What I hate about exams is that they sneak up on you. The date is so far away, then it’s next week, then in two days, then… Tomorrow.
Unfortunately, this IAA is not an exam I can make up on the spot. With humanities, this is pretty easy – all you have to do is ramble about Harry Truman or longshore drift or Jesus. In Science, you have to know actual facts. Which can’t be altered depending on the day. I know approximately eight things about Chemistry:
1).Water is H2O
2. Butane is featured in an MCR song
3. So is kerosene/paraffin
4. So is ephedrine
5. So is neon
6. You can spell Bipolar using the chemical symbols for bismuth, polonium, iodine (if you pretend it’s an L) and argon
7. You can spell Bacon in various different ways
8. Magnesium powder mixed with sulphuric acid makes you cough.
I think I shall go and watch House in the hope that the team encounter a child who’s been eating hydrochloric acid mixed with sodium hydroxide.
Scene: Victoria Sea View Hotel, Scarborough, Yorkshire
Step 1) When a person knocks on the door, turn out light and pretend to be asleep before the door opens (there is no lock).
Step 2) Sarah walks in and asks for her iPod back.
Step 3) Within a second, two or three preps whose names are unknown (because they all look the same) appear at door and say, “Are you asleep already?” Then, “Oh, I thought you were naked in bed with each other and that’s why the lights were off.”
Step 4) Stare dumbfounded at silhouetted preps until they go next door.
Step 5) Sarah retrieves her iPod, complains about Melody’s Family Guy addiction and Tobi’s insistence on showing everyone her cleavage and leaves.
Step 6) Five minutes later, there is a knock at the door. “We’re not naked,” Ruby assures the visitor, but regardless of the switched-on light, no one enters.
Please note that only steps one and two were planned.
I want to hate it. I really want to. I had this whole theory going about Bob being locked in a cupboard and the last four years being a social experiment, but no.
They just had to wait for Mikey’s hair to get long enough that they could dye it blonde.
All I have to say is, look alive, sunshine…
Let’s hope we survive to find out if 2019 is in fact post-apocalyptic.
Technically I don’t become a whole year older until around ten thirty this evening, but I’m sitting in the back garden warming my feet on the chimnea. Since I’ve actually put this weekend’s photographs on the D drive already, I thought I’d be a total techie geek and upload them for you lovely people now. In the garden.
And yesterday’s trip with Cinderella and my family to London to see The Secret of Sherlock Holmes:
In case I forget, thank you to everyone who forked out for exercise books, fineliners, Shakespeare compilations and toe rings for me. Best weekend ever.
It’s become something of tradition, I think, to blog around this week every year. Not because I lost someone on 9/11. I was only five years and three hundred and sixty-four days old when it happened, after all… Most people my age probably can’t even remember it. I know a girl at my school who thinks Osama Bin Laden is a member of the Beatles.
Not because it’s Mikey Way’s thirtieth birthday today either.
Or that it’s nearly nine years since a depressed twenty-something artist on his way to work saw the aforementioned disaster and formed a brilliant rock band with his aforementioned brother.
But because, despite all the odds, I have survived another year. Amazing, innit? I haven’t been run over by a bus, set myself on fire during a Chemistry IAA, contracted cancer, crashed a car, slit one vein too many, been assassinated or fallen over attempting a roundhouse kick, cracking my head open on the dojo floor.
I’m prepared to bet a few of you have considered killing me, setting me on fire or chucking me on the dojo floor. Thank you for refraining. You know that theory Charles Darwin came up with, the survival of the fittest? That if you’re unable to hunt or climb trees or run really fast from whatever’s trying to eat you, you’ll get cast out of the pack and eaten.
I kind of cheated with the ‘survival’ part of the saying. It’s not my fault, okay? I didn’t ask to get born eleven weeks early. It just happened. I didn’t ask for Rochford and Southend hospitals to stick pipes in my side and kick-start my respiratory system either, but I’m grateful to whoever signed the pipe-insertion contract.
Every year I reflect on the shithole that is September 11th and the excellence of My Chem, and wonder how something so good could be born out of something so bad. If 9/11 hadn’t happened, would MCR be doing what they do? I like to think that terrorist attacks notwithstanding, yeah.
Let’s face it, Gerard wouldn’t have done art for the Cartoon Network forever, Ray was going to pick up the guitar again at some point, Mikey had to get over his stage fright one way or another and Frank… Well, Frank is one of those insane blokes who sort of manages to kill demon sharks wherever the van takes him.
Same with Darwin’s theory of evolution. If I’d been born circa 1950, I’d be in a shoebox sized grave right now next to my mum, and Maxim would be an unexistent annoying little brother. But I was born in the nineties, dude, and there’s no point having a pretty comfortable privileged life and not doing anything but surfing Twitter. So regardless of my serious hatred of birthday celebrations and all the grief that accompanies it, I’m rather looking forward to Sunday.
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, according to the proverb. Well, it ain’t over till I say it’s over, so anyone still going on about medical science not being a good idea can go the same way as the homophobes and Qur’an burners. Down the fucking drain.
When the USSR rigged the Polish vote in 1947 to ensure it became communist, Stalin wasn’t worried about cheating. He was worried that Germany might kill more Russians if there was another war, and he wanted Poland to protect them. I don’t like Labour, but Moustache Dictator Guy Two had the right idea.
Also known as ‘An Idiot’s Guide to Zakynthos’ or ‘What the Other Kids are Missing. Poor Dudes’.
Sunday 25th July 2010
It is our second full day here and already I am at my wits’ end with Maxim. He snores, he steals my bed, puts my pen lids up his nose, throws damp towels at me while I’m asleep and turns the air conditioning down so far I wake up with frozen sunburn.
I guess I could always throw him in the overly-choppy sea, but it might upset whoever he’s been mysteriously texting.
Not much has changed here since last September; the sign on top of the Neraida restaurant is still about to fall down, we’re handed useless leaflets at every restaurant on the high street (I’m saving them for Ruby) and there aren’t many Germans.
The Blue Bay Hotel, where some of us stayed last year, as well as a few shops, is closed. There’s a bar along the beach making up for it by blaring bad club music at half a billion decibels for twenty-four hours.
They also still sell frappes.
Monday 26th July 2010
World History According to Kostas, Maître d’ of Neraida Restaurant
2000 years ago, the Greeks were building and making art, the Egyptians were constructing pyramids.
1000 years ago, the English had horses, castles and were on crusades, searching for the Holy Grail.
500 years ago, the Spanish and Portuguese had ships had ships and were sailing the world.
200 years ago, the Germans were picking fruit from trees.
I will assume the Germans are once again on par with the Turks.
Fact of the Day: Greeks will build a church anywhere, out of anything. Including remains of a temple to Artemis.
Tuesday 27th July 2010
I write you from the larger of Zante’s two water parks. This one is in Sarakinado.
I am enjoying a beverage made by Nestlé known as Café Zero. I thought I was buying moccacino frappe, whatever that is, they (the parents) reckoned it was ice cream and it’s turned out to be a mix of the two. I broke the straw with the exertion of sucking out the slush and am waiting for it to melt.
Anyway, I like water parks about as much as I like Disneyland, Peter Pan’s, Phantasialand, etc. In fact, the only two ways it could get any worse would be if a) I was forced to go on anything other than lazy river, b) Mickey Mouse appeared. In a swimsuit.
There is also Lady Gaga and Alexandra Burke blaring from a nearby snack bar stereo. It seems Simon Cowell has cracked Greece, his only challenge now is to get Nikos and his mates to cover Leona Lewis instead of the live Greek stuff in Neraida.
It’s not all bad – I’ve had an amusing time people watching and debating various tattoos and swimsuits on various people. My favourite design so far has been a flower pattern up a girl’s ribcage that she will regret when she has kids.
There is a statue in the park of a transgender mermaid on steroids and I think she is trying to take ‘masculine women’ to a whole different level. Or the architect was sexually confused.
It rained this morning. I am not making this up. We were in Zakynthos Town/City, walking up to the remains of a fortress after crêpes and there were blobs of rain. It is still cloudy now.
You know I hate cats? How the only feline animal I tolerate is Elizabeth’s cat Marmite because she’d never speak to me if I didn’t? Well, I made a friend today. Granted, it was only there for the crepes, but it looked Egyptian. Not fat. Almost sweet.
Anyway, I don’t want to start talking about middle-aged men and their band’s replacement drummer. Or their children. Congratulations, by the way, Frank and Jamia. One question: you mentioned daughters. Does this mean that instead of naming one of them Frank, you’ve named one Francesca?
Just a thought.
Right, go-karting photos:
But that’s old news.
Today we went paintballing.
All I can say is, ow. Seriously. I got shot in the neck/ear area, and I think it’s bruising. Plus I got orange paint in my hair, all over the mud-stained overalls, trainers, helmet, gloves, trainers. Between my toes.
I don’t know how many of you have been paintballing, but you basically get an air-filled canister, lots of orange marble paintballs (originally contained in rigid condoms) and an army jumpsuit with crap pockets. Then, in your teams, you have to attack a castle and capture a flag, or get to a bridge or trench without getting shot by the enemy – marked by a different coloured armband – then do the same from the opposite end of the field, or defend the castle. It’s pretty fun when you get into it, but the paint hurts when it hits. The dud ones bounce off, causing little round circular lumps wherever they hit you. My dad has a large one on his forehead, a guy took his shirt off and looked like someone had attacked him with a plunger. Through the protective vest.
Thanks for the belated birthday treat, Michelle and Ross!
Pictures, and the first installment of The Zante Diaries 2010, to come.
on 2nd July it was my brother Maxim’s birthday. We celebrated yesterday… By going go-karting.
I had never been before – not many of us had – so it was understandable, I think, to say that once we pulled on the jumpsuits, messed around calling balaclava ‘baklavas’ and watched the rather crap safety video, I was quietly freaking out. I am not usually a fast person. Why run when you can walk? It’s prettier.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words (although it takes up a lot more PC memory) so here are some snaps of the future of Formula One:
And here is Team [insert cool name here] thrashing the track. Well, Maxim thrashed. So did Ellen and Ross. Isobel and I, on the other hand, should have received trophies for being the most careful drivers out there, with the most improvement. Who cares if we were always the two slowest people? I shaved seventeen seconds off my first lap time, Bel got twenty.
Twenty.
Beat that, Mr. Hamilton.
Okay, I would love to post more photos, but I’ve strained my wrist and hand doing physics homework/obsessive diary writing/go-karting, so I’m going to make an unofficial Part Three when I can type and click ‘Insert into Post’ without wincing.
Isobel says that she’s got bruised legs from the karting. I would like to point out that a reason I crashed about six times was because my feet could hardly reach the pedals. Which were the wrong way round. And there was no reverse and no wing mirrors.
