#also gcses sound nasty

[bruhman745]

Is it weird that I kinda wanna go through Mumbos videos and pick out elements I really like about them. I've been studying media since I was like 14 (our gcses, British btw, start when you're in year 9/10 so 14/15 basically.)

But like seeing him take that break makes me sad because I'm going to be doing a media production degree and seeing Mumbo get excited about projects has always made me happy. So hearing him feel anxious about posting cuz of pressures is just :(

oh not at all! i do that with concerts and music all the time (the amount of times ive listened to the patd live in denver 2006 concert is unhealthy at this point)

and i relate to him taking a break sm,,, i attempted to do content creation at one point and it was So Draining. u had to post every day and stream every other just to get a few people's attention. (i may pick it up again someday, but i think writing and music are much more creatively fulfilling for me :))

I'm glad he's avoiding the long-term burnout and taking care of himself, u don't really see that often with how fast-paced the internet is right now

[ambertea]

clever

Read on AO3

She’s six years old and she’s just won a certificate for Maths.

Her mum’s sitting at the back of the assembly, exchanging whispers to the single dad sitting next to her. Rose keeps looking back, trying to catch her eye, but instead watches her mother’s hand sneaking up a strange man’s thigh.

The headmaster smiles at her strangely, in a way she will later define as ‘condescending’ but in the moment she can’t wrap her head around.

“Well done, you clever girl.” He says, and Rose hates it. His clammy hand engulfs hers and Rose just blinks as he shakes it up and down.

The school claps dutifully and her mum is still not looking at her.

She’s eleven years old and she hates everyone in her class. They tease her in the playground, mock her in the classroom and the only safe haven is the tiny library. The librarian is old and odd, and she strokes Rose’s hair like she’s nothing more than a tiny doll.

“Don’t try so hard to be clever,” she tells her. “They’ll leave you alone.”

Rose leaves the library and never comes back.

She’s fifteen years old and GCSEs are utter bullocks. Mickey has already failed them all, already told her they don’t matter in the real world. She stays behind after school to sit in empty classrooms to figure out algebra and tells her mum she still does gymnastics.

She gets her results in a thick brown envelope and takes a quick glance at a long list of A’s before she chucks it in the bin.

“Pure shit.” She tells her mum. “Didn’t even try, anyway. I’m just not clever enough.”

Her mum throws her a party regardless, and Rose ignores the ache in her chest.

She’s seventeen and he’s fucking hot.

She’s told her mum she’s doing A-levels because she hasn’t figured out if she wants to do hairdressing or childcare. Instead, she doodles equations on the back of English papers whilst she waits for everyone else to finish.

She meets Jimmy outside the school gates and he’s smoking cigarettes and the smell gets right into the back of her throat. She tells him that it’s bad for him, and he tells her he could be bad for her. He’s right.

She drops out of school and her mother approves because it was giving her airs and graces. What her mother does not approve of is the filthy bedsit she moves into, where she cries as her boyfriend screams at her.

“You think you’re clever, do you?” he yells, and she shakes her head and whispers no, no, never.

She’s nineteen, fucking shop window dummies are after her, and a strange man is standing with her in the lift.

“’Cos to get that many people dressed up and being silly, they got to be students.”

“Good point. Well done.”

She’s wrong, but the praise bounces around her brain.

She runs off with him because apparently, that’s just what she does. Runs off with charismatic men, leaves her mother worried sick, because she is Rose, and Rose is not clever.

This man, however, is no Jimmy. He’s smart – so smart, any small attempts at intelligence still leave her feeling dumb. This is a comfort. She argues with him, thinks around him, and starts to feel a bit better about herself.

He’s sweet as well, and kind, and doesn't care when she asks too many questions. He shows her how to strip wires and repair parts of his precious ship, and they tinker away together in comfortable silences. Now and then, she properly impresses him, and he ignores the beauties of the universe and beams at her instead. It’s strange and wonderful and she tries her best not to disappoint him.

Then she is sent away, he is trapped, and it’s time for her to use her bloody brains only she’s not sure they even work anymore. He is dying, far in the future, but still dying, and she is watching her mum scoff down chips. She doesn’t want to go back to her old life, doesn’t want to play stupid anymore.

“Why, because you’re better than us?”

No, because she has learned what life is like when she tries, and she is not yet ready to stop.

She makes it back, using her brain and a fucking massive truck, and it is worth it if just for the way he is looking at her. He tells her she is fantastic and then explodes into a whole new man, with a lankier frame and wilder hair. He takes a long nap, and she is left to be useless once more.

She stands up in front of actual, breathing monsters and tries to copy words she’s heard, but her voice shakes, and her hands are trembling. They laugh at her, and she is eleven again, being teased by the nasty girls in her class.

He saves the day, because that’s just what he does, and she runs off with him again because his smile is still kind and their hands fit nicely. Cassandra sits inside her brain and hums with curiosity, poking around her mind like it’s a mildly interesting boutique.

“Not as thick as you seem, are you?” She whispers into Rose’s mind.

She’s inside some sort of spaceship and he is gushing over the accomplishments of Reinette de Pompadour. She already knows all this, knows who she is, but he is enjoying the sound of his own voice, so she keeps quiet.

She watches him carefully, notices the lipstick marks around his face and the ridiculous angle of his collar, and stamps down the familiar feelings of jealousy rising within her chest.

It had felt like they were growing closer. Their hugs had been lingering, hands held tightly at any available moment. She had thought something was growing, something small and precious and good. Clearly, she was wrong.

Reinette dies, and Rose isn’t glad, not really, but she watches him carefully afterward and wonders. Wonders why he keeps her around if he even wants her there. She tries to ask, but the words die on her tongue.

She has almost let the feeling go when she meets her father, a man who does not know her and apparently does not care to. She calls him dad and he runs, leaving her crying and shaking and so very vulnerable. She wonders, afterward, why. Why no one has ever wanted her properly, why it feels like no one has even met her in the first place. She sobs into her mum’s shoulder and wishes she had told her about the GCSE results.

Maybe it’s a good thing, she thinks later, that she’s alone. She has no real connections that make her want to stay at home, no real relationships that don’t leave her mentally exhausted. He is her grounding point, her focus, and he doesn’t think she’s stupid, not really, but he doesn’t think she’s clever either.

She knows she loves him; knows she will spend the rest of her life pining for him. It aches, having so much unspent emotion coursing under her skin. Feels like she could explode and implode simultaneously. But his eyes are so soft, and he is so worth it.

“We’ll always be alright, me and you.” She tells him. He just stares into the sky glumly.

“There’s a storm approaching.”

She hopes for a bit of rain but instead gets a fucking earthquake.

She’s twenty-one, she’s in a different universe, and she’s absolutely fine.

“How are you doing?”

“Are you okay?”

“Speak to me, Rose, please.”

She doesn’t speak to anyone. Doesn’t even look in the mirror.

It’s hard to assign blame on a talking pepper pot, so instead, she blames herself. If she’d been stronger. Tried harder. Been cleverer.

She tells her mum this over a bottle of wine, and she just laughs.

“People like us aren’t clever, Rose. We’re survivors.”

She doesn’t want to be a survivor anymore.

She starts working at Torchwood. Starts sleeping at Torchwood as well. Pete gives her the job out of pity but is quickly astonished by the scale of the work she’s doing.

“You’re brilliant.” He tells her one night. Jackie scoffs.

“Brilliant? Hark at her.”

Rose ignores her. It doesn’t matter.

She sits through A-levels, and then university lectures, and then physics conventions with groups of boring boys who follow her like a bizarre squadron. She has a brother now, a tiny boy with eyes just like hers, and when she tucks him into bed, she whispers stories of the stars.

She creates a dimension cannon and brings it home to show Pete. He marvels over it whilst Jackie sniffs like she’s got a nasty cold.

“Just glorified jewelry. Face it, sweetheart. You’re stuck here with the rest of us. It’s time to get used to it.”

“Shut up,” Rose says, and she can feel her pulse banging away in her ears like a marching parade.

Jackie is spluttering, Pete’s eyes are wide, and Rose isn’t quite sure what she’s doing but she’s doing it anyway.

“I can do this. I am going to do this. So just shut up.”

She does do it. She flits around universes like students backpack around Europe, and it’s strangely healing to spend so much time by herself.

She meets tiny aliens made of glass who kiss through the refractions of light and hugs ginormous bear-like creatures who are surprisingly friendly and incredibly soft.

She searches for him, and it hurts and it’s hard but it’s also fantastic.

She gets through finally to a universe that should be right but is oh so very wrong. A red-haired woman screams at her, and Rose is finding it difficult to breathe.

“I'm nothing special. I'm a temp. I'm not even that. I'm nothing.”

“Donna Noble, you are the most important woman in the whole of creation!”

“Oh, don't. Just don't.”

She tells her mum about her GCSE results because she can’t stop thinking about it. Her mum stares at her for a long while and then looks down at her hands. Rose has never seen her mum speechless before, doesn’t like it, so she just nods and leaves.

She finds him, and the feeling rushes right from her toes to the top of her head. She has done it. After all the effort and pain, she has found him, and the uncurling pride is like nothing she’s ever felt before.

He gets shot and utterly ruins it, but the feeling lingers.

Her mum shows up at the worst possible time, but she is there, and she is looking at Rose so fiercely. When the situation calms down and they are safe, she pulls Rose into a tight hug and rubs her hands in circles across the small of her back.

“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.” She whispers, and Rose quickly wipes her eyes on her shoulders.

She is dumped on the same beach she has had nightmares about for the last five years. She is left again, but this time she is left with a familiar man who whispers promises into her ear and holds her like she is something important.

He is looking at her like he’s hoping she might lead the way, and she knows how to do this now, knows how to think and plan and strategize. She kisses him on the cheek, watches the blush that spreads across his cheek, takes his hand, and leads him back to England.

She doesn’t take him straight back to the mansion, hates the idea of speech and silence in equal measure. Instead, she takes him to her lab, and he stares at her designs through startled eyes and stolen glasses. She fidgets in the corner of the room, and wraps her arms around her waist, waiting for his verdict.

He turns to her, whips the glasses off of his face and a look of quiet wonder spreads across his face.

“You’re brilliant.”

She squirms under his gaze, picks off an invisible bit of fluff from her jacket. He is still looking at her, and she tries her best to smile.

“Thanks.”

“No, seriously. These are so impressive.”

She’s still not sure what to do with the praise, but it warms her and fills all the cracked pieces of her soul with new and growing tissue. She kisses him, both because she’s not sure what else to do, and because she can, and he smiles against her lips. They break apart and he runs his fingers over her work, his eyes soft and curious.

“How did you do this?” He whispers, and something tender and precious burns gently in her chest.

“I guess I’m just clever.”

[femaleaspie]

My head teacher was a wanker, and I told his wife I pitied her

My head teacher was your typical upper middle class, white, able, male. He had everything he wanted and never really bothered understanding others.

Let me give some context. This will sound arrogant, but they are facts:

-I’m smart like top set, top 3 student, type smart

-I’m very ambitious

-I’m very lazy

-I’m very honest

I feel like that’s the basics.

I was that student who could just be in the back of class doing whatever they wanted and be in the top 10 of the class and if I put any effort in I’d be the top three. My friends were always 1st/2nd and they deserved it.

So 2014/2015/2016 was the time of my GCSE’s.

During this time my mum and dad divorced (semi messy) due to my dad not understanding that they were in a monogamous marriage, then there was me getting bullied by my so called ‘bff’ and my Asperger’s Diagnosis, and my GCSE’s which I was told was the most important thing ever...*eye roll*

So I was under a lot of stress, I went from being emotionally trauma at home to having my trust messed by a so called friend and getting extreme pressure.

In year 10 (’14/’15) I did my class did our English GCSE a year earlier, my teacher hadn’t fully informed us and had taught us the wrong material for the year. So when we did the paper I got a C. Which I was happy with, because I’d always hated English, as the school system destroys learning.

The next year I had my diagnosis and more confidence, as it was my last year in this crap hole and I looked fly in my Doc Martens and my uniform bending the rules.

However my head teacher didn’t want to hear anything from me.

OH, I forgot to mention, he and my dad were like besties as my dad loved to surround himself by powerful people.

So I was walking to class with my friend who was Emo as heck, and the head called us into his office, which were confused about. As we were quiet well behaved, smart kids, top set, only got detention for forgetting homework (for me) and being verbally aggressive (my friend). Compared to most of our year we were angels.

He brought us in and praised my friend for her achieving their estimated grade. Then turned and started ripping into me. I was getting C+’s, except for Drama I was getting A’s.

I was proper mad. 

I had gone through lots in the last years. Recovering trauma that I couldn’t talk about as nobody really got it. Then the whole thing with my dad’s sex life (he ended up in court and lying to the police which ended up in the news paper! Front Page). And I was reeling from finally feeling ‘normal’ after getting my diagnosis. Also coping with nasty nasty girls who would message me how they wanted me to kill myself. Which he didn’t want to know about.

I was thrown for a loop, he expected the best from me, but wouldn’t look at the mitigating circumstances I was living.

So I pointed it out to him.

Which he then replied with my favorite line from a wanker

“You can’t use that as an excuse in the real world!”

That line always make me want to punch something.

At that point I couldn’t say something as I was so mad. So I internalised until I had to talk to my ‘Last Year Tutor’ which was a teacher who was supposed to make my last year a breeze.

And the stars a lined. It was his wife. 

She was swell! She was my Home Ec teacher, and even though I wasn’t the best cook she’d always be so nice to me. If she didn’t help me I would have flunked her class.

She asked me how she could help me with GCSE year. And I told her about her husband being a wanker and she was proper appalled. She called him out on it and he stopped breathing down my neck the first time in 4 & 1/2 years.

One time when we were ‘making sure all is fine’ I said, “I feel bad for you marrying him. He’s so ignorant!”

Since my time in that hell hole, he’s been replaced by a slightly less crap head, but still the damage is there. He messed up about 300 student, by being a wanker!

[studylizziee]

Maths

woo part 3 of my A Level tips for the subjects I study!

Notes

Personally, I find that notes aren’t the most important thing to do when studying Maths, but I aim to at least have a page or two per chapter. I tend to include:

the main methods / theories

worked examples 

any formulae I need to use

Practice

For me, I think the best way to study Maths is by practice. I do a good selection of questions from each exercise in the textbook, and then exam questions. 

Make sure to mark everything you do (it sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how often people forget to double check that their answers are correct).

If you get a question wrong:

make sure you understand why (e.g. ask a teacher to explain what to do, or look it up in your notes)

do another similar question to make sure you fully understand what to do, and that you’re not making the same mistakes

Also, through practice you’ll start to notice common errors that you make. For example, mine is differentiating when I should be integrating (which is so stupid because they’re opposites but whatever). Once you’re aware of them (I’d jot down a list somewhere), you will be extra cautious doing those questions & hopefully won’t make the same mistakes again!

Websites

Khan Academy : you’ve probably noticed by this point that I absolutely rave about this - I promise it’s for good reason! Watch these videos if, like me, you get freaked out by a dense block of writing in a textbook

Wolfram Alpha : this is the ultimate search engine of maths & it can literally do anything! You can use it to show you what your graph should look like, to give you a step-by-step solution to algebra problems, etc 

Exam Solutions : if you’re running out of practice questions, there are loads here, & they’re specific to your exam board

Physics and Maths Tutor : I was so pleasantly surprised by how helpful this is. Here there are loads of handy summary sheets / revision materials, & here there are links to past papers. It’s all organised by unit

MyMaths : okay this one I found more helpful at GCSE, but it’s good - there are lessons & then ‘homeworks’ to test yourself. Bear in mind that you have to have a login from your school though

Overall

I always seem to bang on about this, but for the love of god, use the exam board websites (AQA, OCR, Pearson) to check your specification. Make sure you’re covering everything as you go along & you won’t get any nasty surprises in the exam :)

Also, I have a Maths help tag, with all of the posts I have reblogged that contain useful tips and advice

Other posts in this series: [English Literature] [Chemistry] Biology is coming soon!

[franthetutor]

Critical Thinking In Practice: The Sweetest Poison of All

“There’s about 40g sugar in that. Weren’t you meant to be going healthy this week?”

“Yeah but it doesn’t contain any refined sugars. That’s the nasty stuff that you want to avoid.”

“You’re still 10g over the recommended daily intake of sugars.”

“But it’s not refined sugar. You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. I Googled it. I’ll send you the link.”

I read the article that evening, but we never spoke about sugar again. A pity, because the garbage Charlie was citing to support his argument was an absolute shocker. It’s the kind that uses pseudo-biological language and half-arsed logic that superficially sounds like it’s making a great point but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If you’ve done GCSE or A Level biology, you’re in a good position to pick it apart. It was the first search result for “refined sugar” in 2015 but has thankfully since dropped down the list. 

Nevertheless I managed to find it again, and thought it could be helpful to scribble my thoughts in the margin to illustrate the kind of thinking I do when I read. It’s especially important to get into the habit of not just reading about things for interviews/life, but also actively engaging with the texts you’re looking at. Ask questions - that’s how you learn more about a topic. Challenge, even if the source sounds/is authoritative. You’re allowed to have opinions. Authors can make mistakes. I’ll be doing some more of these analyses as time goes on, but I thought this was quite an entertaining and obvious one to start with. 

Click this to see my thoughts on the article. (Sorry, the JPEG doesn’t load properly when I include it in the body of the article, so I’ve had to make do with a link to the PDF.) This isn’t the full article, by the way: I only got a few paragraphs in before rage-quitting.

I think in this era of “alternative facts” and webs of lies it’s easy to cling to “science” as some monolithic source of truth. But the reality is, as this annotated document shows, science is only as truthful as its practitioners and interpreters. I think it’s important to get your head around the fact that science is a very human endeavour and that all scientific documents require just as much critical thought as, for example, historical ones. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security because you see words like ‘pyruvic acid’ and ‘enzyme’, or science loses its driving force: critical thinking.

Charlie wasn’t stupid. He just mistook science for truth, when the former can only give a reliable estimate of the latter. He could have avoided looking like a tit by simply not taking the article for granted. To plagiarise my own tweets to the Dalai Lama, who once made the same error as Charlie:

Science isn’t infallible. To hold it as anything other than organised common sense/experience is dangerous. I’m not sure science can dictate values nor instruct, or we’d be eradicating the human race. All science can do is provide evidence.

It’s up to us how we interpret it.

And with that power comes great responsibility.

[big-stamp]

Former World Champion snooker player Shaun Murphy has revealed how he was bullied and “left for dead” when he was at high school in Northamptonshire.

Murphy said: “I lived in a very parochial town and because of what I did, I was in the local papers and on BBC Look East etc. So I was singled out for a bit of abuse from the other kids.  Kids can be really nasty. In the penultimate day of year nine, I was left for dead in the toilets at the school. I was beaten up by a group of lads at the school. I was just left in a pool of my own……whatever. 

“The Geography teacher took me home in her car that afternoon, she took me to the house and said to my mum and dad, ‘If you know what’s good for your son, don’t ever send him back to this school’. Over the next few days we came to the decision that we were never going to go back.”

Murphy was speaking to BBC Radio Sheffield sports reporter Andy Giddings on the Snooker Heaven programme last night, Wednesday 24 April. The programme featured interviews with various snooker legends and current players discussing the World Championship which is currently taking place in Sheffield.

Murphy also discussed how the memories of being bullied have stayed with him throughout his career.

He said: “I would love to sit here and tell you that when I won the World Championship and other tournaments I didn’t think of those lads, remember those times and didn’t get some satisfaction about the fact that I’d had the last laugh if you like. I would love to be big enough to say that didn’t happen but it did happen. I remember them very well and I never forgot them.

“I couldn’t wait to get out of the school system to be completely honest. I was educated at home and I took my GCSEs two or three years early. But for that decision I perhaps wouldn’t be sat here today.”

You can listen to BBC Radio Sheffield’s Snooker Heaven programme on BBC Sounds –https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p075mm6x

[thatshitwasntworthit]

07-01-19

hello

2018 was an atrocious year, we can all admit. and if i’m completely honest, 2019 will probably be just as nightmarish. it’s not all bad news however... i have a sneaking suspicion that 2020 might go down as one of the greatest years in modern history. so there’s that to look forward to. just a thought.

anyway..about this blog. this page will cover a range of subtopics zooming around in my head on a daily basis.. food, fashion, travel, language, theatre, videogames, tv, film, music, fitness, pop culture and social media. etcetera

etcetera

etcetera

god i fucking adore the word ‘etcetera’ i could type it for hours

today i’ll mainly be talking about travel, something i want to do more of in 2019. and language, especially the ones i want to learn/already speak.

so.

let me be honest about my travel history.

i’m pretty priveleged.. in the fact i usually get to fly to at least two foreign countries a year, and then also stay in other parts of the UK in the holidays/some half terms etc.

for example. last year i visited:

- February: Sandbanks, Poole, UK

- July: Christchurch, UK

- July: Gdańsk, Poland

- August: Murcia, Spain

might not sound like a lot but considering i stayed in Poland for two weeks, overall it was a great experience for me to delve into other cultures and temporarily assimilate.

i have been going to Spain every year, all my life, since my grandparents live in a villa in Murcia.

my stepmother is Polish, and therefore i have been visiting Poland since 2017, and will continue to do so for years to come.

but i don’t really get to experience OTHER countries. that’s my biggest issue. it’s not a complaint.. but i would like to visit Rome for a day or spend a weekend in St. Petersburg. Europe has so much to offer regarding foreign travel, and i just want to appreciate and celebrate it.

so yeah, that’s my stance on travel. i’m visiting Poland again in March for my GCSE Philosophy trip, and am going to Southwolds in Feb, so it’s not all bad huh.

now..

languages.

a year ago, i would say “I HATE FRENCH” or something along the lines of “FOREIGN LANGUAGES ARE STUPID IDK WHY WE’RE FORCED TO LEARN THEM IN SKL LOL”... but, since summer of last year, i developed a serious appreciation for foreign languages and decided that i was going to learn at least one.

i did.

well, i’m still learning it..

but,

seven odd months of learning a language, and you start to really pick it up, at a rapid pace.

i am of course talking about the INFAMOUS Polish language.

it is said to be, along with Finnish and Hungarian, one of the hardest European languages.

it was scary for me to learn at first, in comparison to learning French or Spanish (renowned to be reasonably easy for English speakers), but i persevered. i didn’t let my fear get the better of me. i now speak to my stepmother in Polish in general conversation. and of course, i am not fluent. no where near it. but, it’s nice to be able to secretly translate what your maths teacher is saying to you into a completely different dialect. and to say “fuck you” to someone you hate without them knowing anything. or to simply order a meal in a different country.

kocham Polską kulturę. (= i love Polish culture.)

i also plan to learn French this year, or in 2020.

Duolingo, an app free on any mobile or laptop, is generally the best resource online to learning a language. it’s taught me so much Polish. i know the French resources are even better..

god i can’t wait.

my goal is to eventually speak Polish, French and at least one other language. maybe German. idk tho. heard that one was kinda nasty... ich bin what?

i hope you enjoyed this post. i don’t know if this blog is public yet. if it is hi, if it isn’t, also hi. i’ll probably be posting once a month. maybe less. idk. every post will have a theme. (today’s was language and travel). uh so yeah lmao

thank you for reading. really. it means a lot.

Jack

[thebookofdave]

On Group Travel

Technically speaking the whole of our Australia trip when we were nineteen was group travel.  The company was called something like Oz Experience and mostly consisted of transporting fifty twenty year olds around the country via famous landmarks, bars, sexual experiences (not a lot of that for us sadly, I blame the haircuts from the sheep shearing farm) and in one memorable incident, a crashed 4x4.

In practice because there were so many people and because it was step on and step off there was seldom much of a group vibe.  There were exceptions to this, 4x4 driving on Fraser Island (including wrecking the car) was a lot of fun, we had to cook our own food and camp each night so we all got to know each other pretty well and since we had an unexpected extra night we ended up quite close by the end of it.   In the main however, we tended to meet people in the stopovers rather than on the bus journey's, the loss of 24 hours of our lives in Cheeky Monkey's in Byron Bay for example was a combination of random people in our hostel, extremely attractive bar staff, party games and Bundaburg Overproof rum.  

Still, I didn't do any group travel for a long time after that, I'd enjoyed traveling alone for all the reasons outlined in the last blog and I strongly disliked the concept of being on a routine.  I did short trips here and there as a way to see places, Canada for instance is a pain to get to some areas unless you undertake an organised tour but in the main I avoided it.

I ended up on a proper group tour the first time around because I couldn't really work out how to get to see everything I wanted to in the time period I had.  I'd always fancied seeing Morocco, it had had a certain feeling of mystery to it but it was also clear with my innate sense of direction and navigation combined with a really poor public transport system I was asking to end up in all the wrong places.  

The company I picked was called something like Explore Adventure travel, it doesn't exist anymore but it was catered towards 18-39 year olds who wanted a more cultured experience and who were in reasonably good shape.  The trip itself was only for a couple of weeks but it remains one of the best travel experiences of my life.  We saw a huge amount of the country including the Sahara and we had an excellent local tour guide.  I think it also benefited greatly from only having us staying in many of the locales, so we all ended up bonding quite quickly.  We even managed a local night club for an evening out which was... interesting.

The follow up trip to that was South America which I chose because languages are not really my forte.  I was for instance; the only man not allowed to take French GCSE as I'd bring the average school mark down.  South America was fantastic as a trip although slightly less successful as a group experience, it was three tours welded into one so some people had already been on a tour when we joined them and some people had to leave early, I particularly gelled well with an English couple so when they left it was me, one other guy in a couple and seventeen girls which sounds good on paper but in reality...  Later on however we were joined by a couple of Aussie guys who were great to hang out with and things returned to some normality but it has left me with the view that some balance in numbers is helpful.  

It was also my first experience (sadly not my last) of group illness which rocketed in Bolivia and meant a lot of people missed out on some parts of the trip.  Still the positives far outweighed the negatives and the experiences I remember were things that will stay with me, playing football with the locals in Lake Titicaca; albeit at high altitude so my pace was even worse than usual, the Inca trail and playing around on the Salt Flats.  

Interestingly when I did Central America with a group, apart from some food poisoning most people were fine.  I got ill for the first time in my life but I suspect that was due to swallowing half the water in El Salvador during the gravity falls, I should have stuck with the Irish plan of killing anything via the local rum.  

Since then I've done plenty of further travel in groups but in the vein of the previous blog here's a few things I enjoy about it and a couple of things I don't.

It's easy:

You have an itinerary, you get instructions every day of where you have to be, what time and there's little stress about missing a bus or being in the wrong place.  It also means you don't need to plan, everything is taken care of for you so it's pretty relaxing as an experience, you can just watch the world go by (or realistically read a book in my case).

You see a lot:

It's easy to mock being on a routine but tours are planned around the main sights of a country, if you're on a short time scale it's a really good way to view the highlights of a country.  You can always decide you want to come back at a later point.  They really cram the activities in; the downside is this means early starts and a lot of driving but I would struggle to argue I'd have seen more in the same timescales if I'd done it myself.

It's sociable:

You have a group of people, mostly around the mid twenties to mid thirties age and you'll be spending a lot of time together.  When it clicks, it really works and most of the time I've had some awesome groups of people on my tours.  It's particularly important if you're doing a long group tour and I'm fortunate that the last long tour I did, Central America, had a great group of people but NZ South Island was also excellent.  It makes evenings much more enjoyable when you have a group of people to sit around, share drinks with and play games.  Oh and people hook up of course which is always entertaining, alcohol plus spending a lot of time sharing rooms tends to mean there's a fair bit tension.  

There's a safety net:

I luckily very rarely get ill aside from coughs and colds, I suspect a lifetime of adventurous and questionable food choices abroad has helped my constitution somewhat but I've certainly seen people get pretty sick, parasites, fevers, complete collapse.  Having someone who knows the country well, has access to a group doctor and can speak the language is always a reassuring thing to have.  

It's *generally* cheaper than doing the same stuff yourself:

If the route looks to take in most of the things you wanted to see anyway at the same standard, chances are it's cheaper to do it as part of a group.  You'll have all your transport and accommodation included with the addition of a guide. There are two massive caveats with this, firstly it's all based on sharing a room so there's a premium if you're not and the second is there are always a ton of add on extras.  They're always optional but honestly, for some of the evening activities you're going to feel pretty bored if you don't go.  The backup free option for daytime is usually a hike or walk or some sort though so I guess you'd get pretty fit?

On the downsides...

When the plague hits the group...:

When I did Egypt seventeen out of twenty-one people got sick, Bolivia was about roughly the same number, China had something nasty going around which everyone got to a lesser or greater extent.  You're all in close proximity to each other so there'll probably be a bit of freshers flu anyway but any kind of illness gets exacerbated.  

There's not a lot of flexibility:

If there's anything you want to see that's not on the list it's highly unlikely you'll get a chance to see it unless it coincides with a free day.  The problem with the tight timetables is that there's rarely time to head off the beaten path:

There will be a falling out:

Most of the time it's because someone got drunk and was a bit of arse.  They're usually over the quickest and you've only got half a day or so of awkward bus ride to wait it out.  Relationship arguments are pretty bad depending how feisty the couple is but they're also mostly limited to frosty stares and stony silence.  The worst ones tend to be when someone's slept with someone else they shouldn't have, particularly if their bf/gf is also in the group and then you just need to turn up the headphones and take an interest in a book for the next few days until it all blows over.

Timekeeping can get annoying:

I appreciate the hypocrisy of saying this as a man who was an hour and a half late returning from Petra but consistently missing the return time for trips creates two issues.  Firstly, everyone will start coming back later on the basis they don't want to sit on the bus for the guilty party, secondly it starts to throw the whole timetable out of sync which means other visits get curtailed or cancelled altogether.  Most of the time in my experience people are pretty good about coming back at the appointed hour but there are some people who just seem to consistently be late for everything.

The snoring:

If you are unlucky enough to share a room with an Irishman with a broken nose, just bump him off, don't do the polite thing of believing that it's his allergies, just kill him at the start of the trip, it'll make the rest of your time so much happier.  The sole reason I now always pay the premium to have my own room.  

The sex:  

You're not paying for the Hilton, these are thin walls most of the time; headphones/ earplugs are your friend.  Unless it's you of course, in which case, just try and keep it down and hope you have a roommate who enjoys late night strolls.  

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Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’, A review – Or: ‘How many potatoes can a man eat on Mars?’

Not since the Mountain faced off against the Red Viper have I felt quite so tense whilst viciously clutching a book between my frail man fingers.

I’m tempted to tell you to just read the book. Don’t read this, read the book! Fair warning, this review will feature spoilers. ‘Cause…I wanna talk about the book, OK?

The Martian, by Andy Weir is a roller-coaster on speed. It’s like watching your favourite comedian walking a tightrope between the London Shard and the Gherkin whilst doing his best routine with no safety harness and a swarm of angry, UKIP supporting super wasps doing fly by stingings. Sure, you’re laughing–but who knows when one of those bastard bugs’ll get a pot shot and the laughter goes tumbling back to Earth. Splat. Bye-bye laughter!

Tumbling back to Earth is something Mark Watney would have loved to do. Being stuck on Mars sounds…frightening. If you don’t know the story, here it is in a nutshell: Mark Watney, one of six Ares III crew members (a NASA organised manned Mars mission) finds himself stranded on the red planet when a nasty storm causes an emergency evacuation. On his way to the MAV (fancy speak for spaceship), Mark goes and gets himself a little bit impaled on flying debris and the rest of the crew shrugs apathetically, climbs into the rocket and slings their collective hooks. Bye-bye, Mark!

With only his super botany skills, above average mechanical engineering skills, and a whole boatload of smarts, Mark must find a way to resist Mars’ wiles and keep himself alive until he can be rescued. But with no way to communicate with NASA, and not knowing if anyone realises he’s even alive, Mark is faced with the damn right daunting reality that he’ll either have to survive until the next Ares mission (four years away), or die alone on a godforsaken rock.

He gets busy, gettin’ busy, I’ll tell ya that for free!

You might recall in my last review (David Brin’s Uplift), I mentioned that I’m a slow reader. Whilst that’s true, every rule has an exception. And The Martian is my exception. I read it in five days, which is a record for me. Others say they read it in a single sitting, but you know what, whatever. Five days is impressive, I don’t care what you think!

Every page of this book is a turner. Be prepared for a whole bunch of science, though. I’m not sure how accurate it all is; the last science I did was in secondary school, eight years ago. I did alright in GCSE science (B,B?). Either way, Weir clearly knows his stuff, and it’s incredible to see so much research and hard science in a work of fiction. It makes the entire thing that much more believable.

That said, this is a survival story to the bone. This is the sort of stuff Bear Grylls should be doing. Oh, you ate a live scorpion? Good for you, Bear. Mark Watney ate potatoes…which he grew…on Mars…after harnessing the bacteria in his own homemade chocolate pudding.

You crossed the Sahara Desert did ya, Bear? Very impressive, Bear. Well done, Bear! Mark Watney crossed MARS, Bear! He pimped a rover, and drove 3,200 kilometres with a radioactive radiator as his only source of heat!

Face it, Bear. You’ve been dethroned.

Just to clarify, I’m aware that Mark Watney isn’t real…but he is, so shush.

I’m not typically a fan of first person narratives, but this isn’t pure first person, so it’s fine. Not that there’s anything wrong with first person–a good story’s a good story–but I just prefer third person.

We, the audience, get semi-regular daily updates from Mark as he sits down and types out his misadventures. Should I say daily? Soly? Eh…anyway, I thought it was pretty neat of Mark to format his diary as one would a typical novel. 0.6” indent on new paragraphs. Double spaced. 0.5” margins. Thanks, Mark. Very considerate. Honestly though, that was the only thing that drew me out. Once. And it’s not something that can be helped, it was just a thought that paid me a visit whilst reading. Anyway, this format allows for plenty of interesting story telling tricks because everything’s told from a first person account of past events. So, a log entry can start (and often does) with something like:

“I f**ked up. I f**ked up big.”

And instantly my heart is racing. Whatcha do, Mark? Are you doomed? Don’t let it be so, Mark. You’ve gotta make it back! The world’s watching, Mark!

Mark Watney might just be my favourite fictional character in recent years. I actually care about this person. I care if he lives or dies. I’m invested in his survival. Well done, Weir. You made me care for a non-thing! Mark’s a funny, optimistic, ridiculously intelligent bloke. Yeah he swears, and he throws tantrums, but wouldn’t you in his shoes? His resourcefulness and ingenuity is utterly inspiring. Really, at the end, it begs the question: could I do what Mark Watney did? Even with the intelligence and training. Could I have lived alone, stranded on a world that doesn’t even support the simplest of bacterial life, for a year and a half? Would I have gone insane? Taken the easy way out? Or, more simply, would I have failed?

See, Mark falls down. He falls down a lot. But he also manages to dust himself off, and get back to it. So the message I’m taking away from The Martian is that of perseverance. When the universe decides to pile it on, when everything’s getting too damn much, I’m just gonna remember that Mark Watney endured a year and a half of disco music and nothing else, but despite that he remained a sane man.

What an inspiration.

* * *

The Martian is Andy Weir’s debut novel, and is soon to become one of those moving picture books staring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott. Weir first self-published The Martian,but was later picked up by an agent which is both bloody rare, and really, really lucky for us all. I don’t know if I’d have heard of this fantastic book had it remained self-pubbed.

Check Andy Weir out here: http://www.andyweirauthor.com/

And check out The Martian here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Martian-Andy-Weir/dp/0091956145/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438977239&sr=8-1&keywords=the+martian