Really great cake recipe.....

Good evening fair reader,
Despite popular demand in the comments, I don't know any recipes. Although saying that, my ex-(sob)-housemate and I may be writing our own pasta cookbook with assorted pasta-based meals. Some favourites:


1) Cook pasta for less time than necessary        2) Add sauce
Or,
1) Buy a pasta ready meal.


So while this blog will be many things to many people, it won't be the source of culinary delights. Apart from photos of food made for or given to me. 


No blog posts over the weekend due to my departure to London to celebrate my best friends 21st - we got treated to a fancy hotel with swimming pool and steam room and rahrarahhnotboastingrahrah; it was really good. 
I got a tip of the week from a girl I met today. She has just finished the Graduate Scheme I've applied to at the company where I work. During our conversation about her past 2 years, which sound amazing, she said to not worry about what I want to do but do anything and get stuck into it. And then to use that experience for finding a job I actually want later.
This seems like pretty good advice and is definitely something to think about! It seems that a lot of people I speak to didn't really know what they were doing at first and that it all came together in the end.


I remember watching Steve Jobs making a speech where he talks about chance and how his life worked out how it did. Actually, the first thing that amazed me about this was that he created both Apple and Pixar, which I didn't realise. 
He talks about how in college or uni he stopped going to his classes and turned up to calligraphy classes for the hell of it because he was really interested by it. At the time it didn't make sense but later he used this knowledge when building laptops and that's why laptops today have so many typefaces.


One of my favourite quotes is from this video actually is:

 “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about anything. This was when I was at my most creative”  

This was when he had to leave Apple and when he began Pixar (this is from memory, I may be wrong) but I love this concept and it's also what I was talking about in the last blog; creativity and being in the moment. 


Link here if you are interested in watching the whole thing. 


I also like to think that in 5 or 10 or 20 years time we can all look back and see reasons or patterns e.g. "I uploaded files for 8 hours a day when I was 21 and that's why I'm ended up....................." Queen of Europe?


It could happen. 


On that happy and ambitious note I'm gunna love you and leave you. 


Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday :) xx

New post occurred

Hey there,


Nice that it's a Friday right? 


Before starting work about a month ago, I never really got that 'thank God; it's Friday' feeling, but now every Friday the fact that it's Friday replaces the weather as the main topic of conversation. It's quite nice as everyone swaps their weekend plans but also a bit depressing because you spend all week gearing yourself up for 2 days that go by so quick. 


Actually, this reminds me of a Dalai Lama quote. Let me find it. 
Someone asks him what surprises him most and he says: 

"Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never

going to die and then he dies having never really lived"

Something about this always strikes me as true as we are always looking to the next thing; the next holiday, the next party, what we're going to do after now. Life happens where you're just in the moment and you forget yourself.

More and more I'm agreeing with philosophers who said that you only 'forget yourself' and become free when you participate in art - music, theatre, painting.  

This used to annoy me because I thought it was so upper class and anti pop-culture....but then I realised I get these kind of moments when listening to music, jogging/doing jiu-jitsu (new hobby) or reading. It's all art, right?

When you are not immersed in the details and worrying about everything; that's when life happens. When you're outside of your comfort zone. When you don't know what's going to happen next but you look forward to it.

Frank Zappa (composer) said that "without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible" and it's the same sentiment. 

The point that I'm making is that 

trying new things = doing life = happiness

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the drudgery, routine and expectations of everyday life but I love those moments when life just.....is and the worries and thoughts melt away.

Mostly though, this guy is good on a bike  :)  And the song makes it feel like summer even thought its been raining all day.

Love 

xxx

Beautiful day to blog

Happy Wednesday to all :)

The weather is b-e-a-uutifull today! British weather really needs to decide if its in Summer or Winter at the moment. Preferably, it'll choose summer but it'll properly only happy when all the school children get thrown forcibly from the fields and back into school.

6 week holidays are definitely a distant memory; I much prefer the Uni way of ~3 months off and then casually turn up to a few lectures. I think discipline is a memory too 'cos at Uni you could come and go and it felt like you'd done a really good deed if you managed to turn up to nearly a full week of lectures.

I'm loving the freedom that leaving education gives you . Even though my head is crying because it can't make a decision, it's a great feeling to have so many options and I'm so lucky to live in a country where I have access to pretty much any job. Glass ceiling or no glass ceiling, at least I'm not gunna be shot down for wanting to be a female doctor. If I was so inclined.

Mostly though, I wanted to talk about a book. Anyone that knows me will be thinking (as they avidly read my blog) -  'oh here we go, Bow and her books'.

I like books.

It's this particular appreciation that inspired the background to the blog, as you might imagine (n.b. don't go thinking this is the final, finished 'look' of the blog - complete work-in-progress. I'm not creative but hopefully I can do better than this). So do expect Bridget's Corner to talk about some books. I might even have a themed section called Bridget's Books or something equally unimaginative. Expect this.

The book I've been reading is called Until the Final Hour by Traudl Junge....in normal words, she was one of Hitler's Secretaries who stayed with him until, yeh, 'the final hour'. I haven't reached the final hour yet, but I'm sure it'll be good. Her diaries were made into the film Downfall which you may or may not have seen.

The book is literally fascinating. I don't use literally fascinating very often, but when I do it's normally about something good. Normally you hear character appraisals of Hitler and it's all "he's evil" and "he's a vegetarian ohh the irony". While he is evil and his eating habits are slightly ironic, Traudl makes him seem so....normal.
She was very young, very naive and you can see how there were almost two sides to Hitler; evil, militaristic, megalomaniac....and then the man who eats dinner, who makes jokes, teaches his dogs tricks.

Amazing. Do read it, or watch the film, if this kind of thing interests you. If you've ever read books like Anne Frank, The Book Thief or literally anything about the holocaust, this book will just amaze and confuse you.

Book loving out the way, I feel I should credit my older brother Timothy for his remarkable genius in naming the blog. Naturally, it arose out of him making fun of me when I used to ask [great and interesting] questions when watching Match of the Day. And sitting in the corner.

Thank you for reading :)

Bowing out xx

Day 2 in Bridget's Corner....

Hi there....

How are we? 

On this rainy Tuesday I would really like to share this amazing video with you. This is one of many amazing TED talks which can be found on the website.

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) if you don't know is a conference where people who are unbelievably talented and complete specialists in their own field conduct talks on new inventions, ideas or theories. 

My parents in fact know Chris Anderson (hugely under-rated entrepreneur) who set TED  up a few years ago and made the videos freely available on the net so it's nice to see the products of his labour! If you haven't heard of it, you should definitely check it out :) It's a great way to procrastinate.

Anyway, this video is by Michael Pritchard who developed a water-bottle which can turn dirty water to clean, sterile water. It's unbelievable that this a) hasn't been developed sooner and b) that it's still not being widely used in places like Somalia right now, or after any major disaster.

The problem may be cost effective-ness but you'd hope further incremental product or process innovations could make it more cost effective, especially given its potential impact.

Serious conversation over In lighter news - my new bracelet arrived today :) Pic below of charm. This is the beginning of my belated 21st birthday. I'm hoping to collect charms from various family members and friends from now and into the future! :) Thanks to my Grandma for the first one! So I am hugely excited about it :)

 

Thanks for reading! :D Hope you had a great day

Bowing out xx

Hello!

Hi guys :) first post!

To people I don't know - hello and welcome! To people I know: you mock me, I'll kill you. Get out.

I'm not really sure what to tell you to expect with this blog. Most likely it'll just be my thoughts or ideas whenever I get round to writing them down. I've just graduated (a month or so ago) from University of Manchester and I'm in a transition period where I don't have a clue what's going on. I have a small part time job but my main focus should be on getting a real person's job and doing real person things.

However, despite this lofty aim I spend all 98% of my time not looking for a job, being on the internet, reading, going out, travelling to go out or sleeping. Main problem for me is not knowing what I want to do. Whenever I try I kinda end up like this and I don't get anywhere.

So this blog is potentially going to cover the undoubtedly fascinating chronology of:

a) My successful journey to adulthood with details on my successful, impressive high-paying and convenient job.

b) My increasingly frustrated attempts at finding any more work as my attempts become more and more futile.

c) Screw the job, enter instead highly dramatised and exaggerated version of the days events; more often than not, the blog ends a life-threatening situation....but do I survive?

Anyway, updates on any brainwaves I have on what kind of job I want can be hoped for but expect this hope to remain unfulfilled. I'll probably be commenting on things in the news or stuff I've found on the internet or that happened in the day.

Things and stuff, essentially.

But mainly, this was something that made me smile today so, enjoy :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwEYYI-AGWs

Bowing out x