Saturday, October 02, 2004
been a long time
Hmm fortnight no blog. That'll be doing stuff I guess. Today is the 2nd of October 2004. 17 years ago today I moved to Leeds. This is quite a long time - nearly half my life now. What is most disturbing is the whole "what have I been doing for most of that time?" thing - since all the weddings I thought I went to a few years back turn out to be a lot of years back I think someone has just stolen my memories. that or I blocked them out because I wasn't so keen on them anymore. That would be me stealing my memories - Zaphod Beddlebrox syndrome. "some bastards been messing with my brain and they left their initials - ZB" etc etc. Tonight I don't feel like celebrating however - I have failed to do anything I should have done so will retire, try to sleep through next doors party and get up really early tomorrow (perhaps play some loud music...) and get everything done when I feel happier....
so what have I done in the last 10 days? Well I've been to the pub a few times, I've been to Pilates, I've been to the Alexander technique lady and I've started my Post grad Certificate in Management course. We have to do a reflective journal for that. I'm awfully tempted to blog it but part of me says that would be very sad. However it would make entries rather easy to do...
Pilates - the jury is out, doesn't really seem to be like anything, not really exercise, better than Yoga in the class length but hard to say if I'm getting it right. Also the Alexander lady says that the two don't sit so well together and a class atn 12.15 or 1pm on a Saturday doesn't really do much for the progress of weekends. Will give it another week I think and decide
Alexander Technique. Now this is cool - I get lying down homework! Sadly week 2 and I was told I shouldn't be listening to the radio for my lying down homework, but I've been good and doing it most days. Alexander Technique is a "fix your posture" thing and I most definitely need to fix mine (she says slumped over her keyboard) however the hip and soles of the feet are significantly less uncomfortable these days.... mulcho pindy motivation to do the lying down homework despite the tedium of it being in silence. "don't do the do do the don't" is going to be very tricky - instructing muscles to do things without consciously doing it is just downright weird.
Cert in Management - induction was not so cool as I told you. The first classes were not as inspiring as one could wish. I forget that University lecturers don't really get taught how to teach so they really don't engage you in the same way at my PGCE tutors did, but perhaps we were just very scary to them and next week they will improve. The marketing guy seemed like a terrified bunny with a sainsburies and tescos fixation, but perhaps its the fact that no one has a marketing background that is the problem. The managing for individual effectiveness lady was just thrown by not having working powerpoint. Lets hope she is happier next week. She spent too long making the assignment seem scary because we don't have the assessement criteria yet so everyone who's been out of education for a long time was letting their imaginations run riot. We have to do a reflective journal for her.... Thankfully the data guy is someone I've met before and has a very entertaining lecture style so hopefully we will all stay awake till 9 at night.
Saw Sky Captain America last night - very amusing stuff. I've not actually watched a film in that retro sepia kind of finish (can't remember the name of the genre, chap said it but I forget) and it does seem very larger than life - the red lipstick on Polly stood out against the sepia so the 1 whole scene were continuity forgot it was really really bizarre - chap didn't notice, so clearly his "I don't like makeup" is the usual level of tosh for statements like that. If he really didn't like makeup he'd have so noticed it I reckon. Then went to the pub with group of chaps mates who refer to themselves as "the collective" Initially I didn't realise this was just what their forum was called (not being a forum using kind of girl) so had assumed it was another of those elitist things that groups of people do to exclude others, but it was all very sociable, if a bit shouty.
Perhaps I thought it was being elitist because some of them do that elitist role player thingy were they refuse to talk to you about a hobby that they define themselves by. Apparently I have been mistaken all these years. Table top roleplayers are not stuck up elitists who look down on everyone else, which was the impression I always got because they wouldn't tell me about their hobby. NO! They are embarrassed and shy about it. This seems weird to me, I don't see what there is to be shy and embarrassed about, but then I always thought it was about having a group of people who effectively did method acting one evening a week and explored a story, which seemed pretty cool to me. I don't have the attention span to do it week after week for years, but find it admirable that some people do. However I guess that since this is deduced from what little I could glean and 2 sessions years ago were I got to join in with some guys I knew perhaps my impression is wrong.
I have been having a war with politics again. Trying to make some sense of the Labour party conference. Really didn't try very hard with the old Lib dem one - but perhaps I should have. I do get the feeling that there's a lot of media whipping up into a frenzy going on. I say Mr Blair and Mr Brown as a team is good so why speculate so much. Mr Brown is a dour Scot who's canny , Mr Blair is a charismatic figurehead and the end result is a team who strike me as getting things done in a mid/long term kind of way that is far healthier for any nation than the radical changes of say Pol Pot. Lots of people seem to have problems with the idea of no one clear figurehead - but team management is the big thing in industry, families are no longer run by one person but all the adults in the household so it is logical to me that government should move the same way. If you want to return to a dicatorial patriarchal society then can you go somewhere else please.
Lets hope they get back in for a 3rd term and get things sufficiently entrenched that the excesses of the blues or the oranges (orange is the new blue I believe after Hartlepool) do not throw us into a spin of grimness of 1980s proportions. I remember a lot of unemployment and lack of hope around as a child, a lot of low pay and lack of hope in the early 90s and since 1997 things have definately been rosier for me and my peers. This is partly a late 20s early 30s thing and partly, I suspect, the powers that be.
so what have I done in the last 10 days? Well I've been to the pub a few times, I've been to Pilates, I've been to the Alexander technique lady and I've started my Post grad Certificate in Management course. We have to do a reflective journal for that. I'm awfully tempted to blog it but part of me says that would be very sad. However it would make entries rather easy to do...
Pilates - the jury is out, doesn't really seem to be like anything, not really exercise, better than Yoga in the class length but hard to say if I'm getting it right. Also the Alexander lady says that the two don't sit so well together and a class atn 12.15 or 1pm on a Saturday doesn't really do much for the progress of weekends. Will give it another week I think and decide
Alexander Technique. Now this is cool - I get lying down homework! Sadly week 2 and I was told I shouldn't be listening to the radio for my lying down homework, but I've been good and doing it most days. Alexander Technique is a "fix your posture" thing and I most definitely need to fix mine (she says slumped over her keyboard) however the hip and soles of the feet are significantly less uncomfortable these days.... mulcho pindy motivation to do the lying down homework despite the tedium of it being in silence. "don't do the do do the don't" is going to be very tricky - instructing muscles to do things without consciously doing it is just downright weird.
Cert in Management - induction was not so cool as I told you. The first classes were not as inspiring as one could wish. I forget that University lecturers don't really get taught how to teach so they really don't engage you in the same way at my PGCE tutors did, but perhaps we were just very scary to them and next week they will improve. The marketing guy seemed like a terrified bunny with a sainsburies and tescos fixation, but perhaps its the fact that no one has a marketing background that is the problem. The managing for individual effectiveness lady was just thrown by not having working powerpoint. Lets hope she is happier next week. She spent too long making the assignment seem scary because we don't have the assessement criteria yet so everyone who's been out of education for a long time was letting their imaginations run riot. We have to do a reflective journal for her.... Thankfully the data guy is someone I've met before and has a very entertaining lecture style so hopefully we will all stay awake till 9 at night.
Saw Sky Captain America last night - very amusing stuff. I've not actually watched a film in that retro sepia kind of finish (can't remember the name of the genre, chap said it but I forget) and it does seem very larger than life - the red lipstick on Polly stood out against the sepia so the 1 whole scene were continuity forgot it was really really bizarre - chap didn't notice, so clearly his "I don't like makeup" is the usual level of tosh for statements like that. If he really didn't like makeup he'd have so noticed it I reckon. Then went to the pub with group of chaps mates who refer to themselves as "the collective" Initially I didn't realise this was just what their forum was called (not being a forum using kind of girl) so had assumed it was another of those elitist things that groups of people do to exclude others, but it was all very sociable, if a bit shouty.
Perhaps I thought it was being elitist because some of them do that elitist role player thingy were they refuse to talk to you about a hobby that they define themselves by. Apparently I have been mistaken all these years. Table top roleplayers are not stuck up elitists who look down on everyone else, which was the impression I always got because they wouldn't tell me about their hobby. NO! They are embarrassed and shy about it. This seems weird to me, I don't see what there is to be shy and embarrassed about, but then I always thought it was about having a group of people who effectively did method acting one evening a week and explored a story, which seemed pretty cool to me. I don't have the attention span to do it week after week for years, but find it admirable that some people do. However I guess that since this is deduced from what little I could glean and 2 sessions years ago were I got to join in with some guys I knew perhaps my impression is wrong.
I have been having a war with politics again. Trying to make some sense of the Labour party conference. Really didn't try very hard with the old Lib dem one - but perhaps I should have. I do get the feeling that there's a lot of media whipping up into a frenzy going on. I say Mr Blair and Mr Brown as a team is good so why speculate so much. Mr Brown is a dour Scot who's canny , Mr Blair is a charismatic figurehead and the end result is a team who strike me as getting things done in a mid/long term kind of way that is far healthier for any nation than the radical changes of say Pol Pot. Lots of people seem to have problems with the idea of no one clear figurehead - but team management is the big thing in industry, families are no longer run by one person but all the adults in the household so it is logical to me that government should move the same way. If you want to return to a dicatorial patriarchal society then can you go somewhere else please.
Lets hope they get back in for a 3rd term and get things sufficiently entrenched that the excesses of the blues or the oranges (orange is the new blue I believe after Hartlepool) do not throw us into a spin of grimness of 1980s proportions. I remember a lot of unemployment and lack of hope around as a child, a lot of low pay and lack of hope in the early 90s and since 1997 things have definately been rosier for me and my peers. This is partly a late 20s early 30s thing and partly, I suspect, the powers that be.
// posted by Bitvacuous @ 9:42 pm 
