I'm mildly disturbed by the number of male welsh names that become female names in America, Rhys (reese in US), Morgan, Meredith, Griff, just slightly odd 'tis all

cut for Da Vinci Code spoilers

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*sigh*

For those of you who don't know, I did Drama for GCSE, and did lighting for as much of the course as I could, got a C because my acting is rubbish. But since the only other people who did lighting in my year left school, and no-one else has taken it up in the years below so far I'm the only lighting person in the school (one of the boys' whose left works in a theatre tech company his father runs, so they hire them for school shows etc, which are very technically hard anyway). As a result I'm doing lighting for two A-level groups, at least 2 GCSE groups and possibly more. Ah well, I enjoy it, somewhat.

Will be away from Thursday to Tuesday, am going on a rugby tour to Lisbon from Thursday (we leave for Gatwick at 1am, opening exam results on the bus) to monday.

Then when I come back I'm going to the Welsh Finals of the "Young Consumer Trading Standards Quiz, in Llandrindod Wells (for those of you who haven't heard of it, it's known for being a place where the closest thing to entertainment is watching the traffic lights change. Has some lovely scenery about it too apparently, but not exaclty much to do).

I have a huge backlog of serious books to read, about 20-30 philosophical political books varying across "The Communists Manifesto", "A beginners guide to the Israel-Palestine conflict" and "Seneca: On the shortness of life". Plus a few hundred magazines from the 1970s about WWI my grandfather gave me. So much reading, so little time.

Had a Law mock exam today, have another one tommorrow, and another one the next day.

C'est la vie

I've suddenly started feeling listless and disinterested, no idea why, but currently I am completely de-motivated and couldn't care less about anything. This is when any sense of sympathy I have goes out the window and for a while I just don't feel or care about any event that's happening to me or anyone else. Right now I could hear about a murder and be blase (e with an accent on top of it). At least I think I could, can't be sure since it's never happened.

Sometimes it's better to avoid me when I'm like this, since I can often be callous, insensitive and offensive.

*shrugs*

Oh hell. According to headlines "Blair is guided by God", suggesting that he's gone the way of Bush in saying that he is following God's orders etc. If you actually look at the interview then you see all he says is about the War in Iraq etc you have a conflict of conscience sending people to die, and his conscience is affected by his Christian beliefs. Stupid Media.

'tis St David's Day, Dewi Sant in Welsh, as far as I know we're the only country in Britain to have it's patron saint actually come from the country they're supposedly patron of. And it's snowing, or has snowed, hence school is cancelled and I am relaxing in dressing gown and slippers drinking many cups of tea, in short, having a wonderful day.

I'm back, eventually. That flight I was supposed to leave on at 7:55am, finally left at 4pm. Then had a 6 hour bus journey up to the resort place thing. Not pleasant. Don't ever go to Geneva airport, ever. It's overcrowded, cramped, too hot and it's impossible to get a newspaper after you've gone through the passport checking thing. I had to resort to stealing The Financial Times (which lacks a lot of non-business news) from cafe tables etc. Skiing was fun, not only was skiing fun, but the views were spectacular.

Some pictures of mountains... (if they work, the link to the album is http://photobucket.com/albums/y107/TP4CCCC/Alps/
but these are the best...

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It's now 10:05am and I'm stuck at Gatwick airport (on a 10p a minute PC). Took the scenic route to the overnight hotel, had to fight for a room. Then get up at 5am this morning to get to the airport for a 7:55am flight. Currently it's delayed until 10:00(yes, 5 minutes ago according to the baord), but it said 9:00 a while ago. Foggy as something very foggy outside, don't know if that's affecting it. Oddly, I prefer getting up at 5am to 7:30ish. If I'm going to get up early, make it the crack of dawn so that by around noon it feels like early evening. Having my bodyclock out of sync is something I find enjoyable enough to cope with a lack of sleep. If I get up at 7:30, then I'm tired and Im still running on a similar timezone to everyone else. That's just hell. Before 6 or after 10. Between those times getting up is hell.

<--heads back to airport of those damned to wait for delayed flights.

Last you'll see of me for a while, I'm buggering off for a week or so, skiing in the French Alps. Whenever I look back on saying things like that it always seems to make it sound like my family is very rich. Which we aren't. We're comfortably well off but nowhere near rich. It's true I've been to a few places, France (many times) Spain, Malta, Ireland. And by the end of this school year I'll also have been to Kenya, Switzerland (only passing through on a bus) and Portugal. But most of them I've gone with rugby teams or other organisations on my own which cuts down the cost (and it's often only for a weekend or a week or so at the absolute longest).

My parents bought a house in France before doing so especially in that area was fashionable, for about £60,000; which again has saved a lot over the years in not hiring accomodation (and a lot of our family and friends use it).

I'm lucky to have been to these places, and I feel it, and I've lost the point I was trying to make.

btw, I've just found out the company/group we're going with is a Christian one, with organisd Bible readings in the evenings (on the letter it does say "bring your bible".) I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry ;)

Since Anna decided to tage me:

Four jobs I've had in my life:
So far I've determinedly never held an actual proper job. Get by by spending little and the EMA (yay for EMA)

Four movies I can watch over and over:
* Life of Brian
* The Italian Job (old version)
* LotR
* Blackadder back and forth (yes it counts)

Four places I have lived:
* St Brides Gardens, Newport
* Rogerstone, Newport
* Givrand, St Gilles Croix da vie, France (Well, spent very long period on holiday there)
* Ilfracombe, Devon (same as above)

Four TV shows I love to watch:
* Blackadder
* Have I got News for You
* Scrum V
* Match of the Day

Four places I have been on vacation:
* France
* Ireland
* Malta
* Spain

Four of my favorite dishes:
* Peking Roast Duck
* Ham and Egg Calzone Pizza
* Porridge
* Jambon, Oeuf et Fromage Galette

Four websites I visit daily:
* MNFF forums
* LJ
* BBC
* nationstates

Four places I would rather be right now:
* On a rugby field
* USA (to visit people and go on a tour of the deep south seeing how many people I can send apoplectic)
* Kenya
* France

Hmm, Am currently browsing through University prospectuses, probably applying for history.

Sent off for ones from Cambridge, York, Durham, Warwick, and Bristol. I was going to ask for one from Oxford, but they wanted an actual e-mail as opposed to filling out an online form, and I haven't worked up the energy for that yet.

Only received Durham and Warwick so far. And I'm determined not to be influenced by Warwick offering a year studying in the US.

It's relatively early since I don't apply to next year, but considering what I went through when I left choosing my A-Levels until late.

More injections today, had MMR on Friday, then went to Nurse to have Hepatitus A and Typhoid for Kenya, have to contact the people to see if I need Yellow Fever as well. Model UN to go to soon, I hope our team gets to be Israel or Palestine etc, or perhaps the US again. It's oddly fun to be the villains of the piece.

Since everyone else is doing one: http://kevan.org/johari?name=Dragon_4c

<td align="center"> Tomas --
[adjective]:

Pretentiously academian

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com</td>


<td align="center">

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

No I didn't have anything better to do with my time,

This ig going to shock a lot of people, and no doubt I'll have hordes of comments about it, but I'm becoming slighty bored by one bit of the abortion debate. The old "a foetus is/isn't alive" bit you can't prove it either way and it gets a bit repetitive.

revelation over, I still enjoy other parts of the debate. I'm now trying to just back people into corners they don't want to be in, eg them being against intefering in "God's plan" then they are against healthcare. 'tis fun taunting the less intelligent. Like my English class, we started examining the various types of humour and how humour is created etc. And as an example I told a very bad joke to some girls who were working in a group (If you're really interested it was-What do you call a one-eyed dinosaur?) and then spent ten minutes literally in pain from laughing as they didn't understand the joke and argued about what it meant. They didn't understand the mildly dirty limerick I told them either *wonders how many people will ask to hear it*.

apart from that my life is stagnant.

http://www.totalwar.com/community/medieval2.htm

World Domination is good for the soul, and practice makes perfect :D

*sigh* First 6 Nations matches just finished. Ireland squeezed past Italy, and England breezed past Wales.

Italy were very unlucky, they've improved a lot since last year, and only lost because of a try that shouldn't have been given. Ireland were very poor to say the least, and very lucky to win.

Wales vs England. England have achieved their goal, play boring rugby for the majority of the match (they only started being even vaguely adventurous after the match was over). The scoreline flattered England a lot (thought this no doubt looks very biased). Dawson's try was a blatant knock-on, and Martin Williams shouldn't have been sin-binned, since both sets of forwards did what he did all through the match and no-one else was even penalised for it. And the referee did an excellent job of blocking Stephen Jones for Dallagllio's try.

I take some comfort in knowing that Andy Robinson is screwing England's rugby future. When all the rest of the teams are blooding new players and looking to the World Cup, England are reverting to type with older players. Come 2007 they're going to suddenly find a lot of trouble with players retiring and lack of experience. They've bought the present at the expense of the future. Their loss in my opinion.

And if any of you know any rugby fans, send 'em my way. 'twill be fun ;) *laughs evilly*

If y=a^x then x=log a y

If we had 2 +ve numbers C and D If C=M^p D=M^q M>0
p=logmC and q=logmD DC= M^p+q

Logm(DC) = logmC+LogmD

If b=a
Log a*a=log a + log a
Log a^2 = 2 log a

I'm starting to get headaches in my maths lessons, can't think why...

YES!!!, the commons rejected the incitement of religious hatred bill, my faith in British Parliamentary sytem is temporarily restored, it'll probably get passed eventually, but it'll be a watered down version, which is a lot better than the current one. Yay

Bugger, Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,!

Now that my ankle has swollen up so I'm unlikely to be able to do any exercise, I get asked to come for a pool test with a potential offer of a lifeguard job I've been after since October.

Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,Bugger,

Me again, two updates in one day, must be some sort of record for me.

I've managed to fall down some steps while running across and down them (it's complicated) and now my ankle has decided to swell up in an extremely annoying fashion, so I'm going to see how it is tommorrow, probably won't be able to play rugby for a while *sigh*

oh yes, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/jo_caulfield_again is a good link if anyone fancies listening to some pretty decent comedy for half an hour or so

EDITED: *sigh*, I've just found out that we're chucking away more free speech. Not only is this law about inciting religious hatred (read: say anything insulting about said religion) about to be passed, under a terrorrism act, if a chief of police and the home secretary designates an area (any size) to be a potential target then they can authorise Police to detain, video, and take the details of (to be held indefinitely) anyone, not even requiring due cause for suspicion (as is the case in normal circumstances for detaining and arresting someone).

When the Labour Party conference was held in Brighton, they designated the whole sodding city (or town, whichever it is) as one of these zones. And detained etc some guy who was collecting signatures for a petition against ID cards. I used to feel pride at living in a nation that I considered one of the world's best in terms of civil rights, I now feel less pride, but I'll enjoy that... while it lasts.

Hmm, me again, randomly wandering in and updating, otherwise known as avoiding writing a commentary that I have to get done by 1:30pm. Meh, if life's not getting on top of you, you're nopt living, and if I ever feel completely in control, I look for a new hobby to do.

I can no longer feel my feet, my ankles hurt like hell, but my feet are just dead, I've taken a look or two, and I'm about 90% sure that they're still there, but actual senses would be nice. Probably my own fault, not content with an hour of rugby training, I cycled about 2 miles (uphill!!!) to play 2 hours of football (and it's not the relaxed elegant passing football, it's charge around constantly as fast as you can football) then totally exhausted, (I'm sure there should be some sort of comma arrangement around those two words, but I have no idea what) had to cycle home. Hence the lack of feeling in my feet. They're probably just angry at me for making them work so hard and are ignoring me out of spite, I'm sure they'll get over it soon. And if they don't, I'll make a living setting records for walking across hot coals and things like that. Win-win situation.

Moving on to Trade Unions in Britain in history now, which is pretty boring to be honest, very important to the development of the welfare state, but a recommended cure for insombnia at the same time. Ah for the times when we learnt about monarchs being assassinated with red hot pokers (I have a feeling that certain corrupted minds will guess how the pokers were used, and be correct).

My rugby is going reasonably all right, but I'm having trouble fully committing to a tackle, and it's annoying me. Dates back to about 2-3 years ago when I tackled a large boy, two other large players drove him forward, and dislocated my collarbone (since it was only moved about an inch or so, the medical opinion was just leave it, hence one of my collarbones is now permanently pointing at a slightly odd angle). Ever since then when I commit to a tackle of that nature, my mind takes over and forces me to back out of it and protect my shoulder at the last minute. Which often ends in me missing tackles. Stupid mind.

*sigh* My mind is arguing with itself again, so I might as well finish typing and let it get on with it.

...

Another driving lesson today, I think/hope I'm improving, some slightly scary moments (I hate roundabouts).

Starting English Coursework twice (we have two different bits for two different teachers that we're doing at the same time). In one we have to genre bend a fairytale (tell it in an unusual way). I might do a set of CVs for Fairy Tale characters, or my teacher suggested a psychiatrists report on Prince Charming (serial polygamists, addicted to saving damsels and marrying them etc etc).

The other one is two analyse a transcript of spoken language. I'm either going to do a transcript of a religious guy telling his story (usual stuff, broken home, mother into witchcraft, did drugs, got shot, found Jesus). The guy came in to do a talk (not the one on the CD a more general one) on a Religious Studies day we had (we have about 3-5 a year I think). And told me that because I was an atheist I was going to hell (but he told me in a nice and reasonable way oddly enough).

Either that or get someone to perform (read) The Sermon on the Mount; I think it'd be intersting and mildly amusing to analyse that and see how good it is as a speech.

I'm playing a lot of rugby now (Friday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Sunday this week, then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday and possibly Saturday next week assuming that nothing gets cancelled, which it very well might), and hence am finally getting back into full fitness (I was irritating unfit in my first match or two, it didn't help that they were practically played in bogs, there was an almost foot (12") deep puddle on one pitch, and yes I both stepped and fell into it (fell into it with a lot of other players at the same time).

[/random life update]

Six Nations start soon, Wales are the reigning Grand Slam Champions (won every match last year), but due to a shedload of injuries to the spine of the team it's very unlikely they'll repeat it. France will probably win it, England probably second playing their boring "give it to the biggest guy drive forward, give it to next biggest guy drive forward, if that doesn't work kick it as far downfield as possible" style. It works, but is less exciting and unpredictable than that musical piece that is one bar of music played over and over again for 24 hours. And it'll be a fight between Wales and Ireland for third, hard to say who will get it, but things look good for the future, a lot of IReland's best players are aging, and although they do have some good youngsters, when a lot of the current stars pass on in a few years, they'll decline a fair bit (and since Scotland are improving, they might even slip below them). England don't have the greatest set of youngsters coming through either, but they're almost always solid.

I think that's everything...