Number Twenty: Looking up things that you shouldn't

Oh the joy of the internet; so many opportunities for so much pleasure and yet so much pain*, and all in the privacy of your own home. You can look up anything, be it carrying on from Number Eighteen and photos of your ex-boyfriend's wedding (that apostrophe is soon to take a step to the right, quite scarily**), to THAT Paris Hilton video. These can lead on to repeated versions of Number Nine, or another certain work avoidance tactic that is a favourite of one of my friends that I am as yet undecided whether to publish. Either way, it forms a great link if you're looking to waste - sorry - USE your time in larger segments than is afforded by single tactics alone. Hurrah!

*Which I guess is a win/win situation if you're a masochist
** and add an s in there somewhere too - it hasn't got to the point where two of my exes are marrying eachother, yet...

Number Nineteen: Sleep

This is a subject very close to my heart now that I've finished my thesis - I couldn't get enough when I needed to get up and write at 5 in the morning, and now I'm out avoiding it until 1 or 2, margherita in hand being constantly replenished like the magic porridge pot (whilst my credit card acts in the opposite manner) only to find myself forced out again, blinking in the sunlight of the outside world to which I am still unaccustomed at half 6. You can toss and turn all night, but it always feels just so damn good about 46 seconds before your alarm goes off, just long enough for you to be conscious of what you're missing as you fight to keep your eyelids slamming shut and your head nodding in a way which - however much you may kid yourself - cannot be misinterpreted as "oh, I just really needed to see that detail up close on my screen for half a second". And now that my social life - aside from the margherita quaffing - is confined to weekends I've got that horrible realisation that I should be up to "make the most of the day". God, when I didn't think it could get any worse I find that I'm turning into my mother.


(If you're lucky enough to be working from home, then mid-afternoon kips are the best - whilst you digest your lunch and nod off in front of Doctors - and have the added bonus of turning your brain to mush for about as long as it takes to get around to watching the repeat of Neighbours. Damn, I miss those days...)

Number Eighteen: Stalking

Where do these thoughts come from? They wander into our heads, usually late at night and often with so little a preamble as to make their apprearance quite rudely imposing. What happened to that guy I used to go out with in school/the girl I used to sit next to in Maths/that actor I really fancied from that TV programme back in the eighties/etc? Friends Reunited only goes so far and, being stingy enough not to fork out the tuppence ha'penny required to contact these people legitimately (and also for the reason that they might imagine that that I take any interest in the site whatsoever, which is completely unfounded of course) It's amazing the number of sites you can use to track people, be it by photo, job, email address, phone number, skype - the possibilities are seemingly endless, although usually finite. It's quite exciting to finally get hold of your quarry, like a fish on a line, to see if you can land a reply.* you might chat for a bit, maybe meet up for drinks and talk about "the good old days"** But frequently there comes the realisation that there is a reason why you didn't keep in touch in the first place - they're dull, they're clingy, you have nothing in common, their temper's a little too prone to combustion at the smallest thing - and so you must now extracate yourself from their company with the greatest degree of politeness but also preferably abruptness as possible.

But what DID happen to that guy I used to go out with at school...?


*I realise that that is an appauling analogy. Or is that a similie. Or something.
** Neil Patrick Harris has - as yet - failed to return my calls

Number Seventeen: For what we are about to Send and Receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful...

Now fully ensconced in the world of work, I've been deprived of many of the former work avoidance tactics (although I've been busted by directors on many occasions looking at ebay - I can't quite figure out if it is a good or bad thing that it's frequently Agent Provocateur that I'm searching for on these occasions...)
However, I've been reintroduced to the addiction of the "send and receive" button on Entourage. This is, however, reserved strictly for those times when zooming in and out from whatever drawing package you are using has become so repetitive that it's beginning to bore you to tears. You know what I'm talking about, we've all been there, it's part of the training.
Despite the fact that our system is set to automatically check for any email updates every nine minutes, my inherent impatience means that I am checking every four minutes, in quiet times, which reduces to every two minutes when bored and every 3 seconds when absolutely desperate to find something else to distract me from what I'm doing. Our strictly "office only" address book has also been expanded as much as one of Douglas Adams' trilogies so as to increase my chances of receiving material to distract me, using a scatter gun technique of contacting people who I haven't even spoken to in ages. This last process however, also necessitates the use of Number Eighteen...:

Number Sixteen: Develop minor - but annoying- ailments

Failing to acheive the drama - and resulting sympathy - created by Number Twelve, I have developed a vast range of minor flaws in my physical make up over the course of the past month. This can be anything from a clicking wrist - which of course would be my right (mouse) hand - incredibly itchy ingrowing hairs on my legs, and a clicking ear which is set off EVERY TIME I BREATHE IN (which, as you can imagine, is rater annoying at 2 in the morning when trying to find yet another word to substitute for "linguistics", "morpheme", "composition" etc...)
I can't work out whether these are brought on by stress, or whether stress merely makes them noticible, but given that they are interrupting my working patterns (!) it seems only right to derive their cause and thus spend time fiddling around with tweezers/cotton buds/piles of books/google etc in an attempt to find their remedy.

**INTERMISSION**

It's in a week today, and quantity-wise I'm pretty much on target. I have no idea about the quality of those 30 000 words though, and I've still got the small matter of sourcing a load of images to place, adapt, reference and caption yet. I've been officially deserted by my housemate who's run off to Newquay with her boyfriend for a long weekend of beer, surfing, pasties, cream teas and general merriment in the three dimensional world (but at least it's raining - ha!) and so am holed up in our tiny house with a weeks worth of ready meals which I'm supplementing with vitamin pills (and feeling more than a little like Major Tom). If I was a guy I'd have grown a beard by now. In fact, I'm taking so little care in my appearance (since I have absolutely no time or reason to venture outside) that I may actaully have grown one and not noticed.

There's a book on my shelf that I put there at the start of this thesis that was intended to be used as a key text for the evolution of the argument. I bought it in Barcelona shortly after the end of my Diploma, when Mum and I went for breakfast at the Miro museum up one of the city's ridiculously steep hills, and lugged it's excessive weight around the city for the rest of the day in the sweltering heat. Suffice to say that it's never been read and probably never will now. It's quite sad really. Actually, maybe I should just have a quick flick through...

Number Fifteen: Use Microsoft Word to type your thesis

The computer age seemed like such a wonderful leap in evolution - we were promised time saving devices that would cut down on the amount of work we were faced with, to make our lives easier and less stressful. I'm old enough to remember typing up my homework on a typewriter, and even at A-level I literally cut and pasted drafts of essays together (yes, with scissors and a photocopier - I'm not really a luddite, I promise) before writing them out by hand on reams of ridiculously expensive display paper. So with the advent of new technology I stood marvelling at my friends' parents' electric typewriters, despite the constant need for Tipp-Ex if you'd made a mistake beyond the printed five line error margin. I took great pride in navigating an angular plastic "turtle" around a classroom to spell out my name, enjoying the sense of control that the computer gave me - you told the robot to do something, and it did it (albeit about 6 minutes later). But the glory days of black screen and green text, and programmes on tape that you had to play for half an hour to load the game (weeeeeeee ERRRRRRRR kerchun kerchun kerchun, dit dit dit EEEEEEEEEEEEEE) were numbered. And along came Windows (in my world at least, although I acknowledge that the Mac concept existed first elsewhere) with its colourful icons, folders that actually looked like folders and generally all-round friendly user interface.

Or should that be interfarce?

I cannot begin to imagine how many hours I have spent reformatting text that Microsoft Word has "helpfully" altered for me. Did I tell you to make that red? Why is it now a different font and size? And why - given that I just deleted this bit - did you just change something three paragraphs up?!

This is beginning to relate to Number Fourteen again. Pass me the typewriter and Tipp-Ex. Or maybe writing it out via the turtle would be quicker?!

I'm off to throw sticks at an automated loom....

Number Fourteen: Get Angry!

It's not very often that something rattles my cage so much that I can barely concentrate on what I'm writing (besides, I'm usually too busy on ebay...) but there's something about schools' league tables that really chaffs my ass. And when you get that wound up, you just have to release the torrent of venom at someone. In my case that was Amanda Baillieu, editor of BD. It took me an hour of getting cross, another of writing and rewriting, and then a good half hour (and sseveral chocolate biscuits) to calm down again. Nice.

"Like many members of staff and graduates of the architectural schools around the country, I read the article informing us of Cambridge Architecture School's prowess ("Cambridge ranks top for architect students" 5th May 2006) with a cynical slant. However, it was refreshing to hear the system denounced by those it congratulates, and that the staff at LMU were steadfast enough to refuse to participate.

Whilst I accept that Cambridge may well have an outstanding course to offer students, the scoring system applied to all university courses is not appropriate when assessing architectural education. For instance, many schools with a high ranking research score are unable to offer the time and design expertise in studio - where architectural education is put into practice - due to the staff's workload. Other criteria used by both the Times and The Guardian includes the A-level scores of entrants, which bears little or no relation to their architectural capability once in the school, and actively discriminates against those chosen by their ability to design rather than perform well in exams aged 18.

It is a shame that the Guardian's article may form a negative influence in the choice of schools made by those soon to complete their A-levels, and I would certainly encourage them to take the time to visit the different institutions and gauge whether their means of working are appropriate to the way in which they would want to be taught.

Whilst Portsmouth school didn't feature in the top 20 (which given its relation to other league tables would certainly prove Disraeli's theory regarding statistics) we aim to turn out students with a broad spectrum of abilities and who are capable of applying themselves in the workplace. Surely the truest test of a school's educational capabilities would be to question the employers. Afterall, these are the people better placed to assess the quality of students that an institution is capable of producing."

The next time wastage was incurred the next friday when I suddenly got scared about maybe seing it published, and then the disappointment that they'd managed to edit out all the salient points. Humph. I feel another letter coming on...

Number Thirteen: Take pride in your work space.

I'd like to thank Apple for giving me yet another method of procrastination. It's kind of related to Number Four...
When my shiny new iMac was delivered about 4 years ago, I was very disapointed to discover that it had an optical mouse. You cannot underestimate the hours of joy I have had scraping the petina of dead skin and general desk based crap from the 3 separate rollers inside my old mouse. But that one was black, and now my desk in Space Oddesy-esque white, so the new old one had to go. However, this morning I noticed - and I can't believe it's taken me so long - that Apple didn't reduce the opportunities for cleaning when they delivered my new Mac, but increased them 10,000* fold. Oh yes. Gone are the days of having only 3 elements to clean, but instead I have around 100 keys collecting dust, crumbs and any general detritius that comes within a two mile distance of my workspace. I've spent quite a while perfecting my cotton bud swabbing technique too, using a variety of fluids to determine which is the most effective. Bliss.

And only the other week, my housemate suggested that I might want to change my room around to create a better working environment. Rails were errected, cabinets painted, boxes moved, and at the end of a long and tiring day I am still sat staring at the same metre wide desk, barely aware that I sit in a room at all let alone a house, street or city. Ah well, at least the panic factor has now set in...

*okay, evidently this isn't mathematically correct, but you get the gist

Number Twelve: Get ill

If unable to contract anything significant from friends/colleagues etc (possibly as you don't come into contact with many people over the course of the day) then eat something stupid. Blowfish isn't in especially abundant supply in Portsmouth, but I'm sure some can be acquired if resorting (as ever) to Number Two.

Particular aspects to aim for are the necessity to spend lots of time in either the bedroom or the bathroom (although preferably the former, obviously), requirement of rare medication to be bought either from far away or via our old friend the internet, aversion to reading (bonus points), and development of complex symptoms leading to doctors appointments and blood tests (or anything else which requires repeat attendance and waiting for results).

Just remember to allow time to recover about a week before your deadline.

Number Eleven: Catch a rat

Not sure how you could orchestrate this yourself, but it actually happened to me. And it's fairly ironic given what I was talking about in Number Four...

One evening, whilst I was actually motivated and in full flow, my housemate stood at the bottom of our stairs and screamed the kind of blood curdling, catroonishly long scream only ever emitted by women in no perceivable danger. The previous week we - or more to the point, she - had discovered that mice had managed to invade our kitchen cupboard and much their way through our newly acquired supply of "healthy food" (Rivita, oat cakes, couscous, Weetabix - the last one was my token effort) and so we had invested the weight of our hard earned financial debt in Europe's supply of tupperware boxes. Ha. No more expensive munchies for you my little rodent friends. But being the inquisitive and persistent little blighters that they are, they went on the look out for food elsewhere. Which is what led to the accoustic bombardment of my eardrums, rodent vs. architect stand off and ensuing (and elaborate) chase around the house. I'm 5'8" ish, this thing was no more than 1 1/2" (although my housemate swears it was more like 8", which means I don't hold out much hope for her boyfriend...) but still the little bugger won. We tried cornering, trapping and at one time even hammering (although I couldn't bring myself to do it) him. So we decamped to the local curry house for food - given that we had none left ourselves - and bravery-instilling booze. The next day traps were ordered and set, and after hours of research by myself, naturally, a sonic erradicator was installed. And life returned to normal.

Until a week later.

When in full flow again following the interruption a few days before, the gnawing sound returned and I - stomping down the stairs to confront my old adversary - was confronted with his significantly larger cousin. The only retaliation was to sit on the stairs, call housemate's boyfriend to stand guard and pass the phone from the other side of the kitchen, research pest control (for which Lee from Contract Killers came as my knight in shining rentakil uniform) and to move out to housemate's boyfriend's house for a week. I don't know why I like mice and am severely bothered by rats, I just am.

All in all at least 4 hours chasing mouse, 2 hours researching traps, 2 hours in curry house, 1 1/2 hours recovering from copious, complex and gratuitous consumption of bravery-instilling booze, 1 hour spent shaking on stairs, 1 hour waiting for rock and roll pest control, 1 week in housemate's boyfriend's house. Not a bad thesis/avoidance tactic ratio, I think you'll agree.

Number Ten: Train for a Marathon

I can't believe I'm on number ten. My housemate can hear the click-clickity-click of keys and keeps telling everyone how hard I'm working into the night, tells me she has every faith in me and provides me with endless cups of tea so I don't have to interrupt my working. So now not only do I get work avoidance guilt, I get typing deceit guilt too. Oops. I am a bad, bad person.

Doesn't last long though - back to the case in hand (which is partly her fault anyway!)

Training for a marathon can help out in many ways. It can negate Number Seven (as if you ever chance to leave the confines of your room, your newly svelte figure combined with your radiation tan from months in front of the compuer screen is sure to attract a real, three dimensional person. If only you had time to see them...), and if you're doing it for charity then you've got the added responsibility to not let either your friends who have sponsored you nor the poor disadvantaged (insert beneficiaries of chosen charity here) down. You can even add on optional extras of shopping for appropriate sports gear, searching for training tips or - "two birds with one stone" time here - talk to people on forums about your progress.

I'm only running about 10k every other day, and it takes at least 2 hours out of my day once I've changed, stretched, ran, showered, cooled down, recovered, eaten, had a little nap to recuperate. I'm just too damn lazy to run the 26 miles.

Number Nine: Wallow

One of life's ultimate brain "screen savers" - random and irrelevant depression creeps up on you when you're not out enjoying yourself (as you won't be otherwise "YOU"LL NEVER GRADUATE" as the little elves in your head always scream. Maybe that's just me)

Sitting in the bath, having woken up full of enthusiasm and with all intention of getting straight back into whatever it was you were putting off yesterday, one little thought creeps into your head. It could even be something happy at first - some great day out, when you were having a fantastic time, and you were talking to that guy who you had such fun with, who you went out with a couple of times before HE RIPPED YOUR HEART OUT AND SQUASHED IT INTO LITTLE TINY PULPY PIECES.... Oh what's the point. Surely a cup of tea would help. And maybe some of those chocolate biscuits from the shop about 20 minutes walk away. Or - if the sun is over the yard arm - just a wee snifter of something a little stronger.

It's a slippery slope. Surely it's safer just to go back to bed?

Number Eight: Follow the Amazon Trail

"People who bought this book also liked..."
"Related items to those on your wishlist..."
"Buy this book and get this one for (completely combined price with absolutely no saving whatsoever)"

You've got to love it. You innocently and work consciously enter the site with the title of one book in mind, when Amazon's cyber literature pimps recognise the smell of an addict and take you on down a meandering path of books which seem to lead you closer to "the answer" that you're looking for.

Several hours later you realise it's dark, your eyes hurt and you've spent a small fortune on a mountain of seemingly irrelevant books on jazz music, country houses, knickers and language reports, with the promise that these are guaranteed to improve your life/knowledge/thesis to previously unimaginable proportions. Until they turn up and you find that the seven lines of blurb on the site are the only seven relevant to what you were looking for (if that).

The double whammy of this complete fallacy is that you'll never have time to read them anyway.

Number Seven: internet dating

Related to number six - whilst you realise that you can't spend your life alone, you simply don't have time to go and find Mr/Miss Right in reality. Think of all that valuable procrastination time you'd have to spend in the pub/bar/cafe/park. Surely it's far simpler to stay in, compose, edit and recompose an ad, fauxtoshop your picture until you look less drunk/red/big nosed (or whatever your personal paranoia is) and then search through the endless lists of people who
1) you're not interested in, or
2) who you can add to your "favourites" only to have them ignore your expensive, laborious and protractedly composed attempts at seduction.

Not that I'm bitter or owt.

For those of you proficient in advanced thesis avoidance, find a friend of the opposite sex/alternative sexual persuasion for whom you can look for matches in a caring and sharing kind of way. This at least doubles your number of profiles to peruse.

Number Six: forums

Given that leaving your house for anything more than getting a pint of milk gives you guilt trips, the internet provides the last remaining gossamer thread of interaction with the outside world. And afterall, you're typing, which is related to work, isn't it? Keep hitting "refresh" just in case you miss that witty comment someone has just published. The beauty of this is that you will NEVER run out of forums to join - the internet is full of people dying to regurgitate their fermenting ruminations at someone else. As this blog proves...

Number Five: Learn Esperanto!

...or something equally random in the name of "research". I've also managed to wangle in reading Alice in Wonderland, watching Monty Python and researching a potted history of sporks into my thesis. I'm just hoping the assessment board have a sense of humour...

Number Four: Cleaning

Washing up!
The beauty of this is that you can let it mount up whilst you're "busy" working towards that deadline. The critical point - running out of cutlery (even if it's just a fork for a hurriedly made pot noodle), realising that you can't reuse your coffee mug AGAIN without contracting some horrid stomach bug or the remnants of the last 72 coffee dregs sliding down your gullet, or finding an infestation of mice a la Withnail and I - will always come the night before your hand in when you're desperately trying to make up for all the time you've wasted on work avoidance tactics numbers one, two and three (so far). But then, it really has to be done. Your mother would be so proud.

Number Three: Food

You've got to love cooking. It's nature's law, you have to eat! So there's always going to be cooking. Rustling up three courses from scratch the night before a hand-in has to be my paricularly extravagant achievement though.

And of course cooking leads us on to...

Number Two: Ebay

The epitome of student time wasting - it is your mistress, and no matter what time of day or night, you will obey!
The catch-22 of the situation is that I use it to save money as I have so little. But then it's wasting time of which I have even less.

Number One: The Blog

This is quite obviously the ultimate work avoidance tactic. It's the final line that's standing between me and finishing my thesis, and it's only stopping me because I (under no other duress) have just signed up to it, as I am
1) dangerously close to having to face my personal demons (AKA my tutor) and hand the tome in for criticism, and
2) I'm getting quite bored of all the other work avoidance tactics.

You may find them useful, as I have.