AWOL...

I know, I haven't been the most faithful of bloggers recently, but as I've been complaining to everyone I seem to know in the virtual world, I've been busy. I have exams in April. I also have extremely difficult subjects this semester. Therefore, I have not been updating or reading other blogs for quite a while now. I apologise to everyone who thinks me to be an ungrateful blogger because I haven't been commenting on anything for a long time now.

Its really strange, I have so many things I could post about these days, but I just don't seem to have the time to do absolutely anything that I seem to want. I could blog about my visits to this extremely illegal photocopy shop or review Elizabeth I, that I watched yesterday from 4 in the evening to 8 at night on TV. If I wanted, I could also post a lengthy review about Notes on a Scandal and wonder in amazement on how the movie is an amazing cross between the scandal in my school last year involving a 15 year old girl and a Geography teacher and The Collector by John Fowles.

I could also write a wonderful post about spring time and how spring in Milan is my favourite season here. Nothing can make a me happier than the early days of spring. It is such a lovely season. I could, if I wanted, whinge about my semester (not that I've not already done that above) or write a long post about my amazing grandma, who is presently visiting us or narrate my first baby sitting experience (which was extremely surreal, by the way)

Another thing I could probably post about is how excited I am to my upcoming weekend in England. I'm vising TPF next weekend because we have a long weekend and I really need a little break. I'm leaving next Thursday evening and will be back on Monday.

As I said, there is a whole list of topics that are just demanding blog posts from me. But right now all I seem to want to do is go to bed because its 1 at night and I woke up really morning and have been at uni all day today.

Louis Vuitton and Ray Bans

The problem with living and studying in Milan is that you can't afford to have a bad hair day here. It is just not possible for a person who wakes up late one morning to get into a hoodie, wear a baseball cap and go for lectures. It is something unheard of. People prefer to wake up early to get ready for uni or skip classes if they wake up late rather than attend the day with dark circles and no make up.

I would be lying here if I said that I don't bother with how I look and I don't really care what other people think. However, I can't be bothered to wear make up every day. That would be pushing it too far, even for me. I wake up much too late for that each morning. I barely make it to lessons on time. But I do make sure that I am decently dressed and have clean hair each day. I wouldn't dare to go to uni with unkempt hair. I just think, its something that comes naturally to you, once you spend enough time in this city.

Its just that Italian people like to be well dressed, I guess. Of course, most of these people that I see at uni are pushing the limits of being well dressed. It can get rather ridiculous at times. For example, it is perfectly normal in uni to wear sun glasses in any month of the year, regardless of the sun or rain. As I came out of lectures today, I saw a whole group of boys and girls with Ray Bans going around, pretending to extremely cool as if they did not look like absolute idiots. Winters in Milan are not exactly bright and sunny, but no one really seems to care.

I, myself have a strict policy about sun glasses, as in I refuse to wear them later than October. This year I even had my parents teasing me about wearing my sun glasses so late on in autumn. But it really is almost a part of university custom to wear your sun glasses and who am I to question tradition? Also, the fact that I happen to love my sun glasses, was an additional advantage, I suppose. But even I, with all my vanity could not bear to wear them later then early November. It just gets too dark to see anything. I don't understand how people can do it.

Italy is also the only country where guys carry Louis Vuitton bags to uni, wear Gucci belts and Armani jeans and proudly proclaim to be heterosexual. I know perfectly straight men in my class who actually go get fake tans all through the year, so that their skin can look good in every season. Funnily enough, Italian men are obsessively homophobic and cringe every time anyone says the word 'metrosexual'. So I just can't seem to understand Italian teenagers, however hard I try.

I live in a country where most of the men like wearing tight jeans, spending hours in the gym, and carrying designer bags and most women like wearing tight jeans, spending hours in the gym and carrying designer bags too. So where is this big gender inequality that people seem to be raving on about, I ask you ?

Foreign Bookstores

I should technically be desperately studying right now, but all I feel like doing is going to bed and procrastinating. I've been having exams for more than a month now. It is just four exams stretched out over month and a half and what a terrible month it has been. My last one is on Valentine's Day, so at least I have an excuse to stay at home this year and be miserable on my own. Ignore me folks, I'm just whinging out of self pity.

I've been thinking quite a lot these last few days about how lovely my Paris trip was. I have also now come to the conclusion, that Paris is definitely the most beautiful city in I've have ever been to, in every sense. But strangely enough, now that I think about it my favourite place in Paris was a plain old bookshop rather than any of the city's impressive structures. This is the particular bookshop that I am talking about. It has been almost a month since I got back and I cant seem to stop obsessing over this bookshop.

I am really bad at directions, but roughly speaking the shop on the banks of the Seine, in front of the Notre Dame, just next to the entrance of the Latin Quarter, near the St Michael bridge. It is also extremely small, as in the width of the whole store is just what is shown in the above picture. This makes it very stuffy and crowded inside, but people don't seem to mind because it has such wonderful books. It also has a second floor, which consists of antique books that you are not allowed to buy, but you can sit there and read all to your heart's content. To my delight, the shop sells only English books. Most people outside Continental Europe do not realize how difficult/expensive it is to buy books written in English here.

I don't even know how to start describing the insides of this wonderful store. It is very strange architecturally from the inside, as in it has little rooms everywhere. Now these little rooms are also full of bookshelves from the top the bottom. This makes it extremely uncomfortable to navigate around the store. At one point I found myself surrounded by books on all three sides from the top of the roof to the bottom and no moving space.

The books seem to be arranged in no order whatsoever. I'm sure they have their own system in there, but in the very short time I spent in there, I couldn't figure it out. But all this made the shop prettier and more approachable, if you know what I mean. Another great thing about this store was that, on the top floor there were these tiny rooms with beds everywhere for people to lie down and read. We unfortunately did not have enough time to sit and read in there, but the though of lying by a bed, next to a window looking towards the Notre Dame and peacefully reading antique books sounds really beautiful, doesn't it?

I don't think any shop in the world that I ever visit is ever going to live up to this one. It was just beautiful and I know my post does not do much justice to it. It almost makes me want to live in Paris just go visit this shop every weekend and browse through some of my favourite books.

Oooh, the start of the movie Before Sunset, is filmed in the bookstore. I didn't realize this until a few days ago when they were showing it on television for the umpteenth time and I was actually watching it again for the umpteenth time. I suddenly saw this familiar store that has been in my mind for a such a long time now and got overly excited, and had no one to gush about this. So this is me gushing about a trivial bookstore. I promise to write about something more interesting next time.

I love

I'm not a very hard person to please. I'm a bit fussy about some things like margins and justified text and highlighters, but apart from all that I think its really easy to make me happy. But I'm not one of those overly bubbly people. I cant stand people who are cheerful all the time. I'm sure they are really nice people, but it really irritates me for some reason. Anyhow since, I've been extremely grumpy all day today, what could be better than making a list of things that might help me feel better?

I love:

1. Getting under my duvet on winter afternoons to read my book and then napping for a few hours. I love afternoon naps. I normally don't ever have time for them and they make me feel very grandmother-ly, but I do enjoy them very much.
2. Kissing my dad (on his cheek, of course) after he's just shaved and smelling his aftershave.
3. Having chilled coke on a hot summer day. Mind you, if you put ice into it I shall be very annoyed.
   
4. Watching a good movie on my own on television. The worse thing you can do in my house is watch a movie with my parents because they keep talking randomly all through movies. I don't think they get the seriousness of listening to each and every dialogue in a film.
   
5. Wearing tiny skirts with flip flops all through summer and not caring about how chubby/fat I think I look because there is always someone on the street that looks worse than me.
   
6. Eating ice cream with TPF. I'm one of those people who do not like to experiment with new ice cream flavours. I suppose this would make me an old school ice cream eater. Also, I dislike chocolate ice cream. I'm a terrible person. I love chocolate, but cannot bear to eat pure chocolate ice cream. EW!
   
7. Walking from the tram stop to my house after uni every day with my ipod. Mind you, I only like walking back home, not walking towards the tram stop because that means that I have a whole day of lectures ahead of me. I also like taking the tram instead of the bus or the metro to uni, it makes me feel very quaint.
   
8. Scarfs. I love scarfs and everything about them. I love how they feel nice and warm around your neck and how warm they feel because of your body heat when you take them off.
9. New episodes of my favourite TV shows. I religiously watch Lost, Scrubs, Desperate Housewives, Heroes and Veronica Mars every week and I need to have updates otherwise I get very, very irritated at the world.
   
10. Being nice and dry under an umbrella when its raining. I love umbrellas enough to write blog posts about them too. I know, I should really stop being sentimental about inanimate objects.

and one more because I like prime numbers

11. Getting into bed each night. The Scarlet O'Hara in me still has a small hope that everything is going to be alright when I wake up the next day.

Dear Diary,

Exactly one year ago, on this day, I finally decided to enter the technological world of geek-dom and get myself a blog, an online journal of sorts.

I know I haven't been the most faithful blog writer in the world and have let you down so many times. You have to understand that I am but an inexperienced, fickle, hormonal teenager quite prone to angst filled outbursts (for one more year, at least) and this sort of behaviour is what is expected of me. Sometimes, pressures from the society can be quite burdening, and I am forced to behave in the manner people expect a person in my age group to behave in.

A lot of things can happen in the period of a year, but a lot of things can remain the same too. I have not yet managed to find solutions to issues that I promised to last year. The world still has a lot of problems such as global warming, Dan Brown, nuclear weapons, K-Fed, Iraq, Paris Hilton's wardrobe and Darfur; but rest assured, I am still working on them, and maybe one day, who knows, I might actually miraculously do something to solve them.

Even though I haven't done much in this whole year, there are some things that I have successfully managed to accomplish. I have gotten myself successfully out of high school, for one. Sometimes, on the most angst filled days of my teenage career, it used to seem that my school building was going to keep me hostage in its murky corridors for the rest of my life. But I have managed to surpass my fears, graduate from high school and have gotten myself enrolled into a university.

My entire blogging experience has been disappointingly wonderful. I do not have scary stories of Internet stalkers to narrate to my grandchildren. But I have met some really great people though you, my dearest journal. Both Ash and Szerelem did not turn out to be porn stars in disguise, paedophiles or middle aged men with no life, but relatively normal people. I have also not succeeded in maintaining my anonymity thanks to certain people on here who couldn't resist looking me up on facebook.

I am not going to make you fickle promises for next year, dearest diary because I don't intend to keep them. But what I can assure you is that I shall do my best and become the better person you want me to be.

With much love from your one and only,
Pan

Exams!

GAH!

Am taking a mini-break. Will be back at the end of January.

Paris!

I'm not much of a photographer, so I'm just going to upload just a few pictures on here. I always thought that Paris was over rated, but I am very glad to say that I was wrong. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my entire life. To say that I absolutely loved it would really be an understatement.

We were there for just five days, which I have to admit is really not enough for a person to completely explore Paris. All we managed to see were the main tourist attractions. I suppose, they are the main tourist attractions for a reason and from whatever little sightseeing we did, it was wonderful.
I know a lot of people don't actually like the Eiffel Tower and think it to be a metal monstrosity. I actually liked it. It was exactly how I imagined it to be; metal and brown. Yeah, the Eiffel tower is brown. I'm really glad that I knew that it was brown before I actually went there, otherwise I would have been severely annoyed.

The line to go the tower was a nightmare, but we eventually managed to get up to the top because we ahem, kind of managed to skip the queue by perfectly legal means. The view is brilliant and its worth going up there. I read somewhere that Tom Cruise proposed to Katie Holmes on top of the Eiffel Tower. How much do you want to bet that Tom and Katie didn't have to stand for 3 hours in a queue to get up to the top? I'm sure Tom had the whole tower reserved for the evening or something. Hell, if a man reserved the Eiffel tower for me for an evening, I'd totally marry him and become a Scientology expert. Morals be damned!

French food is absolutely delicious (i.e full of millions of calories). I've managed to gain almost 2 kilos in 5 days, even with all the walking we did (which was really a lot!). I feel fat now, but it was worth every calorie and cent, I have to say.

My poor friends got tired of me pointing out cute apartments all over the city that I would eventually be owning when I am older and much more richer. I have decided that one day, I'm going to become the Donald Trump of Paris and my great real estate choices are going to make poor old Donald turn in his grave (because by the time I get rich, he is surely going to be dead).

I just got back a two days ago. I've been thinking about it and I still cant figure out which was my favourite area in Paris, the one that I would absolutely love to go back to again. I think it might be the Quartier Latin or the Opéra, but I don't think I'll ever make my mind up. The trip was also a lot more fun because we went by train. I've always loved travelling by train. It just makes the whole experience so much more fun, according to me, especially if the train is a sleeper.