Wednesday, 25 November 2015

New Hobbies...I guess

A lot of people have asked me, you’re a uni student, you have heaps of holidays, what do you actually do with your time? I have only been at uni for one year now, so I don’t really know why people expect me to know the answer to this, but I understand how that is a valid question.

I get about two months for winter holidays and about four months over summer. Uni is 24 weeks a year in total, not counting exam time. That is only six months. So, I have half a year off on holidays (this all depends on exam timetables of course).


That is a hell of a long time. Seriously, after I figured out I was literally like OMG holy moly I seriously get that much holidays? Pretty shocking at first.


But then I realised, what the hell am I actually doing or going to do with this time?


Over the last holidays I got a lot of reading done. I’m the kind of person who enjoys buying books and collecting them (and reading them, of course), but I can never keep up with myself. My pile of unread books keeps getting bigger because I can’t read them fast enough! So, I spent my month or so off last time reading as much as I possibly could and I managed to get through quite a big chunk of my collection. (That sounds really awful, it wasn’t like it was difficult or painful, I love reading, that sounds too much like it was torturous).


I plan on doing similar this holidays and although that’s great and all, it’s a little sad and I feel like I should have some new hobbies or something.


Anyway, recently my brother has been doing guitar lessons and is doing well (for a nine year old with three lessons at least). You know how siblings are, so now my other little brother (seven) is a little jealous so my step mum pulled out her old mini guitar and her ukulele so that my slighting older, younger brother could teach the other one. So, then I was like ‘well, now I feel left out so I want to learn!’ (This all has a point I swear).


So then, while my nine year old bro was playing his guitar, and my seven year old bro was playing the mini guitar, and then there was me, playing this tiny ukulele. It was quite a sight to behold.


But anyway, so he taught me a few things on the uke (I had to google how to convert from guitar to ukulele because the strings are different and such but it wasn’t that difficult), I now I am totally hooked. I am teaching myself how to play the ukulele!! It’s been a few weeks already and I am still obsessed.


It’s been years since I was learning an instrument, I was learning piano when I was younger but I think my last lesson was when I was ten years old (and I am eighteen now) so it has been a long time.


The other day when I was home alone, the postman came delivering this huge box thingo. This is normal at our house seeing as we buy practically everything online, and I have learnt to just sign for it and put it on the relevant seat at the kitchen table so that whoever’s it is knows that it has arrived.


So, I signed for it and put it on the table and was about to walk away when I saw the label that was on it. It was from some kind of music store and it was the perfect size for a ukulele. So, after some careful poking and prodding I discovered that I am TOTALLY getting a ukulele for christmas! And I am so excited!! :)


I am officially obsessed and have found my new hobby!! My granddad found out that I was learning and has set me a challenge to learn to play at least one christmas carol by Christmas. So, of course, I have found a whole booklet of songs to learn and have slowly been going through them and I believe that I can learn probably about three by christmas time so yay me haha!! :D


And now I am excited about Christmas for a whole new reason!

I’ll let you know how it goes later I guess, ta ta for now!!

Wednesday, 11 November 2015

Beautiful and Terrible Words

Do you ever look at a word for too long, and just think it is the weirdest thing in the world? That is just looks wrong? It might be spelt correctly, just a perfectly normal word in a normal sentence or phrase, but the longer you stare at it, the stranger and more ridiculous it seems? This happened to me today.

It was the word ‘among’. It can be pronounced like ‘amung’ but spelt like the word ‘long’. It is so weird. Seriously, just look at it.

AMONG

AMONG

AMONG

AMONG

It is so messed up right? No? Yes? Am I just officially going crazy? Sounds about right to me…I swear that I am not. I am in perfectly good health and absolutely perfectly sane (at the moment at least) but I just cannot get my head around how wrong this word feels to me right now.

But its not even the weirdest word in the English Language, because, lets face it, it is the weirdest language in the world and our grammar just let’s the weirdest things be grammatically correct.

Take this sentence for example. (taken from tumblr, where all the in’s and out’s of the English language is discussed).




Is that not the best and most wonderful sentence in the whole word? How can that seriously make sense, it is a wonderful and beautiful thing.

Did you know that that sentence is cool, but so is this one? Go on, read it again.
Can you believe that saying that that is actually correct? And that ‘that that’ thing is also correct. That is repeating the same word THREE TIMES!! Am I serious? Yes, the fact that that ‘that that’ thing is real is just another reason for my love/hate relationship with the English language. (FOUR TIMES)

So, I’m getting lost again. Let’s go back to ‘among’ shall we?


Among. Is it starting to look weird yet? If it is not, then clearly, I am most definitely going crazy. I mean, don't even get me started on the word ‘amongst’, like seriously? Who came up with these? Who decided that these letters in this combination and order made a perfectly good word that was totally acceptable.

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