[ Spider Death of Pasta ]

I killed her. I noticed her when I was brushing my teeth and I drowned her in window cleaning spray.
She was a huge-ass spider, sort of minding her own business next to the toilet seat.
I felt kinda bad after I killed her – at least I think I killed her, I didn’t check for pulse -, seeing her twitch and try to to run to a safe place, little did she know that the poison was already working it’s way through her system. I got a bit sad after that, maybe that’s how alien invasion movies come to be, we put ourselves into the spider’s/Indians/rain-forests position and swap the cleaning spray with a Mothership and a death-ray. But what was I to do? Let her live and spawn dozens of cute eight-legged critters? Spend 10 minutes trying to get her out of the house?
The moral high-ground comes at a cost.

So Maria was here for a few days, hence my lack of updates. We played Hearthstone and League of Legends, watched movies,played Rock Band with Kyle and Jana, I leveled up my cooking skills (now I can include pasta in my CV) and had a great time all around. I have not progressed much on the things-I-have-to-do list, tomorrow I will finish up some applications and work on my LinkedIn profile.

(ugh, I am NOT looking forward to it)

~Garret

[ Breaking Dawn… I mean… Bad! ]

My alarm is set for 9:30 tomorrow, my best guess is it will have to work for 2 hours to wake me up.

I did some progress today, I have to finish my motivational letter and apply for an MA course on Contemporary Curating. Initially I was thinking about applying to more than one course, but after a talk that I had with a friend, I decided against it. When this is done, I have to finally get on with my essay for Leiden, I don’t know why I am so scared of starting it.

Other than that, I have been watching A LOT of Breaking Bad these days. This show is amazing. It is So. Well. Acted. I mean, I knew there was a buzz around it being a great show, but I had avoided it mostly. I tend not to find crime/drug stories particularly interesting, but DAMN this show sets the bar on how a good show should be.The characters are amazing, the writing is clever and realistic and the storylines are tense without ever feeling… over the top. Some of it’s themes are also… very relatable for me somehow. Being in a rut that you have a hard time getting out of can come in many different flavours.

See ya all tomorrow.

~Garret

[ To serve Garret ]

Kudos if you got the title reference.

Anyway, today I would like to talk about my relationship with Cooking.
I say relationship, it’s not very official yet, we’ve barely had a few dates , a couple of dinners (hey look, a joke) and our time together does not amount to more than a couple of hours.

Although I’ve seen Cooking before, in my own house in Athens, imagine the coincidence. I was either not interested or too intimidated to make an approach.
Embarrassingly enough, my mother tried to arrange a few awkward dates, but I must say, my heart wasn’t into it then.

Recently though, we were re-introduced thanks to Maria, during her latest visit here in Manchester, in much simpler terms than before, and you know what? I can’t continue this analogy between cooking and relationships any more, soon I will have to mention sex and that’s a few short steps from having this blog become an ungodly debauch.

So yea, the past few weeks I have been, in a way, cooking. Up until last month ,cooking was something that only other people did, like driving buses or being President of the United States. If something was not ready to bite, it was not considered food in my book.

Here I am though, buying meat , not processed meat in souvlaki form, no sir, now I buy, pink soft meat, the kind that comes in those packages that are white foamy on the bottom part and have clear plastic on the top bit. I know that for many people these things were always there, but for me, they didn’t even register. If I found myself in a zombie apocalypse and as any logical person, I wound up raiding a supermarket, I would get crisps (see I am becoming a Brit), Coke, probably some fruit, but I would completely ignore any frozen meat stuff.
Using the hob was unthinkable for me, I didn’t even know what a hob was. Microwaving leftovers was the most cooking-y thing I would do. The top part of an oven was just wasted space that could be better used to leave the supermarket bags on.
Using a hob would be meddling with technology I couldn’t possibly understand.

Cook, for your own good Garret.

Cook, for your own good Garret.

So I am quite surprised with myself these past few week. Cooking chicken, buying rice (ffs, that is an evolutionary breakthrough for me), even warming up beans and stuff on the hob is something that feels new. It’s not that I enjoy it , not really, I find it quite boring. But I do see the correlation now between being hungry and the stuff I have to to in order to stop being hungry.
I have lived alone before, in Lesvos, and I don’t think I used the kitchen for anything other than keeping all the stuff I did not wan’t in my main room. So what is different now? Is it just that takeaway is more expensive here? Who knows.

So even though most of the time here I am whining that I don’t change fast enough and that I don’t do as many things as I would like (and it’s true, I don’t), let’s have this post here to celebrate one aspect where I do see some change.

Let it be a herald for more.

Also Sprach Chicken

Also Sprach Chicken

~ Garret

[ How the ghost of you clings… ]

Tonight Kyle knocked on my door and that set off an awesome late night gaming spree. The whole flat-mating thing is new to me, but I am starting to enjoy how We played League, Hearthstone, I showed him my Warhammer 40k miniatures and in turn he introduced me to Rogue Trader, a roleplaying game set in the 40k universe and then… we played some Rock Band!

This got me thinking, the last time I played Rock Band I must’ve been at qb’s second house in Lesvos, with Mordread, Neni, qb, Yuki and Elena, those were good times. We used to gather there, watch movies, have talks about who knows what, play video games and drink beers. That house had an enormous kitchen, come to think of it.

Hmm, I am getting nostalgic. I don’t believe nostalgia is a very… helpful sentiment. At best it makes one sad, at worst it makes someone miss the opportunities for new great memories to be made. Maybe in 5 years from now (2019 O_O) I will be equally nostalgic about the time I was in Manchester, discussing games with Kyle, with no “real” problems besides finding a job and working towards an MA.

Who knows.

But tonight was a good night.

I am not happy with my blog updates lately by the way, ( I know, it’s a complete change of subject but hey). I find them uninspiring and I also find moaning about them annoying, I am , you could say, in quite the predicament. As douche-y as that might sound, “Rome was not built in a day”, I am trying to change, even though it happens slower than I would like.

I just hope I am not so slow as to regret it later.

~Garret

[ Back in university ]

But only for a little while.

Today I had quite the evening. I went to a talk about Science Fiction in the Indian culture (Why Aliens don’t visit India), with a friend I met at a Cosplay/Sketchoff thing. It was quite interesting, I had no idea how fractured the Indian cultural identity is. The talk was held in the library building in the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU for us Mancunians), I am thinking of applying to some of the MA programmes they have here.

We weren’t many people at the presentation so the whole thing had a conversational feeling to it, afterwards we went to a falafel place called… Falafel. Last time I had falafel I was at the Eksarhia square and that is what I have the falafel taste associated with.

Anyway, we had discussions about science fiction, comics, movies, and cultures, it was a good night out.

~Garret

[ It’s alive, it’s alive, it’s aliiive! ]

The main reason for this post, is to test my new keyboard. I upgraded my laptop keyboard, it now has delicious sugar under its keys. They say it helps in gaming, providing that wonderful crunchy feedback each time they are pressed.

It all started (I am noticing some resistance on the letter S) when Mr. Knee,a friend of mine, introduced Dr.Tea to Mrs. Keyboard. Dr.Tea was unfortunately carrying sugar with him and that is how the whole thing happened.

So yea, my laptop had a little bit of an accident, but in true fashion of a Garret-owned machine, it pulled through,queue epic music:

I left it to dry for a day,the next day I took a few keys out and gave it a nice wash with a wet brush, that seemed to calm the crunchiness down a bit but unfortunately it is now back to the previous levels.

I should be thankful though, I am just glad it made it through. I would be quite devastated if I was left here without a laptop. Although, this whole incident reminded me how much of a time-sink it can be.

One small update on the party from last week, Jana (who today organised an Easter egg hunt in the garden for all the other flatmates! It was my first ever, she is awesome!) told me that a fire extinguisher blew up shortly after I left. As suspect as I sound I can honestly say I had nothing to do with it.

~Garret