So, recently I gra­dua­ted, spent some time at home over the dis­mally wet sum­mer and loo­ked for a job. The job hun­ting aspect pretty much domi­na­ted my time. It star­ted out with two or three pho­nes calls a day from rec­ruit­ment agen­cies with a num­ber of roles they thought I might be inte­res­ted in, inc­lu­ding throughout my holi­day to Ply­mouth — everything from Con­trol sys­tems sales to supply chain mana­ge­ment — I selec­ted the roles that inte­res­ted me most to pur­sue — this trans­for­med into a mul­ti­tude of inter­views and tests. I tra­ve­lled to Lon­don, Surrey, Hert­fordshire, Lei­ces­tershire, Glou­ces­tershire and more, com­ple­ting no more than 9 sepa­rate inter­views. These inter­views inc­lu­ded apti­tude tests, inte­lli­gence tests, rea­so­ning abi­li­ties, pro­blem sol­ving tasks, data analy­sis tasks, group exer­ci­ses and other such nas­ties. For the sake of pros­pe­rity, these were with such com­pa­nies as Uni­le­ver, Data Con­ne­xion, GE Sen­sing (they do not refund tra­vel expen­ses), Smiths Aeros­pace and Ocado. Both Ocado and Smiths offe­red me a job, and I opted for the more inte­res­ting and supe­rior offer from Ocado, based in Hatfield.

Whilst not loo­king for jobs or hou­ses I tur­ned on the TV, lin­ked it to an AV out­put from the PC and watched some X-files or Twin Peaks to fill me up on my mystery-weirdness fix for the year. I am about half way through sea­son 2 of Twin Peaks now. Agent Coo­per is my hero. Any­way, moving onwards. With a job con­fir­med and a start date of Sep­tem­ber 10th I had 3 weeks to arrange vie­wings, par­take in vie­wings, make a deci­sion and sort out all the fine print, on a sin­gle soli­tary resi­dence. I arran­ged six vie­wings, two in Welwyn Gar­den City, two in Hat­field and two in St Albans for the bank holi­day wee­kend in August.

I can’t be bothe­red to find pic­tu­res of all of them, and to be honest, I want to for­get a few of them, they were that awful. In fact the last one we saw nee­ded a light on in every room in order to see anything… this being at 2 pm on a cloud­less day with the sun high in the sky. It was also dis­gus­ting with a shoddy door, the whole thing was tac­ked onto the back of a house — they wan­ted £625 a month for it!

Here is the second best can­di­date — a one bedroom ‘mini’ house. This was in wal­king dis­tance from where I work and was a strong con­ten­der at £650 a month. Although in the end we deci­ded the nearby ame­ni­ties weren’t great and living in Hat­field wasn’t the nicest of options.

My third arran­ged vie­wing for a stu­dio flat in Hat­field fell through, and in that spare hour we roa­med the streets of St Albans, pop­ping in every estate agents we came across on Lon­don Road. Even­tually one such agent had two apart­ments we could look at straight away, one just (the day before) coming back onto the mar­ket after a pre­vious deal had fallen through. The first of these was an atro­cious annex in Lon­don Col­ney, it was damp, sme­lled of wet and was pretty much a shed. We left (the family and Sam) as fast as we pos­sibly could. The second was a one bedroom flat for £725. This was like a breath of fresh air. It was clean, spa­cious, light, secure, well-appointed and very close to both rail sta­tions, the town cen­tre, a super­mar­ket and retail park, a large park with golf course et al. and a bus route to get into work. It was per­fect except for the price. We con­ti­nued loo­king at our other appoint­ments — except for one can­ce­lled two-bedroom vie­wing which nas­tily clashed with a much nee­ded toi­let stop on my part. The flat was always on our minds and at 3pm we deci­ded that I should go for it — and can­ce­lled any further vie­wings, the extra price was deci­ded rea­so­na­ble for the dis­tin­guished impro­ve­ments that it offered.

Having sett­led that mat­ter we spent the after­noon drin­king in a nearby pub, watching the foot­ball results (which were also ami­ca­ble). I remem­ber having a lovely large glass of New­castle Brown Ale, before moving on to Wethers­poons to have Steak for din­ner. It was a nice eve­ning all around. We were there for the wee­kend, so on Sun­day we had a pic­nic in Veru­la­mium Park — right next to my new flat. Crispy fresh baguette, pasta and salad selec­tions and a Mars bar to cap it off. Acti­vi­ties also inc­lu­ded “pla­ying catch in the park”, buying expen­sive chi­lli cho­co­late, a tour of the lake, exci­te­ment over the kid­dies water park fea­ture, remote con­trol boats and Ye Olde Figh­ting Cocks pub. Then we hea­ded back to Bris­tol, with Sam going north. I would move in on Sep­tem­ber 3rd, the next Monday.

In the week follo­wing I spent some time lear­ning Java, mana­ging my web­si­tes and fran­ti­cally sor­ting out the huge depo­sit and one month’s ren­tal pay­ment (£1800) to be made avai­la­ble in only four wor­king days (bank holi­day issues) in clea­red funds! That was a laugh. On the Fri­day I watched Knoc­ked Up at the cinema with Mum and Stu, post scrump­tious Chi­quito Lazy Boi star­ter. I also watched the Bris­tol Rovers vs. West Ham game on Sky as well as a num­ber of the England vs. India ODI’s, inc­lu­ding the stun­ning 8th wic­ket part­nership of 99 runs to seal a win, which we cele­bra­ted whilst eating chips on the way back from visi­ting my Aunt (avec gra­dua­tion photos).

With only one car the pac­king nee­ded to be ruth­less and pre­cise. Fit­ting a com­pu­ter, tv, all the clothes I will need for a num­ber of months, croc­kery, coo­king pans and uten­sils, duvet and sheets and any addi­tio­nal enter­tain­ment I deci­ded to bring was akin to those crazy Christ­mas toys that involve arran­ging sha­pes into a cube.

* Cho­co­late Muf­fin Break *

Mum and I arri­ved in good time via M4 and M25, sig­ned the con­tracts, pic­ked up the keys and moved in, with Sam quickly behind us with her odds and ends and a much nee­ded set of dra­wers. Then we set about with the ickle things — arran­ging inter­net and phone ins­ta­lla­tion, sor­ting out water, gas and elec­tri­city, tele­vi­sion license, fin­ding myself a com­pu­ter desk, filling my cup­boards with food (Sainsbury’s is very expen­sive!), unpac­king and making myself feel at home. Mum left the next day, to return to work, it was a sad goodbye, and I had that melancholy fee­ling all day.

I think that is enough of the tale, I have now been here ten days and obviously the inter­net has been ins­ta­lled (20mbit, woo!) and once again I have spent too long wri­ting this, it is late and I must go to bed to get up for work tomo­rrow. All I have left to say is thank you so much to Mum, Sam and Stu — your help was inva­lua­ble, I couldn’t have done it all without your help.

Ove­rall Degree cal­cu­la­ted as: 86%
First Class Honours

Well, that’s it, done and dus­ted. Uni­ver­sity life is now offi­cially over — I am no lon­ger a stu­dent. My four years stud­ying a Mas­ters in Elec­tro­nic Engi­nee­ring at War­wick Uni­ver­sity have come to a fruit­ful end. It’s odd thin­king of the very first day when I moved into Roo­tes with my big boxes, going up the stairs for the first time, seeing that awful bright yellow paint, unpac­king and chat­ting with Sam and Kayte for the first time. Good memories.

This final year was spent in Red­fern cam­pus accom­mo­da­tion, with old friend Ste­ven and new flat­ma­tes Jo, Madhu­mita and Robert. It has been a great year. Here is a short but happy-memory indu­cing list. Ten pin bow­ling — both real and Wii based, mas­sive marathon video game con­quests (Bur­nout Revenge, Kata­mari, Bom­ber­man, Wii Sports, Red Star), birth­day cele­bra­tions, the adven­tu­res of Bobby Green and Snowy Bob, tal­ka­tive fridge mag­net non­sense, watching Pla­net Earth, fridge and free­zer space mayhem, the rot­ting cele­riac, Madhumita’s bell rin­ging and supers­ti­tions, the donkey-film fiasco (and the asso­cia­ted eeyore jokes), New Year cele­bra­tions, Christ­mas deco­ra­tions, Madhumita’s quo­tes and blue tac sculp­tu­res, outings to Zizi’s and Piccolini’s “I could be a vam­pire — but you’re vege­ta­rian”, eating two meals at once in Wethers­poons after Oceans 13, sha­ring artsy fartsy films with Jo, going on walks around Heron­bank (to my sec­ret pond), taking trips to the per­fect Arts Cen­tre Cinema (£2.50 stu­dent tic­ket for films such as Zodiac, This is England, Infa­mous and others), buying bar­gain £3 DVDs from the now defunct Fopp, jug­gling in the kitchen (3 ball, 4 ball, mill’s mess, 5 on the floor), the faulty Xbox 360 issues, com­ple­ting that Mars EBM assign­ment, Future Elec­tro­nics “big time” and “for sure”, kitchen visi­ting spa­rrows, wood­pec­kers, rab­bits, squi­rrels and a sin­gle fox, War­wick Art Centre’s tuna jac­ket pota­toes with salad gar­nish, my inter­net ban and resul­ting scrubs marathon, base­ment lab conc­rete slab tes­ting for hours on end, pain­ful all nigh­ters on 300 page pro­ject report and pos­ter, my poor tummy and appen­di­ci­tis, rewar­ding revi­sion marathons (and mis­sing the Bris­tol Rovers pro­mo­tion), lear­ning man­da­rin chi­nese, the lunar eclipse on the night of Steven’s birth­day meal and wii com­pe­ti­tion, watching Liver­pool knock out Chel­sea on HD pro­jec­tors outside in the gar­den after feas­ting on a BBQ, rea­ding Graeme’s fri­day eve­ning “wee­kend joy” texts and laser/smell of bur­ning eye sto­ries, eating fresh French baguette and Camem­bert after retur­ning on a long hard bike trip to Tes­cos, the moun­ting rust pro­blems my bike suf­fe­red as a result of being left outside in the rain, the mag­pies attac­king the bin bags, the “cost-cutter” chime, the inc­re­dibly wet sum­mer, pla­ying Fris­bee on the green outside, watching films with the TV at the foot of the bed, watching the clea­ner rota­tion as ours was off sick again, buil­ding up recyc­la­ble skysc­ra­pers in blue bags, pla­ying corri­dor golf with the plas­tic golf set and Ste­ven losing his ball under my bed, pla­ying long range corri­dor darts and skitt­les, being solemn as Madhu­mita rushes away for the last time, doing that 1000 piece puzzle on top of my dra­wers, buying fans and crea­ting cus­tom made wasp nets, seeing Madhu­mita play Halo, boi­ling up the kettle and having a nice cof­fee and crois­sant break­fast before star­ting revi­sion, pla­ying Scat­ter­go­ries and LOTR Risk (too geeky?), rea­ring my grape found cater­pi­llar to a full fled­ged moth, indoc­tri­na­ting Sam in the ways of BSG, taking down my pos­ters for the last time, Jo’s regu­lar parsnip-carrot and mince meal, Steven’s toad in the hole and chips, Roberts plas­tic cut­lery and balloon antics (see: Madhumita’s cup­board), Madhumita’s smelly night time thing and yoghurts left in the mic­ro­wave, the 2 for £3 tesco piz­zas that got me through, wee­kend trips to Lei­ces­ter to visit Sam where we would shop at Fen­wicks or on the off chance go to Riley’s or cook something won­der­ful and ins­pi­red. And taking pic­tu­res for the last time as I pack up the car and pre­pare to go home.

And so on 26th May 2007 Bris­tol Rovers retur­ned to the third tier of the English lea­gue, now ter­med “Lea­gue 1″, bea­ting Shrews­bury in a close pla­yoff final 3–1 at Wem­bley. Because of my horrid exam finals I was for­ced to miss this dream Wem­bley occa­sion, although every time I go and watch they tend to lose, so maybe it was for the best. I also had fears of the Don­cas­ter sce­na­rio when that quick 2 minute goal went flying in.

Let’s look at some of the good moments from the season:

What a Goal!

And another against City.

The Rovers sup­port at the JPT final in Cardiff.

Road to the Playoffs.

War­ning, pic­tu­res of sur­gery below (not graphic, because I nor­mally squirm at these things).

Come night time Wed­nes­day 2nd May, my day had gone well, revi­sion was on sche­dule, I was trying a new mouth wash and all was sweet and well. The hard grind of revi­sion, pro­ject work and cour­se­work was under way and uni life was as any hec­tic third term nor­mally is. I think I’d just relea­sed my latest fb2k con­fig that day also. At 5 am I was awo­ken with awful sto­mach pains; a horri­ble grip­ping fee­ling as though my diges­tive sack was being used as a stress ball by an over wor­ked under­paid office emplo­yee. I couldn’t sleep through it so I grab­bed some crac­kers and made some quick fb2k upda­tes until I felt duly capa­ble of hea­ding back to the land of nod.

Thurs­day was much the same, only worse. I’d hoped the pain would have left me; maybe it was just me lying awk­wardly or some bad sau­sa­ges from the cham­pions lea­gue BBQ. I set about revi­sion as nor­mal, strug­gling to get anything done, some Ibu­pro­fen hel­ped and I con­ti­nued through until the after­noon thin­king I had past the worst of it. With late after­noon the pain­ki­llers res­cin­ded and I was thrown full-whack back into the tor­ment of having my diges­tive tract deci­ding it wan­ted to leave my body by tur­ning itself into a truncheon and bea­ting its way out from the inside. Gavis­con sto­mach sweets fai­led, as did all the anti-acids and little tricks like drin­king Milk or eating dried foods. With the doc­tors now shut and at a loss for what to do, I tried to simply just rest, sit back and watch a film — I chose one I wouldn’t par­ti­cu­larly care if I enjo­yed or not (My Super Ex-Girlfriend — don’t watch this). By the end of the film my intes­ti­nal baton had grown spi­kes in a step­ped up bid to escape. I was bent dou­ble and in agony with a sto­mach pain that hadn’t cau­sed sick­ness. I called NHS Direct (with my mum’s advice and dili­gence in fin­ding a Skype com­pa­ti­ble num­ber) and they soon advi­sed me to get myself chec­ked out ASAP, just as a pre­cau­tion. With the walk-in cen­tre shut it was off to acci­dent and emergency.

My very kind accom­mo­da­tion war­den drove my friend and I there where we star­ted to wait. One hour later I saw the triage and enjo­yed blood sugar tests, blood pres­sure tests and the usual check-up mumbo jumbo. With inten­sif­ying pain, gro­wing hun­ger and tired­ness the two hour wait to see a doc­tor was horri­ble. Mid-wait my offi­cial accom’ war­den, Adam, tur­ned up and swap­ped shifts, brin­ging cross­word enter­tain­ment, although we never com­ple­ted a sin­gle one. Both war­dens were espe­cially help­ful and I wish to thank them both very much for their efforts and care. At 1am I was called into see the doc­tor, he prod­ded me and asked where the pain was, whether I’d been ill, etc. He did a blood test and issued an abdo­men X-ray. Half an hour later, lying on my back, I was whee­led into the X-ray room and whee­led back out again moments later.

Lying on a bed had its bene­fits and coping with the wait was not as bad, though just as pain­ful. It wasn’t until 4:30 am that someone came to see me and tell me I was hea­ding to the cri­ti­cal deci­sion unit where a sur­geon would later see me. At 5 am they deci­ded to keep me in for the night until next morning’s break­fast, see how I was then after some food and take it from there. With this news both my friend (thanks Ste­ven!) and war­den were relie­ved to be able to go home whilst I tried to get wha­te­ver kip I could. Come 8 am I was up and ready for brek­kie! Whilst the patients around me were being ser­ved up Wee­ta­bix and porridge an impor­tant loo­king fellow asso­cia­ted with the uni­ver­sity (with a num­ber of stu­dents around him) infor­med me that I did indeed have Appen­di­cits and that I would be nee­ding sur­gery some­time during the day.

Whilst in the pro­cess of let­ting whoe­ver I could know what was going on a bubbly anaesthe­tist explai­ned the pro­ce­dure to me and said I would be prep’d for sur­gery within half an hour. And that was that, before I knew it an IV was being put in, pads stuck on and gene­ral anesthe­tic admi­nis­te­red, “You’ll be asleep within 20 seconds”… I remem­ber thin­king, “I don’t feel tired”.

That’s a tra­di­tio­nal appen­dec­tomy, I didn’t get this done (thank good­ness), I was given a modern keyhole lapa­ros­co­pic sur­gery which is “mini­mally inva­sive”, at least this seems to be the case given the size of my wound.

Here’s a video of a keyhole appen­dec­tomy, not mine I might add:

I woke up at about 12:30pm in the reco­very ward, dreamy and bliss­fully enjo­ying my deep sleep and dis­tinct lack of pain. About half an hour later I was fully awake and another cheery nurse whee­led me to my ward. As the anaesthe­tic wore off some pain retur­ned (inc­lu­ding a sore throat because of the tubes they had to give me) but I was much more com­for­ta­ble than before, I was soon happy to see my grandpa, sis­ter and girl­friend shortly follo­wed by Ste­ven and my warden.

My reco­very was (mostly) a smooth one. For the dura­tion of my stay the IV remai­ned attached, through which I was fed and admi­nis­te­red the neces­sary anti­bio­tics. 4-hourly pulse, tem­pe­ra­ture and blood pres­sure tests were given; my tem­pe­ra­ture was high each time ( 37.5) and I was given para­ce­ta­mol to bring it down. The only pro­blem I had was a gro­wingly uncom­for­ta­ble and soon to be pain­ful fee­ling which moun­ted in the hours after sur­gery; in short I was having pro­blems taking a piss. The nurse sug­ges­ted I may need a cathe­ter but before get­ting one did a quick ultra­sound to check if my blad­der was full, her res­ponse upon seeing the result was quite comic and she soon retur­ned tubes in hand. My blad­der was so full it was put­ting enor­mous amounts of pres­sure on my back, wound and abdo­men, which suf­fice to say, hurt a lot. The blad­der can typi­cally hold 0.6 litres, within 15 minu­tes of the cathe­ter being added the bag was up to 1.5 litres, and reached 2 litres before the hour mark. Time for the great Bri­tish pun, “that really takes the piss”. A cathe­ter is quite uncom­for­ta­ble and it dra­ma­ti­cally redu­ces your mobi­lity, even when you’re tied down to an IV, its remo­val was also quite pain­ful. Get­ting it put in wasn’t too bad, but I was pro­bably still seeing the influen­ces of some anaesthetic.

All this took place at the brand new Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal (UHCW) outside of Coventry. It really is a beau­ti­fully new, clean and impres­sive place. I par­ti­cu­larly enjo­yed their bed-entertainment suite, which, for £3.20, gave me 24 hours of free­view digi­tal let­ting me watch the mor­ning foot­ball round-up, some Jee­ves and Wor­ces­ter and quite pain­fully with sti­fled laugh­ter “Have I Got News for You”.

It’s been about a week since my discharge and des­pite having a busy week, catching up with work, etc., I am making a good reco­very.
My stitches are all inter­nal and set to “dis­solve” in the next few days, hope­fully I’ll be right as rain in no time. This is my wound as it stands (oooh skin!) — doesn’t look too bad.

That wound is just on the belt line which has meant this past week I’ve had to wear my trou­sers like all those hip boxer sho­wing kids do these days.