…or more like “returns”, to be honest.

Anyway, if you’re reading this, welcome [back] to Surrealle! I “appear to have” finally, FINALLY revived this domain from the dead; more info on which (well, its history/past life) you can find out here. First timers, I advocate that you pop by that page as well.

Surrealle’s still a portfolio of sorts, as it originally was; but there’s hardly anything in there to warrant a standalone portfolio – I’ve not done a LOT of art in my sixth form/college years. So I’ve now combined my old blog with it and have designated the combo of the two as my main homepage. Whoopie!

Somehow, though, I still feel that omitting a bit of a relevant “BUT WHY CAZ WHAT MADE YOU RETURN?” blurb is a bit rude, so I’ll do my best to go about it. Long story short, I’ve now ended up at university in London; which – as most people can tell you – is PERFECT blogging fodder. This subsequently caused me to regret the fact that I had no place to turn said fodder into…well, lighthearted reads, as I used to when I was blogging (kinda off-on/shoddily, I might add. Yay distractions.) And well, my mum has *always* harped on encouraged me to keep documenting my experiences whilst keeping my writing skill in check in the process – what better way than with a good ol’ blog post, eh?

Which brings us to the other (related) reason: I’ve since become a part of my uni’s student newspaper, Felix. I originally joined as a copy editor; but since then I’ve also gone on to do a bit of minor news coverage. Hopefully I’ll get to write more meatier pieces this coming term – so blogging more often will help to build my confidence in my writing abilities, which – hopefully – will make tackling said stuff easier. (Oh, I sometimes upload content on to the online portal as well – good to know I haven’t lost my touch in handling new UIs! )

So what have I been up to whilst away from this site (or website maintenance as a whole)? You can say I’ve been well and truly bitten by the social media bug; so perhaps some good came from the hiatus. Yes, I’ve actually had the terms “Queen of Facebook” being thrown around amongst my peers when referring to me at times; and I’ve also started to fully fall in love with Twitter.

Twitter’s a funny thing: I actually had it a looooong time ago back in the days of le old blog; but I’ve never fully utilized it as much as I have now. I created my new main account and linked it up to Facebook because I wanted to – le gasp! – hone/streamline my wit a bit. 140 characters per tweet means keeping stuff short and sweet (hey rhyme!)…or in my case, snappy. And judging by peer feedback, I think I’ve succeeded. Either that, or I’m on my way.

At the same time, though, Twitter’s also served as a microblog of sorts for me; which I guess is useful in the re-transition back to traditional blogging. Hopefully it means that I’ll be less waffly/more concise from now on!

“What about Google Plus?” Well, I *do* own it; but at the moment I haven’t used it enough to have an opinion on it. I’ll tell you what it’s been handy for: videoconferencing with the group of lovely new friends I’ve made since starting uni. “Truly grateful” doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about having met this new bunch of people…well, they do say your time at uni will be some of the best years of your lives for a reason.

I intend to follow up this post with a review of *my* 2011 fairly soon – which will give a bit more insight into what’s gone on before. All in good time, though!