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.

For what has actually been a four day week, it’s seemed quite long, busy and pretty hectic. There was a lot of catching up to do after not being around last week, and, of course, a party to organise…

Back In The Office

Certain things can be very distracting. It’s difficult to maintain one line of thought when, after a week away, your e-mail box is piled up with updates on just about everything and then, to top it off, your new-found friends discover Facebook… It’s been fun, make no doubts about that, but work output has probably reached an all-time low.

Catherine and I were already posting things over the weekend, and once the week had started, most of the others had appeared, either via e-mail or on Facebook, or in most cases, both. Thanks to Simon being in Paul Spencer’s team, I got hold of the photos that were used on the slideshows, so we have some already, while we’re (still) waiting for Danny and Paul to post theirs. Paul is the only one we haven’t yet heard from since the GRADSchool, although he has been spotted around the country by both Catherine and Martin. We’ve also only had one e-mail from Lou so far.

There’s already talk of meeting up again (with Rosemary even offering to play host, and Asli accommodation), which is something I’m really looking forward to. I can’t believe how much I’ve missed them this week. The blow has been softened a bit though, by the aforementioned e-mails and Facebook postings, particularly some really nice wall postings from Asli. It was also great to actually get to see a photo of her dog, Bailey.

Being reignited on the Facebook front by all this action caused me to also link up with some friends closer to home. Swampi, Emily and Alice in SCHARRland have all made an appearance on my friends list this week, and Em and I seem to have been exchanging messages at an almost scary rate. Which is doubly odd when you consider she’s just down the corridor…

I still have quite a bit of demonstrating to chase up and claim. I managed to put through Siobhán’s this week, but I still have to wrap up Crossover, work out what the hell is going on with COM162 and tie up lots of other little loose ends. Speaking of which, one of these has come back to haunt me with a vengeance. I thought the masters students had submitted their reports two weeks ago, but it turns out this isn’t the case. So after my week away, I came back to a lot of Turnitin kerfuffle and I’m still chasing things up now (mainly by repeatedly waiting for replies from the folks at Turnitin). The main problem at least is solved, that being that students couldn’t submit revisions of their reports due to a mixup in the settings. The solution was to create a revision assignment and link the two, but a lot of things are still unclear and retrieving the assignments later will no doubt be a nightmare.

I haven’t be able to make a great deal of progress in my chasing, as Sara’s currently away and she’s the one in control of all that stuff. Me, Henry and Sanaz are not even officially on the list for COM162, so sorting that out should be fun — we need to chase up Peter more next week. The office to the left of reception has been pretty empty all week in fact, with just Em, Karen and Kirsty (who’s temporarily doing Alice’s old job). When I popped in on Tuesday, there were actually more non-secretaries in there than secretaries with both George and Stannett hanging around.
There was a bit of magic in the air too, as it seems a fairy wand has been found floating around the department. I’ve always thought it must take a bit of extra something to run this department, given the less than abundant amount of administration skills in some of our academics, but this was a nice proof. Back in the lab, myself and Simon spent a lot of Tuesday reminiscing about the week before, and sharing experiences (having not really spoken to each other at the time — we don’t negotiate with our enemies…) and he seemed a lot happier and interesting than previously. Unfortunately, he seemed to have pretty much reverted to form by the end of the week.

Ibby reappeared on Wednesday with claims on wanting to be in the lab more often and asking me to make sure he comes in. Haven’t quite worked out how just yet. Personally, I don’t see why he wants to. I’m getting throughly fed up with being there and have been making the most of escaping where possible this week. I’ve managed to get my hours back down to leaving at five, and it’s been better. And I get bored of just seeing the same old faces. It’s been great chatting to Em and Monika a bit more over the last few weeks instead. I also had an interesting meeting with Amanda, and we have some interesting plans for an upcoming postgrad meal. I’m also going to be sorting out a little Pacman game for the open days which should be fun.

VT Party

Friday morning was manic because I was trying to sort out tunes for the party. Henry came up with this wonderful idea of asking everyone for tunes, which they then didn’t supply until the last minute (or did, and he didn’t bother to mention it). I ended up getting stupidly stressed out about it and what with various intermissions (like lunch and Simon’s talk) we ended up running late for the party and the thing ended up a right mess. Henry not turning up until gone three o’clock didn’t help and I ended up having a regrettable argument with him, not helped by Henry already being a bit tipsy by that stage. Next time, I think we’ll just pile them all up, hit the random button and run. It’d be much simpler than trying to be clever. It seemed to end up a right mess, and we just seemed to end up going round the same tunes. I noticed afterwards we seemed to have very little R ‘n’ B or rap for one.  Maybe just sticking one of my mix cds on would have been easier…
We did get quite a good turn out in the end. I’ll leave it up to others to comment on whether they thought it was any good, as I always seem to end up so in the middle of these things I can’t be objective. There were quite a few comings and goings. Our NLP friends (Swampi, Ben and Sanaz) turned up but left fairly early. A text from me managed to get Mike in as well, and we just seemed to keep picking up and losing various other random people.

Ibby was one of those who unfortunately departed early (although not as early as he originally said he would fortunately). Work was calling clearly. Male strippers are much in demand these days it appears. We tried to get him to show us a few moves on the VT dancefloor before he left, but he was too full of giggles. He seems to know the Saturday Night dance but wouldn’t do much more of it than twirl his arms. Zubair and Mahmood fared no better. Even Emmanuel did very little Honestly, where do we get these people?

As far as the afterparty went, it was me, Em, Henry and partner, Emmanuel, Ramsay, Mike, Peter and Daniela & friends who set off for the pub (we chose the Devonshire Cat in the end). Only a valiant seven of us actually ended up staying there. Daniela and co departed as soon as we got there, having to meet some other friends. Emmanuel got as far as the door, but didn’t seem to be able to work out how to open it… don’t know what happened there.

Peter left after about half an hour, having to catch an early train for London (which he’d got a ticket for surprisingly cheaply). While we were there, it became clear that Henry, Mike and Ramsay were already pretty inebriated. Ramsay was glowing red again, which always seems to be a sign that he’s had a bit to drink. Mike was singing to us on the way there, but seemed a bit more with it while we were there than say, Henry, who decided he was called ‘T’ (PG Tips to his mates).

Ramsay (of the jumping across tables fame) left at about 10:30, as the rest of us departed for the Leadmill. Henry and Mike seemed to decide that we didn’t need a taxi, yet neither of them seemed to be that clear on where we were going. Walking through town at that time of night is not much fun. On the way down, someone decided to try to get into Gatecrasher instead, with Mike warning what a snobbish bunch they were. Turns out he was right, when they refused me for being too ‘casual’. Apparently, I didn’t pack my top hat and tails for dinner with the queen. Exactly why you’d want to be dressed up to the nines to go and jump around with a load of sweaty people I don’t know — we’d have been better in leotards.

When we finally did find and arrive at the Leadmill, we headed straight for the bar and then struggled to get Mike to stop being a wallflower and show us a few dance moves. We did succeed in the end, but I don’t think this time was as good as the last. Both Mike and Henry were too far gone to make any coherent sense most of the time. I’m really glad Emily was there, otherwise I think I’d have been completely lost. I don’t really know Henry’s female friend well enough to try and talk to her (and I mean try over the music, this being a nightclub), but she seemed relatively sober and at least came to tell me that she was taking Henry home. Apparently, he had to work in the morning. Walking would have been a start, after he spent most of the evening struggling to stand on both feet, and not fall over people (which he failed at on at least two occasions).

When they’d gone, the rest of us made tracks as well, Mike not being in much of a state to do anything. We popped Mike into a cab outside. Luckily enough, he could still remember his address. I was a little worried he wasn’t going to at first. Having seen him off, myself and Emily went to grab a bite to eat at Pepe’s before heading home ourselves. I’d say this time was more interesting than great to be honest.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to whatever comes next. In the immediate future, we’ve got the movies tomorrow which should be noticeably more restrained than Friday’s antics. It’s Henry’s birthday in two week’s time, so maybe he’ll want to do something for that, but to be honest, that seems a bit too long to wait…