MSN spaces are a bit temperamental still so here is my livejournal: www.livejournal.com/polarvenka I think that's it anyway. It's more detailed than anything I can be arsed to write here. Oh, and email me, bitches.

OK, and this computer is in Korean. I think they do this so the international students can understand it. But what about me?? I'm an international student too! A Pakistani girl in a really nice sari has just come up to me and asked me where I got my nose pierced. While we were chatting she told me she had some family who lived in England. I asked, "which part of England?" and she said "Scotland." So as you can see most people are really friendly here, and some Chinese people shout 'hi!' at you as you go past or come up and talk to you. Or they just gaze at you because you're a westerner (the other day a lady actually brought her baby grandson over so he could look at me). Either way you never get ignored like in England. Yeah, China is completely different to anywhere I've ever been, but it's the people who are the most interesting. It's far more lively than back home. If you look down any given secluded alley you'll see a couple of street vendors, groups of men sitting around on crates playing cards or mah-jong and smoking, a lady sweeping up with a straw broom and millions of bicycles. Many of them have carts attached to the ends and carry random crap like potted plants or crates of chickens. I've been out to the shops every day just looking around with the other English girls and sometimes my room mate. It's extremely cheap here. Most things cost under 20p, and they sell really cute stuff that the indie kids would snap up in England for about 6 pounds each. Today I got some really nice earrings with strawberries on them. I've also bought some stationary with bad English on it - one notebook we saw said "Well, I like egg fries, but I am not an egg. Will someone help me exit this egg basket?" Other examples of bad English I've seen include an advert for Motorola Razr phones saying 'I CHOCOLATE YOU" at Beijing airport. Plus unintentional innuendo on girl's tops - my room mate Yi\uanshu was today wearing a T shirt saying "deep throat" on it, and we saw a girl in town around with "honeys love sex" on her top. I've vowed to get myself a top with crappy English on it. Well it's not hard here. Better go now. zaijian xx EDIT: I've just realised this computer won't let me write in paragraphs (because it's gay). Sorry if it's a bit hard to understand.

Just wanted to let everyone know that hotmail and msn messenger doesn't work on the university computers (they're crappy Windows 98 ones) so I haven't been able to receive emails since arriving here. If you want to get in touch then my alternative email address is joanne9989 (at) yahoo (dot) it. I'll write more soon because the computer room is closing soon, but all you need to know is that I'm OK, my room mate is nice and my Chinese is slowly getting better. It's sooo different here, I can't even begin to describe it. And I don't have my wire to put pictures on the PC. It is absolutely boiling hot and I can't understand anyone. I can't even understand this computer, it's all in Japanese for some reason.

• My hair was annoying me by being unruly, taking up valuable time that could have been spent eating or smoking, and constantly blowing in my face with this current windy spell. So I got it all cut off. Insomma, I now have dyke hair!! I have been freed from the tyranny of Good Hair Days and Bad Hair Days; from now on I shall only have Hair Days. Except today, when it went all curly from the damp.
• I've managed to get myself a few extra days at work, meaning more moneh and more distractions from my plight of not revising at all. Today I was making Dewy labels for the books and I made myself a sticker saying "LOL STFU n00b", which I promptly affixed to my lapel. Some newbie will see it and it will BLOW THEIR MIND!

The bad news:

• One of the Old Ladies from the charity shop has died. My favourite one, in fact. As a short obituary, Joan was a born-and-bred Plymouthian, who was born a few streets away from where she eventually passed away. She had a dog called Pumpkin and stole one of the one of other old ladies' boyfriends (I name no names). This is good because I didn't really get on well with the other old lady. When she was young, she would go dancing with her friends in the Duke of Cornwall's ballroom. She had blonde hair, called me 'bird', bought us coffee on Monday mornings and was by no means old enough to die. It is so sad that she's gone.
• Other than that, the outside world is COMPLETELY FUCKING ME OFF in three ways:

Number 1 is the state of Heathrow Airport at the moment. I heard today that, to top it all, they're losing everyone's luggage, including people's keys and wheelchairs. I am pissed off for these people and am not a happy bunny that this is the very place I will be waiting in 9 days' time with all my worldly possessions. And no, my travel insurance does not cover acts of terrorism.

Number 2 is the Daily Mail. What is there not to hate about this hate-filled, homophobic, racist, sexist piece of shit? Usually I just take it all with a pinch of salt, but recently it has become clear to me that these whiny journalists, going on about being 'second class citizens in their own country', are actually speaking from positions of enviable priviledge. Of course, it must be awful being a rich white male, but is a bank holiday for Muslims really going to alter your place in society?

Today's issue was no different to usual, really, and by now the politics behind the articles are very obvious. They had the usual article about Muslims getting offended (read: "how dare they demand rights!"), underage sex (="young people are crap. So is anyone who has sex before marriage - namely, 90% of Britain"), and then the crowning glory about a man saying men can never be faithful. I didn't want to read this, because I knew it would come out with the same old bullshit, namely "men have high sex drives, I'm sorry but they're just slaves to their anatomy, so let them sew their wild oats! ...Women, on the other hand, are monogamous and emotional and have no sex drives blah blah blah." I've read this sort of thing before in the Mail, and find it both extremely patronising towards men and what's more, having no fucking clue about women. Gah.

I have decided to stop reading it, even when I'm really really bored. My blood pressure will thank me for it.

Number 3: Today I couldn't watch the Simpsons because Big Brother was on. Repeats of cartoons win over Big Brother any day. Really, if I wanted to see some attention-seeking twats with egos the size of the former Soviet Republic, I'd just go to the Faversham. End of.

OK, I'm done now. If you've made it this far down the entry, well done to you! Have some cake.

Since I last wrote in here I've visited London twice more. The first time I went to see Becca and Gemma. We all slept in Becca's large comfortable house, ate posh food, smoked on Clapham Common and got very sunburnt. That was in the weekend. The second time was last night till this afternoon, when I went to get my Chinese visa sorted out. This time I slept in a dingy student halls of residence in West Hampstead (an area which only has ONE cashpoint, don't you know), ate takeaways, and spent a disproportionate amount of time wandering around getting very tired and lost.

I hate West Hampstead with a passion. I particularly hate Kidderpore Avenue which is miles away from the shops which in turn are miles away from cash machines.

But I have my visa now. It's basically a sticker that they slapped onto one of the pages of my passport. It has a picture of the Great Wall on it and my name. So it's one less thing to worry about really and I'm happy. I am sick of London though. So big and far away.

After admiring my visa for a bit I went to Canary Warf to have my lunch (OK, so I just wanted an excuse to sit at the front on the Docklands Light Railway). There was the two minute silence for 7/7, but when it happened I was standing at the tube stop so there wasn't a great deal of conversation going on anyway.

Other than my shenannigans in the capital then I haven't really been up to much. I'll salvage a social life when I get around to it. I do have good news though, I have got myself a job for August. Something to do with libraries I think. It pays £6-£7 an hour which is loads to me. In the meantime I have to revise for my chinese exams which I have to take as soon as I get into China. I don't remember sod all.

Tomorrow I am going to a barbecue with my mum over at my cousins' house, who are on The Cornish Side of the Family. Word has it that there will be a French student there, but apparently he's not very fit. My mum keeps hinting at me to brush up on my French, I think she wants her family to hear me talk all foreign. Unfortunately it's been 7 months since I last had a conversation in French, so she might be a bit disappointed.

OK I'm knackered so I'm off to bed...

I'm bored so I thought I'd leave a very short entry for y'all.

Of course I have lots of strong opinions on the rediculous Christian dogma of abstinence before marriage, after all I tried it for about a year (and failed miserably...the rest is history). But they will have to wait for another time when I actually get around to blogging about something political rather than a minute-to-minute account of my existence. For the time being, if you are still under the impression that 'saving yourself' is anything other than an outmoded, unrealistic, and patriarchal institution, take heart in the fact that you can still enjoy lots of bedroom activity - as long as you do it in a sort-of biblical way.

My attention has been drawn to a website on how to have sex in a good Christian way. I'm pretty sure it's serious, and presumably it's been written by a man (the bit on oral sex is almost exclusively about blow jobs and the importance of swallowing. Predictably there's not much about doing anything for women...) While you're at it, be sure to check out fisting and God's will. Because you wouldn't want to do it in an unholy way, would you.

God Bless.

xx