Exercise Of The Body And Mind? Or Just One At The Expense Of The Other?

I don’t have a TV. I don’t watch live TV on my laptop. And yet I am still bullied by the TV licensing organisation (read: mafia) to buy a TV licence for the exorbitant fee of £145. They threaten that if I’m caught watching TV without a licence I’ll have to pay over a £1000 in legal fees. They say things like, “We know students watch TV on their laptops.” “We know the laptop is the new TV. But did you know…” And on and on with the menacing language, the posters everywhere, the constant mail.

At first I was worried; I thought it might include things like iPlayer – recorded shows. But I looked at the fine print on the posters and letters and though they do their best to hide it, it’s obvious that you only need a licence if you’re watching live TV. I’ve heard people say it’s actually only BBC that matters, but I don’t know about that. Regardless, I wasn’t watching live TV so I followed the instructions in the letter for how to tell them through their website that I don’t need one. I filled out the form and they said they might be sending people around to check (because bla% of people who think they don’t need a licence actually do), and I said, pssshhh. Right. They’re gonna come around checking dorm rooms, and what? Look at my internet browsing history? That would certainly be an infringement of some kind, and it wouldn’t help them – the same sites offers live and playback.

What’s more is they said they’d stop sending (black)mail around but I’ve received two more letters since then, and more than a few weeks after I filled out the form, too. True, the letters were dated from before I said I didn’t need a licence so it could be the fault of the cleaning lady (who for some reason delivers only these letters when we have proper mailboxes downstairs – well, semi-proper if you read my story about that – must be getting subsidised by the evil company itself). But this is definitely overkill. They’re arrogant, mean-spirited, and greedy (the company, not the cleaning ladies. They’re just..mm, yeah).

I mentioned to a German friend that the thought of suing the company for harassment had crossed my mind. I could sure use the cash for tuition. He replied, “This isn’t America.” Oh…right. Have I really been that influenced?

But I actually didn’t start this post to whine about pestering media mobs. I haven’t heard from them for a while so perhaps it’s blown over. No, I actually started this to tell you about my sports centre. It’s just a few steps up the hill from my halls so going in the morning is easy-peasy (fun to say, not so fun to be heard saying) and their equipment is ace. Yes, I probably paid for it with the sizeable membership fee, but I think it’s worth it. I’m making it worth it.

My favourite pieces are the treadmills. Not only do they have headphone and iPod jacks and FM radio, they’ve also got TV (and I don’t have to pay for the licence, that’s what reminded me of that and got me off on that preliminary tangent). I plug in my earbuds, start the belt, and turn on Friends. Used to be Friends. They recently changed it to a lame comedy so I haven’t been as motivated to go exercise.

But the change of show is probably a good thing because I’m more likely to instead choose to watch the news. And that’s where the point of this entry really comes into focus, because lately I’ve been quite busy writing a politics essay. I don’t know much at all about politics. Or I didn’t, before my copious reading.

It’s about UK politics and I just moved here; I didn’t have a clue. But even if it were about Japan or America I wouldn’t have been much more clued in, and oddly enough now I know British politics far better than any other country’s (it’ll be interesting to see how that shapes my interaction with the subject for the rest of my life). But my knowledge is largely theoretical, so I would benefit from the practical aspect of watching David Cameron do the Question Time in the House of Commons, for example.

So I amused myself with the thought that perhaps I should go work out to study for my politics essay.

There, that’s basically all I’m trying to say with this. I probably won’t even do it, I’ll just trade exercise time for reading time. But in a few days I’ll be done with these two essays (the other one being on the Chilean coup of 1973 and a bit more interesting, though equally involved with a subject completely foreign to me – economics. My brain is literally expanding with all the knowledge I’m taking in, guys) and be off to see Emma Watson and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.

Quite excited, yeah.

I Love Learning, I Love Uni

I grit my teeth and call this a blog and yet I don’t actually blog that much. Most of my time is occupied with moving stuff over from Facebook onto here. But a lot does happen in each day and while most of it is probably not worth sharing (which doesn’t seem to stop a lot of people) there is a considerable amount I wish to remember, and perhaps one day formulate into something more prosaic, or, dare I say, poetical. So I’ll try to drop in most evenings and record the day’s memorable events and thoughts. If you know me well you’ll know better than to trust my promises of consistency, but we’ll give it a go.

In my never-nearing and ever-exasperating quest for wise time management I don’t have a lot of time to waste on worthless blog entries about things I won’t care about two weeks from now, and in times such as these when I’m trying to get into full swing on two essays I’m particularly conscious of that truth. But let’s talk about those for a bit.

I’m learning so much these days! I am completely loving being back at uni. Yesterday I basically learned Britain’s entire political structure – I learned more about the UK government yesterday than I knew about those of the UK, US, or Japan combined, previously. Today I learned what the Chilean coup of 1973 was and Chile’s political history leading up to it. I can learn whatever I like with this massive library at my disposal (open 24 hours a weekday, I might add) and a course as interdisciplinary as peace studies. It’s magnificent. So why I waste at least half an hour a day watching The Office – the American one, not helping me with the accent at all – is beyond me.

‘Half an hour’. I say that like that’s all the time I waste in a day. I waste far more than that. I don’t want to be all down on us humans, but imagine if we truly took advantage of the resources afforded us – time being the chief one. Imagine what we could accomplish. I’d be able to speak four or five languages by now instead of a measly two. Let’s not give up, okay? But what language should I study? Like everything else, I want to do too much and end up doing far too little.

But my main point for now is that I love learning; I really don’t subscribe to this ‘learning is uncool’ belief. As I said to a flatmate today, this is why I love university – the possibilities are endless. Actually we were talking about studying abroad, but same idea. I know knowledge isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s a serious tool that I intend to wield robustly. I like that word ‘robust’, I was reminded of it by a textbook a few days ago.

This is getting long for a blog entry, so I’ll stop here. I’m trying to rein myself in on these, the ones that I slap the ‘General Blog’ label on. Once I get started there’s really no stopping, as those old entries painfully show.

I read this morning that people aged over eighteen need seven and a half to nine hours of sleep a night (younger people need more) because one sleep cycle is roughly ninety minutes. The effects of not getting this are significant, though not immediately noticeable. While I certainly won’t be getting that every night, I mean to endeavour to get that most nights. If I can harness this sleep cycle thing I’ll really be in a good position.

That said, good night.