I caught a train, it was thiiiiiis big

Well, I’m blogging on a train again. I already made comments about not having a magical internet capable notepad last time, so I guess I’ll skip that joke this time. Ah, too late.

This train ride’s just for a day trip though, rather than between homes. I’m going to London to visit my Grandad, who is (as I’ve mentioned a few times recently) in hospital. He went in 3 weeks ago for what was supposed to be a routine operation. Following that though, he got some sort of infection, and the doctors later discovered that there was a hole in his throat (or gullet, or aesophegus or whatever the fancy name is). No one’s entirely sure why, but as doctors have said that it’s very unlikely for a hole to magically burst open at the same time as him having a heart operation, the most likely reason is that they accidentally cut it. I’m not too sure how a trained surgeon manages to cut a hole in someone’s throat when they’re aiming for the heart, but needless to say I’m not too impressed with the health service. With them mistakenly diagnosing my Nan with cancer and giving her an infection in hospital 2 years ago, and now this, I’m not too happy with them. But still, I guess I can’t complain too much about a free health service, and I’ll reserve some amount of judgment until after I’ve seen him.

I quite like London. Some people hate it, and I know most of my family haven’t enjoyed having to go there to visit my Grandad; but then these are old people whose dream home is in the countryside far from any large town. I’m a city person though – my favorite place in the world that I’ve visited is New York, and I just generally like being in busy areas. It’s been a while since I visited London though, and this is the first time I’ve been there on my own. That seems kind of daunting at first, until I remember that I travelled around America with only Julian for company, and I ditched him a few times to explore the busiest places like New York City and Los Angeles. It’s kinda funny to realise that I know more about New York than London, and I’d probably find my way better on the NY Metro than on the London Underground. I think the last time I visited London was with James and Julian, and we went to a games show (Which was fun. We got to pretend to own a games store and play on Metroid Prime 2 and other games before they were released).

Previous to that though, most of my visits were with my Dad. After he and my Mum broke up and he was still recovering from his drinking problem, I wasn’t allowed to stay with him, and I could only see him for a day at a time. Now I think about it, I’m surprised my Mum trusted him to take me to London alone, when at one point I wasn’t even allowed to talk to him on the phone. This was at the height of his drinking problem, when he tried to teach me to drive a van while drunk (I don’t think I got it out of neutral, a problem which would come back to haunt me 15 years later). It’s only now as I start to understand alcohol myself that I realise the severity of his drinking problem at the time – that he allowed it to affect him to the point that he couldn’t even see his son.

But back to the London trips… We used to visit various museums and other attractions in London at weekends. I really enjoyed the trips, though I don’t know if that was because of the sightseeing, or seeing my dad. But still, they were fun, and perhaps that’s part of the reason why I like London now.

It’s funny how I used to think that the train journeys to London were so slow and boring. I guess the trains have gotten faster, and there seem to be less stops than in the old days. But still, a 1 hour 20 minutes tran ride is nothing compared to the 3-4 hour journeys between Southampton, Exeter, and Cornwall. That’s barely enough times to listen to 2 albums on my iPod, and I’ll probably still be writing this when I get there. I guess those days out were a long time ago though, back when I thought that 10 minutes was a long time, and Winchester was a really long way from Southampton. After you’ve travelled from one side of America to the other, and been on a train for 48 hours, a few hours is nothing.

I’d quite like to have a look around London while I’m there, but I don’t really know where to start. While New York is a far busier city, London seems more widespread, without any particular “center”. That could just be me, comparing an 8 year old’s memory to a 19 year old’s thoughts.

I guess I’ll conclude this now, as it looks like we’re nearing London. Or at least, the buildings are getting taller and closer together. I had planned to sleep on the train after getting only 4 hours sleep, but oddly I’m not tired. Not that I’d be able to sleep anyway, with all of the loud children on the train. I find it annoying that the “quiet zone” on the train says you’re not allowed to listen to music on your headphones. I still am anyway, but that’s not the point – you can’t even hear headphones over the noise of the train engines, let alone over the screaming and shouting of babies, children, and their parents. I think the sign should read “No loud music, phone calls, or children”, then you could actually have a quiet ride. As it is, I have to use my headphones to block out the noise of the children. I wish there would be rules against children sometimes, or at least a specific place for them to scream at eachother. Now I think about it, rules always seemed to be getting the better of us when we WERE kids, now there aren’t enough against them.

I guess 15 years ago I was just another of those screaming children.

I am the eggman

So I go to write a new blog and I realise I never posted the last one. So now you have some light bedtime reading (which will probably last you a few hours) if you read both posts!

It seems to be customary to say “Happy Easter” today, but beyond quote-enclosed statements, I am not going to wish you a “happy easter”.

I’m not sure if I’ve just been trapped in some sort of bubble in previous years, but I don’t remember Easter ever being a particularly big thing for the general population. Even when I was a kid, I enjoyed the giant chocolate eggs and extra time off of school, but I never thought of it as a particularly big occasion.

It may or may not have been mentioned in this blog already, but I’m not a religious person. My family isn’t particularly religious either. My grandparents probably vaguely follow the concepts of Christianity, but that’s just because everyone of that generation did really, and I don’t really recall them mentioning it. My grandad on my dad’s side does go to church, but he seems as quick to point out Christianity’s failings as anyone, and as far as I can tell he just started going to church after his wife died because he was lonely.

The exeption to this would be my dad, who became a buddhist after being divorced from my mum, and recovering from an alcohol addiction. I’m not entirely sure how this chain of events led to buddhism, but needless to say it helped him, and he’s now living a semi-normal life again. Or at least, as normal as a tai chi teaching buddhist who’s living with a woman who’s married to someone else and one of her five boys who wants to go to ballet school can be. Catch all of that? Good. I’m trying to cut down on my word count, so I’m leaving out needless explanation and punctuation.

The point is that as a whole, my family isn’t religious, least of all me. But I think both them and myself are pretty representative of the average family and teenager (wait, damn, I’m not a teenager any more) in terms of religious views. The average family doesn’t go to church these days, and while a few may cling on to the odd religious value because it “just seems right” most teenagers range from vague apathy to a rebelious detestation of religon (And I suppose I fall somewhere in the middle of those extremes).

Yet with all of this, easter is still highlighted on the calandar as some sort of big event. I had an interesting discussion with James and his grandparents the other day about Easter. None of us actually knew what the specific days of easter celebrated, or what Good Friday was really for other than an extra day off work. I know another thing Good Friday is though – the second busiest shopping day of the year (the busiest being before Christmas). And I can confirm that that’s true from working in a supermarket for 3 years. Customers flock to the shops to buy giant chocolate eggs, and apparently half of the shop.

But no one really DOES anything for Easter. Maybe they’ll have a bit of a family get together, but that’s as much because they have the time off to do so as it is anything else. We all pay homage to Christmas still, but that’s because everyone loves presents. At least the Christmas story and all the songs are memorable as well. To the best of my memory, Easter involves a flying baby dying and coming back to life as a giant chocolate egg, which a rabbit decided to distribute to children around the western world.

Needless to say I didn’t celebrate Easter. And that’s not in a “Bah, humbug” sort of way, I just wasn’t at all affected by it, and didn’t really realise it was easter until I logged on and saw it plastered over the interweb, and “Happy Easter” in everyone’s MSN names. Did everyone suddenly start having parties for Easter and not invite me? If so, I’m dissapointed. I’m thinking not though. Ironically (and somewhat coincidentally) I have actually seen all of my close family over the easter weekend, the exception being my Grandad who’s in hospital (and now recovering), and I’m going to visit him on tuesday.

My mum informed me that I have a giant chocolate egg waiting for me at home too, I’ve only been deprived of it because I haven’t got round to going home yet. For the same reason, I haven’t really celebrated my birthday on any one specific day, and received half of my cards and presents yesterday (a week late) and a few are still waiting for me at home.

My point (yes, I do make one occasionally) is a fairly simple one in the end, and it’s not exactly original. People are always complaining about people celebrating christmas when they don’t actually care about the religious side of it. But that’s ok, because christmas has presents and cake and it makes kids happy. People celebrate easter without actually celebrating it though, and somehow make a big deal out of it without actually doing anything. In the end, it just confuses me and seems like a bit of a waste of time.

Merry Easterweenmas.

Twenteen

 (Oh wow, I just discovered that I wrote out this post a week ago and didn’t actually post it. Two for the price of one today then.)

 So yeah. I’m twenty.

It sounds awfully old when you say that that’s two decades, or when you consider that at this point in their lives, my grandparents were married, my mum was pregnant, and [insert famous person here] was profoundly rich. I suppose I could complain about not having accomplished as much as I could have in the past 20 years, though I am quite happy at the fact that I’m not pregnant.

Saying that, anyone who gets married at this age is crazy (Hi Nathan!) and anyone who gets rich at this age is just damn lucky. Sure, I could have been a bit more successful, I could have done a few things differently. But overall I’m pretty happy with who, what and where I am. The past 20 years have certainly been a learning experience.

I guess now I’m a big two-zero I have to start acting grown up and mature. Although I think I said something like that when I was 18, and not a whole lot has changed. Maybe that’s why people make a big deal out of 21st birthdays, to give you a years practice after reaching 20.

My birthday’s been pretty disjointed but enjoyable so far. I received my first present 2 weeks early – a shiney new iPod. I swore I’d never give in to Apple’s ever extending grasp on the mp3 market. I tried using other cheaper players. But in the end I happened upon a cheap iPod after my old Creative Zen broke, and I realised that they are in fact… quite good. That then reached the end of it’s life a few months ago, which isn’t all that suprising considering it was second hand and travelled around America with me. So yeah, with the newer iPods within my parents budget, I asked for one for my birthday, and ended up getting it early so I could take it with me on my easter travels. I can’t live without my music.

Other than that, I haven’t really received much in the way of physical presents, though my dad’s buying me some CDs tomorrow. I also gained a pair of jeans when one of mine got soaked in the rain, and I put on some of Nathan’s instead of my own. Surprisingly they fit (I’ve apparently gone down from a 42 to 36 waist in the past 6 months), and in some mixture of generosity and drunken confusion, Nathan said I could keep them. I’ll probably have some money from various relatives waiting for me when I get home eventually too, and other than that, James’ Nan (who I seem to see more than my own grandparents these days) gave me £10, which was nice.

Regardless of what I’ve received though, I’ve had a great weekend thanks to my friends, which looks set to continue this week. It’s always good to be able to catch up with my friends, and it doesn’t happen nearly often enough. Everything seems to have all fit into place nicely this week though, which comes as a big surprise after recent events and general bad luck.

Hopefully this signals the start of a good year, and it does seem to be that things change for the better around my birthday. Winter’s ending, spring’s starting, and there’s a nice amount of time to relax around now. This time last year I was just finishing off work before having a good time with friends and then flying off to America. The year before that I got a girlfriend shortly after my birthday, which was nice at the time, and college ended not long after when exams had finished. Before that my memory is too fuzzy to remember specifics, but the spring is just generally a nice time of year when everything seems to start going well. Karma? My name is Joe.

I’m now going to stretch out my birthday for as long as I can by going out for a meal with friends on friday, and then I’ll go to see my parents and do it all again.

It’ll take more than an alarm clock to make me do work

So as usual I’ve been neglecting my blog thanks to university work. And I’ve been neglecting my university work thanks to… anything but university work really. You know the story by now.

Stress seems to get to me whether or not I realise it, but it certainly has recently. In the past few weeks I’ve had to deal with my grandad being seriously in in hospital for a few weeks, university deadlines sneaking up and flying past me like some sort of insane bat, and the promising prospect of a house turning into a requirement of £400 that I don’t have.

In the end it’s all worked out sort of ok. My grandad is slowly recovering it seems, as he’s now sort of woken up and hasn’t got any unaccounted for holes inside him any more at least. The deadlines have sort of been dealt with in the most inefficient and unsuccessful way possible, but in the end I handed in the work and I only need to get 40% to pass the year anyway. As for the money which I don’t have.. well, I still don’t have the money but I can pretend that’s not a problem for the moment at least, as for now my bank’s allowed me some extra debt, and my parents will give me more money soon.

But still, the stress is well and truly here and messing with my mind. I’m not one to make excuses for things and I’m generally the first to admit that I’m just plain lazy when it comes to getting things done, and it certainly doesn’t feel right to go to my tutor and say “I didn’t do my essay because my grandad’s ill, be sympathetic and let me give you the work next week please”. As I and others have come to notice though, it affects me. While at the start of this year I’d managed to pull a new found positive attitude out of nowhere (hammer space, perhaps), as the terms gone on I’ve steadily fallen back into the pits of lazyness and unproductivity that seems to construct my life. I blame my lack of motivation on lack of sleep, and that means I miss lectures, which makes it hard to get work done, and I miss my deadlines, and then I also make no progress with anything else like the PR site.

The stress becomes most obvious with my sleep though. It’s not really anything new that I have trouble getting to sleep, though it can be even worse when I have a lot of things on my mind. It’s more once I get to sleep that it’s a problem though, as it never seems to last for long when I’m stressed. I often wake up with weird dreams, think there’s something in my room, jump out of bed, or attack my TV or something. These odd severe dreams seem to run in the family, as both my mum and grandad suffer from similar things (although mine seem to be the worst), and there’s not really a lot I can do about them. They’re a lot more frequent when I’m stressed in some way though. I used to get them fairly regularly in school when I was always stressed for the usual teenage reasons, and even more so around exams. When I first moved to university and was struggling to fit in in an unfamiliar place, I was getting them practically every night. Over christmas and in the first month or so of this year, they went away, but they’re back with a vengeance now, with some sort of odd nightmare plaguing most nights sleep.

Of course the lack of sleep can be blamed on many factors, but it doesn’t take advanced pattern recognition (a subject of the essay I handed in today) to tell that my sleep suddenly starts to suffer at the same time as my stress levels rise. In the end it’s all a very nasty circle which tends to totally mess up my life and routine and basically means I become totally useless.

Fortunately thanks to my university’s crazy system they give us 5 weeks off for easter, which couldn’t really come at a better time. Not only because it’s my birthday, but also because if I didn’t get out of this place for a while, I’d probably keep spiraling into demotivation until I started unlearning things, or I just became one with my bed. The latter seems quite likely as it’s becoming increasingly difficult to prise myself away from it every morning (or afternoon, whenever I get up), and alarms just aren’t working. I can set 3 alarms and I’ll still manage to turn them all off and go back to sleep without realising.

And now I’ve mentioned that, I’ve come to a realisation. I have to catch a train in 4 and a half hours now, and I still have a fair few things to do before I leave. It’d probably be a really bad idea to try and sleep now, as I’d probably wake up somewhere around 4pm this evening. Looks like I’m going to be sleeping on the train

Jobs have wheels too

Again with the bus analogy. Much like the house situation, I now seem to be being bombarded with job interviews. Well, ok, two isn’t really a bombardment, but it’s somewhat reassuring when I was starting to give up all hope of having any money left by the summer, as my money seems to be tricking through my hands quicker than some sort of sub-atomic water at the moment.

I got a call at 9:30am this morning from an unknown number. I promptly ignored it and went back to sleep, ad any hour with single digits is either far too early for me to be talking to people, or far too late for other people to be talking to me. When I got another 30 minutes later at 10am, I grudgingly answered it, trying my best not to sound like I’d just fallen out of bed (which was quite challenging).

The thing is with my phone is, the alarm sounds exactly the same as a phone call. I did recall setting an alarm for some time around 10, so I assumed that was it. I got up to turn it off, only to see a call on the screen. I have frequently done the opposite though, and greeted my alarm with a drowsy “Hello?” at 8 in the morning while I’m still coming to my senses.

But anyway, it was the people from a job I’d applied to last week, calling to offer me an interview. Unfortunately their offer of an interview at 10am the next day just wouldn’t do, as I had a 9am lecture and a coursework deadline at 12. In the end we went for 11am on monday. at least I think it was 11am, I really hope so anyway. Ithen went straight back to sleep for that “half an hour more” sleep I needed, and was woken up at 12pm by another phone call. Turns out this was from a job I’d applied for a few weeks ago, and had given up hope on hearing back from. Typical. So now I have an interview for that at 1pm tomorrow.

Now I’m faced with a potential dilemma. What do I do if they both offer me a job? Job A is a data entry job, with a pretty nice rate of pay (£8/hour) and should be flexible hours. Job B is working in a call center, around £5.50, and unknown hours. However, Job A is fixed term up until the summer, while I could potentially keep Job B when I come back next year. Hmm.

Of course, this is assuming I have a chance at either job, let alone both. And I get the feeling that if that did come up, whatever choice I’d make I’d regret it a week later. This is also hoping that they don’t want me to start next week and have no holiday, as I already have a train ticket back to Southampton booked, and I need to visit my parents at some point in the 5 week break too. And I’d rather not be alone in a big house for 5 weeks either.

Regardless, I just want money right now. The £120 I got from work I did last month has all but vanished before I really knew I had it, and the steady stream of food and bills are quickly eating away at this month’s money before it’s even started. I’ve spent somewhere around £300 in the past week, with another £400 to come next week. Sure, £160 of that was an iPod which I was given the money for as an early birthday present, and £475 is housing costs which my parents will hopefully pay back, but it all adds up and keeps sapping away at my bank account, and it all gets very confusing. With my parents unable to get any money to be in the foreseeable future while they’re in London, I’m probably going to be on the bones of my overdraft by the time I get to Southampton. And once I’m into my overdraft, I’ll have no idea how much money is left, and probably spend way more than I can afford to.

I hate debt. While I’m often complaining about lack of money, I probably am still doing better than the majority of students. A lot of them manage to “afford” to go out every night, buy nice food, and get expensive treats like CDs and DVDs all the time, but for most of them it’s probably coming out of their ever increasing overdraft. I was talking to someone the other day who appeared to be in a similar situation to me, with £10 left to last them until the end of the month. But while I meant £10 of actual money above 0 in my account, they meant £10 until they reached the absolute £1200 overdraft limit on their account, which they’ve managed to hit in the space of 6 months at university.

And it’s hardly surprising when the banks are so willing to gives us students so much debt. I had to go into the bank yesterday to get my overdraft raised, as £200 wasn’t going to be enough to cover the housing deposit before my parents could get money to me. So I went in and explained the situation, and they happily raised my overdraft up to £1000. And gave me a credit card. So now as well as the ever rising Student Loans debt which will reach some £20,000 by the time I leave university, I’m now equipped to get myself into a further £2000 of debt on whatever I want. And of course, they’d raise that further if I wanted. My dad’s frequently on the limit of his debts, but as soon as he reached £2000 on his credit card, they offered him £10,000.

Overdrafts and credit cards are of course useful when used in the right situation. My overdraft-less account got me into a bit of trouble with the bank last year, when I had no choice but to withdraw money I didn’t have in america to be able to live. On another occasion, some sort of mistake I made on paypal resulted in money coming out of the wrong (and empty) account. It was all very confusing as I wasn’t sure why they were charging me for spending money I didn’t have, when I was well aware I didn’t have it and that was precisely the reason I had no overdraft, so I could not spend money I didn’t have. Last time I checked, when you went up to a cash point and asked for money you didn’t have, it said “you don’t have any money” and refused. I’m not sure when this changed with regards to the internet. Banks suck.