my fondest memories is my cousin Rohan disappearing for a while, going off after the guy and very quietly promising to beat the shit out of him if he came near me again. Ah, brotherly love.
If we're talking fear of the more rational sort, then I'm not so sure. When I was about eight or so, I flew from Manchester to Chicago via Philadelphia to visit my family over there, and was very well taken care of by the airlines. (Interestingly, as a child from the European Union I was given a large degree of relative freedom compared to the Americans, who were on reins, some literally.) On the way back, though, there was an administrative slip-up. I think the moment where it dawned on me I was alone in a foreign country in one of the world's busiest airports, and no one was going to come and I'd have to make it home by myself - pretty frightening.
4. (Because you can NEVER ESCAPE THIS QUESTION OMG): Do you have any idea what you want to do when you finish school?
A couple of nights ago - just before my little crack-up, in fact, which is why I didn't write about it - I went to a Balliol careers talk being given by a former Balliol woman who's now working with the Foreign Office. She painted a very vivid picture of her job, and I was instantly smitten with the idea. Not that I hadn't considered it before, because I had been thinking about it and that's why I went along to the talk, but now I'm pretty sure that that's my first choice for what to do post-degree. I'd love being a diplomat, I think. I have never wanted to go into politics, as I don't think I want to join a party and run for election and be a PPEist hack. (Okay, yes, I'm a PPEist hack by definition. I'd prefer to be less of one, although I have been accused of networking. I don't network. I just have friends in a lot of places, due to fandom and LJ and my RL connections. This is a terribly long and not very interesting digression. I apologise.) I don't want to go into politics, but I do want to do something that actually matters. And the Foreign Office over the home departments because the idea of travel always fires my imagination. I've been so lucky to have travelled as much as I have - the benefits of being the spoiled only child - and I know that I'd love it.
I'm going to need a Plan B, though. I sort of thought that once I'd got in here, I was finished with stringent, long-odds applications processes, but sadly not, and there's a big fat chance that I won't make it to that level. And that's where the uncertainty creeps in. I might convert to law. I'm really not sure yet. I don't think, though, that I'm going to take the classic PPE route into investment banking. Still, I have two years in which to be proven wrong.
5. Where are you going in New England, and why will I not be there? --Okay, that's not really a question. Where are you going in New England, and what are you most looking forward to seeing?
Ah, I don't know! So far the plan is stupidly fuzzy. We're going to Boston - I think. Pedar may possibly be undertaking a visiting fellowship (is that what it's called?) at Harvard in a couple of years, and he wants to check out the place. That's what he says, but he's been to Cambridge before and I think he just wants to get back over there and bask in the ambience. Other than that, we're going to Connecticut because apparently we have family there. I'm not sure about that; one of my cousins, who lives over there, will be visiting me in Oxford in ninth week, and I reckon she'll fill me in on what to do and where to go. I'm really looking forward to it. I've never been to the east coast of America - no, wait, I've been to New York and DC, but I haven't been any further. It should be good fun.
As for why you will not be there, Leigh, I do not know but it clearly has something to do with the fact one or both of us spent a past life KICKING PUPPIES. Pout. Sniffle. Flounce. If I come within a hundred miles of you, I will get over to see you somehow.
Comment if you want questions. First five get 'em. Um. Still ridiculously tired, but I've done a bit of work, and that's something, I guess. Tomorrow I need to do my laundry, do my reading for philosophy of mind, and I'm going with Maria in the afternoon to the university's No Diet Picnic. Which sounds like fun. In fact, all of that is fun with the possible exception of laundry. I rather think Philosophy of Mind is going down on my list of finals papers. I've picked four Philosophy papers, finally (Ethics and History from Descartes to Kant as core; Philosophy of Mind and Aesthetics as options), but am less sure about Politics. I am, however, feeling safe and secure in the fact that after this year, Economics will be as a closed book to me and I shall not care. Not in the slightest. It's amazing how panic evaporates when I lay down the macro textbooks and pick up Locke instead. I will never stop rambling about my undying passion for philosophy, although I am a little peeved that there is no option for feminist or gender issues. Still, I guess that's a little churlish - I did, after all, spend my evening sipping coffee in Starbucks with shoes kicked off and reading about Locke's theory of consciousness. Could there be anything better, from an academic standpoint?
I begin to ramble. Yes. I blame the overtiredness, myself.
In which I ask my iTunes questions, and make it randomly select songs in answer.
1.What do you think of me, iTunes?
Coldplay - Clocks. Um... I'm always late for everything? That sounds right, actually.
2.Will I have a happy life?
Ani DiFranco - Gratitude. Ah, that's nice, I think.
3.What do my friends really think about me?
Travis - Dear Diary. They think I write too much in LJ, possibly? That I am one of life's chroniclers? Both true.
4.Do people secretly lust after me?
Placebo - Centrefolds. That's a yes, then!
5.What should I do with my life?
Magnetic Fields - I Shatter. Aha. Profound.
6.Why must life be painful?
Counting Crows - Blues Run The Game. Life is painful because of country music. Someone's got the causal relationship mixed up, methinks.
7.What do you think happiness is?
Snow Patrol - Chocolate. AHAHAHAHA. Perfect answer.
Next,
gamesiplay gave me interview questions weeks ago, and I've been doing them very slowly. She wanted to know: 1. How old were you when you started writing fiction, and what's the first piece you remember writing?
I was three. Pedar taught me to read and write very early on - in fact, I rather think my written English was a lot better than my spoken English for a time - and I have a very clear memory of cutting up a piece of paper into eight pieces and trying to use them to write a "book". It was about a hedgehog and a kettle, I remember that much. The kettle got left too long on the fire and melted. If we mean "proper" fiction, I tried writing a novel when I was twelve. It was very bad. Later attempts were, if that is possible, worse; my first fanfiction, written when I was about thirteen, wasn't much better, but it was a start. The rest, I think, is history. I think my fiction starts turning into something that, while I don't like much, wouldn't burn, round about 2003 or so.
2. Favorite Beat author, and why?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and here's why:
Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning
There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
on the freeway tonight
as a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
and sinks into the sea like the Titanic all lights lit
Nine minutes later Willa Cather's Nebraska
sinks with it
The sea comes over in Utah
Mormon tabernacles washed away like barnacles
Coyotes are confounded & swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
and bass players float away on their instruments
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhatten Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
buried masts of Amsterdam arise
as the great wave sweeps on Eastward
to wash away over-age Camembert Europe
manhatta steaming in sea-vines
the washed land awakes again to wilderness
the only sound a vast thrumming of crickets
a cry of seabirds high over
in empty eternity
as the Hudson retakes its thickets
and Indians reclaim their canoes.
3. What's the most frightening thing that's ever happened to you?
I don't think many frightening things have happened to me. I mean, I've had moments when my varied phobias have kicked in, but I don't think they count. In case they do, the most violent manifestation of one of my irrational fears was maybe a couple of years ago, in India at Christmas, when my family and I went on a collective day-trip to Haridwar. Haridwar is the closest Ganga-mata comes to Delhi; it's a site of pilgrimage and is correspondingly full of tourists, sadhus and hawkers. Just after we'd got there and were wandering down to the water, one of these hawkers opened up a basket and out came a snake. As one might expect, I freaked. I hate the irrationality of it, because it's really not something that can be reasoned with; I screamed and screamed and I'm pretty sure the pilgrims round about privately decided the place was going to the dogs, but I wouldn't stop until the man was given money to go away. Still. one of my fondest memories is my cousin Rohan disappearing for a while, going off after the guy and very quietly promising to beat the shit out of him if he came near me again. Ah, brotherly love.
If we're talking fear of the more rational sort, then I'm not so sure. When I was about eight or so, I flew from Manchester to Chicago via Philadelphia to visit my family over there, and was very well taken care of by the airlines. (Interestingly, as a child from the European Union I was given a large degree of relative freedom compared to the Americans, who were on reins, some literally.) On the way back, though, there was an administrative slip-up. I think the moment where it dawned on me I was alone in a foreign country in one of the world's busiest airports, and no one was going to come and I'd have to make it home by myself - pretty frightening.
4. (Because you can NEVER ESCAPE THIS QUESTION OMG): Do you have any idea what you want to do when you finish school?
A couple of nights ago - just before my little crack-up, in fact, which is why I didn't write about it - I went to a Balliol careers talk being given by a former Balliol woman who's now working with the Foreign Office. She painted a very vivid picture of her job, and I was instantly smitten with the idea. Not that I hadn't considered it before, because I had been thinking about it and that's why I went along to the talk, but now I'm pretty sure that that's my first choice for what to do post-degree. I'd love being a diplomat, I think. I have never wanted to go into politics, as I don't think I want to join a party and run for election and be a PPEist hack. (Okay, yes, I'm a PPEist hack by definition. I'd prefer to be less of one, although I have been accused of networking. I don't network. I just have friends in a lot of places, due to fandom and LJ and my RL connections. This is a terribly long and not very interesting digression. I apologise.) I don't want to go into politics, but I do want to do something that actually matters. And the Foreign Office over the home departments because the idea of travel always fires my imagination. I've been so lucky to have travelled as much as I have - the benefits of being the spoiled only child - and I know that I'd love it.
I'm going to need a Plan B, though. I sort of thought that once I'd got in here, I was finished with stringent, long-odds applications processes, but sadly not, and there's a big fat chance that I won't make it to that level. And that's where the uncertainty creeps in. I might convert to law. I'm really not sure yet. I don't think, though, that I'm going to take the classic PPE route into investment banking. Still, I have two years in which to be proven wrong.
5. Where are you going in New England, and why will I not be there? --Okay, that's not really a question. Where are you going in New England, and what are you most looking forward to seeing?
Ah, I don't know! So far the plan is stupidly fuzzy. We're going to Boston - I think. Pedar may possibly be undertaking a visiting fellowship (is that what it's called?) at Harvard in a couple of years, and he wants to check out the place. That's what he says, but he's been to Cambridge before and I think he just wants to get back over there and bask in the ambience. Other than that, we're going to Connecticut because apparently we have family there. I'm not sure about that; one of my cousins, who lives over there, will be visiting me in Oxford in ninth week, and I reckon she'll fill me in on what to do and where to go. I'm really looking forward to it. I've never been to the east coast of America - no, wait, I've been to New York and DC, but I haven't been any further. It should be good fun.
As for why you will not be there, Leigh, I do not know but it clearly has something to do with the fact one or both of us spent a past life KICKING PUPPIES. Pout. Sniffle. Flounce. If I come within a hundred miles of you, I will get over to see you somehow.
Comment if you want questions. First five get 'em. Um. Still ridiculously tired, but I've done a bit of work, and that's something, I guess. Tomorrow I need to do my laundry, do my reading for philosophy of mind, and I'm going with Maria in the afternoon to the university's No Diet Picnic. Which sounds like fun. In fact, all of that is fun with the possible exception of laundry. I rather think Philosophy of Mind is going down on my list of finals papers. I've picked four Philosophy papers, finally (Ethics and History from Descartes to Kant as core; Philosophy of Mind and Aesthetics as options), but am less sure about Politics. I am, however, feeling safe and secure in the fact that after this year, Economics will be as a closed book to me and I shall not care. Not in the slightest. It's amazing how panic evaporates when I lay down the macro textbooks and pick up Locke instead. I will never stop rambling about my undying passion for philosophy, although I am a little peeved that there is no option for feminist or gender issues. Still, I guess that's a little churlish - I did, after all, spend my evening sipping coffee in Starbucks with shoes kicked off and reading about Locke's theory of consciousness. Could there be anything better, from an academic standpoint?
I begin to ramble. Yes. I blame the overtiredness, myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2006-05-12 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-12 10:21 pm (UTC)I have this stickerbook from Doctor Who that was in the Radio Times (my mother gets that). If you want I can send it to you.
no subject
on 2006-05-12 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-12 10:32 pm (UTC)In the meantime -- mmmm, Ferlinghetti. I think I'll sit myself atop Mt. Rainier and watch the tidal wave as it sweeps slantwise across the nation....
no subject
on 2006-05-12 10:34 pm (UTC)When are you going to the states?
no subject
on 2006-05-12 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-12 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-12 11:37 pm (UTC)1. What attracted you to Berlin in the first place? When I first knew you, I think you were happily settled in York. What prompted the move?
2. You've told me before that you're having your wild teenage years in your twenties, so to speak. Was that a conscious decision, or is it just happening that way?
3. Are people ever surprised to hear you're "outside the confines of heteronormativity"? Or do they guess?
4. Moving between countries, have you had any lost-in-translation embarrassing mishaps?
5. Tell me something funny that's happened to you recently.
no subject
on 2006-05-12 11:50 pm (UTC)Questions!
1. Are these ones coming up your final exams? And what are you planning to do once they're over?
2. Is it sunny, where you are? What's summer like in Belgium?
3. What are the songs you can't get enough of at the moment?
4. What did you want to grow up to be when you were little?
5. Why did the chicken cross the road?
no subject
on 2006-05-12 11:58 pm (UTC)1. Tell us about Seattle. Why is it a fab place to live, why is it not such a fab place to live?
2. Are you working on any fic at the moment? If not, have you got any plot bunnies flying about?
3. Now that it's getting to be summer, are you enjoying the sunshine? Is there any sunshine? *g*
4. How do you pronounce "casira"? And what significance does it have?
5. Biggest fandom pet peeve. :)
no subject
on 2006-05-12 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:04 am (UTC)Yey, questions!
no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:06 am (UTC)1. Why medicine? And while we're at it, why medicine at Oxford?
2. The classic desert island question - what three things would you take with you?
3. If you started a band, what would you call it?
4. What's the last book you bought? (note the phrasing; textbooks don't count!)
5. It's your birthday soon! What are you going to do for it?
no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:19 am (UTC)I'm going to be totally fucked with jetlag... Nine hours difference for Vancouver, home for a week, then back across the pond. I think I'm just going to try and keep some of it!
no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:20 am (UTC)Needless to say, I'm very jealous. *g* I adore Vancouver.
no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:29 am (UTC)I still can't believe I'm flying to Vancouver next month, even though it's had a week now to sink in (heh, I just remembered I never got round to telling my parents I'm actually going)... ;)
We're only going for a week and I already have a list as long as my arm of places to visit, but was wondering if you had any recommendations?
We were hoping to stay with someone, but it looks like that might fall through... so far all we have booked is flights, which is quite scary!
no subject
on 2006-05-13 12:34 am (UTC)My one recommendation is to wander aimlessly around the waterfront. It's beautiful, seriously - it's one of the few places on earth you'll see mountains and an ocean view in the same direction! And eat in as varied restaurants as you can. I fell in love with Chinese food over there.
And take an umbrella!
no subject
on 2006-05-13 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-13 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-13 04:23 am (UTC)Mmm, god, Boston is beautiful, and Cambridge is beautiful, and you will have a lovely time up there. I'm jealous.
If I promise never to kick another puppy, perhaps someday it will work out.
no subject
on 2006-05-15 12:58 am (UTC)2. What does "spockette" refer to?
3. Marmite - goodness or evil?
4. The classic desert island question - what three things would you take with you?
5. I've heard so much about the Kim-and-Colleen-and-Other-Scary-Lesbians House-of-Crazy, and I'm sorry I'll never get to see it - so, précis the experience of living in it for me. :)
no subject
on 2006-05-15 01:09 am (UTC)I don't know, though, if I'd like it to. I've been at uni for a year, almost, supposedly the time of my life where I'll be doing short-term flings (or even something serious - a surprisingly large proportion of my friends seem to be engaged) and, uh... no. Not for lack of trying, although maybe I ought to get out more. I don't know. I would like to meet someone. But realistically, I don't think it will happen, and I'll be fine without.