A brief update

It has been a busy few months for me, and I thought I'd fill you in on all the events that have been going on. There have been three weddings, two stag events and a new job to take up my attention - so understandably a bit of a hectic time!

It was my brother's wedding in Birmingham this weekend, and my friend Matt's wedding near London a fortnight ago, both of which went really well. I had the privilege of being one of the best men at both of these weddings, which was slightly stressful at points, but so rewarding and worth all the time and effort. Here's a couple of pictures of both the occasions.

Matt and Laura's Wedding - I'm fourth in from the right!

Joe and Ellie's Wedding

Matt's wedding went quite smoothly compared to Joe's - things just wouldn't stop going wrong! Firstly, my parent's car window was smashed outside the church during the rehearsal. Then I came down with chronic stomach issues in the night after a dodgy curry, which kept me on the porcelain throne all morning. Then the chair covers for the reception didn't fit - it was a bit of a nightmare. However, God clearly wanted the day to go ahead, because all these issues were solved by a variety of blessings - a friendly neighbour of Joe's patched up the window with perspex, my mum negotiated a deal for some different chair covers, and through the miracle of Imodium, I stayed corked-up for the rest of the day! In all seriousness though, it was a fantastic day and thoroughly enjoyed by all, I'm sure.

Now that all weddings are out of the way, I can focus on God's most recent answer of prayer for me - a new job! I've been looking for work since I finished at university last year, whilst continuing to work at my part-time job. It has been quite a challenge to trust that God had a plan for me each time another door was closed, but now I can clearly see His purpose in all these things. So, to cut a long story short, I've accepted the role of Communications Assistant at a Christian Evangelical charity based in the local area. The job is initially part-time, three days a week, so I'm hoping to continue doing a couple of days home-delivering to make it a full week of work. It's a fantastic role, making use of my creativity and interests, and will be a great opportunity to serve God.

Matt Chandler - Defining Masculinity

I was looking for a sermon today, something to focus my time with God, and I found this on YouTube. It really challenged me as a guy as well as a newly married husband, I hope it has an impact on you too. The next section should be linked at the end of the video.

Something strange is happening...

I have found myself bizarrely interested in the World Cup as of late, the strangeness of this concept being that for most of my life I have been decidedly anti-football. The reasons for this stance were two-fold. Firstly, I've never been that good at the beautiful game myself, generally relegated to a defensive position where my usual tactic was to rush screaming at the attacking players (it did work sometimes), and secondly, I just couldn't generate the same level of passion for the sport as my friends. While they were obsessing over league tables and their latest season on Championship Manager (vintage 97/98), and would much rather have read a book or immersed myself in Final Fantasy.

I think the turning point came when I started doing the home delivery job at a certain frozen foods specialist (hint: it's not Greenland). Whilst out in the van I would listen to the radio, and quickly became bored by the monotony and repetition of Radio 1. I don't really know why, but I decided to switch over to Radio 5 Live. I've never switched back. I was initially attracted by the book and film reviews during the weekday afternoons, but gradually I began to take an active interest in the sport commentary broadcasted on Saturdays. It was so funny to see my friends faces when I chipped into their conversations with an actual viable comments about Rooney's performance over the weekend, or something of that nature.

When the World Cup came along, I said the same thing to myself as I do every time England play in an international football tournament; I'm not getting sucked in. This time however, the same as all the other times, I did get sucked in, but not in the way I expected. Rather than just following the my national side's ulcer-inducing scramble into the second round, I actually found myself absorbed in the entire tournament, to the point where I've been filling in a little World Cup planner in a magazine my Dad left in the living room. When the inevitable happened and England were knocked out, I didn't lose interest and pin all my hopes on a certain British tennis player, who in my opinion was never going to beat Nadal this year anyway (see, I also have opinions about tennis too!).

I think this World Cup has been particularly intriguing for me, mainly because of the big upsets during the tournament. When former winners such as Germany lose matches to underdogs like Serbia, it makes you sit up and think, who is actually gonna win this thing? All predictions go out of the window, along with shock early-exiting favourites such as France and Italy, leaving the field very much open to anyone. I guess it feels a little bit like the equivalent of me, a fairly unfit and unskilled player, managing to somehow wrong-foot one of my football-fanatic mates and send the ball sailing into the top corner. So maybe I'm enjoying it because I feel I can relate to the underdog spirit of the lower ranked teams that rewrote the record books by beating their bigger national neighbours into the second round and quarter finals. I was gutted when Ghana lost last night, but at least I was actually enjoying watching the game even though I had no national stake in it.

So there you have it. I'm actually enjoying the World Cup! I feel like the universe might implode from the very nature of that concept. I mean, it doesn't even involve lightsabers! My predictions for the remaining matches are as follows:

Germany will beat Argentina, and Spain will beat Paraguay, meaning it will be Germany Vs Spain in the remaining semi-final. The Netherlands will beat Uruguay and Germany will beat Spain, leading to a final between Germany and the Netherlands, in which Germany will win. Basically I want England to have been beaten by the best side! We'll have to wait and see if my predictions are correct. Post yours below and we'll see who gets it right!

The end has arrived!

As of today, I have unofficially finished my university degree! I handed in my last essay this morning, just gotta wait and see what marks I get. Hopefully good ones! It's a little bit surreal. Hasn't really sunk in yet that after three years of uni (four if you count my year doing Sociology and Criminology - worst course ever), it's all finished. And I've gotta find a job now, and be a real person!

This week has been an interesting one so far. Started off well on Monday, I'd done over half of my essay and the rest was well planned out. However, for reasons I've yet to ascertain, I spent Monday night/Tuesday morning worshipping 'the porcelain throne'. The culprits could be either a dodgy chili, essay stress, the fact that I drank a copious amount of Pepsi with my dinner, or a combination of the three! I spent most of Tuesday sleeping, playing PS3 and feeling sorry for myself (sigh, get the violins out).

However, I felt much better on Tuesday and was able to finish off my Post War American Writing essay with minimal stress. I think it was quite a good one, well I hope and pray it was! I chose to write about the importance of the outsider figure to American identity, using Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club to demonstrate the argument. I thought it would be really difficult to find secondary material on Fight Club, but there were actually some really useful journal articles online. I didn't get a good mark in my earlier Post War American Writing essay (not many people did apparently), so there's a lot riding on this one!

Having handed in my final essay, there was one inevitable thing that was going to occur today. After over a month of waiting, the moment has arrived...Final Fantasy XIII has been played! By me! I'm enjoying it so far, the graphics are amazing, the story-line is involving, and the battle system is actually quite fun, while being a complete departure from the ones of the past games. Some of the characters are a little bit annoying, like soppy Hope and over-enthusiastic Vanille, and the game feels very linear at the beginning, not much scope for customisation or any side quests so far. But it's still really good, worth continuing with until the choices open up a bit more.

I've really been RPG-ing it up this month, as I bought Fallout 3 the other day. It's an awesome game, and a nice change to the FF-style RPGs that I'm used to. However, in my opinion, it's strongest feature is also it's biggest weakness. Fallout 3 is a BIG game, with almost limitless permeations of how it can be played. This is really cool, as it means you definitely get your money's worth (especially if you get the Game of the Year edition with the DLC included), but it left me feeling a little bit lost to start with and forced me to wander around aimlessly before I got to grips with the game. It's really fun though, great mix of first-person shooter and RPG elements.

Managed to persuade my housemate and Lauren to watch The Usual Suspects the other day. And, as I knew they would, they enjoyed it very much! They should listen to my film recommendations more often. Watched Kick-ass and Iron Man 2 at the cinema recently, both of which I enjoyed, but the former was better than the latter. Kick-ass was really original and superbly shot, but was a little bit lazy with the humour at some points. There are cleverer ways to make people laugh than having a pre-pubescent girl cursing like a trooper. Iron Man 2 was good, but lacked a little bit of sparkle. I think the first one was a fair bit better.

So it's gonna be a lazy day tomorrow, with much Final Fantasy to be played. However, I don't wanna rub it in Lauren's face that I've finished my uni work MUCH MUCH EARLIER than her. So I guess I'll be looking for a job...any ideas?

Guess who's back?

It's taken a while, but I'm finally back online! I moved into my uni house at the end of September and we've got our internet/tv/phone package from Virgin Media sorted out at last. I thought we'd be stuck in the dark ages till next year, but after a trip to B&Q by my housemates, we managed to jury-rig the tv box thingie to work. The only downside at the moment is that we have a 20 metre cable snaking dangerously through our house, which seems to be sentiently trying to trip everyone over. And we don't have a phone yet.

My registration all went smoothly, despite my fears that the student loan fiasco would rear its ugly head again. My units are, for the most part, very interesting, in particular my dissertation unit and writing project. I'm writing a 90 minute scifi/noir screenplay for the former, and starting a fantasy/scifi novel for the latter. Essentially I have roughly 30,000 words to write whatever I want! Slightly daunting but I know I'll enjoy it.

Best get on, I'm popping home this weekend to work, so I need to pack and do a few other things. Over and out!

Heroes Needed!

Again, I must apologise for my lack of posting as of recent. My literary silence has been due to a combination of being extremely busy and wasting what little free time I have playing Driver and watching the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings films.

Mostly this week I have been working, which isn't really out of the ordinary, and also helping at the 'Junior Heroes' kids club at my church, which is slightly out of the ordinary. I didn't think I would really enjoy it but it was actually quite fun. I haven't done any youth work for a while so it was a bit weird to start with, but I got into it quickly.

I'm going to Uckfield tomorrow, to visit my mate Tom for his birthday. It's a long drive but worth it for his Mum's cooking.

Finished two books this week, Film Noir by Andrew Spicer, and Suffer the Children by Adam Creed. The former was very useful for my dissertation and the latter was just a very good read, which did have some noir elements so I guess it will be useful academically. That's the beauty of my course; I can watch films, play games and read books, all in the name of inspiration for my course!

Busy, busy, busy

Hey y'all! Sorry I haven't written anything for a little while. Been quite busy at work and with other stuff. Plus my parent's computer is sloooow at doing anything and we don't have wireless boardband, so posting an update generally involves 10 to 15 minutes for windows to load and then another 10 to 15 minutes for the anti-virus software to stop hogging all the memory and allow the internet to be barely useable. Oh well, could be worse. Could be dial-up.

Dial-up internet was amazing! Of course at the time you didn't have anything compare it with, so you were just happy to have a webpage load, even if it did take an hour. Who can forget the sound of the modem firing up? It was like artoo deetoo having a fit! And then there was the wonderful situation when someone was on the phone and you'd hear them speaking mystically from the back of your computer saying, "yeah... NNNNGHGH yeah, someone's KKKKFGG just turned the flippin' GFHHHJH internet on." Those were the days.

Anyway, steering frantically back on course, here's some stuff I've been up to instead of writing my blog. On Thursday I went back down to Portsmouth for the day to give my student house a final clean before leaving my keys. I severely underestimated how long it would take us. We were there for about 6 hours in total, but we left it spotless. The 'we' I am refering to here is my girlfriend Lauren (we're actually engaged but I always call her my girlfriend, might get in trouble for that), her grandma and myself. Now I know what you're thinking; how could I press-gang a poor elderly woman in cleaning my house? Firstly, she's fairly young and secondly, she offered to help, so... The job would have taken twice as long if she hadn't come, she is a master at cleaning, bless her. Anyway, the job is done now and I'm glad of it.

Yesterday, which was Saturday, I had a band practice with some guys from my church and my job at a certain frozen foods supermarket to take up my time. I decided to organise some music events over the summer with the help of Lauren, because there are a few people who can play well at my church, it's just a case of getting us organised. The practice went really well, considering we only played for an hour and a half, and for the first time in 3 or 4 months! Work wasn't too bad, I do the home delivery driving when they need me to, which gets me out of the shop and into the ghettos! It's not all bad though, I can listen to the tennis in the van, so every cloud...

To finish, just a small mention of the recent passing of Michael Jackson. I'll be brief because I don't have anything too valuable to add what others have already said. I hope his family can find peace at this difficult time and that we will remember him for the music and not the controversy. I wasn't the biggest fan but I still respect him as one of the greatest musicians and performers of our time.