Hair New Era

4. Stephen Fry. We were having this discussion in one of the first weeks of term 1: Who in their right mind wouldn’t want him to be their dad, or at least uncle?
5. David Mitchell.

6. And while we’re at it: British comedy in general. Or even the whole British way of life: the less you know someone, the politer you are – and the other way around. So you’re extremely courteous to people on the bus, but once you get to the pub with your best mates, you start ripping the absolute piss out of them. There is a certain ‘cool to be cruel’ aspect to the humour, but it doesn’t worry me because, let’s face it, it is kind of cool to be able to do it in an eloquent and hilarious way. And the best defence is obviously a good comeback.
7. Jonathan Groff

8. Here’s a bit of an exception though: Glee. My friends are divided: there are the ones who love it and those who don’t watch it. And I don’t fall into either category. I watch it, but every episode makes me hate it more. It started off biting and funny, but now it’s just a ridiculously unrealistic show stocked full of ‘very important life lessons’.

I can’t wait to get back! To course mates who are all crazy, arty and extremely talented. It’s actually quite intimidating. Not only can they write so much better than me, they can also draw, act, sing, dance and do pretty much any creative activity possible. A true wake up call, I’ll tell you that.

And the tutors who are funny and weird and brilliant. Who have Wikipedia pages and who end emails to us with text kisses.

And the course itself! I don’t think there are many where you’re able to end an essay with a sentence like ‘Because otherwise, I’m fucked.’ and get a good mark for it. (I should add that it wasn’t the most academic essay we had to write that year. It was an end of the year super essay about our own writing and how it has changed since last October.)

Well, not long to go now. Back to good old England on the 21st.

Finally, here's my attempt at a bit of a summary of my first year at Warwick University, UK.

I’ve met all kinds of people from hyperhipsters to cheery goths, from transsexual to asexual to pansexual to cured gay (read: drowned himself in hardcore Christianity. And let me tell you what a normal person he turned out to be. Here are some of his beliefs: girls are not allowed to wear trousers or have short hair. Decorating yourself in any way (make-up, hair dye, nail varnish etc) is wrong, as is creating or indeed consuming anything fictional. So I’m going so deep in hell it isn’t even funny (it is a bit). Oh, and the world is definitely going to end in our lifetime).

I thought I’d do a list of things I like about my life there, or rather, a list of things that, surprisingly, are also liked by other people I’ve met this year. Quite honestly, I didn't really expect to meet other people interested in them.

1. I suppose it goes without saying, but brightly coloured hair. I’d wanted pink hair for years, but I doubt I’d have ever got round to dyeing mine if I hadn’t gone to a place where it is completely acceptable, even encouraged. In fact, on my course alone (I say alone, but really, our course has the craziest people. What else would you expect from creative writing students?) we’ve already had pink, purple, blue, yellow, orange and bright red hair. And I’m proud to say I was one of the first ones to take the leap.
2. The Midnight Beast

3. Harry Potter

In Estonia when you’re old enough to drink (at least old enough in your mind), it generally means you’re too old to be a Harry Potter fan. I've seen it happen to nearly all my friends. Sure, you’ll probably go see the films, but you’re too cool to get excited about them. That might actually be the best adjective to describe us as a nation: we’re cool. And we don’t generally lose our cool. Yeah, me might hear a great joke, see a famous person or win the lottery, but we’re not going to lose control over our emotions just because of that.

But in the UK, not only is Harry Potter cool (in a slightly different sense of the word), but it’s just so incredibly widespread. Of course everyone’s read and seen them, and they’re among the most common pop culture references. Picture from weheartit.com

We’ve had a drinking game around the names of Harry Potter characters and divided UK’s top universities into Hogwarts houses (Oxford – Gryffindor, Cambridge – Ravenclaw, St Andrew’s – Slytherin and finally Warwick – Hufflepuff. At least we’re being realistic). Every young person fancies Emma Watson (who’s doing a ‘year abroad’ at Oxford now by the way (proving our sorting skills)). Although, Matt Lewis might be taking her place now... (I still can’t believe how fit he suddenly is!)

But funnily enough, the only people to compare my ever-changing neon hair colour to the character Tonks were my brother and his flatmate. (And by the way, yes, that would be my power of choice: the ability to change my appearance to whatever I wanted. I’d be saving a fortune on hair dye alone!)

[to be continued]

I recently found this series of paintings of Emma Watson by Manchester-based artist Mark Demsteader. They're absolutely stunning.
If I had £3,000-8,000 lying around, I would definitely buy one, but sadly it's not quite the case at the moment (last week I had to go through all my purses, drawers and bank accounts to find money to pay the rent for the flat I'm moving into this autumn).
But fortunately I - and you - can admire the pictures on the computer screen for free.
Enjoy!
And by the way, I found myself listening to this as background music (heh):











Pictures from panterandhall.com

I'm back from Spain now, and back from the UK. And I have a lot to tell you guys, but it'll have to wait a bit. My computer's crashed and I've lost access to all my pictures and half-written blog posts. It looks like they can be salvaged though, thank God.
So I'll see you later, hopefully very soon.

Right now I'm listening to this and feeling a bit melancholy:

Pictures from weheartit.com

Day 27 – Best pilot episode
Glee

It’s obvious you can’t keep that high a level up for several long series (or at least their writers most certainly can't), but Jesus, the ‘Born This Way’ episode was a disaster. Enough with the life lessons already! Glee will not stop bullying, what’s more likely is that people get bullied for watching Glee.
Fortunately there were three good things about the otherwise awful episode: Kurt’s back and looks awesome, Santana is awesome, and this is one of the most beautiful duets I’ve ever heard (I’ve been listening to it for about three days in a row now):

Just when I’d pretty much given up on Glee (the Justin Bieber episode was the final nail in the coffin), they gave us ‘Blame It on the Alcohol’ which proved that a drunken Glee Club is a whole lot of fun. Even clingy annoying bore Rachel (‘Your face. Tastes. Awesome.’). Of course the episode turned into a PSA towards the end, because you can’t have the biggest show in the world glorifying underage drinking.
Darren Criss’ character Blaine is still too boringly perfect for me, but when he starts to sing – anything –, I melt. Talk about charisma! Case in point: ‘Teenage Dream’ (and I truly hate that song. At least I used to). Also, for those of you not nerdy enough to have seen the Youtube phenomenon that is University of Michigan’s ‘A Very Potter Musical’, I assure you, he makes for a fantastic Harry Potter. And songwriter.
All that considered, I’d sure like to get him drunk.
But enough of that show.
Pictures from weheartit.com

I’ve just come from my creative writing class which always pumps me full of inspiration: texts to read, techniques to use, things to blog about. But then life happens with its speed and excitement, and I forget about all that.
But not today!
The first half of the term we were doing poetry (first term it was fiction and creative nonfiction). Now, poetry is quite an uncharted territory to me. At least it was six weeks ago. I’ve grown to understand and like it a lot more during that time. Still, the first things we learned about poetry are the ones I remember best:
1. Most poetry you’ll write is bad.
2. Most poetry ever written is bad.
3. There is no money to be made in poetry.
Considering all that, and the fact that I’ve never felt the need to release the poems trapped inside me, I’d say that poet is not a career path I’m considering.
My favourite class activity concerning poetry writing was cut-up technique. As you’ve possibly gathered from my blog, I love cutting out inspiring pictures and creating collages. I was surprised to find out I really enjoy doing the same with words. Print out a poem, cut it into pieces, and rearrange them into another one – easy.

I also tried it with the written warning I’d received from the University Accommodation from not having cleaned the kitchen one morning, but sadly I couldn’t make it work.
Anyway, this week we started a new section: performing writing. Again, something I had no real interest in (radio, stand-up, poetry slams, rituals and all that), but again, unbelievable how thrilling the seminar was! What I’ve heard of the tutor is that he will tell you if your work is shit and he does make people cry, which I’m not particularly looking forward to, but I suppose it’s something you need to get used to in this business. Or in any business.
The activity we did was something I’d heard of before, and feared: having to write non-stop (whatever comes in your head, just don’t let the pen leave the page) – while counting backwards from 100. It makes your two brain sides work in opposition, bringing you close to writing in trance, and thus coming up with ideas that you never knew you had in you. Theoretically. And it worked for some people. They had chaos on their pages, sentences that might as well have been written in a drug haze, words they simply didn’t understand. I, on the other hand put all my effort in blocking out the numbers we were saying out loud together. And it worked, resulting in a simple normal text. Talk about boring!
That is so typical of me. It’s the notion of losing control that is just never an option in my case. Even with drinking, I have only had one experience when the situation was out of my hands and my always-in-place public image had been dropped somewhere on the icy streets of Tallinn. And even then, with chunks of the night missing from my memory, I do remember thanking and apologising to whoever those people were who were looking after me. And I remember the embarrassment I was feeling. Which has pretty much disappeared now, because why else would I keep telling people about that. I suppose a part of me is proud that I finally have a proper drunken story to tell. Everyone has something concerning getting into fights, throwing up on bouncers, being arrested or the like. Mine measures up alright, I think, because it includes being called an ambulance and ending up getting stitches.
With the exception of that one infamous time, I am virtually unable to let go of control. Just ask my friends. Most of them will probably think they’ve never seen me drunk.
And I can't decide if it's a gift or a personality flaw I should be trying to overcome.
Good song (not really relatable, though).

The academic side has been challenging. In a good way. Not too easy, not too boring. I was a bit scared at first, because at the English department’s induction meeting they warned us that it would nothing like school. That all of us must surely have been top of the class to get in, but now everyone here is top of their class, and it’s going to get a lot more difficult. And I thought, shit, I was in no way top of my class even at school. Well, largely because I was (and often still am) too lazy to put any more work in than absolutely necessary, and instead choose to abuse on my great memory and good girl image.
But as I said, it’s not too bad here. Although the writing class is still a bit intimidating because of how talented everyone else is. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as there were over 30 people to a place, but I still am. They’ve got stories. And not just stories, true ones. We once had to write a couple of vignettes on important moments in our lives and strong emotions they created, and mine just paled in comparison to others. Every story they read out made my jaw drop, because whoa. They’ve had some seriously fucked up things happen to them. I’ve always known I’m lucky and have had an easy life, but I had no idea that there are so many things I should be grateful for not having experienced. Really dark stuff which makes me embarrassed about the childish disappointments and petty fights that I’ve considered traumatic experiences. In a sick way I’m almost slightly jealous, because these are the kinds of things that inform your writing. How can I compete with them if I have no idea how these emotions feel?
Anyway, moving on to something lighter. The other side of uni. The fun, stupid, irresponsible things caused by nothing but hedonism. The kind of behaviour my Estonian friends would quite possibly judge, because a large portion of them seems to have suddenly become serious adults who work in offices and have proper homes and serious relationships. And real problems, not whether it would be alright to pull a guy from your own corridor, or taking a girl back to your room only to have her reveal herself to be a devout Christian who won’t even kiss.
Which is actually one of the reasons I’m glad I left. The idea of the ‘grown-up’ lives of my friends frankly gives me a bit of a panic attack. I’m still young, for God’s sake.
I feel like I’ve blabbed about my social life quite a lot, both here and on Twitter, so now I’ll just let pictures do the talking. Oh, and since I’ve been posting songs here for a while now, then what would be a better soundtrack to the kind of university experience I’m talking about than this: