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November 6th - Some Pictures :)

Posted on Wednesday, 6 November 2013

I thought I'd do a blog with some pictures rather than just words, words, words :)

First, Andy's brilliant decorating skills at Halloween







Yep, Andy's decoration skills are extremely good.

On the Sunday, his parents and Sam came to visit and kept saying "wow it's very dusty in here". It was quite clearly a joke but I think they weren't as impressed by his decorations as I was. The decorations are still up (apart from the ones we have taken down so we can access things - cobwebs in our mixed with our cutlery wasn't the best).

His parents took us to a lovely pub by the sea. It was beautiful if not hilarious by the amount of things the pub didn't seem to have that day. It had everything I wanted but Lynne and Andy had to keep changing their orders. It was a lovely day out and Andy and Sam had the most extravagant pudding between them at the end. It was called the Fairground.

I think it contained mini toffee apples, ice cream, raspberry jam, mini doughnuts, waffle baskets, chocolate sauce, chocolate popcorn and wafers....think that covers it. The boys loved it. 

We then went for a stroll down the pier (even thought it was wet and windy) and found a tea room at the end were we all sat down and had tea. It was really sweet. The pier also looked quite magical with the stormy weather surrounding it. 


After the lovely break with Andy's parents (Who were very very nice and paid for everything) we got back to work. It was nice to have a break and some fresh air. Fourth year is turning out to be pretty tough but we're getting there. Slowly.

x

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November 5th - Guy Fawkes

Posted on Tuesday, 5 November 2013

This is the night when fireworks, sparklers and bonfires are all set alight as Britain celebrates 'Bonfire Night'. The celebration of when Guy Fawkes failed to blow up Parliament on the 5th November 1605. 


However, I doubt many people really care about the reason, the exciting excuse to let off fireworks is delightful for anyone :). 

I wish I could tell you that I was out and about. Eating marshmallows and watched the sparkling colours in the sky flash and then disappear, but no. No I am not. I am inside. Doing work. Taking a quick break to write on here and then I'll get back to my work. 

Other than work, at the moment, my focus is on my fitness. I have lost quite a bit of weight since coming back from America (where I managed to pile on the pounds unfortunately) but it is not quite enough. I want to go back to my pre-America weight. My London Olympics 2012 weight. Weird to think that it wasn't actually that long ago and how easy it is to put on weight but it is so hard to lose it again. Especially for me. Due to a drastic diet when I was 15 and a bit of yo-yo dieting since, my metabolism has pretty much got itself royally f**ked up. Therefore, I gain weight really quickly and have to eat pitiful amounts to lose weight. But I have always been a stubborn girl when it comes to weight and therefore I am good at restricting and pushing myself. Now I am 21, a bit older, and my metabolism is even more ruined, I am trying to lose weight healthily. No crash diet. No fad phase. A sensible diet to get me to a weight I feel confident with and can maintain. if I maintain it then my metabolism will return to normal and maybe, just maybe, I can eat normally again. Like my sister. Who has been whining recently how she is eating so many bad things at Uni. Yet her super slim figure is still super slim. HOW DOES SHE DO IT? Well...she didn't f up her metabolism. 

My diet is rather low calorie but that is just because it has to be to actually allow me to lose weight. I go to the gym four times a week and I weight train in my apartment the rest of the time. Those who know me know I love to swim. I usually swim everyday. Well, there are no affordable pools around where I currently live. Consequently, I have had to put that on hold temporarily. I am excited about being able to excel at different things other than swimming but I hope it will not set back my swimming by too much. Hopefully I can catch up over Christmas or Easter times so I don't lose my PBs etc. 

I have never felt the gym really does me any good. The machines say you are burning calories but I never seen a huge difference with my body whereas swimming clearly helps your figure. But with the help of some websites and advise I am going to use the gym to the best of my ability. Clearly if it provides results for some people I just have never been using it correctly. I have never properly weight trained either. My kit arrived today so I'll let you know my progress. I might start a fitness blog on the side of this one to just keep me motivated by updating it and exploring new training techniques. I don't know, I haven't decided yet :)

Anyway hope you're all well!!! See you soon! 

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November 4th - Competitiveness

Posted on Monday, 4 November 2013

Competitiveness is a thing. A thing I am very used to having been a swimmer most of my life. It eats you up. You can think of nothing worse than loosing and you strive and strive to the best. However, what I have never done is let this competitiveness in sports affect the way I make others feel. I don't like boasting. That's why I hate writing personal statements or cover letters for jobs as I hate being like
"You should hire me because I am the best blah, blah, blah"
I never turned around to people after a race and smile happily at their loss. I simple got out, head down, and smiled with my team. Maybe occasionally I celebrated a bit too much if my team won or sulked too much if my team lost but, I grew up and I grew out of it. What I have never done is show off or be openly competitive with grades.

"So what did you get? How did you do?" is the first question anyone seems to hear as they leave an exam or when they have just got their papers back. They didn't seem to understand when I responded,
"I'm going to see when I get back." I'd fold my piece of paper up and put it in my bag. I didn't want to know till I was by myself. This was, in part, a defence mechanism incase I got anything wrong. But imagine if I opened up my mark and was gutted yet the girl next to me got lower and was delighted. How would she then feel? Should be gutted too? Should be suddenly disappointed because I am?

And now I turn to Social Media. I HATE IT when I see people put "OH MY GOD JUST GOT AN FIRST ON THIS ESSAY!" I may not even be doing the same course or I may have got a first myself but what kind of a thing is that to say on Facebook? How will that make all those who tried their best but didn't quite make the mark feel? Probably a lot worse than they already did. Think before you show off on Facebook please.

(Sorry, it's a short one today as ummmmm  I don't know how to delicately say this...ok fine, PMS has hit and I'm in a lot of pain. I am also completing my last day of applying for Graduate schemes and one of them just quit on me when I spent an entire two hours writing out answers to their questions and now I need to do it again!)

Love x



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Nov 3 - Halloween

Halloween this year seemed to change. I’d never seen so many people get into the Halloween spirit. Shops, supermarkets, restaurants all had decorations, deals and Halloween themed products coming out of their ears! Oh hang on, no, I had seen this Halloween spirit. In America. In America they had shop dedicated to this spooky festival and due to the Mexican festival – The Day of the Dead – it would continue till November 2nd. England, I believed, liked Halloween but it was never that big of a deal. Americans celebrated and worshipped Halloween the same way the England worships Christmas (Side note - I didn’t feel Americans really felt Christmas was that important). However, this year, England showed me that they have grasped the Halloween spirit full on.

I applaud England. Well done for giving it a go. Well done for dressing up so well – even if there were far too many people going as Miley Cyrus and thinking their costume was sooooo original, sorry to disappoint but it seems 1 in 3 people did that.

Most of my friends went out drinking. They celebrated till dusk and then collapsed into their beds with white face paint still smeared across their faces and their costumes covered in fake blood in a pile at the side of the bed.  I spent Halloween, babysitting my dogs, in my house, alone. Sigh. Now I have an over active imagination. I have a really over active imagination. The entire house was shrouded in darkness and I was scared. Andy was on the other end of Skype, which calmed be down a bit but I was still scared. I remember my American friends dragging me to see Paranormal Activity last year (think it was like the 3rd or 4th one) and one boy being on Skype. A lady suddenly appears in the screen behind him and he stares at the camera before his neck gets broken. That image get flashing into my bed especially when I turned off the lights to go up upstairs. I really began to believe that this was my last day alive.

I had my dogs. How could I be scared with them by my side? Well, because if a murderer tried to get into the house he would soon realise the scary barking was actually to toy poodles, excited to see him and lick his shoes. Yeah. My friend Rachel said she is always scared when she is left alone but she has Kia. Kia is taller than me when I’m sitting down and is a mix between a Rottweiler and an Akita (I think). She is so lovely but yeah, she would scare off a murder. My white fluffy knee high dogs…..nope. My dogs had a habit on Halloween of barking in the conservatory. This meant they were barking out into the dark garden at something they could see or hear….but I couldn’t. It was petrifying. Thinking they could see someone out there that I couldn’t. I literally begged them to stop barking as I was going to go into a nervous breakdown.

Bonnie also spent the night under my bed. Barking at something that wasn’t there and fixated with staring at one point, wagging her tail. This is quite Bonnish behaviour but on Halloween, when you’re by yourself, you begin to think…..Ghost? Is there something under my bed? Some spirit that is going to reach up and kill me? It’s terrifying.

We had no trick or treaters (luckily). I was having my hair done till 6.30 and when I came back I saw some walking away from my house so I hoped that was the last. I just didn’t like the idea of opening my door when I’m in the house alone to people in masks. Little children in Harry Potter costumes? That is fine! Here have all my candy. Fourteen or fifteen year old lads in masks? No. No thanks. I don’t live in a rough area or anything but still, go away. Also teenagers who don’t bother to dress up? Really? Are you begging then? Begging for sweets? I’ll pop by your house tomorrow in my gym gear and say  “Trick or treat?” shall I? No? Didn’t think so.

I managed to escape to my friend Rachel’s house for a little bit of the night so that was nice J Had a good catch up. And then Andy stayed on Skype all night so I felt much better after a while.

When I got back to Bristol on Saturday Andy had decorated the whole apartment as a surprise for me. There was cobwebs everywhere with spiders, orange and black balloons and toy rats on the floor. It looked incredible. Andy barely gets any nights off from working (neither do I) but it was nice that we both had worked hard during the week so we could spend some time together. We sat up, had pizza and played scary games. It was a perfect evening J.





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November 2nd - Megabus

Posted on Sunday, 3 November 2013

I have been doing my fair bit of travelling on good old Megabus recently. It is cheaper than a train and I conveniently arrive closer to my accommodation in Warwick and Andy’s accommodation in Bristol on Megabus than I would by train. It is perfectly designed for travelling students who can not afford the extortionate train prices (which are increasing year by year). Even with a 16-25 year old rail card, the prices of trains are not within my grasp as a student.

Yet Megabus comes with a lot of disadvantages. Disadvantages which make you want to throw down your bag and say “FINE, NO MORE. I’ll beg for more money if it means I can avoid Megabus and get a train.” But alas, you sigh, you huff, you pick up your bag and next time you find yourself searching the web for cheap train tickets, you find yourself back at uk.megabus.com.

Maybe I am spoilt as I just spent a year in America but the Megabus customer service is p*ss poor. In America, everywhere you are greeted with a smile and some friendly banter. Within my last three trips with Megabus, I have been met with yelling, rude, and impatient members of staff.

For example, I arrived ten minutes early for my trip from Bristol to London and the bus was already there (let me tell you, a bus to be there early is a SHOCK.
“Anyone else going to London?”
“Yes!” I called looking him straight in the eye. I grabbed my bag to reach for my phone because I had taken a photo of my reservation ticket number online (even though I had paid for the SMS service so it would be texted to my phone, yet alas, no such text had been received). The driver went and sat down in the drivers’ seat, started up the engine and began closing all the doors.
WHAT! There was still ten minutes to go and I had just told him ‘Yes’ to his face. And he had heard me as we were a foot apart! Luckily, another boy came running up and starting banging on the door. And totally out of character it would seem, the man turned off the engine and began grumpily swearing to himself as he got out the coach.

Another student ran up to him (she had been there for sometime it would seem) and begged him to let her on the coach She had an important meeting to go to in London and had bought her ticket. She had a NUS student card and had selected the student card option. You need a NUS Extra student card to get a discount on Megabus (just so they can be seen as giving student discounts but aren’t really). This poor girl was asking if she could pay the extra £0.40p there and then.
No. The driver refused.
She begged if she could buy a new ticket.
No he didn’t except tickets and his bus was full.
Yes but she wasn’t going to be on it with the previous ticket so she could buy a new one?
No.
To be honest the driver could have stashed the money as a tip for himself if he had accepted. I couldn’t believe his manner and was glad people kept running up to him so we left ten minutes later than expected. What a rude man.
This is only one case concerning the rude drivers. There have been plenty more.

I have had drivers tell me they are not going to my destination when last minute they yell out “So anyone else for Coventry?”. I have had drivers swearing about traffic and drivers sigh as I hand them my ticket as if they really didn’t want me personally to turn up!!

I remember when I worked at John Lewis, there were mirrors backstage with words across the top like “the customer is always right.” “Deliver everything with a smile”. Clearly Megabus mirrors say “Act like an Arse”. Let me quickly add there are some (VERY FEW) nice drivers. I can remember one in particular who drove me from Coventry to Bristol at 5.20am in the morning. He was really cheerful. How can he be so cheerful at 5.20am and the others be so miserable in the middle of the day?

Another thing I hate is how delayed they always are. They never seem to be on time and there is no GPS tracking system so you are just standing there, indefinitely, waiting for the buses. Today, I was on a Megabus that was delayed by forty minutes. No explanation given. And once we had got on they filled the empty seats with people who were early for their next bus to Bristol! What!!! So then we were all nicely squished and toastie warm.

And I am not complaining about delayed coaches due to traffic. I get that. It’s understandable. I am complaining about when you’re sitting in London Victoria Coach station and you’ve seen your driver munching on a pasty for the past thirty minutes and smoking a cigarette. Then suddenly your coach is ready…twenty minutes late - it’s been stationary in front of you with all its lights off for the past hour.

I once even had a driver who got off at every stop to have a cigarette. Sorry? If I knew my bus was delayed not due to traffic but from the driver’s smoking addiction I would be furious!

Furthermore, the people. Ok. Yes I am one of them but I don’t act like them. Why have English people forgotten how to queue? We are British! Kings and Queens of the Queues! Yet when it comes to a Megabus queue, well it’s like that scene in Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan imagines the cafeteria in Africa where people roar at one another and leap across tables. That is what it like.

Then you sit down….well try to sit down. People do the classic tricks of putting seats on bags, pretending to fall asleep across two seats the moment they sit down, sitting on the aisle seat and putting their bags by the window. Yep. Classic.

Once you’ve sat down you realise someone didn’t send you the details for the Megabus picnic. What is this? Everyone is getting out food. From the smelly coronation chicken sandwiches to the salt and vinegar crisps and the curry. What? Sorry? It’s 4 in the afternoon. Why are people having food now? Why are people having a meal? How did someone bring a pizza on here!!!!? So then there is the background music of everyone eating, choking, spitting etc. At least that smell can disguise the smell of BO that accompanies every Megabus journey. Yep. No one washes. Or at least three people don’t and stink out the bus. You encourage the person next to you to get out their anchovy garlic egg roll just to drown out the smell of the person two rows behind.

Also Megabus advertises £1 bus fares. This is FALSE ADVERTISING. On their website with their highly unprofessional FAQ section, they state the first 1-10 tickets on every coach journey is a £1. How come I have been on a Coventry to Bristol journey with one other person and it has been £5. Did 9 people not show up? Also, if the journey was £1 they would add 0.50p for booking it online…and then if you wanted your reservation sent by text that would be an extra 0.20p (and it would never show up). So in fact NO JOURNEY is £1.


Basically Megabus is anything but Mega. It is annoying and corrupt. It’s a rather awful way to have to travel and it makes you irritated and much more of an angry person than you were coming onto the bus. However, it’s cheap. Yep. And hence, I’ll have to keep travelling on it.

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November 1 - Bad Luck :D

Posted on Saturday, 2 November 2013

I am going to try and make a promise to myself to write every day of November. Weird challenge. Yes. But it is something I want to do. I haven't been very good with my blog recently, and I feel this promise may kick me up the arse enough to actually write, write, write - and get more addicted and determined to writing in my blog again. It's like my own version of NaNoWriMo - a writing competition which encourages you to write 1, 600 words of your novel a day in November. I wanted to do that this year but with my University work being so hectic I really don't think I will be able to.

So my first blog will be about Bad Luck.

Bad Luck 

 Luck has been a distant friend to me recently. I was very lucky in America. I was spoilt by Luck, if you will. I had some amazing friends :D who were encouraging, kind and lovely and I met the boy of my dreams (yep gush gush sorry - I'll stop!). I did also have a fair share of bad luck in the form of a Spaniard 'friend' but we won't go into that (lets just say it nearly destroyed my faith in people and my trust in friendships).

However, I still felt lucky. The sun came up everyday, I was surrounded by support and I had the lovely Andy two seconds away. I also incredible friends from England come and visit me and support me.

I knew this luck may have to be balanced out by the world in one form or another.

It started with little things - my clumsy self dropping plates/cups/items here, there and everywhere. And then it got more serious. I was involved in a car accident. I won't go into details but it wasn't my fault. Yet it proved my Mum's theory of "It's not you, it's other drivers that I don't trust" and it shook me up. I also felt incredibly guilty (as I always do) and yet it wasn't even my fault. I had to depend a lot on my parents and I can't thank them enough for their love and support. I also have to say goodbye to driving long distances ever (I never was allowed to in the first place but now, I must admit, even I don't want to).

Second piece of bad luck. Sitting in bed, I was doing my work, essaying hard, reading away, drinking a cup of tea and BAM, tea began to slip from my hand. I tried to grab it desperately and as it fell on the laptop I grabbed it and pushed it the other way - onto myself. It was a new cup of tea so I burn my stomach badly in order to save my laptop. However, despite believing I may have saved my laptop it began to not respond as the keyboard died. I stupidly tried to hair dryer the keyboard to make it more dry. Warning kids, DON'T DO THIS. The keyboard keys melted before I had time to turn off the hairdryer. I am getting the laptop repaired and hopefully it will be just the keyboard but *head in hands* I don't know. I had spent the whole day doing good deeds for others. Cleaning Andy's apartment, doing his washing, giving money to all the charity boxes in Bristol and food to homeless people as I was feeling generous and I just felt like why on earth did I deserve this bad harma. I balled my eyes out. However, it was my own fault and I never balance tea on the bed anymore.

Thirdly, my spare laptop which I have had for four years was back in Warwick. When I got there, happily hoping I could switch it on and have a temporary solution....well the loading screen appeared and NOTHING HAPPENED.  I cried. I cried so much. This wasn't even my fault. Luckily, I have a genius boyfriend who knows computers and when I returned to Bristol, he rebooted it for me.

:D

THANK YOU MY LOVE.

Fourthly,
I'm ill. I am so very ill at this point in time. I am not only ill in the sense I have a sore throat, pounding headache and feel feverish but other partially mental issues as well. I have developed insomnia when I am away from Andy. I know sounds pathetic but it's true. I simply cannot sleep. I take it as an opportunity to do more work but when your days are filled with work it's hard to be happy when your nights are too (and evidently I am away from Andy). I also get horrendous stomach cramps instead of hunger pains. Don't know what this is and if anyone would like to fill me in I'd be very grateful.


Anyway bad luck. Do you believe in it? I feel I have had my fair 2013 dosage and hope things will begin to turn around. I am feeling positive. My friend, Chloe, recently told me she didn't believe in bad luck and believed anyone could turn their bad luck into good. So I've tried. I have tried to be positive. All of this expensive bad luck has made me more determined to get a job in January (I didn't want a job where I live in Uni before Xmas as I felt they would make me work through the Xmas holidays and I would be unable to spend any time with family/friends). Also it has led to me applying to graduate schemes. I have also been budgeting very well and finally getting on top of finances (I believe). I am also determined to move in with Andy as soon as possible. I feel that this would a) make us extremely happy and I am prepared to apply to graduate schemes and pause my dream career for a while to earn some money and develop my skills elsewhere. Andy's dream career comes first :). B) I wouldn't be such a financial burden on my parents and I feel they'd respect me more if I wasn't living at home. c) I am prepared to go out there and give it my all in a new exciting company with new opportunities and tasks to complete. d) I am prepared to take creativity into my own hands - I am planning a few documentaries in the upcoming months and writing opportunities. I want to keep my creativity even if University work is trying to drill it out of me and my dream career in creativity seems to being put on hold.


Sometimes I would rant and rave that I was hardly the most deserving of bad luck (that potentially couldn't a famous Spaniard's computer be the one dying in a pool of brown tea) and the world was not being fair. But then I remember all the good things I have in my life and I genuinely feel sometimes the world just has to balance it out. I have Andy. I found Andy. Furthermore, he lives in England and at 5am coach to Bristol is nothing in comparison to the long distances other friends have to put up with (especially those who found love on their year abroad trips). I have my family - my parents being so supportive of me, and my sister being one to always cheer me up. I have my friends - those at home who are always there for me, those from America who have become life long friends and those from Uni who don't mind me jetting off across the country, back and forth to Bristol, and are always there to give me a hug. I have my dogs who are like fluffy therapy sessions. I have my passion for learning which is keeping me through this last horrendous hurdle of a year. So yes, maybe I deserved my dose of bad luck. And maybe if I just keep my head above the water and try not to be beaten down by it. Obstacles are going to be thrown at me and I just have to keep going.

Thank you to all those to have been there for me. Hopefully I can turn this all around :).

Watch this space and see if I will update every day :D

x



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Hello Again

Posted on Monday, 30 September 2013

Hello again, some of you may have wondered where this blog went over the last summer.


Well I turned it off, I made it private, I decided that was it. My Mum had told me it was too much diary and therefore, I deleted it off the internet...But so much has happened over the summer. So much. And I wanted to share it so badly. I wanted to write about it on here or rant (more likely). 

So this is a quick note to say I have started again. Not telling my Mum. This is going to be my one extra curricular activity this year as I will be head long deep in books for the most of it. Watch this space :) x