Boredom writing

I am currently broken down on a motorway somewhere, I have no clue where as I've been sleeping for most of the journey.
I'm heading back to my hometown from Worthing, a seaside town. I was down there with my parents visiting family members for birthdays as said birthdays were all at a similar time. It was my grandmother's 85th birthday, my and my cousin's 14th and my other cousins...I don't know to be honest, they are younger than 7 though, I know that. It was rather a boring afternoon, one of those events you really don't want to go to, but have to out of fairness and respect.
We arrived early, which for anyone in our family is quite impressive! The other arrivals then slowly trickled in and by about 4 (we arrived at 2.30 ish) the party was complete. It was really just a small, afternoon meetup, with crisps, sandwiches and such snacks to eat. Hence, you can probably see the boredom of the event that I mentioned above.

Anyway, that's pretty much the reason I'm writing this post right now, to pass the time. I do want to write, It's not that I don't enjoy it, It's very enjoyable, but I've just been rather lazy recently. That, and the fact that I've been quite busy in the evenings (the time I usually write my posts) chatting to friends over Skype.
It's quite sad really, spending so much time doing that, but the people I've been talking to are some of the best friends I have at the moment, so I figure It's not so bad!

Also, on a side note, I missed a picture from my last post, as a friend of mine sent the picture from the evening to me after I wrote it, so I just went ahead and published it. The picture is not especially of high quality, but it was dark and cold, so a good picture isn't to be expected.
The picture is of one of the massive snowballs we pushed into the river. Looking back at it, It's pretty impressive that we managed it!

The snowball itself!

Good times!

So, the last couple of days (thursday, friday and today specifically) have been bloody awesome! I can't remember if i've blogged about it or not, but pretty much, over the last past month or so i've been rather solitary, not really getting out into town and meeting people much. I may have told you this in person depending on who you are. It's been a little irritating, as usually i'm quite socially active, meeting friends in town most weekends however I slacked off on this to  spend more time on revising and such things for my January exams.

On thursday, I went to the youth centre that I usually go to, where a couple of bands that I know practice and generally, a big group of people hang out there. I hung about in town a couple of hours before this with some friends, waiting for the centre to open. Later on, when it opened, I hung around there and chatted to people, played a couple of games of pool. Then I went upstairs to the band practice rooms and hung out with a band that was playing there that night. Well I say playing, but they weren't really doing that much, as their rhythm guitarist was taking a break from the band due to upcoming exams. So we were pretty much hanging around in their practice room, listening to music through the PA system and having a good ol' mosh! A little later, before the centre closed for the night, I did some modeling for a friend of mine, as they needed some material to draw for their artwork at college. The pictures generally revolved around lighting, and shadows and it generally was  the best time to take pictures as it was dark outside. I'm not sure whether those pictures are going to be actually used or not, but I shall see I guess.
I headed home after this, and went on facebook. Soon after I arrived back, a couple of friends of mine requested that I talk to them on skype, and I ended up talking to them and a couple of other people from about 10 o'clock till probably 1:30 in the morning, which wasn't the best of ideas considering I had to be up at 7 for a full day of college in next morning, but I decided to keep talking and suffer the consequences as it was great fun talking to those people, it really did pass the evening quite quickly!

However; when I was woken up in the morning by my alarm, and I had my usual five minute lie in, my dad came into my room announcing that college was cancelled due to the snow! I was pretty pleased by this, and celebrated by going back to sleep till around 11 o'clock. I woke up slowly, and went through the usual morning procedures, then was quite lazy for the rest of the day. I did try to make plans to go into town, and meet people in town, but I didn't really get round to it and also accidentally missed out on an opportunity to do so. Anyway, later that night, the same friends as last night asked that I contact them on skype again, and I gladly did! We ended up talking with various different people joining the conversation at points in the night, and talked for an even longer period of time compared to the previous evening. It totaled to about 8 hours or so, which I would say is rather impressive amount of time. I think we finished talking at around 2:30 or some time, mainly because everyone was tired.

The next day, I awoke at roughly the same time. I would have probably slept longer, but my parents wanted me to get up. My dad had made me an awesome cooked breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and black pudding; it was delicious! but anyway, I walked into town at around two o'clock, it was quite icy and slippery but hey, that's what you would expect in cold weather. I hung around like any other day, milled about, went in a couple of shops, chatted; the usual. The people I was with didn't really want to go and play around in the snow, which I found rather disappointing as I hadn't been out in the snow until then. A while later, they went off and I was left with a decision of either walking home, or seeing if another friend is about. I took the other option and texted a friend to see if they were busy. They said that they were not and enthusiastically told me that I should meet them and play around in the snow with them! This was awesome, as I didn't particularly want to go home yet, that person got to get out of their house to meet somebody and because I was meaning to catch up with them at some point anyway! Soon, we were wandering through town and eventually got to a surprisingly snow-filled park. I was expecting that it would be very slushy and messed up, as it was the closest park to town, but the snow was fairly fresh. We trudged around in the snow, destroyed a couple of balls of snow and also pushed two into the river, which I am fairly proud of, as we finished the job for the others that clearly gave up on doing so themselves! This was good fun, but not as much as the other thing we did. In the river, there were a load of ducks, and I decided to throw a snow ball or two close to them. They had a surprising reaction; they seemed to go towards it, assuming it was food of some sort. So pretty much, for about half an hour, we were throwing snowballs into the water with the only objective to disappoint some ducks. I really don't know how this kept us entertained, but it did. Sad eh?
After this, we went into the children's playpark and hung around there for a little while before heading off into town again. We dropped off at Mcdonalds, as my friend wanted to grab some food, so we sat on a bench for a while, eating, chatting, and observing the passing chavs. By now, at around 6:30 ish, it was quite cold, and my friend was especially cold as they were stupid enough to bring fingerless gloves with them... So we hugged goodbye and headed home.

When I arrived back, at around seven o'clock, my mum surprised me by suggesting that we go out and have a meal at a restaurant or pub of some sort. She had mentioned this to me quite recently, but I had completely forgotten about it. After about half an hour we (me, mum and dad) drove into town and parked the car. We then walked to the restaurant, a fairly small thai curryhouse. We had pretty good food there, I ordered a green chili pork curry, my mum had a pad thai (noodle based dish) and my dad had a braised beef steak. These main courses were great, but I feel that the desserts were the best; my mum had a sticky rice dish cooked in coconut milk, my dad had a similar one, with the addition of banana to it, and I had something completely different. I ordered a custard dish, it was cooked in some way or another, I can't remember how specifically, but it was pretty much like a solid square lump of custard made of an oriental ingredient called taro (I think that is what is was). It had a texture similar to jelly, except it was a slight bit more solid. It tasted divine. As delicious as the other dishes were, I personally think that my dish blew both other desserts out of the water, it won by miles in terms of presentation and taste.

After this wonderful treat, We got home at around 10, and I relaxed for a while and began to start writing this blog while listening to porcupine tree (an amazing prog rock band, you should give them a listen at some point) when those same friends I had skyped for the past two nights struck for a third time in a row! I was considering joining them later, and finishing my blog post, but they convinced me when they said that they were discussing the human centipede. This time, we also had video working as well, and we talked from about eleven o'clock till about 1:30 in the morning. In this space of time, I and another person in the conversation did the cinnamon challenge, and another person that was part of the conversation attempted to do the cinnamon challenge but then realized after doing it, that they had used cumin. This was hilarious.
And now, I'm finishing my blog post in the early hours of the morning.

All in all, it's been an awesome couple of days! Mostly orientated around my social life, and regaining it a little bit. On a side note, just to give you some numbers, I can say that I have spend a total of almost 17 hours in three days on skype to two people, with other people joining at random intervals. Time well spent I must say!

To end this post, here is a gallery of relevant pictures:

My cat being rather confused in the snow 

The view of my back garden in the snow

A rather shitty, pointless picture of the park we hung out in

The confused ducks!

The massive snowball!

When you finish..for the moment

For me, just about all my January exams are over now, since yesterday.
Well I have general studies on Thursday, but that is a general knowledge course that I don't especially care about and you don't need to revise for.
I've had a small amount of exams in comparison to some people, all i've had is maths and chemistry, whereas some people have had exams in all the subjects they study. In a sense, I'm fairly lucky, as I think the revision stress has been much less for me.

But anyway, I the two exams I had went overall okay, but then individually they went well, then incredibly shit. I found the chemistry exam surprisingly easy (to an extent) as the questions were fairly straightforward, they didn't phrase them oddly or do many questions where you would have to combine knowledge that you know. And in the last week before that exam I had done a fair bit of revision of formulae and definitions of things. So that was chemistry, it was fairly nice and I'm quite positive about it!

Maths however, is almost a polar opposite; as I said above, it went absolutely shit. This wasn't entirety because of me, as many people who sat the same test also found it pretty tricky. To quote a fairly clever friend of mine "It's the hardest paper they've ever set". So yeah, the exam and questions within it were fairly tricky in comparison to past papers. This was not my only problem though..
During the holiday I had found that most of the maths I struggled at for most of the term suddenly clicked and I was feeling quite confident about the exam. About a week or so before the maths exam, I stopped maths revision completely, as I felt I should focus more on chemistry as I had that exam first. I think this short break completely messed my knowledge up, and a few days before the exam, I really wasn't feeling too happy about what maths I knew. But either way, I don't think this would have changed anything, as the difficulty of the exam would probably still ruin it for me.

Whatever results I've got, I feel that these exams have taught me exam techniques and how much revision is needed, and in the end, I'm not stressing out about the results; I can retake them in the summer if needs be.

If any of you reading have had exams over the last two weeks, or have tests coming up; good luck with results/the exam!

But anyway, I wanted to write about the period after exams.. so I shall extend my post.
The after exam period is usually a very lazy, self congratulating and/or time when you allow yourself to be lazy, even if you haven't really earned it. With the January exams, this isn't a good thing, as you start learning new topics for the summer exams pretty much as soon as you finish that particular subject's test. This is understandable, as there isn't that much time before the summer. Anyway, yeah, your probably having a good time relaxing after the exams you just finished, take advantage of it while you can!

Story

I wouldn't really call this a blog post, as i'm not really going to write anything, but I just felt like posting a short story I wrote today. It is rather non-sensical and jokey, but that's the intention; I wrote it as a birthday message to a friend of mine. Anyway, to cut to the chase, here's the story (i'm also going to include the prelude I added to the birthday message) :

 'Well son, it’s your birthday. As a present, I am going to share a life story with you, one that can teach you much about how to react in this coming year. You’d better be proud of it too, as this is what my whole life has been based upon till now.

I was walking through Camden, accompanied by many hooting wallabies, and a vicious gang of unusually coloured basketballs. It was about late afternoon, the time when time often stood still momentarily in the 1980s. I was walking back to my house, as it was too cold outside, and the basketballs were attempting to mug me; BUT TO THEIR GREAT DISAPPOITMENT, I AM NO MUG! (on a side note, I hate drinking out of mugs). I had been walking a while now, being continually assailed by those angry hot little balls of rubber we call baskets. A little while later, I reached the road I lived on. I walked up to my front gate and looked ahead, and I saw that in the place of my house, was a house shaped mass of air! It was as if it had disappeared into thin air. In fact, it had, for I suddenly remembered that my house was built from inflatable balloons. I looked to the sky and saw my room filled building floating away on the oceans of clouds. The balloons somehow interacted with the clouds and caused them to cry delicious tears of sweaty men. With this, I began to laugh with mirth and malice, because I love sleeping in air. I walked through my gate and opened my air-front door and lay flat on my air carpet. I thought a while, then got angry; the wallabies were supposed to stay in the house an prevent it from floating away. I sat up and stared at them (they were still clustered around me, the basketballs however I last saw running away carrying masses of swag) and caused them to form blisters around their nipples and turn an odd shade of purple. They were not phased by this it seemed, for they revelled in their new found glory and partied with the many shady strangers in nearby alleyways. I was alone for a while and wept. Not out of sadness or even out of joy, but because I was bored and had fuck all to do.' 

I hope this story has enlightened you, cheered you up, amused you, or even confused you greatly! Either of the four reactions would be great.

Back

My first day back at college was today. I had Monday off thanks to a teacher training day. I frankly would have preferred to go back on Monday, because well my holiday has been rather crap.

There has been good moments, and a party or two, but otherwise, I've just been home alone trying to revise for exams. It's been a little lonely and this is why I've been looking forward to returning to college.

Anyway, It's been a good day back, I felt happy that I have possibly started on achieving the resolution I've had in my mind for a while!

Unexpected topic

I'm going to try and steer away from the obvious topic that you would expect me to write this post about. It's a new year, everyone is making resolutions and such. A friend of mine has said similar things on their blog, but i'm going to talk about my point of view anyway. 

New years resolutions are quite fake in a way, they are almost done out of tradition, rather than actual concern. Think about it, if said change was that important to you, then you would be trying to make it happen already, rather than waiting for the traditional time of change. However some people who state that they have new years resolutions, aren't saying it for reasons I just mentioned, but because they already are trying to sort out their resolution, but merely go along with everyone else and say it is a new years resolution to be part of a conversation. This is fine, but the only issue with this is that they really should have described with a more correct title. I feel I am in this category.

I am going to end this section of the post, as well, it isn't that interesting; isn't everyone talking about the new year at the moment?

I'm going to write about something musical instead. On a side note, I just stopped writing for a couple of minutes to order a poster of a band I like. It's quite impressive, the band is called TesseraCt, so their logo is quite obvious, it's the shape itself. The poster though is quite cool, it is their logo behind a space themed background. I may as well just put up a picture to show you, as it's probably quite hard to imagine just from a written description.

                                                For six quid, I would say this is a bargain.

Anyway, now to continue writing. I've had my electric guitar for about 3 months now, i'm surprised how accustomed to it i've become, considering how i've played the acoustic guitar for at least two years. They are two very different instruments to play. I sometimes think to myself that I generally enjoy music involving electric guitars more than acoustic music. In all honesty, this is a lie, depending on the mood, I can enjoy acoustic music much more than rock or metal that I would usually listen to.

This makes me a little disappointed in myself, as all the time when I played nothing but the acoustic guitar, I never got round to either doing pieces involving other people, or composing my own music. But now that I have my electric, I feel much more inclined to do both. I've been planning on doing both recently and hopefully sometime this year I should get round to achieving both things. I already have plans to have a bit of an acoustic jam with a friend at some point, hopefully a little while after I am finished with my january exams.

For most of the time i've been writing this post, i've been listening to an acoustic artist called Beth Orton. Her  music is a mix of folk music and trip-hop beats, which sounds great, she also has a great voice! I would suggest you give her a listen.