Things Michael has learned from attending London Anime Con

• South West Trains is way nicer than First Great Western for long journeys. My six foot frame can actually fit in the seat of a SWT train without having my knees jammed up against my chest.

• London Waterloo is a hella nice train station.
• The little branches of WH Smith in train stations sell everything you don’t need and nothing you do.
• London Underground is frigging hot!
• Londoners are the most impatient bunch of people in the world. The trains arrive at the station literally every two minutes, you don’t need to run to catch it!
• Holloway is fucking grim. It’s dirty and grimy and yuck.
• That said, if you’re ever in the area and feel like having a milkshake, iShake on Holloway Road is awesome.
• London Anime Con needs a way bigger venue. Lord knows how 800 people packed into three rooms.
• It is nearly impossible to play Rock Band when you can barely hear the music.
• Me, my friend Eleonore and her friend Millie know a surprising amount of useless shit.
• I was the only person who it the most difficult question in the quiz right – as evidenced by me shouting wildly when the answer was announced and the rest of the room looking at me like a madman. It was a weird question where the description of an Anime series was given, and I somehow knew it was referring to Toaru Majutsu no Index, a series I have never seen.
• To win a pub quiz, you need to combine this knowledge of useless shut with a random guy in a green tie who joins your team halfway through and gives you five answers you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Thanks Green Tie Guy!
• Little Kuriboh does a very good Emporer Palpatine impression.
• People with cameras will always follow the guests around and intimidate people, stopping other people from approaching said guests and having a chat.
• Consequently I never for a chance to speak to Little Kuriboh of Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged fame or MasakoX of Dragonball Z Abridged and Naruto Abridged fame. Sadface.
• Cons never run to schedule. This is especially annoying if they were going to show your favourite anime film of all time but then moved it back by four hours, well after the time at which you had to leave.
• If you catch a train out of London on a Saturday night, you WILL share a carriage with drunk football fans.
• One of them may even set fire to something, whether it be a cigarette, the train or themselves.
• Shared train journeys are otherwise surprisingly nice.
• Travelling back to London by yourself for the second day of the con is less nice.
• Londoners will look at you suspiciously if you carry a tripod that looks just a little bit like a weapon.
• Cons are much less fun without company.
• It is even more impossible to play Rock Band if you can’t hear the music at all.
• Anime fans are very bad at improvisation.
• Anime fans are very good at cosplaying and putting on a show.
• Charge your camcorder overnight – don’t assume it’ll have enough battery to make it through to the most anticipated event of the whole con, the Q&A session with the Abridgers who were guesting.
• MasakoX does a disturbingly good woman’s voice.
• Little Kuriboh could make the phone book sound funny if he read it in YGOTAS voices.
• A Street Fighter tournament is serious business.
• If both fighters are using Guile you will hear “Sonic boom!” more than you would ever want to hear it.
• Nothing is lonelier than a train ride on your own in the dark. You’d think I’d have gotten used to it in the many months I went to see Kelly, but I haven’t.
• Southampton is so much nicer than Central London.
  

Breakups and opportunity

For a recent writing challenge I wrote a short piece of fiction entitled Rue the Days. You can read it either on The BBS, the forum the challenge originated from, or on deviantART – whichever you prefer (I would have thought that it was easier to comment upon the work at dA myself, but most people who read this are members of The BBS, so… yeah). This is the first piece of writing that I’ve published on the Internet in a number of years, and is a brief tale of people realising what is painfully obvious and yet tough to accept.

As you may know (loathe as I am to use such a clichéd opening to a sentence), my relationship of nearly two years broke down last month. I would be lying if I said I haven’t drawn from my experiences in the last few months; if anything that was the inspiration for writing the piece – ‘write about what you know’, they say. I saw it as the final step in moving on, and the concept for it is, in my opinion, the most positive thing I’ve said about the end of the relationship thus far, and believe me, I’ve said a lot of things. This was the point where I finally acknowledged that a whole world of good can come out of the end of a relationship. I’m projecting some of my situation onto Simon, the male lead of my story, but the ending is a complete fabrication – if there’s someone in my life who has been pining for me all along, then make yourself known! I jest, of course, but the circumstances of the ending are largely unimportant. What is important is the recognition that a breakup can lead to better things. That’s the way I want to look at things from now on, and I’m sure it’s the same for her.

I decided to write this post after seeing that one of my closest friend’s relationship has ended. I’d conversed with but never met her boyfriend, and he seemed like a perfectly likeable chap. The two’s relationship seemed to be one of the best among my friends, and it ostensibly seems not to have hit a rough patch recently, unlike how mine (and, indeed, Simon’s) panned out. It seems to have ended very suddenly – they appeared to be perfectly happy just yesterday. I hope for both of their sakes that it hasn’t turned nasty, as that is the one thing I regret most from my previous relationship. Nay, it’s what I regret most in my whole life – that I acted completely out of order towards someone that I loved for nearly two years of my life, and I fear I have irreparably ruined our friendship, despite the fact that we do talk to each other.

Wow… This blog took a much darker tone than I intended it to. On a happier note, the England cricket team will soon retain the Ashes, a biennial cricket tournament between England and Australia, and international cricket’s most celebrated rivalry. We English love to get one over the Aussies.

Christmas meme

Shamelessly stolen from the lovely Jax.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Definitely wrapping paper. I’m hilariously bad at it, but that’s the fun of it. I seriously used like half a roll of sticky tape wrapping just a few presents this year, it was awesome. And then there’s the unwrapping, with the mahoosive piles of paper that appear in the 4.3 seconds between presents being under the tree and all of them being opened.

2. Real tree or Artificial?
Artificial. We’ve not bothered with real trees for a number of years now. They make such a mess with all the needles, and to be honest the smell of a real tree just gets on my nerves. And then there’s going out to somewhere that sells them, paying a stupid price for one and transporting it home. What’s the point? Now we just have an artificial one that lives in the loft and comes down once a year. There’s probably a joke in there about domestic imprisonment, fill it in for yourselves.

3. When do you put up the tree?
Around a week before the day itself, though this year it was a little earlier, as evidenced by the fact that it was already up when I arrived home from university last week.

4. When do you take the tree down?
I believe we usually take it down on New Year’s Day, maybe a couple of days before. Certainly, it comes down before the start of the school term in the first full week of January.

5. Do you like egg nog?
I’ve never had it. It seems to be a uniquely American obsession, with the tipple of choice in our house being sherry and brandy. I do have a couple of bottles of Swedish cider, though, so they’ll be what I’ll have with my turkey dinner.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
Oooooh, a difficult one. I can’t remember most of my Christmas gifts before, well, a couple of years ago really. I guess I’d have to say my iPod Touch from two years ago, which is probably the only thing that I have ever received for Christmas apart from clothing that I still use today.

7. Hardest person to buy for?
I don’t usually have problems with buying presents, actually. I certainly didn’t this year, I pretty much got everything in one go off of Amazon.

8. Easiest person to buy for?
My dad. Pretty much every year I just buy him a music DVD from an old rock band.

9. Do you have a nativity scene?
We’re a completely secular family, so go figure. It’s not something that’s done over here, much like egg nog. Primary school children will put on a nativity play once a year, but I don’t know if that’s a purely British tradition.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Always mail. For me, e-mail is used almost exclusively for really unexciting things, so any cards I send are through the good old postal system.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Any of the novelty gifts that one inevitably gets. It’s fun for a few seconds when you’re younger, but now they’re just pointless. This year’s selection consisted of novelty Christmas socks, 100 cards with money-making tips and, I quote, a ‘chainsaw pizza cutter’ (to be honest the latter is pretty cool and I could potentially use it, but the others…?)

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
Probably The Nightmare Before Christmas. I only saw it for the first time this week (I literally have no idea how I never saw it until now), but it’s pretty much the only film primarily about Christmas that I like. Incidentally, I’ve also never seen Die Hard. Again, no idea how that happened.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
December. I almost exclusively buy online nowadays, so I have to get everything with plenty of time to spare. Even more so, this year, because of the snow and ice that the UK has been struggling through.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Oh, never. I always buy new presents for people.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
So many things. xD Roast turkey is the traditional Christmas meal over here, not goose, and I love it. Christmas also seems to be the only time where it’s acceptable to eat huge amounts of stuffing, which I also love. Mince pies, too, especially as my mother usually makes some herself (not this year – instead she made shortbread biscuits which are equally delicious). And also the obscene amounts of chocolate you receive. <3

16. Lights on the tree?
Every year. This year they’re the only Christmas lights we have anywhere on our house. We’ve never gone all out with a gaudy Christmas display, and thank god, because they look awful.

17. Favorite Christmas song?
There is only one possible choice – Fairtytale of New York by The Pogues and the late Kirsty MacColl. All other choices are invalidated and your opinion is irrelevant.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
We’ve always stayed at home, because my mother cooks for us, my grandmother and my aunt and uncle. I can’t stand the idea of going away on holiday for Christmas.

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?
In short, no.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
An angel. It compliments all the frilly decorations we have on the tree. I should take a photo really.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Always on Christmas morning. That’s how it’s done by nearly everyone over here in Britainland, and that’s how we do it. You haven’t lived if you haven’t got up at four AM, tried to wake your parents up, been told to go back to bed and then repeated that every half hour.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
Usually I’d say the manic shopping centres, full of people buying presents, but this year it was the weather. I’ve fallen on ice twice since returning from university, and it’s bloody hurt each time.

23. Favorite ornament, theme, or color?
Iunno, green? xD;

24. Favorite for Christmas Dinner?
Turkey is always our preferred meat, but as for my favourite part of the whole dinner? Probably parsnips. I AM NOT POSH, I SWEAR.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year?
A camcorder and/or a woollen long coat. The camcorder would be for recording video reviews, the coat for looking like Gene Hunt in Ashes to Ashes. Fanboy? What?

Letters

Dear You,

I let you down, and I’m sorry. But I’m sure my replacements will serve you well, so I’m glad.

~

Dear You,

If you don’t want me to talk to you, then just fucking say it. Cut the passive-aggressiveness and the lies.

~

Dear You,

You creep me out, and you creep others out. Seriously, dude, tone it down.

~

Dear You,

You are seriously awesome. <3

~

Dear You,

I miss you, I miss everyone.

~

Dear You,

I've not spoken to you for many, many months, and I'm glad we haven't, but you finally got your wish. And hey, maybe it would have been better for me if you'd succeeded all that time ago.

~

Dear You,

I have no idea how we manage to hit it off so well. We're practically chalk and cheese, and yet by a chance encounter on the very first day of term we're really good friends. I especially enjoyed larking about in the snow today.

~

With love/hate/sadness/regret (delete as appropriate),

Michael

Yet more thinking

I’m considering quitting The BBS outright. I don’t do anything. At all. I barely post, ASBN has been dead for months and I’ve had no obligation to moderate the forums since my demotion from super moderator, what with the section I retained some semblance of control over being mostly quiet. When I say “quitting The BBS”, I also include the chan. At various times in the past few months I’ve detected what I think is a malicious undercurrent – I kept getting the sneaking suspicion that people really took severe issues with me being there. One chan regular I’ve genuinely upset in the past, so I could understand if they were one of the perpetrators, but they aren’t. Instead, it’s people who I considered my friends. People who recently have projected nothing but negativity and hate in my direction.

The last time I had this feeling, I was still with Kelly. Now for those of you who didn’t know, the main way we communicated in the last two to three months was through IRC. That was probably one of the many reasons the relationship failed, but that’s for another time. Now, however, I don’t need to stay in touch with her. If anything, I don’t think she wants me to be – that’s the impression I got most recently. So, what is there to stop me leaving? A promise of friendship? There are perhaps two or three regulars who I consider friends who aren’t a part of this hate campaign, for lack of a better word, and it’d be a shame to not speak to them again, but even so my relationships with the other forum members have never been very deep.

So yeah, basically I think most of the chan hates me, and that they’ve decided to make me feel like shit. Because, y’know, it’s not like I’ve had to deal with anything particularly Earth-shattering or life-changing in the past two weeks or so. OH WAIT. Yeah. Classy, guys. Real classy. Way to kick a guy when he’s down. There’s very little keeping me at The BBS, and that’s a damn shame.

It’s over.

Kelly broke up with me. Nearly two years of my life down the drain.

Intentions

So I want to start doing some video reviews, in the vein of the Nostalgia Critic/Film Brain/various other contributors to tgwtg.com. I’m going to be reviewing films that I can find cheaply in used video stores etc. So what I ask is this: does anyone have any requests? They can’t be new films (say, within the last two years), because I just won’t be able to get them cheaply, and ideally they should be bad films (either universally accepted as bad or a film that just you think is bad – I don’t mind). I’m going to traipse around Southampton tomorrow looking for cheap DVDs, so I’ll take into account any suggestions.

And oh yes, I’m at university now. Just thought you should know.

Exam results

Chemistry

Atoms, Bonds and Groups – 74/90 (a)
Chains, Energy and Resources – 111/150 (b)
Equilibria, Energetics and Elements – 114/150 (b)
Practical Skills in Chemistry 1 – 50/60 (a)
Practical Skills in Chemistry 2 – 45/60 (b)
Rings, Polymers and Analysis – 72/90 (a)

Overall – 466/600 (B)

General Studies

AS Culture and Society – 98/100 (a)
AS Science and Society – 78/100 (b)
A2 Culture and Society – 50/100 (d)
A2 Science and Society – 86/100 (a)

Overall – 312/400 (B)

Mathematics

Core Maths 1 – 94/100 (a)
Core Maths 2 – 100/100 (a)
Core Maths 3 – 98/100 (a)
Core Maths 4 – 92/100 (a)
Statistics 1 – 100/100 (a)
Statistics 2 – 92/100 (a)

Overall – 576/600 (A*)

Mathematics (Further)

Further Pure 1 – 95/100 (a)
Further Pure 2 – 77/100 (b)
Mechanics 1 – 91/100 (a)
Mechanics 3 – 88/100 (a)
Decision Maths 1 – 85/100 (a)
Decision Maths 2 – 64/100 (c)

Overall – 500/600 (A)

Religious Studies

Religion and Ethics 1 – 85/100 (a)
Philosophy of Religion 1 – 71/100 (b)
Religion and Ethics 2 – 54/100 (d)
Philosophy of Religion 2 – 64/100 (c)

Overall – 274/400 (C)

Notes

-Letters in lowercase indicate a grade for an individual paper. Letters in uppercase indicate the final grade obtained overall.
-The A* grade is awarded if a candidate averages 80% on all papers and 90% on the second-year (A2) papers.
-Mechanics 2 result was 53/100 (d). It was omitted from my Mathematics results, as all individual results are shuffled to produce the best possible result for the candidate. Hence, Mechanics 2 was dropped as it was the lowest scoring paper I took.

Thoughts

Was lower than what I was predicted, but I’ve no right to be disappointed with that result, as I still got into my first choice university. In five weeks I’ll be packing my bags and going to the University of Southampton to study Mathematics (no one cam claim I’m not doing what I do best, eh?), and for this I am extremely grateful. Anni, who by some cruel twist of fate is visiting me at the moment, got no offers when she applied for the University of Helsinki for the next year, and another friend of mine found out today that he had missed out on a place by a single mark. So, three years of mathematics in Southampton. Three of my friends are also going to Southampton, though one who was going to study maths for 75% of her course didn’t get in. Life goes on.

Disciplinary proceedings

The store at which I work probably has around forty to fifty staff on the payroll, and with so many people interacting in the space of a day there will inevitably be people who don’t get on, disagreements and altercations. Everyone who works there has the option of speaking to the store manager if they have a problem with anything in the store – quite rightly. This includes members of staff, and they have every right to lodge a complaint about someone. Before our particular store manager will begin the disciplinary proceedings, if indeed the complaint warrants such action, he will always ask the member of staff who is complaining one particular question:

What have you done about it?

He never fails to ask this question, as he firmly believes that he should have as little as possible to do with relations between staff. He actively encourages people to solve their own problems. He advises them to speak to the person or persons and try to sort the issue out with mature discussion. If this has failed, then he will undertake disciplinary proceedings. I wholeheartedly endorse this theory.

I was demoted from my position as super moderator of The BBS yesterday afternoon. Comments I made about the tactics used by a certain member in an ASBN battle riled some, one or more users and led them to make a complaint about me.

I am not posting this blog to defend my actions. I can’t defend my actions, to be frank. What I did was wrong. I went too far with what I said, which combined with circumstances within this person’s life at home to make them feel uncomfortable (I didn’t find out about these circumstances until after the event, but that’s no excuse). I am posting this blog to highlight the fact that the first I knew of any disquiet was in the PM informing me of my demotion. I had no communication with this person whatsoever – they made no attempt to address the problem directly and maturely. Instead, they went straight to the top. This should have been the last option. I don’t accept the argument that this person’s uncomfortableness with me prevented them. It didn’t prevent them from conversing with me in any situation, be it on the forum or on IRC.

Allow me to reiterate that I know what I did was wrong, and allow me to expand upon that by saying that the punishment fits the crime. I take issue solely with the way in which what I did was dealt with by the certain person who I criticised. If the person had contacted me instead of the admin first, then we could have discussed the incidents and made progress. Instead, it will only serve to alienate us and breed resentment. And that makes me sad.

I write like…

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I pasted my three reviews from novorossiysk.wordpress.com in and all three threw Nabokov up.