Pop-socks and other errors...

xyz

2009-03-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm being positive. Very positive.

1. I am alive
2. Excepting some terrible event I will be alive for some time to come
3. I have a wonderful family who love and suport me
4. I have a fantastic boyfriend who I love deeply and who loves me
5. I have wonderful friends
6. I have a new and exciting job
7. Excepting some terrible event I will have a job for some time to come
8. I have the ability to think freely and clearly
9. I have the ability to acknowledge my mistakes and learn from them
10. I can choose my own path in life

I have a lot to be grateful for, and pity those people who can only see the bad things in their lives, or who believe that only the bad things exist.

Emoto-crap

2009-03-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

Meh. The one person I can talk to completely honestly is too far away to really do so, and right now I could do with a heart-to-heart... :(

A Bloody Brilliant Day :)

2009-02-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

I'm aware I haven't blogged in some time - bad me. But it just hasn't seemed worth while lately; yes, there have been the usual hijinks, but nothing of real importance...until today!

1. I interviewed for a policy job (temp contract for 11 months) with the SG.
2. I was offered the policy job :D
3. I had a meeting with an MP and may have some voluntary research and policy work lined up :D
4. Went out a celebrated success with Sarah:
i) Had dinner and cocktails at Jekle and Hyde
ii) Bought cigars and chocolate cookies and wondered along Rose street smoking cigars and eating said cookies
iii) We caught a pedicab and went on a brief tour of the New Town, and got out at Charlotte Square
iv) We sat down on the door step of the official Edinburgh residence of the First Minister, Mr Salmond, and ate more cookies and giggled until a gruff security man told us to move on - it was brilliant.
v) We went window-shopping at all the most expensive George Street stores, realising that shopping is only really fun if there's no one else there!
vi) We bought huge glasses of wine in a nice pub, and then were hit on by two very ugly men who clearly thought they were the bees-knees - it was very funny!
vii) Escaped from the ugly men and called it a night at that point.

:D

So the job starts on Wednesday (!) and I'm very much looking forward to it :)

Up-date

2008-12-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Here comes Christmas again. On the one hand I'm looking forward to spending time at home with the whole family together and go walking, and to a certain extent I'm looking forward to the inevitable political debate after Christmas dinner (in a fairly limited way - Uncle Peter always gets a bit scarely emphatic!) But on the other hand I'm not looking forward to the bickering, Gran getting morbid when she's had a couple of drinks, and the over-preperation. I guess it's a matter of taking the rough with the smooth! Of course I am looking forward to doing the decorating and wrapping pressies and stuff, but I've three shifts to do before then and it's going to be extreemly quiet - virtually a waste of time, but it's money and I can't turn that down atm.
Speaking of money and jobs I'm still on the job hunt: I've had a couple of interviews since August but nothing has panned out yet. I'm not utterly down-hearted or anything, but it's increasinly difficult to maintain a positive attitude! It's not all doom and gloom: I asked for feedback on an unsucessful application for a research position with the SLD and the guy got back in touch very quickly. I wasn't asked in for an interview but I was next on the list had anyone dropped out, and the only reason I wasn't asked was because the other candidates had governmental experiance as temps. So that leads me to say that I've applied to a temping agency, and I'm just awaiting my disclosure form being returned before I can be put to work at long blooming last! And I spent today looking for jobs, and have about 11 to apply for over the next few weeks. It'll keep me busy anyway!
MSc graduation came and went: it was a nice, eventful day rounded off by a meal at La Gerrique, as last year.
The next few days should at least be eventful: tomorrow I'm back up in Edinburgh for drinks and a birthday party (and possibly a cocktail party there-after!), then on Saturday I've work and will hopefully see Doug when he gets in, Sunday is more work followed by a meal and drinks with whoever's around, Monday will be about the same, then home on Tuesday. And hopefully I'll manage to spend a bit of time with my boyfriend too :P
Right, I need to make a list of stuff I need to do over the next couple of days! I'll try and write more soon...

A self-ingulent whine.

2008-11-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

This evening should have been a lot of fun. Should have been. As you might have guessed, it wasn't. So now I'm sitting in bed drinking neat tequila and blogging about why it was shit: this should give you some idea of quite how bad it was!
A bunch of us went out to see the Blues Brothers show at the Festival Theatre - the show itself was fantastic: can't fault that. But I spent quite a lot of the evening feeling like I had no point being there: everyone else in that particular social group either lives with another person in that group or is dating one of them. Everyone except me. I felt very isolated. I don't feel that I have the connections in that group that everyone else does: I wasn't in the same uni class, I don't live with another member of the group, I'm not dating another member of the group. I am essentially rootless. During dinner especially I felt the desire to get up and just leave, and I doubt anyone there would have followed me or asked if I was ok. It's not that I think that they don't give a damn about me, but there's just not the same imperative for any of them as there would be if it were someone they were connected to. I feel very issolated because a lot of the people I'm closest to are very far away, and I feel like I'm loosing my relevance here and with these people who I count as friends. I feel it especially because I've been edged out by someone who's trying to carve a place for themselves, and because of how other members of the group feel towards this person it's making my gradual fading-out that much swifter. I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn't just have left in March when I had the oppertunity and the reason, then I wouldn't be in this position. So in other words I spent the evening feeling like a spare wheel, unwell, hormonal and upset and very unloved. Most of the time I get the impression that people expect me to be fine and able to deal with stuff because I'm relativly mature and tend to be there when everyone else needs a hug and a chat. Is it too much to ask that when I'm looking upset and down that someone just gives me a hug and tells me that everything will be ok? Most of this has been reinforced by people making plans and forgetting to invite me (or plain just not bothering) or talking about plans they're making as a group to which I'm clearly not welcome. I just wish they could be a little more sensetive to the fact that I don't have that connection. I feel so alone here now. I feel like I don't belong to any group and am therefore very easily disregarded. The fact that someone who is relatively new to the group has just slide into place as a flatmate and a partner to other people means that they get invited to stuff that I won't because I don't have those links. I'm on the periphery and already getting further and further away.
This builds on the insecurities which are the basis of my depression, so it's triggering a lot of stuff in that direction. In high school someone who had been a friend deliberately tried to break me out of my circle of friends, for a reason which to this day I cannot define. She did everything except tell everyone else not to talk to me. This was during my sixth year, so I spent the greater part of that year feeling unwelcome in my own group because someone didn't want me there for reasons not shared by the rest, and when I left for uni that was the experiance which followed me. I'm almost continually paranoid that people I believe to be friends will turn around and hurt me for no reason. Much of what I have said so far is the hormones talking, but they're just allowing me to say what has been at the back of my mind for quite some time.

Slinking back to the blog at last...

2008-09-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

Yup, I haven't written anything in quite some time. I have a lot I could say right not, but alas I cannot be bothered :P Ok, ok - I'll try and keep a more regular blog. As much as anything else it'll ensure that I keep writing and that it doesn't just fall by the way-side while I hunt for employment.

So, first off I have now completed the MSc and know for certain that I have passed :D I just don't know the mark and probably won't until Wednesday evening when I go home to visit the family for my birthday.

Secondly, I just got my rota from MHM and it confirms my belief that they might just be entirely incompetant. I asked for 2/3 shifts a week this month, with the exception of the first week where I could only work one. I had asked for the 2nd and 3rd of October to be reserved as days I couldn't work because the plan was to spend a few days with the family while I have a bit of free time. So what did they do? They gave me shifts on both those days. Not only that, but I got the rota so close to the 1st that there isn't really any practical way of changing the shifts. Gits. So I'll go home on Wednesday evening, and come back on Thursday morning. Apart from that, I have also discovered that I am now doing roughly 50% of the work for the Edinburgh team. Another thing is that they have only given me one of the better-paid weekend shifts, and the one that they did give me is out at the Dean Gallery to which there is no public transport on a Sunday. I say again, gits. And finally, Tim and I had planned to go away for a few days this month, but because of the way the rota has panned out this might not be possible. Once more with feeling, gits. In conclusion, there is a distinct possibility that I will quit at the end of this month. But on the plus side at least we don't have to do surveys at the museums any more...

Went and saw MacBeth on Friday with Charlotte: superb production, and certainly one of the best productions in terms of emotive interpritation. The woman playing Lady MacBeth was exceptional. I also met Charlotte's boyfriend that evening - a pleasant, if slightly overly-intense, young man who is lecturing in Economics at Herriot-Watt. The evening was something of a cultural body-blow in some respects. It made me realise just how often I apologise for things that I don't have to apologise for. It showed me that a lot of the time I apologise just for having an opinion, or for not having an opinion. Charlotte and Philip are both from mainland Europe, and although I like both of them very much I don't feel comfortable around them: this in and of itself is not a bad thing because challanging aquaintances provide interesting perspectives, but I did find myself suffering from something of a cultural inferiority-complex. Their sense of humour is very differant, and their priorities and attitudes. There are a lot of people who think that main-land Europeans, especially the French, are arrogant: I would not dispute this in some cases, and Philip himself openly admitted it, but I think that a lot of our adversion to arrogance is born of being told not to be arrogant. We have willfully surrendered our collective self-confidence in favour of being overly polite. So I found it really very difficult to converse with Philip (Charlotte not so much) because he was dismissive of quite a lot of what I had (when I dared venture) said, and quite merrily talked away as if his opinion could only be right. On the one hand, I found him rude and arrogant, but on the other hand I was trying to reconsile this to the fact that it wasn't terribly rude in his culture, just in mine. I also acknowledge that in many respects he had the advantage over me in terms of age and educational advancement and world-experiance, as does Charlotte. Ignoring the BS I've managed to create around the situation, and stripping it back to bare-bones, I spent the better part of an hour feeling like a complete ignoramus. But I bet Philip didn't guess that I understood everything he said when he talked to Charlotte in French...

I'll probably come back to this cause there's a few things I want to talk about in relation to culture and cinematic appreciation, but I think I've waffled enough for one post.

Other news - er, not a lot.
My flatmate and her boyfriend have decided they want to buy a house together: I'll admit that I was shocked in that although they've known each other for years, they haven't been going out for very long at all. They reckon it'll probably be about a year before they finally get a place.
Still job hunting, although I'm finding it hard to work up the motivation.
Tim and I have started going to swing dance classes, and it's good fun :)

- Yet someone is clearly doing their job horribly wrong...

2008-08-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

This:
http://xkcd.com/463/
is also true of this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7583805.stm

Procrastination? Moi?

Catch-up

2008-08-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

I haven't written anything for a while - tut tut. I usually write more when I have an impending deadline, but right now this doesn't seem to be the case - and it's not as if I don't have anything to write about either.
The fringe is into it's third week and Pinafore opened last night, to great appreciation apparently :) Have managed to catch up with quiet a few people: Harriet, Helen, Si and Jordan. I've been to see a few shows, notably Ed Byrne and Tim Minchin. Great fun with fantastic energy.
I'm currently in the midsts of hunting for a new flatmate - thought we might have had the right candidate but she changed her mind at the last moment, which was somewhat frustrating. Got a few people viewing tonight, so hopefully will be able to make a decision in the near future.
I have been pretty low with a bug for the past few days - feeling really weak and shivery. I've managed to keep going but I have a horrid feeling it'll be back again once this deadline is done and I start to chill out again.
I have such a long list of things I want to do once this dissertation is done! Not least of which is to find a job! There are a few which might be worth applying for, but nothing truely exciting.

Stuff

2008-08-08T01:19:00.001-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7547148.stm

Absolutely bloody teriffying...

---------------------------------

I'm at home now for all of 24 hours to visit the family - My Aunts and Uncles are visiting from South Africa and London, so am taking the opportunity (however brief) of catching up with them while they're here. Just back from a family meal (with the missing members being my brother and my London-Uncle-Peter: we have 4 Peters in my immediate family). Was crossed examined on my dissertation and employment prospects by my Grandfather - joy.
The train journey down was utterly packed - there was no way I was ever going to get a seat on the 5.30 train to London Kings Cross on a Friday! I ended up huddled in a corner of the vestibule until Dunbar, where on everyone else got a seat but I couldn't be bothered moving so just stood by the open window enjoying the fresh air and the wonderful seascape North of Berwick.
This is the first time I've been home since Holly died, and it's very strange without her. Even just noticing small things like the absence of her water bowl puts it into sharp relief. I'll visit her grave in the morning - it's too dark now.
Have been interviewing potential flatmates over the past couple of days - a couple of guys who didn't seem right, and a lovely girl who I reckon will fit in perfectly. Hopefully she's meet Sally tomorrow, and if sally likes her then I'm more than happy to offer her the room if she wants it.
Ug - my head is aching :(

About bloody time!

2008-08-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7540480.stm

I've probably ranted about Starbucks on here somewhere before, so obviously this article delighted me :)

Other stuff:
Have seen The Dark Knight: brilliant :D
The Fringe started: w00t the Fringe! (but not the crowds when you're trying to get somewhere!)
Finished the first fraft of the dissertation with 3.5 weeks to spare: unheard of!
A friend I haven't spoken to for ages got in contact again, which was pretty cool :)

Later:
I have a problem involving making a choice between two options; both have their ups and downs, their strengths and weaknesses. I honestly don't know if I can make a choice between them, or even if I have the choice - no, that's stupid, I have other choices, and even the choice of not activly making a choice. I also have the choice of not angsting out and not sweating it - after all, who knows if it'll even come to making a choice.

Polo and prudishness

2008-08-01T01:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan, but the girl has a point...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7536492.stm

Yet another odd dream...

2008-07-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

I can't remember so much about this one, but I do remember sitting on Forest Road with someone else. For some reason we were singing, but kinda singing a conversation rather than just speaking it - nothing about this seemed in any way strange (as always seems to be the case in dreams). We were sitting on the edge of the pavement watching people racing cars with too many people in them at high speed around the corner, some of them leaning out of the windows, laughing crazily. The person I was sitting with (I don't remember what he looked like, but he reminded me in some ways of a person I know through Savoy) sang something, and I remember being very happy about what was said but not knowing what it was. All I did know was this person was extraordinary , and what ever it was they said was precisely what I wanted to hear. Unfortunately at this point I knew, inspite of being fast asleep, that this was a dream, so I couldn't/didn't want to say anything in return. I think I may have made an excuse or put off giving a reply imediately. Someone handed me a leaf (it looked like the kind you'd have drawn as a child - oval with a central line and diagonal concentions etc), but for some reason I wanted to see the skeleton, so I burned it with a lighter and left the skeleton. And that was it. Odd, but I do remember being very very happy.

Procrastination

2008-07-29T01:59:00.000-07:00

Here I am in the library again. I've only been here for an hour and already I'm going utterly spare! I come here in the mornings with all the good intentions of working, but end up getting distracted by just about anything! Arg! The only time I actually work efficiently is when I get up at 5am and just start to work rather than faff, but I can't do that often because it's exhasting and I crash by 3pm, and even then I can only do it when really under pressure to finish something. Even with only 4.5 weeks to complete my dissertation I'm sitting here putting off working and just building up stress for later on. I know I have plenty of time to finish and edit this bastard, but I just can't bring myself to do the necessary work before the very last minute. It's not that I'm terribly lazy, but there seems no point in working too hard until there's no choice, and I tend to find that I work best under high pressure. Lots of my last-minute essays have recieved much better marks than those I spent a lot of time working on *shrugs*, It doesn't seem fair, somehow, that my last-minute work ends up getting better marks than projects that I've put a lot of time and effort into! Perhaps it's because it flows better as a continuious stream of thought rather than as a series of segments.

Ok, will try and do some work now. No doubt I'll post again in the next few hours...

Later:
As predicted, here I am again.

Found this on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y
So, this is the generation to which I belong; and sadly, yes, I really do belong to a generation which defines itself by ownership of technological goods and use thereof. Right now I am using three of the defining goods of this generation: laptop, MP3 player and mobile phone (clearly not all at once - I can multitask, but I only have two hands!), and writing it on my blog - Gee, could I be anymore steriotypical?! Plus I really can't see myself working for one firm/organisation for my whole life, so will probably move around quite a lot because there's no real pressure to stay in one place and it's almost looked down upon now to want to stay with one group for the rest of your life. We are given these expectations of new experiances, and once the novelty of a new job and responsabilities wear off and everything starts to become rountine, it can be very tempting to want to move on. Looking at my employment history I have had, since I was 15, 10 differant jobs! Admittedly, this isn't because I got bored or anything, it's down mostly to moving around and Uni and some of the jobs being temporary contracts. But still, 10 jobs by the age of 22 is kinda strange!

*Insert appropriate title here

2008-07-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening was a bit of a head-fuck for various reasons - in retrospect it was quite funny and a bit sad. If nothing else it explained A LOT. I think I'll have to laugh about it otherwise I'll just end up completely depressed again. At the same time I'm quite glad that the situation occured, if only because it reassured me that I wasn't at fault and that someone needs to sort their head out.

Dreams

2008-07-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a particularly vivid dream, and for once I can remember exactly what happened.
The dream, more or less, ran thus: I was working with the army (not as a member but in some sort of assosiated capacity) and I knew the unit I was with quite well. We had been sent to an area which had just been subject to sever flooding, and although the water level had now dropped, it was apparent just how much damage had been done. One of the first jobs we were to do in the community where we were based was to clear all the flood debries out of the local church to make it usable again. One of the images I remember most clearly from the dream was standing on top of something outside the church, looking through a low window in to the church. In the church there were masses of rubbish and rubble, even a couple of old cars! For some reason it was vital that we cleared the church first because, according to the logic of my dream, one of the members of the unit was planning on getting married there in the near future, and the present from the unit to him and his bride was having the church back to it original state.

Most of the images I can atribute to things I had seen in the past couple of days, but the meaning was a bit more difficult. I decided to try a bit of dream analysis, for fun, and see what came up. I took a few of the key images from the dream and looked them up.
1) Looking into a church from the outside can represent spiritual strife and questioning.
2) Rubbish represents the need to change bad habits and avoid scandle
3) The wrecked cars could represent feelings of being out of control of life
4) Floods represent tension and stress
5) Armies represent a massive force working against you
So, going by the analysis, not a possative dream then.

Although I don't put faith in dream analysis this still reflects a number of things in my life that worry me; my crisis of faith, wondering whether I'm a bad person, feeling out of control of my life. Although the thing that made me wonder was the fact that in the dream I was working with the army but not as part of it, so maybe that has a differant meaning. Who knows!

Feedback and stuff

2008-07-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

Got a call back from Ian Campbell at the Scottish Government Offices in Brussels about feedback on my application. The guist of the conversation is: my application was very strong and I have relevant experiance, but my French was the deciding factor - I wasn't fluant and that's what the role required. The French requirement was what I expected to be the cause, so am quite happy that the rest of the application was good enough. I am in the process of improving my French, but obviously with my dissertation deadline drawing closer I don't have a lot of time to work on that. Ian gave me a few pointers for people to speak to if I want to go ahead with the EU thing in the future.

Off home tonight for my Mum's birthday tomorrow, so a couple of days of quiet'll do me good I suspect! Need a break from the city as am feeling somewhat hemmed in right now.

A conversation that has needed to be had for a while has now happened, and is certainly for the best. It will make life less confusing :) which is always good! But I think a seperate conversation with a differant person is still needed, but it's never going to happen because in theory "everything is fine" and there is nothing to talk about - I'm not convinced.

Finally returned Chris' flat key this afternoon.

Need to pack and return a library book now, but honestly cannot be bothered...

Later:
I'm at home now and it's muggy as anything down here - I can't sleep but should try as I'll have a busy day tomorrow.
Got a further call from Ian earlier - a job came up today that he thinks I should apply for: again, it's in Brussels, and it's a policy assistant job. I'll give it a go and see what happens.
Should go and wrap birthday presents now.

Sleepy...

2008-07-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

1. Got an email back from the Scottish Government EU office about my request for feedback on my application - someone'll be calling me next Tuesday :) So somthing posative came out of an otherwise disappointing failure to secure a job. It'll be useful for the future anyway.
2. We won the pub quiz yesterday - woot!
3. Discovered Dr Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog and The Guild: wasted a lot of time this mornign watching those rather than working - oops!
4. Applied for a broadcast assistant job with the BBC - don't expect to be called for an interview, but it pays to keep applying for things here and there.
5. My horoscope today on FB made me very very nervous (not that I believe that sot of crap, but still...)
6. This made me smile: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7513571.stm
(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxWNl2Kd-dU)
7. This made me want to hit people: http://community.livejournal.com/muslims/583460.html
8. This is far too true for comfort: http://xkcd.com/451/
9. This made me go "awwwww":
more cat pictures

Oh, and I finally remembered what I had intended to write about today in the first place! Go me and my shoddy memory (warenty has probably expired by now...damn...). Yet again, it's in reference to my faith-related-crisis of the past few weeks. I was Wikipediaing stuff on the Abrahamic tradition and got to following a chain of articles on faith, philosophy etc. I came to the conclusion that my current stance is more or less sumarised by the following two life-views:
1. Agnostic Theism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism)
and, 2. Ietism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ietsism)
Really, I guess the best way I can describe it is Agnostic Abrahamic Theism - but the problem I find is that it falls in to a semi-Gnostic catagory, and gnosticism isn't something I particularly hold with at the moment.

Post 100!

2008-07-13T05:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my 100th post :)

Nothing terribly exciting to say really. D'oh!

Oh, did go and see The Forbidden Kingdom last night - it was a lot of fun :) And saw Kung Fu Panda a few nights previously - laughed my ass off!

Got a call from the Telegraph asking for photos from HMS Pinafore for an article they're doing, so that's more or less sorted now. Free Publicity! Woot!

This article on the BBC website makes me worry about people:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7503861.stm
In what way would someone's sexuality impare their ability to drive?! Helloooo discrimination!

This one is more specifically for Si (assuming he still reads this) regrading the conversation we had the other day:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7487995.stm

This just ammused me:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7504433.stm

This doesn't suprise me:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7502678.stm

And finally, in reference to my little crisis of faith that has been going on lately:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7503968.stm

I could go back to my first post and do some sort of retrospective, but I think that would be really wanky and unnecessary given that anything that needs retrospection will (for the most part) be in this blog.

P.s. I identify far too much with this:
http://xkcd.com/449
Can't quite believe it has been 7 months already...

Environmental developments

2008-07-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7501476.stm

This sounds fantastic if it is ever fully implimented! But not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, is it ever going to get as much funding as it potentially deserves...? We'll see, I guess.

Faith revisited and other stuff

2008-07-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the news this morning, and one of the big stories of the day is the decision by the Church of England to allow the appointment of female Bishops. I think that this is a big step forward; a really significant event for all involved. What I don't understand is why women in the Church was ever an issue of contention? We could get into the whole 'women are the source of original sin' thing, but quite frankly I think that is utter BS. The Garden of Eden story shouldn't be taken literally, in my view, as historical fact; it isn't fact. Evolution is a fact (or as close to one as we can reasonably get at the moment). I don't see that the creation story and Evolutionary theory are at odds - we just have to acknowledge that the Garden of Eden story is a annalogy for the development of consiousness. Which makes the whole idea about Eve tempting Adam with the apple of knowledge utterly irrelevant. The exclusion of women from positions in the church on that basis is, thus, unjust and backward for a body which claims to desire equality for all. If the traditionalists were to have won the vote today, then it would have been a backward step for the church of England and a sign of the continued institutional sexism which has been rife in the Church for the past 500 years. The claim that women are fundamentally tainted has been used to justify the oppression of women, and exclude them from full and fair participation in a faith which teaches tollerance and forgiveness. Surely it's about time 'Eve' was forgiven and her daughters were no longer burdened with an unfair reputation as 'tainted'?

This kinda feeds into my thoughts in the last post: can I really follow a system of belief in which sexism and inequality are central tenants of the faith? I have been to a couple of Christian wedding ceremonies in the past year, and in each I was annoyed by the emphasis on the dominance of the man in the wedded state and how the woman was expected to 'submit' to the man 'as the Church to Christ'. As a feminist and a female Christian I find this hard to bear (perhaps this is why I'm not a very good Christian). In any relationship there should never be any forced dominance or submittion involved (I'm not talking in the sexual way - what people get up to in that respect is entirely up to them); a wedded relationship should be about negotiation and discussion. No decision should ever be made simply because one party has been 'picked by God' to be dominant. Besides, I doubt that God (who/whatever that is) would honestly create humans unequal; any traditions in Christianity are almost certainly the result of millenia of Church dogma and unjust male domination. Woman's submittion to her husband in the wedded state in Christianity is almost certainly the result of institutionalised patriarchal dogma. Using the 'fear of God' to restrict women of faith from full and equal participation, and full emansipation as a sex.

I'm almost certain that most of the Traditionalists at today's vote don't think of it in those terms: I guess they reason that it's "God's will" and that women were designed as man's 'help-meet' but not to be religious leaders. My response; you're stuck in the past, and many of the best and most faithful Christians are women. It's about time this was acknowldeged.

That was more of a feminist rant than I was intending, but can you see where this leaves me? Again: in the same situation as before: can I follow a faith that requires inequality? I think that I have to believe that this inequality was not God's will, but is the result of centuries of church politics.

Faith

2008-06-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

This may get a bit rambly in places, just so you know (having said that, if you've read any of my posts before then you will already have anticipated this).

I had a conversation with Tim a few weeks ago about faith. I am a Christian; not a very good one, I'll admit - I probably commit 3 of the 7 deadly sins on a daily basis. I am what would be termed a Liberal Christian; my basic rule for life is "Do as you would be done by" - and I don't always manage to follow that rule particularly well! Tim on the other hand is an Aetheist, verging on Antitheist.

I'm not entirely sure how we got onto the topic of belief/faith, but we did. The discussion more or less ended up with me acknowledging the logic of the Aetheist argument (and I do follow it and will admit that it makes perfect sense) but still certain that there is something more to this life than a random fluck of cosmic parking! Just the thought of there not being a God, just thinking it, really upset me - I was in tears.

It wasn't Tim's fault by any means; we were simply having a debate from our two respective viewpoints. I'm not prone to crying - I don't like people seeing me when I'm upset, so I tend to just make a joke or hide it. But this time I honestly couldn't help it; I cried. The idea that there is nothing beyond this is fundamentally terrifying. At the time the only two routes I could logically see were; 1) accept that This Is It, or 2) be a better Christian (and I am talking fundamental here).

The problem with 1) is that were I to accept this then I could go one of two ways: a) become a complete nihlist and stop caring about anything or anyone because nothing matters at all, or
b) acknowledge that my time here is fleeting and that the only thing I can do is make my time as good as possible and do as much good as possible.

The problem with 2) is that I don't agree with everything in the Bible - I think that there is a lot wrong with it as a guide for life. A lot of it I do agree with, but so much of it is really just 'common sense' stuff for the creation of a harmonious society. And I posatively hate all these people who stand behind a mask of faith and use the teachings of the bible to their own ends - I couldn't stand to be counted as one of that number, even if I wasn't but was assosiated with those people by others.

So where does this leave me? Well, much in the same position as where I started I guess: Christian/Agnostic. Agnostisism is a bit of a cop-out in my mind, but unfortunately it is the position I find myself in: I don't know what's going on but I have a little too much cynacism for blind faith.

Ultimately, I think I can believe precisely what I want to believe as long as it doesn't affect the rights and freedoms of anyone else, and if I choose to believe in God but it turns out that God doesn't exist then who am I hurting? As long as I do what I believe to be right, and follow my conscience, then I don't think I can go too far wrong. A huge number of people have said what I have just said, and far more eloquently (no doubt with better spelling, grammer, structure and punctuation).

No fear: I'm not about to launch into a massive "What does it all mean? Why are we here?" schpiel: I think I have been quite emo enough for one evening!

Stuff

2008-06-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

I'm back home for the weekend. Dog-sitting for the parents while they are away at a wedding up North. Holly, our black Labrador, is senile, deaf, incontenant and virtually immobile; she spends 90% of her day sleeping and the rest of it eating and dumping, or following me around and staring into space. Unfortunately she also has a tendancy to fall down the stairs these days, which is worrying. Anyway, so I'm back down here until Monday, all on my lonesom. On the plus side I have peace and quiet to get on with work, which is always a good thing.

I'm missing the Graduate Ball again this year. Didn't go last year because I didn't see the point; I didn't know all that many people in my year who were going so I didn't see the point. And this year I'm not going because I don't graduate until December, which sucks a bit really. I guess it has become something of an unofficial tradition: I didn't go to the Freshers Ball, my first graduateion, so it makes sense that I shouldn't attend my second graduate ball. But I am quite sad to be missing the fun.

I heard back from the Scottish Government EU job - I didn't get called for an interview, which sucked, but I wasn't suprised really. Although I put as much into the application as possible, I have to acknowledge that I wouldn't be their first choice of candidate. It was a long-shot to begin with, but I was still disappointed. Lesson being: don't get your hopes up over a long-shot, because chances are that no matter how much you want it, no matter how much you know you would put into it, it does matter cause you're not in control. I hate not being in control and being aimless. Says a lot about me and my life really!

Have been writing a bit again recently, which is good: I have been trying out a few new genres - trying to mix genres more than I have before. I have realised just how much I limit myself in terms of style when there are so many options open to me! Still fairly enamoured of short-story writing. I have a feeling that this is more to with my lack of patience, which is something I need to work on - is it wrong just to want to get into the heart of the story without too much characterisation and scene-setting?

Grr.

2008-06-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

I am tired of these stupid passive-aggressive little jibes that are being made at my expense. Sick of it. Seriously. I don't mind a joke, or a joke being made at my expense occassionally, but people poking fun at a weakness is a step too far. I know that it's not exactly important, or even a real weakness, but it still makes me feel stupid when people pick up on it. And I feel pretty stupid most of the time anyway, which doesn't help.

I'm feeling insecure at the moment and could do with not being made to feel like an idiot by some of my friends. Yeah, for the most part I've always been very good at hiding how I feel and ignoring it when people are insensative; but now I have had it up to here. Next tosser who pisses me off is getting a slap.

Ok, perhaps being a bit oversensative, but I have as much right as anyone to be annoyed.

Update-type-post

2008-06-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

Not a huge amount to say, but the stuff I do have to say is reasonably important I guess.
Firstly, I sent off the application for the Scottish Government EU Office Internship yesterday. I'm really quite excited about this role; I'd be working in Scotland House in Brussels for 11 months (paid, fortunately) and it would be excellant training for an Government job in the future. I really hope that I at least get through to the interview stage - I would be pretty dissapointed if I didn't, considering the amount of work that I put into the application! The deadline was today, so I hope to hear back in 2 weeks - 1 month. May have to re-learn French for the job - oh la la!
Secondly, probably not all that important, I've ordered a new laptop which will (hopefully) arrive tomorrow. I look forward to having a comp which will take less than 20 minutes to boot up in the morning, and hopefully won't die any time I download articles from Jstore. And most of all, it won't die while I'm writing this damn dissertation.
Thirdly, I've decided to work from home for the next 11 weeks (i.e. until the dissertation deadline). Hopefully it will be less distracting than the office. I cleared my desk space on Sunday and lugged everything home (ouch!); I'm quite sad to have left, obviously, because it feels like the begining of the end of my academic career (at least for now, anyway) and the start of a real life. Oh well, it's for the best I reckon.

Other:
Spoke to Eva the other day about her wedding: she sounds really happy and I look forward to catching up with her soon.
Went to see The Incrediable Hulk the other day - weak at best. Not dreadful and cringeworthy as it did have it's moments, but still below par.
The Fringe Guide is out at last - woop woop!
The girls are away atm - quite lonely :(
My window sill has now been taken over by plants! :D Tomatoes, chillies and basil.

Lastly, a problem:
I'm in a bit of a quandry. There's something I really want to know, but I don't know whether it would actually be to my benefit or detriment to know. What I do know is that I definately cannot ask the question to the person concerned because it's none of my business. Sucks. And, quite honestly, knowing may well involve wishing that I didn't. So, do I just wait for them to say something (which they might never do), or do I ask a question to which I have no right to know the answer? Bah.

Nostalga and reflections

2008-06-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Probably going to do exactly what it says in the title.

This bout of reflectivness is brought about by various events of the past couple of days. The first of these events was being informed that one of my best friends from school was now married. I knew she was engaged, and I was at her engagment party in Jabuary, but I thought she wasn't planning on getting hitched until October - seems I was wrong. Well, I was only partially wrong: She and her now-husband only decided three weeks ago that they were going to go ahead and get married asap (I should perhaps explain that they were in America at this point and he is an American citizen), so three weeks later they were. They only informed their parents and sorta-kinda eloped. I'm glad that they are so posative that this is what they wanted to do, and I suspect that it had been on their minds for a while - it just came as a suprise when checking Facebook to find that Eva had updated her status to "Eva is married - officially!!!". It's really very telling of our generation - lol!

Maybe I'm so freaked out because I don't really think of myself as an adult or as being in anyway mature enough to make that sort of decision. Eva and I are both only 22. Is it just me, or does everyone still feel like a kid at this age? I mean, it's only 5 years since I left highschool! Looking through my books the other day I came across a copy of Persuasion that I was given by my AH English teacher in sixth year - the inscription on the fly-leaf is dated 07/05/03. Over 5 years ago. And yet, sitting here at home, it could have been yesterday. It think that it is perhaps the time of year: I love this time of year at home; twilight is lingering, mist settles in bringing a damp chill to the air, everything become muted, blackbirds and robins call out from all around, lending a last vibrancy to an otherwise melecholy landscape. I went around the National Gallery of Scotland today and saw several pictures of the Borders: they were all picturesque in the style of the Romantics, but terribly unrepresentative. Nothing in the style or mood of the images made me think in anyway of my home. Admittedly my taste in landscape turns more towards appreciation of the sublime or the melencholy-picturesque rather than the idylic. Anyway, back to the point: I always feel younger at home - perhaps everyone does - and sitting here, right now, I don't think that at this age that I am in any way capable of making that decision. Hell, there are days where I can barely decide what CD to put on while I working, let alone knowing whether I'm capable of being with someone for the rest of my life!

Which leads me neatly into my next point: how does anyone know whether the person they're with (etc etc) is a person they would be capable of spending their life with? Ok, clearly there will be attraction for whatever reason and you get to know the person in question over a period of time, but frankly, even when you think you know the person completely: how do you know that they are 'the one'? (Aside: I don't think that there is any such thing as 'the one' - it sounds like romantic BS with no basis). There are no thunder-claps or choirs of angels to highlight the fact, so we have to go with intuition. This is the point at which I get very nervous: humans are faliable - none of us make perfect decisions which will please everyone all the time, it's impossible - so is it a case of making the best of a situation or a least-worst-choice? I hate the mere thought of there being 'one perfect person for everyone' - it's a load of bollocks - but if you are going to spend you're life with someone then you want it to be that 'perfect person' otherwise, what's the point? So when a couple make the decision to marry are they hoping that this is the right person for them or are they compromising and making the most of it? Sorry, I'm not terribly romantic - I'd like to think that romance still has some place in my world, but quite frankly I'm not sure it does. My conclusion is that it must be a case of meet someone you like and can stand to be around for long periods of time (who also likes you preferably) and make the best of it and honour those comitments should someone "better" make an apperance in your life (ye gods - how wanky did that sound?!).

Sorry, this has become a very convoluted and irrelevant post which bears little resembalance to the original title. Please bear with my rambling train of thoughts until it reaches it's terminus or become completely derailed.

Ok, the second reflection-inducing event of the past couple of days: yet another graduation approaches. This year it's Maya's turn and she's moving back home to Wales tomorrow. We've been best friends for nearly 5 years now - which is a scarey thought in it's own right - throughout the highs, lows, tears and hysterics, we've always been very close. And now (in terms of physical distance) that's about to change. Edinburgh's going to be a very differant place for however long I remain there. In many respects, it was the same last year - me staying when a lot of my friends left for pastures new - I missed Doug especially as we hadn't really been apart since birth. And, in turn, I've made new friends, and many situations and relationships have changed in the space of that year: what I have come to realise is that as I remain in the city this will continue to happen and it cannot be avoided. Not that it should be avoided - it is an important part of growth. It can be upsetting, but these wouldn't be real friendships if I wasn't emotionally affected in some way.

Oh god - I'm aware that I have rambled terribly, so will keep the rest short and sweet (promise):
1) Am home atm for the Wellfield House open garden for MacMillan: will be helping on the plant stall.
2) Had Maya's farewell bbq last night - t'was fun.
3) Started the new job - first shift went very well :)
4) I'm extremely tired.
5) I need a smack around the head for being emo (not just in relation to anything I've mentioned in this note - may get around to writing about this at a later date, but right now it's probably not a good idea).