How Sez Sees It

Social media seems to have taken over our lives. I am a big consumer of it myself. Is it contributing to us being happier or unhappier as a species though? My involvement in social media began as a teenager. You weren't 'cool' unless you had a Bebo account. Then, along came MySpace. With both social sites you could post pictures and personalise your home page to 'express the real you'. It was the age of the emo selfie (that scene kid look with the big fringes covering your eyes) and a time when pop punk like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance were ruling the music scene. Along came the new kid on the block, Facebook. This was the one all the university students were signing up to and was a way of creating connections that would stay with you after you graduated and you could form business connections with. Although, that was the intention the reality was that it was a way of wasting half your life on simple games (Farmville), insulting strangers and sharing in...

This not having added sugar lark is getting easier by the day. Once you get into it and find out what you can actually eat it is quite good fun and I am feeling the benefits already. All this week I have been eating wholegrain rice cakes with low fat cheese spread and lettuce for lunch and fruit or shredded wheat for breakfast. Dinner has mostly consisted of salads or chicken and vegetables. By only having natural sugars (and only small amounts at that) I have been feeling more energised and my head is clearing up. I have felt fuzzy before when I have a sugar crash. I also find that I don't tend to crash and I am not so hungry and looking to snack to top up my sugar level. I am drinking more water (though that is not uncommon for me, it is my drink of choice anyway and it might be down to the hot weather). I am also changing other things I drink such as coffee. I have been having my coffee black and no sugar and it tastes really good that way. I don't know about how much ...

It is that time of year again when the great British Summer rolls around and we get the greatest sporting event on earth (my opinion) Wimbledon. Don't get me wrong, I used to loathe Wimbledon with a passion. I was one of those kids who loved The Simpsons and back then the cartoon was shown on BBC2 every night at 18.00 sharp. For two weeks every summer that was taken from me. I was horrified. The matches appeared to be too long and I could not get my head around the scoring or the markings on the court. That little thing that beeps on the top of the net was just annoying too. Then, magically, something changed. I was 14 years old and going on the most awkward date of my life. I was annoyed at my then boyfriend and wanted to punish him by going out with a lad in our year who had an infatuation with me. Yes, those were the days. The days when teenage drama was the biggest thing in the world and nothing else mattered. As a total aside the date was great if awkward but I kissed and ...

I am going to use the naming convention that the Japanese do where the family name goes first and the given name goes second. I thought I would go into more detail about some of my favourite actors and actresses from Japan and some of my favourite films/TV shows that they have been in. These are my opinions and the information is as correct as I could find where I didn't know something myself. Copyright images/videos where they should be. Sato Takeru Born: 21 March 1989 (age 26 at time of writing) From: Iwatsuki-ku, Saitama Sato Takeru Sato was in senior high school in Tokyo when talent agency Amuse Inc scouted him. He made his acting debut in 2006 in the ‘drama’ (lose sense of the word) ‘Princess Princess D’. He really gained a following after appearing in the ‘Kamen Rider Den-O’ series on TV and in the films. In 2009 he appeared alongside his stable mate and real life best friend, Miura Haruma, in the drama ‘Bloody Monday’ which ended up running into a second s...

I am attempting to live without too much sugar. There are sugars that are naturally occurring in fruit and as fruit has fibre you can't really cut this out. I also cannot drink tea without sugar as it is gross otherwise. Then there is the question of what to do with birthdays. So far I am failing spectacularly. Monday 29 June:  start of the no or low sugar week. Did well. Ate some wheatabix and had a salad. Not too shabby. No biscuits either. Tuesday 30 June:  the meeting I was in had biscuits and I ate some. Otherwise I was living off fruit and salad type things. Wednesday 1 July:  another good day really, except it was the hottest day of the year so far and my manager bought us all ice-cream. Thursday 2 July:  a good day finally. I was very well behaved today and only ate my breakfast and lunch without adding sugar. Even avoided biscuits in the evening. Friday 3 July:  good in the sense that I didn't really add sugar until the evening...when Dave g...

Studies have shown that we become aware of our own mortality between the ages of 3 - 8 years old. This is when we become self-aware and so we begin to realise that our lives will end and we must die. I am no exception. At the age of 3 I began to fear death after seeing an article on day-time magazine show 'This Morning' about a house fire that had killed someone. At 15 it happened again while I was watching crappy soap 'Crossroads'. One of the major characters was killed off with a heart attack (later it turned out they were very popular and the whole thing had been faked...that was a death...the death of any remaining credibility in the show and so it was cancelled). At 22 I was in a terrible relationship that left me worried I was wasting my life and that I would be better off either dead or out of the relationship. I was scared I had achieved nothing and that this man had wasted my time and my life. My self-esteem was at an all time low. I finally got round it with...

'Star Lord'and 'that kid from Iron Man 3' join the cast of dinosaurs in the biggest and craziest installment of the Jurassic Park series yet. In this film we return to the original island, Isla Nubla, where 'Jurassic Park, was due to open 22 years ago. This was the scene of the tragic events which saw a T-Rex and group of Velociraptors terrorise Dr Grant, Dr Sadler, Richard Hammond and his grandkids (Lexi and Timmy). A new park, Jurassic World, has been built though and has been operating for about 10 years. That's the problem, people are getting used to seeing dinosaurs! Now, personally, I will always be amazed by dinosaurs, but, this is the premise of the film so let's go with it. Kids want something scarier and standard dinos won't cut it! The corporate sponsors want to make more money and so Dr Wu (remember him from Jurassic Park?) returns and is again played by BD Wong to lead a team creating new dinos. Their creation this time is the Indominus ...