Went there, spoke to my friends on the way there who were going home. Firstly, I saw Leanne walking towards me surrounding by about 5 cute girls. After saying hi to her, I then saw Jamie and his new found friend, Mike for about 10 minutes, talking about the usual kind of stuff and how there's so many nice girls on his course and those nice girls were the ones I'd just seen with Leanne.
I then seen Stan and Claire and Claire asked me if I was coming out on Friday, which I said no to, but that I was going to come out next Friday instead. I also suggested that since Jamie, Stan and I are with an entirely new group of people and that we'd be making friends with those people, that it would be a good idea if we invited a few of them out from each of our classes. If Jamie invited four people out from his class and Stan done the same along with me, that would be 12 new people there and then! However, then there's me and my friends, consisting of me, Stan, Jamie, Dave, Fisher and Claire, so there's another 6 people, bringing the total to 18! However! There's then my friend's friends, which consists of at least Lee, Mike (Jamie's 'old' friend) and maybe two more, bringing the grand total to 22 people for a night out on Friday! Amazing.
Of course, that's a generous rather than conservative number, as i'm sure not everyone will be inviting 4 people out from their class. I'm going to try and do so though, there's at least Abigail that I'll be inviting, along with another two who I've been speaking to on MSN, getting to know them as well as Abigail. She gave me their MSN addresses and then we had a group conversation, so we were all socialising together.
So yes, back to my journey to college and I got to my class first, since I was about 15 minutes early. It was pretty damn hot outside and I'd just walked up a large hill. Of course, most people would not sweat doing this amount of walking, but i'm incredibly unfit. I sat down on the floor and took my jacket off. Having a heavy black jacket on does not help when it's hot outside.
After about 10 minutes, more people started to arrive and stand outside the classroom, but none of them were from my course. I found it amusing that one of them asked if I was Bronek, the tutor. I don't know whether I should take that as a compliment or insult really! Since I wasn't part of their class, I felt as if I didn't have the 'right' to talk to them and chose to simply watch and listen to what they were doing around me. They seemed like a great group of people. They were just really friendly to each other and seemed very intellectual - my kind of people! I was quite disappointed that these people were not the people I'd be spending the next two years with.
Bronek arrived five minutes later, explaining to me that I was in another classroom and that Brian would be taking me instead. He directed me to the Mac room, which is nearby the room I was currently waiting outside. The Mac room is basically just that. A room full of Macs. About 15 workstations altogether. It's a nice room, because it never gets hot, but never cold either. The fans on the Macs themselves keep the room at a nice temperature.
Five minutes later after waiting on my own, Abigail arrived and then some other guy on my course did. I'm still not really on name terms with anyone besides Abigail so as they arrived, I asked what their name was, introduced myself and asked if they were competent with any of the programs we'd be using. Sadly, most of them said no. About 5 turned up in total, before Brian himself did and let us into the Mac room. Another 3 or 4 arrived soon after he did.
The next hour was simply about filling in the enrollment form. There's a workstation in the Mac room that for the past year I've claimed as mine and so I sat there while filling out the form. It wasn't intentional, but I guess on some sort of subconcious level it was, that the workstation is on its own table and therefore seperated from the rest of them, meaning that i'm seperated from the rest of the class. It's not like i'm miles away of course, but the fact that i'm sitting at a seperate table makes me look like an outsider. It doesn't bother me that much really. However, what did bother me a little was the fact that because I had chosen to sit here instead of with Abigail and the people she was now talking to, I was not getting the crucial getting-to-know-you time in with anyone, which has proven in past cases to be a Very Bad Thing.
At 2pm, Brian told us to all go down to enroll. On the way down, I started talking to the guy who Brian said was from Zimbabwe, but it was Zimbabwe, it was Uganda. I asked him for his name, which he told me, but I've forgotten. I asked him where he was from and then said that I thought it was a long way for him to come for a course. I don't know why, but I got the feeling that he was thinking "You're weird", as I was talking to him. He just seemed a little uncomfortable talking to me. Not shy or anything, simply not interesting in talking to me.
Once I had directed the class to the enrollment place (since no one but me knew where it was and Brian was still trailing behind), we all sat down in what was already a busy hall. There were about five rows of 12 seats and although most of the front ones were taken, there were a lot of gaps. This is exactly how it was last year. I had told Bronek the day before about this and he said that it wouldn't be a problem this year. Yeah right.
Thankfully however, after going through this once already, I knew that even after waiting God knows how long in this unfair queue, that the person at the front of the queue who takes your details would only ask me for my income support proof to waive the �10 fee and therefore couldn't process my application. So, I told Brian this and he checked with the person, before coming back to me and saying that I was right and that I didn't have to wait in the queue which I was very glad about.
I asked Brian if he had five minutes to spare to fill in a form so I can get some help with travel expenses and he said sure so we went back up to the Mac room together. On the way, I asked him if he was glad to be back at college and he said that since he's used to getting to up at 6am every morning for work (he does contract work, along with teach), college to him, is like having a break from that and that he was glad to be back. I said that I had been eager to get back as well.
Once in the Mac room, he told me that he'd told the tutors about me, saying that he's said "there's a guy on the course that knows what he's doing". He said that he'd told them to tell me what I could be getting on with while the rest of them learn the basics, but that they couldn't physically give me the brief because then it'd look unfair to the rest of the group. Fair enough I thought, just as long as I don't have to go through the basics of basically using a computer again! I thanked him for telling the tutors about me. I appreciated it.
While he was filling the form in, Ed came in the room. I said hi to him and I swear that man can be so arrogant sometimes. Instead of saying "Hi", back, he says "What are you doing here?". How bloody unpolite can you get? "You're not on his course are you?", was his next sentence. Yeah Ed, you keep being like that and make me hate you even more. Oh and by the way, he didn't even mean it sarcastically, which actually kind of hurt, especially when Ed has already seen my work on computers. But regardless, he's a graphics' tutor, not a multimedia tutor. He then proceeded to sit down next to Brian while he was filling out the form for me and said "Do you have five minutes to go through this?". Now, as he could clearly see, Brian was helping me out by filling in the form for me, yet he didn't have the decency to simply wait another two mintues for him to fill it out and then I'd be done. Brian said exactly that to him.
It didn't stop there though. Brian had to fill out the times that I was in each day and I knew that it was 9-4 so I told him that and Ed chips in saying "More like 9:30am", insinuating that I turn up late to lessons, WHICH I DO NOT DO. Over the course of the year, I've been late (by no more than five minutes) around three times. I've often been at the classroom before Ed himself and he has the cheek to insinuate that I turned up to his classes late when he himself didn't even have the decency to inform us that he wouldn't be turning up at all, when we all turned up on the last day because he specifically said we had to. He didn't have the decency to just tell someone and let us know and so we spent an hour simply sat in the classroom doing absolutely nothing, waiting for Ed to arrive.
I told him that I was hardly ever late for his classes. He paused for a second, then retorting with "Yeah, when you turn up at all". Fucking hell! So bloody unsupportive or just polite! Instead he takes every oppurtunity to say something bad about me and he was like that with everyone else on his course too. It's fucking disgusting the way he treats people.
I let it go, however, choosing to simply try and ignore it. Brian completed the form for me and I thanked him, before saying goodbye to him and then Ed. I heared Brian say goodbye back. I didn't hear Ed. I even said it again just incase he hadn't heared me and waiting that extra second as I was closing the door behind me to hear him say it, but he didn't. What a bastard. I'm very glad he's no longer my tutor.
I went back down to the enrolling hall to check out where the rest of my class had gotten to in the queue and it wasn't very far. I told Abigail that I didn't have to wait there and that I was now going home. I then told the rest of my class and said goodbye to them, before walking out.
On the way back to the station, I stopped off at Furniture Gone Mad, as I was in desperate need of the toilet. Only Laura was there on her own. She was puzzled as to why I was there, but I said I just needed the toilet. Once I'd been though, she asked me if I'd stay in the shop while she went to get something to eat so I agreed.
In the time she was gone, a few people walked in and out of the shop, but there was this one woman who was interested in buying a wardrobe and some drawers. I asked her if she needed any help and then I had to look as if I actually knew what I was talking about, which I clearly didn't. She was asking me all of these questions about the stuff she was looking at and I didn't have any answers for her. She then went downstairs to look at some more stuff and again, asked me hard questions! She was in the shop for at least 10 minutes doing this and after she had made up her mind that she wanted something in particular, needed to know a few more things about it, which I didn't know. I told her that if she'd just wait five minutes that someone would be back and they'd answer her questions. That five minutes seemed like ages though. It's very uncomfortable having a customer sit there waiting and you're supposed to know the answer to her questions.
I called Laura after a few minutes to check where she was and she said she was on her way and another minute later she came into the shop. I explained to her what the woman wanted and then I let Laura deal with it. She called Peter though, since she didn't have the answers either. The woman said she'd be back the next day to pay.
A cute girl and her mum came in and went downstairs to look at the same and I went down to see if they needed any help. They asked me if we had anything in the same style as a wardrobe or something and again, didn't really have any answers for them so I just told Laura to deal with it. After that I decided to go home and get out of there.
I emailed Olga, from Mainsteam a few days ago asking if she could help with finding me a job on the days i'm not in college. She said she could. She said she'd be in touch again when she has more time and information. I'd rather have her help in finding a real job than work for Gary. I don't feel like I have a job working in that shop. It makes me feel crap.
Hana left for university on Friday. She came online on Thursday and I got a chance to say goodbye to her. Sadly, out of the three halls at her university (Stirling) only two of them have internet access and she got the one that doesn't. This means that i'm not going to be able to speak to one of the only people who I love speaking to. I don't know when I'll be able to talk to her again. It makes me feel like I've lost my friend. I'm really excited for her though. I hope she makes lots of friends and has a great time there, I just wish that I could be kept in the loop about what 's happening. To that end, i'm going to email her often and hopefully when she has a chance, she'll email me back and tell me what's happening in her life. She said that she'll be coming home at the end of terms and stuff like that so i'm hoping that it won't be as if I won't talk to her at all for the next two years. Hopefully.
That's about all of my news for now. College starts for real on Tuesday and i'm looking forward to it. My sleeping patterns have been turned on their head over the past few days though and I've been waking up at 4pm so in the next 48 hours I somehow have to put them right so I can wake up and not feel dead at 7am on Tuesday.
