YouTube

Now, I was going to talk about the snow, and having lots of it. Talk about Britain, and it's reliably bad coping of the weather. And also talk about living in the South East, and bearing the original large batch of snow. But I won't, because that's boring. Google "Britain snow blog" and you'll inevitably come up with some complaint or another. So I'll mention vlogging instead.
 
Vlogging is a strange thing. I've found it's more a teenager/uni student phenomenon, and if you allow ads before your video, it makes sense. Sure, you won't make thousands unless you go viral, but a couple of hundred views on three videos might get you a few pounds (don't ask me for exact figures). If I allowed ads on my blog and I had certain keywords, I could make a living off of this. Of course, that'd probably mean daily posts.
 
So back to vlogging. For those out of the loop, vlogging is video blogging. You sit in front of a camera and talk, or complain. Mostly the latter. Occasionally they'll talk about the world around them, but it's mostly about them. Blogging in any format generally doesn't include "the world" but instead "_____'s world" and the world begins to revolve around them. Hey, I'm not sitting in a large chair on a high mountain laughing at these people. I'm fairly sure I'm like that too.
 
I said vlogging is a strange thing, and it expands out to the entire internet. My Chemistry class, for example. I wouldn't dream of telling them that I have such an addiction to tea that I don't feel I can go abroad. However, I told you this last December. In vlogging, blogging, internetting (Is that a word? It is now.), we all share things, sometimes deeply personal things, that we'd never think of telling a stranger in person.
 
It's easy to forget that we're talking to strangers. In vlogging, when people film a video they're talking for 6-7 minutes, sometimes longer, about their lives. You, as a viewer, are actually sitting there and listening to these people witter on about their financial lives, or their sex lives, or their social lives or just lives in general. In your local pub, how many times have you sat next to someone and willingly listened to them talking about them having a cold for over five minutes? Probably none (And if you have then you must have incredibly social skills and I would like advice within the next thirty seconds cheers). How many times have you watched this on YouTube? I have. Twice.
 
A friend of mine tried vlogging and found it so strange she never did it again. Another does it regularly. And a third has created a joint YouTube account with me and we're going to make this work. We've already posted a video, not a vlog, mind. But we will, eventually.
And yes, we are both teenagers. Predictably.

 I know it isn't Friday, or two weeks since my last post. But it snowed overnight, and I thought it'd be a shame to miss the photo opportunity!

Familiarity

Last Sunday, I was woken late at night by the sound of my mother breaking her ashtray. I was distraught. I don't smoke, although I was rather fond of that ashtray. She bought it when I was about four, when we went to Ibiza. It was a simple ashtray, a little piece of pottery painted with an old style of flowers. I have no idea what exactly possessed her to buy such a thing, it's horribly ugly and in a place like Ibiza, it couldn't have been incredibly cheap either.
 
So, it's ugly, possibly expensive and abnormally large. But now it's broken, and we feel like a great loss has befallen us. It was such a minor thing in our life, mine particularly. Every afternoon I would come home and it'd be there, in the kitchen next to the sink. I'd wake up on Saturday morning and there was the ashtray on the coffee table. The ashtray was a reliable staple in the home, like our microwave (which sadly had to be replaced recently, to the discovery that it was actually filled with water and at risk of exploding at any point).
 
My mum has recently ordered a like replacement off Amazon, but it just won't be the same. It won't have been bought in Ibiza, with euros (I think). It also won't have "Portugal '98" etched in the underside of the pot. In short, it would be a dull mass-market ashtray, rather than a mass-market ashtray bought in a tourist trap of a shop.
 
It's strange, how the smallest of things can be so greatly missed. I don't want to go all wax-lyrical about it, it was just an ashtray. But it was a nice ashtray, one that's been around longer than our residence of the flat in which we inhabit. It's outlived my mum's surname, the television, the sofa and the boiler (twice). As I said, I was quite fond of the ashtray.
I like familiarity. Before now, I've spend hours stitching up the end of the legs of jeans because I didn't want to let them go. Recently I allowed my school shoes to be so ill-fitting they gave me multiple blisters, and were pretty much shredding my feet. Yet I kept them for nearly half a year because they were familiar. Something dependable.
 
Actually, when this ashtray was broken, I offered to glue it back together. It had shattered into a thousand pieces, and yet I still offered to glue it back together. I'm going to miss that ashtray.

Movies

On New Year's Day, Sherlock came back for its second series. It was shown in the UK at 8;10pm, fifty minutes before the official watershed. Naturally, the Daily Mail complained about this show because it existed. Before the 9pm watershed, Lara Pulver (who I know more from Spooks) played Irene Adler... and not much else. She was stark naked, although you couldn't see that. Of the ten million people who watched it, one hundred people complained. Save you doing the maths, that's 0.001% of viewers who had a problem with it.
I personally loved it. Having read the books (well, two), I found the show quite interesting, and subplots were tied into it to keep it interesting. Not only this, the way it was filmed was incredible, especially the texts sent. I also believed it to be cast well, written well and just generally be good.
 
However, not all book-to-movie/tv shows are not this brilliant. I personally thought the Harry Potter movies were badly done. Although the acting was good in places, written well in places, it could have been done better.
Eragon. I watched the last half or so, and it was awful. Yes, the book wasn't incredible, but the ending was just... incorrect.
 
And then there are the successes
A Clockwork Orange. Haven't watched the movie, but it was banned for years, so they must be doing something right.
Stardust. I thought the book and movie was very similar (although Neil Gaiman did help with the screenplay, I've heard)
 
When you watch a book-to-screen conversion, there's always that gamble. One choice, of course, is to never watch the movie (I refused to watch The Spiderwick Chronicles because of how much I love the books), or to never read the book (...yep, I don't have an example to give you). But you always find a sense of emptiness, not being able to enjoy a book on every platform.
This all leads to the release of The Hunger Games in March. I haven't read the book, and don't really intend to (my understanding is that it's a romance novel), however the concept of the movie sounds interesting, and one that I shall most likely see.

Reading a Book

Yesterday, I finished reading The Amber Spyglass (by Phillip Pullman), signalling the end of the His Dark Materials series. What's funny about finishing books, particularly series or one that took time to read, is that you're not really sure what to do with yourself afterwards. Once you read that last page (which will almost always be disappointing), there's not really much left in reality that interests you. If the book is particularly long, or you enjoyed it lots, the characters become people. I remember reading a book, and not being able to read anything else for two weeks, because I couldn't manage to start reading about other characters, with different names, histories and traits to the ones I'd been used to.
 
Maybe I'm just emotionally volatile. But I'm also as tired as hell, so this blog post is roughly 150 words. You get my disappointment at the end of a book.
 
Although I rarely wait two weeks for my books. Until the next time.

School Holidays

Today, I was freed from school for two weeks. Excellent! Two entire weeks! And then, I shall have six/seven weeks of school, followed by a week of holiday, and then another six/seven weeks of school, and then two weeks holiday. Six/seven weeks of school, followed by a week of holiday, followed by six/seven weeks of school, and then six weeks of holiday. Then I begin Yr 11, my final year of secondary school, and continue on with more of the same.
 
However recently, a little birdy (in the form of BBC Breakfast. The Beeb has taken my soul. No more.) told me that the government are thinking of changing the holidays. Instead of six weeks in the summer, we'd have four. And for two of the three one-week holidays, we'd have two weeks. The idea is that many people fall out of synch with school life over the six weeks, and forget much of what they learnt. By making the long holiday not as long, and spreading it out over the year, pupils engage in school when coming into the new year and much less time is given to revising of the past year.
 
I'm not happy about this. First, because my parents are divorced, I have to split my holiday time between the two families. When I'm at home, I can get stuff (i.e. extensive amounts of art homework) done, however when I'm away at my dad's, I can't do as much. I class my time spent up there as lost holiday. The six weeks holiday gives me three weeks of holiday, something I don't get any other time. If it was reduced to two weeks, it'd just be like any other holiday, when I occasionally spend the two weeks of Easter at home.
 
Secondly, living in South East England, it can get pretty hot in the summertime. Not insane levels of hot, but fairly toasty. Concentrating during July is near impossible, and that's only the first two weeks before they end the year. Having to attend through all of July would just destroy us, as we wouldn't be able to listen or try in the final critical weeks before the holiday.
 
Thirdly, it'll take away the sheer joy of six weeks of wearing whatever the hell you want, eating when you want, and swearing until you go blue in the face. Holidays are full of freedom (family commitments permitting), relaxtion and sleep. The six weeks (sometimes seven, sometimes five) are long awaited from the moment we begin the new year in September. Although the change to four weeks would mean no lost holiday, it'd feel like much less.

Going Abroad

I have never been outside Europe. Yes, I've still got quite a few more years left in me. But as yet, I've never been outside Europe.
This is not particuarly relevant. Slightly, but not totally. I'm talking about tea. Ah, yes. Beautiful tea. Not about the history of tea, but tea abroad.
 
Being from (East) Sussex and all, I'm not very picky about my tea. I'm not fussy about what different herbs have been infused with, or what it smells like, or what colour it is. Put the bag in the cup, add water, sugar and milk. Done.
However, go abroad and it's almost as if the concept of a decent cup of tea has never reached them. Go out and drink tea, and you get a pathetic little taster tea bag from PG Tips that'd only taste good if it had about three drops of water in it. So you go to a supermarket for some teabags, and you get more of the same. Pathetic little bags that have about six tea leaves in and you need two or three bags per cup. And even then they taste a bit crap.
So, you've found a problem, find a solution. Bring your teabags with you. So you exceed your Easyjet baggage allowance with an extra suitcase full of teabags (while attempting to not look like a smuggler), and bring it with you to have some excellent tea. Congratulations, you look like an idiot. Besides it still doesn't taste nice. Foriegn milk tastes funny. And sugar. Come to mention it, the cups give the tea a funny taste. And not forgetting the water.
 
I don't like going abroad because then I have to rely on coffee. My current limit is six cups of coffee a day (2nd July 2011, I traveled in a coach for three hours through the same amount of countries), and that was borderline jittery. But I like to drink tea at midnight, 2am, 3am even. I've had twelve, thirteen cups of tea in a day. And decaff coffee is more expensive and harder to find. Besides, it doesn't taste too great without excessive amounts of whipped cream in it.
 
I like going abroad, but I like my tea. Saying this, I feel a bit like Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but there you go. I really like my tea. Ah well, I guess I'm stuck to the UK. I hear Bath's lovely at this time of year.