My day at Dundee University.

Wednesday was another day, another uni to inspect.
I live close to Dundee and have always loved the city so naturally it was one of the universities i wanted to apply for. Unfortunately only 2 universities in Scotland do the course i want to do and Dundee wasn't one of them. But just to be safe i thought i'd better go check it out. Dundee has an excellent English course and also a fantastic film studies one.

Most of the university buildings are relatively new and very hard to find so even i, who goes to Dundee almost every other week, got lost! The campus is nice too but overall i was quite underwhelmed. The English tutor was a nice enough man but the course isn't as interesting as other English courses in Scotland - Edinburgh has the best! So i decided not to spend all day there and went shopping! I bought 3 books for £5 - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ludmilla's Broken English and No Country For Old Men. Me and my friends spent most of the afternoon bitching about people in Waterstones while i read Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Afterwards, one friend went home while the other and i went to meet up with my Advanced Higher English class.


I absolutely adore the class. We get to study Shakespeare in more detail (We read Othello and acted it out. I got to be Othello and stabbed myself with a plastic sword!), we do Plath poetry and there's the dissertation. My topic is on unconventional relationships - i'm reading Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lolita and Brokeback Mountain. Anyway, we all met up at Papa Joes, the nicest restaurant in Dundee. It was expensive but totally worth it! But the highlight of the night was Peer Gynt...


Peer Gynt is a Norweigan play which has been updated by The Dundee Rep Ensemble. It's the story of Peer, a lying, boozing womaniser who wants to find his purpose in life. To say it was odd would be like saying Emma Watson is a bit annoying. The play included sex starved trolls, quad bikes, a caravan, a psychiatric group with a hanged man who all later danced and sung and a group of poo throwing gorillas! It was like David Lynch's Highland wet dream! Suffice to say, i loved it! I'm now trying to convince my English teacher to take us all to London to see Ewan McGregor play Iago!

Quote of the day...

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?

My 3 favourite albums...

Apologies for my very limited CD collection....but these 3 albums are my ultimate favourite albums ever. I could listen to them over and over and never tire of them....hey are all rather recent, i know, but i don't think that should matter. I've also put up YouTube clips of my favourite songs from each album...

Memoirs Of A Geisha

I borrowed this film from a friend in exchange for Pan's Labyrinth and while not a completely equal swap, i enjoyed this film very much.
Based upon the spellbinding book by Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha is the life story of Chiyo, a young girl sold to a geisha house (an okiya) as a child. After initial problems such as multiple escape plans, the unwanted rivalry with the okiya's star geisha, Hatsumomo (Gong Li) and injuries, Chiyo meets The Director (Ken Watanabe) and instantly decides she must become a geisha to meet him again. After being taken under the wing of Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), Chiyo becomes Sayuri (now played by Ziyi Zhang) the most amazing geisha who ever lived.


Watching this film is like watching the tastiest, most colourful and beautiful cake being waved around in your face. There's no denying that every intricate detail is stunning, from the kimonos to the amazing sets, everything is made with tender loving care. I just wish the same could have been said for other parts.
Although the acting is good, albeit a tad hammy in places, i just don't get why Chinese actors were cast in Japanese characters. Maybe i'm a tad PC but where were the fantastic actors and film-makers of Japan when this project was called into production? The cast are really good, don't get me wrong (i love Yeoh and Zhang especially, the latter showing impressive English acting chops) but i just feel like it was a bit wrong. Of course Rob Marshall the director was always one to look more at the big picture. Chicago was a great musical but he went and cast Richard Gere (just wrong!). The script plays out like a soap opera in places ("I Want a life that is MINE!") and lacks the inspiring romance and emotion of the book. The final scene should be the most moving thing in years but it left me a tad underwhelmed. What happened to the 2nd world war? It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it event in the film yet plays a very important part in the book. I understand cutbacks but that was just stupid!
I really am being a bit cruel because i did enjoy it. A solid 7/10 film that just came a tad short. Just ignore the inconsistencies and watch this sumptuous eye candy! And please tell me i'm not the only one who is now a little in love with Ken Watanabe?

Teenagers scare the living sh*t out of me!

It's been a bad day...
I was having my usual lunchtime chat with my little sister and her insane bunch of friends. All of a sudden i feel this massive kick to my thigh. I stumble over and see as shit faced slutty 3rd year group of girls smiling back at me like the bitches they are! I told them to get lost and leave us alone but it was like talking to a brick wall and expecting a dignified answer. They sat there like dumb animals giggling and insulting me. One of the girls tried to bait me ino fighting with her which i of course refused. There was no way in hell i was going to fall to that sub human level - plus confrontations scare me. They kept kicking me so i walked away. Then, the bit that really bothered me, they kicked our friend Megan, a 1st year, into me making her hurt her nose. She cried then i got angry and screamed my head off at the cows! We ran inside where they kept kicking me. We went to report it but it was so pointless. The deputy head didn't care at all about Megan or I. All she cared about was to get me to stop crying (by this point i was hyperventilating) and swearing (i was so FUCKING angry!) because it was 'setting a bad image of the senior pupils!' How stupid is that? Megan is 12 years old and this unprovoked attack could have seriously hurt her but once again all the school cares about is its image! I was so angry, made totally worse by the deputy practically saying there was nothing she could do!
Is this the state of UK schools? We're powerless to stop the bullies, we practically hand everything they want to them on a silver platter! Bullies and 'troubled students' at my school are sent on school trips and adventure holidays when they behave for a week - i get 4 higher passes and i dont get so much as a well done! The bullies get sent home just like they want - the hard working students get in trouble for the occasional bad piece of homework which those bullies don't even try to do! This sort of thing makes me ashamed to be a teenager at a Scottish high school. It makes me sick to my stomach and i'm close to tears now just thinking about it. I'll have to go into school tomorrow and work myself to the point of suicide with so much work while those girls will get a slap on the wrist then sent to do nothing! Where is the justice?

Uni Open Days - Glasgow

Yesterday was my first open day in preparation for my university applications. Now, my number 1 choice is and always has been Edinburgh university but i felt that it would be practical to see a few more just to make sure i wasn't settling for second best. So with my fantastic if totally insane grandmother, i set off to my 4th choice (after Edinburgh, Dundee and Stirling) in the biggest city in Scotland.


I will admit that i was a bit apprehensive about going to Glasgow, it doesn't have the best image in the world. But i was pleasantly surprised. The campus was beautiful, the people were friendly and the courses were very interesting. I really want to study English literature and Gaelic and Glasgow and Edinburgh are the only 2 universities that offer the course (i will be applying for Film Studies and English lit in the other universities). The department was very welcoming and explained what the course entailed, including a year in Ireland!

The Eng Lit dept were also lovely. The reading list is superb, ranging from James Joyce's Ulysses to Don Quixote to Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude to even Harry Potter! Glasgow also has the best music scene in Scotland. It is, after all, where Franz Ferdinand, Snow Patrol and hundreds of other famous bands started out. Christopher Brookmyre and Louise Welsh the authors (the latter of whom i adore) came here too.

After the tour, my gran and i went to the city centre to do that old past time, shopping! Gran bought me two books, Frankenstein and American Psycho. The city is beautiful in the centre, especially Buchanan Street which reminds me in a way of Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Then we found the most gorgeous Chinese restaurant to eat in. I'm addicted to Chinese food, especially noodles so we all splurged out. Shame the resturant decided to play old Sheryl Crow songs!

Overall, my opinions of Glasgow have definately changed. I still want to go to Edinburgh but if i had to go to Glasgow i wouldn't be unhappy about it. Any university with an 11 floor tall library is okay with me!

My favourite book!

I have been meaning to do this for a long time now but keep being delayed by important things such as alphabetising things and putting pictures on my wall...but i think it is time that i write a review for my absolute favourite book ever.

"Middlesex" By Jeffrey Eugenides

'Middlesex' is the fictional memoir of Calliope Stephanides, a haemaphrodite who was raised as a girl until discovering his true identity as a teen, the result of inbreeding between his sibling grandparents. Cal, writing the book aged 41 and living as a male, tells the story of his family, from his grandparents escaping Europe to America, to her parents' lives in Detroit during prohibition era moving up to the race riots.

Let it never be said that buying a book based on it's cover is a bad thing. If it weren't for my slight shallowness (and the cheap price of £3) i would never have discovered this book. Jeffrey Eugenides is also famous for writing the fantastic book 'The Virgin Suicides' and 'Middlesex' also tackles issues of family. What most surprised me about this book was that it was so funny, espeically when tackling such taboo subjects (incest, sex, homosexuality - but not really), always done in such a sensitive manner.

Cal is one of the most wonderful narrators ever commited to the written page. He looks back not only on his own life but those of his family, telling the colourful stories of the Stephanides family, spanning over 40 years and 2 continents. Each character is so perfectly described and given little quirks (Cal's grandmother Lina is described as being 'one of those women they named the island after' - the island in question being Lesbos!) that you become so attached to them. My favourite character was Cal's grandmother Desdemona, a traditional Greek woman who falls for her brother then feels isolated in America, grasping hoplessly onto her identity and heritage while her children forget their roots - until she discovers television!

The main theme of identity takes so many forms in this book - from the cultural identity of Desdemona and Lefty, to the racial issues of the Detroit race riots in the 1960s, straight to the sexual and personal issues of Callie/Cal - "Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome,'' It's written in such a poetic ay, it really makes you think that Cal is a greek poet - he even apologises for being a bit Homeric - "That's genetic too."

I try to force as many people as possible to read this book, like my English teacher who went on to love it! I should have been happy that Oprah Winfrey picked it this year for her book club but it pissed me off so much! Now people will pick it up ignorantly and read it with no real view of it because some chat show host told them to. But i urge you all to buy this book and pour your heart and soul into it. 'Middlesex' is a rarity - a book that manages to be emotional without laying on the sickly sentimentality. Funny without trying too hard. Poetic without being pretentious. It took Eugenides 9 years to write this book and it was worth every minute.

University...

I had no idea that the moment i got back to school after the wettest Summer since Noah's D.I.Y. project, i would have the dredded university subject thrown upon me!
I have to do my personal statement which is basically writing an advertisment for myself. I find it impossible to say nice things about myself unless its in a joking manner. And i don't do anything worthwhile to talk about. All i do is watch films, read books and write stories. And i doubt that 'professional Empire forum poster' is a real occupation. UCAS is so annoying, the site wont let me log in so i have to wait for the school to sort it out. It might mean i have to put all my details in again...damn, that took me ages!
I can only apply for 5 universities and since only 1 has the exact course i want (Celtic studies and English/Scottish literature), i am applying for English and film studies in the other 4. My choice has always been Edinburgh but now im getting weary about leaving home and looking into Dundee which is closer!
I'm off to the town Braemaqr night now so see you later!
While youre at it, go read some stories i wrote!
www.fictionpress.com/~kaylee42