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.

It’s Christmas party time again. Quite unbelievable that it’s been a year already. This time last year, the VT folks were only just starting to go out together at night, whereas this year has been packed with dalliances and debacles with the creatures of the night. Yesterday was the departmental Christmas party, where the members of the DCS all got in their spaceships (ours looking strangely like a Supertram) and headed for the Moon. That was after a fairly busy morning of handing out Christmas cards and preparing the lyrics for the VT choir to sing their little hearts out.

We set off about quarter to one, having waited for Em to close the gates of reception and keep the students at bay for the day. We’d decided to take the tram there in order to carry the instruments for the VT choir (Tony’s guitar and Henry’s keyboard) but somehow we all got split up. George lead a contingent of people (including Monika, Daniella, Chris and Tony) there on foot, while myself, Henry, Em and Csaba held on for Mesude who was running late (we were worried we were going to be short a keyboardist) and then when to catch the tram. Em was trying to get hold of Anna, who we thought was still in the department, but it turned out she was already at the tram stop and we saw the tram arriving as we were on the other side of the road. We dashed across but I ended up getting on the tram while Henry, Mes and Csaba got left behind and had to get the next tram.

In the end, we all got there, although a rather depressing turnout from the VT lab with only the five of us (Abraham arrived shortly after). Emmanuel would have come, had it not been for him deciding to stay in the VT lab all night (!!!) and then only go home after me and Henry arrived in the morning. He was still sleeping when Henry called him. I saw him later on when we returned to the department to drop off the keyboard and camera, and he wasn’t that bothered about missing the food after he found out how cold it was and that there was no hot chicks (of the edible variety) like last year. The design of the venue this year was better (we were all sat at tables in the back room of the pub, rather than sitting separately and circling a huge hole like last year at the Walkabout), but the catering was very lack lustre. As already mentioned, the food was all cold and we didn’t even get a free drink! Csaba had to cough up money for an orange juice which is disguisting when they were offering drugged up drinks for free. We ended up getting Henry two free drinks while he bought me an orange juice.

Once again, we performed miserably in the quizzes. Last year I think we did fairly okay with Stannett’s quiz, but this year we were up against Phil’s rather lengthy quiz and a barrage of bizarre questions about the earnings of the department. We succeeded in guessing a few people’s middle names correctly, and did okay on the Christmas section but given most of the questions were from around 1984 and the oldest in our group were only about five or six at that time was kind of a disadvantage. I still think we should have divided the score by the combined ages of those of the group instead of the number of people in it (although we lost 3 along the way; it was nice to see Swampi again though, brief as it was). However, it was still a better performance than the 05 quiz where I think we managed just 2. Dave once again had a guess the person picture quiz, and I think we did better than we had before, using our phone-a-friend to get some help from Mahmood and (belatedly) one of Mesude’s friends.

By far the funniest of the quizzes was George’s face quiz, but unfortunately only the die-hard contingent of Monika, Pete, George, Tony (Chilton), Dave, Em, Csaba and myself stayed around for this, after we scared the rest off with our renditions of the VT song and Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’. The quiz had two parts, one where you had to guess whose eyes were starting at you from the page and another where you had to determine the parents of a series of mutant bastard children, resulting from dalliances in the broom cupboard by various members of the department. I was surprised to find George had put me in there twice, but I couldn’t spot either. Em found the eyes one. She also appeared twice but was pretty easy to spot. Certain of the partnerships were pretty scary and will probably continue to haunt us for weeks to come.

We made our way back to West Street around 6. Csaba kindly helped me bring the keyboard back to the department, but then called it a night, so I headed off alone to join Dave, George, Pete, Monika and Em in the Bath Hotel where we stayed for one drink before heading to the Swim with the prospect of some food. Memorably, Em showed considerable control by having only a Diet Coke to go with her lasagne, but she did seem quite worried about being okay the next morning for the secretaries and support party at RSVP and the other plans she has for this week with two days off. We had a nice chat over food, with George’s usual lude remarks, before Henry finally rejoined us, having gone house hunting. Monika and George decided to call it a night at that point, and she guided him off towards the tram stop.

The five of us moved on to first the Forum (with salsa dancers), then the Green Room (with a guy singing Buddy Holly’s ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ among others) and finally the Frog and Parrot, moving at Emily’s ‘drink up’ pace. It was there that she decided to call it a night at about half nine, and literally jumped in a taxi right outside the door. Henry was keen for more though, but it was down to just me and him after Emily jumped ship. Pete had a train to catch, and Dave, seemingly half asleep, decided to stay there enjoying the music. We walked down to the station with Pete, and then the two of us headed in to the Globe for a drink before the Leadmill opened.

Arriving at the Leadmill, we still had to wait even though it was quarter to eleven by this time. It seems the band of the night, Gogol Bordelli, had overrun a little and people were still filtering out. When we did get inside, it was only the second room that was open but it soon warmed up and we enjoyed a good selection of indie tracks from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and naughties before we headed home about 1am. Quite early, but still a pretty good session, totalling 12 hours in all, and certainly one of our more memorable departmental Christmas parties. It was easily better than the first year, where we headed home after only two hours, and last year’s as well I’d say. Interestingly, the only person I saw on both this year’s and last year’s outing was Em, who appeared last year in the Devonshire Cat with Fran. This year, Ramsay has generally been pretty boring, becoming settled down and not coming out with us at all much unlike last year. He chose to go to listen to lecturers droning on in Birmingham instead this year with Simon and Georg. Stannett seems to have also become something of a party pooper of late, not appearing at either this or the VT party, but hiding away with some MSc students somewhere.

Oh well, that will probably be our last one, so a good job it went well. I wonder where we’ll all be next year…

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

It’s been a funny old week. It’s sort of like Sheffield has been on an attention seeking rampage. First, Gatecrasher One went up in flames the other week and now we see the worst flooding for more than a century. I’ve been considerably lucky to live in an area unaffected by this, and the few inconveniences I’ve had to suffer have been nothing compared to those who’ve lost their homes, their most valuable possessions and in some cases their lives.

The extent of it all was lost on me on Monday. I got soaked coming in that morning, but thought little more about it until it was time to go home. I knew it had caused some flooding at the station (Zubair couldn’t get a train down south), but didn’t realise the effect would be anything like it was. Going out to get the bus at 5pm proved a forlorn hope. The entire left-hand side heading towards Crookes and Walkley was packed solid and nothing was coming back down on our side.

I was lucky enough not to be on my own, being with Monika and another lady (Margaret) who works for the university, as we all usually catch the 123 together. Monika luckily had the foresight to get one of the few buses that did come down (a 30) and, in hindsight, we all should have. I’d pretty much given up on the 123 (as it tends to be a bit errant anyway), but we expected to see at least one 52. As it was, we waited until it was nearly six before we gave up, having seen only a few 120s go down and the odd First bus.

Walking down West Street we saw a couple of 123s going up towards Walkley (at last), but it seemed doubtful that they’d be coming back down again, at least anytime soon. On Leopold Street, one of the First drivers stopped to let us know what we’d already begun to guess; that they were stopping all the buses and taking them out of service. It did however seem a bit dumb that they didn’t at least take passengers as far as the depot, given that they had to drive the buses there anyway.

In the end, we went to the taxi rank at Barker’s Pool and joined the waiting queue of anxious people waiting to get home. A lady came past to tell us what was going on, and that they were providing food, drink and shelter in the Winter Gardens. That’s when we knew how extreme things were I guess. Quite a few people waiting couldn’t even get a taxi to take them home, as the routes were flooded, so I guess that’s where they were headed. As our route was just a case of heading up the parkway towards Woodhouse, it was easy enough to get a willing taxi driver to take us there and by half past seven I finally got home.

Listening to the radio on Tuesday morning made me skeptical as to whether I’d be able to get back in again, and I was contemplating not bothering at all. I only did in the end because it would be my last day for a while and there were quite a few things I needed to get sorted. As it turned out, there were no problems getting in, the bus was actually early and I spent a really nice day with Henry, Emmanuel, Abraham and Ibby.

Myself and Ibby had a rather extravagant final lunch at Nando’s where Ibby complained about the cost even though he wasn’t paying… It was really nice and worth the money, I thought. On the way home, I went through the Wicker on the 52, and it was a real mess following the flooding. Most of it looked more like a building site.

There were still problems on Wednesday. I had to get to Leeds for my enhancement operation, but the Sheffield bit of the M1 was closed. We ended up having to take a tour through the windy backroads, going out towards the Pennines and Manchester before following Mortimer Road up to Milhopestones and driving along the A626 to eventually get back to the M1. In all, a journey which took about an hour for a distance which should have taken about 15 minutes.

We also had to make the same trip on both Thursday and Sunday, as Meadowhall (where I’d usually have followup appointments) was flooded and has only just reopened today. Fortunately, the M1 was open again and so the journey only took about 40 minutes each way.

I tried to chillout for most of the remainder of the week, in order to allow myself to recover, but it’s not actually as easy as it seems. Last weekend I’d have preferred to do nothing. The end of last week I found it really difficult to do nothing. It also meant being out of contact with people (although Ibby rang twice which was really nice) and having lots of time to think; which can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

Still not sure how well this is going to work out, and still having to pump myself full of drugs. I’m taking going back in slowly, partly for this reason, and also because I couldn’t actually think of many reasons to be in the department at the moment. I’m actually happier here right now, which is strange. And actually finding it easier to get things done — although so far it’s mainly been emails and such like that I’ve had to follow up on from last week.

Sounds like Mike has also had a fair old time of it too, from reading his blog. He texted me on Monday asking for the CICS number to get online which I gathered meant he had no broadband connection due to the weather. There’s a postgraduate meal coming up this week, organised by Amanda, which I hope will work out well. I’ll be going in for that at least.

Fingers crossed all works out well. I’ve had too much stress by far over the last nine months from this…

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…

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…

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.

Today has been one of the busiest days for a while, and there have been some hectic days recently. I had a nice quiet start, where I managed to get about half of the remaining transfer report work done by the time Ibby landed. Soon after that, things started to go an ickle bit mad…

But first we had to decide what to do about lunch. I think the Ibbster was almost too in to his work today as he didn’t seem inspired to go. There was no sign of Zubair or Mahmood either which got me worried. Then Zubair appeared online but I couldn’t speak to him! Damn thing! So we had to use Ibby as our intermeditary conduit and it all worked out. We waited half an hour for him, then left because Ramsay could smell the beer and wouldn’t wait any longer. But, contrary to Ibby’s assignations, he did appear just after we arrived.

We then had lunch, surrounding by some exhilarating sights… especially of a couple of girls behind us in rather short skirts. I don’t know how we will control the testosterone levels in VT much longer. On our return, a cuppa was in order before we started work. Then it was all hands on deck as we destroyed the VT lab, making such a noise that Monika had to close her door to down the corridor. I’ve never seen the lab so full; seems we got about 16 of our 19 residents in all (although not all felt like participating in the day’s activities). Mike popped his head in and was surprised at how active the lab was too. He told me that Frank was upset about his machine, which I knew nothing about… hopefully it is all sorted now.

Anyways, desks swerved round corners, papers flew, monitors and machines went awol but all in all the lab turned in to a nice place, although I’m not sure we nucleus folks should be as far back as we are now. I stuck to my guns on the window seats and I think they look really nice. The whiteboard is accessible. The printer is out of the way, in the other corner, in a perfect position to just grate on Yasser’s nerves and confuse the hell out of anyone coming in to the lab. Neil fell for it already.

We finished around 5pm, when me and Zubby went to grab another cuppa. I spotted Mike and Frank in the retreat on the way back and decided to see what was going on. Lots of deep mathematical gubberings it seems, which should eventually result in a Theory SIG talk. I also found out that his tutorial sessions for his pi-eating course will be on Tuesdays, so I should be able to participate. Mike plans to escape next week, it being the only week he can get away from the place as he isn’t teaching, Simon is still on his sojourns and there is no Theory SIG yet. He also suggested I should take a holiday, which fits in rather nicely with the planned bash next week. Simon’s transfer report went on the back burner too, when he realised he wouldn’t be back until the 2nd. I don’t think Ibby was too impressed when I told him though; hopefully his other pasttime of hunting down the rare sight of a woman in the department will keep him entertained. Seems from Zubair’s blog that he, Henry and Zubair all spotted a girl going past during the movements, and raced to catch her, Ibby in the lead. Oh dear, the boy is insatiable these days…

And in the evening…? Well, the first draft of the transfer report is finally finished. Hopefully, I won’t have to do anything on it until 2008 when Mike has finally read it all… wishful thinking I guess.