my (lack of) living situation

So... honestly, I don't remember the last time I wrote. neither the time, nor the content, so I'm just going to ramble about how everything sucks. Or rather how the dorm people here suck. So this is what has been happening. I'll keep it short. And I'll just apologize beforehand for this post, as it's a full-grown rant with curse words and much anger.

Starting September, naive little me thought that I might start to find out what is going on with the dorms, and start worrying about getting myself a bed. So I went to the Komendant (the lady in charge of the dorm) and asked. She said return in a week. I returned in a week, but they said that since i'm 5th year and from Moscow, I should wait till next week, so the first years who haven't gotten their space yet can get theirs, because they're more important. Well, ok. So I return September 22nd, and I already have a problem. Friday at 8pm I have a class lasting till 9:15pm, and going to Moscow after that means I'll be in the streets of Moscow at 11pm, which is rather unpleasant and dangerous. Well, somehow, I managed, and found myself a place to bunk for the day. With high hopes, I return next week. And guess what. I'm sent packing again. My hopes are dashed. My nerves are slowly wearing thin. Luckily, Denis manages to get me a place for the weekend.

Once again, I return the following week, now having gotten promises that I'll finally get a room. A half-success happens. I get a key and a temporary pass into the building. All seems well, but this is given, only with the words that, should a first year come, and have need of a place, then I'll be kicked out. Well fuck that. But considering it's already 3 weeks into the school year, I have doubts. They tell me to wait until October. So, today, I go to the Komendant, ready with all the documents and all that. In the morning, of course, the electricity fails, just before I have class, so aside from the fact that I wasn't going to be able to pay for the dorm, and thus be officially moved in, I get a telling off. Apparently, Denis used a few untactful words yesterday when asking for a temporary pass, and now, aside from the Komendant keeping a watchful eye on any illegal activity (like Denis staying the night at my dorm, which is usually completely ignored by everyone) and expulsion from the dorms if it should happen. I was even threatened with not being given a place in the dorm at all. 

Fuck you all.

Really.

Fortunately, somehow, she consented to give me a room in the end, if I came back when there was light. I did, She was out. I had to skip two lessons because I was waiting for her (and only waiting, not even talking). And on a side note this is by far not the first time I had to do this. I've only been once at these two lectures, because of this GIANT clusterfuck of a situation. And guess what the result of that was? that's right. Come back next fucking week. Because the other dorm dude has not yet put my name into the system (and he's had a fucking month for that.) 

Screw them all thrice over in then ear!

On top of that, Denis is generic angry so he's decided to stay in bed and read all day (although the idiot also has lessons that he has to be at.) and because of that I haven't seen him all day so I can finally be properly angry at him. No! He, of course, decided to avoid it, and talk tomorrow. When I'll be tired, and the anger will be smoldering out. And I have a shitload of lessons to be at all day, and my neighbors will be home, as they don't. So this great meeting will happen somewhere around 8pm best case, and I don't see how anything good can come of anything this fucking week.

(as you can tell, I'm quite pissed. very very pissed.) 

Needless to say this month has been horribly stressful, and because of the imminent threat of hobo-life I've been having slight breakdowns about once a week. And the fact that on Thursday I'll have to talk to a lot of old academic people at my dad's defence is not helping, that and compounded with him being on his last nerves as well.

help?

Well, that's all I really have to say for now. I'll try to write something more normal soon...

fuck life

it seems i have really the worst luck/taste in men. this one (according to himself) turned out to have a psychological disorder, which makes him loose all feeling for a girl as soon as he understands that she likes him very much. sorry, but that's fucked up. really... at the very least it's a very creative lie, i'll give him that..

well at least my march 8th is now officially free... asshole...

so much to say..

... and so little time. I hardly know where to begin. Probably chronologically, as always.

I’m honestly of the opinion that I somehow jinxed people, when I last wrote. You see over the course of 2 weeks (this was already 3-4 weeks ago) 6 people got sent to a psychiatric facility. One of them a guy I knew personally. One for jumping and surviving, one for extreme anti-socialness, one for eating a crap-load of pills and surviving, and one for having potato salad for a brain for all it was worth, the rest I have no idea (not even sure they exist). The fact that a bunch of people went nuts isn’t exactly surprising, but the fact that they all did it a t the same time, and during a relatively short interval (and not one of the stress filled ones at that), makes you thinks something was up besides just normal insanity. Some people speculate that a bad batch of psychoactive drugs may have been involved, on top of slight personal issues, and that sent them over the edge. But really, who knows…

Well, on a brighter note, I’ll tell you about the ball! October 19th was probably the craziest day ever. Theory of complex value functions test (huge one at that) at 2pm, ball at 5pm right after the end of the exam, then dance night right after that. I studied a bit for the test the day before, but what probably really saved me was that it was so late in the day, although I did end up complaining about that later, but anyways… I ended up doing most of my studying in the morning, equipped with cheat sheet, and all that. The test was supposed to last 3 hours, but (I have no idea how or why, I finished in only 2, and it seems that a lot of people finished very early, my group mate finished in an hour… but everyone stayed for the whole 3 hours anyways.) I would have stayed too, but no thanks to some idiots who decided to hold a concert the same day of the ball (and they reserved the adjacent place much later than the ball people) ad so the ball had to be moved ahead 2 hours. Right into the middle of my exam… assholes. So as soon as I finished the test, I left the testing chambers, and ran over to the ball. (I seriously hope that I actually passed that exam, since I’d be quite pathetic if I didn’t. the passing mark is like 5/25, but I wouldn’t put it mast me to be a complete idiot.) anyways, I got to the ball, and everything was already in full throttle. I’d missed about 14 or so songs, which wasn’t all that bad. The evening proceeded splendidly. I danced with a lot of people, some of them awesome, and two absolutely dreadful (they didn’t even know the basic steps, the morons. You don’t go to a ball without even knowing the basic steps of the walz. And even if you do go, the you better not ask someone who can actually dance as good as I do to then have me be a crash test dummy and collide with very single couple on the floor.) but anyways. In other news, during the preparatory master classes I convinced an acquaintance of mine, who could only dance ballroom, to learn hustle (which is a horrid mix of swing, and latin dances. So it’s like swing, except no bouncing, and lots of inappropriate-like dips and whatnot (though the dips are a bit different in the fact that the follow has to hold herself in most of them, without leaning or hanging on the lead. Which is a very difficult habit to break, I might add.))but the amount of inappropriateness really depends heavily on the lead, and this particular guy is very notinapropriate, and he’s an excellent lead (I actually noticed that in hustle the better the lead, the less ew-gross the whole thing is, because they have realized that dancing isn’t actually about doing inappropriate things, it’s just about having fun. mediocre leads seem to be still a bit too hung up on the fact that they het to touch a girl, and make her do what they want.) so yeah. I had a lot of fun there. After the ball, there was a club night I honor of some other faculty’s freshmen, I forget which one. I went, it was ok, but a bit too crowded, for my taste, and I was rather tired, so I ended up leaving early. I was never so tired than on the way to the dorm. Those 10 minutes seemed to last an hour. (and I had to sit down twice on my way up the stairs to the 5th floor, to catch my breath.) The whole next day, I was pretty much unable to do anything. When I went downstairs to shower, I had a lot of trouble making it back, so I refrained from descending during the rest of the day.

Well, as you may or may not know I had my birthday recently, and I was very unexpectedly surprised by two boys from a parallel group. (I think the two are in different groups actually) as you might guess from the previous statement, I don’t actually interact with them very much. However I do know them to be of the kinder half of my year. In the evening, they came into my room and presented me with a box of chocolates (108 grams, this is significant) and a poem which wished me to have 100 grams of luck. As for the 8 that they couldn't fit into the poem, they gifted me 8 chocolate bars, each of them bearing a well-wishing. =)  

Aside from that the end of semester madness is now upon me. And the only reason I’m actually able to write this is because it’s 1:30am and I’m waiting for my group mates to finish learning computational mathematics, so they can explain it to me, so I don’t fail the test tomorrow. Oh yes I’ll explain what I mean by end of semester madness: 

tomorrow: computational mathematics exam, English presentation, turning in 35 hw problems for theory of complex value functions, and turning in 6 incomprehensible problems for chemical physics as well as two variants of a test (3 problems each, and slightly less incomprehensible.)
the day after tomorrow: shitload physics problems, and a shitload of theoretical physics problemsthe day after that: 3 physics labs to learn theory for and pass off

so yeah. And December 28th is the first final. Chemical physics. I am SO screwed!

In other news: I went on a date last Sunday! =)

We went to this modern art exhibition where a lot of Marina Abramovic’s work was shown, both documentation, and recreations. (On two instances the doorway you had to walk through were guarded by a naked man and woman facing each other, and you have to step through between them (I’m glad I’m not fat, I wouldn’t want to squeeze between them.)) but yeah. It was a bit weird when there, but I’m actually liking it more and more now that I had time to think about it without distractions. Some of the topics addressed are quite fascinating. They also had quite a lot of work of a man who caricatured various political situations, namely the end of the apartheid period in South Africa. Overall it was very interesting, but I think that I’m more on the side of Oscar Wilde in the opinion that art should exist purely for its own sake. Art is something utterly useless, valued only for its beauty. What was in the museum was more of a call to awareness to politics, and an exploration of human nature and it’s limits. So much for the art. Now about the guy. He’s a 4^th year, so about my age and he has the most amazing smile in the universe (I always thought that people just say that because there is nothing else to say about someone, but it actually exists: the perfect smile). Lucky for me, he smiles a lot, which is as aforementioned very distracting. The only downside is that he’d have been maybe almost shorter than me if I had worn heels. But in his case I’m very willing to overlook that. I’ll not annoy you with further details at this point, since I’m hoping he’ll call me sometime. Hopefully sooner than later… 

JINX ALERT!

No sooner have said that I'll be on the lookout, that some ass beat a girl walking home so badly that she had to be taken to the hospital. The jerk made sure to aim for her face, of all things. The poor thing barely made it too the dorm. Dang... 

recovery

I'm starting to enjoy brutal murder again. [I'm watching Bones] =)
Recently, I've been a bit depressive an cynical, to the point that I'm actually not happy about it. Which really isn't very good. To give you a taste, here is something I wrote a few days ago:

[...] It was of course the ass-holes that left the most offspring. The farmer that secretly stole from his neighbor. The drunk in the bar who would go from town to town impregnating women. And the slanty eyed b****** who squeezed every last penny from his subordinates. And although they say genetics plays little role in behavioral patters, I think that thousands of years of wildly reproducing jerks, would tip the balance at least somewhat towards a more 'cruel' society [...]

 So still being in my right mind, I decided to spare you my mad ravings. Now that I have spent two days sleeping and not doing anything, because I got sick (again), and for the first time in my life it actually is affecting  my brain. Well in other news we got the little first years though their little trials, it was pretty fun and I got a bunch of money on my phone out of it =) This year was pretty ok, the only problem, was that two fat guys on a truck came and said that we couldn't make a fire on the ground. So what do a bunch of smart people do? Well, we got a bunch of metal and made this platform thing 30 cm above the ground and tried to have some semblance of a fire on it. It ended up being small, and we had to hold an umbrella over it at one point (the only umbrella we had, btw...) but it served its purpose.

so much to say...

So it's beeen quite a while since I last wrote. And there is kinda a reason for that.Mainly I had way too many other things on my mind. But to start off I have a request:

If any of you happen to meet my parents, or have parents who are friends with mine, know that I don't tell them the more "stupid things," I tend to do. So please don't tell them, or i'll never hear the end of it.

(You see my mom’s the type who if I tell her that a boy poked fun at me on the first day of class will be asking about him for a whole year, and it just drives me nuts.)

Anyways. I left off with the unfortunate end of my theoretical mechanics exam, and the rest of them didn’t go too well either. I scraped by in Math Analysis (although I’m very happy that I’m rid of it and I’ll never have to see it again.) Physics I somehow survived. This one is actually an interesting story. I'll elaborate.

The written exam was something I dreaded, since obviously not having actually done any of the homeworks, and not having opened the book; I obviously couldn’t solve any problems. But luckily a very nice first year girl lived next door. And I exploited her shamelessly. I had her copy the answers to the exam that would be posted on a super-secret facebook site (ssfs).[the process works this way: everyone gathers, then the test begins, someone photographs the variants and posts the pics on the ssfs. Then the smart people sharpen their brains and turn on their pencils and solve them really quick. The answers are checked by other smart people and posted back on the site. From then on people either use their phones or have same sex accomplices copy the answers and put them in the nearest bathroom.] So that’s what I did. And I SURVIVED muahahahahaha. I know. It’s bad, but there was nothing else I could have done at that point. The oral exam was sad. I had allthe answers strapped to my leg (litterally) but I had no chance to pull them out (litterally), since I was sitting in the very front right by about 4 teachers. So overall that didn’t go all that great.

And then came the monster - the thing that is actually so easy, but of course the one thing that I actually failed: Differential analysis. I failed the written test, so I wasn’t able to even try the oral one, and now I’m starting to enter a state of very mild “holy crap” since the exam is in just a little over a week. And if I don’t pass this time, it’ll be all over…

Well, in other news.

I got a new phone, and I've been abusing it quite harshly. You see it has a touch screen and that's pretty much the funest thing ever. And as you can guess, the "somewhat obsessive" personality I have the fortune to possess, is making it pretty much impossible to keep my fingers off it. (As a matter of fact I'm actually writing this on my phone just ‘cause I can. (also partially because at night in my bed is theonly time I can actually concentrate on writing something productive.But this toy was bought not just so I could play cute little games with my fingers after I've gone to bed. NO! It actually serves a purpose. Well, point one is that cheating on exams will be much simplified. I shan't have to resort to the measures I resorted to to pass my written physics exam. (Although it was actually quite convenient and nice) I didn't have to worry about being caught with a phone.But if I had it, then I would have had the possibility of getting more answers than I did. But anyways... Those were the main ulterior motives when requesting that my new phone should have a touch screen. Back then I had no idea how fun it would be...

But recently it actually came in quite handy in a way that I had not expected.

Several weeks ago, I had decided to go to an art store to buy paper and replenish my supply if paints. And seeing as I had no idea where to find such a place I Googled it and quickly found a couple hundred shops. After deciding on a metro station that had five of them in its nearest vicinity I went to look for them. That turned out really well...

When I got out of the metro I started looking for a map. You know those things with the obnoxious red YOU ARE HERE dots that make you feel like you're thought to have the intelligence of a three year old, but are secretly thankful for. Well this was one of the rare examples that did not have that unholy flecked. As a result I ended up picking a direction and looking for street signs, which Russia are surprisingly well hidden or altogether absent. The direction I picked seemed to be kind of right, after a while I was certain of my correctness since the name of the street was right. What I didn't now then was that I was going in the exact opposite direction. But I went on.Over half an hour later I was getting suspicious. It wasn't supposed to be this far away. I had come to a huge street, which was right, (and I was approached by a guy with a kiddie backpack who made no attempt at hiding that he wasn't

actually looking in my eyes when I asked for directions.) However, I had failed to notice the lack of river. So I just kept looking for that store. After a while I got fed up with the ordeal and made my way back to my metro station, and went then in a perpendicular direction to look for the other four stores. I walked for a while, but then I came upon a river where there should be none. This is when I finally understood that I had no idea where I was... Luckily modern phones, to simplify the life of the various secret service agencies all over the world, are equipped with gps! It so turned out that I had gone south instead of north and east instead of west... Super... Well, in the end I finally found that art store after I walked past it about 3 times, as it was skillfully hidden in a basement in a courtyard which you could get to by going under a little bridge connecting two buildings. But I got my paper and my paints so all's well that ends well I guess. And seeing as it is now 3 am I shall continue this another day! tee hee

Moving on to the culinary culture section of today's newscast.

Yes! I did IT. I cooked. Thrice this summer the first time it was pancakes. That was actually quite fun, although I had a lot of trouble with adjusting the heat. You see, we have one of those pesky gas stoves that are really nice if they aren't from pr-soviet times. Meaning: touch it too little the flame doesn't change, use too much pressure - even one pascal too much ( for those if you who don't know, it's the pressure exerted by a milk chocolate bar (100g or 0.0454lbs) that has been spread out uniformly on a 1mx1m (40in x40in) surface.) - you get a flame that will burn off your eyebrows, or one that will need 24 hrs to boil a glass of water. And unfortunately the flame size I needed was right between "oops, I pushed too much" and "darn, why isn't it changing." So I had to switch between too much and too little all the time, so as to attempt to keep the frying pan at the right temperature. The other issue with pancakes is that no matter what I did, it was absolutely impossible to make them round. Here are some of the shapes that I got: a mutant deep sea fish, a freshly ripped out heart, and an upside-down alien glob.

But that's not all! For my dad's birthday and my own enjoyment I made what's so wonderfully called

Russian salad. It's my favorite dish, and one of the mist time consuming things that you can do in the kitchen.Equal quantities of boiled potatoes(exc

ept you want about twice as much potato than everything else) and carrots, harboiled eggs, pickles, meat, peas. Topped off with plenty mayo. Cut everything Into 5mm x 5mm x 5mm cubes (except the peas, which would be ridiculous to cut, and egg folks which dissolve in the general mass of ring cubes anyway are therefore pointless to cut.) If you've ever cooked, you might guess how long all that takes. About 2 hours... And after doing that twice in the span of 3 days and successfuly flattening my poor behind while I wad at it I got sick of cooking and haven't done it .

On a Side note

I have returned to my one great my anti-drug. One big thing, that be irreversibly changed my life: I've been reading manga again, and it's so wonderful that it makes me sad that I ever stopped. In this past month, I've read quite a number of series that deserve a spot on my absolute favorites list. But i'll not bore you with it, since I'm aware that few of you are fellow manga nerds. (i'll gladly give recommendations if you want them though!)

Now, the time has cone to tell you sad news.

However unlikely it may week, I have become one of those insufferable girls who cry during sappy moves. I know, I'm probably the last person such things are to e expected if under normal circumstances, but they're just so sad sometimes. For all of you who have read rave master, I think Sieg's fate was the suckiest that could possibly be imagined. I guess I've become like the Grinch/b>... I grew feelings towards sappy crap... Boo...

I actually completely forgot this incident until now.

It happened quite a while ago, sometime during session I think, but I'm not quite sure. But someone got wind of how to get free tickets to this random concert that would be happening on the red square in honor of Russia day. Well, since we're moderately active people, we decided to go get tickets and see that concert. Well it all started out fine enough we got our flyers and went into the city center to meet with the group/organization thing that would give us our tickets. They said they'd have them at 4 so we naturally wanted to get there at 3 (but that didn't quite work out because one if the guys we went with jumped over the barriers to get into the metro, but got held up by the police, just cause they recited to be a pain in the ass that day, so we had to wait for him for the good part if an hour.) But in the end we got there around half past 4, which, as it turned out, was not a big real at all, since the tickets didn't arrive until much much later. Obtaining that piece of paper involved much walking to and fro, much waiting in the heat, much shoving, and one really awesome old guy in a silly hat who danced really well to really crappy techno music while waving a Russian flag about, and being cheered on by a crapload of people because there really was NOTHING better to do. But when the tickets finally drive everyone naturally ran to the guys handing them out and much compression of people and shoving ensued at the hotspots of high ticket concentration. And if you have ever read manga or watched any anime or just have a very 'active' imagination, you know exactly what must be present in a fluster cluck like this: you got it! An ass who tries to grope girls! All I can say: not pleasant. I regret that I didn't get,a good look at his face so I could rip his nostrils and break his fingers. But we got our tickets and after more walking, and 3 police check points we were in. And then there was more shoving, more really drunk really tall guys flailing about, more near fatal compression of the lungs, more killing of your feet and subsequent revenge for the poor dead chunks of flesh attached to your ankles. And another half hour later we were pretty close to the front, could not move a millimeter, had trouble breathing, and could neither see nor hear anything that was happening on the stage. So we decided to screw the whole affair eat some french fries and go home. The getting out part took about another hour. The fast food part... Well, that took ages. Probably another 2 or so hours of walking, before we found a McDonald's. But we got there and we ate, and then we went home, completely disappointed at the concert, but agreeing that the best part of the day was the feeling of accomplishment when we had obtained our tickets. (I kept mine of course) =)

Now that I've sufficiently bored you with all the other stuff,

it's probably time to explain the thing you are probably most eager to hear about. That one... Let's call it 'unusual' status I had up on Facebook a while ago.
(here I give fair warning to any and all of you to continue reading at your own discretion. )
Well me and the guy I'd mentioned earlier had been seeing more of each other. Although after a while there was progressively less and less "seeing," per se, involved, but that's another matter. I was really just highly surprised by the fact that the dear child gave me his girl's notes. And the way I found out was by way of a casual friend request from her on the Russian equivalent of Facebook with the message: "hi! you have my notes, can you please return them to me? (Insert smiley face here)." Naturally, I returned them to her, we even chatted for quite a while. And as soon as I turned my back I had to fight the urge of laughing out loud at the boy's nerve, and the situation in general.
But that was a while ago. Now I'm growing tired of the internet serenades and the fact that movies and YouTube videos seem to be his only area of interest. So when (hopefully not if) I return to the institute I will end the charade, but not before thoroughly enjoying it :P

everything

Oh gosh. So much has happened since I last wrote I’m having trouble deciding where to begin. I guess I’ll begin with a warning to a certain person who somehow managed to find this:

Do not, under any circumstances, talk to me about this post, Klezovich! (I’d rather you wouldn’t read it at all, but it’s not like I could actually stop you from this.)

Now, that being said, I’ll continue.
Well I guess it all really began in the beginning of March. Just a few days before March 8th actually, which is a really big deal here as you may or may not know. It is international women’s day, and the day when all the men say thank you to all the women for being awesome. (The same thing in the other direction happens February 23rd.) Well let’s just say that a certain someone, who for all intents and purposes shall be called number one, and I shared a very endearing moment the details of which I’ll be withholding from the general public. After this said person disappeared from all radars, but as that was the usual pattern with him, I ignored it. A few days later there was a party in honor of said holiday, to which I naturally went with one of my friends. We had a blast! We stopped dancing only once. The very first slow dance, when there were still way too few people around. But that changed soon. Soon enough the space got filled up, and I met an acquaintance of mine and his friend and we danced for a while, and then shared quite the exciting slow dance, which ended in him picking me up and spinning me around. After that, of course, he disappeared, and I put that instance into the [awesome dance] folder. But, unexpectedly, he returned after about an hour. And again some silly dancing, then another slow dance, and then we spent the rest of the evening together. When the party was over I detached myself from his grasp, and ran off back to the dorm without saying goodbye. When I got back, there was a message in my inbox. We messaged each other until 4am. And he sent me quite a lot of songs. I guess you could kind of call it web-serenading. We’ve kept at it since then. But that is all it is. (And it seems he has a gf… :[ ) As for number one… well, he’s been ignoring me, which I’m not happy about to say at the least. So, as always… life does its thing.

In other news: I have successfully reestablished my reign of terror. How, you ask?

As you may or may not know/guess , I’m friends with the local druggies. And they have been bugging me all semester about etc etc etc you get the idea. Well the day before yesterday they finally killed my nerves completely, and combined with the above mentioned I decided to give it a go. However it backfired a bit in their face. Every normal person is happy happy happy. I was the most furious I have ever been in my entire life. It was like someone took all the things that annoy me, and make me angry, and let them roam freely in my brain. I couldn’t sit still for very long because I felt that all that if I did, the second someone did even the slightest thing to annoy me, I would… I don’t even know what I would do. I was furious at everything. Everything made me angry. Absolutely everything.
When looked at objectively, really, it was a very interesting sensation. All inner barriers that usually hold me back from yelling at people and doing them physical injury and torture them slowly and drink their blood from a black chalice were gone. All that was left was logic. One of the guys was so frightened that he expressed the wish to shut himself in his room with a knife. At that moment if I serious decided to do him harm, that wouldn’t have saved him. It would actually have made it worse probably (you know there’s nothing to excite a maniac than a shiny sharp pointy object and some blood), I felt like I could have done the deed bare handed and successfully if the need arose. It was very strange. There was also the issue that I had trouble understanding words. I could hear sounds, but they made no sense to me. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even expect them to hold any meaning. They were just sounds. I saw him last night. He was still terrified. Hehe. When I just stopped being angry, it was interesting how one of my druggie friends acted when I walked up to him. It was just like the behavior of a lower ranked dog before the alpha male. Avoiding eye contact, he ceased talking, sat quietly, attentively. Then I let him know that I was nice again and he relaxed.
The only aftereffect that is left of that incident is that the cap on my bottle of anger seems to be looser than usual. People who usually just annoy me slightly I find hardly tolerable. In the sense that I want to punch them in the face, and make them bleed tears. So yeah. That’s all for now folks. ;]

Ah, I just remembered. the drama queen who threw plates about that I'm sure you remember, put an egg in the microwave, and almost killed her roommate, who had her mooved out. She now lives with a couple of first years. =D
I’ll keep you posted on any new developments. =D

Murder at the Institute

So, Febuary th 14th is apparently a day of red things: love, Lind chocolate, and also bloody murder. This evening in one of the buildings of the institute (the highest one with 9 stories, and also the one where most of the computer labs are along with a few lecture halls etc.) A second year stabbed his roommate 40 times with fatal result. After that, he jumped of the roof of that building crashed into the passage leading between that building and te adjacent one (located at second floor level) and crashed to the ground with a broken spine and various other fractures. The boy survived, and will live. The murderer's name was Ilya Zhuk. The victim was Andrei Gusev. Both - very smart, very diligent students. The victim seemed a very nice person, incapable of aggravating someone to such an extent. The murderer likewise, was equally pleasant. No one could have ever even immagined such a scene to become truth. So many other people are much more likely. How do I know all these facts? Well, my roommate's old classmate was a friend of theirs. (I know it sounds really far, but it doesn't feel like it.)

The death rate at this institute, and particularly at the department of general and applied physics (not my department, luckily) is a bit alarming for an institute as small as it is.
8 departments, 80 students per year per department and 3 years living here, plus the odd grad student and people who decided that they'd rather live outside of Moscow (about 80 per dept.) makes for a total of roughly 2560 students at the dorms here. And judging by the experience of many people who have already graduated (various parents including my own dad). a 1/year death rate is 'normal'.
The first case was at the end of the first semester just before the winter session. A second year boy from the notorious dept of General and Applied Physics jumped off the fifth floor and died, leaving a lonely grieving mother behind.
The second case was at the begining of my third semester. A first year girl wanted (probably) to commit siucide by jumping off the 8th floor of my dorm (I knew her and talked to her quite a few times, as we lived on the same floor.) However, luckily a 5th year fished her off te railings of the balcony. They locked many of the balcony doors after this incident.
And now this. Again, the general physics people. about them actually. there is an age old tale about them, it's so old that even my father heard the tale when he was at the institute:

Some time ago, an incident happened. It concerned two roommates from the General and Applied Physic Department. One was a rather quiet and calm boy. The other somewhat more social. There are multiple versions as to the cause. Some say that it was because they were fighting over a girl. Others that one interferred with the other's studying by being noisy. Others again say, that he simply snapped from the pressure. But it always ends the same. The quiet one took an axe and hacked his roommate into pieces either in the bathroom or in the room itself.

damn...

$#@!

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. :/

So it Goes

First of all, I make no excuses for the tardines sof this post, as there can be none with me writing so terribly late.
I started writing this post at the end of last semester, so I'll leave you to read. I wasn't exactly happy at the time, and I’ve little desire to rewrite the account of those experiences... so here it is:

So, basically the most stressful few weeks of my life have finally come to a close. And it couldn't have been soon enough. You see everything started out just peachy, but then I failed the written math analysis exam, which isn't too great. However I studied, and somehow managed to convince the man who corrected my test to give me those two miserable points I needed to be allowed to take the oral exam, which I promptly failed. So basically epic failure right there; but that was just the beginning... the analytic geometry and linear algebra exam was next. Where, with my incredible luck I ended up with the same guy, my math lector, who failed me on my written exam. And the only reason that he ended up not failing me on this one, was because he thought that with two fails you are immediately kicked out, well lucky for me he found that out afterwards. "Oh. So I could have failed you," he said... peachy, just peachy. Well that all was great, and next was something that I thought that I actually knew: Chemistry. Well, it seems I was under an illusion there as well. I ended up with my seminar lady from the first semester, who, as soon as she walked into the door, caught me looking in a book (fyi: EVERYONE was cheating anyways, and I didn't even have enough time to look up what I needed, so another fail right there.) Well, after sitting around (and I mean that quite literally) for 2 whole hours she finally had mercy on me and began her torture procedures. And very rapidly my illusion that I knew Chemistry was quickly blown away as an unsuspecting lawn chair would be by a hurricane. In the end I managed to get my measly 3 (the not-quite-fail-grade) and I was off. But now the real tests began. The retakes, for us idiots who didn't manage to pass the first time around. But first of all let me explain how these finals work. You must pass every test. And you have a maximum of 3 retakes total (and theoretically no more than 2 in any one subject). If you fail more than that, well... you get kicked out. And that does not make for happy students. So woe
me, one of my not-so-dear-friends managed to persuade me to go try to pass in the first round. As I expected: I, again, failed miserably (later I found out that I actually got to an evil lady who hates all human kind and especially poor stupid students). Thus I went "slightly" deflated to my next retake. And curse my luck! I AGAIN got to my lector. Well... although he didn't want to... he gave me my thrice accursed three... and I was finished- mentally, emotionally, scholastically, and in every other possible way that one
can possibly imagine.

Thus ends the more depressing part of my tale. Now for some more fun stuff:

First of the summer: Soccer world cup. Drat the Spaniards! Curse their excellent trainer, and curse the German’s utter inability to play closed soccer. Their victories were splendid (loved the England game.) and their loss was tragic, though I must confess inevitable(no like we had the misfortune to see in 2006 with the Italians, the spaghetti-eaters). The Spaniards were far better. Though that does depress me somewhat…
Anywhoos. Some of you may have heard of the horrid smog (and unbearable heat) that we had in Moscow this summer. It was quite extraordinary. It seemed quite unnatural: Absolutely uniform. No wind at all, and everything was in a haze. You couldn’t even see, as one usually can, the speck of light that marks the position of the sun. you could hardly make out anything 100 meters ahead of you, only dim figures cloaked in shadows, hinting at the fact that if you keep walking straight ahead, you will walk into a wall. However, because of the heat (, and the fact that I’m not a fan of hot weather and sweating,) I went outside about 10-15 times all summer. And all (excluding two trips) were to get food at the market next door.
Now that I’ve made you interested in what those two trips were I’ll not tell you. Nah, I’m joking. The first is absolutely uninteresting: a haircut, which I’m quite happy with actually. I think I’ve taken a liking to professional hairdressers. And the second trip was a trip around the metro in Moscow. Now THAT is a sight one must see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any place so richly decorated as the central stations. It absolutely dwarfs any of the castles I’ve seen in Germany, and exceeds any of the riches that I might have even imagined. And that is only what is left over from an underground station. This prompts the obvious question: how splendid and magnificent must the palaces have been. How Russia must have diminished the shine of Europe, had it not as always stuck up its high nose and pretended to see barbarians where honorable people stood. So yeah... that was a true eye-opener.

I’ll speak now of something more merry, namely merry making, aka: drinking. Let’s proceed in chronological order.

• Two nights before the chem exam was the first one. And excitingly I found alcohol to be quite a good solvent ;P of certain types of problems that is. I have an acquaintance who is not quite ‘indifferent’ towards me. And, who can resist a drunken girl, really. Well one of my other acquaintances obviously could not. Luckily he’s of the shy type, and I was not so drunk as to not be reasonable, though drunk enough to be all happy-like (turns out I’m a happy/quiet drunk, if I hadn’t mentioned it before). So basically: walking about with another guy quite disturbed the first one; Even so much that the next day he confronted me about whether I remembered anything, and upon my positive answer, grew quite furious with his friend temporarily, and quite cool towards me, which was a welcome change. And before the retakes the two of them had quite a bit of fun drawing on my legs, and seemed the best of friends. Hehe. On a side note: that day I learned that beer is perfectly dreadful even compared to vodka, and that Vermouth is quite yummy. The next morning, I felt perfectly fine.
• The next time, of course was when I’d already gotten back from the summer break. We decided to get our group together and finally try to socialize. To my greatest delight, the two boys who had up till then not ever said hello to me, came to the event. And I did enjoy myself. Since the two are great soccer fans, we brought a ball and played volleyball a great deal of the time, during which time the fire almost died several times. (and my legs were quite sore the net day) We made sausages on sticks, and when the sweet little boys left, we called our group’s alcoholic, who didn’t fail us. And I tried Gin for the first time - turns out its quite tasty, especially after the 4th cup, at which I lost count. I just continued drinking until all that was left was beer… in the end I was quite drunk, mumbled quite a lot, probably made many errors in my speech, but happily they did not laugh, and tolerated me. When we got back to the room, I lay down, saying that I’m not tired, and that I won’t sleep, and then I promptly fell asleep, waking up 4 hours later to change, and go back to sleep. When I woke up, I felt perfectly horrid. Worse than when I woke up in the bathroom on Halloween last year, and I still felt that I had alcohol in my system. After sitting around and breathing for n hour I finally was sick, after which I felt infinitely better and went to class. Now they say hello to me :)
• The next time was but two weeks after that. (Yes, it did make me feel like I was an alcoholic.) It was the consecration of the graduates into the brotherhood of university students (you may remember me speaking of the various fun group activities in the woods last year, with pushing people through the spider web and falling off a tree stump.) well this time I was one of the organizers. In the logistics department actually, we had a schedule for 5 groups, but we planned to split them into 6. So I had an hour to make a new schedule. However when I got there, the horrid idiots decided that they’d like to split into 7 groups after all, and I had to redo the schedule last minute. In the end the only problem was that we had to magically conjure up 4 extra places for the groups to have lunch but after that, all went well, and everyone was happy. Soon enough we again called our main alcoholic group mate and he brought alcohol. That day I learned that Vermouth tastes good only when you’re already drunk. The way back to the dorm was quite funny. The shy boy, I talked of earlier, lead drunk me, who led another even more drastically drunk acquaintance of mine (surprise surprise it turned out that he’s also a crush on me. I think there are very few other ways one might interpret the following actions: *kisses hand* “you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”) Anyways… Later that evening the organizers were to get together and celebrate ourselves, and that we did well. That, naturally, cannot possibly be done without alcohol. And I tried wine for the first time. To my surprise, it was quite tasty, but that might be due to the fact that (out of my observations) alcohol seems to taste drastically better when you have reached a state of not being able to walk straight. Well, I quite enjoyed the wine as you might guess, and got quite more drunk than I already was. The evening ended rather quietly, and the next morning I felt absolutely fine.
• About a week ago, I smoked my first cigarette. I’ll say it’s not exactly something pleasant. The smoke tastes horribly (although they were supposedly cherry flavored.) and they do quite make my head spin so much that I lose the will to do anything, even stand up. None the less, yesterday I bought a pack, and I smoked my second one. I felt absolutely dreadful afterwards. As if I had pulled the spine out of a living kitten, and thrown its brilliant blue eyes into the mud and trampled on them. I intend to make use of them during my self-destructive moods. And I’ll limit myself to less than one a week a most. I’d hate to become an addict. I’d hate it so very much.
• And today I gave blood. It was actually quite a funny story. Turns out I’m AB+, but that’s not what I want to write about. I was sitting there, giving blood, trying not to cough, as I’m still a bit sick. And I see the giant guy to my right starting to nod, and his head slowly falling on my arm. He’d fainted. About a minute later the guy to my left was asked to count, soon started mumbling, and also fainted. Another few minutes a guy sitting at the far table fainted. Then I felt the plastic tube that was sticking out of my arm touch my hand. It was so warm. So very very warm - the perfect temperature. From then on I started feeling bit by bit sicker and sicker, and I felt the noises mute, and my head starting to spin. But at that moment I was finally done. The whole day my head’s been spinning, and I didn’t go to any of my classes. I’ll go to the first three tomorrow though; A lecture, then English and finally informatics (though I may skip that, if I feel too unwell.) I’m going home to Moscow tomorrow, and then returning the day after laden with food and other good and useful things.

So I’ll write to you soon (I expect after the next time I drink, which I expect to be not much later than Halloween. One of my group mates expressed the desire to drink ;))

whoooooooa! did that just happen?

So... believe it or not: Such a thing as a one sided fight exists. Remember that girl I told you about in my group? The really bitchy one? I think I called her CB in a previous post. But yeah… I went to visit her room to talk to the other two girls who live there, since we’ve become more-or-less friends, and I sit around chatting with them, when all of a sudden I hear sobs, quite loud ones. Dear CB was lying on the bed, sobbing. I mean I’ve heard that she does that quite frequently, but that was my first time seeing it. Well, I pretended not to notice it, since that was what seemed to be their policy, and we talked somewhat quieter. After a few minutes it seemed she was starting to feel better, and started walking about, still sniffing her nose a bit, but otherwise alright. When she finally sat down on her chair, there was a knock on the door, and I could almost guess who it was but that’s another matter. The person wasn’t allowed in, he (that’s an assumption) knocked again, but was again denied entry, and it seems left. What happened next startled me completely. She got up, opened the door, and started throwing her dishes with absolute ferocity down the hallway. She was at it for about five minutes and then walked around yelling various things along the lines of “why do they have to come to my room?! Why can’t they stay in their own room?! I have to get up early tomorrow! I hate everyone! You should all go die!” etc. etc. etc. [this is more or less a direct quote with swear words removed and, of course, translated.] peachy I thought. Just peachy. She had seemed a bit on edge the past few days, but WHOA! Chill! Meanwhile the inhabitants of the other rooms in the block got active, asking if everything was alright. {“mostly,” she said. Geh.} Well, once the circus was over she cleaned up the broken glass, and once done with that she turned her attention to me. “You know; that in the hallway was meant for you. I need to get up at six tomorrow morning.” WTF??? My reply: “If I’m in any way disturbing you, what prevents you from simply telling me. If you’d have told me that you want to go to sleep, and to please leave, I’d have done so without question.” With that I of course left the room. But seriously:

____________WTF!!!___________

drama 101

So…. I've had a piece of juicy gossip (local of course) that I've been wanting to tell peoples about: namely: THERE IS DRAMA!!! And lots of it, some of the elements of it include: plates attacking people, little girls running amok, large crocodile tears, and a divorce. [Madness? This is SPARTAAAAA!!!!!] <------ written by random acquaintance next to me ;P (tell you more later. Tee hee.) MUAHAHAHA…….

Anyways, after that little interruption I'll actually begin with the story. I forget whether I wrote about them before or not, so I'll just start from scratch:
We're 4 girls in our group, and the three others live together in a single room, since they met before the semester began, since they're all from Ukraine. (actually almost everyone in our group is from the ukraine with the exception of me 2 other guys from moscow, one from hell knows where in siberia with whom I've yet to speak a word, another one who I've no idea where he's from, and one more that we call biscuit from Tula (translated of course)). Anyways I digress. So basically from the very beginning I was cautious of one of the girls. She isn't precisely the most pleasant of people and has a habit of not only antagonizing everyone she meets, but also of making extremely poisonous indirect insults that just make you want to use a boa constrictor to lasso her. The second girl who lives in the room is a very timid, quiet girl upon first impression, and a very nice and helpful one at that, though a bit to insecure for my comfort (that and her tendency of looking at everyone like a drenched kitten kind of bring out my protective instincts, coupled with a mild feeling of disgust) anyways. Basically those are the two who are at most odds with each other. The third girl is probably as normal as anyone gets around here, other than the fact that she likes tying stuff around her neck (as of now I've seen various belts and the power chord of a water heater.) But she's very fun and also very helpful, and very nice. Basically the only decently tolerable girl I know here (other than my marvelous room mates of course, but I rarely ever talk with them, which makes them so awesome for an antisocial person like me :D .)

[for the purpose of convenience I'll call girl one CB(House MD reference here, for all those who are privileged enough to know what I'm talking about. And yes. She really is one!)
Girl two will be Kitty, and girl 3 can be Three (yes, I'm taking the easy way out, just like with thirteen)]

So yeah. There'd been drama before in that room, but it had never been anything too major, this time though CB, being what she is, freaked and loaded all the food and dirty dishes out onto Kitty's bed, where it spend a whole day and night. Well Kitty and Three didn't do much about it, other than let their opinion of CB worsen even beyond the limit of being bad. But a few days later she made another one of her vile little comments in the direction of whose bed she'll pile dirty dishes and food on next, and Three did not stay silent. An altercation ensued, and ended with three crying and running to Kitty for consolation, who being a predator went wet towel in hand to CB and gave her a very mild whooping (considering Kitty is about half the size of CB, it must have been a very entertaining sight) the electrics ho were working in the hallways all saw that, and who knows what went through their minds. Anyways. Later that night there was a little accident involving plates falling on CB's head wit some assistance of Kitty's (that was really an accident we're really not that insane as to throw glass objects at each other… at least for now… ;P)and CB now is rather intimidated by little Kitty. Monkey? Funny word…. I think, monkeys can't climb using their tails. They have some fingers on their paws. Hello!!! I'm mad girl))) bugaga….. And I find it highly amusing. A few days later they finally talked and decided to divorce each other as roommates (like you divorce a lab partner, you know the deal. It's a messy business as you might know.) now they don’t talk to each other anymore and it's a very funny situation whenever I go to visit them. As I have no quarrels with any of them I'll talk to them all, yet Kitty and Three refuse to communicate with CB and she with them. Though, surprisingly, I have marked that she's been trying to be nicer to me recently, which I'm attributing to the fact that she wants to have at least one person in the group who doesn’t hat her guts, which I'm willing to be. I've no intentions of wasting my time with these things. So yeah.

(donkeys are fun, too. They have 4 legs, one fuzzy tail, and they cry "eaaaw….". Donkey is a "oslek" in russian. Or "Ishak". They are used instead of horses and bulls. But they are so weak, and I'm very touched when I see them. They are so sweet….. )

Ok… now to explain the random animal things… THANT WAS NOT ME! There's a crazy dude next to me periodically taking over my computer, and writing random shit. So don’t blame me for it. (though I'd not mind as much if it was about llamas, but that's another matter.) anyways. Toodles!!

Love you all