Not a lot

Another blog I’ve decided to write as an alternative to sleeping. Last night I was at my friend Chantele’s 20^th and as is tradition left around the time you hear the morning chorus, a lovely soundtrack to stagger home to. The repercussion of this was me staying in bed pretty much all day. Tomorrow I’m determined to get up and not accidently sleep through a seminar, like I did earlier in the week, missing an awesome powerpoint presentation I was meant to present. I stipulated the inclusion of lot’s of terrible clipart, something that can make or break a presentation and an obvious demonstration of risk. The module I missed, English in Practice apparently gives you extra marks for taking risks, so I’m definitely going to get a 1^st now. Alas I wasn’t there to present it, but as I learnt later neither was the rest of my group so I felt less guilty. Anyway the reason this happened was because my sleeping pattern is not existent and I occasionally end up being nocturnal for a few days. I should get in some kind of routine.
  If I want to get up for uni tomorrow I’m afraid I’m going to have to wrap this up, but if you’re looking for other ways of drawing your attention away from responsibilities, here is a link to my soundcloud.
http://soundcloud.com/matty-scholar/3-chords

Time is of the essence.

Students generally have quite a lot of time on their hands, most of this ‘free time’ could and probably should be spent doing work surrounding there course but even after fulfilling work requirements many of us are left with a large percentage of the week were we can do what we want.
   Though as a young person and a student I have the freedom now to do what I want without having many responsibilities that encroach on my lifestyle. Unable to find a job and unsure on whether or not I actually want one, my only real obligation is attending University, though I usually enjoy that. Occasionally I will wake up (usually hung-over) and decide to miss a seminar or lecture but I always make sure I’ve caught up with whatever it is that I missed. I encountered some students on my course that managed to get through the entire first year without reading a single book and claiming they don’t really like to read. Personally I don’t understand this at all, why would you decide to do an English degree if you hated books? It’s like doing marine biology whilst having utter contempt for whales. Aside from that we are paying thousands of pounds a year to do a degree, you want to get your moneys worth by getting a decent qualification. I don’t really imagine that those students are doing anything worthwhile with all their free time if they aren’t even bothering to do the work. Although, I don’t know them intimately, they could be masked vigilantes for all I know or perhaps even super villains, though they’re probably just general nightclub lurkers who are destined to lead a mundane life.
  Sometimes I have no reservations with sitting in the same place on the couch, baked, playing Xbox and chomping down tasty treats. (I did it often last year). Though recently I’ve been spending a lot more of my time doing productive things, in large playing the guitar. When I wake up and I feel like I can’t be bothered to get dressed let alone do some work the guitar seems to beckon me towards it and I will spend many guilt free hours playing away. Then on the days when I’ve got to do reading or coursework pretty much all day I’ll have little intervals where I play guitar as a kind of cathartic release from everything.
  However I’ve become less satisfied with playing on my own, I really want to form some kind of band, even if it was just a 4 or 5 of us practicing in a garage. If I formed one and we did a few gigs it would be awesome, but it’s partly just because I’ve got the time to do it now and I might not in a couple of years. This year I think I appreciate being a student a whole lot more, partly because it’s the second year and it doesn’t seem like the end is too far away and also because my friends at home with jobs have got hardly any free time in comparison. I don’t see myself ever having a conventional 9 till 5 job I don’t like, I find the idea of that slightly horrific, but eventually I’ll have to get a job if I want to continue to eat. At the moment I plan to do a masters to put off the world of work for as long as possible but when I do get a job I’ll make sure it’s something I enjoy.
    I want to be able to look back on my time as a student and remember all the funny stuff, like getting a tattoo in the bedroom next to mine by my mate Dan at midnight (http://doomandgloomtattoo.tumblr.com) or having a house party where a fat white chap who thought he was black threatened to beat up everyone, there are other things I want to, but shall not disclose for my mother reads this blog. I feel this is starting to get nostalgic and slightly morose even though it’s not meant to be and I’ve got another two years of being a student, possibly more. To conclude I don’t take it for granted and if you are a student you shouldn’t either.

REVOLT!

Oddly enough I feel now, at half past three in the morning, motivated enough to try and write something that will be hopefully interesting, maybe inspiring and perhaps insightful to anyone reading.
   This motivation comes from watching the latest episode of BBC3’s ‘The Revolution Will Be Televised’ on BBCiplayer.
   I don’t consider myself as someone who is knowledgeable in regards to the news, though nor am I completely ignorant of what is going in the world. I read the news most mornings via the internet but usually only skim through stories, clicking haphazardly about the screen until something pops up that appals or humours me. Though watching ‘The Revolution Will Be Televised’ made me discontented with being a passive spectator, someone who just listens but doesn’t put what they have just learnt to any use.
  For those who haven’t watched this enlightening yet hilarious program, you are genuinely missing out. The format is similar to programs like Dom Joly’s ‘Trigger Happy TV’ or Channel 4’s ‘Balls of Steel’, where the humour comes from real people being victims of absurd comments and characters. Though as you may have gathered from the title’ The Revolution Will Be Televised’ is politically motivated. The two brave individuals behind this program, Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein openly insult and humiliate politicians, diplomats and celebrities using a series of satirical characters and comments. The majority of the program relates to injustices committed by countries and institutions, which we are told, ‘are all true at the time of the recording’, as well as some general mocking of stereotypical rightwing opinions.
   Despite it being essentially a comedy program I can’t help but feel riled up by the end of each episode, like I should be an active participant in trying to engage a revolution. One of the reoccurring themes within the program is tax avoidance and abuse. The program highlights malevolent moguls like Phillip Green (owner of TopShop and Aracdia) who avoid paying hundreds of millions of pounds in income tax by having accounts overseas. As well as Chris Grayling, an MP who used taxpayer’s money to payoff mortgages on multiple houses within London. Those are two of the living atrocities I can remember from the program that; have helped to confirm my already strong belief that Capitalism is a greed encouraging system of shite, and makes me want to succeed where Guy Fawkes failed.
  I don’t really have confidence that we will all unite and rise against the powers that be, because too many people are simpletons, content spending there lives aspiring to be like those creatures from ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ who actually detract from what the Human species has achieved. However there are people who try to incite change even if it’s just by boycotting certain shops or only buying fairtrade. With all the corruption you hear about it’s hard to see it ever changing but I’ve decided that it won’t stop me from trying.
  I’m not sure what I hope to achieve but this post shall be the start of it. I shall write again on this topic once I have achieved something.
Viva La Revolución!
   

Student life begins once more...

Today was the first day in a number of weeks where I actually had to get up for something. Admittedly I only had to get up at ‘midday’ but it started to make me wonder how I’ll establish a routine again, or if I will actually bother.
  Today was the induction into my second year of university, which involved sitting in a large but sparsely populated lecture theatre, to listen to various things that we had already been told at some point over the last year. Needless to say my mind began to wander and the notes that I planned on taking soon became a drawing of a wolf in a suit. On completion of the wolf I realised I hadn’t really listened to a word the lecturer had said, though looking up at the PowerPoint briefly, reassured me that it was all stuff I’d seen before. However it made me wonder how difficult people find getting back into the whole university swing of things after being home for months on end.
    I discovered today that I only have lectures and seminars on three days a week. It occurred to me that my routine needn’t change as long as I spend more of my conscious hours doing the work that needs to be done, but importantly I’ll be able to maintain my current precious sleeping habits. Though this isn’t the case for some people who have to get into a strict regime of waking up at 9am to a breakfast of earth and being back in bed before 12pm if they hope to get any work done.
   As well as sleeping patterns the other thing that I contemplated whilst day dreaming in the lecture was my inability to hold concentration whilst sitting in lectures. Hopefully this will change once I actually start my course and people are saying fascinating things but my minds quickly wanders when reality isn’t interesting enough. I’m not sure how to conquer this inability to actually listen to monotone people and boring subjects. Water is meant to be good for brain activity maybe drinking lots will reveal new tones to the drone like voices.
  Moving back into student accommodation is something I’ve had to get used to as well. At home the cupboards were rarely bare and when they were someone was usually out gathering tasty things to fill them with. Though when I stared into a barren cupboard this evening I knew that I’d have to cycle down to the shop if I wanted to eat. Cycling down there isn’t a problem it’s deciding what to purchase that defeats me. Every time I go to Sainsbury’s I find myself wandering back and forth down the same isles staring blankly at a wall of tins and boxes thinking to myself “what the fuck was I here for?”. Despite writing lists occasionally we always seem to run out of sufficient eatables within a couple of days. I’m going to attempt a ‘big shop’ tomorrow and get as much shit as I can crammed into my backpack and more still in carrier bags attached to my handlebars that way it’ll save me returning for a few days.
   Then of course monitoring money. Surviving gets expensive if your not careful with your cash. Living in Manchester where it isn’t unusual to pay over £3 a pint can easily lead to spending too much over a weekend finding yourself having to ration supplies. Though this could be looked at as a valuable life lesson. If you can learn to ration food and make what you have last as long as possible, when the apocalypse eventually arrives with its zombie hordes or nuclear fallout, (those are the best ones) you’ll be able to outlive your greedy equivalents.  

Just a Little Update

Amazingly it is already the beginning of September. Summer is probably over, though it’s hard to tell since the climate is on par with Michael Phelps for records broken these past two years.  This time last year we were making the most of the final days of warmth, preparing for the icy weather that was surely soon to follow, then a month later a week in October was warmer than any week we had in ‘Summer’.  So I shall keep my hopes up that winter will give us a miss this year and be replaced by vibrant rays of sunshine and some kind of hot snow which doesn’t go all slushy and brown making everything look bleak and polluted a few days after its fallen.
   Anyway my summer holidays have pretty much drawn to a close as I have now returned to Manchester to try and conquer my reading list before the start of term. It hasn’t gone entirely to plan since I returned as I’ve been… Sidetracked. When I moved into the house everything about it seemed void of vibes. The off white walls were blank and bare, mould hung above the sinks and the whole of the downstairs smelt of stale cigarettes and forgotten milk.
  The first thing we did was explore what we could do with what was already in the property. The key to interior design, I found, was the creation of spaces and focal points. In the living room we achieved this by trying to keep an open space within the centre of the room placing all the furniture bar one coffee table against the walls. In the downstairs bedroom we achieved this by placing a cat’s tail we found under the bed into a jar and putting it on a shelf.
   We soon ran out of interesting stuff already there so I bought some gnarly Indian bed sheets to hang about the place to hide the state of the walls. My nan provided us with a Sony stereo, that’s as old as I am, complete with vinyl player. She said it was broken but I don’t know what she thought was wrong with it because it all works fine. This prompted me to buy some vinyl which is how I discovered the magical and vibe producing band that is ‘Goat’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swOjaFXnDeA. I spotted the vinyl in the ‘psychedelic rock’ section because it had a trippy case, which was enough for me to buy it. Turned out it was a good move because there the most original band I’ve listened to in ages (LISTEN TO THEM DAMN IT!). So now with ‘Goat’ playing, and things hanging from the walls and ceiling the living room at least, seems more homely.
   Even though I might only live here for a year I can’t help but try to make it feel like a home opposed to the staffroom feel of the student halls last year. As I’m living with two of the people I did last year, one of them being my cousin, there’s no issue with people leaving their possessions lying about indiscriminately or with the consumption of whatever’s in the fridge by whoever feels hungry for it.
    All in all it’s starting to feel like a home and perhaps I’ll feel comfortable enough to finish my reading list within the next couple of weeks.
  

It's been a while...

It’s regretful that I have to start another blog by acknowledging the fact that I haven’t written one in months but, yet again, it must be done. The reasons for this stretch far and wide, some may say, too far and too wide! So I won’t attempt to bore you with these reasons, which stretch, to the very horizons of each and every one of your sensory perceptions.
  Yes it has been quite a while since I have written a single word. I feel that now, enough time has passed for me to be able to string out five hundered or so words informing my avid readers of what exactly I have been up to for the past 4-5 months and it will be sufficient and perhaps entertaining enough.
  Well my last blog was posted at the end of March, slightly before or perhaps slightly after my last exam, I don’t really remember. What I do remember is that I passed all my exams and am able to cling to the label of ‘student’ and to all the luxuries that go hand in hand with that label, such as getting marginal percentage discounts from selected retail outlets and a special railcard that says student on it, which gets you a third of any journey just like all the other types of railcard you can purchase.
 Since then I have been comfortably busying myself by doing nothing. Every now and then I’ll try desperately to find a job but it seems that every CV I have handed out is another wasted piece of paper playing its part in destroying the rainforests, something I abhor. So I have decided to stop printing off CVs that don’t even get looked at, another step towards saving the planet.
  Another studenty thing that I have experienced is the feverish excitement I’m sure all students endure when they have to move all there shit from one place to another. I’m not sure how it happened but over the course of the year I managed to accumulate quite a lot of random stuff I barely used such as an accordion, a violin and a nerf gun to name a few. Perhaps the greatest acquirement was obtained on the day we moved out of the flat.
    As our sneaky Korean housemates emigrated before the end of the tenancy, myself and two other English tenants I live with, had to clean the entire flat. Not only did they leave the tidying to us but also they pretty much left all the things they kept in the communal area of the flat. Fearing we would lose our deposit if the flat was full of stuff we decided to claim it all. The most precious treasure we acquired was there fancy Korean rice cooker. Unfortunately all the buttons are in Korean so unable to use it, it serves only as a cultural ornament and talking point, perched proudly on a table in the centre of the living room in the new house.
  At the moment our abode for the following year of university is bare and unappealing, (apart from the living room of course!) The alarms go off every time someone moves and I am scared of the responsibility of having to arrange bills and their payments. So currently the house functions only as a sort of squat, a cold building in which you can shelter from the elements and sleep, providing you are very very still.
  I am planning on furnishing it with bohemian wall hangings and various other gnarly stuff to make it more homely; perhaps I’ll upload a picture or two when it is complete.
  That about wraps it up, a few other occurrences have occupied my time but I’ll save them to give me something to write about another day.

Bacon

It’s been a number of weeks since I last updated this blog, the reasons for this vary between laziness, lack of inspiration and excessive amounts of coursework. Over the course of the last week I spent many hours frantically trying to finish ten worksheets that we were meant to be completing throughout the academic year. As I never seem to panic or get worried about deadlines I always end up leaving the majority of them to the last minute, so far this doesn’t seem to have compromised my grades but I don’t think I’ll be taking any chances next year, mainly because University is expensive. It would be a waste of money if I graduated with anything less than a 2:1. 
  Anyway, what inspired me to write today is a very real hazard to everyone whom I consider real people. This hazard being the ‘bacon police’, which is a phrase coined by myself in accordance to anyone who has anything negative to say about bacon… Shame on them!
  According to ‘Science’, which I have ridiculously over generalised for the sake of my argument, eating bacon or any red meat for that matter everyday is bad for you. The result of bacon badness, being bowel cancer. When I first heard this I expected it was the kind of scaremongering you would find in the daily mail, according to that particular institution being a black person gives you cancer amongst many other things, so I assumed it was just invented to instigate needless paranoia and I shouldn’t let it coerce me into eating less bacon.
  However after reading a story about it on the BBC website backed up with statistics I decided that there might actually be some risk in eating bacon everyday.
  This prompted me to cut down on my bacon consumption slightly but I still expected that at some point in the near future ‘science’ would find some new research telling us that actually bacon isn’t bad, its magical and it fights cancer and terrorism at the same time with one hand tied behind its back…bacon.
  Sadly this news never arrived, but I did stumble across some other news which should bring the joy back into your life, unless of course your fictional man in the sky says pigs are dirty and you can’t eat bacon anyway, which also places you into the fictional category when I afore mentioned ‘real people’.
 Anywho before this blog digresses into a rant about organised religion I’ll get back to the point. I was on the BBC website yesterday when I read a startling piece of news. According to new research if you eat an Aspirin a day it dramatically reduces the risk of developing cancer, particularly Bowel cancer.  I’m not entirely sure why, but the article failed to explain what I deduced straight away. Aspirin cancels out Bacon cancer!

  So my top tip of the day is if you’re worried your eating too much bacon or the ‘bacon police’ are oppressing you, just have an aspirin after your bacon sandwich. 

Wrath in response to the apparatus

Since I started University, Tuesdays have become my least favourite day of the week. On Tuesdays I am a victim of the heinous crime of having to waking up at 9 o’clock. I then have to make the arduous journey from my flat, up some of oxford road, negotiating a busy road, avoiding collisions with busses and people who can’t walk at speeds exceeding two miles per hour. Then when I eventually arrive at Uni I have to scour my mind in order to remember which lecture theatre or seminar room I need to be in. After this I endure two hours of brain exhausting ‘learning’. I must then tackle the return journey with all the perils that plagued me on my outwards venture.
  When I think about it, the three other days I am in University are pretty much exactly the same as Tuesdays, though the 9am wake up is replaced by a 1pm wake up.  And if I compare my average week this year with my average week at college where I had to get up at 7am and usually got in 5.30pm I feel like I shouldn’t have any reason to complain.  However I complain anyway.
  Though this particular Tuesday has been slightly more irritating that my average Tuesday, which is the reason for me writing about it.
  Today I decided to start an essay that’s deadline is 9 days away from now. I was going to leave it a little longer because I didn’t think it would take too long to write 2000 words on Christina Rossetti.  Not unless the university introduced some ridiculous rule regarding this essay, which they did. We are forbidden from using any Internet sources to research said poet!
  I don’t understand the reasoning for this decision; the Internet was created for sharing information. All Universities should actively rejoice everyday and thank Tim Berners Lee for creating the World Wide Web, (see I just learnt who invented the Word Wide Web thanks to the World Wide Web, BE IN AWE AND FEAR THE POWER OF TIM) by sacrificing a nerd.  The Internet is an omnipotent omniscient overlord that actually exists, unlike all those gods that people go on about.
 Denying the use of the Internet in a modern assignment is like forcing the emergency services to use horses.
  This means that the time I could have spent writing the essay will be spent exploring the library for relevant books which are readily available from the relative comfort of the staffroom furniture provided by my halls of residence. On realisation that my time was under assault by an oppressive rule I decided that I must do what others have done in similar situations and revolt against the domineering apparatus. This involved me sticking my fingers up at the computer screen and to any prospects of getting any work done tonight, and then drinking Guinness and Irish Coffee. Now it is no longer Tuesday and I don’t have to get up at all as I don’t have university on Wednesdays, I do however need to go to a library and study multiple books that might not even have any significant information in.
 However, I recently had a kind of alcohol induced epiphany, I needn’t bother waste time looking at books in the library when the internet has sites and tools for looking inside actual books and finding all the details I need to reference them. The University will be none the wiser and their rule is pointless, gratuitous and unenforceable. I also demonstrated revolutions are successful when fuelled by Guinness.

House Hunting

In late November I was surprised by one of my high school chums informing me that he had already put a deposit down on a house for his second year at university. This immediately put me into a state of panic, as I assumed that everyone else had started to secure accommodation whilst I had barely thought about it.

  Driven by fear of being a homeless student I wandered into the closest estate agent and pleaded for assistance with finding a suitable abode for myself, and two of my current flatmates. I was told by an agent to peruse the properties on the companies website and email him when we had found some houses we would like to look at. This seemingly easy task was made infuriating as, for reasons still unknown, the estate agent wouldn’t respond to an email unless I sent it to him multiple times. I decided that the reason for this derives from the stereotypical estate agent being a wanker. It wasn’t his fault it was merely part of the job description. After numerous emails sent, in return for little advice or insight, we eventually secured a viewing of three houses in early January.

  We met a representative, near the first house on our list, then ventured to it. After knocking on the door with no answer she assured us that the current tenants were aware of the situation then promptly let herself in. I personally felt like we were breaking some kind of law entering someone’s house without knowing whether they really gave their consent. However we wondered in anyway and found one of the tenants still asleep unaware of what was going on. At this point I started to doubt that he had given his consent. After looking around briefly and quietly we decided to move onto the next house.

  Like the first house the agent knocked, then let herself in. Although this time the two people who were in knew that we were coming and provided us with more information about renting houses than our estate agent did.

 At the third house the sales rep didn’t get a chance to use her set of keys as a chap with a broad grin opened the door slightly and told us to give him five minutes. After waiting five minutes we entered the house to be greeted by a strong herbal aroma and another guy who was also clearly in high spirits. We explored the house a bit and in one of the bedrooms found two plant pots with a light above them, which were obviously for growing bedroom tomatoes. After looking around for a short while we decided that we liked this house the best as it was the cheapest, at the best location and smelt nicest.

 The next day I emailed the estate agents three times, as I was now accustomed to him being awful, telling him we would like to put a deposit down on the third house. A couple of days later I received an email from him telling me to ring him.

I attempted to ring him several times but he was equally difficult to communicate with over the phone. Eventually he picked up the phone and apologised as the estate agents had advertised the house we wanted incorrectly.

Apparently the price and number of bedrooms were incorrect. I understood how the price could be incorrect but the number of bedrooms we saw was three and number advertised on the website was also three. How they managed to hide a bedroom is a mystery that made the house even more desirable to me. After finding out that all the houses we viewed that day were now unavailable to us we found ourselves back at square one.

  After this ordeal we have decided to cut out the middleman and not bother with estate agents. Instead were looking exclusively at properties where we can speak directly with the landlord. This way you get a good idea of whether or not you’re going to get on with the landlord, you save paying all the ridiculous agency fees and you don’t have to deal with the bastards that are estate agents. Hopefully we shall find a house soon.

A Christmassy Rant

Its that time of year again when the snow falls from the sky, everyone comes together in the spirit of cheer, adorable little cherubs knock upon our doors and sing us endearing songs about our messiah who saved us all  and we are trapped within an inescapabable world of commercial harassment that is Christmas. Except wait, in my eighteen years of survival I’m yet to witness a white Christmas day, everyone is still a dick to each other and the little carol singers are confined to the front of a supermarket ignored by the majority of our populace who couldn’t give a shit about Jesus unless there getting presents or chocolate. So all it really is, is an inescapable world of commercial harassment. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Christmas, (Well I don’t hate Christmas day. Which in my opinion is the only day during the holiday season, which should be acknowledged if you choose to celebrate Christmas) Its every other day in the weeks prior to Christmas that cause the bile to rise in my stomach.
  Every year over the entire country in mid November adverts on television and in shop windows make damn well sure we don’t forget that Christmas is on the way. I personally like to think of these early signs as a warning system of what’s to come; otherwise there presence causes me to scream “JESUS CHRIST!!, IT ISN’T EVEN CHRISTMAS FOR A MONTH” at the nearest person who looks like there unaware of this fact. Similar to some small mammals that sensing the impending cold of winter, go into hibernation. These ‘first adverts’ remind me not to turn on the television or go into densely populated areas such as towns or cities and to stay in bed for the majority of the day.  However sooner or later I end up having to face up to the ridiculously stressful scenario of buying presents.
  This year I intended to do my entire Christmas shopping online, though when I realised I had less than five days to buy the remainder of the presents I realised that anything I ordered from now on would not be delivered in time for Christmas day. At first the idea of leaving the house and venturing into a Christmassy environment revolted me causing an almighty rage to build within me. Eventually this subsided only for it to return even mightier when I drew close to the shopping centre. The first thing I noticed was a crudely animated decorative Father Christmas that seemed to be convulsing violently as though in the grip of a sudden possibly terminal ailment. This was followed by a menagerie of other tacky decorations and feeble lights that failed to impress. These were bad enough but when I entered the shopping centre I was immediately tormented by what I believe to be the worst part of Christmas, which is the music.  Every single year the same terrible songs are played repeatedly wherever you seem to be. Each one sounding menacingly similar to all the rest whilst at the same time sounding different and managing to embody everything I hate about Christmas. They all seem to involve lyrics about decorating the house, the music that is on during Christmas and enjoying everyone else as company. I’m not really sure how there came to be so many but at the same time hearing the same ones over and over each and every Christmas causes me to wish death upon all Christmas artists, except one. The only Christmas song I’m not ashamed to admit enjoying is ‘fairytale of New York’, which I enjoy because the Pogue’s are an underrated band who have done numerous other songs I like and because ‘fairytale of New York’ is ultimately about a pissheads empty promises on Christmas which is a much needed break from the rest of the Christmas songs.
  If you can block out the Christmas anthems incessantly being played the next emotional distress you have to deal with is the anxiety of what to get everyone for Christmas. I have to buy at least twelve presents for twelve different people every year and each year it becomes increasingly difficult to decide what to get everyone. Looking back on previous years I think about how easy it was to get my younger cousins one of many cheapish toys that they would have genuinely been pleased to get, now a few years down the line they have all outgrown toys so I have to actually think about what to get them. Which isn’t only difficult because you have to think of something each person will like but is made increasingly complicated by the politics of Christmas shopping. You have to consider how much your going to spend on each person and whether or not to buy two presents for someone if you spent quite a bit on a present for someone else. Eventually I battled through these difficulties and got most of my shopping done which leads onto the irritating and downright appalling tradition of wrapping the presents. Apparently the generous act of going out of your own time to think about and buy someone a present isn’t enough to please some people. If you unintentionally do a terrible job on wrapping a present, (usually for a grandparent) on Christmas day you can expect a glance of disappointment as you hand them the gift as though the appearance of the wrapping paper will make or break their Christmas. Which is completely unnecessary as the wrapping paper usually just ends up going into the fire or into the bin (well these days recycling bin).  Yet despite these, and a few more other annoying aspects leading up to Christmas when I’m sitting in my living room opening my gifts I’ll forget all this because at the end of the day in despite of what people will tell you Christmas is really just about getting presents.

Student Solutions- Spending your loan

I often find that money burns a hole in my pocket. When I checked my balance after my loan came through and I had over a thousand pounds I immediately wanted to purchase a luxury pet such as a pelican, a slow loris or perhaps one of those cats with squashed faces. For most undergraduate students their loan is the largest amount of money they have ever had access to. I imagine, that like me, temptation to spend it on things they have always wanted is all too great. On top of this the banks don’t exactly encourage responsible spending, with the ridiculous overdraft offers on the student accounts luring students into debt, I decided to stay with my normal saving account to avoid temptation. However the bank had created another way for me to be irresponsible with my money. I had been planning on creating a standing order, which would allow me to live on a set amount of money each week, but apparently I was not deemed worthy of this option as I had ‘the wrong account’. Now I have to log on to digital banking every week and manually transfer my funds. Every time I do this I contemplate and then transfer how much money I’m likely to spend in the week when I originally wanted to be living on a budget.
On the surface this doesn’t really sound like much of a problem but if you don’t budget you could fall into some expensive habits whether its buying expensive brands of food, regular nights out or a crippling crack addiction you’ll find that your spending more money than you realise. If you don’t realise or you fail to address your overspending you’ll eventually find yourself surviving off your house/flatmates left over and out of date meals, wallowing in your own self-pity, reduced to performing degrading acts in the high street for small change. Your life will get gradually worse until the next payment of your loan. At this point some will realise the error of their ways, others will go out and buy the cat with the squashed face and the vicious cycle will continue.
At university were lucky that you can make these mistakes and not end up having to wash your clothes in public toilets providing you only make the mistakes once, as well as getting a degree were teaching ourselves how to look after ourselves. Your student loan will probably be the best loan you get in your entire life, you have no interest and you don’t have to start paying it back until your earning over £15,000, and even then you pay it back gradually. Make the most of it, go out and treat yourself with it, but just remember to make sure you have enough to survive comfortably on.

Student Solutions- Korean housemates do's and don'ts

Admittedly the title makes this blog seem like its aimed at a fairly niche audience but I’m sure my ideas will apply to any foreign student you may be sharing a flat/house with. First of all and most importantly don’t assume that your South Korean flat mates are lying about coming from the south due to the red stars they put on their milk. After not mistaking them for communists make sure you don’t ensue in seeing the shared living area as land that they may be invading and definitely don’t devise a counter attack after they invite a few of their Korean friends around one night.
Ok well those initial points may have only been relevant if you are sharing with South Korean people and even then I don’t know if they’re as relevant as I thought they were. Sharing a flat/house with someone who speaks minimal English can be quite difficult, especially when you set off on the wrong foot.
After finding it hard to hold a conversation with my South Korean flatmates I didn’t really speak to them much after I first met them. This was a wrong move and was most probably the reason why ‘Patrick’ hated me for a short while. It became apparent after one night me, and the two English people I share with, had some friends over and got quite merry. At around five I was in particularly good spirits and thought it would be a good idea to turn up the volume. Shortly after this an angry shirtless Patrick came in and turned off the music, at which point we remembered that they lived here and felt a bit guilty. A couple of days later when I next saw him I did apologise, but he didn’t really acknowledge me and for the following week on the rare occasion I would see him, he glared at me. This is mostly due to no attempt at conversation with him. If you don’t speak to your flat/house mates and they are in the minority they hide in their rooms and you have no idea whether they are in or not. Not talking to them also means you don’t know what days they have early starts, whether or not they are planning on having friends around and pretty much everything else about them, so despite it being awkward when you have to ask them to repeat what they said and vice versa, I advise talking to your foreign flat/house mates more often. Think of it like this, the more you talk to them the better there English will get, then you might become friends and stay up getting merry and playing loud music with them. It is easy to forget but some foreign students have travelled thousands of miles to come and study in a completley alien environment. Unsurprisingly they can often feel very isolated and alone. So even though, sometimes you may find it difficult, try and make them feel at home in the flat with you and eventually the pub too.

Student Solutions

It is safe to say that I have been neglecting this blog again; this is the first one I have written in about 4 months. The last blog I wrote, in May, contemplating the starting of a swimming legacy might have suggested that I had some determination for this venture. However that was the last time I went swimming so it seems I wasn’t as determined as I thought I was.
Reading back through my blogs has made it apparent that my ability to maintain interest in my impulsive ideas is a battle not worth fighting. So I have been contemplating a new theme for my blogs over the past week or two. Instead of occasionally ranting about something random that springs into my mind, I have decided that I shall be generous and impart some of my wisdom onto you. It may make your life slightly easier, or dramatically easier, I haven’t decided yet.
Anyway getting to the point, as I have now officially become a university student I have also been burdened with the responsibilities and hardships that come with it. Of course you may also be suffering the same day to day difficulties as I am such as, ‘ how long after the use by date is too long after the use by date’ or ‘how can I easily cover up damage to my residence to avoid losing my deposit’. Over the next three years I shall answer these questions and hopefully many more to make student life easier and more fun.
As this is the first blog on this theme I may as well address the majority of students primary concern, “How am I going to afford to get pissed as regularly as I require”(That’s right I’m tackling some heavy subjects from the offset). The answer to this relies heavily on whether or not you’re a prick. If you are and you struggle to get on with your flat/house mates I’m afraid you may never be able to meet your needs. Basically it is cheaper to buy in bulk and it’s even cheaper if you share the cost. Instead of buying for yourself on the night you plan to get drunk, what you and your housemates need to do is agree on an equal amount your all willing to spend on booze then once a week all chip in for as much as your budget allows. Unless your doing it wrong it should work out cheaper than buying your booze on the night regardless of how much you drink.
Next time I’ll be discussing the Korean housemates do’s and don’ts.

Shwimen

Today was possibly the start and finish of my attempt to get fit. Inspired by the weekend of sport in Manchester and the amphibious people creatures that swam in Salford quays, I decided I would start going swimming in an effort to increase my stamina. Before I actually got round to going swimming, the idea that this all would probably be an impulse that I would soon give up on, like many others before it, went through my head.
However I decided I would give it a go anyway. I got to my local leisure centre around quarter past nine expecting it to cost around two quid. It didn’t! It was around four quid. Reluctantly I departed with my hard earned money. As I got into the pool I expected I would be able to swim for about an hour then go home and have breakfast. This was extremely optimistic I did two lengths then had to have a minute to get my breath back, at which point I released I probably wouldn’t manage an hour. Whilst all this was occurring some old man who appeared to be powered by steam made an example of how unfit I was. Not only did I get outdone by an elderly man but by a number of portly gentlemen and women. I refused to accept that fat people had more stamina than me, so I decided that their largeness must provide buoyancy and effectively each one of them was a little boat which wouldn’t sink, all they had to do was flap their legs about and they would stay afloat. Whereas myself, being a scrawny person, had to stop myself from sinking, as well as propelling myself through the water using up much valuable energy. In the end after many regular breaks I managed either 18 or 20 lengths at which point one of my legs got a sudden pain so I accepted defeat at around quarter to ten.
On the walk home I was fairly annoyed that I spent four quid on less than half an hour of swimming but I worked out I did around 500m, which wasn’t too bad for a first attempt. So I have decided that to prove to myself and the lifeguards(who I’m sure were laughing at me), that I can do better, I shall carry on with these swimming ventures, unless of course the pain in my leg reoccurs.

An awful week

The world of college has started to become an inescapable fascist regime, and it has only just occurred to me that I should write about it, as it is something I have passionate feelings about. Although it could just be more apparent today as this week so far has been a series of irritating and depressing events. The feeling of college resembling Nazi Germany, became evident when they decided to introduce a ridiculous policy; you must have your i.d card visible at all times, if you don’t have it you are not acknowledged as a student or even a human being as you’re not allowed food. Try and argue with your oppressors and they will come down on you with an iron fist. For example when I once forgot my i.d it took someone till the end of the day to realise I was an unidentifiable object threatening their establishment. I politely informed the member of staff that I had forgotten it and assured her that I would bring it tomorrow, she then decided that this wasn’t good enough and ordered me to get a temporary one. On the way to getting one she then interrogated me and somehow came to the conclusion that if I was a pupil at the college I had been skiving all day and could not be trusted, a reasonable conclusion. A few days after this I received a letter in the post telling me I was deemed a threat to other students and if I continued to forget it I would receive a warning. Presumably after that I would be subjected to torture involving the branding of my student i.d onto my forehead so I would never be mistaken for an outsider again. The regime aside, this week has been terrible for other reasons, college has just exacerbated it. Firstly on my list of ongoing aggravation was Leeds festival. The release of the line-up was a long anticipated event which was ruined when I found out that ‘my chemical romance’ are headlining. A person trying to recreate mozarts 5th only using a cow and a spade would have been a better headliner. So I decided that I wouldn’t bother with Leeds festival this year. As well as this my laptop which I had sent away to be fixed, costing me £60 of my own money came back still broken. I should have realised that I probably was wasting my money after the I.T technician I dropped it off with couldn’t type using any other fingers than his index one and couldn’t spell the word computer. The shop was also in Farnworth a place inhabited by dim-witted people who have only just discovered electricity and probably believe it is witchcraft. I then was punished further by catching a cold, although not life threatening or enough to stay at home in bed for a week it is annoying and makes my breathing sound like that of the elephant mans as I can only breathe through my mouth. On Wednesday morning at 4 o’clock I was woke up by my own breathing believing that a homicidal maniac with severe asthma may have intruded into my bedroom. Unable to breathe I panicked and began to suffocate as I didn’t think to breathe through my mouth. After I got over this it took me a good hour and a half to get back to sleep. Mostly because of the cold but partly because I realised my usual Wednesday lie in had been compromised by the fact I was being dragged into college on my study day. Wednesday morning dragged on a bit because I could barely speak due to a sore throat and couldn’t concentrate on anything due to lack of sleep but I got home in the afternoon, the sun was out and it was warm so I’m hoping that it’s a sign my week will improve but I am not going to get my hopes up.

How to get a job!

I am a victim of prejudice and oppression, being denied of money to support my wayward lifestyle. Job seeking has become something which I view with utter disgust and hatred. Every time I try to get a job of any sort it ends the same way; no reply, no job, no money. I have applied at numerous shops and restaurants around where I live over the past two years and no one has even given me a chance.
Today I decided to give De Vere Whites another go after being rejected twice before, this morning on the way to college I was informed that there was a recruitment evening being held there and they were giving out jobs to almost anyone. As soon as I got home from college I scrambled around the house delving deep into unfamiliar territory (ironing pile) to find clothes which would create the illusion of being a smart person. After I found what I thought was a good combination for a job interview I ran down to my friend’s house who was giving me a lift there.
On the way there we discussed the dos and don’ts of a job interview. My opinion on what I should say involved lying to them about being the father of a heroin addict whose mother left for the circus, in the hope that I would be looked on with pity and offered the job. However when I got dropped off and eventually found my way to where I needed to be, after being frozen and blown around by the wind, I was told that they had interviewed the two hundred applicants for the evening and I would have to attend the next one. This pissed me off. I didn’t say anything though and I just walked away seething to myself quietly planning the demise of the entire establishment.
As I walked back through the blistering cold it occurred to me I could easily get a job next time. No person with a soul would turn down a person in a wheelchair. Now you may think this is being slightly immoral but hear me out. If I turned up in an electric wheelchair and pitched to them the idea of the unstoppable waiter they would hire me in an instant. I could carry more plates than an able bodied waiter as I could get at least four on my lap, although the chair could be modified to hold up to ten, whist I scooted about the room. As well as this I wouldn’t tire as easily and wouldn’t complain about being on my feet all day because I wouldn’t be. Then after proving that I am a more efficient employee the customers would always tip me for my excellent work despite being confined to a chair.
So if you are confined to a wheelchair, unemployed and reading this, become a waiter or waitress as I guarantee you will earn more than the able bodied employees.

Merry February

Well we are now firmly within the grasp of 2011 and my determination to blog at least once a month has lapsed as I have had offers from most of the universities I have applied for. However I feel that I should keep at it as it’s the most constructive thing I do outside of college.
As I haven’t done one since November you would think that I should be able to think of something worthwhile to write about. Sadly this is not the case and I can’t recollect anything awe inspiring happening. The only thing I can think of at the moment is how I failed my challenge to give up Facebook I got as far as Christmas, then a few days after that I needed to know what was going on for New Years. Since then I have reclined back into my usual regime of going on it most nights just watching people post utter bollocks to each other. In the end it wasn’t even worth returning to it as I had some kind of a flu over New Years, although I didn’t want this to stop me having a good time so I went out anyway. Unfortunately it did stop me having a good time because I just sat withering away in the corner like some kind of forgotten orphan who is observing a party through frosted glass, in the hope that watching the others having fun will be just as fun… It isn’t.
Then fate being the cruel bastard it is I recovered from my illness just in time for college. Since then I have been overcome with a constant barrage of coursework which eats away at my very being. The majority of the time it’s getting done in time for deadlines and my first drafts got fairly good marks, but I always seem to worry I will fail miserably when I decide to take nights of working. Tonight for example I decided not to do any work as I was dragged into college against my will on my study day, the cheek! Study days are for lie-ins, an hour or two of work then doing whatever I can do to fill the rest of the day. Today however I was forced to come into college at the expense of me! A ridiculous £5.60 for two terrible bus journeys, the drivers didn’t even try to crack a smile or act like they enjoyed their jobs. Then I went in for a measly half hour of recording someone play guitar for a piece of coursework that would drive the most mild tempered, easygoing person to arson. Luckily one of my friends had a free so I wasn’t bequeathed with loneliness, which would have just been adding insult to injury.

I shall try harder to write blogs more often even if my readers are few and far between.

PeAcE!