Journal – January 2004

We’ve made it to another year of journal posts. This month I stayed with a friend at Bournemouth University for a few days, continued my own studies at Exeter University including another exam, got addicted to another video game, and bought a few more DVDs. Plus there’s another top 100 list, for which I take no responsibility if you willingly explore the links and come away with any unwanted earworms! So let’s crack on with it, and I hope you enjoy!

Thursday January 1, 2004

Happy New Year!

Well, here we are in 2004. We didn’t go anywhere last night, just stayed indoors and watched Jools Holland’s Hootenanny on the TV. We had champagne too, and there were fireworks nearby that we could see, so we got a free display!

And as for the year ahead, I’ll be finishing uni and hopefully getting a job as a result, and I’ll turn 21 in August as well. But that’s all in the future. Right now I’ve got one and a half weeks left of my holiday, and Nan goes home soon. And next week I’ll be going to stay with my best mate at Bournemouth University, so that should be good fun.

Friday January 2, 2004

Channel 4 have been continuing their obsession with Top 10 and Top 100 list shows lately, all of which are voted for by the public. For instance, we’ve had the 100 Greatest TV Treats of 2003 – which was won, not surprisingly, by the England World Cup Rugby victory. There’s also been the 100 Greatest Musicals, won by Grease, and it was good to see Rocky Horror reach Number 7. And there’s been the 100 Greatest Sexy Moments, won by Honey Ryder emerging from the sea in Dr No.

And then last night we had the 100 Worst Pop Records of all time. There are certainly some awful tunes in there, most of which I agree with. But there are also a few good songs which don’t really deserve to be included. So as I’m a music fan, I thought I’d print the full list. See if you agree with them:

1. The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum) – The Cheeky Girls 
2. The Millennium Prayer – Cliff Richard
3. Agadoo – Black Lace
4. Candle In The Wind 1997 – Elton John
5. Fast Food Song – The Fast Food Rockers
6. Mr Blobby – Mr Blobby
7. Because We Want To – Billie Piper
8. Barbie Girl – Aqua
9. Achy Breaky Heart – Billy Ray Cyrus
10. Jenny From The Block – Jennifer Lopez
11. Orville’s Song – Keith Harris & Orville
12. Look At Me – Geri Halliwell
13. Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini – Bombalurina featuring Timmy Mallett
14. (Everything I Do) I Do It For You – Bryan Adams
15. Sacred Trust – One True Voice
16. Against All Odds – Mariah Carey & Westlife
17. Who Let The Dogs Out? – Baha Men
18. 5, 6, 7, 8 – Steps
19. Living Next Door To Alice (Who The Fuck Is Alice?) – Smokie featuring Roy Chubby Brown
20. Anyone Can Fall In Love – Anita Dobson
21. There’s No One Quite Like Grandma – St. Winifred’s School Choir
22. Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’ – The Teletubbies
23. Earth Song – Michael Jackson
24. The Lady In Red – Chris de Burgh
25. My Heart Will Go On – Celine Dion
26. No Way No Way – Vanilla
27. Wannabe – The Spice Girls
28. For All Time – Catherine Zeta Jones
29. Mama – Who Da Man? – Richard Blackwood
30. Can I Touch You… There? – Michael Bolton
31. The Birdie Song – The Tweets
32. Suspicious Minds – Gareth Gates
33. Diamond Lights – Glenn Hoddle & Chris Waddle
34. Lucky – Britney Spears
35. Long Haired Lover From Liverpool – Little Jimmy Osmond
36. Believe – Cher
37. Macarena – Los Del Rio
38. Boys (Summertime Love) – Sabrina
39. Just Say No – Grange Hill Cast
40. Y Viva España – Sylvia Vrethammar
41. Unchained Melody – Robson & Jerome
42. Can We Fix It? – Bob The Builder
43. Fog On The Tyne (Revisited) -Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne & Lindisfarne
44. Shaddap You Face – Joe Dolce
45. Chick, Chick, Chicken – Natalie Casey
46. Ice Ice Baby – Vanilla Ice
47. Touch Me (I Want Your Body) – Samantha Fox
48. Grandad – Clive Dunn
49. Puppy Love – Donny Osmond
50. Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday – Boney M
51. I Will Always Love You – Whitney Houston
52. Dick-A-Dum-Dum (King’s Road) – Des O’Connor
53. Girl You Know It’s True – Milli Vanilli
54. Out Of Your Mind – True Steppers & Dane Bowers featuring Victoria Beckham
55. Mysterious Girl – Peter Andre
56. Back Home – England World Cup Squad
57. Every Loser Wins – Nick Berry
58. MMMBop – Hanson
59. Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep – Middle of the Road
60. I Wanna Be A Hippy – Technohead
61. Don’t It Make You Feel Good – Stefan Dennis
62. I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) – Meat Loaf
63. We All Stand Together – Paul McCartney & the Frog Chorus
64. Star Trekkin’ – The Firm
65. Perfect Moment – Martine McCutcheon
66. Doop – Doop
67. We Are The World – USA for Africa
68. Give Me Your Body – The Chippendales
69. I Should Be So Lucky – Kylie Minogue
70. Cotton Eye Joe – Rednex
71. The Floral Dance – Terry Wogan
72. I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper – Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip
73. We Will Rock You – Five & Queen
74. Dirrty – Cristina Aguilera
75. Wind Beneath My Wings – Bette Midler
76. No Limit – 2 Unlimited
77. I Wanna Sex U Up – Color Me Badd
78. The Laughing Gnome – David Bowie
79. Love Is All Around – Wet Wet Wet
80. So Macho – Sinitta
81. American Pie – Madonna
82. Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? – Rod Stewart
83. We Built This City – Starship
84. Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble – PJ & Duncan
85. Love And Tears – Naomi Campbell
86. Save Your Love – Renée & Renato
87. Saturday Night – Whigfield
88. Hello – Lionel Richie
89. Remember You’re A Womble – The Wombles
90. MacArthur Park – Richard Harris
91. I’d Rather Jack – The Reynolds Girls
92. Vindaloo – Fat Les
93. Ebony And Ivory – Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder
94. My Toot Toot – Denise LaSalle
95. Ebeneezer Goode – The Shamen
96. Making Your Mind Up – Bucks Fizz
97. Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid II
98. Rabbit – Chas & Dave
99. C’est La Vie – B*witched
100. Spaceman – Babylon Zoo

Friday January 9, 2004

I’m back from Bournemouth. It’s been a good few days, and it was great to see my best friend again. I arrived at the Bournemouth University campus on Tuesday night, and we had a pizza at the university bar, which was delicious. While we were there, a lady approached us and asked if we would do an interview about our sight problems, for a university radio show she’s working on. So we agreed, and we did it the next morning. Also on Wednesday we went to a meeting of a community volunteer group that my friend is a member of, and they do all sorts of interesting projects and activities.

On Wednesday night, he took me to a couple of nightclubs, which was good fun. They were having a retro night in one of them, so they had various songs that we remembered. Then on Thursday a mate came down from Portsmouth to join us. We had a look around the town and then went ten pin bowling.

We also saw Bruce Almighty on DVD during my stay. I’d never seen it before, but it’s a good film, starring Jim Carrey. it’s light-hearted, funny, and a good way to kill an evening, and makes some good points too. And we played a PS2 game called Burnout 2, mainly on the Crash stages, which are very addictive and great fun.

My mate’s got a nice house, which he shares with two others. He’s on the ground floor, with an en suite bathroom. The only gripe I’d have is that the lighting in that area is terrible at night, so it was hard to find his house – and that was with a taxi driver helping me! But talking of taxis, they are very good in Bournemouth. There are taxi ranks in all the important spots, or you can phone for a taxi which will arrive very quickly. All the taxi drivers I met were very polite and helpful, and the fares were reasonable. And all in all Bournemouth is a nice place. I’ll hopefully be going back there again to visit later in the year.

Tuesday January 13, 2004

Things are going fine after my first two days back at university. We’ve pretty much finished International Accounting now, and my exam’s on the 29th. It means I have one less subject to attend next week. The week of the exam is a reading week, so we don’t have any lectures or tutorials. Then we go back for the rest of the term, which lasts about 7 weeks, and we’ll be getting into a new module to replace International Accounting, called Financial Statement Analysis, which might not be too bad.

Friday January 16, 2004

You’ll be pleased to know that our oven is now fixed, after it broke last month. The part they sent this time wasn’t strictly the right one, but the engineer put it in the other way around and it works perfectly safely like that. Apart from that, uni’s going fine. And I’ve actually got a reason to use MSN Messenger at last, as a couple of old school friends have got in touch, so I’ve downloaded version 6 now.

Friday January 23, 2004

That’s another week at uni over, and we get a week off now. I’ve got my International Accounting exam on Thursday, so I’ll be revising for that mainly.

I’ve bought some more DVDs this week. It’s typical, nothing decent gets released at Christmas, and now quite a lot of great stuff is coming out over the next couple of months. So I bought series 3 of Ever Decreasing Circles, and series 3 of The Brittas Empire.

In the news there’s been no contact with Beagle 2, the British craft on Mars. NASA have been doing well with theirs though, called Spirit, and some good pictures have come back, but now they’ve lost contact with that too! And back on Earth in the UK, the naked rambler has finished his trek from Lands End to John O’Groats, even though he was arrested many times. The strange things people do!

Tuesday January 27, 2004

As I’ve got a free week, my parents and I went out shopping yesterday, and I bought Burnout 2, which I had played when I stayed with my friend earlier this month. Sure, it is fairly old now, but it’s part of the Platinum range, meaning it’s £20 cheaper. I completed the training part (all Gold medals, easy), and I’ve opened up all the Crash levels, as I love that part of the game. I’ve tried doing races as well, but I’m certainly going to have to get used to them. It’s so annoying when you’re doing so well, only to crash into something that appears out of nowhere, especially if you’re going over a hill! But the crashes do look cool, so it makes up for it!

NASA have got their second probe, Opportunity, on the other side of Mars successfully, although they’re still having trouble with the first one. Still, they have found ice on the planet, which is interesting, and means that some sort of life could or did exist.

Apart from that, my revision’s going well I think. We won’t know if I’ve revised the right things until Thursday, but fingers crossed!

Thursday January 29, 2004

The exam went well today, it’s probably the easiest of all the ones I’ll have to do this year. I’m not sure when the results come out, but I expect it’ll be a few weeks at least. I go back to uni next Monday for another 7 weeks.

I’ve also continued playing Burnout 2 with a passion. Crash mode is extremely addictive, and I’ve already got Gold Medals on all 15 levels. That opens up a cheat called Runaway which, when turned on, has the same format and levels as Crash mode, but with faster speeds, and the car will go off on its own if you leave it alone. I’m now going to concentrate on races and championships, although I’ll keep coming back to Crash Mode as it’s such fun.