Addicted!

Two habits I'm addicted to and can't seem to change - reading before sleep and music which working.
The first thing started pretty recently since I don't have time to read in the day I started reading before bed and now I find I cant fall asleep unless i read for half - 1 hour. Even if I feel realy tired and its 2am I will just toss and turn till I quit put on the lights and read for a while. Whats the problem with this ... well just that I read mainly thrillers - not exacly bedtime material - as a result I cant put down the book cause its gotten realy interesting hence end up not getting enough sleep and even if I put down the book I end up having violent dreams. Second problem is that if I'm realy busy and didn't have time to go to the library and i run out of reading material I'm doomed. Well its not too bad cause I'm capable of rereading stuff and i just resort to picking up something I own.
Now the music has been a thing since ALs ... I would always study with earphones in my ears even though my mother highly frowned upon this. I can't study in silence ... if there is no music I generally transfer to the outdoors where at least I can hear vehicles and such. The library is my least productive place. Didn't have such problem with this till recently when I realized i had no music at work. Had to contend with the online channels which you cant tweak very well according to your mood. thank goodness for the new computer and I've been able to put my own stuff. This one not such a problem except when people want me on the phone and I dont hear it ring. But a lot of people are like me and listen to music so our Lab Officer generally screams out the name. Thank goodness I haven't developed the habit of singing along too.

Scary Meeting

Went for my first weekly meeting with the Phd group. Boy was that scary. We had two presentations by a post doc and a senior student and our proff kept asking questions throughout and not only that the people in the audience who had related research also got asked questions. I guess since it was my first meeting he didn't ask anything from me but I got a good taste of what to expect. Half the things were also going over my head and I knew I had a lot of stuff to catch up on. I felt better when the others also made mistakes cause well although thats not a nice thing to feel at least I know I'm not alone in my ignorance. My turn to present is fast approaching ... next week ... and i don't even know what to present. I guess I'll review some paper but I'm not sure how it will relate to my project - wait a minute I dont even have a well defined scope even!

Movies...

I've had the misfortune to see some bad movies recently - and considering 2 of them I wanted to see its a bit dissapointing. Well here're my thoughts ...

Doom

At the risk of sounding cheesy this movie could only be summarised by what my friend said "It was 'doomed' from the start!!" True it was modelled after a popular(?) video game and I wasnt expecting much in the lines of story etc...but is it asking too much for it be at least entertaining /have some action/special effects? I knew it had hit rock bottom when "the rock" sees a gun ona computer screen named BFG and then goes in to get it and says "Biig Fat Gun!!!" seriously! Ok that was indeed the worst movie I have ever seen.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Ok so now i'm big fan of the books and this one happened to be my favourite so I was expecting it to be good plus it should have been scarier/darker since this is the first time the 'good guys' start dying. But no the director in the interest of keeping the film the correct length cut up the story and left out some nice bits and characters. Ok yeah so i get it you need to keep the movie a decent length but why leave in romanticizing bits which aren't thaat relevant or interesting and cut out the details of the maze and dragons and such. It was less scary than chamber of secrets too. Oh well it wasn't the biggest tragedy of a movie I guess and it was still enjoyable and if you hadn't read the book you might like it.

Pride and Prejudice

Ok i'm talking about the latest release here. I saw the bbc version earlier and loved it and I was looking forward to this - ok even from the trailers I wasn't too impressed with Mr.Darcy and he looked neither imposing nor aloof nor proud but I went into it undaunted. But once the movie started and we had the first glimpse of Mr.Darcy I knew all he was was depressed. Again there was condensation and stuff but this was ok. What failed was the characters themselves and some of the modernisation. Little slip ups like Charlotte saying she was twenty-seven instead of seven and twenty could be overlooked by people not familiar with the book/times but seriously could anyone realy think Mr.Bingley saying"ass" or Liz discussing her love with her father were normal for Austens times? As for the characters - the girls including Liz and Jane were like giggly teenyboppers, Mr Bennet seemed very cruel, Mr Darcy depressed, Mr. Bingley himself a giggly teenager and the list goes on - only maybe Mrs. Bennet remained in character. But what realy did it was the final scene - no words to describe it - I wonder who came up with it!! I heard they had removed it from the UK release and I think good thing too or those audiences would have thrown tomatoes at the screen as for us we were just convulsed with laughter.

stuff...

Felt like clearing my head a little... Life seems to be progressing more these days... finally decided on the phd sup...sent in the application too and have begun on lit review...Thats been quite fast considering I had no clue some weeks back. Proffs on a conference though so haven't met up with him or anything often...wonder if he expects some sort of summary of what i've done so far when he get back :|.
Wish everything else was running as smoothly as this. But I guess other peoples lives are out of my hands-but why oh why does it seem to be out of their hands too.
Decided not to go home finally. Waited and waited for my dad to give me word ... and then when he finally did it was rather late ... though I guess I could have still gone but I'd only just talked to the new sup and couldn't immediately up and leave. PlusI guess I subconsciously have a second reason which my perceptive friend pounced on. I do want to go home a lot considering I havent been back for a long time now - want to see the new place...catch up on the few friends left there before they leave too. But I do sort of dread having to meet extended family members and such. Last time was akward enough and I'm two years older now oh dear!! Well shall be going sometime in the near future hopefully.
No christmas or new year plans as yet...but considering all my closest friends will also be here we will come up with something. Must go and see the big christmas tree again - am i the only one who gets excited about it? Couple of movies lined up to see...esp narnia - must read it before i go!! couple of others which i may get coerced into going on the account of my friends' tastes. Saw the new HP already - was pretty let down cause I was expecting something much better as it was my favourite book. I will go and see the next one still though - one can hope. Going to see P&P today - heard from various sources that its quite nice but my friend and I having seen the TV are pretty convinced it cant be as good - (that we watched 3 times in 2 weeks despite it being 5 hours long!!) - and no way can this Mr.Darcy be good as Collin Firth - that guy was born to be Mr. Darcy! but still going with an open mind ;)
Lab has been pretty quiet these days considering quite a few of the proffs are on leave so the students come in later and stuff - wish I had such luck - I guess with the perks I there must be some downsides too. People are also trying to clear left over leave that they cant carry forward and such. Managed to configure comp to the settings and stuff that I like so now working on it has become a joy and not a frustration.
hmm thoughts are not coming out any more - guess my head is more cleared now

Bye old computer ... welcome new computer !!

My office computer is being replaced - finally!
Well the old one was a compaq P2 272MHz with 128 RAM running windows 98!!! decent hard disk space though 10 Gb, but that was its only normal point. Crashed all the time and would freeze if I ran more than 2 programs.
Now for the new one - isn't exactly top of the line but its still the best computer i've owned (or had permanent use of as in this case). Heehee its a Dell P4 3Ghz, 504Mb RAM (hmm strange number) and it has 80Gb hardisk amd finally WinXp - also came with an optical mouse. Runs smooth as silk so far.
Only crappy thing is that the new one doesnt have a zip drive - not realy that necessary normally but most of the systems we use have zip drives and its convenient to transfer data this way, rather than floppys and thumb drives are a pain with things that dont have plug n play or worse no usb. Hmm lets see maybe we can connect up an external one.
Ok must sit and install stuff into this now...just went and got admin access to it.