posted by Mark posted on 10th April, 2008 at 03:46 pm
Today was the day I did my Leaving Cert french oral exam. I’ve always been fair decent with the french oral, and I think it went pretty well today. Hs asked me some of the harder topics which is considered a good sign. I was asked about the celtic tiger, obesity, social problems and technology and bebo.
I produced an answer for every question, so I was happy that I didn’t resort to the “Je ne sais pas” or “Ca ne m’intresse pas” type of answers to get yourself out of jail.
The orals are in my opinion, the worst type of exam you can do. They’re so difficult to study for and very nerve-wracking. I was sitting outside waiting to be called in for ages. Then the guy comes out and tells me he’s going to get a cup of coffee and will be back in a few minutes. At this stage you really just want to go in there and get it all over with. I’d also been over-dosing on Rescue Remedy (a dropper type thing that supposedly keeps you calm) to keep the nerves at bay. I’m not too panicky usually, but when I found that stuff in the house the night before, I thought I may as well bring it in.
When I was in there the nerves didn’t affect me very much at all, I knew I was getting on well, and the examiner was a nice guy that seemed all to willing to help if I had needed.
Also, there’s been some exciting news for me of late involving a national newspaper, but I’ll keep it all under wraps for now at the risk of looking like a fool if it doesn’t all go through.
Next week I have my Irish oral, just four days after the French, boo-urns to you State Examinations Commission. There was an incident in my school with the german orals actually. The german oral examiner for our school was in a car accident and the exams had to be postponed. The thoughtful Examinations Commission suggested doing the german orals the following week (the same week as the Irish orals). Thankfully my school had enough sense to say no and do them the week after. It’s times like this I’m grateful for being a dirty, smelly, arrogant French student rather than a hardened beer guzzling German student.
Good luck to any fellow leaving certers with the orals this week and next week. Remember, your examiner is just another teacher, they want to see you do well.
posted by Mark posted on 2nd April, 2008 at 02:36 pm
Only the Irish readers will care about this one, but if you haven’t heard already, Bertie Ahern announced today that he’ll be handing in his resignation as Taoiseach on 6th May. It’s a pretty interesting case really. Bertie’s been Taoiseach for nearly 11 years, and was liked by the public for seeming like a pretty down-to-earth kinda guy. He should be remembered for his work on the Peace Process with Northern Ireland and the “Celtic Tiger” economy that grew under his leadership. Lately there has been a tribunal though into some of his finances during his time in office, with some suspicious large sums of money under question.
With this tribunal going on I don’t think too many people would have been surprised to hear of his resignation.
Personally I liked Bertie Ahern. I’m not too into politics but he seemed decent enough, and I once met him him a local shopping centre when I was way younger (I’d say nine or ten years of age) and he was very polite, even to me, a young child at the time, despite the fact that he was surrounded by a ton of people trying to talk to him. I asked him “What’s it like being known everywhere you go?” I basically just wanted to ask him something for the sake of talking to the Taoiseach. He answered that it had some advantages and disadvantages, but then some middle-aged bitch interrupted with “I’m a teacher and I’m very upset” and I decided it was time to leave the man alone, I’d gotten my wee chat with him, I was happy.
Whether he took brown envelopes or not, I liked him, and he seemed to be doing a decent enough job. What’s so bad about brown envelopes anyway?
posted by Mark posted on 1st April, 2008 at 11:30 pm
As I write this post, I have been officially 18 years of age for the past eleven minutes. How wonderful.
Finally, I can attend clubs and pubs without having to borrow an ID off someone that looks like me. Finally I can go buy beer without having to worry about getting asked for ID and having to shamefully admit that I don’t have it, and then face the horrible walk of shame. My mate Warren always had the hilarious idea of heading into an off-licence on the day of your 18th birthday, wearing only a nappie (diaper), baseball cap, and holding a giant lollipop. And you can proudly produce that identification card that proves you can purchase alcohol despite you wearing the attire of a two year old.
Unfortunately, I’ll never again get to experience the thrill of getting served alcohol or getting into an over-18s club when technically you’re not supposed to. Perhaps that was even the best part?
Posts like this really show my Irish-ness don’t they?
For my birthday I’m getting mostly money, because quite simply, I need it! I’ve had to buy a new laptop though, as over the weekend I broke my old one. I’ll post about this in detail soon, I hope!
The laptop partly explains the lack of posting on here lately, but mainly it’s due to exams. I have Leaving Cert oral exams coming up on the 7th (French) and the 14th (Irish). Two orals exams in such close proximity is quite unfair in my opinion, as it’s so easy to mix up both languages. Today I had a practice French oral, which went quite swimmingly! My teacher was hard enough on me too, allowing me very little chance to talk about the basics or stuff I had learned off, but instead challenged me by asking about the economy and stuff like that. She was very pleased overall, so perhaps sacrificing my blogging time has paid off a little!
Because of the afore-mentioned exams, I wont be doing anything for my birthday. I’m not happy about this, but when it’s sacrificing two weekends for the sake of my Leaving Cert oral exams, I think it’s a wise decision. A nerdy decision, but a wise one.
June 16th is the day I finish my Leaving Cert folks, and I promise you walsho.net will be back with regular posting from then on!
In the meantime, feel free to get me to buy your under-age friends, relatives, or general acquaintances alcohol or cigarettes. Why? Because I can. And it makes me feel like a big man.
posted by Mark posted on 23rd March, 2008 at 09:37 pm
I’ve sold another site I can no longer run due to time constraints.
Your Gphone Blog was set up by me a few months ago, and during the time I owned it I made only three posts on the site. In fairness it had still managed to get decent enough rankings in Google, but there was no way in hell I’d have time to take advantage of that or try to improve it.
So I made a sale thread for it yesterday, with an ambitious Buy It Now price of $60. The thread died fairly quickly, it just got buried, but one guy did PM me saying he’d pay $30 for it right there and then, and the offer was just handy so I accepted.
$30 and less clutter on my server, I’m happy.
All this selling the websites I no longer have time for is like a digital detox for me or something, I’m loving it.
posted by Mark posted on 21st March, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Finally, I’ve become the number one search result for my own name!
For ages Wikipedia stood between me and that coveted number one spot on the Google search results for “Mark Walsh”.
I wanted to make this more boastful, but unfortunately Wiki is still ahead of me in the search results for “Irish Hero”, so I cannot yet declare that the number one online encyclopedia can suck my balls.
Apologies if that last remark was a bit vulgar, I’m currently planning a website based around life’s vulgarities. I would tell you that there’ll be more on that to come soon, but we all know there probably wont be. In fact, I find so little time to work online lately that it’s almost unlikely that I’ll get to a) make the new site and b) blog about it afterwards.
I’ve managed to put up my proxy site again, 4getschool.com. It was down for a while when my proxy host kicked me off for not paying the bill. Their goddamn site was down! When they emailed saying my bill was due, I went to pay and the site was down. So then after a few days they inform me they have taken my site down because of my failure to pay my bills. Again I try to pay and the billing option isn’t working. So after sending them a classic sarcastic response I decide that maybe they’re not the right proxy host for me! I’m currently testing out another one, so let’s hope it’s slightly better.
posted by Mark posted on 19th March, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I mentioned recently that I’d finally managed to conduct some online business amid all my school work these days.
Y’all remember the lolcatblog I set up at ShavedLittlePussy.com (also used lolcatblog.com) ?
I had posted on the blog every saturday for about a month, so nothing major, hadn’t even set up a feedburner count for the blog, or monetised it or anything. Well I threw it up for sale and within a few hours had gotten a Buy It Now bid of $100! I was delighted, considered the site had not been too developed. I think the quality of the two domains and the concept gave it the value. The few posts on there were funny enough, but were really nothing special. I was reluctant to sell, because it is a site I wanted to develop, but I needed some moola (I’ve recently gotten addicted to buying on ebay) and once I got the $100 offer there was no refusing it.
I also managed to get rid of an old site that had been cluttering my server and Godaddy account- yourbabies.info sold for the grand price of $10! I mentioned it somewhere on DP and somone PMed me offering to take it off my hands, so I was happy just to be rid of it, since it was completely stagnant under my care.
I’ve also noticed the price of LLLL.com domains is rising already, with $50 being an average price for any crappy one going. Should my ebay addiction get the better of me once more at least I have 3 of those to fall back on for more funds!
Now let’s just hope my new jumper off ebay arrives tomorrow along with the complete works of Oscar Wilde.
posted by Mark posted on 16th March, 2008 at 06:26 pm
I just watched this film.
It was made back in 1993 and stars Michael Douglas. It’s absolutely hilarious. It’s this guy basically having a shit day and going on a bit of a mad one, doing all the stuff you wish you could do when you’re having one of those days. My favourite bit is when the guy goes into a fast food restaurant for some breakfast. He’s two minutes late for the breakfast menu and they refuse to serve him breakfast, only offering from the lunch menu. Imagine you’re having a shit day and this happens, it’d annoy you. Just watch the film, it’d do no justice for me to write here about what happens.
I’ve also eh, “bought” some new music. The Holloways and The Noisettes (both bands supported Babyshambles when I saw them in 2006, and it’s taken me this long to finally get their stuff!). Both are very good bands, both from Britain I believe. Check ‘em out if you’re a bit of an Indie head.
Also, there’s finally been time for a little business on my part! I’m just waiting to tie up loose ends on the deal, so I’ll post about it when it’s all done. It’s nothing major, but it’s a nice boost considering so little time I’ve had.
posted by Mark posted on 5th March, 2008 at 08:08 pm
That’s right, I’ve joined the world of ebay consumerism.
I’ve been browsing ebay a lot lately, and there’s really some good bargains to be had on there, and the ability to purchase using paypal is a huge advantage for me with my online income coming through there.
So today I saw something I really couldn’t resist, it was pretty pricey and I dismissed purchasing it at first, but the more I looked at it the more I realised I’d regret it if I didn’t go and buy it.
A 24″ x 36″ print, done by some eastern European artist, featuring some of my favourite movie/tv characters. Tony Soprano from the Sopranos (James Gandolfini), Tony Montana from Scarface (Al Pacino), Jimmy Conway from Goodfellas (Robert Deniro) and Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather (Marlon Brando). Behind these guys who are seated at a bar is their respective crews. There was a black and white version of it available too, but I went with the colour, it looked a bit better to me. The overall price incl. delivery was £28.00 which is around €37/$57, but I’m pleased I bought it. I have to consider getting it framed when it arrives.
Another online purchase today may interest some Leaving Cert students who read this blog. Leaving Cert Solutions.com offer books with all the Maths exam questions from previous years and the solutions combined. On one side of the page is the question, and on the other the solution, which is much handier than having to go online and find the solutions and print them off all the time or whatever. It cost €25 to order online, and though this may seem expensive, since you already have the exam papers, and get the solutions for free, I feel it’s a pretty big timesaver, and should come in handy. They do Higher and Ordinary level too, in case you’re wondering!
posted by Mark posted on 1st March, 2008 at 03:03 pm
This is something I noticed last week when sitting my exams. Obviously there’s teachers supervising us. Then you get the one or two hot female teachers in the school supervising. In an exam hall of teenagers just bursting with hormones, this is not advised.
You hear the familiar sound of her high heels walking up the hall. Oh yeeaaah. That heavenly clip-clop mimicking the rhythmic beat of my heart.
At this point you go into some sort of Scrubs style fantasy, just like in this video.
You have to look up as she reaches your desk and begins conversing with some old hack of a colleague. The sun shines through the window highlighting the radiance of her ravishly refined body. And then, shite. Five minutes to finish this essay.
You bitch.
Also, I wonder if anyone else finds that they get ridiculous songs stuck in their head during exams. I was doing my english paper and in my head I was singing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I mean, could there be a more ridiculous and innappropriate (on many levels) song to get into your head during an exam?
