Indelacio.co.uk

So I was working on the bars at the big chill as part of my tour of different festivals on the bars, I had a unique experience compared to most of the other staff as I was transferred to different bars all the time when others got busier so I got to see what different bars were like (if Id slacked off more I probably wouldve only been on the one but hey I was happy to be moved around made the days go quicker)

In my opinion main stage was the worst as most of the day there were bands nobody knew who they were playing and by the time the headliners got on they cranked the music so loud that all you could here was the thumping bass and could not here the tune or singing behind it, and we werent exactly far from the stage being directly opposite it too.  Amstel bar was good with party tunes all day long and a relatively busy environment.  Castle bar opposite castle stage was mellow and chilled with very unusual chilled versions of songs on mellow instroments if that makes any sense, was fun to play guess the song with the other bar staff there until I got moved back to main bar. 

For me the last day was the best bar in club 10(possibly meant to be club tent and I misheard it) the open air stage with comedy in the morning, then some really good dance music, the end of the night sucked a bit with dub step, so repetitive and boring I tell you. But a nice and chilled bar and we had far too many staff so could have a bit of fun and relax on the last day.

The worst part was when you werent working you have to sit in the workers campsite and do nothing all day, we were all commenting on how its like a prison campsite, there is absolutely nothing to do and if you start at 6:30pm you bake in the sun with about 10 of you left on the campsite waiting to start a shift and you cant even sleep as its so hot.

I guess it is really more of a festival to be enjoyed walking around and chilling out as opposed to actually going there and frantically rushing the stages to see bands, hence being called the big chill, and really the place was huge covering quite a lot of land, so it would be more of an event to enjoy with your mates and meet new people.  I would like to see it from a visitors perspective, I can see where the appeal would be and as a chilled out event for gathering people together to have fun I see the appeal, but as an event for the music there were a few issues with the levels for the actual enjoyment.  Maybe next year they will sort out the sound levels and things will be better.  I can tell you now, the music was louder at the big chill main stage than any of the other festivals I worked at and that includes bloodstock the heavy metal festival.

I was going to call this 60 days later as a play on 28 days later as the last work issues post was 60 days ago, but yeah anyway…

I was confirmed as booked in for working the weekend at relentless nass on a bar down there, so that means travelling to shepton mallet from birmingham right, was on a train from 9am, get to castle cary, catch the bus to shepton mallet, cant find the people to sign in with so phone them up and they say “oh sorry we dont need you go home” and they refuse to pay the costs of my transport down south which as you can understand were quite considerable, end up getting back home at 11:30PM having spent the entire day on public transport and was going a little stir crazy by the end of the journey, quite frankly the company I am supposed to be working for take the piss and are absolute crap, its just finding a replacement job thats the thing which isnt easy in this climate in the slightest.

sorry but what a pile of shite that looks, my sisters 3 year old could draw better than that, okay its meant to be a comedy, so act or something and film it rather than draw pathetic little things a 3 year old could draw better than, or hire in a decent artist to draw the characters, who cares if the comedies any good, put it on the radio if you cant be bothered to act the scenes or draw something decent.

When working at the nec having a message saying to be in for work the next morning at 7pm is one thing but when its a shift down in another town, in this case ascot being informed of it with a matter of hours before the end of the day before you are due to work there is a completely different matter, how am I meant to pack a tent, buy food to survive 4 days in a tent etc when I am informed after the shops have closed, and worse still I was not informed of an exact time to be there and where at ascot to meet, I tried phoneing the office first thing in the morning but was unable to get a response and have also emailed them which I doubt they would be able to check if they are off at ascot racecourse anyway. 

So it looks like I wont be doing this shift and if they think Im the one at fualt they are mistaken had I been informed properly and given enough notice I would have been there on time, and if I knew a place to meet them I could still go for the remaining three days but I get no response so will be unable to work that shift… oh well.

Okay so this isnt the greatest blog post in the world but hey felt like I should write something, didnt really do a lot, one day I spent in the attic sorting through boxes and tidying the place so it was actually not just a huge mess up there and you could get to everything and the lot wouldnt collapse on itself, then there was another day spent deciding what stuff I needed to take to birmingham with me, and in the bath relaxing of course :-P, day 3 of the weekend was sunday and went to the boot sale, picked up quite a few bargains, a grilling machine 50p a donut maker 50p, a heater (which didnt work) 10p a poker set 10p and a few other things. Anyway after the boot sale went back and everyone was going to play poker, the entire family claims to be poker experts, and this was a texas holdem set so we were playing that, my sister did well in london playing it but was whining because she was losing at this so we went to playing 5 card stud and blackjack.  Okay now apparently a new hand which beats 2 pair is a silly hand where you have one pair and a mini straight “as your other hand” of course this doesnt appear on the legal list of poker hands but who was I to complain miles ahead of everyone else, my sister had to rebuy her stack 4 times, steve rebought 2ce and my mum once, and then everyone was wondering why we ended up playing for hours it was supposed to be a quick game and once you were out you were out but everyone was winging and insisting they rebought, by the end of the day half of the rules were changed but I wasnt in the mood for complaining.  And then even though I had a large stack ahead it was insisted the last hand would be everyones chips all in one hand wins, but I still won anyway so it didnt matter.  One thing you learn never play poker with family they will all complain and whinge when they arent winning and accusations of cheating flying around and people who brag they were experts at poker when losing blame the type of game.

Growing up Ive had some serious problems which Ive always thought I should have been taken to hospital for such as when Ive vomitted for about a week without being able to eat or drink food, bad chest pains etc, however recently when Ive actually taken myself to hospital Ive found that they are in fact quite useless, symptoms being firstly utterly freezing cold unable to retain heat, secondly absolutely no appettite without being able to force much food down, thirdly a huge rash over much of my body, a few days after all these symptoms I get a bit of a cough and a sore throat, and cough up a bit of blood so decide to go to hospital, the doctor checks my blood pressure, checks my tempurature and looks down my throat and decides its just a throat infection even though there were problems which started elsewhere, and it doesnt explain the rash of absolute zero appettite.  Then he states take 2 paracetemol every 8 hours, painkillers when I have no pain, thats going to do a lot, what about antibiotics? Useless doctors, and he also stated you’re young and healthy you’ll be fine, how does he know some tests he did, assuming because Im young I cant have any serious illnesses, speaking to other non qualified people the two more likely things which actually explain more of my symptoms were liver failure, or glandular fever, and the throat infection being a SECONDARY issue. It makes you wonder what is the point in going to doctors if they are so incompetent and just presume things without actually testing anything. People have also noted that the current trend is for doctors to perscribe painkillers and paracetemol for everything regardless of your symptoms, like a pill for all conditions, no wonder superbugs are prevailing.

Celebrities taking part on gameshows should not be allowed, its ridiculous, they earn large amounts anyway so when you see them on tv taking part in gameshows it doesn’t seem right, they can easily afford all of the prizes they win themselves whereas members of the public wouldn’t be able to.  And with something like family fortunes you just never know if they’re scripted or not its not as funny as a member of public coming up with some random answer

One off celebrity special editions of a gameshow is one thing, but entire series dedicated to them without members of the public taking part and winning doesn’t seem right. “Its all in the name of charity” as they win for charities, but you have to ask questions there, what are their motivations? Do they do it for additional air time? Maybe in the case of something like celebrity big brother or I’m a celebrity get me out of here, but with some of these things you wonder do they do it for the tax break? Do they declare their winnings as donations to charity, or do the networks do it for the tax breaks as they can offer the prizes as “donations to charity” and get the tax breaks which result from such.

Its all part of the downturn in television anyway, there’s less and less on that is remotely interesting, and the one or two series that I may watch tend to not be shown until years after you could see them through other methods such as video.

In the past I have taken up try me free promotions, where it doesnt state you must be dissatisfied in order to recieve your money back, just to try the product for free send proof of purchase and you will get your money back. Well in the past I have taken up these offers and not recieved my money back, then of course as you have sent your reciept and your wrapper you no longer have the proof of purchase. Two of the companies which have offered this and not produced the funds were coca cola who make powerade, the product was a bit watery and not what I was expecting for the price paid. The other was the makers of aero who had a special try me promotion accross a number of chocolates they were producing, I noticed it on buying a pack of aero mint, it stated other chocolates which were on the try me free, some flavours Id not tried before so I picked them up to try, a couple of which I did not like at all, and still after sending my reciept etc they didnt send my funds back, so now I am put off trying products as part of a “try me free” promotion as I know that they never send the money back and are impossible to get in touch with as I have tried continuousely contacting powerade/coca cola and they do not respond, and how would I prove my purchase after Ive already sent off my wrapper and till reciept to them? Id much rather print off something from thier website and take the voucher into the store to try a product free than send off after purchase as a lot of manufacturers seem to not want to pay back thier promised “try me free” deals.

On a seperate matter yesterday I recieved a text from orange PAYG about yet another change to thier topup system, this time you no longer get the VAT saving you are now forced to pay the additional 2.5% vat regardless of whether you want to or not, and this goes into a fund for the purchase of a new phone… with £1 for every £10 you topup, of course this is more money than the VAT saving of 25p but if you think about how much a new phone costs, at least £100-£200 that would require topping up £1000-£2000 how long would that take for the average payg customer, if you are using that much credit you would surely be on a pay monthly plan with better deals and savings, imagine you top up £10 per month, thats at least 10-20 months before you could possibly have enough saved, who’s saying the system wont have changed by then? What happens to the funds you’ve saved up do you get them as a cash payout? Do you get them in credit? No I think orange would pocket it all themselves. And what about the majority of PAYG customers who would not use thier phone that frequently, a lot of people have payg as emergency phones etc where the credit is used infrequently and definately would not be topped up that often, especially with the credit crunch effecting even more people, I believe that less people would be topping up so much as to benefit from this deal.

Did they rewrite the end of the butterfly effect? I just saw it on tv last night, but the first time I saw it on tape the ending was different, in this one when he didnt have journals he watched a home movie and made sure he never spoke to the girl for everything to work out, when I watched it on tape round an ex’s when he was in the mental institution he went back to when he was in the womb and strangled himself with the ambilicle cord so that he wasnt born and couldnt ruin everything, Im guessing that ending was too dark for tv so they changed it? It makes you wonder was the ending different again at the movies? I think the bad ending works better as the one where everything works out is too open ended and doesnt explain how he is now perfectly fine even though every time he changed the past he became increasingly ill as his brain had even more thoughts crammed inside, by the end surely he had 80+ years of memories which would have drove him crazy like his father. I did wonder how the butterfly effect 2 would have worked, which I still havent seen, but it opens the possibility that it is him again trying to change things rather than someone else or his father, or a future child which would have been conceived as he killed himself before he was born and his parents may have tried again for a child. I know thats not associated with the main post of this blog but rather than write an entire article for it I thought Id post it on the end here.

Okay so its been a while since I wrote something, a few things I was going to write about have passed like the discovery that there is a black hole at the center of the universe, well of course there is everything is circling a big black mass at the center like water circling a plughole, I think that was a pretty obvious thing, maybe origonally there was a supermassive sun which exploded and created the hole in the center who is to know, but it certainly makes the “dark matter” theory some people had pointless as the massive weight of such a large black hole makes thier dark matter mean that the weight of the universe wouldnt be stable, as Ive always thought if you have to invent something you cant prove just to make something fit youve missed something, and they missed out the weight of black holes and the mass and gravitational effects they produce.

Okay now onto the title issue, of the credit crunch and how it is a self defeating circle, as people have less funds to spend there is less need for people to work so people end up losing shifts so they have even less disposeable income which means there is even less money being spent on the economy reducing the need for workers further.  The government try to bail out failing industries but are just throwing money into nothing as it would be far better to let a failing business fail and focus on saving those which are copeing and providing support for those without work as a result.  It also appears that as a result many people are buying the “value products” but as they do it means that most shops sell out of these products, and even tv shows encourage the migration to buy lower value products not realising that by everyone doing so those that have had to survive on these all along are finding that there is no longer the option to buy these as the supermarkets run out and dont restock them very often.

On another matter related, the euro exchange rate is 1.05921 according to www.x-rates.com however when I went into the post office to exchange some euros to pounds they charged me the rate of 1.1373 which is stealing rather a lot to be fair considering they are supposed to be commision free exchanges.  I would sooner pay some commission and know what Im paying rather than sneakily be taken advantage of with a rate much higher than the actual exchange rate.

I also think it was funny how dispatches were trying to make out that the supermarkets should take a hit on thier profits of a few pence on the value products and make better quality products, the chances of that happenning very slim, but of course the general public are going to say yes they should when asked, if you went around asking the supermarkets theyre all going to say no…

Finally that flora buttery advert, gary rhodes travels the nation asking people which margerine product they prefer flora buttery or lurpack spreadable (read the smallprint) by a majority of 6 people out of 200 they prefer flora buttery, and if they had prefered lurpack no doubt the advert would have been a lurpack advert, confirming that of course the public thought what the creators of the spread thought, that the nation preferred thier product, because it was deeply bias, one of thier products or the other.  And you could hardly say a 3% majority a landslide win.

Okay so its been known for a very long time that cigarettes are full of crap and added shite which fucks up your body… yet they have also been releasing the nicorette inhalers etc, which are basically a clean way of getting a nicotine fix, the drug from the cigarettes, so why dont they just ban cigarettes and sell nicotine as a highly taxed product? People can still get thier fix, and the government can still get thier taxes.. If its not strong enough then why not just pump up the concentration to give people a bigger hit, and sell it as a recreational drug. The only reason that alchohol and nicotine are legal is because the government want the taxes, and its a form of control, if they have a drug or two which are legal it reduces the number of people who will go elsewhere for other drugs to escape thier hundrum lives.

Heck then know very well if they wanted to they could simply adapt cigarettes to not include tar and all the damaging ingredients in order to make a cleaner safer recreational drug, but instead they think simply putting images on a package which people will ignore will do enough to stop people, they wont care, its like football because its the social thing to do the majority of the public get involved, and its all spread during high school people go from there, they see other popular people doing it, they see thier tv idols smoking and its ingrained into the public image, the only true way to stop it would be to ban it, or to make it safe. Of course they know that if they made it safe many many more people would do it, and abuse it.

Heck its well known that nicotine and alchohol are some of the most damaging drugs, but the government only cares of the tax it gets from the sales of these items and the control it has over the public, and they wonder why theres major mental health issues throughout the nation, because we are a nation of drugged up people, all of your life is based on the consumption of drugs, if you have a sniffle you “must” buy the latest lemon based drug to stop your cold even though your body is more than capable of stopping it, thus training it to rely on drugs and not your natural healing ability, there are day and night capsules to control your body to put you to sleep and wake you up, so that you dont have to rely on your body and let it recover and rest as it tells you to, in order to allow you to work 70 hour weeks you must work in order to pay for things in this world.

With the ammount of drugs we all pump into our systems daily, caffine, nicotine, additives, heck if youve ever drank a can of red bull some of the percentages of your daily intake of certain substances are in the 1000% range. Add to that the pollution in the air, (some parts of the uk the pollution is bad enough that its equal to smoking 4 cigarettes per day just breathing the air) Your microwaved food, both from your own home and the inevitable microwaved food that is passed as cooked in major restaurant/pub chains in order to meet the demands of food that is delivered fast. Has anyone ever considered how much radiation we take in through this in our lifetime, how do you even know when your microwave is leaking, surely there should be some sort of safety feature like something on the outside that glows if there is a leak during its lifetime, because most people will have microwaves far longer than they are expected to have them, when they start to take longer to cook things, is this a natural decay of the atomic element or has the microwave sprung a leak? after all its a radioactive element sat in your kitchen.

On top of that most of these have symptoms that are easily hidden, and a world which only cares for itself rather than other people so they fail to notice when someone is suffering, parents blind to see symptoms so they pretend not to notice, or are just plain oblivious to symptoms, these things are genetic they get passed on, and as we progress more and more of the uk will suffer from mental health problems as we pass these down onto our kids and thier kids, until eventually the whole world suffers, and are then force fed drugs to control them until we have a state much like in the film equilibrium where you have daily drugs you must take in order to control you so you dont feel emotions and you are a drone to work as society expects you to with no life. I wouldn’t be at all suprised if it isnt long before we are given drugs we must all take in order to combat the nations growing mental health problems, which undoubtedly will lead to further problems.

The worst of it all is the over the counter medication you can get without symptoms though, hypocondriacs, and the world which are told by tv you must take drugs the instant you have a sneeze, defeating your natural immune systems allowing super bugs to thrive and get use to medications. We all need to stop useing and abusing and only be able to take such drugs under a prescription after careful deliberation and the knowledge that the body cannot cope without the drugs, maybe then we might have less symptoms in the world.