Universal

So I thought I had left the messy days behind when I graduated! According to everyone I know, the university is a perfect place. Deadlines are to be kept, projects are to be fulfilled quickly, all information is to be memorized instantly and everything works without trouble. It's also said to be much, much, tougher than any previous form of education. Out of 250 applications to Japanese, 180 were accepted. I was one of the lucky ones. Especially lucky since noone believed I would get in anywhere with the grades I had from highschool. It's great to prove them wrong! My grades aren't below average though, it's just my surrounding family that have an "olskool" view on everything. People studied harder and achieved more in the old days my parents learned from. Now everything is sooo easy.

The first day was tense, as it always is. I had gone to bed early the night before, but had still not been able to sleep as much as I had hoped. I took the train to Karlberg, walked to St Eriksplan, took the subway to Odenplan and the bus to Albanon. It only took an hour, an hour less than I had expected, and therefore I was one of the three first people to arrive to the almost empty classroom. The introduction had been meant to be held in the Aula, but since another group had booked it we had to help cram 60 chairs into a smaller classroom. The principal talked for two hours, introducing the course. Our first section of this 30 point course consists of 12 lectures and 12 movies about the Japanese society and history, most of which are two hours long. Out of the 180 people in total we are divided into 3 groups, but for the first 24 lessons the full group is to be present.

Our very first movie was called Sansho Dayo. Thanks to the wrong region settings the movie did not start playing and our teachers frantically fiddled with the different settings in vein. One of the students even tried downloading VLC and MPC, but without effect. Another one tried plugging in his laptop instead, but could not get it to function properly either. They called the IT department and they arrived to fix the problem. Our next movie, the week after, was called Ninjo to Kami-fusen. This time everything was trouble-free. However, when, last week, we were supposed to watch Sen-nen no Koi, further troubles appeared. The movie was locked inside a room to which there was only one key, and this key unfortunately belonged to someone who was at the time at a funeral. Luckily though, one of the teachers had the same movie at home, and also had his father home visiting him. So he called his father and almost an hour later the movie began. All movies so far have been fairly interesting, despite their black and whiteness, and our lectures are stuffed with information. I do though, not agree with whomever said that this place is trouble free and serious. I can find just as many flaws as at my old school, and now there's no free food either! . . . so I have to eat at home, heh. It's a challenge not eating anything for six hours or more.

Can't complain about efficiency though, there's more information in one lecture here than there is in a whole week at school. The difference about this year and the past is that now I'm studying my own chosen courses, which should mean I have more motivation to learn than I had before, which seems right. Today is a no studies day though. I've watched the Bourne Supremacy, updated the games page, the ftpdb and finally added some pictures from the now rapidly vanishing summers vacation. I've discovered a few Windows XP powertools that resize all images for me. Saves me hours. I really wish I had used this tool when putting together all previous galleries and stuff. Took a long walk with Andreas too . . .and had the opportunity to test his newly upgraded supercomputer. woo.

Time to gain some lost sleep now. Goodnight.