The Adventures, Mishaps and Musings of Me

Italians produce fantastic food, cars, fashion, and generally excel at anything that requires passionate input. However, when it comes to administration and organistaion, the country is an absoloute disaster. England, a country that often views itself as beauracratic, is simplified bliss in comparision. After my year and a half of living in Milano (Yes, Milano, not backwards Napoli), I have many, many examples, so let me tell of my most recent run in with the joy of Italian administration...

( "The Beautiful Mess" Explained... )

So tomorrow, I'm flying home to England for a few days before the July exams.  Amongst the many things on the family itenery, we're going to London to see "Waiting for Godot" with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.  *Fangirlish excitement*

It's about time I flee to England, because something very strange is currently taking place within Italy.  Something strange that I first noticed on the weekly shopping trip a few weeks ago: There were blond people in the supermarket.  Not just one blond person (that would be disconcerting enough) but many of them, in the pasta aisle, confusedly weighing fruit and clogging up the cheese counter.

"Very strange", I thought to myself as I waded my way through the masses.  More strange was that all the blond people carried a degree of sunburn, as if they had too much time on their hands to lay about in the sun.  At first I thought blond hair dye must have suddenly become Milan fashion and sun tan lotion out of fashion, but then, as I found myself in the queue for the checkout surrounded by non-Italian speakers, the dramatic and frightning truth hit me - They were all on holiday.

( The Dramatic and Frightning Truth Continued... )

Let's face it, 90% of fan fiction is utterly tedious teen trash.  Seemingly, no matter how much advice that is given, no matter how much you mention the existence of punctuation, sentence structure and the source material: Fic persists to suck majorly.  Because of this writing injustice, (but mostly to distract myself from revision) I have decided to take a stand (of no consequence) on the issue.  Ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure and amusement, I present the '30 Point Guide on How Not to Write Fan Fiction'.  Because what you can say in a constructive, friendly, helpful manner, can always be better said using condescending sarcasm.  

Why is there this hideous mentality on the internet that reading the Wikipedia article on something constitutes the same as reading the book/watching the film etc?  It doesn't.  You simply cannot construct an informed opinion on something by reading a summary of it - espicially a summary that is bound to be subjective due to the nature of Wikipedia.  You can, perhaps, decide if the thing in question is likely to be right for you or not, but you cannot make any kind of critique on its quality by simply reading an outline of events.

...

I dislike Twilight whole heartedly, but more annoying then its zealot fans are the people who lengthily bash it when they haven't read the book and thus know absoloutly nothing about it. 

And more annoying then that, is when they try and put forth some sort of angry arguement on how reading said Wikipedia article puts them at a perfectly informed position to discuss narrative structure, style, themes, setting, mood, descriptions, dialogue, characterisation and all things needed to give a considered evaluation of the book.

All of which stems from another bizzare disillussion commonly found on the internet that a bit of research can compensate first hand experience of the thing.  I don't even want to get into the time I once insinuiated on a forum that fanfic writers should wait until they've had sex before writing it and the MONUMENTALLY HUGE fandom backlash that created! 

Computer systems that are so inflexible as to completely prevent humans from applying common sense to problems, will eventually be the death of society.  Period.

I'm sure it can be argued that it is better for profitablity and efficency for companies and organisations to have such computer systems that "act intuitively" to restrict employees from ever having to perform value judgements i.e. use their brains, thus speeding up tasks and ensuring they always follow an exact logic.  But, there will always come a time when a bit of "out of the box" non-quantitative thinking can provide a simple solution to a problem and if a computer system prevents the use of such common sense, then said computer system is no longer an asset i.e, it becomes a pain in the ass for all involved.

Le sigh.

Of late, I've come into contact with way too many administrative people whose answer to everything, albeit I'm paraphrasing here, is:  "Computer says no".

This strangulation of human intuition cannot be a good thing.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Went to see the third Mummy film (something dragon something kingdom) last night.  Bloody awful film.

Before I get stuck into my rant, let's get one thing clear: I speaketh to you as a huge fan of the first two Mummy films.  They were great action-adventure movies which I totally enjoyed when I first watched them aged 11 and still totally enjoy now.  With that said, onto the rant.

The problems with Mummy 3 (as I shall now refer to it) are many fold.  Firstly, there is no Rachel Weiss - a key element to the first two movies.   But, instead of writing her character out, they try to replace her with a woman who cannot act nor do a Englsih accent.  Actually, her horrific accent turned out to be a good thing as it distracted you away from the horror of her performance.

Secondly, there is the character of the son (who has grown up to be a carbon copy of the father, except more of a prick) who, like his mother, also cannot act to save his life and was thoroughly irratating every time he came on screen and tried to "out macho" Brendan Frasier.  The weird thing was that, unlike the mother's charachter who annoyed me less as the film went on, with every apperance of the son the hatred bubbled and deepened!

Perhaps, these two casting flaws could be over come, if the film had a sharp script and original story... Alas, it was not to be.  The dialogue was laughably bad (did Rachel Weiss turn it down after reading a draft of the script one wonders?).  And when I say "laughably bad" I mean prequel to "The Scilence of the Lambs" bad.  Yes, that bad.  And no, John Hannah, should not be allowed to yell "spank my arse" in the middle of an action sequence.

Lastly and most importantly, the story was just run-of-the-mill whatevery.  A mummy is regenerated, who wants to take over the world, Brendan Frasier must stop it.  It's just a rehash of the previous two movies, with everything good and interesting removed from it.  The only difference being the fact that we're in China - honestly, when will Hollywood learn that there is more to Asia then just China? - and we have to sit through one dull martial arts sequence, which thoroughly wasted the talents of Jet Li (who has to play a thoroughly 2D villian with no personality whatsoever).

All in all - this movie should never have been made (espicially without RW) as it had absoloutly nothing new to bring to the table even with a change of scenary.  A thoroughly bland movie that no one should go and see.  Phew, glad I've got that one of my chest...

So shooting in Mac Donald's went reasnobly well yesterday... if you count "well" as having one take to shoot someone dressing up as a Cowboy and then said cowboy standing on the table before being chucked out.  Well, at least we haven't been banned.  After that me and my sister had bonding time in town, met up with some friends and I bought some CD's.  White Stripes:  Icky Thump; Greenday:  Dookie (one of their earliest and best albums) and Fightstar:  One Day Son This Will be yours.  Fightstar are an awesome, British band that (like almost all British bands) are so under appreciated.

Watch the music video for "Floods" here:  http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-a130cetXow

I realised this morning that out of all the music I have on my IPod, I only have two British bands represented.  Ugh.  My Ipod is infected with America.

On another note, how is it that you can buy music CD's from Wallmart for $7.50 (that's around £3.25 ), yet over in England music CD's cost around 10 - 15 pounds, which is about 20 - 30 dollars.  Exact same product, only more expensive.  Buwah?  You cannot tell me that the price has to be trippled from just tax and shipping fees?  It's a pricing conspiracy I tell you! 

I've just got back from my Aunt's 90th birthday celebration up in Liverpool (which was, pretty much, a "look how you've grown" fest) to find that Bocconi still haven't recieved my dossier and today is the deadline.  

There could be a variety of logical reasons for this:  A.  they've recieved my dossier, but just haven't updated the Bocconi site to say that my application has been recieved or B. the application's officer is going to come back from a lovely weekend to find my application in his/her office on Monday or C. Royal Mail is living up to it's reputation of being utter shite and have turned my 2-4 day delivery into a 10 day + delivery.  I naively thought that special delivery didn't mean late delivery...

Whatever the reason for my dossier being noted as "not yet recieved" on their website, I've sent an apologetic email to try and get it sorted.

I am not going to be a happy bunny if I can't get a place at Bocconi just because the post was late.

So... I had my law exams a few days ago and if I was going to give you a one word of summary of each, it would be:  Brillinat, crap and craptacular.  Oh, I can't resist.  Blow by blow account of each here we come!

Paper 1:  You have 45 minutes to do 1 question (3 parts) of a choice of two.  This paper, I think I aced!  I had a great, straight up question on the advantages and disadvantages of "ADR" followed by another simple, impossible to misinterpret question on the effects of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 on the Civil Justice system.  That paper went brilliantly... and totally lulled me into a false sense of security!

Paper 2:   You have 1 hour 30 minutes to answer two questions from a choice of six.  *engaging rant mode*

Every single, damn question on that paper was either on a really, narrow a topic that was practically impossible to stretch a full 15 marks out of or was drowning in legalese so you could barely understand the question.  None of my favourite topics were on there: Bail, magistrates, statutory interpretation, Woolf reforms or the jury.  Pretty unlucky - probably makes up for paper 1.

In the end, I had to wade through a dodgey 10 mark question on equity to get to a straight forward advantages/disadvantages question on precedent.  With the dodgey 10 mark question, I just wrote reams - going for quantity over quality.  And then tackled a (comparitively) OK question on the Crown Prosecution service, but I wouldn't say it was one of my best areas... I don't think I put in enough detail.  In heinseit, I could have done the questions on EU law, but the questions were on quite narrow sections of the syllabus - not much scope for picking up a whole 15 marks.

Ugh.  But things got worse on paper 3:  45 minutes to answer 1 question - no choice.  At first glance, it's on statutory interpretation - Woo!  Actually looking at the questions:  WTF?  The questions were joined with the Human Rights Act 1998 and just worded so crazily, I think I got the complete wrong end of the stick on the first one, 5 marks down the drain already.  Which means I could only possibly get a low B if I got perfect marks on the other three questions.  

And I think it's safe to say that's not gonna happen.  My arguement had no flow, whatsoever in any of the questions on that paper.  It didn't help that I was kinda gutted over Paper 2, so I wasn't thinking particulaly clearly.  If I had to guess at what I got on the papers, it would be: A, B/A, D/E.  And that's not the only thing that's bringing me down right now.

I would go and wallow in self pity, but I did that Tuesday and, frankly, it's over rated. 

I've had a growth spurt over christmas!!  I've grown about an inch, so now I'm taller then my little sister again!  Tallest and oldest never felt so good.  Thanks to the growing power of mince pies and salted peanuts I now come in at 5 foot 10 inches XP

Although, I've now disproved my own theory that younger siblings (of the same sex) always out grow their older siblings.  Damn those growth inducing peanuts!!

In other much less consequential news of my life, I have my business studies exam this Wednesday morning.  Apprehensive?  A little...  The results from these exams kinda dictate what I'll be doing with my life for the next few years...

I've done so much work this time around: practice questions up the wazoo, putting the entire syllabus to memory and eating the case study for afternoon tea.  In the summer exams, revision went like so: "pfft, I know it all."  So, logically speaking, considering I got a B last time around with no revision, I should be able to get an A and top marks with all the work I've done, right?

I may have to send a strongly worded formal letter to God if this is not the case.

Also, last time around my examine technique was a little shaky.  Usually, I'm a master of exam strategy, so where I fall down in IQ, I pick up in "how to go about getting marks".  But, it really hit me, last year, of just how intense the A Level exams were.  

In business studies you have 3 papers (one after the other, with literally 10 seconds break) all 1 hour.  And geezus, it's a sprint to the finsih!  In each paper, you have 1 hour to answer two big essay questions, and three mini essays.  You. literally, cannot waste time thinking about what your gonna write!

Law is again 3 papers (two 45 minute papers and one 1 and 1/2 papers.  The first gives you a choice of two essay questions.  The second paper you have a choice of six qustions and you have to answer two.  The third paper you don't have a choice, but you know it is going to be either on precedent or statutory interpretation.  Law is less of a speed race and you have a choice of questions, but it's still pretty gruelling.  Who would of thought sitting on a chair for three hours could be tiring XP

Ah, I can't wait to the other side of January 14th.

I've just come back from 3 hours of ICT A level examinations and it went well.  Very well.  Suspiciously well.  OMFG it went well!!  

For those of you who don't know, A level ICT is almost nothing what so ever to do with computers.  It is a subject of pointless theory and defintions.  For example (god I'm still in exam mode) you must define the difference between data, information and knowledge.  For any normal human being all three mean the same thing, but for the sad individuals that made up the syllabus?  *RANT RANT RANT*

Ahem.  My point is don't take A Level ICT unless you enjoy boredom.  Take A level computing instead - you actually get to use a computer!

Hmmmmm... Is it too late to try and save this post from becoming a ranting waste of your reading time?  Wait, I learnt something yesterday that'll be worth you reading the next paragraph!!

A little trick to make your computer boot up faster and cut down on the initial loading time:  Click start and then run.  In the box type in "Msconfig"  Without the speechmarks obviously :p  A little options window opens.  Click on the "Startup" tab.  On that tab you'll find a list of programs that your computer runs in the background when it first loads up.  Looking down that list I'm sure you'll be able to see some programs that you don't want running (I had some photo editing software and other random freebee programs running in the background that I no longer use).  Uncheck them and click apply.  When you next boot up your computer it will load a hell of a lot faster!  

Right, I'm off to finish editing the Rufus skit and to enjoy two exam free weeks - see ya!