General Fiasco @ The Underworld 23/02/2012

So as you may have seen (but I doubt) in my vlog, I saw General Fiasco on Thursday at The Underworld. I went with 2 friends and it was pretty rad. There were two support acts, More Than Conquerors and The 1975.

Firstly, the venue. It was a nifty little place where the small stage was underground. The stage also wasn’t that far off the floor, which could be bad, I guess. One other thing that baffled me was the rather thick pillar which was like…. quite far forward towards the stage…. but we didn’t mind, it meant we had something to lean on while we watched the music. It was pretty much the optimal distance from the stage, as you could see everything and weren’t even that far back.

The crowd that arrived was mostly 16-18 year old kids (possibly younger?) or at least mentally aged so. Now, I may be an old fart (at the ripe old age of 18 and 8 months) but kids are a bunch of dicks. Basically there were a bunch of people who thought that acting like a complete dick was a right “larf”.  For a lot of them it seemed like it was babies first live concert as well so they thought the only thing you do is act like a BIT of an arse…

There was one group of kids (lead by a boy with his big ball of afro-like hair… basically a “Jewfro”, are they even cool these days?) where I heard one of them say to us “You basically pretend it’s a metal concert and go crazy!”. Now I had two problems with this statement. Firstly, if they were at a metal concert they’d get the living stuffing beaten out of them as those things are fierce. CRAZY fierce, heads will roll. Secondly, it was General Fiasco! They’re not exactly the most rocky thing, so it’s just crazy!!! Le sigh.

Anyway, the first support band were More Than Conquerors. Now I sort of liked them. They had a good sound. It wasn’t GREATLY original but still, it was kinda good. I wasn’t the biggest fan of when they tried to go a bit more hardcore as it just didn’t sound great, but for the most part it was good and the lead singer was rather friendly. There’s not much more I can say really, they were listenable to (that’s a word) and I would check them out, if I were you.

The next band to come on were The 1975. Now, my friends and I judged these guys while they were setting up, expecting sort of harder rocky stuff. NOPE. They played some nice sort of melodic tunes. I’d say, maybe a bit like The XX, but probably more upbeat. Probably the best part was when some of the kids on the front row started to clap and the lead singer told them to stop because they can’t keep a beat for shit (which was true, they tried clapping in all the songs, clapping =/= improvement). The lead singer also had a Mortal Kombat logo tattooed on his arm so my friend and I just quietly yelled characters at him as well as going “MORTAL KOMBAT!” between songs. We confronted him at the end and got some signed thingies, which is jawesome.  Sadly I can’t find any online presence for them 😦

FINALLY we got General Fiasco on stage! Loads of people suddenly crowded in at this point including the above mentioned kids with the afro. One of them stood RIGHT in front of us, so I just yelled at the back of his head until he turned round and eventually moved. Good times. So anyway, General Fiasco were pretty fantastical! They played a LOT of songs, including Sinking Ships which is probably my favourite song EVARS by them. They played more than when they played at Reading Festival 2011 which was sweet! They also played A LOT of new songs, which some people complained about, but I liked it. It’s like a taster of the new album they’re going to release, like an advert… it’s how the music industry is meant to be. It also meant that a lot of the teenagers couldn’t jump around like loons as they didn’t know the song…. they also couldn’t clap out of time as they didn’t know the structure of the song. Some of the teenagers started to climb onto stage and then try crowd surfing…. one of the girls got pushed towards us… we stepped back. LOL. Plus some girls got on to sing, BIG mistake…. they couldn’t sing. It’s like…. no…. It was amusing anyway.

Afterwards we waited in line to get some swag and bumped into someone on our course (well, me and one of my friend’s course) who we didn’t really know but still. We got two posters (one signed by the band) for £5 which was AWESOME as well as the little card thing signed by the guy in The 1975. Sadly we didn’t get any More Than Conquerors stuff, but we didn’t really see much around… :S

It was a good night with good music and I’d definitely check out everyone I mentioned (bands)

Buying Soap is the Sign of Adulthood

So I felt like it was about time I became mildly self centered and write a blog post about… my life :S

Sadly, I’m shocked to find out that WordPress has completely changed it’s layout and tried to make it more like Tumblr (from what I can gather) and I must say, I don’t like it, I feel limited in what I can do now.

This disjointed and near schizophrenic (all over the place) blog will EVEN contain some University stuff, like WOAH!

So I’ve basically realised that I’m going to have to buy some more scentless hand soap soon and then I realised that I’m basically an official adult. This happened last night and I quickly found it strange how out of ALL the things I’ve done at Uni (being not much) the one thing that really hits me as becoming self reliant was having to eventually buy some soap… I probably need to get out more.

Strangley I had a whole list of stuff to talk about last night, but now that’s just gone by morning (it was a mental list)

So recently I managed to forget my PIN, like…. I forgot it over the xmas break but I’d managed to avoid using my card until recently when my travel card ran out. Basically, I had gotten it wrong to the point where it locked me out of my card and I suddenly felt VERY poor. The biggest problem, my Oyster travel card had also ran out at pretty much the same time, so I was having to find what little money I had lying around to try and get to and fro university (it came to about £24 in a week, OBSCENE). The good news is yesterday my PIN arrived back in Suffolk so my mother told me (I eventually heard it over the yells of my friends trying to embarrass me…. and succeeding)

(Only now after I quickly restart Firefox is it that I realise that the WordPress publishing layout has not changed at all and I was just on the wrong bit)

So today just now I popped down to my local Barclays and BAM! I’m back with some money, so I even redid my travel card, it was £78.x0…. is that right? (Yes, it was always that expensive, or it’s just gone up, seeing as zone 1 to zone 1 also costs £2 at any time in the day) so now I don’t have to worry about running out of cash, and just worry more about the fact that if I keep eating I’ll be too poor to live (work that one out)

So, I’ve found myself watching a lot of films recently with my friend Holly as she gets bored of working. These have included in the last week: Battle Royale, Hostel, Chocolat, The Human Centipede 2, Howl’s Moving Castle (<3), Rabbit Proof Fence and probably some others that I just can’t think of right now. I must say, The Human Centipede 2 (having not seen the first one) EXTREMELY boring. The level of gruesomeness was just too silly to take seriously. The few bits I didn’t like were the knee surgery, purely because my knees are messed up and they just hurt when knees are the main thing, the teeth knocking out (to an extent) and then the baby head being crushed under the accelerator peddle and that was purely because it was a baby and it just seemed a bit too much. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. The character was a bit creepy and what not and then when everyone’s pooping it was just stupid with the added noises AND the poo/blood splatter effect on the camera. Honestly, it was just a bit boring. (Now Hostel was gruesome)

University? Oh  yeah, I’m at university aren’t I. I’ve decided that I have no reason to even bother remembering my life in Suffolk seeing as it’s apparent there’s NOTHING for me back there (oh boo hoo, cry me a river, right?) as is apparent from my recently “removed” blog posts that you may or may not have cared about. Due to this decision I sort of forget that I haven’t spent most of my life in university, which would have probably made things easier/more torturous.

So yeah, how about that university eh? The first year at the moment has been MOSTLY A-level stuff just gone over again and occasionally containing more detail. There’s FAR too much biology for my liking (it’s basically all a Biology A-level just split up, so naturally I hate it all) but there are some parts which are tolerable. You’d think with the logic of “It’s just A-levels, wah” I should OBVIOUSLY be slamming everything into the ground? Sadly, I’m a stupid person so I didn’t do well in my exams. In Biochem I got 75% (woo?) as well as in Pharmacology (which I guess equates to a first). Sadly I got 62% in Physiology and 61% in Cells to Systems which are like a bad 2-1 in both of them. My average was like 68.25% which is EVEN WORSE! Bleh. (Is anyone even reading at this point any more?)

I guess some of my coursework is all right as a lot of them have been A – A++ (which is 70+%) while sadly one piece was a B+ (65- 70%) and then test I got maybe a B…. gross (a B is 60 – 65%) so I guess it’s going well, but not great. I know, gross right?

I joined a fencing society! So now I fence, with swords! I’m apparently sort of good at it and I’ve found myself applying to be on the committee next year… wait, what? I thought I was really lazy and didn’t do any work? Yeah, mildly bullied/ pressured into it. I’m sure it’ll look good on my UCAS CV.

The food in halls is very hit and miss so I go through great periods of starvation and then have like one meal and rinse and repeat, it’s sort of gross how much I eat now. Too much.

I’ve recently gotten into Death From Above 1979. Seriously, listen to them, they’re AWESOME!!!! Like, amazing.

I’m also going to see General Fiasco in Feb with my friends Holly and Neil (Although Holly may drop out so I’ll have to find someone else)

Other than all that, I’m fine.

2012 is THIS year?

As it’s the new year I thought I might as well do the ONE blog post that seems to be always constant (as I feel I ought to update it at least once a year so why not at the start?) being the new year thing! There will also be Christmas as well, I guess. So here goes!

I’ll start with Christmas, Christmas has come and gone already and it was an interesting one… and when I say interesting I mean exactly the same as every other one. As I’d already been home in Suffolk for a week I’d already gotten tired of being around my family, but that’s just natural. Anyway, Christmas day had “everyone” wake up at about 10:30am… I say “everyone” as my brother woke up at about lunch time, so we went straight to that. My grandparents weren’t here this time so it was smaller and… I guess LESS stressful than most years. We eventually opened some presents:

That’s a blurry photo of most the things I got for Christmas:

• Captain America on DVD
• X-men: First Class on DVD
• Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood on Xbox 360
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution on Xbox 360
• Batman: Arkham City on Xbox 360
• Disgaea DS… on DS
• Some Mittens
• An Ugly-ish Jumper
• Some PJ bottoms
• The Rogue (hardback) by Trudi Canavan
• Atomic Robo Vol 5
• Two boxes of Winegums
• A box of Lindor
• Some Mr Happy Bath stuff
• Some Ted Baker Bath stuff
• Some Mango and Lime Curd
• A chocolate Reindeer (santa)
• Some Chocolate animal biscuits (santa)
• Some Haribo Star gummies (santa)

The day after Xmas we went to My Grandparents house for the day, so that’s like 3 hours in the car either way…. fun. The day after I slept until 2:40pm….

Quick Gaming blar – Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is TOO easy…. The combat you just use the hidden blade and kill EVERYTHING. It feels like I haven’t actually had to make an assassination for a while yet (like story-wise where they normally make it more difficult in a little area and you’ve got to sneak around instead of just normal jump off roof and kill) then there’s the crossbow which is as strong as the gun (in that it kills the big heavily armoured guys in one bolt) yet also silent. Then worse still is your little Brotherhood of Assassins…. Just walking down the street they do most the killing of the guards… I’m just left to loot the bodies :S I’m only into maybe the 5th sequence but that’s because I know own every building I can at this point….

Deus Ex: Human Revolution – I didn’t get to play a lot of this before going back to Uni, but I have liked what I’ve played. I obviously cranked it to the hardest difficulty straight off and then am playing pacifist as well as making it so there are no alarms going off ever, just to make it a fun challenge. The sneaking in the game does feel very legit (more so than Assassin’s Creed). Sneaking around and monitoring the guard’s movements and then trying to hide the bodies in places where they wont be seen! It’s all so tense! (No infinitely large haystacks here!) Although I must the hacking has now become a joke now that I have the 3 Augments that decrease detection rate, but not getting spotted WHILE hacking is another challenge xD I’ve NEVER used a code I found yet… I always hack, but I’m fun like that.

Gaming blar over!

Now for the quick year review where I just make a quick comment (or a long one) on various things that have happened in my life, but hey, It’s legit as I haven’t written many blogs this year! 😀

So I finished Sixth form! That was pretty neat… stressful as well, mostly waiting for offers from Universities… I didn’t do as much revision as I should have for my exams it was the normal last night cramming sort of thing except for Maths. I guess you could also include Chemistry as well but then I only did papers in lessons as we had nothing else to do and I didn’t do many as I just chatted. Maths was, again, only doing papers in class and stuff as we basically had NOTHING else to do and I still had to go to lessons and it was the sort of lesson where talking through it and not doing anything was frowned upon. Biology, on the other hand, we finished the course in the last week of our time there…. and I’d already had a Biology retake before then (which I didn’t revise for). I got AAB so I got into King’s College London where I’m currently at studying Biochemistry.

I turned 18 in 2011, which I also just forgot as it wasn’t a big thing. I mean, not even my family remembered and I didn’t have a party (no friends to invite) so it wasn’t the biggest part of my life.

I went to Reading Festival, which was pretty amazing! I met some people from Twitter (although not as many as I hoped or as often either) and to say it was my first experience of live gigs… it was pretty amazing! 😀 I’m still sort of shocked that I went by myself (on the trains and stuff) which freaked a few people out at Sixth Form.

So September came around and I was bored out of my skull… I’d basically already cast off my secondary school life as it wasn’t exactly great and I was greatly looking forward to University! So it eventually came to the point where I was by myself in my room in halls not knowing what to do. I guess the first term has been okay (as long as you don’t look at my arms), I’ve made some close friends and then have also made a bunch of others. Again there’s not really one SOLID group, it’s lots of people from groups I was in but it’s still cool. I’m happy with the people I’ve befriended… which makes me sound like a bit of an emotional so and so… :S Which I’m not…. ugh, emotions. Lame. Am I right?

The actual learning part of Uni is pretty intense… it’s only now that I’m not doing ANY revision AT ALL when I should be for my exams starting on the 9th that I realise I should probably focus a bit more :S I joined Fencing as well! Made a few friends there… I guess?

I believe the expression I’d use to describe the first term would be “socially confusing” I would have said “Confusing” but that could be mistaken for me not understanding the course material and looking over the main reason for the word “Confusing”… I mean…. GAH!

I don’t want to go back to old habits of just moaning for ever and ever about everything and I’ve really tried to not do that…. I’ve slipped once or twice but I’m getting better and better at bottling up everything that’s wrong and just telling everyone I’m fine. As well as hopefully taking on other people’s problems as well… I mean, although you may not think it (what with the blog posts showing me being a bit of an arse when people are getting up in arms) I just want to help people. Not ALL the people, the people I actually care about yeah. As well as friendly strangers. People I’ve known for a bit and I’ve just grown tired of, I will not listen to their problems and care… I’ll barely even listen. But listening is fun as it fills me with guilt (oops, did I type that? It’s cool, no one will read this far down anyway).

I must say I do hate New Years…. as it’s just that sort of time where you reflect on the year and you realise how bad it’s been and then you realise that the coming year will probably be equally as bad as well…. same with Birthdays… I’ve come to hate my birthday as I basically realise I’ve not made a positive difference to anyone’s life or to the world around me in the X amount of years I’ve been alive while at the same time I’ve probably made A LOT of people feel bad. Then there’s also all the stuff I haven’t done either that 12 year old kids are doing these days…. (I am pathetic…) WAIT NO! Ignore me, I’m bottling that up…. sorry.

So yeah, yesterday I went to see the fireworks with some friends, it was pretty sweet! We ended up waiting around in a big crowd of jostling drunks for like… hours! It also rained but it was really heavy rain at times so that made up for it! (gosh I love heavy rain). Then I got to count down with everyone in London and then KABLAMO! Fireworks! They were pretty amazing fireworks as well. I swear at some points it seemed like they just threw some flashbangs up in the air :S Suddenly the music changed to people talking about the Olympics and then saying London and everyone cheered…. I then remembered, the London 2012 Olympics are THIS year…. 😦 That will not be fun….

Resolutions? I know I normally review my resolutions from last year and say how they went, but I’m fairly sure I failed a lot of them so I don’t want to carry them on again, for some that’d be like… 4 years in a row or something, so instead I’m coming up with a new resolution:

To not make any resolutions.

Oooh, paradoxical!

Oh yeah, over the Christmas break I managed to increase my song count from 4926 to 6988 songs (I can’t download torrents in Halls (well I can, just not the .torrent file) so I have to do it all elsewhere) which is pretty rad 😀

You’re Hot and You’re Cold

What an exciting week. Well, the week was actually sort of boring… and a bit depressing… but that’s like how life normally works.

Not much apart from the above happened for like… the ENTIRE week.

Thursday evening was Parents’ Evening. I had to go with my mother. It turned out to be pretty rad. My maths teacher, Mr Tapscott, was first on the list. He said that he was a bit worried with my revision seeing as that morning I had said “Could you help me with Probability” and then when asked which bit… I said the entire chapter… :S However he did say he can see me doing well and possible A material, despite the bad Mock result for stats (E/D). Mr Hydes jumped over and was very chipper. He sort of said things opposite to Tapscott, which was funny. Apparently he’s a bit worried about me because I don’t ask any questions in the lesson and stuff. So yeah, they said I was quiet.

We then jumped over to Mr Smith… I was sort of worrying this would be awful, because Mr Smith gave me a C on my progress report but a B to possibly the worst person in the class… However, it turned out to be pretty decent. He said that I’m a bright young lad! He did say I’m a bit quiet and that I don’t put my hand up enough, but when forcefully made to answer a question, he said I know what I’m talking about, as well as me possibly getting an A. He even asked about how my University stuff was going! AND WAS SMILING! It was kinda weird, because it almost seemed like someone actually cared about my life, which we all know isn’t true because no one does. I do sort of wish Miss Cresdee was there, because I think she likes me… maybe…

Lastly it was Mr Hillier, my Chemistry teacher. I was also a bit weary about this as he had been a bit all up in my grill recently. However, he was all like, “Dang, yo’ son be amazing! He gon’ do my statistics a whole world of good!” That’s because I have predicted grades of CCC, due to my AWFUL  GCSE results, but I’m currently on ABB, the A in Chemistry. The funny thing was, he was the only teacher who didn’t mention the mock. The funnier thing is… I’m actually really worried about my Chemistry exam. I can’t remember the reactions very well or the conditions. From 3 Past papers I’ve done I got an A* and 2 As… although I’m still shitting myself about it. Sadly Mr Peters, my other teacher, didn’t pop over because he was with another student. Ah well.

The Friday I had a Stats exam.  By Friday morning I had done NO revision AT ALL. This was because I thought “I have two frees in the morning followed by double maths before the exam, LOADS OF TIME!” What I had not counted on… was waking up and feeling weak, CONSTANTLY COLD (despite wearing 5 layers of clothing and stuff) and just generally VERY ill. Everyone thought I was crazy at first when in the common room I was going “It’s so cold… so very very cold…” and everyone else was saying it was too hot… but sooner or later people decided I may be quite ill…

So I got no revision done. The Stats exam however…. was MUCH better than I was expecting. It didn’t even go that deep into each topic. It just scratched the surface of everything. It only went to the end with Binomial Distribution, which the hardest that gets to is a simultaneous equation… which is easy (despite at first I got a standard deviation of 1200…. which was wrong) but yeah, it was MUCH better than I was expecting. However, I did think Mechanics was pretty easy and I got a B in that :S

Saturday I woke up and was still awful… so I got work off, which is good. Still ill today… Probably will be tomorrow but I have to go to school. Which SUCKS!

So yeah, I’ve decided I’m feverish… as I go from going VERY hot to VERY cold quickly… One time I was both hot AND cold at the same time, which is the worst feeling ever (hence the name)

So yeah, next week I have two maths exams on the same day… being mechanics retake and Core 3. I hope I’m better by then….

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED SCHOOL?

CAPITAL LETTERS Are FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (why is my shift key being annoying :S)

So yeah, Wednesday was the start of the wonders of going back to school. You may have guessed from the title that I didn’t enjoy this new introduction to doing something useful with my life. PREPARE FOR AN EXPLANATION IN DETAIL! #caps

WEDNESDAY, I was lucky enough to start Wednesday with a double free so I could slowly ease my way into working. How did I do this? Simple, by doing absolutely NO work AT ALL! I spent my double free dossing about in the library.

I then had double chemistry where I TRIED to do some revision style work, being past papers… however with the exam being late January and there being 5 other exams between me and it, I really don’t have the Oomph to do anything. Which is why in 3 lessons I have managed to do HALF a past paper (each lesson is 50 minutes, the past paper is 1.5 hours long 😀 )

Lunch, because I was hungry and so were some other people, I went down to the Co-op (which is like a 15-20 minute walk from the school). Only a friend and I went. It was cold… SO VERY COLD!

Then in my last two frees I continued this trend of doing nothing.

Thursday (Was nearly immature and called it “Turdsday”, you know, because I’m mature and shit! *sniggers*)  was greeted with double statistics. My Stats exam is on Friday, so I had no drive for any sort of revision, I did one question that was 5 marks in total (So it should have taken about 5 minutes) and spent the rest of the lesson doing… something I guess.

This was quickly (after break) followed by double Biology with my boring teacher that everyone hates because he can’t teach or anything like that and he’s old and boring and old and can’t teach… and boring. So, my first Biology Exam is on the coming Tuesday in the morning. So as you could have guessed, I had no drive to revise! So I didn’t, I spent the double lesson staring blankly at my revision guide and occasionally turning the page to fool everyone around me. It was dull.

My lunchtimes don’t really stand out anymore as anything, at least in my memory, mostly because I just drift from place to place looking for acceptance and trying to hide the frown on my face 😀 (fun like that)

After lunch I had Chemistry, see previous, although with less work (although the previous one also has stuff from this one in :S) and then I had biology with my fun teacher 😀 Well, I say fun teacher, she’s a lot more interesting and young and not old and not boring and can teach and is friendly and young and not old. She asked everyone how much revision they’ve done and I went “I’ve done none!” and she went, “You’ve done NONE?! But your exam is on Tuesday…” I grinned and went “Yeah, I know…” I’m radical like that. She was also shocked when I was saying how over xmas my sleeping hours moved from 2am to 6am to like 4am or 5am to like 9am… She didn’t understand the concept of Sleep Deprivation for Fun! (Child Friendly) I didn’t revise in this lesson either.

TODAY! I was beginning to feel PRETTY gosh darn tired by now. After avoiding going to the Thomas Mills Day Assembly (an assembly about the guy who donated money (that he got from marrying two rich widows) to some schools in Ye Olde Framlingham that lead to the formation of Thomas Mills High School), despite the day being tomorrow, I thought that  I might actually start some biology revision. So I spent about 50 minutes staring at my revision guide not really revising as I can’t remember anything that I read. Prepare for a list of random stuff that pops into my head about Unit 1 AQA Biology. You can feel free to skip, I’ll put some stars to indicate:

***

The immune system is… fuck this is boring…

*** so yeah. After break I had DOUBLE maths… I did some Core 3 Revision as Mechanics is REALLY easy and I’m not sure how I only got a B in the exam the first time round and seeing as the retake and the Core 3 exam are on the exact same day at the exact same time and I seem to be able to do Mechanics without actually doing ANY extra reading I was doing some Core 3. I seem to be pretty decent at that as well with little revision, I got a C (1 mark off a B) in the mock exam and did no revision, so I just need to read up on Integration a bit and then also learn how to read and then also check my work as well as revolutions of solids or something like that and I’ll be supery dupery. okay, I’ll stop blowing my own horn.

Then double free again…

So yeah, I’m not actually really used to doing work again :S I’ll also start my “serious” biology unit 1 retake revision on Sunday… hopefully….  If not Monday… DEFINITELY Monday, after school…. The good thing is, I get to miss 3 lessons of Biology next week because EVERYONE except for me in my biology class are retaking Unit 2 (I got an A) so he’s going to spend next week’s lessons doing Unit 2 revision, seeing as I am not doing Unit 2, I do not need to turn up 😀 This is good news. Hopefully I’ll get more than 66 marks on this retakes :S (I originally got 66, and then also on the retake got 66…) well, not marks… UMS points or whatever, I dunno… % maybe? Whatever….

LIFE! I got shoes:

My new Vans... IN ACTION! ACTION SHOT!

They have blue soles as well 😀

I got a new external hard drive… and also my brother’s bday present turned up that I then wrapped like a MORON!

Then that’s that. Hopefully school will quiet down (No it wont, after January I’ll be starting the next unit of work meaning that I’ll start getting homework again and actually have to DO something in the lessons which is the opposite of fun D:)

Also, Reading Festival. Definitely going to that 😀 I just need to make sure I can get a ticket, then get a tent, then get some welly boots and whatever is needed for this sort of thing as well as train tickets, people to go with, people to sleep with (not in that way) people to not get stabbed with and people to enjoy it with 😀