Dundee - More to Life - delay

Photo's -
All from Dundee trip - Megabus front window - Arran @ Old Trafford - Dundee sky - David, Mathias, Amanda, Antonio - Lei Wei, David, Amanda, Mathias - last photo was quite funny guy on the side was getting the winners of the entrepeneurial competition in place and they all thought I was the photographer as I kept taking photos . . . whereas that was the photographer amongst them.

Post 1:
My theme for the is week is “More to Life” or Life is more than XYZ –

Wow with that as a lead in I may have built up certain expectations – I read a couple of things this week which I found really interesting

1) The ‘Meaning of life’ - can be found in the freedom of a jazz band. All the musicians know the tune / song but then go on to do whatever they want to do – any band will include a solo spot – when the melody is finished – everyone on the band is highly satisfied – most of the people listening are happy although they don’t really know why other than that the emotional response has been a satisfying one.

2) Progress has freed us up – supposedly giving us more free time than we previously experienced. Is this true? What about the amount of time spent on mobile / Internet / email / etc., Seems as if progress hast actually decreased the amount of actual free time we have.

3) The mass genocides that took place in Germany – the blind and autistic etc., people that were first sterilised and then at a later stage euthinised – these were the first examples, which were ignored, of a policy which had been imported from the states – eugenics.

SO what am I really on about? Cant quite put my finger on it can’t quite my finger on it. All about balance – and not just seeing life from one perspective. Take this blog for example it was initially all about my uni life / experience but it has somehow managed to transform itself – it is still predominantly abut that however things have changed – I have changed as have circumstances – plus lets face it we are never just one thing in life – we always fulfil multiple roles in life, at any one time, father; son; friend; lover; partner etc., - changing from one role to the other at any one time.

I just think, that at the end of the day everything is about balance - and when we have too much of one and forget about others – we are missing a certain part of ourselves.

Plan to take some photos this week with the mobile phone – started with my mobile – and then had Wednesday in Dundee that I took a few photos at as well . . . so those are the photos basically.

I am also considering writing whenever it catches my fancy – will still keep it to one posting but it may be made up of multiple parts to it . . . and have been contributed at different times . . .

Post 2:
Judi seems to have hurt her back – complaining bitterly about my futon as it is really hard and has almost no give in it at all. May have to invest in a new bed – I’ll go and have a look down Dumbarton Road – see if I can pick anything up.

Post 3:
Wednesday 6 March Scottish
Met 07h15 and had a Megabus take us to Dundee – I had to use my mobile the night before to check what time the 1st train from Dumbarton was – to see whether I could make the bus from uni – it turned out that it was 06h25 – which was the only train I could catch – managed to get up in time and made it in plenty of time. As I walked up the street to the bus there was some furious waving from the front of the bus – turned out to be Mathias and Antonio - +/- 70 other students turned out as well. We set off at about 07h30 – Amanda turned up and plonked herself down next to David, brave girl, and ended up spending the rest of the day with myself and the rest of the guys – she turned out to be a pleasant conversationalist and she, Mathias and I sorted out the worlds problems well we discussed a whole load of things. David had a hip flask and he was hitting it not long after leaving uni – not surprisingly it wasn’t long before he was fast asleep and he ended up sleeping most of the way.
I realised I had not seen much of Mathias this semester as we have different subjects apart from Software Construction – have seen even less of Antonio as we don’t have any shared subjects.

Roughly 2000 students from across Scotland but also some from Wales & Northern Ireland. Kicked off with a bacon buttie (roll) & some coffee.

(1) BJ Cunningham: Brand Evolution – Death Cigarettes unambiguously marketed cigarettes which carried a ‘enjoy them but be aware they will kill you’ – Marketed from Luxemborg but sold here in the UK the deal lasted for about 6 months before Customs and Excise stepped in and closed him down – even although he had the law on his side. It ended up going all the way to European High Court which although agreeing with him ruled against him – as they claimed that the law had never been intended to be used like this it had never been designed to function in this manner.

How had he started – went to uni then went to the states and bought a Carmen Ghia – coming through customs the official had asked ‘how much did you pay for it?’ and had then gone on to offer him double that amount – he didn’t think twice and sold it – went back to the states and bought 2 Carmen Ghia’s – cut a long story short ended up making a mint until they changed the tax law overnight – and ended up with a £800 000+ overdraft – phoned his dad as any son would – his dad asked him how much in the red he was – and he told him – there was a deathly silence – and his dad told him – ‘your on your own now son’ and that was when he came up with Death cigarette’s – which incidently Barclays gave him a loan for . . .

(2) Second speaker – Mick Jackson – passion and bold gave an inspiring speech which centred on you believing in yourself. He has 4 photo’s on his PC – which inspire him to succeed. He pulled out a punch and told us how he markets stationary to large corporate companies – who have to buy this type of equipment – RBS spends more than £25m per annum on this and he gives them an option which allows them to contribute towards charity but receive something tangible in return . . .like the punch.
(3) Jacqueline Gold – Ann Summers CEO – sorry she did not impress me – 3m vibrators sold in the UK . . .An interesting story but somehow she was less credible to me than the other two speakers who came across as true off the wall entrepreneurs . . . . her parting comment – size really does matter – Now I’m not sure if you she was speaking from a distribution point of view – i.e. the more branches you have the better or whether or perhaps she was being more direct.
Lunch – quick tour guide (that’s me) to Groucho’s – 2nd hand CD store – didn’t have any Eddi Reader – which is what I was looking for.

(4) David Sibbald - The Summerian Foundation & Johari Fashion Show - Kenya – didn’t enjoy – fashion show component was good but found the rest a little too self patronising.

(5) Tom Ilube - Egg – Garlik and everything else was a breath of fresh air again . . .
(6) Vicky Featherstone - National Theatre of Scotland interesting challenge and we had some poetry which provided some light relief
(7) Alistair Campbell – who was the headline attraction. I was interested to hear that both his parents are from Scotland and that he considered himself to be a Scot – has played the bagpipes since he was 7 and even busked around parts of Europe at one stage – His history was interesting to me – to inform and give me some background into who he was but him as a speaker I was not impressed. SO in the end I was mildly disappointed.


What did I take away from the whole experience:
a) Really life is all about yourself – What do you really want to do? Do you know? If you do – get on with it and do it – nothing else counts or matters – forget about chasing money – it is all about self realisation and when you realise that things will fall into place.

Friday
Mathias birthday on Friday - went for a few beers at Print Works . . . myself Chris, & David hung around and had a good blether . . . well its my Birthday this Saturday - so it will be back at the Print Works this Friday . . .

Last post:
Well apologies for late posting - somehow things never quite worked out best of intention and all . . . . As I have said may try to post more frequently - but having said that held up - its Wednesday evening of the following week now.

This weeks Extract from: What the rest of the world Knows about South Africa:
Q: Are there supermarkets in Cape Town and is milk available all year round? (Germany)

A: No, we are a peaceful civilisation of vegan hunter-gatherers. Milk is illegal

Q: Please send a list of all doctors in South Africa who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)

A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca, which is where YOU come from. All South African snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets. Good examples of snakes as pets are mambas (both green and black), rinkhals and municipal workers.