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Happy Days |
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posted by
Scrambled
15:02:04
2:49am
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My mother is a gifted person.
Not in the way that a brain surgeon or rocket scientist is considered so, but in a social way. As a child, I remember finding her quite odd a lot of the time, my sister was regularly embarassed by her and the two of us would often wonder why she wouldn't "be normal." You see, the thing is, she's one of those people who can strike up conversations with total strangers and chat with them like she's known them for years. We'd be out shopping in a convenience store and she'd start quietly moving to the beat of the cheesy musak, smiling and humming along to it. She'd talk to the check out girls in the supermarket, she'd laugh with the people waiting in line at the tills, she'd welcome friends of ours into our house with open arms.
It's only now that I am leaving the realm of childhood that I see my mother not as the embarassing person who people laugh at whilst thinking "who is that crazy lady," but as the friendly, open-armed person who people like because she is both genuine and has a glowing personality.
Friday scared me because it showed me that, in some respects, I am fast becoming my mother's son.
Several weeks ago, I agreed to work with a guy I met through my drama activities on a charity project of his. Our university RAG (Raising and Giving) week has a tradition of a "Hit Squad" where people pay money to charity to anonymously have the squad attack a random victim with custard pies during their lectures. As a mirror of this, this guy decided to run a barbershop quartet where people would pay money to charity to have someone serenaded and presented with a rose in their lectures. We practised and got pretty good.
Friday was our day to shine. After making our first "hit" to a very embarassed girl, we went on to serenade a male friend of mine who was being set up by another friend of mine. The only problem was that we had to crash a lecture half way through and the lecturer wasn't expecting it. I was asked to try and convince the guy and was expecting the worst. So I walk into this lecture, dressed in a cheesy blazer with an open necked white shirt and in my bubbliest way convinced the guy to let us crash his lecture. I did all under the eyes of about 200 students in the lecture hall and bizarrely didn't fell bothered at all. The morning carried on and I was adopted as official announcer. The worst booking being one where we had to wait an hour outside before we could sing after me being less lucky in convincing the lecturer to let us crash his lecture mid-way.
During the lunch break, we walked up to random people to sell roses and sing on the spot. Somehow I managed to strike up conversations with a wide range of people whom I had never met before and sell some rather tacky roses and sell a few songs. Just randomnly chatting with these people and making them laugh managed to get them to donate to charity and feel happy.
After lunch we had a booking for a friend of mine who presents on college radio. We crashed her show, but alas she was not there. We sang to her copresenter anyway and I got my voice on radio. Again I surprised myself at how happy I was seeming and how people were reacting so positively to us.
We had several booking in the afternoon, but the last one had to be the most special. A guy had hired us to sing for his girlfriend as they sat in the common room of the Physics department. She was smiling so much and was moved to tears as we sang. We made her day (and probably made his evening ;)) and it felt really good.
That evening I was working as usual as a steward at my university. I was still feeling really perky and found myself chatting away to a lot of the students who came in. Managed to make friends with some more members of the barstaff and I helped out a guy who had had a leeeetle bit too much to drink (details withheld for reasons of non-ickyness). I did pretty much all of this whilst wearing a plastic white hat with red hearts on it. I looked like a tit but I didn't care and people seemed to warm to me.
Another nice part of the evening was meeting up with a girl I hadn't seen for 8 months and hadn't spoken to for over 6. She had been one of my best friends in halls last year and had gone through some difficult personal problems which I had supported her through. Last summer she went to America for the duration of the summer break whilst myself and my mates were looking for a place to live. We had arranged that she would live with us and all was hunky dorey when we found our current house. Except, as we got close to having to hand in our deposit, we couldn't get hold of her. We found out two days before handing in our deposit (when she didn't turn up for her resits) that she had decided not to return to college this year and so we needed to find someone to replace her... in 2 days. Fortunately we found someone who needed a place (Ironically the guy mentioned in the previous postings ;)) and it all worked out fine except we were furious with her for not telling us what was going on and for potentially making us homeless for a year. A lot of people hold grudges, but I struck up a conversation with her as she tried to walk past (turns out she was scared of what I was going to do to her). We had a long chat for the remainder of my shift and she was so happy that I had forgiven her. We've promised to catch up real soon.
Part of my job also involves kicking people out of the bars at the end of the night. I have never found it as easy as the other night. A few friendly words and chatting with a few of the more difficult movers made life a lot easier and I found myself, again, chatting and laughing with people I didn't know. We cleared out the bars in record time and people seemed happy to move when they thought they were doing me a favour.
In general, I had a fantastic day on Friday. I made a lot of people smile and it made me happy to do so.
Realising that I had awoken a dormant trait of friendliness and making people smile which I inherited from my mother has only served to give me fonder memories of the day.
I hope the gift is here to stay :)
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Brad! Janet! Dr. Scott! Rocky! ....! |
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posted by
Scrambled
12:02:04
2:47am
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Ok, so after a hellish week of arse last week, I am met, this week, with a week jam packed full of things that require my attention and very little time to sit down and do nothing.
Basically, the publicity for the show I am in is all needing completion ASAP which means "this week." I have spent time working on designs for posters, tshirts, tickets, leaflets and programmes and corresponding with the respective businesses that we will be using for the production of each job. It's hard work but I know we will get it all sorted and have a great finished result at the end.
It also happens to be lab report week which means I need to spend time tomorrow working on tidying up my computer programs and writing some 1 page bollocks about pions decaying to muons and positrons and their associated kinetic energies and relativistic momenta and the program I made to model these situations and AAARGH! I also have to have a CV prepared for Friday and a cover letter written for a fake job as part of my coursework. Oh yeah and I'm also doing that barbershop charity thing on Friday all day (I believe I mentioned this previously). Oh yeah and I have work on Friday night until 3am. Oh yeah and I have rehearsals to be going to. Oh yeah and I had a social gathering with my cast tonight. Far too much crammed into one week in my opinion.
Anyway, I've sidetracked into whinging about my encumbered life, so much so that I've forgotten the real point of this blog entry. Both a rhetorical statement and an opinion poll for those who wish to leave comments.
Basically it boils down to this: Are you a better friend if you are honest or if you tell them what they want to hear?
(I know that no one in my personal life reads this blog but im still going to be careful about how I say all this.)
One of my very good friends has had a rough time ever since my friendship with her began. A lack of a stable relationship (amongst other things) convinced her that she was undesirable and doomed to a life alone. A couple of months ago, she gets a new boyfriend and is buzzing. Due to both of us being busy with whatever life decided to throw at us, I never met this guy until tonight. Now this is where my dilemma begins.
I know for a fact that she has been eager to introduce me to this guy for a long time and wants to know what I think of him. Now, having met him tonight, I have been left with a bitter taste in my mouth, and a nasty feeling. He turns up with her to a night out with mine and her mutual friends. From the outset he is quiet and unfriendly. I chalk this up to shyness as he is suddenly surrounded by all these people he doesn't know and I reserve judgment for the time being. We're bowling when they arrive and he takes over someone else's place, at their request. To try and break the ice and be friendly, after smiling and introducing myself I do my best to offer encouragement to his game. Such as "Nice one!" or "Ooooooh!" when he just misses a shot. All I get in return is an occasional, unsmiling glance and a snappy "I can see that!" when I said "just a little bit further left this time." The evening carries on with him continuing to be surly and unreceptive so I get on with enjoying the night out with my friends, stopping making the effort to suck up to him and be friendly.
Whilst making a few running jokes with my friends, he interrupts asking us what we were doing, because "all it seemed like was a failed attempt at humour." Whilst telling an anecdote to the group about the time I almost got arrested whilst being involved in the medic's pub crawl and how it set up my distaste for medic charity events, he quips "I wonder if the near-arrest is more a reflection on you or the medics?" By this point I am beyond laughing it off, so I just deadpan respond "no, it is more a reflection on the medics." and then carry on with my story, ignoring him for the rest of the journey home.
In case it's not obvious, I don't like this guy. He seems rude, obnoxious, surly and I don't think I like the idea of someone like that being with a good friend of mine. However, it could simply be that he was playing the "marking his territory" card by acting hostile to any close male friends of his girlfriend who he may see as competition. He could just simply be a git. Either way I am not keen on him.
So the next time I see my friend, she will ask me what I think of her boyfriend. She seems very happy with him and I don't want to spoil that for her as I know she values my opinion very highly. I don't do lying. I sometimes am selective with my words such that I gloss over the bad parts by picking out the nice things. In this case, the only good thing I could say when she asks me that question, is "He seems to make you very happy." which is true.
I just don't know whether or not to tell her my full opinion of the guy or not. I may well have misjudged him, but I normally am a very good judge of character and can figure people out very quickly. It's like an intuition, and my intuition isn't telling me good things here.
What do I do?
(Other than sleep on it and forget about it considering I have far more important things to be doing this week!) |
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I'm Federal Agent Jack Bauer and this is the longest week of my life. |
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posted by
Scrambled
5:02:04
11:06pm
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You ever have one of those weeks?
You know, weeks which don't seem to end, in which your life just seems to be a punching bag for one of those cheeky Greek Gods sitting on their ass up in Mount Olympus?
Well, this is one of those weeks.
Started rather unceremoniously on Monday by the events of the above post, my week was off to a rather bad start. Tuesday almost ceased to exist as I attempted to salvage some excuse for sleep. Having missed yet another day of lectures at university, I spent Tuesday afternoon with the aforementioned friends and the hospitalised one's girlfriend. He was ok, fortunately, but left with a hangover from hell and a really bad haircut (which was fixed later on if you care). When we grilled him about the previous night he laughed it off as tradition and seemed to not care about the fact that we had given up our time and sleep for him as well as the fact that we had been extremely worried for his life and wellbeing. But hey, I didn't help him for gratification so why should I expect some?
Suddenly remembering the fact that I had a deadline to meet for a publicity drive the next day, I spent the night finalising designs for a poster and trying to make Photoshop work for me. By the time I was finished it was 3.30am and I was still not very tired. I made the executive decision to not sleep at all that night. In retrospect that may not have been a good idea but it seemed logical at the time.
The next day I got up from the computer and got ready to leave for uni at 7.30 to give myself plenty of time. I ended up waiting 45 minutes for a bus in the rain and ended up being 25 minutes late for my 3 hour computing lab. This goes against my final lab mark and thus effects my final degree mark, but as they say in Ancient Greece, "bothered." Sitting through that lab was painful as the sleep deprivation was kicking in and trying to understand the difference between a class and a header in C++ Object Orientated Programming was nigh on impossible. I left early, fobbing off my surprisingly nice demonstrator with the excuse that I had finished the section and it was pointless to start the next. After that was the tutorial (like a small class of four people) from hell, as my tutor tried to get me to answer questions I couldn't understand, embarassing me in front of my friends. After that was a rehearsal for the charity singing group I am participating in for the upcoming university RAG (yearly charity doodah) week. Basically people pay us money to go and sing to some poor shmoe in their lectures in front of their entire year group. All proceeds go to charity of course. Rehearsal was a nightmare as I had 0 energy and my voice was dreadful.
The journey home on Wednesday was fun though. It happened to be around the end of the school day in Hammersmith so I was entertained on the bus on the way home by a score of 12 year olds trying to act like your stereotypical ghetto gangsta. Except it invariably came off more like Gary Coleman taking the piss out of Eminem. For example, a conversation held by the kids behind me:
Kid 1: So yeah I was telling my mum like SHUT UP BITCH AND BUY ME THAT PS2 GAME!
Kid 2: Nigger, if I ever spoke to my mum like that I would FEEL the rebound, like BAM!
Kid 1: Yo parents hit yo?
Kid 2: Yeah, all the time, like my dad is always knocking my face about. Don't yo parents beat yo?
Kid 1: ....Er...Uh..YEAH! Like BAM, my Dad is like mean yo.
Kid 2: My Dad is so mean
Kid 1: Oh yeah? Well my dad's in prison!
Kid 2: Errrr well my dad's a drug dealer.... and a pimp!
Kid 1: Saaaaaaaafe!
Kids.
Got home and crashed out but couldnt sleep long due to noise in the house. Wandered around for about 4 hours getting extremely frustrated and wanting to smash stuff. Smashed my face against my pillows and fell asleep for a decent amount of time, having some exceptionally weird dreams involving a bank robbery for giant cherry danishes. Go figure.
Woke up this morning in time to talk to the wonderful lady in my life. She was unfortunately infected with many computer virii so I was prompted to check my own machine. Turns out I was riddle with the W32.Jeefo virus. I hate virus programmers, you can all go fuck yourselves. On top of that I also found out that I was in trouble with campus security and my theatre society for having not returned the storeroom keys on Monday night (when I ran off to help my friend in hospital). A bollocking from union security later and I went to a boring lecture on CV skills which was SO enthralling that I drew red tattoos on my arm for the duration, including a rather fetching Triforce.
One highlight of the day, though, was making the decision to go and see Big Fish. Despite almost getting run over on the way, it was well worth seeing. It's a beautiful story and exceptionally directed by the man that you and I both call Tim Burton. If you haven't seen it already I demand that you see it now. It is law. Scram law.
Got home, computer still infected. Me still tired. Spent another 5 hours trying to fix it. Turns out that this virus actually embeds itself into executable programs and thus removing it requires the deletion of the files and loss of programs. I will probably spend the next few weeks trying to reinstall the dozens of programmes that it has taken with it. Once again I damn thee, virus programmers, and hope that one day you wake up with no legs, one testicle and two noses.
Just when I think today is over, I get a phonecall from my mother, who is in tears, on my mobile. Mobile decides to die on me despite a full battery (typical) so I run around the house looking for the landline to call her back. Turns out my dog, who I have had since I was 4 years old, took a turn for the worse earlier on today and my mother had to make the hard call. She did the right thing, and I told her that, but it didn't make it any easier for her. It is both a grounding and confusing thing to be consoling your mother down the phone, trying to make her stop crying. Fortunately I know my mother well enough now to know what she wants to hear and how to ease the pain. I made her laugh a couple of times and reassured her that I would come home this weekend to give her a hug. She's upset now but she'll be ok. I made her know that I supported what she did and that she made the right call. Myself, I'm currently doing my atypical, in the context of my family, routine of not reacting. Now is the time that the rest of my family needs someone to cry to, someone to hug and someone to help them. This has always seemed to be me. The death of both of my grandparents gave me the poignant realisation that this was my parents' parents who had died and perhaps their grief was more important than mine. My grief really set in AFTER I had been there to carry the coffin of my grandfather and put my arm round my dad's shoulders at the funeral. Why I am saying this I don't know. I guess it's just an unavoidable thing about who I am. I never know how much something like this is going to upset me until after it has stopped upsetting everyone else.
Sure you may say "It's just a dog!" but a pet that has been an inescapable piece of your family unit for 15 years is something that you are going to miss. My younger sister probably doesnt remember life without this dog. When she gets home from work she will freak out when she hears the news. I've told my mother I'll be keeping the phoneline free if they need to talk again later on. I'm hoping they ring.
However...
What's weird is that I KNOW I've had a crummy week, but I'm not sitting here with a heavy heart or feeling like arse. In fact I'm feeling quite normal. There's probably lots of explanations but I put this down largely to the feelings I currently have for my special someone and the feelings they have in return. It's an uplifting and strengthening feeling and I feel constantly lucky to have it. This week has been a tough one but it's been so much easier to bear when you have the knowledge that someone loves you and that you love them. I won't go on, for fear of nauseating you gentle readers. :)
Thank you so much sweetheart.
;) |
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Ohholycrap |
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posted by
Scrambled
3:02:04
8:25pm
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Bloody hell. It's been over six months since I updated this blog! A lot has happened since then but I won't bore you with the details. I'll stick to the recent.
So last night I was out rehearsing for my latest theatrical endeavour and I had a great time. I'm sitting in the bar afterwards chatting with my cohorts and just about to leave when I get a phonecall from one of my housemates telling me he needs my help over on another campus as soon as possible. I grab my things and head off, biking like a maniac over there to find my housemate sitting in the lobby of the building with another one of my housemates who is in a very bad way. Extremely drunk and with a head injury. Turns out that his so called friends had decided to get him paraletic with alcohol and then attempt to shave his head. He fell off a chair and cracked his head on the floor and they all laughed. The future doctors of the world, ladies and gentlemen. What can I say? My sober housemate arrived to fetch the other guy before he called me.
We lugged the guy over to the A&E of the hospital (fortunately next to the campus) and sat with him for a while whilst he was waiting to be seen. He lost consciousness a couple of times and we were pretty scared for him. They hooked him up to a drip and left him to sleep so I walked with my other mate back to our house. Unfortunately that was not the end. We had been staying awake in case the hospital called and sure enough they did at 3 am because my housemate had woken up and was being uncooperative (details of which I will not go into). My mate went to go and sort it out and came home with the other guy at about 5 am as they couldnt treat him whilst he was drunk. We stayed up for another hour or so to make sure he was ok before getting some sleep. We were worried sick.
Today now he has sobered up he is ok, the head injuries could have been a lot more serious and he could have died. Fortunately he has been lucky, in more ways than one. I hope he learns his lesson and doesn't put himself in that position again. I sure as hell will go and sit up till the earl hours to make sure he's alright but it was not an experience I could say that I would like to repeat.
On a lighter note, I'm back and better than ever. To prove it I give you Mr. Axel Foly.
Boosh.
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Long overdue update |
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posted by
Scrambled
18:07:03
1:23am
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Ok so i havent updated for like a month or whatever.
Why?
Because I don't care.
Time to bring my competition on my blog to a close.
Caption was: "Frank's party trick was allways a hit with the ladies"
In 3rd is Evilone with
In 2nd is nN with
This week's winner is a newcomer called "Spritely Armadillo" with this giggler:
The final leaderboard is as follows
Poofbird: 10!!! All hail the king!!!
Digga: 4
nN: 4
Colonel: 3
Franith: 3
Spritely Armadillo: 3
Boggy B: 2
Murray: 2
Sunflower: 2
Easytiger: 1
Evilone: 1
Ok! Congrats to Mr. Bird! I'll buy you a drink when I see you :).
The contest WILL continue on the forums. Keep an eye on the Fanart Forum for developments.
Until then I'll use my blog for more menial things
Like shoutouts to irc nobbers.
One time for my main man Garg, keep it real. Keep Smiling. Respect
Two time for the top dog, Kat. She be kicking it flipside on da backdrop o the flow. Recognise
Tree time for the Tree. Half woman, half tree, all real. She knows where its at. Fo showa. Rewind
Four time for the son of da Stavros. Stavrosjr you be a real mad foo, homeboy. But Y'areet. I give you the number of my homegirl, Charise. She got a hairy lip but she go like a corker. Realtime
Five time for the Fen. Fo real, dis badboy make da ladies go coconuts. Homeboy come kicking at ma yard any time jus don't bring no next bre's or I will spark you. Rectify.
Six time for the hamsta. She got the webcam, she got jumblies, she got the HNGs in the palm of her hand fo real. Pity the foo who mess wiv dis lady. She bite. Hard. Reminisce.
Seven time fo the lektrik hamster. Bre be making a yaya bout no shoutout so I and I be shouting out on the backside to the remix. Readjust
Eight time fo the gadron. Some time you leave the best to last. Not this time. Rejected
I'm gonna think of something to use this blog for in the future.
until then you can just fucking wait.
Love you.
Kiss Kiss
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Random Link: |
Nebulus
Flash verion of fantastic C64 game |
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