life, a thursday quiz game, some general infodumping and as-level results!

hello, friends!

and sorry for disappearing! 1. as i’ve probably said before, writing takes up a lot of my energy and 2. my recent life has, frankly, been very boring (i mean, what can i tell you aside from what i’ll talk about later… i watched “derry girls” twice (once by myself and once with my best friend) and i really enjoyed it! i think i enjoyed the humour most of all, i feel the characters are very well-written (my best friend said that they really liked the fact that most of the characters aren’t great people but aren’t, like evil) and the occasional (and i’m glad for that, since, if you’re into social history, it’s a really important point that by the late 1980s, the troubles no longer worried most northern irish people significantly (i actually have some data for this! in the study conducted in the book “don’t mention the war” by david miller (great stuff (as questionable as miller’s views are in other fields (remember, friends, when you’re doing any sort of political work, you want to prefer to work with people who hold the same fundamental beliefs over those who pursue the same tactics, which means that, no, as anti-zionists, we should not be collaborating with far-right and right-wing groups who may think they should act in the same way because they are antisemitic)) if you’re doing research on how the troubles were covered in the media in the 1980s (for the 1970s, liz curtis’ “ireland: the propaganda war” will prove more useful (though, the publisher of this book, information on ireland, mostly published a lot of books written by ex-british army servicepeople, so, even though i’ve only ever used this one for objective information and statistics and have never fully read it, i’d beware of the author potentially holding the view that, during the troubles, all northern irish catholics supported the ira))), 75% of 200 northern irish people taking part in the study surveyed (this was in 1990) said that life in northern ireland was mostly peaceful) historical references. i also loved how quickly the tone of season 2 changed after the 1994 ira ceasefire because, when i read about it, it felt like a really palpable turning point when it comes to people’s optimism and all that. i also read “v for vendetta” by alan moore (i really enjoyed it!) and am currently starting the discworld series by terry pratchett (i am currently on “equal rites” and am enjoying it!) thankfully, besides that, i now have quite a bit to talk about.

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two days ago, i met my best friend in a georgian restaurant and, besides trying to complete a motor vehicle and road user studies gcse past paper (ccea sure has some very strange gcse qualifications (the other one i can think of is learning for life and work. the past papers (especially the ones for personal development) are very fun to look through because of how randomly the questions are combined into one (like, you’ll have something like “explain the advantages of opening a bank account online” as part a and “write down two examples of emotional abuse” as part b)) due to wanting to see how high of a mark we would get while having never sat a single driving lesson (we ultimately ended up giving up halfway through) together, we had this really interesting conversation about english-language songs sang by non-greek and cypriot musicians that were commercially unsuccessful in the countries they originated from but were and are weirdly popular in greece and cyprus (sorry for the long explanation, i can’t really seem to find the words to shortly explain this! when we were actually talking about this, i referred to these as musical "un dia de vida"s!). we tried making a list and here it is so far:

• “why’d i have to fall in love with you” by matthew fisher (matthew fisher is the guy that plays organ on “a whiter shade of pale” by procol harum (which my autocorrect just tried to make into “provolone barium”). later in life, he apparently became a computer programmer (i really wonder how his job interviews must have went. “so, matthew, what job did you have before you decided to apply for this position in our company?” “rock star”). either way, for some reason, this solo song of his plays semi-frequently on three separate radio stations in my area and even wikipedia admits this song is strangely popular in greece)

• “rock sugar” by rob grill (rob grill was the lead vocalist of the grass roots. this song isn’t officially available on any streaming services and most people who know it seem to have heard it while on holiday in greece, which is expected because if it’s a radio station, if it’s in greece or cyprus and it’s called “rock fm” (most of them, in my experience, tend to have very similar playlists), chances are, it plays there (and i don’t blame them. this is a great song: i like the ending a lot!))

• “darling” by stories (since we’re talking about obscure 70s songs unavailable on streaming that the rock fm in my area (and i’d assume a few other places because how’d it end up there, then?))

• “breathless” by dan wilson (you thought we were done with prominent band member solo careers? you’re wrong! this one is sang by the lead vocalist of semisonic (speaking of semisonic, was the song “secret smile” was ever popular outside of here? i’d thought about including it here, but felt that the fact that it charted in the us, the uk and canada kind of exclude it (i don’t blame that, since it’s a great song and is also really fun to sing, in my opinion), despite the fact that semisonic are treated like a one-hit wonder with “closing time”) and is also strangely popular here for reasons i yet do not know of)

• “señorita” by james (“getting away with it (all messed up)” did spectacularly well here (and deservedly so!), so it’s rather not surprising that at least one of the other songs from the album it comes from also became quite popular here)

• “julia” by pavlov’s dog (i clearly remember this being in some sort of ad around 2019 but don’t remember what that ad was actually for. either way, also a very popular choice among the “rock fm”s)

• “you” by twoface (a greek cover of this song plays on a radio station (others i’ve heard on there include one of “how you remind me” (not a choice of song i’d expect, to be honest!) and one of “you’re the voice” by john farnham) in my area exists and i’d say that’s enough of an explanation. “fire in your eyes (ay ay)”, which i like a lot more, was also popular here, though i feel the polish public enjoyed it far more than us)

i would have also added in “what do you want from me?” by monaco (due to the number of stations that play it and the fact that the main youtube audio upload for this song was made by a greek person. however, i think this song is too well-known among people who are generally into new wave music (if you don’t know, peter hook was in this band!) to really qualify for this list) and “idlewild” by travis and josephine oniyama (also popular in hungary: and for a clear reason (being mentioned in a book), too!) a lot of songs of a similar sort that were successful in italy (“strange world” by kè and “imitation of life” by r.e.m. immediately come to mind) also did really well here, but i don’t really know the reason for that (and probably never will)!

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two weeks before we met, i went to a thursday pub quiz. my favourite question that was asked was this one:

“a) oleander is a very poisonous plant. one article about it even mentions its poisonous __. fill in the blank.

b) an italian proverb states that doing useless work is like “drilling a hole in __”.  a similar proverb involving the same __ exists in russian. fill in the blank.

c) which song occupies the 434th spot on “rolling stone”’s list of the greatest 500 songs?”

(the answers are smoke (oleander is sure not a bush i’d love to imagine as the biblical burning bush!), water (the russian proverb translates to “to pour water through a sieve”) and “smoke on the water”)

as is the case with thursday quiz games, there was a prize given out for the funniest answer, which, this time, went to the team that answered the question “no one in this room will likely be able to answer a question about what their __ will look like. during halloween season, one polish supermarket offers discounts on products for caring for __s. fill in the blank.” (the expected answer is “gravestone”) with “pessimist”, though i felt that the team that answered the question “thomas mann was once sent a __ __ by the nazi regime. a monument dedicated to __ __s in germany consists of an empty bookshelf. fill in the blank.” with “dead rat” instead of “burnt book” deserved it more.

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yesterday, i received my as-level results! i got abbb and can say i’m pretty proud of myself (the a is, surprisingly, in the subject i always forget i am good at (maths). i even managed to score 100% on paper 2, which i’d always felt was beyond my abilities! ), though I’m currently worrying about how next year will unfold. i expect a2 exams to be much harder than as exams (though, i am excited to learn the politics content (as disappointed as i am with myself due to the fact that i got a low b in my exam while my teacher expected a high a! (i'm beginning to feel like i'm not even allowed to be interested in politics anymore!) and, frankly, i’m really worried right now because i know my politics teacher tends to overestimate my abilities and overmark (and i have absolutely no idea of how to deal with this. i feel like asking my history teacher to mark my politics essays for me, but 1. he is not a politics teacher and 2. i am scared of him. i also definitely need timed practice, but, even if asked to, i’ve (this is absolutely horrible of me) never managed myself to even motivate to do it and the same goes for pre-planning essays, since i still can’t exactly grasp how specific questions can get and forget most of what i plan, since most people tend to do this as flashcards and those don’t work for me) next year, since the case study we have for anarchism is the zapatista uprising and i know quite a bit about that and the stuff on political ideologies might be relevant to what i’m currently researching on the ideological positions of irish republican groups during the troubles (there was quite a big debate on whether irish republicanism is compatible with socialism since the early 20th century which really intensified with the irish civil war (since the anti-treaty side tended to be supported by more working-class people since one of the major arguments of the pro-treaty side was “we don’t want any more violence”, a big fraction of this violence being the various forms of labour unrest that coincided with the war for independence) and ultimately led to the 1969 split between the provisional and official ira (since cathal goulding was chief of staff of the ira between 1967 and 1969 before it split, it was ideologically trotskyist (most modern irish republican socialist groups tend to be trotskyist since it’s the most compatible to irish republicanism ideologically (especially since goulding (from whom a lot of people learned from! the nicra also had socialist leaders and, i mean, the northern irish communist party also existed back then, of course!) wanted to involve as many people as possible in the struggle (which ultimately led to him having this, in my opinion, very naive idea that, if class was to cease to exist, unionism would too (in my opinion, loyalism would, but unionism wouldn’t: not all unionists are unionists because being a settler is the little privilege they have)) and since the ira, under him, also tried to work with farmers (considering farmers in this way (since the main obstacle here is their relationship with land ownership, as was the case with the peasants in russia) as part of the proletariat is a very bolshevik idea, though i feel that this sort of action would have worked far better in ireland than in russia since ireland already had quite a history of agrarian agitation))) and the essays i will have to write in history will finally involve examining stuff like success from different perspectives, which is more how my brain works when making arguments rather than having to pick a side even if the argument i have to produce still has to be balanced) and i’m, frankly, a little scared of that, but, at least, i’m now confident that at least what i’m doing is good enough for what i want. the two universities i want to apply to want abb and bbb from me anyway.

i’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually and even had a bit of a crisis a month ago over the “am i contributing to anti-intellectualism by not holding myself to higher standards?” the answer is, of course, no, though i’m still genuinely a little scared that, despite the fact that i feel i won’t have this this year since i have a clear path i want to take, the fact that i can’t motivate myself to revise, learn things that i’m not exactly interested in, am critical of academia (though i think higher education should exist, i feel that the current system of higher education cares more about profit and cares very little about actual academic and personal progress (both because research is meant to benefit people, at least in my opinion, which for-profit and corporate-sponsored academic research will not and because most education systems in general expect (or, even if another way exists (for example, access qualifications), you’re usually not seen as intelligent if you decide to take it) a linear, uniform process of learning progression which is plain unrealistic (i mean, standardised tests were literally first made only to determine areas of weakness in students which COULD AND WOULD BE IMPROVED UPON LATER. i wish it stayed that way, to be honest) and haven’t picked up a piece of classic literature for two years (though, i’m mostly a non-fiction reader at this point), is genuinely concerning and something i need to work on (i mean, it’s great stuff to acknowledge, but, whenever people talk about this stuff, there’s rarely any “this is how you can improve!” advice (which proves my point about linearity). also there’s the fact that i’m not getting all as (though, i mean, of course, i know people who are amazing academically who are, in other ways, horrible people (for example, there is a guy from my school who achieved a*a*a* at a-level (one of them, i should say, was in history) who is also a zionist and thought that we should not have been given a presentation on how taking drugs can impact health two years ago because they affect, in his opinion, only black people. our goals in life are also markedly different. and, i mean, i’ve definitely improved in some areas: like, for example, my critical thinking has definitely improved since last year (though, i shouldn’t be that harsh on my past self because i was, well, sixteen) since i’ve now started stopping myself and either trying to argue against myself or look over what i know if something i think is too one-sided. 

it’s nearly 2am now (i did really spend three hours writing this…), so i believe it’s time to end this off and congratulate anyone who got to the end of this because this definitely reads as something that was written at this time.