New Years London 2014 Rant

So yesterday at 11pm I stormed the rain just to watch a couple of fireworks go off. Not really a “captivating” intro but it’s my blog and I’m too lazy to bother thinking of a good one. Deal with it :). So 2014 just started in London about 6 hours ago and I went to the central London to view the fireworks go off at the London eye. Aside from watching 12,000 fireworks go off simultaneously for 11 minutes, it wasn’t all that great. Central London is generally overcrowded during the day with corporate suits strolling the streets, but at New Year’s Eve there were probably 100,000+ in attendance.  Before we get onto that, let’s talk about actually getting there.

Well going there was a pain in the ass. The DLR to waterloo was packed. Just trying to fit onto the trains was a mission in itself, like trying to fit sardines into a tin can. Well to be fair a can of fish probably smelt better than the midnight carriage I was on. One of the most irritating things about going on the tube is parent bringing along children. Everyone who takes the DLR to Stanmore knows that when you go through the tunnel, your ears start to pop. Not only do you have to deal with the partial deafness, but also with the wretched sounds of children shouting and complaining to their parents that they can’t hear anything. Children should not be allowed to go to such events. They’re a liability. You always see a family that are dragging along their kids and constantly doing a head count to make sure that they aren’t lost. Well if you are so concerned about them, LEAVE THEM AT HOME. Even at Westminster Bridge there were parents putting their kids on their shoulders, not considering the fact that they were blocking everyone’s view.

Once you’ve gone out of waterloo station then comes the awkward moment of navigation. With the invention of Google maps it is relatively easy to figure out where to find a location. But my inner Guji keeps reminding me that I have only so much internet data. So I ended up following the crowd rather than referring to any form of maps. There was no stopping. There was always this constant push of people from behind you that urged you to go forward. You would notice one or two people that were trying to go the opposite other direction. These poor simpletons were trying to go against the concentration gradient that are people funnelling out from Waterloo station. Studying biology, you could work out that that didn’t get them too far!

Trying to find a good spot during New Year’s Eve is near impossible. Despite the fact I arrived an hour before midnight, Westminster Bridge was packed out with people. So then came even more following. Like a herd of sheep we followed each other through inroads and back alley ways in order to get to the other side of London Bridge. Eventually we found a spot where it was a decent location to the London Eye, but then came my dislike of human behaviour.

The smell of both skunk weed and Smirnoff fill the air. Occasionally a drunkard would stumble down the street, bumping into street lamp, post boxes and people, not knowing if he was at the jubilee gardens or in Narnia. The discarded bottles of what once was a bottle of Sainsbury own brand wine, litter the streets.  I feel sorry for the guys that have to clean up tomorrow.  The fragrance of recreational drugs along with the horse excrement from the riot police horses whaft the surrounding air.  Everyone looks at their phones, counting down the minutes until the clock strike 12. Now it’s bad enough that its cold out, but what really rubbed salt into the wounds was that the heavens opened up and it started to rain. Now we have this situation where people bring out their umbrellas further blocking our peripheral view.  Eventually they received the disgruntled jeers of those behind and take down their umbrellas.

Now the countdown: 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1… HAPPY NEW YEAR! 12 minutes of constant fireworks light up the night, exploding and sizzling. You hear the gasps and awes from everyone as thousands of fireworks dance across the blank canvas that is the night sky. It was amazing to watch and for a second it was all worth it. But like all god thing they end. So then came the slow death march.

Once the excitement was over, everyone walked back towards the train station. Now you have to realize that there is free travel during new years after 12, so everyone took the train back home. Now there are 100,000+ people and a pathetic excuse of a transport system… what could go wrong? One hour and 30 mins it took to get from Hungerford Bridge to Waterloo stations.  An hour and thirty minutes. Not only was it the sheer magnitude of the crowd, but the fact that there were people taking “selfies” in the middle of the street, not considering the ramifications it caused to the mob that were behind them, halting the passage of movement like cholesterol in the arteries.  People feeling sick after downing bottles of cheap vodka only worsened this problem.

If you enjoyed reading this, please share and follow me @bassettesSweets for more pointless ramblings of my unconscious.

P.S. And a Happy New 🙂

My Top 50 Movie

So basically im trying to kill 2 birds with one stone… one of my friends requested I make my top 50 all-time movies and I gotta keep up with this blogging malarkey, so here it is (in no particular order) my top 50 best movies of all time:

1)      The Shaweshank Redemption

2)      The Godfather

3)      The Godfather 2

4)      Pulp Fiction

5)      The Dark Knight

6)      Schindler’s List

7)      Fight Club

8)      One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

9)      Inception

10)   Goodfellas

11)   Forest Gump

12)   The Matrix

13)   City Of God

14)   Se7en

15)   The Usual Suspect

16)   American History X

17)   Saving Private Ryan

18)   Memento

19)   Apocalypse Now

20)   The Pianist

21)   Untouchable

22)   The Departed

23)   The Green Mile

24)   Gladiator

25)   The Dark Knight Rises

26)   Django Unchained

27)   The Prestige

28)   The Illusionist

29)   Taxi Driver

30)   Amelie

31)   Reservoir Dogs

32)   Requiem For A Dream

33)   Braveheart

34)   L.A. Confidential

35)   Unforgiven

36)   Snatch

37)   Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels

38)   Inglorious Basterds

39)   Scarface

40)   V For Vendetta

41)   Gran Torino

42)   Casino

43)   Warrior

44)   No Country For Old Men

45)   Sin City

46)   Avengers Assemble

47)   Million Dollar Baby

48)   A Beautiful Mind

49)   The Kings Speech

50)   Slum Dog Millionaire

51)   IP Man

52)   IP Man 2

53)   The Butterfly Effect

54)   Shutter Island

55)   American Gangster

56)   A Prophet

57)   Lawless

58)   Cinderella Man

59)   300

60)   The Hurt Locker

61)   Butterfly Effect

yes its 61 movies and the title says 50, but 61 is not as catchy as 50, and the fact i wrote 50 before i realise how much time i waste watching  movies and the sheer amount of movies i watch…. its 2 am in the morning when im writing this, so Umais if you reading this your a paigon and you better watch all these movie :D… 

-Basit Ali

P.S. there are so many more movies, but i cant recall them, partly because of my screwed up sleeping pattern so please reply to this post to remind me to update it and follow me on twitter for more useless shite 

@BassettesSweets 

PEACE

                

The 169; The Bane Of My Existance

Standing in heavy rain at 6 PM, whilst waiting for the bus I had an epiphany. Public Transport is shite. To those who use public transport regularly, this is nothing new, but for those outside of London I will explain to you why it’s so bad? Well for starters there’s the bus shelter. The smell of piss and dried vomit wafts the air, from the drunkard that had one too many jaeger shot from the night before, relieving his bladder there and then, not thinking of the ramifications to those who will use it the next morning. Chunks of undigested food, scatters the stone floor, which one can only presume was the £2.50 burger meal from the chippies across the street. I don’t blame him for puking, just by looking at fake tanned “Barbie-Models” on the billboards at the bus stop would make me queasy!

Another thing that irks me (irritates me) is the impracticality of the bus shelter. Somehow, ever with a roof on the shelter, there are still droplets of rain left on the seats. HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?! Have we become that much of an incompetent nation that we don’t know the definition of the word “shelter”? No wonder Britain’s manufacturing industry has gone into decline, with this shoddy work, I’m not surprised!

There is always one person in the general vicinity of the bus stop that has the “bus app”. This individual believes it is he who is a messenger of god that has come to bestow upon us information as to when the bus is scheduled to arrive. “The bus is coming in 2 minutes!” Like a flock of pigeon, everyone stands to attention and start speed walking to the pavement curve, shifting left and right, trying to estimate where the bus is going to stop so they can be the first to receive a seat. Gazing down at their watches, counting down the seconds until the time reaches two minutes. Everyone turns their head right, looking down the street in anticipation of a big red shape to appear from above the horizon. Sometimes a large red van turns the corner, fooling us all into thinking it was the double deckered giant but infact was a fraud, a sigh of disappointment echo through the air. 5 minutes pass without any sign of the bus and you see every turn their head and glare at the person that revealed this inaccurate information.  He scours away into the back of the que in shame and embarrassment.  

Eventually after a prolonged wait, the bus eventually arrives, but now an entirely new situation arises. Where will it stop? Now being an expertise in bus ques, I have devised a tactic that ensures I am the first person on the bus. Move ahead of the que IE move further away from the bus stop ahead of the final person, ensuring that the driver notices you first and stops adjacent to your bearings rather than the large flock of people ahead of you. NOTE this only works in certain situations IE where there is only one bus that is running only one route on that road. This is because the driver is fully aware that it is a busy stop so doesnt want to risk injuring someone with his headlights.

An entire mob of people migrate behind you, pushing you between the dirt ridden doors of the bus and the gap between the bus wheels and the pavement.  The sound of the compressed air of the cylinders in the door ‘whir’, opening the two doors and allowing the influx of passengers onto the bus.Now if you are one of the unfortunate people that are right in the mix of mob, you will most likely have a person in front of you that is searching their bag for their oyster card, halting the entire entrance way into the bus as if she was a piece of cholesterol stuck in the arteries, preventing anything from getting through.

Standing on the bus is the worst, especially during rush hour at 5-7 PM, people lifting their arms up to reach the handles, revealing a dark patch of moisture underneath their armpit and if it is the summer then you see it run down the length of their spine. The smell of BO radiates from them, alienating anything and everything around them. During the evening, the bus accumulates rubbish from those lousey slobs that are too selfish to bother throwing it away in a bin. The occasional subway wrapper and cola bottle scatter the seats of the bus, leaving you with the option of either smelling big burtha’s BO or risk having southwest hotsauce on your trousers if you sit down.

The humble London bus, the bane of my existence.

-Basit Ali

If you enjoyed this and want me to keep continuing please share this and follow me @BassettesSweets PEACE!

 

Designer Nation

After a long arduous process,  i came to the ultimate choice. Fight Club or The Usual Suspect? now i like a “throwback” as much as the next guy but inevitably i chose Fight Club. Although the allure of kevin spacey playing as the infamous Keyeser Soze (SPOILER) the sheer brilliance of Brad PItt and Edward Norton was more than enough to sway me towards Fight Club. 

Much Like the Dr Who special, there are word in the fabric of space and time that resonate for generations to come. one that particularly has been echoing in my mind ever since i watched the movie is, “advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, doing jobs we hate to buy shit we dont need”- Fight Club. now,you may not realise it buy why are we at school? why do we do job? why is it that we strive to buy the fanciest cars the nicest shoes. You look left and right and all you see are hoodrats wearing Gucci and Louis Vuitton Belts. Why is it that we care so much about what other people think about us? Being an asian you always hear the elder aunties colluding amongst one another, creating their factions and gossiping about each others dresses. What the hell is this?  Game of Thrones? why cant was be happy with what we have than what we dont?

Movies are awesome. they inexplicitly explain human behaviour but we dont really look at it from a third persons point of view.. well because were human, we look at it from the first person, our view. But if we were to take the movie Inception and analyse it. what is its underlying meaning? well implanting an idea can grow in your mind. you may say this is impossible but i can prove to you that it is,

Hypothetical situation, you have a daughter who has a BF that you dont like but you dont want to say anything because  it would just end up with the hormonal teenager running to her room with a packet of digestive biscuits. well the best way to approach this is inception. in a way you are manipulating their thought process at an unconscious level, you ask them the question: “does your BF do anything romantic for you?” and she replies with her answer. now this makes her think for a second and contemplate. lets say this question is futile, and she says he is a hopeless romantic and that other bullshit. now its time to incept. you ask her how was her dates. she replies. now what ever the argument, undermine it. reply back ” when i met your father he took me to a fancy restaurant for our first date”. you dont explicitly say that her first date was bad, you say that it is inferior to your. this creates doubt in the persons head. they start to “nit-pick” at little things that the BF does due to the idea you have planted at the bottom of their unconscious. this emerges to the pre conscious and eventually the conscious and flourishes like a flower in spring. she becomes this aweful person to be around and now shes single again. Now you’ve dodged a bullet for a potential son-in-law. but you see how inception is possible. there was doubt over the Exchange Rate Mechanism during John Majors time. The idea that everything was going to turn to sh*t was predicted by some, such as george soros who made £1 billion by speculating the inevitable downturn of the sterling. this seed of doubt is powerful, it has caused the arab spring, overturned governments and changed peoples ideas of the world.

Back to Fight Club. advertising has implemented this idea of what a female should be IE a kimmy-K look-alike-wanna-be. jesus christ, when you come down east london its 50 shades of orange. its like willy wonka made his oompa-loompas redundant and now theyre roaming the SoHo night scene. with the creation of the smart phone we can access the world at our fingertips. we are living in a fast paced generation where we are constantly being bombarded with olay adverts of this stereotypical white female model who has flawless skin. it saddens me to see people succumb to the corporations. we are at the mercy of Jordans and Dolce and Gabanna. we crave these items. we work jobs we hate to buy shit we hardly ever use or dont need. in 6 months that handbag is out of fashion, why? because the corpoartions have brought out another one that is apparently the new thing to have. I am sad to report that this has happened to men. we buy the new gillette mach3 razor when our normal one is just as good. it just has extra razors. at thing rates were going to be shaving our faces with a cheese grater! 

just remember. you are beautiful. now this is contradictory to what fight club teaches us, which is that we are not special, we are insignificant ya-de-ya-dey-ya-dah. But collectively as a race we are special. we should strive for the betterment of each other and not just ourselves. bring everyone out of poverty rather than buying that new lamborghini. if everyone in the world donated 2.5% of their salary to those living below the poverty threshold there would be no poverty. but why does it still exist? because we want it to. we prefer to have this new hand bag than help people. its an opportunity cost. 

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BassettesSweets and SHARE THIS POST! 

-Basit Ali