I arrived back in Cardiff on Sunday. Of course, I’d gotten all cosy on the train here from Bristol Temple Meads when they told us over the speaker that there was an engine fault. I ended up getting a train to Bristol Parkway, and then went to Cardiff from there. Luckily it only added 30 minutes or so to my journey.
I went into Tesco Express (The little one) today and bought some things. She put them all in a carrier bag that was far too small, and with an apologetic smile told me that Tesco had started only sending out the small bags, rather than the large regular ones we’re all used to. I asked her why, since we had been having a friendly chat, and she suspected it was something to do with saving plastic.
It led me to realise that if Tesco make a major change, they should really inform their workers as to the reason for it, since it’s the workers who are going to be asked for reasons by the customers. She didn’t know the exact reason, which I can imagine is not her fault. Also, as she very handily pointed out, the bags are about half the size, which might save plastic per bag, but she told me that they use twice as many, saving Tesco absolutely nothing.
And here I thought Tesco, as the largest retailer in the UK, had their shit together.
Two thoughts on children: First of all, it is useless to lie to children. About Santa, where people go when they die, or any of the many lies upheld at great expense so that children might feel some comfort. Every parent is going to have to explain the truth to these children at some point, so doing it first and foremost, rather than lying and then having to explain the truth later, has always struck me as the better, and more to the point smarter, option. You think kids will suddenly be miserable if they know that their parents bring them presents rather than Santa Claus? No. They’re still getting the goddamn Wii.
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Second, I have just realised that losing your temper is one of the most childish things you can do. Surely self-restraint is something that should come with maturity? So many adults lose their temper all the time. I’m of the opinion that remaining calm should be in the “toolset” of any well balanced adult, so it seems we have a lot of unbalanced individuals running around. I can’t even remember the last time I lost my temper, which I am entirely grateful for.
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Every once in a while, there’ll be a moment when I really appreciate women. “The Fairer Sex” is an apt description. I’m not talking as women about objects, in a sexual sense, but rather just what the good women amongst us represent. Sure, there are some dirty women around, and they could probably never be described as “fair”, but that’s their choice.
I know some women, however, who make me smile in a way that none of my male friends would be capable of, so I guess I’m simply glad that the opposite sex exists. It always seems as if the two sexes are meant to be at war, what with the plethora of jokes about the differences between men and women, and the division clearly visible on the magazine racks. Whoever is responsible for perpetuating this divide is an idiot.
Yesterday I went fishing. Adam and I took a fine nature trip, gear in hand, and I held an uninteresting (To the fish, at least) rod for 10 minutes or so. Given the difficulty of getting to and from the rocks we were fishing off of, our “game” time was a little limited. Nevertheless, it was fun, and it was nice to see Adam again.
I’m loathe to make assumptions, so let’s propose this in the form of a prediction instead: I will not see Holly this Christmas. That might seem like an insignificant prediction to some of you, so I’ll explain the situation:
I always want to see Holly in person. Like any friend, really. Talking to people on MSN might be fine for catching up, but for the purposes of close friendships, it’s about as useful as a Greek heterosexual in 400 BC. In regards to meeting in person, however, she’s like Bigfoot: You’re going to have to put some serious work in just to get a glimpse.
As someone who places a lot of importance in face-to-face conversation, this bothers me. Sure, I can just turn my back and realise that no-one should have to do this much work to keep a friendship alive, but I’m wary of doing that with some people, since I’d rather know them than not.
So our friendship is, instead, built upon broken promises: We agree to meet up and then someone cancels (Hint: It’s not me). We recently agreed to meet this Christmas, but after some brief conversation the words have ceased. Either she’s dead, her phone doesn’t work, or she’s ignoring me. I’d hope it’s the first, since the latter two are just ridiculous.
For those of you who aren’t religious or spiritual in any other way, the meaning of life, which was once a “big question”, is as follows:
Humans look for validation.
The greatest satisfaction a human being can experience is in knowing that their existence is valid. You could say that they “matter”. It is quite an achievement, and it’s all about the people around you. They’re the ones who are able to validate your existence, and not yourself. Unfortunately. This means that I might have to start being nice to people in order to gain their approval, which isn’t something I look forward to since I enjoy being a dick and getting away with it. As a path to validation, however, it doesn’t work.
With that slightly left-field and possibly unimportant message out of the way, take the time to listen to a Christmas song which succeeds in the way that most others fail: It wasn’t recorded years ago.
I might have said, in the last few days, to some of you, that I was looking forward to returning home because it offers a “change of pace”. I probably should have specified that I meant a slower pace, since fate seems to have frowned upon me and decided to speed things up a bit.
I have an email address other than my personal one. It’s for professional stuff, like applying to jobs. I use it as the reply-to address when I send emails to those people who might think my personal email address is silly.
I had failed to notice, given that I don’t use the address particularly often, that without fail every single one of the emails I sent went unanswered. Given that I often used it to email busy people in busy companies, I thought it was that they simply didn’t have the time to reply.
I have multiple Gmail accounts, and I’ve set it up so that every email sent to any of the accounts gets forwarded instead to my personal email address. This is so that I don’t have to check 4 different inboxes at a time. At least, that’s what should be happening. It turns out that my professional email account wasn’t forwarding the emails. For reasons that aren’t important I decided to check my professional email account, and in doing so found a reply to nearly every important email I had sent in the last 5 months or so.
Of course, this reflects badly on no-one but me. I have sent follow-up emails to all those with whom I hope to repair the situation. As far as life-altering problems go, this isn’t really a big one, since I still have my health. On the other hand, it feels pretty major. I’m not used to having something go wrong like this.
Last night was fun, for the most part. There was a Christmas meal with debaters, and then the majority of us went to a club and danced like it was 2008. Which it was. But it will not be for much longer.
There was a problem. It snuck up on me towards the end of the night and was firmly planted in my brain. It still is, although I am continually failing to put my finger on it. I won’t go into any of the details, but I can certainly try and summarise what I suspect the problem relates to:
I generally consider myself to be successful at life. Nothing goes wrong, that’s for sure, and things certainly go right most of the time, and I suspect that counts as a success. Given my self-concious nature, however, that success in life is almost wholly dependent on what those people I know think of me. If everyone started hating me, my success would surely dwindle.
Consider it my armour, this having people like me. It protects me from bad things and ensures that the success continues. However, every once in a while something will happen (As it did last night) which chips away at the armour and leaves me shaken: I am still successful, but I feel the fringes of that lack of success I am continually haunted by. Being reminded that you are fallable isn’t nice, by any stretch of the imagination. It is a strong enough shock that it has stayed with me through the night, when usually sleep is a powerful enough eraser no matter the problem.
It isn’t something to worry yourself over, should any of you be the kind of people who might worry for me. I’ll admit, that refers almost exclusively to my close family, since the thought of any of my friends worrying about me is laughable at the least. I have realised that since I can’t put my finger on the problem, it’s very likely that it isn’t a real problem to start with. I shall stop worrying about it myself in due course.
The moments when things slide together and “work out” are so few and far between that I usually get a tingly feeling whenever it occurs.
In my lecture yesterday, the man at the front told us that the British military has an internet-like network that helicopters can tap into, beamed down from satellites. Its name? “Skynet 4″.
As soon as I heard these words, I panicked. Skynet, for those of you who aren’t awesome, is the name of the artificial intelligence in Terminator that decided to kill all the humans. The rapid advance of robotics always has me worried, because it means that the robot uprising could be just around the corner. Coupled with this, naming any kind of military system “Skynet” is just asking for trouble. Like a jinx ending in a horrific death.
But this is where the situation came together: I turned to the guy I was sitting next to and whispered “SKYNET?!” in mock horror. I hadn’t noticed, because my mind was on robots, but as soon as I said it I realised that he was already drumming the classic Terminator theme on the table top. Apparently our thoughts were aligned on robot annihilation.
This is the time of year when viewings start. We don’t have to be out of the house until the summer holidays start, of course, but the deluge of students looking to rent begins far earlier than that.
We’ve apparently got a viewing today. The house is looking slightly… cleaner as a result. You know what the reason is? My house mates want the house to be taken quickly so that we don’t get any more viewings. They suspect it’ll be disruptive, I guess. I can’t imagine having people look around for fifteen minutes is going to be all that bad, but hey, I’ll find out in a little while.
This is also the time of year when I just start waiting for the term to be over so I can go home. I’m not sure when the tipping point is, but it gets to a certain number of weeks before the end and all I can think of is the holiday. It’s not even a case of missing home, or wanting to get away from Cardiff. I like it fine here.
Maybe I’m just looking forward to a change of pace and scenery? A different place to continue my life for a few weeks.
I’m hesitant to use the word “series”, so welcome to a new thing. When Demitri Martin said that the phrase “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” should be changed to “No-one should throw stones, unless you’re trapped in a glass house, which means that only people in glass houses should throw stones”, I realised that there really is a lot of room for classic common sense sayings to be updated. Here’s my first attempt, but keep in mind that some of these aren’t meant to be amusing:
Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, but there’s always a chance that the devil you don’t know is actually the better devil.