Online Life Blog

Thousands of students are gearing up to start further Education in Northampton and in towns and cities across the UK. When starting college or university for the first time there are a few things to think about.

Finance

Before heading off for college or university make sure your finances are all under control, this could prove crucial. You don’t want to be running out of money to pay for the essentials such as accommodation, food, utility bills and university equipment such as books etc and you don’t want to be missing out on nights out because you can’t afford to go.

If you don’t have one already look at opening up a bank account. Many high street banks offer special student accounts but it’s a good idea to shop around to make sure you get the most suitable account for you.

Find out when any student loans or financial help will be paid to you to help you budget, also find out when your bills will be due, this way you won’t be caught out.

Insurance and TV Licence

In case of the worse insure your belongings so you will be able to easily replace them.

If you are going to be watching TV in your student accommodation don’t forget a TV license, if you are caught with out one you could face huge fines. To find out more about TV licensing visit www.tvlicensing.co.uk

Accommodation

Check out your accommodation before you go if possible and find out if your rent covers any utility bills. If you are sharing with other people try to organise how the bills and costs will be split.

Look for smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and find out when they were last checked.

Make sure all windows and doors have good locks on them as some insurance companies will not pay out if you don’t have adequate locks.

Transport

Find the out the bus timetable so you don’t turn up to class late. If you have a car, enquire about parking.

Reading

Before you start your course check to see if there is any preliminary reading required and make sure this is completed before term begins.

Household Items

Depending on the type of accommodation you are staying in you will need to bring along some household items with you. This could range from laptops to pots and pans. Plan what you will need to bring with you well in advance of going so you don’t end up forgetting anything.

Should you be considering getting some spiritual advice it is very important to understand exactly what services a medium or a psychic offers.  It has become confusing for people to differentiate due to the many new terms created by people involved in this fascinating field.

A very basic explanation of the difference between a medium and a psychic is that mediums can contact and communicate with the spirits of the dead and a psychic uses mental forces such as telepathy to give their readings. As you can see the two are very different and it will be in your best interest to familiarise yourself with them.

The word medium translates to vessel, meaning that mediums can communicate and contact spirits. When you visit a medium they will use a variety of different methods to contact the spirit world including channelling, trance channelling and light mediumship. These different methods let the medium use different states of consciousness to conduct their communication. Most mediums are psychics but not the other way around so many offer Psychic medium readings.

A psychic is someone who can sense things that can not be sensed through ordinary perception.  It is said that psychics have a sixth sense that helps them in their practices. A psychic can use their gift to sense auras using many different techniques such as clairvoyance, tarot cards and palmistry. Clairvoyance is the ability to see images inside of a persons mind; tarot cards use the psychic’s intuition to make predictions and palmistry is the art of Palm reading.

An important thing to remember is that a psychic can only sense on a material level and not though spirits like mediums do. So you should now be able to understand the methods and services that Psychic mediums provide.

If you have never been to a psychic before it can be quite daunting to know what to ask.  If you prepare yourself then you can get the best out of your visit and in turn be more understanding of the outcome. When receiving a Tarot Reading for the first time some people will become nervous and freeze which is why it is important to prepare yourself.

The questions below are just guides and of course can be used or adapted to use during your Psychic Reading.

Relationship Questions

What will my future hold for my current relationship?

My relationship has recently ended; do you have any guidance on this?

I am interested in someone, what does the future hold for me in connection to them?

What are my strong and weak points and how will they affect my relationships?

Career questions

What are my strengths and weaknesses?

What does the future hold for me in my intended career?

I have some issues in my current career how will I overcome them?

I have recently changed my career path, have I made the right decision?

Finance related

Will my financial situation differ in the future?
My financial situation is very bad at the moment, will things improve?

I am about to commit to a very large financial agreement, am I correct in doing so?

My financial situation is very good, will this continue?

Health Questions

I am in very good health and would like to know if this will continue?

I am currently very unwell and wonder if this will change in the future?

General Questions

What is my purpose in life?

What do other people think of me?

My life feels muddled, how can I change it?

Fancy hearing some more bizarre funeral rituals that go beyond a traditional burial with marble headstones?

Jewish mourners will take part in a mourning ritual known as ‘sitting shiva’. This is where friends and family will go to the Shiva house and mourn for 7 days. A candle will be lit and all mirrors will be covered so they can concentrate on the mourning. This occurs immediately after the body is buried.

Hindu’s today will make their final pilgrimage to die in the city of Banaras on the Ganges River. This is where it is believed the cycle of death is broken and the soul will ascend to the world of their ancestors – Pitriloka. Over 80 funeral pyres are present along the river so the dead can be cremated although often this isn’t possible and the dead bodies will simply float down the river.

Some African tribes would fire spears and arrows over the dead to ward of evil spirits, these days a rifle is shot over the deceased and this is to mirror the age old practice.

In Japan, when a nobleman died, a whopping twenty to thirty slaves would be made to commit Hari Kari (the process of belly cutting) as a sign of respect. Friends and wives along with slaves would even be strangled in Fiji to honour the deceased.

In some areas of China they believe that the more people that attend your funeral and stand over your headstones the more luck will be bestowed on your relatives. The Chinese have even gone as far as hiring strippers to the after tears party in order for the whole event to be more popular.

In the last blog I spoke about a few funeral customs that are a tad different to our traditional memorial in a church, burial with Gravestones and then wake to follow.

In some cultures men and women are treated entirely differently when it comes to what happens when they die. The Bongas buried men with their faces to the North whilst women faced the South. The Ghonds buried their women but cremated their men and the Cochieans buried their women and suspended their men from trees.

Before 1829 in Hindu India, a widow was considered useless without her husband so was expected to lie next to him and be cremated alive. The ritual known as Sati was believed to give the woman a free passage to heaven and purify her. It was abolished, however even as late as 1981; a recorded Sati occurred with an 18 year old widow.

The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the Calatians ate their own dead believing it to be a sacred duty of the family. Queen Artemisia is said to have even mixed the ashes of her lover with wine and drunk it.

Fantasy coffins are becoming increasingly popular in Ghana. Coffins are being carved into everything from airplanes to motor cars, cigarettes to bottles of beer. I wonder what they would do to headstones given half a chance.
Closer to home, in the Scottish highlands the deceased would be buried with a little salt and soil which would be placed on their chest. The soil was symbolic of the body decaying and becoming one with earth whilst the salt represented the soul which never decays or dies.

In England, our funeral customs are fairly traditional. Either a burial or cremation takes place. If a burial occurs, the body is left in the ground peacefully often with memorial gravestones at the head for respect. With cremations, the body is given back to the family in an urn for them to do as they wish. Other cultures and countries have some slightly more bizarre customs.

In Tibet, Buddhists believe that when you die, your soul leaves your body so the body is no longer needed to be respected or cared for. They choose to give the body back to the land by dismembering the body and leaving it high on a rock for the vultures to eat.

In Northern Vietnam the bodies are buried in the back garden of the deceased family but only after two years of it being buried in a paddy field. The body is then dug up, the bones cleaned and then re buried in the garden.

In ancient Rome, the eldest male relative would make sure he caught the last breath of the dying person.

In Madagascar, they have ceremonies called Famadihana. This is where they dig up the dead, parade the bones around the village and then in a new shroud bury the remains. The old shroud is then given to childless newlyweds who should place it on their bed to help with fertility.

There are many more so check out the next blog. It certainly makes our funeral customs and UK Gravestones seem a nice, safe choice.

It is a well known fact that some animals can sense changes that are undetectable to humans. Often, people suffering from severe epilepsy will have a dog as they will start to warn their owners of an imminent seizure. In one study, out of 60 dogs, 15% were able to consistently detect imminent seizures.

A cat called Oscar made headlines recently in America by successfully predicting the deaths of residents in a nursing home. He would curl up with the patients during their final hours and a total of 50 deaths were accurately predicted using his Psychic Mediums ability.

Other animals that have been used for help over years are canaries which were taken down into mine shafts well into the 20^th century to help detect any signs of toxic gas build up. Snakes are thought to be able to predict disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes due to sensing atmospheric changes or earth vibrations. For centuries cows have been thought to predict when the rain is coming and will lie down in the fields prior to the downpour and ground hogs in America are thought to be even better predictors of the weather. On the 2^nd Feb each year when they leave their burrows, whatever the weather is doing is a sign of how long winter will stay.

Domestic animals such as dogs and cats are often thought to have a sixth sense or a Psychic ability and will pick up on any ghostly happenings in a home, often barking when they hit a certain point in the house or refusing to go into a particular room.

If you’ve been involved in an accident then you’ll already have had to deal with any pain or injuries that happened as a result of it. You may have even suffered long term damage that will continue to impede you for years. In cases like this, it’s obvious that some sort of compensation is necessary and most injury claims will take into account any pain suffered by the victim, especially ongoing pain.

There are other things associated with an accident that you may not have thought of though. Although you are entitled to claim for any physical suffering that was caused, you can also factor in the cost of any adjustments that will have to be made to your home or transport if you have suffered a debilitating injury such as paralyzation or severe brain damage. These adjustments to your home can quickly become expensive and it’s important they are factored into your claim.

Even if you haven’t suffered any lasting injuries, you can still claim for any wages lost during the time that you were injured, or any additional costs that were accrued through not being able to drive or travel.

Taking everything into consideration can quickly become a complex and daunting task, which is why there are No Win No Fee Accident Specialists available who are trained in every aspect of these claims and back that up with a huge amount of experience. Add to that a £300 cash advance and a 98% success rate and you know you’re in good hands.

Help from animals in predicting the future has been used for centuries and dates back to the practice of extispicy by ancient Roman, Greek and Babylonian civilisations. The practice involved using any anomalies found in animal entrails and things like unusually high levels of blood were thought of as warning signs of a worldly disaster.

It seems using animals to predict the future is as common and widely used today and mostly with animals that are alive. An octopus in Germany called Paul is thought to be a Psychic, successfully predicting every Germany result in the games that they played in the World Cup this year in South Africa. The two year old eight legged octopus was given a choice of two containers, both containers had food in for him, but also displayed the German Flag on one and their opponent’s flag on the other. Whichever container he chose would be the winning country in that match.  The length of time he chose to make his decision was also taken into account, the longer he took to choose, the closer the results of the game was. This Psychic Medium octopus correctly predicted every single Germany match in the tournament!

Other animals have been used for help over the years to successfully predict certain scenarios; in 1930 a champion hunting dog, Jim managed to follow instructions in shorthand and Morse code whilst also successfully predicting the winners of seven Kentucky Derbies along with the sex of unborn babies.

I know it’s a strange title and quite possibly a stranger blog post to write about but if the last time you thought about your funeral was ‘never ago’ and you think they still comprise mostly of traditional wooden coffins, white lilies and are black tie events then think again.

These days it is getting more and more common for people to arrange their own funeral, with many saying it can be one of the greatest gifts you can give your friends and family in a time when they are mourning and whilst you won’t be able to take a seat in the pews you’ll certainly leave this world exactly the way you want to.

Do you want Granite Headstones, wooden coffins and white lilies? Then of course you can choose those and traditional funerals are as popular as ever although there are also far more extravagant delights when it comes to coffins. From ‘green’ coffins made from banana leaf and water hyacinth to coffins designed and made to suit your interest like a miniature Orient Express or Rolls Royce.

People are choosing all manner of quirky things for their funeral which reflects their personality and this is just one of the benefits of arranging your own funeral. To the outside world beautifully simple Marble Headstones can be displayed in keeping with the graveyard but on the inside you can be buried in what seems to be anything you want along with particular items that you have held close to your heart.

It may seem a morbid thing to think about, but the only way you get to choose how you want your funeral to be is to arrange it yourself.