Rocking a ballad

You probably know, but just in case you hadn't heard, Foo Fighters are playing in Edinburgh next June 23rd. And YES, I GOT TICKETS. So yes, I'm attending the f****** concert of my life :D
I am not a very big fan of music, to be honest. Yes, I listen to music... and yes, I like listening to music. I have some favourites, but I'm not one of those who needs to have music playing constantly. Besides, I don't have a good ear for it anyway. This is a bit of a shame to say since I'm working in HMV, but hey! I love films and tv series! So that's something. I guess. (I hope).
I suppose that because I'm not that huge fan of music, I am very open to genres, but my favourite is hard-rock/metal. Although Spotify keeps surprising me...
So in this type of music, as you might know, there are not of soft, sweet, gentle ballads, but there are a few. And probably, because there are so few and they differ so much from the rest of the style of the band that plays it, they are loveable.
And the blog today is about those rock/metal ballads that I love listening to. There are many of them, but I will limit my list to my top 5 and then I will leave the comments open to participation:



5.b.-"Photograph"- Nickleback: Awwww... I feel so sorry for Nickleback... I believe they are not that bad, they keep me entertained with their music, although it's true that all their albums sound alike or follow the same pattern. But still, they are ok, even they are so much hated. This song might not be considered a ballad, though, just slightly slower than other songs. But I think of it as one.
Also I like the lyrics of this song. They make me think of my Erasmus in Iceland...

5.a.- "Hero of War"-Rise Against: I didn't really know where to place this one, it's one of my favourites, and very out of the known ones. Maybe if it didn't make me feel so sad when I listen to it, I would like it better and it would get a better position in my list. Still, such a good ballad.

4.- "Wake me up when September ends"- Green Day: Well, yeah, it's overplayed, overquoted and overposted on Facebook during the month of September, year after year, but that's my favourite month (can anyone guess why?) and I like the melody in this song. So there's one.

3.- "Bed of roses"- Bon Jovi: HELLO? I love Jon. He was so cute and adorable in Ally McBeal...  And I love Bon Jovi. And this song is such a good song. A legendary song.
(Now I'm considering re-watching Ally McBeal and probably go further than half 3rd season when Robert Downey Jr. goes away and breaks my heart...)

2.-"One"- Metallica: HAH! Did you think that I would go for "Nothing else matters?". That's also such a hit. But I like this one better, maybe because it's less known, so it feels more special. I don't know. And you might not think of this song as a ballad, but listen to the first 4 minutes! The combination of the slow rythm and the hard chorus... It's just excellent.

1.- "Kristy, are you doing okay?"- The Offspring: Just... THE OFFSPRING. They are superb, and live... just speechless. And this song gives me goosebumps. I hadn't listened to it for a while now, but I rescued my old YouTube playlist and when I heard it again I almost cried. This song very often brought tears to my eyes. And, YES, this is a ballad. If you know The Offspring, you might even think that they went too far in their cheesyness with this one, but I can't help but loving it.

Oh, golly, this was a tough one. So hard to choose. And I find it very strange that Foo Fighters is not in my top 5. Well, I can't just choose one of their songs, I guess.

Hopefully this post will have more participation than the last one in which I tried to get you guys to leave your ideas in the comments, the one called Worth of Words (in which you can still participate if you check it out!). So if you have any more rock/metal ballads you'd like me to know about, please, comment below! I will really enjoy reading your suggestions :)

Oh... referees...

Oh, there we go again.
Yes, I'm writing about waterpolo again. I'm sorry, but it's my thing, so deal with it. There's gonna be a lot of it in this site, so if you don't like it, you can read Vogue or Glamour, I'm fine with it.
I always forgot to write about that crazy, stupid, hugely biased game we played against the University of Edinburgh. Believe me, I'm not one of those who criticise every referee, or talk back to them. I just follow the rules. They are the bosses, they decide, nothing else to do with it.
But this time was different.
This was the situation: we were very even along the game: 3-3, 3-4, 4-4, 4-5... some of the players in our time are experienced, they've played before in others teams, for years. What a coincidence, two of them were scoring most of the goals, and they got exclusions. For those of you who don't know, you can ONLY get excluded 3 times. At the third exclusion is permanent for the rest of the game, so you can't play anymore.
Becky, the captain, had scored 3 goals and been excluded once. Connie hadn't scored, but she is one of the experienced, and got excluded once. So suddenly, when Becky gets a second exclusion, they said it's the third one (??????????????????) and that Connie was also out (???????????????????????) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry???? What the hell did just happen at that table?
So yeah, pretty much they took well care of getting rid of our best players in the game up to that moment. Clever, huh?
But wait, THERE'S MORE. Do you know how many penalties did the other team get in favour? I think there were 4. 4 FREE PENALTIES, OUT OF THE BLUE. You know how many we got? None. Zero. Ninguno. And believe me, there were penalties.
One of the referees was okay, but the other one clearly wasn't. IF you are a bit into waterpolo, how many times have do the referees meet to "deliberate" during a game? If they do, that is. Well, these two had to meet 3 times. IN ONE GAME. Ridiculous... And, well, many more things that I probably have forgotten already. It really was a match to forget...
Final Score: 13-5. This game was just A JOKE.
Well, don't even get Becky started on this topic because she goes crazy mad. And for a good reason.

We were waiting for our revenge...

...and we kind of had it yesterday. But thanks to the boys!
They played to Edinburgh yesterday, and I was supposed to ref, even though I've never done it before... not even at practise! So I didn't really want to. And also, I thought I would be as biased as the ones we had in Edinburgh... So we sorted it out and got their coach and an ex-player of ours to ref. And very gladly, because it would've been a hard game for me to ref.
Surprisingly, the guy from Edinburgh was very fair! So maybe trying to make it up for what happened to the girls?
I don't know, but the boys won! First victory of the season, and they played really well. So proud!

But yeah, I feel like that was a bit of revenge from us. Although we are not satisfied enough, and we will beat the girls' asses up when we play against them next!

But tomorrow... some water-wrestling in Glasgow! Let's see how it goes ;)

Alumni + Callum's birthday

Once again, it's time to talk about waterpolo. YAY! But not only, since this was more of a social event rather than a competition.
Well, two social events, actually. I don't know if you have ever had it happened to you, but sometimes you have nothing to do, no plans in some weekends, but then others are just tons of things to do and fun things to attend. Argh, tipical. (Yeah, I guess this applies for everyone).

The term Alumni refers to former students of an institution, and in this case also ex-members of the waterpolo team. So it was planned to play a game between current members and Alumni. Needless to say that, as Paddie said, we had won by default... but those adult, old, boring people (...they were probably younger than me, but no need to tell anyone) needed some boost of confidence, so we let them score a lot. And of course we (ME, as usual) missed a lot of shots to the goal. But it was all intentionally, I promise. I always do it on purpose. (I'm frustrated enough regarding that matter, so let's move on).
So yeah, Alumni "won" the game, but only because they had some of the current students in their team. Don't get too cocky about it!

Birthday boy and pretty ladies. I really need some sun-tanning...

After that, we were all willing to take the fun beyond just a waterpolo game, so we went all out to party. Not me, of course, because as I said, too many events in a day. I got ready and left for my classmate Callum's birthday! I actually really wanted to go, we were meeting in a bar called "The Kilted Kangaroo". HOW COOL IS THAT. C'mon, it's meant to be MY party place. KILTED KANGAROO. SCOTLAND AND AUSTRALIA IN ONE. And yeah, it was awesome.
You know what makes a bar awesome?
Having hair straighteners in the ladies toilet. Yes, it might sound dull, BUT IN HOW MANY BARS HAVE YOU SEEN THOSE? Not just any straighteners, but GHD straighteners. That just says a lot. Ok, you have to pay £1 for 2 minutes, but still, they give you the option. I'm sorry I do not have any pictures, but when I went to the toilet and saw them, Lara was too busy laughing at me for getting paper stuck on my shoe and she distracted me. Blame it on her! But I will take pictures next time.
By the way, in case Helen reads this... SHAME ON YOU for failing our date.

Ain't them cute!

So I had a couple of drinks there, chatted with some people, took pictures (of course) and headed out to Fubar! We were supposed to dress up as a character of Wizard of Oz, which I obviously didn't do, but my girls were very efficient on make up their customes. Look at them!
So there they were, all having too much fun, and so I joined! And I must say that I also had a lot of fun. Then I "lost" my jacket, so I was a bit sad... after a while, having fun anyway, I felt tired (didn't want to exhaust myself since I had an assingment to work on... see? tons of things this weekend!) and decided to go home, following my "I'll-go-home-if-I-don't-like-the-next-song" rule. I checked first if they staff in the bar had found my jacket and...YES, THEY HAD! So I came back to tell the girls, they knew I was dismayed. But definetely, I was leaving after that. But, OH, on my way out they were playing a song I really like... so I couldn't go! (Specially attending to my rule) So I just came back and danced a little longer. And then, they wouldn't play songs that I didn't like! So nope, I was not going home just yet. Until the girls decided to leave, so I followed.
*Forgot to say that I found a lovely hair-bow on a counter in the ladies toilet, that I have acquire for myself as a new hair accessory! :D *
Though tired as I was, I felt so happy for having so much fun on a Saturday night but still being able to get up the following day for some school work. I guess that at this age, satisfaction lays in this stupid little things :p

But joy and happines couldn't end there. The last race of MotoGP was taking place in Cheste (Valencia). I have attended that race several times (and some others in Spain...) and my idol, my god, my favourite VALENTINO ROSSI had the chances to reach the 2nd place on the general final clasification. And you might say "2nd? Why is it that good?" Oh, well, I know why, and his fans know too, and that's enough! And so he ended up being 2nd in the race and in the final classification! And the worst rider, the most egocentric, self-centered and prentious (Jorge Lorenzo) had to quit due to his bad planning. (It started raining... and he screwed up by changing the motorbike, since it didn't rain that much). So I was  happy, because Rossi was in direct battle with him for the 2nd possition in the final classification :D


And so that was my weekend.
You probably find it random that I write today about this irrelevant stuff, but  I do it because of Megan! :D She told me that she reads my blog, and asked me to write about Alumni, so I just cojoined everything and updated.
So Megan, there you go! This is for you! (You probably don't remember... but here it is :p)