I’m alive, more than I’ve ever been. It’s all because of the city, not school. My feelings towards the latter tend to be on the negative side. Chaos and boredom shall prevail in that field. Nobody seems to have a clue about anything really, teachers and students alike. Plus classes are spread so unevenly, I only have courses from Monday to Wednesday. I feel I’m taking too little classes this semester but there are only so few courses offered and a lot of them are running at the same time with other courses I have to take. Argh, I’m feeling frustrated and let down even before it’s all started.

I have my first class tomorrow at 8 in the morning and whenever I think of that date, I have to resist the urge to shoot whoever’s responsible for that schedule. Monday morning, 8 am – what the hell is a normal human being supposed to do at a time like that other than sleeping soundly in their bed?

As much as uni takes from me, the city gives it all back in other forms.
From an architectural point of view, Berlin has only very few beautiful or exciting sights to offer but as far as cultural possibilities are concerned, it is absolutely perfect. And don’t let me get started on consumerism. Someone’s got to prevent me from becoming a shopaholic, please.
Speaking of which, here are a few things I’ve newly acquired: the repackaged edition of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm which has a slightly longer tracklist (in the form of the additions of Little Thoughts and Two More Years) and comes with a superb DVD including a tour documentary, live footage from a French festival and all the band’s promo videos (I was slightly annoyed at first at the concept of a rerelease of the album – all their fans, including me, already own it; but what can I say, it’s definitely worth having two versions of the same album!); Bloc Party’s Two More Years single (the maxi CD version for Hero), the War Child Help! A Day In The Life compilation album, Paul Auster’s latest novel The Brooklyn Follies (the UK version, the US version hasn’t even been published yet) and Kenzaburo Oe’s Somersault. Much to keep me occupied when I’m home and in need of acoustic and intellectual stimulation :)

A new selection of songs. Coincidentally, all seem to fit the current season quite well. (Or is that because I picked them late last night/early in the morning?)

Babybird – You’re Gorgeous
(From the album Ugly Beautiful, UK, 1996.)
A huge hit back when it was released as a single, this fantastic little pop song stands out from the rest of radio hits with absolutely hilarious lyrics about… pimping… with a twist!

Sleeper – Sale Of The Century
(From the album The it Girl, UK, 1996.)
Oh no, now I’m digging out the old Britpop stuff to revive my early teenage years! Run, everybody! No, seriously. I loved Sleeper because Louise’s lyrics were always slightly cheeky but also, and most importantly, observant and very accurate in describing modern relationships. This song is a perfect example of those characteristics. Very catchy, too.

Black Box Recorder – Child Psychology
(From the album England Made Me, UK, 1998.)
A haunting song about a girl who one day suddenly stops talking. The line “Life is unfair. Kill yourself or get over it.” got it banned from British radio/TV. Wonderfully cynical, very typical of the band.

The Smashing Pumpkins – The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete
(From the album Adore, USA, 1998.)
An almost-folk song (including a very pretty chorus with wonderful, warm vocal harmonies) by one of the best American rock bands of the 90s.

Editors – All Sparks & Crawl Down The Wall
(From the album The Back Room, UK, 2005.)
The Back Room is one of my favourite albums of the year, I’ve been constantly listening to it over the summer. A fantastic debut with songs that combine desperation and hope, songs driven by an overwhelming urgency, songs so hypnotic that the term “dark disco” which the band coined for their sound seems perfectly fitting.
All Sparks is one of those hypnotic and highly addictive “dark disco” songs, absolutely irrestistible.
Crawl Down The Wall, which is a bit heavier and rawer but no less beautiful, is taken from the Cuttings CD that came with the 2CD Limited Edition of the album and was previously released as a B-side of the single Munich.

Bloc Party – Tulips & Skeleton
(From the Silent Thoughts EP, UK, 2004.)
I fear I’ve overplayed Bloc Party’s debut album Silent Alarm since it’s come out earlier this year. The Bloc Party I’m now playing on heavy rotation is the Japan-only Silent Thoughts EP which is just as brilliant as their debut CD. (What else could you expect? Bloc Party are hands down the best band ever in the history of man. Period.)
Tulips is a touching downtempo song, as close to a ballad as it can get for a Bloc Party song. (It always almost breaks my heart when Kele sings the line “If you promise to let it grow” for the last time in the song, it’s that beautiful.) I ♥ the drums.
Skeleton is quite the opposite of Tulips, starting slowly and then quickly building up to an almost raging chorus.

blur – On the Way to the Club
(From the album Think Tank, UK, 2003.)
I love how all the elements of the song come together at the beginning; first it’s just the drums, then some background noise comes in, followed by the bassline, the guitar etc. A perfect late-at-night song that ends in lots of noise, loops and distortion.

So I’ll have a working telephone connection from Monday on but no DSL ;_; German Telekom (DT) is expecting me to fork out €99 just for the new DSL connection because I’m using a different ISP whose DSL flatrate is a lot cheaper. And I’m not going to pay 100 quid now. I can’t. Stupid greedy DT capitalists! That means I’ll be travelling back to the good old 56k modem days after moving. For now, I’ll be using as much of my bandwidth here as possible. (I’m uploading songs, will post them in another post in a few minutes/hours.)

On top of that, I have a hunch my poor laptop won’t survive the new 6 months. It’s sometimes making all sorts of subtle but weird noises a normal working laptop shouldn’t make and working with it doesn’t feel the way it used to… It’s hard to explain, it’s almost like I’m connected to it in a strange way; I can feel there’s something wrong with it without knowing the exact technical causes, I just know it’s going to die rather sooner than later ;_; I guess I can’t complain much because it’s been running so smoothly these past three years but I wish it would work another 1-2 years in order to keep my bank account from collapsing.

Tomorrow I’ll have a marathon packing session including a lot of angsting and panicking. Looking forward to that quite a bit -_-; The site updates will have to wait till next week. I’m almost done and have already uploaded the large image files so I won’t have to do that with my slow connection next week but the updated HTML files won’t be uploaded until in a few days.

Oh God, I’m so nervous.

[Music: Bloc Party - Skeleton]

Oh, my comfortable time at home is coming to an end. I’m not sad or anything; terribly excited would be a more accurate description of my current condition, I guess. It’s just that I have to say goodbye to all the lovely people I am so fond of, like my sister, my grandparents, my friends and also our dog and our cat (which I know aren’t people, per se). I know I’ll miss each and every one of them so so much. The good thing is that I’ll be able to see them a lot more often than last time when I went to Uni in T. Berlin is quite close to my hometown and I probably won’t even have that much time to think of home because I’ll be busy with school and … culture :) I have already compiled a small schedule of concerts I want to go to, as well as museums and art galleries and the like. Cultural overload, here I come!

In the few days left till I leave I will not only need to pack and get a few bureaucratic issues out of the way, but I will also update my Fairy Cube site a bit and maybe I’ll also be able to make a new layout for this place, though that isn’t exactly a priority on my list of things I need to get done before moving to Berlin. But songs! Songs will be uploaded. Oh yes.