#sraffies

[dolorosa]

Srafcon Reykjavik has now happened! (I think this is the northernmost location for a srafcon since the heydays of srafcon Helsinki?)

[dolorosa]

So I've got three fabulous books to read on my holiday, and one of my sraffie friends just made two new, fabulous playlists (he makes them every year, and they're basically the way I discover most new or new-to-me music), and MY MOTHER IS ON THE TRAIN TO CAMBRIDGE! In other words, life is pretty fantastic.

[dolorosa]

So this weekend I have: Spent Friday night at a fifteen-person dinner in honour of a friend and former academic colleague who now lives in Germany but came back to Cambridge to give a paper and graduate; Left the dinner at 10pm to collect my friend M from the train station and take him back to our place; Spent Saturday morning showing M around Cambridge; Spent Saturday afternoon at Original Library Job, while also coordinating things for M and another friend, D, who needed to be collected from the bus stop but whose phone couldn't send texts to M's (which meant I had to relay texts between them); Spent Saturday night out at dinner and the pub with M, D and the Philologist in what was my first srafcon since lowercasename left the UK. We ended up being awake until midnight, hanging out in the living room and chatting; Woke up at 6am on Sunday in order to help sort out M and D's taxis to the train station; Will be out tonight at a second celebratory dinner for the friend who graduated. I love all my friends, but at a certain point it's just too much socialising.

[doctorbee]

Trips and drowns in a pool of love for sraffies.

[dolorosa]

So, in a normal year I generally go to Germany for two weeks - one around Christmas, and one at some point in the northern summer. The summer week tends to vary depending on whatever events my partner's family and friends have planned that year. And, what do you know, this year's week in Germany coincides with: probably the only concert The Naked and Famous will ever do in Cambridge; and a mega srafcon in London with a configuration of people that will probably never happen again (seriously, people from Ireland, Iceland, Australia and Canada are going to be there along with the usual UK-based suspects). GAH.

[dolorosa]

THE SRAFFIES CHANGED THE TOPIC IN CHAT TO 'CONGRATULATIONS DR MYLASTNAME' OH TODAY IS SUCH A GOOD DAY.

[doctorbee]

Do you ever just... sraffies.

[dolorosa]

Back in the golden age of chat*, I developed this marvellous talent: I had a sort of internal clock that kept track of what time it was in all the places all over the world where my interlocutors lived. Not only that, but I sort of memorised their schedules without consciously meaning to, so I had a rough idea not only of what time of day it was everywhere, but also what times of day people were likely to be around. Thus, at any given moment, I knew not only what time it was in Britain, Ireland and Iceland, in Germany, in Finland, in the east of Australia, on both coasts of the United States and Canada, and, at times, in China, but also who would go in chat during uni lectures, who would sneak on during their night shifts at work, who was always out on Friday nights and exactly which North American's arrival signalled that I should probably go to bed. Chat isn't exactly dead these days - I was in there earlier talking to thelxiepia and M - but it's not the primary way we all talk to one another any more. A lot of people use Whatsapp on their smartphones, and no one is in school or uni any more, so we have a lot more freedom and money to (for example) travel to London for a weekend and catch up with people. But most of us don't have these huge chunks of time to sit there for hours having incredibly involved conversations. And the result, for me at least, is that I've lost my internal sraffie-clock. If I really think about it, I know what time it is in the States, or whether it's reasonable to expect certain people to be online, but it's not as subconscious and instantaneous as it used to be. All the knowledge is there somewhere, I guess, but it's no longer easily accessible at the front part of my mind. ______________________ *Which for the purposes of this post is 2007-2010, the years I spent most time hanging out in my group's IRC channel.