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Hooray today is my birthday, making me 20 years old. Arriving at Mandarin class this morning I was greeted by my friends blowing balloons, with Martin trying to hide a birthday cake he had bought earlier. I was greatly touched by the effort they put into this and I appreciate Martin's effort into buying the cake and everyone else's contribution, making them some of the kindest friends I have ever had and making Martin the kindest fairy I have ever encountered. This has persuaded me not to capture him to use for research. For now.

After class Tony and I headed off to Strathclyde University where we we walked through a rather deserted campus and rested in a nice garden, spending a few hours drawing pictures and enjoying the sunshine. Our walk through the campus seemed eerily unsettling, reminding me of scenes from a number of post apocalyptic films, including the Omega Man where Charleton Heston played the last man alive wandering through a city deserted during the day while fighting nocturnal mutants at night. I drew an awesome armour clad warrior/dark knight, which gives a small indication of my fearitude.

I've checked on Spider and the grades for my Physiology II report have been revealed, 79% making it an A or 1st class pass. Excellent.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened in the past few days (apart from the death of Boris Yeltsin and the discovery of Gliese 581 c) Therefore I've taken the opportunity to discuss, or more correctly rant, about one of my dislikes, specifically abbreviations that people have been using ever since home computers and cell phones became widely used among ordinary people. When home computers became really widespread around 10 years ago some believed that they would be useful tools of learning and enrich our vocabulary. Clearly this is not the case. For example here are a few abbreviations that I've soiled my blog with:

"wtf, lol, rofl, 2moro, plz, thx, lmao"

These kind of things really annoy me. What on earth is "rofl" ? It sounds like Scooby Doo trying to say "waffle". So it's a relief to sometimes see normal typing:

"am i going to regret this or shall it be hilarious. what ridiculous patter. but it did bring a smile to myface when you talked about the change of careers. you should drop the test tubes and go get your single shot gunpowder filled brace of pistols and your cutlass. or either that your samurai sword, throwing knives and grappling hook."

Apart from the lack of capital letters this guy's typing is excellent. Contrast it with this fecal matter that I snatched from somewhere:

"hiya ano tel me bout it! am gd ta urself? av not bn doin much workin drinkin usual crap u? x"

That's not to say that I have a grudge against people who use these abbreviations. Many of my friends use them and they are intelligent people who either attend university or have graduated. However when young school children grow up not knowing how to spell properly and doing their homework in this way then it becomes a problem. Some of the things I see on the internet are so absurd it shocks me to my very bone marrow and makes my intestines rumble in disapproval.

As a small indication of my severe lack of maturity, I'll talk about pirates and how awesome it is to be one. I spent some time telling people about International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th). This is an excellent holiday, even though I haven't even heard of it until yesterday, as pirates are cool and I'm one of the most fearsome. Pirates are cool because they steal from the rich and...well they keep it for themselves actually and either spend it all on alcohol or bury it in some obscure location. Since I'm the type that doesn't drink on a regular basis (i.e. never) the alternative is to bury it all - in a big treasure chest and have a map that looks like it was drawn by a 2 year old. My friend Martin seems to think I'm delusional as well as being very immature for a 19 year old soon to be 20, but he's just a fairy so what would he know?

I also came across Day of the Ninja (December 5th) which also sounds good. Both professions tend to involve being devious, brandishing sharp things and having an abundance of fearitude (an amalgam of being fearsome and having attitude). Except that ninjas move around stealthily, which brings back memories of the videogame Tenchu where much of your time was spent moping around in dark places taking the opportunity to sneak up behind someone and kill them. The most stealthy ninja like thing I ever did though was to steal freshly baked muffins from the kitchen. Mwahah, I am the Muffin King. However dressing like a ninja is probably not a good idea in this political climate, as having a piece of black cloth wrapped around your face looks altogether too similar to those guys in the Middle East who all seem to drive a Toyota Hilux, demonstrated on Top Gear as being near indestructible.

Yes it's Friday, the day before Saturday (my powers of observation are astounding) and Saturday is when the newest episode of Doctor Who is on. There's something very intriguing and exciting about the Doctor and his adventures through time and space and I have high expectations for his new companion Martha Jones. There was something I didn't like about Rose apart from her lack of brain cells (her huge mouth).

First day back at university, although we only had one lecture. The two week easter holiday was good but it's good to get back and focus most of my brain cells again on what I do-Pharmacy. Afterwards I spent time in the library, using up a collosal 250 credits on printing lecture notes for Bioscience (that equates to 250 A4 pages) with enough paper to account for a few acres of a rainforest. My computer got hijacked by my classmate Gail who seized the opportunity to add herself to my friends list on bebo without my permission. Curse you, I will have my revenge. And I did, now a big turd graces her whiteboard and demonstrates my absurd lack of maturity.

Afterwards I met with my sister for lunch at Oko. I think it's my first time there. The sushi was good although homemade sushi seems to be profoundly more satisfying. To my sister who may be reading this I'm subtly implying that it's time you made more of your delicious sushi, especially the ones with dried seaweed wrapped aroud the outside. Woops, so much for being subtle.

I Found out that a new J.R.R. Tolkien novel was released, well it will be tommorrow and being the Lord of the Rings fan I am I've ordered my copy on Amazon. It all comes to roughly £11, a good price considering the post and packaging included and it being an impressive hardback. It's called 'Children of Hurin' not 'Children of Urine' as some dimwitted person who I happen to know and who goes to the same university as me suggested. It's apparently darker and more tragic than the Lord of the Rings, as well as being much shorter (300 pages). Somwhat like the Silmarillion which I read about 4 years ago, despite it containing some really good stuff it was a seriously difficult book to read and tested even my patience. It's like reading Don Quixotie, long and with lots of archaic language. Hopefully Children of Hurin will be less taxing.

Hmm, had a nice steak for dinner. Rare with fried onions and mustard. Finished off with a bottle of soya milk and an orange. My sister couldn't finish her dinner since she had an upset stomach. Actually we had the same thing the night before and Eva didn't feel like eating. Must have ate something earlier. So I ended up eating her steak, which was really tough and hard, like my ass.

Managed to get some studying done for Pharmacy, Physiology class to be specific. It really pays to have all those notes I wrote earlier this year, saves me having to frantically flick through books and journals. Writing my own notes helps me learn stuff easily. Which reminds me, I had a funny lecture just before Easter break started on Reproduction. It wasn't funny because it was on Reproduction, the people who giggle at that should reflect deeply on their sense of humour then jump off a cliff in despair, lemming style. What was funny was the mention of VIP hormone. Hmm what does VIP stand for? Very impressive p***s?

I've started a new campaign in Medieval 2:Total war and so far have expanded England's territory, massacring soldiers of various nationalities in my quest for fame, glory, power and just some good old fashioned warmongering. The Pope excommunicated me for being too aggressive against France. This annoyed me greatly and so I waited for him to die of old age (or cholera/plague/typhoid fever/etc) so that my excommunication would end. Generally I'm amazed and surprised at how quickly Popes die in this game. The only thing I can think of that keels over quicker are fruit flies.