(U)

I broke her heart.

Now it’s time to mend it…

Nothing Worth Living For

I couldn’t think of anything worth living for,

It was a miracle that you came along,

What a surprise, out of the blue,

And I found the place where I belong,

Love and tears eliminated all my fears,

You still captivate with me with your gaze,

My life’s gone crazy, I don’t understand,

How this quite happened, it’s all a haze,

I couldn’t think of anything worth living for,

My heart was coming to an end,

An atomic bomb dropped on my life,

You repaired my soul, a complete mend,

My mind remains a mess, it’s not easy,

To manage all this is hard,

Like a poker game, betting on luck,

I hope I have the winning cards,

I couldn’t think of anything worth living for,

But this girl, so shy, so coy,

Walked into my arms, melted into me,

She brings me endless Joy,

Now living in comfort, peace and happiness,

Safe in the knowledge that you are mine,

Our separate lives became entangled,

One and two combined.

I’ve not got something worth living for,

This is going to last forever,

She never leaves my mind, always in my thoughts,

An unbreakable bond that no-one can sever.

Sugar or Salt?

So many people love to take life in their hand, and turn it into a poem. I am one of those people, as of today, because life is really tough sometimes. At this present time, I have much to think about, but I know I am not alone. Sustaining so much, and trying to achieve ideal happiness, is pretty much an impossibility these days.

A friend of mine expressed his day through salt. ‘Salt has a bitter taste, and unless it’s used well, it does not work’ he said. It takes a little bit of thought to discern what Joe it talking about here, but my eyes were opened to his analogy immediately, and I understood how he felt.

I could express my life through sugar. Too many sweet things may seem good, but in the end, it can make you go mad. For some time, I’ve had a lot of good things thrown at me (that’s not to say bad things we’re present also), but now, it’s becoming difficult to sustain them all. But I’m not a quitter, and I don’t plan to give up, and I still have my eyes set firmly on my goal. Everyday, new targets come along which I have to shoot down, but there’s one thing left to do.

I must control myself. Sometimes I do things that I regret, and seal them up inside myself, because if I let them out, I would destroy everything I’m aiming for. A personal philosophy that I churned up in my mind was, ‘Those who can control their physical state are weak, but people who manage their own emotions are strong’. Physically, I may be pretty weedy, but after months, maybe years, of maintaining not only my emotions, but others around me, I’ve developed strong emotional muscles.

Whoever said life was easy should be shot, because it really isn’t. But I think I’ll cope, because I have the unbeatable shield: ‘faith’.

My YouTube Presence

It has happened. I have uploaded my first ever YouTube video. You’d think I’d do it in style, but instead, I choose a clip of me on Neave Webcam. Paul Neave, if you don’t already know him, is an amazing Flash animator and programmer, and has created a digital virtual playground of all his work. One of my favourite things he’s made is Neave Webcam, which provides a whole load of effects which you can toy with and even upload short clips of yourself to the Neave Webcam page.

Without further ado, I present to you my first ever YouTube video:

Sorry… it really was the best I could do.

Destroying the Universe

Not a great deal of people have heard of paradoxes; we may use it every now and then but nobody really stops and thinks about the meaning behind the word. Today, my eyes were opened to the truth, and I became a fan of studying paradoxes. Basically, paradoxes are impossible situations which cannot happen because, if they did, a loop would form in time and space, or even logic.

Confused? Same here, until I looked deeper, and became aware of how simple paradoxes are to understand – but they still have huge meaning. One of my favourite examples (and this may sound slightly gruesome) is travelling back in time (not possible yet) and murdering your grandmother or grandfather. They would never give birth to either of your parents, and you wouldn’t be born – so you wouldn’t be around to go back and kill them in the first place. Can you see where this is going? A loop in time and space, no matter how fictional it sounds.

Another example are the three words, ‘I always lie’. If someone were to say that, it would be a lie, because everything they say has to be a lie. But if they’re lying about always lying, then they must tell the truth sometimes. Complex stuff, I know, but strangely intriguing.

Now, as a Christian, I’d just love to take the opportunity to batter down a somewhat atheistic paradox. This particular one says that if God can do anything, which He can, then He should be able to create a rock that He can’t lift. I can see the sense behind this paradox, but the writer’s of it are forgetting one thing: God can do anything. Therefore, He can bend the very rules of physics and logic, so even if someone says He can’t lift that rock, it’s not like He’s gonna obey their opinion is it? If God creates a rock that He can’t lift, He can still lift it, because He can do anything. That’s that one out of the way…

How did my day go? Tediously. I got five new ringtones of Andy, including the A Team theme music and that awesome little 20^th Century Fox tune you hear before movies, with the big gold letters. I talked to Joy, of course, and that’s about all.

Warning – Paradoxes are not to be messed with. If you create a loop in time, you’ll destroy the universe. Although it would make a fun afternoon project…

Not a great deal of people have heard of paradoxes; we may use it every now and then but nobody really stops and thinks about the meaning behind the word. Today, my eyes were opened to the truth, and I became a fan of studying paradoxes. Basically, paradoxes are impossible situations which cannot happen because, if they did, a loop would form in time and space, or even logic.

Confused? Same here, until I looked deeper, and became aware of how simple paradoxes are to understand – but they still have huge meaning. One of my favourite examples (and this may sound slightly gruesome) is travelling back in time (not possible yet) and murdering your grandmother or grandfather. They would never give birth to either of your parents, and you wouldn’t be born – so you wouldn’t be around to go back and kill them in the first place. Can you see where this is going? A loop in time and space, no matter how fictional it sounds.

Another example are the three words, ‘I always lie’. If someone were to say that, it would be a lie, because everything they say has to be a lie. But if they’re lying about always lying, then they must tell the truth sometimes. Complex stuff, I know, but strangely intriguing.

Now, as a Christian, I’d just love to take the opportunity to batter down a somewhat atheistic paradox. This particular one says that if God can do anything, which He can, then He should be able to create a rock that He can’t lift. I can see the sense behind this paradox, but the writer’s of it are forgetting one thing: God can do anything. Therefore, He can bend the very rules of physics and logic, so even if someone says He can’t lift that rock, it’s not like He’s gonna obey their opinion is it? If God creates a rock that He can’t lift, He can still lift it, because He can do anything. That’s that one out of the way…

How did my day go? Tediously. I got five new ringtones of Andy, including the A Team theme music and that awesome little 20^th Century Fox tune you hear before movies, with the big gold letters. I talked to Joy, of course, and that’s about all.

How to steal a filing cabinet from a hospital

Today started badly. My alarm clock, also known as ‘Dad’, didn’t function properly. Probably ’cause I forgot to plug him in the previous night. As a result, I got up at 9:53. As soon as I saw the time, I got dressed as quicky as possible, skipped breakfast, woke up Dad and forced him to drive me to the Church.

The reaction wasn’t so bad, so I just got on with editing the website straight away. Not much to edit there – but removed The Impossible Quiz because the word ‘Twat’ was present on one of the questions. Sorry to be pedantic, but we’re looking at an audience age range of 11-16, so we have to keep everything sqeaky clean.

Day seven’s highlight is probably stealing a filing cabinet from a hospital. Well, not ’stealing’, but removing-with-permission-while-no-hospital-staff-were-present. Here’s a step-by-step guide to accomplishing this task:

1) Team yourself up with a 20-odd year old guy called Andy and a woman called Chris whose age you dare not guess at. Get Chris to drive to the hospital.

2) Get Chris to go upstairs to make sure that the coast is clear. Then get her to call Andy on his new Nokia 5800, and then get Andy to drive the car into the parking lot while listening to the A Team theme tune.

3) Don’t bother with a parking ticket, just get in the elevator, break into the doctor’s office and grab the filing cabinet. Put it on a large red trolley frame.

4) While Chris goes to get the car, you and Andy should wheel the cabinet into the wrong elevator. Get lost, find the exit, and come out looking as inconspicous and innocent as possible.

5) Put the filing cabinet in the car and make your escape, and try to pretend that the filing cabinet isn’t there.

Step five can be kinda hard...

And that’s it! We got the cabinet in the Church and that was our mission accomplished. The rest of the day was spent making booklets which, while small, had more text that the Enyclopaedia Britannica. Trust me… it was a time-consuming and tedious ordeal to type out all those scriptures, but a good result once finished.

The Ignorant Paragraph

Chameleons don’t change their colour to suit their background. They actually change colour when experiencing different emotions. This is possible because of special cells called chromaphores, which, when made unbalanced, reflect and absorb differing rays of light, thus simulating a colour change.

Standing up is so tiring…

Today was, as most of you regular readers know, the first day of my second week of work experience. First were the physical jobs, which first involved me standing up. That was hard enough, but then came the vacuum cleaning, taking out the trash (Andy helped) and carrying a new filing cabinet into the Church’s entrance hall. At one point, I cut my finger, and have contemplated suing Dan

Masses of work done to the website today. It’s not got a forum, a completed links page, a page for contact information and a currently-empty page for information about the youth leaders. This should be filled up soon, so watch this space. If you wanna check it out, click here, but please, don’t spam the forums

Did anything else happen today? A large conversation with Joy, as per usual, which lasted several hours, and only just stopped. I got a rather sweet picture of her holding a teddy bear, which I won’t post just yet for fear of getting caught. In other Joy-related news, her mother invited me to a  barbecue at their home in two weeks… I guess I’m supposed to hop on the next plane to France? I would if I could, but I ain’t got the money. Donations are welcome if you feel sympathetic.

And that’s about all for today. Ciao!

The Ignorant Paragraph

Nelson’s last words were not ‘Kiss me Hardy’. After being shot on deck, he requested that the flag-captain did not throw him overboard, as was the norm in those days. He then asked that they take care of ‘Poor Lady Hamilton’. At that point, Hardy kissed him, and Nelson uttered those infamous words. After Hardy’s second kiss, he croaked, ‘Who is that?’ When he saw that it was Hardy, he said, ‘God bless you, Hardy’. His very last words were ‘Drink drink, fan fan, rub rub’, as crew members kept him cool, provided lemonade and watered wine and rubbed his chest to ease the pain.

It’s worth noting that ‘Kiss me’ might have been confused with ‘Kismet’, meaning fate. This would have been logical, as Nelson would have been acknowledging that it was time for him to pass away.

Don’t you just love the Council?

Portsmouth City Council, the political morons who run the city I live in, can’t do anything right. Today, as I hunted through heaps of letters and legal documents in vain hope that I’d find my old passport, I came across a letter from PCC which outlines just one of their humiliating mistakes. Back in 2005, shortly after moving into our current residence, my father decided it was high time to get a garage, just to stick the car in at night. So he sent off for one, and shortly after, we got the following letter back from Hannah Reynolds, a local Customer Relations Officer:

Dear Mr Williams,

RE: Offer Of Garage Licence 13G Cheslyn Road

I am pleased to offer you the garage at No. 13G Cheslyn Road, Portsmouth. If you would like to visit the garage to ensure that it is suitable for your parking needs, please contact this office and we can arrange that for you. If you are happy with the garage please contact the City South Housing Office before 8 November, 2005.

Could you please call me on 02392 834354 to arrange an appointment to sign the licence papers and collect the keys.

Failure to contact the office will mean this offer will be withdrawn and the garage offered to another applicant.

The fortnightly charge is £12.42.

Other matters regarding the offer will be explained to you when you call to this office to sign the licence, though if you do require more advice then please call 02392 834354.

We went and viewed the garage, but getting the car in was far too awkward, due to a stupidly placed fence. Dad clearly explained this in a letter to Hannah Reynolds.

To: Portsmouth City Council,

I, <Dad’s name> of <our address>, here by give one week’s notice that I no longer want garage 13G Cheslyn Road, Portsmouth, as it is too difficult to get my car in/our.

Signed, <Dad’s name>

Is that so hard to understand? Apparently so, because a month later, Geoff Ashby, a local Housing Officer, sent us a letter via snail mail.

Dear Mr W Williams,

RE: Garage 13, Cheslyn Road, Portsmouth – Arrears On Garage Account Of £24.84 As At 18th December 2005 – Notice Of Termination Of Garage Tenancy On Monday 02/01/06

I have written t you previously because you have not paid the rent on your garage on a regularly fortnightly basis. Despite this, your account is still in arrears.

This is your final opportunity to ensure that your rent is paid when it is due. You should ensure that the arrears and the ongoing rent are paid in full by the end of the current payment period.

If you do not do this, you must first clear your garage and then return the keys to this office before 12 noon on the date detailed above. If the keys are not returned, the lock to the garage will be changed, and you will be charged about £50.00 for the cost of the work.

Any vehicles or other articles that you leave in the garage wll be considered abandoned and you will be charged with the cost of clearing these items.

If you disagree with the amount owed, or you wish to discuss alternative methods of payment once you have cleared your account, please contact me.

If any further warnings letters have to be sent about arrears on your account, then notice to end your garage tenancy may be given whether or not you clear your arrears.

A firing squad is too lenient for these complete and utter moronic, imbecilic, brainless idiots.

This is where the brainless idiots 'work'. If you're an arsonist, do a good job.

Nine to Nine

A 12-hour working day. Or rather, an hour-long prayer meeting, followed by 9 hours of work, and then two hours worth of RegenR8. That means I was down the Church from 9 until 9. That’s three lots of 9, which makes 999, the emergency number for Britain. Seriously, what am I going on about?

So RegenR8 now has a website and a logo, thanks to ten minutes of hard work from yours truly. Not much on the site yet, but that’ll change on Monday. The logo is black and white, and consists of some plain white text in a fancy, distorted typeface. All can be seen here.

What was done today? Not a lot. Just another lazy day really. Got some cards printed to slip inside some little plastic wallets, for the Church Ministry Team to proudly wear. Should have been done yesterday, but that stupid printer…

Andy has had some trouble opening the keyrings. The plan is to put a little slip of paper inside with the Church logo on, and the FB website URL, before handing them out to people at RegenR8 (our Friday youth group event). Andy has resorted to chucking the keyrings at the floor, resulting in a trio being snapped open. Oh well, that’s office life for you.

Not much else, to be honest, unless you count talking to Joy via WLM voice chat as ‘work’. That had to be the highlight of my day, because I don’t usually get the opportunity to actually talk to her through word of mouth. A lot of slushiness, believe me – after all, ’soppy’ is my middle name

I’d like to point out that while Dan (my employer and the Church’s youth pastor if you’re not totally sure) was first dating his wife Laura, Laura often called Dan by the name ‘Poochy’. Like I said yesterday, no secrets held back on this blog

And now for today’s Ignorant Corner…

The Ignorant Paragraph

Humans have more than five senses. Usually, you’d just think of sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste, but there’s at least four others.

• Thermoception – as you’d expect, the sense of heat. Some would pair this with touch, but sensing heat is somewhat different.
• Equilibrioception – our sense of balance, thanks to fluids in inner-ear cavities.
• Nociception – perception of pain. Like thermoception, is often linked to everyday touch, but works differently.
• Proprioception – awareness of the body and doing things without thinking. You know your hand is there, for example, even when you’re not looking at. And do you think about walking when you’re on the go?

Other scientists include yet more in that list. Hunger and thirst, a sense of depth, meaning and language, and our sense of electricity are all valid entries. How about our sense of impending danger, when our hair stands on end? A final example is synaesthesia, a process in which senses collide. Synaesthesia was discovered when someone developed a way to see music as colours – a revolutionary breakthrough for visually-impaired people.

Some animals have senses we don’t. Sharks have electroception, which helps them detect electric fields, while bats use echolocation to ’see’. And last but not least, some birds can sense magnetic fields useful for navigation – an ability known as magnetoception.

Measuring a Church with a tape measure

So I ask for the dimensions of the Church, so that I can reconstruct the whole building in a 3D-modelling program, stick it on Google Earth and create a realistic 3D tour. The bloke who should know the dimensions doesn’t have a clue how big any part of the building is, so what do I have to do instead? Use a tape measure and find out myself. Reasonable, until it comes to measuring from the ground to the roof…

In other news, I’ve got to make a load of small card things for name badges. The first few print-outs went wrong, but then I managed to get it right… when I got home. No printer there, I’m afraid, so tomorrow it is.

This morning, I had to make Dan a cup of tea. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded, but he humiliated me in the process ‘Steve’, he said questioningly, ‘When you’re playing golf, what’s the name of the small round peg you put the ball on?’. I looked dumstruck for a moment. ‘Tee’, I replied. ‘Yes please, mate’, he said, with an evil smirk that I wish I could have burnt. Oh well, all good fun.

Any news on Joy? Yes, there is. Two things, as a matter of fact.

• Her parents have agreed that, if she managed to pass her GCSEs, she can come over in July. Smiles all round
• She thinks Dan is fit. Sorry, baby, no secrets held back on this blog

I totally wanna meet this guy's alternate face.

The Ignorant Corner

French toast isn’t necessarily French. Dipping bread in eggs to prevent stagnation definitely didn’t come from France. As for the meal, well, there are references to ‘French’ toast recipes from as early as ancient Rome. But it all depends on where you were at the time, because there are similar references to American Toast, German Toast, Spanish Toast and even ‘Nun’s Toast’. The first known reference to French Toast is from 1660.

It may come as a surprise to any French citizens (Ahem, Joy, Ahem) that champagne isn’t a French invention either. Early records from 1662 show that the English were the first to make proper champagne. But we can still thank the French for perfecting it.

What’s this ‘work’ you talk of?

Yesterday at work experience was a pretty lazy day to be honest. I had loads of jobs to do, but the computer I needed to be able to accomplish the tasks was already being used by another colleague. One of the jobs was to put a load of videos onto a single DVD, but then I realised we no longer have the footage, unless it’s still on the camcorder originally used for filming. Fingers crossed…

Today’s work experience hasn’t fully finished yet, but I’ve done some stuff, and discovered that I hate printers as well as laminators. A fellow worker, also kinda young, decided he would wage war against laminators, when the A3 holding card decided to go in at an awkward angle (this resulted in another torn holding card). So, we made do with another one, which we found in the recylcing bin…

As for the printer, well, it’s a bit stupid really. First it doesn’t print what I want it to (well, it does, but it moves the graphics around so that everything’s messy, blurry and strewn all over the paper). Then I was asked to print off 30 envelopes. After about 10 paper jams, that went smoothly.

If anything else interesting happens by the end of the day, I’ll be sure to let you know (hopefully) today.