Sunday 30 November 2008

Day 72 - Bad November

So in the end I stayed up till 6am watching Heroes and the only reason I stopped is because the episode I was watching stopped half way through and wouldn't load anymore meaning I had to read the recap and a review on youtube to understand what I missed. Not as good as the real thing, but I got the general idea of what happened in the last 20 minutes I missed. Anyway, due to my late night, or early morning, I was up at about 3:30pm.
I wasn't sure yet as to whether I was going to go to the jazz gig at the Old bar tonight, I wasn't really in the mood for anything.
I spent the day watching more heroes and washing my clothes till it got to about 7pm, everyone else was going to Carnage and I didn't have anything else to do, so decided to go to the gig. I got there and people were playing already, Luke called out to me (called me Winston) so I sat with him for a while.
The band that played first is a band that formed from the jazz society, their name being "Size matters not", they are really really good. Which in a way was how my bad night started. I had brought my sax along with me as I wanted to go up and play.
Eventually people said they would just do a general blues jam, so I decided to go up this time as I reckon I am alright at improvising. However for some reason most of the "good" people that were up before decided to sit this one out leaving only me, a bass player, a keyboard player and a drummer with huge eyes and a small head up on stage.
Needless to say, the performance was shit.
I didn't even know what key we were in and the whole thing basically sounded like a warm up. It was only about 3 minutes long or something, the drummer just did a fill and ended it quick as he as well as everyone else could tell how bad it was going.
Weird thing was, we got a huge cheer for it :S
Even a guy in the front shouted "YEEEAH"! Got up and started clapping.
If I didn't know any better I'd say he was taking the piss, a lot.

That kinda put me off wanting to go up and play again, as all these people were REALLY good, there were already 4 other sax players as well so I didn't really need to be there for the playing side. Not to mention I don't actually know anyone else really in the society and since it's now week 9, socialising with all new people is harder as people have already formed friendship groups.

Jessi, the leader of the society asked someone in the band (size matters not) if they had a song I could go and play with them. I told her and him I didn't want to really and would rather watch but they refused and said I had to (kinda like when you're at a disco sitting down and girls keep trying to drag you to your feet getting you to dance but you just can't be bothered and the more you decline the more it makes you look like a boring person).
In the end after looking through their book I found only one song I knew, Pedido.
However, turns out they didn't have the Eb part to it, and considering JV never did a good job at teaching me much about music, I wouldn't be able to transpose.
I said it doesn't matter and forced a conversation with someone else from the society I knew a tiny bit (mainly because he is the only other black guy there) as to draw the attention away from me looking as though I was sitting there doing nothing so wanting to play.
In the end after about 20 minutes they decided to take a break, it was about 9:50pm at this point, didn't wanna walk home late nor get a taxi and I wasn't enjoying myself at all. I casually walked out which was very unsociable of me but I couldn't be bothered to explain the reasons as to why I was leaving so early as the old "I got an essay due in for tomorrow" trick might not work.

As I walked home I saw some people from carnage in their T-shirts all staggering around Leeds. Wonder how many people will get lost along the way.

Got home and began to watch more Heroes when I heard a knock on my window. I thought it was someone playing a trick on me at first, either knocking on my window and running away or knocking on the window, hiding beneath it then jumping out at me.
So I didn't look out, but I still heard voices. Eventually I took a peep and noticed it was Ben M and Tim and they just wanted to know if I wanted a kick about.
Why not ?


So in the freezing cold we were kicking the ball about against the Tiltyard, for about 30 minutes. Then we saw community support officers approaching us on bikes.
Looks like our fun for the night was over.
Well, we thought that anyway.

"On me 'ead"!
Shouted one of them.

At first I thought he was just a friendly officer who didn't want us to kick it but was being reasonable, but Ben M didn't kick it towards him as he thought that he was going to take it.
The officer then stated how he wasn't going to and just wanted Ben to kick it to him (not sure why he said on me head, as he was wearing a helmet).

So, Ben kicked it to him and the man was pretty good actually. They just told us to make sure not to break anything but it was fine to play there. Tim said that he wished there was a field to play in, and according to them, there was.
They told us where to go and left.
They were nice officers.
Infact, think they were the same ones I saw earlier on the walk to the Old bar, who rode pass me but were making weird sounds and hanging off their bikes as if they were kids.

With these directions given to us, we decided to head down to the field, we were told a skatepark was there as well, which excited me.

The walk took about 15 minutes, we even got into a housing estate area, which since being in Leeds none of us have seen before. Passed a shop which had really good fast food deals and a pub. It was weird that this area was just over the bridge but the chances are 98% of the people from Clarence Dock would never have been here as it's te opposite direction from Uni and looks as though nothing but factories would be there.

Eventually, we found the field, but not the skatepark. Was a really good field though. Also it was a nice clear night and we began looking at the stars. Tim somehow knew the names of every single one. He never ceases to amaze me, he seems to know EVERYTHING. Yet if you met him would never gather that.

On the way back we got some food from the shop was passed as the offer was too good, £2 for 2 pieces of chicken and chips for example.
Only problem was it was about -2 outside and we had to walk home in this.
Made it worse that my hands were covered in ketchup.
By the time we got back to Clarence Dock my hands were so numb I was actually unable to take my card and keys out of my pocket to open the door, Ben had to do it for us.
I got into his kitchen and wrapped my hands up warm as they were throbbing like mad.

Whilst we ate we were talking about how things have changed since we first got to Uni and stuff that has happened on nights out. Turns out Tim can't seem to remember any of them as he always gets really drunk. During November however people haven't done much due to work load catching up on them. However amongst all of this, the past few days have been a huge downer for everyone.
It's weird how one small moment can change everything so dramatically.
The news now is that Scott has had an operation on his brain and things seem to be going Ok for the time being, but the next 72 hours are really crucial.
Personally I am quite worried for him. The last person I knew that had all the same injuries as Scott after an accident ended up dying :|
Really hope he recovers or it could ruin the first year for all of us or at the very least cause some sort of tension or break in the group.
As Tim described it, it has been a Bad November.

We left Ben's kitchen as he had work t do and we all had to get to bed (well, I say that, Tim went to play football manager and I left to watch Heroes).

Am finally up to episode 10, which means I am up to date. No longer have to worry about accidentally reading spoilers. Just hope this is all worth risking being tired tomorrow when I gotta get up for a 9am lecture.
Urgh.

Piece out, or Peace out.
Which ever you prefer.

Saturday 29 November 2008

Day 71 - Getting there...

Right, times I have been drunk since Uni. The army social, the Taekwondo Otley run and the E block Otley run. Each time was a lot messier than the previous.
Yet for some strange reason, none of those times did I wake up with a hangover and on two of those ocassions, I ended up doing some sort of vigorous exercise the next day. Weird eh ?
I managed to get up about 12:45pm and have breakfast whilst talking to Mia who was quite ill despite being one of the only sober people of the night. Thinking back, despite the state I was in, I still remember everything that happened last night.
How one of the bouncers said we had to give him all our pens when we went into one of the pubs, promised to give them back to us when we left yet when we did refused at first in doing so, for no reason at all :S Think he just wanted to be a prick about it, as bouncers generally tend to over-react and/or attempt to spoil people's nights.
Not to mention how at the Hyde Park Pub the bouncer made Mike turn his shirt inside out because of the stuff that was written on it,

"Fuck you guys" (Mike says this a lot)
"Fuck off back to Canada"
"I like to do Mums"
"Piece of dick"
"I have a mangina"

Loads of stuff like that. Funny thing was, EVERYBODY has stuff written like that on their t-shirts, so not too sure why he singled out Mike out of all 17 of us.

Though one thing I forgot to write in the last blog was how on the walk home Adam said that he thought I was the type of guy who can easily pull girls in clubs and that he got that impression from just looking at me :S How wrong he was.
Maybe that's why he thought we had a chance with those two 23 year olds last night haha.

Despite Scott's accident, it was a really good night.


Eventually I got ready and went to training. The first part of the session was fitness but tbh was not that hard at all compared to other stuff we have done. Not sure if I am in better shape than I was before or if it was generally easier, but eitherway it was a nice feeling. Did some pattern work too which went quite well and then some sparring. At first was with an old woman called Liz. She is alright, but being old, is quite slow so is in it more for the fitness side of things I am guessing and yes, I made sure to make it light sparring.

I also watched a sparring match between Jerermy and one of the instructors who has 25 years experience. Now Jerermy is really good, one of the best there, and because of this, the insructor (Andy) wasn't holding back when sparring against him. Really made me see how much of a difference there was in the two as it's te first time I have seen Jeremry get pushed back in a sparring match and actually look as though he was losing. The spar ended when Andy threw a punch so hard it actually sent Jerermy's head flying backwards. It looked pretty painful tbh.

I stood by people hoping someone else would spar with me and somehow Anthony could sense that haha.
As soon as it began, I could actually feel the tension in the air change from sparring with Liz to Anthony who is a black belt and also one of the best in the class. It was really good to spar with him and I learned a lot about when to attack, defend, counter etc.

The session was over and I decided to make my way back home and get some food from the reducded to clear section in Tescos. I met Mike in there who was doing some shopping too who didn't know about the clearing section. Everyone should, it's a life saver. Though this evening I was disappointed. 3 baps for 34p and 4 muffins that were there, but didn't say the price. Original was 89p so eitherway it shouldn't be bad.
Though when I went to pay for them they cost £1.24 :@
I dunno what the hell happened, they should have been out of date today and were more expensive than the ones that weren't. From now on, even though I know how annoying it is from always being asked at JD Sports for it, I am going to ask staff to price check things that have no label on them.

I spent my evening there after watching 2 episodes of Heroes, eating and doing my report which I have now managed to finish. Daniel phoned me asking if I was going to the Sunday sparring tomorrow but I declined as I don't think I am ready for it yet, as he had to too, as he has loads of work to do and hasn't been able to turn up to training once this week. Bad times.

Also I swapped my family guy DVDs for John's Lord of the rings DVDs, so on bored days in I might actually watch them all. Maybe..
I still have Scarface and Fight Club that I bought specifally for Uni and still haven't watched those. But I got another 3 years here to worry about that :)
Think I might watch some more Heroes now...

Friday 28 November 2008

Day 70 - Luck, joy, failure and tragedy..

Even if this isn't the longest blog I have ever written, I think it is definitely the day in which the most has happened. To the point I have to split it into 3 different sections.

Part 1 - luck.

Well, the first part of my day was both good and bad luck. On the walk to Uni I noticed there were loads of policemen basically surrounding the royal armories and blocking certain sections off. Considering some of th queen's jewels are in there I am guessing there was some huge meeting. As I walked further on I noticed a policeman look at me, point and shout, "yooooooooooooou".
At first I thought he was just joking about pointing to every random person that walked passed, but as I got closer noticed it was actually one of my Taekwondo instructors. (Side note: All the Taekwondo instructors are policemen).
He basically said there is a meeting with some really important people, hence all the police around. They even had underwater guards too. A bit over the top I think, but it does mean that there would basically be no police around Leeds in the day.

Next I had to walk all the way into headingly to try and find a post office so I could send my details back to my parents, only problem was that I left it too late in the morning to do, didn't write down my directions well, got lost and couldn't find it in the end. I managed to see where another post office is however on otley road so might go there tomorrow or sometime in the day.
Next came the chemistry practical which I wasn't looking forward to tbh as I didn't know what I was meant to be doing. In the queue to get in I overheard a guy saying how he had done loads at A level so should be fine (weird, as this module is meant to be for people who DIDN'T do it at A level. Unless they failed and decided to do it, as Ben got a D in chemistry at A level but doesn't have to still do it, oh well).
Anyway, we got into the class and were told we had to work in pairs. I didn't know a single person in the class apart from John, who one, already had someone else to work with and also wasn't that good either, and it's not a good idea having two clueless people in the same group.
So I was just there at a desk on my own, the same guy that said he had done chemistry A level said he had nobody to work with either and told me to work with him.
YES!
Btw, his name was Charlie.
Basically, he did the entire thing himself. I couldn't really follow it but he whizzed through it to the point we finished about 40 minutes before the end of the practical. However, with our first measurements when working out standard deviation and % error, it turned out our % error was actually 0%. Which scientifically is almost impossible. So in a way, this was a good thing, as it showed we (he) knew what he was doing, but also a bad thing, as it looked as though we didn't actually do the practical and just wrote in any old answer.
However we spoke to one of moderators and they said that although it was strange for that to happen as long as we showed our working we should be fine.
Needless to say, this practical was a lot easier than the last one in which it was basically a stressful 2 hour guess session.

Left to go the Union to get money out but was stopped by a very enthusiastic netball player who spoke very fast and loud and left about a 1cm gap between her and your face. Basically she got me and this other guy called Juel to put in 50p and try and get in as many netballs into the basket as possible. Despite being black, I only got in 7. But hey, was for a good cause. Pointless statement, but afterwards Juel said he is a 3rd year doing Maths and economics and is yet another person to think I look older than a 1st year. Also he was Asian.

I left early and went to go get my huge T-shirt from Primark after accidentally walking into TK Maxx thinking it was Primark :s
Don't ask.
Only cost £2! Was tempted by some other things I saw in there too, but had to stay focussed.
I decided this Otley run wouldn't be fun without something bizzare, so decided to buy a strawhat too, kinda like the travelling hat.
Got back to the flat and put everything down but on my way to the kitchen opened the door to find John there.

Part 2 - Joy

John was feeling a lot better now than he was the night I met him which was good. Turns out the doctors didn't find out what was wrong with him (nor did they even find out what blood type he was) but he recieved negative for everything.
We were talking in the kitchen for about 2 hours probably, just about life in general, what things were like when he was back at Charles Morris and how I am invited to his wedding in 2 years and that his fianceé (yep, you read right, at the age of 18, and she is 17) is coming down at 10pm to visit him.
Not to mention he said he has spent more weekends home than he has in Leeds which must be REALLY expensive considering he is from Essex too.
But the highlight of the whole "bonding session" was when he showed me his party trick. He knows the forumla for how to solve a rubix cube. No, he isn't Chinese. But he did say once you know it is actually really easy. He tried to teach me but I didn't really learn a thing so won't even bother to explain what it was you're meant to do to solve it. In a way, he kinda reminded me of Adam, in that Adam tried to teach me how to juggle in his time here (which I never did learn how to do) and now John is teaching me how to solve a rubix cube (but can also juggle as well).
Some other funny things I found out about him is that his name is actually John Johnson and that he is the youngest of 8 children....hehehe.
Anyway, the Otley run was coming up quick and people were getting ready, Mia phoned me saying everyone was in the kitchen next door so we went there and decided to get our T-shirts all drawn on.
I decided to write "I know what you're thinking, and yes, the rumours are true about the size of our cocks" on the back of mine. Though when I put it on realised that it was actually off to the side a bit so difficult to read :(
After a lot of cocks and rude messages were drawn on people's backs we set off for our first destination, the Woodies.

By the time we got there it was about 6:30pm, the Otley run consists of 16 pubs, and you are meant to start at about 3pm or 4pm, there was no way we were gonna finish this. After the 2nd pub, I was declared the official time leader and was in charge of when people had to leave pubs, after which I did some complex calculations at to each time we could spend at a pub (which were all wrong and corrected by Harry).
At about the 6th pub I was pretty gone and lucky I was let in by the bouncer as I actually stumbled in a bit and had a woman say "Whoa, easy there" to me as she walked out. How embarrassing.
By the time we got to the Library I was adviced by Mia (yes, Mia the one who gets drunk a lot) that I had had enough and should switch to water. She was very right. I was way too drunk to be the leader anymore. Also I was quite hungry and ended up having 2 cheese burgers from Mamheeds, only £1.20 each.
Was so good I got out money and got 2 more, guy even said "Again"? when I came in the 2nd time.

At this point the group split, there was still the Packhorse and the Eldon to go, but most of us wanted to skip straight to the old bar at the Union. Everyone apart from Scott and Tim went to the Old Bar, in which I met a girl called Becky from Geology who I gave my number (she asked for it) and she told me about a Geology Otley run tomorrow.
Sorry, but there is no way I can do two in a row. It'd be too expensive and also quite dangerous (for me anyway). At this point we wondered where Tim and Scott were, we text them and got a text later saying they were at A and E :|
More about this later.

Part 3 - Failure

So by now, everyone was pretty gone apart from Laura, Mia and Harry, depsite them drinking roughly the same amount as everyone else. As we left, some people wanted to go Gatecrasher while others wanted to go home. I wanted to go to Gatecrasher, BUT, as soon as the taxi left with all the people going home, I was informed by Mia and Robyn that it was £10 to get in :|
No way am I paying that!
Still though, I walked with them anyway in the thought that I would go home.
I stopped at a cash machine and had a random chat with some guy from sussex and two girls in the queue were huggin everyone. They came up to me and one of Tim's friends called Adam and asked us if we wanted to snuggle. Of course, we said yes.
Thinking we were going to get some, we walked with them to their destination which was fab café. Only £2 entry.
Although upon getting in some guy they knew kept talking to them and basically, cock blocking. Also the two girls went to the toilet together and didn't come back for ages and when we did spot them, took ages to find them again.
At this point we began to wonder if we were wasting our time as we sat with them whilst they were texting other boys. Oh, and one more thing, they were both about 23 although they didn't look it, more about 18.
They went to the toilet again and Adam and I saw 3 other girls that tbh were not good looking at all but this place was a complete cock fest so we had no choice.
As soon as we walked down to talk to them, they went outside for a fag. We did the old "Got a spare fag" line, even though neither of us smoked, and it worked quite well despite them calling us pikey.
So we stood there talking to them for about 5 minutes smoking fags we clearly did not want (or in my case know how to smoke properly).
They went inside again and we followed but decided t find the two original girls we came in with. No luck, so went back to the 3 bad ones. Were outside with them again smoking and basically regretting the decision,

"Wes, why are we doing this, we aren't gonna get anything from them".
"Yeah I know, it's not worth the lung cancer".
"Let's go back inside, they're not even nice".
"Not even by my standards".

So we went back inside and found those two girls again who spent about 10 minutes taking pictures of each other, by this point we KNEW we were wasting our time and were gonna get shit all. Adam even said that they were just playing us which they denied (tbh they didn't really do anything as we were the ones that followed them around all the time and they didn't ask us for anything either).
They went up to the bar again (quite strange, they bought pints of beer the first time they went up, girls drinking pints looks weird I think) and said they'd be back in another 20 minutes.
Tough shit.
Adam and I had had enough and left.
Come to think of it, I paid for Adam to get in as he had no money, and I'll probably never see him again. Dammit, what a waste of £4.
We walked back to Clarence Dock, me without my hat as Mia had it and Adam without his coat as one of Robyn's friends took it.
On the way back we met another guy from Clarence Dock who basically moaned the entire way back about how he hates Leeds and hates Clarence Dock as he doesn't think it's social as you don't get to know anyone else outside your block. But tbh, you wake up, go to Uni, get back and go to your room, if not will go out. It's unlikely for about 610 people who never knew each other at the start of the year to be able to mix all that much apart from people they live with.
Though he did make some fair points about it all, he was actually quite annoying.



Part 4 - Tragedy

Getting sick of reading yet ? You should be.
So, Adam and I walked into the kitchen but the mood seemed pretty weird. Laura asked me if I knew about Scott, which I didn't.
It was about the A and E text, he got hit by a car :|
We were told he had a bruised lung and fractured neck.
For a while everyone was debating as to whether this was all that serious or not. As for me, I have no idea whether it is something you can recover from perfectly or something that will cause you pain the rest of your life.
However the mood soon lightened when people began to joke about how Scott would rather be paralysed for life and still see Man City games than to die etc.
About an hour later Tim walked in looking pretty rough to say the least as if he had mentally broken down.
Turns out Scott actually had a fractured spine and skull, bleeding in his brain and a collasped lung :(
Not to mention that Tim of all people if definitely the worse off to witness it, as he said he actally heard the crack and has been down quite lately what with Ash leaving and just Uni in general. You could see he was holding back tears, tbh all of us were. It was a sad mood.
Once again though, it soon lightened up with some drunken antics as Harry was now wasted and him and Mike had an arguemt about how you pronounce the word humus.

It got late and I went back to my room to sleep when I heard loads of noise outside. Ben and Harry were in just their boxers getting their pubes out to people in E block and their asses out too. Yes, they were shit faced. Guess this was there way of letting off steam. Mike was there too, but fully clothed and pissing himself with laughter. Adam and Tim soon joined them and they went off for a "naked" run around Clarence Dock.
Laura came back to her room and we began laughing about it in the corridor when we heard them come up to the window again. It was Ben but he looked quite serious,

"Guys, Harry is getting beating up by some guy"!!
We ran out as fast as we could to find Harry having an argument with some 6 foot 5 guy. I wasn't there to witness it. But basically they were just going for a run, this guy came out of nowhere and began to chase Ben. They thought it was a joke till he hit Ben round the face. Harry tried to calm him down but got pushed into a bush and got a huge cut down his leg. When we all went out to try and sort it out Ben also got headbutted, so it made for a huge arguement there after.

As we were outside trying to calm Ben and Harry down some guy from the 3rd floor threw a bottle at us, yes, actually aiming for us. The same annoying guy that plays music really loud in the night. Laura was pretty annoyed about it but tbh I didn't really care about that atm considering Scott is in A and E and Harry and Ben were debating as to whether to gather people to beat the guy up who started on them.
This whole thing lasted about 2 hours in which people were phoning subwardens who said they couldn't do anything about it now and will get the police down the next day etc. It was a lot of drama basically.
In the end, what could have been the best night out actually ended up being one of if not possibly the worst night out. All I can hope for now is that Scott recovers soon....

Thursday 27 November 2008

Day 69 - Going down in History

So, despite Ben saying the night before that he needed help in his Geophysics and our plan to do it together in the morning, he didn't turn up to the morning lecture :S
I heard a girl behind me saying how she is really worried about the exams as she struggles and that she looked at a Geophysics past paper and didn't understand a thing. I guess I am in the same boat as her really. Not to mention my key to success during A level was 80% based on knowing how to structure and predict what questions would be on the test paper and memorising the mark scheme but that might not work this time round.
Once the lecture was over me, Tom, Greg, Darryl and John (guy that looked like Seth Rogan) went to a cluster to finish this once and for all. Turns out I had actually done my graph wrong according to Greg and it was too late to change it as I had already uploaded it and wasn't prepared to scan it in again. Oh well, I have already got 66% on this without the last two questions which are worth 22 marks in all, so even with that I am happy.
Also I decided to look at a Geophysics past paper whilst I was there. Tbh..it wasn't actually as hard as I thought it'd be. The first secton you answer 1 of 5 questions. I figured you'd have to memorise all the formulas for amplitude, magnitude, Bouguer's anomaly etc. But most of the questions were simple describing ones. My favorite being "write an essay with the title how to measure large earthquakes".
If it's writing and describing then that's my strong point. The 2nd section I actually understood a few of the questions such as explaining what a Geoid is and to draw and label a seismograph, seismogram and seismometer.
Takes a little off my mind now knowing how the exam paper is structured.

I then got a text from Ben asking if I could help him with the assignment when I was free. (Had he turned up for the morning lecture it would have made it a lot easier tbh). I had maths for 2 hours so met him after that. The maths lecture wasn't too bad really, just did more stuff on logs and exponentional functions and made quite a large dent in my coursework in the maths help class.

I then left and met Ben in a computer cluster and went through the assignment with him.
A few minutes later, Laura and Natalie walked in. (Side note: This is the first time I have actually seen Laura at Uni. Up until now I have seen almost everyone else from E block there, but I always find it weird to see people from Clarence Dock there).
Whilst helping Ben with his assignment and reading a Zelda comic I found online I took a look at Natalie's computer.
She is doing a degree in Nutrition, and tbh, I thought all it would contain is a small bit of Biology about the human body and some stuff about how much energy food contains.
Man was I wrong. It took me a while to work out why on her screen there were physics equations. Turns out she even has to learn the physics of why some food is tensile and strong and others are able to bend :S
Not sure why, but it looked just about as hard as Geophysics. I guess there really is no such thing as an "easy" course.
After Ben left to see his personal tutor (who might bring up his poor attendance) and Louise arrived to see Natalie and Laura opening with the line,

"Urgh, I hate my course and I hate my life"
(Despite her facebook status being set THAT day as Louise is happy)

I decided to leave.
I originally planned on going to buy my huge white T-shirt for the Otley run the next day, but it was cold outside and I decided to put on my other hoody. Couldn't find it in my bag though. Walked back to the maths help centre but it wasn't in there. Walked back out annoyed that it was my favorite hoody and that my gloves were still in the pocket. Checked my bag once again.
Yep.
Was buried right at the bottom.
Bit embarrassing.

So on I walked, as I was crossing the road a man turned round and asked me if I knew where Kirkgate market was. Had I not taken the journey yesterday to find the megabus I wouldn't have known, I told him I knew and that I was heading in that direction anyway.
This actually made to be one of the most interesting walks home I have had.
Turns out he was a teacher at Manchester, his subject, History. Not sure if it was at a college or Uni that he taught at though. I told him I was doing Geology and he said that was one of his favorite subjects as it was the only science he passed.
We also got onto the talk of Sociology when I was talking about lecture hours, he stated how people that take it tend not to be all that bright and that it's not really a real subject. (Quite funny as Mia takes joint honours psychology and sociology and got AAA at A level despite going to a crap college that didn't even teach maths or any science subjects).

Finally after a nice chat we arrived at Kirkgate market, he said he wouldn't have been able to have found it without my help and shook my hand :)
I wonder if I will ever see him again...

Anyway, I got home and realised I had forgotten to buy my T-shirt due to walking home with that man but didn't mind as I can easily get it tomorrow.
I was doing my report for about 2 or 3 hours, determined not to take a nap despite being tired. Finally it got to about 6pm and I needed a break. I heard a lot of voices in the kitchen so decided to go there.
Laura, Mia and Charlotte were in there after just having dinner. This is the first time that Charlotte has actually seemed to be somewhat sociable though :S
Usually she only used to talk to us if she needed something or if you happened to be in the kitchen at the same time as her, in which case it was more forced conversation. This time it was different, as if she had been there from the start, laughing and making jokes. Probably doesn't mean much just me saying it but if you lived here and expirenced it you'd notice the change too.

The 3 of them were talking about how much they have cut down on drink since getting here. Had I been healthy at the start of Uni I have no idea how much I would have drank having never been a heavy drinker to begin with. Turns out that Charlotte used to have about half a bottle of vodka a night during the first 3 weeks and that Laura and Mia have basically halved what they used to drink.
Also, although I should have noticed since I live with them, they said there has never been a week in which they haven't been out less than twice. As for me personally, if it weren't for Taekwondo, would probably only ever go out about once every two weeks. But considering Mia is on £45 a week and Laura on £20 a week, I have no idea how they manage to afford that.

The 3 were also talking about how their Mums all think they are still virgins and that in their minds have never even kissed a boy haha. How naive. Think Ben and I are the only virgins in E block actually. During a drinking game of truth or dare it was revealed that (I won't state their names in case they one day read this) Ms.X had slept with 6 different people in her life, Ms. Y had slept with 7 and Ms. Z had slept with 10 different people.
Shocking figures I must say.
After an hour in the kitchen we all went our seperate ways. Mia and I did work, Laura went to visit Natalie and Charlotte said she is just going to lay in bed.

I was doing my report for about 20 minutes when I heard a knock on the door. It was John. I went to shake his hand but he said he didn't want to as he was really ill and didn't want me to catch it.
He wasn't joking either.
We only spoke for about 3 minutes after which he said he felt so bad he had to go and lay down again, he had to lean against the wall the entire time he was speaking to me and needed a blood test tomorrow to see what it is he has got.
Bad times.
However, he is also from Essex, a place beginning with B, sounded like Bishopsmouth, but anyway it is near Harlow and Colchester which is the same place Keith Oak lives, so he must be good. In addition to this he also takes Biology, meaning we got two Biologists in the flat now.

Anyway, he went to bed and I carried on with my report. It got to 8pm and I could take no more, I had to nap. Only intended two hours so was quite shocked when I woke up to find it was midnight. I had two options, carry on sleeping and wake up at about 6am the next day. Or wake up now and carry on the report till early morning, I chose the latter.

It needs to be about 1,500 words and atm I got 1,300. If anything I will end up going over and have to delete stuff as this report isn't hard, just time consuming.
That's how I spent my evening basically. Doing my report whilst watching stuff on youtube and talking on facebook.

It is now 4:30am and I plan to be up at about 9:30am to go and find a post office to send some of my Uni details back to my parents. All in all, I'd say it was quite a productive day.

Oh, and for those that have been following this, you might have noticed I changed my background and font colours. This was due to the fact that Steve and Dean had the exact same colours and format as me and I didn't want people to get bored of seeing it.

It's likely to be a long one tomorrow too, the E block Otley run. So get a cup of tea before reading.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

Day 68 - And the next E blocker is...John

Right, as I had no reason to be in early today nor did I need a shower (I did, but I try not to have one daily or I have to be up too early, plus is saves water) I got up about 7:45am. Thought I'd have a quick breakfast then be off to Uni. However things soon became a huge rush, I checked online what room I was in for my first lecture though for some reason the Uni site didn't seem to want to work, so instead I had to text Darryl and ask. Got to the kitchen Put my milk in the microwave and set it for 2 minutes, got out my coco pops and noticed the box felt a bit light. Looked inside.
Shit. I remembered I had run out the night before. It was 8am now and I had nothing else to eat for breakfast. I power walked to tescos and bought some frosties, scoffed them down then power walked to Uni with slight indigestion.
Darryl had replied that we were in lecture theatre 23, although upon walking through the doors I saw my lecturer anyway meaning I could have just followed him and wasted 10p on a text :(

Once again, didn't understand a thing that he talked about but my mind was set on what I was going to do after this lecture. I was way too tired to attend Dynamic Earth and didn't feel like falling asleep in another lecture so after Geophysics decided to go home and catch up on sleep I missed as I was up till about 4am the night before. I figured with this free time I might as well see where it is that I actually need to catch the megabus from.

After wondering around Leeds city centre for about 20 minutes taking the longest route home possible, I couldn't find it. I probably should have brought a map. Finally I decided to call it a day and head home.
But wait, that building,

"Kirkgate bulding"

I was looking for Kirkgate road. I was on the right track (or in this case road).
I carried on walking down and actually saw a megabus there already. So, after all that time, it turns out the pick up point is basically 50 metres from the usual route I take to Uni. In a way I am quite lucky that I live at Clarence Dock as it'll mean a really short walk there come 14th December (remember that I will be taking my bags, laptop, saxophone and a load of other heavy stuff home).

I got back and began to do some work, but, like most days, I got tired, so took a long nap. Not sure how long I was sleeping for, but got woken up by Tom D phoning me asking about the Geophysics assignment. We went through it together on the phone on and off for about an hour. I had already submitted it once and got 15% on it, only got 2 questions right. On my 2nd submission after talking to Tom I got 46%. I only had one more attempt left.

It got late and also to that time again, TAEKWONDO. Had some food so I'd have my energy for the night and left. The first part of the lesson I was in pain. For some reason I wouldn't stop sweating and my shoulders were aching like mad, which is bad considering about 90% of my patterns involve having my arm up in the air and/or punching.
But it got better as the session went on. I have finally learned everything I need to do for my yellow tag belt and even got told that it is actually 70% attitude, 20% movement and 10% technique. Meaning you can really really mess up but as long as you keep your attitude up you should pass.
I am pretty confident as I know all my patterns really well atm.
Chon Ji, 4 directional punching and 4 directional kicking.

The 2nd part of the lesson involved being in groups of 2 and working on self defense. I was with Anthony who is black belt. I worked on my technique of getting out of a head lock which is basically grab their wrist to stop them hitting you then quickly stand up to throw them off balance. It's easier to show than explain.

Next we were in groups of 4 in which someone had to hit focus mits, get attacked by either a headlock or strangle, get out of it, punch again, get another of those attacks, punch again etc.

I was with Anthony, a guy I can't remember his name, and a girl who I recently found out that lives at Clarence Dock that has large breasts but not really very attractive.
That also went well, I even heard her say "He's really good" when it got to my turn :S
I'm really not, I am just a lot more confident with what I do now.

Finally, sparring. I went up against James first who is green belt. Never sparred with him before. Basically he had to throw either punches or kicks and I had to block then counter. Think I might have suprised him a bit as he expected me to be worse than I was as he said "You've actually got good reflexes".

Not sure how to take that.
Eitherway, sparring is awesome. Not sure whether to go to a Sunday sparring session though.

1. I have no idea where it is, it's in Armley but I don't know how to get there.
2. I have been told it is a "mission" to get to.
3. I am only white belt, this sparring session will have really good people from boxing, kickboxing, taekwondo, jujitsu and karate so I will get shredded most likely.

Not to mention I wanna attend the jam session at the old bar afterwards, so we'll see.
Got changed and went Library pub only to find out they were not serving food anymore. It was only 8:31pm yet they are meant to stop at 9pm. Srsly, WTF!?

So instead we went to the old bar and got chips. Wasn't too bad apart from the 30 or drunken girls all dressed up in rave doing different chants. I kinda found it funny at first but James was getting pretty pissed off with them all to say the least. We felt sorry for the people that worked there that had to deal with this every night.
Was quite funny though how we were saying all the girls looked quite butch and we said they were probably the rugby or volleyball club (turns out it was darts :S ).


Got to 9:30pm and I left. Saw that everyone was in the bar so I joined them only to have Ben say he hasn't started his Geophysics and doesn't understand a single question and needs my help for tomorrow (suprise suprise).
Also the new guy moved in today. His name is John. Haven't met/seen him yet but apparently he is from Essex and seems like a show-off (according to Mia, Ben said he thinks he is a bit of a prick haha).

Well, I'll soon meet him.
It got to 10pm and I decided I'd do some work. However got distracted by Darryl talking to me on facebook about the practical and also Heather who I just had a general chat with. She said she got a bit drunk a few nights ago and can't remember much of what happened after which I made up a story about how some drunken person walked into our flat and flipped our fridge.
I carried it on for about 20 minutes saying how if she had no evidence that it wasn't her I would press charges, thinking she was going along with it till she said,

"Wes, it wasn't me. I wouldn't have the strength to lift a fridge. Still though, it's pretty random someone managed to come in and do that".

Yes.


She believed me.

I even told the story in a way to make it obvious I was making it up as a joke, guess she doesn't know me well enough to understand my "online joke tone".

So, did some more Geophysics and plan to meet up with some other Geologists tomorrow to sort it all out.
God knows why I have stayed up till 2:46am tonight though. I'm just gonna be really tired tomorrow, sleep in the day then not be able to sleep at night. Ah man, the vicious circle continues....

Tuesday 25 November 2008

Day 67 - C U Next Tuesday (of 2009)

Couldn't sleep for shit last night. Past few days I keep going to bed too late and sleeping in the evening which has really messed up my sleeping patterns. Ended up being about 4am and I was wide awake but managed to get at least 2 hours sleep I'd say.
Decided to wake up at 7:10am which was way too early but I needed a shower. Still had loads of time to spare though. I thought I would go and say bye to Adam properly with the free time I had. Wasn't sure if he was asleep or not so put my head to his door. I didn't hear any movement. He SHOULD have been awake as he was leaving at 9am (it was 8am at this point) and he had already been on facebook, although when I knocked on the door nobody answered :S
I figured he might have gone back to sleep, so instead left him a letter on his door about us making a jazz band when he comes back next year and left for Uni with Ben.
The I.T. Lesson was quite annoying tbh. First of all, it took me about 4 attempts to print off my coursework because the printer couldn't seem to cope with CorelDraw. Also as I had 100 free credits and Darryl had none he used some of mine too to print off his work.
Then when doing the real assignment in class it took me about 7 or so attempts to do a really simple task of finding a place on a map and scaling it down to 1:10,000. Even when I printed it off it was wrong as I forgot to align it to the middle but didn't care at that point.

We all left with about 40 minutes of the lesson left as you can go once you do the actual assignment part and decided to get the lift together, 4 of us.

*Whilst in lift*
Ben H "I don't like lifts, I just remembered I am claustrophobic"
Me "I just remembered I am homophobic".

It was a small lift with 4 guys all tightly packed in it. We got to the ground floor and a girl was waiting to get in. As I stepped out I heard Darryl whisper "run" to me.
Yep, that's right. He had pulled the old "press every button on the lift" gag on the girl. Though Ben was the last out so she will think it's him.

After going to the canteen, getting and reading the free student paper (they're really good, and I should know. I was a paperboy for over 6 years) Darryl and I left for our next practical.
Was the final map drawing class but wasn't as bad as all the others. No, I still had no clue what I was doing, only one person on the table did, so we all copied him. But was still a bit of a laugh.
I'm wondering what is going to happen to me when the exam comes round though.

Darryl went home but I still had another class at 3pm so decided to waste some time. Had lunch and read the paper when I saw Lauren walk pass. As there was 90 minutes till my next class I decided that at the very least it'd be more interesting to spend that with another person. She said she didn't know where any clusters were so I took her to one which is always quite empty but at the same time is booked out quite a lot too. So it's risky, we were literally there about 5 minutes when what happens ?
Fire alarm.

Not sure why it keeps on happening in computer clusters tbh, if it was a drill, then it'd cover a larger area. Not to mention Leeds Uni is so huge it's unlikely they would bother with so many fire drills as they'd be nothing more than an annoyance.
Lauren and I left but waited outside with some other people for ages for the alarm to go off. About 3 people were still in the cluster doing their work just ignoring the alarm which I found funny. As I was looking at a poster of other nearby clusters a girl told me that there would be a booked class in this one in 10 minutes.
Great, why didn't she tell us that before making us wait ages to go back in.

Instead went to the library cluster and did some revision on logarithm functions and inverse functions. All that stuff. Weird I have neverdone logs before and don't find them too hard yet did factorising and quadratic equations at GCSE, were alright at them yet can't seem to solve even the simplest of them here :S
Also I looked up times and places for the megabus as I will be going home soon. Luckily the pick up place is about 5 minutes from Clarence Dock, if I got the right address and it'll only cost me £10 which is nothing.

3pm came and I left for my practical. Was really easy but a little boring and depressing seeing as I was sitting on a table basically on my own whilst everyone else seemed to be laughing away with friends they had made. Man, why didn't I make friends in the first few weeks ? Well, I did, but not many.

Finished it all in about an hour and left to get back to Clarence Dock. Did some washing up and took a nap till 7pm when I had to be at the bar for a meeting. Will from the green rep meeting way back told me they were having one so we decided to turn up. Lucky I text him asking where it was as I thought it was still at the Uni and would have waited there for 2 hours for nothing.
Tbh Will and I didn't do much in the meeting as the main (only) theme was for the Xmas ball they were having in the bar. Gotta hand it to the girls organising it though. They work REALLY hard.
I mean on a CV it'd look like nothing, but the amount they have had to do, handle budgets, decide how much to pay people, what decorations to use, health and safety, it is A LOT of work. Kudos to them all.

The only contribution I made at the end was that there should be a bin specifically for the plastic cups we are using so that they can be recycled at the end which I was told was actually a good idea :)

Meeting lasted an hour or so and everyone left leaving Will and I wondering what to do. These situations have occured a lot at Uni, and my solution is always the same.

"Wanna play pool"?

Luckily Will was just as bad (maybe even worse) than me at pool so it was a funny yet embarrassing game. It ended with him hitting the black ball in making me winner. YES!

He left to do an essay and I left to have dinner on my own :(

Evening after that was normal. Mia and Laura had gone to Asda with Ben H to get shopping. Feck knows what Charlotte was doing but I think I could hear her on the phone. Just did some more revision and talked to people on facebook/msn. Went on mousebreaker again and played some more online games. Couldn't find the mining one but no matter. I booked my tickets for home too. Will be leaving on the 14th December at 1pm. Was not sure when to do this for at first as I didn't know if I was going to Simon's party or not, but eitherway there SHOULD be something for me to do over the weekend. So, 14th December I'll be back :)

Also I found boss nigger on youtube so will most likely watch that tomorrow as I don't plan on attending Dynamic Earth. I already looked through the powerpoint and it's just so dull that a lecture on it would make me fall asleep.


Speaking of sleep, it's about 2am now and I got a lecture at 9am. So guess I should be logging off right about................................now.

Monday 24 November 2008

Day 66 - Mousebreaker.com

Tbh today wasn't interesting at all. Had my first lecture. Had nothing during the day till 2pm so went home. Took a nap, did the weekly assignment in 5 minutes and got 90%. Went to geological maps lecture. Was the last one of this semester meaning for the next two weeks on Monday I will only have a 9am lecture then can go home.
Also had to go find student services to get a letter to prove I am a student so I can re-new my priv ticket.
After locating myself on the Uni map, I went to the place that said student services only to see a sign saying

"Your new student services centre, opening January 2009"

Not a big help really.

Once again it took me ages to find and in the end it was the exact same place I had been to twice before already for my accommodation mix-up. Bought some scrubbing brushes for the kitchen as I can never seem to get my knifes and forks clean as well as some bleach and oust for my room as there is a constant weird smell in it.
Also I bought some permenant marker pens for the Otley run we are doing on Friday so that we can write on our t-shirts.

Did some chemistry revision, took a really long nap. No idea what the rest of E block did but judging by Lauren's facebook status I cam guessing some of them played pictionary. Man I wish I could have played.
Anyway, seeing as it was Adam's last night and he was in his room on his own (as was I), I decided to spend the night with him. Yes, I know that sounds gay.

We ended up playing a load of online games on a site called mousebreaker.com.
My favorite was one where you are a mall guard and gotta shoot shoplifters with arrows. Also there is another one where you mine for minerals which Adam was playing fot quite a while. I would have had a go but by the end of it all it was 1:45am (neither of us realised how late it had gotten. I only thought it was about 11pm).

I also got a text from Ben H asking if I could meet him outside tomorrow as he has no idea where our Tuesday computer classes are held. Yes, that's right, 9 weeks and he has never once turned up to a class which is a core module and stupidly is the only module which is 100% coursework meaning he has already missed out on about 15% or so of his mark.
Tbh I'm suprised he actually wants to bother coming in tomorrow as every week he has said he definitely would but never did. Ah well.

I said to Adam I'd say bye properly to him tomorrow as he is leaving at about 9am. It's gonna be really different without him here. For one thing, it's gonna be a lot more boring for me having nobody else to really talk to in the flat anymore. But the new person might not be as bad as Charlotte (in that he might actually appear more than once a week and say more than just hello). If it IS a he that is.
Well, I'm just going on a bit now so that this entry is a little longer than needs be.

It's unlikely anything good will be in here the next few days until Friday I think. So don't get your hopes up.

Sunday 23 November 2008

Day 65 - Black noodle

So, I woke up at 11am but stayed in bed till about 2pm as I saw no real reason to get up today. My original plan was to do all my work by about 6pm or so then head off down to the old bar to play some jazz. Short version. That didn't happen.
Spent some time during the day doing my report but got distracted talking to sister and Anneka on msn.
Guess it doesn't help that I keep on thinking that I have loads of time to do this report so do very little each time.
I then saw Tim outside kicking a football around, well, I actually saw him kick it over the fence and opened my window to laugh at him. But decided to help him get it back by using the walking cane I bought for Halloween. Tim was actually quite good at football considering that years ago he tore all the ligaments in his leg and now walks with a permament limp, which he has named "gammy" as in his gammy leg.
After having a little kick about for 30 minutes or so, Tim managed to once again kick it over the gate and basically into the river. Had it not been for pieces of wood by the bank he never would have got it back.
Also had the branch he was holding onto have snapped off then he would have falling straight into the river and probably have died.
His washing was done so we decided to call it a day. I came back in and had something to eat whilst talking to Mia about our time at Uni. Turns out we both felt the same way. We liked it here, but we missed having our old friends. So far, Mia, Tim and I are the only people that have never been home since Uni and/or had friends from home come visit us. Well, Mike too, but he lives in Canada so is kind of out of his way.
Also Adam was packing his things today which he said was making him pretty depressed as he really didn't want to go but has no choice but to :(

Had an interesting conversation with Matt on msn too about a photo he had tagged me in on facebook. Wasn't actually me, was just a black guy in a photo with loads of chinese people which Matt said they might have adopted.



Wes the Loiner says:
Could definitely be a TV show
matt. says:
think that would make a pretty good sitcom actually



Yes, that is the conversation from msn. We both said that at literally the same time. We really think too much alike and I'm not sure yet as to whether that is a good thing. I said I think the name of the show, if it were real should be called Chinese Chicken (chicken = black stereotype), though Matt's one was a lot more catchy,
"Black Noodle"

During the day in the kitchen We were also talking about living arrangments for next year. Seems as though the girls seem really up tight about who they are going to live with while none of the boys could care less. We could even sort it out on the actual day or arrival at the new houses. Tbh, I don't mind who I live with, but given the choice, would want to be in the same flat as Tim. Main reason, we both like Ben 10.
Good reason ?
Nope, not at all.

Evening soon set in and everyone was watching top gear upstairs so I joined them. I met Tim at the door and he told me he has a hamster now :O
We aren't allowed pets but one of the girls in his flat has two of them but one is Tim's. They were holding them and they looked pretty cute. But I just can't hold hamsters or small animals. I did have a hamster once, but never once did I pick it up. My brother tried to pick his up once and it bit him, he was crying so much that it put me off ever wanting to do it for life. Not to mention I am quite heavy handed and if I did get bitten would probably tense my hand as a reflex action and crush it just like Lenny from Of Mice and Men.

Not much else happened that evening. Stayed in the flat upstairs till late. Got a phone call from Mum saying how things were back home. Lauren was typing her assignment and when she left the room I typed "bellend" into it in big letters but Mia deleted it saying that she might not notice and send it off :S

It was impossible not to notice and even if she didn't I wouldn't have actually let her send it off.
We watched Anchorman too. Scott went to get the film from his room the same time Mike walked into the kitchen,

"Guys, I warn you now that Scott will repeat every single line in the film".

We wanted to see if Mike was right so made a tally. By the end of the film Scott had repeated 28 different quotes from the film or said them before they had even occured. Everytime he did, we'd burst out laughing, though he thought we were laughing at the film.
Also I met the new person that lives in Ash's flat, Harry.
He seems like a pretty nice guy though I've been told he's quite posh as he is from Exeter and plays Lacrosse. He also takes Maths. Though I'd add that in.

Soooooooo, it got to about 12:45am, Anchorman had finished and we all decided to go to bed. Got to my flat and realised I didn't have my keys so had to go back upstairs to get them. Got back to my room and realised something else was missing. My wallet.
I hadn't left Clarence Dock all day and knew I had it on my when we were watching the film as I bought a chocolate before hand, so maybe I dropped it outside.
I walked out looking for it but found nothing.
Then the next problem occured. I had no way of getting back into the flat as my card key was in my wallet, which was lost :|

This meant I had to ring the bells of the flats in E block for someone to let me in. Luckily Ben M was up and let me in and began asking me if I could make sure Ben H actually goes into Uni tomorrow as he has missed 2 weeks straight of it and had gone out tonight too meaning he probably won't be in tomorrow either. I said I'd phone him in the morning but we both knew there was not much either of us could do. We all doubt that he is going to pass the first year now. Even Ben H himself said he came to Uni only for freshers week :S
As soon as Ben M and I stopped talking I heard Scott from upstairs open his door. Turns out my wallet had dropped out in there.
What a relief.
Losing your wallet is one of the worst things that can happen to you at Uni. No student card so no library access. No debit card, so no money or food. No I.D. so no getting into clubs. No card key so no getting in and out of anywhere, it sucks. 2nd to that is losing your phone.

I don't have chemistry tomorrow which means I can finally for the first time come home between lectures at Uni. YES!

Wonder if I will actually spend the time wisely though. Probably not. But hey, I'm just a student after all...^_^

Saturday 22 November 2008

Day 64 - State the obvious 50 times

As predicted the night before, I ended up waking up at about 1:45pm, leaving just enough time to make training. Well, not really, I was actually kinda late, but still.
On the way there however I got a phone call from Daniel asking if the training was actually on as there was a volleyball match going on in the sports hall. I wasn't sure but told him it was definitely on, hoping it actually was.
I arrived at the sports centre to see a lot of the Taekwondo club standing by reception, no need to guess as to what the problem was here.
Basically the staff said they had sent an e-mail to people saying that this date had been booked (which they clearly hadn't) which meant we had no where to train for today. I'd like to remind readers that this is about the 5th time something like this has happened. Well, 6 if you include the fact they moved us to another hall to train despite there never being anyone in the hall we used to be in on Wednesdays anyway.
After some arguing with a staff member that was useless he walked off saying there was nothing he could do and that all halls were booked. However Kyle looked in sports hall 3 and noticed nobody was there.
Screw it we all thought. We'll use that hall till the people who booked it turn up.
Lucky for us, they never did.
So the training session went pretty smoothly. It was basically fitness then patterns then the last part we all got a little excited as we found some mats and were doing self-defense. Such as how to get out of head locks, choke holds and someone on top of you punching you. All went well except when it was my turn to be the attacker and get Claire in a head lock she moved too fast and I accidentally grabbed her boob instead of her head. Hopefully she didn't notice though.

After training a few of us decided to go the Old bar was Rob was on his way down and this would be the last time we see him for about a year or so. He turned up with two of his friends who at first were really quiet but after about an hour we somehow got into playing a game in which we go round in a circle naming all 50 states of America.
After watching Super size me I could add a few more to my arsnel, or so I thought.
Bit embarrassing that I thought Detroit was a state.
In the end we only got to 43 and couldn't think of the rest.


Hmm...


*Goes on wikipedia*


So, the ones that we DIDN'T get were

Maryland
Maine
New Hampshire
Montana
West Virginia
Minnesota and Idaho.

Thank YOU wikipedia. I can now name all 50 states of America haha. Bring on the pub quiz!

Once this was done, we then went onto naming every single European country. For some reason I found this A LOT harder to do and was the first person out, even though a lot of the obvious ones hadn't been said (for some reason we got to about 40 and nobody had said switzerland yet).
We WERE going to do African countries next, but it was already about 7pm at this point and we all had to get home. So, I said bye to Rob and hope to seem him again in Summer, in which I also hope to be a kick ass Taekwondo master and Geologist.

The walk home was lonely and freezing as always. On arrival however I heard jazz coming from Adam's room. Had another short chill out session listening to more jazz and he gave some to me via his iPod. Dammit why does HE of all people have to be leaving!!? Things in flat 1.2 are gonna be crap with him gone, what with Laura being really friendly with the other girls, Charlotte never being in (I think she has gone home for the weekend because she hasn't said or done anything about the bowl, the new one is still on the table).

I started my report today too, didn't get far, but being an A level English student this should be easy. Got hungry so made some chocolate custard in which you just add hot water. It was so disgusting. I think it is the first time since being at Uni I have actually thrown food away (aside from apples I had that were going mouldy). I was mixing it for ages but it still tasted of powder. Urgh! Wish I hadn't bought 3 packets of the powdered stuff! As I was making it however Magda knocked on the kitchen window, I thought it was just to say hi but she asked me to open it and if I could let her out of Clarence Dock using my card as she had lost hers. After I had done so I realised that this was actually the first time I had heard Magda speak (by that I mean say more than hello) since the 2 months we have been here and it sounds as though she has a some what caribbean accent.

(I don't think I have ever talked about Magda yet but she is also in E block on the 2nd floor but is even rarer to see than a Tauros in the safari zone. She seems to never leave her room and is quite shy, so for me, this was somewhat of a treat).

Spent the rest of the night doing nothing really, sitting on facebook, reading manga. Hoping something would happen. Did some revision on logarithms too and was gonna start trigonometry but cba atm. Will do it tommorrow I hope.
Oh yeah, there should be a gig at the old bar tommorrow.
We will see when the time comes as to whether I can be bothered to go to it or not.


End.

Friday 21 November 2008

Day 63 - Torn together

Today was kinda strange. Seems as though a lot happened but not sure how much is worth talking about.
Well, my day began with me getting up early to start my chemistry tutorial, only to find that my laptop was unable to download the word documents. So I walked to Uni and hour early to do it. Only problem then however was that the wrong tutorial questions had been uploaded!
I had woken up early for nothing.
Luckily this was the one tutorial you didn't HAVE to start before class as you could easily finish in the hour session.
However the morning wasn't a total waste. I got an e-mail saying that I was one of the first 1,500 students to complete an online survey about alcohol and recieved free print credit. YES!
After posting this as my facebook status I got a comment from Haydn who in the end convinced me to print off a sign saying "Quiet please - Genius at work", which I did.
Right, my day was over now. I made a trip to TK Maxx to buy Mia a new bowl to replace the one I smashed. It took me ages to find the bowl section and I couldn't find one that looked a thing like the one I broke so just bought a blue one instead.
Had a nice floral pattern around it.
Made my way back to Clarence Dock and put the sign up on my door then took a nap for a few hours.
Woke up with just enough time for me to go to Taekwondo.
There weren't that many people at this session for some reason. Though as grading is coming up soon we worked only on patterns today, I am hoping to go in and get my yellow tag belt after December, though would have prefered to go straight to yellow belt as I can already do all the patterns (or so I say).

Originally we planned to go to the German market after training but as Simon was only in a t-shirt and it was freezing and due to other complications we just ended up going the Library again.
Had a really good time there actually. Had a game of pool with Andy, lost, but not that badly considering how good he is.
Also got a few racist jokes which I found quite funny,

"Who ordered the veggie burger"?
"Oh, me"
"Why do you get a veggie burger"?
"I don't really like red meat, if I do eat it, it's only white meat"
"Gutted Wes"!

I found it funny.
There were a few more but I can't remember them. I spoke to Simon most of the night about race in general and the way in which people can use it to gain an advantage. He told me a story of when he was about 10 and someone pushed infront of him in the lunch queue. Simon told the teacher and the boy said "He called me a paki" and Simon got into trouble for it haha. Man, pulling out the race card, works everytime (most of the time anyway).

Ended up staying at the Library for ages and was about half 10 by the time I got home. I began speaking to Anneka on msn for the first time in months as ever since Uni we seem to have lost contact. Turns out JV still hasn't changed his ways.
Everyone seemed to be going out tonight, I was going to tag along too, I was really up for it. I heard someone in the kitchen, thought it might have been Laura or Mia and was gonna ask them what was happening but turned out to be Adam.
He wasn't doing anything really so we had a jam session instead.
Probably one of the best we have ever had (and probably last one too).
When it got to about midnight we began just listening to a load of pink floyd and getting lost in the music while Adam was eating jam and chocolate spread straight out of the jar (the medication he takes makes him hungry apparently).

At about 2:30am somehow over the music Adam said he could hear someone outside. It was Tim. He was just sitting there talking to himself :S
He said he wasn't really up for going out so went outside for a fag but we invited him into Adam's room as he'd freeze otherwise. Had an indepth convo with him saying he thinks he might leave Uni as it's not what he thought it'd be and that things don't seem to be going well for him. I really don't want him to though. It'd be such a waste. Ash has already left (which is one of the reasons Tim wants to go too as they were really close). Adam is leaving. Tim can't go too. I can't be bothered with anymore new people. I still haven't even met the new person that moved into Ash's room yet.

Anyway, it got to about 3am and Mia got back from Halo though was annoyed that one of her friends she was meeting was hours late. We were all in the kitchen having a chat about houses next year and who wants to live were.
Atm I am not TOO concerned who I live with. So long as they are energy efficient. The one thing that will annoy me is if people leave lights on, TV on, water on and when the bill comes make it be split equally. Not to mention if they leave doors or windows open when nobody is in. For now it's not bad, we are in our own rooms not paying for energy so it's their own problem.
However everyone is aware that tension could be caused depending on who lives with who due to some of the things that have gone on during the past (yes, all of them involved drunken regrets).
It also made me think long and hard though. These people I am living with. Are they REALLY my friends, or do I only talk to them because I have no other choice. I really think it is the latter. I get up, go to Uni then come back and spend the rest of the time in my room talking to people on msn or facebook. Since being here, Adam is the closest thing in Clarence Dock I have made that I can consider a friend. By that I mean someone I can easily talk to and hang out with. And as luck has it, he is leaving! Tim was also concerned about this too. He, as well as Mia, miss having best friends that they can talk to. So do I. It seems that most of the girls have gotten really close (Laura said the friends she has made here are better friends than the ones she used to have). However the rest of us probably don't feel as though we fit in all that much. And thinking about it hard, not all of us do.

Just have to wait and see what happens this time next year. Guess I shouldn't be complaining though that this is happening as I doubt I'd have been able to find a place to live on my own. I apologised to Mia for breaking her bowl too, at least I thought it was her's,

"Mia, sorry about your bowl, I bought you a new one"
"That's not my bowl, it's Charlotte's"
"Oh shit".

Why didn't she tell me ? If I hadn't said anything she would have just let me think it was her's all along and it would have looked bad if I never said anything to Charlotte about it. However, I did manage to tape her bowl back together as a sort of light hearted joke, but still, seeing as I don't really know Charlotte that well it's gonna be hard for me to say sorry to her.

That was my day and night basically. It seemed like a lot more happened. Well, it did, just the conversations we were all having. But it all got a bit personal really and tbh is no fun to read at all.

Guess I'll leave it there.
Tune in tommorow where I'll probably talk about squad training then how I did shit all after it.

Thursday 20 November 2008

Day 62 - They call him Boss..Boss Nigger..

So, no morning lecture meaning I could sleep in till my Maths one. I didn't really enjoy my bowl of coco pops this morning. Not sure why, it's my favorite cereal :S

Lecture wasn't too bad, but that's only because I have been working on logarithms way before this lecture as I knew I wouldn't have a clue going into a lecture starting something new. The examples class wasn't too bad either. Turns out there are more people there that struggle with maths than I thought as questions that I thought were quite "easy" were being asked quite a lot. This might just be a repeat of college after all. Biology for example. Started the year not getting anything higher than a U (seriously), until one day I worked my black ass off for a test and got 100% in it.
From that one boost of confidence in myself to make me realise that it was possible I was able to attain a B at A level for it. This might be the same.

Got home and began to ponder as to what I should do next but got distracted by Heather (she is a girl that lives on floor 3) talking to me on facebook asking how I found Puro as she was there too.
We talked for about 2 hours or so about clubs, music and even doing drugs. Like most new people I talk to, she too was suprised how I am actually capable of having real conversations on facebook unlike most people.
What can I say, I love to be descriptive about things.
I am writing a blog about every single day of my Uni life which could easily just as well be summed up as.

"Got up, had breakfast, went to lecture, facebook, dinner, sleep".

No fun in that is there.
Also Mike showed me a youtube vid that Rich S sent him ages ago about a film called Boss Nigger.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bTIklFsMjjU

I really reallly wanna see it. Rich S has seen it, but don't know if he has it, but we organised that when I get back we should all watch it.
I ended up falling asleep for about 4 hours during the evening and didn't do much else when I got up.
However the water will be turned off tommorrow due to works around Leeds (this is about the 3rd time this week this has happened). So I decided to fill up some bottles with water from tonight.
However, on top of our fridge there are about 10 or so bottles, some empty, some filled with vodka. Pretty silly place to put them I guess. But there was an empty lemonade bottle right behind them all.
Without thinking, I picked it up and accidentally knocked one of the glass bottles. This caused loads of them to fall and crash on the kitchen drying surface so loudly that it caused Laura to come out of her to see what the noise was. Also I ended up smashing one of Mia's bowls in the process when a bottle fell on it.
But don't worry, the vodka is still in one piece.

Felt kinda guilty so left her a note saying I was sorry and that I'd buy her a new bowl, though Laura said she doubts she (Laura) has already broken one of her (Mia's) plates. Not to mention since being here Mia has smashed quite a few of her things too.

Well, guess today wasn't as indepth as yesterday but no matter.
Am kinda getting into the hang of things now and with each passing day am looking forward to coming home and seeing family and friends once again :)

Day 61 - Good Times

Today I was quite lucky in that instead of having 2 Geophysics lectures at 9am, Wednesday and Thursday, it was changed to just having a 2 hour session in our extra slot from 2 till 4pm.
This meant a lay in, a rare thing for me.
Also last week our Dynamic Earth teacher said he is not bothering with a register anymore as it never gets round to everyone. Ha, big mistake.
That means I have no reason to turn up anymore!
I rwad through the lecture the night before, was just about the destruction of oceanic crust, simple. Subduction, mantle melts, rises, caused Island arcs, if saturated in water, the melt is faster. No earthquakes occur after 700km depth as things get too ductile.
So, I woke up about 1pm or something and just went to the Geophysics lecture which was on magnestism. Made some sense. Still strange how magnestism and gravity have made more sense than refraction and reflections when in theory the process of the first two should be a lot more straight forward.
Also this lecture was pretty funny, I thought.
Remember the guy that always asks stupid questions ?
"What's the difference between a rock and a stone"?

Yep, well, he's done it again!
I'll call him Mr. M for now.

It began when the lecturer turned down the lights but it got too dark so nobody could see what they were doing, when he asked if he should make them brighter Mr. M shouted
"No don't, I like the dark"!
Though what made me laugh with the quick and witty remark behind me when someone said under their breath,
"Of course you'd like the dark, you're a goth"

(Mr. M is basically, he is Asian and has hair down to his hips and has never ever worn anything aside from black. Even has a long black leather jacket and boots as well as a black top hat. In conclusion, living proof that people who take Geology are generally quite strange).

Half way through the lecture, the lecturer was talking about how when rocks get heated the magnetism aligns in a direction and when cooled down, that magnetism is stored in the rock, Mr. M then said,

"Is that how come you can work out the alignment of ancient buildings then"?

Maybe it is to me since I take Geology, but this seemed a pretty obvious thing to ask, even so, the lecturer said,

"Yes, you're completely right, and I'm suprised by that".

Of course this caused a little laughter from the class as it was only afterwards he said it that he realised it could have sounded as much of an insult as it could a compliment, in which Mr. M replied,

"What's so strange about me being right, have some faith sir"!!

Yep, shouted that out, infront of about 120 people. Could hear loads of comments like,

"This guy is such a queer" etc.

Well, all that probably didn't seem funny at all, but I sure as hell found it hilarious. Maybe I have a crap sense of humour ?

Hmm...what happened next...

Well, can't seem to remember, so must have just walked home.
HOWEVER!

On the way back, walking past the parkinson steps, some chinese woman stepped infront of Tom and I with her arms out, thought she was giving us leaflets, but no, something even stranger.

Glasses.
Yes, she was handing out glasses.
Not prescription though, they were UV protection, but they basically look like normal glasses.
I was so happy by this I wore them all the way home, not knowing how stupid I actually looked in them (found this out when I got home and looked in the mirror).

Decided to go tesco on the way back to get some essentials, though as usual, bought too much and tried to fit it all into one bag, I knew it'd rip so stood there trying to put one bag into another one, it wasn't working. Luckily a girl came over and asked if I needed a hand. Well, her exact words were,
"I'll help you with that if you help me with mine".
So she held the bag open while I placed my other one in and I did the same for her.
The kindness of strangers eh.

Got back to Clarence Dock, sat about for about an hour then went to Taekwondo.
As grading is coming up soon, we spent most of today working on patterns, seems as though in the class only about 3 of us beginners (including me) can actually do them.
One girl I'm not even sure as to why she takes Taekwondo as she is so timid I could never imagine her going up infront of everyone doing her patterns let alone sparring.

However, when we did spar, it seemed different from last time. It was a lot harder. Was it that people were trying more this time round ?
Last time I didn't really seem to struggle all that much, this time however I realised that despite everything, there is still a huge gap till I get good.
Especially when I went up against Simon who is a red tag belt (one away from black belt).
For about 60% of the fight he would basically nudge his fist against my head to remind me of my guard. The weird thing was, in my mind, I DID think I was guarding :S
What was worse too is that he is about 6 foot 2, seeing as I can't kick high, and it is nothing below the waist, one of my kicks landed straight to his balls. I actually felt them on my feet (which is weird as I had pads on my feet).
Though he said it wasn't bad as I had good control, in that it was a light kick.

*For those that don't know, Taekwondo is a semi-contact light sparring sport in which you can actually get disqualified if you knock the other person out. Hence why it is sometimes regarded as the "pussy" martial art*.

After that we went to the Library pub but I didn't really feel like getting any food. However, this may have been Rob's last day :(
It's strange, of all the people there, I should dislike him the most. He makes racist jokes (though they are more for comical than offensive purposes) and is the only person to actually make fun of how bad I am at Taekwondo as when I went to spar with him once he commented,

"Well well, it's the guy who never steps in"

Though maybe all these comments were out of humour too. Eitherway, I like him. And am sad he is leaving. He is going to live in the Alps for a few months. No joke, not sure why either. But he was one of the best in the club, definitely the most flexiable as he had been doing gymnastics and stretching from about the age of 7.

Well, we all ended up staying till about 9:45pm which was later than intended. Got a cheeseburger and subway on the way back which was both a good and bad idea.

Good idea the "pre-drinking night" was in our kitchen tonight, so I wouldn't have been able to make dinner. But bad, as as soon as I ate,I went out to Puro, forgot to take money out and ended up only having about £4 for the night.

I was lucky though. Was only £2 entry. Got to the bar drinks were real cheap. However they didn't accept card at the till and told me to use the club ATM.
Problem ?
It wasn't even switched on!!!!
So I could only buy one drink.

Though later in the night I met Tom (this is ANOTHER Tom, one I met during Freshers week but haven't seen in weeks. He also lives at Clarence Dock).

Basically, he asked what I was drinking, and after only telling him once I had no money left, he bought me all my drinks for the rest of the night :D
The only reason he stopped was because I said I'd be sick if I had anymore (really I felt guilty for the amount he had spent on me).
Literally as soon as I had finished one, he'd give me another, as if he was trying to get my drunk. Well, he was..
"We can't have the coolest looking person here not getting drunk" (Actual quote).

By the end of the night I had 3 snakebites, VK apple, carlsberg and half a vodka coke (Heff knocked it out of my hand when he was dancing:( )

Also he asked if I was looking for a girl tonight as he'd hook me up. That wasn't my original plan but I agreed anyway.

The rest of the night was real good, Tom buying me drinks, good music (Sir Duke even came on!) and each time there was a group of girls Tom would nudge me closer to them hehe. Near the end of the night however as the drink was starting to set in Tom and his buds were dancing round a bunch of girls so I joined them.
Two of them were dancing with each other infront of me but the one with her back to me began edging into me. I thought I was in the way so stepped back, but she kept doing it.
What's wrong with her I thought, I looked past her and noticed, there was nobody infront of her anymore, she was trying to dance with ME.
She even grabbed my arms and put them around her waist.
Gotta say, this is the first time something like this has ever happened, Tom sir, you had done it.
Despite the fact she looked pretty fucked out her face anyway.
Later on as we were dancing and ended up kissing she asked "If I was really going for it".
Wasn't too sure what she meant by that but after that she seemed to lose interest and go back to her friends.
Ah well, no she's gone black she probably won't be going back, EVER!
As we were about to leave it turned out Mia and Laura had lost their keys which meant it was lucky I was still there. After about 20 minutes of looking, it turned out Mia's had been picked up by a woman cleaning up and that Louise actually had Laura's keys all along (not sure why she didn't tell us this as she was even helping us look for them).

All three of them were fucked and were saying they wanted pizza, though Mia was sure she knew where she was going, I didn't really trust her in the state she was in and told her the pizza place was in the opposite direction (really I tricking them into walking back to Clarence Dock as I was cold and tired).
The entire way there Mia was swearing at me and calling me a liar as she was well aware of what I was doing, while I just had fun saying how the more she moans the less likely she is to get any pizza and that in the morning she wouldn't remember any of this anyway.
She was certain she would and asked me to tell her a sentence that she could repeat the next day,

"A ninja must never show his true feelings".
That was the sentence. She got it completely wrong after only 5 seconds within me telling her, not looking good for tommorrow.
Was too tired to stay in a kitchen that night so just went straight to bed after having some pints of water as I wasn't really up for a morning hangover.

To sum it up, Good times....

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Day 60 - Ice liebe die Deutsch markt!

Yeah that's right, I speak German. Or at least could, can't remember if I am meant to use die, der, dein or deine but who cares. I think most people can recognise that the title is meant to read,
"I love the German market".

Let's begin.
2 hour computer session, actually finished my coraldraw. Did a shit ass job of it but for now I am only aiming to pass, not excel!

*Holds for applause*

Told that to a group of computer nerds, they found it so great they told me (in binary code) that I could be their new leader, however I told them (in Jive talk) that I had too many responsibilites. Felt bad for letting them down.
Next had the map drawing class, was a bit confusing but I think I got the basics down. At least I hope I do anyway.
In the two hour break I actually planned to go to sleep. After reading the Leeds studnet paper, some boy wrote in on the best places to sleep at Leeds Uni, number 1was the Edward Boyle library, level 12.
Yes, you have to walk up all those flights, but it is worth it.
There are basically a load of cubical like working areas in which nobody can see you unless they walk up right behind you. If you choose one which is down a small flight of stairs then NOBODY can see you. I have slept there once, but in a bad position, so hurt my neck afterwards.
Anyway, I'm going off the boring point I was trying to make before hand.
I first went to a computer cluster doing some work. And at the exact same time (ok, there might have been a 0.01 second gap) two people spoke to me on facebook chat.
Liz, from Taekwondo who asked about my status...

"What do you mean the Otley run is on Wikipedia"?
*I began to reply*
"Oh never mind, found it"
"See you tommorow".

Glad I could help Liz.

The 2nd person was Kirsty.

"Wes, random question, PJ and I were talking about people who used to work at JD and had an arguement about you, are you Jamaican"?

=/

Man, is this what couples do these days when they're not doing it.
Basically for the next 25 minutes I had a talk with her as to my origin as her bf PJ thought I was half Nigerian (the dreadlocks man, it's a dead giveaway)!
She then asked how I was finding Uni in which I replied that I miss having people to cook and clean for me, which brought us onto a session in which we made fun of Jen and her lack of domestic skills in not being able to turn on an iron or using half a bottle of fairy liquid to wash a few plates, bless her.

Then suddenly, a fire alarm.
I always find them funny.
Whenever they go off, people sit there to see if anyone else gets up, if one person moves, someone else will follow. However most of the time people think it's just a drill so don't move. In a way it defeats the whole point of fire drills.
Some Asian guy was saying that it happened yesterday and that it wasn't actually a fire drill, it just happens when someone unplugs a computer :S
Eitherway, I didn't wanna risk it so left.
Looked for another computer around the Uni for a few minutes but found none so returned to the fire drill cluster to finish what I was doing till it got to 3pm.
Was a mineral practical, dead easy.

On the walk home I decided to take the back way, I remembered a girl at Taekwondo saying the german market was really good as you could buy marshmellows "this" big
(Basically the size of her head).

So I took a look around.
Have to say, I was REALLY impressed.
The food there looked so good and there were loads of souveniers I could have bought too, my favorite being a rasta blowing out smoke which was actually an incense model.
They even had a mineral shop, being a Geologist, this excited me a lot.
Well, I wasn't sure how long this market was going to be up, so might as well take advantage. First I bought this Gemran cake thing for about 70p (bargain)! Weird that it was the German market but the person behind the stall was Korean though.
I wasn't sure of the texture of the cake, so bit into it and held it tight.
Big mistake.
It had a marshmellow like centre (Hmm...maybe that's what the girl was talking about), which meant the whole thing basically exploded all over my hands when I bit into it :(

I walked pass another shop selling apple pancakes. 3 for £2:50 with free apple sauce, NICE!!
Bought some of those, again, was a Korean guy behind the store.
Finally as I was about to set off home, saw ANOTHER food store selling fried potatoes, mushrooms and burgers. It's probably the nicest thing I have ever smelt, just had to get some. Times like this I am glad that (for now) I can afford to spend money like this.
It was really really nice, the mushrooms had garlic sauce on them too. First time in a while I have felt really well fed.

So, that was the highlight of my evening. In the end I spent approximately £8:70 on German food.
But it was worth it, even if the mushrooms, potatoes and burger made me feel a little ill afterwards to the point I could feel the globules of fat creeping around my intestines, I didn't care. If I die from a heart attack now, I know I will have died happy.

Not much happened when I got home really.
Did some work but was really tired so slept from about 6:30pm till about 11:30pm, guess I won't be getting to sleep tonight easily.
Then decided to do more work on graphs and functions and get a head start for my next maths lecture on logarithms.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJ5z_ZP1kU&NR=1

Ended up watching this at about 1am.
Hopefully I'll understand it fully pretty soon though.
It's 2:23am now, I don't have to be in till 2pm tommorrow (there is no register now for Dynamic Earth so am not going) so might watch a DVD I bought at the DVD sale.
Super size me for £3.
After watching this I'll probably be super tired too.

Till next time, Auf Wiedersehen und haben eine sichere Heimreise

P.S. Google langauge tools rocks!

Day 59 - Diagnosis Puro

(Warning. I think this is the longest blog I have written so far, mainly because something happened in the day, evening, night and morning when I got back. So be warned).

Alright! Another start to the week, another great day to be alive!
Things kicked off with a shit easy mineralogy lecture on sedimentary rocks. The weekly assignment was only 5 questions, I managed to do them in 5 minutes even before the lecturer showed up :S
Wish all classes could be as easy as this one (though two weeks in a row it has been Darryl who has reminded me about these assignments when he logs onto facebook the night it is due and asks me how I did on it).
Rest of the day was pretty normal, not worth writing about.
At 3:20pm however I had another doctor appointment.
Was about 20 minutes late but no matter.
For the very first time since this damn illness, it seemed like a Doctor actually cared about me.
Back in Upminster when I kept going back to them the first thing the doctor said was,
"Why did you drink alcohol in the first place, it's bad for kids"!


I drank because it was my damn 18th Birthday!
Stupid question really.
Even after that, whenever I would describe my symptoms, they'd just give me the same thing over and over and say the same thing "Excess stomach acid", "Indigestion" "Eat more fruits".
Well, the 3rd one is true for me, I do need to eat more. But c'mon, there can't STILL be excess stomach acid after about 5 months or so.
Screw 'em.
Even the last doctor I visited in Leeds didn't really seem to know what she was doing.

"So where does it hurt"?
"Around here, in the solar plexis area"
"The Solar what"?

=/

So maybe that isn't the correct medical term for it (it's sternum), but I thought that most people, especially a doctor would know what and where the solar plexis was.
What was even stranger was that she said she wanted to test me for a bug and that she would have to take me off lansoporale for two weeks to do this. Yet for some reason, prescribed me more lansoparole :S
It was in a different box, but they all do the same thing though.
Anyway, this doctor was really nice. She sat and listened to everything I said, had a really soft sympathetic voice, actually felt around my stomach to see where it hurt (which the other doctor didn't do).
And, finally, for the first god damn time, she actually suggested that I could have a hiatus hernia!
I've already said this to other doctors but none of them seem to take notice (or act as though they don't know what it is).
But anyway, I need my results from Upminster to be sent up then have another appointment to see what needs to be done.
I'm hoping to just stay on the PPI drugs till it goes away (if it ever does) as the only other option is surgery, and there is no way I wanna have that!
Eitherway, all I can do now is wait and see what happens.

Got home and met Tim who said some people would be going to the Dock bar as we haven't been in weeks (seriously, you'd think having a bar on campus where drink prices are really low that it'd always be pretty busy, but at most there are only like 10 people in there every evening).
So after attempting to do some work and falling asleep, some of the guys went to the bar and had a few games of pool. I ended up playing against Ben "The Man" Mann, who plays pool A LOT, and is really good. Somehow I didn't get beaten all that badly though. Only had two of my balls left over.
We then got into teams.
Mike and I Vs Tim and Ben. Neither team had the advantage really.
The game basically went like this:
Tim broke, nothing went in. I hit the balls randomly and get in a red. Ben gets in a few. Mike gets in a few. Tim gets in nothing. I hit the white ball in. Some balls go in on the next few shots. I hit the white ball in again. Got to Mike's go. He hit two balls in the middle, they both went into the far pockets at exactely the same time. I went crazy.
In the end Mike and I lost however, only had one more ball to hit in before black, but it was a really good game.
Decided to have dinner as I was drinking on am empty stomach and met Maeve in the kitchen making soup for her and Adam.
Seeing as this was Monday, and she is leaving Tuesday, it may be the last time I see her. (Even though she plans to attend Leeds Uni next year AND wants to stay in Clarence Dock).
Seems as though she is bad luck though as the first few days she was with us loads of things went wrong with our kitchen. Everything was fine for a few weeks. She got back and the handle on our oven just broke off when Mia tried to open it :S

Eitherway that night we all decided to go out to a club called puro because it was 80p entry and 80p drinks. I was up for that!
In the kitchen we were all talking about where we are living next year. The "girlie girls" in the flat all said they wanted to live together. But in the end, we all concluded that none of us wanted to live in a flat with all boys and/or all girls.
We decided that a 12 person flat should do it (if we can find one, think 12 would be too many though).
Strange enough, despite Ben being the person to bring it up, he is actually the least likely to even pass the first year AND his parents were gonna buy him his own place in Leeds for next year :S
Also Mike found a website in which we could all go to Ireland for 4 days for £2!
We thought there must be some sort of catch (and there might be, like international fares), but still, it was a good offer.
After about an hour of arguing as to who could do what day we decided to leave it till January. I want to go though.
After this however, things began to get annoying.
It was about 11pm and hardly anyone was ready. Also it turned out that it was only 80p entry BEFORE 11pm, after that it was £2.50!
Still though, I thought I might as well go. For about 45 minutes Scott and I were basically shouting at everyone to hurry the f**k up and leave or we weren't going to get in but everyone was too slow and drunk to care.
Eventually we got people to leave by using the mass flow trick (If enough people walk out the room to go somewhere then naturally other people will follow them).

Even when we got outside though people were still trundling along at below average pace, so Scott, Laura and I walked on ahead. We got there and thigns got worse as Scott read the sign

"Mondays and Wednesdays! 80p before 11pm. £2:50 before midnight. £4 after midnight"
SHIT!

It was 11:57pm at this point, had we not had to wait for everyone we could have actually got in for 80p!
Whilst waiting in the queue eventually everyone caught up with us (almost everyone, Mia was so smashed she could barely walk and fell over in the middle of the road, luckily Lewis managed to pick her up quick enough before any cars could come).
Whilst in the queue Scott and I were getting annoyed that we'd have to pay £4 to go in while at the same time having to hold Mia up as she couldn't stand on her own. Not really suprising seeing as she always drinks Gin and orange back at the flat and is only about 5,4 so gets bad pretty easily.
We all got in, but Scott and Mia were at the back. Whilst walking in I saw one of the bouncers talking to them both. Looks like they weren't gonna get in.

After a few minutes dancing we got a text from Scott saying the bouncer told them to go for a walk for a few minutes then come back as he knew something was up with Mia.
So, I danced the night away happily. Out of the corner of my eye though I saw someone and did a double take. It was like it was out of a film, he did the EXACT same thing. We both stood there for about 5 seconds staring at each other, both thinking the same thing,

"Is that really him"?
Yes, it was.
TOM RICHARDS!

Like a couple of gays, we both ran up to each other hugging and screaming.
The night wasn't too bad after that really. Mia and Scott never did come in. A bouncer with a bleeding head had some guy in a headlock shouting "MOVE"! As he dragged him through the crowd throwing him outside. Guessing he bottled him.
Music was good too, was 90s night so had some old cheesey classics. Got to about 2:30am, I had to be up and in for a 9am lecture and I noticed Sean was looking really tired too so I walked home with him.
As we walked out we saw some boy with a bleeding nose talking to a bouncer and the bouncer telling him he wasn't allowed back in. Not sure if a fight had began outside or in the club, but Sean and I both looked at each other and said the same thing,

"Let's get out of here".

Got back to Clarence Dock and heard Scott come out of his flat. I asked him what happened to him. He said that whilst on a walk he asked Mia if she wanted to go back or go home, she said home and considering he wasn't too up for going out after that, he went with her. So for the next hour or so, it was me, Scott and Tim sat in a kitchen. Was quite funny actually. Tim was saying he wanted University Challenge to be on as he was watching it with Scott once and knew about 2/3 of the questions :S
(Tim is one of those weird people who is really really smart yet does no work and his personality really doesn't comply with his intelligence. He got 4 As and already has a 1st for an essay he wrote. Crazy).

After that Tim and Scott began having a really complex talk about chemistry and atoms haha. Won't bother going into it though.
Got to bed about 3:30am, tommorow is gonna be a long day. *Sigh*.