University of Life (Pt.1)

University. It’s both a source of fear and joy. However, no matter who you are, whatever you do at university is sure to shape your life.

I started university a month ago, and as my flatmates have mentioned countless of times; “It feels like I’ve been here for ages”.
Perhaps it’s just because my high school system was extremely similar to the university system here, or perhaps it’s because I’ve had to readjust myself to completely new situations so often that everything is the same; but either way, being here has somewhat lost its novelty. It’s just living a nice life at the moment.
I think it’s about time to do a quick retrospective look on the first month, and to share tips on starting university I wished I had when I first moved here.

Room
I have a single room with an ensuite, the top thing that makes my room comfortable is keeping it tidy. While decorating the room would probably help with the physical appearance, I prefer to put things in easy reach for when I might need them and I stick the relevant essay information up on my wall. That doesn’t leave a lot of space.
My top decorating tip is to utilize the furniture; it’s more space and you’re more likely to look at it there as well.

Flatmates
My flatmates are lovely. I’ve heard horrible stories about things other flatmates have done such as steal food and items from others, but none of us here are doing that- at least not too often! The solution is a ‘community pile’. Psychologically, it’s a deterrent from taking other food as the ‘worth’ is already in the pile.
Creating a community pile of food, sharing magazines and having a good room-to-room flow all encourages good flatmates to stay good flatmates. If possible, try doing activities together or having dinner as a flat once a month.

Food
Sometimes I’m too busy to cook lunch and having experienced eating sandwiches everyday; I’m not returning to that. What I do now instead is make more than I need and put the rest in the fridge to reheat later on.
Risotto is a terrific food to apply this rule with, just add a bit of water to it before reheating. It’s also cheaper than making sandwiches and allows variation (for a quick recipe, see here!). Do the same with pasta and have it cold as salad.
Cup-a-soups are also a handy emergency food, better than tin cans since they take up less space.
- Allow the food to cool before it goes in the fridge to avoid food poisoning!

The Thing About Monkeys

The thing about monkeys is you can never quite predict what they’re going to do, such as evolve.

I’m sure that there are still a few monkeys out there who are only pretending to be a homosapien to avoid being shoved in a laboratory and experimented on. Take, for an example, John Smith- we’ll call him John.
John likes to play basketball, he enjoys a good minestrone soup and always combs his hair. That’s about as human as it gets, right?
Well, John also enjoys a good evening in front of the computer on various chat sites like this one , and this one- or this one. In the privacy of his room, John engages in a basic primal act; asserting his dominance over others (did you think I was going to write something else?).

Others choose to work their way to the top, similarly this is seen in prides where lions fight each other to prove their worth. However, with primates they assert their dominance through fights, yes. Of course, comparing the size of their genitalia also helps (there you go, your first thought was correct after all!).

No, it’s not a sick way of saying something crass, but an creative sentence that illustrates how the hormones that help monkeys assert their dominance are kept in the sex glands.
Let me explain; the sex gland secretes a hormone that help monkeys grow larger, it also coincidentally smells quite strong (think male cats). Certain scents are able to attract females easier and therefore the monkey has his little harem to play with and the other monkeys get jealous. They decide to challenge him.

Back to John. John is in a club and somebody irritates him. They fight outside the club. Same with the monkeys.

So why do I mention all this? Because the monkeys are in danger- and also because I signed this petition. The KitKat company (amongst others such as Dove) use Palm Oil. Do you know what this means? It means that they bulldoze down natural forests to make way for the palm trees for their oil. Who lives in the forests? The monkeys. So far, 50,000 amount have been recorded dead, with how many knows more.
Make a difference and write into the cooperations, don’t buy products with Palm Oil and there’s so much more you can do. Just do a quick Google check to make a difference. Here’s a site.

5 things you might not have known about monkeys.

1. There are over 250 different species of monkeys.
2. Often in movies, you are watching the capuchin monkey.
3. The capuchin monkey can be trained to assist quadriplegics as an aid.
4. The word ‘monkey’ has German origins.
5. In 2004, over 10,000 monkeys were used in animal testing laboratories in Europe alone.