Happy New Year/I'm back

Today I’ve nearly been in Brussels for 4 whole months, and I’ve got 6 months left. I don’t know how that happened, and I’m pretty concerned that it means I probably don’t have an excuse not to know where things are anymore, and that my French should be far better than it is.

Okay so this is a bit late, apologies, but I hope you’ve had a good first week of 2013 and haven’t already given up on those New Year’s resolutions.

Usually when people ask me if I’ve made any I just reply with ‘get my shit together’, which I like because it allows me plenty of scope, and because it’s an ongoing process and will clearly take longer than 12 months no one can say I haven’t achieved it.

I very rarely make proper ones however, for the same reason I never made revision timetables, or set myself deadlines, or planned my essays properly. Just because I ignore myself and because I can’t shake the knowledge that there aren’t actually any consequences if I don’t keep my promises to myself. That maybe doesn’t apply to the essay planning one; I think that’s more stubbornness, and I’ve gotten a bit better at it, but not much. We’ll see how serious that one actually is when I fail my degree.

But my actual New Year’s resolutions, although I only thought of them in the past few days, are as follows:

1. Stop pretending you don’t need glasses – i.e. stop never taking them anywhere and then just telling everyone that you can’t read things like signs and bus timetables. Just take your glasses with you and actually be able to see.

I have no idea why I do this in the first place but since I moved out here I don’t think my glasses have moved from my desk. I certainly didn’t take them home with me, so I’ve just spent the last three weeks repeating the phrase ‘I haven’t got my glasses on so I can’t see’.

2. Stop looking at things that you know will annoy you – I’m not really sure why I do this either, and I mean this one actually makes no sense, I don’t know why I hate myself so much that I feel the need to irritate myself on purpose.

So I’m going to stop following people on Twitter when I know everything they say annoys me, and I’ve definitely hidden a few people’s updates from Facebook in the last couple of days.  I guess you just like some people better if you never have to hear what they have to say.

I’m also going to stop looking at any links anyone posts to anything from the Daily Mail/The Sun online; because then I really do only have myself to blame.

3. Find a way to clean your laptop screen/underneath the keyboard – it’s pretty bad. I’ve tried to clean the screen a million times but whatever’s marking it is beyond the cleaning power of mere face wipes. I’m 99% sure it’s just coated in hairspray, making it 100% my fault.

I’m writing this on the train and the guy who was meant to be sat next to me all the way from Retford to London sat down for all of 10 minutes and then got up and left. That was about 40 minutes ago and I don’t think he’s coming back. The guy opposite me also just caught me looking over at his Uni notes trying to work out what he was doing, so that’s good. Maybe resolution number 4 should be get some social skills.

Au revoir!

xx

I get paid tomorrow...

...I have €7.17 in my purse, and £0.66 in my bank account. So it would be safe to say I'm pretty excited.

I went to Bruges! Despite the crazy weather (hail, sleet and sun...seriously?) it was by far one of the best days I've had since I got here. Even at the end of October it's just a beautiful and tourist-filled as you would imagine - but don't even bother imagining, there are photos at the bottom. The hot chocolate we had when we got there was probably the best I've ever had, and when your table is the one in front of a log fire in the cafe, it probably couldn't feel more like Christmas.

That's pretty much the only noteworthy thing I've done this week, apart from very stupidly, and unintentionally, use up all €15 of credit on my phone by calling home for 20 minutes (Mobistar...is this about what I said last week? Because that feels like an unnecessarily high tariff to me).

I'm beginning to get really annoyed at the woman on my French learning audio course - she just gets everything wrong all the time, I've never known anyone be this bad at repeating something they've just heard (I should point out that these are on my iPod and she is a 'student' who repeats back what the guy leading the course says, I'm not just getting really angry at some woman who's genuinely trying to learn French). As I'm only 9 lessons in, this is probably a bad sign - there's like 80 more to go, and by the end I'll either be able to speak French, or I'll have spent 10 hours yelling at my laptop. Maybe even both.

I'm also inadvertently following the X Factor, so I know Jade went last week, Union J and District3 are basically One Direction but...no that's it, they're just basically One Direction, and Rylan appears to only still be in the competition to frustrate everyone who watches it. All this horrendously useless knowledge has been gained through my Twitter feed, so thank you Twitter, for making me incredibly well-informed about a programme I have absolutely no interest in, and have never watched.

Finally,

I just had to share this site : http://www.lovepanky.com

Now coming away from the fact that 'panky' should never ever be used as a word (even when preceded by 'hanky'), there is just so much more that's just plain wrong with what they're suggesting.

For starters some of the stuff they suggest is just contradictory, I'm probably going to find it pretty hard to play with my hair if I'm not allowed to move my hands, and that's all gonna look pretty weird if I'm constantly shifting around on my feet at the same time, in fact I'll come out of this less of an attractive young woman, and more of a Weeble (Google it). I'm personally going to find it pretty difficult to express myself full stop if my hands have to be clamped by my side, but then with advice like 'speak softly' and 'barely speak at all', expressing myself clearly isn't the aim here. I think the worst thing is that if this actually works and his heart is suitably melted to the point where we start dating, he's going to get the shock of his life when I stop being cute, and start being myself. And then I'll have to start all over again, although maybe this time I could take their advice on being sexy, and the advice on that one is basically just 'LOOK AMAZING', which might require a lot more prep work, but at least I won't have to put on a voice.

Their first date advice is equally as frustrating, to be fair the article is entitled '14 Signs You're Ruining Your First Date Unknowingly'. It may as well be called '14 Ways Everything is Wrong With You and You'll Die Alone'. And the advice itself is a lot like being yelled at by a maniac - 'be yourself - but not too much like yourself, speak a lot, but not too much, show an interest, but don't be too interested, or friendly, definitely don't be too friendly don't smile too much, dress appropriately and under no circumstances agree to seeing him again,  - oh, and BE PERFECT IN EVERY WAY'.

If I actually read this before a first date I'd probably be a nervous wreck by the time I arrived and sit in silence for the whole date, convinced that even the slightest movement or sound would ruin everything.

It's probably wrong of me to direct this purely at lovepanky.com, I just happened to stumble across it this week and it brought up a lot of the anger I feel about dating advice more generally. I'm not even going to give alternative advice, because I never give advice, and even if I did it would be just as useless. Just behave like a normal person and you'll probably be fine.

This is my last post before I go home on tomorrow night for the Bank Holiday weekend, so if you're in Belgium, enjoy your days off, if not, then enjoy your normal-length weekend.

xx

Thanks to Ash and Francesca for their help in inspiring this post, I hope it's every bit as ranting and angry as you expected.