The wonders of Facebook...

The great thing about St Andrews is that there is definitely an international feel about it, you just need to look at the Fresher's group on Facebook and you can see that people are coming from all over the world. So, that is my first point really, how people from all four corners descend on this (tiny if you look at global proportions) town to have their university education, it truly is magical.

My second thing is to profess the wonder that is Facebook (or any other social networking site, but for this specific purpose Facebook is the ultimate master). Within seconds you can find your future classmates, there are already 639 members on the Fresher's group, 639 students of the class of 2012 are already in some kind of contact with each other. Then comes along accommodation allocation, you get the e-mail (University Hall by the way!) and there is flurry of activity. Everyone wants to know who is where and if they can find their future roommate or neighbour. I've already found around 12/13 who are in the same hall and 3 who are on the same floor, one guy who is 6 doors down from me. It's crazy how around 2 months before we all move in we can chat, 'chew the fat' to quote good old Holden, and get to know each other.

Also the fact that quite a few of these new hall acquaintances are American has also made the whole time difference thing come more to forefront for me. When speaking on the internet, or on the phone your concept of distance gets a bit mixed. You know that this person is thousands of miles away, but for some reason if you have a direct conversation with them the distance seems illogical. Or maybe it is just me!

But the distance then becomes logical again when you look at the time difference at the sending of messages through various Walls and other channels. Whereas I may be typing in the mid-morning, say 10.30 am, the person who I'm sending the message to will most probably be asleep be it, 5.30am in Washington D.C. or 2.30am in California. And yet all those barriers are broken down, that message that I left after my breakfast will be waiting for the person after their breakfast, when it will be afternoon for me.

One my friends in Art College did her final project on the passing of time, 'Tempus Fugit' it was called, 'Time Flies'... It certainly does in the 21st Century, the increasing web of communication demolishes all walls of time, the world is most certainly alive 24 hours a day.

The wonders of a coffee shop...

You know as much as I would like to rebel against the commercialism of the world, I have to admit to being a visitor of Starbucks. Not frequent, but occasional, mainly to meet up with a certain friend (She will most probably be reading this and going 'Is that me?' in the vein of Simon Amstell...) and have a good chat and catch up about life, friends, university, possible careers and then general gossip and people watching. I must also note that although we may be in this multi-national, multi-millionbilliontrillion coffee stop, neither of us buy coffee. Instead we opt for either a smoothie or a 'flavoured water', wasting our money on things that we most probably could make at home for a much cheaper price. But then, you get caught up in the whole thing don't you?

You go to a coffee shop, stop, place whatever you want to call it and you end up buying something of probably dubious quality for treble the price than if you bought the ingredients separately and made a nicer, healthier version yourself. As mad as this may sound, and as much as I wish I could say I would have no part of it, it is ingrained in our culture and generation, rather than going over each others houses and sitting around the table with a mug of tea or coffee and some biscuits from the tin as our families used to.

We are all caught up in our fast, retail orientated lives of having so much to do, but seemingly so little time to do it, we organise a rendezvous point where our calendars magically align themselves to meet.

Our modern day astrology I suppose, although without the whole stars, planets and signs element...

But to be honest, it is one of the few times I see this friend as the weeks pass, and I love it. It costs me an extra bit of money on something that can be drunk in 30 seconds, but who cares because you have the whole 'vibe' of being in the coffee shop. Our express pit stop, where you can either order to go, or sit down and have a well deserved (debatable I know) rest. And for people watchers like me, it's a haven.

So my friend and I will sit down with our drinks, sometimes on the stool facing the shop that this branch is located in, if we are feeling nosy, or on the comfy chair, where you sit back (or as far as you can without your feet leaving the ground *cough*) and just shoot the breeze, catch up, laugh, talk about the past, talk about the future and also the present. There is something about a coffee shop where you suddenly have a burst of energy to talk, communicate with an actual human being, something that is really quite rare in these days of MSN, Myspace and 'sitonmyFacebook' (to quote the wonderful Mr. Stephen Fry).

It is the hour or so that I can just expel any area that I haven't done with the person sitting opposite me for a while, leaving no stone unturned, although some stones take a little while longer to turn than others, due to my friend's amazing ability to suddenly forget a subject that we only talked about the night or two before.

It is a commercial, garish land full of grande and tall and frappamochachokes, a strange country where you have to pass a language degree just to enter through customs, but it is the one place where you can see people talk, laugh, actually communicate which is a truly magical thing nowadays.

I would still prefer it if I didn't have to spend money to have such a 'luxury' though.

Bring it on when I have my own flat, preferably in Edinburgh, and people can come over and for a mug of hot liquid, free of course, and just talk, talk, talk and forget about everything else in this weird world that we live in.