John Stupart.com

Or perhaps I’ll simply come back to this world as something cool, like a dolphin or wombat… Who knows; that was just the title of the song I was listening to while writing this. It seemed appropriate.

Spending so much time on campus has made me fully aware of just how shitty the catering is. From the plethora of Greek-owned franchises on campus one can choose from an array of equally-expensive stores where you can buy stupidly-overpriced coffee or, in the case of the Senate House’s store, serve it yourself from shitty containers into cheap Styrofoam. I’ve recently begun the trek to a more upmarket coffee shop which is part of the Origins centre principally because they treat their customers like human beings.

The converse of course is a stupidly cheap Indian joint that sells what is theoretically authentic cuisine for stupidly-cheap prices. However, their samoosas taste like saturated oil, their biryani is a yellow mass of congealed fat and cheap-ass rice, and the rest just looks inedible. Needless to say, John’s lunch consists normally of a packet of chips (crisps) and a bottle of flavoured mineral water. When those Greek sheisters stop being so bloody mercantilist I might return some form of patronage to their horrid establishments.

Food has been a primary thought of late, as last weekend saw my speaking partner and I taking part in the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Gauteng Provincial Debating Championships. Sounds grand, except it was run by a single, incompetent student and they fed us one slice of cold pizza for the weekend. The tournament itself was a joke, and I kinda want my weekend back, returning to Gauteng in truly miserable spirits. To celebrate this horrid weekend my brother and Irene, a small-but-potent pixie who happens to be in the debating union as well, had some truly excellent pizza in this arb Italian restaurant in Emmerentia. My emaciated frame truly reveled in this decadence.

Justifiably angry at the tournament fail-cake

No matter. July sees Wits hosting the National Championships, which promises to be truly awesome, thanks largely to a ridiculously-large amount of sponsorship from Standard Bank. No matter how badly we might do in the actual competition, the entire tournament promises to be truly epic.

On a more housekeepingish note, I have once again tweaked the blogroll, adding one Sarah Richmond’s Yosh! site to my illustrious pagentry of amazing co-bloggers. Sarah has the unfortunate tendency to change blogs every couple of months, but this one seems to have been hanging around for a while, and she writes rather prolifically about life in Sapporo, Hokkaido. In some of my early posts I mentioned being one of only two South African ALT’s living in Hokkaido. Sarah is the other city-dwelling one. Aside from taking roughly 5 hours to find her apartment the first time I drove the six hours to her city, we never really had much contact. Nonetheless, you’ve heard my tales of the countryside, now read about her exploits in the city.

And lastly, on a geekier note, I play a PC game called America’s Army, developed by the US Military funnily enough. That’s irrelevant though. My clan has won the latest and largest tournament in South Africa, meaning that I am in fact fucking awesome! Of course there’s no prize money or anything, but it’s nice to be on top of something .

Music today:

As much as John now exists in the mindset of pirates, development and general academics most of the time these days, it’s incredible how getting some sort of drive, and meaningful drive at that, can prove extremely cathartic for the soul. Back in 2006 writing about the Fallujah offensive I always enjoyed it because, well, that shit was fun. It just wasn’t particularly pertinent to anything anybody cares about. Not so anymore!

As I read more about my current piracy-centric paper and talk to the people in the know, it’s incredible just how easily one can get the notion internally that this stuff might actually say something. It’s important because it makes my studies both enjoyable and ‘noble’ in the not-so traditional sense. Naturally, being an academic agnostic it’s important to note that the truth of the end result is almost irrelevant, but rather it’s the process, it’s the striving to better oneself in the perception of a higher cause of study/life/cow-tipping/whatever which is important. To me anyways.

I’ve long since stopped trying to hide this and have instead started being very honest about my incompetencies, naiveties and aspirations, goals and strengths. I make no excuses, but I expect none in return. This is probably why I have precious few friends on my facebook, and also why I tend to cling onto the good ones I have at the moment. Nobody likes a know-it-all who really knows nothing! Nonetheless, those precious few who still tolerate me regardless are special, and it’s in them that I confide my hopelessly futile, yet irreversibly inevitable path, because they will encourage, participate, or – in a rare case – contribute to my worldview in ways I’d thought impossible.

I take this into my studies and use it towards something which I consider more ‘noble’ than mere John-writing warmongering, and I recognise the importance of this. It’s noble not in the traditional sense, but more because I consider taking these preciously-rare opinions and implementing in something I love more than any other profession to be important for something beyond me. Arrogant, perhaps. But if on the off-chance I’m able to create new literature where once there was a gap, I want it to include everything which influences me, and not just the pointy end of my own bias. That’s important… I think.

Below: The showcase video for Strategic Studies, and also a damning indictment against torture (ironically?):

Apologies for the lack of updating. I have been busy writing for www.undiscoveredcountry.co.za though, and also eating really crappy R6 springrolls on campus. Also, it’s getting cold, and I tend not to stay on the pc too long if I don’t have my woolly slippers on anymore!

Music for May:

I have been plagued with the horrendous responsibility, in the course of the past three weeks, to mark undergrads’ essay papers as well as write two of my own. The former was relatively painless in sheer time-spent terms, yet utterly horrendous in terms of how my intelligence was so molested by the things these people wrote. The latter is still ongoing, because after what is almost three years of non-academic writing, two of which were spent actively writing editorial-styled stuff on commentary, I’m finding that getting back into the groove of academic writing is rather… tricky.

But first the marking: first and foremost the task itself is slow. It takes roughly 20 minutes or so to mark a medium-length paper of about 6-8000 words. To add to the pain, the essays are largely crap, or slightly better than crap. This means that one spends hours marking torrents of crap which varies in consistency. Of course, it does mean that when one comes across a slightly decent essay it generally receives a far more favourable grade, almost as a subconscious ‘thank you’ for providing one with a break from the mental genocide that normally occurs. So yes, marking essays is onerous. No matter, when the grades are received I will not be surprised to see the population of my tutorials decline significantly, which means there might even be seats for everyone.

Now back to my papers. I find it has taken me 2 weeks to actually formulate a coherent argument for my first paper, and mere hours to actually write it out. In fact, the most annoying part of writing the paper is probably the referencing. YAWN. So once I learn to speed up the researching part, I expect this Masters lark will become far more efficient. Just as well, for after meeting with my supervisor (I’m officially researching piracy now! Hurrah!) I expect there’s going to be a LOT of necessary reading, in terms of historical, legal and strategic aspects. It’s a three-pronged attack! Like Europe in 1944, or something.

Menial slave labour aside, I am officially writing my research paper on piracy in the Gulf of Aden, which has good potential to really say something interesting in the greater academic world. Lots of things need to be read up on, including historical accounts of piracy, Malacca, Guinea, hell even 18th century privateers might make a cameo. International laws on maritime warfare and general transnational crime. All this stuff needs to be collected. Good gods! That being said, I have to admit that it’s freaking awesome that I’m able to actually write about pirates in an academic paper. That truly is rad!

And what, after all, am I listening to during all of this? Why, the best study lounge metal ever: Russian Circles – Campaign