Friday, 28th July 2006
The Brainiac Strikes Again!
I got my final results for each class I took last year and I did WAY better than I had hoped. Ahem:
Intro to Islam: 1st (A)
Intro to the Study of Religions: 1st (A, I was actually only 1% off a distinction or A+)
Religions of the Near and Middle East: 1st (A)
Religions of Africa: 2:1 (B+)
Judaism: 1st (A)
Buddhism: 1st (A)
Wooohoooo for me!
Since the criteria for switching to a joint degree with History was that a) I persuade two History lecturers that I am fabulous (check) and b) get at least a B in 3/4 of my classes, they have now processed my transfer and I am an official History & Religion student. Weeeeeeee!
So next year, I will be learning Persian, taking 2 History classes from the Near and Middle East pathway, taking a 1/2 unit in Eastern Christianity and a 1/2 unit called “The Bible and it’s interpretation in Ancient Judaism.” I also plan to sit in on the “Sacred Language, Sacred Scripture” class, AND, if I can, learn Biblical Hebrew.
I started working in a rare and second hand bookshop today. It sent my brain barmy, in the best way possible, over all the learning yet to do and how very little time…
Wednesday, 26th July 2006
The varying shades of fantasticness that is life right about now
In order of ascending verboseness:
1) Rhome.
Just because. 
2) The Magnetic Fields
I am obsessed with 69 Love Songs. Buy it now, and if you want, you can buy me some of their other albums. Weeee!
3) 99
Ms. 99 is the hero of several of my personalities, and her latest project, “The Internet: A series of fallopian tubes” has many of my minds cackling in sheer glee.
4) Persian
I can now say that I have mastered the Persian/Farsi alphabet (nearly the same as Arabic, but with 4 extra letters) and my does that make me feel proud. I have all four forms of the letters down (full, beginning, middle and end of a word), although I do need to get a better understanding of the dots and dashes that delineate the vowels. Also, I want to have learnt the numbers by the time school starts which will be extremely easy since the numbers we use originate in Arabic.
Learning a new alphabet has seriously been one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. It’s so intensely satisfying, especially since the Arabic script is one of the most beautiful things in the world to look at. See Hassan Massoudy for details. Even though I don’t understand what the words actually mean, that I can read the script and know how to say it (albeit in a butchered-by-the-English-accent type way) just gives me so much joy. I am so glad I decided to learn this and I really think I can keep at it long enough to be able to read that which motivated me to learn: Rumi and Hafiz.
August is dedicated to learning the Hebrew alphabet since I am also going to take extra classes in Biblical Hebrew come September. Weee!
5) My Inability to Say the Right Thing.
I needed to get a new saddle for Banana Baby since the one I had hurtied me in a way a woman should not be hurt. It squashed, mashed, mished and smooshed my lady bits in such a way that it felt like I had cystitis when peeing after a ride. That, my friends, is not good. Now, because I am, for want of a better word, an idiot, I endured this pain for years. However, a recent discussion with someone made me snap out of my “no pain, no gain” dementia and so I went off to buy a new one.
A little internet investigation revealed that some bike shops have a devise for measuring your arse to determine the correct size saddle. So I called the shop that recently gave Banana Baby a tune up, and they told me that whilst they didn’t have a magic measuring devise, their sister shop did. (In case anyone was wondering, the magic measuring devise was really boring. I was hoping for some spectacular piece of equipment with belts, buckles, slides and rules, perhaps electric, perhaps not, rather like the foot measuring ones they used on you as a kid. Alas no, it’s just a piece of foam that retains the impressions of your sit bones with a ruler to measure how wide your arse is. Boring!)
To get to the point of this all, which is that I am completely incompetent in matters that pertain to being appropriate, let me tell you that as I walked in the front door of that shop, the worker mannie looked at me and I looked at him, and I said, “I have paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain in my nether regions and I neeeeeeeeed you to make it stop.” *sigh* I don’t know why a simple “hi!” wouldn’t suffice. :/