Japan Expo 2008 – Super Smash Bros Brawl
I play a video game like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, or Soul Calibur II. It's a satisfying but harmless way to relax.
I’m a hoarder. I have probably never thrown anything away in my life. But finally I’ve stopped to wonder why I have so many children’s books and other things from my childhood. (But let’s not all start commenting on my collection of Pokémon movies, they’re here to stay! You have no idea how easy and uplifting they are after a bad day…)
So what I’m doing is I’m going to sell them. I’m not giving them to charity shops because someone told us that they receive so many, they end up going to paper recycling. No, I’m going to use a combination of online services to sell my books, maybe take advantage of mum holding a car boot stall one day soon, and probably the Noticeboard at work. And then I’m going to give all my money to charity. I’m thinking that if they accept donations, I’d like to give half of my proceeds to the Dorset Breast Screening Unit, and the rest to Macmillan Cancer Support. My reasons will follow later.
First up I’m going to use fatbrain.co.uk, CeX and musicmagpie.com to get a good price for my more popular items. Then I’m going to hopefully get in on a car boot stall. Then I’m going to put things on Staffnet’s Noticeboard at work. And finally I’m going to put some things up on GreenMetropolis.com, which will take a portion of my sale price for Macmillan anyway. That’s a slower way to get rid of things though.
So why those charitable units? When I was nine years old, or thereabouts, Nan (my maternal grandmother) was diagnosed with breast cancer after visiting the screening unit. She had an operation to successfully remove it, and she came home. We were all really pleased and so grateful to the screening unit, but she soon died in her sleep at home of a blood clot resulting from the operation, entering her heart.
So that’s why I want to support the screening unit, and a cancer charity. Because they really did help her.
Please, do me a favour though, don’t bring up the details about Nan with me or my parents, because it’s obviously a very sensitive subject to us. I explained to my parents the charities I want to give to, and they understood straight away. They know why I’m doing it, I just don’t want anyone to upset anyone, especially Mum, with the details.
Today I spoke to Chris about my sound sensitivity. I don’t normally speak about it. But I spoke to him continuously for a good five minutes about what’s bothering me at the moment. And of course he was awesome.
And then I got in the car after we parted and I think I cried a little bit. I rarely talk about it. I rarely talk about it because so many people make me feel guilty about even saying one thing about it. (There’s nothing worse than being told to stop complaining, or that you’re overreacting, or “making a scene”.)
It was good. I need to get those feelings out more often.
Six days after I requested that my order for that 3DS be cancelled (as in, that email I sent on the 14th):
Dear Customer,
Order Ref:-xxxxxx
Your order was despatched on 16/06/11 so we were unable to cancel this. It should take no longer than 5 working days to reach you.
Sorry for any inconvinience caused.
We hope this helps with your enquiry.
Kind Regards,
The Games Basement Team
No, it actually doesn’t help with my enquiry at all!
So I’ve sent them another email detailing this, will refuse receipt of the item, and will ask to get my money back. I have Lloyds TSB on standby.
…
Also: “inconvinience”. Don’t they have a spellchecker?
Or rather the lack of my 3DS! Here’s the lowdown.
I decided on Saturday morning, after some looking around on Google Shopping, to get my 3DS for £157.99 from a place called GamesBasement, who seemed to have good reviews on the Google Shopping page. I chose them because they were the cheapest after eBay. Turns out I probably could have trusted the eBay seller better.
I decided since PayPal wasn’t available on their site, that I’d use my credit card. I placed my order. I happily confirmed it, seeing that they would normally dispatch it within 24 hours in the working week. Monday, then!
It’s Tuesday. For over 24 hours now, the order status has said “Packing”. I started to suspect they didn’t have it in stock. I went to access their website at work during my lunch break, and Googled it because I was too lazy to type the URL in. Turns out the website is Websensed, but that didn’t really matter. When I went back to the results page, I noticed all the results underneath were terrible reviews about them. It also transpires that most of their positive reviews were written on the inside.
I checked my credit card statement on the phone. They had taken the money on the day of my order. Not one of those earmarking things either – they have actually debited my card for the £157.99. The website said they would only charge me when the order was dispatched. I checked the order status again from my iPhone browser. Still “packing”. Does it take that long to pack a 3DS?
When I got home, I got straight on the computer and sent them a customer service enquiry, asking them to formally cancel my order as I was uncomfortable with the way the transaction had gone so far. If they don’t cancel it by the time it turns up on my credit card bill, I will ask Lloyds TSB to credit me back and contest it for me. And I’m going to make a complaint to Consumer Direct or Trading Standards or whoever. Maybe all of them. Maybe also Watchdog. Who knows? But I don’t want it to happen to other people – even though by the looks of things, they’ve been getting away with this sort of thing for almost two years…
It’d really mean a lot to me if you could read this. Anyone.
Today I’d like to talk to you about Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome. If you’ve heard me say “I kind of have a problem with my hearing”, this is what it is.
Mainly, it’s a problem with tolerating certain noises. The definition gets a little difficult here. When I say “problem with tolerating”, you might think I just find things annoying. And you might say “well, I find those things annoying as well”, but that just frustrates me because that’s not it at all. I’m not easily annoyed. It’s actually kind of a fault with the limbic system – the part of the brain that processes input (correct me if I’m wrong here). And the noises and sometimes visual triggers cause a bad reaction in the fight or flight system for me. I feel like I have to get out of there or I’m likely to start panicking.
It has once caused me to have a small freak out at work, which is not what I wanted to happen. It looked a little like an anxiety attack and it certainly didn’t feel very good.
Normally I wear white noise generators in my ears that tend to filter out a lot of “trigger” noises, like chewing and tapping. It doesn’t block out short/sharp sounds or very loud ones, like someone snapping a pen lid on and off, and those can make me have to get up and walk away to clear my head too. I have to hope I don’t look impolite.
Recently though I’ve also been developing an issue with my peripheral vision, largely the movement of peoples’ hands and feet when they idly fiddle. Today it’s been worse. But I feel like I can’t tell people about this problem, because I just feel so unreasonable asking people to pretty much sit perfectly still. I feel bad enough having to ask people to stop making noises – this just looks petty.
If you’re a good/close friend of mine, could I ask you to have a little look around soundsensitive.org? Particularly this page on relationships. It should clear up a lot of questions. Please believe me, I can’t help it. I didn’t make it up. I don’t do it for attention. I’m not proud of it. I don’t think it’s cool. I can’t just ignore it. It’s like asking someone to ignore a constant nails-on-chalkboard kind of thing.
While the NHS were helpful in the beginning, and I don’t know what I’d do without my noise generators, I’ve now been discharged from audiology because they don’t think they can help any more. I also went to a psychologist (despite my appointment not being made by the person in the admin office I spoke to, I managed to get there), and they were quite dismissive and didn’t call me back when they said they would.
Excuse the depressive tone of my post, I just feel particularly desperate tonight. If nothing else, it feels good to get this out.
This is “On The Verge of Something Wonderful” by Darren Hayes.
The song and its video reminds me very much of work by Douglas Coupland, my favourite author. =D
Did someone ask for almost 89 screenshots from Magic Knight Rayearth, mostly involving Fuu and Ferio?
Come now, I’m sure you did.
It's intended to be a very moving film, to be honest. I stumbled across it by accident on my flight to Canada.
It was just really heartwarming, and I'd recommend it if you want something very very drama-ish but ultimately gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.
I really really hate too much swearing.
Some people I know take it way too far.
I feel like I'm being prudish when I find them too much, but you know, there's only so much of the f-bomb I can take before it becomes ridiculous.
