Almost up to date.

Dissertation:

Recently (ish) I completed my dissertation. Due to the fact that I’m lazy with blog up-dates and the fact that hand in date was the 1st of May I use to term ish at it’s furthest extend. The reason it makes it into my blog it two fold. 1) it’s an important part of the final year of my course. 2) it sums up the ‘difficulty’ I’ve had through out my final year. Namely that I have not felt the “panic” at all for the last year. Although I admit it is not the best tactic it has often come down that I’ll get uncomfortably close to the deadline for a piece of work and thus feel the “panic” and suddenly focus whole-heartedly on the subject at hand thus completing it. Throughout my final year I have not felt this “panic”, part of this may be due to the general lack of course work but either way it’s felt strange to me all the way through.

The panic even failed to raise it’s head during my work on the dissertation. Whilst I did still manage to find focus on it, it wasn’t in the same category as the “panic”. This may be good after all but it’s unusual for me so I don’t entirely trust it as yet. Only time will tell really at this point…

QOTD:

GLaDOS: There was even going to be a party for you. A big party, that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend, the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn't come either, because you don't have any other friends, because of how unlikable you are. It says so right here in your personnel file: "Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner, whose passing shall not be mourned." Shall NOT be mourned. That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official. It also says you were adopted, so that's funny, too.

Democracy re-born at Essex

I saw this (a bit late by the wording of it but I don't remember spotting it before) and thought I was going to be sick. Though that could just be the bottle of wine...

---EDIT--- it turns out it was posted yesterday (10th Feb) although at one point it says 'Last night proved this'. Petty complaint but if you're busy and can't post it when you intend I personally find (having missed many blog deadlines) that editing the text slightly doesn't cost too much.

QOTD:

Robin: Yeah, it's the end of the world. But so what? We're still here, still fighting, still friends.
Young Raven: Look at me, Robin! There's nothing I can do! There isn't any hope!
Robin: Then I guess... I'll just have to have enough hope for the both of us.

Last Thursday (5th) I went to my first ever General Meeting in my time here at Essex University. I then proceeded to interrupt two people as they enjoyed themselves at Alternative night with one question. "Is it normally like that or was that uniquely horrible?". As I expected (as would anyone else who was also there for the first time) the answer was the latter.

It's too much like hard work (and somewhat sickening) to try to recount the events of the general meeting so I'm going to try and describe in single words my thought at various points during the meeting and why:

Boredom - not the first one you'd expect but yes. For portions of it I was just bored out of my skull. This was mainly around the Gaza issues where it was just the same speeches they'd given over two weeks ago. You'd have thought in that time they'd have at least been smart enough to reword things, if not come up with new arguments and concessions for the 'opposition' group.

Amusement - yes, some of the arguments just seemed ridiculous and left me feeling amused. For example the claim that putting up the Union Jack is a reminder of colonialism. Personally I didn't realise you could colonise your own country but now that I've been informed I will have to work it into my plans for world domination. Another example was when it was suggested that instead of the Union Jack flag we should put up flags of all nations. I was so very tempted to comment on that asking if they'd be happy to have the national flags of Zimbabwe, the Peoples' Republic and the Republic of China, and most importantly Israel. It wouldn't have helped the situation at all but it amused me greatly. A final example of the amusement was when someone tried to argue that the SU wasn't trying to support one side or the other in the Gaza conflict just oppose the killings (or something to that effect). This may be what the and protesters wish. However, the motion being debated had as it's first point under resolutions "To call for an immediate end lifting of the siege, and to support the broadly-based demonstrations demanding an end to the attacks and the lifting of the siege". Seems there's some confusion somewhere (may just be me).

Disgust - indeed. Most would assume this was over the results of the various votes and I'll admit that I'm not pleased with most of them. However, my disgust if precious and saved only for special occasions. This occasion is when a argument broke out towards the end of the meeting resulting in one voter threatening to punch another. The fact that someone is stupid enough to think that this is an appropriate response during a democratic meeting is bad enough but my disgust is more over the fact that the aggressor wasn't thrown out on his arse immediately after this. It has been pointed out to me that there probably wasn't anyone legally able to remove someone from the room but the alternative was at least a dozen people pilling in from both sides to 'settle' the dispute.

However, credit where it's due. The VP Education is a very good orator and nearly talked me round to voting yes for the new constitution. But only nearly as I still stuck up my hand for no and make sure to stare straight into the eyes of any Saab who appeared to look back at me (petty as that is).

I'm too tired to continue ranting right now so I'm just going to post this (as it's already pushing it's relevance being 3 days late). I'll be randomly tagging anyone I spotted at the GM I'm friends with on the facebook version of this. I just leave one final thought (hopefully you can read it):

For those no longer at university who might read this there's a list of motions discussed at the latest GM (whilst it lasts, will need to remember to update the link): http://www.essexstudent.com/your_union/gm/

QOTD:

John Crichton: If he masters wormhole technology, what will he use it for?
Scorpius: Faster delivery of pizzas.

I still feel slightly bad to be resurrecting my blog just because of this post (seems much to stereotypical, 'I don't like that... to the Internet to complaint!') but it's happening anyway as it seems a fairly drastic event on campus and I suspect will have a long series of after affects (never know, might keep me blogging this time).

To start with I'll try and set the scene. At the last student elections on campus a group called 'viva essex' (basically a bunch of commies in my opinion but I only gave a quick glance over the elections before making my decisions) achieved a clean victory with all 5 of their members winning their positions. I voted against them all the way but fair do's to them they gained the popular support and won. They started the job some time over the summer 2008 but for me weren't noticed until the start of this academic year which is when things started going wrong. The current sabbs seem highly politically motivated (but not overly politically savvy as it's been put) which you might argue is good but they're following their own personal interests seemingly exclusively.

Before I go further I'm going to draw attention to 'seemingly'. Given that very few people will read this and I know them I won't waste their time with a definition of the word. I say seemingly as for the most part I have no interest in what they're up to unless it effects me, unfortunately I feel this year most things they seem to have done have effected me in some way or another. Possibly I'm just growing up and generally showing an interest or they are interacting (interfering, whichever you prefer) with the average student life. Equally, to my opinion they seem to be wasting a lot of time on international issues of little or no concern to the majority of the student body which is what current events are concerning.

I could go on and go but 3 months is a bit of a pain to cover and detracts from current events. I didn't witness these events myself so advise these notes by Mat specifically for a view of what happened and a good read (The SU: How did it come to this? and Kavakeb: What he said vs What he meant). In short they've brought the university to the brink of a civil war (for lack of a better term) and I still haven't worked out the most defensible position on campus once the fighting breaks out.

Now the protesters are perfectly free to have their opinions and protest though I really would prefer it if they didn't or at least thought through what they were doing and picked a better strategy rather interfere with lessons and piss off a lot of people (though it gives me hope that we're finally going to witness the counter-attack against the commies/socialists which seem to have taken over the majority of campus' across the country). However, just because they have a right to do this doesn't mean I'm going to happily stand aside and let them (despite how apathetic I generally am to causes on campus). I half hope they try something stupid like putting up a picket line in front of the lecture theatre building (which they're currently 'occupying'/'squatting' in over the weekend though never word really describes what they're doing as they booked it out) which I can then run and I have no problems with forcibly barging my way past these people even though I know it'll just make matters worse.

All this is once again encouraging me to consider running in the up coming elections. However, I fear that despite the best efforts of the SU they still haven't raised my selling point sufficiently high to have a chance of winning (equally there's still the risk of some of them winning and I might find myself winning and being required to work with 4 people I don't agree with).

As a parting question (for now) I'm still wondering whether those who are arguing against the SU and these recent protests count as revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries due to the SU's own stance. The leaning seems to be towards the former in which case the SU should be dropping to their knees and worshiping us as we are what they appear to idealise most.

QOTD:

'I do the jokes,'  snapped Varl.

'Yeah, why is that?' asked Laydlly.

'Because... I'll shoot you,' said Varl.