Psapphirical

First day back at uni was boring and a tad annoying. Nothing more to report on that end.

On the way home, I stopped by at Coles Express in Melbourne Central and got flirted at by a check-out boy. He was like "do you like this Enrique Iglesias song?" And then he started telling me about how he has a cousin who does Enrique Iglesias impersonations. Lol. Why don't check-out girls ever do this? Woe.

Also, I saw a tiny article in mX today about how some Swedish researchers were claiming that World of Warcraft was "more addictive than cocaine". That also made me lol.

Holy shit! Lol. I finally got around to checking my final grades for this semester. They were out yesterday but I wasn't too keen on seeing them, since I was sure that I'd gotten crappy marks, considering that I'd handed pretty much every single assignment in late this semester.

BUT.

Old English Poetry - H2A (this was even with that horrible Beowulf essay handed in 1 week late with no extension o.O)
Viking Studies: Sagas and Society - H2A (a little annoying that it wasn't H1 cos that's what I got for it last semester but oh well)
Semantics - H1 (Amazing, considering that I missed over 60% of the classes, how little reading I did for this, and how badly my final essay was written)
Computer Mediated Communication - H1 (Again amazing because my final essay was complete bull crap randomly pulled out of my ass after a week of very little sleep... and about 50% of it was just me talking about Xena lol)

So there we go. I've passed my degree! I never really expected to fail, but I was still a bit edgy and paranoid that somehow I would fail one of my subjects by handing it in too late or something. But no... two high distinctions and two distinctions. Hooray! :)

Now I can go burn all my Semantics and CMC notes. :D

Today:

- My Semantics assignment is due: Need to work on that.
- Resident Evil: Extinction comes out. No time to see it.
- Bionic Woman episode 2 airs: No time to watch it.
- Is my last day to work on my Vikings assignment: *STRESS*
- I need to buy another World of Warcraft gamecard.

The world is all wrong when one must forgo hawt womenz for semantics and stress. ALL WRONG. -.-

My friend Jean mentioned reading a bunch of books by an author, Jane Fletcher, in her most recent email to me. I remember Jane Fletcher. I read Lorimal's Chalice, or something a long time ago online and enjoyed it. So I looked her up and apparently she has a whole bunch of books published now. Maybe I'll buy them. If I can find them in the godforsaken Land of No Books that Australia is. Or maybe I'll have to end up ordering them from Amazon, and pay their exorbitant shipping fees. -.- Anyway, I found out on her site that Jane Fletcher's partner of 20 years died last year. Things like that make me so sad. :(

Yesterday I fell asleep at 5:30pm and missed dinner again. I need to stop doing that. I think all the lack of sleep from last week is finally catching up though. *yawn*

I must leave you now. But remember: These silverfish have become adapted to life under concrete.

My Old Norse Professor, Katrina, collapsed in pain ten minutes into our Vikings lecture.  o.o  We called the ambulance and despite the Royal Women's Hospital being just five minutes (walking distance - it's right next to the uni) away, they took /30 minutes/ to arrive.  They then spent another 15 minutes inside with her - it seemed to take forever- before they took her to hospital.  We are now awaiting news.  I hope she's okay.  o.o

[Edit: Just got word that she's fine. Yay.]

Ugh.

Such a tiring day.  I was up all night (until 3:30am) translating Old English poetry, then got up at 6:30 am to go to uni.  It was a pretty good day though.  I love Old English and I love Old Norse, and all my subjects today were lectures and tutorials for those two subjects.  So today was very interesting.  :-)

Right now, we're translating an Old English poem from the Exeter codex called The Wanderer.  It's so awesome.  I love it.  The translating can get a wee bit monotonous, but the poem itself is beautiful - especially when you pull apart the Old English and look at it properly.  It just isn't the same in Modern English (for those who don't know, Old English is about as intelligible to Modern English speakers as say... German - unless you happen to know German, that is.)  Nevertheless, I'll stick some of my translation up here.  Just keep in mind that the Old English version is about 100 times better.  :P

( Behold, the first emo poem of the English language )


In more depressing news... has anyone else heard that they're RAZING the ERC library?  Apparently the books will be moved to closed storage site in Bundoora (of all places) where nobody can access them (unless they put in a special request).  Some of them aren't even going to be catalogued.  Some might even be pulped.  O.O  Many of the books will be early medieval primary sources, such as the Old Norse sagas.  Our lecturer has already told us that we'd better do all our research for our assignments before September because the books will be gone after that.  It's stuff like that that really brings it home.  Never mind that there will be no Old Norse classes next year - you won't even be able to find a copy of the sagas by the time they're through removing all the books.  I can't believe what they're doing to this university.  -.-  

And there are Xena DVDs in the ERC!  HOW DARE THEY GET RID OF IT?  *wails*

I had a run-in with a Socialist Alternative (aka left wing student organisation that operates on campus and around Australia; viewed by the general public as a tad extreme and unrealistic) member today. She held me captive for an hour and a half. It was my own fault. I went to sign their petition against the new Melbourne Model (which, incidentally, will make me pay $15,000 upfront for my Masters of Education degree which I am now considering NOT doing at Melbourne University O.O), and she started talking to me about... the world. And socialism. And stuff. You know, Socialist Alternativey stuff. She kept talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and I really suck at walking away. It all culminated in her asking for my number and me reluctantly giving her my email (because everyone knows that once Socialist Alternative has your number, you'll never be free), and also buying their magazine (only because she insisted on giving it to me and I felt bad for potentially wasting their money) and agreeing to a later meeting for discussion over coffee (only because she was hot.)

I feel like I've just been inducted into a religious cult. O.O

*sigh*

I so fail at saying "no".

(But she was hot.)

There is nothing more frustrating and stressful than trying to change around your shitty timetable and repeatedly getting the message: "Sorry, that class is already full."

*twitch*

So, I'm at uni, and there's one more hour before karate starts.

I've checked my emails and my LJ flist, and read my blogs and comics, and done most of my Linguistics readings...

I'm so desperate to play World of Warcraft that I'm on the verge of telling my sister who's at home and on msn to open WoW and check my auctions for me.

So here's a question for people who've learnt or tried learning a second language.

Does your first language mostly hinder or help the learning of a second langage? If they're similar to each other, do you get confused, or does the simliarity help? If they're very different, does the alien-ness of the second language make it harder, or is it the same as learning any second language?

With regards to simliarities, I'm particularly interested in:

Native English speakers with French as their L2, and vice versa.
Native English speakers with German as their L2, and vice versa.

Comments are appreciated!

*whimper* My first time on WoW in over 24 hours and I only get 3 minutes before the server goes offline!

I got to Syntax early today and was sitting on the ground in the corridor outside doing some reading when Jennifer appeared, and so I got up and sauntered over to where she was standing on the opposite side, and ended up hitting my head on a fire extinguisher near her. That was so impressive.

I spent most of the afternoon doing Syntax homework. It's hard. :/

I want to play WoW. *whine*

OH! And I can't believe the people in my history/gender studies tutorial said Xena was femme! XENA IS SO NOT FEMME! What the hell? They obviously haven't seen anything of the show apart from stupid ads that focus solely on the size of her BREASTPLATE! GAH! *fumes*

Femme indeed.

...

I want WoW. Now.

[Edit: There's absolutely nothing wrong about being femme. I'm often attracted to femme girls. The point is, if they're going to use Xena as an example, they should at least DO THEIR RESEARCH instead of simply judging by appearances (their argument was that she had long hair, wore a "large metal bikini" and a skirt). *mutters darkly about ignorant heathens, smites them with a lightening bolt*]

[Edit 2: I'm well aware that "femme" is a socially constructed concept. The point is that Xena is not /their/ version of "femme".]

My timetable this semester was so screwed up. So very screwed up. All four of the subjects I originally picked clashed. Old English B ended up clashing with Syntax. It was terribly hard to decide between the two, especially since Old English A had been my favorite subject last semester. Syntax won out in the end, for several good reasons:

1.) It starts at 10 in the morning and not 9:30, which means I can hitch a ride with mum in the mornings and not have to get up an hour earlier.
2.) Syntax = a chance to keep stalking hot girl and
3.) It's a core subject for linguistics that I want/need to do and I won't risk having it clash next year.

Anyway, instead of Old English Poetry B, which I'm going to do next year (hopefully), I picked Computer Mediated Communications as my Linguistics elective and ARGH, that ended up clashing with my history subject, which I wasn't about to give up. So I had no choice but to leave CMC for next year as well and pick Language and Culture (the ONLY linguistics subject that didn't clash), which is an interesting enough subject, but I've had the lecturer before and I can't stand her lectures. But oh well. On the up side, cute girl might be doing Language and Culture as well, from what I remember. Anyway. Finally, to rub salt in the wound, the one subject that I absolutely MUST do this semester (2nd Language Learning and Teaching), because it isn't offered next year, has its lectures on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at EXACTLY the two times that I have Karate during the day. GAH!!!! So for the rest of the semester, I won't be able to go to the daytime Karate sessions. Which means I'll have to make extra trips on Monday and Wednesday to go to the night time ones. GRRRRRRR.

Fucking timetable.

Now, for some randomness:

- Did you know that Melbourne is in the same timezone as Vladivostok?

- I've had dreams of Rachel Nichols for like 4 days in a row. Wow. (SCORE!!!)

- Hmm. I bought some Ribena yesterday for the first time in years. Mmmm Ribena. Rhymes with Xena.

- Watching Season 1 of Hercules is rather painful. I'd never realised how damn cheesy the show was in the beginning. Also, Xena, as portrayed on Hercules is SO out of character. For one, she would /never/ deliberately injure her own horse even if it was part of her Evil Plan to Seduce Iolaus and Kill Hercules. Hmph. Also, where the hell is Ares? So far in first season, is only appearance is as a bubbling pool of tomato juice trying to pass itself off as blood and a giant hulking box-ish robotic-like demon-Ares with two red LED lights for eyes. o.o

- Saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2 the other day. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I think I still like the first one better.

- Uni starts on Monday. Luckily for me, I don't have class on Mondays (hee).

- My dear friend selina_ is in Kenya. I miss her.

- Myspace sucks because it keeps sending me email announcements informing me that a particular friend has updated their journal, and when I click their stupid link, it takes me to a page that goes something like "Sorry, you can't see this page because so and so hasn't friended you. You are the weakest link. J00 Suxx0r. Goodbye!"

- I was PMSing when I wrote my last entry. I think I still am.

- In my angst, I downloaded like 800 mb worth of ABBA songs. Isn't that scary? In any case, it's rather amusing to listen to Waterloo in French, Fernando in Spanish, and Ring Ring in German. Not to mention the many other random Swedish songs. :-D

- And on that very odd note, I'm going to bed.