January through April

I’m sure there were many events that transpired over the above time period but as they say, time obliterates everything. I will be moving back to daily entries, no matter how mundane, in order to preserve these events, I’ll also try to post images as these are worth 1000 words, a limit by blog post have broken very rarely.

For the life of me, I can’t remember off the top of my head anything meaningful from January or February, I bought a bookcase and assembled it months later, it sits in my bedroom with very little on it, just 2 shelves occupied. I bought a new jacket, it is yellow, it is the one that I mostly wear now. In February Persona 3 Reload was released and I got the platinum trophy. I spent 100 hours on Final Fantasy Rebirth but didn’t get the platinum, I was quite burned out on it and didn’t want to put the time in to replay it on hard mode, furthermore, I wanted to sell it on quickly to get my money back.

There was a new shift manager at work, he is from Lithuania and really into video games but much like my other co-worker, or every normal person, it seems, into multiplayer games, I understand that, gaming is a social activity for most. Anyway, dude had a warm personality, very chatty, he set up a WhatsApp group with me, him and the other gamer from my office, on my day off, he hit us up and we played the video game “For Honour” for like 6 hours, you play as a viking /samurai/knight and kill the other team. I have never had such a long gaming sesh, both of them were “real” gamer types, like he had over 1000 hours in one game and both of them don’t play for trophies, they play the game for the game, so alien to me. Anyway, he ended up having to move to the other 4 on/4 off shift pattern.

The only social events were going out for drinks and watching the football with my Bury friend and his friends, one of them was a fan of the blog and fellow Hearthstone player, wish I could have spoken to him some more but he was very quick to get off his face on ket, brother definitely needs some help. It was in a town I hadn’t been to before, but rural, quite nice.

There was also Eid, I did it at my grandmothers but everyone else decided to go to my cousin’s, my father and mothers relationship has broken down some more.

I watched some TV shows, Fallout was OK. I mostly watch YouTube though.

How things are going

The defining event of my November was a work outing, it was arranged by my manager, she seems to be socially anxious much like myself so I respected that she was attempting to arrange this but I found the idea uncomfortable, I’d much rather hide at home with my hot water bottle. On the other hand though, I understand social conventions enough to know how rude it would be to decline. I went along, even paying a fee to book a slot at the bowling since it wasn’t covered by work. Anyway the night was OK but I feel like I came across like the clueless freak that I am, this whole thing isn’t my scene and I can’t force it by placing myself in these situations over and over, it just isn’t in me. We went bowling and went pub crawling. I think people assumed I might be more interesting but I proved to them that I am not.

December, was Christmas, or so I hear, I did not celebrate it. I suppose for the most part the cycle of my existence is currently spending 4 days at work and then with my time off I play video games and buy things for my house, I have quite a lot of furnishings now and even a soundbar plus subwoofer for my TV, a real pointless item because I’m just looking for anything to drop my expendable income on. I think I buy one new furnishing every week.

More to be added later, don’t trust wordpress to save draft

3 Months in 3 Minutes

First off, regarding my new job, I’m getting along with it OK, I can’t watch YouTube and Netflix all day like I used to but I prefer to have something to do, though even now there are down periods, I think I am stealing a wage still, I don’t deserve to be earning a salary of over £2k a month. I think I am a bit underskilled and incapable of learning, I don’t really understand the rules, options on the system or how to investigate things but I will ride this as long as I can.

My coworker is from Zimbabwe, he’s very patient with me and friendly, he understands the struggle, we’ve never spoken on the topic of race but I think he gets it. I paid my mum to make some samosas and gifted them to him, said I made them myself, it’s because he said he had them as a youth in Zimbabwe and was paying £1 a pop for them at the Chinese takeaway. He trained me at the job and through him I’ve learned about the history of Zimbabwe, such as Great Zimbabwe.

I had an eye opening experience several months ago and haven’t been able to shake it, walking passed the local Pakistani sweets shop or “matai” shop, I saw a Pakistani father with his disabled son in a wheelchair and he smiled at him, spoke to him with kindness and I could feel his love, it makes me think that the Pakistani soul is capable of love, it’s just that I’ve encountered the worst of the bunch during my existence. It also makes me wonder though, why is it that the good Pakistanis struggle but the evil ones thrive? It doesn’t seem fair.

I have bought a house and moved in, my youngest sisters and my uncle gave me car rides to help me move stuff, I’ve dressed up the house mostly, there’s a run in the living room, a sideboard, sofa, TV. The only issue is the smell from the bedroom, I find myself just sleeping on the sofa in the bed, it’s where all my stuff is so going to my bedroom just seems unnecessary. I spend my days being comfy, watching stuff on streaming platforms and playing PS5. My dad doesn’t know where I live and he’s trying to find out, I don’t see any reason he needs to know where I live so I’ve refused to tell him.

I recently had 12 days off from work, that’s the beauty of 4 on 4 off, book 4 days off and get a 12 day long holiday. During my time off, I went to me cousin’s wedding and ComicCon with my friends. I found going to the wedding annoying since I didn’t get along with my cousin, this part of the wedding is the Walima, the grooms family arranges this part, it’s the essentially the reception. We got in at 7pm and left around 10:30pm. It was the usual fare except that there were only the usual 20 members of my family. So we were bored, we were just seeing the people we see every day, no extended family. Another cousin has a young child, under 2 years old and I feel like her siblings treat him like a toy, they take turns playing with him, I guess it’s because he’s too young to tell them anything they don’t want to hear, he’s like a pet, I think he’s going to be disappointed when he starts growing and these aunts and uncles become more distant. My sister also has a baby, she’s addicted to attention and keeps making everything about her and the baby.

As for ComicCon, the train journey there was fine, 3 hours, not much better than the 5+ on the coach, there was one young Pakistani woman talking to some Chinese like they were aliens and she hadn’t bought a ticket, she had no idea how expensive tickets between Manchester and London could be, I felt sorry for her at first but then it became apparent that she just hadn’t bought a ticket and thought she’d get away with it.

I met up my pals around 12pm, Shutin had gotten 1% larger and to be fair to him, he carries the size well, Andrew has embraced his baldness and to be fair to him, it suits him well, Oseph, has grown a goatee and mustache, it also suits him well, I’d say he’s the most handsome of the bunch, like an actor, he can also be mistaken for any race, apart from black, Zoomer later joined us, he looked as hapa as always but much skinnier.

We weaved through the barriers before being able to enter the venue, it was full of the most hideous and lazy trannoids I’d ever seen, I didn’t even know such creatures existed. For the first 30 minutes we stuck together, checking out stalls and splitting up, getting lost and then finding each other again but it became obvious that it would be better to split up so we could check out what we wanted to and wander around the stalls at our own pace. I didn’t really know what I wanted to find, nothing really leapt out at me, there was manga for sale, action figures, model kits, vintage video games, plastic swords. If I’m honest, I didn’t make the most of it, I didn’t ask what the stalls where about, like there were trading card and video games ones but I didn’t ask if I could be taught to play or take a turn on the game. I met up with Oseph later on and we queued to get some food but then I realised the “Ghosts” panel was starting soon, the highlight of the event for me, a panel featuring the stars of my favourite show, Horrible Histories, they do a new show, Ghosts, now. To cut the story short, I queued up to go into the wrong tent and ended up watching some Cosplay instead, it was crap, the worst part was that while I was queuing, some guy asked me what I was in a queue for, I told him about the show and people around me heard and didn’t correct me, I still feel embarrassed thinking back to it, it was awful.

I met back up with the crew at 3.30pm, we hung for a while, I wondered around and felt like people were staring at me because I was retreading the same ground, during the final hour, I went into the tent to watch 2 episodes of My Hero Academia. We all then left together and I insisted upon a Pakistani meal, we went to the Pakistani run district of Whitechapel to find a suitable venue, I spotted many but Shutin knew the area well and insisted upon one of his regular haunts. To be fair, it was a fancy looking place, 3 floors and clean. I didn’t recognise much on the menu and the prices were higher than expected, I was interested in finding out what everyone’s spice tolerances were.

I got a chicken biryani because it was reasonably priced and one of the things on the menu I recognised. Oseph got a chicken tikka and thought it too spicy, quite disappointed in him, Zoomer also found his food too spicy and opened up a £3 bottle of water. Andrew and Shutin, I already knew could handle the heat. I did embarrass myself a little when I burned myself on a hot black dish, I thought it was styrofoam container, it seems dangerous to place boiling on metallic dishes on the table with customers. To biggest surprise of all though was that Shutin paid for the meal, for all of us, it came to over £100, it was shocking, not even my own family would pay for a meal for me. They would get takeaway for everyone except me and not feel a shred of guilt. This really is one of the kindest things someone has done for me in a long time, I think the last time someone did something similar was Shippy paying for us to check out the tower in Oxford or my manager was work forgiving a 50p debt (though I insisted of paying).

Below is a link for the website of Oseph where creates original content

https://oseph.net/