I woke up around 10:30am and called Alice a few minutes later to see if she was still coming. I also asked her if instead of meeting at 1pm like we had agreed, could we meet at 2pm instead and she was fine with that. I then called Jamie to see if he was coming and he said he was so I told him where and when.
I got to town a little late and made my way to where I was meeting Alice. On my way there, I bumped into Jamie and we walked together. Alice wasn't where we were planning to meet so I called her and she said she was waiting for the rain to go off before she wanted to walk through town to meet us. Pft, it's only a bit of rain!
So, me and Jamie went to look inside HMV for a few minutes. When we headed out again, a girl and a guy walked towards us and Jamie said hi to the guy. I didn't know either of them, but I did recognise the girl. I've seen her around college quite a few times and I happen to think she's one of the most attractive girls I've seen since I began my course in September. Of course, not knowing her, I can hardly just go up to her and introduce myself.
Jamie started talking to the guy as if he knew him.
"Oh, were you at the AJ's last night?", I inquired.
"Yeah", the guy replied.
"What's your name?"
"Jamal"
"Hey, I'm Neil"
I took the oppurtunity to introduce myself to the girl I had been wanting to introduce myself to for months.
"What's your name?"
"Jasmin"
"Jasmin? You don't know Dave do you?"
"Who?"
"Dave Wilcox," Jamie joined in.
"I...don't know?," she replied. She looked at me confused and perhaps a bit freaked out.
"It's just that he knows someone called Jasmin and I thought it might be you"
Dave had often said that he did indeed know a girl named Jasmin. I remember him showing me a picture of her on his phone as well, although it was quite blurred. However, I'm sure it's the same Jasmin.
We stood by the exit of HMV for a few minutes talking or rather, Jamie talked to Jamal and I stood there with him not talking. I got the feeling from Jasmin that she wanted to leave our company as soon as possible. However, I was incredibly glad that I now indirectly 'knew' Jasmin. I had been wanting to say hi to her for months and now that I just did, it felt like I had accomplished something amazing.
Me and Jamie went to wait for Alice again outside after a while. She arrived a few minutes later, although I wasn't actually sure if it was her or not as I watched her walk into HMV. I called her mobile and she said she was inside HMV so I assumed it was her and it was.
I gave her a hug and we headed back outside together. I introduced Alice to Jamie and the first place we headed to the first shop on our travels together. I didn't really have a clue what I was shopping for. All I knew was that I needed jeans more than anything else, then some shirts or tshirts, then a jacket or blazer.
It was great seeing Alice again after so long. I haven't seen her in over a year. She looked as gorgeous as ever.
The three of us walked around the shop and Alice took the lead in trying to find me some jeans. It's so damn difficult for me to find them though, because the majority of jeans these days seem to be low rise and I HATE them. They feel as if they're not pulled up properly.
Alice and Jamie suggested I try a pair of jeans on that Alice had picked out for me, but they didn't feel right on me. The next shop we went to was Topman and Jamie said that he was going to go meet Mike and left me and Alice to shop on our own for a bit. Again, however, while Topman has god knows how many different styles of jeans, I'd say about 95% of them are low rise. In addition, most of them only go up to a 34 waist. No good for me - I'm a 36.
Jamie returned after a while with Mike and I introduce him to Alice. They both went again after we exited the shop though, as apparantly Stan was coming down as well and they were both going to meet him. While they done that, me and Alice went to the next shop, but again, found nothing of use. While looking, Jamie, Mike and Stan returned and this time I introduced Stan to Alice. It was quite weird having four people helping me to choose some clothes. I did try on some jeans in there, but again, they didn't feel right.
After 90 minutes of shopping, I had bought nothing.
The next shop we went to was Next. Again, the majority of their jeans were low rise. I did find some that were nice though and picked them up. Jamie wasn't bothered about jeans selection though, he very much likes buying jackets and blazers. He has about 12 all hung up on his wall in his bedroom! I kept telling him though that my priority was to get some jeans and clothes in general. I can't go out wearing nothing but a jacket.
I tried on the jeans I had picked up, along with two long sleeve tshirts. I liked the jeans and one of the tshirts, so I bought them. By now, Danielle had joined us as well.
After Next, we all went to McDonalds. Even though my clothes shopping hadn't produced many things, it was nice to be spending the day with my friends.
We discussed the notion of going the cinema to see Ocean's Twelve, which Jamie and Mike were up for, but no one apart from me was. Alice said that she had to be home around 6pm, so she couldn't go either. I was happy to go though, no matter how many people came.
The next place Jamie and Mike wanted to go after McDonalds was to get a load of food for the cinema. This is like a ritual for them. They get loads of sweets and crisps to take with them.
After there, we then went to Quiggins to see if there'd be anything in there for me, but I wasn't hopeful and after looking about, my thoughts were right. Stan did take the oppurtunity to try this on though.
It was now 5:20pm and Alice had to go. The others walked on ahead and I said goodbye to Alice, giving her an extended hug and told her how great it was seeing her again and that I hoped I'd see her again soon.
I caught up to the rest of my friends. Jamie was taking Danielle to the bus stop, since she wasn't coming with us to the cinema and Stan had decided he wasn't coming either so it was just me, Mike and Jamie. We didn't actually know what time the film was on, but luckily, when we got there, Mike picked up a list of times and it was showing ten minutes after we got there.
In a nutshell, Ocean's Twelve is crap. It's awfully slow. There's hardly any style to it. No class. There were a few times in the film when I just wanted to go home because it was so boring. Waste of money.
After the film, the three of us went to the station. Their train arrived first and we said our goodbyes. Mine arrived 15 minutes later and I went home.
It wasn't until the next day that I realised that the jeans I had bought still had the plastic tag on them. The guy at the till had forgotten to take it off. It meant that although I was planning on wearing them the following Tuesday to college, I now couldn't.
Sunday night, I decided to start the process of me looking a bit different. After much deliberation, standing in front of the mirror, I decided to shave my moustache off. At first, I thought it looked bad and that it made me look too young, but I've grown to like it now.
Monday night, I asked my mum if she'd order some jeans for me, since catalogues seem to have a lot more regular fit jeans and less of those horrible low rise things. Either she didn't notice, or simply didn't let on, but nothing was said about the fact that I now had no moustache. I thought I'd get a reaction out of someone. She ordered the jeans the next day.
Tuesday came, and I took the jeans, along with the Bond CD which wouldn't work with me. College was fairly average for the duration of the day. No one noticed the fact that I had shaved off my moustache for about an hour or so. Of note was that was had to film a 45 second clip of us talking to camera about someone culturally important. We all sounded pretty boring I think. I mean, you can tell that we're reading off a piece of paper, even though we're looking at the camera. Our voices have no style to them like a TV presenter might have.
At lunch, Jamie met me in the library and Claire was in there as well. He talked to her while I did some research. When we were ready to go, we noticed that Jasmin was sitting at a table with some of her friends. I decided to take the oppurtunity to say hi to her as we walked past. It was meant with a hi, but it was more of a "Hi, please go away, I don't want to talk to you," which confused me a little. I mean, I was simply trying to be friendly and nice.
The afternoon was spent exploring typography with Tony. We had to work in pairs to create an image out of text. The text being a haiku. I had to work with Tony (not the tutor, the student). Tony is apparantly 33 and he's visually impaired and has a slight speech disability. Now while I don't have a thing against him being disabled, he can be annoying to work with as a person because for one, his breath fucking stinks. Seriously. It's sickening. Plus, I don't like working with people on projects at the best of times because I can get more done on my own. For this reason, I just designed something on my own.
We had to create three seperate haiku designs in total within the space of about an hour. After I had finished the first one, I thought that I better let Tony do the second one, otherwise he might complain or Tony (tutor) might. So, while I told Tony that he was creating the second one, I went to the toilet. When I came back however, the page was still completely blank. I sat down and sigh. Everyone else was getting stuck into it, offering each other advice on how to make their designs look better and I was stuck with a blank page I had no control over, since I had given it away.
I sat there for 20 minutes, watching Tony 'design'. Nothing came of it. I was very glad when finally that task was over and the next task was to be done on our own. The task was to create a picture of ourselves using nothing but typography. That was quite an interesting thing to do and quite challenging as well. At the end, I was only half pleased with my result. I know I could do better.
Every Tuesday, we're supposed to have a tutorial lesson with Bronek at 4pm. However, he has a tendency to ramble on a lot and so people don't bother staying. It's partly what happened this Tuesday as well. Sean went home, as did Will, Joel, Alex, Ray and Tony. Bronek wasn't too pleased about that. However, just as normal, he did indeed ramble on about how our folders should be organised on the computer. Very annoying being told something as patronising as that. Speaking of patronisation, he always tells everyone to switch their monitor off so he has their attention. But I give him my attention anyway, yet he still tells me to turn the monitor off and it gets on my fucking nerves. He can just be extremely anal sometimes.
From 4:20pm to 5pm, the remainder of the class had to look through some Guardian newspapers, searching for information. A little bit pointless really. There was no real importance to it. I would of rather had a proper task to do. An aim. Regardless, I did what was asked of me.
I asked Bronek if I could show him my DEC (Disasters Emergency Commitee) animation. I had only shown Daniel up to now and his response was very muted, which frustrated me. Bronek sat down, I turned the sound up and clicked play.
When it ended, I turned to see Bronek's reaction. Now THAT'S more like it. He loved it. His mouth was open, half smiling.
"What do you think?," I said, now smiling too.
"Neil," he replied, "that, is excellent. That presses so many buttons. Really, really good."
"Thanks," I said, beaming.
"We must get that in for something," he said, referring to entering it into one of my units of work.
When I was about to leave the class to go home, he called to me.
"Neil," he said, "really great work."
Made me feel good.
On my way home, I decided to stop in at the Philharmonic and check on ticket availability for the Ludovico Einaudi concert. All of the main seats had sold out, but there was seats upstairs that were still free. I was tempted to book there and then, but I wanted to wait until I had spoken to Jen, because I wanted to invite her.
My jeans arrived and they're comfortable enough to wear.
Wednesday was spent sleeping mostly.
Thursday, my lesson with Brian was mostly group based, talking about advertising. Brian's lessons are always the best of the week. He always makes the lesson light hearted, it's a great working enviroment.
I showed him my DEC animation as well and he liked it, although he was one of his "that's great that" sentences, which I find impossible to figure out whether he means it or not. He did ask me whether I had sent it to the DEC though and I said no, confused. He said that I should because even if they can't use it, they might remember me and contact me in the future. I doubt I'll send it though.
The afternoon was about learning more in Flash, specifically how to create a popup menu. I didn't know how to do this so it was a nice lesson, learning something new. He did go too slow at times though and I noticed that he was reading the instructions he was giving us off pieces of paper in front of him that looked like website printouts. When he was doing his rounds helping people, I took the oppurtunity to see which website he had printed it out from and the address of the tutorial and loaded it up on my computer.
While I hadn't managed to find the tutorial, Daniel did see I had loaded up FlashKit.com, the website he had gone to to get the tutorial.
"Don't cheat Neil," he said to me.
"I'm not," I replied.
That annoyed me. Whether he was just joking or not, I couldn't quite tell but I don't think he was. It annoyed me because he thinks that I'd do such a thing. I wanted to view the tutorial for myself because he was going so slow. I wanted to progress at my own pace.
Infact, that's how it is with all of the course in general. No one is allowed to progress at their own speed, but one overall speed which everyone can keep up with. I think that's wrong. By doing that, you're hindering the progress of people who may be a bit more advanced and by doing that, you're not allowing them to explore their skills. It's wrong. And, when I ask things such as "What do we have to make for this project?", I always get shunted, as if it's a secret that I'm not allowed to know.
I had brought the jeans I needed to take back with me and planned on returning them. I walked into town with Rob and Joel. Rob wanted to go into Boots so that's the first place we went and the bleeper went off. We were quite confused, as we were walking into the shop, so it's not like we had even picked any items up. On the way out, it bleeped too. We the went to HMV so I could return my CD and it bleeped there too. I got credit for the CD and exited the shop with them. Again, bleep.
The three of us knew by now that it had to of been the jeans that were causing all of the bleeping, due to the tag still being on them. I went in Next and again, it bleeped. Joel pointed out how it might be quite a good idea to keep the jeans with the tag on, since when we exited Boots and HMV, no one had asked us to stop and we were allowed to freely exit. Quite a good way how to get goods out of a shop!..as long as CCTV doesn't catch you of course. Not that I'd be shoplifting in the first place.
They took the tag off for me and I left Rob and Joel to go home. However, I stopped in Topman and bought a long sleeve white tshirt. I then decided to go to Waterstones because I wanted to buy the second book that compliments Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy, which I finished on Friday last week.
That night I talked to Jen and invited her to the concert and she said she'd like to go, but she wasn't sure if she was working late or not and she'd have to get back to me. I'm starting to worry that if I leave it too late, there won't be any tickets left.
Yesterday (Friday) was quite a short day for me. I set my alarm as usual for 7am, but for some reason, it didn't go off and I have no idea why. It meant that I woke up at 9am instead. I was pissed off with myself about that, because I really wanted to say that I had been to college every day this week without fail. However, I didn't want to stay off all day and decided to go in at 1pm, which I did.
The lesson wasn't much though. It was mostly about backing up all of our work, since the computers are being wiped over the half term. We also got some homework from Daniel. We have to draw two self portraits in different styles. I haven't got a clue what those styles are going to be and I haven't got a clue how I'm going to draw myself unless I plan on standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom. I don't think so. He did orginally say do three, but after much deliberation with the group, he backed down to two, as everyone was panicing.
Jamie 'appeared' as he seems to be doing a lot lately about 1:20pm and we talked for a few minutes, before he said he would be back at break, which he was and he came and sat in lesson with me which Daniel didn't seem to mind. He asked me the weekly question - "You coming the pub?" to which I replied with my weekly answer - "I can't be bothered, it's boring".
We were allowed to leave the lesson early at 3pm instead of 4 and me and Jamie walked down to the station together where he said goodbye to me.
He called me at 6pm, asking if I was coming the pub, but I said no. I did kind of want to, but I knew that I'd just be bored out of my mind there and come home stinking of smoke. That's not a good night to me.
I went to bed at 9pm, shortly after texting Jen, telling her that I'd be online at 11pm. I set my alarm for 11pm and went to bed. However, I didn't awake till 3:30am, as I had set my alarm for 11:00 instead of 23:00. I found a message from Jen on MSN, wondering where I was. She said she'd be on again tonight though.
Because I now have all of my work backed up on CD, in my next entry, you will have the pleasure of viewing it all, including my Journey is the Destination animation, my movie, my print designs and my DEC animation. Aren't you excited? I thought so.
