I’ve got a train to catch, but will it catch me?

Writing a blog post on a train… What next? Well, it seems like telling the Internet about your day to day life is addictive. That, and I like to whine about things, but usually, I forget these things by the time I get to a computer. With the next chance to touch a keyboard many hours away, I turn to the notebook that I always have in my bag, just in case it might be useful, but rarely use.

Well I’m obviously not writing THIS on a piece of paper. Unless it’s a piece of paper that magically transmits to the internet. I want one of those.

Ooh, look, the train’s moving

Finally. I’ve just got onto the second part of my 5 hour train journey, from St Austell (small town in the south west of England with plenty of trees but not many people below the age of 300) and Southampton (my ‘home town’ or thereabouts, where I lived most of my life until this year). Being a poor student, I don’t get to make this journey very often, though I like to go back there as much as possible to catch up with friends and family there.

I’ve just left Exeter station, which is where I spend most of my time these days. I go to university there, and live on the campus in a room big enough to hold a decent sized bed, my computer, and a bathroom. So, pretty much everything I need. Today I was just passing through though, getting off of one train and on to another.

I’d tried to pick the fastest train possible, while still keeping the price somewhere within my monthly income. Being as this is a large sum of 0 for me, that was somewhere on the borderline of fantasy and impossible. Still, I’d imagine that even Bill Gates would have to sell a few CDs in shiny boxes, before he could afford to get a train that doesn’t take you have way across the country, before turning back and taking you an hour in the other direction. I’d managed to find a decently priced ticket, that didn’t involve me waiting around at one station for long enough to to get through all the music saved on my PSP though, or so I thought. My first train arrived in Exeter at 12:25 on Platform 5, with my next due to leave from Platform 6 at 12:30 (For those unfamiliar with British train stations, think Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter, only without running through invisible walls). I was quite suprised at such a quick and efficient change, sure that something would have to go wrong. So of course, it did.

Why aren’t we moving?

At 12:30 we were still sitting on a stationary train, when a rather confused man with an odd accent started talking over the speakers, announcing something along the likes of there being a “technical rifficulshy”, and that they would rectify it “as soon as pottable”. 10 minutes later, and they had obviously found their pottable rifficulshy, and we started moving. 25 minutes late. In an hour, I have to get on yet another train, at yet another different station, and I’m starting to lose hope of getting there on time. Currently, the train is crawling across a field somewhere between a little village and nowhere, with some hills somewhere in the distance.

This wasn’t the first problem either. My first train was a fancy new train with new digital seat reservation technology. Of course, new digital technology means a system that doesn’t actually work yet. Consequentially (Ooh look, long word), Coach A thought it was Coach F, Coach B thought it was Coach C, and Coach D was listed as an “anomaly” on the system. Of course, my seat was on Coach D, so while the rest of the train was having an identity crisis, my seat did not exist. Apparently their new system uses some sort of sattelite to download the information. Being the British rail service, they’ll probably blame the problem on leaves on the sattelite, or the wrong sort of space or something.

Still, it wouldn’t be a big problem. I’d had a 48 hour train journey while travelling america, and I didn’t spend much of that in my seat. Then again, they had 2 floors and a lounge. Eventually, I found a somewhat comfortable place in a corridor to lean, while my annoyingly large bag of clothes for the week got in everyone’s way. Then at the station, a group that looked like the over 60’s knitting society (both in age and in number) decided it wanted to get on the train too. So after everyone quickly vacated their seats for the nice old people, more people pushed along into the corridor until I ended up crushed in a corner somewhere.

Eventually I got a chance to stumble off of the train onto my next connection, and here I am now. So now I’m nearing the NEXT station, where I’ll get to move my bags and myself to some other cramped space, and hopefully find a spare seat.

But it’s ok, because the confused man just apologised for the train’s “lady parture”.

Thanks. Do we get a free refund? Or at least free drinks?

Oh, you don’t even have any drinks on this train?

I’m thirsty.

WordPress is schizophrenic and smart

Now for a light interlude where I -don’t- try too hard to write wonderfully witty words. Ok, maybe not. Any post that starts with a word more than 10 letters long and includes alliteration has obviously taken far too much thought already.

I like wordpress. 2 days ago I was struck a problem while nearing the end of my previous post. My mother tripped over the internet wire, pulling it straight out of the modem. Well, part of it anyway… the other half was still attatched. I was pretty unhappy that I’d just lost more words than I usually manage to string together for a serious essay, and was about to go back to giving up on this new blog altogether. But then today I arrive at a friend’s house, and fire up my PSP, stealing some unsuspecting neighbour’s internet to check on some emails and stuff. After 10 minutes of loading up WordPress, I find most of my post still there! Apparently it’s smart and saves drafts every 5 minutes or so. Clever little website.

Now I’ve actually got access to a computer that doesn’t take that long to load every web page with more than 1 picture and fiddled around with a few things on here, I like it even more. Though I didn’t know I had to allow comments. I just found out that my good friend and blogging buddy James thinks I use fancy words (I guess Port…man… Ok, I can’t even remember how to spell it any more, so I guess it was fancy), that someone I don’t know thinks I’m funny (Thanks!), and “Mr WordPress” thinks I’m a cock.

And for some reason I have to say it’s ok for them to say that. Well, I assume Mr WordPress is some automated robot, but I’m not too sure why he’s calling me a cock. In fact, he’s telling my default post that I didn’t even write that it’s a cock, so I’m not really sure if it’s insulting me or itself. So basically, WordPress is asking me if it’s ok if it insults itself? Crazy robots. Oh well, they say all press is good press, or something like that. Now where’s the “allow all” button?

Anyway, I ended up writing an entire blog entry while on the train earlier because I was that bored, but I won’t bombard my young baby of a blog with too many posts in one day, so I’ll save that for tomorrow. Or later, if I get bored. Again.

Are you sure that’s not a different distant cousin?

So, only 3 hours into my new Blog, and already I’ve been compelled to write a new post. These things are addictive. Blogs? No, I mean cashew nuts.

Actually, I’ve been wanting to write this post all day, but I’ve been otherwise engaged in other rooms. That’s not to say I’ve been busy. No, I’ve been doing absolutely nothing all day, but apparently my presence was absolutely essential while some of my relatives were visiting.  I just had to be there for the entire day because of course, they wanted to see me so much. Wow, I wish my presence was in such demand by normal people. Well, I’m sure it wasn’t in such demand from them either, but my parents seemed to think that it would just make the day of some extended family that barely knew my name, to be able to ask those same generic questions that every relative does.

They’re not even my relatives. They’re my step dad’s relatives. We never saw them much before when we lived elsewhere, but since my parents moved here, and there’s no one else around here, they decided they should probably talk to these people. And being Christmas, the time of family, we just had to invite them over here. It’s not that there’s anything WRONG with them, they’re a perfectly nice couple. But there’s only so long I can make small talk for. Frankly, they won’t remember whether I’m studying Computer Science of Arabian Elephant Handling in 2 days, and I’ve already forgotten what town they even live in. So then next year, it’ll come round to Christmas time again, and we’ll sit down for 5 hours and have the same conversation.

I’m no good at small talk. Oh, and did I mention they have kids?

These kids seemed to have the look of someone that’s just been spotted by a velociraptor on their face when they saw me. Ironically, my cats had that same look of fear on their face when they saw the children, and promptly ran off to hide under my bed. Unfortunately, they children did not do the same when they saw me. And I did not have the option of doing the same, as I’d been commanded to stay out of the bedroom all day, so that I didn’t play on my PS2 rather than wanting to gouge my eyes out with sheer boredom. I tried getting around this by taking my PSP into the living room, but that was apparently, also not allowed. The only sort of games I’d be playing would be board games with the kids.

The thing is, they didn’t want to play board games any more than me. They were quite content to sit and play on their DSs  and feed their whining bear doll (Don’t ask, I have no idea what it is. They had some toy bear that made a noise which sounded like a cross between an explosion and sandpaper when it wanted to be “fed” – this involved sitting there for 5 minutes holding a bottle to it’s mouth, before it would then make a slightly different noise and, if you were lucky, shut up for half an hour). Regardless, we had to play board games. In the end we ended up playing some Trivial Pursuit-esque game, where the kid’s team had to answer “Junior” questions about see-saws and Thomas the Tank Engine, while the Adults had to know the fortieth president of the USA, and the composers of 13th century music. As if this wasn’t a steep enough handicap, the kids had to be told all of the answers. Because if they didn’t get every question right, or, heaven forbid, lose the game, they’d have a tantrum and throw some things around.

Such is the nature of children, I guess. Did I mention I’m not good with kids?

It’s not that I dislike children, I just… can’t talk to them. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to them, I am just not able to talk to them, amuse them, or generally do anything more than sit there and look like a big old scary guy.  It’s just the same as the fact that I am physically not able to fly, turn invisible, or understand the point of rap music. I am just no good with kids. It’s just that I’ve never had kids in my life really. No younger (or older, for that matter) siblings, no younger relatives until recently, or even any friends with younger siblings really. Oh, and I never did babysitting either. Perhaps I can learn to be better with kids, but at this point in time, I’d rather just avoid them. I’d really rather not think ahead to the point in my life where I end up with kids of my own. Perhaps it would be a good idea to deal with it before it gets to that point. Or perhaps I’d rather just not think about it for the next 20 years until it becomes a problem.

Family. Can’t live with em, can’t live without em. Or at least that applies to close relatives. Distant extended family? I don’t think anyone particularly cares for seeing them. Chances are, they were thinking the same thing today, and wanted to go home, but stayed to make light small talk for family’s sake. Ah well, see you next year, step-uncle John.

Randamblings

Randamblings? What the hell does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. One of many things.

1 – A Portmanteau of Random and Ramblings.

That’s right, there’s a fancy name for grabbing two words, chopping them in half, and sticking them together into something vaguely pronounceable (And I think I’ve succeeded in this case). You see, I like to ramble a lot. And a lot of my ramblings are quite random. Hence, randambling!

2 – My attempt to make a new blog.

Blog… what’s that all about. Who decided to give it a weird new name like that. Yes, I know it comes from shortening Weblog (And I’m sure there’s a fancy name for shortening words like that too). I guess Diary is too teen-angst, and Journal is too businessman. I’m somewhat past the teen-angst stage, and not yet onto the businessman stage. So, I guess a “Blog” is perfect for those who are somewhere between, or rather not entirely sure which end they want to be. God, this is starting to sound like a mid-life crisis now.

Still, this isn’t my first attempt at a Blog. I was “blogging” before it was called Blogging. Before it was cool to tell the entite internet how you hated your life, and what you ate for lunch. And my Previous Attempt at a Blog was certainly not what you would call cool. That was the teen-angst stage. it was mostly play-by-play accounts of my school days, down to the details of who I hung around with in the lunch breaks, how badly I did in the french test , and how close I got to sitting next to that girl I liked in science class. It is somewhat painful to go back and read it now, to see just how much of a stereotype I was, how much I really did whine about everything, and how awkwardly pathetic my high school crushes were.

But still, this is my attempt to start over on one of those Blogs that seems to have become the “thing to do” these days. After distancing myself from my angst-ridden old LiveJournal, I’m trying again. I’ve graduated on from whining about my social life. Now I’m going to whine about the WORLD.

3 – A collection of unnecessarily long commentaries on the life of a lazy British University student.

I guess in the end, it’s the same as before.

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