Birth Order

I was reading a few articles on birth order today. I'm the oldest child, and seem to have pretty much all the oldest child traits. I knew all this already, so this is not what I was interested in. I am more interested in what my sister is like.
As the youngest, she is obviously so if you meet her - well, I think she is anyway, but I could be just biased; she is my little sis after all! However, judging by what I've been reading, there are only a couple of traits that I can identify in her that are younger sibling traits - socially outgoing for example, but then again, there are ones that I really can't see in her. Some sources say that younger siblings are agreeable and less likely to provoke, but I've lived with her long enough to know that's not true. In fact, if anything, on reading up on personality traits, she actually seems to have a lot of older sibling traits too.
Maybe growing up in my shadow caused her to develop a similar-but-different personality, or maybe my parents have been very clever in how they brought us up - which, all things considered, I wouldn't have put past them!
The birth order thing also led me to think about what it must be like for my little sister being born into the family with me always having been around. I find the idea of having three permanent figures in the family to be an odd one - I, being the eldest, only had my parents. Lizzy was a later addition.
Then I think, what about the family cats? They were there before I was born, so maybe if I think about it like that? And that's when it starts to make sense. And I suppose, if lizzy ever tried to fathom the feeling of the new addition, maybe she could use our new cat as an example!
I wonder if cats could be affected by the birth order phenomenon?

Hello mum

I've noticed that mum wants a mention, so here you go!

I miss your cooking! :-D

Love you xx

Banana Transplant

My motorbike is severely unwell! :-(
Sunday before last, after a long and enjoyable trip to and around Bury Hill not even 2 miles from the end of the journey my bike lost its power and made funny noises. Oil all over the engine and none left inside it (despite putting a load in on Friday evening). Matt reckons piston rings or valves. Frisbys reckon the same.
So, as the cost of a garage replacing the engine would be gargantuan, I figured shell out £150 odd to buy another engine and fit it myself. I've played around with car engines in my car mechanics class, so it shouldn't be /too/ different - even if it is hellishly tricky, I enjoy a challenge and I'm an engineer so I need to get used to this sort of thing!
Might see if I can respray my bike while it's in bits.
Sadly this means I'm bikeless for quite a while! Only been a week and I miss it like crazy! I don't really know what to do with myself now it's out of action! :-(

Oh well - I should enjoy performing the heart transplant on my beloved... I always fancied myself as a surgeon! ;-)

Reflections

First of all, can I say that I'm writing this in an internet cafe. Nothing wrong with that except that there is a man behind me watching fat woman porn, and I'm really struggling not to laugh.
But I digress.
I was just reading back over some of my old blog entries over the years. I was a pretty angry person! And VERY opinionated too. I still agree with the things I believed back then, but perhaps I could have worded some of it better, and maybe I could have been a little more level headed about it.
It leads me to wonder if I've mellowed out over the past year. I'm certainly no longer spouting innuendos left right and centre, even if I still find it hillarious. Maybe that or I'm more subtle about where I raise my eyebrow to an innocent-but-dirty sounding comment! I'll be the first to admit that when somebody pushes the wrong button, the red mist will come down, but that has become more rare recently. Perhaps either I now have less buttons or I've learnt to exercise self restraint. I expect I owe that to my lovely boyfriend, who is about the most chilled out person I know! (except maybe when it comes to exams, but again, I digress).
Then again, a lot can happen in a year, and you don't quite realise the extent until you read your old posts and can reflect back on how different and more immature you were when you were younger.

I also noticed a little throwaway comment about my long suffering dad sitting in the kitchen when I go downstairs to make my cup of tea in the evenings. I must admit I miss that, now I've moved away to my flat in London. Not only do I no longer have the pleasure of going downstairs to listen to my dad playing his guitar, and then proceeding to have long conversations with him about bike mechanics, or politics, or music, but I now longer have the pleasure of popping downstairs for a cuppa - the bedroom in my flat is the same level as my kitchen.

Perhaps I should carry on the family tradition of playing my guitar in the kitchen - although I don't expect my flatmates would be too pleased, considering I'm usually awake until antisocial hours !

Long time no update!

Well, It's been a while! Well over a year in fact!
I shall update my blog in hollywood style "Over a year between last season and current season" A la 24, one tree hill, etc!

I went to loughborough university for the engineering taster. Changed my whole view on what I wanted out of life - whilst at the chemical engineering tour realised that was what I wanted to be doing. Decided that medicine really wasn't right for me.

Following my chemical engineer idea, I decided to spend 2 weeks with some engineers in portsmouth. During my time there, did 6 hours of 125cc bike training.

Did my july AS exams. Pretty bad. CCDU. Re-started maths AS, carried everything else.

Bought myself a bright blue Yamaha RXS 100. Got pretty seriously into motorbikes!

Met a cute guy at one of dad's jam nights. Musician AND a biker! Bonus. Got chatting, his name was Matt, he had a Honda Hornet 600, was a pianist, a campsite warden and lived just down the road from me.

We met up the following friday for a drink, after much hint dropping, shyness and the inevitable trip back to his, we eventually kissed, and both took that to be a sign of interest! Luckily for the both of us it was, and we're still together a year on! :-)



Anyway, back to the A levels. Not so good. Failed most of my January exams. However, I got one A. In physics - my favorite subject. Of course, I was told that one A was nothing to be proud of considering what else I got. They didn't really care that it was a sign that I was good enough to get an A, nobody helped, they just left me to my own devices.
Oh well!

In January I started my 125 lessons again, this time with an awesome training school called Frisby's (thanks to Matt's recommendation.) After an assessment lesson, I managed to dislocate my knee during one of my kickboxing classes, which put the bike lessons on hold, and caused a whole lot of discomfort and disorder. By march I was doing the lessons again, and in mid april I passed my bike test on my second attempt.

Of course, the next logical step was buy a bigger bike. After much research, I settled on a cheap to insure and run, low budget bright yellow Kawasaki ER-5. A 500cc naked streetfighter style bike! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Flying Banana!


Predictably, A levels didn't turn out well. BUT, I still ended up in London! I left the witterings to go to LSBU! Ok, I know South Bank Polytechnic is a little far removed from Imperial and Cambridge and UCL and all those other top universities, but I am only doing an HND here. I actually intend to try and get into second year MEng at UCL or Imperial - so don't fret, my standards haven't lowered, I have just altered my strategic route! And with my famous sense of direction, I will get there!

Regards, Vicky
P.S facebook me - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=642684972

Packing

I'm currently packing for Loughborough. I don't need to pack much because I'm only going for about 3 days, and then to London for one day, but I really want to pack more stuff. Not because I need to, but because I just love packing. It's really odd, but there's something really satisfying about having put together a bag full of stuff in the most efficient way possible! It's like a jigsaw! I have this odd urge to just add more things to the bag, just to see if I can get them to fit in the remaining space!
I really need to get out more! hehe

:-)

Phew!

That's the last of the really hard stuff for this term! Deadlines have all been met! Had to do an all nighter last night to get my chemistry done, but it was in on time and I'm quite happy with it! I'm a little on the tired side now, but I'm still buzzing a little bit from all the coke I had last night. Must have been about 2 litres - all that sugar and caffiene had me bouncing off the walls! :-)
I think it'll be a while before I do another all-nighter! There's something not quite right about not having slept a wink - just feels weird!

Anyway - off to Loughborough in a few days! Should be fun! I can now start thinking about packing!

\m/

Found!

I've found my results!!! :-)
It was a bit of a family effort and they actually turned up in my sisters work box. No wonder I couldn't find them!

Anyway - back to work!!

Crisis 2

Well, I still don't have my main results, but on the plus side I have my pilot results, so I can work around most of the problems at the moment.

Can't see myself getting an easy ride tomorrow though - I was 5 minutes late to my lesson and told to leave as I walked in. How irritating.

In other news, My 1000 word Chemistry essay is going rather swimmingly! Should be done within the next couple of days. So, on top of that, I'm starting to get on top of my maths work, and Physics is easy peasy. This topic in particular (Astrophysics) has already got me curious. Looking forward to the next few weeks.

Right. My break is over and I must get back to some coursework, so Tally-ho for now!

:-)

Crisis

Bloody big problem. Trying to finsih off my Biology coursework, all going swimmingly, and suddenly relise I'm not sure where my results are.
This is a slight problem. You can't analyse results that don't exist... unless you're the UK government... but that's beside the point.
So I've been rummaging around my *ahem*filing system (big mass of paper). Now, I've come across some very interesitng notes, so the go into their respective folders, but still no sign of my results. The annoying thing is that my pile is getting smaller, and my results should be really visible as they have bright purple beetroot stains on them! :-(

This doesn't look good! :-(

New scrolling titlebar....

If you will look at the top, I have added a completely and unashamedly stolen scroller. Nice! :-)

Still playing around with it... but it's a start, and certainly seems to work.

Been a long time!

Mainly cause every time I try and publish something, the evil bastard that is blogger deletes it, so there's an empty post! Arrrghh!!!

So, an update.

Got my GSCE results. Not fantastic, I must admit. No A*s (Blame it on the coursework - great exam results and shoddy coursework - that's what happens when you don't cheat), couple of As, mostly Bs, and a C in art, which doesn't really count.
Did better than I would have liked in RS, especially since I made slightly less than tasteful comments about danish cartoons. Anyway, the GCSE results will do. They're not abismal. At least I didn't get all U's, like a certain person I know...

Doing my A levels now. Decided that further maths would be too much, so I stuck with 4 A levels instead - Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Maths. Certainly an eyebrow raising combination. Most people think I'm mad, but I find that the 3 sciences are a good combination - they compliment each other nicely. I find that each subject slightly enhances my knowledge of the other, giving me a bit of an edge in all of them. I've also discovered that my favourite subject is physics. So, to all you mean old middle aged people who relish in the idea that the youth of today are too stupid to enjoy physics, please observe the following animation.



Unfortunately, Maths isn't going so well. I chose mechanics, and still maintain that I would have gotten a better grade if I'd been allowed to take the subject that I CHOSE, however, I was forced into taking statistics. I have never understood statistics and probably never will. All because the new head of maths thought it might be interesting to mix the two. Evil Evil Evil grrrrrrr. I shant go on too much, else I may become slightly irritated. So, to sum it up, I'm stuck with a module that I can't pass (as in above a C) and that my teacher openly admits I can't pass (how wonderful for the self esteem), rendering my maths A level useless. :-( How on earth can I get offered a place on a Physics or an engineering degree if I don't have a decent Maths grade!! :-(

So, on that warm, happy and comforting note, I shall bit you a good night!

Vicky :-)

Oooh, 3 days!

I get my results in 3 days time! Yay!
I have to admit, I don't think I did that well. I started off being predicted really high grades, but I didn't work hard enough in my coursework, and I don't think I revised enough for my exams. I expect I probably did well in English and Maths, and I bloody hope I did OK in science! Apart from that, I don't expect I'll get much more than mostly Bs and Cs. Which will suck. Buuut, I've decided to do a bit of moving around in my room, so the computers are a little more difficult to get to, and there's more room to do some actual work. And I won't have such a blazé attitude towards coursework - I now know important it is.
Gonna work bloody hard next year - I need seriously good grades if I still want to go to the top Universities! (Not given up yet - Cambridge is still a vague possibility!).

Only 3 days...

More prisons? There's a better way to go about it...

Pay the police less. I'll explain...

The reason we're having problems with crime is because the police don't care about who's been commiting crime (going over 30 doesn't count...). There are two ways to earn money if you're thick as sh*t and are only good at beating people up: becoming a criminal, and becoming a police officer. Becoming a police officer pays much better that crime does. Therefore, if the police forces wages were cut, we'd have more police officers who actually cared their jobs, because they wouldn't have hired people that are in it for the wrong reasons. Then perhaps there might be a few more arrests of the violent yobs and thugs terrorising the innocent, and more importantly, the victims may get treated with more respect than the criminals for once.

If my opinion seems unfounded, I'll be more than happy to give a few examples; A certain police force beginning with "S" and ending with "X" have made more than enough cock-ups recently...

School's out....

I've just left school... and looking back at the yearbook, I can't quite believe how much certain people have changed - there are some who you can really see have found themselves... or at least, begun to! Even I have! It was only a quick thing too - only happened recently, when I chopped my hair off! lol

The thing that's really hit me though, is that I may not see some of these people ever again. And I'll probably forget some people too. And worst of all, the best friend I've had there over the ast two years is going elsewhere - it's going to be really difficult to stay in touch, but I'll give it a go!

Anyway - as one door closes, another one opens... I'm going to the prom tomorrow, and hopefully to a theme park on monday... and maybe I'll be going to interesting places over the summer! Who knows! :-)

Got it!

Got my moped today... and got dreadfully sunburnt whilst playing with it at the bike shop. It was a nice day, the moped was outside, it needed getting used to and I forgot to put suncream on! Doh!
I'm a sort of red-brick colour on my arms, and pink on my face, and exhausted, as I've spent hours in the sun, and ridden it for 10 or so miles. Oh, and the exhaust went funny half way down the straight, so the sound went from hairdryer to turbo-blast superhairdryer, and it was extraordinarily loud!

Well, eventful day!!! :-)

Woo Yay CBT...

Did my CBT (Compulsory Basic Training) today. Effing brilliant. I can now ride a moped! Bloody tiring though - and I've got a stiff neck from all the 'lifesavers'. It was worth it though... 30mph on a moped feels like 60mph in a car, and whizzing around the roads is rather good fun! You're not even aware that it sounds like a hairdryer! :-)
Now to actually find myself a moped!

Trends....

According to google trends, Bristol is the most suicidal city in England, closely followed by Liverpool (but they're from the north, so they don't count!). Slightly worryingly, I'm surrounded by suicidal cities too... Brighton being 4th most suicidal, and Portsmouth being 5th. But that's not the worst - I'm living near a bunch of psychos... Portsmouth has the 4th highest result for "Murder". Yikes.

Interestingly enough, Portsmouth, Brighton are top searchers for the term scum. Bristol, who are further down the list, also seem to be worried about scum. Could there be a link between the amount of unpleasant common scum in a city and suicide rates?

Of course, stats can prove anything...

The road becomes more dangerous...

I've just got my provisional licence through the post, and will soon be learning to ride a two-wheeled life expectancy shrinker... :-)

Be a while before I can afford one - I think I'll have to sell a few possessions... Like my beloved PS2, for example. :-(

Lacking Chemistry

The University of Sussex appears to have made a rather foolish decision - to abolish the traditional Chemistry degree, despite applications increasing by around 40%, choosing to focus on other English, history, media, and maths.
This could prove to be rather irritating, as I was considering Sussex as a possibility - their science department's pretty good, but seeing as they've decided to dumb down the Chemistry degrees - or Chemical Biology as they've now called it - I don't think they're going to be worth it.