It's been a while since I've updated this thing so lets see if my grammer has improved within a year.....Nope.
Well what can I say 2013 was turning into being one of the best years I had ever had despite the upset that we both went through at the start. The summer of 2013 was great, myself and Sophia visited places all over the country and were getting on great, honestly life couldn't have been much better.
We celebrated Eid in the good old Iftikhar fashion down in Manchester and a great time had by all. The time of Eid is fantastic with an asian family. It is a somewhat community spirit where not only family and friends come around to eat, but also friends of friends because everyone knows everyone, or at least this is how everyone starts to get to know everyone. All of the men and kids playing cricket in the garden with some snooker and ball games thrown in, it's a great time. Women chatting and gathering in the kitchen comparing foods running around like olympic sprinters multi tasking as women do and not complaining about it but enjoying it, ensuring that everyone is happy with the outcome so they can take satisfaction that everyone is served and please when it is time to sit down and eat.
Another hockey tournament came along in Hull which me and Sophia traveled to with the rest of the Predators. This year round we had a great tournament reaching the semi - finals and taking away some great team spirit.
Summer time came around which meant that I take Jennifer on her our holidays for a week. Visiting the fisher ground campsite in the lakes district for a couple of nights with 'Crazy' George and his kids, James Frankish and his two and Justin Branton and his little chipmunk. Great time was had even though we (as a Dads only group) were shoved away from the middle class and into a field on our own.
After the camping trip me and Jennifer (who is growing up far too fast), headed onwards to Liverpool to check out the museums that they have there. Liverpool is a nice city but I think we could have done with spending a night there to fully embrace it all, unfortunately money circumstances were not going to let us do that this time.
One of the big surprises of the trip had to be the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield. This is a National museum and therefore has free entry. You need to pay £2 to go down the mine but it is fantastically worth it. Take a picnic and it's a great day out.
Back to recent times though and fast forwarding from the summer to the winter of 2013/14. Me and Sophia are going through a bit of a rough time. The rough time cause is the talk of Children. I don't want to have kids that would be brought up into a religion and taught a certain way, Sophia does. My views have changed over the time and I am a bit more intolerant when it comes to fully accepting how my kids would be brought up. Although religion is not a bad thing when done properly I just don't see how it would fit into my life. Having kids with Sophia would mean they would have to learn the Quran, visit the Mosque on Sunday and be circumcised. The latter is a big no for me, I see no reason why the need to mutilate genital areas for the sake of a religion should be practiced.
All things considered it's not possible for us to carry on wearing Rose tinted glasses and pretending that everything would work out fine in the end when clearly, we are dealing with huge issues here when two potential parents cannot agree on the religion their child will be brought up in.
April seen me and Sophia travel by car to Bruges and Amsterdam for a mini break. Fantastic time was had driving over there was great, something which I definitely want to do again.
Sophia is now living back down in Manchester at her parents (although I have just read a text while writing this - Looking to get my own place). Sophia has changed her workplace also and is now working in Manchester for the same company.
One of the big disappointments came only last Tuesday when I travelled down to drop some of her stuff off. I pull up outside the house and begin off loading the carriage. I ask where her parents are and she says 'inside'. Not once did they make an effort to acknowledge me or come and see me. It's disappointing as for the past 3 years they've been my in laws. No effort was given to even say bye which I was hoping for.
So the year of the mountains certainly was as rugged as the namesake and ended up climbing and stumbling somewhat, but I'm not crashed out just yet.
One of the challenges I set upon at the beginning of 2013 in one of the first blogs was undertaking the NEBOSH Diploma in occupational safety and health, with a change of workplace and job role as a Health and Safety Practitioner.
Having been studying now for 16 months I have sat 3 exams and completed three modules. Exam 1 (Unit C for those in the know) was about workplace hazards. I failed this exam by only achieving 33% of a 45% pass mark. Unit B exam which was taken in January of 2014 I happily passed achieving a pass mark of 53%. This was a massive boost, If I had have failed Unit B it would have been hard to get the determination to go hard for Unit A (Sorry about the confusion of the units). This unit I hav ejust sat and await my results which should be here in September. In the mean time I am starting Unit D (last one I promise) which is my dissertation (now unit 'D' makes sense). I'm going to have to resit the first unit I failed again in January but with now knowing how the examiners want the wording, I'm confident that I can pass it.
There was a blog of which I wrote on Tumblr during Christmas which I'll upload on here to keep everything together as Tumblr deleted my account for some reason.
So this is my life now. Living on my own, waiting for the landlord to sell the house and I'll possibly move back to my mothers at the grand old age of 33. But I'll keep plodding on and hopefully one day, I can achieve having a great job, stable home, fantastic kid (Which I already have). Oh and I'll be blogging more often too.
