Went to Washington DC and it snowed. A lot of things were closed, was a bit crazy. Loved the weather though and spent some time with amazinggg people, bought Juicy Couture and (lots of) Abercrombie & Fitch, and realised I am still far too poor for any more Betsey Johnson

Went to Sheffield University, pretty epiccc. Pretty much set on going there. It’s so indie it’s perfect. Too many bars, too many cheap drinks, epic accommodation, a PolSoc that goes to Amsterdam (messyyyy!) and a damn good department. They changed my offer too, so I really wanna firm it (but can’t…yet).

Also went up to York University. It was interesting, met a guy who lives literally like twenty minute drive away and was on my train and we had lunch. Met a posh boy who I got the vibe he felt I was unworthy talking to him, because I didn’t own half of Oxford. The university had a nice feel to it but on the whole, too dull. It’s not somewhere I could spent a fulfilling three years and the department isn’t particularly strong either.

Um, last few weeks I’ve kissed someone old and kissed someone new. I’m also not single anymore. Rejoice! Lets hope he works out and that he gets an offer from King’s College London to do Law, which he doesn’t even want to do anymore, but he still spends far too much time checking Ucas to the point I have to drag him away from WiFi areas :’)

Playlist is a-coming. And January exam results come on the 11th March, expect me to pretty much break down due to my Economics score (and probably all the others too, eep)

Made another Spotify playlist. I think I may do this at the end of each month. January was hectic college-wise, so I ended up mellowing out into the relms of folk/indiepop and drinking copious amounts of Japanese green tea. It doesn’t flow as smoothly as the last playlist, partly due to laziness and the fact I should be doing coursework, but my room lacks so much oxygen I can barely stay awake at my desk anymore. Here it is.

1. Charlie Darwin - The Low Anthem

2. A Short Weekend Begins With Longing - The Leisure Society

3. The Islands - The xx

4. Hopelessly Wasted - Shrag

5. Night Drive - Gotye

6. To Ohio - The Low Anthem

7. The Sleeper - The Leisure Society

8. White Sky - Vampire Weekend

9. Huddle Formation - The Go! Team

10. Twilight Omens - Franz Ferdinand

11. Dangerous and Sweet - Lenka

12. Animal - Ke$ha

13. Stronger - Kanye West

14. Everyone’s a VIP To Someone - The Go! Team

15. Bridge To Nowhere - The Like

16. Ready For Drowning - The Manic Street Preachers

17. Heart Skipped a Beat - The xx

18. Hunted By A Freak - Mogwai

I can’t be bothered to detail all the tracks. The first track is the best one, his voice will make you melt. The Leisure Society are probably my favourite band to listen to right now. Tracks 12 and 13 probably shouldn’t be in there. Ke$ha apparently compared her track to The Arcade Fire, I laughed, that must’ve been a high comment. And yeah, 13 shows that I’m a year behind the world when it comes to number one singles, and it distracted me from so much revision. Night Drive by Gotye is breathtaking, and reminds me of the sound in Age of Empires where you complete building a house. You know the one, that African drum that lasts a milisecond. I’m not that into Vampire Weekend’s latest, but White Sky was a clear highlight. And I assume everyone on the planet has already heard Huddle Formation, and I hope I’m not alone when I simply have to dance to it when it comes on.

Anyway, I quite like this playlist. This’ll be the last post into after Americas!

I am currently, at this very second, being molested to buy a cheeseburger by Yves and Baldy, which is under Yves jumper and he’s stroking it in a rather seductive manner, they actually tried American-accented flirtacious talk in order to sell me it. It’s comical. I said no.

Edexcel Core Two.
Harder exam that I expected, but I was far more prepared than I was in June (missed out ten marks of trigonometry, haha). I only needed 2 extra UMS from last time (76 to 78) to get me an A in AS. Still missed out seven marks worth of questions. I’m pretty confident I got that, if not higher. I just wanted an A in AS Maths certificate to stick on my fridge.

Edexcel Decision One.
I did a lot of Solomon papers/old spec to prep for this exam, which shot my nerves right up. The actual exam was easy, except for the definitions. Is always great when your hardest question is ‘what is a tree.’ The grade boundaries are always beastly for D1 but I’m pretty sure I got an A of some description. Taught Baldy most of the syllabus before we went in and then made a bet with him that I did better, then realised we got all the same answers except he got the definitions and did more thorough working. I won’t pay him even if he does win.

Edexcel Core Three.
I have a feeling this will be my highest UMS score. It was hard exam, but I was fully prepared. I made a few stupid mistakes, but the minimum percentage I will get SHOULD be 80% which is more than enough for an A. So I was happy when I came out. Although I made some criminal mistakes which I want to beat myself up over. But if I could get an A at A-Level Maths…well…that proves there’s hope for anything.

OCR US Government & Politics.
I planned to retake this anyway, because I barely revised for it (C3 was on Wednesday PM, this was Friday AM) and I hadn’t written an essay in three months. I “wung it” (whatever the past tense for ‘winging it’ is)  as best as I could; but the questions weren’t the ones I wanted. I know Presidential Elections inside out and there wasn’t a question on it! I was gutted. For that reason alone I may retake. My essays weren’t as strong as my AS ones I don’t think, but then again I barely remember what I put. I need a 70% average this year. I think I may have earnt that, but I honestly don’t know.

Anyway, I have lots of Economic revision to do.

First thing to arrive through the door. Squee! Indiepop 09 mix from Rough Trade. I don’t have a working CD drive at the moment (silly Macbook) so it’s on rotation in the old boombox. It’s really really good.

There’s the tracklist. The highlight for me was Hopelessly Wasted by Shrag, followed closely by The Punks Are Writing Love Songs by Tullycraft (which has a nearly identical opening riff to Mandy by Jonas Brothers…) and (naturally) You!Me!Dancing! by Los Campesinos!

Then the thing I was most excited about. Cooking Cleaning and Flower Arranging by Manic Street Preachers. Limited to 300 copies. And then….

Garrr, red ink marks. There’s been a lot of problems with them according to the forums - mostly bad packaging and red ink. Have emailed Rough Trade to see if I can get a replacement, although I’m sure they will sell out by the time they get back to me.

After my Decision Maths exam (which was surprisingly…enjoyable?) I went for a drive with my friend from Durham University before he goes back. He taught me life lessons; like the value of university pre-lashes on the wallet, what to drink/what not to drink and most importantly, raiding Sainsbury’s for clearance CDs  = good stuff. [Top one is a David Gray album]. The one of the left is making my ears bleed right now, although getting home and putting on ‘Paris to Berlin’ was pretty priceless. I don’t he’ll ever let me in his car again because he bought me cookies and they were crunchy and I got crumbs everywhere. He also lost a £2 bet because he thought I didn’t know the company of my local petrol station. Dork.

Then…as if life couldn’t get any better…

Yay! Foreign Policy Magazine! I must’ve paid for the subscription months ago (and by I, I mean using my father’s funds) and it’s finally came. Half way through reading it at the moment. Has thrown a spanner in the works in the whole revision weekend shebang. Speaking of which…

My desk has seen better days…

The journal has taken away any need to write personal bullshit. In a nutshell, life events have been good but emotions haven’t. “Lashed” out (in the lightest possible way) at Baldy, luckily he’ll never hold anything against me. Thank the world for great friends. And eating McDonalds and playing music before exams together, and then turning up late. We are silly.

I got a (rather) belated Christmas present, which consisted of an assortment of things, one of which was a diary. I haven’t had a diary since I was twelve, and oh do I cringe. Seriously, horrific, pathetic, oh dear I don’t know why it hasn’t been burnt. And initially I thought I have no use for a diary; all my important events I sync between iPod and iCal. But it’s a really nice diary, it’s one of those Paperchase buttery softcover ones, and it’s a pretty shade of pink. Diaries you can’t dawdle with, as you know they are going to expire. Anyway, after some initial doubts, it’s now going to be my journal. Today I was thinking how pointless that would be, and how entries would be consistently one of the following: “I am happy/I am sad/I am revising.” And then in a fit of anger/confusion; I wrote a page in it. Obviously things I would never let anyone else read Baldy made me read it to him, and he will probably be the only one who will ever get to. And then linking back to the posts I’d just privatised; there is drama in my life. There always is. I just don’t express it anymore, because once upon a time I had an overtly honest blog but then people found out about what I’d wrote about them (not that I tried to keep it quiet anyway) and I got smeared as a bitch (for about a day, admittedly). There is such a thing as saying too much, but I’ll see if I can write something every day.

I’m also attempting to write a second ’story.’ The last story I wrote was GCSE English coursework, which I frequently lament about how awful it was whenever it mentioned, but it was only written in a few weeks. Essentially my writings are me trying to describe a sequence of snapshots. I judge how good the work is over how vividly I can remember the original snapshot. And that’s what that story was - a sequence of snapshots that ended up amalgamated into some sort of twisted plot that no-one but myself will ever understand. And it’s all “semi-autobiographical;” I take elements of myself, the people around me and the songs I listen to, and exaggerate them. The characters are also one-dimensional, there’s never any moral story or silver-lining. There’s never any dialogue. It’s just me, trying to expand on an inner persona or ‘desire’ that I have in a fictional character in a world moulded around them.

So the first snapshot of this one is currently being written. Very slowly. I’m lucky, because it hasn’t left my mind for days, and I feel like I have time to really develop it. I have a perfect title (which I won’t reveal as I’m tempted to buy it as my next domain name) and the main character is all formulated; or at least the element of my character which I’m throwing into it. I plan to write this over a number of years. I want to travel the world/visit places/meet people/read widely to get inspiration. It’s like a concept story. To me, it will be a piece of artwork. And I plan to litter it with academia I learn, such as philosophy and political theory. I want to see if I can weave something seemingly vain and typical, with deeper ideas which don’t form anything concrete. Now that I think about it, it loosely resembles a plot that I started a number of years ago (and never finished, clearly) so I might dig that up adapt it, or I might delete it from my mind and concentrate on what I have in front of me. It does seem like I’m making a big deal about nothing, but it’s one of those things that I feel like I’ve been ‘meant’ to do for years. I won’t set myself a time limit but I’d like to have it done a few years down the line.

EDIT: After a long phone conversation with Baldy, he read some of his journal. He writes great little philosophies. One of them was “Hello Journal. Journal, is such a manly word…so much manlier than diary. It’s like wallet is to purse, it’s of those words that just makes us feel much more manly.” It’s quite true, that was just brilliance.