Thursday, January 13, 2011

$#@!

So I'll start with my tale of the recent ball. It was absolutely AWESOME!!! Dancing all night – who could have anything against that. The first half of the evening was dedicated to more historical dances. Basically, over half of them were various permutations of the Waltz, which is nice, but after 3 minutes of nonstop spinning it gets difficult to walk straight after it’s over. The rest were various historical dances, which in essence are a short piece of choreography repeated over and over again, basically you can’t really call that actual dancing, in my opinion (no creativity, you see). However there was one rather entertaining instance: the Waltz with a flower. We ran into a small obstacle there. You see: we had no flower. (The flower is used to pick partners. Girls stand in one line facing the line of the leads. In each line –people stand in twos. The one holding the flower picks who he/she wants to dance (usually one or two rounds around the dance floor) with from the two from the line facing her. The person not picked gets the flower and gets to choose themselves following the same algorithm.) But, as I already said we had no flower. What to do? A couple guys really into rpg, brought their rpg costumes along, and there were a few instances of what looked like soldiers chasing a prisoner around the dance floor. Well part of the costuming was a rather large and real looking gun. And we said, heck, why not use the gun instead of the flower. Hilarity ensued as people were fake-shot.
Now, moving on to the more interesting part of the evening: the informal dances. Half hustle, half various fun fun fun folk dances. For those of you who don’t know hustle, essentially is like swing dancing plus Latino charm (read: sexy sexy swing ;) ). For the first few I danced as lead with Katia (is from a parallel group, and I taught her some basic following, so we get by.) this, of course, acted like some wonderful advertising, and soon enough a bunch of absolutely amazing dancers started asking me to dance (hehehehehe). Epicness ensued. One of the guys I danced with was particularly awesome, quite tall, rather imaginative, and a really good lead (also quite cross-eyed and with a dark sense of humor as I later found out ;) ). And his girlfriend was my absolutely favorite person there. It seems she went to a dance school, and her movements are incredibly beautiful. She is just what I imagine elves to dace like (or at least the nearest human approximation thereof.) Random: Btw, I also realized that dancing swing with a short lead can be quite great, but waltzing with a short lead is highly uncomfortable.
In the end I had tons of fun, and I even got to take home some free food (sausage :D ).
So much for that.
Now to something more disquieting: Today I got a russian-fb message from my dance partner for ballroom dancing. In it he asked me to meet him 15-ish minutes earlier than the class would start. My first reaction: wtf, mate? (Hence the title). First of all I’m busy on Thursdays, since I’ve another dance class before the ballroom one (which sadly today did't happen...), so he said he’d meet me just before that one as I leave the dorm. Obviously, he needed to tell me something important… my second reaction: wtF? So as I left the dorm, he was there, and got straight to the point: he’s in love with a girl from dance classes, and can’t stand seeing her dance with someone else, so he talked to her partner and now to me about doing the old switcheroo. I agreed. I regret having to lose a good dance partner, but I shan’t hold him against his will. It would be cruel, and everyone would be unhappy. Well, the guy turned out to be halfway decent. Very uncertain in his leading, for now, but the basics aren’t half bad. (of course, he doesn’t compare to my previous guy. So sad). On the other hand, it’s quite obvious that he had quite a lot of fun today, and my boy progressed quite a lot too. I shall make a dancer of him yet. Sadly, no one does such things for me yet though.

btw: physics went well: I got a 5/10 that's like a B (or a 4 on the 2-5 scale)
I also passed my chemical physics exam with a 4/10 (which is a 3 in the old system) or like a C. not so happy about that one. Now I must study for theoretical mechanics on the 17th. :/

Saturday, January 1, 2011

so this is the new year

So... quite a bit has happened since last I wrote. Basically after the ball I started studying. Doing homeworks en masse, hardly having time to sleep etc etc. the usual basically. Nonetheless, class finals came to a highly intense conclusion. Somehow I managed to complete and (for lack of a better word ) "turn in" a semester's worth of homework in 3 weeks time, which is pretty much a hell of a task, cause you see turning in a homework always involves questioning by the teacher. For differential analysis you have to perfectly solve a set of practice problems from finals of previous years. For math analysis I just have to bring perfectly solved problems that the seminarist has made up, for physics it's trying not to fail the test that goes with the homework but you're not allowed to use anything, which is terrible, as for the written final you may use whichever books or notes you wish. Needless to say I pretty much failed (also the physics man thinks that I’m pretty much the very last idiot there is). But anyhow, I made it through class finals, and now I’ve final exams. Written physics is already behind me. And I actually managed to solve 4 problems out of five, which is pretty much epic awesomeness on my part. On the other hand, I think that my dear seminarist will only count maybe one of them as solved correctly, which is very very sad. But mo matter. He’s promised to give everyone a passing grade, and that’s all I want from him at the moment.
Now towards more interesting things: New years!
What a feast it was! I had sooooo much fun. Two of my roommates went home for newyears, so Lera and I were alone in the room. We bought a Christmas tree (which is called a new years fir tree here) decorated it, bought shiny shiny tinsel, hung it on the tree and from the ceiling, cut out snowflakes, hung those from the ceiling also. Made lots of food, bought wine and champagne, and had a few guys help us a bit, dressed, invited one guy who turned out not to be celebrating because of lame roommates, and sat down to enjoy our labor. Lera insisted on watching the president’s address, which failed epically, since everyone was doing that and thus the net was completely inoperative, well around twelve the invited guy opened the champagne, and spilled it all over the floor and table (I ended up almost not getting any, but luckily we had but luckily we also had wine :P ) so we ate and drank, and the decided to find out whether there would be a nightclub event or no, so we went outside and, lo and behold, heard very loud music. The obvious conclusion: yes, there would be dancing. And because the good always comes with the bad, we met a certain acquaintance of my roommate’s former roommate Ilmir (which by extension I also happen to know and loathe, who with his quiet friend demanded a New Years hug… well we were in a good mood, and it was new years after all… we tolerated it. Quickly said our goodbyes and went on our way.
Once inside the club, dancing commenced and obviously because we were waaaay too awesome at what we do, (read: too noisy) they shut us down about 3 hours early. So there we were a bunch of people in sandals and skirts in the snow at 4 am and the doors to the dorms had already been locked. Luckily, there were about 15 of us, and the night guard was nice and let us in :) once back in the dorm, obviously no one wanted to stop having fun, so we didn’t :)
The fun we had amounted to this: going to the 7th floor, eating and drinking (mostly drinking for me they had this really tasty wine made from plums. It was really really yummy, to my surprise. I didn’t know alcohol could taste so good. )While we were sitting there, getting merrier and merrier by the cup, we heard loud guitar music, and went to investigate. We stumbled upon quite a large company having quite a bit of fun. Unfortunately, a drunk Ilmir was there as well and wouldn’t stop pestering me about English swear words and phrases. Soon enough he left, and I stayed where I was with a bunch of random people I don’t know, a guy from my group and one from a parallel group, who had/has a crush on me (considering the way he acted I’m leaning towards has…). And this is where the odd part of the evening began.
It started when this drunk guy from 6th year came up to me, asking me my name. I answered. He then started drawing what was to become a very sorry attempt at a portrait on an empty pizza box, and gifted the creation to me all the while showering me with complements. I was amused by the whole thing, and thus always smiling… amusedly. This led the guy, whose name turned out to be Nicolai, to believe I was insulted by his portrait and to apologize threw it out of the window on the 6th floor into the snow. The poor box. He then became depressed which, in retrospect, was a bit unfortunate for me since from that moment on, all he did was hug me, I’d get him to stop, he’d smile and hug again. After about 15 minutes it began to strain the nerves. In the end I got him to leave, but only after I promised to keep a pen he gave me as a memento. After I’d gotten rid of that one, I rejoined the general crowd in some room, where as it turned out they had a water pipe, weed, and two half naked guys dancing to “sex bomb” on a table with a broom held by one of them but located between the legs of the other. (Yes dear friends, this is the future of Russian science. I think we’re all going to die.) Oh, and I hadn’t mentioned the weird guy in the cowboy hat who was enjoying the music way too much (he actually sang a few lines whilst looking at me… hugh… creeper…). It seems he was a friend of Nicolai’s and for those of you who know him, is very much like Jim Woodward, for those of you who don’t know him… well let’s just say that no other person can be that much of a creeper by just raising his eyebrow. In the end all they did was open buttons of pants and nothing more, which I personally was glad of.
After that fun little episode, I decided to go back to my room, only to find my roommate sitting on the windowsill on our floor with none other than Ilmir and his silent friend. I joined them, since she had my key and another bout of slight altercation ensued between the Bashkir and myself. Soon enough an oh so high (meaning on drugs) Arthur came along (with this one I talk quite a bit always about random crap and it’s always rather interesting, although he’s probably the most inadequate person I know.) And in the end my pen was taken from me by Ilmir (with a freaking proclamation to stop by tomorrow and return it. (never bothering to ask whether I was busy or not, the bastard)). And that, pretty much, was the end of it.
Now I must study for my oral physics exam… damn