Norfolk Terrace, Day 12. 23:21. The Pink-Spotted Buddha
The day is best defined as more of a mental process than a physical account. I do this every semester: overthink my classes ‘til I am content enough with my decision. Most of my brain power of the day went towards choosing between 19th Century American Writing, American Gothic, and 19th Century Writing (British). I took off the 19th Century American once the claims “the reading list is really boring” and “why study some of the American time period you studied last semester” felt sufficient to drop it from the triad of what-should-my-third-module-be. Currently, I am enrolled in American Gothic, but after finding out that it’s only opened to international students, I finally set my sights on the third, 19th Century Writing in the country that is the birthplace of it all. I probably won’t get another chance to study Dickens in a British class with British students.
I decided to save you the long and painful process, the pro’s and con’s, the list of advisors, from official to familial to friendial to girlfriendial. All arrows point to British 19th Century.
Now here comes the story of the pink-spotted Buddha: In the midst of this agonizing juxtaposition of the modules’ syllabi to determine which to choose and which to drop, I checked my timetable of current classes (oh wait, class. Singular, yeah that’s right.) for today. Apparently I had misread my Thursday class from the first time I had set eyes on it. Fuck. Not 15:00-16:00—14:00-15:00!!! Stupid 24-hour time setting. I didn’t intuitively think “2 o’clock” but more like “oh there’s a 15:00 and I know that as ‘3pm’ and so that’s all I need to know. It probably starts then.” or some other rubbish idea like that.
Ah—no. So I ran to Congregation Hall, just like in the old times of last semester (and every semester of uni basically) when I lollygag until the last second and then rely on my legs to get me to class like Hermes’ winged sandals. The students were just filing out of the small classroom (I’m still so used to a lecture being in a big hall) and I got to the front of the room, got a copy of the syllabus, apologized to both tutors and walked back out.
I hadn’t really thought about how one of the tutors had kinda given me an odd look until I was walking on the pavement (yeah, apparently they don’t call it a sidewalk like in America). Even this guy I saw walking out of lecture looked at me funny. Then I felt my forehead. Damn it, my flatmate Stephen had been right. I would make a fool of myself with it on. Quickly I stripped off the bright pink sticky dot that I had attached to my forehead earlier that afternoon. I had simply tried on a new white T-shirt I bought yesterday, found a pink dot on it, attached it to my forehead to amuse my flatmates (which worked like a charm), and had lunch…and forgot about it ‘til now. Oh boy, not only did I apologize to my tutors for missing the first lecture but I did it looking a little ridiculous. Glasses on and a hot pink dot smack dab in the middle of my forehead to feel Buddha-ish or as I told Stephen, “Hinduish” (similar to Buddha-ish only because of the marked forehead). Great.
Well to make up for it, I plowed through reading the Preface and the 1798 version of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, finished the last thirty pages right now but definitely covered seventy pages in the library after that unfortunate affair of the pink dot. Made chicken wings and baked beans with Vinny; sharing food is awesome. My tube of mayonnaise dropped for the second time out of the fridge and splattered the floor. I put the half still in the tube into a bowl, and then Garlic Jen (yes, she’s known this name) got all excited and wanted to put garlic in it. I let her, quite amused that at least someone was making light of it—but oh! Dan! And he stepped into the mayonnaise still on the floor. I wasn’t quick enough to clean it. Oh well, white shoes are better than brown, anyway—and put the bowl in the fridge and cleaned up. There. Hmmph. Pink Buddha signing off.
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