Sunday 29 April 2012

Never Let Anyone Tell You What To DO

New things week 16: Cinnamon Challenge. 

Last week while in college someone was talking about the Cinnamon Challenge. For those who do not know what the cinnamon challenge is, here is a short video to show you what it is. Basically you have to put a tablespoon of cinnamon powder in your mouth and try and swallow it. Much harder than you would think.

Friday 27 April 2012

Hard work

Week 15 Day 7

I know it's been a few days since I posted and this is the last story of my new thing week 15. But I have decided that I will probably start posting more than once a week. If I have something to talk about. What do people think? I'm late with this post because I have been going to college all day and then to work straight after. Then practically straight to bed after work. I may get a few minutes on the internet before I fall asleep. So apologies for my absence.

Today I am going to talk to you about hard work and money. As we all know and are told on a regular basis the world is in a horrible state of affairs economically and we all need to tighten our belts. I am from Ireland where it seems that the only people who are having their belts tightened are the regular joes like me, my family, and my friends. I say having out belts tightened because we don't have much of a choice. A lot of people in our Government are earning huge salaries that they don't need, or deserve. Anyway I am going to veer miles away from this because I will only start to rant and nobody wants that, trust me. Since I turned 16 I have been working to earn money when I can. I learned from an early age that money is earned through a hard days work. That's how we earn an honest living.

Monday 23 April 2012

Earth Day

Week 15 Day 6:

So yesterday (22nd of April) was Earth day. For those who do not know what Earth Day is, it is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth's natural environment. It is organised globally by the Earth Day Network and more than 175 Countries celebrate it every year. There were events organised all over the world, but unfortunately I have no idea if there was one organised in Ireland anywhere. I for one am very fond of our Earth and its Environment and want to see it continue forever, so I am totally in favour of Earth Day and think everyone should make an effort to be more green in their lives. We all get so used to taking things for granted in our lives that we forget it could be causing catastrophic damage to the Earth. It is really easy to make small changes that can make a big difference.

Sunday 22 April 2012

Change

Day 5 of Week 15.

Note: Officially hit 1000 views on this post :) Thank you to everyone who has read my blog and is reading this now :) Hope you enjoy this post.  


Change.

I apologise in advance if this blog seems very sporadic to anyone. I am just going to write it down and don't want to read over it because I know I will make changes to it and I don't want to do that, because I know my first draft will be exactly what I wanted to say from me.

Change happens around us everyday, not always in ways we can see or feel though. We can see the weather change and feel the wind direction change, but we can't see the change that is happening inside a person. These changes can affect a persons mood or what they decide to like. People believe they cannot control the things that are changing around them. This is partly correct, we cannot change what other people think or how things happen around us. But we can change how we react to them and what we do to make changes in ourselves. To quote the famous ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky, "You miss 100 percent of shots you never take." This can be used in all walks of life, not just sports. If we do not take risks we will never know what could have happened and we wont move forward in life. If you think you deserve a raise, but are afraid to talk to your boss about it, you may never get one unless you work up the nerve to ask for one.

Saturday 21 April 2012

Random Things I Have Learned Recently

Day 4 of a week I have been enjoying.

So I learned something very interesting today. Not to sure anyone really want to hear it, but oh well. Apparently if you drink blue food colouring and get sick you will puke blue, but if you digest it and pee it will be green. When I was told this I was intrigued and disgusted at the same time. Also the person was just sitting there and suddenly this was the random thought that came out of their mouths. It's one of those things you could have done without hearing, but after you have heard it you are kind of interested.

Anybody got any weird or strange fears? I was talking to someone about my fear of heights and they told me about a few weird fears that they learned about recently. These are just a couple that I can remember:

  • Anatidaephobia: The fear, that some time, somewhere, some how, a duck is watching you.
I don't even know what to say about this. Why is this a fear? Are ducks really scary? This is just one of those things that does not make any sense at all in my mind. 
  • Paraskavedekatriaphobia: The fear of Friday the 13th.
In one sense I can actually understand this fear. I personally believe in a lot of supernatural things and don't care if people ridicule me for this. But I honestly do not believe that anything extra weird happens on Friday the 13th. It is simply another Friday in the year. 

I also learned a new fact about the Titanic that I never new. I have always been interested in everything about the Titanic. But the one thing I never knew in all my years about the Titanic was that it made 3 stops instead of only the 2 I thought it made. I always thought it went from Southampton to Cobh and left for New York. But today I learned that it left Southampton, went to Cherbourg in France next and then on to it's stop in Cobh before finally departing on its voyage. My mother and I always shared the knowledge we gathered on the Titanic and neither of us knew this fact until she told me after hearing it at a table quiz.

Well that's all the random I have to share today. I realise it is short, but sometimes short is good. Hope this is interesting to someone out there. Oh and always remember to be on the look out for ducks.

Stardansheill o7

Friday 20 April 2012

One Mans Angry Rant

Week 15. Day 3.

So I am a bit behind on my stories. So I may or not upload two today. This one is going to be a rant. Not about anything specific and it may ramble after awhile so please forgive me. I just feel like ranting lol. 

Just look at his face. Enough said. What kind of emotion
is that?
This rant was brought on by the cinema last night. I went to see the Cold light of day. It was supposed to be a dramatic movie that kept your attention the whole time. It was supposed to build tension so the watcher couldn't actually stop watching. But unfortunately this movie was pretty terrible from the very beginning. The camera work was full of off angle shots, unnecessary over the shoulder work and really annoying rotate around the scene shots. The script seemed to be lacking something and the lead actor acted as if he was on shot poorly written half arsed soap. Me and the people I saw it with spent most of the time laughing at the whole thing. They made the trailer look amazing, but that is the only good part about the whole movie. I hate when they do that, they put all the best parts in the trailer and then the movie sucks.

This got me thinking about the future generations on the way home. When I was growing up reading was one of my favourite things to do and I nearly always had a book in my hands. But when my brother got to the age where I started reading technology had become better and he preferred his gameboy to a good book. There is only four years between us.

Thursday 19 April 2012

Firefly Review. Week 15 Day 2.

Ok so in my last post I said that for this week I was going to a new story everyday for the week and upload them. I know that technically a review of a show isn't a story, but in all honesty I couldn't come up with a new story for yesterday. I had a few ideas, but couldn't flesh them out and kind of gave up. It was also my brothers 18th birthday so when I got home from college all the family were over for dinner so I had to mingle lol. So instead I wrote a review of the tv series firefly. I am sci-fi nerd and will watch anything no matter how bad people say it is.


For those of you who have not watched firefly it is a show based in 2517 when humans have reached and inhabited a new star system. It is basically a futuristic western movie where you have the outlaws on the run from the law, taking jobs where ever they can get them. I really liked that about the show, because to me it showed that no matter how advanced we get there will always be the cowboy element of human life.

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Week 15 Day 1

So for week 15 I have decided to do something I have always enjoyed doing, which is write. So I am going to write a new story everyday for the week. I will be uploading them all individually and will probably do a summary post at the end of the week with all the links.

Todays story is going to be about a man by the name of Liam and his hearts desire. Lets begin when Liam was 8 and his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Liam replied that he wanted to be a time agent. All the students in his class laughed at him and he saw the teacher give a little snicker and a grin before telling him that he had a very vivid imagination, but that time travel isn't real. Little Liam did his best to hold back the tears. Liam loved to read and he had read about time agents loads of times. But what he didn't understand at that age was these books were fiction.

When he got home from school he went to his room and was throwing his books around because he hated them and didn't want to read about time agents or time traveling anymore. While throwing his books around, one of them hit his wall and he looked over and saw a poster he had gotten from his parents for Christmas. He stared at it for what seemed like hours, but was only a matter of seconds.
He decided then and there to never give up on his dream of becoming a time agent, even if he had to invent time travel himself. He placed all his books back on his shelf neatly and started reading a new one. From then on whenever a new teacher or any person asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up he would just tell them he wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor or something. He new though that he always would want to be a time agent, no matter what he had to do.

Monday 16 April 2012

Weeks 13 & 14

I really have to stop falling behind on these blogs. Had a few assignments over the last couple of weeks and my Aunt got married in Donegal and there is no such thing as the internet where my Aunt lives lol.

For weeks 13 and 14 we were on Easter break from College, but I had study, assignments and work to do around the house. So for week 13 my father and I painted the inside of the house. This is the first time I have ever done this and I really don't recommend working with your parents lol. It can get frustrating and you will always get stuck with the horrible jobs. At times I felt like Mr Bean the time he painted. I got stuck with all the trimmings which was a pain in the ass and very time consuming. We eventually got a good bit of the house painted in the week. There was so much more to be done that we thought. I also had a project due this week that I spent a lot of time on and my usb managed to change the file type to an unreadable type just as I was going to upload it. Totally frustrating and have no way to get it back. GONE forever. It was a total WTF! moment. All in all, a very productive or unproductive week depending on how you look at it.

Sunday 1 April 2012

New Things Week 11 & 12

So my weeks have started overlapping and it's getting confusing for me. I feel like I am missing a week, but since I put them up here every week I clearly amn't lol. But I have gotten the overlapping under control and all will return to normal with this entry. To get it back to normal I am doing a blog with two weeks in it rather than one.

So for this week I decided to become a vegetarian for the week. I have absolutely no idea why I decided to do this. I swore that I would never give up meat. It's not very often I would have a meal that doesn't include some form of meat. Mainly just breakfast, pizzas and the odd pasta dish. But since this is all about doing things I said I would never do I decided to try it and see how I got on. It was definitely one of the hardest weeks so far, if not the hardest one. I started on Tuesday and I found the first few days handy enough and the food was pretty good. But then I started to notice that I needed to eat more during the day because my appetite had increased. By Friday whenever I smelled meat it made me miss it. I also noticed that every time I was making my dinner I was thinking about what meat I could add to the dish to make it complete. It was a really interesting week and I enjoyed all the meals I made.

Tuesday: I made vegetable stir fry with noodles in Chinese Hoisin and Garlic sauce. I used baby corn, carrots, onions, courgette, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, mangetout, and cashew nuts. It was lovely and all the vegetables in the pan created a lovely smell before I even added the sauce. The sauce was a nice, but I wouldn't buy it again. It wasn't exactly a taste that would appeal to me too much. I thought it smelt like ginger and had a strange after taste. I just couldn't put my finger on what exactly it tasted like, but it was still really nice. I'd never really had courgette and never really new what it tasted like and was wary to eating it because I didn't know whether I would like it or not. But after trying it, it was nice, when stir-fried anyway.

Wednesday: I made Pasta Provencial. I made the sauce on Sunday though, as it can be frozen and heated up straight out of the freezer and added to pasta. The sauce takes a couple of hours to make, so it is easier to make it in multiple batches. 1 batch can be used in one spaghetti bolognase to feed four and it's delicious. I much prefer it to jars of sauce and actually don't eat the jars anymore.