Fifa 13- Paddy

Today is my last day in the small Hampshire town of Farnborough. Tomorrow, I shall be making the journey up to my halls of residence at Leicester. I am looking forward to it, I've packed all my stuff away and am raring to go. The one downside is that I have had to pack away my Xbox 360 in order to transport it tomorrow. This unfortunately means that I am not able to play FIFA 13, the disc of which arrived earlier today. Don't get me wrong, I already played 2 and a half hours of it earlier today, kicking of my new manager mode with French side PSG. I have only played 1 league game so far, but I won it 4-3 and I have already made several big name purchases in order to bolster my squad. I am looking forward to continuing it, but doubt I will be able to play much over the next few days, what with fresher's and meeting new people and what not.

Tournament- Paddy

Sorry for not doing my blog thing at the weekend. I was rather pre-occupied with a tournament of sword fighting. For realsies. In my spare time, I am a member of a HEMA school that teaches 16th century style rapier fencing. Here is a video of some other people doing some. That was actually a demonstration by my coaches.
But anyway, back to the important matter, I had a tournament of this all weekend. It was my first ever tournament and it did not go so well. I lost all 3 of my fights in the group stage and placed 11th out of 12 fighters. In my defense though, I did have last years defending champion as my opponent for my first ever tournament bout, a bout I lost 5-1. I also lost 5-2 and 11-2, rounding out my exit from the tournament. Despite my complete and total defeat, I did enjoy the tournament and I am already in training for next year when I will undoubtedly win, of course.

Prepared - Alex

I am as ready as ready can be for moving into university tomorrow. My xbox and television have been taken down (my room looks naked without them). My boxer draw is nearly empty and my sock draw is less empty but still noticeably depleted. The most important piece of preparation that I could do, however, is get the booze ready, and boy have I. I have over time got 1.4L of spirit (half scotch and half Jaegermeister) and 8.36L of lager. That's nearly 10L of alcohol! Now I'm just watching QI and awaiting the moment I can rest my head upon my pillow after using my toothbrush at home for the last time in weeks. If you're ignoring tomorrow morning that is. I have only one pair of trainers left out and am really considering throwing another pair of jeans in my car tomorrow morning. For now I want to go and watch Stephen Fry however I suspect that I will post on Sunday as I may well have something to tell you about AND time to kill. LOVE YOU GUYS.

A Green Scouring Pad on a Stick- Paddy

Today I went shopping with my Mother for a list of things I would need to survive successfully at university. This list included, but was not limited to, a green scouring pad on a stick for cleaning dishes and plates and what not. If owning your very own green scouring pad on a stick is not a sign of being an adult, who has to fend for themselves, then I don't know what is. It is not something that I would even have considered adding to my basket of items, had it not been for my Mum. With all her adult experience  having been one for more years than she'd like me to tell you, she told me that a green scouring pad on a stick was something I was going to need. So I splashed out roughly £1.50 on (by I splashed out, I in fact mean that my mum paid for it). I have never felt more prepared for university.

Penultimate - Alex

Well this is my penultimate regular blog, as I said a while back I would halt my bi-daily blogging in favour of posting when I felt like it. What can you expect after this change? Well the obvious answer is "for there not to be a post from Alex every other day", however on this blog we like to dig deeper than the painfully obvious. I like to think that you can expect a higher quality of post from me as and when I do post, primarily because I will only post when I have a genuine idea of what I'm going to write. Therefore you can expect less boring filler and more comedic wit. Also being at university I will be surrounded by intelligent sorts who will no doubt teach me all sorts of amazing new words which will allow me to tantalise your imaginations. No longer will I bore you with FIFA talk that only I or Patrick find interesting, instead I will no doubt keep you entertained will interesting uni anecdotes or other whimsical and entertaining snippets of text.

My Tuesday- Paddy

Let me tell you about my day. Not because it was particularly interesting, but because I have little better to tell you all about. I woke today at the late (even for me) time of 1pm, for no particular reason. I then, surprisingly proactively, gathered various items and belongings of mine from around my house and placed them in my study. This is because I was gathering items to pack for university, where I shall be going in 11 days. I also made a list of things I need to buy, like stationary, because I am an organised human being. Once this was done I played roughly 3 hours of FIFA 12, because I could. I had a pork chop sandwich for dinner. This is 2 pork chops in a baguette, and is a manly sandwich. Post-dinner I watched the Champions League fixture between Real Madrid and Manchester city, which was won rather excitingly by Real 3-2. And that brings us to now, me writing this blog. Telling you about my day. I hope you enjoyed this little insight into my hollow, empty life.

Packing - Alex

I have begun packing for leaving for university, which is a bit rubbish. As it stands I have all of my shower gels, deodorants, appliances and such in a big box. I have my crockery and glassware ready for one last wash before being packed up. The most crucial things I am taking up are A.) my huge mug for big servings of tea or coffee and B.) a crate or two of beer, for those first few days of bonding. It would be incorrect to label myself as nervous for university, but I am a touch anxious to meet the people who I will spend countless hours with over the next year. I am absolutely positive that most of them will be genuinely bearable people, but I am also fairly certain that one or two of them will be complete burks. I'll fill you in within the next week I reckon!

Also just a little note, I just signed David Beckham for free for Wigan on FIFA 12, a 77 cm on only 20,000 per week can't be sniffed at. I also signed a 36 year old cb (Legrottaglie - 75), a 36 year old rb (Neville - 74) and a 36 year old cdm (Brocchi - 75). All for free, in order to quash an injury crisis rising at my club. So I am not the proud owner of an old persons club.

University times- Paddy

It is now exactly 13 days until I have to depart from the small town of Farnborough for the big city of Leicester for my university to begin. However, for the last week or so of that time I shall be left in a desolate wasteland. Basically, all of my friends will be already at their universities, having started in the coming days. In fact, Hayden, who is a friend of mine, already started his yesterday down at UWE in Bristol. Fortunately, one of my better friends, is not leaving until the 7th of October. That is redonkulously late. I will be 19 by the time she is even thinking of leaving for university. Also, that's exciting, I turn 19 on the second night of my Uni Fresher's week. That's a good way to get drunk. I'm looking forward to it.

They are leaving - Alex

Well the first of my pals have started to leave for university, and as Pat's dedication to the blog wanes as does the number of friends I have in this neck of the woods. Just last night I attended a "leaving party", although rather sadly it was not for university but instead she is moving to South Africa for ever and ever. I have one week left in my home town and then I am living in the middle of England. Patrick, I will tell you for him, has a fortnight left in Farnborough before living in the middle of England. He's literally within 15 miles of me, how amazing is that? We can stay best friends forever and still see each other on weekends. It'll be like we aren't even apart. I can also, hopefully, tell all of his embarrassing stories to his new friends. I'm going to make them hate him.

One last time - Alex

I am grumpy a lot of the time. This doesn't mean that I'm not happy, just that I don't really want to appear it. For this reason I don't really enjoy clubbing, however tonight I will be clubbing in my local area in the last time for a mighty few months. Since I came of age in February I have been to Fleet thrice, Guildford once and Camberley once also. So tonight will mark my sixth time in my seventh available month, party animal. A very good bit of news is that tonight is "£2 Stella night", which means that a bottle of Stella Artois lager beer can be acquired for just two British pounds, which is a good deal for "out". What, however, is an even better deal, is ten 440ml cans of Budweiser for only £7, that's a measly £1.59 per litre. I imagine the Stella tonight will work out to something around £6 a litre! That's the best thing about shopping in ASDA, bargains.

Connor, the denier of goals- Paddy

Tonight I played some 5-a-side football with a few of my friends, 9 of them in fact otherwise it stops being 5-a-side. I played at a striker on my in my quintet, because this is the position that I play. I had a decent game, racked up 9 or 10 goals, more than any of the other 9 players managed to get. This of course meant my team won. However, none of that matters. None of that matters because of Connor. Connor might be the worst person in goal that I know. Despite this being the case, Connor still managed to prevent me scoring on no less than 8 separate occasions. This started to wind me up, as he kept reminding me of this fact. This meant I became more and more frustrated and upset at my lack of goals vs Connor and started to take more and more outlandish and desperate shots. This lead to more and more pressure on me to score against him. I couldn't handle the pressure. I ended up in the fetal position at one point. That is all that people will remember from this game. Not the 9 goals, no, the Connor induced breakdown overshadowed all that.

Ch ch ch ch ch changes - Alex

Soon my life will take a huge change, around late September what I have known in my recent memory will be changed for the foreseeable future. Yes, I am of course talking about the release of FIFA 13. I have grown fairly fond of FIFA 12 and to help demonstrate this I will tell you how many matches I have played in each mode (and each match takes roughly 12 minutes), I have played 333 head to head seasons matches, 65 ultimate team matches, somewhere in the region of 50 pro club matches, 140 career mode matches, 216 online friendlies matches and I would estimate around 30 exhibition matches. That's 834 matches of  FIFA, amounting to a time somewhere in the region of 167 hours of FIFA match time. That's a week of FIFA. That means that I have effectively spent 1/52nd of my last year playing FIFA. Bloody hell. Of all my time on FIFA  170 of the matches are against Patrick, of the 170 I have won 78, drawn 42 and only lost 50. We have also completed 19 full seasons of which I have won 14 (and I am all but certain to win our current season, not even he would deny that). I'll miss FIFA 12, Terrence Musuveni and my very average ability on it, but I also can't wait for FIFA 13. God I'm a loser.

Parties- Paddy

As Alex informed you yesterday, we had a weekend full of partying. I, unlike alex, however, do not have any self control and got very drunk on both nights. In fact on Friday I was sick outside my friends house, and on Saturday I was "really, very nearly sick" but refrained from actually chundering, as someone who is uneducated might say. Before you get all judgmental, I did consumed a high amount of alcohol, conservatively estimated to be in the region of 45 units, which is no small amount and works out at more than 1 unit an hour from the time I started on Friday, to the time I fell asleep on Sunday morning. Is it wrong that I am just the tiniest bit proud of that ratio? I'm more ashamed of the actions caused by the ratio, obviously. I woke up on sunday morning and people had adorned my body in rude words written in sharpie. I had to remove the whole top layer of skin from my upper arm to remove the message that "****'s love ******* & poo". It wasn't a sentiment I really wanted to share with the people by displaying it so prominently on myself. Also my Nan was visiting me on Sunday, and she certainly wouldn't want to see that.

Neglect - Alex

You've been neglected, neither I nor Paddy have been on top blogging form recently and I know that I'm disappointed in myself for letting you down. I have a fairly good excuse for Wednesday, I was at the Paralympics and hence was not in my house between 5:30 in the morning and 9 at night. for Friday I have less in the way of excuses and the only vague thing I can muster up is that I got addicted to Minecraft that day. Anyway, what's been going on in my life? Well Friday night I went to a party and got drunk and then last night (Saturday) I went to a party and didn't get drunk. On Friday night the party had no theme but last night the party was Hawaiian themed, forcing me to buy an incredibly garish vest from primark adorned with palm trees and sun sets. It made me look both very Hawaiian and very silly. I don't really have the physique to wear a vest though, the only person who looks worse than me in a vest is... well... Pat. Bless him the little chucklehead.

Harry Potter Tour- Paddy

I am an avid fan of the Harry Potter series, both in novel and film form, as is my sister. It is for this reason that today we both went to the Warner Bros Studio Tour in Watford to see the behind the scenes work on all the films. It was one of the most interesting days I have ever had. The level of detail in the props and sets in absolutely and ridiculously minute. For example, each of the small jars on the shelves of the potion's classroom set has its own unique, handwritten label. A second example is the 40 full editions of the wizarding newspaper that were published, despite many of them only having 1 or 2 pages shown on camera. The attention to detail is simply astonishing. If you are a fan of the series, I would strongly recommend taking the tour. It made me make excited squealing noises on more than one occasion.

Trilogy- Paddy

Today I did a marathon. Not the conventional 26 mile or so run, I'm not healthy enough to do that. No today I did a marathon of the film-watching variety. I, along with 4 of my friends (all males of course), watched all 3 of the Lord of the Rings film back to back. We only watched the standard editions of the films as that would have been far too time consuming, but still they totaled 492 minutes of film, which is roughly 8 and 1/4 hours. That is a lot of Lord of the Rings. In that duration of time Usain Bolt could run almost 200 miles, assuming he maintained the average speed of his world record run. However, watching so much of Peter Jackson's trilogy did have its downside. Towards the end of The Two Towers (the central film of the trilogy) our attention began to wane and more and more distractions were found from the films, eventually leaving the last part of Return of the King as little more than background noise. Also at one point I stood up to get a drink and hit my head on a lamp. That hurt quite alot

Trilogy - Alex

As sang by Schoolhouse Rock, three is the magic number. And things in my life have just so happened to neatly fit into threes. Firstly, avid readers will remember me talking about my DVD set with Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smokin Barrels and finally L4yer Cake. Well I finished the DVD set today by watching the pre-bond Daniel Craig film L4yer Cake. I enjoyed it, however I much preferred Snatch and Lock, Stock. I also just completed a trio of signing on my Wigan manager mode on FIFA. This will mean very little to most of you, but I managed to nab myself a 78 rated left midfielder, a 77 rated central attacking midfielder and then a 75 rated left back (who, crucially, is versatile and can play at right back or central defensive midfield). Last but not least me and four friends (or so I am told) are planning to watch all three Lord of the Rings films in one sitting tomorrow, back to back. The films back to back, not the people. Wish us luck.

Replay - Alex

You know when you get a song stuck in your head and you just rape the replay button for the best part of an hour? Well last night I listened to THIS on repeat for at least an hour. It starts off slow and melodic before morphing into hectic string filled bliss. I find it difficult to listen to it without tapping my feet. The reason I listened to it so many times is because yesterday I watched both Lock, Stock and Two Smokin Barrles AND Snatch. I must say that I found both films rather enjoyable and will be completing the DVD box set they came in by watching L4yer Cak3 within the next week. Now this morning I've been listening to THIS many times over. It's really relaxing and easy to listen to. I'll be keeping an eye out for their debut album! AND HERE'S A RANDOM FACT FOR YOU, today I washed myself with old spice original body wash which promises up to 7 hours of fragrance. After 5 hours I still smell like Terry Crews fresh out of the shower, success.