Alix

It's weird that I never really have appropriate moments to just sit and write a blog post. For me to write a blog post I feel I need a good amount of time to just sit down and actually write something legible and meaningful. Realistically I never get moments when I don't have something better to do! Right now I am on the train down to London, due to server difficulties last night I am unable to access my emails; therefore I have free time, to write a post!

Anyway, Alix.

She's bloody brilliant.

But seriously, the story? Who wants the story? Ok.

I was hanging, badly, the night before I had a few drinks after work in honour of a particular friend who had hurt himself quite majorly. Because of this friend's taste for whiskey we chased every drink with fire whiskey, particularly potent stuff. So I was hanging, woke up late used the generic "traffic" excuse to be late to the office. Although now I have learnt to be honest, it's much easier, let's face it Directors aren't stupid.

So I walked into the office, stinking headache, dehydrated, feeling sick wanting my bed .. To a girl with the most brightly sparkling eyes, a truly beautiful girl. Stutter. Cheeky smile. "morning" ... My heart racing. I then talked about the day usual work stuff etc. I then followed Jenny into the kitchen to get a coffee.

Me: "who's that?!" heart racing.
Jenny: "that's my neice" heart drops a bit.
Me: "how old is she?"

Jenny's answer made my heart drop even more. I thought, damnit she is too young!.... (apparently she had a similar conversation with Jenny later in the day)

Spent all day considering it, went for lunch with Jenny and this beautiful Alix girl. We flirted a bit, teased and learnt a bit about each other. I soon realised that we are clearly two pea's in a pod. We are so similar and so different, a truly perfect match; but damn why couldn't she be a bit older, she is still in college! (she was covering whilst Jolyon was on vacation)

So anyway, I thought about it all day, I have never fallen for anyone so easily and so fast.

The rest is history (as they say) we talked on Facebook, went on a date and fell in love very quickly. But not too quickly, it was perfect. I have never felt so close to somebody and so in love with somebody.

As I often tell her, she is not just truly beautiful on the outside she is so deeply beautiful on the inside. She is truly someone who uplifts your entire opinion on life and happiness and the sunshine truly shines when she walks into a room. Even my parents think she is great.

I know this is a bit of a soppy post, it wasn't particularly meant to be; but actually why not. She is such an amazing girl and the best friend I have ever had.

I was going to talk about her in hospital last week and the emotions and such but I don't think I want to ruin this post. I seem to write about stuff a few months after the date so I guess that'll be written eventually. We are coming up to 6 months in December and it still feels like yesterday that I walked into that office, except we know each other better than I have ever known anyone.

The week from hell

Have had an absolute week from hell,when someone you truly deeply unconditionally love is in hospital for a week.... Well that fucks your emotions up a bit.

Will blog more tomorrow when I am not falling asleep, quite drained.

At least I now have blogging app on my iPhone FINALLY so will hopefully update more consistently.

Test

Test

Africa

This post was written when I was in Africa, I just found it and have uploaded it..


Side note: Its rather frustrating that I can't find an application to update my blog from my iPhone as most of my blogging moments are when I'm not by my laptop, actually I'm quite rarely by my laptop these days.

Anyway, incase you hadn't realised, I'm pretty damn lucky. I'm currently sitting in the back of a Safari converted (lift off roof, snorkel) Nissan Urvan (guess netspeak has made it's way to Africa) crossing the massi mara to get to the hotel where we have lunch, a rest then at 4pm we will do an afternoon Sarari, where I hope, I will get a close up of the animal I am most excited about seeing, the lion! (or if you're Alix, Alex (that does make sense)) I've seen a few lions from a distance but not close enough for any decent photos;

Quick pause to comment that we are all sitting here listening to our separate iPods and Hannah just showed me that she is listening to "Lion King OST - I just can't wait to be king" how apt.

Anyway, this national park is where I expect to see lions fairly close, our guide Issac said they will be within a few meters, I hope so!

On day 1 of the safari, we saw a couple of cheetahs that were stalking some gazelles, but then they walked past them, oddly. Towards some wilderbeast, ah, a bigger pray...! Except, one of the two female cheetahs crouched down whilst the other walked on away from the wilderbeast, clearly setting up to get some lunch. The moving cheetah moved around slowly and casually to a seemingly open space with a few low shrubs. I was watching all this through binoculars, literally heart racing at the excitement of seeing something few get to see, at least I hoped they were about to get some lunch. All of a sudden with lightening speed they both went shooting off so fast that I couldn't focus with the binoculars and grabbed a young gazelle that was hiding in the bushes, poor thing didn't have a chance. How lucky am I? Not just seeing such a sight, not just seeing cheetahs, hippos, elephants, giraffes all up close in their natural habitat. But lucky in that my parents have brought our family here, looked after us, with luxury hotels and astonishingly tasty food. We are lucky children.

P.S - we saw lions!

The List: Part 2

The second item on my list of things I want to do before I die is, learn to play an instrument. I remember when I was younger that I used to have piano lessons, I think my sisters also did, but I cant quite remember. I remember it was the generic piano lesson you would expect, you turn up at some house, a fairly creepy house (although probably not actually creepy, to a small child it would have been) and I used to get piano lessons by a little old lady, again this is all from memory. I cant remember exactly what happened, but I think I was distracted far too easily and didn't really put the effort in that I should have done.

I would quite like to learn to play the piano, or guitar, or drums, maybe one day, will I get to an age where I just can't learn these things, you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

I guess only time will tell.

Richard.

Yes ok, I fucked up.

I have come to a conclusion over the last few months when I have had a lot of time to think, particularly when I have been lying in a hammock, or a sun lounger in Asia. I have concluded that I have fucked up. When I first went to university back in 2006, at DMU I was immature, and some may say I am still immature now. I should have worked harder, I should have dedicated myself to the course, but I didn't, so I failed, then I tried again, and was kicked out. Seriously, at that point I perhaps should have given up and got a job. But I didn't, I took the rest of the year out, and applied for 6 more university positions through UCAS, and got all 6 places, unconditionally. Which was nice.

So I chose Coventry, went to Coventry. Pretty much spent my entire first year in my boxers in my room, playing computer games and watching TV, occasionally doing a spot of coursework. I would venture out when Gavin or Robert would knock on my door and tell me I should get some sunlight. This does sound a little bit like a bit of a geek story, but not so much, I am perhaps exaggerating about the about the time I spent in my room. At the weekends I would go home to my then fiance, and spend the weekends working security at a nightclub in Newmarket, then back up to Coventry for the week where I would vaguely study. I passed my first year, with a good pass of 70% for the year, quite a good precident;

perhaps where I went wrong as complacency might have taken over. My second year at Coventry was spent working a bit harder, not by much, and I did attempt to go to the majority of lectures and do all the work required, but I just didn't have my heart in it. I was too interested in working, to earn money and to actually have money in my back pocket, the whole point of this whole education experience!

I failed my second year, not by much, but by a bit, but due to a particularly fun breakup I managed to get extenuating circumstances, and thus was allowed to defer my year, and essentially write off that second year, repeating the second year (for my third year at Coventry) and scraping a pass at my second second year. So here i am in my third year, at least, I should have finished by now, my friends all getting 2:1's and other fantastic grades, a few firsts, nobody seems to have reported a 2:2. I am going to be lucky to get a 3 class degree.

This is what it has come down to, my whole education experience, I have two pieces of work due in on friday, and an exam on the 22nd, the exam I am not worried about, the two pieces of work due on friday, there is mild worry. But the amount of stress I am under right now is seriously causing me to be down, more down than I have ever been before.

I think one of the major catalysts to this feeling of total self unworthyness, pointlessness and a total feeling that whats the point of me, where am I going, what is my direction, is due to a particular person that plays a very strong role in my life constantly putting me down and making me feel crap.

Lets put things into perspective a bit, in-front of some guests said person just said "You shouldn't have bought that car, you don't even have a job" if we take me, and said person, and my situation out of the equation and break down what was just said, its ridiculous;

I have 2 jobs!! One of which is full time (garden furniture sales & logistics) and the other which is part time, but I work it as much as i can (3d events). To any normal person, to any normal perspective I work bloody hard! but no, I get called a lazy slug! I actually got called that! The perspective that because I am not working the kind of job that is to a required type, a lawyer, a doctor, a banker or something that can be bragged to friends. I am thick,lazy and worthless. Maybe said person is right? Maybe I am utterly crap and am wasting my life. I used to think I was a really hard worker, when it comes to jobs and earning money, and that I am just lazy when it comes to academics, "I am not thick, I am just lazy, I just don't try" is what I would tell my friends.

All this time to reflect, maybe I am wrong? Maybe I am thick. I must be thick. Otherwise by now, I should have a degree. I truly believe a degree is not be all and end all, but to certain people it is. Understandably, as some people have invested a large amount of money in my education. But the education I have recieved has sunk in, I have listened, I have learnt, I just might not come out with a degree at the end, I bloody hope I will. I am buckling down these few weeks, my final run, my final chance to sort it out.

My life has come to a point, for the first time where I have absolutely no direction, no obvious next step, or next decision to make. I have no idea what now. That scares the shit out of me. I want to do something with my life, but what?

 - Richard

I hate the stars because I look at the same ones as you do, without you.

The List

Everybody should have a list of things that they want to accomplish before they die. I have only just begun to realize that such a list must exist. It is always important to have aspirations and dreams, even if some are unreachable and some are unrealistic, you are not truly living until you're dreaming and looking at the what if, the what can be and what the future could hold.

My list starts off with simple items, simple things that to me now, are tasks that could be completed in months, but I know they will take me years, the first thing on my list, that I have considered for a while now is:

Learn a second language.

I don't want to just know bits and pieces of the language, I don't want to be coherently fluent, I want to be able to understand the language enough to have a conversation with a native and understand mostly what they are saying, without having to revert to english. Because lets face it, we are so lazy as a country, not necessarily through our own fault, but everybody speaks our language, which means not everybody makes an effort to speak a second language. Most countries out there that do not natively speak English will have English as a second language! The second language of the UK? English. I want to learn another language that I can use one day. I think French would probably be the best language for me to learn, probably because as I was discussing with my younger sister earlier, we know various phrases and words that we learnt from GCSE that will help, with additional learning to become fluent (Charlotte is walking around with headphones on listening to a french learning tape, incidentally this is not on my list to follow her lead, rather something i've wanted to do for a while spurred on by her).

The next item on the list will be explained in a later post, I'm currently waiting for the photos from Thailand to be copied over to my MacBook Pro from the Windows system upstairs (for the geeks, I have no transfer cable for my sony digital camera and the windows computer has a memory stick pro card reader, the MBP only has SD... Wifi data transfer is sloow.....)

Richard.

Ah Hello..

Hi there blog. I've just returned from a month long journey to Thailand, will write seperate blog entries with photos about all of the different places that I visited, but not quite ready yet, need to download photos and wake up.....

Everything we do, we see, we decide; will always teach us which path to take.

I am not going to start this post by saying stuff along the lines of 'I haven't posted for a while' because this isn't going to be the sort of blog that I update hourly, daily, weekly or whatever, its just going to get updated every so often when I have stuff that I want to put down in a digital diary for the world to read.

Since I started this blog there have been lots of times when i've been on the road, or sitting without my laptop thinking how I want to write a blog entry, but haven't been able to write it down anywhere, so I am going to attempt, off the top of my head to write the three points that I wanted to mention:

1. Digital Technology

I had an exam on digital technology, and don't worry this isn't what I want to talk about. Its the fact that I remember back in 2009 I was reading a book at a sales event, that I had just finished. It was awesome, I cant remember the exact book I think it was by Tess Gerritsen, a murder psychological thriller, fantastic book. A customer I was serving (who spent quite a lot with us) asked about the book as he liked the author, I was really enthusiastic about it. If any of you do a lot of reading, you know that once you have read a book it is nice to pass it on, so I said to the customer that he could borrow the book (thus far this is quite dull, yeah I know, I have a point!), 6 months later it was posted back to the office.

Fast forward to Christmas 2010, I receive a Kindle as a gift, as does my dad. We both use it quite a lot (well I know I use mine) and download books to it to read. The problem is, because of the advancement of the technology from a physical book to a digital device that cannot be shared (well I suppose I could give a customer my kindle?) the sharing of 'information' whether its a fictional novel or not, is going to become lacked in a physical manner... obviously we all have email and digital transfer, but its just no the same. Especially with people that aren't as IT literate as others.

So the point i'm trying to make is that the advancements of technology are creating an even larger digital divide, in the simplest of ways; not being able to lend a book, to people without the knowledge being unable to access information that they are entitled to.

2. Perspective


I don't want to write much about this, because it hurts to think about it. But one of my friends was involved in an RTC over last weekend, in a life changing manner. When something like this happens, it truly gives one an understanding of perspective and an understanding that whilst what has resulted is so painful for the individal, and for all of us to think what he is going through, it could have been worse. I just hope that the recovery and rehabilitation process goes well, the individual is one of the strongest people I know, i'm looking forward to seeing him tomorrow.


3. Annoyingly...

.... I did have a 3rd point, but point 2 kind of distracted me away.

Will post if I can remember it.

Richard.

"The spaces between your fingers were created so that another's could fill them in."

Lets Start Again...... Again....

Throughout the years, ever since I first experienced the Internet I have written various blogs of different natures and different target audiences.

When I was young, I wrote a blog about my life and how I must have hated being a teenager, I assume, I don't really remember to be perfectly honest, it was probably some emo depressing shit that just explained my dislike for life.

When I was a bit older I remember writing another blog, again similarly to the younger one, but probably along the same sort of lines, again I haven no idea where this has gone, or what was written in it, perhaps this is the main problem with blogging, unlike hand written diary's that are permanently kept (unless one is unfortunate enough to experience a house fire, or theft...) an online blog is just not exactly, permanent. What happens if blogspot (blogger? I'm not entirely sure where this blog is, silly google ownership) goes bust, does that mean I lose everything? Anyway I digress....

A few years ago I wrote an anonymous blog about the life as a bouncer, well vaguely anonymous, I attempted to omit obvious locations and names were changed; since in the security game its not good to talk about what you do openly, just in case. Especially as some situations involved police involvement, not something that you want to advertise to the entire internet!

So, my newest blog, started right this moment on the 27th May 2011 is to be my personal blog, about my life, and about what changes now and how I develop and grow now that I have,

FINALLY FINISHED UNIVERSITY!!

.. Anyone that knows me well knows I have been at uni, basically since a fetus (interestingly, I thought the spelling was foetus, but that is the technical non-british term), I am basically a less cool, less party hard version of Van Wilder!

So, please do look back, and follow etc, to read about interesting, or rather not so interesting, but maybe funny to read situations,stories and moments in my life, I will update. I have quite a lot coming up, and changes so it might be interesting!

If you read this do leave me a comment, as it would be quite interesting to find out how many people are actually going to read my blog and see what I have to say, I will try and keep it colourful!

Richard.