Cool Stuff - "The Invisible Man", Liu Bolin

Ah, the stuff you hear about from Have I Got News For You. This really Cool Thing is Chinese clamoflage artist, Liu Bolin, who became what papers have called an "Invisible Man", because he couldn't get a job elsewhere.

He goes all over the world, and paints himself the exact colour of the scenery. I think it's cool, personally.

 

 

      

 

So yeah, that's the cool thing I found out about today. Probably old news, knowing it...

I think whomever it is that paints him does a great job.

A Few Things I Don't Yet Understand About [my] University

1. The suggested work load - Some of you might correct me on this, but I *think* that I remember hearing that the recommended time spent a week on a subject is 40 hours a week per module - so if 3 hours a week is taken up by seminar and lectures per module, that leaves you 37 hours to study per module, which would leave you just 48 hours to do everything else in your life.
   (7x 24) - (40x3) = 48.
   Factor in sleeping and eating times, that's say 8 hours x 7 a week, plus maybe (3 x 1.5) x 7 for eating meals and then you're supposed to have a balanced work-social life, so if you're spending a good 3 or 4 nights a week doing something that isn't work for ~5 hours (I know people who party more, but I'm talking more more about just downtime on an average night) that's 20 hours... not entirely sure how that works... if you sleep and work to the department's poorly phrased schedule, you have 2 hours a week to do whatever else you like - shower and brush your teeth, I imagine.
   
   Of course, if individual tutors stopped pretending that their module was the only one available for the course, and they applied the 40 hours to all three modules in total (making it just over 8 hours each week per module, which doesn't actually seem enough) then perhaps that'd be easier to understand.
   
   
2.  We graduate in our colleges - Most people will agree with me, I think, that if a person makes the majority of his friends through his degree scheme, it'd be much nicer to graduate with said people in his degree scheme. Unfortunately, this is impossible if they are all from different colleges. It can happen that you graduate with one person you barely know cause you were only flatmates for one year and went in separate circles, instead of milling around with your besties from your course in which you've shared 3 years together. I shall be graduating this year, and will perhaps see three people I know but don't actually hang around with - one is my flatmate whom I've not seen in over a week, and there're a couple of people I recognise from first year, and then there's one dude I know, and do speak to occasionally (he had a very dapper suit on yesterday, for example, with a really nice tie) but will probably not see on the day anyway. And besides, he does Physics. I do history. It's almost strange we know each other at all, really. [Actually, I have mixed with quite a few physicists. It just sort of happened.]
   
   
3. Angela Baywater - for other students at my university, that's probably 'nuff said.
   
   
4. Where the porters go when they're ''on patrol'' - They're wonderful people and they love it when you get mail BUT porters are mysterious creatures. They have walkie talkies they never respond to, and these weird things called ''patrols''. You'd think that'd be obvious - clearly, they're walking around campus doing their thing. I argue that that is rot. Most of the time, when the porter's lodge is dingy, with a football match on the pc on silent, and a sign in the window stating the porter's whereabouts as 'on patrol', he is in fact just going for some air. He is probably musing life and the buzzing noises of the saw near by (we have building works) or the annoying yelling and screeching of young adults returning at 3am after a night at the Sugarhouse. He probably thinks deep deep things, in a corner of campus where nobody can happen upon him.
   Sometimes, he is not even on patrol, but is using that excuse when it's his lunch break. Or when he's gone to the loo. He even uses it as an excuse when he's actually been to sort out a student's short circuited kitchen (as the last time I saw him).
   Whether and where the porter "patrols" is going to forever be a mystery.
   
   
5. Extreme Heels + Copious Booze = amazing agility - I can't help but admire scantily clad girls wearing beautifully dangerous heels on cobbled streets, clearly smashed off their face being able to walk, albeit not in a straight line, pretty normally. I can barely stand in those things sober, so goodness knows how that works. Generally girls coming back from a night out are walking better once their feet are partially crippled than when they're starting out at the start of the night.
   
   
6. How girls who got at least one A at Alevel are still stupid enough to wander around town or campus when it's subzero degrees outside (and had been snowing the night before) wearing less than 50cm of vertical length pieces of fabric. Coming back from town and complaining of cold feet when wearing a hat, gloves, scarf, hoody, leggings AND cotton tights, knee high boots and a coat made me look, well, like an arse, in comparison to the squatting mass of blue flesh on the curb waiting for a taxi. 
   Didn't stop me saying "I could really use some ear muffs right now" as loudly as I could to my equally well-wrapped up friend without sounding like a complete dick. I'm sorry, but when you know that hypothermia technically kicks in when you're just 2 degrees cooler than the normal body temperature, you can't help but feel bitchy and scornful of those idiots complaining when they're the ones going around in practically nothing - not even a pair of skin-tone tights to complete the outfit. Skanky.

 I'll probably add more to the list - anybody that has something about university or their university specifically that you'd like to add may comment.

Many a things a happening.

First term so far has had its ups and downs. Fortunately the downs were mostly cause I was ill. =D

Yay me.

I've made many new friends - Ian the Bowland Barman, Jeremy the County Barman, That lovely American girl that's here for a year, other people that have now joined the society. I've been chilling out a lot with my friends and spending a ridiculous amount of money in doing so. It all adds up, you know.

I've achieved one or two of my goals for this year. I've had to change one, perhaps, but that doesn't matter.

Let's see. What have I done? I've finished one essay out of 2 I need to do this year, I'm a bit behind with my dissertation cause the sources turned out to be tricky to get hold of - I have to read one or two in Old English. Yay.

      I've had teacher training with the volunteering unit on campus, and I went to their social which was great fun. It involved really good free food, epic games of Giant Jenga, Twister, hoola hooping contests (I can still do it! Not done it since primary school, and I tell you, doing it for more than 3 minutes is oddly tiring) space hopping, ''INVOLVE Olympics'' - my team came second - and just chatting to people who also love to work with children. I tell you though. Space hoppers are really hard on your inner thighs when you're on a slippery floor and you've never done it before.

      I've also got an official job. As in, paid and contract and everything - I'm working for Aim Higher, trying to persuade people that whatever reason they have for not going to University when they've got the academic ability to is not really an issue. Bit hard to sound convincing when you've got the Government undermining everything you say.

I'm so cool.

      Probably not of a huge consequence to you lot, but I've got lovely new clothes, too. I LOVE my tartan skirt. It's so comfy and soft and pretty. I'm always a bit cautious with tartans. I tend to dislike the pattern after a closer look. But this one, I really like. Except I have to put a bit of tape on one of the fake buckles, cause the bits that go through the leather of belts and such sticks up at a right angle, threatening to pierce my shirts. Not very friendly! And it hurts when I unwittingly ram my hands onto my hips.

It's cool though, that part of my skirt is always covered by a top. I don't really like tucking them into my skirt... don't like the back of the waist line so much.

     I've been to the cinema, as you might have guessed. I actually also saw Burke and Hare, but I've not felt I could really bother writing an entire entry about it. It was ok, that's all. I mean, they said themselves it's not historically accurate, but it's not going to be on my pre-order list. I plan to see the first half of the last Harry Potter film. I'm a canon-Potter fan, so I shall be critiquing the film against the book. If there are scenes that are irrelevant or never happened in the book, I will rage, just as I did with the sixth film, when the Deatheaters burned down The Burrow.

Nom nom nom

The guys and I have been having loads of fun. We've seen films, been to town, (ah there's another friend, the Juice Cafe guy. Go to Juice Cafe for milkshakes! They're WAY better than Diggles. Seriously. And it was Juice Cafe that came up with the idea and recipe in the first place!) When I had my training, I missed out of the History Society trip to York. :( But we made up for it by having a film night in my room with Some Like It Hot and trying out 99p facemasks from Superdrug. We all had different ones - but only Hannah's and Simon's came out looking pasty and cool. I just looked sunburned for a while.

Hannah and I have been trying to do Pilates - we've been once, then one or the other of us was ill, and the instructor was ill when we weren't, so you know. But we'll probably go again tomorrow!

We've been doing Art Soc, too. I dunno. It's not quite as structured as it was sold to us, but apparently that was to do with Amazon orders and such for t-shirt week. I enjoyed the life drawing, and the door sign stuff though. So there are two hobbies there ''expanding''. I've been going to live music nights with Kate, and it's making me want to join a band more and more. Maybe not here, but I've made my mind up to try out for the Linton Jazz Band. Though it's really nostalgia for the Windband at my secondary school that I'm really feeling. :(

He's such a poser.

My ex-flatmates and I met up, too, when the lovely Ibby came to visit. She's a working gal, now, so the weekend was greatly appreciated. Twas with them that I saw Red,  and we had a lovely long dinner at the Bella Italia.

And my younger (height does not = age) brother and grandfather came a-visitin' as well. That was fun. Get on quite well with my brother, see.

....And stuff. Yeah, there's probably loads I've missed out. It's got to that point where I'll have something to write, but it seems lame or I get distracted by something else really cool.

Had quite a few weird dreams, too. I have to write up that one with dragons in. All I wanted to do was to meet Kate by Greaves Park. Jeeze.

Long-pronged forks and fisticuffs are apparently the most effective weapons against Zombies.

It was dark, and I was crouching behind some tall boxes. I peeked through the crack and listened to the discussion going on between the Dean and some other strange, dark looking people.

It'll happen soon, they said. Then it will have begun and the road to domination would be complete. It'd start at County bar and move throughout the country.

I got away and spread the word: the zombies are coming, week 10, during the Winterfest. County bar will be attacked first. 

I'd seen what the protoypes could do - one female zombie kept a machete inside her, which she drew out through her eye socket. (She removed the eyeball first) I had sneaked out a very long-pronged fork, which I knew would be dangerous to them if in the hands of the students.

I and my friends and others in my college were assembled in the bar. We had ammunition in the back of the bar. We barricaded the doors. The windows were glass, but for now they'd do. The air was tense, and we were nervous. I was kicking and punching the air as I fidgeted, knowing that if we didn't do something - didn't fight back, then there'd be nothing stopping them making their way towards Alex Square and the Winterfest.

One girl arrived in a neon green skirt, with heels. It was a pencil skirt and she could barely move her legs apart to walk normal length strides, never mind kick. I told her to go back to change - didn't she know that they'd be here soon? How could she fight in that?

I spied a surley looking boy in the corner. He had the bad 90s curtain fringe, and pale pale face with shadows around his eyes. He saw me looking and as I started towards him, feeling worried in my stomach, he got up and left. I was almost sure it was one I'd seen when I discovered this plan.

I sat with my friends, as we discussed the plan. They were worried. I reassured them, saying that the long pronged fork would be of use to us. Kate was carrying a large baseball bat. 

Soon it was dark. If you looked along the length of the window, down the spine, you could see the white tents and lights from the Winterfest on the edge of Alex Square, near Greggs.

People came out of the shadows. Those of us in the bar took up our weapons. We were surrounded by 5, perhaps 6 of them. The machete girl came out, with a cat by the scruff in her right hand, and the machete in her left. She held the cat up, holding it under the stomach, and slit its back open, letting the spurts of blood spot the ground and around the bar. She looked at me and smiled.

I knew that that was how they were going to seal us in - with some sort of force field. The surly lad from before had his face up against the window, and I looked at him face to face through the glass. I felt my fist curling in anger and testosterone.

How dare they do this to us?! 

I saw the tents in Alex Sq from the corner of my eye and fear gripped my stomach - what if we couldn't stop them? 

And then I woke up, thank GOD.

Retired and Extremely Dangerous

Mixed reviews online - generally, I can see what they mean, and I guess if you review films for a living, you will have seen this plot line at least 50 times before. So I forgive the 2-star givers.

For me, however, I considered the film to be enjoyable and funny - yes, the fight scenes generally don't include a lot of danger (it's a 12A, get over it) and yes, the jokes are probably as old as its cast, and yeah, Morgan Freeman isn't exactly stretching himself into a new character. I still rather loved it though.

Not read the comic, so I won't be making comparisons.

The plot is pretty basic: Ageing Bruce Willis (he's so bald!) has fallen gently in love with the girl that answers the phone at the pensions office. He tells her he's coming to visit, but that night he's attacked by (very sloppy, I must say) unknown assailants who DEFINITELY wanted him dead. He realises that his phone's probably been tapped, and so goes to kidnap the girl of his dreams for her own safety.

He meets up with his old pals in the form of aged, ill but still active 88 year old Morgan Freeman, the absolutely insane paranoid John Malkovich, the mysterious but cuddly Brian Cox and the glamourously deadly Helen Mirren in order to infiltrate the FBI HQ, and to take down the person(s) behind the death orders.

The film has gags in it, and the cast is fantastic, but it's one of those films that could still be better. The writing was a bit predictable - there was the aforementioned lack of danger. Perhaps that's why it was a 12A film, or perhaps that is what they were aiming for. But the special FBI agent moves and the gun fights and the explosions were all too perfectly choreographed. That doesn't mean, of course, watching Helen Mirren handling an enormous machine gun whilst in a gala dinner dress wasn't entertaining.

Perhaps if the writers had followed the cast's lead, the film might have been better - the lines were delivered very well, but there wasn't always enough pace, or the action scenes were too formulaic. The end of the film was a bit too clichéd for words.

What I do know is that despite it being yet another Bruce Willis Proves He Still Has It at 50+ film, he is still endearing (and cool) and John Malkovich's performance was brilliant.

The sub-romance plot between Cox and Mirren was more enjoyable than the main romantic plot between Willis and Mary Louise-Parker, though.

I'd give the film 3.5 out of 5 - still enjoyable and fun to watch, but it wasn't quite brilliant.