Foreign Perspectives

As usual, the Open University results were in earlier than planned so yesterday I found out that I’d passed S204 and was well clear of 40% too.

Just as well really as there’s no way that I’d have been able to fit in even more revision for the resit in April. From the 297 students around 50 will be eligible for a resit though I suspect that there will be a good deal fewer than that who will actually do it as the revision is something of a nightmare in terms of sheer volume and indeed difficulty in parts too.

It looked like it was a little harder than usual as only 2% picked up a distinction rather than the usual 10% for exams generally.

I’ve been plugging away with biology for a couple of years now. Starting from scratch, biology was seriously difficult at the start but a couple of years down the line I’m thinking like a biologist.

Thus, despite having done quite a lot of chemistry a long time ago, it was a bit of a jolt to restart the chemistry straight after the biology exam. That said, the resulting mark was slightly higher than the biology marks.

What’s quite noticeable is that I’m getting back into the swing of the chemistry. The texts are a lot easier going than the biology ones were, so much so that after just over six weeks into a seven month course, I’m over half-way through the books. It’s a slightly different story with the assignments which are taking ages to do although to be fair most of that is down to the time it takes to draw the various molecules and to get the relevant characters picked out of the chemistry font.

Next up is an iCMA which I hate as even the tiniest mistake is a problem and you can’t even print out the questions beforehand.

Quite what progress will be like when the biology/chemistry/psychology course that’s Signals and Perception starts up next month is another matter, of course.

Mum’s journey into a nursing home was largely unplanned for and constantly suffering from delays on the part of social services but she’s been there for several months now. That’s created a much greater involvement with social services and social security than we’ve had up to now and it’s something of a nightmare on the whole.

First off, the financial assessment people want a whole bunch of information about her finances. That sounded like it would be simple when they demanded it (“ask” isn’t in their vocabulary) but in fact it isn’t. Even getting information from their colleagues in social security proved extremely difficult. In fact, that difficulty should really be obvious: you’re phoning up to ask about someone else’s financial situation. Naturally, the answer is along the lines “we can’t provide that information to you”.

On the other side of the coin their colleagues in social services are concerned about protecting her finances. Well, protecting them for themselves really as their view is that all her assets were built up to pay for nursing home fees. However, there’s a conflict in their demands and those of the financial assessment people.

Then there’s the matter of transferring numerous direct debits built up over a period of time. Not quite so simple really although that at least appears to be doable for the most part with the exception, so far, of Sky who can’t get their head around needing to cancel Sky because the person using and paying for it has moved into a nursing home. I look forward to their demands for payment now that I’ve canceled the direct debit. Well, actually, I won’t get them as they insist on speaking to the bill payer, who ain’t here any more.

Anyway, I think I’m on the home run with moving the bills to appropriate places.

Nobody is openly calling it a depression but then it’s a difficult call to say whether you’re in a depression or not when you’re actually in the midst of one.

Aside from the obvious financial difficulties that a growing list of countries are finding themselves in, signs this time around are seemingly all around on the smaller scale too. The list of bankrupts seems to be growing although that’s not really a terribly reliable sign in these days of financial engineering.

What’s perhaps more obvious is the number of small shops gradually disappearing. The smaller shops are more dependent on the local economy than the large chain stores and they tend not to have a large financial cushion to help them ride through the bad times either. Indicative of this too is the rise in the number of charity shops which can operate through financial difficulties as they don’t pay their staff nor do they pay for their stock. Thus in difficult times, charity shops tend to replace small shops.

Slightly strangely in some ways is that the chip shops and home bakeries are closing up. Two different reasons are working here with the chip shops suffering as they’re popular as cheap food outlets and thus have a fall-off in trade when those at the bottom end of the income levels have to make cuts. To some extent that affects the home bakeries too but there’s also the element of their products being a bit of a treat and that “treat money” is in shorter supply these days.

Will we all look back on this period ten or fifteen years from now and call it a depression? Somehow I suspect that the answer to that will be yes and that there are even more difficult times lying ahead.

Whilst playing around with book borrowing on the Android, I came across a brilliant little book on sketching: You can draw in 30 days. I’ve always meant to learn how to draw properly and this book is just the ticket for that. Each lesson takes around 20 minutes or so to do though there are supplementary exercises that would double that time if you wanted a little more practice.

What’s really amazing though is that after only a couple of the lessons, the sketches begin to look like proper drawings. So far it’s only spheres and boxes mind you but just using those you’re drawing a little castle by the seventh lesson which is pretty good going I think.