22.10.12

The Research Cave

So... I've been in the UK for over three weeks now. Guess what, my irrational side was right.

They keep casually flinging around big names of big things like it's adding two numbers. They expect me to read and understand those logorrhea + barbed wire formulas articles. Every single attempt to master anything ends with me having to backtrack five miles and start from the absolute basics of everything imaginable.

I attempted to combat it with creativity. They don't really see a problem with the errors they're making. And I don't have enough stuff in my arsenal to persuade them that it's otherwise.

It's not helping that I'm cooped up in an office with three other people who are doing more-less the same thing for their PhD, and they're all continuing their masters projects. Which, in turn, evolved out of a class they took during their taught masters part. The guy on the left is writing up page after page of bushy integrals like it's nobody's business. The girl behind me is whipping up crazy-ass graphs of shit I probably wouldn't understand. The guy on the right came up with his own skewed distribution for some sort of neural cell process. And his supervisor accepted it. My supervisor just nixed my perfectly-in-sync-with-their-method's-core idea to make it somewhat more compatible with other techniques that are less home-brewed than theirs is.

Also, today's a shit day. Had a pretty epic (one-sided, as usual) fight with Fox yday, the chicken I had instead of fish & chips doesn't exactly like it inside of me, and all my office mates are gone. I have no idea where they are and whether I should be there as well. Still, at least it gives me an excuse to slack off and type this up instead of doing actual work. Plus, it's the standard glum UK morning out of my window.

Fox fights left me a bit battered up back when I was home and in good condition. Considering I'm something of a halfway-snapped-open egg over here, and she was even more hard-hitting than usual, I'm in pieces. And I'm changing my demeanour with her, this time for real.

I miss home. I want to ditch this place and head back, hug my folks, sit in the mountains and never leave. Meet up with all the people I left behind and have fun with them. Like I used to. Before I left it all for some madman's dream of actually being competent and managing. Guess what, now that I get to execute Plan A (even though I'm a Plan B for them), it simply turns out that I'm not good enough for it. After a lifetime of being told by my parents how smart I am, acing GPA's, doing well in competitions... it just turns out I'm not good enough after all.

And that feel will not leave me for the rest of my life, no matter what may happen. That I had a chance and I'm watching myself blow it in slow motion, not for lack of trying (hello 8h office days). Simply because I'm too much of a worthless piece of shit in the end.

Signing out. Hopefully it'll all magically fix itself, but I doubt it.

26.9.12

Just prior to leaving...

Welp, the time's here. I'm gonna be heading off to the UK in a ricketty steel box with engines in just over 24 hours. And I won't lie, it's stressful.

I'm justified in being freaked out. After all, I lived with my family until now. I studied at a local university. Now I'm skipping the masters step, going to a somewhat more prestigious university, and getting away from mah folks at the exact same time. If that's not a leap, what is?

There's the stress of "will I be adequate academically". I downed a ton of articles. I read them. They were scientific logorrhea hiding behind barbed-wire formulas. As such, I familiarized myself a bit with how stuff works from an extremely basic standpoint to not come in empty-handed. I'm usually quick to grasp stuff that's presented in a friendly manner, and they know I'm an interdisciplinary weirdo, so my rational side is telling me all will be well. My irrational side is scared.

And, obviously, I'll miss my family. There's times when we quarrel, but who doesn't. Mom's concerned whether I'll be able to handle being in charge of my life, but I think that's not really a problem. I'm asked to make Excel cells red (from within a program), I manage to learn to do it and pull it off, even though it's only for visual purposes. Whenever I'm home alone, I don't wreck up the place, I feed myself, I clean up, I know how to operate a laundry machine and use an online bank account (to pay stuff). So I guess I'll do fine.

The world is doing everything its might to make me feel better. It's feeding me good music (new Bucket trio of discs is his best thing in ages, new Biffy is surprisingly un-shit by their major label standards, and I discovered Voivod's awesomeness three years too late). It's letting me socialize with people, "closing the pages" of my life here. Slowly saying farewell to everything and everybody. Already said farewell to the mountain house, my good friend from down south, Lillien... ugh. This is pretty damn tough. But, excluding the nerves from the leap, I'm in surprisingly good psychic condition. So, I'll have to use it to my advantage and have a good start there. The good friend from down south reminded me of a happy time from around 2004-2005, when I could walk up to anybody and go "I don't know you, I'm Rumpy, who are you?"... it was a different time. But I'm reconnecting with some of those vibes. The meetups with fellow bronies helped, as did all those gatherings and some inner mental closure.

Signing off, almost certainly for the last time from Poland for a while. Anxious like shit, but rather confident in the end. Rumpy.

12.8.12

It's gonna be alright

Long time no post yet again. With reason though - I sank into a mental stupor following the scholarship rejection and it took a hefty dose of Team Fortress 2, ponies, Futurama and other shit to kill off any semblance of thought that may have formed in my head. It was essentially the post-breakup mental doomride all over again, and it took me quite some time to stomach the failure. I felt bad that people wrote me recommendations and all that, they tried their best and all in all it didn't work out.

Eventually, I settled into Plan B. The second university may not be as prestigious, but it's a tried-and-true option, and I'll have friends there to make the start easier, all that jazz. Afterwards, I can grab some sort of PhD and be settled in for life...

...and then guess what happens? Mom keeps bugging me about buying plane tickets to fly in for Christmas, so I log into my gmail account which I use to correspond with said university. It's been forever since I signed in, as I wasn't expecting any mail from them and all my other business is handled by my Polish email (which bounces off UK university email hosts like a charm). And guess what I see? University #1 comes back knocking, offering me a fully funded PhD spot starting in October. Guess the time stamp? A month before I logged in.

And this is where the crazy ride kicks in. I write them back, turns out the spot is still available, so they ship me an offer, and it turns out that I'd still need to redo my English language certificate. As you can probably tell from my posts, I know how English works, and I do have a "valid for life" certificate to prove it. Not good enough. As the whole course of action is such short notice, I apply for a waiver. The waiver thing starts going and the UK application nature kicks in immediately - here, have this article, whip up a summary, plus you'll get a phone interview. I whip up a summary, and it's been over a week since the phone interviewer was supposed to get in touch with me to schedule the thing.

Clock. Is. Ticking.

I can lose my down payment at the other university if these dudes don't get their stuff together and finally give me a clear green or red light. This limbo is extremely stressful, and the fact I'd bypass masters and get injected directly into PhD ain't helping soothe my nerves. I was freaking out over it non stop, and I was supposed to go a BBQ over at a friend's place yesterday to socialize a bit and calm down.

Guess what. I spent most of the BBQ walking around like a dope, distressed by truly disdainful power metal playing from the loud speakers, and trying to avoid the gaze of a rather hot female friend of his who was invited as well. Her Witty Line Of The Evening? Bronies need more sexual action. Easy for her to say, with her cover girl visage and callipygous posterior. Whatever droplet of sex appeal that may have been hiding in me got sucked out when I got my hair cut. Once the ordeal was over, I got my ass over to the train station. After absorbing the urban decay and perfect silence (stirred only by my footsteps) for half an hour, I got on the platform. Five minutes passed. Ten. The train was supposed to be here by now. I check the schedule again. Guess what, faggot - the train doesn't come on saturdays. Only saturdays, mind you. And that was the last train of the day. As such, no return to the mountains for me.

I hitched the next train out of there to the main train hub and went to where I usually live, seeing it for the first time in about a month and a half. My computer and primary guitar are in the mountains, so I dusted off the ancient lapper I used to chat with my ex. Glacial efficiency and a ton of toxic memories at their finest. The whole fiasco with the schedule left me further distressed, and I had trouble maintaining any semblance of composure - everything was just welling up and I had trouble imagining how the situation could get worse. It got worse when I woke up at 3am with a raging stomachache, as if a xenomorph was preparing to make its appearance. Cool.

Come morning, I was wiped and shaky. For whatever reason, I picked up my old classical guitar. I played Beneath. And shit got better.

Beneath may be a song about unrequited love and whatnot, but it got some vibes in my head. Vibes that have been gone for a long time. I felt like Rumpy again. The future is in the future, and I'm doing what I can to prepare myself for it. It doesn't matter all that much if I go to University A or University B, I'm continuing with my education. And music is an amazing thing... but I was well aware of that even when the vibes were gone. I need to finish up Big Axe, it's been a while.

I recorded a spontanous, horrible, horrible Mike Johnson cover with sour notes, rhythm fuckups and overpowering microphone static. Who gives a shit. Life's gonna be okay. I'll just Wait & See ;) Signing out, hopefully the next post will be 100% optimistic.

21.5.12

A rose among potatoes and other tales of woe

Long time no post. So, as I'm running out of things to procrastinate with, time for another post here to pretend this is alive.

The main thing that happened since my last post? I didn't get a scholarship, and as such I'm not going to the fancy-ass UK uni in spite of being accepted. But hey, the costs are insane and we're not exactly made of money. And raising money there in order to cover costs wouldn't be that easy.

As such, I'm going to another UK uni, along with nine other students from my current uni. It's less fancy-ass, but it does come with a wimpy scholarship and no tuition fee. Thus, the required financial investment is less overwhelming and can be covered.

I need to get out of this university I'm in right now. My undergrad studies were okay... nothing to write home about, but pretty bearable. But the masters studies are horrible. Truly, undisputably horrid. Two times a week I feel like giving a damn... two subjects are actually worth listening to. The rest range from mind-numbingly boring drivel to incompetent idiots rampaging around unchecked (I should be fearing for my academic life, as hell knows - maybe these dunces will decide to fail me). And I have to pass all this shit in order to go study in the UK. Just fucking amazing.

In order to flee from my ever-encompassing depressive thoughts, I fled into Team Fortress 2. I play more than is healthy, and I still suck at it like mad, but it makes it easier to stop thinking about the shit surrounding me. About the fact that I'm a Forever Alone, about the fact that once again my high aim ended up dropping me on top of the nearby heap of manure. About the fact that my dream of making music for a living won't ever come true because I'm just too weird and idiotically noncomformist.

I don't even listen to much music lately. Burning a hole in Dick Valentine's solo acoustic effort (hence the title of the post). It's amusing how much moods the guy covers over the course of a single chord-driven, near-minimalist record. Thus, a tip of the hat to my current model of rose from a royal potato on the sidelines. Signing out, until next time.

19.2.12

Flounder / Performance Hat

Today I found Flounder. Will the consequences ever be the same? I fear not. This is some of the most intense stuff I have ever heard, and I can't get enough of it. When I heard Demo II, I was dumbfounded. When I heard Demo III, Demo II started sounding like tripe. Of course it's still awesome. It's just that Demo III is Albino Slug tier of awesomeness, and that's not something any other band can claim. Holy shit.

Randomly went to the same mall where we did the Christmas shopping. A ponymeet was held there yesterday (I didn't go, first one I missed during my tenure as a ponymeet-goer), and they couldn't find any blindbags at all. The meet leader had a word with the employees of the toy store, and what do I see when I walk in today? A spanking fresh shipment of wave three blindbags, all for me to sift through! Scored Big Macintosh, so I'm up to two ponies. Wanted to pick up Lyra for Fox & Lillien, but I forgot what the identification number was. Funny thing though, whenever I go to that mall with my family I end up buying a pony. I guess the new wave of blindbags will be out when we go there yet again, and I'll pick up Derpy (she'd better be in there!) to maintain the tradition.

Also, I scored a new Performance Hat. Others may consider other elements of gigging apparel important, but for me the vital component is the hat. Got a fantastic red ski cap from Big Star, complete with pompom. The site says it's a female model, but what do they know. My old trusty ski cap that I casually nicked from my dad is freaking amazing, but it's probably older than I am and it's a bit stretched, so I need a new one just in case. This one does the job pretty well.

By the way, tomorrow I'm starting my masters studies. Never before have I dreaded going back to university quite this much, and I can't even put my finger on why. Maybe because the leadup to my final exam was stressful, and the couple of weeks I've had off weren't quite enough to recuperate? Hell knows. I'll survive.

So yeah, another post. All hail Flounder!

6.2.12

Snowflakes

Winter hit like a truck, at least in terms of temperature. It's fucking freezing around here! At least it seems to be getting a teeny bit warmer lately, so there's hope that the chill will go away eventually.

I went outside in the evening to fetch something for supper (I'm home alone, waiting to show up and wave my hand at the appropriate moment so bureaucracy doesn't implode because I'm not around), and the usually busy street was empty, everything was dead silent, and there were snowflakes hovering down from the sky. Sure, I can get something similar in the mountains no problem, but it was a cool new experience to get this in the area around my house. Felt awesome.

Today, I learned that just because something says that you're to cook it with the heat cranked doesn't imply you're to dime the power. Still, the cutlets were surprisingly edible. I'm making progress.

Also, today I found out that the cover for Taproot's new album is online. It's not promising, to put it nicely. Plus, the fact that it's essentially a bunch of glorified b-sides from their 2008 record isn't that inspiring either. I'm hoping that the guys manage to surprise me positively.

So, that will be all for now. It's easier to live when one tries to look at stuff less emotionally and more objectively. Hooray.

31.1.12

Your Ad Here

Good day, kind sirs.

I'm an engineer. The university can't be assed to write back to me whether they like me enough to accept me. I'm supposed to register for further study at my current university, but of course I had to be thrown for a loop and have no idea what to do. So I'll probably just ignore it one more afternoon and pick the lazy way out tomorrow.

Figured Turnip could use a little sprucing up, so I wrote a spanking new outro to Snake, redid the finale of Pulling A Tiger Through The Fifth Dimension, and tweaked Goatcreep by slowing it down a notch and sprinkling in some ukulele and the reinstated 2007 tap figure. There's gonna be an epic ukulele-Nebulophone duel in there too, that's gonna be fun stuff. I should get a band together and record it before it becomes a Chinese Democracy-style overproduced hunk of garbage.

Guess I could record it at the same pad that Kabanos utilizes to track stuff, with the same producer. He's used to music that's a bit outside the box with Kabanos's absurd lyrics and whatnot. I wonder if he can take my harmonies with a straight face though.

Life just trickles on, I guess. I go on clocking in the science stuff by day, when needed, and shyly fantasize about music afterwards. My current shopping list is a Musket Fuzz, a decent tuner of some sort and possibly a better overdrive (Lovepedal comes to mind). I'm not going on a spending spree, as maybe the money will be well spent on more productive stuff in the future. Time will tell. I did snap and buy the phaser... but the only thing cheaper than that on my to-get list is the tuner.

Greetings from Poland,
Rumpy