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.

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.

This Week’s Tune: Gossip — Standing In The Way Of Control [Soulwax Nite Version]

So this week has mainly been about getting the Turnitin system up and running. Our inaugural use will be for the 3rd year projects which have to be handed in two weeks today (Wednesday the 2nd) at 11am. We’ve already had to make the decision to have an additional handin deadline of the Friday as well, to allow Turnitin time to generate re-submission reports. Basically, two printed copies will be handed in as usual, but they also now have to handin their plagiarism report. As a side-effect, this also gives us an electronic submission of the writeup. The mail to students went out yesterday, and it looks like some have already started to play around with the system. They’ve been directed to Anna in the first instance, as UG secretary, but any technical issues I’ll have to deal with.

The next stage will be the MSc dissertations, the initial part of which has a deadline of the week after. For that, the plan is for me to write a guide on how to setup the system, rather than doing so myself, and then to get Alice, as MSc secretary, to actually set it up. Should be fun…

We’re missing a few folks from the lab this week, but it’s not that much different because the majority were also missing last week too… Henry, Ibby and Simon are enjoying the delights of MGS at Nottingham with exciting lectures on operational semantics, category theory, stone throwing and other such shenanigans. Tonight, they get to enjoy dinner at an Indian restaurant which prides itself on its decor… or rather, Ibby won’t, as he has decided to commute every day. Yesterday morning, he managed to end up on the way to Derby instead, and missed the lambda calculus lecture while being kindly directed by some ladies who, apparently, enjoyed getting to talk to a nice Yorkshire lad. I do think he’s missed out on the best bit, which is the social side; 175 pounds plus travel expenses for lectures he could have had here is a bit of a con. Interestingly, we heard nothing from him last week, even when I texted him on Anna’s behalf about the open day, yet this week he has phoned me about four times so far…

Back in the lab, Emmanuel is stuck in a bit of a rut while he waits for Tony Cowling to read his transfer report. I think he was a little displeased to find out that he hadn’t got round to it yet yesterday. Here’s wishing him all the best with it, and hopefully we can a celebration when he completes, as that will be all our 05-06 students. At the same time, this year’s students are getting ready for their six month reports. Mohammed is certainly putting a lot of work in to it to please Siobhán and Barry Eaglestone, while I think Ramsay’s current research direction may be more suited to the graphics group… Poor Mahmood is struggling with a mountain of marking from Phil, and Zubair has had to stay away from the lab due to catching a Vista virus, but did find time to visit the new Information Commons briefly. A proper trip there is planned soon…