Fun lovin' in the sun!

Girls just wanna have fun…

… and boys just wanna have sex. One of life’s dumbest axioms, but there is some truth to it. College changes your ideas of entertainment in a way nothing else can. You’re above eighteen, and discos are suddenly very real attractions. There’s Starbucks, too. And the movies. And shopping.

But although everyone would like to get on in life by just having fun, it just doesn’t work that way (unless you’re a Hilton Heir, which doesn’t count). That’s not to say that you can’t have any fun — what would college be without it? But it must not get to the point when you’d rather sip on a latte than be at tutorial.

There is also the question of where to draw the line between entertainment and stupidity. Dancing the night away can be a lot of fun, but is quickly ruined by drugs or too much alcohol. The best way to know if what you’re doing is acceptable is to imagine Mum seeing you at it: will she be merely annoyed, or will she be break into tears? Annoyed is okay; tears are not.

Year One

Night heat:

You’ll be tempted to experiment, but we should warn you to stay away from full-fledged clubs (the kind with the largest dance floors and brightest lights) for now. Most of the time, they’re for above-21s anyway… and with good reason.

Day breaks:

This is more up your alley, and we encourage you to find ways to let off your steam during the day instead of the night during your first year. Think: shopping, Starbucks, movies and park outings.

“Me” time:

AThere is nothing like time alone to reflect and relax. We recommend settling into an alone-time routine throughout your days in college. Oh, and ‘Me’ time does not equal sleep time.

Year Two

Night heat:

The neon lights are calling you seemingly every weekend and the music never ceases to get you grooving. Now that you’re settled, feel free to party now and then… but only if you think you deserve it, and if you can afford it.

Day breaks:

These will seem pretty humdrum affairs to you by now, but they’re still important. Ideally, your clique should be more coffee-sippers than Margarita-guzzlers, too. It’s cheaper and (somewhat) healthier. Try to take the lead.

“Me” time:

This will possibly be your favourite way of unwinding by now, and that’s good for you. As long as you don’t start feeling lonely, you should continue this therapy as long as you can.

Year Three

Night heat:

Okay, sweetheart: time to shelve the dancing shoes and sequin skirt — the party’s over. Don’t feel sad, though. You’ll be partying more than ever when your Finals are over.

Day breaks:

Without the clubbing, do you see why these day breaks are so important? Even so: how much time do you have to while away at Starbucks if you still haven’t mastered Calculus yet?

“Me” time:

Now, it’s easy to start dealing with exam pressure by (over)sleeping it away, but this is not going to help you much in the big picture. Not enough sleep is bad, but too much can be devastating. It becomes a hard, terrible habit to kick. Try simple meditation exercises instead.

In the College Lifeseries:

• College life: new freedom, new independence
• College life: new friends, new rules
• College life: your body, your health
• College life: boys, boys, boys!
• College life: study hard, study smart
• College life: fun, fun, fun!

Photo credit: Miss Gong & The Flickers. Click image to visit them.

Do you remember the last time you were on the bathroom floor with nothing but your knickers on, your stomach wincing and the world spinning around you like a top? Do you sometimes spend the night in what is known as the ‘recovery position’: resting your head on the toilet bowl imagining it to be your pillow till morning?

At approximately 2 pm (morning, in this case) you wake up with a ton of bricks for what used to be your head, a hairbrush for what must have been your tongue and a needle cushion in your stomach. With eyelashes stuck together — thanks to that lovely Bobbi Brown mascara — facial pores that have become craters and eyeliner gone crusty around your eyes, you look like a nightmare. This is when you say, “I’ll never do this again” — a classic promise that we all make to break. Because the next time you need to get over some bloke you fancy who broke your fragile heart, you head straight for the tequila shots.

Hangovers happen to the best of us. The ‘happy juice’ makes us feel really good, but like everything else, overdo it and you’re in for a hard time. Apparently, though, it’s not the alcohol itself that’s the culprit (hard to believe, I know), but rather a by-product of ingested alcohol: acetaldehyde.

Your body breaks alcohol down into (among other things) acetaldehyde before transforming it into less harmful substances. Next, a host of depleted minerals short-circuits your nervous system whilst the acetaldehyde does further damage to your brains. Low blood-sugar sets in and this is accompanied by horrifying headaches and dry-mouth symptoms brought on by dehydration. If you don’t know by now, alcohol is a diuretic: it forces the evaporation of a vital portion of the body’s water. Coming off the effects of a mild overdose of depressant drug — like alcohol — leads you into nervous shock. Your nerves react by going into a relatively hypersensitive state.

The sum of all the above is nausea, head spins, twitchy nerves, grumpiness and general unpleasantness. Some report diarrhoea. Because I suffer from gastritis, I usually get a prickly acid feel in my stomach and even heartburn. Oh yes, the list of reasons to NOT drink again is very long in the morning, but look on the bright side: these symptoms are fantastic excuses for not going to work.

The severity of a hangover varies according to your age, ‘enzymatic capacity’ to deal with the poisons and the quantity you guzzle. So, the older you are, the worse it gets. The more you take in a shorter space of time, the more you’ll feel the alcohol. And if your physique looks somewhat anorexic, your chances of an almighty hangover are far greater than it is for lardy types.

But never fear — celebrating happy occasions or brooding over sad ones can turn out better with these tips… and the Miracle Cure for the morning after.

Preparing for the night out

• For starters, never leave home on an empty stomach. Pump yourself up with a hearty meal loaded with minerals and starch to absorb the alcohol so it doesn’t all go directly into your bloodstream.
• Next, water: I know its no fun having to run off to the ladies every time a George Clooney-ish dude starts chatting you up, but if you want to still like him in the morning, you must be sure to fill up with plenty of water before leaving home.
• Finally, bring out the blender and get the secret potion below ready for when you get home. Keep it close by, preferably next to your bathroom.
• It might be a challenge to squeeze these tips into your already tight beauty regime for that sizzling night out, but do it and you could save yourself a whole load of pain in the morning.

While you’re out

• Remember that dark beverages are more potent than lighter ones. Avoid brandy, red wine, bourbon and scotch and stick to gin, rum and vodka. Apparently, a bad chemical named ‘congeners’ occurs naturally in fermented drinks which explains why darker drinks have more ‘congeners’ than lighter ones.
• Whatever the colour, never date a cheapskate who only buys you cheap drinks…especially red wine. It contains an extra hangover-inducing poison called ‘tyramine’.
• Try consuming less than one drink per hour. The science behind this is that your liver breaks down alcohol at a rate of about one beer per hour. In my experience, alternating alcoholic beverages with non-alcoholic beverages always keeps my body hydrated.
• If all else fails and you know that you cannot handle another drink for fear of looking like a loser in front of the boys, sip on tea and pretend its whisky. You can also sit or stand next to a plant and water it with your glass’ contents.

When You Get Home

• Throwing up is good. It gets the alcohol out of your system so that it cannot cause more damage while you sleep.
• Never take analgesics (any form of headache pills) as they aggravate your stomach and may even worsen the hangover. If you’re the type that needs to pop a pill once back home, take a multivitamin. This is a good way to replace the lost nutrients and minerals.
• Julian Mokhtar, a rock guitarist and hard-partier by any standards, says that he attempts to down two large glasses of H2O as soon as he hits home. Works like a charm for me, too.
• Some swear by lime juice over a bowl of steaming instant noodles, while for others its pancakes and honey. In truth, any kind of food will do. The starch will help absorb the alcohol and protect your stomach’s walls from further damage while you sleep.

The morning after

• No coffee and certainly no alcohol. Eat (more so if you’re not feeling queasy) and go back to bed. Simple. Forget the age-old hair-of-the-dog technique (having more alcohol to calm your shattered nerves) unless you want to become an alcoholic.
• Personally, I love a shower when I rise (from the bathroom floor). There’s just something about it that works well for us girls, like washing that man out of your hair.
• As for makeup, be sure to clean your face. Yes, even if you did end up in someone else’s house. Clogged pores make us look scary.
• Finally, get your Miracle Cure (see below) ready and down it in one go.

The Miracle Hangover Cure Recipe

1. Take 2 aspirins
2. Take 200 mg cysteine (available at specialty food stores)
3. Take 600 mg vitamin C
4. Take 1 tablet vitamin B complex
5. Mix the following ingredients in a blender:

• 1 banana
• 1 small can Red Bull
• 6 large strawberries
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1-2 cups milk (or soy milk)
  ¼ tspn salt
• dash of nutmeg

Note: Drink it ALL up. If you can down it in one go, you shouldn’t have a hangover, anyway.

This work by The Chick Times is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.chicktimes.com.

Find out more about syndicating this and other free content.

Will she win?

There’s something special about being a pop star that beats just about every other profession in the world, isn’t there? You get paid a whole lot of money for doing something you love (so how can you call it work?). You get VIP treatment everywhere you go. Hordes of fans all want to be your friend. Truckloads of money to go shopping with. And guys? — whew! Take your pick, girl!

Up until the Idol series (and other reality talent competitions like it), becoming a pop star meant travelling the gruelling road of botched demos, embarrassing public performances, hours of walking from record label to record label… and pretty much doing all of that without even knowing if you’re ever going to sell enough singles to buy your next meal or not.

These days, though, there’s a shortcut to stardom: American Idol. But if you’re thinking about trying your luck with this super competition, you’d better take these top tips first.

1. Can you sing?

I know this seems stupid, but you’d be surprised to know how many people think they can sing, but can’t. This is not about belting out Aretha Franklin — just being able to sing in tune is challenging enough for these folk. “They said I sang out of tune, almost through the whole song,” recalls Tracie, a competitor in an Idol-format competition. “I was stunned. When I asked my friends about it later, they admitted that the judges were right: I was horrible.” So, the first thing to do is to ask someone reliable to be brutally honest with you — are you tone deaf, or not?

2. Okay, you’re not tone deaf. But can you really sing?

Okay, so lots of people can hold a tune, but few — very few — can do so well enough to make you want to look up and see who it is that’s singing. And there are fewer still that you’d actually pay money to watch! “Most contestants are too normal,” comments Izham Omar, CEO of 8TV. “The judges are always looking for something spectacular.” It’s easy to gauge if you can really sing. Are you often asked to sing at family get-togethers? Have you always performed in singing acts in school? Are you always being invited to karaoke? If this kind of thing happens often, then there’s a pretty good chance that you may be in the top 10-percent of the singing population. But are you in the top 0.001%? Well, I guess you’ll soon find out!

3. Do you really want this?

There are really no guarantees in the entertainment business. Today’s Idol could very well be tomorrow’s Passé. It’s hard work getting to the top, but it’s even harder work staying there. Everyone wants to be a superstar, but are you ready to do what it takes to stay one? “If you are serious about being a singer, then you should invest your time and energy into it,” adds Omar. “That’s the only way you’ll succeed. There will be little sleep and a lot of pressure. Only the best survive.” The entertainment business is all glam, gloss and goss. There’s a whole lot of bitchiness going around, too. Not many women have the stomach for the incessant attention that must be paid to their faces, their bodies, their hair or their teeth. Sure, the money (if you sell well enough) could make this all worthwhile. But many stars who make it big wish they had their own lives back again. The question is: are you ready for the spotlight, and will you stand it?

4. Your first song at the auditions

Must you choose Whitney? Or Mariah? Or Beyonce? In other words, do you really think you’re good enough to sing like a Whitney or Mariah or Alicia? If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll say no (you would already have a recording deal if you could). The point I’m trying to make here is that you should be original and be creative when choosing your audition tune. The judges have listened to many, many renditions of I Will Always Love You and I’ll Be There during their lifetimes. If you want to stand out from the rest, choose something really different, really unexpected, and master it.

5. Make the time for it

There will be lots of filming for the show’s sponsors, lots of practice sessions, lots of hanging around doing nothing while the organisers decide what to do with you. It’s not exactly fun, although it’s been said that you make fast friends with the other contestants. It’s no fun at all if you don’t enjoy making friends in the first place. “Treat it as a real important job,” says Omar. “Being a star is a job, not a hobby. You have to be serious about it.” If — and that’s a BIG if — you get to the Finals, the demands on your time are going to be significant. You’ll be up and about by 7am, and may only get home late at night, only to do the same thing all over again the next day… and the next, and the next, and the next. You’d best make sure your other work or study commitments are minimal if you want to give it your all.

6. Build your confidence

Kylie Minogue may not be able to sing, but she can do a whole lot else!

You may think that you are a regular Christina Aguilera, judging by the the way you mesmerize your friends at birthday parties and karaoke afternoons. But so does every other girl who is going to be lining up at the auditions. Believe me, you will hear girls practicing in the lobby who sound much, much better than you. You can start to feel very insignificant. If you’re not careful you could carry that feeling straight into the audition room. “The judges will be very critical, so do the best you can,” advises Omar. “You only get that one chance.” A competition is always a confidence game, of course, but in a singing competition, that confidence is very nearly all you have. You would have spent all morning (and maybe even afternoon) listening to some amazing talent in the waiting hall, and may realise that, note for note, there’s no way you’ll ever beat some of the other contestants. This is where a confident step and tone can make all the difference. This could become the only trump card you have to pull against the others — at least in the audition stage — so get pumped!

7. Eat well, sleep well

If you do get through the auditions, then life is going to very suddenly move into high gear for you. You do not know exhaustion the way an Idol does until you’ve been one yourself. You will be working your voice hoarse with singing and your jaw will become tired from weeks of smiling. You must make sure you take care of your health. “Get lots of rest and sleep,” continues Omar. “This will help your voice reach its maximum potential. Make sure you wow the judges — if you’re mediocre or just ‘not bad’, you might not even get to see the judges.” Last year, there were several contestants who complained of being a little ill with sore throats and the sniffles. You can attribute both to lack of sleep and poor dieting in the days leading up to the Finals. No matter what, you must watch what you do. Late-night movies can wait, as can late-night chats with the girls. What is important is that you eat good food, drink lots of water and get all the rest your poor, battered body will need.

8. Dress well

There are two ways to look at this. On one hand, it seems that in order to make it big, you’ve got to be willing to shed some fabric… at least that’s the way MTV makes it look. On the other hand, slutty dressing could also mean that you have to compensate for your lack of talent with a willingness to show some skin. “You must nurture your charisma,” says Omar. “As in any entertainment field, charisma, when combined with talent, is a potent recipe for success. Don’t be shy. If you want to be a star, start having the aura of a star right now. (But don’t be a Prima Donna else you’ll never get the votes).” What we’d recommend is thinking local tastes for your local audience, at least to begin with. Sexy may be good, but sultry could be better. Think of something that shows less skin, but which accentuates your curves. Something that places less emphasis on the element of sex, and more on the element of woman. But above all, make sure it’s comfortable — you have to be able to sing in it, remember?

Audition checklist

All set for the auditions? Better make sure with this handy checklist:

1. Make-up — bring everything you have, because you don’t know how long you could be waiting.
2. Comfortable clothes — you don’t want to be sitting around in high-heels and pleats for three hours. Get changed into you Idol attire about three people before your turn.
3. Snacks — the waiting makes even the strictest dieter hungry, so here’s a good excuse to get some chocolate!
4. Mirror — a good-sized hand mirror for you to keep an eye out for stray hair wisps and lipstick smudges is a must.
5. Money — like, duh….
6. Portable music — like a CD Man, MP3 player or equivalent, so you can keep your spirits up and stay in the mood. Failing which, do get some ear plugs to block out the practice screeches of other contestants.
7. Mobile phone — so you can call home to say you got through to the next round!
8. Perfume — even though you may not have body odour, the guys around you might.
9. Water — get plenty of this to drink so you don’t go in with a parched throat.
10. Travel games/good book — even the most excited of contestants will find herself getting bored, so bring along a travel Scrabble or Mills and Boon to keep yourself occupied.

Practice makes perfect

The professionals recommend practicing hard to make sure you peak during the auditions. But neither should you overpractice. Some techniques that professionals use include…

1. Ululating — try imitating the birds. It’s harder than you think.
2. Vowelising — enunciate your vowels, A, E, I, O and U, in progressively higher pitches until your voice cracks.
3. Consonatising — do the same with consonant sounds.
4. Speaking aloud — before you can sing aloud, you must be able to speak aloud. Judge for yourself if you can make out every word distinctly.
5. Do, Re, Mi — run through the scales back and forth in progressively higher pitches until your voice cracks.
6. Yodeling — yes, yodeling. This is not very easy to do, either, but it does wonders for your pitching.
7. Deep breathing — whatever sounds you produce in your voicebox need your lungs for power. Practice your breathing technique as often as you can.
8. Vibrato — Whitney does this admirably, as does Fantasia. The vibrato quality of your voice depends on how well you vibrate a note with your diaphragm. It takes ages to master, and if you don’t know it already, well….
9. Dynamics — being able to plunge from a high note to a low note and sing both with the same amount of power requires a lot of practice.
10. Ssss and Rrrr — Rrrrolling your Rs and hissssing your Ss while singing is something many people overlook in the karaoke, especially if you’re singing English songs. But in American Idol, pronunciation is paramount.

The Harry Potter Series

Learn to finish what you start

I didn’t know Harry Potter’s eyes’ were green.

Ever feel that with a little more will and perseverance you could really make something of yourself? Many of us have a tendency to let challenges bring us down, and get discouraged too easily. Adventure games build your resolve in a way other entertainment cannot.

The beauty of the Harry Potter series lies within its level of difficulty: it is not hard; but it is not a walk in the park either. The format is such: you get one mission directly related to the main plot (for example, finding out what the Goblet of Fire is all about). When you complete this mission, you go to a lecture (Professor Sprout’s is particularly interesting) and then learn a new spell. You then go through an obstacle course against the other Houses at Hogwarts (Slytherin is your arch-rival, of course).

Each time you complete a Professor’s course, Professor Dumbledore does a House Points Count. The House with the most points gets to go to a bonus level, where you collect as many Beans as you can within a limited time. Beans are the currency of Hogwarts (in this game, at least), and can be used to buy stuff like ingredients for magic potions, Life Points and other useful stuff. And then you go through the whole gamut again, picking up a new spell with each new cycle.

The game tests your patience in several ways, not least of which is going over a lot of the same ground and zapping the same enemies before you finally complete your mission. Along the way there are many ‘secrets’ to be revealed, many of which you discover accidentally. Persevere, however, and you will learn the satisfaction that comes with conquering your discouragement and finishing what you start.

Zoo Tycoon

Mastering crisis management

What with traffic summonses appearing in your mailbox out of the blue, getting dumped by your boyfriend and your hairdryer spewing smoke on a bad hair day, it’s easy to lose your grip these days. How do you keep things in perspective? A fun way to learn this skill is with Zoo Tycoon.

Zoo Tycoon is a strategy game in which you have the task of building a zoo, making it profitable, keeping the authorities at bay and ensuring the animals and water life in your care are happy. You start from scratch by selecting an animal up for adoption, building an enclosure for it and hiring a zookeeper to take care of it. Then, you expand. This is where the real fun starts.

First, your animals will start complaining that there’s too much grass in their new home. Then, it’s too much sand. Then, they want a toy. Then, the water is too murky. Then, they fall sick. Visitors don’t like seeing unhappy animals (there’s a bar that shows the animal’s happiness level), and they make scathing remarks like, “We don’t think much of your zoo.”

While all this is happening, of course, your money is depleting with wages and salaries. Suddenly, you find yourself in the red — you’re going broke! And then the National Animal Welfare Foundation says you’re not taking care of your animals properly, and bans you from adopting any new animals. People get bored and your ratings drop. You can view your zoo’s financial data and statistics in real-time, helping you keep track of how you’re doing.

The game gets more complicated as you go along, throwing increasingly tougher challenges at you, which you must overcome with panache in order to succeed. If it starts getting boring, you can increase the level of difficulty or download interesting stuff like the Endangered Species Expansion Pack to make it more educational. All this and more certainly helps you put everyday emergencies like broken high-heels into perspective.

The Sims

Brush up your people skills

What makes the difference between a good manager and great manager? — people skills. The ability to empathise with others and to understand human nature, whims and failings gives great managers a useful edge when it comes to motivating subordinates and handling bosses.

As far as human computer games go, nothing beats The Sims. Easily the most popular game amongst women, your job is to choose a family (or make one up yourself), buy a plot of land, build a house and move in. Then you make neighbours in the same way, and everyone becomes friends and all your Sims live happily ever after.

Except that they don’t. Things can go wrong. They miss a couple of days’ work, and they lose their job. They have affairs with neighbours. They fight, and run away (never to be heard of again in the game). They are lazy and selfish, always complaining… very much like real-world people, don’t you think?

The Sims live on a few basic necessities just like we do: food, rest, companionship, entertainment, comfort… the usual. You can improve your Sims’ mood by giving them better living conditions and making sure they get enough rest. A Sim in a good mood often gets better prospects at work, and can therefore bring home better paycheques. A Sim in a bad mood does not even want to look for a job.

Get ready to have your management skills and human insight tested to its limit with The Sims. They start sleeping on the bathroom floor, playing basketball at midnight and hitting on married neighbours. Keeping your family of Sims happy is tougher than you think, especially when (like humans) they have nearly infinite wants, are fussy and behave in surprisingly stupid ways. Oh, and if you think that money solves everything, it doesn’t — housing your Sims in a mansion with all the frills of opulence in no way guarantees success. You’ll have to think out of the box for this one, I’m afraid.

Diamond Mine

Sharpen your eye for detail

If you have a habit of letting even the simplest errors get by you when sending in reports, then you ought to look into how you can improve your eye for detail. Bosses like to spot mistakes on subordinates’ work, so the less you have of them, the better.

Diamond Mine is very much like the PDA game, Bejewelled: a single-player game where you need to switch the gems around in order to get three (or more) in a row. This may sound easy enough, but when you’re looking at 64 gems all packed together side by side, you’ll be surprised at how many times you end up slapping your forehead exclaiming, “How could I miss that!”

The trick to playing Diamond Mine is to think at least two steps ahead so that you don’t end up having no more moves (in which case your diamond stack collapses — Game Over!). This small-time strategy will help you construct your work-day better, too. Just don’t get addicted — this game is hard to put down once you get the hang of it.

You either play the free web version of Diamond Mine (with limited features) online . Or, if your internet connection is sucky, you can download the application onto your hard drive for free, which has better graphics and sounds, but comes with an expiry period. Or, if you have some spare plastic cash, why not get the full version for USD19.90?

Internet Scrabble

Tickle your brain

A lot has been said about what playing Scrabble regularly can do for your word power and presence of mind. If you’re one of those people that frequently have embarrassing lapses during concentration when you just cannot find the right word to use, playing this popular word game will soon set you right. The trouble is playing Scrabble with your partner can often lead to miserable tiffs… especially if he’s a sore loser.

The Internet Scrabble Club is every avid Scrabble-player’s dream website, plus it’s free. Registration is simple — username and password — and they don’t make a big deal of fancy graphics and stuff so that your game can proceed uninterrupted. All you need is to download a small file to your hard disk, have a reliable internet connection and you’re good to go!

You can specify the type of player you want to play with. Some use official American Scrabble dictionaries, some use French, Dutch and even Italian (seven to choose from, altogether). Select one you’re comfortable with. Also, some players like to use a dictionary during the game, which you may or may not be comfortable with. This, too, you can specify when you’re looking for a challenge. Supposing you cannot find a suitable one (or no one wants to play with you), a computer is assigned to challenge you — a very tough opponent!

There are some ‘commands’ you need to learn to play Internet Scrabble effectively like SEEK (search for a suitable opponent), WHO (see all players logged in to the ISC server) and MATCH (set up a game with a specific player). To make the Internet Scrabble Club experience more realistic the TELL command lets you send a personal message to your opponent so you can really tease them into making a bad move. But if you’re like me, just clicking on the buttons work great… if you’re not fussy about the details of the person you’re up against.