Eager & Surprised

Since roughly starting University it's been an intent of mine to not only join a club or two, but to also extend my practice and knowledge on the Japanese language.

I got the clubs down - joining Salsa lessons and Cocktail society but not quite the Japanese. To be honest, I've been hoping to find some Japanese people around studying here. Part of it is to carry on my practice of the language but it's also because I just miss having those sort of friends. Chichester was my previous locale for education but also a hotspot for spanish and japanese students. Last year I made good friendship with Nao Sano who was studying in England part-time. When she departed, Nao left me a letter explaining how happy she was to have an English person speak (some) Japanese to her, especially out of the blue. Not only that, she settled in better to the course because of this.

How many foreign students must have this same problem of isolation? Most likely vast amount. Part of that could possibly be down to our culture's somewhat xenophobic nature. Hell, one former Japanese student at Farnham made an animation piece which partly spoke about the cultural blockade.

Anyway, I've heard Japanese students on a number of occasions mention how they've been failing to make friends in England. The fact I helped Nao like this really did surprise me. Could I really be supporting others like this in that case? Maybe. Something on the back of my mind has been pushing me to find some Japanese people to befriend. One day this week I visited an English language teacher - Vicki. She told me she'd pass my contact details onto any Japan students she'd be teaching. Not only that, we had a discussion about Farnham UCA's potential plan to introduce language swapping. If that'd happen, that would be great. Vicki seemed to understand the same delight of breaking that cultural wall down when speaking to a foreigner their own 'tongue'.

Well it's Friday and I've yet to get an email or text from someone Japanese! Maybe she hasn't taught any yet? That doesn't seem feasible since she told me she teaches a lot of Japanese students. Maybe they don't need to contact me because they're already going ok with friends? Do hope if that is the case. (And of course they simply do not want to, for whatever reason)



Alarm went off at 7am this morning and I completely blanked it. Warm comfort is just really too much, and being an hour before lesson is the only real impulse that gets me out from under the covers. I met the sassy Sophie up in the kitchen and mentioned the hysteria last night:
Yesterday was the Thursday ball finishing at 2am. Everyone who intended (which sounded like a surprising amount given that shitty entry fee) came back in a pissed state. Along with our door bell being wrung repeatedly, the screams and general feel-good roaring was enough to keep my eyes open well past 4 o' clock.

Back to Friday morning, Sophie explained how she was not a happy bunny that night. To be specific, her friend PJ and Becky decided to be the ones ringing our house up past 2am. They must of thought we were all still up playing a round of cards or Ring of Fire. Sophie tattled them that "some of us (Hello) could of been sleeping."

Turning up to my Friday lesson just on time, it wasn't so much Digital Skills - albeit related - but a tutorial. Our group basically spent all of it coming up with some ideas for the 30 minute animation we were to do. It did feel fairly pointless on a basis of actual productivity but I did find it helpful since it put me a perfect position to brain storm some good ideas. Towards the end of the lesson we were to explain our current ideas with accompanying imagery and video.

Our assignment for Digital Skills, by the way, is to produce a 30 second animation on a classmate we were randomly partnered with (and vice versa). My partner is Jade Midson. In fact she is a girl who keeps catching my eye mostly due to that rad purple highlight she has going on down the side of her hair. I got some necessary, crapsy lets-be-pals question responses down.

I know it jumps the gun, but Jade does seem like a person willing to do as she pleases but that isn't a bad thing at all in my books. I figured a note pad with doodles is a good theme to go with since that's often associated to impulsive creativity, a sort of freedom to do as one pleases. She has some tasty responses to work from such as favourite colour green, special place Egypt, selection of music and so fourth. Maybe, then, I should take that notepad on a literal journey and have the texture of the paper take effect to those responses? It could soak up from the water of the Red Sea, get sand over it from the desert and use inspiration from Hieroglyphics.

The teacher there was a calm and collected man. Good time talking with him, and he gave me two animators to look at for ideas in relation to my work. It's also worth noting that the two animators are teachers at Farnham UCA here! Haha, what the hell, right? :(

Afterwards I bumped into Luko - younger brother of a good friend of mine back in High School. He's doing the same course as me. Luko looked irritated, and told he that he was suppose to have Digital Skills earlier in the morning but Jon Hunt told him to go the next session because he missed 8 minutes of the current 1 hour 30 minute group. With a crippling hang over and incoming cold, Luko certainly wasn't a cheery man at the time.

At 3:00pm, it was my time to head to the fabled UNDERCROFT of the Library for Digital Skills. Fitting name, for sure - it's not so much underground like traditional basement floors but from the sheer scope of the Library it was enough to within the walls of building - thus the absence of windows and hallowed light of time. Whilst our group was waiting in one of the rooms for the other to finish up, an Asian girl (a pretty looking one at that) I'd never seen before until now was waiting around, along with another girl of our nationality. I asked both their names - the Asian girl with Su, and the other was Imagen - a very nice name, in my opinion. Su originally did foundation here at UCA (made apparent by a girl of our group excitingly running to hug her  on reunion) whilst Imagen had to retake this year because of issues concerning her health and well-being at the time.

It was time, and out came the previous group for ours to step in. Jon Hunt was there, projector and computers at the ready. I encouraged Su to come over and sit with me from afar, but Su just stood there hesitated. It's just now that I realise she was most likely intending to sit with the friend of hers (and may explain why her friend felt cold with me during that lesson) so I really did fuck that up quite badly. Su sat on some other row of computers.

Our lesson with Digital Skills today was with Photoshop. I've learnt that program so much before, maybe starting from age 8. I'm always open to a refresher on basic tools, though. We learnt how to cut out parts of an image with the Lasso tool, as well as the basics of Layers. More importantly however is we were informed on the technical side of aspect ratio, and the specifics of using PAL formats. I listened quite eagerly - this was something I've been curious about for a while.

The lesson went okay up until the group task where we had to gather images of our favourite characters and pass them over to a single person within the group who'd place them together mixed into a background. Most of my faverites and their respective images had a white space and thus no need for any form of cutting out but Felix - the man in charge of placing together the images - told me to include backgrounds with the images. Sorry, huh? I was lost there, really. Time ran out, too, and Jon labelled our group as DNF. Did Not Finish. I joked if we'd win an award for being the best anyway. He responded that we failed to meet the client's deadline and the producer/director fired us. I think that was meant to be sugar-coating moral punchline there, but in the Industry I wouldn't be choosing to work with someone who instructs me on something that completely inverts what the papers brief.

Imagen scantly stated she didn't care as she didn't want to work with the others anyway. Damn, sister!

The lesson finished up, and I feel like quite a looser for goofing up back there. (I did take Jon's remark to heart at the time) I went ahead and asked where Su was from.

Yup. Japan.

My eyes widened up and my stomach raced. I asked if she WAS Japanese, in Japanese. Yup.
Su remarked my Japanese was good (Many seem to say this upon first meeting) but I really think not in comparison to her fluent English. I really wanted to talk more with her, but she quickly departed to go upstairs in the Library. I hope to hell I see her again on Tuesday or sometime next week.

Luko was outside the croft at Library reception incidentally, looking to trying to get his UCA card. (PJ passed by, as well) He still seemed bloated, tired, and generally under the weather. We talked about how the Digital Skills project was going, in regards to the partner. Luko's repeatedly tells him to go onto Facebook where he can see the info there (she often scampers off to catch up with her other friends) which is annoying as it is - but Luko despises the social networking website altogether. Luko had to depart on home whilst we were in Waitrose. Hope he'll get better.

Meanwhile, today was Stir Friday! Picked up the goods for a stir fry, and cooked it up when I got back. Put some into a small bowl for Yannis and others to taste. They quite liked it! Phew, my cooking isn't terrible then. Oh! The kitchen was cleaned up today as well much to my and various other's rather huge surprise. Georgia, Sophie, Yannis, thanks.

Sophie had to head off this evening to go back home to Brighton, essentially to help with her Film Production project. Her friend Becky happens to live in Brighton too, so they headed off together.

PJ came up sometime after 6 to hang with us. He's a cool guy, and he must like being with others. I guess the absence of Becky - his housemate and good friend - had some reasoning to his appearance with us at 92.

It's my first actual weekend spent in University, too! Man that's nice. I hope things go okay for my brother and sister in regards to the meeting on Sunday. I wish I was there to support them - they say they'll be alright. I can't provide much input for the meeting, though. Bonehead, and all.