Andrew’s Blog

So it’s January again and the department is only just now starting to get back up to full steam. I’ve been back in since the 2nd in order to give myself plenty of time to get going again while it’s quiet. I actually quite like it like that. For most of the first week, there were very few academics in. Notably, Phil was around (the mark of a good head of department) and Marian was also in towards the end of the week. Other than that, it was pretty much just me, Monika, Kirsty and a few other VT students (Henry and Maslita then Mohammed and Ali on the Friday) around our part of the building.

Henry spent most of the time trying to finish sorting out his new accommodation and, most importantly, his Internet connection. It seemed like a good idea to go with the discount O2 gave him via his existing mobile contract in theory. In practice, their website was obviously designed by idiots and caused no end of problems. Why should we have to tell the web site that we’re logged in? Surely it should know!

Ibby also made an appearance on the Thursday (although much later than I expected from his phonecall the day before!) and Henry suggested some post-birthday drinks which was very nice of him. We spent a couple of hours in the Swim, having a good chat before going home.

This nice little spell of quite winterdom was over by the next week when people started to reappear en mass. There still weren’t enough people to warrant a postgraduate seminar session though, on the Monday, so it was cancelled much to Ramsay’s dismay at the loss of pizza. Most of my time over the last two weeks has been spent on getting the Sun stuff going, of which you can ready more on my other blog; other than that, it’s been lots of nice chats over cuppas as usual.

The biggest event of the last couple of weeks has to be our impromptu night out. Last Thursday, me and Henry bumped into Emily in the kitchen (she having returned on Monday, when we sadly took all the Christmas decorations back down) and were given a rather strange invitation to a night out. You see, she didn’t ask us if we wanted to join her but rather if we’d meet up with her if we were already going out. Kind of bizarre. We weren’t sure what to do, given the short notice. I know Em would never go out at such short notice, so it seemed a bit cheeky her expecting us to.

In the end, we decided to go and I texted Em to let her know. We were forewarned it was apparently a ‘girly night’, whatever that means, but even without any mascara, we still decided to go. Unfortunately, we were a little late in getting across to the Varsity and when we got there at 9, Em had left. We stayed for a drink anyway, then went across to the quieter Cavendish for another. As usual, the Varsity was playing loud music for the very few customers it has, while it was noticeably quieter but packed with people in the Cavendish. After some interesting chat, the two of us headed down to the Leadmill, again via the Globe, having agreed to meet Emily there.

The streets were desolate, with the Cavendish seemingly having the majority of tonight’s party people. To say we got to the Leadmill later than we have before (about half eleven), and yet it was still nearly empty, it shows how much the night-going population of Sheffield is dominated by the students, who were all still mostly away on Christmas vacation. We spotted Em and friend not long after getting there, but there seemed to be little hint of the girly night we were told about. Rather than interrupting her, we waited until she spotted us as well and decided to come over.

The night was a bit different to what I remember the last Thursday at the Leadmill being like. The music in the main room was way more cheesy than before, being a smattering of all sorts of pop music, while room 2, rather than being the usual indie stuff, was playing house music. Sadly, as always popularity surrounds the worst music, and the poor DJ in that room had very few people on the dancefloor. These kids today just don’t have any taste — I mean, Peter Andre? The guy kept repeating tracks too which always annoys me. 3 Britney Spears songs (1 twice)?

It worked out well though, because I think the DJ in room 2 realised he didn’t have to play to the crowd but could just play what he fancied. We went back and forth a few times; I got Henry to join me in there the first time, then the second time he initiated us going in there after hearing that the guy had moved on to playing some trance. The main dance floor was a joke. Not only was the music not too good, but the majority of people there weren’t even dancing and seemed to take it badly that some of us wanted to actually enjoy ourselves. They’d rather just stand there like idiots and get drunk.

Towards the end of the night, there were people falling all over the place, so I escaped once again to the other room, especially when I heard the DJ was now playing some drum ‘n’ bass! That made me very happy, even I was one of only about three people in there, while the rest were staggering around in the other room to Whitney Houston. Admittedly, it was commercial drum ‘n’ bass (Pendulum’s ‘Slam’ followed by Puretone’s ‘Addicted to Bass’) but this was still a league above what the annoying wedding DJ was doing in the other room. It’s always a sign of a bad DJ when they feel the need to talk to their audience and tell you what tracks they’re going to play. Honestly, it was like listening to Hallam FM or something.

The DJ finished the night with some old skool stuff, and then I met up with Henry again and we walked back up towards his house. I was in no rush to get back and I didn’t want to leave him until I knew he was cognoscent enough to get home okay. All in all, it was a good night and I enjoyed the chance to have a good chat with Henry. He’s a really good friend.

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…

Barry visited on Friday it what was originally supposed to be a party, quickly became a fiasco and ended up in some relaxed visits to the pub. He arrived late, so his panel meeting was pushed back to 2pm. With Simon having scheduled Joachim at 3pm, there seemed little point in trying to have a party in the half hour after Barry’s talk, so we instead just went for lunch. It was nice to see Barry again (now 88 months into a PhD) and things were a bit more laid back and chatty this time, which was good. Interestingly, it’s exactly a year since he last visited (well as close as can be — it was the 18th last year and things move forward by a day each year)…

Stannett has been getting increasingly crazy and bizarre recently, but in a very good way. It’s probably got something to do with what is now two trips to Hove, where they are apparently ‘all really hard working’ despite the stories he keeps telling. Sounds like he enjoyed the ‘picnic’ he went to, despite it being very different from the ones we’ve held in the department. He also had a sudden desire to remove all trace of himself from t’Internet — well from certain sites (last.fm, facebook). To my mind, he went the wrong way about it and only seems to have made it more difficult for him to edit the data they hold about himself rather than eradicate it (especially in the case of Facebook, where there’s now an odd authorless comment of his). Changing his details would have been a better option… the Internet allows you to create countless identities for yourself, and there’s not much enforcing them being in any way real.

Last week, me, myself and Ibby went to try out Patillos, the new restaurant in Leopold Square:

It proved very expensive and it’s doubtful we’ll go back (for lunch anyway), unless Stannett’s paying again. The library folks seem to be trying to further promote the Information Commons by subduing the power of the Main Library; it’ll be renamed the Western Bank Library from September. So any hopes that that gigantic expensive green spaceship will return from whence it came seem unlikely so far. Might be a good idea to add some books then. You know, I mean proper books… ones with things like, gosh, pages and such. Ones that you can pick up and eat if you so desire.

Other than that, things have been fairly relaxed and normal. Ibby’s not done any work, so nothing new there. It’s been raining again, so seems like summer is over (it lasted about two weeks, sorry if you blinked and missed it). Time to get ready for Christmas again then. Jingle bells and all that…

What a fucking awesome 14-hour session! Today was the long-awaited date for the departmental summer picnic that’s been in planning for about two months and I do believe it duly kicked ass. There were a few lows but these were overshadowed by some terrific highs.

We kicked off laying out food in the Lewin Lab at about half twelve, after me, Simon, Monika and Emily converged on Tesco’s to get some food. Things were a bit quiet initially, and me and Mike spent the time sorting out the music and his quiz, that we spent a good five hours going through the night before (interspersed with numerous YouTube videos).

Things eventually warmed up a bit. I did a quick bit of going round, cajoling people. The VT folks were big slackers; most of them preferred to stay in their ice cold lab rather than venture downstairs for fear of…oh no…an academic actually talking to them! I’m glad I’ve moved out of there and I think the fresh air is much better for me.

After an initially depressing looking start, Mike asked George to give out the quizsheets and get people organised, which worked wonders. The actual quiz seemed to go down really well, and Mike certainly knows how to set a good ‘un. As he says, there was something on there for everyone.

Mike was already getting quite out of it by that stage, although he was still able to indulge in some political debate with Ibby. We left the department about 5ish, and originally planned to go to the Red Deer with some of the NLP crew, but neither them nor the Devonshire Cat would let us in with Sam’s baby. We ended up in the Forum instead, and it was debatable whether Mike was already too sozzled to go much further.

Fabio also appeared after about the first hour, and preceded to gather his WIG hommies around him in a scene reminiscent of a cross between Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Wayne’s World. Mike even gave him some respek. Emily seemed to insist on going to the Common Room for some reason, so eventually we all trooped out over there (although only after managing to lose Mike who got fed up of all the pissing about).

The place was packed and we ended up getting jostled about all over the place and separated several times. We eventually found a seat near the back, although Emily seemed to decide to huddle in a corner with Ajay instead. I texted Mike to let him know we had eventually ended up there and eventually went out to find him. He’d acquired food from Subway in the mean time and who knows what else, but he’d certainly perked up a bit.

We were slowly losing people by this stage, and we said goodbye to nearly all of the NLP crew after about an hour in that dive. Mike then played pool against both Henry and Sam, and managed to win. Emily left early with Ajay sometime during this, but we never saw her at the Leadmill.*[See below]

After Mike had been challenged and thrashed by another guy at pool, we headed down there ourselves, stopping at Simon’s fabled Devonshire chippy on the way for some chips. They have remarkably big fish. We went past the pile of ashes that is Gatecrasher One on the way and Mike again told how they wouldn’t even let him in when he was supposed to be managing a live broadcast of PvD from Zurich for them. It’s a strange twist of fate that it burnt down about the week after they didn’t let us in…

Inside, it was a bit weird because we couldn’t seem to get into Room 2 at first which has a cheaper bar. However, it was definitely open later as I went in there for about an hour instead, after being completely fed up of all the utter shit (Take That???) they were playing in the main room. Mike and Henry seemed happy enough to dance to it, but then I guess they were out of it enough to dance to the sound of our coffee machine… They had stuff like the Arctics and the Killers on in the other room, which was much better.

I went back at what seemed to be just about the right time, as they went into the more anthemic dance stuff like ‘Jump Around’. Both me and Mike stuck it out to the end, but Henry strangely decided to leave after they announced 15 minutes to go. He missed all the best classic stuff like ‘Set You Free’, ‘Children of the Night’, ‘No Good (Start the Dance)’, ‘Sandstorm’, ‘No Limit’, ‘Boom Boom Boom’ and finally ‘Superstylin'’ which ironically Mike had put in his quiz earlier. It was great fun, although I thought we were going to knock someone over when we were bouncing around together to ‘Sandstorm’.

Mike was seemed much more aware of what was going on this time, even remembering to collect his coat. We got a quick drink from a van outside (which strangely claimed to do tea and coffee, but didn’t) before getting taxis down at the railway station (which was shut but seemed to have a train due within the next hour). All in all, a very good night for those of us who stood the pace…

Update — We Found Emily

After not hearing anything from Em and getting very worried on Saturday, she fortunately popped up on Facebook on Sunday and all was well with the world again. It turns out she did make it to the Leadmill but somehow managed to miss each other — she got there earlier and left earlier so it’s not too surprising. I’d have been in the other room at that point. It does seem she had a little too much to drink, because the poor thing was throwing up most of the next day.

She’s been my saviour today though, as she managed to recover the missing camera. I nearly had a heart attack this morning when I realised it wasn’t down in the lab still. I’d be thinking about it since later on Friday, but thought it would be okay there. But I come down to the Lab and someone has cleared away everything! So I pestered just about everyone I could think of — Emily, Monika, George, the porter, Henry, Simon, Neil — and eventually an e-mail from Em got it returned.

So in all it’s been a pretty mad cap day. Em did still have fun on Friday by the sound of it, but none of the orgasmic throes of passion Mike referred to. We know her better than that

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…

End of the Year

The academic year ends today. I’ve just collected three of the Crossover folders from TC, so I’ll be able to make a start while locked away in this GRADSchool thing. At least I’ve completed Siobhán’s marking and nothing else has come through yet. Plus, it appears the travel fees will also be paid for, after I was quite annoyed at the thought of having to pay a `cheap’ train fare for something I didn’t particularly ask to go to.

VT lab is also pretty sorted. Last Friday, Henry, Mahmood and I completed the last few changes by moving the post-war cupboard up the lab and matching desks to windows on the light side of the lab. The cam is also now positioned on the top of this cupboard, surmounting pi, which provides a different view to any VT lab enthusiasts. vtprint1 is back again, so Ramsay is much happier.

Bad Boys

Last night was the first proper VT night out we’ve had for a while. We’ve had some movie trips, but this has pretty much just been a hardcore few (me, Emmanuel and Zubair), and the odd lunch but nothing major. But last night pretty much topped anything we’d done in the past, and that’s pretty much thanks to Henry (also known as H Drive) and Emily’s w1ck3d plans

Unfortunately, our VT numbers dwindled before we even started. From our initial listing, Mohammed dropped out due to back problems (which I fear are caused by VT movements) and it was just too late for Simondo. The fun started in the department, when we all gathered in the retreat for the usual send-off thing, this time for Alice who is taking a long and dangerous trip across the quadrangle to join the SCHaRR crew. Good luck to her, and all the best in the future.

We returned to the lab for a bit and chilled, while Emily went home to ‘powder her bits’ (to use Henry’s terminology). At about quarter to seven, after Ibby, Emmanuel and Ramsay had warmed up with a few dance moves to ‘Kiss Kiss’ and ‘Family Affair’, we headed to the Common Room where pool and pizza was the order of the day. Just before eight, we headed back towards West Street and the Cavendish where we met up with Emily, with Alice to appear later. Some of the VT guys seemed to be feeling a little rambunctious and some interesting questions were floating around the table. We learned that Ibby is a big, yellow banana, Abraham is a passion fruit and Henry a sweet little strawberry (who’s he kidding?) Ramsay unfortunately has a bizarre phobia of fruit, and thus it was not that surprised that he departed early, leaving us in the Varsity for the shackles of his lady friend.

Speaking of which, we crossed the road to the site of our previous entanglements at about 9:30, and promptly met up with Alice. Unfortunately, she didn’t stay long, leaving us when we left for the Leadmill and avoiding any of the bizarre questions with which Emily was bombarded. Taking a taxi to the Leadmill, we reunited with Ibby and Emmanuel who had left early to sort out their shit and clearly powder their bits too. Certainly it was a pleasant surprise to see Ibby return, although I did give Emmanuel strict instructions to ensure that he did. He obviously been busy doing his hair too, which I couldn’t resist messing up

Fun ensued, and after Henry had breakdanced the night away, we left in our taxis at closing time. Folks were a little worse the wear the next morning, particularly Henry, who probably indulged a little too much, and had to examine students with a pounding headache. Luckily the bouncing from the pinballs was left to me.  Bad news is that we later found that Ibby has mislaid his phone somewhere, and it’s probably when me and Henry were throwing him around the dancefloor. Poor guy…

Departmental Politics

This has also been a week of some intriguing internal debacles. We’ve had the bad news that our undergraduate student intake is not looking as good as last year so far (less confirmed places) and just the general reminder that so many of our department are overworked and underpaid, especially our fantastic admin and support teams. Next academic year is likely to be fairly interesting, if not only because Stanny will be ultra-stressed, being exams officer, running part of Crossover and having a grant to spend. I also seem to have ended up as a sole student representative, after I said I’d prefer sole representation next year and the others didn’t seem willing to compete (or bothered at all, to some degree).

I also mentioned our buddy system at the board, and its planned use in VT, and found that Daniella already organises something similar for graphics and it apparently works well. I’m also now working with her and Chris on developing something to represent VT for open days. Should be fun.

Party Wheels In Motion

Our Friday 1st party is taking shape, although I still have doubts that Henry will fulfill on his proposed lighting claims (although we do now have a flickery light at the back of the lab — not sure if this counts as yet…). It is set to be a diverse evening, with people bringing a variety of food, Maslita inviting her children and myself and Henry trying to drag in other cohorts from the admin team and NLP. Apparently Anna doesn’t go out much so, so we’re helping her to do so in small steps by first getting her from the admin office to the lab. Next the quad, and then who knows… The idea seemed to go down well with Ben, Sanaz and Swampi this morning and they will hopefully bring more NLP folks. I just hope there is enough space in VT lab, but we will probably move out and about later. Providing the music should be most interesting as we’re trying to get as much from as many as possible, so a diverse variety should be the order of the day.

Looks like more fun packed times are still to come!

This Week’s Tunes: Mini-Mixes by Anti Chris, Basement Jaxx, Mark Ronson and The Rapture

It’s been quite a busy week and a half. The big news is that the lab has changed face again. After six months, things start to get rather boring. On Tuesday evening, myself, Mahmood, Zubair and Mohammed removed the two redundant desks between myself and Ibby (seating Idoru) and Ramsay and Azman (seating dopefish). We then moved the desks in front back, and placed two new ones at the front, where Ali and Mohammed were then ensconced. It took a while as first Kirill came in to observe the chaos, resulting in a chat about monitors and the Information Commons, and then we needed a break and some food (kindly provided by Zubair) after having to move the refuse pile that was Ramsay’s desk. At least, I guess there was a desk under there somewhere — something moved anyway. I just hope it wasn’t alive. We, of course, removed the many additional power cords that seemed to run all the way to JD’s office.

We were entertained in our endeavours by Emmanuel, who serenaded us with tunes from Zubair’s laptop. He’s still waiting on TC to provide feedback (average now down to 1.5 chapters a week), although I did let him know that he has plenty of work to do after seeing only part of Chapter 1… The move provided much needed party space at the top of the lab, which an enraged battle with Ramsay on the Thursday turned into a nice little communal area, which now houses drinks and food. Fran was interested to hear of the news, although I assured him that his desk was still intact — got to be one of the best in the lab.

Jumping back a bit, Wednesday morning was a bit chaotic when we tried to get everything powered up and working again. I don’t think Rams was happy about us unplugging his cables, but he was motivated to at least clear his desk. I eventually got to the Machines and Languages tute, although turnout was again low (but at least, not non-existant this time). On arriving back, I found that Mahmood had received a message from Alice; appears our phone number is the number of Lab 3 — whoopsy. Three guesses what the call was about — Turnitin of course. A student was having problems getting in, but we eventually found this to be down to him accessing the US version by accident.

This week saw Henry and Simon returning to the lab, sans various bugs and illnesses. Actually, to be accurate, Henry returned in time for last Friday’s Java tute, which I didn’t realise until he texted me just before. Unfortunately (for him) it means I didn’t tell Chris he was about and fortunately (for me) I snagged a role pretending to be Steve Murphy (last week) and Mike Holcombe (this week). That was really enjoyable and hopefully something I’ll get to do again.

It was last Friday evening that Emmanuel and Henry rolled off to the opening night of Embrace (formally Kingdom) with VIP tickets in hand, only to see Henry turned away — poor guy. At least the swings were still open at the local playground. This age things really piss me off, and I don’t think these places deserve custom if they’re going to treat their clientele with such little respect. I thought it was innocent until proven guilty… they should be trying to show that Henry is under 18, not vice versa.

Anyway, this resulted in a discussion with Emily in the kitchen (which certain members of our lab refused to believe actually happened) and the organisation of a VT lab + secretarys night out at some point. Probably the 17th. It should be great fun, although Emily has strictly banned me from using any form of photo-taking device… Seems we will have to find some other way to redecorate said kitchen. Come on guys — get doing something fun again!

Zubair, or Zed to his mates, officially now our movie mastermind, also has a trip planned to see the new Spiderman movie. That’ll be this Wednesday, provided I remember to send out the appropriate mail, cajole appropriate people, etc. Summer is coming, so I guess there will be many more we want to see — the new Pirates and Simpsons movies spring to mind.

This bloody GRADSchool thing has become a pain. Not only is it timed badly itself (have they never heard of semesters???), but they now want ridiculous amounts of rubbish beforehand. Well, I did the best job I could but time is limited at the moment. When not reorganising the lab, I’m doing various teaching and marking duties which actually pay… GRADSchool thing take note. I’m not exactly encouraged to spend a large amount of time applying for a fake job — doesn’t exactly inspire enthusiasm. In the meantime, I’m trying to arrange a chat with Leila at Google and that could possibly lead to something real… I just need to remember about things like timezones and international calling codes.

What else? Well, I’ve unfortunately only seen Ibby once this week, but we did have a nice lunch in the Swim. Not sure how happy he is with his new seat just yet, but I like mine much better (although I would also like to convince Henry to shift as well). My enhancement has finally been arranged after much a debacle, and that’s jutting on the GRADSchool thing too. Fortunately, I checked with Monika and the board is the week before. This time, I have plenty of things to bring up (if Amanda doesn’t get there first). Stannett has just returned from Italia where he and Frank have been spending many an hour shouting ‘Ciao, bella!’ at the locals I guess. I’m now awaiting his blog to find out the details. Lots of marking has been completed for Siobhán — nearly there now.

Anyway, comments, suggestions, etc. welcome with a stamped addressed envelope to the usual address. The bin needs to be full, you know.