New Shoes!

My family and I went to London today for some good old fashioned Christmas fun. My Dad was awesome and bought me these trainers (sneakers if you're American) of the Reebok variety.

I love them.

I love him.

Shoes are clearly the way to my heart.

(and yes, I know the photo is sideways, deal with it)

Merry Christmas!!!

Holidays

Gah!
I've never been very good at holidays. I don't like being lifted out of my routine to which my body ad mind has become quite contempt to be bombarded with lots of television, food and family all at once.
Don't get me wrong, I love seeing family and friends again. But I don't like reajusting to life back at home.

God, if this is too much a shock to the system then how the hell am I going to survive moving to China next September?! I'm gonna be fucked!

I had also promised myself that I would work hard over this break cuz I have exams in mid-January. This has proven less than sucessful. I have done some work but not nearly enough revision as I had wanted. To be fair once Christmas finishes I should be able to knuckle down. I just don't want to screw these up. I have a chance of doing really well if I apply myself. Fingers crossed.

With Christmas I am genuinly looking forward to the giving and the reaction of people getting the presents I have got them than the ones I am going to recieve. Mainly because I know my presents arn't going to be what they used to be, maybe also because I am getting older and more miserable. :P

I am going to Bristol for Christmas and we'll be traveling down Christmas Day. Hoping for empty roads. We go there every other year cuz that's where my mum's side of the family is from. It's fun. I am hoping to be getting some footage and annoy people with my camera mucho this festive season.

This is all
I am tired. Insomnia ftw!

hugs
<3

I am Weak

I went into town today with the expressed desire to just buy myself some lunch and then leave. I ended up paying way too much for my lunch and, after accidentally falling into HMV, two albums and a piece of Gorillaz artwork.

I am weak.

To be fair, the CDs were the Gorillaz 'Demon Days' for £4 and a double disc set of Jeff Buckley's 'Grace' and 'Mystery White Boy' for £6. I am currently listening to Grace and orgasming all over the place.

I subsequently saw some amazing limited edition Gorillaz art work on my way out but said to myself, 'No Jazza! Think of the starving children in Africa!'

I of coarse left the shop, when to the ATM, got out the £5 I needed to buy it, re-entered HMV and purchased it.

But come on! It was marked down to a Fiver from £18! and with a student discount and lower VAT it was a bargain.
Plus it's effin beautiful!


P.S. Can you tell I have figured out how to use the picture function on my video camera now. :P

Just Plain Gross

This is the communal area where I live. We are a flat of blokes and this is what has resulted in not having a stern woman figure telling us we are dirty and disgusting:


I just wish I had some slef respect... or that I lived with a female... Not that I am being sexist and saying that I would make a girl flatmate clean up. Cuz I wouldn't. If she wanted I would help!

-EDIT- and today we failed an inspection, surprise surprise.

Happy Teacher Time

So, I know I usually use this blog in quite an emo fashion, to moan and complain, but today I thought I would express some happiness. I taught one of my English classes yesterday and it was an effin ball, I had genuinly forgotten how much I had missed teaching, planning and being in front of a class and seeing them get it, it's the greatest feeling. Of corse there are those that don't want to work, that will get annoyed when I come over to see how they are getting on (one of them tried to hide in her bag... you're 13 for Christ's sake!) but all in all it was a really sucessful class.

Also, because my group are all pre pubescent girls I got Christmas cards, one of them had forgotten my name (the call me Mr. Jazza <3) and so put in the card, "To our 'handsome' teacher." Not sure why she chose to put handsome on quotation marks but I still thought it was really cute.
Good news in terms of teaching as well; one of the teachers for the ESOL classes (which are the ones they run for adults) can't teach on Sunday so they have asked me to stand in and they're going to pay me and everything! I am proper nervous though, it's a three hour class and the longest I have taught before now is only an hour and a half, but it should be good experience, I'll learn alot from it.

In other news I have started planning a story that I have had in my head for donkey's. It's the first time I have actually put down any thought I have had about anything story related, mainly because I hate writing, I have to do paragraphs in short bursts and then have a cup of tea or something.
So far I think the best way to describe it is a cross between 1984, Firefly, Tank Girl and Terry Pratchet with a little bit of Elektra Natchios thrown in. I'm not sure what the outcome of it will be, part of me likes the idea of graphic novel, part of me likes anime, part of me like plain old normal book novel. However, the outcome will probably be nothing.

Also, I am doing something very risky here, this year, my theme for Christmas presents is mugs (which i will then customise for each person), and I am just over half way finishing most of them. I am pretty sure most of the people affected by these presents do not read this blog, and even if they do they won't be able to tell who's is who, or the detail, so here is a pic of them, I am quite proud:

Old Jazza - New Jazza

Warning, this is very long and even I am not too sure what it is about.

Welcome to Jazza's train of thought.

*WARNING* emo levels are high

I am currently using any excuse under the sun to distract myself from a Chinese essay I am currently about 2/3 of the way through. It's my last chance to get a proper decent mark on for my Chinese writing module in that is that last of three chances I get (they take the highest mark you get over the term and the last two have been distinctly average) but I'm just not feeling it. Another low 2-1 me thinks.

I am currently thinking of the vlog I did just yesterday and am content. I was genuinely nervous about it when I was recording, feeling like I was very out of practice, but it turned out well. I joked about it but it was what I originally did on YouTube and it was nice to go visit my roots again.

A consequence to doing a vlog after such a long time was that a lot of my very old vlogs came up in the description and good god they were cringe worthy. I was, quite frankly, a great big self promotional whore. As well as being distinctly average at editing. I watched one specific one in which I was over the moon about reaching 90 subscribers, which in retrospect is a very arbitrary number to be so happy about. I say how happy I am and then proceed to whore myself for a large majority of the video saying why people should subscribe to me and tell as many people as they can that I exist. And this was me just over a year ago.

I can't stand people who do that, just whore themselves, focusing on the subscriber and views numbers rather than their content and the people behind the screen names that are gracious enough to comment. I even deliberately never ask people to subscribe because I think it's rude. Have I really changed that much in 14 months?

Saying it like that 14 month is a reasonably long time. I mean, a baby could have been conceived and born just over one and a half times by then! Looking back this year, with Uni, YouTube, teaching and holding down God knows how many jobs over the summer just gone must have changed me.

I feel older now... which is a stupid thing to say because I am. But I feel like I can hold my own in a debate, a conversation with practically anyone whether it be my family, my subscribers or a room full of the top people from the News of the World (I never told you about that... woops).

I used to be a bit of a blunder. People knew that I was kinda smart in that I had a brain between my ears but I was always seen as a bit dopey, a bit of a screw ball. But now I have this voice that people listen too and value as a genuine opinion. It's nice. I guess that's why I was apprehensive about vlogging again, I didn't want to go back to being the hyper, goofy one.

I was invited to a Christmas do that my old school does every year for ex-students and I was elated that I wouldn't have to go due to the fact my term finishes too late because I didn't want to just be Jazza again. The Jazza in the heads of all the people I used to know at school is no where near the Jazza that exists now.

But I guess I'm allowed to be goofy-me. The majority of people who commented on my latest vlog told me that I didn't need a new channel because they like that I'm not just this robot that talks about news like a TV anchor. I think I should embrace old Jazza more. But no matter what anyone says, I am not going to that Christmas party.

Keep Safe
Jaz

*EDIT* So, from essays, to being a whore, to being goofy, to being listened to, to Christmas parties... My mental process is... how do the French say?
Merde

A Vlog

In which I asked the peeps who watch me whether I should have a separate channel for vlogs... to which the resounded, 'NO!'

I was really nervous about posting this, it has been a long time since I made a vlog and I felt a bit silly.


It also featured two Chinese pastries; one shaped like a cat, the other like a boob.

Hacked

I always wondered how it feels to be hacked, seeing the likes of Jaydee, the 5AGirls and sxephil go through it gets the mind thinking. Now it happened to me, and it's bloody hilarious!

Firstly I practically gave them my password on a silver platter. I got a message from the fiveawesomeguys channel posing as Charlie saying that they wanted to upload a promotional video on my channel. I of coarse said yes and proceeded to give them my password... yes, I know, je suis thick as shit!

I remember thinking, this is weird, doesn't seem like something Charlie and they boys would do, but no, my brain was too busy concentrating on the mugs I was painting. More on them later.

the channel posing as the guys btw was fiveawseomeguys, with the s and e switched round. They clearly knew that I am dyslexic and don't notice letter order problems. :P

So now they have control of my channel, of the number one reporter in the UK (I still don't count Jaydee). In their position what would you do? upload a video promoting yourself? Delete all the videos? Leave offensive comments on other people's walls? Change the colour of the home page, change the profile description to say my name is Mr. HorneyBush and transform the channel to Guru?
Well apparently they thought the latter would cause the most destruction... I'm thinking they weren't planning on this little gimmick working and me handing over the password so easily. To be fair until now even I didn't think I would ever be that stupid, shows ya huh?!

All in all I am just sitting back and enjoying watching what they are doing and tinkering with. It's all quite amusing. I just want my channel back so I can watch my subscriptions and change myself back to reporter... I think I may keep my name as Mr. HorneyBush.

When all is said and done, I know YouTube can fix whatever they try and do.

Drop by my channel in the next few hours and have a look at what hilarity these people are cooking up.

x

Roll on Christmas

Good God I am shit at blogging. How long has it been?... can't be bothered to look so we will say a good few weeks. I don't know how Alex and the like do it.

I seem to say that I am extremely busy in every post I put up here, this is probably because I genuinely am, but now I am even more so than ever.

I am now volunteering two days a week at WaiYin which is an organisation that provides a community for Chinese immigrants, specifically women and children. I am teaching English to a group of giggly girls on Wednesdays for an hour and tutor a kid with 'learning difficulties' on Saturdays, also for an hour. I have also just landed my first payed teaching job, teaching a girl from a Malaysian family a couple of hours a week. I met the family for the first time yesterday and they were having a domestic whilst interviewing me, multi-tasking ftw! So far as I can tell the argument was over gravy... no joke.

I am also falling behind in my languages, mostly Catalan and Chinese, my brain just feels like it can't take in any more vocabulary. I'm also not sure if I am being lazy or not, putting in enough work... I guess my grades will soon tell.

Under this stress I have kinda started smoking socially again, don't jump down my throat about it, I know it silly and shitty, I just need to relax somehow. I haven't had a proper night out in about a month. I haven't been to the gym regularly for a couple of weeks now either, is this a slippery slope?

I am just desperate for a holiday of some kind (he says just weeks after coming back from America). I just want to not have to get up for anything for a while.

For the reason of my overloaded-ness I had to turn down working with Dennis on his new project for davisfleetwood, which would have been amazing but I just can't be dealing any more than I have to right now, I am struggling to keep rhyming afloat tbh.

I don't mean to be moany, I know for a fact other people on YouTube are having a much worse time of it than me right now but bluuuuuuuurgh!

In other news I went to see a stage production of one of my favourite Chinese novels, Monkey: Journey to the West, which involved a collaboration with a Chinese theatre troop and the guys behind the Gorillaz. It was awesome, but something was missing from the actual show, I had such high hopes for it and it just seemed to lack... something. The x-factor? lolz

I am also hoping to go and see La Clique with Paul at some point before Christmas which should be fun. It's a variety show with women doing amazing things with their sexual organs, strip dances and people rolling around in baths, amongst other things. If we go it should be awesome.

Roll on Christmas.

Jaz
x