Fri 4 Apr 2008
Well yesterday turned out not to be a hacking day at all, but rather a day dismantling VT and installing a new disk (80gb from support). It’s not yet active (we need some more downtime to setup the new disk, and move data back and forth) but it should mean we have a lot more room to breathe! Thanks to Simon for his help with the beast; getting a new hard disc into a desktop case proved to be a very non-trivial process!
Tue 1 Jan 2008
No, this is nothing to do with James Bond. We’re now two and a half hours into 2008, and so it’s time to look back ponderously at 2007 — just like we looked back at 2006 last year…
Last year I struggled to remember anything from the first couple of months of the year. I put this partly down to it being fairly uneventful (I couldn’t remember much) and also not having a blog for that period (I didn’t start properly until September 2006).
This year, I’m struggling to remember much about the first couple of months of the year too. And guess what? — I have a blog. Guess what I wrote in it? Hardly anything. Looks like we’ve got a great couple of months to look forward to then if the last couple of years are anything to go by. Although with all the stuff that’s ‘about’ to happen, I have a feeling it won’t be true this year.
My main memory of last January is of Mike Stannett discovering the Internet. Most people would have discovered it before 2007, but not Mike. He got a new computer and developed a sudden fascination with all things net, insisting that we all get webcams and microphones so we could talk to him at home. I still don’t understand why, and fortunately by the time the next semester had started this obsession had somewhat subsided. I think it had a lot to do with wanting to stay at home to be honest.
In my 06 year blog, I mentioned Shaukat joining earlier in the year. At the end of January last year, he left. We made our first VT expedition to Jumbo’s as a goodbye meal. Going back to the beginning of the month, for some reason the first few days stick in my head because I didn’t go back on the 2nd, having an optician’s appointment, but Ramsay did with him and Mahmood ending up in a fire alarm practice outside in the cold. Weird how I remember that.
The first week of February saw Mike Stannett’s birthday, and we trooped down to see him the week before to give him a present. The other big event of the month, for me at least, was my trip to Brussels and FOSDEM. I remember planning to leave rather late because I thought me and Henry had to actually attend Siobh´a;n’s lectures for her module as well as do the marking. But it turns out we didn’t, so that, coupled with a late plane arrival and trying to find everything, made me get there a lot later than I would have ideally hoped to. I’ll be going again this year so hopefully the travel and stuff will be better. The event itself was great and I expect this year’s to be even better too.
There still doesn’t appear to have been much happening even in March, given that I resorted to using my blog to write dramas. But at least I wasn’t alone in blogging then because Mike was actually doing so at the time (although checking that link just now shows he has posted again for the first time in six months). Looking back at mine brings back a few interesting memories. And to blatantly re-use that format, that was the month that:
But mainly one of just being in the lab I guess. I know there was a lot of demonstrating going on. Me and Henry taking packed COM162 classes with Sanaz, Ben and Swampi. Lots of the aforementioned marking. COM2030 tutorials for Georg. And the Turnitin stuff started to kick off as well, not to mention Crossover as always so that probably explains why not much else went on.
April always seems to be where things start to kick off, with May becoming a veritable tornado of activity. In 2006, it was the month we spent gallivanting around the country (BCTCS, MGS, Types, TFP and all that jazz) and April 07 was similarly pretty busy. Although my blog again shows my whimsical musings, it also clearly demonstrates a busy month. I suppose the most memorable bit is that bloody CONCUR paper. I spent two entire evenings in the lab with Mike while we cranked it out and while I spoke lyrically of it back then, the response to it clearly showed it didn’t smell of roses.
Speaking of MGS, Simon went off there again and this time Henry, Ibby and Peter went too. Memorably, Ibby travelled there and back every day, was less than diligent in claiming back the expenses for this, got lost, most enjoyed looking in the pond rather than at the lectures, made a racist slur, set the department in a bad light and phoned me every day. Not bad for a week’s work.
This was also the time of my eponymous blog about the Information commons. From what I’ve seen, it still all holds. In fact, in all accounts everything I’ve heard since has merely darkened my opinion, notably including its effect on the opening hours of St George’s and the name of the Main Library as well as its ridiculous mandated 24-hour policy. There’s no money to helpfully open St George’s for a few extra hours of an evening which students actually want, but keeping the Information Commons opening at 2am and during the Christmas break is a must.
It’s all been departures this year, and sadly April saw the unhappy story of Ravie leaving, as he lost funding to continue in Sheffield. He was given the option of continuing back home in Malaysia instead and took it. These changes have had quite an effect on the lab, and its makeup today is quite different than it was this time last year.
What a heady month May was! It even kicked off quite dramatically, when we did the final rearrangement of the VT lab to what it is today. I’m quite pleased with how it is at the moment, to be honest, although judging by what Mike Holcombe told Mesude it’s not that clear that we now have some space in there, and, thinking about it, the current space is pretty akin to the space that was there before the last shuffle. Interesting.
May was also the start of the Emily odysseys. I remember running in to her in the kitchen (not literally) at some point, Henry had past history of seeing her in the disgrace that is Embrace/Mingdom, and it all kicked off there, with us arranging a night out. That ended up being the same day that Alice left. Quite strange really, because I’d only recently got to know her through the whole Turnitin debacle. Both her and Em joined us on what was the first of several VT07 nights out that culminated in a trip to the Leadmill. It was a Thursday and I still think the best night we’ve had. Everyone made it to the end for one thing. It was also the only one Ibby attended (partially) — certainly the only time he came out clubbing and as a result lost his phone. I’m surprised, as I thought it was surgically attached. Strangely enough, only myself and Henry have been on all our many adventures last year.
It was also the month of the GRADSchool trip, which I moaned and whined about beforehand, but which turned out to be quite brilliant. I chronicled it all pretty fully at the time, in probably my most epic blog to date. But suffice to say, I made some good friends on the trip, maybe even learnt a little and had a good break from the usual hussle and bussle of the DCS. It even seemed to have a positive effect on Simon — well, for a few days anyway until he reverted. We’ve still got to have a reunion, which I hope will happen sometime this year.
Oddly, once of its most notably effects in the short term was the consequent rise (and later, demise) of Facebook. I’d actually become a member back in November of the year before, when invited to it by Fran. Me, him and Zubair conversed on there a bit but there wasn’t really much point. We were all seeing each other day in, day out anyway. It took off when I then used it to keep in contact with the members of Team S, my new-found friends from GRADSchool, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was Emily finding out. I don’t know how many times we messaged each other over the first few days but it became quite bonkers to be honest. Thankfully, things slowly calmed down until it was basically dead by late summer.
The 1st of June was marked quite notably by the inaugural VT lab party, which celebrated the start of summer, the leaving of the undergraduates and the successful completion of transfer reports for everyone from the 05-06 bunch. Yes, we actually had a party that wasn’t a VT Christmas party, nor just a few drinks and a chat in the retreat. This was a full blown thing with music, food, drink and even non-VTers (Emily, Sanaz, Ben, Swampi, Daniella, Julia and James all put in an appearance as far as I remember). And it didn’t stop there; we went out afterwards too, ending up in the Leadmill with a severly inebreated Mike Stannett (who me and Em had to roll in to a taxi) and Henry (T to his friends) who proceeded to fall over people and had to be delicately manouevered home by Julia.
On the way to the Leadmill, Henry instead decided to try Gatecrasher One. They didn’t let us in. It burnt down a week later. I swear there is no relationship between those two events, though no-one has yet been able to prove either way. Yes, June was certainly packed with events. We were invited to Alice’s party, but that somehow went awry. I organised two seminars, one being the return of Gerald and the other my final Theory SIG with Nick Bezhanishvili. That’s probably significant because of Emmanuel’s track record in inviting speakers in the first half of 2006, although we didn’t do that much better even with me in charge.
Also in that month, Peter Höfner left us to return to Germany, following some sausages and potato salad in the DCS quadrangle. Henry celebrated his birthday with a night out at Nando’s and Havana, proceeded by a rather pointless postgraduate research day hosted by the University. Finally, Sheffield was submerged by floods in the final week of June (usually one of the hottest times of the year) and we really needed our umbrella-ella-ellas (ay ay ay). What a rollercoaster that was!
Things started to dry out a bit in July. I remember taking a trip around the ghost town that Meadowhall had become, post-flood before returning to the university for the postgraduate barbeque. The most memorable event was of course the departmental picnic which was preceded by my move to VT Lab 3 and an afternoon spent with Mike and some old cassette tapes preparing the music quiz. That was the first time we didn’t make it to the end with Emily (the last three times we got a taxi back home together) and we haven’t managed it any time since either.
In August, we had a yearly visit from Barry, this time without his sidekick Monika. Memorably this marked the beginning of the collapse of party planning which didn’t really recover until November. Having had four successes fairly close together (the kick off in May, the June lab party, Henry’s birthday and the departmental picnic), we were trying to get something together for the day of Barry’s visit but this was scuppered by Simon’s Theory SIG arrangements and a general lack of interest.
The following week we did go out for the August birthday celebrations, but things went quite differently to our past events. To start with, Emily missed this one (she was on holiday as I recall). It was much more a VT affair. The usual triage of Henry, Emmanuel and Abraham were there, along with Stannett who was also becoming something of a regular. However, initially we also had Simon and Ramsay, and Mahmood also came along, being keen to finally try a nightclub.
My most vivid memories of that night are of us eating lunch outside at the University arms and then heading to the Harley for seemingly endless games of pool, with Mahmood being something of a dark horse. We’d lost both Simon and Ramsay by the time we moved over to RSVP, where Stannett was showing severe signs of intoxication and Mahmood finally gave up and went home, after being exposed to the volume of the music there.
Now a quintet, we ended up in hell, also known as Embrace, where I first took the position that popular venues are like popular music i.e. generally rubbish. The events I’ve been to since have been an order of magnitude better, and going off on my own to organise things has been one of the best things I’ve done since. Not that I don’t still enjoy our nights out — just as long as we end up at somewhere vaguely decent like the Leadmill and not a preposturously overhyped place such as Embrace. It really is no different from what Kingdom was and I knew that well enough by reputation before. The departmental holiday afterwards was so much better.
The first week in September was notable for my trip to Lisbon. The main thing I can remember is the heat which was all too much for me. I think I’d prefer future conferences to be in Antartica or something. Well maybe not, but at least somewhere where the temperature isn’t overbearing. On my return, I acquired access to the University CMS after jumping through the appropriate hoops, and Liang left us after completing his MPhil panel successfully. His desk was quickly taken by Csaba, who’s visiting John for six months. It was also the last month that Ibby was with us, as far as I recall. At the beginning of the month, he was organising gym sessions with me, but by mid-September he’d decided to take a year out. We’ve yet to see if he will actually return.
I’m reminded of him also because he was originally going to go to Gatecrasher’s 14th birthday party at Magna with me. In the end, he gave it up due to Ramadan, and I ended up going with Henry instead. It was a fantastic night, and something I’ve since experienced again with the Boxing Day event. I’m now looking forward to the Resurrection on the 22nd of March and the eventual return of Gatecrasher One around September (if I’m still around by then).
October was a month of quite a few nights out, but none of them involved the VT crew. On the 2nd, I visited the Tuesday Club for the first time and was treated to a brilliant show by DJ Yoda. The week after, it was the Octagon for Oakenfold (along with Ben Gold and Riley & Durrant who been at all three Crasher events so far). The month culminated with a return to the Tuesday Club on the 30th to see Skream and High Contrast. That was also my first experience of a D&B crowd though (or rather a student D&B crowd), which wasn’t pleasant. Let’s not dance, let’s just push each other about… what fun.
Back in the DCS, we gained two new PhD students, Andrea (who I’d already met in April when she came for an interview) and Mesude (who Mike told there was no room in the lab…). Both have proved really enthusiastic so far, and it makes a nice change to actually have some people who are willing to get involved, do things and be sociable. On the subject of social events, the last weeks of October also saw us kick off our postgraduate meetings (which Mike had mentioned to me back in July at the picnic) with free pizza and a second postgraduate meal (this time for new students) at K Pasa, having moved from Wokmania and its rather dodgy food (health inspectors anyone). Saying that, K Pasa has gone somewhat downhill since, and after numerous trips over the past six months or so, me and Mahmood pretty much say goodbye to it in December.
The postgraduate meetings were something of a trial to get going. The first one was attended by just me, Maslita and Mahmood and resulted in an e-mail and associated discussions which meant that the next meeting had only three people missing. Since then, things have settled down to just over half of the VT postgraduates attending. It will be interesting to see if this continues in the new year. Also in October, I acquired the role of Sun campus ambassador. It’s still yet to really kick off but things are looking promising (unlike with the Google debacle).
November saw our clubbing trips re-established after a few false starts and me going it alone for a bit. The first of two took place on the 2nd, where Emily rejoined me, Henry and Abraham. Csaba also joined us and we briefly had the company of Mesude, before she had to rush off for her Design Patterns meeting. Csaba made it as far as Reflex before he also decided to head for home, and we finished the night in the Leadmill again. Memorably, Emily went off home early, because her feet were aching and both Henry and Abraham headed off not long after. I finished the last hour or so off on my own before heading home when the club closed. It was quite empty given it was still middle of semester, and even more so by closing time, with the taxi driver also commenting on this on the way home.
The week after I returned to the Tuesday club for the big birthday bash and Pendulum. I was already a bit doubtful of it, after last time’s experience with the D&B folks, and was also feeling a bit tired. However, it ended up turning into a fiasco when the fire alarm went off not once but twice and we all ended up outside in the cold. We ended up seeing probably about an hour of Pendulum and went in the other room for about half an hour after they’d gone off to make up for it and also avoid the cloakroom queue.
On the 21st (a date chosen especially for this reason), we celebrated Emily’s 21st (actually on the 19th) with another trip out. The socials list proved its worth when Dave came along and it was one of our best nights out in my opinion. We kicked off in the Cavendish as usual, before going to the Varsity. However, we didn’t stay there when we discovered that they’d decided to show some football match that night. Instead, we headed for the Forum which was blissfully free of such torrid entertainment and we had a nice chat there going briefly to the Frog and Parrot (where we parted company with Csaba) and then the Leadmill. We were a little early, so we ended up having to wait to get in. Emily’s birthday tickets paid off when we all got a free drink, discounted entry and they enjoyed a bottle of champagne.
It had to be one of the weirdest nights though, given they had some bucking cow thing that people were riding on and they were playing all sorts of classic pop tunes such as the Spice Girls, PJ and Duncan and S Club 7. What I’ve said about popularity obviously rings true because it was packed to the rafters for this. I was soon pretty fed up of it and I think this was also felt by the others. Emily left early again and, in hindsight, I probably should have gone with her, as we left not fifteen minutes later.
December was indisputably the party month, though I feel only me and Emmanuel were really feeling the vibe. We had two VT lab parties, the first being a postgraduate one but this was nowhere near as successful as the one in the summer. Only the usual VT suspects turned up, and we reined it in by about 7pm and went home. It was however a good chance to try out the new speakers and amplifier before the Christmas bash the week after.
The VT party was really quiet to begin with and I don’t think it ever really took off for the academics. At 12pm, you’d not have thought there was a party imminent, and it must have took until at least 2pm before there was a sizeable amount of people there. They seemed to come in dribs and drabs and it was quite late on before the VT choir (myself, Henry, Mesude, Abraham, Emmanuel and Tony Simons) gave our rendition of ‘VT The World’. Fortunately, we were spared another slideshow from Tony, and the party took on a life of its own when it was left to just the postgraduates for the last few hours.
There was quite a final ring to all this, as this is likely to be the last Christmas we’ll all spend together. As a result, it’s a good job all three parties (these and the departmental one) were good fun, if not anything spectacular. It will be interesting to see what 2008 now brings and how VT continues to change…
Wed 19 Dec 2007
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…
Fri 24 Aug 2007
Tonight we went out for quadruple birthday celebrations (Emmanuel, Mahmood, Simon and Ramsay). Clearly, as Ramsay says, people liked having sex at Christmas parties in the 70s and 80s. We let Henry plan things. In retrospect, that was a bad idea…
The night started out quite nicely, although it took a while to get things moving. Simon had to leave relatively early to get back to Chesterfield in good time, so he left for the pub with Ramsay and Stannett earlier than the rest of us. Myself, Henry, Emmanuel, Mahmood and Abraham headed off just after 6pm, after being informed that we’d had to change our pub from the Star and Garter to the University Arms as the former was shut. Took a while to get them all out of the building, due to some prevarication, but we eventually headed off there dropping by the cash machine on the way. We were notably Ibbyless; he’d already whined about not staying the whole thing earlier, but decided to do a sly little wander off again and not come at all in the end.
We had a nice drink there (formally Club 192 or whatever) and some interesting conversation including Stannett telling us about his ‘picnic’ (which turned out to be rather unlike the departmental one and more like the Gay Pride parade) and Emmanuel letting on about his fear of bees. It’s not as bad as Ibby who is apparently scared of everything including kittens and ants. I hope Mike Holcombe doesn’t decide to do any live experiments near him.
After that, and Simon leaving, we headed to the Harley where most people indulged in several rounds of pool. Emmanuel, like the time we went out the first time, chose to sit out. I did as well, knowing I’m no good at it, but Stannett eventually made me have a few shots. Another guy in there (Keith) also decided to join in, giving the guys tips and eventually playing them in a game. It was interesting to see Mahmood’s first encounter with someone relatively intoxicated…
After a fair number of games had been lost and won, Mahmood turning out to be something of a pool shark, and Ramsay having bid his goodbyes for Walkley and a warm bed, we headed to RSVP via Aslan’s. Emmanuel seemed to perk up a bit after getting some food, and he was dancing about both in Aslan’s and RSVP. The music in the latter was really good, the DJ playing an eclectic range of stuff from the Chemical Brothers through ‘Yellow Submarine’ to Barry White’s ‘The First, The Last, My Everything’. Stannett passed on details to him offering him the chance to broadcast on his station and I hope he does.
Mahmood got a headache and so went home rather than going on to Embrace. What a good choice! The fact that they were handing out free entry/drinks flyers should have been enough of a hint as to what a dive it was but we still went anyway. Last time, we had to queue up and then got turned away, so we’d all made sure we had shoes not trainers on this time and such, and then there was no queue, no interrogation and we just waltzed in. I wish we’d not bothered on both counts. I’m glad we didn’t pay (it certainly wasn’t worth it) and I would have been more comfortable in trainers.
Inside, the Ibby tunes pounding were a good hint to how things were going to be. They only seemed to have the one room open. I’d looked at them on dontstayin.com the day before, and none were mega-appealing, but some were bearable. The only one they decided to have open was this Decuba room which plays ‘Pop, Chart & Party featuring stunning stage shows and Tropicana style cabaret’ apparently. That description is enough to put you off to start with.
The music was awful. I like most of the tunes, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t want to go out and dance to them. Most of them were far too slow and this DJ guy had no idea how to order things. He puts two trance songs on (terming them old skool wrongly — since when is mid-90s old skool?) and a bit of electro house (but awful commercialised versions, like what they’ve done to The Creeps), then we’re back to slow-ass r’n'b, and not even good ones. I mean Mariah Carey and Justin Timberlake??? And repeating songs — how many times do you want to hear Out Of Office? It’s boring the first time. I could have done a better set from my iPod. Heck, Ibby would have done a better set. At least he would have probably stuck some Darude, some Brainbug and Hans Zimmer in there. I don’t know if they were doing requests, but it would have been very tempting to request some Prodigy or Pendulum. Most of their stuff I’d play in the day as background music. Heck, the Frog and Parrot was playing better music as we went past, banging out some Dizzie Rascal.
The floor was full of chavs. Seems this rethink has already fallen on its face. Stannett put it aptly when he said it was more gay than the Gay Pride parade. This was something more akin to a seaside disco in Skeggie than a nightclub. Seriously, drop the booze and it’d be a good spot for school discos. They having some Galaxy 105 shite this weekend, which says it all. Ripped up the flyer they gave me straight away, as there’s no way I’m going back there. It might be fine if you’re so fucked out of your head you’re willing to dance to Bob the Builder, but this place truly is awful. Sleazy Kingdom by another name…
Sun 19 Aug 2007
Barry visited on Friday it what was originally supposed to be a party, quickly became a fiasco and ended up in some relaxed visits to the pub. He arrived late, so his panel meeting was pushed back to 2pm. With Simon having scheduled Joachim at 3pm, there seemed little point in trying to have a party in the half hour after Barry’s talk, so we instead just went for lunch. It was nice to see Barry again (now 88 months into a PhD) and things were a bit more laid back and chatty this time, which was good. Interestingly, it’s exactly a year since he last visited (well as close as can be — it was the 18th last year and things move forward by a day each year)…
Stannett has been getting increasingly crazy and bizarre recently, but in a very good way. It’s probably got something to do with what is now two trips to Hove, where they are apparently ‘all really hard working’ despite the stories he keeps telling. Sounds like he enjoyed the ‘picnic’ he went to, despite it being very different from the ones we’ve held in the department. He also had a sudden desire to remove all trace of himself from t’Internet — well from certain sites (last.fm, facebook). To my mind, he went the wrong way about it and only seems to have made it more difficult for him to edit the data they hold about himself rather than eradicate it (especially in the case of Facebook, where there’s now an odd authorless comment of his). Changing his details would have been a better option… the Internet allows you to create countless identities for yourself, and there’s not much enforcing them being in any way real.
Last week, me, myself and Ibby went to try out Patillos, the new restaurant in Leopold Square:
It proved very expensive and it’s doubtful we’ll go back (for lunch anyway), unless Stannett’s paying again. The library folks seem to be trying to further promote the Information Commons by subduing the power of the Main Library; it’ll be renamed the Western Bank Library from September. So any hopes that that gigantic expensive green spaceship will return from whence it came seem unlikely so far. Might be a good idea to add some books then. You know, I mean proper books… ones with things like, gosh, pages and such. Ones that you can pick up and eat if you so desire.
Other than that, things have been fairly relaxed and normal. Ibby’s not done any work, so nothing new there. It’s been raining again, so seems like summer is over (it lasted about two weeks, sorry if you blinked and missed it). Time to get ready for Christmas again then. Jingle bells and all that…
Sat 28 Jul 2007
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… 
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 
Fri 13 Jul 2007
Yesterday, I made my auspicious return to the lab as there was barbeque food to be had. As far as free food goes, the last two Thursdays have been good for us postgrad students. The week before, we had our yearly departmental meal at K Pasa and I think of the two that was the most successful (but then I’m obviously biased…) I blatantly stole the networking game from our GradSchool experiences and it worked quite well in the end. Describing the game to those assembled in the research retreat, I thought they were just going to stay sat there instead of socialising but things soon got moving. People from different research groups actually spoke to each other, which is amazing in and of itself, although, as perhaps expected, there weren’t that many from NLP (given its size) and VT accounted for over a third (but didn’t seem to dominate).
The meal was nice (although some poor souls got burnt pizzas). We should definitely introduce that place into our regular rotation. Ibby slacked off as usual, and so we decided to stop him coming in the lab until he had also completed the networking game, but failed miserably. I don’t know, free food — you’d think more people would turn up. Ramsay was notably absent too and Zubair decided to spend time with friends instead. Ah well, maybe next time. It seems to take that long to get one of these together and also get the department to fund it. I don’t think we’d have one much more frequently. We’re keeping the new postgrads one smaller this year so that they don’t get overshadowed by the existing students. I’m happy, because as rep, I still get to go
Anyway, suffice to say, I think they could have done with the same game at the postgrad barbeque because those who bothered to get out from behind their desks (me and Henry tried in NLP and ML and failed in both) just came, ate and left pretty much. We ended up in the pool room, mainly, for me at least, because there was some attempt at music in there while the party atmosphere seemed to be lacking outside and we saw nothing of Ramsay’s fabled topless waitresses. Simon got excited and smashed a glass, but otherwise things seem to go well. Ramsay was in search of a wireless network connection which some gits had stopped in Bar One, so, unable to pull the plug, we headed for the interval instead and hung out there with teas and cappachinos until the weather was sufficiently good to allow us to return to the department.
We seem to be having nothing but departures this year, while last year it seemed to be mostly arrivals. Peter checked out of Hotel VT a week last Tuesday and we saw him off with drinks in the Red Deer and some heated debate with Emmanuel. Good to know he’s got home okay and hopefully we’ll be able to blag a way of getting him back for a talk sometime. Speaking of which, with me now leading the seminar charge, things are looking up and lots of invites have been sent. Hopefully some people will still want to come and see us.
Other than that, I’ve been chillin’ at home. Seem to have been more productive actually. Wednesday I went to Meadowhall for some retail therapy. The lower level is like a graveyard, so many shops shut off in need of refurbishment. No music shops! ;( Oh dear, oh dear. Ibby’s been complaining all week about me not being in the lab, so I was going to invite him to come along too but he vanished in a puff of smoke on Tuesday afternoon. He’s been very withdrawn lately, think his impending panel make be making him shit himself inside. Cheer up, bro!
Simon and I have already started planning our concurrency roadshow for early next year, and it seems I might be going on tour in a couple of months after all too. Things are looking up at the moment. Surprising lack of gossip though, I don’t think Em will be impressed when she returns next week.
Sat 23 Jun 2007
Up to now, it’s been a relatively quiet couple of weeks, mainly because certain people were recovering from becoming rather intoxicated at a certain lab party. With the end of the semester, it’s also meant that there are less things going on generally, and we’ve seen noticeably less people in the lab. Both Emmanuel and Henry have been working hard done their respective coal mines instead of being in the lab, and we’ve not seen that much of Zed either. I’ve been moved to having headphones on most of the time, because I can’t stand the silence.
There have been a few good points. Me and Ibs have had quite a few nice lunches out and about, but we must make our choice of where to go early than we do. We’ve also had our only two external speakers this year — both came on consecutive Fridays. Gerald’s visit was something that had been on the cards for a while, and went pretty much as expected, with a good VT seminar turnout and lunch in the Swim.
Nick’s Theory SIG talk seemed a bit more risque, especially when we discovered that they’d decided to have an exam board that day as well. I was worried we weren’t going to get much of a turnout, but we actually managed to get easily the largest Theory SIG turnout we’ve had all year (including Georg and Kirill who escaped!). I reminded people, I bugged them by phone and it seemed to work. We also had a really nice social down the Red Deer afterwards. On this kind of high, I’ll be bowing out and taking over the VT seminars from July instead. Beware…
We’ve also got a departmental picnic on the 27th to look forward to now as well. Phil’s given the okay, and is even sorting me out ‘ bit of a budget’ — woo hoo! I’ve also managed to chase up most of my demonstrating claims, although I still seem to keep being offered new really interesting ones. I had an afternoon earlier this week of phoning around prospective undergraduates, which proved to be really nice in the end — mainly because I escaped the lab and borrowed Karen’s desk instead!
I’ve just got the open day stuff to sort out now, and posters to chase up. I want to get as much done of that as possible before I disappear from Wednesday on. I’m actually kind of looking forward to the chance to have a rest and get away from the depressing place the lab has become of late.
So here’s the bit I know certain people have been waiting for, the full gory details of tonight’s shenanigans. It’s been quite a bizarre day when all’s said and done (for me at least), given that I actually spent only like 20 minutes in the department, but still saw most of the same people.
Trying to organise tonight has been a nightmare from start to end, and I don’t think I ended up doing anything in the end. I can try all I want, but I may as well be talking to the wall or e-mailing the pope. It was Henry who did it all in the end as it should have been, being his birthday and it’s clear that I should leave these things to our resident party goddess and little party monkey in the future. There’s only so long you can feel like the spare wheel, especially when it’s the one that gets a puncture. It was good while it lasted, but we can’t always change as we’d like.
On to the events. Friday morning, things finally seemed to be arranged, so I e-mailed around and let people know, before grabbing a quick cuppa and heading up to the postgraduate research conference with Simon. We left Ramsay in charge of the lab, after I was less than impressed than the alarm had once again not been set, by, I have a feeling, someone who shouldn’t even have been there, but I don’t know for certain.
Overall, the day was quite interesting, but a lot of the information was a case of if you’ve heard it once, you don’t need to hear it again. I think the sessions could have benefitted from a little more participation (too many times, especially in the morning, we were sat just listening, which never works for me). This also impacted on the fact that one and a half hours felt far too long. I also thought there was a lot of room for improvement in the catering — I don’t really count a few sandwiches as a lunch, but more importantly things were unmarked, making things difficult for many of our students. Timetabling was also a problem, given that the early afternoon on a Friday is prayers for our Muslim students (which from the majority in VT). Even though I saw lots of DCS folks, my choices meant I spent a lot of the day with Simon who was more sociable than he has been of late, as he was in the pub last week — getting him on his own obviously works…
We returned to the department to drop off the stuff they gave us and pick up others, most notably Emily who was waiting patiently for us in reception at 5, dressed up to the nines and looking wonderful. Seemed a bit odd to then lead her in to the mess that is the VT lab, but oh well… we eventually cajoled people into leaving and headed for Nando’s for some food. This was not before losing both Zubair (who hurried off with excuses of work to do) and Ibby, who’s pathetic text doesn’t even bear mentioning. Someone should teach him that honesty really is the best policy…
The eventual party that left was thus just me, Henry, Emmanuel, Abraham and Emily. At the restaurant, we got seats for seven as we were soon joined by Henry’s girlfriend, Julia, and his friend, Mary. We then gormandised our way through three plates of chicken, rice and chips with bottomless supplies of Fanta, Sprite and Coke. Over this, Emmanuel told us how apparently Henry should traditionally be whipped in Ghana on his birthday. Believe what you want, maybe Henry has some kind of masochistic streak…
Even after the meal, Henry still hadn’t decided what we were going to do. Apparently, he’s a man, can’t multitask and can only juggle two balls… Eventually hopping over to the Cavendish, wine was the order of the day, while Henry devised me a non-alcoholic cocktail called ‘Strawberry and Bits’. I have to admit it sounds kind of intriguing, but I’m definitely going to stay away from his other alternative, ‘Henry’s Banana’ and leave that to the ladies.
After finding that, due to me chatting with Emily, Julia and Mary, that I must be learning about ‘women’s things’ (including lipstick and tampons apparently), Henry was inspired by Julia to become a transsexual and shake his ass like Beyonc&eecute;. This led on to another conversation about Henry living with a homosexual, and Emmanuel discovering this when him and a friend came out of the bathroom wrapped in towels. You have to wonder what these two get up to sometimes…
Of all coincidences, we happened to see James going past the window and he popped in, agreeing to come back and join us later. That he did by the time we had moved across the road to the Varsity, a place which I’ve still failed to work out the point of. I can understand going to a bar to socialise and chat with people. I can understand going to a club to dance. What’s the point of some weird middle ground where there’s loud music that drowns out conversation but no dancefloor?
Me and Emmanuel were again exposed to a bit of Henry’s data quality shit during our time in the Varsity. He had us applying 0 to 1 scores to women in the room, with no criteria on how to judge these scores (a clear floor in his analysis). I’m waiting for the day this reaches his thesis and Siobhan sees it…
Leaving the Varsity about an hour later, Henry and Emmanuel beatboxed our way to Havana, but we decided not to go in as they were still serving meals at this time (it was still pretty early, given we’d started at five). Instead, we headed to Reflex, and cut a few moves on the dancefloor.
For some reason, we then went to try and get into Embrace, even thought it was obvious I wasn’t going to get in, as I hadn’t bothered to dress up, having come straight from the PGR conference. In retrospect, I should have just gone home and left them to it, instead of fucking things up for everyone.
We ended up retiring to our homes at about 1am, after spending the rest of the evening back in Habana, where everyone showed off some seriously good salsa moves — I’m well impressed by their hidden talents. On the way home in the taxi, we went past the remains of Gatecrasher. Still hard to believe it burnt down like that on Monday. It will be interesting to find how it happened.
Hope you had a good birthday celebration Henry — don’t work too hard!
Sun 3 Jun 2007
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…
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.
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…
Mon 28 May 2007
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.
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 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.
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 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 Li