Journal Entries
Life at uni
Posted Nov 10, 2003
Been at uni about 7 weeks now. It's an easy life 
The workload is pretty light. Only the occasional German homework, and 25 programming tasks to be done by the end of the year, which I've already finished. Also three assignments, one of which is done, and (the worst part) a written report to be done by 2 weeks from now.
The worst aspect of academic life at the moment is probably the lectures for "Professional Issues and Software Engineering", by a lecturer who seems like he doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't really like doing lectures. 
It's as if the whole module was just tacked on to give it BCS accreditation.
Outside of work, I'm spending almost all of my time on campus. It costs £1.90 to go to town by bus, which is a bit of a drag. It's cheaper by taxi if you can fill it. I eat in the refectory most days; the food there is of uniform quality, i.e. below average, lukewarm and overpriced. 
I'd cook my own food, but a) I can't be bothered to go shopping (see above) and b) I have to find something I can cook in the microwave. We've got no ovens, and hobs only every other floor (and not our floor).
I only eat twice a day, breakfast and dinner, in an attempt to reduce expenditure - no biggie, since I'm not really active enough to need lunch.
I go out once or twice a week, usually on a Monday to the Orange House 
(a pub with (rather crappy) pool tables), then to Flares (a 70s theme nightclub). 
Wednesday was karaoke night three times but seems to have disappeared now.
I've been to Time only once since Fresher's Week, for the Freshers Ball. It had a 'school disco' theme, so everyone bought clothes that looked vaguely like a school uniform, i.e. trousers/skirt, shirt/blouse and tie. I'd have worn my actual school uniform, but I didn't have it with me and it wouldn't have fitted anyway. It was good fun.
Well, my first lecture tomorrow is at 10am and it's now nearly 2am, so I have to get to bed 
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Latest reply: Nov 10, 2003
Fresher's Week, part 1
Posted Sep 25, 2003
I arrived at Hendrefoilan at about 5pm on Saturday, just as the Vice-Chancellor's tea was finishing. We got a free cuppa, Welsh cakes and bara brith 
and talked to one of the staff there for a couple of minutes (not the vice-chancellor himself, I think) before going off to the campus, where my hall is.
With help from my old folks, I got all my stuff up to my room on the fifth floor (there are ten floors in all, including the ground). Only two other people were in at this point. I said goodbye to my parents, and unpacked: clothes mostly, but plenty of kitchen utensils and some food. Got chatting with the other people on the floor, and the new people as they arrived. In the evening we went to a club in the Students' Union building called Diva's, which is very small but still very loud. Had a pint and a half of local bitter, enough to make me nice and sociable. 
The next day... there was nothing to do. We just stayed in waiting for new people to arrive. At one point we decided to take a campus tour. I didn't learn much, except that Singleton Abbey never was an abbey, that the university was founded by a copper tycoon, and that everything was planned around Fulton House, which is why the campus is quite sensibly arranged physically.
In the evening we went to the pub, a place on the second floor of Fulton House called JC's. I asked for a White Russian (vodka, Tia Maria, and milk) but they didn't have any milk. The barman thought it was supposed to be made with lemonade, which I thought was very odd, but I had one anyway. It tasted VERY strange - not like a White Russian at all. And it looked like a half of lager, which is not white at all, so why would one call it that? (It's supposed to be very pale brown.)
Monday was when the term officially started. First thing in the morning (well, just after breakfast anyway) the Vice-Chancellor made a speech to all the freshers living in halls. I don't remember what he said. Later I went to the CS dept. to pick up an 'enrolment pack', consisting of several forms, and a course handbook. It turns out I have only one option in modules, which is for German. I've decided to take the course in translation to English.
By Monday I was really feeling groggy 
having caught my mum's cold. (No, a real cold, NOT fresher's flu! 
) Despite this, I went with several people on my floor to a club in Swansea called Time, which (along with another club, Envy) was doing a special student night. It's a pretty big place, spread over two levels (though the dancefloor occupies only a fairly narrow strip on the bottom) and several bars. I didn't think masses of alcohol would be a good idea in my condition, so I got a bottle of fruit juice. Surprisingly, I eventually got on the dancefloor and started dancing, and even more surprisingly, I actually enjoyed it! Well, that is until my voice started getting hoarse from all the shouting 
Tuesday was enrolment day. Went to the CS and German departments to get signatures from the professor there. Then I joined a queue of about 50 (quite short at the time) to hand in the forms. The administrators had thoughtfully put up a tent to hold the queue - mainly in case it started raining. Didn't feel up to going out so I stayed in and watched Coyote Ugly with most of the girls and one other bloke. Rating: chick flick. 'Nuff said.
Wednesday: Fresher's Fair. Lots of stalls for the various societies run by the Student's Union. I joined the Pool Society (because it's cheap and a flatmate said he joined), the Christian Union (who also provided a free lunch ), the LAN Society (or something like that), and asked about the chess, Go, airsofting and re-enactment societies. Airsofting is like paintballing except they use lots of kinds of guns - pistols, rifles, SMGs, machine guns. The bullets apparently hurt less than paintballs, and the action is more realistic. And of course re-enactment involves dressing up as a Viking and hitting people hard with a blunt axe, which sounds great fun
That evening we attempted the Mumbles Mile. This is a long-established pubb crawl route in Mumbles, a town on the southeastern spur of the Gower peninsula. We only got as far as the third pub when we got caught up in a karaoke night. I was surprised at how good the acts were... until the boys from Floor 5 took the stage to sing Bohemian Rhapsody 
Looks like Karaoke Night will be a regular fixture.
Today (Thursday) I finally managed to get onto the computer system (as you can see) and post this. I haven't got my NUS card yet as I didn't send them a passport photo in time. Seems a lot of people didn't, so I'll have to wait until next week for it Also got a free burger from the Christian Union barbecue. They're very generous people in Swansea
More updates later in the week.
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Latest reply: Sep 25, 2003
# It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me... and I'm feeling tired
Posted Sep 19, 2003
Off to uni tomorrow. I'll be in part-catered halls in the first year - concrete towers. And thanks to my parents, I will be about the only Computer Science student without a computer in Fresher's Week. They think it'll induce me to stay indoors all day, never going out. Which it has done over the last few months 
but I really didn't have anything else to do here. I'm sure I'd go out most days even with it. The most annoying part of it is that communication with most of my existing friends is cut off, as I don't have a mobile phone yet.
Module selection is on Monday, and enrolment proper on Tuesday. I hope my student support stuff is sorted out by then - I applied rather late. 
Update tomorrow if possible, or Tuesday otherwise.
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Latest reply: Sep 19, 2003
# I am the music man, I come from Pompey way and I can play... the guitar
Posted Jun 23, 2003
After a few weeks of contemplation, I finally took the plunge and bought a guitar. 
It's just a £100 beginner's acoustic (painted blue), but it's much, much better than my mum's elderly 3/4 size guitar I'd tried to use before. With it I got a soft case, a tuner and a couple of picks.
I've found a website about music theory (http://www.torvund.net/guitar/Theory/01-introduction.asp) and have been working through it. I also found a tab for "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who, and found it surprisingly easy to play (though rather slowly). I knew all of one chord before; now I know seven (E, Em, G, D, C, A, Am, F). 
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Latest reply: Jun 23, 2003
# Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
Posted Jun 22, 2003
It's been a rather interesting week. As I said before, I have been working as a postman. It seems my role is to do the rounds of regular posties who aren't around for one reason or another.
I've done three different walks so far. The first two were rather complicated - mostly big estates and rabbit-warren-like closes and retirement homes. Fortunately I only did the worst of them once. Unfortunately that was my first day. 
I needed to finish by 1pm (having signed in at the depot at 6am) because everyone goes home soon after that. Needless to say, being a very confusing route, and being new to the job, I took longer. When I finally finished (actually, there was a fair amount of mail to blocks of flats that I couldn't deliver because the "trades" button to unlock the door doesn't work after midday) and rode back to the sorting office, it was deserted. I rang the bell and waited a while, but nobody turned up.
I decided to phone home to ask my folks what I should do. We tried to leave the bike and mail at two post offices and the Co-Op where I left my second bag during the round, but the post offices were closed and the others refused for legal reasons. We ended up taking them home (with the boot open, since the bike wouldn't fit entirely ) and I called the depot first thing on Monday (I wasn't working that day because my brace was being fixed) to have them collect them. 
Being June, and being (almost) on the south coast, it's been very hot and sunny. On Thursday and Friday I forgot to wear sunscreen. Needless to say, I got badly sunburnt. 
I also wasn't wearing a hat, so my scalp is sunburned too. I've now got a rather fetching floppy hat to wear in the sun, so that problem is solved. Today the redness on my forearms (which stops abruptly just above the elbow, and where my watch is) has nearly turned into a tan, probably my first since my holiday in the Mosel valley two years ago.
Friday was my dad's birthday. We went to Chichester Festival Theatre to see "The Gondoliers", a silly Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. I have to say "silly" here - the plot is quite absurd, but it's great light entertainment. The plot is that the heir to the island kingdom of Barataria was taken away by his nanny and became a gondolier in Venice. He's been pinpointed as one of two particular gondoliers ("There's no possible doubt whatever", says the Grand Inquisitor, that he is one of these two), but nobody knows which - only their elderly nanny can tell. In the first scene they marry by picking two girls out of a crowd at random. Unfortunately the Grand Inquisitor married the prince to a Spanish hidalgo's daughter when they were both babies, resulting in a bizarre love pentagram. And of course the daughter has her own boyfriend... When the two gondoliers go to Barataria to rule together, being republicans, they implement a strange "monarchy tempered by republican equality". So they do their fair share of the chores, and everyone is head of their department (e.g. the Grand High Maid).
Dinner was rather different that day - in the theatre cafe, a kind of Mediterranean buffet, with things like olives 
, capers (very bitter), artichokes, oddly-shaped but nonetheless delicious lumps of salmon, sun-dried tomatoes, beef (don't think I've ever eaten rare beef cold before), pasta salad, etc., etc.
Finally, yesterday we saw an amateur production of "Blithe Spirit", in which a twice-married man summons the ghost of his first wife during a séance, whom only he can see and hear. It's a very funny story, and was surprisingly well executed for an amateur production, though the acting was a little wooden.
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Latest reply: Jun 22, 2003
Pete, never to have a time-specific nick again (Keeper of Disambiguating Semicolons) - Born in the Year of the Lab Rat
Researcher U151654
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