Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Initiation, Round 2

And so it begins, the second year of the rest of our lives. It’s been another inter­est­ing week, segue­ing into the start of term before we had a chance to catch our col­lect­ive breath.

The last seven days have been spent get­ting the house geared up for life, buy­ing second­hand fur­niture and being har­assed by util­ity com­pan­ies. Highlights from the begin­ning of the week include the pur­chase of ten large inflat­able beach balls, the infla­tion of said balls and their inser­tion into Elias’ bed­room while he was out; a shock­ingly bad hangover from last Sunday night; and the start of our household’s Mario Kart Double Dash addiction.

In the inter­ven­ing time Internet sub­scrip­tions and phone line have been ordered, gold­fish pur­chased (one defect­ive, one not — one still with us today, the other’s death dis­covered after an unknown amount of time motion­less in the bowl) and large amounts of money spent. And today was the start of 2006-07, Year 2, where the fun dwindles and the work mounts, or so we are told. In true slacker style I was up at 10am, my timetable being con­spicu­ously free of any engage­ment at all, and set to going through the morning’s mail instead. And what a happy bag it was — dis­con­nec­tion threats from both Gas and Electricity util­it­ies, appar­ently in spite of my phoning two weeks earlier to inform them of the change in ten­ancy and demand that out­stand­ing bills be charged to the land­lord — and being told that this had been done. So I phoned again; the help­ful agent could find no trace of any account in my name, so the pro­cess was repeated, and I was told to ignore the notices. So if the lights go out some time this week, we will know that British Gas have done their job once again.

The remainder of the day was spent on cam­pus, sort­ing out my loan for the term and watch­ing the thou­sands of Freshers milling about in vari­ous states of ter­ror. In that vein I went to tonight’s Top B, the reg­u­lar Monday night Union event, as it was the first of the term (and the first Union night for most Freshers) and a good time was sure to be had by all. And if I was there to sample the wierd feel­ings, there was much to sample, as we saw things from the other side — no longer the Fresher still wet behind the ears, we had been there and seen and done it all, and this even­ing we could look back on a new set of kids doing it anew, and twist­ing out and mak­ing the mis­takes we did.

Many of them got it right, but it was those who didn’t who provided the most enter­tain­ment — the ones who dressed like grand­par­ents or formal ball­go­ers or those who didn’t dress at all, or those who by 10pm were already two sheets to the wind, lean­ing back against the walls with their eyes rolling in their sock­ets and three hours of debauch­ery still to go, or stum­bling around in the Gents’, piss­ing and vomit­ing at the same time, or tak­ing the “easi­est place in the world to get laid” advice to heart and grind­ing up against some hor­ri­fied lass while bowel-shaking trance blasts in the back­ground, or cluster-bombing four people with the remains of a kebab and salad. It was truly a spec­tacle, but the strongest vibe was that of polite sus­pi­cion, as every­one watched every­one else — try­ing to guage the mood; or like us “seasoned” types, watch­ing the whole thing unfold in quiet deja vu. And of course we (myself and Dave, at this point) had to put on a show of our own — shake the poor kids up a bit — scream­ing obscen­it­ies, dart­ing around the crowds and whoop­ing at everything, dan­cing like tor­tured pup­pets — and I wasn’t even drink­ing. But they lapped it up. When it was over I drove Dave home and we soberly reflec­ted on what it all meant — yet another thing we wouldn’t quite exper­i­ence in the same way again. And then I got home; someone had help­fully set the chain on the door so I couldn’t get in; a housemate’s rude awaken­ing later and I was inside shav­ing next to a bar of soap with teeth marks on it, and won­der­ing whether it’s us that are the real freaks this time around.