Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

29 January 2009

The Day Before the Day…

Filed under: Forward Thinking,Reflection — Tags: , , — Ben @ 8:20 pm

So, the day before school starts… How joyful.

I have effectively started school a week early due to the music camp that ran last Sunday for three days. Also, I was at school yesterday to help with orienting new people (and some small kids). Therefore, the getting up early has begun.

I really don’t know what to think about the time between this summer and the first term. Should it have been more fun, or more work?

But anyway, it’s all over. There is 10 months to go, and many hours of work. I hope for the best for me and everyone.

BTW, the title of this post is a song from Dido.

22 January 2009

Skins: First Generation v Second Generation

Filed under: Forward Thinking — Tags: , , — Ben @ 8:21 pm

After yesterday’s start to my ‘memory dump’, there has been some criticism to what I have written. That’s fine, but I thought I would clarify what I wrote.

When I said ‘voucher’ as a gift idea, it was only meant to be an idea, and not a solid decision.

Anyway, next topic.

Well, the third season of Skins is about to start airing on E4 this week. I’m sort of a fanatic, so I guess the reason I am writing this is because I want to share my analysis with someone, out there. So here goes.

(Most of the base information is from Wikipedia, which is distilled from the Skins website.)

Creator Jamie Brittain said that there were some similarities between the characters from each generation. Some of them are very clear.

Tony’s sister Effy is now the leader of her group of friends in season 3. Tony’s best friend is Sid. Effy’s best friend is Pandora. Sid and Pandora share a few traits, such as the need to lose their virginity as soon as possible. I think Pandora is a little bit less ‘in the know’, but we’ll just have to watch the series.

Freddie, JJ and Cook are three best friends. Their personalities make for a brilliant contrast. One is shy, but great with magic tricks, one is a weed-smoking skater and the other is charismatic and sociable. This friendship is similar to Maxxie, Anwar and Chris. Their personalities are reflected in other characters though. It will be interesting to see how these three will turn out throughout the series.

Thomas is polite and kind person. He has just emigrated from the DR Congo. He can be seen as similar to Anwar, as he is the character with the stand out characteristic. (Anwar’s characteristic is the fact he is Muslim)

New in season 3 are twins Katie and Emily. There is also a brother-sister relationship present; Karen is Freddie’s sister.

Those are the main similarities in season 3. I’m sure that it will be a great season, no matter what anyone said, yeah?

20 January 2009

How I select birthday gifts for people

Filed under: Forward Thinking — Tags: , , — Ben @ 8:26 pm

With my final year in high school and the HSC coming up, I decided I needed to clear my brain of all the loose thoughts that exist inside. So, here is the perfect place to write them all down. I’d really love some input to these, because I think there are some interesting topics out there.

Over the last year, (while I still had a job), I gave many birthday gifts out to people. Some were interesting, some were plain, but there was a common way that I picked these. I have only just worked it out now, so here goes.

First, I think of some characteristics for a particular person. Usually these are in the form of single words that describe them. They might be interesting facts about that person, say, their favourite colour. From this I generate one word or phrase on which to base my gift on.

Second, using the known characteristics and that word or phrase, I go out to the wide world and pick my gift to that person. This is where all the usual factors in selecting gifts come in, i.e. cost, size, nature, etc… Then comes the waiting time to that person’s birthday.

Third, I give the gift to the person and observe their reaction.

Let me demonstrate with an example.

Name: PS (Name changed for security)
Descriptors: Favourite colour green, light, smart, wants to be lazy after HSC, quiet…
One word or phrase: Inspiration
Gift idea: Something from a design studio, voucher

I won’t kill the surprise for this person by revealing what the gift is, but I hope you get the general idea of how I go about selecting gifts!

18 January 2009

Chocolate Cafés in Sydney

Filed under: review — Tags: , , , — Ben @ 12:37 pm

Updated: Max Brenner review

Over the past few holidays, I have tried several chocolate cafés in Sydney. There are three that I have been to. Now, if you don’t mind, here is the boring bit about how I reviewed each of them.

The product that I reviewed from each café is a take-away iced milk chocolate. Each café gets rated out of 5 on three things: Service, Food and Value. Food is how good the drink is.

So, here goes.
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