A Very Merry Christmas

I don't very much like Christmas. I saw an article on the BBC today titled 'A Genius Scam', all about The X Factor. Personally, I think the same phrase can be used for Christmas.
When it comes to Christmas, I am very much a Scrooge figure. Bah Humbug to decorating everywhere, and to the constant playing of Christmas songs. Bah Humbug to buying useless tat for people (although I am myself guilty of that this year, but what else are we meant to buy for my father, a man who has no interests and hobbies, and who has all the hankies and socks he needs?!) Although I have felt myself feeling slightly more Christmassy than I usually do, the feelings are fleeting and I see sense. I am spending Christmas in Dorset this year, a change of scene might do us all good.

I actually prefer New Year to Christmas, although nowhere near as much as I used to, because now it is the anniversary of my grandfather's death. But what I like about New Year's is the tradition of reinventing yourself. As if people didn't do it all year round, but New Year's gives you an actual time to make changes about yourself, and become a new person.
According to this website, the Top 10 resolutions include losing weight and getting more exercise, quit smoking or drinking, and learning something new. As Wikipedia confirms, resolutions tend to be advantageous. We want to be better people. I'm sure even saints could make resolutions, except it probably wouldn't be to 'help others', more likely 'have some "me" time'!

I have already made myself some resolutions, and in addition to this, made goals for January and February. According to the Wikipedia article on New Year's resolutions, women succeed 10% more when they make their goals public and get support from friends.
This year, I managed to complete 4 of my 6 resolutions (although one thing I have already failed at again because I learned it, and then I forgot it)

I have so far got 9 resolutions sorted, some easier than others. And I'm going to share them with you now:

1. Get work experience
2. Lose 6lbs - get to 8st
3. Watch 360 films out of 1001
4. Finish bedroom
5. Read list of books
6. Learn to play ukelele
7. Get bonus in April
8. Learn to use Adobe Illustrator
9. Pay off £600 of student loan

It used to be that one of my resolutions would be something like 'Sort out self-esteem' or 'Gain confidence' but they were so vague I didn't really know where to start. So I never started. And eventually, I stopped making that a resolution.
3, 4 and 9 are probably the easiest. But I include them because you still need to achieve some things to keep you on track for the rest of them. I am currently at 320 out of 1001, so I should get to 360 easily. 4 sounds silly, but so much remains unfinished in my house. and 9 could be easy because I could just take £600 out of my savings, but instead I am going to set up a direct debit.

Other are not so easy. I'm not very musical, nor do I stick to things well, so 6 and 2 will be hard. 5 also will, because I don't really make time to read anymore. But I will endeavour to start this month and get a head start. It's only a list of 6 books (I have more unread on my bookcase, but I can add them when I run out).
7 is an unknown quantity since I could really work hard and deserve a bonus as promised in my contract, but budget restraints may leave it out of my reach. If the time comes and I don't get it, I will assess how hard I worked, and decide whether I would have deserved it had it been available.

1 is also, in a way, an unknown quantity. I could apply for tons of work experience, and not get any. If the end of the year comes, and I have no additional experience except that of working on corporate videos for the company I set up with another friend, I will still sort of see that as a failure. It's a bit like saying 'I'll get a job'. You could apply everywhere and get nowhere. We'll see.

Anyway, having thought about it weeks ago, but this being my last blog before the year is out (I have a pretty hectic two weeks coming up), I have decided to evaluate my year using the systems in place at the school I work at.


2010

WWW - what went well

• Finished university - with a 1st
• Got a job
• went on a cruise
• went to New York for the first time
  
• stayed in touch with friends from home & uni - even rekindled a friendship
  

EBI - even better if

• succeeded in all my resolutions
• had a better time at uni
• won an award for Where the Waves Break
• made more contacts
• got more work experience
• saved more money (I succeeded in saving £1000+, which was one of my resolutions, but then I started spending it) so really it should be not spent so much money
• gained more confidence
  

What do you reckon your WWW and EBI's would be?

The weather outside is frightful (or: it's being smart that counts)

Why do we get so excited about snow? the BBC asks. I don't why, you tell me Beeb. Because I sure as hell don't get excited about snow. Not one iota. Knowing snow is coming, or waking up to find snow covering my garden makes my heart sink.
I don't know whether this is a symptom of getting old, I can't remember enjoying snow when I was younger. As my mum has pointed out, I've had more snow in my lifetime than she ever did by my age. I pointed out to her this was probably due to the global warming her generation and the generations before her had caused. But for as long as I can remember, I have not liked snow, for the reasons listed below.

1. Snow is hugely inconvenient. For transport, public and private. For businesses. For schools. For people in general. You can't get anywhere, and if you do succeed in finally getting there, you can't get back.
2. It's white. I hate the colour white. Whilst not a universal disadvantage of snow (for example some people might like the colour white), it certainly gets irritating after a while.
3. The end result of snow. Slush, or even ice, tend to be what comes next once the pretty little snowflakes have fallen and covered our houses, cars, roads and pavements. If you're lucky, it becomes slush. Dirty, mucky, slushy slush. At least this only soaks your shoes through faster than the snow did. Slush most often occurs on roads or where grit/salt has been used. But the compacted snow more often becomes ice where people tread repeatedly on it. This makes for more dangerous walking than the thick snow that lay there before, and I'm sure most people find themselves with aching feet from the way you walk on ice.
4. It is cold and wet. This comes into play when you get it in your face or down your clothes, whether because it's drifting down from the heavens, being blown around by wind, or if you have been the target on a snowball.
5. Snow costs money. Much like the inconvenience, businesses will do less trade, people are unable to work, and the cost of getting the area/country back on it's feet is pretty big. Compensation for disrupted travel, most likely flights from closed airports rather than disrupted public transport, will need to be negotiated.
   

Basically, snow is useless. I personally do not think it is even that pretty. There's nothing majorly magical about a blanket of snow, and I don't understand why people like it. With the exception of kids, because they obviously know no better.

***

I recently saw a bus advert for the LG Optimus phone that claimed "It's being smart that counts."
This obviously refers to the fact that if you don't own some sort of smartphone these days, you clearly live in a cave or under a rock. My contract is up in a matter of weeks on my G1 and though I both love & hate my phone, I don't know if I can find an acceptable replacement. I was hoping to go for the HTC Desire Z, but since it's so new I don't think I will get my regular £30 800 minutes-Unlimited Texts-Unlimited Internet contract on such a phone. But now I have had my G1, I have higher expectations of phones. In fact, I get frustrated that my phone cannot do things. I now want a phone with the following abilities:
- Email
- Threaded texts
- Open documents i.e word doc, jpgs, pdf
- in addition to this, I want to be able to EDIT these documents and then send them on
- Navigation & Maps
- Social networking feeds
- Integral calendar that is easy to use
- a QWERTY keyboard
- and probably many more I can't think of right now.
I basically want a laptop in a phone. Which is probably why I want an iPad, for the first time since they were launched, as I have sort of been seduced by the idea of their capabilities. I'll let you know after Friday whether I buy one using a friend's bulk discount.

The other thing that came to mind when I saw the aforementioned LG advert was that it is not being smart that counts. If it was being smart that counts, then I would have had an easier time at school, and so would a lot of kids still in education being ridiculed for their higher intelligence by those with lower intelligence. Telling them that it's "being smart that counts" probably isn't much consolation.


Last but not least, the photo here shows how sentimental I am: this is a collection of scrapbooks and memory boxes I have, and two large photo albums started by other people but finished by me of my childhood and adolescence.
This now all resides in the loft. Teehee.

Blogging & Bagging

I haven't advertised this blog. On my old blog, I used to post links to it. Which wasn't a wise thing to do. It was mostly out of seeking attention and wanting people to listen to my opinions.
But for a while I have felt blogging is a shameful thing. Which is why I started this blog in secret. I don't know if anyone has happened across it, it's unlikely, and there are no comments as evidence and I have no followers. Which gives the impression that although I have told someone I write a blog, they, and no one else, have seen it.

What is the point of blogging? We live in a culture where words are vomit and disrespectful. I don't remember time before the internet, and time before blogs, Faceparty, VampireFreaks, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. I have belonged to those websites in that chronological order. The reason I was on Faceparty, VF & MySpace was to connect with my friends and keep in touch for free because that was when I was on pay as you go. I joined Facebook shortly after my 18th because a friend of mine told me it was the easiest way to share photos (MySpace had a limit of photos in album (less than 60 like FB) and they were excruciating to upload and you could not tag friends either.) and Twitter I joined because...people kept mentioning it on the news and I sort of wanted to get in on the act.

The internet has become an arena for all those people who want to be famous, as well as for those who want to use it to connect and improve the lives of others. This blog probably won't improve the life of anybody, nor do I use it to connect, and I'm not using it to get famous or simply get attention. I use this blog because actually I find it easier to type than write properly in my diary. Plus I find the mental block of reserving my diary for personal feelings (I mean, really personal things) and using a blog to express opinion. My old blog had crossover entries where I ranted and vented, and I've learned from that. It's out of order to be rude about people on the internet. Mark Zuckerberg knows that too, if the narrative and screenplay of The Social Network are accurate.

Can you remember a time before Spotify? Before Facebook? Even before email? I still have a penpal, but we met on the internet. We write handwritten letters (which frustrates me because when I receive a reply I can hardly remember what I wrote in the first place), and instead of hearing or seeing that "You've Got Mail", I receive tangible, physical mail. And it isn't junk or a LoveFilm.

We live in an era of attention seeking, the internet is not the only arena for it. Reality TV for both celebrities and 'ordinary' people are simply ways to seek attention. It probably saves marketing budget for the celebrity, because shortly before their new single is released or their acting career is revived, they have some free advertising in the form of a reality TV show. I imagine before the internet it was harder to get a publishing deal, but now books are commissioned from people's blogs and Twitter feeds. People can get famous simply from their YouTube videos (the guy who cried about Britney Spears, the girl that dances and looks like an anime character?) and others are now celebrities because they blogged - Perez Hilton being one very obvious example.

This is more of a ramble than anything now, I have no conclusion at which to arrive except for that statement of the obvious that the event of the internet has changed how people connect, and write, and what they write about. Some blogs are specifically created for parts of people's lives (their weight-loss diary, a cooking lover's recipes), and others are seemingly pointless (like this one!) Will there ever be a time again where the internet doesn't saturate our lives? This woman is experimenting to see what life is like using just the internet to connect with people. This is the website.


The other reason for this blog was to talk about the activity/job of "charity bagging". I discussed with my friend whether "bagging" is a verb, and technically it is, but I'm not sure it is in the context of "charity bagging". Mostly it is a list of what I do and don't like about charity bagging.

• The worst thing about charity bagging is people. I hate asking people if they are in their gardens or at their door if they want a charity bag. It's about 50/50 of their responses yes or no as well. Some people say yes because they want them, some say yes because they don't really know what they're accepting. I've had a few "yes thanks"'s as well. But people who say no are the worst bit about this worst bit. Some of them know immediately and are prompt with their refusal, some even tell you before you get up their drive. But some just don't understand, or um & ah until they say no. Really very annoying.
  
• Also quite annoying are how people block off a path that could save you time between their house and their neighbour's, for example with a wheelie bin, a bush or a flower bed that you don't dare tread on. They could make my life, and the lives of people who deliver mail, free papers or even leaflets so much easier. Instead they consciously choose to make it harder.
• Long, long drives are actually the second worst bit. Just simply because they are long. Even worse is when you get to the door and the letterbox is irritating (I'll get to those shortly) or they have a sign that says 'No charity bags'.
  
• While we're on signs, I don't count charity bags as junk mail. They don't contain junk until you put it in there for the charity.
  
• LETTERBOXES. Why aren't they uniform? I remember this from doing paper rounds, and that was a lot harder to deal with. Why do people have really small letterboxes? Why do they have that don't match up with the door so when you push things through they come up against a small ridge? Similarly, why the bristles, when they make getting mail into your house so much harder? Also, letterboxes with knockers over them, I really don't get that at all. And mostly you find them in Purley & Sanderstead.
• And lastly (that I think is most important) are cul-de-sacs. These are both good and bad. Good because a fair amount of houses in one area so you can offload a good amount of bags and lighten your load in a short period of time. Except in the cul-de-sacs with about 4 houses. Bad because you are in that area for a period of time and there is no escaping. If these people were a community of psychos then you're done for, really. And they all watch you, if they're in or up that is, and that feels horrible as well. In roads I don't tend to feel that.

Also, as promised, a photo of my car after the crash. There was more damage underneath where you can't see. The radiator got shunted a bit too. Still waiting for the verdict from the insurers & bodywork mechanics.




Watched Traitor earlier - it was okay. And currently listening to the new Good Charlotte album, Cardiology on Spotify. It's okay so far. I used to be a big fan. Well, I had all their albums and I saw them live. I quite liked them, obviously.

Everlong

Good evening.

Last night I had a car crash. 'Crash' is most certainly the correct word to use, even though in a way it was also an 'accident', because clearly I wasn't intending to go straight into the trees on the corner of the road and damage the car.
Without knowing the damage done to the inside of the car, I can't tell you whether the car is a write-off. I don't think it is because the airbag didn't deploy. Although I'm sure I went straight into the trees at about 40mph. I had already missed a left turning and I was rushing to get home as I was meant to be going to see Mary & Max. The TomTom told me the next left would be a "sharp" one, but on a dark A road I wasn't familiar with the sharp left came up quite suddenly. And, pretty desperate to get home, I tried to make it. I really, really didn't. The corner was on Pilch Lane in Milton Keynes. I had been in MK to meet Rheya, who I am starting a video production company with. I had to get Rheya to retrieve me (after the panicky call to my mother, and then a rather calmer one to the police) and three hours later my mother was in MK to pick me up in my dad's car, and the AA had pulled the car out of the ditch/trees. They returned it home, and we arrived home by about midnight. I wasn't hurt by the way, I'm not writing this from hospital or anything. Just very shakey. Amusingly, next weekend I am going on a Ferrari test drive! The one thing it reminded me was one of the entries on this blog -
http://thisistheheff.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/dry-me-out/

I've been quite busy at work the last week or so. Putting together videos for the Dance show on next week, and other things for the Creative Arts show the week after. I've been extra hours & extra days, and I'm in an extra day next week, although I'm not for most of my usual hours next week because it's my Graduation.
I did however witness a teacher get extremely mad at a pupil when he called her a "clown", and a boy who had hair like a Rihanna used to. I think. In any case, I wasn't sure he was even a boy.

Oh and before the I crashed my car, I had been intending to write about MK's road system of V's & H's - Vertical and Horizontal's. But it doesn't seem interesting anymore. However I will probably post some pictures regarding the crash and the v&h's another time.

A New Daily

Today was my first experience of the new daily newspaper 'i', brought to us by The Independent. It's basically a condensed version of he Independent, sort of like the Metro, which rips articles from the previous day's papers and puts them in one paper for commuters to read for free. At least, that's the impression it gave to me.
It was an easy read, I browsed and I find more than one article particularly interesting. In today's edition was an article critiquing the new film The Social Network, or more to the point, critiquing the society Mark Zuckerberg has created: 'They are forging a culture in which words are things you vomit out onto a keyboard - because without the keyboard, and the screen at the other end of it, the words are nothing - and one in which an experience isn't real until it's been ratified by a photo, or a tweet, or an "update" that your "friends" can gasp at.' (Christina Patterson, My View, 27/10/10)

She has a point. Why do we sit at our computer's, updating and tweeting, almost as if we have nothing else in our lives? It is so unheard of for someone NOT to have Facebook, and even people who don't see the point in Twitter are still signing up because their friends are encouraging them to do so. There are millions of blogs just like this one, that document the writer's life because they are so desperate to write it all down and make the experience real. Whatever happened to writing in a journal or diary? Was it just a predated version of the blog? They were more private, but now we feel free to write our hopes, our fears, our tears of sadness and joy on the internet for all to access. Is that evolution?

The Social Network was well-written, well-directed, well-acted and well-edited. I doubt it will win an Oscar, but it will be nominated for awards because it tackles something that everyone is involved more and more in, and people like films that tackle "real issues" (although the issue here is probably whether or not Facebook was a stolen idea and how the man behind it is an "asshole", rather than how our culture and society has developed and moulded around the Internet and its endless possibilities).

I will be seeing Paranormal Activity 2 tomorrow. I was extremely scared by the first one. And it's taken some persuasion to go and see the sequel. But I am currently reading Feel the Fear... and Do It Anyway, so I'm doing it anyway.

Simon Cowell is God.

A remark I made today at the car boot sale I was selling at led my mother to think I had a crush on him. I don't, it's just that I am acutely aware of just how powerful the man is.
According to wikianswers, he's worth £112 million.
Although the Daily Mail, quoting from the Sunday Time's Rich List, claims it is £165million.

Is it wrong of someone like myself to wish to possess such fortune and wealth? Ultimately, money is often respect. And I do crave respect.

My mother has also seen fit to get behind Ann Widdecombe (not literally) in her latest pursuit of Strictly Come Dancing success. Also, she is anti Paul Daniels, because of his & his wife's current outing on a marriage behind the scenes show, and Gavin Henson, because we should be behind "our Charlotte". (we're not Welsh, we've never met her, so I'm not sure how she's "our" Charlotte, except that she's also female.)

I went to see Buried at the cinema on Thursday. Claustrophobic doesn't even describe it. It's really very good. The editing, and the camera work, and the acting and storyline all pull together and allow for the coffin-location not to get boring. Although the frustration you of course feel for the character Paul can be nowhere near the the frustration he feels. And the near-elation at the end when you so desperately hope it'll work out ok, but deep down you know it can't happen, met my expectations.
I can't see how it will do well in DVD sales though. Possibly it'll find a market in Ryan Reynolds fans, those who didn't make it to see it at the cinema, and those who quite like the knew genre of Iraq/Afghanistan war films, that focus on the mental and psychological effects of war, as opposed to the action and the death.
Trailer
Website

Composites

Today was a good day at work. In fact, more like a great day. I enjoyed it immensely, and hope that the job continues this way. I have a line management meeting next week so I will mention that I like it.

I mostly have some photos I wanted to share with you.

The first one is a baby having been defeated by a dinosaur. I came across the carnage in the ELC in Wimbledon. Personally, I think it was probably a fair fight, and that the best man/creature won.


Second is Barack Obama appearing on an assessment I had to take to check my workstation health & safety. During the online assessment I learned what makes a well-organised workstation, how to keep my back healthy and that your monitor to be an arm's length away from you. Barack is demonstrating that often you need to use your mobile devices to keep updated on your work and in contact with people. There are some simple safety tips to make sure that your use of mobile devices leaves you healthy and uninjured. This includes not using it a lot.

I had to take a test at the end. I got 100%.





And the last picture is of some graffiti/wall art I discovered down a pedestrian walkway, sort of a short-cut but not quite a short cut to & from work.

I think it's lovely, and while it is still light at half 4, I intend to walk down there everyday after work.
It is located in Sutton, between Sutton Common Road and Hallmead Road, and it is called Coombe Walk.



That is all for now. Ciao.

The First Step on the Rigid Search

Finally I have managed to get Blogger to work. I think it's a sign that it doesn't work on the macs at work.
I created this to learn how Blogger works. Now I have decided to see what it's made of. And to see what I'm made of.


Before I go out and deliver charity bags, which is a) pocket money, and b) good exercise, I am trying to find out the news on the BBC. Except so far all they are talking about is the Papal visit.
Which I really don't care about. Because I am not religious, let alone Catholic, and I am not in any way racist or homophobic. Plus I am a woman. And I might not be keen on children, but that doesn't excuse the behaviour they covered up.



Top news story? Spending cuts have gotten boring then? Have Pakistan's floods receded?
Personally, I think this should not be top story on the website AND get the first 5-10 minutes of television news coverage.

Maybe I'm missing a trick by not being Catholic/religious. But as far as I'm concerned if I wanted to be inferior in an organisation, I'd rather get married. And that's saying something, coming from me.