Sexism

Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver are released in America today, but us folks out here in the UK still have to wait pretty much another two weeks before we can get our hands on a copy. I would have also loved to grab a copy of sparkly Final Fantasy XIII last week – but it would be kinda pointless seeing how I don’t actually have a console to play it on.

Which brings me rather haphazardly onto my main point. I wouldn’t exactly call myself a ‘hardcore’ gamer, but I do spend a heck of a lot of time wrapped up in RPGs when I should be working. Most people don’t take me seriously when I explain this, and laugh when I challenge them (metaphorically speaking) – because I’m a girl – until I win and flat-out humiliate them in front of their mates.

It’s never been something I could quite get my head around. Why should it matter what sex a gamer is? It’s not a boy thing or a girl thing in my opinion – it’s a skill thing. There are probably an awful lot of girl gamers out there in the world, but are too afraid of being shot down by the boys who think they’re better by default to admit it. It shouldn’t matter if you’re good at games or not, anyway – what matters is if you have fun. Games are, after all, meant for entertainment.

Postal Service

A couple of months ago, I ordered a package from Korea. It’s not the first time I’ve done this, and uually it takes a good few weeks to come through; seeing how it’s on the other side of the world and all. This time, however, this package was kind of special to me – it was a Christmas present I bought myself. Perhaps because of that, according to sod’s law, it took a little longer than normal to manufacture and post. Like always, I tracked the parcel on its perilous journey across the world. I stayed in the day it was sceduled to arrive, because I didn’t want to miss it. My parents had to go out and drop my brother off somewhere, so I was in the house alone. I waited patiently for the doorbell to ring, looking forward to seeing the jolly postman in his big red van – but he didn’t turn up. Odd.

I checked the tracking on the website, getting worried that something had happened to it. According to the website, it had been unsuccessfully delivered to our house and a notice had been left. Was there a notice? Had the doorbell gone? No. I rang up the service it was supposed to be coming with – but they said that it had nothing to do with them. They gave me a number and shrugged me off. In a state of panic by this point, I called around, repeatedly being handed other numbers. No one seemed to know where my precious parcel was. After almost an hour, I finally got hold of a woman who told me the package hadn’t been delivered at all. It was sitting in a depot somewhere with customs charges – £29.88! So after an evening of panic and worry that I’d somehow missed the note or that it had been delivered to the wrong house, they expected me to drive out to some distant building and pay as near as made no difference to £30 for messing me about like that? Wow. I knew they were bad, but I never thought the postal service could be so inept.

Living in Widnes

I’ve just returned home from a trip downtown – and I have to say that Widnes has outdone itself for Christmas decorations this year.

(sarcasm)

I saw two christmas trees during the four-or-so hours we were out. Two. Only one of which was moderately impressive. Aside from those, I spotted a single one of those tacky star-shaped plastic lights and two or three sets of streamers. Very festive. At least they tried.

I think that there is some kind of invisible forcefield surrounding Widnes. In every single part of the country, it seems, this cold and pretty white powder called snow has fallen from the sky. What’s Widnes got? Frost. And ice. I’m surprised that I actually managed to walk to the bus stop this morning without falling over.

Christmas + homework = %*£$!&

I am a student nearing the end of my first term at college. Aside from the ability to wear my own clothes and not some monochrome uniform that is neither comfortable nor particularly attractive, I haven’t really noticed too big of a step-up from high school. Well, perhaps the workload is a little more focused; instead of the occasional scrap of homework we were given once every blue moon, there is a steady flow of regular essays and research tasks that are set on a weekly basis. However, one thing that has caught me by surprise is the sheer mountain of homework that the teachers/tutors/whatever have given us to do over the Christmas holidays.

I’m sorry, but I thought that ‘holiday’ meant something along the lines of ‘break from work’. I actually have a thesaurus here with me (no dictionary, so it’ll have to do), and I can give the definition to you. Here it is – holiday noun. 1 VACATION. break, hols, leave, recess, rest, time off.

I understand that we need to do a little bit to keep our brains working over the weeks of partying and cake – but asking us to write multiple full-on essays and articles and pages of annotations (et cetera) is going a bit too far, isn’t it?

Another thing that irritates me is what happens when you get sick in term-time. You spend days at home, in your bed, coughing your guts up and generally feeling absolutely awful. When you finally recover enough to drag yourself into school or college or whatever, all of your teachers instantly shove a list of what you have to do to catch up in your face. This is fine – perfectly understandable, in my opinion – until they get to the part where they want it in for the next lesson. I don’t understand how they can expect you to have it all done instantly, especially when you’ve had a good few days off at once and are still feeling under the weather.

The reason for this rant, I suppose is because I recently came down with a mild case of (swine?) flu for a solid week. The moment I recovered, after spending a few horrible days in college without the ability to breathe, I caught the exact same thing again and ended up back in bed. In those few days between periods of semi-consciousness, I just managed to catch up with what I missed. When I went back in the second time, I came away with a massive list of chunks of work I needed to complete in order to not fall behind. I even had a rather awkward one-on-one session with my English tutor to cover what I missed – and am still tying up all of the loose ends to this day.

All I’m saying, to summarise, is that tutors should take into consideration the facts that (a) teenagers have social lives and want to enjoy holidays while they still get them and (b) there is only so much work that is physically possible for someone to complete in such a short space of time.