Reflecting pool…

Well, I haven’t felt the need to write for a while, but it’s been an interesting couple of weeks. I’ve now left Wolverhampton and am on the hunt for jobs in sunny (no, really) Coventry. It’s a bit strange living with my Dad again, but also quite cool – for now. I’ll be looking to get my own place by the end of the summer, but for the time being it’s quite peaceful.

 

I’ve spent most of the last week helping my Dad out in his garden, sorting out the pond, building a rockery and shifting 500 Kg of gravel and top soil from the garden centre into position around the pond. At the moment I’m supposed to be trying to work out the volume of water in the pond so I can add some treatment solution, except that I can’t hear the doorbell from out back and I’m waiting for a delivery of a graphics card and monitor that should be here already. Bloody City-Link. In any case, the equation to work out the volume of a segmented cylinder is complicated to say the least and it’s been a while since I inflicted brain damage upon myself with mathematical problems. For those that are interested:

 

  

 

DAMN THE FACT THAT I DID A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY COURSE!!

 

So, as I brush off the cobwebs from the side of my brain that usually deals with this kind of problem (along with my scientific calculator), I can’t help but reflect on what it is that I’ve been doing at Uni for the last 4 years. Sure, I’ve learnt a lot about war, international politics and the history of conflict, but does that help me now?! One of my friends has done an engineering degree, so he’s probably set for life (though not a lucrative field, at least it’s stable). However, when talking with him the other day, it took him 4 or 5 attempts to identify a 2D diamond, after going through some other 2D shapes, including circle – scary that one day I might be sitting in a plane that he will have helped design…

 

But then again, even if my degree isn’t of any immediate help in getting me a job it will allow me to get on a good graduate course, which hopefully WILL help me get a decent job in international politics in the future. Ugh, I’m 23 and facing the prospect of yet MORE education – what a gyp.  

 

 

Very little has happened, really…

I have been mostly listening to: Pendulum - Propane Nightmares

Well, i’m back from good ol’ Coventry. It was nice and relaxing, but there’s nothing much to report. Tuesday: I arrived, raided my Dad’s freezer and then we went off to the pub for a few drinks and a catch up on happenings in Wolves with me and Cov with him. Sat out in the beer garden (hooray for smoking with a pint!), and just shot the breeze.

Wednesday, my Dad and I went walking with his insane but oh-so-cute dog, Molly. She’s a 4-and-a-half month old Jack Russel Terrier with an inexhaustable supply of energy. My Dad is chuffed to bits with her, but sometimes I think he is expecting too much from her at such a young age - something that can encourage overly submissive behaviour in small dogs. Nevertheless, they share a pretty tight bond and once she gets out of her bad habits (jumping up, licking, walking right where you’re about to put your feet), she’ll be the perfect little dog. Later on, I cooked a barbeque with steak, pork and chicken - burning myself in the process.

In the evening on Wednesday, I went over to my best mate’s place. He’s 23 and still hasn’t given up weed, and seems to have lost all desire to. I abstained from his offers of a bong (I used to be quite a heavy toker, but realised that it was doing me, my work and my relationships with those close to me a lot of harm). For the first time, it amazed me how much he forgets, and in such a short period - he had to fix his sound card, and forgot the model, then kept forgetting what he was actually doing. It was a bit disturbing, did I used to be like that? In any case, I had a good time and drank a few brewskis, chatted about crap and watched some Frasier, my favourite TV show at the moment.

Having got back from Ben’s at about 4:00am, I didn’t wake up until gone midday. Didn’t really do much until 2 or 3 o’clock, when I decided to look at the vast amount of jobs available in Coventry - I found 2 to be mildly acceptable. Exchanged banter with Inn over Facebook, where she said that she would “Beat me up if I started calling her “Pox-eye”". I might just have to take her up on that. She’s taking her most recent bout of bad luck in her stride though - good for her.

Walked Molly in the evening before I left for my train. She’s far better off the lead than on it at the moment, and is a nice dog to walk with. Forgot her poop-bags though, oops. At least she did it in a place no-one is likely to step in. 

It’s been a pretty uneventful week, and apart from tasting some god-awful Nigerian cuisine from my new housemate Victor and feigning delight, nothing unpleasant has happened really. Sorry about that - this is turning into a bit of a boring blog. I’m sure something interesting will happen soon…

Problem of the day: None

Broke, bored and fed up

I woke up extremely late today, having spent most of last night chatting on VOIP to one of my mates over in the states before playing a bit of BF2142. Of course, this was made extremely difficult by the fact that i’m currently using a woefully inadequate graphics card - my X1950 is back for repair (again) due to a temperature issue. Dave, or “Hat” as we call him, is a good bloke - he granted me access to a few journals I needed whilst writing my dissertation. Don’t worry, my university has a subscription, but their access is dire and many links are out of date - so Hat wasn’t breaking any copywrite rules. It just made life much easier.

Problem of the Day #2: I need a job

Since finishing uni, these late nights and late mornings are getting more and more frequent. I need a job so badly - i’ll be moving back to Coventry soon to get one. I’m going to miss Wolverhampton though, i’m going to miss it a lot. But within a few months (hopefully) i’ll be renting my own place with my best mate, and going back and forth to some temple of boredom for 8 hours every day.  Looking forward to the cash, and the whole ‘New Life’ thing, but it’s all just to get a bit of money to do a graduate program in International Relations - it won’t be a career or anything. I love international politics, it’s just so interesting.

 

I feel really sorry for my friend inn. She had her heart set on going to the Download festival this weekend. Instead she’s broken out in chicken pox and, presumably, is feeling worse and more itchy by the day. She’s a great character, always seems happy - even when it’s clear that she is deeply troubled - and always makes an effort. Even so, this must have come as a real kick in the pants. I would have invited her down to Wolves for the weekend for a few beers and barbeques with the guys, but I also lack immunity to chicken pox. I wouldn’t really care about getting it if it weren’t for the *ahem* personal complications that can arise from adult males getting it in their twenties or later.

Well, i’m off to Coventry in a few hours to chill in the City of Peace and Reconcilliation. It probably wouldn’t be called that if the guy who gave the city that moniker had seen areas like Hillfields and Wood End, but still, it is a nice city. Outside of the city centre, Cov is so green and relaxing, and I just need somewhere like that right now. Wolves has been good to me, but it is nevertheless a rather grey and bland backdrop that tends to rub off on the lives of those who live here.

Just typing this has made me look forward to leaving Wolves behind, only to return for the occasional Poker night or Party with Rafe - my strange, bedreaded housemate. Roll on Coventry…

Of all the blogs in all the towns in all of the world, you walk into mine…

I never really caught on to the whole internet socialising thing, I only just got myself a facebook page which, though fun and addictive, is just one of a billion pages floating around in some server room on the west coast of America. This blog is not much different in that sense, it may not get many hits and I doubt it will be what you might call “groundbreaking”, which begs the question:

Why have a blog in the first place?

The ‘Blogosphere’, as it’s known by some people who can’t help but put a label on just about anything for fear of losing the concept of what that thing might actually be, is full of musings and diatribes, rants and reviews and, i’ve found, a lot of videos and pictures of deformaties. Most of them are about minor goings on in someone’s life, and in some ways it is a kind of catharsis or a way of purging oneself of their daily routine and mentioning it in a place that is their own, dedicated to and controlled by them.

Psychoanalysts, be they Reikian, Freudian or Jungian sit and listen to your problems before coming up with an explanation you’re unlikely to understand, and this is not helpful for many people. However, just talking through your problems with someone can help. I don’t subscribe to the notion that “A problem shared is a problem halved”, in fact the opposite is often true. Still, it helps to get it off your chest sometimes. This blog is going to be my therapy for life and, at the moment, the prognosis is good. What’s more, I don’t have to pay vast sums of money to some guy in an Armani suit in order for him to doodle on a pad for an hour before telling me that my problems stem from me wanting to kill or do something inappropriate with a member of my own family, which in itself is completely barmy.

Oedipal misconceptions aside, now that I know what I want this blog to be about (which is no different from any other blog, really) I had to think of a name for it. This is turning into one big hassle: 

Problem of the Day #1: What do I call my blog?

After about 20 minutes of intense thought in between digestive biscuits dunked in coffee (something that takes all my concentration, thanks to clumsy shelf stackers), I decided I couldn’t actually be bothered to come up with anything smart, sophisticated or witty. So I decided on ‘Thought Overflow’, since that’s pretty much what this blog is going to be.

For too long now, i’ve not vented any of the things that either bother or excite me. There are a few reasons for this, the first being that i’m a naturally introverted person. The second reason is that, even if I wanted to vent, i’m not exactly in the right environment. My housemates, though quite cool, are not exactly bearers of good advice, nor are they especially good listeners. One would probably stop me mid-sentence to have a bong or a joint, before imparting completely irrelevant advice on a different subject through a haze of smoke. The other would probably stop me mid-sentence before disappearing, not to be seen for the next 3 days. Although my best mate is quite intelligent and listens, we rarely share things of a personal nature due to our equally reserved characters.

So this blog is writing for writing’s sake, not necessarily to be read or understood, but just to be written. If it helps, then great - if not, then “Oh well, whatever”. Why didn’t I just buy a diary? Cos it’s one thing extra to lose, or be found and read by by people who I don’t want reading. At least here I can password my posts if I want.

Anyway, for an introduction this is far too long. But i’m not going back to edit it, because this blog is my thoughts overflowing and poured straight onto the page. If you fell asleep halfway through, then thanks for the visit. If you made it this far then I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.