It’s been, well let’s just say “a while”, seems that things this year got chaotic and as with everything in life part of the blame must be mine, along with other aspects in life.
Last time I wrote here was many years ago… or at least that’s how it feels, unfortunately commitments in my personal life and university life have stopped me doing as much as I would have liked on www.SpikedEffect.com and this blog.
I’m sceptical about how many people will still be reading this blog, but just in the odd chance that I have a solitary fan out there that has been waiting so long for an update, this entry is for you.
I’m currently sat on a train to London Euston as I draft out this blog entry (which may actually end up being finished on the return journey to Manchester), and it seems the perfect time to let you know about what’s going on in my life apart from it being totally chaotic. So with baited breath I start my ramble…
So Long and Farewell University Life…
This week I finished my last exam at university, that’s right, I’ve come close to the conclusion of my university days. Four years I’ve been the “poor” student and now comes the time where I wait nervously to hear the final result of four years of torment lol…
It’s an odd situation though, because for the past four years (bar the year I worked a year in industry) I have been craving the feeling of achievement of doing something that contributes to the real world rather than just re-implementing something that has been done before.
Yet, now I’ve reached that step, there are downfalls to the working life, unless you are a teacher or work at an educational establishment, the term “holiday” now holds a totally different meaning, 20-25 days per annum versus 5 months, it’s a different kettle of fish. Kind of ironic really considering your now making the money needed to go on holiday… Also the days of 10 hours of lectures a week turns into the old 9am to 5pm syndrome (if you’re lucky in avoiding overtime that is), a situation that a lot of workers dread but is yet an accepted part of the working life.
However, I look at it different, ever since my first job, I have matured, I have learnt, and I have seen that working 9-5 isn’t necessarily a bad thing… just so long as what you are doing during those hours inspire you. During my gap year for university I had that, I was working for what could be deemed a “smaller” company which specializes in web based promotion and general public relations. During that year even though I was officially a student, so the pressures weren’t that same as what a full time worker would experience, the fact I was doing real world work and contributing towards a final goal and that is what inspired me.
Every morning I would wake up and actually think about what had to be done at work, rather than actually dreading it. So now comes the times where real life work is all I’ll be doing and whilst it’s daunting in a way, it’s also a real thing to look forward to. Web based promotion and website work can be quite challenging with all the different possibilities of how you can bring a page to life, the avenues you can take to make a website appealing and user friendly are yours to pick and that makes it quite interesting.
So it has come to that time in my life where you say goodbye to learning in a classroom environment full time, and hello to the real world problems you have been preparing for, and all I have to say is, “Bring it on”.
We’re all going to Wembley!
So, Wembley stadium is built and usable, a year later than originally planned with the tax payers money of this country paying for it, so has it all been worth it? Well, apparently the development of Wembley stadium and the proposed development plans for London in general are what won London the 2012 Olympics, which is always a good thing for a country… On top of this the now well known “Wembley Arch” has become a new landmark and it can be seen from quite a distance way, and even though it’s as useful as an inflatable dartboard it seems to be wowing passers-by and causing a stir in the tourist side of London.
So the hype pre-ceding the completion is well documented, but what is it like as a stadium? The first thing I must say though, and this will be the only mention of it as I’m talking of the stadium here and not the ticket costs, but what were they thinking with the ticket allocation and pricing of the final?
Anyway, I was lucky enough to be present for the first FA Cup final at the new Wembley when Manchester United played Chelsea, so had my chance to find out… Upon approaching the stadium on the motorway you could see the arch from a mile in all its glory and even though a fairly big waste of money, as it’s just an aesthetic feature, it does help you know you’re on the right track towards Wembley. The outside of the stadium itself is really just like any other, so won’t go into too much detail, but it’s a big stadium, and it’s an oval shape that pretty much all you need to know.
What about the insides? Well the concourse areas seem pretty well thought out, there’s plenty of space and plenty of food & drink spots across the concourse areas (even if they are a complete rip off with a burger and chips with a drink setting you back £8). However it seems, at least in the top tier stands of Wembley, that they seemed to forget that there are males that come to Wembley on match days, as all the toilets are in fact designed as women’s toilets with no urinals to be seen, but in general seemed pretty decent. On top of that the interiors of the concourse areas will match many other grounds, with no extra cost being put towards the aesthetics of the concourse areas, but then again you’re not there to stand in the concourse areas are you?
The seating areas of Wembley are well thought out with even the back rows of the upper tiers having a reasonable view of the pitch. There are two big screens each side of the stadium behind where the goals are on the pitch which are pretty clear from wherever your sat in the oval stadium. The pitch… hmm, well, considering the cost of the stadium was far below what you’d expect from a national stadium, it looked like it had been played on all season and been tired out, when really all it had hosted was 4 or 5 matches.
However, and this really is a big factor to me, but the acoustics of the stadium were terrible, and the PA system wasn’t anything to boast about either. Half the time you couldn’t hear what was being said through the microphone, and also the sound of the crowds didn’t travel well, what sound there was anyway… This is a huge factor to me, as I think in a lot of ways the memory of a stadium lays in the atmosphere on match days, and the stadium doesn’t do anything to help it, and this should always be a major factor of consideration for the design for a stadium.
So, of course this is by no means a detailed review of the stadium but just a brief overview, but the main thing to note is that to the general public the billion pound price tag associated with the Wembley development doesn’t seem justified… Most of the money seems to have gone into the development of the executive areas of the ground (as well as most of the match tickets for the final) but how they can justify taking it out of the general tax payer’s wallet is beyond me, especially as mostly they can’t even afford to go to the events… But then again its country pride against practicality, they wanted a landmark that doubled as a stadium and that’s what they got… Let’s just hope in the long run that people aren’t wishing the two towers of Wembley were never torn down and replaced by the Wembley arch…
We are the champions! A word of Congratulations…
Having touched above on Manchester United, after an exciting season and a dull cup final, the football season in the UK has come to a close… Manchester United were crowned the premiership champions, Chelsea crowned Carling cup and FA Cup champions and Liverpool losing out to AC Milan in the Champions League final.
But this snippet of my blog is congratulations to Manchester United for a good season of football, and showing they still are amongst the world’s best football clubs. With most critics at the beginning of the 06/07 season predicting a 3rd or 2nd place finish (at best) for the team; they came out all guns blazing to show they had what it took to compete at the highest level.
With a champions league record result (7-1) in the knockout stages against AC Roma, I think they sounded out an alarm to all teams in Europe that they shouldn’t be taken lightly and that were as hungry as ever for success. A second leg poor showing in Milan proved to be the end of United’s European conquest against the eventual winners but intensions were shown this season and that is what matters.
I want to also take this opportunity to say congrats to Wigan Athletic football club for staying up, and I just hope that Chris Hutchings continues Paul Jewell’s brilliant work at Wigan, they are a great team to have in the Premiership and I hope they remain there (and Manchester City go down :-P).
I’m going to solitary confinement…
Yes that’s right, the inevitable has happened, they are locking me away for good due to mental insanity… lol Na, over the past few months visitors to SpikedEffect.com may have noticed that the reliability of the server has been “questionable” at best, and the good news is SpikedEffect.com is finding a new home soon on a dedicated server, which means it will no longer be sharing a server with other websites.
This should mean an improvement in the reliability of the server as well as your personal experience of SpikedEffect.com and this blog, and it also means I have more control of what the server can actually do. So, over the next few weeks you may see some changes happening, as I take this opportunity to bring SpikedEffect.com to life on its new home.
Depending on how long it takes to get the new server set up and working as expected, I may take the opportunity to do some development on the main website and add some new features and aesthetics.
So for now just keep an eye out on SpikedEffect.com and bear with me as I am to improve the “spiked” effect experience.
The Arabian Homies Invade London!
As expected at the beginning I am finishing this draft on my return to Manchester Piccadilly from London Euston after a reunion of my close friends from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia that I had growing up. Mona, seemed to use the phrase “Arabian Homies” to describe us, and I thought it was brilliant as that’s exactly what we are… We are the group of friends in the good “old” days when the westerner population was rife in Jeddah, who terrorized the Arabian Homes compounds across the city and in fact Jeddah itself.
It’s a accepted part of life that as you grow up and get older you make friends and then grow apart as you move on in life to the next step you have to take, and in most cases you lose that bond that you once had. But there is something about how Jeddah was during the years I was growing up there that was the exception to that rule, we formed a relationship as a group of friends who shared many moments together as any group of friends do, but 12 years down the line when we all meet up again it’s as though nothing has changed.
Obviously with us all spread out across different parts of the world, finding the time, money and organization to get us in one place is not easy, so it doesn’t happen often, but when it does its again moments I cherish.
Even though I had to return to Manchester earlier than originally planned I at least managed to spend time with most of the people who made it (I missed two people Andrew & James who came later on the day I left) and it was good having everyone in the same place again and even though it was in a different country, it was as though we’d never been apart.
So I just want to say to my “Arabian Homies” out there, thanks for a fantastic weekend, the pictures I took will be up soon and we’ll have to sort out another reunion soon!
Everything has a beginning and an end
So I’m 2,245 words into this post and I think that’s a good sign I should really stop babbling on. But now that University has finished you should be hearing from me again soon (and I have no excuse this time to go against that lol). So until next time to my solitary fan out there who still reads this blog, I hope you enjoyed it! Lol
Take care all, and look after yourself, and until next time, Mafi Mushkila & Salam Alekum!
Post Tagged With: Arabian Homes, FA Cup, Jeddah, Manchester, Manchester United, Reunion, review, Saudi Arabia, University, Wembley, Wembley Stadium.