For today’s Christmas themed entry I have a bizarre little anecdote for you, one which contains an (un)intriguing medical mystery.
    It was a Saturday during mid-December (2010) and my family and I were watching a Korean film before we went to bed. The film was pretty good actually, I mean, it did featuring pretty shocking things like people having their teeth pulled out, men eating live octopi, and probably nudity too, but it still managed to be a good film, so I guess that says something for it.
    Anyway, the film ended and everyone went off to bed. I went into the bathroom so that I could brush my teeth before going to sleep, but when I was in there something very strange happened. Seemingly for no reason, I went completely cross-eyed. My newfound cross-eyed-ness meant it was rather difficult to see properly, so I wandered over to the bathroom mirror to see just how bad my eyes were. When looking at my reflection I was able to make my eyes normal again by aligning them with what I saw in the mirror, but this far from solved the problem. I’d become very dizzy when I went cross-eyed, and while my eyes may have been straight again,  it was almost as if the two of them weren’t in sync with one another, I still couldn’t really see properly.
    I staggered into my bedroom, and planned to turn off my laptop. I realised I was still on MSN talking to somebody so I said goodbye and tried to sign out. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t just by balance and vision that had been impaired; it seemed as if my mind wasn’t working properly either. As you probably know, to use MSN you have to type in a password, but, for some reason, I was thinking I needed to do that as well to sign off. So I mistyped my password to my friend about four times (luckily they didn’t realise what I was doing) and got increasingly confused as to why it wasn’t signing out. In the end I just held down the power button on the laptop so that it turned off.
    The next morning I still hadn’t fully recovered, I still had a strange feeling of dizziness and of being light headed, so I felt a little odd while we were all putting up the Christmas decorations. Luckily, by the evening it had totally passed. But this is by far one of the strangest things ever to have happened to me, the best way for me to describe what initially happened was that it felt like being drunk (a feeling I am ashamed to admit I have experienced before), but how on Earth could this have happened? I guess we’ll never know, and I guess it’s unimportant too since I’ve been fine since then.

For today’s Christmassy entry, I have decided to post a piece of Christmassy writing of mine from 2004. For an English lesson, I was put in a group of people and together we were given the task of making a Christmas themed magazine. One part of the magazine I had to write was an article on the history of Christmas trees… This is what I wrote. As you’ll soon see, I quickly got distracted and wrote a very weird/random/bad story using some characters of mine. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the writing of my eleven year old self! So here’s my (entirely unedited) festive story ‘The History of Xmas Trees’:


One day in the 7th century there was a monk from Devonshire who went to Germany to teach about God. He was very good; he spent a lot of time in Thuringia that became the first place to have Christmas decorations. Legend has it that he put out a fir tree and called it “God’s Tree.” Trees got decorations when Martin Luther put candles on a tree to explain how stars work.
“So that is the history of Christmas trees.” Said Mr. Suttonman then Fox 2jr threw a football at Mr. Suttonman “That’s boring teach us about the Grinch!” said Fox 2jr “No… that’s… boring.” Said Mr. Suttonman, Meanwhile in a huge robot Farther Christmas Dr. Z was thinking up an evil plan “I shall pour a powder over the town that would bring all the Christmas trees to life and turn them evil MWHAHAHAHAAAA!”
Fox 2 was at his house selling Christmas trees when a huge Robot Farther Christmas flew over in a sleigh being pulled by robot dragons and then a load of powder came down and the trees grew into giants and started destroying the town. Bobby ran off to Professor Nerb to tell him about the tragedy but he did already know because he did live in the town.
“The only way we can stop them is with Farther Christmas but if he was a giant and it’s such a coincidence that I just invented a pill that makes you a giant.” Said Professor Nerb so they went to the North Pole. “Um Father Christmas would you stop these giant Christmas trees or my whole town will be dead… and after all it is Christmas.” Said Bobby “O.K.” said Farther Christmas so he ate the pills then grew giant and threw the pills away and went to Fox City and killed the trees.
The pills he threw away went to the planet Unowat and the Unowatiens ate and had a war with Earth many were killed.

_On the first day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Club ladies attacking me!

On the second day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the third day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the fourth day of Christmas,
I wrote an entry on,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the fifth day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the sixth day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Six guys a-kissing,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the seventh day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Seven cows a-chasing,
Six guys a-kissing,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the eighth day of Chritmas,
This was my entry,
Eight wasps a-stinging,
Seven cows a-chasing,
Six guys a-kissing,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the ninth day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Nine Egans falling,
Eight wasps a-stinging,
Seven cows a-chasing,
Six guys a-kissing,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the tenth day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Ten dolls a-creeping,
Nine Egans falling,
Eight wasps a-stinging,
Seven cows a-chasing,
Six guys a-kissing,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the eleventh day of Christmas,
This was my entry,
Eleven bloggers blogging,
Ten dolls a-creeping,
Nine Egans falling,
Eight wasps a-stinging,
Seven cows a-chasing,
Six guys a-kissing,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

On the twelth day of Chirstmas,
This was my entry,
Twelve Chatroulette weirdos,
Eleven bloggers blogging,
Ten dolls a-creeping,
Nine Egans falling,
Eight wasps a-stinging,
Seven cows a-chasing,
Six guys a-kissing,
Five crazy parties,
Four failing jokes,
Three water bottles,
Two kinds of cheese,
and club ladies attacking me!

_ Just a quick little shout out for today’s entry. Basically, the Elf Yourself page is a fun little site where you can make festive music videos featuring your family and friends. It really can be quite amusing, so if you ever have a free few minutes on your hands I suggest you try elfing yourself and your friends, I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Link

_ Just a couple of days ago, after finishing my day at the university and buying some food ready for Christmas dinner, I got on the bus and was ready to ride home. To my pleasant surprise, an old friend of mine was riding on the bus as well, so I was able to chat with him on there as I rode. However, an unpleasant surprise was that the bus was extremely packed with Christmas shoppers, a significant amount of people, including my friend and I, had to stand due to lack of seats. Things only got worse from then on, more and more people piled onto the bus. It seemed that every single bus stop had a Christmas shopper waiting to get the bus home.
    Before the bus had even gotten out of Bath (Bath being the city I was in) the bus seemingly had far more people in it than was the amount they were safely supposed to hold. It was a very uncomfortable situation. When we got to a stop, somebody had pushed the button so that they could get off. However, the bus was so full, that it took them a very long time to get from the back end of the bus (where he was sitting) to the door. Meanwhile, as the poor man tried to escape from the bus and get to his stop, another man was stood near the door and becoming more and more frustrated by the number of people on the bus. When several minutes had passed and that poor man had still not made it to the door, the man at the front did something very heroic. In order to make more room for everybody else on the bus, even just a small amount, he got off of the bus and waited at the bus stop for the next bus to come along, heroically sacrificing his position on the bus for the greater good of every other passenger. A real example of Christmastime good will. I wish I could have told him how much I admired his selfless action.

_ I was going to give today’s entry the title ‘Bus Etiquette’ but then I decided on ‘Bus Behaviour’ due to the added alliterative appeal. Anyway, I don’t like to have my blog as a place for me to complain about things, though I’m slightly worried that that is how this entry will come across (sorry if that is the case).
    Today’s post starts with an anecdote. After a long day of working hard at the university, it was time to go home. I was waiting in line for the bus, and ahead of me was another regular guy. However, there was a subtle difference between he and I, and that subtle difference was that he had a rather sizeable circle of friends (three to be specific) who happened to be walking along beside the bus line. This is what happened, I’ve decided to name the guy waiting in line ‘Norman’:

Dante: Oh hey, Norman.
Ermentrude: Oh yeah! Hey Normy.
Gus: Yo, sup bro?
Norman: Alright homies? Shanking much lately?
Dante: Yeah, we shanking!
Ermentrude: This is for real bro!!
Norman: Oh no, my man Guss here done knocked it out of the park!
All of them: Woo!

(or something like that)

With that, their conversation had come to an end, so I assumed that Dante, Ermantrude and Gus would then all head to the back of the line, but they all then took the three spaces in line behind Norman…

Me: (thinking) Hmm, maybe I should have a word with those three people and ask them politely to move to the back of the line because they’re stealing spaces which aren’t rightfully theirs… Actually, nah, that’s be rude. It’s best if I just leave it, after all, this doesn’t directly affect me in any way!

Five minutes later or so, the bus arrived and the long line of people slowly walked on into the bus. Norman got in, Dante got in, Ermentrude got in, then Gus got in. I was behind them in the line, so now it was my turn to get on I stepped up into the bus and approached the driver, ticket in hand. I was excited to get in so that I could then go home and read books (or whatever else it is that I do in my free time). Then this heartbreaking exchange happened:

Me: Here’s my ticket (smiling happily)
Driver: Sorry mate, the bus is too full, you can’t get on.
Me: Oh, okay… (gets out of bus, smile suffers internal collapse)

Now, is it just me, or is there something wrong with this situation? Shouldn’t the correct rules for queuing at the bus stop be that your friends are perfectly free to chat with you in the line if they are not intending to ride the bus as well, but if they are, you have to move to the back of the line to talk to them. Otherwise, the people with no friends who are near the back of the line are given the further misfortune of having to be further back due to the overly popular people.
    Furthermore, I’ve noticed another immorality related to the buses at my university. Often (due to the time of year) it is cold and raining, which is lucky for the people at the front of the line because they get to hide from it in a bus shelter. But then that means the people at the back of the line firstly get soaked while those at the front stay dry and, secondly, that after already being wet, they have to stand up on the bus because the dry people already have the seats. It seems slightly unfair to me.
    But like I say, this isn’t supposed to be a complainy blog! Riding on the bus is fun usually, with the gentle vibrations, comfy seats and so on! These are just a couple of things that bother me slightly…