Learning Things

Evening all.
Being the nostalgic sausage that I am, I decided to look back on the things I learnt in 2015. And they're pretty much still useful a year on. With the odd adjustment here and there, they could easily be life tips. If what you wanted to do with your life was not annoy your housemates and avoid becoming Catholic.

But I've been pondering. Many of you will have seen my last post, claiming that I didn't learn much in 2016, and it's sadly true that there were no great revelations regarding pumpkin vampires, or locking the bathroom door. But did I learn anything in 2016 that contradicts what I learnt in 2015? Time to find out:


According to my flatmate, food (specifically a kebab) is better than sex
Said flatmate still believes this, as far as I know. The kebabs really weren't that good.

It's not the ringers that smell of the tower, it's the tower that smells of the ringersStill true.

Vegan cooking can be super easyThe key word here is can. It can also reeeeeaaaally easily go super wrong....

Lock the door when you're in the bath
Since learning this, nobody has walked in on me in the bathroom.
(I may have forgotten this once or twice, but Daniel is a gentleman, and still nobody has walked in on me in the bathroom...)

Tea and sympathy get you a long way
Just make sure it's the way you want to go.

If you reach the age of 30 in north Germany without getting married, you have to sweep the steps of the Rathaus until a young lady comes along and kisses you 
Well, we're going to find out this year, when Daniel turns 30...

"If it ends in 'e' it's probably 'die'" is a lie.
Still a lie.

If you lose one of your Beavers, they are probably in the tent
Still true.

You will get on better with your friends during a four day hike than you will ever in your life again. Ever.
I still get on better with these friends than I ever did previously. I think that working together like that makes it really easy to understand people. And everything we've done since then has been easy in comparison. So, I guess we're just stuck with each other for life now.

That's it I guess. Everything else on the list is either so obviously true it doesn't need repeating, or could possibly need reassessing in the future. But for now, I'm going to let sleeping dogs lie.
This is quite a short post, but I don't really have a lot to say. I just wanted to see whether I was still learning new things.



Emmatt update: Haven't done one of these in a while because there's very little to report. Matt and I are still together (3.5 years in February), and we're still making long distance work through a combination of phone calls, texting, and total, unquestioning trust. There's a plan in the pipeline to try and move in together once I've graduated, but money (as ever) is the key thing holding us back. And anyway, who knows what things will be like in six months' time?

Things I've learnt in 2015

Greetings dear friends and Internet stalkers. It's coming to that time of year again where I look back and ponder what I even did with myself over the last twelve months. As ever, the answer is "not a lot".

Still, I seem to have learnt some things. So here are the top twenty pieces of  ~ahem~ "useful" "knowledge"* I've picked up in 2015. I hope some of them are helful to at least one person at some time in the future.

1. According to my flatmate, food (specifically a kebab) is better than sex
2. It's not the ringers that smell of the tower, it's the tower that smells of the ringers
3. Vegan cooking can be super easy
4. The German for "a really big yurt" is "Super Jurte"
5. If you slice off the end of your thumb, it's probably not bad enough for you to need to go to hospital, just stem the blood flow
6. Lock the door when you're in the bath
7. If you don't know the words, just sing "tractor tractor tractor"
8. Mike the Tiger is the mascot for Louisiana University. He is a real, live tiger
9. Chicken fried chicken exists
10. Tea and sympathy get you a long way
11. If you get bitten by a Catholic, you become a Catholic
12. If you get bitten by the Pope, you become Italian
13. Vegan cheese doesn't melt
14. If you reach the age of 30 in north Germany without getting married, you have to sweep the steps of the Rathaus until a young lady comes along and kisses you [SIDEBAR: This tradition is more common among men, I don't know who kisses women. Maybe Santa]
15. "If it ends in 'e' it's probably 'die'" is a lie.
16. Your housemates will think you're crazy if you try to make the house nicer
17. Your housemates will think you're crazy if you try to use a slow cooker
18. Your housemates will think you're crazy if you try to explain sausage rolls and Christmas Pudding
19. If you lose one of your Beavers, they are probably in the tent
20. You will get on better with your friends during a four day hike than you will ever in your life again. Ever.

Season's Greetings and a happy New Year!

*Some of these "facts" are true and some are utter garbage. I'll leave it to your personal judgement to decide which are which.