Leaving Europe

(In which Brexit will not be discussed.)

Stevan: I think I understand why you don't want to leave Germany.
Me: Go on...
Stevan: Well, if we both know then there's no point in prattling on about it, is there?

So guess what I'm going to prattle on about?
But there's more to my pondering than just the obvious. Of course, like any person who lives somewhere for more than a few months, I've built myself a life here in Braunschweig, and leaving this, my first totally independent year, is not going to be easy. But I've known that for months. It's not just the fact that I'll be going home to a much more sheltered life that's getting me down.

In the last year I have, in one way or another, dealt with almost every serious life event. This year hasn't been simple by any means. I've come into contact with moving, making new friends, missing old friends, long distance relationships, language barriers, cultural barriers, starting a new job, moving away form friends, losing weight, commuting, fixing a bike, learning to bake for vegans, University Challenge, Americans, illness in the family, personal illness, inability to travel due to illness*, flight delays, dream jobs*, retirement*, graduation*, realising your dream job isn't*, operations*, important birthdays, writing a book, break ups*, Austria, totally seeing Jeff Lynne in concert like legit for real oh my gosh it was amazing, homesickness*, international travel, drunk people (Drunk Daniel is Best Daniel), enormous upheaval back home in the shape of most of my favourite lecturers leaving/being unceremoniously chucked from their jobs, missed dreams*, a pregnancy scare*, promotions*, marriage*, lost passport*, socks and sandals**, driving a Trabant, quitting smoking*, failing to quit smoking*, alcoholism*, Christmas dinner, growing plants*, insomnia, Buddhist monks, enormous political upheaval, Donald Trump*, musicals about being saved from a curse by leg warmers, Americans in vests*, stag/hen dos*, religion, Creepy Sauna Guy*, gender reassignment surgery*, beard(s)*, and really bad cups of tea.

In fact, the only life events I haven't really dealt with this year are births and deaths (thank goodness!)
So you see, a lot has happened in the last twelve months, and Braunschweig means a lot more to me than just friends and familiarity!

If you see anything I've missed in this list, I'd be very pleased to add it!

*not mine
**reeeeeeaaaaaaally not mine!!!!

Fax Machine Time Travel

Hello hello children, adults, and those lost somewhere in the middle. I've been having a lovely time in Germany since I last wrote on here, with lots of good times seeing friends and doing interesting things with my life. Last weekend I met some uni friends in Frankfurt, and we had a great catch up, as people who haven't seen each other for six months often do.

Anyway, I've got a ponderance. It's something I've been thinking about for a while and have decided to put into words now.
As many of you will be aware, the "Back to the Future" films go forward to this year. The story takes Marty and Doc Brown forward in time to 21st October 2015, to see how Marty's children have grown up. This, coupled with the popular Internet expression "If nobody from the future comes back to stop you, how bad can your idea be?" (or whatever it is) have led me to thinking about time travel.

You see, I've been alive for 20 years now, and it's reasonable to suggest that that's a fair window of time for someone going back in time to choose. Therefore, it doesn't make sense that nobody has met a time traveller. There are people who have been alive far longer than me who have also yet to meet anyone from he future who's come back for whatever reason.

This leaves us with two suggestions: either time travel is impossible and will never be invented, or there is something stopping time travellers from coming back so "far".

If we are optimistic and assume that time travel is entirely possible once the technology has been properly developed, we have to then ask why nobody has ever met a time traveller. Of course, I'm assuming that there must be a level of secrecy which goes without saying; if you tell the wrong person that time travel is possible, you'd cause a riot. Especially when so much information is shared in the way it is online nowadays. However, what if there's another reason? What if the reason nobody can come back in time to see us is because we haven't invented time travel yet?

Think about it. If we don't have the technology to send a person through time, what on earth makes people think we could receive someone who's travel through time? Think of it like accidentally calling a fax machine from a phone. The two technologies are incompatible and one is significantly more high tech than the other, which is why the person making the call will hear a lot of static and what sounds like a dialup broadband tone. The fax machine just doesn't have the capability to receive a voice.

This would mean that, at least to begin with, time travellers would only be able to go forward in time. If there is no chance of a receiving platform going back in time, then the only other option is to go somewhere where the technology is as good, if not better.

In my opinion, this doesn't mean that time travel is a worthless goal. Imagine how useful/terrifying it would be to be able to find out about the future, especially if you could only travel forward to a certain point... To me, it would suggest we should keep working towards this goal (if we even still think it's possible) to allow people from the future more range of times to travel back to.

However, the Internet quote about being stopped by someone from the future is still erroneous. Everyone knows that making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn and improve. For example, I'm now never going to forget that Käse, Tee, and Name are all masculine nouns (despite ending in "e" - Mr Whelan lied) because I've made that mistake so many times, it's now impossible to forget. Equally, I will now always remember Mecklenburg Vorpommern, because it was the only Bundesland I couldn't name last time I tried. Mistakes are a great thing. Look how much history repeats itself anyway. Without certain events, we would never learn not to do things (like communism - although I still think that could work if everyone embraced it properly and the leader was willing to step down).

I guess what I'm trying to say, in my waffly and roundabout way, is that time travel is a brilliant idea, but it's like phoning a fax machine at the moment. We need to explore the possibilities further in order to allow it. Although I'm not a scientist, so I guess it may well just be horse apples.

Cool.

Also, if anyone wants to use this idea (probably in fiction, rather than research ;) ) please quote me as the original source. I'd love to have done something useful with my brain drivel.

See you around. Much love xx

CONGRATULATIONS II !!!!!!!!

So, I'm back with the rest of that list, starting with 2013 and bringing us up to date :)
Here we go:

• The entire of this - 3rd January 2013
• I'd like to apologise for the accidental pun on the title of my previous blog post. It was not meant to be in any way funny and (to be honest) it isn't. - 7th February 2013
• when the revolution finally comes, I'll be close behind Miss MacNeill in the line for the Tory Fox Hunt. - 17th April 2013
•  it means that we should've all been relearning what we've already learnt before we've even learnt it since about February, because otherwise WE WILL ALL FAIL AND NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE US EVER AGAIN!!!!! - 2nd May 2013
• Or maybe none of this is really a possibility and I'm just panicking because at my school we're all expected to be able to recite Pi to several thousand digits by the end of year seven. - 2nd May 2013
• "Jumbo Jumble" sounds like a kids' game, in which you have to untangle elephants - 4th May 2013
• Maybe that's why I like Radio 4 all of a sudden... - 17th June 2013
• *The Pink Hair Brigade is in no way affiliated with or similar to the Tolmers Pink Triangle, or any other Pink Triangle for that matter. - 17th June 2013
• Any other band that I'm ever in, no matter how mind-numbingly boring and tedious, will never quite be as fun without being fun, if you know what I mean. Which you probably don't. - 10th July 2013
• Hello, today I have been painting a shed - 14th July 2013
•  I stumbled across half a documentary (well, a documentary which was halfway through when I found it) about Meat Loaf. The singer, not the food - how sad do you think I am? - 11th August 2013
• Frogs apart, Margaret is the funniest thing to have happened in my time working at PhatPocket. - 29th August 2013
• the other benefits of this new job are excellent, but more about them another time... ;) - 29th August 2013
• There's Graham, who works for "the agency" (dun dun duuuun) - 9th September 2013
• My bedroom is orange. Very orange. Special orange. It's so orange that it's like living inside an orange. Or Ginger Chris, one of the two. - 22nd September 2013
• my towels are coral, although I don't think I'll ever understand why that is the case. - 22nd September 2013
• it's by a group of girls called Law Revue, who appear to be highly feminist to the extreme. And American. But that is irrelevant. - 30th September 2013
• So I have come up with a solution. Many of you will think it childish, but to you I say "Ner ner ner ner ner!!!" - 3rd October 2013
• I am still waiting for him to realise just quite how crazy I am, but (mercifully) that time has not yet come. - 14th November 2013
• like a parent who has missed their child's school play, I am now going to ravish you with extra attention and new and more interesting posts to make up for it - 24th January 2014
• Please ignore these people. They're just actors posing as my friends. - 24th January 2014
• I have a lot of friends who bat for the Owen's team, who like to exfoliate and whose favourite film is Moulin Rouge. Is this getting the point across at all? Basically, I've been nicknamed the Fairy Gaymother - 1st February 2014

The End of "Stuff..."?

Hello Internet folks, I am currently pondering a dilemma and I wonder if you can help. (Although, given your usual level of response to this blog, I am not holding out much hope!) It's not a big problem to be honest, quite the opposite, but it may mean the end of this blog forever...

You see, my problem is that I don't actually seem to have any problems right now.

I have a job which, although it's not the best job in the world, I'm earning money from. And sure, it's kind of boring and the pay's not as good as it could be, but any job which you can do with minimal qualifications will be boring and, given that I'm not entitled to minimum wage, I actually earn more than I would in a bar or in most shops. Plus everyone is really nice which, for me, is more important than the work itself. And it's not like I'm even just saying that; literally everyone is nice.

There's Graham, who works for "the agency" (dun dun duuuun) but is planing on going full time. Graham has been really nice to me since I started working there, but his jokes are awful! Then there's Dannii, who only works a couple of days a week, but is absolutely lovely and I always spend too much time talking to her because she's so interesting. Also prescanning is Caroline who, although she seems lovely, I haven't had much chance to get to know, but she's always so happy and smiley. In my recent job development, I've been working more closely with Mark (who wants to join the army) and Richard (who wants to be a Social Worker/Social Work teacher, but works doing whatever he can whilst he's waiting to get the job he wants.) Mark and Richard are both great guys, although they do sometimes talk a little loudly, especially about things which should probably not be repeated here. And the army. Then, of course, there's Chloe and Anya. When the Boss isn't around, Chloe and Anya effectively run the joint; they are in charge of all the admin, all the orders, paying everyone, running meetings and making sure everyone knows what's going on. They're amazing at what they do, even if I annoy them sometimes. Then there's Matt...

I think Matt deserves a paragraph to himself. As most of you will have seen, Matt is my fantastic new boyfriend. Yes, we are that nauseating couple. No, we don't mind. Yes, we know how awful we are, but it's OK because Becky, who is terrified of inter-personal relationships says we're not just that couple, because we're also funny together. Errr, yay?

So, as you see, there is nothing for me to write whiny blog posts about any more. Does this mean the end of "Stuff I Ponder"??!?!?!?!?!

Well, in a word, "no." Weird and wonderful stuff is still guaranteed to happen in my life; I'm still doing the scouting (we've got the Beach Weekend this weekend) and I'm about to head off to Uni, which should provide many an interesting story. Plus, with a boyfriend in tow, there'll even be someone to share it with!

P.S. Good luck Mark for today and tomorrow!

Soooooo...

No need to look surprised, Roy -
I've been talking about it for years!

... I haven't written for a while. I've been meaning to and wanting to, but I've just not had the time. Anyway today I am pondering dying my hair, once again. Anyone who's known me for any length of time will know that it is currently one of my five life dreams to dye my hair bright pink. At the moment, I am looking at which is the best place to buy the colour from.

This particular ponderance has been brought on by seeing my old friend Sally for the first time in ages at the weekend (Happy Birthday, Sal!) Sally now has blue streaks at the front of her hair and they are super-awesome, they really suit her. When I asked her about it, she told me it was part of her new "Art College persona", which is fair enough. My plan since my parents said "not in our sink, sunshine!" is to change my hair once I get to Uni.

But Sally isn't the only reason for this particular strive to change my hair. My last A Level exam is on Wednesday, so naturally I am looking to the future. Hopefully from September onward I'll be talking to y'all from a small room in Nottingham, rather than an even smaller room in Hertfordshire! That's got me thinking really, what sort of person do I want to be at Uni? I want to be the same as I am at the moment, except for the enormous pile of onlookers who only remember how awkward I was for the first three years of my secondary school career. But I also want to be interesting to talk to; intellectual. Not that I want every conversation to turn into some massive political or ethical debate, I'd just like to be able to discuss things a little more interesting than the weather and who's going to leave the Apprentice this week.

Maybe that's why I like Radio 4 all of a sudden...

Anyway, I've spoken to a lot of you about this I know, but I'd like to hear other people's opinions too. At the moment, I'm agreeing with Leila on the shade of pink (there are thousands). I don't want pastel or baby pink, as I think my face will look round and the overall effect would be babyish. Plus, it's not the look I was going for. At the same time, I'm not planning to go for something too bright; I was at one point, but I think it's become too overused by trashy girls and people who just make it look tacky (this is in no way meant to offend anyone with pink hair - I love you - but there are people who have "dirtied the name" of pink-hairedness.) So my plan at the moment is to aim for a sort-of-magenta shade and pray that it turns out OK. Of course, my icon in this whole shenanigan is Roy Wood, King of the Pink Hair Brigade* (having famously gone prematurely pink) and his hair is that sort of colour, primarily because I guess he doesn't bleach it beforehand.

Thoughts?


*The Pink Hair Brigade is in no way affiliated with or similar to the Tolmers Pink Triangle, or any other Pink Triangle for that matter.

A Couple Of Thoughts

• Students would probably concerntrate better outside at this time of year
• ... Unless they were out by the lake and there were ducks wandering around
• Why does Mr Archer like pizza so much?
• "Manic Panic" is a much better band name than "Jumbo Jumble"
• "Jumbo Jumble" is really difficult to say, even in your head
• Green is a calming colour because it reminds us of springtime and nature and peace
• I have no idea why some people think it's unlucky to wear green, but some think it's lucky
• Why do I wear long sleeves if I spend the entire day rolling them up?
• "Jumbo Jumble" sounds like a kids' game, in which you have to untangle elephants
• Stanley has pen on the back of his neck
• ... And his ear
• People's clothing colour changes based on the weather
• English people are very silly inasmuch as they don't learn other languages
• ^^ This is probably due to the Americans
• How did Actual Advice Mallard become a thing?