Well Well, Here We Are.

This is the part where I sum up the year of 2006, a few days (okay, two weeks) late.
So whats happened?

A summary:

- Got a blowjob off a prostitute in a German red light district (€30)
- Dropped out of my University course
- Consumed 1000 units of alcohol
- De virginised a very pretty girl
- Endulged in 2 Terabytes (TB, thats 2000 GB) of Internet piracy
- Spent £2000 ($4000) on nothing. Thats right, nothing. Nada. Niente. Nichts.


And not necessarily in that order.
What about the positive events?

- Moved in with great housemates
- Canned in the fags
- Reduced binge drinking by 90%
- Reduced cannabis consumption by 100% in order to take up the occasional ecstacy pill
- And I can't think of anything else.

From reading the above, you might be under the impression that I lead a happy, indulgent and somewhat dangerously fulfilled lifestyle. Not the case; in reality I am miserable, repressed and generally a sorry excuse for a human being.

Girls do not like me. They do not.

One conclusion.

People = Shit.

Fuck society. Fuck capitalism. I want a socialist society without the corruption of the soviet government.


http://www.buysealand.com


DO IT NOW!!!!

Just read through the below near year old blog from last summer, I guess it pretty much summarises what it's like to be on vacation doing fuck all, as aopposed to being somewhere sunny with a cocktail in hand.

This time I'll be staying in sunny Newcastle working off that massive £2 large debt I built up over the past year, pretty much just through nights out and dinner dates. Was it worth it? Absolutely.
At the moment I'm bang in the middle of exams and should be studying for tomorrows math exam, but i can't really seem to bring myself to do anything about it.

So what's changed in the past year?
Quite a significant amount. I'm a lot happier living independently in a culture that dosn't raise an eyebrow when you walk over a pedestrian crossing on a red light. Also the area I live in is home to the origins of my family, so you could say I'm finally closer to home after living non stop in the epitamy of Germany, filled with by comparison, over-critical and pessimistic German people.
Yes, brit students are a fine bunch. They go on 7 day drinking benders, go on bar crawls dressed in crazy outfits, slop around in any old shitty attire during the day and are iPod junkies, never doing any work, smoking rollies and eating pot noodles.
In fact, that sentence pretty much describes my lifestyle right now, minus the smoking rollies bit (I buy proper tabs).

Okay, well I'm gonna hit the shower.

l8rz ppl

Wales; Beautiful landscape and even more wonderful hostels!

One of the things I agreed to do with some of my over-excessive amount of free time was take a trip to climb some mountains in Wales, the main aim for spending one month at the gym getting back to a former level of fitness after the two months of physical neglecting started. As it happens, hiking in the mountains is something I enjoy (contrary to popular opinion); the clear air of a high altitude as opposed to the smog laden city, the spellbinding views of land illustrating the complexity of nature changing over thousands of generations; the challenge of rock-climbing under full exposure to the forces of nature, with the knowledge that one would be in severe danger of death if a hand hold fails; these are all only part of the pleasures undergone from ascending a high, rocky peak.

Unfortunately, the accommodation could not succumb to the same high standards as the landscape.
I’m sure many of my readers have at least a preconception of the standards (rather, none-standards) accepted by Youth Hostellers, if they have not yet taken the opportunity to indulge in budget accommodation themselves.
Let me just say this. A bed in one of these places comprises of a rock hard mattress (most probably containing a shattered boulder hand selected by the Youth Hostel warden from a nearby mountain), a “sheet sleeping bag”, a duvet and a pillow. Now, the purpose of the justifiably inexpensive sounding “sheet sleeping bag” is to cover up the duvet and pillow, so that theoretically no skin contact is made between you and these items.
The rationalization of its use? In my opinion, the duvet and pillow are never washed, solely covered up by the “sheet sleeping bag”, giving a good impression of the hygiene echelon of a Youth Hostel room.

As the sensitive reader can foresee, getting a good night’s sleep was not on the agenda, especially given the surrounding deafening snores expelled by a roommate after closing his eyes for five minutes.

The food was all done by self-catering efforts. This was perhaps better than having a hostel canteen, as I do not doubt similar standards apply to the catering sector of a Youth Hostel as do to the bedding; offering dishes made from lowest-quality ingredients with minimal labour, that are about as enjoyable to the palette as they are aesthetically presented.

To conclude all of this: the days were pleasurable, the nights a torture, there being nothing worse than looking at one’s watch thinking about how so few hours remain at one’s disposal before entering the health hazardous Youth Hostel bed.

So we arrive, after a week of the above, to the date of August the tenth, having arrived for a fortnight’s stay at my grandma’s place in Durham.
It was here that I was truly able to have a well-earned rest, after the claustrophobia experienced in the house in Cambridge and the aforementioned comfortably accommodating Youth Hostel. Although the daily routine was similar to that of Cambridge (Arise, Breakfast, TV, Gym, TV, Dinner, Sleep), the company was far more enjoyable; a breath of fresh air, perhaps even fresher than that of the Welsh mountains. My grandma is a kind, considerate and selfless person with a heart of gold who I consider to be one of the best hosts I have experienced; always willing to entertain and please with many days out shopping or sight-seeing in the nearby city of Newcastle (incidentally, the University I am to study at commencing this fall).
I took great pleasure in cooking all our meals, ranging from simple dishes such as steak frites with béarnaise to complex fish plates; one of my personal favourites being salmon fillet baked in a sour cream sauce served with roasted potatoes; the roasting process involving par-boiling the potatoes, chopping them up into small pieces and roasting in olive oil and thyme. Pure heaven! As always, a side salad and bread were served with the meal, as well as a bottle of wine, preferably either an Australian shiraz with heavy meat dishes, Californian chardonnay with fish or Spanish rioja with steak.

Not uncommon for me, I’m drifting off the point.

Perhaps interesting for the reader would be to know what a previous close friend of mine, Gabrielle Hansen, had to acknowledge after our previous stay, during our tour of the British Isles two years previous:

“Your grandma is in the mind a young person in their early to mid twenties; it is solely her outer appearance matches her age”

This could not be more true a statement. Many of my peers often complain about the obscurity of their elder relatives, usually putting their mental sanity into question. However, my mother’s mother is somebody I have always loved the company of ever since a small child. Perhaps the fact she is my last living grand-relative makes her all the more special to me.

Enough of the emotional riff-raff.

We’ve come to the present, with me writing these very words shortly after my arrival back in Cambridge following the two weeks in Durham. Not a lot is different, to say the least. My brother moaning about his job, myself being scrutinized in the usual manner, the inevitable consequences of my father’s arrival back from his holiday in Hungary (please don’t ask!) awaiting my siblings and I tomorrow.

Be back later!


Mark

Here I Am. Like the title says, "bored over the summer" and looking for something to do. Blogging seemed like a reasonable method to while away some hours, as well as allowing for the general public and old friends back in my hometown to laugh at my currently rather miserable, mediocre abd mundance existance. My advice to the reader in the case of this blog: you won't like it. In fact, the whole point of this electronic journal is to spread dread, fear, anxiety, horror and a terrible state of depression thoughout humanity. After all, if I'm not having a good time, why the hell should anyone else be?

Ah, most noble reader, let us not get too carried away. Perhaps I should elaborate.

After my graduation ball in early July (what the yanks might call "Prom"), a night of laughs, jokes, reminiscants, nostalgia, good-times and general drunken stupor, I found myself waking up in a generally alienated, hungover state to hear a stern voice commanding me to pack my stuff for college. Little did I know that this was a milestone, marking the beginning of two point five months of enduring minimal social contact, being stressed and bossed about absolute futile, trivial matters such as depositing rubbish into the incorrect colored bin. Seriously!

"But it's the start of summer!!" I argue without much hope.
Naturally, as is the general case between my father and I, I got nowhere. I threw half my room into boxes and found myself the next day in a car driving the 1000 or so miles from the city of Karlsruhe, Germany, situated in the south-western part of the country closely adjacent to the French boarder, to Cambridge, in the UK. The journey was fairly eventless, as is the case with most activities one pursues with one's parents.

The next day, awakening with a serious nicotine craving, I set about getting organized and trying to make the most of my time here. I had gained a roll of flab in the past two months before that due to excessive drinking and partying, most likely as a consequence of enduring endless exam stress, and was determined to get back to my old habit of eating healthily and attending a gym every day.
So thats what I did. I found a reasonable gym, and for three weeks did just the above. I became fitter, healthier, but not happier. The only social contact I had with my old mates back in Germany was with one in particular, Christoph Krüger, and exchanging text messages with someone I've always gotten along well with, Gabrielle Hansen. Also two old classmates visited from the states, and I felt sad and pissed off that I should have to leave their company at such short notice.
My parents grew more and more aggravating, especially since they have a preconception that they "understand" my position and that library books will solve the problem of my minimal social contact with the outside world. HA!
Perhaps most infuriating is that in the house most people ignored me and treated my presence as passive.

Let me give a prime example.

My sister, currently 23 years of age and working in the energy distribution industry, came up to the house to visit us for dinner one Saturday. Being a Cambridge graduate in Philosophy, she soon started the mind bogglingly incomprehensible discussion routine that is Philosphy with my father. Now, don't get me wrong, Philosophy was, in fact, my favorite subject in high school. However, the humble reader must appreciate the academic differences between European School level Philosophy and Cambridge graduate Philosophy, both of them being positioned light years away in terms of theory complexity.
So therefore, as a consequence, everyone else around the table was bored. I started joking around with my brother, also my elder at 21 years. The response from my father?

"Shut up!"

As if my brother and I's conversation was somehow socially inferior to his.
Since that day I never heard an apology, perfectly expectable when one considers that such occurances between father and offspring (with the exception, naturally, to my eldest sister who is treated like a goddess) are common.

As a consequence, I spent as little time as possible inside the dwellings of my parents, a task not easy to accomplish with so few other pastimes open for consideration.
Generally, I spend most days watching TV, going to the gym and in the evening browsing the Internet, whiling away the hours.
I also developed a rather unhealthy taste for pornography, as is an inevitable consequence of going on sexual probation, barred from the outside world of fine woman and socializing in bars and clubs.

So, that just about wraps up the time between July 12th and August 3rd.

Time for some chow ;)