Andrew’s Blog

No, this is nothing to do with James Bond. We’re now two and a half hours into 2008, and so it’s time to look back ponderously at 2007 — just like we looked back at 2006 last year…

January

Last year I struggled to remember anything from the first couple of months of the year. I put this partly down to it being fairly uneventful (I couldn’t remember much) and also not having a blog for that period (I didn’t start properly until September 2006).

This year, I’m struggling to remember much about the first couple of months of the year too. And guess what? — I have a blog. Guess what I wrote in it? Hardly anything. Looks like we’ve got a great couple of months to look forward to then if the last couple of years are anything to go by. Although with all the stuff that’s ‘about’ to happen, I have a feeling it won’t be true this year.

My main memory of last January is of Mike Stannett discovering the Internet. Most people would have discovered it before 2007, but not Mike. He got a new computer and developed a sudden fascination with all things net, insisting that we all get webcams and microphones so we could talk to him at home. I still don’t understand why, and fortunately by the time the next semester had started this obsession had somewhat subsided. I think it had a lot to do with wanting to stay at home to be honest.

In my 06 year blog, I mentioned Shaukat joining earlier in the year. At the end of January last year, he left. We made our first VT expedition to Jumbo’s as a goodbye meal. Going back to the beginning of the month, for some reason the first few days stick in my head because I didn’t go back on the 2nd, having an optician’s appointment, but Ramsay did with him and Mahmood ending up in a fire alarm practice outside in the cold. Weird how I remember that.

February

The first week of February saw Mike Stannett’s birthday, and we trooped down to see him the week before to give him a present. The other big event of the month, for me at least, was my trip to Brussels and FOSDEM. I remember planning to leave rather late because I thought me and Henry had to actually attend Siobh´a;n’s lectures for her module as well as do the marking. But it turns out we didn’t, so that, coupled with a late plane arrival and trying to find everything, made me get there a lot later than I would have ideally hoped to. I’ll be going again this year so hopefully the travel and stuff will be better. The event itself was great and I expect this year’s to be even better too.

March

There still doesn’t appear to have been much happening even in March, given that I resorted to using my blog to write dramas. But at least I wasn’t alone in blogging then because Mike was actually doing so at the time (although checking that link just now shows he has posted again for the first time in six months). Looking back at mine brings back a few interesting memories. And to blatantly re-use that format, that was the month that:

• Simon bought a RISC PC which has since mainly festered in the corner of the lab.
• Simon bought a GP2X which has seen more use.
• Ramsay acquired a SGI box from Kirill which has since mainly festered in the corner of the lab (spot a theme here…?)
• Zubair was mad enough to install Vista — oh how we laughed.
• Scarily, that was the first time I talked about DynamiTE — has it really been that long?
• Ibby passed his transfer report at long last on the 13th; unlucky for some but not for him.

But mainly one of just being in the lab I guess. I know there was a lot of demonstrating going on. Me and Henry taking packed COM162 classes with Sanaz, Ben and Swampi. Lots of the aforementioned marking. COM2030 tutorials for Georg. And the Turnitin stuff started to kick off as well, not to mention Crossover as always so that probably explains why not much else went on.

April

April always seems to be where things start to kick off, with May becoming a veritable tornado of activity. In 2006, it was the month we spent gallivanting around the country (BCTCS, MGS, Types, TFP and all that jazz) and April 07 was similarly pretty busy. Although my blog again shows my whimsical musings, it also clearly demonstrates a busy month. I suppose the most memorable bit is that bloody CONCUR paper. I spent two entire evenings in the lab with Mike while we cranked it out and while I spoke lyrically of it back then, the response to it clearly showed it didn’t smell of roses.

Speaking of MGS, Simon went off there again and this time Henry, Ibby and Peter went too. Memorably, Ibby travelled there and back every day, was less than diligent in claiming back the expenses for this, got lost, most enjoyed looking in the pond rather than at the lectures, made a racist slur, set the department in a bad light and phoned me every day. Not bad for a week’s work.

This was also the time of my eponymous blog about the Information commons. From what I’ve seen, it still all holds. In fact, in all accounts everything I’ve heard since has merely darkened my opinion, notably including its effect on the opening hours of St George’s and the name of the Main Library as well as its ridiculous mandated 24-hour policy. There’s no money to helpfully open St George’s for a few extra hours of an evening which students actually want, but keeping the Information Commons opening at 2am and during the Christmas break is a must.

It’s all been departures this year, and sadly April saw the unhappy story of Ravie leaving, as he lost funding to continue in Sheffield. He was given the option of continuing back home in Malaysia instead and took it. These changes have had quite an effect on the lab, and its makeup today is quite different than it was this time last year.

May

What a heady month May was! It even kicked off quite dramatically, when we did the final rearrangement of the VT lab to what it is today. I’m quite pleased with how it is at the moment, to be honest, although judging by what Mike Holcombe told Mesude it’s not that clear that we now have some space in there, and, thinking about it, the current space is pretty akin to the space that was there before the last shuffle. Interesting.

May was also the start of the Emily odysseys. I remember running in to her in the kitchen (not literally) at some point, Henry had past history of seeing her in the disgrace that is Embrace/Mingdom, and it all kicked off there, with us arranging a night out. That ended up being the same day that Alice left. Quite strange really, because I’d only recently got to know her through the whole Turnitin debacle. Both her and Em joined us on what was the first of several VT07 nights out that culminated in a trip to the Leadmill. It was a Thursday and I still think the best night we’ve had. Everyone made it to the end for one thing. It was also the only one Ibby attended (partially) — certainly the only time he came out clubbing and as a result lost his phone. I’m surprised, as I thought it was surgically attached. Strangely enough, only myself and Henry have been on all our many adventures last year.

It was also the month of the GRADSchool trip, which I moaned and whined about beforehand, but which turned out to be quite brilliant. I chronicled it all pretty fully at the time, in probably my most epic blog to date. But suffice to say, I made some good friends on the trip, maybe even learnt a little and had a good break from the usual hussle and bussle of the DCS. It even seemed to have a positive effect on Simon — well, for a few days anyway until he reverted. We’ve still got to have a reunion, which I hope will happen sometime this year.

Oddly, once of its most notably effects in the short term was the consequent rise (and later, demise) of Facebook. I’d actually become a member back in November of the year before, when invited to it by Fran. Me, him and Zubair conversed on there a bit but there wasn’t really much point. We were all seeing each other day in, day out anyway. It took off when I then used it to keep in contact with the members of Team S, my new-found friends from GRADSchool, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was Emily finding out. I don’t know how many times we messaged each other over the first few days but it became quite bonkers to be honest. Thankfully, things slowly calmed down until it was basically dead by late summer.

June

The 1st of June was marked quite notably by the inaugural VT lab party, which celebrated the start of summer, the leaving of the undergraduates and the successful completion of transfer reports for everyone from the 05-06 bunch. Yes, we actually had a party that wasn’t a VT Christmas party, nor just a few drinks and a chat in the retreat. This was a full blown thing with music, food, drink and even non-VTers (Emily, Sanaz, Ben, Swampi, Daniella, Julia and James all put in an appearance as far as I remember). And it didn’t stop there; we went out afterwards too, ending up in the Leadmill with a severly inebreated Mike Stannett (who me and Em had to roll in to a taxi) and Henry (T to his friends) who proceeded to fall over people and had to be delicately manouevered home by Julia.

On the way to the Leadmill, Henry instead decided to try Gatecrasher One. They didn’t let us in. It burnt down a week later. I swear there is no relationship between those two events, though no-one has yet been able to prove either way. Yes, June was certainly packed with events. We were invited to Alice’s party, but that somehow went awry. I organised two seminars, one being the return of Gerald and the other my final Theory SIG with Nick Bezhanishvili. That’s probably significant because of Emmanuel’s track record in inviting speakers in the first half of 2006, although we didn’t do that much better even with me in charge.

Also in that month, Peter Höfner left us to return to Germany, following some sausages and potato salad in the DCS quadrangle. Henry celebrated his birthday with a night out at Nando’s and Havana, proceeded by a rather pointless postgraduate research day hosted by the University. Finally, Sheffield was submerged by floods in the final week of June (usually one of the hottest times of the year) and we really needed our umbrella-ella-ellas (ay ay ay). What a rollercoaster that was!

July

Things started to dry out a bit in July. I remember taking a trip around the ghost town that Meadowhall had become, post-flood before returning to the university for the postgraduate barbeque. The most memorable event was of course the departmental picnic which was preceded by my move to VT Lab 3 and an afternoon spent with Mike and some old cassette tapes preparing the music quiz. That was the first time we didn’t make it to the end with Emily (the last three times we got a taxi back home together) and we haven’t managed it any time since either.

August

In August, we had a yearly visit from Barry, this time without his sidekick Monika. Memorably this marked the beginning of the collapse of party planning which didn’t really recover until November. Having had four successes fairly close together (the kick off in May, the June lab party, Henry’s birthday and the departmental picnic), we were trying to get something together for the day of Barry’s visit but this was scuppered by Simon’s Theory SIG arrangements and a general lack of interest.

The following week we did go out for the August birthday celebrations, but things went quite differently to our past events. To start with, Emily missed this one (she was on holiday as I recall). It was much more a VT affair. The usual triage of Henry, Emmanuel and Abraham were there, along with Stannett who was also becoming something of a regular. However, initially we also had Simon and Ramsay, and Mahmood also came along, being keen to finally try a nightclub.

My most vivid memories of that night are of us eating lunch outside at the University arms and then heading to the Harley for seemingly endless games of pool, with Mahmood being something of a dark horse. We’d lost both Simon and Ramsay by the time we moved over to RSVP, where Stannett was showing severe signs of intoxication and Mahmood finally gave up and went home, after being exposed to the volume of the music there.

Now a quintet, we ended up in hell, also known as Embrace, where I first took the position that popular venues are like popular music i.e. generally rubbish. The events I’ve been to since have been an order of magnitude better, and going off on my own to organise things has been one of the best things I’ve done since. Not that I don’t still enjoy our nights out — just as long as we end up at somewhere vaguely decent like the Leadmill and not a preposturously overhyped place such as Embrace. It really is no different from what Kingdom was and I knew that well enough by reputation before. The departmental holiday afterwards was so much better.

September

The first week in September was notable for my trip to Lisbon. The main thing I can remember is the heat which was all too much for me. I think I’d prefer future conferences to be in Antartica or something. Well maybe not, but at least somewhere where the temperature isn’t overbearing. On my return, I acquired access to the University CMS after jumping through the appropriate hoops, and Liang left us after completing his MPhil panel successfully. His desk was quickly taken by Csaba, who’s visiting John for six months. It was also the last month that Ibby was with us, as far as I recall. At the beginning of the month, he was organising gym sessions with me, but by mid-September he’d decided to take a year out. We’ve yet to see if he will actually return.

I’m reminded of him also because he was originally going to go to Gatecrasher’s 14th birthday party at Magna with me. In the end, he gave it up due to Ramadan, and I ended up going with Henry instead. It was a fantastic night, and something I’ve since experienced again with the Boxing Day event. I’m now looking forward to the Resurrection on the 22nd of March and the eventual return of Gatecrasher One around September (if I’m still around by then).

October

October was a month of quite a few nights out, but none of them involved the VT crew. On the 2nd, I visited the Tuesday Club for the first time and was treated to a brilliant show by DJ Yoda. The week after, it was the Octagon for Oakenfold (along with Ben Gold and Riley & Durrant who been at all three Crasher events so far). The month culminated with a return to the Tuesday Club on the 30th to see Skream and High Contrast. That was also my first experience of a D&B crowd though (or rather a student D&B crowd), which wasn’t pleasant. Let’s not dance, let’s just push each other about… what fun.

Back in the DCS, we gained two new PhD students, Andrea (who I’d already met in April when she came for an interview) and Mesude (who Mike told there was no room in the lab…). Both have proved really enthusiastic so far, and it makes a nice change to actually have some people who are willing to get involved, do things and be sociable. On the subject of social events, the last weeks of October also saw us kick off our postgraduate meetings (which Mike had mentioned to me back in July at the picnic) with free pizza and a second postgraduate meal (this time for new students) at K Pasa, having moved from Wokmania and its rather dodgy food (health inspectors anyone). Saying that, K Pasa has gone somewhat downhill since, and after numerous trips over the past six months or so, me and Mahmood pretty much say goodbye to it in December.

The postgraduate meetings were something of a trial to get going. The first one was attended by just me, Maslita and Mahmood and resulted in an e-mail and associated discussions which meant that the next meeting had only three people missing. Since then, things have settled down to just over half of the VT postgraduates attending. It will be interesting to see if this continues in the new year. Also in October, I acquired the role of Sun campus ambassador. It’s still yet to really kick off but things are looking promising (unlike with the Google debacle).

November

November saw our clubbing trips re-established after a few false starts and me going it alone for a bit. The first of two took place on the 2nd, where Emily rejoined me, Henry and Abraham. Csaba also joined us and we briefly had the company of Mesude, before she had to rush off for her Design Patterns meeting. Csaba made it as far as Reflex before he also decided to head for home, and we finished the night in the Leadmill again. Memorably, Emily went off home early, because her feet were aching and both Henry and Abraham headed off not long after. I finished the last hour or so off on my own before heading home when the club closed. It was quite empty given it was still middle of semester, and even more so by closing time, with the taxi driver also commenting on this on the way home.

The week after I returned to the Tuesday club for the big birthday bash and Pendulum. I was already a bit doubtful of it, after last time’s experience with the D&B folks, and was also feeling a bit tired. However, it ended up turning into a fiasco when the fire alarm went off not once but twice and we all ended up outside in the cold. We ended up seeing probably about an hour of Pendulum and went in the other room for about half an hour after they’d gone off to make up for it and also avoid the cloakroom queue.

On the 21st (a date chosen especially for this reason), we celebrated Emily’s 21st (actually on the 19th) with another trip out. The socials list proved its worth when Dave came along and it was one of our best nights out in my opinion. We kicked off in the Cavendish as usual, before going to the Varsity. However, we didn’t stay there when we discovered that they’d decided to show some football match that night. Instead, we headed for the Forum which was blissfully free of such torrid entertainment and we had a nice chat there going briefly to the Frog and Parrot (where we parted company with Csaba) and then the Leadmill. We were a little early, so we ended up having to wait to get in. Emily’s birthday tickets paid off when we all got a free drink, discounted entry and they enjoyed a bottle of champagne.

It had to be one of the weirdest nights though, given they had some bucking cow thing that people were riding on and they were playing all sorts of classic pop tunes such as the Spice Girls, PJ and Duncan and S Club 7. What I’ve said about popularity obviously rings true because it was packed to the rafters for this. I was soon pretty fed up of it and I think this was also felt by the others. Emily left early again and, in hindsight, I probably should have gone with her, as we left not fifteen minutes later.

December

December was indisputably the party month, though I feel only me and Emmanuel were really feeling the vibe. We had two VT lab parties, the first being a postgraduate one but this was nowhere near as successful as the one in the summer. Only the usual VT suspects turned up, and we reined it in by about 7pm and went home. It was however a good chance to try out the new speakers and amplifier before the Christmas bash the week after.

The VT party was really quiet to begin with and I don’t think it ever really took off for the academics. At 12pm, you’d not have thought there was a party imminent, and it must have took until at least 2pm before there was a sizeable amount of people there. They seemed to come in dribs and drabs and it was quite late on before the VT choir (myself, Henry, Mesude, Abraham, Emmanuel and Tony Simons) gave our rendition of ‘VT The World’. Fortunately, we were spared another slideshow from Tony, and the party took on a life of its own when it was left to just the postgraduates for the last few hours.

There was quite a final ring to all this, as this is likely to be the last Christmas we’ll all spend together. As a result, it’s a good job all three parties (these and the departmental one) were good fun, if not anything spectacular. It will be interesting to see what 2008 now brings and how VT continues to change…

I arrived back from a very tiring and exhausting trip to Lisbon yesterday evening. It seems the whole thing was fraught with chaos pretty much, but there were lots of interesting talks and it was great to meet people working with JikesRVM for their research. In retrospect, I should have planned things earlier and better, but you learn from experience. I’m still a little shocked at how fast I suddenly had a paper accepted there (if only in the workshop) and was heading off to Portugal.

I left last Monday morning, after only about three hours sleep. I ended up finishing the presentation the Sunday before, after various things took me off track earlier that weekend. Taking three attempts to get my camera being just one of them… I did have a nice trip to the gym with Ibby on the Saturday but getting up early then too really didn’t help. I think there’s only the Sundays in the last two weeks that I haven’t been up at 6am.

The only direct flight I could find was via Air Portugal down at London Heathrow so I got a coach down there on Monday. That itself took nearly five hours. It makes me glad I have an iPod, so at least I can while away the time listening to good tunes (should take it to Embrace if I ever have to go again). There was a lot less waiting time for flights this time round, unlike when I went to Belgium (four hours in the airport IIRC). It did however mean that I was worried about making it in time all the way down to Heathrow, and then things all got messed up on the way back. Next time I need to go to the continent, I’m taking a train.

I took advantage of a chance to avoid Gordon Brown while in the airport, and got a tax-free copy of the new Gatecrasher Immortal CD which will help prepare for the big night out in a couple of weeks. After a bit of food and drink, I boarded the plane. I’d booked the outward flight business class (as that was all that was left, and it was about the same price) and got treated to a nice three course meal before landing in Lisbon where it was noticeably hotter!

Once there, I took the advice given in the conference travel notes and bought a taxi ticket at the airport for about 15 euros. It was a bit more expensive, but better than risking the taxi driver charging what they wanted. Another conference delegate got charged about 45 euros to get from the hotel to the conference site! The hotel was okay, if not that grandiose. I don’t reckon it was as good as the one I went to for either Gradschool, MGS or my various IBM visits, but it was better than the campus accommodation I stayed in for Types and BCTCS obviously (and much better than that for RelMiCS this time last year, where you had to walk out of the room to the shower). It completely confused me (and had to go and ask at the desk) that you had to put your room key in a slot to get any electricity! I tried to get in the Zurique instead, but it was booked up by the time I registered. Again, should have got my act together quicker.

I then went out for a look round and managed to go all over the place but where I wanted to go. I didn’t exactly get lost (I always knew where I was) but I never found where I wanted to go. The most annoying thing is I started heading in the right direction, and then decided it wasn’t somehow, and went back the other way — duh! I did get a few good pictures though, but no restaurant I went back and had something in the hotel bar instead.

Even more fun ensued on the Tuesday when I tried to find the university for the Java PT event. I asked at the reception and the guy there kindly told me what train to get. The train was quite cheap (only 3.2 euros both ways) and very efficient (arriving exactly on time on every occasion), but when I got there it turned out not to be as close as I thought. Again, I started going in the right direction, and then changed again! Grrrr! I got there eventually but an hour into the event (when I started out an hour before). They had my name badge all ready for me though.

The talks were very interesting (those that I could understand anyway — one was entirely in Portuguese, but looked boring anyway — all about UML and stuff). Dinner was a bit odd — it just seemed to be a buffet of rabbit food and chocolate sauce. Lots of drinks though, which was what I needed more. It was 24 degrees at 8:30 the night before, and over 30 degrees in the daytime! Next time I want a conference somewhere cold, preferably Iceland or something. We had talks on JavaFX, GlassFish and NetBeans. I managed to miss the one on open sourcing Java, but given the number of faux paus made later, I’m glad I did. As Tom Marble said before I left, they wouldn’t be able to tell me much new about that anyway. The most interesting was the Sun SPOT demo (I believe Gordon is going to use some of these) and I have a nice bit of video of this, with robots and Project Looking Glass.

For some reason, we got an umbrella for finishing the conference. It wasn’t raining, and I think they just want to have the joke of giving us a Sun umbrella (get it?). Heading back was quite a trek, but at least I knew where I was going this time. I got an Iced Tea (ha ha) at the railway station. They seem to be keen on this there instead of real tea. I had some peach Ice Tea in the bar the night before too. Not much negro cha though…

Back at the ranch, I had a shower (after all that heat) and then went out again, hoping to be more successful this time. Indeed, I did make it to Barrio Alto on this occasion, which Fran had recommended, and had some of the local cod fish at a restaurant there. Very nice but also very boney. Again, it was a bit of a distance to go though, so I decided to stay closer to home in future, and was quite happy that I wouldn’t have to think of my own plans until the Friday evening…

The next morning I again got the train and did the walk to the conference, but later realised that I could have got a coach! The e-mail didn’t mention the 5th! Anyway, I made it, registered and finally got my talk out of the way! I felt much better after that. Not sure how much of it just went straight over their heads, but at least I tried.

There was also an interesting talk by IBM on their VM (which GCs they use and such like) and on using Java together with Petri Nets. The conference (PPPJ 07) started proper in the afternoon, with the first session on how people had used Java. There were some very interesting talks, one on a FOSS web teaching system (both FOSS and GNU/Linux seemed very much in vogue, although they were using Windows Vista to present which caused the usual problems) and one on a scripting language for programming on a phone. One of the four talks was postponed, as the speaker was stuck in a Parisian airport, so we ended up having it the day after. Some very nice practical talks which makes a change…

Things really started properly after that with the conference cocktail party. It was at this point that I met up with Jeremy Singer who I saw in Manchester the year before. Both he and Matthias Hauswirth had seen my post to the JikesRVM list before I left but not had chance to reply! Matthias told me about some problems they’d had running tests with Eclipse 3.2+JikesRVM, which I’ve just started to try and chase up. I had a good chat with Jeremy about all sorts of stuff related to JikesRVM and Classpath during the cocktail party. It was in these lovely botanical gardens with a beautiful view of the skyline — see my photos on Facebook. The waiters seemed very keen on shovelling food down us, even going so far as to replace the cocktail stick in my hand with another at one point!

The next day was dominated by more talks and a nice trip round the area. We went to a convent (actually inhabited by monks, as the word merely describes the size of the place there), a castle and a winery. Again, see the photos. We ended up at Hotel da Mar, with a nice view of the beach and sea (obviously) where we had a four course meal again including codfish! The final day was purely talks and some very interesting ones. I especially enjoyed Jeremy’s, where he demonstrated generational garbage collecting using socks — reminded me of Piero. I felt sorry for some of the speakers as they were obviously having trouble with giving a talk in English (especially the French).

Arriving back at the hotel after the conference had ended, I packed up as much as possible while deciding whether to venture out again. Eventually I did, deciding I’d be too hungry otherwise. I went to a restaurant I’d remembered fairly near by (after getting there much too late on Monday) and ordered some grilled pork (which initially was nearly a coke — the Portuguese seem to struggle with English and can be very abrupt). My stomach full, I went back to the hotel to bed.

Saturday was spent almost entirely in travel. I left the hotel after breakfast at about quarter to eight, getting a taxi to the airport. I had to check the umbrella specially into oversized luggage to get it home. The plane was then late taking off by an hour (we were sat there all strapped in for ages) and I missed my connecting coach. Luckily, I could amend the ticket for 3 pounds so didn’t have to pay again although it wasn’t fun waiting an hour and a half just to get the coach. I finally got back to Sheffield at about 8:30 and fortunately the 123 turned up and I was home by about ten past nine. It was quite an experience, but I’m glad to be back in the UK where I can at least survive outside in the daytime and get people to understand what I’m saying …. most of the time…

Up to now, it’s been a relatively quiet couple of weeks, mainly because certain people were recovering from becoming rather intoxicated at a certain lab party. With the end of the semester, it’s also meant that there are less things going on generally, and we’ve seen noticeably less people in the lab. Both Emmanuel and Henry have been working hard done their respective coal mines instead of being in the lab, and we’ve not seen that much of Zed either. I’ve been moved to having headphones on most of the time, because I can’t stand the silence.

There have been a few good points. Me and Ibs have had quite a few nice lunches out and about, but we must make our choice of where to go early than we do. We’ve also had our only two external speakers this year — both came on consecutive Fridays. Gerald’s visit was something that had been on the cards for a while, and went pretty much as expected, with a good VT seminar turnout and lunch in the Swim.

Nick’s Theory SIG talk seemed a bit more risque, especially when we discovered that they’d decided to have an exam board that day as well. I was worried we weren’t going to get much of a turnout, but we actually managed to get easily the largest Theory SIG turnout we’ve had all year (including Georg and Kirill who escaped!). I reminded people, I bugged them by phone and it seemed to work. We also had a really nice social down the Red Deer afterwards. On this kind of high, I’ll be bowing out and taking over the VT seminars from July instead. Beware…

We’ve also got a departmental picnic on the 27th to look forward to now as well. Phil’s given the okay, and is even sorting me out ‘ bit of a budget’ — woo hoo! I’ve also managed to chase up most of my demonstrating claims, although I still seem to keep being offered new really interesting ones. I had an afternoon earlier this week of phoning around prospective undergraduates, which proved to be really nice in the end — mainly because I escaped the lab and borrowed Karen’s desk instead!

I’ve just got the open day stuff to sort out now, and posters to chase up. I want to get as much done of that as possible before I disappear from Wednesday on. I’m actually kind of looking forward to the chance to have a rest and get away from the depressing place the lab has become of late.

Henry Becomes 28… Or 19… Or Whatever…

So here’s the bit I know certain people have been waiting for, the full gory details of tonight’s shenanigans. It’s been quite a bizarre day when all’s said and done (for me at least), given that I actually spent only like 20 minutes in the department, but still saw most of the same people.

Trying to organise tonight has been a nightmare from start to end, and I don’t think I ended up doing anything in the end. I can try all I want, but I may as well be talking to the wall or e-mailing the pope. It was Henry who did it all in the end as it should have been, being his birthday and it’s clear that I should leave these things to our resident party goddess and little party monkey in the future. There’s only so long you can feel like the spare wheel, especially when it’s the one that gets a puncture. It was good while it lasted, but we can’t always change as we’d like.

On to the events. Friday morning, things finally seemed to be arranged, so I e-mailed around and let people know, before grabbing a quick cuppa and heading up to the postgraduate research conference with Simon. We left Ramsay in charge of the lab, after I was less than impressed than the alarm had once again not been set, by, I have a feeling, someone who shouldn’t even have been there, but I don’t know for certain.

Overall, the day was quite interesting, but a lot of the information was a case of if you’ve heard it once, you don’t need to hear it again. I think the sessions could have benefitted from a little more participation (too many times, especially in the morning, we were sat just listening, which never works for me). This also impacted on the fact that one and a half hours felt far too long. I also thought there was a lot of room for improvement in the catering — I don’t really count a few sandwiches as a lunch, but more importantly things were unmarked, making things difficult for many of our students. Timetabling was also a problem, given that the early afternoon on a Friday is prayers for our Muslim students (which from the majority in VT). Even though I saw lots of DCS folks, my choices meant I spent a lot of the day with Simon who was more sociable than he has been of late, as he was in the pub last week — getting him on his own obviously works…
We returned to the department to drop off the stuff they gave us and pick up others, most notably Emily who was waiting patiently for us in reception at 5, dressed up to the nines and looking wonderful. Seemed a bit odd to then lead her in to the mess that is the VT lab, but oh well… we eventually cajoled people into leaving and headed for Nando’s for some food. This was not before losing both Zubair (who hurried off with excuses of work to do) and Ibby, who’s pathetic text doesn’t even bear mentioning. Someone should teach him that honesty really is the best policy…

The eventual party that left was thus just me, Henry, Emmanuel, Abraham and Emily. At the restaurant, we got seats for seven as we were soon joined by Henry’s girlfriend, Julia, and his friend, Mary. We then gormandised our way through three plates of chicken, rice and chips with bottomless supplies of Fanta, Sprite and Coke. Over this, Emmanuel told us how apparently Henry should traditionally be whipped in Ghana on his birthday. Believe what you want, maybe Henry has some kind of masochistic streak…

Even after the meal, Henry still hadn’t decided what we were going to do. Apparently, he’s a man, can’t multitask and can only juggle two balls… Eventually hopping over to the Cavendish, wine was the order of the day, while Henry devised me a non-alcoholic cocktail called ‘Strawberry and Bits’. I have to admit it sounds kind of intriguing, but I’m definitely going to stay away from his other alternative, ‘Henry’s Banana’ and leave that to the ladies.

After finding that, due to me chatting with Emily, Julia and Mary, that I must be learning about ‘women’s things’ (including lipstick and tampons apparently), Henry was inspired by Julia to become a transsexual and shake his ass like Beyonc&eecute;. This led on to another conversation about Henry living with a homosexual, and Emmanuel discovering this when him and a friend came out of the bathroom wrapped in towels. You have to wonder what these two get up to sometimes…

Of all coincidences, we happened to see James going past the window and he popped in, agreeing to come back and join us later. That he did by the time we had moved across the road to the Varsity, a place which I’ve still failed to work out the point of. I can understand going to a bar to socialise and chat with people. I can understand going to a club to dance. What’s the point of some weird middle ground where there’s loud music that drowns out conversation but no dancefloor?

Me and Emmanuel were again exposed to a bit of Henry’s data quality shit during our time in the Varsity. He had us applying 0 to 1 scores to women in the room, with no criteria on how to judge these scores (a clear floor in his analysis). I’m waiting for the day this reaches his thesis and Siobhan sees it…

Leaving the Varsity about an hour later, Henry and Emmanuel beatboxed our way to Havana, but we decided not to go in as they were still serving meals at this time (it was still pretty early, given we’d started at five). Instead, we headed to Reflex, and cut a few moves on the dancefloor.

For some reason, we then went to try and get into Embrace, even thought it was obvious I wasn’t going to get in, as I hadn’t bothered to dress up, having come straight from the PGR conference. In retrospect, I should have just gone home and left them to it, instead of fucking things up for everyone.

We ended up retiring to our homes at about 1am, after spending the rest of the evening back in Habana, where everyone showed off some seriously good salsa moves — I’m well impressed by their hidden talents. On the way home in the taxi, we went past the remains of Gatecrasher. Still hard to believe it burnt down like that on Monday. It will be interesting to find how it happened.

Hope you had a good birthday celebration Henry — don’t work too hard!

I’m now just about recovered from what has been an intense, enjoyable and exciting week at the UK GRADSchool down in sunny Bournemouth. It’s hard to believe that it’s already a week since I spent my first night there. So much has happened since, and I’ve met so many fantastic, interesting and wonderful people that’s still difficult to fully comprehend. I know last time I blogged I was still obsessed with overcoming the first hurdle i.e. getting there and so hadn’t much considered what would happen after. That itself was part of my trepidation as I didn’t know what was going to happen. However, now it’s over ( ;-( ), I can recall the rollercoaster that was the UK GRADSchool at Bournemouth.

Sunday

Last Sunday was more or less entirely focused on just making sure I got my ass on the right train in good time and then found my way to the hotel at the other end. Clearly, this worked out in the end, but it’s always something that worries me when I have far too much time to think about it.

It didn’t help that I was still a bit tired, and was losing the only day I usually get to have a bit of a lie-in. I’d had about 3 hours on Thursday evening when I got home, and on Friday I can’t even remember what time I went to sleep, being just throughly exhausted when I got home (I do remember the bus broke down several times on the way back).

Anyway, I did manage to get up on time and getting a lift to the station meant I didn’t have to go as early as I originally thought. It also then turned out that the train was about ten minutes late, although it caught this up on the way down. Once on there, it was just a case of trying to relax for the next five hours or so… My iPod came in useful at this juncture. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to so much in one sitting before.

I got a taxi to the hotel on arrival, and, once having found my room, I chilled out for a bit. It was interesting when I first got there, as I went in and found the place full of pensioners all dressed up, while I came in struggling with my luggage. I thought for a few moments I’d come to the wrong place. Fortunately, a receptionist soon appeared and everything was fine. I seemed to end up very far away from reception. It seemed to take ages to get to my room, and I guess the side-effect of arriving early was I got what was left available rather than the more well-equipped rooms I heard some of my fellow GRADSchool colleagues talking about.

I got a text from Simon shortly after arrival, saying he wouldn’t be there until eight, so I used the interim to mark some of the Crossover work. I got through one entire folder between then and Monday lunchtime, but after that I wasn’t back in my room for more than five minutes at a time (except to sleep of course).

When Simon did arrive, we went out for a walk down to the beach. It was really quiet, and we couldn’t even find anywhere to grab a quick snack which was disappointing. On getting back, I pretty much just went to sleep, taking advantage of the fact that I could go to bed a bit earlier than I usually do.

Monday

Monday morning went pretty much as every other morning did while staying there; I got up around 6:30-7:30, had a shower, dressed and went for breakfast between 8 and 8:30. On Monday, I’d already arranged to meet Simon for breakfast, and he appeared shortly after I did. The staff were pretty attentive, and soon had a pot of tea and some toast brought to my table.

We spent the time between then and the start of the GRADSchool at lunchtime with Simon showing me the work he’d done on his ConCalc tool on his laptop. To be honest, this just made me happier that I’d resolved not to bring mine and I really enjoyed a week of not touching a computer or anything like that.

After lunch, the GRADSchool finally started. The main room we were in was the President Suite (later known as ‘Main Plenary’), which was full of several round tables. It was already pretty full when I got there, and I ended up on a table near the front where there were a few remaining seats. I later realised it was also mainly the tutors who were sat there!

Things kicked off with a game of network bingo, which proved an interesting concept and one which I plan to blatantly steal at some point in the future for one of our postgrad events After this, we found that the colour of the card used for this game was also a clue as to which team we should be in i.e. look for those with the same colour. At first, I seemed to just come across people with cards of a different colour to my own, but soon enough I met our team for the first team on a table at the other side of the room.

What followed was the first of many team building exercises and the one most people seemed to be able to second guess when I spoke about the course back at the department. We were given some lollipop sticks, a balloon, sticky tape and some paper plates and, after some debate, came up with the idea of a ‘helping hand’ (Lou suggested it IIRC) to reinforce the message we’d just been given about strong handshakes. The concept was basically that people could use the hand we created using our equipment to practice their handshakes.

We split into two teams, one being creative (Lou, Danny, Asli, Catherine and Paul) and the rest of us constructing the hand. For our part, we basically just drew the shape of Martin’s hand on a plate, cut it out and then reinforced it with the lollipop sticks. We added a second plate to make it bigger, and stapled the two together. In a way, the whole thing seemed a bit childish, but I think it helped to get our group active and start communicating with each other. Rosemary, who was initially very skeptical about being involved at all, seemed to enjoy it in the end. The session finished with each team giving an advertisement for their product and we won with a fantastic skit created by our creative team. Lou really hammed it up as the narrator, and I was astounded by the great acting skills demonstrated by Danny and Catherine. I’m sure Danny is just a born actor.

It was after this that we found out that Lou wasn’t just an ordinary member of our team, but one of the ‘mentors’ on the course. I think it came as quite a shock to a few of us, myself included, as we’d just assumed she was no different from the rest of us, and that’s pretty much the relationship that remained for the rest of the course.

We retired to our tutor room next, which would be our base for the next four days. This is where we first properly met Matthew, our tutor and a really great guy. I think we were really lucky in how our team worked out. None of us took the course too seriously, and Matthew’s quieter demeanor and dry wit offset Lou’s more outspoken and vibrant nature well.

Our first session was pretty much ‘get to know each other’ stuff. We played the game where you have to throw a ball to another person by name (and eventually also by university) and had a few short sessions in pairs or threesomes. The first of these involved us chatting and finding out a bit about our teammates, which we then had to recap to the group. I did this with Danny and Catherine and we seemed to already be getting along well enough for this not to be too much of a chore. Later, we did another activity where we had to discuss our hopes and fears for the course, and our positive and negative baggage. These we wrote on paper which we put up on the wall, where they stayed for the remainder of the course. This is where we found that our hope of having fun was sadly misfounded…
This is also where the session where we made our one and only attempt with the stick. The idea is that you should be able to lower the stick while all the team members have both fingers on it. We only spent a few minutes on it and didn’t manage it. In the end, we didn’t go back to it, but some other teams did manage it. Personally, I don’t think we needed to do that just to prove how well we worked together as a team, as it was obvious anyway

The final session of the day was the first of a series of case studies we did during the course. This one was in an academic setting, where we roleplayed an appeal for an academic who’d been refused a senior lecturer position. It turned out this was because he focused almost solely on research. While he got on well with the students through teaching (mainly by playing to them and giving them easy marks it seems), he really wasn’t a team player in anything but beach volleyball. He’d failed numerous times to introduce a new course, and his failures in administration constantly put work on to other people’s shoulders. This provided an interesting perspective on life in the department, and reinforces how the teaching and admin roles I do are a good thing…

We wrapped up each day with a group review of what we’d done, which tended to be fairly uneventful. After dinner, I met up with most of our team again in the bar, where we also met some of Asli’s fellow Cranfieldians. After a drink, myself, Danny and Asli headed out into town with a few others for a few more. We had a good chat and ended the night on a high, I felt. By the end of the day, I was already happy that I’d met up with a really nice team of people and that the course would be fairly smooth sailing from here on in.

Tuesday

After breakfast, the day kicked off with a summary of the day before in pictures. I have to say I found this pretty cheesy, and, after having seen several over the course of the week, them and the associated songs ended up making me practically nauseous. Hopefully the pictures will be available though somewhere… We also got the bad news that Lou was sick after the food the night before, and so she’d be in bed for most of the day.
Our first session on Tuesday had the rather odd name of ‘Flies in Their Eyes’, and was concerned with charitable organisations. Each team was given an issue (e.g. agriculture, food, gender/HIV) and had to work out what project to sponsor, how much money to bid for and who to ask for that money. Our team ended up with gender and HIV, and after a bit of debate in our group room, we split into two to bid to different organisations. The whole thing was interesting, but the speed of it meant that we got lost in a process of pick-something–>summarise–>present that seemed to be common among a few of the studies and didn’t really get chance to take stock of the issues in great detail.

After lunch was more team building skills. The first of these meant having to construct a little man out of Lego from memory. Each member of the group was allowed to go and have a look at the guy one at a time, but we couldn’t make notes. This actually meant no notes AT ALL, rather than just when looking at the figure, but this wasn’t made very clear to us. The course director was pretty abrupt in correcting us, and it was nice to see us all kind of rally against him rather than let one person take the blame.
The remaining skills exercises were in different places in the hotel. Out at the sand pit, we had to find our way across the electric maze. Some of the squares of a 10 by 8 grid were electrified and couldn’t be stepped on, and we had to get all our team members safely across. Each time a bad square was hit, we had to start again. Catherine pretty much took the fall for this, doing all the experimentation with our help and then we followed in her footsteps (ne, ne, nw, nw, n, n, e, se, n, n, nw, nw). Things got a bit tense at one point when Matthew misread the grid and there were a few stern glances from Paul, the course director.

Back inside, we were blindfolded and had to guess which of a set of shapes were missing and what colour they were. It was pretty disorientating but we managed it just in time. The final game saw us split into workers, supervisors and managers. The managers went in one room where Matthew briefed them on the problem while they indulged in the remainder of our winning chocolates. Rosemary, Catherine, Paul and Martin, as the workers, were sent to a room with a grid containing obstacles and told to simply stand at one end of it. Myself and Danny, as supervisors, were to convey the desires of the managers to the workers. Initially, we got to chillout for a bit in our own room, but soon found ourselves running backwards and forwards a lot until the realisation hit Danny that the workers could be given a bit more than simply piecemeal instructions and thus just telling them to move across, avoiding obstacles, would do!

After a break for tea/coffee and a discarded game of snooker, we entered into the first of our two part series on management consulting. This was a case of the sequel being much better than the original. By this time, we were all a bit knackered and just seemed to be going around in circles with our ideas. We also lost Matthew around this time, as he had to return home until the following day. If I recall correctly, this is when the idea of going down to the beach for the group review sessions was proposed and, after dinner, Rosemary and Asli rushed off to ASDA to buy some wine.

We were a bit unsure of whether we’d be able to do so, especially with getting Paul, the course director, as our stand-in tutor. However, Lou made a reappearance and saved our bacon, having squared it with Paul that she’d take us down to the beach for the group review. Thus, after enduring the sight of the tutors in silly hats (you’d think we were in preschool) and a game of ‘guess what’s in my head’, we headed out and enjoyed a really nice picnic while watching the sun set. I think this is the first time we really all chilled out together as a group and it was great fun.

We allocated team roles to each other, and found that all of us (except poor Danny ) fitted in more than one. Danny was somewhat recompensed by winning the long jump competition between him and Catherine, although this has yet to be fully proven. We also spotted some other teams on the beach, and spent some time wondering what the hell one group was doing. It looked like they were all piled on top of each other, engaging in some kind of orgy. Next time we looked, they’d vanished and we wondered if they decided to take their team building exercises out into the sea.

We returned from the beach about ten o’clock and finished the day with a chat on the sofas. Our little rebellion had brought us all even closer together by this stage and things were going great.

Wednesday

Wednesday was a day of some trepidation as it involved the mock interviews. It started, however, on a much more light-hearted note as Danny told myself and Catherine over breakfast how to avoid the overly warm temperatures in the hotel rooms — sleep nude. We were again treated to a slideshow of the previous day’s events, obviously under the assumption that we’d forgotten what went on. Some of the photos (and definitely the music) were cringeworthy. Of course, they missed some of our personal highlights of the day, as they didn’t include the events of the previous evening.

The team was then split into interviewers and interviewees. When asked by Matthew on Monday which we’d prefer to be, those who expressed a preference seemed to go for being interviewers, so over half our group went off to do this. This left myself, Danny, Catherine and Paul to be interviewed by members of team R. I felt I got some good feedback (basically to be a bit more confident at the outset, slow down a bit and be a bit more big-headed) and it was surprising how easily we could all enter another world where it was just us and the interview panel. It seems it’s definitely worth trying further mock interviews to get more practice.

The CV writing session was a bit overly long, and not that useful. Probably the best aspect was getting feedback from our peers, but it would have been more useful to have had feedback from those who regularly look at CVs in appropriate areas (e.g. academia). The presentation that was given seem a bit self-contradictory, telling us that there was no right way to write a CV, but then telling us how to do so!

The most astounding bit of the day came with the sequel to management consulting. At the outset, most of us couldn’t even remember what had happened the day before, but in a very short space of time we managed to give a great presentation which went down really well with our client. Clearly, team S can also work under pressure! We also found that these are based on real-life case studies, and that our ideas would be passed on to the team themselves. Basically, our scenario was a bunch of four computer games programmers who set up their own spinoff company but had run into a rut where they needed something new in order to expand and grow. We gave some good ideas on how to expand most efficiently, best employ new staff and a range of possible products they could look into.

After a break, we were treated to Piero’s session on how to give presentations, with the later much-parodied shake-warmup and chocolate throwing. Seems it’s not a good idea to have your audience looking like they’re watching Paul McCartney play Glastonbury… We closed the day with the return of Matthew and a group session which consisted of him shutting up Asli and Danny with post-it notes. The team split up at dinner, as half (Catherine, Danny, Martin and Lou) went to watch Liverpool lose to AC Milan in the bar, and the rest of us enjoyed a more leisurely dinner and drinks in the garden.

Lou, Catherine and Martin did eventually join us as well, while Danny disappeared off to a club without us — the traitor! We wrapped up the evening with a girls (Catherine and Lou) vs boys (myself and Paul) game of pool (after we finally found the white ball, which got lost in the table) and table football. We just lost on both counts

Thursday

The final day seemed to come very quickly in the end, and was by far the busiest of the lot. We were spared a photo session in the morning, instead being asked to choose our bodyguards, who would protect us from our chosen assassin. I couldn’t think myself, as I didn’t want to single out one of our team in that way. As it turned out, it didn’t have to as I was pleasantly surprised to find myself surrounded! I still can’t believe it even now! What’s more depressing is, while I’d find it hard to trust just one member of our team, I’d also struggle to choose a bodyguard from those back in the lab. Maybe this is a factor of knowing them longer or something (and thus having time to distrust), but I feel, as a team at the GRADSchool, we connected on a level which I don’t seem to have obtained with most of my fellow lab members. We also seem to have opened up to our emotions more, partly because of the course and the feedback session I’ll mention later.

The main session on Thursday was Matthew’s international treaty case study, which was probably the best on the course. Each group represented a country (or the secretariat) to negotiate a treaty on child labour. We went off to team rooms to do this, although we ended up in an overly hot room 88 instead of our usual room to keep us apart from the other delegates. Fortunately, we ended up as ‘yellowcountry’ (effectively some poor African country, run on child labour with a weak economy and debts to ‘redcountry’ and ‘bluecountry’).
Initially, it was pretty confusing and we had to get our heads around a lot in a short space of time. We split into three groups of two: one for our government, Rosemary and Catherine as the workers and myself and Danny as the employers, and kicked off with our first meeting with the representatives from the other countries.
It was difficult to keep track of what was going on in this, but we did find that the delegates from each country all wanted to be the ones to represent the workers. Returning to our base, we met with lobbyists and other delegates, and eventually allied with the ‘greencountry’ (who were effectively a stage further on than us, but not developed like the ‘redcountry’ or ‘bluecountry’ — think China) to win the seat for the workers at the second meeting.
Straight after this, we were approached by the red and blue representatives, trying to press their own agendas. The guy representing ‘redcountry’ in particular very much suited his role. Interestingly, we won them over on a promise to wipe out our debts! The main meeting then took place, with only the ambassadors and the representatives of the workers and employers (me and Danny) being allowed to speak via the chair (Matthew). The ambassadors were picked from each team beforehand, randomly in our case according to Matthew — he thought any of us could have done it well. We had Paul as our ambassador, and he got to take a holiday for the first part, running off to the beach with Lou (who also managed to end up being an ambassador, but for the evil blues). Unfortunately, Martin didn’t participate as he’d come down with a migraine. It was a real shame as he was probably the best suited amongst the whole group. He left early in the afternoon as well
In the end, it seemed to go quite well. I was surprised how well Danny did, given he was pretty much out of it after getting in at 4am the night before. But, somehow, he still managed to debate with the other teams, although I was the spokesman in the final debate. It was interesting because most of the worker representatives sat cackling behind us disappeared to discuss article 4 about halfway through and so we were basically left to wing it!

After lunch, it was time for shit sandwiches. The idea is that, in giving feedback, you should encapsulate a negative comment in positive ones. The idea of the session was that team members pair up and go and give each other feedback, but most of us didn’t actually go off in an individual pair. We decided it would be more fun to do this as a group, working in a trip to the shops in our now rather rebellious way! We gave 4 to 1 feedback on each member of the group (4 positive comments to 1 negative) as we walked there and back, and somehow I seemed to keep ending up with the negative ones!

Back at the hotel, it was time to start wrapping things up. We prepared a card to give to Matthew, going for the personal touch of a photo of us all rather than some cheap present. Given the nice weather, we again took our group session outside, relaxing in the garden (with Lou sunbathing) as we worked on our plans for the future. Back inside, we discussed these and began to plan our skit for the final ’show what you know’ session at the end of the day.

Given the fervour of cynicism that embodied our group for pretty much most of the GRADSchool, it was only right that our final accomplishment should be a satire. We staged a mock interview for a GRADSchool tutor, where the overly qualified academic (a nobel prize, twenty papers in two weeks or something) competes against the guy who’s been to GRADSchool before, can present by shaking and throwing chocolates, is able to detect the colour of an object blindfolded and created a helping hand… By the time we performed it, we toned down the satire a few notches, although having seen the later performances from the other teams we maybe didn’t need to (especially the one that pulled the tutors up on stage…)

Probably the hardest bit of the skit was not laughing on the interview panel, especially when Asli delivered her line to the academic asking him whether he’d eat a shit sandwich. This brought a lot of laughs from our audience, and Danny had to hide in the corner in order not to ruin the whole thing as he laughed his head off.

Unfortunately, we lost Lou somewhere in between our first practice run and our final performance, while we had dinner. We later found she’d fallen asleep and woke up about midnight. We did manage to get her at question time though, where the tutors and mentors were taking questions from the audience. A few questions were proposed, including ‘Do you sleep nude?’ and ‘What colour are your knickers?’ but eventually Danny asked her ‘If you were a biscuit, which biscuit would you be?’, which came up the day before at the interviews. What could the answer be but a jammy dodger? I think that just encapsulates our entire group quite nicely…
The final event was the party, which seemed closely akin to a school disco. We peered in after our skit, and had to laugh at the sight. It basically seemed like they’d moved the main plenary into a darker room with some flashing lights. Everyone was still just sat around their tables! We split up, with Asli driving me and Danny to the ASDA where we picked up some more drinks. On our return, we went out into the garden and chatted for a few hours before finally venturing in to the party room (after all, we had paid for it…)

Paul and Catherine remained resolutely cynical pretty much throughout, although we did manage to get Catherine up on the dancefloor a few times and even Paul appeared to pogo to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. I spent most of the time up there, dancing with Asli and it was a good laugh. The music was cheesy, but I think that’s what was needed. With a fairly diverse bunch of people, you need something that’s equally bad. Danny got up to dance a few times when some good dance tunes came on, but the DJ didn’t honour his request for some r ‘n’ b that would have got more of the girls up there. The DJ was particularly unskilled too, as all he seemed to be doing was playing some MP3s…

I chilled out for a bit afterwards with Paul, Catherine and Asli on the sofas, until I spotted Danny again, who’d disappeared before the end. He told us he was off to a club, so I joined him and some very drunk members of team R. We both found that we missed the rest of our team, even though four days earlier we wouldn’t have even known them. It felt wrong to be with another team, and you can also sense that we felt out of place because they all knew each other really well too. We were also somewhat distant, because they were so drunk and well, we weren’t. At least, we could spot that they were going the long way.

In the end, we did find a club that was still open (it being 2:30am before we got to town) — both myself and Danny were rather skeptical that we would. We ended up in Toko for about an hour, and then we made our way back. About half way back, we left the other team and made our own way, getting back to the hotel quicker, but once again having to call for assistance to get in.

Friday

Just waking up on Friday was depressing, because of the stark realisation that, within a matter of hours, we’d have said our goodbyes. I’d packed and headed down for breakfast by about 8:30, at which time we’d all sort of agreed to meet the night before. Paul and Catherine soon appeared, and we then managed to grab Lou. Rosemary came over to tell us about a teacup she’d found, which rather baffled us a bit. I spotted Danny as I headed back upstairs to grab my luggage, having worked out that Paul would also be catching the train and so we could leave together.

On coming back down and checking out, I  had a quick chat with Matthew before going back into the breakfast room to meet the others. It turned out Danny had not only managed to get up, but had already booked a taxi for the station. In the end, Paul, Danny, Lou and myself all headed off in said taxi, saying hasty goodbyes to Catherine, Asli and Rosemary.

As it turned out, we all managed to even get on the same train. So in the end our goodbyes were rather more delayed than I had thought. Lou left us at Southampton, and the three of us dozed until Danny and I had to leave our seats (we’d didn’t bother finding our booked ones). Fortunately, Danny was just about to leave us anyway, changing at Birmingham New Street for Leicester. Paul and I spent the time up to Derby standing up and chatting, having lost the remaining seats. I managed to grab one for the last half hour as I arrived back in Sheffield, alone again.
With iPod on, I headed up to the department which was noticeably quiet. I went in to the lab to find it subdued with only Emmanuel, Azman and Liang present (Zubair and Mohammed did make an appearance later on). Realising that such a silent atmosphere wasn’t really what I wanted on arriving back, I headed out again and chatted first to Emily at reception, then Monika and finally went down to see Stannett for a bit. This turned out to be a really good way of getting up to speed on things, and about the right pace for me, given how tired I was by this stage. I did find that there had been some issues with Turnitin again in my absence, and this was reaffirmed when I ran through my swathe of e-mails the next day. Good news was that Emily is still up for the VT party, and hasn’t been put off going out with us after the last time. I was also complimented by Monika on my contributions to the department which was really nice and had a good laugh with Mike at some videos.

Reading Stannett’s blog was rather depressing though. If his comments about the lab are true, then we’ve failed so far, for the most part. It shouldn’t be some quiet abyss just because a few of us are missing. I’m not impressed…

Some more good news for interested parties; Google money is to be piped to my bank account instead. They’ve finally just given up on doing it via credit cards after it didn’t work out. So hopefully we’ll see something soon…

So it’s the beginning of the new year, and an appropriate time to wrap up 2006 and move on to new and better things in 2007. It concluded rather quietly; most of the last week was spent with family over Christmas, although we did have one VT crew outing to Zubair’s house. Lord Ibby provided us with a Monopoly board, and Zubair ended up rolling in it, just about bankrupting the both of us. Turns out the expensive ones aren’t the best ones… trust Wikipedia next time. We unfortunately failed in our task of organising something for New Year’s Eve. Not many of us were left though; with Fran having returned home, Zubair going down to London and Ibby working, it left only me and Ramsay and I failed to find a way to motivate him out of his crypt.

So let’s try and review 2006… not that I can actually remember much of it that clearly. I know it more or less started and ended with Fran. He arrived in February (along with Luca and Dario), and left us just the other week. He was pretty central to most events of 2006, and it will be a different world in 2007 without him. Hopefully, we will get out to see him in Sevilla… Emotions are still pretty raw on this subject, so I’ll not dwell on it for too long.

Early 2006 also saw the completion of the VT crew for 05-06, with Zubair, Emmanuel and Shaukat all arriving and our vain attempts to squeeze them into our overcrowded lab. It looked quite different back then. Things rolled on quite quietly; plenty of VT and Theory SIG seminars going on, and the odd bit of demonstrating. It was quite a busy program of events at the time, with Graham Birtwistle, Georg Struth and Gerald Luettgen all giving talks to the SIG. Marian’s unfortunately underwent a number of false starts though…

Easter saw myself, Mike and Simon take to the road, embarking on a UK tour, which had us giving a talk at BCTCS (to which Graham also tagged along, managing to end up falling down Mike’s stairs and spending most of it hobbling) and attending MGS (sans Mike) and Types. I recall WSDL being the main focus of Simon’s attention (according to Mike anyway) and a conversation at Types gave birth to TNT.

World Cup fever was soon in full flow on our return (and the plants were dead). This was probably the year I paid the most attention to it. It’s somehow more poignant when there are actually people around you from the various countries. Our visitors, Fran, Luca and Dario certainly got in to the spirit, with an additional dose of friendly rivalry. This was the time we also saw the return of Ibby to our flock; we hadn’t seen much of him after his plans for organising DCS spending went awry at Christmas and he missed out on MGS. He made the most of supporting our (as usual) pathetic team, and gloating over Spain’s loss to Fran.

Summer was certainly very busy. In early June, we sparked off a series of lunches, to increase the social activity of the group, the last such social having been way back in the autumn of 2005. We made a few visits to the Swim (where we also took Conor McBride during his visit) and the Cavendish (to which I first went at the invitation of Fran, Luca and Dario back in May). There was also an abortive attempt at visiting the Varsity, which demonstrated the excellent loyalty of our fellow VTers.

Research wise (I suppose I should mention that at some point), things were dominated by Ibby’s panic attack following his six-month panel and the Concurrency Reading Group, which ground itself in to a rut with a discussion on flocking. Lots of whiteboards were filled, lots of pictures taken and erm… lots of music was heard…

Speaking of research, we also had the Research Away day, for which me and Simon spent considerable time hacking away at posters and where the idea of postgraduate reps was first launched. I was later crowned as VT’s rep, but we are still lacking a full set.

Mike is responsible for what must have been the most significant part of the summer. On the last day of June, the Theory SIG embarked on a picnic and managed to gain most of the VT and CompBio groups as members. It was a fantastic day, with some fabulous sunshine (rare — this is Britain), strawberries and socialising. It ran in much the same way as the VT christmas bash, with everyone bringing some food, and seemed to go pretty well.

Simon unfortunately missed out on this, as it took place during his sojourn in Milton Keynes. The poor guy was harshly pulled back to reality by GSC6100 and its bizarre idea of literature reviews… never again. A second picnic was attempted (The Revenge of the Strawberries) but didn’t seem as successful. Quite a few people were away by this point.

August was a big month of change. It began with Fran’s birthday party, and ended with the beginning of the VT lab renovations. Myself, Zubair and Mahmood stayed until 10pm one evening and created the nucleus, celebrating its completion with a kebab. We ended the summer with a little party in the retreat, involving music, food and much laughter. The final Friday was an interesting departmental holiday, and I then spent the next week (bringing us in to September) at RelMiCS in Manchester, the most memorable part of which was the outing which went on from 12pm to 2am.

September was quite a momentous month. Most notable was the arrival of Ramsay, who slid in to the VT crew with a surprising synergy. We soon had him out and about, visiting a noodle bar (East One) that Fran suggested. The meal was also something of a turning point, as Simon left on his holidays straight after, and Fran went to China a couple of days later.

Earlier that week was Mike’s hypercomputation workshop. Myself and Simon ended up helping out, and Mike got quite stressed (and managed to piss off Gillian). Best moment was the meal at Las Iguanas — some nice food and free (for me) to boot. Of course, the week finished with the Mexican Independence party with both Ramsay and Ibby dancing the light fantastic.

The end of the month saw the climax of the lab reshuffle, with just about everyone turning up to pitch in and help. We kicked it off with lunch in the Cavendish and then proceeded to throughly revitalise the place. Soon after, Shaukat, Mahmood and Sarah also moved out in to VT Lab 3, which gave us a fair bit more space, but also seems to have had a notable effect on the ambience.

Ramadan kicked in towards the end of the month, which had an effect on our partying, as most of the crew were fasting. We had another research retreat party, this time with Fran (freshly returned from China and jetlagged) and Ramsay, but it was let down by Ibby and Mahmood being unable to eat. The same week also saw us bid farewell to Carlos who returned to Mexico, and not bid farewell to Fran, who decided to return after his visit to Spain over the next two weeks.

October was relatively quiet and subdued, partially due to Ramadan and partially due to Ibby hacking furiously on his transfer report. I went mad and rushed mine through for the end of September, but it took until Christmas to see the back of Ibby’s (at least we hope that’s the back of it…) This was also the month I had laser surgery. Looking back over my earlier blogs (a use for them!) it seems we also had another little party in the retreat (the last — it’s not the best venue) and it was that month that me and Ramsay discovered the library basement. Things were dominated by the VT postgraduate seminars, and of course, I finished the month by visiting Google in Little London Village.

November was characterised by outings a plenty. We kicked off with the anticipated postgraduate meal, in which I had more input than last year, being a rep. following the research away day. VT lab wise, we had a cinema visit to see ‘Borat’ (with me, Fran and Ramsay also going to see ‘Children of Men’) and of course Bonfire Night.
The week after we went bowling, and the following week saw an extended trip to the Interval, my visit to Gerald in York and Fran’s Spanish night. A very busy three weeks…

We had another cinema visit to see Bond the week after, but things kind of went wayward after that with a fair bit of fragmentation occurring. Me and Ibby managed a wide range of lunches, but most of the time it was only us (although Ramsay came a few times). Ramsay and Fran similarly had a few nights out on their own. Of course there was also mine and Ibby’s disastrous attempt to find CompBio… least said the better… and my attendance at my first departmental board.

We did managed to get a fair number of Christmas decorations, and we had Mike as our honorary guest to perform the switch on. Me and Ibby somehow managed to wind up spending an entire afternoon at Meadowhell, and our attempt to get people out to the pub for lunch left just me and Ramsay going. The VT party was also pretty low-key this year.

Things came together in the final week. Monday saw Ibby, me, Fran, Ramsay and Simon all visiting Summer Street, as guests of Mahmood and Zubair, for some of their cooking. It was a nice evening, with me, Fran and Ramsay not leaving until about 10 (and Ramsay feeling oddly sober).
Of course the departmental party and Fran’s departure followed over a very eventful couple of days. On the Thursday, it was just me and Ibby in the lab — or rather out of the lab, as we spent most of the day out for lunch. What time we did spend there was spent reminiscing a little, just as I have in creating this blog.

And so, we arrive back where we started, with Ibby cajoling me into writing an account of 2006. Truth is always stranger than fiction. Hope you all enjoyed 2006, feel free to leave comments on your own memories of the year and let’s make 2007 even better!

Memorable Quotes

• These stairs look a bit steep…
• Craaaayyy–zy!
• We’ll go to the Interval for a quick coffee and home by eight
• What would happen if carbon suddenly left the Earth?
• Ramsay is defo right and me wrong
• Ah-hah!
• Zoo-bar
• How about a picnic?
• paz amor respecto
• Daytime bad

What a quick weekend! Blink and you’ll miss it. Went to Fran’s Spanish night on Saturday evening, where again Fran cooked up a storm and a quite terrifying combination of ingredients for his sangria. Both Liang and Zubair (eventually) showed up from VT, and we found that Zubair’s name means ‘dentist’ in Slovakian. The only disappointing side of things were that things seemed to finish really quickly, and it was soon time to leave in order to catch the last bus.

Sunday seemed to go by equally quickly, and I received an interesting phonecall which preceded what can best be described as a Free Java party on Monday — see my other blog for the gory details. Monday in the lab mainly consisted of trying to get out of it; sometimes that place is so depressing and an outing to the Cavendish with Ibby (complete with some bangin’ tunes) and then a trip to the basement with Ramsay seemed like better prospects.

Today was the unplanned banquet for Mike’s workshop. I arrived in the morning, and was down there until about mid-afternoon, when myself and Simon retreated for a break from the discussions. The talks were really interesting, contrary to some initial scepticism I had. But I find it hard to just listen all day, and I miss our VT crew.

Ibby’s been working pretty hard lately — in early and stuck with me until late tonight. I just hope it’s not too little too late. Looks like this will be an eventful week — as well as the dinner tonight, we’re having lunch on Thursday and the Mexican night is on Friday. In other news, I won more demonstrating in Georg’s coin toss championships, which terminated in a big political discussion.

How come the only night I stay late everyone leaves??? Anyways, I met up with Mike at about quarter to eight and we went across to Las Igunas via his office. The meal was nice (and free to boot) and we had some interesting discussions. Surprisingly, alcohol consumption was low, the whole thing was cheap and I think the hypercomputation crew are pretty cool.

Just got back from Manchester and the 9th International Conference on Relational Methods in Computer Science (RelMiCS) / 4th International Workshop on Applications of Kleene Algebra (AKA) yesterday. I left on the afternoon of Bank Holiday Monday, so I’ve been away from Sheffield for a while.

If one thing has been consistent over the week, it’s the weather. I went to have a look around after arriving on the Monday, it chucked it down and that was pretty much how it was for the rest of the week. Fortunately, it was really nice on the Friday, which, by sheer luck, was also the day of the excursion to Quarry Bank Mill and the conference dinner. But I’m sure the weather has proved a lot of the foreign delegates assumptions about UK weather correct…

I used the rest of the first evening to hack on my transfer report. I must say it feels much better now I’ve made a start and have at least a plan of what’s going in it. I also made a few last minutes touch to my presentation, which I then gave on the Tuesday. It seemed to go okay, although as I suspected it was rather out of place. Glad to get it over and done with more than anything.

The tutorial sessions in Tuesday’s PhD workshop were good, although, despite an introduction from Peter Jipsen, I’m still no expert on relational and Kleene algebras. It was kind of weird having John there, and hearing his refinement talk for the third time. Although I think I get a lot more of it now… It was nice to hear that he was in a similar position to me as regards to this stuff.

The PhD workshop was nice, and it was good to have others there at a similar stage. We also tended to sort of group together, having more in common, especially at the dinner where our table was just about all PhD students.

We had a reception in the fossil gallery of the Manchester Museum on Tuesday evening — not sure if that was supposed to be ironic in some way. Basically just a few nibbles and some drinks. I used the rest of that evening to do a little more of the report.

On Wednesday, I took my laptop with me and got a connection to the outside world. This gave me a chance to touch base, and say hi to some of the Sheffield gang, as well as doing yet more on this report.

That was the last of it though. On Thursday, the talks seemed more interesting and a group of us (myself, Stephanie, Benoît and Joel) went out for an Indian in the evening. Friday was the excursion to Quarry Bank Mill in the afternoon, and this was followed by a nice meal in the Stanneylands Hotel. Afterwards, I went out again with David, Kamal, Stephanie and Benoît first to a pub, and then to a club where some of David’s mates were. It probably wasn’t a good idea to go out until 2am prior to talks at 9:30 the next morning, but somehow we all managed it. All in all, it was a good trip.