My Bunny Burrow

Sharing an interesting blog on the New Scientist

2012-02-17T23:32:00.000Z

I don't really have much to add. I just came across this article in the New Scientist: Twitter shows chatting doesn't have to be political. The blogger debates whether social media promotes the spreading of social ideas or whether it merely exemplifies divisions in opinion.

Personally, I think any platform which allows the sharing of views can only be conceived as a good thing. We all have more than one friendship circle in real life and in the same vein, we have different "followers" and contacts on social media. Even if you only inspire or inform one person you're connected to, that's one person who could inspire another.

I love social media. It gives the power of speech to the masses. Differences encourage debate which ultimately leads to greater understanding. It doesn't matter if the people you reach through your own profile is limited. According to some anthropological studies, we're all only 6 degrees apart from each other. Somehow, the message will get out there :)

Do financial woes fuel racism?

2012-02-16T21:41:00.003Z

You'll have doubtless heard time and again the rant in the pub that foreigners have stolen all the jobs. These same ranters are quick to moan that because of these foreigners invading their land, ravaging all their women and letting their children mix in their schools, they've had to sit all day in the pub dipping pork scratchings into their pints. It would be interesting to know whether these same individuals would be willing to care for the elderly and less-able in the care homes, pick up the wet paper towels from the public toilets and operate heavy machinery as the economic migrants willingly do to earn their crust.

And these feelings of xenophobia are only perpetuated in tabloid news stories. When some papers recently reported on a rise in unemployment, another paper used those exact same figures to declare that there were thousands of migrants taking those jobs. I'm pretty sure that someone somewhere twisted the figures a little for that story. The sad thing is that if the reader didn't see the corresponding articles in the other news outlets, they would quite reasonably believe the ridiculous story.

And it's not only in the UK. Just a couple of weeks ago my Facebook newsfeed was up in uproar at a Peking University lecturer's comments that people from Hong Kong were dogs. In no time retaliative video responses were posted on Youtube ridiculing the mainland Chinese in the Special Administrative Region. To me, the comments made against the mainlanders were nothing new. From derogatory references to the stereotypical squat to commiting the cardinal sin of eating on the underground. In the past, these comments all boiled down to snobbery at the poor, under-developed China. It's little wonder that now China is economically prospering and can enjoy social mobility, the harsh reality has hit: we're all equal! Like in any playground spat, the bullied will take any opportunity to be the bully. And the results can be massively damaging to communities.

From my viewpoint, the reason racism exists is because the bully is scared of being equal - no better and no worse than everyone else. Times of economic turmoil are clearly times of uncertainty. When the country is prosperous, nobody minds people coming over to look after their loved ones, keep facilities running and all the while paying taxes into the coffer. But come a time where jobs become scarce and sensationalist sentiments are hosted in the media, the desperate and disenchanted are quick to latch on to any explanation.

The craziest thing is that despite all the little differences that are ridiculed, criticised and hated, the world has never been a smaller place. Advances in travel has made the other side of the world no less accessible than the other side of the room. Technological developments have made contacting those down under as simple as passing a note under the table. And, one of the things I am most thankful for, tasting the flavours of the seven continents of the world is as easy as popping down the high street. The world is full of a diversity of people. Yes, we are different. Yes, we may not always share the same values or make the same decisions. But no one set of people are more deserving of a space on the planet than any other. For some reason, we were born on the same rock and we've all got to learn to share the great times and the dark ones too.

As it says in every politician's book of rhetoric - we're all in it together.

A Business Case for Snow

2011-12-19T19:15:00.001Z

After a couple of weeks of speculation and, on my part, excited anticipation...this morning, my newspaper informed me that there would, in fact, be no snow this week. I cannot tell you how many times I peeked out from behind my curtains in the morning with bated breath only to be greeted by tarmac and a grassy lawn.

After all, it is Christmas on Sunday so you can't blame this fully-grown adult for wishing for snow. However, as the paper has assured me, we are in for a boringly mild Christmas this year. In stark contrast to last year, this winter has been surprisingly dry and mild. Admittedly, I am writing this in the comfort of the cosiest part of the sofa in my well insulated living room and the cold is the last thing on my mind. But the thermometer doesn't lie and last year was definitely chillier.

For many, I'm sure the lack of the white stuff comes with great relief. Attempting a graceful pirouette on the M1 isn't my idea of fun and I'm sure most motorists will be glad to avoid that as well. However, my aim today is to stick up for Mr Frosty make a business case for snow. So here goes...

No matter how quiet your neighbourhood is, anyone who lives in a city will be conscious of those unidentifiable sounds that constantly surround us. But waking up to a thick coating of snow means waking up in some magical place with the total absence of sound. To anyone living in a city, sometimes silence can sound glorious. I'm almost certain that no one can boast to have been around at the dawn of time but when you open your front door, breathe in that first breath of air and soak up the silence, you truly feel like you're the only person on the planet.
Once the bubble has been burst, either by the first excruciating crunch under your boots as you venture outside or the screams of excitement from children who have the day off school, you will not be able to deny the pull of the open field and a good snowball fight! And so comes the second positive of snow. Any activity in the snow equals the best work out you can imagine outside of a gym. From firing snowballs and diving for cover, to putting into practice the army manoeuvres you perfected on Battlefield and Call of Duty, a snowball fight will help tackle the damage caused by one too many mince pies and that extra helping of Christmas dinner you squeezed in. But even those not indulging in a little light-hearted war game, a stroll through a snowy field or wood will burn more calories than the same stretch of a paved high street. So snow will do your body the world of good as well.
For those brave enough to venture out in your cars during snow, the frozen flakes also bring out the camaraderie in us. Last year, the most heart-warming scene I saw on one such adventure was the sight of men and women marching up and down the dual carriageways with glowing shovels digging out any poor driver who couldn't get up the road. I saw others stepping out of their own cars to lend a shoulder to heave slipping vehicles on their way. And I saw total strangers offer each other warmth and a hot drink whilst they waited for roadside assistance. The coldness of snow can sometimes bring out the warmest side in people.
Finally, I can't deny that snow is frozen water so it is a) wet and b) cold. Not everyone likes being in the snow. But that can be seen positively as well. Snow brings people together. When mum and dad can't go to work and the kids are off from school, being snowed in is the perfect excuse for family time. In today's day, it's rare to find a time where families are all together in the same building, let alone the same room. Snowy days means dusting off the scrabble and dishing out the monopoly pieces.

Scaremongering news readers paint a gloomy picture every time snow is forecast. But if you look to the positives, snow can be beneficial to the community. PM David Cameron recently reassured us all that Britain was not doomed by pointing at our 'happiness index' and in my opinion, a little more happiness wouldn't go amiss right now. So that's my business case for snow. Any takers?

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

2011-11-25T20:34:00.001Z

Can you regulate smokers into quitting?

This week in the news, the Australian government unveiled plans to order the companies to standardise their cigarette packets to an attractive plain brown with graphic images showing damaged lungs, missing teeth and other delightful effects of smoking. Naturally, cigarette companies are outraged for various reasons. The one thing they seem to have remained silent on is whether the changes will have the government's desired effect of lowering the number of new smokers.

Here in the UK, the government hasn't announced any plans to follow suit. Whether or not this has anything to do with the impact this may have on the taxes levied on cigarettes, I wouldn't know. However, the UK did follow Ireland and other countries to ban smoking in public places. Four years on from the ban, I have noticed a change in smoking behaviour. Before the ban, it was expected for you to open a pub door and feel like you've stepped in front of a bus exhaust pipe. It was the norm to take one sip of your rum and coke with two gulps of passive smoke. And walking behind a group of secondary school kids was akin to following a steam train.

Now...well at least the first two have changed. So has the ban worked? Certainly, I am more aware of smokers than before. I can now sniff out a smoker at 50 paces and I eyeball any mother pushing a pram with the white stick balanced between her fingers.

The only problem is that whilst smoking indoor is drastically reduced - I can't say it's stopped all together, which you can verify by sharing the top deck on my bus - the smokers are still, well, smoking. Would I say that the smoking ban has failed? Not at all. Non-smokers are now better protected from passive smoke which was by far the biggest problem in my opinion.

But what I feel was neglected was the education part. Anyone who has been around children or rebellious teens will know that if you snatch away a toy or stop them from doing something without explanation, they will just want to do it more. The less attainable instantly becomes more desirable. Thus, attitudes towards smoking haven't changed among existing and potential smokers. Lecturing someone won't make them listen but by initiating interactive dialogue about why smoking is discouraged can only be a good thing. And by concentrating on young people now will help secure the understanding of future generations.

Do I think the Australian government's approach should be copied here? Well, firstly I can't imagine how they can enforce a ban on all advertising on a product that they readily allow to be sold in the country. But secondly, I don't think by simply flashing images of decaying organs will turn anyone off. We get more than enough of that in the blockbusters in the cinema. All legal products should surely be allowed to promote themselves in the same way as everything else available on the market.

So what can be done here? As a society, we have a moral obligation to teach each other about the effects of smoking just as we teach each other to look both ways when crossing the road, to cover your mouth when yawning and to wash your hands after you go to the toilet. And is this the responsibility of the government? Well, we elect governments to represent our collective views on a national and international platform. So in a way, the government should speak up about the dangers. But that doesn't absolve us of our own responsibilities. All humans have the capacity to distinguish what's good for them from the bad. You're much more likely to listen to your friends, family and peers that you can challenge and question than a suited and booted faceless politician. By giving others the tools they need to figure out for themselves whether to smoke or not is the only way to truly change attitudes towards the activity.

I hope that over time, smoking will continue to decline. It has no benefit to anyone's health or wellbeing. I can't say if it will ever be banned outright but in the meantime, I hope that more awareness will allow potential smokers to make up their own minds not to pick up the bad habit.

2011-10-03T21:45:00.004+01:00

'Mixed Britannia'

Last month, I spent a weekend with the girls up in Liverpool. We did the usual tourist things: visiting the docks, the shops and the Museum of Liverpool. With my love of history and learning about our past, I was keen to learn more about the skeletons in this vast city's closet. I was aware that Liverpool was one of the first places where Chinese workers arrived in the UK. It was little wonder that Liverpool had the largest Chinatown archway in Europe and in my mind, I pictured Chinese people working hard, but being recognised, if not entirely integrated, by society in early 20th century Liverpool.

So, imagine my surprise when we looked around the section of the Museum of Liverpool dedicated to Liverpool's links to China. After showing how Chinese trade and culture was absorbed by and benefited the UK, from influences in architecture to the trading of imports and exports, part of the exhibition recounted the exile of hundreds of Chinese immigrants from the city. Real life accounts from living Liverpulians told the story of how their fathers and grandfathers were encouraged to accept one-way tickets back to China, vanishing from their homes and, some, never to be seen by their families again. Others were restricted in their employment, or saw their pay slashed, prompted by anti-Chinese sentiments.

I was a little comforted to hear sympathetic tutting from fellow museum-goers around me as I pored over the facts and figures. But the thing that struck me the most from the experience was how this piece of history escaped my knowledge, and that of everyone around me. What I learnt at school in the history books is what has stuck with me the longest. You learn about the Egyptians, the American pioneers and the Tudors but other than a couple of lessons on the Communist uprising in China, I don't think I have been taught anything about China and its extensive history at school. Even tonight as I type up this entry, I did a quick online search to find out a little more about these events in Liverpool and I could barely find a complete sentence on what happened. One helpful website that I was able to find told me that some mixed-race children changed their surnames in order to avoid discrimination based on their ethnicity. I wouldn't be surprised if, a few generations later, these families became totally unaware that they had a little Chinese heritage running through their veins. And with the lack of information on the matter, they would never know what happened their great-grandfathers and his friends.

I'm not trying to compare the treatment here to some of the horrific genocides and massacres that happened to other groups of people. And I wouldn't like to rake up negative feelings towards a city based on the past actions of a long-gone government. However, I am a believer in remembering our past, even pasts that we're not proud of. One thing I have learnt from those lessons in that stuffy classroom is that history has a habit of repeating itself. It's only by remembering mistakes we, or others, have made, that we can prevent ourselves from falling into the same trap.

I'm grateful to the Museum of Liverpool for helping me learn a bit more about my history. And I'm pleased to read that the BBC will be airing a three-part series about mixed race communities in the UK, starting with the story of a Chinese seaman in Liverpool. I can't wait to find out more about the first generation Chinese immigrants and their day to day lives in the country I call home.

2011-08-02T13:03:00.007+01:00

Age is Just a Number

This week will be my birthday. I'm not going to pretend it's a milestone birthday, I haven't sprouted any grey hairs (I don't think...) and I haven't switched to anti-wrinkle cream just yet. But if you believe in the Chinese Zodiac, this year is my year. The year of the Bunny, of course. So as I prepare for my weekend of partying and general fun times, I can't help looking back at my childhood and all those promises I made myself.

You know what I mean. Every kid (read: every girl) started planning out our lives as soon as we grasped the concept of life beyond tea time. For me, I set out where I'd be living, what career I'd be - obviously - succeeding in, when I'd be floating down the aisle in my meringue and what age I'd be cradling my first mini-me. To me, anyone who was single at 'x' age must be living in a whirlpool of despair, and I openly wrinkled my nose at the shameless 'y' aged lady strutting along on the pull in 'young-people's' clothes. I mean, how dare they deviate from their life plan?

So, how have my attitudes changed? Well for one, every year the 'x' and 'y' keeps sliding higher up the scale. They say that 40 is the new 30, and who am I to question that as I gradually

creep closer to the traditional milestone? Beyond that, I have realised that the ages that I chose in my adolescent game plan were totally arbitrary. I had decided that I must settle down at this age because that's what my parents did. I persuaded myself that I wanted to be taking my children to school at that age because that's what little Suzie's mum did. I hadn't realised that there are so many other experiences that I needed to get through before those ones. Some bad, and some GREAT experiences - things that a 10 year ago would have no idea about. Life is sometimes like a dominoes game. What you do today impacts what happens tomorrow. And in this way, you can't dictate where you're going to be at 25, 30 or 50.

Don't misinterpret what I'm saying, though. By all means, have dreams and aspirations. In fact, I encourage daydreaming. Without these, we'd still be amoeba in a Petri-dish and monkeys would be the ones testing hair removal cream on us. What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't confuse experience with age. Don't worry if you don't get to where you thought you'd be at 30. Think about all the things you've achieved along the way. I firmly believe that the journey is more important than the destination. We will all get there some day. Just enjoy the trip for now and pick up the postcards along the way.

2011-06-11T08:04:00.008+01:00

Gender

The other day, me and the boy were spending the day sunning it up in the park and we saw a pair of children sitting by the water's edge admiring the duckies and swans. The older sibling vigilantly watched over the younger, steadying each footstep and draping a protective arm around the shoulders. The older child was wearing a dress and pretty sandals, whilst the younger had blond hair not quite brushing the shoulders. Although I wasn't studying these kids (because that would be a bit weird) my instant impression was of two sisters enjoying the sun with their parents. With that in mind, I was surprised to hear the father called out 'Jack' to get the youngster's attention. I remarked aloud that the younger child was actually a boy. And that was that.

The family all went out of view as me and the boy started cloud watching on our backs. But my little misconception brought my mind back to a recent news article I read on the BBC. This article spoke about a couple who had decided to keep the gender of their child a secret. They explained that "the idea that the whole world must know what is between the baby's legs is unhealthy, unsafe and voyeuristic". They also defended their decision as allowing their child to develop their own gender identity. My question was, does it matter what gender you are? Isn't by making the child's sex such a big deal by shrouding it in secrecy defeating the purpose behind their own ideology?

Biologically, the male and female body is different. Some greater being - God, natural selection, however you view it - decided that two genders were necessary to perpetuate the race. Somewhere along the way, it has to be admitted, the gender balance tipped into the favour of one side over the other. I don't need to spell out who was winning.

However, for many years, men and women have fought to bring the genders back into balance. History has taught us that women can do just as well as men in positions such as industry, and if it wasn't for these hard-working women, Britain would have ground to a halt during the World Wars. Now, hopefully, children in school are taught that boys and girls learn the same lessons in the same classroom, do the same tests at the end of the year and when they grow up they have the same aspirations for the same jobs. Maybe things aren't completely equal yet. The Stylist magazine regularly tells us that the glass ceiling persists when we get try to get to the top of the corporate ladder and statistics tell us that there is still an uneven ratio in the boardroom. But, encouragingly, more and more people challenge these barriers and there are many at the top that serve as role models to the next generation.

What I'm trying to say is that gender is part of your identity. You wouldn't be expected to repress the styles of music you like to tap your foot to, the cultures or traditions that you have grown up with or, probably more importantly, the colour of your skin, in order to be treated equally. These differences are celebrated because we know that underneath all this, all humans are equally capable of achieving the same things.

Whatever the motives behind that couple's unusual parenting technique, surely by denying their child such a defining part of their identity, they're undoing all the hard work of their forefathers and foremothers. These differences exist in the world and we should never forget them. I love the diversity you see in big cities in the UK and I cherish the people I meet from other backgrounds who are willing to share their identities with me.

I do wonder how their child will turn out when s/he grows up. I just hope that the parents aren't using them as some kind of social experiment. They should remember that our children are our future and I don't want our future to be full of faceless clones of one another.

2011-05-02T10:46:00.002+01:00

Goodbye means Hello.

Today, I dropped off a friend at the train station, gave him a hug and said "see you later". This evening, he will be boarding a plane with a one-way ticket to the other side of the world.

If I said I wasn't sad, I'd be lying. But as I headed back home, I thought about the evening before and the leaving party that I went to. At this leaving party, there were no tears. Instead, there was laughter, endless vats of good food and the shouts, screams and giggles from tiny faces. I met some new people and I saw some old faces that I hadn't seen for a long time. As the evening wore on and the children tired, we all sat down in the living room, drinking tea and some of us shared our first encounters with the leaver. It was at that point that I realised that although our friend was leaving, it wasn't goodbye. The day was about celebrating all the hello's we'd had with him and all the hello's we had said today.

So it turns out that every day is full of hello's. Some days, you'll be saying hello to an old friend and some days you'll be saying g'day to a new friend. All that's left to say is that I wish my friend all the best when he lands in the sunny Down Under and hope everyday is full of hello's.

2011-04-21T08:51:00.005+01:00

The age old argument of 'State vs. Private'

I went back to my hometown the other weekend and met up with my old school friends. As usual, it was dinner and pub for a long overdue catch up with everyone. Conversation flowed as the dishes were brought in and we laughed with our mouths full of steak/fishcakes/lamb/etc. At one point, conversation moved on to education. (Isn't it funny how we talk about school as if it was decades ago? We're not that old yet!)

Everyone around the table minus the Boy had been to state school. We'd all got through with good grades, went to university and none of us had been to prison, got shot or had babies. In spite of this, one of my friends surprised me by saying that given the choice, she would send her kids to private school. She explained that she did not feel that state school teachers pushed the best to do better. Maybe this was due to the number of other students and maybe because they concentrated more on getting everyone to an 'acceptable' level. I agreed that this was a fair point but stayed strong in my disapproval of private education.

Another friend gave an anecdotal story about his childhood and school experience. There's no hiding it, he went to a pretty rough school. Some people around him probably didn't do so well and the focus might not have been purely on the glittering star affixed to their grades. But he's come out of it a well-rounded, intelligent and independently-minded individual. From learning to push yourself at school perhaps without the constant and ever-visible pressure from a £3000-a-term school bill, you're put in the right position to push yourself through university, work and, ultimately, life.

On the other side of the education spectrum, helpfully supplied by the Boy, it is true that you get a massive amount of support in private school. With classes numbering half if not less than the bulging 30-35 in state classrooms, students receive much more tailored lessons. You're practically spoon-fed the curriculum and, with hard-work of course, you'll emerge from the school gates with the slight sheen of sweat on your brow and an equally glowing CV. Mind your step though. Outside the school gate, there's no safety barrier or guiding lights. The lack of experience with the 'real world' can cause people to trip at the first hurdle, belatedly falling for the bright lights of delinquency that state-educated kids may have already got past.

I listened to all of these arguments and agreed with both. Private schools do push you harder academically and put you in good stead for highly ranked further education. State schools do give you a more accurate glimpse at the real-world where you're forced to push yourself and the people around you won't do the pushing for you. However, I have always believed that state education does one thing better - it creates well-rounded and experienced young adults. Putting your children in private school may allow them to mix with one type of person. But putting your children in state school will let them experience a microcosm of society. Isn't it better to allow your children to make up their own minds about who they want to spend time with? Maybe your children can even change the minds of potential ne'er-do-wells and put them on the track for success.

And this leads on to my possibly idealised point of view. Every city in every country has 'good areas' and 'bad areas'. 'Good areas' will have 'good schools' and nice houses. 'Bad areas' become run down. Teachers will avoid teaching at 'bad schools' and residents move away. What is the effect of this? 'Good areas' become over-subscribed and unattainable. 'Bad areas' become worse and neglected. I have always tried to promote an idea of a joint responsibility of our surroundings. The Government took responsibility of education when they decided that every child should go to school. This has become somewhat forgotten with politicians who are meant to represent our society sending their own children to private school rather than supporting state education that we faithfully pay our taxes towards. If you treat people differently because they have more or less money than you, doesn't that just undo all the great work done before us to make all men and women equal?

Of course education is important. In fact it's because of how important it is that I strongly believe in instilling equal opportunity in our children at the earliest stage. I hope that one day, there will be no difference between the education you receive in state and private school. But whilst private education is only accessible to certain sectors of society, I will not support sending my children there.

2011-03-19T08:18:00.002Z

The Perception of Colour

The other day, I was watching a news report on the situation in Libya. To simplify things, the ever-helpful BBC flashed up a map of Libya, showing the areas Gaddafi supporters controlled and the rebels strongholds. On the one side, there were plain green flags and on the other, a flag with three coloured stripes with a moon and star in the centre. Immediately, I connected the plain green flag with the rebels, remembering the Iranian uprising in 2009 which labelled the protesters as the "Green Party". With that in mind, I was surprised to see the green square over Tripoli - the Libyan capital. I must admit it took a few moments to realise that the plain green flag is actually the national flag of Libya. In fact, it is the only national flag in the world with only one colour, no design or insignia.

But enough of the flag lesson. The point I'm trying to make is that in one community, the meaning behind a colour seems so obvious. But the same colours can have different meaning in another community. In spite of this, we invest so much reliance on semiotics that we often do away with words completely. Take the use of colours in signage in the UK. Red signs indicate a hazard, danger or prohibition on the road. Red lights on traffic lights to tell people to stop and fire alarm buttons are encased in a red box. Ok, so we get the picture. Red means NO. I may be wrong but it is worth noting that New Labour chose to subtly move away from red and go for a gentler pink as their background colour. Were they concerned that the red colouring was pushing people away? I couldn't possibly speculate on that :)

But hop across a couple of continents and you're in China where red means prosperity, luck, love...we hand out red packets (hopefully) filled with money. We hang red lanterns up at new year and we paint our front doors with the most vibrant poster-paint red available.

I'm not sure of the origins of these very opposite distinctions but I am sure that the society we live in perpetuates these perceptions. Take one colour perception that is forced upon us at birth: blue is for boys, pink is for girls. Any card shop you go into will display baby card after baby card coloured in this way. Clothes designed for babies define them by gender, with pretty pink flowers on girls' clothes and blue choo-choo trains for boys. I even remember the toilets at my infant school had blue doors for the boys' and pink for the girls'. Later in life, boys who do prefer 'girly' colours are then labelled gay and we wonder why.

It's true that colours subconsciously evoke emotion in us. But I firmly believe that it is the society in which we live that causes us to form these connections between a colour and a meaning. After all, to me, green doesn't necessarily mean revolution but my brain made the connection between two unrelated political situations and came up with the wrong answer!

I guess my point is that colours, like words and like actions, are a form of communication. Groups adopt a colour to symbolise themselves entirely and one hopes that the meaning behind a colour is instilled into that community to the extent that their manifesto is conveyed instantly without a word being spoken. It really does fascinate me. But like speaking a foreign language, sometimes the meaning can be misinterpreted or misunderstood when you try to transfer it to another culture.

By the way, a Wiki search reliably informed me that green reflects Islam. How many people knew that in the UK? And I wonder how many people in predominantly Islamic countries could have told me that ? Case in point.

2011-01-16T09:38:00.002Z

Uniform

Recently, I got off the train at the same stop as two men who were suited and booted in 'British Transport Police' uniform. Even before the train came to a stop, the crowds on the platform parted like the Red Sea. As the doors opened, the men easily slipped out and onwards on their journey. But as soon as they had passed, the crowds surged forward to enter the train and if it wasn't for my sharp elbows and experience fighting to the bar, I would have been swept away like the Egyptians.

Similarly, the other day as we drove down the motorway, I witnessed a wave of red brake lights flash on as we approached a bridge with a tiny hi-vis clad figure hunched over the edge looking down at the motorists. Me and the boy giggled as we realised that he was merely an appropriately dressed cyclist, complete with a peddlebike who was probably just taking a breather.

So, on the one hand, uniform - especially on figures of authority - can remind people to respect the law, to revert to expected behaviour and prevent illegal actions. On the other hand, those who aren't in uniform are ignored and are treated all the worse for blending with the masses. Whilst I don't expect to be fawned on or saluted, isn't it a matter of courtesy to allow somebody to get off the train before pushing through? Surely it is a common sense that if the train is clear before you enter, then there will be more space for you once you are inside the train?

If someone was to ask me whether uniform is a good idea - be it in schools, hospitals, the supermarket or the police force - I would say yes, in principle. It gives the wearers a corporate identity. People are identifiable as belonging to an organisation and hopefully they will be treated positively according to their position. But in the same vein, once in that uniform, the wearer loses their own identity. Is a nurse just a nurse? Is he or she less valuable than a doctor because the doctor is wearing a white coat? Can you judge the character of one of your employees because they bear the badge of your organisation on their shirt? You hear time and again in the news of members of authority abusing their power and committing heinous crimes on society, people who probably got away with it for much longer simply because they wore the stripes, or the colours or the logo of the company.

Meanwhile, members of the public continue to move among those in uniform. They are merely present, but not noticed. Every now and again, when these non-uniformed individuals bravely rescue another, or put the well-being of someone else before their own, the media acts with surprise. Why is it so shocking that one person could feel enough empathy and responsibility over another to help them out? Wasn't it firstly someone's passion to save lives that drew them towards a career in the fire brigade, for example? And didn't we all have the same principles instilled in us as children to do unto others as we would unto ourselves?

So in principle, yes. I agree that in the corporate sense, uniforms are a good idea. However, I think people need to remember that underneath those uniforms, everyone is the same. We all have the same social responsibility over each other and just because you're not wearing a uniform, it doesn't make you less worthy.

2010-12-05T21:57:00.002Z

Dependence

Being dependent in this society is not viewed positively at all. Those hooked on the booze are checked into Alcoholics Anonymous quicker than they can uncork another bottle. The Government is constantly under pressure to ban 'legal high' after 'legal high' before yet another person falls foul of it. And even the once innocent cigarette is under fire.

It's not only substances. Everyone is born into the world fighting for their independence and it feels like we hit the ground running in every direction as far as we can from those who gave us life in the first place. If our own innate feelings aren't enough, we're all told time after time through the media to buy this or do that and we'll be free from whatever it is that they think is holding us back.

But this month, I'm celebrating my dependence. Without this dependence, I'm not too sure where I would be and I'm not even sure who I would have been. Too often, people interchange dependence with 'crutch', as though it is a bad thing. But how I see it, crutches are instruments that help you take some of the weight off and support you when you can't walk by yourself.

Not only has my dependence helped me walk when I couldn't make it by myself, he's picked me up when I thought I didn't need him. He didn't gloat when I failed and he celebrated with me when I succeed. Being dependent hasn't decreased my achievements. Instead, my life has been enriched because I have someone to thank for matching my strides and encouraging my progress.

So, this month, I'm celebrating five years of dependence. Thank you for being there for me. You know who you are =)

2010-08-23T18:11:00.004+01:00

Do dreams mean anything?

One friend, whom I called 'Big Brother' for the infinite knowledge he spouted in my first year, told me once that it was important to dream, when I confessed that my late nights and early morning lectures meant I conked out and never had any dreams. Naively, I accepted his sage advice without asking "why".

Lately, I have been so tired again from work that I rarely dream, or at least don't remember any dreams that I do have. So it was with amusement that I recall the dream I had last night. I think it was entirely brought about by my bout of FB stalking the other night where I discovered that someone I hadn't seen in years and not thought about in nearly as long is engaged to be married!

After congratulating said person (mentally - no FB pro would leave taletail signs of their discoveries...) I clicked over and thought little more of the juicy information. So how did this seep into my subconscious and into my Zz's? And more importantly, what does it mean?!

Well, I'm not going to go into my dream to spare the poor unsuspecting soul but let's just say it's kept a ROFLing and LOLing to myself all morning. The point I want to steer things towards is whether we should be paying attention to our dreams? Clearly some people think we do. Whole bookcases in stores are devoted to helping us decode our dreams and unlock our potential. On the other hand, many of our childhood nightmares are soothed away by comforting parents who wipe away our tears.

The question I have for psychologists who thoughtfully label our symbology is, how can it be that an animal, an action or a voice in a dream can mean the same thing for everyone? Just as the colour red means danger, passion, death and luck in different societies, could the age-old 'losing teeth' dream mean both stress and the complete opposite for two people? Whilst I have flicked through countless dream analysers and clicked innumerable decoding sites, maybe it is a little naive for people just to accept generic categorisation.

Just as I realise I should have asked 'Big Brother' why dreams are important, maybe we should question why people are so quick to categorise their feelings. To me, dreams are our brain's personal outlet of feelings. I don't know why I dreamed about what I did but I'll be trying to work it out on my own.

2010-08-15T17:32:00.002+01:00

Thought of the day:

A watched tomato plant will not photosynthesise.

Today, I fed my tomato plant, planted my tulip and daffodil bulbs, replanted my money plant and watered my aloe vera. Shall I try a new career as a gardener? Nah...I don't like getting soil under my nails :p

However, as I browsed Waterstones book store with a friend over the weekend, I did linger over sewing books. I think it might be time to grab my mum's old sewing machine and start a new hobby. Tailored clothes anyone? :)

2010-08-15T16:38:00.006+01:00

I spent the past 45 minutes composing an entry and then I clicked "save" and cast it to my drafts. As a viewed my past posts, I realised that there are so many that I simply abandoned mid-way through writing it. Why is it? Maybe they are too deep, too personal or just the wrong tone for my blog. Maybe I don't think the world is ready to know the real me. Or maybe I just stopped thinking half way through and I couldn't channel the partial thoughts in my head through to my fingertips. Whatever the reason, I think those fragments of consciousness will stay tucked behind the scenes for now.

So, what fully-formed thoughts can I put down? This weekend, I was with a friend who came to visit and brought his DSLR with him. His new project is photography, but I think I took more photos on his camera than he did. Notwithstanding this, I must admire his passion for this new hobby. We spent a good hour or so browsing books in the bookshop and flicked interestedly through photography books. One book we paused on was one which gave some suggestions on how to take candid photographs of a subject without provoking a verbal and/or physical barrage. We discussed whether we ourselves would be upset if a stranger snapped away at us as we picked apples from the supermarket shelves or sipped cappuccinos and we agreed that it might be a little intrusive. But we also agreed that if you gave someone prewarning, even the best actor would be doing just that - acting. I'm not sure if my friend will try out any of the writer's suggestions.

In my own way, I suppose the portrait photographer's dilemma does apply to me as well. I read this week's Shortlist and smiled at the topic in Danny Wallace's column - muses. Or rather, his one Muse. Danny spoke of how his friend was increasingly reluctant to tell him about his day in the fear that his mishaps would appear in the magazine the following week. This alarmed Danny. With his realisation of his friend's power over him, he worried that without his Muse's stories he would not have anything to write about. I'm sure my avid readers (ha) have noticed that many of my posts in recent months have been inspired if not provoked by my friends. In fact one of my friends once asked me if a post was about him. He was sure the story was familiar and I wasn't quite certain if he was pleased or not that he helped me pick a topic and was the indirect subject of it. I don't know if this will change the way that he behaves around me in the same way of the Shortlist columnist's friend but I hope he won't stop giving me ideas!

Whatever happens, my posts are often commentaries of the lives and actions of those around me and I will continue to play the observer and hope that people won't mind me taking snapshots of them as they carry on with their activities.

2010-07-09T19:50:00.002+01:00

Thought of the day...

Is IQ or EQ more valued?

The other day, I was LOL-ing, that is Lamenting Out Loud, that although I'm approaching 23 and definitely an adult in the eyes of the law, I am still yet to overtake my parents on the IQ front. When I was growing up, my parents were the limitless fountain of knowledge. Anything I wanted to know, my mum and dad would always be able to spout out the answer as if they already knew I was going to ask it and had researched it beforehand. Now I'm an adult too, I feel that there is still so much I need to learn, so much even I have yet to consider learning. And the most saddening is that although I have decided to leave formal education behind me, my parents have more letters behind their names than I do. So that's settled, my parents are smarter than me.

As I pondered this, a friend quipped, at least you have a high EQ. Noting the puzzled look I cast him, he explained that I am always quick to notice when something's amiss and sense the unspoken (sorry if I took poetic license with what you actually said, I can't remember the actual words :p). As I settled back down and thought about it, I must admit I did agree with his assessment. However, rather than attribute that to my EQ level, I had always considered that this was due to my tendancy to play the part of the spectator.

That got me thinking, in today's dog-eat-dog world, maybe it is useful to be able to sense a change in someone's feelings, their demeanour and potentially their motives before it's too late and it has manifested itself into something you could have avoided. Similiarly, and possibly more dangerously, being able to spot someone's weaknesses could allow someone to manipulate a situation for their own benefit. On the otherhand, how can you compete with knowledge and understanding? Surely being able to outsmart and out-think someone would trump the less knowledgeable in this world where a thirst for information has caused the birth of Wikipedia and Google. I don't have the answer. However, for my peace of mind, I'd say EQ wins. It would be nice to beat my parents at SOMETHING!

So my question to you is, which is more valued in today's society? IQ or EQ?

2010-07-05T23:00:00.003+01:00

A friend told me that instead of waiting for days (or in my case, weeks) for inspiration to hit, spending hours labouring over words and then leaving half-written husks sitting in my drafts, I should just publish snapshots of what I'm thinking. I'm not sure, I think the world of Twitter and Facebook updates is slowly taking over. But who am I to dismiss constructive criticism without trying it out?

My thought of the day...

Why is it that authors always construct this fantasy hero in their love stories? They are invariably sensitive, read poetry/play instruments/write songs, are witty to a fault, and, how could I forget, have the body of a stone-chiselled Adonis. I haven't quite worked it out yet. Is it to make men in real life look lame and women perpetually discontent?

The long and lonely commute lends well to my tendancies to absorb the idealised Man (capital M just to further raise this figure on a pedestal out of the mere mortal's reach). Between each page turn, I glance around me on the bus and the train. Could that guy have what it takes to overcome his pride and declare his love "ardently" to the apple of his eye? Or maybe that one across the aisle could be the One to make "parting such sweet sorrow". But alas, the sunlight hits them at a bad angle and Mr Darcy and Romeo are revealed to be no more than another suit with a big nose or the wrong taste in aftershave.

Maybe I'm looking at it in the wrong way. Big Nose might really be someone's Mr Darcy, and stinky guy could be the one you fake your death for. I guess one reason why the hero in the novel is so perfect is that he has universal appeal. I'm sure if we were confronted with him in reality, dazzling teeth and all, we'd be so overwhelmed (not least by the sparkles bouncing off the gnashers) that he'd actually turn us off. Instead, we pick the parts of Mr Perfect that we like and fade out the bits that we can live without. So, authors construct this guy to hedge their bets. If he was pure rockstar, the groupies would love him forever, but the librarian might wrinkle her nose. Similarly, a poet in a cravat and a penchance for sherry might make one person weak at the knees and another take up long distance running. No one is right for everyone. That's why Mr Right only comes in singular form and not plural.

...but I do sometimes wish the Boy could throw a little Shakespeare into conversation every now again. Anyone who could hold a conversation in iambic pentameter would get my attention in a heartbeat!

2010-05-06T19:53:00.002+01:00

Making history?

Today, I cast my first ever parliamentary vote. I made my mark with confidence and pushed the slip of paper through the gap in the box with a flourish. But how did I know with such certainty that I'd made the right decision? Once the anonymous bit of paper falls through the slot, it has mingled in with everyone else's opinion and you can't retrieve it. Behind the polling officers' heads, the sign politely but firmly reminds us that we get one vote only.

At work we're told to remain impartial. After all, we've still got a job to do, no matter who ends up running the country tomorrow morning. Despite this, conversation for the last few weeks has been resoundedly surrounding the election. We all openly discuss our secret ballot and weigh the pro's and con's of each party. The ferver is clearly more apparent than I have ever experienced. Then again, last time around (2005), I was just months shy of qualifying for my vote. In sixth form, few of my peers made the effort to travel to the polling station around the corner or even pay much attention to the colourful array of campaign leaflets littering their doorsteps. I could barely contain my frustration that those given the privilege to help decide the governance for the next four years were wasting their chance.

I'm not saying that I avidly follow politics and policy changes in the government. There are so many changes, big and small happening every day, many of which are so complicated and jargon-filled that I can't even pretend to understand everything. However, I have always tried my best to at least follow the basic principles that the major parties stand for. The first time I was fully conscious of the elections was when Tony Blair steered the Labour Party into power in 1997. I remember sitting in the front seat of the car, as my dad drove us home from the airport having just landed back in the UK from our holiday. My brother and sister were snoozing in the back seat and my dad had the radio murmering quietly when the results were announced. Although I was just turning 10 years old and by far too young to understand the ramifications of this change in government, I did get the impression of how monumentous this was for the country. The cheers over the radio and the excited voice of the commentator contrasted so starkly with the hushed quietness in the car and the darkened streets outside and only proved to accentuate the importance of that moment, the precise section of time where things changed to how they are now.

That was 13 years ago. People's attitudes to certain parties have changed since then. It wouldn't be far from the truth for me to say that each of the major parties and some of the smaller ones have had a roller coaster few months in terms of popularity and faith. This is the one time where one small gesture can make a huge difference in a great scale.

...But for some reason, as I type this entry, I can't help thinking of something I saw on the bus en-route to cast my vote. I saw a slight, little old lady walking down the road. She had a knitted bobble-hat on, a warm coat and in her hands she held a plastic bag and a litter collector. I realised, as the bus zoomed passed, that she was picking up litter in from the streets. I don't know if she had been asked to do it, or if she was doing it for other reasons. But I knew that her small action here was also making a difference to her community. Casting your vote today can make a huge change tomorrow. But other small gestures made every day can make a difference too.

2009-11-07T16:25:00.002Z

"Why is it we want so badly to memorialise ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simple attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down." - The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

I'm most of the way through this book now. But a mere 100-odd pages in, this passage stuck in my head. So much so that I noted down the page number just so I could refer back to it at a later date. Why did this passage jump out at me over the previous 100 and what made it linger in my mind a good 400 pages later?

Perhaps it's the relevance of it. Atwood's work is by no means outdated. It was only published in 2001 afterall. Do we still carve our names into tree trunks? Only in love stories, I think. But the idea is the same. We do have an insatiable need to remind others of our existence. Screaming your own name from the top of a mountain is only temporary and with a blink of the eye, it's gone with the wind. Your existence will only be heard by the blades of grass, swaying trees and the rockfaces who will never replicate your cry for others to hear. Who will ever know of your feat unless you take a photo or write it down?

It can be clearly seen on Facebook and other ever-sprouting social networking mediums. Obsessively uploading photographs to tell anyone who's watching what we've seen, where we've been and what we did. Does anyone even care? Maybe a mild curiosity helps fuel the uploading but I'm sure we would carry on doing it even if there was a "dislike" button next to "like". I can't conceal that this post and the rest before it are anything but a trail back to their author. I could just as easily scribble away in a little notebook, hide it under the bed. But then who will ever know?

The question is, why do we have this urge to tell everyone everything? Who first decided to throw caution out of the window and bare all to any voyeur in the ever expanding audience? I guess at the end of the day, all we want is to be noticed. Seen most clearly in the typecast celebrity, we are judged by our actions. So when we do something that defines how we want to be perceived, we do our utmost to ensure that precise moment is immortalised. It's not enough for us to be remembered after we're gone. We want to be remembered right now. We want people to think of us and think of the image of us that we have carefully constructed.

Anyone who knows me, knows of my own fear of being forgotten, left behind. In the fast paced world we live in, people come and go. Life is like a sieve and only the larger than life get caught. It's no wonder we all try to inflate ourselves. The bigger we get, the more noticeable we become. We don't need to work quite so hard waving our hands in the air if we're already the tallest in the crowd.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the passage from Margaret Atwood's book I'm reading. I was impressed with her adeptness. There's not much more to say after she summed it all up so succinctly. I'm not sure whether we're just becoming more obsessed with self-publicity, or maybe we're trying harder because we're just not paying attention anymore. Please take the time to notice those around you. Just because we're quieter, it doesn't mean we've got less to say. Sometimes, we've just got to take the time to stop and listen.

2009-11-02T21:46:00.004Z

In recent times, I've come to discover that friendship is a bit like playing the stock exchange. To get a good return, you have to take a few risks. You pay big to play big. You have to take the risk and give a bit of yourself away to turn an acquaintance into a friendship.

In the current climate, I'm sure most people are familiar with what happens when you make a bad investment. You lose everything - not only what you put in but also your gains and even a little bit of your reputation. But at the same time, a good investment can turn out great. You can find yourself surrounded by that sense of infectious achievement that everyone vies for.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a smart banker knows when something is worth investing in. They know when to splash out and when to just cut their loses. What can I say? I've never been that great with my money.

2009-10-27T22:01:00.002Z

For some strange reason, I really liked walking out of the office and into the twilight after work today. With the clocks going back and the days getting shorter, it was the first of many days when I would be stepping out into the dark after my nine to five. Or rather my 8:30 to 5.

With the streetlights flickering to life and the more conscientious drivers switching from sides to headlights, it was hard to distinguish what was lighting my way. Was it natural light or the artificial kind that was pointing me towards my destination? Each time I paused at a crossing and I looked over my shoulder for passing cars, I noticed the fast approaching darkness snapping at my heels and I sped up. Twilight was coming to an end and the night overtaking.

Symbolically or otherwise, the sun was setting behind the train station and I couldn't tell if I was chasing it or it was just running away. Happily, I reached the platform before the train and in time to see the sun wink at me behind the clouds and the horizon. Glancing down the platform, I noticed for the first time what was now the brightest thing in the sky. It wasn't the sun, it wasn't even the artificial lights. Behind me all along was the moon.

Too often neglected, the moon is always behind your shoulder. We are always so busy chasing our future that we end up forgetting where we came from. It's good, in fact it's great, to have goals and aspirations. But if you forget to tend to your roots then there'll be nothing to hold you upright when you reach the sun. Too many of us are rushing so fast to get somewhere that our ever-shining, ever-patient moon gets left behind. It's only when we let the darkness descend that the moon shines brightest and reminds us of what we left in our footprints and in the shadows.

By the time I got off the train tonight, the sun had truly gone to bed and the moon reigned supreme overhead. And I stopped and took a second to remind myself of my past, my history and the people who helped me get to this stage. Tomorrow I will be chasing the sun again but I know that at the end of the day, the moon will be waiting for me to update him on what new things I added to his memory bank when he was sleeping.

2009-09-19T22:06:00.004+01:00

I've not updated in a loooong time! Well, I'm back! Best get to it then...

So I stumbled across an article on the BBC website yesterday, the way you stumble across articles entitled Do people fall in love on trains? looking forward to some funny light reading. And it was funny, interesting at least. During my reading, one particular line jumped out at me. The article quoted a co-author of a psychology book saying:

"The interesting thing is that people believe the feeling is reciprocated, that something has been shared and that isn't always the case. Even if it is mutual it's not about romance, it's about lust. Humans are wired up to mate, not be romantic."

If a psychologist says something like that, it must be true right? After having read the article, I couldn't help wondering, what's love got to do with it? Who invented the concept of Love and why do we place so much emphasis on it? In one conversation I had with a friend, I suggested that the thing that differentiates a platonic friendship and a relationship is a sexual connection. He instantly dismissed this idea and I'm sure he was slightly shocked with my brashness, although he'd never admit it.

Love is such an abstract idea. It is subjective and unquantifiable. That question on every adolescent couples' lips 'but how much do you love me?' merely emphasises the strangeness of this concept that we place so much weight on. How do you answer that question? Is there a wrong answer? Would you dare feel the wrath unleashed upon a response of 'I love you as much as I can'? I can only guess how many relationships are ended on far more heroic and well-meant answers to the question on Love.

Is it normal for humans to love? Was it created and circulated by some calculating politician, realising that if everyone was searching for love, they'd forget about the aspects of their lives around them that were not so rosy? Maybe it was designed by some religious leader promoting monogamy and hence order in society. Or am I being far too cynical? Is love a sensation, just like pain, warmth and that itch that you can't quite reach? If so, is it innate within us? Just as organisms are drawn to pro-create through natural selection and survival of the fittest, innateness would suggest that love is the euphemism for lust. Do we love people because at the end of the day, that person is the one we want to start a family with, to carry on our genes and lineage? I think it's fair to say that we are (albeit subconsciously) attracted to those we want to mate with, crude as it sounds. Along the same lines, I suppose love is the nametag we stick on the matured form of attraction, of lust.

Please don't take this to be a bashing of love. I am a strong advocate for being in love, for showing love to others and for romance. But are we wired for love? Is love something that we were born with, separate from evolution and Darwinism? Maybe not. Social conditioning causes us to place emphasis on love. Love is just a idealised way of thinking about reproduction and I don't think there's any other way of looking at it. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. If all we've got to look forward to in our lifetimes is making a copy of ourselves, then we might as well have fun with it.

Long Live Love.

2009-06-08T21:02:00.004+01:00

I was chatting to a friend on MSN yesterday and he asked me what >.< meant. Not a little surprised, I explained that it represented an expression of exasperation or frustration. To that he remarked that in his day, they didn't use pictorial expressions to say what they meant.

Ouch.

Does that mean our ability to communicate with words has deteriorated so much that we feel the need to add visuals to get our message across? Disappointedly, I have recently noticed how many times I inject 'emoticons' into my everyday casual written communication. Sticky out tongue to indicate I'm joking or teasing, smiley face to say I'm happy and wink for the cheeky comment.

Back in the olden days, reams and reams of letters would be painstakingly scribbled with perfect margins and identically looping letters. None of these symbols that almost look like a face with a bit of a squint and a lot of imagination. What's changed?

It would be easy to say that it means we don't know how to convey our feelings effectively with pure written word. It would be easy to say that we no longer have a command over language. But that would be to suggest that we have become dumb. It would mean that we literally can't voice our feelings with the very language that we have cultured over the centuries to express what we mean and what we want people to understand.

I have faith in the human brain.

I refuse to believe that our language skills could have gone backwards. Devolution isn't a word in the human vocabulary. To me, it's clear that written language has become far more ephemeral. We don't expect to look back at the messages we sent to someone in the past. In this disposible lifestyle we now indulge, written communication is now an extension of spoken communication.

I remember that statistic people were throwing around in the nineties: body language is x% of communication. I don't remember the exact percentage but I remember it was a pretty high proportion. Scientists analysed the crossing of arms, the flicking of hair and the rolling of eyes - the unspoken words in a conversation. So there's no reason why this body language can't be transferred into the written word.

Any fluent speaker of Instant Messenger or Text will know that you can't write a dictionary or user's guide to the style of language you'd expect to find there any more easily than you can write a convincing guide to the language you'd expect to find in the playground or outside the chippy. At the end of the day, spoken language is full of inflection and idiom. Every speaker is different and so every Instant Messenger is different. It's reasonable, therefore, to assume that some people will use more physical expression in their written language than others.

Looking at it another way, the use of these visual represenations could show a heightened understanding of this cross-over between written and spoken language. The use and comprehension of body language, facial expression and eye contact shows that we're one step closer to understanding not just what people are saying but what they mean. If you put it that way, written language is becoming more of an expression of your feelings than ever before. Poetry is thought to be closest form of human emotion. In that case, I guess we're all slowly becoming poets because these days, there's nothing stopping us from saying what we really mean.

2009-06-01T17:58:00.003+01:00

It's Only Words

One thing I've noticed is I don't think people give enough attention to words. It seems that nothing can be conveyed without action - but in my opinion, doing without thinking can never end well. Anyone who knows me will know I will, can and have fallen in love with words. What you say and the way you say it can change everything. It can make someone stay or leave, love you or hate you, cry or smile. Entire empires have been raised (and collapsed) on mere words. So why have people disregarded the strength of it?

Take the phrase 'making love'. Once upon a time, the most physical making love got was passing a perfumed envelope of declarations into the hands of your paramour. I don't need to tell you what the connotations are now. It makes me sad to think that people have forgotten how to get a message across without throwing a chair through a window. And people have forgotten how to make people listen without wielding a trunchon.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't neglect the power of the spoken and written language. Afterall, our ability to interact in this way is what separates us from animals. People can move me in the ways unknown by what they say to me. Action may leave the most visible impact but our capacity to remember means that words will stay with us long after the cracks have healed. I still have hope that we will remember and regain our capacity to evoke these memories so we don't have to resort to smashing another window, picking another fight or hurting another loved one. I have hope that people will take the time to remember how it feels when someone utters those life-changing words to you and pass that feeling on.

~*~

On a completely unrelated but equally emotional topic...either my personal Alan Titchmarsh and/or his helpful gnome pulled out my tulips in my front garden! Ouch! Maybe someone will replace my favourite flowers of all time with a bunch in my vase? That's what you call WORDS speaking loudly!

Moral of the day: Never leave a man unsupervised.

2009-05-13T17:57:00.002+01:00

The lines on the digital clock morphed into 00:01 and it was today again. She rolled over and and tried to get back to sleep but the drip-drip-drip continued to remind her of her promise to fix the tap tomorrow.

The digit flicked to 00:09 and she realised that sleep was out of reach for today so she jammed on her scruffy trainers and pulled her oversized cardigan over her goose-pimpled arms. She peeped through the curtains and the sky was still dark. It seemed like daytime was still a distant dream of tomorrow. Her feet shuffled towards the door and she grasped the door handle. Nothing. She realised her pile of mess had been shoved against the door and the door couldn't move. Mentally, she scrawled 'tidy room' on her to do list and kicked her books out of the way.

The landing was eerily quiet and she found herself holding her breath, waiting. Then she heard the deep exhalation of her housemate next door and she released her breath in time. Carefully skipping the squeaky steps and dodging the shafts of moonlight from the window, she finally made it to the front door. The chain rattled noisily as she slipped it off the safety latch and within seconds she was surrounded in starlight and midnight blue and whispering tree leaves.

Pacing the glittering pavement, she slide open her phone and scanned her contact list. Who would be awake at this hour? She clicked down, down, down. Highlighting briefly faceless names one by one. A, B, C...she skipped each one with a frown. No one she could wake up, no one who would appreciate her welcoming them into today. And she realised that although she had started her 'today', everyone else was still in yesterday. She felt buoyant. She was one step ahead of the rest. She had this glimpse into what today would bring her before everyone else. She needed to get someone else to enjoy it with her. Opening her phone up again excitedly, she knew exactly who to call. She jabbed 'call' confidently and held it to her ear.

The ring seemed to echo every direction, invading the night, breaking the peace and she guiltily slid shut the phone. She silently apologised to the lamp posts, the sleeping cars, the dandelions nodding at her ankles and carried on walking. One foot in front of the other, she started to grow bored and her brain read through everything she was meant to do tomorrow. She knew it off by heart, she'd scanned it that many times. The list grew longer by the day, always something to do tomorrow.

She needed to call her dentist, she needed to get her car MOT'd, she needed to visit her sister's new baby...well, not so new anymore..., she needed to sign up for the gym and of course that tap. She wasn't worried though. There's always tomorrow.

And as she counted the tasks on her fingers, she skipped off the high pavement edge into the road. Timed perfectly, another person enjoying today, rounded the corner in his 4x4. As they met, both their minds were thinking about tomorrow. For that split-second, they were both simultaneously isolated in their own futures, one step in front of everyone else.

For her, today only lasted a few minutes. For her, tomorrow will always be tomorrow. For her, tomorrow never comes.

My attempt at fiction!! I don't normally do fiction...as you can probably tell! I know serious writers of fiction are very careful to plan and structure their stories before writing them but I just wrote what came to me so it probably doesn't read well! I thought I'd give it a go anyway :) This theme came to me the other night so...there we go!

Oh yeah, moral of the story - don't leave things to tomorrow. If it's worth doing, do it now! It might not end as dramatically as it did for "Her" but you never know if the moment might pass and you wish you told that person how you felt, you wish you sorted things out with an old friend, you wish you helped your mum move that shelf like you promised.

2009-04-18T15:25:00.006+01:00

LBD

They say that every girl has a signature little black dress. The timeless piece of clothing that gives the perfect silhouette to any figure. There is no rule to the shape, the cut, or the length of the dress. It's all about the image that it exudes. The self-confidence that you look good. Not just that - that you look great.

But is that all it is? Is how you look the most important thing? We're constantly being confronted by the outer image. The must-have handbag, leg-lengthening killer heels, the extra-shine shampoo. It's no wonder shopping's an addiction. It's not just the thrill of hitting the shops, it's the thrill of physical improvement.

And I've gotta admit, I have bought into it too. I stare into my wardrobe, fit to bursting and what's running through my head is, 'I've got nothing to wear'. I scan my shoes with discontent and sling handbags over my shoulder with reckless abandon. My eyes linger over the glossy adverts in the magazine, careful to ignore the airbrushing and the hidden pins, and some part of my brain whispers to me, 'I could look like that'.

Of course, another part of me is full of disapproval. The angel on my shoulder tugs at my purse-strings and I remind myself that I don't need to fall into Commercialism's lap. It's what's on the inside that matters, right? 'Beauty is only skin-deep' and 'underneath it all, we're all the same'. The voice of reason is always a little bit closer to my ear and I'm thankful for that voice.

But at the same time, I can't stop my feet from slowing down when I walk past shop-windows and I can't help trying on those heels, these jeans and that dress - just to see how I look in them. And you know what? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I always try to look past appearances and I know that the most important part of a person is their personality. At the same time, I know the importance of presentation. We all love the bows and wrapping paper just as much as the present inside. And I realise that although I don't think I've found my signature Little Black Dress yet, it's not the physical dress that we're looking for but our wrapping paper to the present within.

I guess they weren't far off when they said 'Clothes Maketh the Man'.

2009-03-14T09:57:00.000Z

Perspective

The other day, a little early for a friendly gathering, the boy and I drove down to the reservoir. More than a little windy, we parked up the car in the gravel car park looking out at the expanse of water.

We stared out in front of us, the radio murmuring quietly at our feet, behind out ears and from other locations around the car that I can never find. I asked the boy what he could see and the noted the level of the water, the picnic bench which, although he couldn't see it, he knew still bore the tell-tale scorch marks of a disposable barbeque, the red-nose girl clinging on to her father's anorak as they flew past our windscreen on a bike.

Turning to the same direction, I noted the seagulls swooping and diving, milimetres from the water, milimetres from the treetops and milimetres from each other. I saw the muddy track that disappeared behind the curve of the reservoir covered in the mix of anonymous footprints and I saw the golden retriever weaving in and out of the protective railing - safe one second, verging on the danger the next.

I realised that although we were looking in the same direction, sharing the same air and within touching distance of each other, what we saw was totally different. Thinking back to those art lessons in the dusty art block at school, I remembered those lessons where we circled our subject with our paper and pencil, each drawing exactly what we saw. At the end, the teacher would hold up our drawings side-by-side and everyone's was slightly different. Even the person sat next to you saw a different curve to the bowl, or a different reflection on the vase.

And I looked to my left and to my right and I surveyed the different cars, all a different colour, shape and model all facing the reservoir. I wondered what they could see. I could see that some had their engines on, with fumes curling out of the pipe for a second before being snatched away by the wind. Each would have a different sound greet their ears, from the burble of their engine, to the screech of the chart-topper, to the whistle of the wind through the gap in their window.

Some were closer to the water's edge and some were sat up taller in their car seats. They might have seen the water lapping the side of the reservoir wall. But I don't know for sure because that wasn't my perspective.

Everyone sees things differently. It's not only what you see with your eyes that is different. Your own perception is based on your history, your background, your experiences. No matter how close you are to someone physically, they'll always be a little to your right or your left, in the next seat along or one centremetre taller and what they perceive will be that little bit different.

I can't always understand why someone has done something, or why they have reacted to an event in that way. But I don't think I need to understand. From now on, I think it's best to keep an open-mind. You can't see things through the eyes of anyone else but yourself so maybe it's best to just accept that.

Vive la difference.

2009-01-14T22:25:00.000Z

Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

- William Congreve The Mourning Bride, 1697

I think it's pretty clear what Congreve meant when he composed these immortal lines. Hurt a woman and you'll end up in the hot and sticky clime of the Underworld. The thing that puzzles me is why Congreve has engendered Fury. Is Congreve suggesting that the sex of the person makes them more or less vengeful?

As little Miss Specator I've seen how people have coped with being hurt. Sadness, depression, denial and anger. So are women getting more and more inclined to turn to anger these days? And if so, why?

It's as if it's a defence mechanism. If someone hurts you, intentionally...unintentionally...the distinction isn't clear through the tears...the only option for some is to hurt that person back. In a way, this links back to my previous post. If a woman's wrath really is worse than a man's, does this mean that women are less inclined to forgive?

It's very easy to dismiss this as the outpouring of female sensitivity and emotion. But following this same stream of thought, is anger not considered a masculine reaction? So perhaps the reason Man is so fearful of Woman Scorned because they don't want women enpowered by one of the few acceptable emotions for men.

I don't really want to start on a feminist rant against the oppression of women over the centuries. Truly, I think that men and women are just as capable of commanding Hell if scorned. The difference, I guess, is that at the end of the day that the very contrast between the rosy-cheeked, cherubic female waif that men idealise and the Medusa that men can create scares them.

Congreve not only created poetry when he composed these lines, he made a very relevant social comment. Does forgiveness show strength or weakness? On observation of two separate instances, I've seen both sides of the spectrum. Love and Hatred are as powerful as the other so it's no wonder that they can evoke similar reactions. I've seen and shared a shadow of the pain when love breaks down. And I can't help but admire the strength of prevailing forgiveness.

Corresponding to this, I've heard, and admittedly, joined in the semi-jovial, semi-serious mocking of the 'ex'. Surely it can't hurt when it's said in jest. On the outside, it seems to show strength - a couldn't-care-less attitude can only prove that you're over it, right?

At the end of this blog, I'm no closer to telling if Woman Scorn'd really can bring Hell to the surface. What I have discovered is that, having weighed up both sides of the human reaction to 'Love to Hatred turn'd', I think I do prefer forgiveness.

So I guess the subtitle to this post can be Forgive and Forget pt.II

2009-01-02T17:44:00.000Z

Forgive and Forget

Isn't that what they always say at the end of a relationship-gone-sour? Or even when someone knocks into you in the supermarket. Just forgive and forget.

The question I've been thinking of is which one is easier to do? When I think of the word forgive, I think of removing all feelings of hurt or upset that someone or something has caused me. To me, forgiving someone seems the hardest to do because emotion is the driving force of many of my decisions. How can I force myself to do something that my emotions won't let me do?

I know Dawson's Creek was the fountain of all teenage wisedom with its longwinded and pseudo-profound dialogue (pysche!) but I must say one line has stuck in my head all these years. Cast your minds back to the days when Pacey was going out with Andie. I'm not ashamed to admit I remember the names of the characters, so work with me ok?

Anyway, once Pacey discovered that Andie had betrayed him, he said the immortal lines: 'I can forgive, but I can never, ever forget' (possibly paraphrased).

It's weird that just one line out of thousands, and trust me - there were thousands of lines in that show - would stay with me all these years. It's like a lingering smell on your fingers after you've chopped onions, or a kink in your hair that you can't flatten even after brushing it till you're almost bald.

Could it be possible that it is easier to forgive than forget? According to trusty dictionary.com, to forgive is "To give up resentment or claim to requital on account of (an offense or wrong); to remit the penalty of; to pardon; -- said in reference to the act forgiven."

They say people have an amazing ability to forgive. If you consider forgiveness as remitting the penalty of something, I guess forgiveness means to stop punishing yourself as well as those around you for something that has happened.

Someone recently spoke to me about something that they were having trouble forgiving. After all the memories and the history, forgiving seemed like the last thing they wanted to do. But once we started thinking about it, we realised we had forgiving and forgetting mixed up. No one said that we had to pretend that the hurt never happened. No one said we had to forget about the person and the memories and what caused the pain.

In actual fact, I think it's important that you don't forget. I've always said that your past makes you who you are. To have survived your personal history can only be a positive thing. Memories are like Girls Guide badges - war scars that prove that you've been there, done that. To remember is to accept that something happened. Denial is just as bad as hurting yourself by refusing to forgive.

At the end of the day, I don't think it's easy to forget things. Little things can prompt a memory to resurface. A song, the touch of a material, some memories just manage to work themselves to the top all by itself. It's almost impossible to forget so I say you shouldn't fight it. I'm not going to say that it's easy to forgive. But sometimes it's just easier on yourself.

Forgive and forget? Let's just take one step at a time.

2008-11-14T18:31:00.000Z

So I'm part-way through Huxley's 'Brave New World' and I can't help being stunned by the prophetic tone of what the entire book is based on.

This book, written in 1932, does away with the world as we know it and has replaced it with test tube babies, socially accepted and perpetuated caste system and a helicopter per person. Well, perhaps we're not quite there with the helicopter...

I'm shocked when I realise that test tube babies are no longer as ridiculous as it once was. This may sound like old news but what Huxley has proposed in his novel is that people are created in a factory with chemicals injected into you at various intervals, with certain physical conditions subjected to the semi-formed bodies and decanted - not born as families are now a dirty word - only to be subjected to more social conditioning.

To think of the outcry when scientists have proposed that we select healthier embryoes to avoid genetic disease. In this world, foetus are selected to form a lower caste, uglier, shorter, dumber, so that they can do the menial and physical labour. From our perspective, behind our laws and morals, this does border on the ridiculous. We would never allow that, right?

But the part of Huxley's world that most fascinates me is the social conditioning that happens after decanting. From the moment the child is decanted, he or she is fed rhymes and phrases and lessons and beliefs on and on and on. From these audio lessons, they are taught what to believe, how to act. Society and economy is stable purely because they don't know any different. Lower castes would never imagine trying to break past the glass ceiling because they have been taught that they belong to their group. Higher castes would never sympathise with the lower castes because to them, to be anywhere but where they are disgusts them. But then again...that would never happen, right?

Whilst reading the novel there's a constant nagging feeling at the back of my mind. Maybe we aren't being probed before we're decanted. But what about the social conditioning? We might feel we are in control over our own decisions, our own choices and our own beliefs but can you truly say you're not affected by the constant bombardment of shiny, smily-faced advertisements on the tv, on light-up billboard, on that bus that just drove past your window and through the earphones you're listening to?

What about the nursery rhymes and the bed time stories you hear as a child? All you need is someone to utter the first syllable of the first line of a song and you're singing a song of sixpence. The mind is a powerful thing but it is easily tamed, easily managed and scariest of all, easily controlled.

The introduction of 'Brave New World' by Margaret Attwood compared this novel to Orwell's nineteeneightyfour and I couldn't agree more. People find time to criticise totalitarian states with their rules and punishments whilst proudly patting themselves on the back for the democratic society they belong to. But have they thought about how bound they are to socially ruled expectations? We self-indulgently pick the most brightly packaged washing powder and the sleekest and most expensive family car because we think that shows that we have the choice and we choose that brand over another. We don't realise that we have already been conditioned to choose it. Some higher power already knows what we will choose before the product is even on the shelf.

It scares me to think that this life of democracy, free will and mobility could be the seedling to Huxley's world. I'm not sure what reception this novel would have had when it was first published, but as of today, the life and characters of 'Brave New World' don't seem to far away.

Anyway, I've nearly finished that book. Once I've reached the last page, I'll be able to put it down, let the dust settle on those thoughts and pick up the next book in my waiting list - the third in Phillip Pullman's trilogy. Maybe from reading that book I'll be able to treat Huxley's work of satirical fiction in the same way as Pullman's stories - just fairytale.

2008-11-07T21:28:00.001Z

We will always eat the apple.

The satisfying piercing of the skin is only satisfying because you've broken through it. You don't have time to feel your teeth conquer its only defence before you're faced with fleshy softness. Juice runs automatically into your mouth. You don't invite it. Rushing in like it owns the place. Doesn't matter though because its arrival is gratifying. You welcome it almost as soon as you resent it.

Why is knowledge an apple? And why is knowledge a bad thing? Man's first sin is rewarded now. To think is to be. We champion ourselves with the label of consciousness. We separate ourselves from beasts and objects because we think. We know. We improve.

Is it significant that woman is blamed for eating the apple? They say that women are given the short straw in religion. Woman caused humankind to be banished from paradise. Woman is disobedient. Woman is weak to temptation. But wait a minute, if it wasn't for woman where would we be now? Would we be the beasts that we distance ourselves from now?

Who had the wisdom to sum up knowledge in an apple? An apple is unassuming. There are no prickly leaves around it. There is no tough impenetrable shell. It isn't hard to reach. And the simple taste of it is so subtle there is no reason to repel it. So knowledge is within our grasp. We can get to the middle of it with one bite.

Rather than sinful, choosing the apple seems to suggest that knowledge shouldn't be something to shy away from. To grasp the apple is to hold the intent to learn in your hand. What comes after is what you anticipate. Why do you eat the apple? The same reason you eat anything. You bite into it to take a piece of it. To satisfy your craving for what is in your hand. You want to understand what is in your hand. But when you bite into the apple you release the scent, the juice, the flavour. Not only do you now know the apple, you know what the apple is made of.

What I think I'm trying to say is that knowledge is something we can all enjoy on purpose or accidentally. Despite the villainy shown in the depiction of Woman, I admire her for taking the first step. It wasn't weakness but wisdom. Who would have thought that something so powerful could be found in something so ordinary? You know what the best thing about it is? Right in the middle, when you've almost devoured the whole apple and you feel a tiny bit guilty with how fast it's all gone...you see the tiny seed right in the middle. It's only the fraction of the size of its parent, but it's a sign of new life. New knowledge that will grow, blossom, and produce new bitesized pieces of knowledge for others to devour.

At the end of the day, every Man and Woman now will always eat the apple. And I'm glad of it.

2008-08-12T22:08:00.000+01:00

It took 30-odd minutes of staring at the back of someone's head with the rattling sound of a loose panel somewhere behind me for me to realise that maybe there are some benefits to the mundane Mondays.

I've been working for about one and a half months and not long ago I was moaning that any creative talents remaining within me were slowly crumbling at the heel of my smart leather shoes. But as the bus lurched backwards and forwards in the stubborn stream of traffic, I thought about all the things that summed up my experiences so far.

People around me have been sunning themselves in foreign countries, documenting their experiences on sunny photos. Flashing grins and bug-eyed sunglasses. They ask me what I've been doing all this time. What can I say? I've been sitting at a desk, doing my job. It's hardly glamorous. There are no captivating photographs. There are no tan lines.

To those on the outside, it's hard to understand the small triumphs of getting a photo ID card. It's barely comprehensible when we compare our neck straps and timesheets. But within the little microcosm I'm existing in, it is these small things that mean so much to me.

Typical to every workplace is the pyramid. The carefully observed office hierarchy that is secretly respected and hated; constantly being enforced and rebelled at. It doesn't mean much when you walk out through the revolving glass door. But when you step into the bubble, it means everything to find your place in that pyramid and hang on.

Every workplace has people you can call your friends and people you call your colleagues. In the playground, everyone is on your Christmas card list and everyone will be at your birthday party. In the office, the boundaries are a little fuzzier. It sounds a little strange to write it here and maybe a little cruel. You can't be sure that the smiling person sitting next to you will hold your hair back in the loos when you vomit, and you can't be sure that you'd do it for them either. I'm lucky that I've made a couple of good friends so far. I hope I appreciate them more now than I could have in the days when everyone in your class is on your party invite list.

Maybe it's the repetitive nature of my job that is making me notice the smaller things around me. Making me appreciate them more. Work comes in, work goes out. Each completed task is like a mini victory, stamped out on my personal scorecard and then publicised on the workflow board.

Maybe I should thank the mundane Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays...maybe they are teaching me to grow up and look around myself. I can't claim that this summer has been filled with action and danger. But it has been filled with a brainful of little things that I could have only experienced by accepting this path.

I don't expect anyone to relate to this post, or even understand it. A little part of me doesn't understand it either. But I'm sure that when I make my way through the revolving doors again tomorrow morning and settle back into the routine, I'll think about this post and all the thoughts I've tried to put down here will make perfect sense. And that will be another little memory that slots into place and shapes my outlook for the rest of the day.

2008-06-24T16:31:00.000+01:00

Why stepping out of the comfort zone can be good.

Wow, it's been such a long time since I blogged. I can think of ten thousand excuses. I left my brain on the bus. I fell down a well and have only just managed to crawl out. My dog ate my computer. But excuses are just excuses at the end of the day. Anyway, I finally saw something to spark myself into motion about 30 minutes ago. A frog.

A frog? What's so awe-inspiring and magical about a frog? I confess to have seen hundreds of frogs in my lifetime. Well, that might be an exaggeration but let's just say my brother was one of those disgusting boys who bullied and raced insects and other wildlife in the garden as a child. And next door had a pond.

What was so interesting about this frog was that I spied it amongst the branches and bushes that had been piled at the back of the garden in a frenzy of wildeness-control last week. My garden is green. It has apple trees and rose bushes and all manner of shrubbery I couldn't even pretend to recognise. But there is no water. There is no pond, or stream, or even a bird bath. This little frog had wandered somehow from somewhere and was was quite happily chilling out in slow-drying shrubs.

I know that frogs are physically able to live without water for some time. And I know it's not unusual for them to be spotted away from flowing streams and burbling brooks. But there was something about spotting the frog so suddenly that made me think. I'm at that stage in my life where I could become anything. Of course I can't walk into a hospital and become their top neurosurgeon. It's not like I spotted the frog floating in outer space. But it's time for me to step out of my comfort zone of the dictated direction of travel. I could stick to the leafy marshlands where I can dip back into the pond whenever I've had enough. Or I could try to edge a little further afield. Like that frog, I might surprise a few people when they spot me, but it's only from hopping that little bit further and further from expectation that I can truly say I have made the most of the opportunity that I am now faced with.

So if you spot me in an unexpected place, don't be shocked...and don't just throw more discarded branches at me as I did with the frog (...oops...); take it as proof that I have followed the advice from a frog and built the courage to step outside of the marshland.

2008-04-15T16:25:00.000+01:00

"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul." Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I played the violin today. For the first time in about a year. It wasn't a random idea to pick up my beloved string instrument. I have been wanting to play it for a while but never made the time to do it. Several things prompted me to. My sister has recently joined a local orchestra and when I went home, I heard her playing - starting methodically. Sevcik first, the set pieces second. Non-instrument players probably won't have heard of Sevcik, and I'll admit before me and my sister switched violin teachers, I hadn't either. At first we were horrified to have to slave over monotonous, repetitive bowing exercises. Slight variations, but essentially, the bow hadn't left the A-string, for twenty-lines. But now we are eternally grateful to our violin teacher and Mr Sevcik himself for shaping our strong bowing technique and, indirectly, our tricep muscles!

Anyone who has learn a skill or art knows how hard it is to make something look or sound easy. Listening to the flurry of the fast paced Allegro, you forget the painstaking hours of learning the parts stroke after stroke, blow by blow, at sixty beats per minute. To the listener, it sounds like an accidental but beautiful clash of instruments all miraculously in time and in key. It sounds like an aural display of the composer's precise emotion at that one moment in time. The baring of their soul.

This brings me to the second reason I finally found my violin again from under my bed. On the train back from home, I opened the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I had bought it months and months ago in an overly enthusiastic bid to cross off another handful of books before the end of the summer. Like a true English student, I started by reading the introduction. I used to always skip that part. It isn't written by the author, how important can it possibly be if the author didn't think to include it in their final draft? But this time I read it, reminding myself of the aesthetic movement and the idea of Art for Art's Sake.

I admit that, after indulging in the introduction, I left myself with little time to read much of the novel before the voice above my head announced that I was arriving at my stop. As a rough guide, let's say I am a couple of pages shy of chapter three. But that is enough for me to start to grow attached to Lord Henry Wotton and Basil Hallward. Lord Henry epitomises the dandy, the gentleman. And just reading his melodic, rich, involving speech is to suround yourself in the velvety and addictive essence of aestheticism. You can't help but be drawn to him just as Dorian Gray is. Almost every word he said struck a chord in me. Art is beautiful. Beauty is beautiful but that is all it is. There is no reason for its beauty. No function for it. But it is attractive and magnetic all the same. And that is all we need from beauty.

So today I played the violin just for the music. For once I wasn't doing it to prepare for an assessment. I wasn't doing it to finish an essay. I wasn't doing it because I had a deadline. I played the violin to surround myself in music. And it awoke my aural senses as well as my physical memories of holding the violin. And these senses awoke my soul. I'm glad I took the time to play music just for music's sake. Maybe it's time for an aesthetics revival. People need to live a little just because we're alive. Not because we're striving for something that isn't in the here and now.

2008-02-25T17:49:00.000Z

Go away
Give me a chance to miss you
Say goodbye
It'll make me want to kiss you

(Pink 'Leave me alone, I'm lonely')

I know I haven't been blogging in a long time and I didn't really have any intention to but on the walk home just now, I couldn't stop hearing the lyrics above in my head. Admittedly I had been listening to the song and singing along just before leaving for uni, but let's pretend that it was actually a preordained visit from my Muse.

Essentially, the lyrics are a rewrite of the popular saying Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder, put to popular music by a pretty face. Is it true that absence makes the heart grow fonder? I know when I'm separated from my boyfriend, no matter for how long or how short the period, I literally count down the days till I see him again, miss him like crazy and need him to come back. Right now. But I also know couples who function perfectly well and are no less romantic, loving, or matched just because they live tens, or even hundreds of miles apart. So what's the difference?

I'm no marriage counsellor (I thought I'd clarify that before anyone takes my words as gospel), but I can usually tell a strong relationship from a lustfilled fling. The word of the day is trust. There's no good being in a relationship with someone you have to check up on every second of the day. Don't get me wrong, you're allowed - in fact I recommend it - to think about your partner whenever you have a spare minute but to question their whereabouts is not only damaging to your mental health, but it's damages your relationship with your innocently interrogated partner.

Distance can be the biggest obstacle in a relationship, and personally I would find it a killer, but it should never be used as an excuse. You can say the L-word till you're blue in the face but if you have gone into a relationship, knowing fully that distance is going to be a factor, then it's just another compromise to take into account. If the Absence idiom isn't working for you, then you've gotta be cruel to be kind. They say hope can save you. But false hope goes the other way. The slower you pull the plaster off, the more it will hurt.

Looking at those poignant opening lines I guess Pink is right. When you're living in each other's pockets, you forget to appreciate what you've got. But if you still can't appreciate what you have when you're apart, then maybe it's not worth the heartache. The L-word is just that. A word. You shouldn't need to verbalise it to justify a bad decision. Love is only really love when it's reciprocated.

~^*Cynical reality rant over!*^~
I hope anyone who is faced with this situation will know when to take a bad decision and make it right.

2008-01-10T17:56:00.000Z

In a topsy-turvy start to today's entry, my muse actually visited me on the walk to uni, rather than on the way back. Just as well really, as it was positively tipping it down on the way back and I was devoting my attention wholeheartedly to keeping my hood on my head and my eyes on the road for puddles.

This week has seen my stress levels go from the extremes of quadruple figures to a nice, normal, uni-induced but altogether acceptable simmer. I'm sure the word 'deadlines' speaks a thousand words to most people. Well I had three. Anyway, the topic of this entry is not deadlines so to speak, but one deadline in particular.

At the risk of rewriting my essay, probably ten times worse, I found the topic of ecolinguistics of greater interest by the end of the essay than at first glance. The whole basis of the module was whether the way we talk about something shapes the way we perceive it. The argument of some of these ecolinguistics was that the English language, from word choice right down to grammatical structure, was encouraging an indifference or even an acceptance of the current state of the environment. For example, 'harvesting timber' wrongly suggests that the lumberjacks have a right to take the wood as a reward for their hard work. Instead, people should be encouraged to call it...I dunno...decapitating ancient leafy organisms? Ok so that's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

Now, I don't know about you, but this call for a restructuring of the language to consciously shape people's perceptions of reality reaks suspiciously of Mr. Orwell's Nineteen-eighty-four. Linguists may be right when they say that the way we talk about something shapes our view of the subject, but are these linguists in the position to change the language? As spokespersons for the environment, some could argue that these linguists have not only the right, but the responsibility, to apply the breaks to human apathy before it's too late.

But can language really be controlled like that? Nineteen-eighty-four seems to be testament that there will be always some that break free from the rule. Obviously, the story didn't end well for the protagonist, but I'm hoping that in reality, the ruling ecolinguists won't treat offenders in the same way! The mind is an old organ that should not be underestimated. I don't think that changing a few words can really change people's perceptions. It can only be through communication that people can be influenced. And then maybe language will change accordingly. Language has changed almost beyond recognition over the history of its existence and I have every faith that it will continue to change. But it will change how and when it wants to. We are merely users of language. No one is ever truly master of it.

2007-12-19T10:50:00.000Z

One Hundred Years of the Bra!

Earlier this week saw the 100th Birthday of the bra. I was planning on writing this post on the actual day but I've been ill and busy. In fact I'm still ill and busy but I don't feel like getting up yet, so here I am.

Back on topic. The TV programme I was watching a couple of days ago did a feature story on the history of the bra and, although it was far too brief for such a necessary invention, it did teach me a thing or two. The changing shape of the bra, from wearing in conjunction with the corset, to flattening out (god forbid) the body to that of a boy's, to celebrating the more curvacious figure, was fascinating to me. Not because I wasn't already familiar with the everchanging fashions of the modern woman, but because of how something as small and insignificant as an item of underwear can tell you so much about society.

Sound far-fetched? I'm sure every girl remembers their first bra. Socially, the bra is a marker for womanhood. The school changing rooms was the place to strut your stuff in your new training bra, making sure everyone saw how your figure was developing. For better or for worse, young people have always been in a hurry to grow up. Boys want to be men with broad chests and moustaches, and girls strive for that idealised hip-to-waist ratio.

Fast-forward about 30-40 years and rather than to celebrate your progression into adulthood, women see bras as a godsend for appearing younger and, for lack of a better word, perkier. It seems women are in a no-win situation. The culture we live in hurry young girls into womanhood but once we get there, we are expected to stay there, frozen on a pedestal of the perfect age. And that is provided we are lucky enough to naturally grow up with this socially desired figure. So it's no wonder there are women all over the world frantically pressing the pause button on the remote control of development they so happily fast-forwarded before.

And people seem bewildered at the women who shun bras and apparently burn them. Having said all of the above, it doesn't seem ridiculous that some women see bras as oppressive, physically and psychologically. Bras and physical expectations can feel almost synonymous. There's no denying that bras are designed to make women's bodies appear a certain way. Wonderbras give women a push in the right direction, whilst 'chicken fillets' give the impression of fuller breasts. Whoever said that women's breasts needed improving? All women, whatever cupsize, have something there, or there wouldn't be such an interest in breasts in the first place.

Don't label me as a bra-burning feminist. I've always seen myself as a equalist. And I don't think I live in a bubble, I know society has and will continue to influence my opinions. And no, I don't let it all hang out, I've been culturally programmed to accept the norm, just as many other people are. And of course every woman has that moment every now and again where they look back and forth from the mirror to the glossy magazine. But, ladies, remember, appearances are deceiving. And we have 100 years of the bra to thank for that.

2007-11-11T10:44:00.001Z

Writing about nothing

I can't think about anything to write, not having had any long contemplative walks for a week now (it's reading week at the moment). I remember I was writing about something last time but I stopped because I couldn't get down exactly what I was thinking, exactly what I was feeling in my walk.

I love the walk back from uni. The walk to uni never has the same effect. I'm always rushing to my classes or lectures. The dreaded feeling of being late for something. I'm very rarely late though. My punctuality tends to frustrate me when I'm the first one there. What was the point of rushing, breaking out in sweat and getting out of breath when the other party hasn't bothered to do the same?

The walks home are the best. I get to dawdle, stare up at the sky, kick up the leaves and, best of all, reflect. My best ideas, my most thoughtful decisions are made on that 25-30 minute walk. Maybe that's why I'm going a little stir crazy at the minute. No walking this week really. I've become a fatty no-brains. Haha...

I'm reading a book at the moment. It's called The Memory Keeper's Daughter. It's about a couple who have twins and one has Downs Syndrome. To spare the wife the distress of having a daughter who could potentially die young after years of hardship and worry, the doctor-husband asks his nurse to take the daughter to an institution. Instead the nurse takes the daughter and raises her as her own. The book follows the lives of the separated twins and how the secrets the characters all hold shape and unshape them.
At the same time, I've recently started volunteering at Midland Mencap Saturday playscheme. The children there all have varying degrees of learning difficulties which means each child has to be treated differently. These two instances seem to coincide on purpose. Whilst I know I can never begin to properly understand what the parents feel like, this book is teaching me some of the difficult decisions that someone in their position has to make. I guess I'm starting to appreciate how hard it is to be a parent fullstop, and, on top of all that, to have to make such heartbreaking decisions that could change your life forever.

The book is so dense with secrets that I feel like a naughty eavesdropper. I can feel how they want to tell the world, just so they don't have to hide the terrible truths any longer. But to reveal the secrets could destroy everything. It makes life seem to fragile. It's balanced on the tip of a tiny pinprick, and if you take one step to the side, you could plunge into the darkness. When you are a child, you can take leaps and bounds to the side - and forward and backwards for that matter - as long as you come back to the centre at the end. As you get older, the locus, the area for error, gets smaller and smaller until it becomes that pinprick. The thought of being on that pinprick scares me. Its scares me now more than on page one of the book. I guess that's why I am enjoying reading this book. It has taken me forward in time to the pinprick years, but at the same time, I can still step back and enjoy the size of my locus for the time being.

There, I told you this would be a blog of nothing. I need my walks home again!!

2007-10-10T21:47:00.000+01:00

When you wish upon a star...

As a dedicated Facebook user, it's only natural for me to do a spot of FB stalking now and again. It's not unusual to come out of a good stalking with an interesting tid-bit or two, and the other day was no exception. On reading a friend's "About Me" section, I stumbled across this line: Once I wished upon a star but it didn't come true (paraphrased).

I read the comment a few times over, trying to decide what I thought about it. My first thought was that it was a beautifully written assessment on the (un)fairness of life. How come dreams don't come true? The song in Pinnochio said that it makes no difference who you are. And that anything your heart desires would come true.

But then on the third or fourth read of the line, I started thinking that this poetically admirable line was not so morally admirable. Did my friend mean that she closed her eyes really, really tightly and said please-with-a-cherry-on-top, and when that didn't work, she just gave up? Didn't she pay attention when watching those Disney films? Every story has a moral lesson. You can't get something for nothing. Even poor Pinnochio had to suffer being kidnapped by a shifty fox, exploitation by a fat puppet-leader, transforming into a donkey and being swallowed by a whale before he could be a real boy.

I've got to admit that I've wish upon a star more than once. I wonder if it's always the same star. There's something nice about thinking that all my own wishes are being stored up in one star in the sky and one day they will all shower down onto me like a big jackpot win. But with any serious wish, a proper one that matters if it will be fulfilled or not, I don't leave it up to the heavens. I work for it. Like I said, nothing comes from nothing. If you really wish you could get that promotion, you not only find the brightest star in the night sky, but you find the brightest star within yourself, and let it shine through. If you really wish you would get noticed by that special someone, you can store up the wishes in your personal star, but you've also got to stand up and work up the courage to say hi.

There's nothing wrong with wishing upon a star, but you can't give up when your wishes don't come true all at once. Your fairy godmother can only do so much by herself. Don't stop wishing - if you work hard enough, it might really come true. But if you were ever like 7yr old me, no matter how hard you work on your parents...you probably won't get a pony.

2007-10-01T12:43:00.000+01:00

I drew back my bedroom curtains this morning and my driveway has been decorated by crispy brown leaves. I'm sure they weren't there last night. Whay happened when I was sleeping? Did a michevious pixie visit my road, scattering handfuls of crunchy golden offerings? Was it a windy night, bringing a new breed of everbrown into the area? Or is it just that Autumn is arriving? Thinking about it, I realise that today is the 1st October, which is well and truly Autumn. But I can't help feeling a bit cheated. How can it be Autumn already when Summer never came? How can it already be another new year at uni? My FINAL year.

And that is what it all boils down to. My final year at uni starts today. I can still vividly remember my first day at uni. Maybe it's a case of pathetic fallacy that I definitely recall the weather then as being blue skies and sun - definitely t-shirt weather. Today, the sky is a block of off-white, and anyone who has been in the UK for the past couple of weeks knows the temperature as been on the wrong side of double figures.

It's like the skies are telling me to stay at home...don't come outside, I might rain on you. Who would argue with logic like that? I do kinda feel like hiding away. I know that if I leave the house today and go to this first seminar, it will mean I have to go to the next seminar, and the one after that too. It will mean that another year has started and it will go just as fast as the last two, and before I know it, I will be at the end of the year, facing the rest of my life.

This is another blog of doubt. I'm scared of growing up. I don't know what is happening tomorrow, let alone what is happening after the next 9months that like to move in fast-forward. But I know that at 5pm, I will walk out of the seminar and I will forget about these doubts. I will get back into the swing of uni and I will let time run as fast as it wants. I've packed my bag now. That's the first step. Next, I'll be putting on my shoes and then there will be no going back. Time goes on no matter how scared I am, and I will have to grow up no matter how much I fight it.

2007-08-24T22:41:00.000+01:00

The Promised One

Oh dear, I promised to blog a long time ago. A lot has happened since the last rambling blog. The main thing is my trip to China. Since I've got back, one of the first questions I've been asked is 'how was China?' That is probably the most vague question ever. And I can only think of vague things to say in return. I rack my brains thinking of something exciting that happened, something that can accurately convey how the trip affected me. I guess it's one of those things where you have to have been there to understand. To me, running around the hotel being bounced from one place to another just to track down our first breakfast of the holiday, gradually gathering more and more people from our group along the way, was both frustrating and amusing. To others, it probably sounds trivial and unexciting. To me, it was all part of the experience.

One thing that did stand out on the trip was the number of times I was approached by beggars. I don't know whether or not to be surprised to see such poverty in the streets. I tried to harden myself against the 50-something year old men and women who actually looked about 70-something with their dark, wrinkly, weathered skin and bad, or no, teeth. But one thing that really broke my heart was when we were let loose to spend our RMBs in Guangzhou, only to be confronted almost immediately with the upturned face of a mere toddler begging in the rain. He was wearing an old dirty jumper and tracksuit bottoms and a hat covered in a shower cap to keep off the drizzle that had been a permanent fixture during our stay in that city. My Mandarin is basically non-existent anyway, but I could barely hear what he was mumbling as he held out a little cup and followed us several metres in the street wiping his face. I couldn't tell if he was wiping the rain from his face or wiping away tears.

I have always held the view that people have no reason to beg on the street. That there are so many things they could do instead to earn some money. Wherever we were: on the street, in the middle of the Forbidden City, coming out of our hotel, there were people collecting plastic bottles to recycle. They were clearly homeless but were collecting these plastics to sell to a recycling plant. To these people, I happily gave my bottles. I even finished bottles of water that I could have kept for later if they were nearby so I could help. But with the beggars on the street, all I could bring myself to do was to avert my eyes and keep walking.

So what is so significant with this little toddler in Guangzhou? The difference is that when we walked past the same area again an hour or so later, I saw what looked like the child reporting to an adult. I don't know who that adult was, but my immediate thought was that this woman was some kind of ringleader for a child exploitation programme. It may just be my overactive imagination but I couldn't help wondering what would happen to the child at night. It could just be that the adult was his mother who thought he would have better luck getting money alone and, when the day was over, would spend the money on food for the both of them. Or it could be that the child wouldn't see a cent of that money, all of it going straight into the woman's pocket.

With these thoughts flying through my head, I started to question my previously unmovable stance on begging. If I don't give money to an adult beggar, maybe he would realise the only way to get enough to eat would be to work for his money. If I don't give money to a child beggar, would that mean he would become useless to his adult 'guardian'? Would he then be abandoned and left completely vulnerable and alone? If I was in the same situation again, would I give him money to let him live another night as a street beggar if it meant he would live another night? I don't know. It seems that to give money to someone for doing whatever they are doing is to encourage them to do it again. To help them for one day may be to hinder them in the long run. But not giving a beggar what he needs the most is to not help him at all.

I could go round and round the vicious cycle but I won't be any closer to deciding what I will do next time I see a beggar and every time after that. Each case is different. Each person is on the streets because of different circumstances, and they cannot be understood by someone like me, someone who has never had the misfortune to undergo the hardships that led them to begging. The trip to China was billed as a once in a lifetime trip and it has certainly opened my eyes to many things. The event that I described in this entry may sound like something that you see every day in every city and in every country but I can pinpoint it as one precise event that will happen only once in my lifetime, although, like all events that I experience or witness, it will mould and shape my views and opinions that I already hold.

2007-07-17T10:32:00.000+01:00

Nothing says closure like cake.

People are leaving left, right and centre - either on holiday, year abroad or graduating. I know, it happens every year. And every year I can't help feeling left behind. Oh well, it will happen again next year, only it will be me doing the leaving. Life goes on, right?

To keep up with all the departures, I have been honing on my baking skills. Last year, me and a friend were on a roll with baking. Every birthday, BAM a cake! Not because I am a boastful person, but because I want to break up the text with pictures (really...), here are some examples of beautiful cakes a la Bunny and anonymous friend...

I confess my baking has been going downhill lately. I have been terribly lax with building my cake empire. But I vow to keep baking, albeit intermittently.

Along with sending people off with mouthfuls of cake, I have been marking an end to an era with the painting of my sister's room. We had always discussed giving her room a new lease of life with a coat of paint but we never got round to it. When she moved out last weekend, it felt strange standing in her empty room. It felt stranger still to be painting over her walls, alone. For me, the smell of fresh paint normally signals a fresh start, adventure and new opportunities. But it's a little different when you know who was there before you. Painting a new life for yourself means painting over the memories of another. Even though it was just four white walls, I kinda regret not taking a picture before it disappeared.

I'm sitting in her room now. I still call it her room even though I've moved into it. I keep confusing myself when I try to explain over the phone where I am. Do I call the freshly painted room "my room" or the room I was living in for the past two years "my room"? I'm still in the middle of moving stuff across, so do I have two rooms? Lucky me! I'm going to have to train myself to turn right at the top of the stairs, not left...

Anyway, this post does not make any sense. I will write a better one later. Promise! Lesson of the day: Even if it's sunny when you leave the house, it doesn't mean you can pop out for a 30min round trip to the shops in a tshirt and no umbrella in the middle of July...

2007-06-29T14:27:00.000+01:00

Rain, Rain, go away...

When the makers of Bruce Almighty made the new film Evan Almighty, retelling the story of Noah's Ark, they must have predicted the future...These past few weeks have seen monthly volumes of rain falling in a matter of days causing more than just a damp picnic for the people affected. Although I am not currently at home, I watched horrified as the TV broadcasted news reports of my home county being engulfed in flood water. The scenes shown on the news reports are the sort of thing that you seen in films, or international broadcasts, or heart-wrenching charity appeals. It's not something you normally see in cold, damp, miserable, but normally stable Britain.

(photos from the BBC website)

So what happened to cause this flooding in the very central cities of Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley in surrounding towns? Is this the very violent wake up call for people to take notice of global warming? This time last year I remember basking in the unusually glorious sun in my back garden. This time, someone up there is showing us the other side of global warming. For every unscheduled heatwave, there must be a moment where the skies need to empty their collection of condensed water droplets. And these two weeks has been that very overdue moment.

The last time the area saw anything of this magnitude was the Great Sheffield Flood in the mid-nineteenth century when the Dale Dyke Dam burst as it was filled with water for the first time. When I talked about the Great Sheffield Flood of 2007 with a fellow Sheffield-er, he said that the deaths and casualities are far less than that of the 1864 counterpart. Far from making him out to be a heartless villain, I can't help from thinking that any death, casuality, damage of property is a loss that cannot be measured in figures alone.

My thoughts are with the people affected by the flood - be it those waist-deep in mud-brown water, or those nursing broken bones, front doors or hearts in the North.

2007-05-31T16:58:00.000+01:00

The Case of the Two-Faced Bunny

I'm not sure about everyone else but I definitely think there are two sides to me, one that this group of people see, and another that that group of people see. This is reflected in a lot of my life. I have three groups of friends who rarely, if ever, mix, I practically have two different wardrobes, and I have two separate blogs.

The objective I started off with when I started bunnyh0pping was that this blog would be to exercise my brain, make sure I haven't forgotten how to write semi-entertaining pieces - even if it only amused myself. I never intended it to be a personal outlet of emotion or anything like that. But as a consequence of my starting to bunnyh0p, my other blog (xanga) became less and less personal. Instead of talking about what I was up to, how I felt about stuff, and general banter, it became a place to exhibit my photos and draw up shopping wishlists. In the end, I would update and feel happy with what I wrote on each, but never satisfied with letting people know the real me.

So, I have decided to do the unprecedented thing of RSS-feeding this blog to my xanga. This is nothing (partly) to do with bumping up my hits...There is something admittedly demoralising with having "0 comments" at the end of every post. So if you do that sad thing that I do, and randomly scroll through blogs to see what's happening out there and stumble across my blog...please comment! Even if it's to say I suck or something. It's nice to evoke some kind of emotion in a person! But also, I think it's time to reunite the two-halves of my personality. The one who just likes to mess about, and the one who has something half-serious to say about stuff. Plus, I'm all happy and chirpy cos I've just finished my exams for the year and for the first time in 365days(ish) I'm totally free to do whatever I want without that annoying guilty feeling at the back of my head!

Oh yeah, I also realised that my blog must be excruciatingly boring cos there are no pictures. So...here's a picture of my hamster...He's doing naughty things in the corner...though it's proof that bunnies and hamsters can live in harmony together.

() ()
(^.^)
(")(") poor attempt at a self-portrait.

edit: I realised I have absolutely no idea how to RSS Feed stuff...So I'm thinking copy and paste is good enough...

2007-05-27T23:25:00.000+01:00

The Art of Courting...

Last night I went round to a friend's house and, after toasting a glass of wine to the great Jane Austen: Queen of Chick Lit, settled down to watch Sense and Sensibility. Being the intellectual and well-read English students that we are, we couldn't help giggling at the formality of the courting process. After meeting a few times and "taking a turn around the parlour" - a favoured pastime as it seems, apparently the next step for the proper Georgian lady is to declare her love for the lucky suitor. The question that sprung to my mind was, did the word love mean the same thing in Austen's day as it does now?

Undoubtedly, one of the characters in Sense and Sensibility spoke of "esteem" and "like" before the big L-word but her caution was scoffed at by the other ladies who predicted an engagement in no time at all. Could it be that people fell in love more easily in those days? That love-at-first-sight actually did exist before it could become extinct? Or just that people were less fussy about who they were going to spend the rest of their days with?

These days, anyone under the age of 25 apparently "doesn't know the meaning of love". The phrase wait till you're older practically reverberates around every household in every country of the world. Couples are marrying later and later and children, if any do appear, come after the mortgage has cleared, the extension built and the dog has been house-trained. And all that is only if you ever get that far. The L-word is regarded with such fear and utter trepidation that some people never utter it, or even worse, never get to hear it. So does this mean that people treat the subject of love much more seriously than before?

For some, love and marriage don't go together like a horse and carriage. Some say that marriage is an unnecessary expense which at the end of the day is just a piece of paper that proves what you've been saying all along. That you love someone and want to spend the rest of your life with them. Maybe the whole marriage business is to blame...this institutionalised system has commercialised love. Being 'in love' with someone no longer just means you have that feeling in your heart and sweaty palms. It means joint bank accounts, taking turns doing the washing up and duvet wars.

On the other side of the spectrum, in the playground, girls and boys have several relationships with people they "esteem" and "like", with no intention of swapping vows. Does this lessen the impact of love? Maybe the boy and girl who went out in Y3 cos they had the same lunchbox would have been better suited when they understood what it meant to be "going out". Maybe they let THE ONE pass them by because they didn't wait for the right time.

I guess like a lot of words, the meaning of the word love has changed over the years. As Ms. Austen demonstrated over and over, the path of true love never does run smooth. Sometimes being too restrained meant you missed out on your true love. But as recent divorce statistics show, sometimes Mr. Right-Now isn't Mr. Right. You shouldn't settle for someone you can picture spending the rest of your life with; you should pick someone you can't imagine your life without.

2007-05-22T20:01:00.000+01:00

I have just been reading about Mary Wollstonecraft, supposedly the first feminist, writing in the late C18th. She was writing at the time where practically every novel depicted the woman as a fainting, swooning, gasping, crying, sighing picture of helplessness, brimming with uncontrollable emotion. According to Wollstonecraft, these novels were teaching young girls the wrong impression of how women should behave, and by glorifying their weakness, women are deprived of their adult status.

So, with her refreshing appeal for an equal view of both sexes over 300years ago, are women finally equal? In Mary's time, the novel was looked on as well, a novelty. They were a low form of literature compared to the grand epic poems of Milton and Pope, targetting young ladies with nothing else to do, except faint, swoon and sigh of course. Whilst the status of the novel has rised to the literature of popular choice, it seems the tabloid and weekly gossip magazine has taken its place, along with what they currently show on children's TV...

The woman they present now is a sex-obsessed, alcohol chugging, pill-popping monster. Is this the liberated woman gone too far? What does this teach the curious girl growing up with these images around her? I'm pretty sure Wollstonecraft didn't have this in mind when she implored for women to reject the prejudiced male view of women.

The problem is, both these images of women are meant to be realistic portrayals. Is it right to show this side of femininity if it is teaching the next generation of women to prolong its lifespan? At the same time, will hiding what you don't want to see just be a case of burying your head under the sand? I personally don't like it when I see photos of the latest "role model" celeb rolling out of a seedy club, being groped by an ageing millionaire. I really don't think this new piece of information is really all that useful or beneficial to me. What I do like to read about is when someone, regardless of gender, does something worthwhile for their community.

With good ol' Mary calling for women's rights and the stars of Hello magazine calling you to flaunt it, whether you got it or not, it seems somewhere along the way, they forgot that it's about equality. The girls hitting the headlines have succeeded in getting their image known, but for all the wrong reasons. I don't want my generation to be remembered for what a few halfcut individuals who happened to be at the right place at the right time. So, please, boys and girls, take your inspiration from the achievers, the scholars and the winners. Read widely, not just from novelties.

2007-05-03T16:01:00.000+01:00

*Something I dictated to the thought-recorder in my head one night.*

"The glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling are starting to fade. I can see the almost-full moon through my cute but cheap curtains. I have an early morning and I can't get to sleep.

Every time I close my eyes I think about that thing I don't want to think about. My sensible head is telling me to stop listening to my heart. My glowing heart is telling me to stop thinking so much. That's the problem with being so sensible. You end up having fights between your head and your heart.

I'm lying on my back even though I know I can't sleep like that. It's nice to have the whole bed to myself. I'm waiting for the phone call that I said I didn't want.

Familiarity soothes me when I turn on to my side but doing that reminds me of the thing I don't want to think about. So I turn back on to my back and contemplate turning my light back on to recharge my personal set of constellations.

I am a lover of routine. So how do I know what I am feeling is not just a love of routine? I turn over again and the phone rings. I don't know if I want this phone call but I answer it anyway. It doesn't make me feel better.

I'm tired. I've been watching the almost-full moon move across my window. I've been watching the shadows grow and shrink and shrink and grow in the corner of my room. It makes it look like there is something in the corner, breathing in and out. Watching over me? Or waiting for me to go to sleep so he can pounce? What's the difference? Am I the victim who is going to be pounced on by the very person I thought would watch over me? I don't know. I am confused. I shouldn't think so much."

At some point, I fell asleep. Things are supposed to be better after a night's sleep. I didn't feel better for a while. I guess even when my body was resting, my head and my heart had carried on with the battle preparations. I stayed confused for a while. Writing this tells me that neither party has won yet. But for the time being, it feels like a cease-fire has been put into place. With my head and heart sleeping, one eye open, I'm letting routine reign.

2007-04-24T15:01:00.000+01:00

I looked out of my bedroom window this morning and saw in amazement the 50p sized yellow dandilion heads all over my lawn. I have been ignoring the poppy stems and dandilion leaves sprouting on my driveway and in the cracks of the paving stones up to my front door for some time. I blame the blasted glorious weather we've been experiencing. I know I'm going to get into trouble when my parents come to visit and see that I've not been maintaining the house. My dad's got a point when he mutters that the roots will grow into the brickwork of the house and weaken the structure...but let's forget about that for now, it's not the reason for my post!

The reason is, I've always wondered...who decides what flower is a weed and what flower deserves the marked up prices in leafy florists on the High Street? It's pretty unfortunate for the pink-tipped daisy to be labelled an enemy of the green-thumbed and I suppose the translucent-petaled poppy was in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were outcasted from the greenhouse. I feel that it is my duty and my pleasure to stand up for the under-represented forna of the world. After all, it starts with flowers and who knows, next it might be people.

But wait, that's happened already. You see time and time again, sex discrimination stories around the work place, race discrimination on the streets, age discrimination, size discrimination...it goes on. Why does this happen? Surely anyone can see that we're all the same. We have brains, hearts, lungs...all the essential parts of our bodies are the same. And we all share the same emotions of pain, fear, joy. Is it to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did the white alpha male win the race and earn his superiority over the size 14 aging black woman?

I don't understand why people get treated differently. It's all psychological. With all the technology and medical knowledge around us, we know that there is nothing in one group of people that makes them better than another. I just hope that other people all realise that soon too and stop the senseless hostility.

I can't wait for the daisies to come up. I want to make daisy chains!

2007-04-14T22:30:00.000+01:00

A friend just said to me on MSN that I would be a good social worker because I am easy to talk to. I just laughed it off saying that it's because I like to talk too. But I guess I am secretly pleased at that. I know I feel a million times better when I have someone to talk to about things, anything - problems, interests, what I plan to make for dinner. So the feeling that I can provide the same feeling to others makes my heart smiley.

I guess the other part of me that was pleased at this was the part of me that is feeling a bit lacking in direction at the moment. It's all well and good chugging away at university, regurgitating everything dusty old men in tweed suits drone on at you, but when you're thrown into the middle of the road, wide-eyed and clutching the only evidence of your degree in paper form, it's a little bewildering. Well, so I imagine. I guess that's all ahead of me. But the question is, should we prepare for the future? How can you prepare yourself for something that's not happened yet? How do you know what to take with you?

I guess my big question is, whether I should be so concerned with the future. Historians and smug politicians are always quick to point out the faults of the losing team in history. 'Of course they should have known that would happen...' but retrospect is a beautiful thing. I have spent my whole life thinking about how my actions will affect my future (well the big actions anyway...) and sometimes it stops me from doing what I really want to do. I've seen people who don't seem to care at all and do whatever, whenever to whoever. And I've seen people who plan everything to the tee and then find their plans in a heap on the floor when something goes wrong along the way.

I want the security of knowing where I'm going. I'm scared of the dark, so a little light is always much appreciated. But I can't be scared of everything. Sometimes big open space is what you need to spread your wings and develop your own direction. I guess once in a while, jumping half blind into the void and seeing where you land is a good thing. I just hope when I get there someone will be there to help dust me off and take my hand.

Oops..by far the most personal blog so far. Hey, you should be a social worker. You're really easy to talk to.

2007-03-21T20:13:00.000Z

So I am doing an assignment on the language that teenagers use to talk about body image and weight problems, and looking at the mini dramas and social faux-pas that they discuss got me thinking about the teenage years on a whole. I realised that I am at the threshold in my life where I am in danger of recalling my school years as those carefree, simple days. So before that happens, I thought my memories would be worth electronically immortalising! People always talk about office politics, social hierarchies determined by where you live, send your children for education, and what income tax bracket you belong to. But people forget that lunchtime politics are just as important to a student as securing a raise with the boss at work.

Of course what defined you at school was who you were friends with, who you were seen with. You know those American teen movies where the beautiful girls are popular, the awkward girl with a unique dress sense is outcasted and the guys' worth is measured by the size of their bicep? Ok, I admit they're a bit exaggerated for comic effect but the general idea has been planted.

What has always concerned me is that there's always the beautiful people who sleep with each other in sort of pseudo-incestuous swapshop. I mean I know it's good to give and share, but after a while you must feel like a re-useable sushi-plate on the conveyor belt. Someone picks you up, takes what they want out of you and then you get put back on ready for the next horny, sorry I mean hungry, person to go for your tasty bits. Was that too crass? Well I can tell you that making yourself so avaliable to anyone who shows you the slightest bit of interest doesn't make for a very classy lady.

Now let's look at how the other half live. The geeks. Now, let's face it - everyone's got a little bit of geek in them, except maybe the really shallow ones and they're probably not got anything worth geeking over anyway. My advice to anyone who may have stumbled over this is: embrace the geekiness. In later life you will be glad that all that geeky knowledge you have carefully cultivated means you can engage in stimulating conversations when other stimulation isn't enough. I love geeks, they make my world go round.

School might sound a bit of a social minefield but I guess it's all preparation for the wide world. The moral of the story? Don't sleep with your family. And cram lots on general knowledge. And don't eat yellow snow.

2007-03-02T19:15:00.000Z

I missed the bus today. Or maybe it's more accurate to say the bus missed me. You know those moments when you reach the bus stop and the doors slide shut with a hiss. I'm sure the bus driver had a bit of snakey smirk on his face to go with the sound effects. They say snakes don't have any ears. Maybe that's why the bus driver didn't hear me knocking on the door and instead started to pull away from the curb and try to squeeze into the standstill traffic.

Bus drivers have the reputation for being rude. I suppose it could be seen as reactionary to the rudeness they themselves receive from passengers (the ones that get on, anyway...). So I guess it's not just bus drivers, it's people in general. Have you ever just stopped and looked at the people around you in the town centre on a Saturday afternoon? No, I don't do it often either - mainly because if you stop moving, you'll be promptly shouldered out of the way. There are thousands of people living and breathing in a big city like the one I live in but when you look around, all you see is a swarm of faceless shadows.

One holiday took me to a small isolated village right on the outskirts of nothing. When our holidaying group got to our destination, we were horrified there was no mobile phone signal, no cash point and no fish and chip shop. But the next morning I went for a early morning stroll and was overwhelmed by the number of "good morning" greetings I received from strangers. They were total strangers - old, young, male female - but they still smiled and tipped their proverbial hat in my direction.

Now, I'm not asking everyone to grin manically at every passing stranger. But a bit of awareness of your surroundings wouldn't go amiss. I wasn't alive 50 years ago, but even I expect a thank you from someone who I've helped. And I'd expect some help too if I needed it. People use the term 'small-town mentality' in a derogatory way, but sometimes the big cities have something to learn from them.

2007-02-16T10:28:00.000Z

Honouring Your Ancestors

One of my friends is really superstitious. If she sees a row of three drains she won't walk over them. When someone gave her a clock for Christmas, she had to hide her horror. Have you ever seen those little light spots that sometimes appear on photos taken with a flash? For some reason they seem to congregate around me. Many a debate have been heard over the dinner table about these light spots. Some say they are light flares. Some say they are dust particles that are reflecting the flash. My friend is adamant that they are spirits. To her, spirits are ghosts haunting her. She doesn't want spirits around her.

Maybe I am just trying to make myself feel better, but I don't get scared by them. If they really are spirits, I feel quite honoured. Nothing bad has happened to me so maybe these spirits are my guardian angels. Maybe they are my ancestors watching over me. So what better time to thank them than this weekend?

This weekend is Chinese New Year. To some people this means a new outfit, a juicy fat red envelope of cash and an excuse for loud drums and firecrackers. Maybe that's what it felt like to me in the past. But this year I feel really excited about going home. In a way, it's just the same as every year. The house will be going through a major spring clean as I type, mum will have got in all sorts of traditional Chinese grub, preparing for the biggest test for my stomach - VEGANISM. To be vegetarian is one thing. But to avoid all dairy is hard. Imagine your cornflakes with no milk. Your toast with no butter. Your sandwich with no cheese. That is one of the challenges that I have. And I love it. If the monks can do it, so can I. There is so much variation that you would never get bored. So that's all good news for my belly. The traditional phone call to my grandparents on the other side of the world, timed perfectly so everyone can talk before the clock ticks to another day, is another tiny thing that now seems to important.

All these tiny things piece together to make one day that is looked forward to and remembered every year. All these little traditions were made by my ancestors and passed on to another generation. So if those little light spots are my ancestors, here's my chance to say thank you. Here's my chance to say Happy Chinese New Year...again :)

2007-02-11T21:46:00.000Z

What's LOVE got to do with it?

It's a feminist's worst nightmare, and the giftshop and chocolatier's pay-day. But how Valentine's Day came about is a little bit foggy in my mind. I do not recall ever learning about Mr Valentine or his saucy escapades at school, but my friend Google assures me that there are three different saints recognised by the Roman Catholic Church called Valentine or variations of it. One of the stories say that Mr Valentine was a priest who carried on performing marriages when matrimony was outlawed by who can only be comprehended as a very unromantic Emperor, another story labels a priest who helped Christians escape from imprisonment and torture as this infamous Valentine. Eitherway, I do not see how this saint came to be known as the patron saint of lavish expense, pink lace and fruit-filled chocolates.

Today, as I strolled through the city centre, I could not help notice the signs in shop windows desperately trying to associate every single product they sold to Valentine's Day. Whilst I'm sure every woman would love a state-of-the-art confetti document shredder, it just misses the mark in making my heart flutter when I close my eyes and picture it. Walking past a florist, my eyes bulged in surprise at the price-tag for a single rose that cost a fraction of the price last week.

The problem with this is not necessarily the fact that businesses are unscrupulous enough to cash in on another day on the calendar. The problem is that the public are falling for it. Should you be told when to spend time with your loved one? How is February 14th different to February 13th or 15th for a couple? A relationship where you whisper sweet nothings and giggle on the bubbles of fizzy wine one out of the 365 days of a year cannot be a very successful one. It all seems very artificial when you go for a romantic dinner for two in a restaurant alongside twenty other couples all eating from the same set menu. Your eyes meeting over a tealight as 'your song' comes on and you hear 40 other gasps of pleasure to accompany yours.

It may make things a little difficult for the thousands of boyfriends and husbands out there, but if you really want to make February 14th a night to remember, think outside the box. Don't get sucked in by the commercialism. Be original. But if you just want to tell your partner you love them, don't wait for the 14th to come. Tell them now.

2007-01-28T13:04:00.000Z

I am proud to say I have never watched a full episode (would you call it an episode?) of Big Brother in my life. That said, I think the whole world has heard, some way or another, about the big bother caused by some of the members of the Celebrity Big Brother 2007. It was a clash of apparantly the biggest celebrities Britain had to offer and a huge, gorgeous A-list bollywood celebrity. The comments about hygiene, cooking and ways of eating, and English ability were all hurled at the Indian superstar in a less than coherent manner by the English born and bred contestants.

Seeing the distress of the actress, it's not surprising really that the displays in BB caused outrage all over the world. But the debate that surprised me the most was whether it was racism or a 'clash of cultures'. I think it's safe to say that in this day and age, in this society of gobal mobility, there is no one who has not come across someone from another culture.

Another issue is what you define as racism. To me, anything discriminatory towards someone based on their race is classed as racism, especially something directed in a tone as malicious as what was heard every night on Channel 4. In any case, the main offender was voted out of the BB house to be greeted by mobs, lost contracts and a ruined status. Boo hoo.

Last night I was celebrating a friend's birthday at a Japanese restaurant. It was all fine and dandy and all together very entertaining - my first time having teppanyaki! The one thing that spoilt it for me was a group of four middle-aged causasian people sat next to me. They complained loudly about their food taking so long, which was fair enough. But when the food did come out one of the men started to slow clap and complaining that he should have gone to the greasy spoon around the corner. As their personal chef came out to start cooking their meals, there was non-stop complaining, swearing and otherwise loud talking. The chef cooked their meat dishes and started to cook their rice second, which was not the order these delightful customers wanted their food. The chef tried to explain that in Japanese cuisine, the rice comes last, unfortunately it fell on deaf ears as the customer shouted that he wanted a new tuna dish cooked for him. When the chef went back into the kitchen, the tuna enthusiast shouted loudly and repeatedly that no culture in the world would serve the rice last. Please feel free to insert the expletives I have deleted.

Now, the question is, would this be classed as racism or a clash of cultures? To me, this blind ignorance and can only be attributed to a refusal to accept other ways of doing things. These customers had obviously never been to a teppanyaki restaurant before and so I don't think it's too much to ask for them to allow the chef to do what he was obviously well trained to do. But was it racism? I'm happy to say I did not hear any reference to the service they received as attributible to Japanese people, nor did I hear any direct racist comments. I can only conclude that they were either hired by some rival company to kick up a fuss or they are just really hard to please.

2007-01-11T22:50:00.000Z

On the way to uni on Monday I saw something that shocked me. No, it wasn't the fact that I was walking to uni a week before the start of term...it was the little daffodil stems that were poking out in little bunches like mini social gatherings all along the grassy bank I pass enroute to campus. The first thought was, yay, that means spring is just around the corner! Then I realised that it's still early January. And then I realised that my nose, fingers and other bodily extremities were not freezing to the point of dropping off.

I guess in a way it's a bit hard to feel all that worried about it when you're just an everyday person filling your car with petrol, turning on all the lights in the house, turning the heating up another notch so you can wear those cute hotpants around the house.

It's nice to be able to wear tshirts in February and wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and not feeling like you need another 24hours sleep. But I can't help feeling sad when I hear news reports of polar bears dying in the North Pole because I didn't turn my landing light off last night. And I curse myself for boiling a full kettle of water to make a cup of tea when there are floods in the Outer Hebrides.

I don't think it's a lack of conscience. We all get a little guilty feeling at the back of our throats when we read about global warming in the paper. And then we turn the page and read the comic strip and the weekly horoscope. I wouldn't wish the catastrophic effects of global warming on anyone but sometimes the only way to get through to someone is the hard way. Is the only way for someone to realise the horrors of this slow, ticking timebomb by letting them experience it? I hope not, because by then it might be too late. A civilisation ruined by its own doing...

2006-12-31T12:12:00.000Z

The end of 2006 or the Eve of 2007?

So it's 31/12/06 and it's just gone past midday. Someone just said "Good Morning! This is the last time I'll say that this year" to me on MSN. That really sums it up doesn't it? The end of another year on this earth. The question is, should we view this as a time for reflection or a time for anticipation?

It feels like so much has happened, I've experienced all these new things, met all these new people, and yet it's just another year. I've had a few so far and I hope to have many more of these. So how can I distinguish which ones are the significant ones?

People say that your uni years are the best years of your life. So does that mean I unknowingly lost half of the best years of my life? I don't think I was properly paying attention, how can I reflect now? I wasn't ready for what university had in store for me, how can I anticipate what I can't predict?

I remember the panic and scaremongering that happened this time in 1999. Everyone was preparing for the Millennium Bug. At the tender age I was at the time, I didn't understand what the Bug was and how it was going to affect me. The word bug conjured up images of creepy crawlies, or maybe the feeling in your tummy when you've been eating sweeties without washing your hands. How can the earth's birthday cause such mass panic, when my own birthday caused no more than the arrival of Billy the Magician and a big chocolate cake? Of course, as I recall, the little luminous dial on the VCR turned 00:00 and the date turned to 1/1/00 and that was that. The world carried on spinning and the earth didn't erupt in creepy crawlies.

So I guess tomorrow is just tomorrow. We can hope for a prosperous coming 365 days and wish your neighbour good fortune and health, but shouldn't we be wishing that for today and yesterday? Don't be a hypocrite. If you really mean it when you shout "HAPPY NEW YEAR" and snog the face off the person stood next to you, say it every day; clink glasses with your friends every night and sing Auld Lang Syne every morning.

Happy New Year :)

2006-12-21T13:49:00.000Z

On Tuesday I bought some new shoes. They are beautiful and not even expensive. Of course I wore them that very night for a friend's birthday, and I looked the bees knees - even if I do say so myself. Needless to say, by the end of the night I was begging people to carry me home. My feet have never hurt so bad. There's a Chinese saying, roughly translated to mean: "wanting beauty over your own life".

And I think about the lengths some people go for the "perfect" body. Plastic surgery was originally employed during WW2 when soldiers sustained horrific disfigurement. Somewhere along the line, it started getting used to enlarge and decrease and elongate and shorten every part of a person's body. Visually, it's fascinating. We've all watched in amazement at the transformations to Michael Jackson's face, whether with approval, disgust or amusement. I think the number of extreme make-overs - part 100 shows aired is a testament to just how much people like to see the changes. I admit some people do look prettier after the bandages come off, but is this obsession with outer beauty healthy?

One part of me thinks cosmetic surgery is a waste of money (and we all know how I feel about money and wasting!) After all, it's not essential, you're not going to die if you don't get a nose job. The name says it all: cosmetic. On top of it all, there are almost as many tales of disaster as there are of successes. All this unnecessary hospitalisation can lead to infections and dodgy surgeons can land you with a much worse body than the "unbearable" one you went under the knife in. There are thousands of people you could do with the money if you're willing to throw it away...

The other part of me is slightly more compassionate. Yes, it's cosmetic, but it could also be psychological. Appearance has always played an important part of everyday life. It's all about the survival of the fittest - excuse the pun. So if you have the resources to push yourself up the social pyramid, shouldn't you embrace it? Some people are so concerned with the way they look that they get depressed and reclusive, and a few thousand pounds and an experienced surgeon could fix that with a few tools and a bit of sweat and blood.

I guess my beef is with the attitude towards appearance. Is what you look like worth risking your health on? Could a few simple steps in make-up applications and eating your 5-a-day be enough to steer people away from the drastic? I understand people wanting to look their best but I could never change my face. My face is my identity. Wrinkles are the gold stars you earn for living your life, crows-feet tell the world you've led a happy existence and your saggy bits are parts of you that you accept along with cardigans and fluffy slippers.

I can't say for sure at this stage of my life, but I have no plans to get plastic surgery any time soon, especially not to change the shape of my face or body. But I do plan to wear those shoes again next time they go with my outfit.

2006-12-07T23:42:00.000Z

Saving For a Rainy Day

It was raining when I was walking to uni today. It was still raining when i walked back from uni. In reminscing mode, as I tend to fall into when walking alone, I recalled a book we had as children called "The Rainy Day Book". We used to whip this book out every time it rained too much for us to go outside to play and learn a new card game...or magic trick...or how to bake choc chip cookies, quite oblivious to the idiomatic meaning behind the title.

This got me thinking...should we save for a rainy day? The sensible part of me says yes. Of course it's best to have a little put to one side, just in case the sun stops shining on you. Of course your dreams of a jetset lifestyle, villas in Spain, the Carribbean, the moon...should all stay dreams so you can pay the gas bill. Of course looking after your future is the most important thing.

But when does looking after your future turn into never living for today? Some people spend their money the minute they get it. There's no point scrimping and saving for the future that never comes, right? Living for tomorrow could lead to a life of regret.

I admit that I am a saver. I worry about spending too much, in case I open my bank statement one day and the numbers are in a pretty red colour...Even when I let myself go and go on a little spree I end up feeling pretty guilty about how much I've spent. I do kinda envy those people with carefree attitudes to spending although deep down inside I know that I have more financial security than them. But is that the right frame of mind to live by? What is the point of saving all your life if at the end of it you're a wrinkly old woman with a pot of cash but no one and nothing to spend it on? But at the same time, it wouldn't be so great to be a middleaged woman pawning her favourite necklace for a cup of soup and a biscuit.

I guess it's a case of balance. You have to live a little if you wanna live longer. Enjoy your life and treat yourself if you've earned it. There's the key word, if you've earned it. The saying goes, "work hard, play hard." If you've put in the hours, you can relax once in a while. But still save a bit for a rainy day, you know what it's like in England...

2006-11-22T15:53:00.000Z

Having spent a good couple of hours contemplating death and double suicide in the library, to get me in the right frame of mind to read Romeo and Juliet, of course...I was pretty shocked to see a group of people huddled on the road of a busy roundabout on my way home. My overactive imagination of mass suicide was quickly ruled out when I saw a man sprawled on his back and a motorbike in the middle of the roundabout. Of course I don't know what was happening but it seemed weird to see the people crowding over him but not doing very much and the traffic carrying on around them like nothing was happening.

Since I would be of no additional help, I carried on walking home, and stopped at the traffic lights as two cars ran through red lights before a dad-a-likey slowed to let me pass as the green man was starting to fade.

All along the busy roads in Birmingham you see bunches of wilting flowers tied to trees and railing and lamposts and you just drive past thinking briefly of the tragedy of another faceless victim. People seem to have become desensitised to roadside deaths. The only time it ever seems to come into debate is over traffic jams or speed cameras. I've heard the argument that speed cameras are just a money making scheme, but surely if you didn't speed in the first place then you wouldn't have to pay the fine. There's the other argument that drivers will only slow down when they're in view of the evil yellow box and speed up again when they're not being watched. I am shocked that some drivers do not understand the purpose of speed cameras. They are not to catch you out, you're not that attractive that the DVLA want a photo of your shiny backside, they are there to keep the roads safe and the pedestrians off the hospital bed.

I'm thankful I have so far avoided a road accident and I hope that I will avoid them forever, although I have been very close on many times in the past. MY thoughts are with the mystery motorcyclist and the hundreds of people hurt in road accidents every year.

2006-11-21T13:18:00.000Z

T'is the season to be jolly...

I have been seeing Christmas decorations in shops and pubs and restaurants and every other speakable place for at least the past month. But last weekend, I heard my first Christmas song played over the music system in a shop. My first reaction was, ugh...they bring all this stuff out earlier and earlier every year. Then i realised...in actual fact, it's not THAT far away till Jesus' 2006th birthday.

This year, Christmas has definitely creeped up on me. What happened to the festive cheer that would excite my senses several months prematurely?
I remember at primary school, there would be a week when everyone was allowed to bring in your own tinsel, paperchains, baubles and any manner of shiny things to decorate the classroom and it would stay like that until January. Although I'm sure it made teaching very difficult, peering over the 2ft Christmas tree balanced between our exercise books, the teachers more than tolerated it. I'm pretty sure they got as much of a kick out of it as we did.
I remember the big cardboard postbox stationed in the assembly hall where you could post Christmas cards to your friends and receive them the next day. The number of cards you had lined up on your desk soon became a popularity contest as well as a never-ending struggle not to be distracted from your long division by the pretty glitter and heart-glowingly sincere rhymes inside.

As I progressed to secondary school, Christmas became all about worrying which of my friends to buy Christmas presents for. On my meagre allowance, I couldn't afford to get everyone a diamond encrusted, solid 24carat gift and with varying degrees of friendship, it was a balancing act of not offending people and not killing the bank account. Christmas was now all about impressing people with what was under that Winnie the Pooh wrapping paper. Whilst everyone got pretty little trinkets and windchimes and the like, it didn't really mean anything. These gifts were given for the sake of Christmas rather than to welcome in the festive season.

These days you always hear rants that Christmas has become a commercialised money-making opportunity. When you see the number of new toys and very useful electrical appliances that suddenly spring up at the appropriate season, you may be excused for thinking that. For me, Christmas isn't about the presents. I wouldn't be distraught if Santa didn't leave me that dress I saw in the catalogue in my size and my colour. To me, Christmas is about the dining room table groaning under the weight of far too much food that still manages to be polished off by the end of the night, the sound of pulling crackers and bad jokes, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and all that jazz.

I guess I answered my own question. My festive cheer is hidden in my childhood where all I really needed was a bits of shiny paper, the warm fuzzy feeling inside from family dinners or maybe a bit too much winter warmer, and all-nighter games of monopoly with my cousins. So, hold on to your Santa hats, holidays are comin'...

2006-11-14T16:50:00.000Z

Today walking home from a day at uni, I found myself suddenly walking faster and faster. No I wasn't late, no it wasn't dark. It was purely because I could hear footsteps of a man walking close behind me.

I know it would be naive to think that the streets of Birmingham are candy-coated and smelling of daisies but I couldn't help feeling incredibly stupid when the man carried on along the main road as I turned off on to my road. I remember in the first term of first year, I frequently took taxis home alone at ungodly hours, not batting an eyelid as I stepped into the pre-ordered cab and calling out a cheery hello to the driver.

Maybe it was because of my parents' anxious warnings since I moved away to far away university of rapists, guns, drugs, muggings and worse that I developed this perhaps unwarrented fear of solitude. Maybe it is because I hear story after story of murderers, kidnappers and general madmen in local and national news. Either way, I can't help but pick up my pace when I walk past lone walkers on desserted roads. I don't make eye contact with other people as I cross paths with them once the sun sets.

I laugh at myself for my distrust sometimes. One night-time visit to a friend's house made my heart race just 5 minutes into my journey as I saw the approaching figure of a hooded heavy-set man. Imagine my horror as he raised his head and looked straight at me. Clenching my fists in anticipation, I hear him saying in a broad Brummie accent, "watch out for the patch of ice at the bottom of the road, it's really slippy." All I could do was utter a thanks as I exhaled with relief. I was sure to tiptoe around the ice when I came to it.

Call it caution or paranoia...there's a phrase, better safe than sorry. I guess I just gotta find a balance between carelessness and borderline hermitage - it would probably do my blood pressure some good!

2006-11-09T10:51:00.000Z

Memories.
Last weekend, I found myself trawling through old family photo albums. With each turn of a page, I was greeted with black and white, grainy images of my father grinning broadly, arm around my mother; or big brown baby eyes peeping from under those fetching bowl haircuts my brother was subjected to as a child; or a perfectly poised picture of my sister being rudely interrupted with my cheeky grin in the corner of the photo. Either way, there were album after dusty album of these photos that stop suddenly around 10 years ago. At this point, I became painfully aware that we rarely take photos together as a family anymore.

Tapping away on my laptop, I am also aware of the hard disk embedded somewhere under the keyboard, filled with photos of my friends, acquaintances, the dinners we ate. Are these my new family members? I spend so much time with my friends that I miss them when I go home, whereas I am ashamed to say I don't really miss my family when I'm away from them.

Right now I'm feeling terribly nostalgic. In the middle of my studenthood, I should be living for the here and now. I have the security of structure, providing I keep doing things right, I should be allowed the chug along with the rest of them. But this year feels like a year of change. I'm used to everyone moving at the same pace as me. Here, people are moving on, up, out and all in different directions. I want to scream "STOP!" and for everthing to go in slow-mo...just for long enough for me to catch up, just for long enough for me to see everything, record everything in the camera in my head, just for long enough for me to fill my photo albums.

Haha...it didn't work...things don't go in slow-mo for little old me. Guess I'm just going to have to speed myself up instead. Spend more time with my family. Take my camera everywhere. I want a shelf full of album after dusty album too.

2006-11-08T00:36:00.000Z

My first post! Meant to rekindle my love for writing, my friend advised I dust off the cobwebs and start writing again. That makes it sound like it's been centuries or something! Guess in relative terms it's not been that long but it feels an eternity for me. I'm used to writing regularly, kept me partly sane and reassured myself that I was almost coherent.

Was recently browsing a forum and came across a heated debate on religion. On one side, this guy was adament that religion had no place in the modern world and had been rendered obselete by science. On the other side, there were some Christians who, understandably, were outraged by the first guy. One reply argued that the Bible was as accurate as a science book because the ordinary person trusts a textbook absolutely without questioning whether the "facts and formulae" were true.

At a superficial level, I can see where the Christian is coming from...how many of us actually check those calculations we see quoted in news reports? We see lots of important looking numbers and symbols and all nod in agreement. But...someone is checking these facts out, and science has explained many of the phenomenon of this world. Saying that a god made people how they are now seems totally ridiculous in today's world compared to Darwin and his theory of evolution.

I guess it all depends how you interpret religious parables. You can really believe that Jesus walked on water and dragons and unicorns wandered the land together if you want...or you can see the battle of David and Golioath as a battle of morals. In my opinion, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism...whatever you believe in...it's just a way of teaching people morals. allegories to guide people. At the end of the day, all religions preach along the same fundamental lines: treat others as you wish to be treated, have respect and love for one another. I don't have any problem with religion. But non-religious people shouldn't be labelled as immoral. I've been brought up without a religion and I seem ok...in my opinion...