Change part 1: Out of the frying pan.

That's what it felt like today. At approximately 15.50 hours GMT this afternoon, my job was as a market researcher for Tesco Research, which I had been doing for about a year, and was likely to remain so for the forseeable future probably for the next year. To be perfectly honest, I hated it, but it have me a wage, and the shifts were flexible, and there wasn't much else available to me, which was why I stuck there. At about 16.00 hours GMT, I learned that this was all to change when I was offered shifts on calls teams by the company that employee me. I was sworn to secrecy, so as not to upset other members of the MRU team who had asked for calls team shifts, but had been refused. I nearly blew it by going and telling my mate Dave who is another MRU person, but had to stop myself as a certain person was close by, and I would rather not have her rant at me. At 16.45 hours GMT, after being told to finish early, it was with a certain amount of satisfaction and euphoria that I logged out my phone for the last time working at MRU. At 17.00 hours GMT, I waited with anticipation for training to begin.

Music

This post was meant to go up several days ago, but Meh, I'm lazy/I've got alot on at the moment. So here for your reading pleasure, I give you, Music:

Music is a huge force in my life. Calming, rousing, thought provoking, in-your-face. From Black Sabbath to Bob Marley. I listen to it everyday, going to college, on my way home as I write these blog, really has become an inseperable part of me. From the beginning, listening to the Ramones, to more recently listening to Alestorm and Metallica, it has affected me not just in what clothes I wear, but my very way of thinking and how I portray myself.

Punk is for saying "this is who I am, all my imperfections and warts. Metal means "I an angry! Leave me alone.". Tracks like How to Save a Life, Drops of Jupiter and Bittersweet Symphony are for stepping back and looking at my current position, and thinking of where I go from there. Easy Listening (Lou Reed, Norah Jones, Robert
Johnson) are for relaxing and dispensing of my cares. Other artists, Credence Clearzates Revival, Guns 'n' Roses, Paul McCartney, are for general feel good listening. Led Zepplin are just awesome to listen to at any time! These are just what purpose they serve at the time of writing, they may, and indeed most probably will change. Who's to say what I will be listening to tomorrow, next week, in six months? Well, here's then.

BRB... Need inspiration

*tumbleweed*

Art and Rain

Rain. The kind that soaks into your skin and turns Dundee into Venice. It was the kind of rain that sends people scurrying for the warmth and shelter of shops. I'd joked just hours earlier to Fiona, our course tutor that rain was your friend, not your enemy and that she should hug the rain, but it was hard to be a rain lover whilst trudging back down the Perth road (or should that be wading down Perth road?) In torrential downpours. I'd just come from Duncan of Jordanstone (an art school attached to Dundee Uni) where Fiona thought that it would be a good idea to look at the D of J masters degree degree show, for reasons of, and I quote, "Seeing what stage you'll be at in five years time!". We were not impressed, I can tell you. It was, and I mean absolute no offense to any of the artists, arty farty. There was, however, one installation I liked, which was entitled "Off the wall" which was a video in which a guy spray painted a drawing of a huge hulking humanoid figure on a wall, and the figure came alive and started chasing the guy. It was an excellent mash of live action and animation which was so familiar to me, after having done the animation course last year. The artist was there, faithfully manning his installation, and you could order t-shirts and mini models of the Graffiti guy, so I ordered a t-shirt. And, after all that, art still confuses me!

Phone Rage

Yet another night in work. Yet another night of people confirming my suspicions that Neanderthals have not in fact died out. I wrote about this in one of my very first posts on this blog, and I'm doing it again because I'm still so irate with this happening. A bit of background information first. I work in a Market Research job for Tesco, and we do telephone surveys, some of which we essentially cold call. The responses, as you can probably imagine, are not exactly friendly. They range from having the phone slammed down in my ear, to be told to f*** off/kill myself, etc, and imperatives to that effect. We just smile and put up with it because we get that shtick all the time. It's all very well that we are disturbing you, and we appreciate that, but that is absolutely no excuse for abusing us. They seem to forget that there is, in fact, a real live human being on the other end of the phone. How do they think I feel when they slam down the phone or swear at me? I can tell you that I feel pretty damned angry, often I want to reach down the phone and punch the person on the other end of the phone. There is, of course, a very simple solution to this situation, and the solution is something that seems to dying out these days: Etiquette. A simple, but firm No would suffice. And please and thank you wouldn't go amiss either and don't get angry either, it's our job to do this. Is that too much to ask?

The evil of no evil

I was reading Emzie's Blog, and she was writing about how she watched a T.V. Programme about Auschwitz. This reminded of me something that I had been thinking about earlier in the week. Throughout history wars have been fought to defeat evil, but there is a worse kind of war; the line of war where there is an enemy, but that enemy is not an evil to overcome for the sake of freedom, peace and such like, rather the enemy is like your friends or perhaps even your own family. It's for these reasons amongst others that make World War One such a devastating conflict.

FAIL!

So I was in work the other night there, bored to tears, and my mate Dave started saying "Fail! whenever someone hung up on him or he got an answering machine (taken from funny macroed images with "Fail" on them, often found on the internet. If you don't know what I'm on about, then google Fail.). So we've been doing this for the last couple of nights, and tonight, we were über bored, so I changed log out button on my phone to say Fail. It's one of those phones that you can change the labels on the buttons. Safe to say that it kept us amused for the rest of the night and will probably amuse up for days, maybe weeks. Ok, I'm a geek, so what?

Font faces are sexy, by the way. Seriously though, they are infinitely interesting, I must admit. We had a typography class today in college, and we even got to design a font. You know how in primary one, when you are learning to write, you use the lines for writing your letters, like the tall bit of the b and t have to go above the line and the rest of the letter stays below that line? We had to use those lines, it was awesome, kinda like primary one writing lessons meets caligraphy.

Off college 'til monday, ridiculously long weekend. Get In!

Recommencement

Here we are. The end of the summer. It's gone so fast, too! Where's the summer gone? Gimme back my summer! Anyways, I digress. Last time I posted was before Glen, so that's about a months worth of ground to cover! So here goes:

Glen. I knew it was that time of year when I was living on euphoria and tea (milk, no sugar) for the week before. After several months of anticipation, Glen came, and it most definitely did not disappoint. The atmosphere at the camps was amazing, as usual, and it was great to see some of the oldest housegroup in their last year as delegates, two of whom I have known since their first year at the camp five years ago, and the rest I have met at the camp and at various events. I did, of course, extend the hand of hospitality, with a couple of folk promising to come to Dundee.

Next came the college shennanigans, trying to find a place for this year, and, to cut a long story short, I'm now doing Visual Communication at good ole Graham Street (Web Design, Graphic Design, etc), which I started yesterday. Speaking of G.S., I was a tad concerned when I arrived back at the Ole Brick hut yesterday. As it houses (amongst others) the art and fashion students, it is safe to say that Graham Street Campus has more than it's fair share of fine young things. But Alas! Alack! On monday, there wasn't a single one of them to be seen! Oh Noes! There I was, mourning the state of society, when this morning, there they were. Sketchpads? Check. Arty Clothing? Check. Masses and masses of them? Check! Yay! I breathed a sigh of relief. The balance was restored, all was well with the world. More info on class members will arrive next week when I've done a full week with them. It's a small class, so it's looking good.