The jig of a head.

Habits die hard. Very hard.

My room is almost completely empty now. With the exception of a good set of clothes and several books, I am all alone.

While looking at an event dated 1st July, I wanted (and needed) to know which day of the week that was. I instinctively jigged my head up towards the wall, where I used to have my planner hanging, but it isn't there anymore.

There aren't any posters on the wall, or books on the shelves. The lamps are gone, and so are the rugs. Spartan scenes of hardship stricken characters more often have a cheery hue than this.

Sun rises into this warp, a blank canvass of what one's life is. I can live with less, but why would I, when I can live with more.

The pandering traveller with a torn rucksack, his feet adorned by worn shoes, and his once youthful face as riddled with wrinkles from the sun as train lines crossing the soils of Britain. He has less, but he might have more.

Who is it that mandates, what is more or what is less, when it comes to something as simple as space, more is more and less is less.

Tragic.

Its half 2. Just spent the last 4 ish hours in the sitting room with half the house, den and tom talking about uni life, work, uni, and the rubbish we used to get up to in first year.

Even though the conversation pretty much revolved around university and how it has affected us in the last 3 years, we failed to address how it changed us. Isn't a first class answer really.

Yet, through inference, we all know and can obviously see that these 3 years have dramatically changed us.

Without being pedantic or condescending, but being here in the UK, and mincing about with the mingers that I hang out/live with has completely changed the way I think, act and behave drastically. For better or for worse? I'd like to think its the former.

I was recently reacquainted with someone from days of old on facebook, and as I was looking through the photos posted on facebook, I could only think of 1 word; Tragic.

Looking through the photos, and reading those little commentaries of photos at the bottom, that was all I could think of; how tragic this was.

Here was a reasonably well educated person by Singapore's standards (by far surpassing average standards in the world), a teacher, and a mentor to many, still caught up in what was seemingly an activity brewed from 10s of years ago as a teenager, still unable to very much move on. Life did grow from whence it came, but it remains stagnant and plaid.

I know it sounds amazingly harsh, but 10 years ago, as a teenager, I definitely expected alot more from this person, and I expected the best, as much as it was expected of me.

Religion plays a big part in both our lives, but I now stop allowing religion to take over my rational thought. I allow myself to first be the geologist, before I even allow myself vaguely to be identified as a catholic, because I believe that a couple of old caucasian men should not determine how I interpret a set of specific texts for living my life, and doing my work.

Seeing somebody, whom I thought to be an intelligent and mature individual to immerse themselves that deeply in the religion such that it surrounds their every being brings to me the shock of remembering that once upon a time, I had probably have had the same set of christian utopic ideals.

I still believe in everything the Nissin creed decrees, and everything the Gospel has to tell us, but I find it difficult to find faith in that set of utopic ideals that protestants, or modern christians perpetuate in this good earth.

I don't want to talk about it anymore. Its making me feel dark. Dark, is the lies of men.

Can't believe we're at this big ugly junction.

Biding time. Thats my occupation now. I am biding my time. Waiting. Waiting for what?

The perfect wind, the perfect sail, blue peter. That funded place in leeds, that job in MMU, that position as a mud logger, that contract in Australia, that PhD in Canberra. The Blue peter.

But no one knows when that elusive flag will be raised and the man-of-wars sail out to battle what will be the rest of my life, so now, I'm just sitting on my floor, biding my time. Slowly bleeding money and life away.

Patience.

Why I don't want to leave Britain.

Life is made easier with you,
Through exams, parks and barbeques.
Log in, plugged in, turned up,
Tune in, surf it, play up.

I fucking love spotify. Can't imagine my life without it. That is the sole reason why I don't want to leave Britain!

I really shouldn't be here.

I should be studying for my last exam. The last ever exam in a long long time. LAST. L A S T. I can't believe it.

Time flies. Its frightful. 3 years of taking the piss has passed. We've properly taken the piss in the last 3 years, forfeiting meals to get awfully drunk. Impromtu pub crawls from university to home that end up in someone else's house passed out on the floor at 3 am. And all that library-ness. Lets see... 3 FUCKING MONTHS OF 9 - 8PM (AT LEAST) LIBRARY LIFE, EVERYDAY MONDAY TO SUNDAY. thats 3rd year for you. January and February and November were no less than hellish.

IT took 3 years of training to get to this stage.. where you can chemically define the bowels of the earth, identify any igneous or sedimentary rock type at a whim, describe the geological history of an area just from a couple of fist sized rocks, list the principal stresses that act on a faulted region, and draw the finite strain ellipsoids for a deformed rock, oh yes, and for people like denise, pass out (without fail) in someone else's sitting room everytime we go out.

So, now. last exam. Not worried. 2 essays to write, one on the hypothesis of quaternary geomorph, and the other on quaternary dating techniques. covered erm. 1. oops.

scored a brilliant mark for the practical bit. thats thirty-something-ish percent of the module. MCQ is 20%, and the rest, 40%. all i've got to get is 25 out of 40 for my essays for a first class grade in this module. this is getting rather ridiculous.

Oh. but i do need to do well to cover the shit marks we're all going to get for that horrific sed and strat practical with seismics.

It was the worse exam since global tectonics last year. Almost like fishing for a needle in a hay stack set on fire, with a broken arm, with the BNP shooting at you, and prof rutter telling you dirty jokes.

what are we going to do next year is a question that keeps coming up, especially amid all the "you have not been selected", "we are not hiring", "you have a strong application, BUT", "WORLD DOOM".. not very encouraging.

There are places that speak,
telling the stories of us and them
a village asleep loaded with dream
an oceann flicking its pages over the sand.
Eventually we reply,
a conversation of place and page over time,
inscribing the map so that each in turn,
might hold the line.

- - - - - -

The finals loom, not loom, they flood. They surround me, like creatures of dark mills, and cast shadows over my head. They are, indeed, dark days.

I was once told that having a degree meant that I had the world at my feet. I always believed it to be true. On the contrary, it seems as though, I now am at the feet of the world.

I scarcely believe it to be true that I have to now choose my life to what and where there are jobs. I cannot say, I wish to stay, because that wouldn't happen, and they would say nay.

Where will I be?

If you ever believed in God,

You'd better thank him now, because if I were in a less obliging mood, I would have twatted your face with a mallet, no doubt.