PPP

Patches

Chapter 1: Meet the crew

"It all started many years ago. In the kingdom of eternal light. A small princess was born to the royal family. The kingdom rejoyced, but no one was as happy as the king. But not all was perfect. 

The small girl suffered from a rare and unknown disease. Her left eye was colored the most beautiful jade green that anyone had ever seen in the world. But... her right eye was red. Bright red.

Soon after the birth the queen passed away from exhaustion. And soon after the king decided that an eyepatch was to be put on the right eye of the young princess, hiding the truth from all. The truth that she was not perfect, as someone of the royal birtline should be.

Years passed. And the princess grew up to be a beautiful young lady. Her hair shoulder length silky chocolate brown hair. The skin on her face a mellow almondy color. Her jade green eye marvelously beautiful. Only one ting kept her from looking like the perfect lady she was. The eyepatch always laying on top of her right eye. It had been twenty years after the death of the queen. And no one had ever seen the princess without her eyepatch.

Because of the eyepatch many started calling her princess Patches, and that was how she was in the end mostly known as.

Even though the king was not pleased with the moniker, Patches herself was more than pleased with it. You see, this is because Patches never acctually wanted to be a princess. Every day she dreamed about a certain thing. A very specific thing. Patches wanted to be a pirate.

She wanted to sail the high seas in search for treasure and adventure. It is true that pirating was more than that, but no one had ever told Patches much about the life of a pirate.

And then one day something happened.

Bursting through the palace gates a pirate crew swarmed in and kidnapped the princess. And quoting her own words at that time: 'This is the best. Day. EVER!'

Naturally the king was gripped in panic and he set out hundreds, if not thousands, of search parties trying to recover the princess back. But alas, she was lost.

Years passed, the king grieved and the kingdom was falling apart.

Then one fateful night as the king was sitting on a balcony, looking at the distant ocean, a faint click sunded form behind. As the kind turned around, the only thing he had time to see was an eye the color of jade. And then a shot was fi..." *smack*

"Ouchie! Why'd you hit me?" Patches asked as she turned around to look at the person behind her.

Now in front of her stood a fairly tall man, a scar running over his right eye. And a black rag covering his head.

"Would you stop lying to the new recruits Patches?" Rag said more than asked.

Patches looked back to who she had been talking to. A small child.

"Well, how old are ye lad?" Rag asked as he kneeled down.

With huge gawking eyes and drool dripping from his mouth, the child looked up said " Imma this many yeels old mistel." hold up eight fingers.

Quickly glancing back to Patches, Rag starightened up 'Are we allowed to recruit kids?' he thought to himself. Guessing what he was thinking about Patches answered "No we're not. The captain said no one younger than 20".

Visibly jumping Rag turned around "What... who... the captain acctually said that? oh, right, that's true. Now follow me Patches and I'll show you how to properly get new recruits!" he said grabbing Patches by the arm and dragging her after him, leaving the child still gawking after them.

After dragging her around for ten minutes Rag finally stopped and let go of her hand. "Now look at that beauty!" he proudly stated while pointing. Following his finger Patches noticed a ramshack small booth with a crooked sign hanging over it reading: 'Wi niid prts'.

Audibly sighing Patches looked back at Rag who was beaming with pride.

"Really? I mean honestly. That looks awful." she stated gesturing towards the booth. "And anyway you didn't manage to write a single word correctly."

This obviously changed nothing as Rag just strut towards the booth and sat on a chair inside it. "Well, I'd like to see you do any better! Now get in sit down be quiet and watch the new recruits roll on in." he said. Slowly and carefully Patches made her way inside the booth and found a small wooden box which she sat on.

Hours passed. Patches noticed that she nodded off several times. Suddenly waking up leaning against the booth. Not a single person had come even close to the booth. Looking at Rag she noted that he was at this time a broken man. Staring straight forward into nothingness, his shoulders drooping his breathing almost non-existant. Then suddenly a knock, startling herself Patches managed to fall of the box and hit her head on the floor.

Quickly pushing herself up a sudden dizzyness took over and she had to steady herslef against the booth. As the dizzyness passed she looked up carefully. In front of the booth stood a man about as tall as Rag with an eyepatch over his left eye. His head had been shaved bald. And his skin was a darker hue than was usual in these parts.

Blinking a few times Patches looked to her right and noted that Rag was still entirely spaced out. Giving him a good kick on his shin Rag started and blinked looking towards the new person. "HAHA! I knew that the sign was perfect! Ye foolish naysayers!" he shouted out. "Now then, who might ye be young man?" he asked.

Looking disbelievingly towards Rag the man lowered his eyebrows and coughed. "Yes, um, I saw your sign and seeing as I am in a bit of a bind I was thinking about joining up in your merry crew." he said.

Again glancing quickly towards Patches Rag asked "What did he say?"

"He wants to join the crew." Patches answered sighing.

"I knew that." Rag replied "Well then, tell me yer name and off we go lad" he continued turning towards the young man.

"My name is Jacques Delgado." the man answered.

"Welcome aboard Jack!" Rag immediately replied jumping out of the booth and shaking Jacks hand. 

"Nono, my name is Jacques."

"Yes, your name is Jack."

"Jacques"

"Jack"

Walking out of the booth Patches tapped Jacks shoulder. "No point in arguing about it. In the end he was the one that wrote the sign." she said.

Blinking rapidly twice Jack shook his head and nodded. "Okay then, shall we go?" he asked.

"Aye, the rest of the crew is already waiting for us. We need to leave likety split." Rag said setting off towards the harbour with Jack and Patches trailing after him.

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Right then, that's a small tidbit off of the first chapter. More may or may not follow, any and all comments are welcome.

Untill next time.

Adventures, from my mind!

Expect a post containing a small tidbit of an great adventure!

I'll type it in here mostly for giggles.

What week is it? 7? 8? I'm bad at these week numbers.

Hi-diddly-ho neighbor.

So... even though I just said that the questions for weeks 6 & 7 were the same... they actually aren't.

So week number 7 assignment here we go!

Describe yourself as an assessor. Ponder on your history.

Now then... then now... now then then now, now then!
Where should I start?

The basic problem I have when assessing other people, is that I tend to be too lenient.

I never actually assess people according to what they actually do, but instead, according to what I think they deserve. This usually brings in the problem of me, not having the guts, to tell the recipient what I honestly think of whatever he did.
And accordingly I rate them higher than what I actually think they deserve. Being objective about something is surprisingly hard.

Case in point:

- During several classes where the teacher has asked me to assess someones performance, I have tended to not rate them objectively but instead subjectively. This means that nine times out of ten, I give them a higher score than I think they deserve.
I also tend not to note them their faults or other things that I actually should tell them. This in itself is a problem, because if the assessmentee (?) doesn't get proper feedback about what he should do better, then he cannot better himself in that particular area.

- The latest instant that I remember this happening, was during a certain course, where all students had to give a large presentation about certain subjects. Everyone had to assess at the very least one person.
I remember thinking during the presentation, that the presenter could have moved about more and in general be more dynamic (instead of being completely static).

If I remember correctly, the feedback I wrote the presenter was mostly neutral on all subjects. And I didn't write down many comments (if at all).

I hope that is enough for this assignment. I haven't had the opportunity to assess anyone in my work life so there are no experiences there.

Until next time. Ciao.

It's week 6 now! On the same week as week 5!

Amazing isn't it?

In truth, two different weeks can't be on the same week. Don't be silly.

Okay then, the second weekly assignment! Yay!

Wait a minute... the same question is on week 7. Brilliant! Two stones with one bird! Or was it two logs with one beaver? Anyway, the assignment:

Describe yourself as a self-assesser. (assessmenter? assessesser?). Think about your entire study- and work-history. Tell about, and describe your experiences.

Okay, this is an easy one. I am a horrible self-... self-assessor (heureka!). I always, and without fail, manage to think less of myself than what the truth is.
If the reason for this interests anyone, it is because I hate advertising my own accomplishments and skills. It makes me feel bad tooting my own horn. I don't know why but that's how I work.

Thinking back about how this has affected me I can come up with a couple of examples. Starting with the bad ones:

- During the year, 2006 (or 2007), at a different english class the teacher asked the students to assess themselves. Well, I knew that I was good in english (I pretty much always have been so), but being this young humble being, I decided that putting down the top score (no. 5) didn't feel right (tooting my own horn). Offcourse, I expected the teacher to see through this gesture and give me the 5. But my own humility took a bite against myself and I just got a 4.
Now, that is in no way awful, horrible or unbearable. It simply wasn't what I really felt like I deserved. And after giving myself the number, there was no point in asking the teacher: why?

- At a different time and place. I was applying for a job, and naturally the interviewer asks me to tell him/her my best qualities and skills (assess myself). I think the reader can figure out how well that went?
But for the sake of writing it down (this is therapeutical), I (yet again) didn't feel right about the tooting horn. And that cost me the job. And now that I think about it. This happened to me twice.
Now I won't be writing down what jobs I missed, just that it happened.

Now there we had a couple situations where I missed my mark. There are a couple of good things about this too:

- In general with the tooting horns, and feeling superior to others (which I don't!) is something I just can't wrap my head around. This usually makes me humble. And that in turn helps with people in general.
I in all honesty don't know anyone who thinks I'm a complete... um... in lack of a better term, douchebag (it's not a swear, i swear!). And that is something I'm (quietly) proud about.
Your enemies enemies are your friends. Unless you have no enemies and all are either friendly or indifferent towards you.

Now then, what was the question? Describe myself as an self-assessor? Well I'm bad at it. I don't value myself as much as I probably should. I know the problem and I try to address it as much as possible when asked to assess myself.

I think that's enough for this assignment.

Untill next time. Ta-taa.

I'm pretty sure it's still week 5.

Well okay, it isn't. But time is insubstantial right?

Right?

Fine. This is for my English teacher. The first blog diary assignment thingy.

As homework I made a short summary about a text found loitering about the Internet.
In this case the text was about the U.S.S. Akron and Macon  airships. I found the text from

http://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-akron-macon and they deserve the recognition.

So, back to the weekly assignment:

 - What did you learn from the text you read?

Well, um... to be perfectly honest, the first thing I learned was that the U.S. even had airships (or zeppelins) as aircraft carriers. 

Being quite naive and young, this kind of possibility hadn't even occurred to me before reading about it. I mean, flying aircraft carriers? That's somehow awesome beyond belief. 

But I digress, I learned from the text several interesting and useful fact about the design and history of these two airships. The fact, that instead of the flammable substance that partly caused the horrid accident of the Hindenburg, was changed for the non-flammable helium.

- If you had to write the summary again, what would you do differently?

This is in fact an interesting question. What WOULD I change? 

The first thing that comes to mind, is that I'd likely reserve more time for actually writing the summary. It was a bit hurried and could have been paced better. 

Some referential images might have been nice, although not entirely necessary (which is the reason I left them out in the first place).

I would have also liked to find a more comprehensive and technical text. This would've probably been more usefull in the long run. The biggest mistake that I made was time. More time to do the summary should and would have helped alot.

- Where and how could you apply the two types of reading strategies that you've learned?

Okay, the final question deserves a proper short story, right? Well not really a story as it is more of an observation.

When we talked about these two reading "strategies" (skimming, intensive reading) the terms, seemed at first strange and unobtainable. But after acctually skimming through a text once, I noted that it is something I, in fact, have always done (depending on what I was reading, of course).

Without even knowing the acctual term, skimming, it was indeed something I inadvertently did everytime I had read a text before. Quickly looking at the topics, bolded words and general feel of an article or text, just to figure out if it was something even remotely interesting to read.

Intensive reading is something I do everytime I read a book which has a story. When talking about a case text I would first skim it through and determine if it was worth my time, if I deemed that it was, then I would give it a proper readthrough with thought put into it.

Now, about making the summary. When deciding to make a summary (in this example the one I made) skimming the text is important. It determined to me (at least) if the text was something worthy (or rather unworthy) for me to summarise. 

If I'd used more time with the more intensive reading I might've picked up that the text that I chose, was not the easiest, or best, to summarise.

And that's that. My first blog-ish post containing the more (or less) weekly assignment.

Until next time!

Do not read this

This is a test, never mind this, stop reading.