Amsterdam

Hello my lovely readers!

As you have probably noticed, I’ve not posted in a while. This is because I was on holiday! I should have mentioned it…nope, no I didn’t. Oh well. I was on holiday, and it was good!

Day 1: Arrival at Amsterdam after an ungodly start (4am in the morning does not a happy princess make) but we did a canal boat tour, and then a walking tour of the red light district. It was really interesting actually, from a historical and economical point of view. Legalised prostitution lowers crimes rates, lowers those kinds of diseases and provides a good level of tax for the government. Although I was surprised the first time I went past a window, since I had no idea how it worked before we actually went there. The river boat tour is good as well, since there are loads of canals. Not as many as Venice, and all man made, but lots of water around the place.

 

Day 2: We went to the Zoo! Just me and my partner. Oh yeah, it was a holiday with my partner’s family plus other halves. It was really good, and there was a planetarium, but it loses something when you can’t understand the presentation. Lots of animals, such as Lions, Zebra’s, Giraffe’s, monkeys, small mammals, red panda’s, and lots and lots of tortoises! So many tortoises, I was so happy. I like tortoises as well, my can actually see them favourite animal. Although it did rain a lot right at the end of the day. A really goo zoo, especially for an inner city one.

 

Day 3: The Rijksmuseum. A musuem with lots of dutch things in it. It was pretty interesting and took us most of the day to go around all of the collections, stuff about the house of orange, trade, history, collections. All that kind of stuff. Amsterdam is full of musuems.

Day 4: A quick walk around a market, and some shopping for souvenirs. I came away with a delftware tortoise and a couple of dragon statues (naturally). We then visited The Amsterdam Musuem, which had a fascinating exhibit called DNA Amsterdam, which was the story of amsterdam itself, including these little questions where you would pick a short animation from a selection to do with the time period, and at the end you got your Amsterdam DNA. I was 60% Creative and 40% Freedom of Thought. Most interesting fact: the musuem was the civil orphanage until 1950.

 

Day 5: The last day, it was a week (as in the weekdays) long trip. We woke up, went to a film museum called the Eye, which was kind of cool, but we only did the free bits. Me and then partner then went to the Maritime Museum, and he got to play on a life sized model of the ship called The Amsterdam. I had no idea he liked ships so much until we went to a place filled with them! But there was a whale exhibit, navigational tools, atlases, and even an interactive experience that I managed to break, whoops! Fun time though, and then we came home, on a delayed plane. Obviously.

Now I’m back in Norwich! And there will be more posts to come, but I thought you would all like to know what I’ve been doing 🙂

Empire Event 6

That about sums up the weather for the weekend.

I think the thing that I took away from this event is something that I can relate very strongly to writing. When you write a story, it’s all about conflict. You make events and circumstances and things happen to your character that make things not go their way. And things did not go my way this event.

Because I couldn’t get any time off work, I only had time to make Flapjacks for the welcoming party, which were freely given, so I had nothing to sell and thus I didn’t make any money from selling cakes, which was the first bad thing.

Second bad thing, again relating to no time off work, I got there late on Friday, but at least I made it to conclave (wizards club meeting).

The third bad thing is a little more complicated. On Saturday, Heralds (think servants/aids/butlers) of the Day Eternal (Eternals – powerful magical beings (NOT gods), each on belongs to a particular realm of magic Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Day or Night) Ylenrith were in the Hall of Worlds (special mages only clubhouse) with some challenges. Ylenrith is an Eternal of Purity, Maths and Music, so the challenges were music and maths based. Since I’m a very logical and intelligent person who loves maths, I decided to give the maths challenges a try. Five hours later, I hadn’t gotten anywhere with even the first and easiest maths puzzle, let alone the other two. Needless to say, as someone who prides themselves on being a logical and intelligent person, this really really upset me. Especially when there were so many people completing the music challenges and getting an audience with the Eternal.

I recently became a Day mage, and I’ve really wanted to meet and Eternal, and I blew my chance. I couldn’t solve the puzzles no matter how hard I tried. And I’ve even brought them home with me, and I’ve still only made a small amoutn of progress with pens, pencils and most importantly a rubber. Really, they seem to be more like exercises in guesswork than they are in logic.

And that basically got me very down for the whole day. I had plans, but I put them aside for the chance to meet and Eternal, and I failed. I failed utterly and miserably. And it was only made slightly better when I happened to bump into the same Heralds the next day and asked them if anyone had solved the maths puzzles. Apparently only two people had, and I’m not sure if that was simply one of the puzzles or all three. Either way, it was a nightmare for me.

But that’s what happens to characters, and in life. Not everything goes your way. Things get thrown in your way, and you either overcome them or you have to accept that you failed and move on. Which is really, really hard for me and I suspect I’m going to remain upset about this for a while to come yet.

I mean, the weekend wasn’t all bad. I got to have fun in the battle, and physicked some people after a ritual exploded, and I got a new job investigating the Vallorn (nature went crazy with life magic and now there are ents and insects trying to eat everything), so the weekend wasn’t all bad. And I had a lovely time sitting in one of the taverns as a little boy was being adorable and bowing to everyone.

But overall? This wasn’t my favourite weekend for Empire. I failed at something that was important to me, and that’s kind of overshadowed the whole thing. Also I am all of the aches and pains today and I feel rather ill, which isn’t really helping. That and it’s STILL raining.

New 30 Day Challenge.

Since I have not yet gone to sleep this counts as Sunday’s post! I’ve been wanting to do another one of these for a while now, but never really got round to it. Well now I have and I’ve found a good one but instead of being boring and starting it with the new year, I’m starting it now. Because I can. And because I want to make the Thursday’s line up. You’ll understand when you look at this lovely picture that describes it.

Next post in 5 minutes will be day 1! Still counts as Sunday as I have been too busy packing to go to sleep yet! Days are measured in sleeps not hours, I am sure I have !mentioned this before.

Presents Under the Tree

Back at my mum’s house for the holiday’s. It’s quite nice, although I miss all my friends back in Norwich, since I went home very early.
Also, I’ve look through all of the presents under the tree. Not one of them is for me, it’s rather annoying. I mean, I want lots of cash since I’m planning to buy a tablet this Christmas, but I want *something* to unwrap.

Been shopping for a bridesmaid dress with my mum and we found this dress which is absolutely gorgeous, and we’re getting it in this really vibrant blue colour as well. Although the one they had in the show room was too small for me to try on (size 8! no way I’m getting in that) so our helper lady tried it on for us and we could see how lovely it is.

So pretty!

So I’m home, amusing myself, reading a book full of writing tips and trying to work up the courage to edit my own first draft. It needs a lot of editing.

I’ve also been debating whether to keep a diary this year or not. I’m thinking no, since I never read my old ones, and I never keep them faithfully. I’ll just use this instead 🙂

Happy Christmas to you all!

America

I’ve been in Florida for the past week, leaving the snow away for a week of sun! It was great, three days of theme parks, quite a bit of shopping and then down to the grandparents.

And pictures are worth a thousand words, so here’s some of the best.

Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Well, I’m going to America on Saturday morning, so today you get my packing list!

• Clothes, including underwear
• Jumper and raincoat just in case it isn’t 20 degrees
• Toiletries
• Diary, notebook, pens
• Passport
• Money
• Shoes
• Entertainment for the plane

That is of course in broad categories, my mother had a much more detailed list, but those are the basics. Turned out the thing I forgot was shampoo, and I also had to hunt down to find my hat. But I’m packed and ready, although I need to run errand for my family tomorrow. And do my laundry tonight. Stupid snow made my jeans all muddy. I bet it’ll all be melted by the time I get back.

So yeah, that’s the 30 day challenge done (finally) and just in time for me to go on holiday. Back in February!

 

Jobs

Spent most of today working on job applications for graduate jobs. So far today I’ve applied for two, and I’m wrestling with the application form (because IBM just have to have their own form *rolleyes*) for a third. I’ve had my eyes on the jobs for a while now, but waited until my mother had cast her eye over my CV and made suggestions before applying. Also there were a number of those “application questions” I had to fill in and I wanted to make sure I sounded okay. You know the ones I mean, those ones which are meant to show off your potential but are really annoying to actually answer because coming up with examples, let alone different examples for each freaking question, drives me to smash me head against a wall. Frequently. I think it’s why I take such pleasure in reading online application forms that have been filled in with what we actually want to put on these forms when we fill them out.

Nevertheless, I filled them out entirely reasonably and in line with what prospective employers will be looking for. Although I am still struggling with the IBM form which has half a dozen of these things loaded in, extra tricky style. I mean, where on earth in my life have I demonstrated “Adaptability” or “Effective Communication”, or even “Initiative or Creative Problem Solving”. I mean, I’m sure I have all those skills, but coming up with perfect examples that I would want to say to prospective employers? Proving immensely difficult. I’m sure I’ll find them in the end, but most of these examples can be covered by that one month I did in Ecuador, however I don’t want to use that example more than once, otherwise that looks repetitive and dull.

Anyhow tonight is my last night at home with my Mum, so we’re ordering chinese. So now I’m going to stop being so anti-social and go downstairs and spend some time with my mother. I expect to be back up here later, if only because I have yet to valour cap for the week on WoW.

New Stories

Had two new ideas for stories over the holidays. One came from a dream, the other has come out of an thought I had after listening to a song, and then has absorbed lines from other songs I’ve been listening to lately to come into a story of it’s own.

First one hasn’t got a title as of yet, but is about students who go to school in a old castle, except that the castle at large is abandoned and dangerous. Except the protagonist, despite being a almost genius level scientist, doesn’t get the logic of it’s dangerous so stay away, and so goes exploring the castle, the off limits bits, as soon as she walks into the doors on her first day. The story follows her as she explores the castle, and dives into it’s greatest mysteries. I have a lot of scences planned for this one already, but a lot of them are from later parts of the book, so I don’t want elaborate otherwised I’d spoil a great plot point.

Rogues is the title (in working) of the second one. The world was in choas, until the immmortals came. Some say that they were gods decended to earth, whereas others say that they are humans who discovered the secret. Either way the immortals came, cleared away the choas and built stability upon the world. Apart form one small kingdom which was the last refuge of those who didn’t care for the law and order imposed by those on high, but even that fell into ruins more than a centuary ago. Each immortal is said to have a soulmate upon the world they rule, and when they find their fated partner, they take them to the stronghold of immortals, where it is said that the consorts themselves are granted immortality as well. The second son of <the leader of the immortals> (sue me, I don’t have names for any of them yet) is the one remaining immortal who has yet to find his soulmate and so when he does one unassuming afternoon, he is overjoyed, except that for the first time, the girl doesn’t share his feelings. Can he make her see that they are meant to be together, and is she hiding something from him?

So yeah, two new lovely stories for me to indulge myself in, although I do have Black Dawn open currently, and I’m going to try and work on it a bit more. As well as the 101 theme challenge. I might post one of those up later, or tomorrow. Whichever I feel like either. Talking of challenges, I’ve found a few new 30 day challenges. Like the one I did at the start of this blog, and I might start one up again. I found that facebook has started a 30 day picture challenge – a different picture each day, and since I wanted to take more picture, I might as well start that. I’ll try it for the month of January, and if it’s succesful, I’ll put all of the pictures up at the end of the month.

2012 Resolutions

Double update day! This is probably an indication that I want to do a lot more blogging than I have been doing in the past few months, but I’ll get to that in a bit. The most important bit of the year, at this time anyway, is New Years Resolutions! So here are mine for this year:

• Budget: I’m not the best with money, so this year I’m going to be more responsible and budget properly, and hopefully get myself some money saved up.
• Graduate with a 2.1: This is the year I will finish my education, and I want to have a damn good degree after all this effort I’ve put in, so one more term of effort and I should get there.
• Get a Good Job: This kind of follows on from the graduating bit. I’ve already decided that this is the point at which I will finish my education, no master or post-graduate course for me, so a job it is. Currently working on my CV and I have a bunch of jobs lined up to apply for.

And those are my three resolutions for the year. There are other things I want to do, but they’re not resolutions. Resolutions are the important things that I absolutely have to do this year. The things I want to do this year that are not so important to the rest of my life as a whole are:

• Blog more: I really like this blog, and getting the summary of what happened in 2011, and looking back over some of my old posts made me really want to spark it up again. I hope I can actually keep it going in the new year, and not trail off when it gets to exam times like I did last year. So, I’m going to try for 2 posts a week about my life and things that are happening in it, and 1 post a week for my stories/creative stuff. Roughly. This is the minimum I will try for, so if stuff is really going on, or I get very creative then you can expect more. Although I think daily is stretching it a bit, since I do go to uni and a lot of what I do is work that doesn’t change all that much from day-to-day.
• Write my stories: I can’t post what I write if I write nothing after all. So this is going to come in three parts: 1) Finish Black Dawn, the story that I wrote for NaNoWriMo. I haven’t quite finished it yet, and one of my friends asked me if I was going to put it up here, and I am, when I’ve finished it. I can’t put it up yet because I don’t write sequentially, so the chapter’s are not in the order they will be. But I shall try to finish it within a couple of months, since I got like 70% though in one month, that shouldn’t be all that hard, and then put it up here for you to read. 2) Finish 101 Theme Challenge. I wanted to do this last year, but failed, so if I do the absolute minimum of one a week, the with 52 weeks in the year, I should finish by the end of the year. I’m on 60 out of 101, so 40 weeks absolute maximum if I stick to that schedule. 3) Complete NaNoWriMo again this year. If I can do it on my first year, then I should be able to do it again this year, hopefully.

And I think that’s it for what I want to do this year. I expect other things that I want to do will crop up over the course of the year, but for now, those are the important, and slightly less important things that I want to do this year.

I wish everyone else good luck and prosperity with their resolutions this year, whatever they may be.

Happy New Year!

Well it’s 2012. I just an email from WordPress with stuff about my stats from last year. Like where my viewers come from (all around the world apparently) that my most viewed post was 29. Thank You from the 101 themes, and that my most popular day was 19th February where I had 70 views that day. I love stuff like that, and seeing that I had over 1,900 views that year, made me feel really good.

So if you read this blog, then thankyou, for being one of the people that makes me feels awesome on the inside to know that people, both those I know in real life and those I have no idea who or where you are, take the time to read what I ramble and write about.

Here’s to a great year, and bring on that apocalypse!