Jan 9 2004

Having been back almost a week, I feel it is time to com­ment on the events that have been and gone. I arri­ved and unpac­ked, shop­ped and put away purcha­ses, boi­led kettle and drank tea. Then the family retur­ned home and I was left to be alone once more… alone with friends that is. Sun­day was inc­re­dibly boring as ever­yone was doing all the holi­day work that they hadn’t done over the holi­days. In a spon­ta­neous bout of pas­sion, we all went out to Roo­tes Social to have drinks and play 3-a-side POOL — the jour­ney allo­wing me to spor­tingly show off my new Neo-esque Bur­ton coat I now love.
Mon­day brought about the return of the uni­ver­sity sche­dule. The lec­tu­res, the semi­nars and the labs. Although having 6 lec­tu­res a week ins­tead of 8 is a good thing, the addi­tio­nal 3 hour labs and 2 hour semi­nars I have are a large price to pay in return. This term I enjoy the new delights of “Design and Com­pu­ter Tech­ni­ques” where I further my MATLAB and pro­gram­ming skills whilst lear­ning how to design the layout of a house and create a natio­nal air traf­fic con­trol soft­ware sys­tem through pro­blem analy­sis; “Mate­rials & Pro­duc­tion” whe­rein I learn that a ham­mer is made of wood and metal, Rolls-Royce went bust because of birds flying into their engi­nes, that aero­pla­nes have very expen­sive alloys within their tur­bi­nes and that the Natio­nal Grid could shut the UK down in a mat­ter of six seconds if they so wished. While in my Pro­fes­sio­nal Stu­dies semi­nar, wai­ting for my 20-min group slot, I watched a mag­pie try and eat peb­bles. My hour long tuto­rial on wed­nes­day where we cover Maths pro­blems las­ted a record 13 minu­tes.
Today I was trea­ted to a beauty: FIRST: 3 hour lab, follo­wed directly by an Engi­nee­ring Mecha­nics lec­ture which over ran. One hour break for lunch (cor­ned beef and baked beans on toast plus cuppa soup). Mode­lling and Sys­tem Dyna­mics lec­ture on the awe­some topic of Sys­tem Clas­si­fi­ca­tion, a Pro­fes­sio­nal stu­dies test on Industry and indus­trial sys­tems and finally an hour long lec­ture on Mate­rials and pro­duc­tion which also over ran. That’s 9:00–13:00 then 14:00–17:00. Now I am back after coo­king a LARGE and deli­cious meal for myself.
Saving the best bits til last, on tues­day night I wan­ted an early night, sadly I didn’t get to bed until 1:30am which itself was a royal pain in the neck/backside/arse/elbow but follo­wing on from that — at the most unde­si­ra­ble hour of 3am the firea­larm went off — waking me from my slum­ber and sen­ding me out into the cold wet and dark of the night whilst secu­rity loo­ked for the non-existant fire.

Need to read more books;
Jef­frey Euge­ni­des — Midd­le­sex
Chuck Palah­niuk — Lullaby
Kurt Von­ne­gut — Break­fast of Cham­pions
Michael Moore — Dude Where’s My Country
F.Scott Fitz­ge­rald — The Great Gatsby

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