“Hear You Me” by Jimmy Eat World… “And if you were with me tonight, I’d sing to you just one more time. A song for a heart so big, God wouldn’t let it live. May angels lead you in. Hear you me my friends. On sleepless roads the sleepless go. May angels lead you in…”

Je suis mort. Well, at least I was. I’ll start by telling you that one of the following is true. Choose one and I will confirm the correct one in due course:
1. I ate more junk than usual and lost weight over the last few days.
2. I finished every single tiny component of my assignments.
3. I saved a naive baby seal from going “clubbing.”

I hardly ever get stressed. Please don’t take that as a boasting of my fortitude, but it even surprises me that the only thing I have gotten stressed over this year is work. This time, it hit a little harder (probably not helped by brain burps and sentimental songs). I was maintaining a good balanced diet as usual but got thrown to the milky side of temptation when my brain was crying out for more sugar and the only palatable things in my possession were muesli and chocolate bars. Whilst muesli is a great addition to one’s diet for good movement, chocolate serves to do only one thing… make one more euphoric about living a life where one weighs a little bit more than previously. And yes, I’m only human so succumb I will.

In the process of breaking my good diet, what extra ballast did I have to show for it? Minus 2 kg (Well done for choosing option 1 earlier)! I couldn’t believe using chocolate as part of a non-calorie controlled diet helped in adiosing some of the blubber. I must have been burning off more calories than I thought whilst sitting on my butt and making my brain do somersaults through flaming hoops of code, to the crack of Sun Microsystems‘ whip. My love handles are going the way of the dodo. All hail the mighty cocoa bean!

Yogi was telling me about the London version of Craigslist. You see, in the US it’s actually a valuable resource used to network and net work. If you browse through the lists of say San Francisco, you’ll find it awash with job offers for development projects and various temping positions. However, in an attempt to port this useful resource across the Atlantic, something went slightly wrong. It seems that over here, people use it to network in some other sort of way and get work doing different kinds of jobs. The section that contains the most posts would have me believe that the London version was merely a poor man’s eBay cum dating/casual meeting service. Yogi tested out its sensitivity to P-verts by posing as a sweet 20-something girl and to our unsurprise he was contacted by several sexual individuals (of the deviant kind). So I learned two things. One, that Craigslist needs to sort out its mission plan for the UK (namely the humble mecca for all things that is London). Two, Yogi needs to become a Police officer or stop that posing as a girl business.

Here’s a snapshot of a typical scene in my room during the last few days. Before someone goes singing to my parents, let me add that the packet sitting on top of my Java textbook contains playing cards and not cigarettes (I’m not ready to kill myself just yet). I pretty much finished my assessments at least well enough to not warrant a beating from the underside of a spatula or a shoutdown from higher powers with itchy trigger fingers. The only unagreeable side-effect is that my bottom has morphed into a surface resembling the planar side of a flat tyre. I won’t go any further into that, because quite frankly, this is not that sort of site (though the extra cash would be nice ^_^).

The one good thing about commuting southwards from here is watching the scenery change. I’m fortunate to be living in London because the main motorway connecting London to other nearby cities becomes heavily loaded at peak hours of the morning. Whilst I am afforded the opportunity to speed, the traffic in the opposite direction is only given the choice of coming to a standstill. I never realised how desolate some areas of the motorway were either till it came to driving home through the darkness. A good portion of the motorways are well lit but there’s a section that is shrouded in fields of complete darkness. I always liked night driving. Maybe it’s because of the isolation and masking of one’s surroundings, but there’s something tranquil about rolling by headlight, guided through the night by the flickering of cat’s eyes.

I found out my biggest driving peeve yesterday. It’s when I’m driving fairly fast and a car a few metres in front of me in the adjacent lane indicates to enter my lane. This practically forces me to slow down significantly via sub-emergency-stop procedures and simultaneously curse under my breath at the imbecile before me who doesn’t believe in checking their mirrors before indicating. I happen across this situation more often than I’d like and each time it happens I lose a piece of my halo, but it can be so dangerous when we’re in national speed limit zones. I think the next time it happens, I will start banging the horn and waving my fist as I pass. Possibly the second most annoying ill-practice on the roads is indicating to change lanes when you’re already halfway into the next lane and then proceeding to take your sweet time in completing the lane change so that you hog 2 lanes for a few hundred metres. Is there any logic in that action? The last important thing I learned yesterday was that in the context of driving, a full bladder is the devil. It will encourage you (often successfully) to speed.

Since being homebound for the past few days I never looked out the window, but now doing so, I see that the trees have become stripped of their leaves. When I last took photographs, leaves slumbered ubiquitously on branches, but now they sleep on the ground. Winter is definitely in our midst. When I’m out I can feel it on my skin, which becomes gooselike in nature and watch as my perspiration passes into the afterlife via a delicate mist.