Day 2 of my travel blog

So today I am due to speak about how Christmas never ends, plants, Japanese and the perfect score.

The following picture I discovered when I first arrived at Disney World, quite a nice touch you might say. I say its slightly depressing.

IT NEVER ENDS!!!! Although it does raise an interesting question, when do you start planning for Christmas? When I was younger, Christmas always seemed to come earlier and earlier, but since I started doing A-levels, I've not had time to notice until almost the week beforehand. When does Christmas start? Nowadays, I tend to count from the day after Thanksgiving (How Americanized of me) when Black Friday starts. But it was an interesting question I posed myself. Comment with your opinion, I'd be curious to know. For those who know me, for the last 3 months I've been learning Japanese and decided to use this trip as an opportunity to brush up on my hiragana and (little bits of) kanji vocabulary, using lame methods I used for French and German. For those obsessed with me to the nth power, there's a little shot of my knee in the top left hand corner ;) it actually had very little improvement as I've yet to start covering kanji and katakana in any way, the Japanese bit at the start was easy enough, and the 'mi' katakana character was simple enough, not many other characters were understandable to me, I shall have to work harder. A ride I was on broke down halfway through, co-incidentally right by the area where you can get the most points (It was modelled on an arcade) and I managed to max out the point counter (Thus garnering the top rank) Now photos of plants, Central Florida seems to be a fascinating place horticulturally, it would appear that most plants seem to take to the soil and the climate (Except Alpine stuff, but well yeah, you wouldn't expect it to would you?) Below lie some of my favourite photos of flowers and plants I saw. Yes I've posted a photo of what would appear to be cabbage, and to my best knowledge, it is but look at the pretty structure, and the veins of the thing, I've got a closeup of those next. How can that not be slightly cool? Disgusting to eat yes, but very cool for observation. My final photo for the day I like because, looking back on it, it seems to have taken on a 'Yellow Brick Road' quality to it, initially being able to see individual flowers and stems, the stem is lost in the distance and takes on a surface-like quality. Coming tomorrow, poinsettiae (Or poinsttias depending on what the plural is)

Christmas '08

Well, I was awoken this morning by screams of some sort, apparently someone was on the Wii Fit and was shocked to find that their net weight loss this week had 'only' been 5 pounds. Now this may have set the tone however not me, I awoke, bleary eyed from writing my previous post last night determined not to let any earthly concerns and bickering ruin this one day. My brother is currently playing his new piano to great applause, it lends a slightly gothic atmosphere to today's proceedings as he insists on playing the Tetris theme at a slow tempo on the church organ setting, apparently this is how the Tetris theme should be played. I was the one who wrapped his piano present, took me an hour to wrap it, and it was damn good wrapping I'll tell you now, I winced as he ripped it off in 10 seconds, how I'll deal with it when I'm wrapping bikes and stuff that Santa had to drop off early because of his workload for my own kids I don't know...

I do believe I've done throughly well this year. The gifts I recieved include:-

Apple stock, that's right, I'm a filthy Apple shareholder now, I profit off all those fanboys and pretentious losers buying stuff they don't know how to use.

From Mr Tom Jones

Apologies for the shakiness, the quality of the photo is a tad poor (Damn iPhone direct picasa uploading service being so convenient) I blame the light myself.

A Colbert Christmas (The Greatest Gift of all), no notes necessary

Tom Jones Greatest Hits.... I guess that'll teach me to mention him on my blog and talk about him incessantly for 3 weeks afterwards, it's now on my iPhone and will keep me happy on my travels.

And of course from Miss Nastassia Dhanraj (Who seems to know me far better than I gave her credit for) got me HANNAH MONTANA STATIONARY :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D I've got loads of stuff to do on planes and such and I'll be using this stuff when I need to write something so (thanks Nastassia)

My Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Ian got us awesome presents again this year (They're presents are usually pretty awesome, but the last few years they've stepped up a few gears) We got recycled beer bottle glasses, beaker and wine glass style, they're so awesome I had to put a photo in:-

From Mr Tom Jones

As for me, I'm off 'cross the oceans, where I'll end up, goodness knows. But I've got an ideas or two, the Jonas Brothers are at Times Square this New Years Eve..... might be interesting... Doctor Who was brilliant, I am a hardcore Doctor Who fan, I particularly liked the little nods to Dickens throughout this years Christmas special. Photos from my travels will follow, whenever the heck I can find a Wi-Fi connection....

Fare thee well.

Christmas

Quite a bit has happened since I last posted so I shall give a summary, no new photos I'm afraid.

I got my stuff at College sorted, my grades are significantly up from last year, solids 1sts every time now. An external viewer might say that I've finally shaken off my Sixth Form slump in form and am back to peak performance and I can see why they would take that view.

All of a sudden, people have developed a certain fixation with setting me up with women, apparently I am a thorough gentleman who would any woman would be proud to be associated with. Pity no one's told any of the ladies so far. But despite this, and despite my usual hostility to the idea of a blind date I've accepted these offers. I've always been interested in meeting new people and this would provide the ideal forum for meeting people I would never meet under normal circumstances. Either way I win.

Lab presentations were recently as well. My lab partner and I did our presentation on the Michelson interferometer 10 minutes of preparation beforehand has gotten us a minimum of 68% based on snooping around King's. I discovered merely 3 days before my formal written Lab report was due in that protocol forbade doing both the presentation and report on the same experiment. No one told me that until 3 days before it was due in. In the end I managed to better my original work and complete something on Fresnel Diffraction.

I tried my hand (errrr feet) at ice skating at Alexandra Palace (Map link here)after several attempts at skating (And 3 hours) I finally managed to wobble across, there were people practicing for one of those TV ice skating shows and I was amazed at how they did it. I have a new-found respect for ice skaters now.

I also had an opportunity to meet the friends of a very close personal friend of mine, all of whom were very nice, exactly as described. One of them was even a Hannah Montana fan! I do hope our paths cross again in the future so that we might continue our discussion as to who runs the country, I keep getting new ideas I want to test out.

Well, I'm out of the country for a few days, hopefully I'll be able to post when I'm out there, I'll try and post to twitter while I'm at it. There'll be photos and such. Oh and if anyone wants to know what I really thought would be a great christmas present, a red cape and goggles wouldn't go far amiss.....