Sweat, Biscuits and Professional Flats in Manchester

Hi there.

What have I been up to?
Well, mostly I've been at lectures. Aside from that, I've also started this diet that involves me spending 2 hours at the gym every weekday and has got me eating more cous-cous and cottage cheese than I ever imagined I would in my entire life. Oh, the things one will do to make themselves look good.
It's actually really boring, constantly counting calories, mentally telling yourself off from having that extra glass of wine or that forbidden chocolate biscuit. Then there's the gym itself, which is way too hot and always smells of sweat. The fitness instructors are all way too physically perfect and obviously smug about it, and treat you like pitiful idiots because you've come crawling to them for help. The people in the gym are nearly always too thin to be there - hardly any 'real', fat and ugly people like me who actually need to be there - they're all thin and beautiful or muscled and handsome. Sometimes they're so muscly they look quite grotesque, but they still carry themselves with an air of smug superiority that makes you look at yourself and think "I'm not worthy enough to be around you, I'm made of more than 20% fat."

So there I am sweating and suffering away on the treadmills and the weight machines, and at the same time I'm looking for a place to live next year. It wasn't planned, I hasten to add. I was supposed to be living in a flat with one of my physics friends who was determined to stay put next year, but that went a bit wrong because a new girl came in wanting to move in with us. It's proving to be not fun at all.
Problem is, the two other girls have standards that are way too high for student houses. It's completely normal for student houses to be smelly and to be falling apart from the inside out. However, they don't seem to get this, and it's kind of irritating when we view somewhere that would otherwise have been ok if it wasn't for the fact it "Smelt like wet dog".
Don't get we wrong, I'm not regretting this. Not anymore, anyway- we're on a waiting list now for first viewings of nice, plush but inexpensive flats in Central Salford (the sort-of nice part near the Uni), so hopefully it'll end up ok. Either that, or I'll end up in halls again wanting to kill myself like I have been this year, throughout all the house parties, sleepless nights and fridge-raids.

Also, before I go, I want to send out my best wishes to people in Japan. I don't normally do this sort of thing, but after seeing some of the awful pictures coming out from there of the tsunami and the quake, my heart really goes out to them. Just goes to show that Geography is a complete bastard sometimes.