The Adventures, Mishaps and Musings of Me

If you type the words "how to" into google and hold off typing anything more, a little box comes up with (presumably) the ten most common searches beginning with "how to". I was amused by the following list, replicated here (exactly) for your own enjoyment:

-How to write a CV
-How to kiss
-How to get pregnant (!!!)
-How to lose weight fast
-How to make money
-How to get rid of spots
-How to lose weight (twice?)
-How to make pancakes
-How to get a six pack (Yeah, because only girls have an insecure body image...)

Are these really the top things that the human race wants to be able to learn to do? Most of them all revolving around ones looks? It has to be said, we really are an insecure lot...

I saw this video yesterday with my friends (both Italians and non-Italians) and we just laughed and laughed and laughed. Everything in it, every comparision, is unbelievably true (especially all things roads/queues/smoking/beauracracy)! Seriously, watch this video and you will understand how things work over here in l'Italia so much better!

When is an egg too organic? 

When it contains a half formed chick foetus.  Ew. 

On another note, I have this strange and happily optimistic feeling that this is going to be a good academic year.  I'm not quite sure why.  Perhaps, it's because the year is less maths orientated.  Perhaps, it's becuase I so far like all of my classes and professors.  Perhaps, it's because I have all written exams instead of hideous orals.

Or perhaps it's just that a malformed chick foetus must be an omen of a rising grade point average.   

So last night I really got in touch with my Milanese side and went to a big Vogue sponsored fashion show.  Basically an excuse for the big brand shops to sell clothes, shoes, belts, bags, etc. in an even more exclusive and expensive manner then they usually do.  And why was I involved in such an event? 

Free champagne!  Not to mention vino rosso and cheesy-crackery-thingys.  For free champagne I will happily look at any model wearing a leopard skin pudding bowl on her head.  After the third glass, heck, I'll even try one on.

And from the fashion show, we did not leave empty handed!  No, I didn't get a leopard skin pudding bowl, but instead five champagne flutes, two wine glasses and two cocktail glasses were pinched  salvaged for the good of pennyless studenthood.  For added class, we even carried them home on the tram at 1am in the morning.  Suffice to say, many a strange look was received, but hey, dormitory parties are going to be a little more sophisticated from now on. 

My laptop lives!  Thankfully, I didn't lose absoloutly everything due to "Knoppix" a Linux based operating system that you can run off a CD, thus allowing me to go and rescue all the "important" stuff that I would have gone into a week long mope if they'd been lost before the enevitable hard drive wipe.

In other silly and strange observations, my Dad named the sat nav system "Jane".  My Mum is now incredibly jealous.  I am incredibly amused. 

The way to a productive afternoon is not to have several glasses of wine with ones lunch, and then have to spend the rest of the afternoon in a rather dilapitated state.  But then, considering I have a (no doubt unpleasant) dentist appointment, followed my little brother and sisters "sleepover party", one should start the day in the manner one plans to continue it.

So, I'm home in England again.  Uneventful journey, except for the strain of dragging 25kg from my dormitory in south Milan to the train station in north Milan, which morphed the short walk to the tram stop into a desert expedition and thus caused me to become a sweaty blob ready for the airport. Naturally, the bag I was using to transport my luggage had to have a broken handle and, of course, all the escalators in the Metro where out of order.  Fun times indeed!

I also managed to insult an elderly British couple on the plane by asking them, in Italian, if the seat next to them was free.  They stared at me in silence for the moment, then the women in tone of complete disgust said, "I beg your pardon!" as if I'd just uttered profanity at her.  This was my re-introduction to the British public.

In other news, I just got the results for a poetry competition I entered about a month ago and I won it!  I get to have my poem published in the sponsers summer edition of their poetry journal - huzzah for being able to claim myself as a "published poet"!   

You know I complained ages ago about having a mosquito bite on my eye lid?  How it was the most itchy, irratating thing in all itchy, irratating things ever?

Well, I stand corrected: Having a mosquito bite just under your eyelid is the most itchy, irratating thing in the history of all itchy, irrataiting things ever.

ARGH!!!

In other news today, I found out that I passed the accounting exam.  Yay for unexpectedly good grades.

Let's face it, 90% of fan fiction is utterly tedious teen trash.  Seemingly, no matter how much advice that is given, no matter how much you mention the existence of punctuation, sentence structure and the source material: Fic persists to suck majorly.  Because of this writing injustice, (but mostly to distract myself from revision) I have decided to take a stand (of no consequence) on the issue.  Ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure and amusement, I present the '30 Point Guide on How Not to Write Fan Fiction'.  Because what you can say in a constructive, friendly, helpful manner, can always be better said using condescending sarcasm.  

I think it shows how little I paid attention in accounting class by the amount of utterly bizzare spelling mistakes that are in my hand written notes.

Honestly, "Investory" instead of "Inventory".

"Cahe" (or perhaps "cake", I can't quite tell) instead of "cash".

"Prefredd" instead of "preferred" - what?!

Apparently, I was strung out on financial statements and lost the ability to form words.

I went to a Sicillian style lunch party today, which meant we started cooking at 1pm, started eating at 2pm and didn't stop eating until after 4pm and now it's past 9pm and I'm still stuffed and unable to walk, only waddle.

Oh, Italian and student life, I love you. 

Horror of horrors, I went shoe shopping in Milan... and came back with a pair of 40 Euro, real leather ankle boots.  The price is excellent for the quality and the fact that this is, of course, Milano.  The clear sign of a good quality pair of shoes is that they have the size and "made in Italy" engraved, ornately on the bottom instead of with a sticker. I think Milan has slowly corrupted my stance on "fashion is evil". It's not evil, it's just silly.

I have to say, the choice of wearing my most trampy pair of converses (with rips) to go shoe shopping in was a bad idea. As this caused many a shop attendent to come and try and usher me and my Russian millionare friend (who was trying to buy a leather bag for Uni with a budget of 500 Euros, but still the 800 Euro bag was tempting) out of an annoyingly large amount of shops. In the shop I purchased the shoes from, I'd found a pair I liked and so put my conversed foot on one of the "sitting blocks" to undo the laces in order to try on the shop's shoes and the shop attendent comes over to tell me not to put my foot up on the block.  Charming.  Then she realises that we are actually serious in buying shoes and becomes suck up to a vomit inducing degree.  Saying how she adores The Beatles and Queen and how the shops best leather comes from Russia.  Uh huh.  She did not say anything when I put my foot back on the block to relace my converses.  Honestly, it is moments like these when I wish my Italian was better in order to be more smart ass to prissy shoe shop workers.

After such a tedious day of shopping, it is then, of course, most necessary to attend mad Russian drinking parties involving The Wickerman, Playstation 3 driving games at 3am in the morning and extortianate amounts of hair gel.

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And photos. 

To buy the cheapest pair of smart shoes possible that I will be allowed into the opera with! 

...

In Milano, this is going to be tricky.

I love Milano and its random fashion/design/art exhibitions.  I love even more that at said fashion/design/art exhibitions free stuff is abundent!  Stickers, bags and caffine-overdose-coffee for the win!

Of course, such an afternoon could not be complete without being shouted at by an Italian woman who was most upset that I mistook her art for a sofa and procceded to sit down and put my grubby converses up on white leather.  Oops.  

Also, today I found out (theoretically) that it's an incredibly bad idea to mix spirits with caffine based drinks such as Red Bull.  Another oops.  A worse idea than even mixing a spirit with another spirit, apparently.  I can vouch for this.  Spirit + Red Bull = Hospital.

All LJ friends rush off to buy Red Bull and vodka.

In other news, I am totally excited for Saturday; I'm going to Torino/Turin to see the Italian musical of Notre-Dame de Paris!  I have two favourite books of all time and Notre-Dame de Paris is one of them, so the chance to get to see the musical (really famous in Italy and France) is utterly awesome beyond all sense and reason.

And will I be buying an overpriced programme all in Italiano with pretty pictures?  HELL YES!

Flying home tomorrow: Triple YES with chocolate easter eggs on top!

Though first I have to sit a Microeconomics exam tomorrow morning: Triple NO smothered in mathamatics that I don't understand.

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I must say, it is quite bizarre to be filled with utter dread and total excitement simultaneously. 

I must not postpone doing the washing until I've run out of underwear.

I must not postpone booking flight tickets until prices have sky rocketed.

I must not sit down in the park without checking for dog poop.  Ew.

I must remember to butter bread before spreading jam.

I must not develop unholy cravings for olives.
( I must cut my LJ Entries when they get too long... )

Always check sauce for mould before adding to pasta.  Also, cook using less pepper so smell of mould is not disguised untill placing said mouldy-sauce-pasta blindy into mouth...

Happy kind of belated 2009 everyone! 

I'm having a wonderful Christmas holiday at home in Kent; attending many wild family and "friends of family" parties, which mainly revolve around drunkenly playing board games.  Honestly, I drink more alchohol at home then I do at Uni!  The past two weeks have been somewhat a never ending swirl of wine and sherry.  Ah, it's been such fun!

Of course, this has had a nasty side effect (no, dear reader, not an omni-present hangover) in that studying has taken a slight back seat.  Not a good idea considering I have an exam session during January and February but, over Christmas, reading text books entitled such things as "European Contract Law" just isn't appealing.  Espicially when you have nearby Christmas presents to enjoy!

Ah, I love Christmas...  But, I hate exams in January.

A large part of being a student is creating and consuming major culinary disasters.  I am no exception to this rule.

Yesterday, I found a few packets of Angel Delight (for those of you who are not aware of Angel Delight:  You add the flavoured powder to milk, whisk it for five minutes and hey presto!  Sweet, mousse-like dessert!) that I had brought with me from England.  On seeing the packet, I immediately craved that artifically sweet yummyness.  There was only one problem:  We had run out of milk.  Coupled with the fact that it was 10pm (so no shops open) my dreams of Angel Delight seemed over.  Or at least they would be if I was a sane, reasnoble person.  Alas, I am not.

"Fine", I thought to myself, "I'll just use something else to substitute as milk," that is when my eye alighted on the pot of coffee whitner on the shelf.  You use coffee whitner as a substitute to milk in coffee, why not use it in Angel Delight?  Following that line of thought, I proceeded to pour out 300ml of water (the amount of milk needed) and mix it with many tea spoons of coffee whitner.  The result?  I had created something that looked like milk, yet tasted absoloutly foul.

Was I put off at this point?  Did I decide that this simply wasn't going to work and wait for the next day to come so I could buy milk? 

Nope:  "The taste doesn't matter, the chocolate flavoured Angel Delight powder will make it taste nice", I thought.  Stupidly.  So I added the chocolate powder and started to whisk.  And whisk.  And whisk.  And whisk.  20 minutes later and instead of becoming a creamy mousse, it had simply become chocolate gloop.  At this point I gave up on the hope of Angel Delight, but instead of dumping it down the sink, I decided to do something with my chocolate gloop creation.

"I'll add Shreddies to it and eat it as a chocolate cereal!"

Nauseating is an understatement.  The few mouthfuls of the chocolate-shreddie-gloop I had, before putting the whole lot in the bin (that leaked the next morning - my creation was coming back to haunt me!), made me feel utterly sick.  My stomach was punishing me for my culinary sins.

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Maybe I should have used less water and more coffee whitener?

On Friday I don't normally have lectures, but today I had the oppurtunity to go attend an extra lecture on "game theory" and I figured "what the heck, I might as well keep up the pretence of being a good economics student", so I forsaked the Friday lay in and got ready to go to Uni.  During the "getting ready" process I didn't once look out my bedroom window and even in the kitchen, making myself breakfast, I didn't look out the window to check the weather, admire the view or to see if the apocolypse had come yet.  I was oblivious to what was going on outside.

I grab my coat (luckily), zip down the elevator and start fumbling with my IPod while I walk out the doors of the apartment building -should I listen to Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell or The Misfit's Static Age? Choice made (Meatloaf) I bring my head up to realise I'm surrounded by a winter wonder land!

The look on my face probably resembled someone who has just entered their suprise birthday party, the lights have turned on and twenty people have bellowed "SURPRISE!!" at them.  I was happily gobsmacked!  And the day before I'd just learned how to talk about the weather in Italian - perfect! 

P.S. A post on underwear and yaoi will be coming soon to a live journal near you!