Over a lifetime you collect hundreds of thousands of memories, some of those memories are more important than others, some are remembered only by a fleeting daydream but others are remembered because of photos and video that were taken at the time.

While I was conducting the move of my site recently I started thinking; What would happen if I lost all of it all?

My blog represents about 2 years of my thoughts, feelings, stories and rants, it contains the story of my pre university struggle, my post university struggle, post about my time in America and all the things in between. While I do have backups these only consist of 2 database backups and a handful of written post backups in various documents scattered around my hard drive.

Then there is my gallery, this too contains photos from before uni, during uni and my time in America, and while I do have the originals, it has over 1700 photos, it would take a huge chunk of time to re-upload and sort them out again. Just the move alone has taken hours to do and even now there are problems with some images not working.

This got me thinking even more, out of all the photos I have taken, over 4000 in America, a few hundred of Kingston Uni, and a few more thousand at various other events and occasions I have hardly any backups of any of them, I have no regular backup process in place.

What would happen if all of my photos were deleted in some crazed act of nature never to be viewed again by man nor beast?

Usually I’m paranoid when it comes to backing up and saving things, if I’m working on a document I usually save it ever 5 – 10 seconds, but for some reason when it comes to the things that require more than a 2 button combination I seem to put it off and forget about it.

I know of others that also do the same.

There was no real point to this post only to illustrate that sometimes no matter how important memories are, not even those are safe.

We all know what they are. Some people live their lives by them and believe every written word; others put them down to mumbo jumbo and nonsense.

Whatever you believe there is always something that pulls you towards reading them, a force pulling you towards the magazine that you have on you’re table, even if you don’t believe in them, you still have the urge to read them even if the only reason you want to is to prove the point that you’ve been saying all along – they are always wrong.

People can fall into 3 different categories:

• People who believe
• People who are indifferent towards them
• People who just plain don’t

The people who believe in them are usually people who also believe in divine intervention and fait. They live their life according to what they read in the daily paper and don’t ask questions when things go wrong, because after all, the stars and planets don’t lie right?

In some ways the people who are indifferent are more receptive to the idea of horoscopes, even though they don’t believe in them, they still in the back of their mind wonder if they are true, and sometimes read them because they are curious to find out if they are actually true or not.

“You have a passionate nature, dear Leo, and sometimes it can be difficult for you when the people around you do not share your exuberance. This is a good time to try and tone things down a notch or two. There is some tension in the air, and your enthusiasm will only serve to annoy people, rather than charm them as it usually does. There’s no need to pout. This is just a temporary hiccup. Tomorrow you will once again be the center of attention, bestowing hugs and kisses to all who welcome them.”

This is my horoscope for today from www.live.com, as you can see from the beginning it is very general, lots of people around you aren’t always as exuberated as you are, it all depends on mood, circumstances and lots of other things that affect people on a day to day basis, but someone can safely say it and still be right in most cases and situations, it’s the same as asking someone a question, if you ask someone if they are ok, more than likely they are going to say either Yes or No, but if you ask How they are, you are more than likely going to get a proper answer, the last one is an open question and doesn’t give the person the opportunity to give a one word answer. By wording it the way they have it is open and could apply to everyone.

“There is some tension in the air, and your enthusiasm will only serve to annoy people, rather than charm them as it usually does”

Lets face the facts, 9/10 people are part of a situation where tension is in the air, it may be part of their own life or someone they know, but who doesn’t know a situation with tension, I have many, in fact I seem to collect them, apparently I have a personality with some kind of magnetic field that not only seems to turn off street lights back in good ‘ol Torquay whenever I walk past them but also attracts situations in which tension is a prerequisite.

And yes, in these types of situations enthusiasm will serve to annoy people, personally I would have thought that was obvious, the two go hand in hand together, these types of situations require a lot of tact and diplomacy and sometimes require you to put your own personality mutations on hold so you don’t end up being part of the problem and adding more fuel to the already awkward situation…I thought this stuff was covered in the debrief after birth…or am I just weird?

“There’s no need to pout. This is just a temporary hiccup”

This part of it is true however; it is going to be temporary because there is going to be another horoscope tomorrow telling you something different.

It also makes me wonder about horoscopes when a lot of them contain the same content and predictions, sometimes it’s as if the astrologer was short sighted and couldn’t see all the stars so he just copy and pasted the same thing and worded it in a slightly different way. Ironically today he seems to have gone to the opticians and got himself some glasses, hired an assistant who actually has eye balls or used a telescope, ’cause I just can’t find any that have a significant crossover, but on a semi regular basis you can see the same common words in each signs prediction.

Another thing that is noticeable if you read more than one star sign is that different parts of each are relevant and in some cases more relevant than you’re own. Leading me to wonder at least if was actually born across multiple star signs, wouldn’t it be great if we could take the stuff from each star sign that is relevant and create one ‘super’ sign?

This just illustrates that the predictions are just that, predictions, they do not suit everybody’s situation, it is more down to linguistics and the way they are worded than anything else, most if not all of them are ambiguous and could be related to any situation, they deliberately widen the surface area so it applies to more people.

We have an ability to twist things based on our viewpoint, I know when I read them I usually end up twisting it so that some how it ends up fitting, it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a whole, except the square peg is made out of squashable rubber so you can make it fit. Perhaps this is why some people believe in them, some people just aren’t as skeptical as I am.

As you can probably tell, I am a bit of a skeptic when it comes down to it, but I believe that horoscopes have their use, even if it’s just to fuel the questions and “what if’s”…

Perhaps it was the fact that over the last week I have hardly gone to bed before 3am because a lot of the time I have been talking with a few flat mates, but I’m actually starting to enjoy it a bit, although not as much as back in the good ‘ol days – I don’t think anything will ever be comparable.

I guess the experience has been one of weirdness and education, before the ‘final’ day I’d built up an idea of negativity around the whole thing, it would be lonely, weird, boring, scary and unnerving, these are just some of the things that I had thought about the whole idea, at the time Lloyd made a good point;

“It’s hard to ignore the hurdles which have occurred while trying to get to where, deep down I guess I want to be”

I couldn’t have put it better, it wasn’t just the physical aspect that where the hurdles, moving away was only 1 part of a much bigger predicament, there as also the mental aspect of it, preparing for what was going to become the single biggest upheaval of our lives took a lot to get your head around, there are something’s that I’d personally thought (and hoped) would never change, some things seemed sacred, but in the end it was only an illusion of perpetual affairs. But deep down it was what I wanted, the chance to learn something new, the chance to meet new people and engage in new things, experience the new surroundings, and hopefully eventually find happiness.

I’m glad to say that the ideas that I had in my head weren’t at all correct – in the back of my mind I knew they wouldn’t be, I had to think them, it was all part of the process, I guess the thinking behind it was that if I thought everything would be bad, anything more would be good, I knew what I was doing – and it worked, nothing was how I’d imagined it would be, it was better, and therefore everything was made the tiniest bit better for it.

In a strange way, everyday feels different, even though at this early stage, there is already a vague schedule to the things that go on, a few of them being ‘Midnight Tesco’s’ on a Monday night / Tuesday morning, and The Bi Weekly comedy night, somehow, even through the devastation left behind from the move, some things have become as regular as clockwork.

I guess some of the things that have made it easier are attributed to certain things that we said we would do when we got here, more information will be released soon but behind the scenes we have been working on a little project that if done properly, should open up some very useful channels for us, and hopefully lead to some interesting times.

There are advantages to being this close to the capital of the UK, there are things that you can do because there is less of a mileage gap, sometime next week Me, Lloyd and Shane are going to go to the Mac Expo, we thought while we were up here, we would go along – just ’cause we could, hopefully we’ll get some free stuff and some good photos, and who knows, maybe we’ll get the change to blog from there, although I’m not a big Mac fan, it’s always nice to go and have a look at some new technology. This is just one of hopefully a number of similar events that we go to while we are here, after all…WE CAN.

I’ll leave you with this final thought:

Dum spiro, spero

“Goodbye”

This sole word brings with it so many emotions, distant memories flash past, remembering all of those wonderful times that happened. Sadness and pain is usually associated with this word, some goodbyes are harder than others, but all share the same excruciating element – sadness.

You know when things have come to an end when you have to say goodbye to your mates - not just friends that you have accumulated over the years, but the mates that you have spent the best part of 4 years with, the mates that sometimes know you better than you do, and the mates that have confided in you as you have with them for all those years. These are the people that you wish you didn’t have to leave, and it really hits you when you have to say that 2 syllable word to them, “Friends come and go, but real mates are few and far between”.

Looking back, all those things we did, the drives around with seemingly no purpose, the walks around the harbour talking about whatever the current issue of the day was, and the Saturdays doing nothing but walking and talking had a purpose however boring and monotonous that they had become, they still make up a big part of the happy memories.

There are of course people that I haven’t had the chance to say goodbye to, to all of these people I would like to say “Goodbye, and I wish you all good luck with whatever journey you choose to pursue”

The future is hanging over me like a lone rock overhanging from a cliff face, what happens in the next few days will undoubtedly be exhilarating, distressing and isolating. Everything will hit me at once – it will be a show only rivalled by the shock and ore campaign in the second Gulf War, there will be a short adjustment period where things will be overwhelming, but after that, things should get better, once the new surroundings make the transition from fresh to mundane and the shock and ore campaign lessons as the powers that be run out of missiles things should start to become more of a reaction than a action.

Questions still remain, only adding to the mounting anxiousness, things wouldn’t be so bad if the world being entered was one of certainty, but instead it is one of uncertainty, something only to be clarified once the atmosphere has been punctuated and the inhabitants have welcomed the new comers.

“The future is tomorrow, the present is today, what you do today will affect tomorrow”

I guess before I start I should explain the events leading up to and the thoughts behind this post.

It all started a few days before the end of Sixth Form, There was a few things I wanted to say to someone (The fact that I never got the chance to say it to her possibly indicates that I messed up yet again). It soon became clear that I wasn’t the only one that was having these thoughts, others around me were equally as indecisive about things that they wanted to say, after a lot of thought on the matter though, I confined it to the darkest depths of my mind.

However, more recently I was part of another conversation discussing a situation similar to the one I found myself in, and again the same issue was raised (not by me this time), so I guess this post is a combination of the thoughts and ideas that were spawned from both occurrences.

In any conversation there are usually 3 different channels of communication open at one time:

• Semantics (The meaning or the interpretation of a word or sentence)

• Intonation (The use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information)

• kinesics (nonverbal bodily movements, such as gestures and facial expressions)

All of the above methods of communication are used in all conversation to some degree. Different situations have a bias on a particular method of delivery, for example, when you are trying to find out if someone is lying to you the 2 main ones are intonation and Kinesics, the semantics are irrelevant for the most part because you already have a suspicion that they are lying. However, having said that there is still a hierarchy of importance, the intonation is more important than the semantics but less important than the kinesics, this doesn’t mean that the intonation is useless, in fact singularly each one won’t provide a definitive answer, each one of the channels cascades down the hierarchy and eventually, based on the outcome of each channel a proper conclusion can be made. Even the most subtle of things could betray the person and reveal the truth, the stress levels of someone’s voice – Is their voice shaky or does it crack up when they protest?.

However in this scenario the most important thing to look for is the Kinesics, some people can belie the calmness in their voice and the reasonable explanation that they give by the actions that they make, the tiny movements, the fact that they can’t look you in the face, fidgeting and other similar things can give it away.

This brings me to the whole point of this post, why are certain methods of communication not suitable for certain things?

Phone Calls

Phone calls have only 2 of the mentioned 3 communication channels that can be taken advantage of, Semantics and Intonation. This is good for most things, but for those conversations that you need to be able to use all 3 it’s not the ideal option. Because the person is not there in front of you, there can be problems with interpretation, and other things that require kinesics in order to properly clarify the person’s thoughts.

Text messages

Text messages only have 1 out of the 3 communication channels, this is the single most fundamental failure of text messages as a communication technology, they only allow semantic messages and only allow a one way method of communication. Because only words make up the message, it is very hard to tell the way in which a person meant something, the context and the meaning of something can only be truly understood when you combine all three methods together. Text messages are inherently contextless, messages could be interpreted differently than they otherwise would on something such as a phone call, and this could lead to a cascading effect of the wrong interpretation on the part of both people.

Email

Email, like Text messages are flawed when it comes to really delicate situations, I’m not going to go into it again, but all of the above reasons still apply, although in emails favour, it is a bit more of a two way communication method, but it’s still not quite there.

Face to Face

By far the best form of communication ever invented. It incorporates all of the techniques into one very nice package, all of the necessary things are ‘in there’, all of the things that you can use is right there in front of you, all you have to do is know how to read it. With talking to someone face to face, more emphasis is put on the context and intonation of the conversation, it’s not all about semantics, in fact, if you think about it, language has a disconnected role to play in all this, how many different languages are there in the world? And how many people communicate their true feelings in those different languages, body language especially is independent of semantics.

When talking to people face to face, there is no misunderstanding about how something was meant to sound because instinctively you know how things were meant within the context they were spoken.

This post was the conclusion of many hours of thought, not only by me, but some other people that I have spoken to, albeit to a lesser degree of distinction, some of it may be self explanatory, but some of it may not.

For years, people have been craving change, restless in their everyday 9 - 5 jobs, dreaming of getting ‘out of it all’, starting again in a new town – with new people, or in some cases a new country with a completely different culture.

Such dreams have spawned countless TV shows with titles such as ‘Escape to the Country‘ and ‘Relocate‘, charting the lives of families that do just that – change the direction of their entire life and move away from everything and everyone they know.

The dream that seems to be built around this idea is a very compelling one, of which I have seen first hand, this dream is the sole reason I am here, and why I have lived in Torquay for close to 9 years.

The idea of a life change sounds a good thing, and in many respects it is, if you can find happiness in somewhere new then grab it and don’t look back, but sometimes its not as easy as that.

Moving away is pretty much what I’m going to be doing in a little under 3 weeks time, although the ‘dream’ is slightly different, there are still parallels. When you strip away all of the overhead and take it to a simplistic level it all boils down to one thing:

Wanting a better lifestyle and to be happy while doing something that you enjoy

When push comes to shove this is what it’s all about, and in order to do it, you need to have the motivation and the ability to see through the initial disorientation and weirdness.

I thought I was at least half way down that road of understanding, but yesterday put a different slant on it. First of all I bumped into some people that I haven’t seen in a while (about a year), this was great, but it reminded me that I would be moving away from it all. Secondly I got an email from someone that basically said goodbye, although I never really knew her all that much, it was still quite sad to know that the era from which I had just left was now well and truly over.

I guess the point is that no matter what happens from now on, there will always be things that I will remember and people that I will always have had the pleasure of meeting.