Unstructured

I'm late. Missed my weekly blog post by two days so I feel that I should get writing! I have no idea what to write about so I think the topic will come as I write..

I'm now in the Easter holidays. We broke up a couple of days ago on Thursday. On that day, we had a half day, so we finished at 12. A friend of mine had organised a trip out to a curryhouse nearby the school for lunch so I went there with about 15 other people from my college. I had a good meal there, but I think in terms of spice, I overshot the mark. I chanced a lamb madras, which as I expected..would be a little to hot. This isn't to say I didn't like the food though, it was a pretty decent curry and I just powered through it. There was some funny banter that occurred during that meal, most if it involving me. As this was a 'lads' curry lunch, it was awkward that me and a friend unwittingly chose to sit at a table for two. As I said, the banter that went on because of this was pretty funny, but still good humored though.

On a completely unrelated note, I've been ill recently hence why I haven't said that I've been doing much lately. It's not really bothered me too much, I can deal with the sore throat side of it, but having a runny nose is extremely annoying. When the cold was bad, it seemed I needed to use a tissue every two seconds, which as you can imagine, means your nose gets sore quite quickly! I've almost recovered by now which is good.   Either way, I can't complain about this at all, considering how in this time, one of my close friends was being evicted from the rented accommodation, for seemingly no reason, and also, without being giving enough notification (a month) to make the house owner's actions legal. They are now currently staying at various friends houses until the council find them somewhere to live. I feel for them so much, especially considering the past that they have had, and the effect that it has had on where they have lived. I think I've done all that I could to help well I hope so at least, because they are rather a dear friend to me and in situations such as these I feel I should help out, considering my better living conditions.
My main hope though is that things just even out for them soon as they've had enough things to make their life unstable as it is.

I also just realised I usually write like this, thinking that I haven't written in a little while so feeling the need to, and then just rambling on about what I've been doing lately and what I'm thinking about at the time. While I see nothing wrong with that, it would be interesting to get friends to suggest  particular topics to blog about. It would probably make it more interesting for that friend to read too. I think it may help my blog posts be structured well too, because at the moment, the organisation can be pretty shambles (this post is a good example of this! )

This holiday should be a good one, as soon, I am going to hopefully get to catch up with a load of friends and also, in two or so weeks time, I will be going to two gigs, very close to each other (one on the 9th and 11th). I'm very excited for this, the first gig will be good, and It's in my hometown too! It's a pretty rare thing for any good gigs to be held in our city hall, so this was one of the incentives to get a ticket for it.
I think that the best gig will be the second one will be the second one though. It is a little further away (about 45 minutes by train) but I will be staying at a friends house there for the night along with another two friend that is coming, so transport is not an issue. The other people that are coming are my current crush (who you would probably know I have mentioned in so many of my previous posts) and her sister. The interesting thing is that, counting her sister out, all three of us went to a gig together last November in London. There's this, and then also the fact that by now me and my crush have become gig buddies, considering how many shows we've been to see together. Most of them local, but still, the point stands.
I really should finish this blog post up now, considering that It's 2:42 in the morning..but oh well, It's the holidays at least so late nights are alright!

I have decided to continue my blog on for a little while today, just to briefly describe my day.
Today was Easter day, so me and my family went to my uncles house in the country to meet a load of my mothers side of the family. So pretty much, as usual they put on a great meal worthy of being described as a feast. So for most of the afternoon I've found myself drinking and eating myself to a standstill! So yeah, its been a fun afternoon!

Amplifier

I feel things are absolutely brilliant right now! With summer coming up fairly soon, parties and other events like that, and then my general social life is pretty good at the moment. Plus, over the summer I plan to get a lot more guitar practice done with the free time I will have. With recent events, this has been made even better. If you read my last blog, I wrote towards the end of it about buying a half stack amplifier off ebay.

Well last night, I journeyed all the way up to london to pick it up! In the picture on the auction, it looked pretty massive but still, when I came into the sellers house to give it a quick test run before packing it away, I was blown away by the size. With the size of it, also comes the volume..He had it set at a fairly low volume (about 2 ish) but still it was about as loud as my other amp (A Line 6 Spider 30 watt) cranked up to about 4-5! The first thing I noticed about it was the clarity; considering the fact that my line 6 is a fairly cheap combo amp, the distortion on it is rather muddy, lacking clarity when picking individual notes. This was not an issue at all with the new amp. One of the reasons for this is the type of amp; as far as I know, it is a hybrid amp. To clarify what that term means, it is a solid state amp (fully electronic, using transistors to create tone) with a valve preamp inside it, which I find adds greatly to the tone.
It sure is one hell of a confusing amp though, in comparison to my previous amp, which had 4 basic setting knobs: drive, bass, mid and treble. It has other settings such as presets, channel volume (volume settings for the specific presets) and then other effects. Still, it is a fairly easy amp to use and work out how to change.
My new one though, as is said will take a lot of learning. It has only two different channels, lead and rhythm. The lead is made for more of a rock/metal tone, and the rhythm for a cleaner tone.
This part of the amp is fairly straightforward (except for on the lead channel, where the gain knob has been named 'balls' for some silly reason!). The consfusing part is the changing the channel, and other similar buttons. As it is a hybrid amp, it has a preamp button that can be toggled off and on. On the lead, I find it sounds best with it on, but it depends on the rhythm, as the preamp on that channel can be used to turn it into more of a lightly distorted rock tone than a clean one. The button that turns the effects on is fairly straight forward and understandable. The most confusing one I would say is the one on the lead channel named 'bigger balls'. In the manual, it describes it as a boost button, adding more distortion, however it seems at the moment, using it just worsens the sound. I guess with time I may find a use for it, once i've customised the channels to my liking.

Here is the amp itself, along with my original amp my guitar! The guitar is stood almost vertical.

This picture is a picture of standing me up against the amp to show the height of it.

Party times!

This weekend I went to a friends 19th birthday party. To say the least, it was pretty fucking messy. I was such a bad drunk, but I guess at least remember the night this time.
Pretty much it was a good night, up till later on in the night, when I threw up over the carpet..right by the toilet that was apparently not being used. Finding out in the morning that the toilet was free at that point was rather shameful.
A little while later I broke down completely when talking to my long time crush (who I've mentioned in a fair few of my last post) and explaining my feelings for them. I'm ashamed of myself for this, not because I discussed such things, but because I allowed myself to be so weak. I am normally much stronger than this but I allowed myself to be weak in this case.

This is a photo of me and her from the night. Honestly neither of us are looking very attractive, but then again, who does when your drunk?

To do her justice, this is another picture of her from the night, and I have to say she looks pretty beautiful in it.

The first part of the night was fun, with everyone chatting and drinking, taking photos; the kind of thing you'd expect. but then as I said, I broke. I wouldn't say this made it a bad party for me per se, it was a great party!


My weekend started off on saturday meeting a friend in town then going back to their house. For most of the time I was there, we jammed together and played about with the delay pedal he had brought that day. The sounds we could get out of it were brilliant. From there, I went home and packed up things that I would need and headed off to the party.

One of the best things about the weekend though was that I won myself a half stack guitar amplifier on friday off ebay. It cost me £145 which in terms of amps and speaker cabinets of that size is a pretty good price I'm probably going to sell my current amp for about the same price so that means that it will be even cheaper to get! The main reason I decided to bid on it was the price. Frankly I wouldn't want to miss out on such an opportunity! The second reason was a different tone to my current amp. As much as I like it, it's just not very versatile. It has very warm clean tones, which aren't bad at all, and then the distortion has a lot of low-end to it. The distortion isn't that great, but I would say that it is much better than a lot of amps at the same price range. The trouble is that those are the only two good tones it has to offer, there is no intermediate, no rock tones, just metal and clean. I hope with this new amp, I should be able to get a variety of different tones, so it should be exciting to play around with it!

Bad results

I haven't really written for a while now, it seems that i'm slipping into the post regularity that I suggested in my   first post; writing a post once a week, mostly at the weekend. I'm not too bothered about this, as sticking to this kind of schedule may help me keep me working hard at college work.

Considering my january exam results I expect that hard work will be very much needed if I am to have any good results by the end of this academic year. As I just suggested, yes I did badly in the january exams. I managed to get a C in general studies, which is okay but i'm not too bothered about considering how many universities do not even count the UCAS points from this subject in their applications. This is where the okay results stop; in chemistry I got an E (which is pass but only just) and I failed maths with a U.

I honestly did not expect to do well in maths, as I found the paper incredibly difficult compared to all the other past papers I did before it, however I didn't expect to get such a bad grade. These exam results weren't the most surprising though, as chemistry I was much more surprised by. I think that it was the difficulty exam itself that caused me to do so badly because towards the end of the christmas holidays, I felt that the knowledge was finally starting to sink in. However, lots more work would have always been helpful though.

I didn't really know what to expect I would get in chemistry but I definitely did not think that I would do this badly in it, as I felt fairly confident about the exam after I had completed it. I was obviously very wrong about how well I thought I would do. I don't think that it was my lack of knowledge that caused me to do badly, as I felt fairly on top of the topic, but I think it was understanding specifically what the questions were asking that caused me to do badly.

Either way, I will be retaking both of these exams in the summer. These results were poor, however it has taught me a lesson of how much work I need to do for the summer exams.
To make sure I put in this effort, I am going to try and push myself, mainly by cutting out on a lot of my leisure time that I take way too much of at the moment.

On another matter, in relation to my last blog post, I am now a little bit unsure of what I said in that, feeling that may be not doing the right thing. But in all honesty, I don't really know what to do about that..
Things like that are tricky.

Going off topic

Today was pretty damn good, in terms of what would constitute a particularly interesting day, in those terms it was rather an average saturday; go into town, meet friends then chill with them. The nice thing about today was seeing a friend of mine, who I consider my best friend. I usually dislike using the word 'best friend'; I class people I know as: acquaintance, friend, close friend. This friend I feel consider to be an exception to this though, as they are someone who is so inspiring for me, and that has been one of the influences who has made me who I am now. Anyway, after going off on a tangent..the last time I saw this friend was before last christmas, which is quite a long time! I've kept in contact with them of course though, via social media, but it just isn't the same as seeing people in person.

To continue describing my day, I also saw another close friend of mine, who I haven't seen for a couple of weeks. This is a small amount of time really, but well it was great to hang out with them, as they are very dear to me. At the moment, I would say I almost crave their company. This I feel is bad, as I am making an exception of them which is just rude to my other good friends that I have, as it is giving more importance to them, which is just disrespectful.
I have mentioned this person before on my blog, on the post entitled 'risks, cautions and mistakes' I believe. To describe it simply, I liked a person back then, and now a couple of months on, I realise that I either still like them or I have regained those feelings. I have been holding on to these feelings, being ever hopeful but not really expecting much. I do feel that I have failed myself though, as after making an attempt at making them mine and it did not work, or rather will not work, I attempted to get over them, which I have obviously not achieved at all.
The thing about this, is I knew from the start that I knew that I was most likely chasing a dream but decided to continue down the path. Now it is time for me to take action and I have decided. Letting these feelings fester and develop will do nothing but shackle me, so I am making the decision to give up on these pointless feelings. My only fear is that in striving for my freedom of mind, I grow apart from them which would be such a shame considering how long we have known each other well and especially how they seem to have been making more of an effort with our friendship of late. It would also make all the work I have done for our friendship a waste of time, as I feel a while ago, I was the only one upholding our friendship. I feel that the effort was worth it though because our friendship we have now.

I find it quite funny that the last time I attempted to get over them and now also I listened to a song. The lyrics in the song talk about how there is worse to feel sad about, so just get over yourself and cheer up. It is not the nicest ways of being cheered up, as it is quite a harsh way of doing so; the importance though is that you can rely upon that method to work.
The irony in saying that I cheered myself up using this song is that it links in directly with the person I am trying to get over. The band is their is and has been for a long time their favorite band. I also love them, however this love stemmed from my feelings for the person.
The song is called "Romance is dead" by "parkway drive". I shall include a link to a youtube video if you want to listen to it.

Also, If you need them, here are the lyrics for the song:

The incisions is your wrist were all for show.
Just like you.
He epitome of self indulgence.
Another farce.
A charade and another set of crocodile tears.
So serenade her with your last pathetic suicide love song.

Broken hearts never mend

  But fools never move one.

And now she's gone because of you.
And once again You're the epitome of pure self destruction.

Cupid never found his mark.
As we await the insertion of blades on flesh.
You part the skin and tell of blades on blood.
So part the fucking skin.
To tell the blades on blood.
She said "I Love You"
She said.
She said goodbye.

So cry me a fucking river bitch.

You wouldn't know love if it crushed you fucking chest.
Let go.
You wouldn't know love if it crushed your fucking chest.
"Razors, roses and a black tomorrow"

They never showed any affection to anything but your ego.
A tragedy of errors at the best of times.
You are everything that's wrong with me.
You're everything that I despise.
You are everything I dreamed would die.
You are everything that fades away and slowly dies.

Will you bleed for me when suicide seems so yesterday?
Will you bleed for me?
Will you fucking bleed for me when suicide...
It's so yesterday.
It's all so fucking yesterday

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Holiday post no.8

Today was my last day skiing, as our ski lift passes have run out and we are going home tomorrow. It wasn't a bad day, the weather was very cold in comparison to all other days we've had here but it could've be colder though. In terms of temperature, this week has been wonderful; most days it has been about -1 degrees. It sounds freezing because...well it is the freezing temperature of water, but for here, it is actually pretty warm and when you are dressed for skiing, it's actually a pretty damn good temperature. We managed to cover all of the surrounding mountain ranges in our skiing today, admittedly we did not do a lot of the runs in some of the areas but we made a good attempt at it! After going up one mountain range in the first place, we organised to meet at the bottom of a certain chairlift, but I misheard my parents and we spent about an hour looking for each other. After waiting a while for them at the chairlift i thought was specified, I then went up each chairlift around that one and ended up going down a load of different runs. In the end, they rung me and we organised to meet up at the start of the mountain, but when I went to the chairlift to take me there, I found it was closed. This pissed me off quite a bit but we eventually organised to meet somewhere, then eventually managed to get to the start of the mountain. From there, we went down 'La Face', a run I mentioned in a previous post. If you read that post, you would know it is a difficult run, I would probably say the hardest run in the area. Anyway, we were doing this not so much as a challenge, but more to test the conditions, because a ski instructor had told us that at the end of the day, the conditions on the piste were dreadful, to the point even he would not enjoy skiing down the run. He said that if we did the run earlier on in the day, it would be much more enjoyable, as the ice would not be so uncovered yet. I feel that we did not do the run early enough as it was still fairly icy at points, but I might just have too high hopes. 

I still sped down here, slowing down at points where it was just too icy to go fast and waited around at the nursery slopes where the run ends. My mum took a while to get down, as my dad had slipped over and had to put a ski back on. He then decided to take a cable-car down the mountain instead of ski down, as he had hurt his knee in the fall. It was probably a good thing that he did not decide to ski down as at some points, even I found it pretty tricky getting down at all. Meanwhile I did a couple of runs while my mum waited for him to get down. 

Once he came down, he said that he was finished with skiing for the day, as his knee was injured. It was a shame, but at least it was on the last day of skiing. So we took a bus to another chair lift up to a different mountain range, and sat at the bottom and had lunch. After we were finished, my dad went back to the apartment and me and my mother went up the mountain. It was intensely cold up here, and we skied around this area for a while before we gave up as it was just too cold. At the highest run of that mountain, my mother pointed out that the thermometers at the chairlift said it was -15 degrees..which is just unbelievable to me! I would expect it would feel so much colder. We then took the chairlift over to the other side of the mountain in hope that it would be warmer. It was, marginally. So for an hour or so we skied around this area, doing some nice easy runs. It was wonderful, as these two last mountain ranges had barely any people on them, so the slopes were much less crowded than usual. This made skiing today very enjoyable, ignoring the fact of the cold. Soon enough though, the time to come down the mountain for the last time came, not soon enough for my liking, as it was a little too cold up there for my liking, so I was rather in envy of my dad, in the warmth! I forced myself to stay till the end though, as it was the last day I would be skiing for a long while. 

I only managed to take one picture while I was up on the slopes today, as I completely forgot about doing so until the last minute. However I took a picture of the resort in the sun from high up on the run 'La Face'. I feel it really does show the size of the resort quite well.

After this, we went back and relaxed then eventually went out again to take our rented ski equipment back. Then later on, the ski instructor that me and my mother had been taught by earlier on came round for a drink and snack to eat. 

Anyway, i'm going to wind down now and get to sleep soon, so adios till tomorrow. 

Holiday post no.7

Today was pretty damn good. Much better than yesterday. It started off pretty much the same way it has for most of this week, wake up late, go skiing and come back then relax. Today followed that pattern except I decided to go out shopping with my parents later on.

Today we skied in a a new area, in the valley around the resort 'Tignes'. We went there to go to the top of the mountain, to ski down the glacier. It was rather a long journey to get there, as we had to get to the highest point of one of the surrounding mountains, but then had to get all the way to the top of the Tignes mountain range at around 3500m. With this fact, I would have expected that it would be very cold up there, however as it was a very still day, the cold was minimal compared to what it would be on an average day. The runs down there were also not especially icy, as type of mountain range would suggest. I really enjoyed the pistes around the top here, and also down the bottom of the mountains, as many of the runs were fairly steep and had a fair amount of powder on them; these factors were great as they made it not too tricky to speed down a lot of it!
While we were in this area, we stopped for lunch at a rocky outcrop that was a fair distance off piste. We chose this area because the view around there was astounding; the snow had been barely touched by skiers, and the views were great because of the height we were at. It was a little tricky getting back to the piste as the snow was so deep, i mean if you really tried, you could probably sink to waist height I expect. I took some pictures while I was up on top of the glacier and this rocky outcrop because the views from both locations were amazing.

The mechanism of the cable car up to the glacier

A view of the mountains around the glacier

A view of the mountains around the glacier

A view of the mountains around the glacier

A view of the mountains around the glacier

A view from the rocky outcrop

A view from the rocky outcrop

A view from the rocky outcrop

A view from the rocky outcrop

Also during today, I took a video of me skiing down a small section of  run. The video wasn't that good as I was skiing down, phone in hand, not using poles..but that isn't my main concern. I think that it come out with very bad quality but I shall see when I post it. You may also have to turn your head sideways to watch it..but it's the best i could do!

Later on tonight, I went out shopping with my parents, and was surprised to see some sort of street carnival type event going on! There were people with costumes on, holding floating balloons in the air. There was a pair of people dressed in an old divers style costume (with the large, round brass helmet) holding a large whale balloon. One of the best costumes I saw was a man dressed up as a penguin, in a suit. Anyway, in the street, there was also a small bandstand, with two people playing music. One person was playing guitar and the other was singing. Their set was obviously catered towards young children as it was all very interactive, but I still found it over all entertaining to watch. I was also in wonder at how the guitarist could play well in the cold, as it couldn't have been any warmer than -2 or so degrees C...
Also in the street, there was a stall that was handing out free hot chocolate and heated wine; I of course chose the wine. The streets were also lined with lit up multi coloured shapes.
Over all, this unexpected event was wonderful, it was something that was just so unnatural for me to find anywhere near where I live.
After wandering about the street for a bit, we finally went into the supermarket and got the shopping done. We then came back to the apartment then a little while later had supper. My father had cooked some steaks, which tasted wonderful.

I apologise for the lack of structure in this second part of the post; I had written the first part earlier, and now I am finishing it off a little too late (it is currently 12.24!)
Tomorrow is the last day of skiing! I'm both happy about this and also disappointed, this week has gone by very fast. I am happy about this because it means that I am soon returning home, back to normality and my friends. The disappointment in this is obvious, because well this week has been great, but I guess you can have too much of a good thing though.

I'm going to leave it here, I don't have that much more to say, and besides, the writing would not be that good anyway because i'm tired.