In the Loop

It took me a while to understand what they were saying. I laughed hard when I got it.

In the Loop: you just took a shit with your clothes on.

Music and mobile phones

Whole essays could be written about people playing music off their mobile phones in public (and I imagine the Daily Mail and the Diana Express have both spanked plenty of cash on this type of story), but the fundamental issue is the fact that it’s so annoying not because you are forced to listen to music against your will, but because the sound quality of modern phones is so completely unacceptable.  If I had a mobile phone that produced such tinny and abrasive noise, not only would it remain in a perpetual state of silence, I’d be far too ashamed to want to play music out of it, even in my room, let alone on a bus full of people who would scowl at me and take pity on me for having such a piece of shit phone.  No, the problem isn’t the fact you don’t want to listen to music.  That happens everywhere.  Hollister, as well as using pretty much every other commercial gimmick in the book, positively blasts the shit out.  I went past a branch of the Principality today which was pumping out something that could have been classified as dance or something.  The Principality isn’t a high street shop aimed at wannabe-hip teens, it’s a Welsh building society geared towards offering either an extremely low interest rate if you want to entrust them with your hard-earned cash, or an extortionate rate should you wish to ask for a hand buying a house.  Having music – good or otherwise – thrust into your earholes when you’re out and about is not something new, not something necessarily unpleasant (although I’d think twice about visiting the Principality today), and definitely not something to whinge about.  What should be held up for inspection, however, is how the fuck these phones get produced, get through testing, get bought by customers of their own volition and how the owners drum up the courage to force some naff tune out of their tiny little speakers.

Cool photo

Just found this very weird and wonky photo, taken in Sardinia out of the car.

The last two weeks

Have been filled with thrills and spills.

We said goodbye to these two

Clarke and I flew

 

Clarke looked for hats to suit the inhospitable Irish weather

We had afternoon tea a few times

I had the most excellent hot chocolate of all time

Overall, Dublin was a rip off

At home, I found an excellent new drink

Holiday snaps

Much overdue.  Taken in Sant’Anna Arresi and Porto Pino, Sardinia.

Weird flowers

 

One of three, India maybe?

 

Sant’Anna Arresi from the house

Olives

View from the garden

Porto Pino

The beach car park flooded

dnekeeW ehT

Epic clouds

Craft afternoon

Roasted vegetables

Mozarella madness

Hai

stuff my iphone has helped me remember

Lou and Marc got married

They had cool place settings

We went for a picnic

at Wayne Manor

None of us could work out how much money to put in

I saw the Apollo 10 lunar module


Loads of horses went for a wander past the office


Clarke's cat fitted perfectly into the indian delivery box

Amy and I found ourselves at the whim of a cruel man

Bill Bryson wrote for the Daily Mail

Disappointing.

My mum and sister saw a ferret race yesterday. I missed out big time. They also went to a prize pig competition.

This week has consisted of:

Zombie feelings

Anxiety

Presentations

Appalling standards of communication

Dumping a load of old shit at the charity shop and replacing it with a load of new shit

Exploring new depths of sedatedness

Next week:

payday, despite not having started the job yet

Lego Star Wars

Rush hour, Friday night, bank holiday weekend M4 traffic

wants

• To re-read A Capote Reader
• To read all the books I bought when working next to the best charity shops in Wales
• To re-start and finish Crime & Punishment
• To have time to do all this shit
• To be able to get on the caffeine train again
• To get my cider diary back on the go.

pathways

The summer has been spent waking up at 5.30am, commuting for 3 hours a day, getting the crampons on to climb the learning curve, finding out living in a studio just isn't a reality and wondering wtf I'm going to pick for my career in September. I have some options:

Job

MRes Speech, Language & Cognition

MSc Neuroscience, Language & Communication

I do want to get my neuroscience on but I think I'd rather save a wad and spank it finding myself around the world (specifically Utah, Massachusettts, California and China).

Been thinking loads this week about:

My most favouritest place on earth

Zion, Utah

The great salt lakes, Utah.

Monday 21 September:

Hours and hours and hours

Because I'm a forgetful idiot, yesterday when I ordered a coffee at Starbucks I forgot to ask for decaf. I realised before I drank it but because I didn't want to waste it (even though I'd wasted £2.25 on something I didn't need already), and lo, how I paid. I slept from between 2-4am, then zombied my way to work where, incredibly, I managed to stay quite alert. I tried getting some kind of make-you-drowsy medicine, similar to what I'd taken on a nightmare flight between San Francisco and London, but apparently taking stuff like that isn't conducive to staying seizure free. This means I am stuck tweaking my already pretty perfect sleep routine of warm milk with amaretto, breathing exercises and reading. I am ready to drink the bottle of lavender I bought if it'll take the edge off.

I do have one reason to be thankful, however: because I've been going in hyper early and leaving at 4pm this week, I missed the months worth of rain that fell over London during the rush hour yesterday. I did, however, cut the roof of my mouth later that night on a bit of pastry made, in retrospect totally, by the mirana.

This afternoon on my trek home from the station, I sawa dog that looked like a shaved old English sheepdog straddling the front and back seats of an old Mercedes. I tried not to look suspicious, but not taking a photo was absolutely beyond my restraint.

On the way I also saw a man whose face had the expression I can only liken to that of a crazed loon (eyes popping out of his head, teeth like something iron-aged and generally a look of discomfort in his own skin), and a man who appeared to have stolen a child. Of course, I did nothing about any of these because by the time I'd reached ye olde Welwyn Garden City, I'd lost all speech skills. I grunted my request for dinner; thankfully my younger sister is also a grunter so she was able to understand that I wanted a jacket potato with beans and cheese.

Success

Having snaffled an internship at Cancer Research UK's internet and new media department, the last week has been spent looking out of train windows, organising nightly search parties in my wardrobe to seek out things that are a. office-suited and b. do not make the obscene heat in London any worse, and trying to remember lots of names.

The first two days were spent watching lots of presentations about the company and participating in lots of 'interactive' activities with my fellow interns, but since properly starting in the office I've found myself working on a few genuinely interesting and challenging tasks. I hadn't expected to find myself at the photocopier for eight hours a day, but it's been a pleasant surprise to be given real responsibilities and the freedom to choose how I should work. While I value my previous work experience, it is really nice to not be tied to the administrative side of things. That said, the project I'll be working on takes some serious getting your head around, and sometimes I'll be sitting there working and I'll suddenly realise I don't know what I'm doing. My background is completely arts and admin-based, so to find myself in a more businessy-marketingy position feels quite strange and it will take some adjusting.

This week I'll be trying to get up at 5.30am to get the early train to work; if things go to plan I'll be home by 5.30 to catch some Friends and try to smash the shit out of Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

Decisions

Last night I found myself complaining that I had nothing to do all day. At countless times in the past this is what I've wished for, but now I have it, I'd much rather have a job or something. So, to that end I am seeking out something to do. I would like to inventory my boyfriend's Warhammer stuff but apparently it's something he would need to supervise, and unless we're going to get our webcams out, it's not going to happen. I have had an interview for an unpaid internship at Cancer Research UK, and with any luck will get it. I'm awful at working out the odds of stuff but by my calculations, I have a 1/3 chance of nailing that beauty. My bank balance won't look so beautiful for it, but it's much better than losing my mind wandering the house until October.

I've also been considering WTF I'll do once I finish my degree. I'm seriously tempted by some masters courses, but also by the money being offered by some of the graduate schemes out there. Of course, if I pursued the latter I'd probably turn into some unfeeling, corporate automaton, but right now, the money alone would make it worthwhile. I've previously whined about some of the ancient educational requirements of such schemes, but there seem to be a few who don't require a specific set of A-level grades. What ALL of them do require, however, is for the hundreds (thousands?) of applicants to jump through a series of hoops, generally conforming to the following system:

1. Seemingly endless application form requiring educational details, work info, why you want to work there, competency questions (which are The Worst), etc.

2. Online tests - numerical, reasoning, personality.

3. Telephone interview - basically an oral version of stage 1.

4. Assessment day - a day spent with the other brown-nosers who've managed to get that far. More tests, group work, interviews, presentations.

5. Offer.

I know the whole process is designed to filter out the wheat from the chaff, but the prospect of going through that once is bad enough. But to have to go through that for every job you apply for? WAH.

All this said, I'm not sure I could come up with a better way of doing it.

Domesticity

Amy and I made some bags after being told to do something creative. I took the pics, Amy blogged it.  laughinghardcryingharder.wordpress.com

 

Silly cat