The end of Spotify in Ireland *insert sad face*

So today the dreaded email came:

"We're writing to you in regards to your Spotify account which up until now you've been using free of charge.  While we are really happy that you are enthusiastically using Spotify, we are unfortunately going to have to restrict access to your free account."

It seems as though everyone outside Sweden, Norway, Finland, Spain, France and the UK has received an email to confirm that their accounts will be effectively suspended.

There are two reasons this annoys me: 1) I am in the south of Ireland, but only about 20 minutes away from the UK border, and 2) I do live in the UK, I'm just staying for a while.

There shouldn't have been an option to change location if this wasn't allowed in the first place, so while I understand why they have to do it, this situation should never have been allowed to occur.

Anyway, I'm going back to England in a few weeks, and my account better come back!

Making the most of having music in my life for as long as it lasts, so current track is Lily Allen - 22.

Get your Red Nose NOW!

There's absolutely no excuse this year not to get one. No more: "Oh I didn't get down to Sainsbury's" or "I didn't have any change".

Now you can get an online Red Nose for Comic Relief!

Visit digitalrednose.com and you can download one of three red nose styles to place on a photo of your choice. It also gives you the option to place the image on to Facebook, Bebo or MySpace. You can add it to Twitter too after you've downloaded it to your desktop :D

It costs £1, which is nothing really. I'm a student, and even I could afford it!

I think this is a great idea. With the increasing popularity of social networking it is a great way to show your support and donate money at the same time.

I order you all to do it NOW!

First Impressions Matter

The following is a piece that I wrote a while ago based on a previous experience. I just thought I would share it with you here on my blog:

A handshake to me was always something that older people did. It was a formal act in my opinion, and suggested that two people didn't really know each other that well, if at all. Whether or not the hand shakers knew one another was not a concern for me though; by looking at people and the way they shake hands, it is not difficult to tell how they relate to one another. I took the view that handshaking was just like saying "hello", so it didn't really matter how you did it.

The first part of this statement is true, the second is not! Hand shaking is in fact a way of saying "hello", and in the same way, it does matter how you go about it. If you say "hello" to someone in a tone that suggests you really don't want to be there, they can sense it. If you smile and say hello, the greeting takes on a different meaning. The same goes for a hand shake.

If you are meeting someone for the first time, the handshake is the first opportunity they get to relate to you on a personal level. If you are not meeting for the first time, it is likely to be more informal, and doesn't create a lasting impression.

I learnt this the hard way. As a young woman, I tried to avoid hand shaking. It was quite an embarrassing situation to find myself in, and evidently, my handshake showed this discomfort. On work experience at a local radio station, I met someone for the first time in the kitchen. I said hello in a friendly manner, and tried to come across as a confident young woman, even though inside I was quite nervous.

The woman then came over to me to shake my hand. I was thankful that my hand was not clammy, so I continued in my usual manner to shake her hand in a loose and reserved manner. This turned out to be my biggest mistake of the week. She told me that I had an awful handshake, and it showed that I was not confident, and did not like the situation I was in. Okay, this was partly true, but I did not want it to be so obvious.

After some conversation about the handshake, I learned that it should always be a fairly firm grip, accompanied by good eye contact and a confident smile. Suddenly, handshaking felt important. I had learned a valuable lesson to take to future job interviews, and also social situations.

This is not to say that when you meet friends you have to firmly shake hands and appear confident. Of course, the handshake depends on the situation, but clearly as my experience shows, a handshake is a gateway to your personality.

Always Take the Weather With You...

...whether you want to or not!

Why is it that people always want to talk about the weather? I know it's quite important, but it's not as if no one knows about it. If you bump into someone in the street and say: "Isn't the weather bad?", what are they going to say? They're hardly going to reply: "I don't know I haven't noticed", as their umbrella blows inside out!

I worked in a shop in Ireland over the summer, and my goodness do they enjoy revelling in miserable weather! To be fair, it was awful weather pretty much every day, but I didn't expect EVERY customer to talk about how rainy it was.

When I wake up now in the mornings, it's on the radio. Turn on the TV and it's on there too. Go into the shop and whatever cheerful soul serves you will ask you if it's cold out! The answer is always yes. Even Facebook is littered with status updates saying how cold people are!

So why are we so obsessed with weather? I suppose because it affects what we do, how we feel, how we dress. But I think one solution to make ourselves feel a bit less miserable about it is to not talk about it! Wrap up warm, bring a brolly and wear a smile on your face. Whatever the weather, make your topic of conversation how great the economy is in this country...

...oh wait!