Ideal Time

Timekeeping is something that I sporadically have issues with. Indeed, it's something that has haunted most of my life. Most people never forget their first day of (secondary) school, but mine was memorable for all the wrong reasons - the fear that I wouldn't be able to find anything, given the knowledge that I'd managed to turn up about 15 minutes late. I remember running into some sixth formers and asking 'where is P7?!' only to be told that the room 'P7 didn't exist', and was I looking for J7 or S7, or did I not mean to be looking for a room at all and, in fact, was just trying to find the class that was 7P? So I settled for the latter, and found myself in an empty classroom - bar the form tutor - who was inevitably waiting for 'the late girl'.

In fairness, during those early days I did live a small heart attack - two tube lines and 22 stops - away from school. And I was lucky enough to befriend the other six or so unfortunate souls who also lived well outside the London Borough of Barnet to warrant tube travel, a couple of which were in my year group, and consequently, upon becoming friends, we understood and accepted our individual tardy ways, and it became acceptable to be 15 minutes late for anything we were going to do, because we knew that we would collectively be at least 15 minutes late - and therefore, by some perverted logic, all turn up punctually tardy.

Anyway, after years of struggling with this condition - and I do believe it is a condition, mind - I have concluded the following:

My mind, and therefore my body, run on what I call 'ideal time'. So, in an ideal world, it would take me only 15 minutes to get ready. In an ideal world, tube journeys anywhere would take no more than half an hour. And walking distance, in an ideal world, would be no longer than 10 minutes.

Sadly, I do not live in an ideal world.

'Real time', in fact, runs on an " 'ideal time' + 30 minutes " formula - give or take; (I have yet to refine this into an exact science.)

Armed with this fact, and three forms of alarms in the early morning, I am slowly becoming a punctual, reliable and tardy-free person.

Just a ramble...

I did not blog at all in the month of February - so here is a short ramble before I completely forget the art of stringing sentences together in an (arguably) amusing fashion:

I did start a post about a fortnight ago, but have so far failed to make any headway with it as, these days, if I'm not working on my laptop then I'm taking (what I perceive to be) a well-earned break to catch up on some Gilmore Girls or laugh at South Park. Although, having said that, last week I stumbled upon an article on psychopathy (see here) which took the best part of a day to read through. At first it was all very intriguing, until I started to think it didn't really have much of a basis in science. Anyway, various playings-around from one link to the next took me to this interview with the founder of (amongst others) the site upon which said article is hosted. Now, all of that made for some very hefty reading. But it was worth it, I think, for two of the funniest things I have read in the last three months:

- hyperdimensional beings are perpetrating an experiment on us, manipulating us, with evidence to strongly suggest we are food for them

and

- scientists in one field don't talk so much to scientists in other fields - like the Egyptologists

Much LOLing ensued on my part.

I swear Egyptology isn't an actual science?! Egyptoligists must be historians, surely! Historians interpret various sources from the past. Ergo, history is not science. Anyway! A discussion for another time, perhaps!

I don't know if this makes any sense to people reading it out of context, but if you go through the aforementioned interview, you'll come across what I mean (...eventually. I did wonder why I spent so much time reading so much nonsense. It must've been a slow news day.)

Oh, I also watched 'In The Loop' this weekend. It kind of likened itself to me as a heavily satirical, political version of Napoleon Dynamite. But I have only seen ND once, and that was over three years ago, so the comparison is probably not valid. But I don't think either film has explicit humour, it's all more about the delivery.

And finally - I thought I found two googlewhacks today. However, I don't think they fell within the guidelines - shame!