09:19 - breakfast of two soft-boiled eggs (I ate only one and a half though) and wheatmeal toast with margarine, and lemon-scented tea with honey. I wanted to make soldiers for my eggs, but decided it wasn't really worth the effort. I'm still trying different ways to making the soft-boiled eggs I'm used to; what I did this morning was to submerge an egg in freshly boiled water for three minutes, but it was still too raw, so I zapped it in the microwave set for defrost for less than a minute. It sorta worked.

11:11 - coffee and a banana.

I've caught a cold or something. My throat feels completely raw and painful; I feel twinges everywhere on my body; my head feels heavy, my eyes swollen; and my nose is running. I actually slept in the afternoon - something I'd never do on an ordinary day - which says something; and I woke up past 10:00 this morning and didn't do laundry - which says even more. Argh. I wanna get well soon. =(((

08:44 - walked up to school this morning, so I stopped by Le Moulin for a chicken and potato pastry for breakfast. Delish! (With my little tumbler of coffee.)

08:38 - boiled egg and roast chicken on wheatmeal, and my little tumbler of coffee.

08:34 - multigrain toast with shredded chicken. Didn't go to school today because I was due at the police station to be finger-printed at 10:15.

09:18 - multigrain roast chicken sandwich, with my little green tumbler of coffee.

08:54 - a sandwich of shredded roast chicken and a sliced hard-boiled egg, and my little green tumbler of coffee.

09:44 - 'Best Breakfast' cereal (my current favorite, consisting of corn and bran flakes, all-bran, rice puffs, dried apricot, red papaya, and pineapple) and milk.

Currently addicted to this blog, and very tempted to document my own meals. It'll be a good idea to see the amount of junk I injest (yikes) - maybe I'll finally be shocked into taking better care of my body (which is now so fat that rolls of fats are preventing me from getting deeper stretches - I know: that's disgusting and TMI).

Other stuff: I found the letter from INZ in my letterbox this morning. C said she'll go with me to the police to get fingerprinted on Tue after her class, but I'll need to hand in my signed contract (for 20 hours' work?!) to the administrator for the Psych department with a copy of my student permit next Mon. I started doing some of the work on Friday itself, looking for articles on Semiotica, and sorting through the existing articles on EndNote. (EndNote is an OCD wet-dream, by the way.) I actually can't wait to continue next Monday! Will try to go through all the journals on my list with the shortlist of names, rather than reading abstracts of articles with titles that look like they may be what I should be including in my cache of articles.

Also hauled some books home from the school library on Friday, borrowed under C's staff card since my student one doesn't work no more ... =(

You know, I bet it's only when I'm here that I feel like I'm missing out on so much back home.

But, honest-to-goddess, whatever I feel like I'm missing out on (by not being back home, and thus being able to attend/be involved in those events), I prolly would've skipped if I were back home anyway.

Feels like Purgatory where I am now, just a whole load of waiting, waiting, and waiting.

The Singapore High Comm. was efficient, and I received what I asked for the day after I called. Immigration NZ, on the other hand ... well, I made a call yesterday, and thankfully it was a friendly chap named James who answered. He put in my request for me and told me it would take a couple of days to process, but since the letter is to be sent from the AKL office, I would receive it next week - "but give us a call if you still haven't received it next week".

It's so tedious. I hate forms. I hate not understanding what I'm reading.

I feel so tired these days, doing nothing. Not quite sure if it beats being wired on adrenaline though ...

This is my last day as a student (being officially enrolled, that is). It's a wee bit scary, and I don't know what to do with myself.

In the short term, though, there are dishes I want to try make, and I've gotta tidy up the flat. Keep busy, I suppose.

I hate job hunting though. There're prolly few things on earth that would make you feel as worthless. And desperate.

And things I love doing that aren't job options (for me): pole, dance, and papercutting.

I was chatting with Mandy (my dance teacher) after class on Thu, and she asked what I was doing in school (strangely enough, that was the second such question I was asked within a span of two hours that day), and I said, "My honors in English. It's completely useless."

Mandy said, "Don't be so hard on yourself! It's not useless!"

But, it is. I spent my undergraduate years doing mostly medieval papers:

• ENGL214 The Chivalric Quest
  
• ENGL215 Old English Literature
  
• ENGL224 Literary History of English Language
  
• ENGL307 Troy and Troilus
  
• ENGL315 Restoration and 18^th Century Literature
  
• ENGL320 Beowulf
  
• ENGL321 Old English

And my honors papers are:

• ENGL402 Medieval Studies: Old Icelandic
  
• ENGL406 Medieval Studies: Middle English Language to Early Modern English Language
  
• ENGL489 Research Essay (Manuscript Use of Anglo-Saxon Runes)
  
• LING410 Literary Linguistics

I'm gonna come right out to say that as much as I love these papers, especially Old English and Old Icelandic, my degree is completely useless. Were I to pursue it to Ph.D. level, it would still be useless.

For one thing, my school has more or less abolished the medieval studies department because so far there has been no hiring of any lecturer(s) to replace my lecturers who retired. Christine and Robert were the medieval studies department. As a result of their retirement, medieval studies papers aren't offered this year at all. (Well, actually there will be one girl who will be taking Beowulf, but it's more like supervised self-study, with an ex-student of Christine's guiding the study.)

Since the school doesn't see fit (yeah, yeah, it's always about the bottom-line, I know, and so C says) to keep medieval studies running, I can only infer from that the uselessness of what I'm doing.

And then I read this thread.

Cut. Cut. Cut.