Chicken Wings & Vodka Bottles

Fear not for the excitement of blogging hasn't quite worn off yet, though with it being a bit of a busy week I couldn't find the time to do anything but stare at equations that although I've spent the best part of the last seven months being taught all about I still couldn't tell you what they were or what i'd use them for. The life of a student where due tomorrow translates to do tomorrow. 

Anyway enough babbling some news first, I am a tenant... again! Though the contract was signed a few months ago, last week was the official seal was placed on the deal by having our first meal as a house. And what better venue for such an occasion than all you can eat chicken wings at the world famous Hooters. Now as an admirer of leg and breasts of any variety finding me and my three other male house mates in Hooters on a Monday was not an uncommon sight whereas for my housemate Sophie it was her first time and judging by the picture below I think it's safe to say that Hooters now has a new regular. 

Sophie shows her appreciation

Now that the news section is over let get down to the real business. So on my desk at home I have 3 litre bottle of vodka that is now about a quarter filled, no university hasn't turned me into a raging alcoholic where water has become substituted for alcohol. No this bottle I picked up empty from work and it's  a quarter filled with a mix of coins that I have found lying around on the floor. And I think the vodka and the pennies are a good way of representing life.

Now you may ask what on earth does a vodka bottle filled with coins have anything to do with life? And it's a good question but the way I see it, The vodka bottle is our memories and the coins represent our experiences. So we when are born our vodka bottles are empty as we are yet to have any experiences but as we go through life and collect the coins our experiences start growing. And for the majority of the time we'll find 1 and 2p coins, everyday thins which in the long run we may not remember but every now and again we may come across a 50p or even a £1 coin, things in life that will make a bigger impression. So for me it would be something like my first gig or first pay check, a memory that was big for me at the time and something that I won't forget but not life defining or changing. And then very rarely might you come across a £10 or £20, big events which mark significant milestones in your life.

Now everyone would wish, me included, that we could find £20 every single day but the whole reason that finding that £20 is because its a rare event, that doesn't happen often so has an added special feel with it and adds to the whole event of finding. And if we kept finding £20 it would make the memory which should be a massive event not so special, we need the pennies there to give us perspective and show whats really important and what means the most in our lives.

So I say appreciate the small things in life because without them you won't be able to appreciate the bigger things and if you are someone who actually does find £20 all the time then you need to get in contact and tell me your secret.

Until next time,

Ash out.

1st Impressions

So here it is; my Led Zeppelin II, my Axis: Bold As Love, my 21 and my 7 to the great S Club. If I haven't lost you already then you'll know I'm talking about the follow up albums and in this case follow up blog. I've gotta say its taken longer to decide what to write than it did for my first post. Whereas my first blog the process from thought to typed took all of 1 hour this one has taken all week to settle on something to write about but I finally got there and here we are.

My first post got me thinking about first impressions and how important they are. As Willis and Todorov's research article (Willis, J., Todorov, A. (2006) First Impressions

Making Up Your Mind After a 100-Ms Exposure to a Face, Psychological Review, 7(17), pp 592-598) shows a first impression on just your looks alone can be made in 1/10th of a second and that your behaviour afterwards does very little to change this. Now I can agree with the impressions taking less than a second to form however I find it hard to believe that anything you do afterwards changes that. Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm not always the best at making first impressions. I seem to have a knack of saying the most inappropriate things, lets take for example my first night at university. 

It's my first night there and pre-drinks had just begun, I had got to university a few days after the rest of my block and so had yet to meet anyone bar my flatmates whereas most of the others in the block had already formed initial friendships over the previous two days that I wasn't there. Pre-drinks was in my flat that night and so the whole block and uor reps had gathered there, about 40 people all crammed in. Now like I said I have an almost superhuman ability of saying the most completely inappropriate things at the wrong time and this night was no exception.

When I usually meet someone for the first time I try and break the ice by making a joke or two and me being the great comedian that I am thought I had the perfect ice-breaker lined up. Now to this day I'm not sure what made me say what I did that night, I don't know if it was nerves, my cock sureness that I really was a funny guy or my desperation for the rest of the block to like. Looking back I'm pretty sure it was a lethal mix of the three. So the room is full and I am yet to introduce my self, everyone else introduces themselves to me and it's now my turn. And here are my exact words "Hi my names Ash and I hate white people," yes I really said that and instead of the raptures of  laughing people in stitches over how good joke was I instead had 40 silent, shocked and predominantly white faces staring back at me. That's right folk I told my future block mates who I was gonna spend the next year with that I pretty much hated them all. 

Of course I didnt hate any of them and especially not for being white, it would have been a bit awkward if I had as my girlfriend at the time was a White Irish Catholic girl and I come from Norfolk which is about as white as it gets, so race was never an issue.
Understandably I wasn't a very popular figure at the time and having spoken to some of my housemates recently I was told that they didn't plan on me surviving the week let alone my first year of university.

Thank fully though race relations improved considerably over the week I must say and somehow I've managed to survive it this far without causing a race war and it's been from that moment that I realised that first impressions aren't really as important as I used to think they were. Sure you can get a basic idea of what a person is like from one instance but it's not until you spend time with someone that you really get to know them.

The old saying rings true "never judge a book by its cover", especially in my case as I don't think I'd be standing here if I wasn't given a second chance.

Until next time,

Ash out.

A Venture Into The Unknown

You can look back on your life and pick out key dates and important moments which will be forever imprinted in your memory, for one reason or another. The events will have affected your life and caused significant change whether it be good or bad.

My reason for foraying in to the world of blogging is based on one of these experiences that changed everything for me. I want this blog to be a deposit of my experiences in life and something to look back on when my own memory starts to fade.

So let me set the scene for you, its 1:30am and I have just finished my shift from work and am walking down the street to my front door when my phone rings. Being a university student with  friends who like a drink or 40 it isn't so unusual to get a late night phone call which usually involves said friend on the other end speaking some language which I can only assume is some form of English.
However this call was from my home number, instantly I knew something wasn't right, its usually me calling home not the other way round and i never get a call this late at night. I pick up and its my Mum, she tells me that my Dad has had a heart attack and has been taken to hospital. I don't hear the rest of whats said for in that instant my head has become filled with a million thoughts and I go through a hundred different emotions.
For the life of me I can't remember all that went through my mind in that moment but what I remember clearly is how scared I felt, I couldn't remember being this scared since I was a small child and  that was because  I'd had a nightmare that i was being chased my mushroom men who were after my stash of shiny Pokemon cards (i will have to explain this one one day).
Luckily for us it was only a minor heart attack and Dad has since made a full recovery.

Though there were some big changes after my Dad's heart attack. At home it was the motivation for the gym routine to begin again and healthier living to start fully, hopefully this time it will last more than the week it did last time. It also helped bring our family closer together, we weren't taking each other for granted as much, not now that we had come so close to losing it all. The biggest change for me was one that couldn't be seen, for Dad's heart attack had caused my view of the world to change. Dad's heart attack really hit home and shown me personally just how fragile our lives are and how quickly it could just all end. It also helped open my eyes to just how big the world really is, most of us will spend the majority of our lives living in our bubbles but there is so a whole world out there waiting to be discovered. 

Now my bubble didn't completely burst that night but it got a hole in it and through the gap I caught a glimpse of how much there is out there to see, do, taste, smell, hear and all experiences that are there to be had. It's true what they say that "the only thing stopping you is you" because I am not one who believes in destiny or fate, I believe our life is on our own hands and that if we want to go out and do something than we can. I know I probably wont be able to do all the things that I want to in life, i'd like to think it's because life is too short to fit it all in. We live in a big world and the traveler inside me is dying to see as much of it as possible, so hopefully before long this blog will be one filled with my various adventures in exotic lands.

I leave you with one thing, let your bubble burst.

So until next time,

Ash out.