One one things

I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to pull an all-nighter, it’s been so long since i’ve done one. The last couple of weeks have been excessively hectic bc finally all my slacking has caught up with me and end of term papers have begun rearing their ugly heads. I just finished my first presentation over here and it went alrite I thought, except the part of having to work like a biatch to get it done. It’s a massive topic, explanations of the collapse of the global economy during the interwar years, also it’s really hard to structure a nice coherent answer. Presentations for IPE are done between two ppl, and I was sharing the burden with a Nordic dude who reminds me lots of that backstreetboy who used to have the mushroom haircut (I know his name but i’m trying to be cool by acting oblivious). Annoyingly the Nordy had already got a good knowledge of the issue in his Monetary class so he had an advantage in splitting the question. He took the mainstream view and I had to fill in the gaps and try to explain the anomalies. Bugger.

So the past week i’ve been buried in early 20th Century political economy literature and surprisingly enough it’s been mildly interesting. We tend to underestimate the power of history a lot. There are an infinite number of lessons to be learnt and the advantage of hindsight is one of the nicest things to have, I must edit my letter to Santa and see what he can do. Several years down the line ppl will look through history books and pass judgements upon us the way that we pass judgements on the past. I was reading about economic policy in the interwar goldstandard years and thinking what a bunch of thick gits, sticking to a fixed exchange regime and raising interest rates while in an economic downturn. Historians in the future will probably look at SL’s recent election and have a good chuckle. But even worse, they’ll laugh at our dress sense and hair-dos (or don’ts), like the way we laugh at the ’80s, they’ll laugh at our taste in music, well some of us laugh at it right now. I do hope they have some good things to say about us too.

Anyway work moved on until last night when around 9pm I realised that I hadn’t even finished my reading, and I still had to organize my notes into a coherent structure. 12 hours to go. I had a midnight snack later on, topped up with coffee, by this point I had just finished reading the last paper and begun giving structure to that haphazard bunch of scribbles. It’s usually around this time that the urge to play Hearts and Minesweeper and have a chat on MSN are most pertinent, I tend to indulge every 20mins or so. Speaking of Hearts, the programmer deserves a pat on the back, almost everytime I try to shoot the moon the computer players seem to double guess me, I have no idea how it’s done, amazing. Around 2 I ran into a crisis and had to re-read a large chunk of a paper by a guy called Horowitz, as far as I’m concerned he was on about a bunch of cock that I could make no sense out of. But I had to work my way through it bc this particular tutor loves to grill. And you can’t dodge with him, he doesn’t let up until either you admit failure or you come up with something fully baked. But I finally finished around 5.30 in the morning leaving me a little over an hour and a half of sleep. But that’s quite pointless bc as soon as my head hit the pillow arguments were running through my head, questions, potential answers, nearest windows to jump out of, they all appear at once. I didn’t have time to dream, soon as I hit REM i hear the worst sound in the world, my alarm. Put snooze for what was supposedly 5 mins but I could swear someone changed it to 5 seconds. Up and about by 7.15, out of the house by 7.30, still pitch black and freezing, and I forgot my scarf and gloves. Bugger.

Get to the library, make a whole heap of photocopies of my presentation, I couldn’t be bothered doing powerpoint bc at 5am I just didn’t have the energy. Walked early into class, must be some kind of record, and I was feeling quite awake. It’s the last IPE class for the term so attendance is abysmal. The tutor ambles in and makes a B line towards me and says; “Hey, you know that Nordy isn’t coming right?” The bastard. He’s bailed on me. Never trust a Scandinavian. Thankfully he said that he’ll look after Nordy’s part of the presentation and that I can go ahead with mine. So I went ahead and it went alrite despite the fact that I was relying on Nordy’s paper to give my arguments some form of structure and template. The first question I was asked was if I was trying to answer a question, which is a bit embarassing bc I’ve just spent half an hour giving an answer. But to be fair it was just a haphazard bunch of theories with a semblance of empircal justification attached to them. I got through the grilling reasonably alrite so I walked home rather content. It’s a mara pretty day, shame that i’m going to spend the better part of it catching up on my REM. Two more essays due by this Friday. Bugger.

Thought for the day: If it is my human right to be able to work in Colombo, Kandy or Jaffna as I please, why is it not my human right to work in London, New York or Adis Ababa as I please?