On Wednesday Sarah, Esther, Chris, Richard and I piled into Rody’s car and made our way up to North London to try and make our way in to the Celebrity Big Brother Double Eviction night. Unfortunately we were nowhere near early enough to secure seats so we had to make do having fun under the harsh sodium glare of showbiz parking lot lights. It was a fun road trip none the less.
On Saturday I attended a learning day on Babylonia at Birkbeck. It was nice, Chris’ aunt graciously paid for my (and Chris’) ticket, and his mom treated us to lunch. Some of the lectures were things I had heard many times over, but some of the lectures were terribly interesting. I met Irvine Finkle, the head Assyriologist at the British Museum. He said I should come down every week and do research in the collections.
Gillian and I went to a party on Saturday up north of Finsbury park. It was fun, great decorations. We left around one and escorted a friend to the bus and then came back here and went to sleep.
I met with one of my professors today about an essay and advice. I wasn’t even looking for a new mark, but she insisted on taking it back and rereading it. I think she felt bad for not marking it as fully before. We also talked about fieldwork and she gave me more names to e-mail for a site in Syria and Isreal. Speaking of which at the thing at Birkbeck I picked up a flyer for a dig in England in April which should be easy to get on and great experience.
Oh speaking of the two cds that came since the last post. The Gorillaz cd came awhile ago. What I’ve heard is good, unfortunately it’s not a real cd, heavily copy-protected it won’t play on my computer and barely on my stereo, so unfortunately it won’t get much airplay, nor will I ever buy an EMI cd again. Matisyahu came today and isn’t copy-protected so will definetly get listened to a lot, what I’ve heard so far is just how I expected it to be, and very good to boot.
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Life’s been good recently. I’m thinking a lot about the future and school and stuff. All of it is terribly exciting.
Chris and I made home-made Mayonnaise last night. It came out all-right. Wasn’t too hard to make either.
Things are going well with Gillian, but sometimes I wonder if the only thing keeping us together is that we want to be together.
Band practise on saturday was great. I’m not sure what our style of music is… but I like it a lot. It’s really upbeat and happy. We came up with this great song, long periods of just rhythm followed by intense chord changes, and back again. Next time will record some of the newer stuff and maybe put it on a cd.
Today I’m going to translate some sumerian and akkadian and paint. I’m only using the computer briefly in the morning. Tonight Sarah won us tickets to see the big brother eviction.
Politics:
The Senate version would have targeted private HMOs participating in Medicare by changing the formula that governs their reimbursement, lowering payments $26 billion over the next decade. But after lobbying by the health insurance industry, the final version made a critical change that had the effect of eliminating all but $4 billion of the projected savings, according to CBO and other health policy experts.[…]
Our government is crazy.
nGGT_HHHH
Oh I almost forgot I have some brilliant new cds:
Gorillaz - Demon Days:
Hasn’t come yet, but I’m looking forward to it. What I’ve heard has been good.
Matisyahu - Live at Stubbs:
Hasn’t come yet either (probably today). I downloaded some of the tracks and they were superb.
Moby - Play:
I know most of the songs and they’re very good, I like the earlier part of the disc more then the later.
Moby - 18:
I had a tape of this in Turkey, I really like it.
Blur - Blur:
This has “song 2″ on it so I thought I should buy it and listen to the rest. And what do you know? It’s all good.
Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings:
This completes my Rilo Kiley album collection, their first and a bit slower then the rest.
Tinariwen - The Radio Tisdas Sessions:
An amazing band from Mali, ethnic Tuaregs. They play what is called “desert blues”. It’s really nice rolling relaxing music, much like Ali Farka Toure.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift you skinny fists like antennas to heaven:
I had heard of them often but never really listened to their music. It’s a lot like mogwai, it’s more a sitting and listening to the album kind of thing.
Cheap cds too, and well worth it. Every time I buy a cd, I imagine having it for the rest of my life and playing it for my children.
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Sarah and Chris et al. planned a suprise party for me! I love surprises so this was amazingly awesome. Lots of people came which was really really nice. So thank you to Sarah espiecally.
Otherwise life has been good. I’ve been getting a lot of work done for my courses which is good. I’m itching to start another batch of soap soon, maybe even with colours this time.
I’ve started thinking more and more about going to school in Leiden after SOAS, we’ll see how things progress.
Oh this photo is courtesy Sarah, here’s the original.
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I’ve come down with a well nasty cold. I went to bed at 8 tonight and just woke up and took some decongestants, but they had caffeine so I’m up for a bit till I can get back to bed.
Vacations photos:
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This is going to be a long entry.
Christmas this year was celebrated in my house in London. My family flew over and we had a very nice low-key family Christmas here at 61 Woodstock road. After the holiday the four of us headed up to Peter’s house to spend some time with his family. In the morning we took a walk out in the fields to the Rollright stones which was very nice.
After visiting with Peter we took the Eurostar to Belgium and stayed for a while with some friends there. They lived in a town outside Brussels so we spent a lot of time commuting on the train. Brussels was lovely though. It snowed a good deal.
After New Years we took the train to Amsterdam. We only stayed one night as my family was flying out the next day. I spent the time between their departure and mine (a good six hours) walking around Amsterdam and visting the Rembrandt house. Then I caught the flight to Bristol in England.
In Bristol I was picked up at the airport by Gillian and her mother. The next day was the fourth and my birthday. Gillian and I took the train to Bath and visited the roman bath houses and walked around the city. We found a mini-golf course and had an impromtu game. After some very fierce competition I managed to pull ahead by only one point.
The next day she and I cycled down to Clevedon which is a small town on the Bristol channel. There we walked on the victorian pier and cycled back to her house. On friday we took the coach back to London and went our seperate ways to our houses.
All in all it was a great vacation. I really enjoyed seeing my family and spending time with them. The time I spent at Gillians including my birthday (20!) was really really nice as well. Now I’m back in London and doing a load of clothes in the washing machine for the first time in about a year. In a bit I have to brave the cold outside and get some grocerys and cook dinner.
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