• We all failed the exams spectacularly, so we are repeating the first year. Fabi passed, which is is good, but it means that she hardly hangs around with us fails anymore...
• My mother hates me for that
• Everyone else is disappointed (including me and my friends)
• I spend my free time gaming Metin2 in order not to spend it actively hating myself

• I finally met korpun - he visited Zürich for a few days in the middle of September and we had a great time!
• The Chinese were here (bad) so I stayed with Tom for a few weeks (GREAT!). I got him hooked on Metin2 and he got me hooked on Sledge Hammer. xD
• My books keep multiplying. I sometimes wonder if they do it by themselves. Then I wonder where all my money has gone. Then I usually get the idea.
• We've been at Doom's place on Friday, eating cheese fondue (yum!) which I had been made to cook (under careful supervision, though, so nobody died. xD). My stupid, shouldn't have complained about not knowing how to cook. Then again, I have to learn sometime. ^^ After that we went on to Chris's (losing poor ill d_h_m_o on the way), where the guys played Halo 3: ODST for an hour and I actually enjoyed watching it. (They would've let me play, but I fail at Halo controls. I'm not a gamer. Yet. XD) Then we played some brainmelt together.
• (We do actually study, even if it doesn't sound like that. -.-' There just isn't that much to do at the moment.)
• I'm too lazy to do a "This Month" now, so: watch the british TV movie "Skellig", listen to Rhapsody of Fire ("Autumn Twilight" closely followed by everything else) and read a lot of Terry Pratchett. Also, read some poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, check out a few animes/mangas like The Legend Of Basara and Loveless, watch "Equilibrium", play Metin2 through the night, listen to chemistry/biology/physics/it/math lectures through the day, and you'll have my creative input. As for creative output, there is none. Except my exercises and the next post.

• Сегодня, мама! by Сергей Лукьяненко & Юлий Буркин - A children's book, actually. I listened to it (read by the authors) and enjoyed the adventurous story about travels in time and space tremendously. It's kind and funny, and really well-read.
• Жук в муравейнике by Братья Стругацкие - I always liked the Strugatsky brothers. Their books always make you think out of the usual patterns. Beetle in the Anthill takes place in the Noon Universe (ignore this if you've never read a Strugatski book) and deals with the influence of secret agencies on people's lives, showing, that no matter how good the intention, nothing good comes of such control.
• Униженные и оскорбленные by Ф. М. Достоевский (Humiliated and Insulted by Dostoyevsky, in case anyone read it) - Only the second book by the great Russian classic I've laid hands on. I wasn't disappointed. No one understood human nature like Dostoyevsky, nor could ever convey it to the reader so subtly. Besides the beautiful language and the insights, there's another thing I love about his books: despite all the evil in humans, there's also some good and it does win in the end. Utopic, maybe, but very comforting.

This is why I love Russian rock so much.

Hадо мною - тишина,
Hебо, полное огня,
Свет пpоходит сквозь меня,
И я свободен вновь.

Я свободен от любви,
От вpажды и от молвы,
От пpедсказанной судьбы
И от земных оков,
От зла и от добpа.
В моей душе нет больше места для тебя! 

• Shibumi by Trevanian. This book was given to me by lautenist (like so many others) and I've read it more than once already. A freelance assasin against the CIA. Japanese philosophy against the merchants' world of the West. Two cavers in the Basque mountains. The world-wide struggle for power and the art to kill with any object at all. Brilliantly written, this is a book of a much higher class than Dan Brown's thrillers - and no less capturing for it. 

• WALL-E is a children's movie that relates to environmental problems. Now, now, don't yawn! The earth has been so polluted by waste tha tlife becomes impossible. A large part of humanity is sent on a journey to space for a few years while robots clean up the mess. Generations later, after the operation has failed, a probe brings a little plant to the spaceship... Along with the last remaining cleaning robot: the little WALL-E... I must say that the task of animating robots to show emotions wasn't easy... but they've done just fine. And, of course, like other Pixar movies, WALL-E, too, is kind and cute.
• Ratatouille came out in 2007. Those of you who still haven't seen it - shame on you. It's one of my favourites ever. The plot is simple and rather kind, with the message that talent is not affected by origins. What really makes me go wild about the movie is the lovingly and thorougly made animation. In case you don't know, the movie is mainly about rats. The first time I saw Ratatouille I was almost shocked - the fur looks so real you want to stroke it. It looks real in the wind and getting wet. And having owned a rat once, I can tell that the movements are very similar to those of real rats. Great love for detail combined with great computer power make Ratatouille quite cool.