Paintings of the Day

Paintings of the day...by Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691-1765)

Galerie de vues de la Rome antique (1758)

Galerie de vues de la Rome moderne (1759)

I suppose this is a rather random post but these are 2 of my favourite paintings in the Louvre...probably coz after viewing so many paintings in the Louvre and all around Italy and France (which is pretty much everywhere or in every church at least) they all start to look the same (not to mention your eyes start crossing...). And these, well they're different. Too bad photography wasn't allowed in the room. I liked these way better than the Mona Lisa. I find it amusing that the view of modern Rome as it was back in the 1700s included the Fontana di Trevi which is really old, Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona. Still, I suppose since they appeared in the 1600s they were kinda modern...

Moving Woes

I hate moving. Yet I seem to be doing it pretty much every year now and will have to move again next year. Even though I love travelling, moving is something else entirely. With travelling you live out of a suitcase. Not much to pack, easy to pack. It's just a couple of belongings after all. Moving on the other hand is essentially packing up your life into cardboard boxes and shifting said life somewhere else. There's furniture to dismantle, glassware to pack, removers to call and settle with, working out shifting schedules... It's a nightmare. Presently the flat looks like a tornado has been through it. My room has certainly seen better times, and I still have 2 exams to go.

It'll be worse next year I reckon coz I probably wouldn't be in Dunedin the year after. I shudder at the thought of having to deal with issues like storage and selling off furniture. Plus I've grown rather attached to my furniture. Nope I'm not looking forward to next year at all. 8( I wish someone would hurry up and invent a teleportation machine or something that can easily transfer stuff from one place to another in a blink. Think of all the logistical problems that could solve, not to mention making my life infinitely easier. Now where's a genie when you need one?

Bubbly Times

Yesterday we had a mini champagne, cheese and cracker party at our flat. The champagne was good stuff...courtesy of my flatmate's boyfriend who would never touch cheap wines. So we proceeded to get high on bubbly...and I wound up giving my flatmate's boyfriend's friend a makeover...think smokey eyes and blood red lips. All with his cooperation of course. In fact I recall that after the makeover he declared himself prettier than us chicks lol.

A couple more glasses of bubbly (encouraged by my flatmate) and he was out cold. Totally out cold. My flatmate being drunk spend half an hour screaming in his ear for him to wake up so she could drive him home. That was despite my sister and I telling her she was in no condition to drive and we wouldn't be able to move him anyway. So we left him on the couch and went off to slp.

Except that my sister hear a loud thump some time later and the guy had fallen onto the floor and hit his head on the table leg and he was shivering. So my sister got some blankets to throw over him and turned on the electric heater. For some reason he kept moving under the table (still completely unconscious) until his toe went into the heater and might have caught fire if my sister hadn't noticed and moved the heater away. I doubt that catching fire would have woken him really coz to stick a body part into the heater right onto the heating coil and not feel anything...well WWIII wouldn't have got him up. If that wasn't enough, he then proceeded to throw up while still unconscious, sending my sister into a panic coz he could choke to death. Despite her best attempts to get him to chuck in the bin he ended up chucking every where else except the bin. Ugh! Our lounge still smells a little odd currently...

Moral of the story: if ur guests are gonna get drunk and pass out, make sure they sleep over a bucket!

Blog Revamp II: All's Good

Yay now it works in all browsers...although it appears best in Firefox. It's a minor problem of spacing in IE & Opera though so all's good (it was a layout disaster before...)

Right now that I've run outta excuse to procrastinate I suppose I should do some study...bother.

Blog Revamp: Warning Only Works in Firefox

I've just spent the last 6 hours giving my blog a new look...(talk about procrastination what am I doing? I've an exam in 3 days!!!) Anyway I thought the old colour scheme was pretty bad. I've no idea what I was thinking when I picked those colours the last time!! Ugh! Now my blog looks much better...I mean the colours aren't as random as they were the last time...and I like my header. I used photos from my days in Europe 8). I must say I'm getting the hang of css since it took me less time to design the blog than it did de last time.

Oh fantastic...argh!!! My new design only works on In Firefox. It doesn't display correctly in IE or Opera! *sob* Bother...anyone have any ideas on how to fix it?

Strange Weather

Honestly I dun think I've ever come across stranger weather than here in Dunedin. I woke up this morning to heavy snowfall. Hey it's spring you aren't supposed to have snow in the middle of spring! If that wasn't weird enough, after about an hour or so of snow, the weather realised it was spring and poof! It became sunny again. Then as if the weather couldn't make up its mind, a quarter of an hour later it decided to snow again...heavily (think overcast sky, strong wind and swirling snow). Then sun (blue sky, a few white fluffy clouds here and there)...and barely half an hour later sleet, then rain, then sun, then hail....well you get the idea.

Basically we've been alternating between snow, sun, rain and hail and it's kinda driving me nuts. I realise though that this may also perhaps be due to the fact that I'm supposed to be studying for upcoming exams and somehow have barely gotten a start on that. Still you've gotta admit...it's some pretty crazy weather...and it's pretty obvious I'm procrastinating again. *sigh*

Psyc BBQ

To commemorate the end of a year's worth of PSYC 300 level honours seminars, one of the professors threw a BBQ at his place. His place is quite well-known in the department...mostly coz a murder was committed in one of the bedrooms. And the murderer wasn't just anyone...he happened to be the department head of psychiatric medicine who murdered his wife by poisoning her and being really stupid about it. For example, he actually lectured his students on how to murder someone by administering drugs that give the symptoms of natural diseases. In any case the place was massive, and my professor runs it as a B&B...he puts the guests in the bedroom where the murder happened but naturally doesn't tell the guests that. The bathroom is fantastic though...it's totally carpeted with a jaccuzi.

It was certainly a night of learning...all the gossip in the psyc department and stories of past events. According to the head of the psyc department (as one professor told us) said that the staff of the psyc department are so much more fun when they're bad.

For instance the lecturers used to form a band and had annual concerts. It's kinda hard to picture some of them in a band, but apparently they did actually make large profits from concerts. Unfortunately the band broke up after a disastrous concert where few people turned up...which was expected given that for some reason the organisers decided to hold it around the end of the year on the same night a big rugby game was on. Well nothing gets between a kiwi and his rugby.

Our other professor told us of the costume party the psyc department used to hold and who liked to wear what. Apparently she used to dress as a pregnant nun and another lecturer used to go in mini-skirts, fishnet stockings and thigh high boots (think skanky). We spent quite some time trying to convince them they should revive these traditions....it's much more fun than trying to pay attention to a lecture on attention!

Speaking of paying attention, the professors confess that the lecturer who organises department seminars falls asleep in every one of them. He said the guy sits beside him everytime and falls asleep on his shoulder and drools...lol Really unfair I reckon, since they make us go and we don't get to fall asleep since we're required to summit a report on it. 8(

Anyway I'm gonna be looking at the psyc department thru new eyes from now on...