Home
Patwa's Paradiso On The Web
Just lil' ol' Me
Recent Entries 
25th-May-2008 01:58 am - Eurovision Belgrade 2008 - Deli!!!
The title is taken from this year's Turkish entry, 'deli' meaning 'crazy', and honestly, that's just what this annual festivo politico is becoming. What's gotten into everyone? I mean, apart from our own British humiliation of an entry, it's great to see new countries entering, such as Azerbaijan whom everyone's raving about, but then they go and mess up by dressing up as angels and wailing in a way which makes an overcrowded maternity ward sound like a fine Italian opera by comparison. Mio Dio! And what was all this about? You can always trust the Fins to put on a show, and the Croatian guy sounded as though he was about to kick the bucket any moment - I was actually worried for his heart at one point (just watch the video, he gets really excited at one point and that's when I thought "oh dear, he's had it now!").

Last year we had football teams, and this year it was movies. I'm pretty sure there must be copyright infringement in at least one form or another there somewhere. I was personally favouring Sweden, but they turned out rather disappointingly flat. They've been playing the track on the radio for ages now, and it sounds so much better than in real life. This song was the best in my opinion, and thanks to Malta for agreeing with me and giving it the full douze points.

I just hate the way this has all turned into a complete farce, and it's now more about looks and politics than music. However, I suppose it's almost to be expected, no surprise why Russia won this year, is it? To give credit where it's due though, they did try to make things a little fairer by separating neighbouring countries during the elimination rounds, not that it actually did any good when it came to the final, but I suppose again it's all about making a show of doing something. And I just can't stand how the UK, even though it hasn't had a decent act since 2005, continues to get automatic places in the final just because it has a large share of the funding pot, when newer countries are getting in through hard work and actual talent, and because people are actually voting them in on that talent, not based on how much money they have, or whom their president is.

Ah well, it's almost become a ritual for me, just one of those yearly occasions one marks for the sake of marking, and well, it beats 'Dancing on Ice' any day.
8th-Jan-2008 11:03 pm - And once again the party's over...
Hi! Happy New Year to everyone, hope you had a great time. Well actually, it's the second time around for me today as it's the start of the new Islamic year 1429H, so best of the day to whom that applies, or, what the heck, everyone for that matter.

The holidays were absolutely awesome, although the travelling, to summarise in one word, wasn't. In fact, it made a pretty decent attempt at curbing even my insatiable infatuation with all forms of transport travelling at anything above ground level. I'll probably do a diary of what happened at some point and give you all the fancy details. It was great to see Michelle (my girlfriend since December for those that didn't know), and we sort of came to an agreement about our 'status' given the uncertainty of months to come, but again, more later.

I was almost tempted to not come back as I heard about the new Norovirus (Winter Vomiting Bug) sweeping the country and gaining upwards of 100,000 victims per week. There’s also apparently a stomach and flu bug making the rounds. I was fine over the hols apart from a few days when the toes played up majorly (requiring some frantic ping-pong’ing with Swedish pharmaceutical authorities before I could get my hands on some codeine based painkillers (and no, I’m not going back to the Solpadol days of June/July 2007)) but now my left kidney is sore whenever I breathe and my fingers are iced up again. Oh well, I think I’ll take Ali’s advice, given to me when I spoke to him on the phone earlier and just keep a gas mask on until this all blows over and society is fit for co-existance once again!!!

Christmas was good, I got the two audio books I wanted, "Mind over Matter" by Ranulph Fiennes and "The Blue Ice" by Hammond Innes, a PowerMonkey Explorer (absolutely awesome piece of kit) to make up for all the phone chargers I've broken, nice fluffy and warm Nordic ski socks (great for the toes) and an awesomely heavy but warm fleece that I can snuggle into when it gets too cold (which is all the time nowadays). A few bathroom necessities, some Scandinavian and Dutch music compilations I'd had my eye on for a while and some much appreciated (though now sadly spent) cash made up the stash.

This will probably be the last blog entry for a few weeks as I'm now battening up the hatches for exam season plus quite a bit of the redecoration work that didn't get done before the hols needs to be completed. There's also a long overdue computer-overhaul. I'll probably not have much time to chat either, as I have simply got to do the best I can on these exams and pass them, failure not being an option now, and a few anomalies with the coursework having narrowed the margin for success by a little more than a bit. However, I leave you with some goodies to tie you over:
Chapters 1-3 of the Novel - Revised and including an Author Introduction
Several new songs - Mostly complete (the Cheerio one isn't mine, but a rough translation of the Norwegian rap by the same name. It's not the best musically, but it's a fair hoot comedy’ wise. BTW, if anyone has the MP3 for it, I’d love a copy if you have the time to send it.)

One of the problems with not updating more often is that I have more to cover, but I'm going to leave the rest till later. In the meantime, good luck to those that have exams, enjoy the break for the rest of you, and I'll catch up with you soon.
This page was loaded Dec 1st 2009, 3:08 pm GMT.