Time Spent in the Wrong Places

Apologies for the solitary post last week but after my controversial post on Monday evening I thought it was best to keep a low profile. The angry mobs outside of my window (which might just have been the wind but I'm convinced it wasn't) meant that I've not left my flat for a whole week solid now and I'm running out of food/clean clothes to keep me going. Come to think of it, if I let my clothes get so unclean then they might become edible? Not a good idea? OK. Anyway that is a whole load of rubbish and fine well you know it. My excuse from Wednesday was the age-old one of football and for that, as I've said many a time before, I will never be sorry (except for the fact that Chelsea lost - I'm sorry for that). Today's post is about something that makes me a little bit scared about my own ability. They say that the more you put into things, the more you get out of the other end - you have to earn success - and of course this is true. The sad thing is that I'm aware of that for all of the wrong reasons.

The Inevitable Has Happened

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR READERS OF RAMBLINGS OF A TEENAGER
Sorry but this blog will soon be closing down on account of it's chief (and only) writer being a liar and a scoundrel - he bought a Kindle. Your computer will explode in 5...4...3...2...

Just kidding, you can put the party on hold for now and be safe in the knowledge that I don't have the ability to remotely make anyone's computer explode. But yes, it is true, I purchased a Kindle at the weekend and you know what? I love it. In fact it turns out (as if this was always the plan) that I predicted that one day I would get a Kindle for the primary purpose that I decided to get one on Friday - to put my university reading on it. One thing that is for sure is that I'm not going to lose touch with the good old paper back any time soon and, as if to neutralise the purchase, I spent £25 on books last week - real books. But I've said it already and I'll say it again: I love the Kindle. The screen is like nothing I've ever seen before. I spent the whole weekend at home gazing at it from various angles, testing out the claim that it works in any light. I must have looked like a monkey with a new toy as I contorted by body in an attempt to be able to say something bad about it - I couldn't and I think I probably pulled a few muscles in the process. 

Advice to Naive Sports Stars

Following on from the fact that I don't really blog about much else than person experience at the moment, today's post is going to be about something that I learned today. I'll provide you with your fix of 'world events' later on but you'll just have to wait for it! Today I played football for the first time since the summer and it didn't go very well. I thought that I was a lot fitter than I actually am and this attitude that I had soon lead to problems. 

Into the Home Straight

Week 9. That doesn't mean very much to people other than those at Edinburgh Uni but to me it strikes equal measures of fear and anticipation into my heart and mind. In essence it means that there are only a few more weeks until the exams are finally upon us and that scares me a little. It feels like only last week that we were dusting off our pens and word processors as the first lecturer of the year stepped up and declared the law in our general direction. Having said that, it feels like the summer was a very long time ago - I suppose we are closer to Christmas now than we are to the summer (ouch!). I'm now at that awkward time of the year when I can't quite start to look forward until Christmas but everything around has slipped into festival season mode - kinda sucks.

The thing is that I can feel something rumbling deep inside me - it's not my dinner repeating on me just for the record. No, I feel like something good might be just about to happen. After more or less coasting for the first 8 and a bit weeks of 2nd year I think I'm just about to move up into a new gear that I've either not used for a long time or not used at all before. I tend to think that the former is the truth because I've been here before and I know how it feels to be working at full pelt - it's a nice feeling when you're out of the other side.

All I'm trying to get around to saying really is that the lot of us might well be on the home straight to Christmas (although I would whisper that word very quietly around me) but we've all got a few hurdles to get over before it's holiday time again. I've got 4 sizeable hurdles to leap over and then on the 21st of December, all things being well, I'll get to say that I'm on holiday for a few weeks which might well be the best present that I get this year.

Thanks for reading and I hope I've not dampened any early holiday spirit that you might have had about 10 minutes ago!

Martin

Inter-Disciplinary Conversation: Some Advice

The parity between Monday and Wednesday post is becomes more and more palpable as the weeks go by. Maybe I'm just struggling for ideas at the moment or, even worse, maybe I've lost it all together. The truth of the matter is that they have always been pretty close together anyway and maybe it's time that I dropped the distinction that I've been clinging onto with my fingertips for so long now. The reason why I open with this is because my post for today is literally just talking about my position in the world. I write about that kind of thing most weeks and because there is a mention of the word 'world' in there I suppose that's why I've kept the distinction between Monday and Wednesday going. Anyway I'll get on with it now. Today's post is about something that I started to notice when I came to university which has now grown and developed into something that I feel defines a part of someone's personality. This, my friends, is where society breaks up.

Happy Mondays

Granted, I'm starting to get a little lax with my blog. It's purely been a combination of university and going out that has served to take my precious blogging time away from my finger-tips and, by Jove, does it pain me. I'm going to try and get back into the swing of things properly over the next couple of weeks because I hand in my last essay of the term on Thursday (yay!) but then I'll be starting exam revision (boo!) so we'll just have to see how it goes.

Today my mood is up and the feeling is good. I managed to get up at a reasonable time today, get some work done, went to lectures (one of which was a bit of a zone-out session sadly) and then I've managed to finish off everything that I wanted to have done before I head out for food, beer, pool and a pub-quiz - I feel I have earned all of those things because of today and the busy weekend that I had. Today might very well have been the coldest we've had for a long time but the sun was still shining in vein and trying its utmost to keep the spirits of thousands of chilled students up. I've recently more than I ever have that when it is sunny, regardless of the temperature, it does make you feel a lot happier than when it is grey and horrible outside. If it snows (or should I say, when it snows) this year, I'll be happy so long as the sun still makes an occasional appearance and I'm able to get home for Christmas. Just two little things to get me through what promises to be an awfully tough couple of months for me and my peers.

Thanks for reading and I'll be here again on Wednesday hopefully.

Martin

Warming Again to Coldplay

No post on a Monday!? What is this madness that has occurred over the last couple of days? Well it was Halloween for one and I was in no fit state to compose a blog post and so I thought that I would defer to today when I'm a little more awake. Never a better decision has been made either because today I have probably been as tired as I ever have been before. I could feel my head flopping in lectures this morning (9am start - ouch!) and for the rest of the day I found it hard to get myself going. How I even managed to take lecture notes today is mystery to me but I've managed to make it to tonight unscathed. Tonight's post is based on something that I stumbled across last week. I found out that Coldplay were streaming their concert in Madrid live on Youtube and I was all over it. Subsequently I've hit a real love for their music again, especially their new album - I can't believe that I ever doubted them.