Journal Entries
Where Have I Been?
Posted Feb 18, 2007
Doesn't time fly? I just logged on and realised it's been nearly four months since I last wrote anything. I have a dozen bits of paper with random thoughts scribbled on, but I seem to find it difficult to actually submit anything. There's plenty to catch up on and I need to get around to writing my annual review at some point, but for now I'm going to settle for writing a few short pieces about what I've generally been doing with my time since October. To start with I have three entries I wrote during November, but haven't had chance to submit until now:
Getting Sent To Coventry (And Then Locked In A Carpark).
November 1st, 2006
Last weekend was really quite productive. I managed to sort through almost all of the junk I've accumulated at my parents' house. I ruthlessly threw a lot of stuff out and packed the rest of it into boxes and bags ready to bring to Reading this coming weekend.
Because I was so efficient on Saturday I didn't have a great deal to do on Sunday so in the afternoon I drove over to Coventry. My girlfriend was staying with friends for the weekend and since she was so nearby I thought it would be nice to meet up and have dinner together.
We only had a quick bite to eat in a Wetherspoons pub, but it was nice to see her, if only for a couple of hours. Unfortunately on returning to the car park we were horrified to find that our cars had been locked in. We called the car park management and tried to find security, we even asked the staff in the nearby Burger King if they could help us, but all to no avail. Everyone told us we would have to wait for the car park to open at seven the next morning. If we were lucky and our cars hadn't been clamped then I might be able to scramble through the rush hour traffic and maybe make it to work on time. We were extremely lucky though, because just as we'd called my girlfriend's friends to ask if they wouldn't mind picking us up and letting us stay the night a wonderful kind lady who had been working late turned up and let us out and what would have been a major drama ended up being just a minor setback. I got back to the bed and breakfast shortly after ten and collapsed into bed soon afterwards.
It's been hard work sticking to my resolution to run regularly this week. The clocks went back at the weekend so by the time I leave work in the evenings there isn't enough daylight left for a decent amount of running and I had to start getting up early to put in a cold and torturous ten miles before breakfast. But I think a few more days of such toil may motivate me to join a running club so that I can have a couple of evening training sessions each week with other runners on a well lit running track.
Workwise this week has been pretty good. I finally managed to get away from my desk, get a labcoat on and actually do some practical work. It's odd, I never would have imagined I'd miss lab work, but this week I actually feel useful and I feel I've made some small contribution to the company and as such, I'm a bit more relaxed about everything.
Another reason for feeling more settled and happier is that this week I finished sorting out my new flat. On Monday lunchtime I dropped into the letting agents to drop off the tennancy agreement, to show them my identity proofs and to pay the balance of my account (frightening amounts of money!). And today after work I drove over there to meet the landlord and pick up the keys. The flat seems a bit spartan with no furniture in it and I need to make it a bit more homely before I can actually move in properly. Currently I don't even have a bed so I'm staying at the bed and breakfast until the weekend when I can move some furniture in.
Also this week, on Tuesday I met up with an old friend from (undergraduate days at) Wolverhampton University in Reading. He's been living in Basingstoke for the last year so since we're now living quite near to one another we thought it would be rude not to meet up for a drink and a chat. Unfortunately he's having a bit of a rough patch with his girlfriend, poor chap and I had to try really hard not to offer too much advice, but nevertheless it was good to catch up and talk a bit about old times.
So that brings me up to date again. I'm feeling quite tired at the moment and another busy weekend is looming ahead of me and I can't wait until I can spend a weekend doing normal weekend things like sleeping.
Moving House.
November 8th, 2006
As predicted the weekend was pretty hectic. On Friday evening I left work and drove into Reading to pick up a rental van for the weekend. I usually drive a Nissan Micra, so a long-wheel-base Ford Transit was quite a change for me. Not only was the sheer size of the vehicle quite something to cope with, also I haven't driven a car with a manual gearbox for two years or more and most important of all there's no rear view mirror in a Transit and it took a long time to get used to the massive blind spot right behind the van. My nerves were further frayed when a shambling tramp loomed out of the darkness on a narrow Berkshire lane and very nearly splattered himself on the front of my van and later, having joined the motorway I was rather shaken to see a burning car on the hard shoulder. Nevertheless I managed to get both myself and the van to Bath safe and sound, but very tired on Friday night.
We didn't really do much on Friday evening, just had an early night and got up fairly early on Saturday morning to drive the van up to my parents' house where we grabbed a quick lunch, loaded the van and headed back down south again. By the time it got dark we'd unloaded the van and started to pack things away in the new flat. Needless to say we were pretty tired out after all that driving so we took it fairly easy for the rest of the weekend. On Sunday morning we took a walk around the village, bought some food at the local supermarket and in the afternoon we drove over to the bed and breakfast to collect the last of my things from there then had another quiet evening and an early night.
On Monday morning we got up early to take the van back to the depot and I dropped my girlfriend at the railway station before heading into work. After driving more than three hundred miles in the Transit it actually felt a bit strange to be back in my little car again, it felt weird to be sitting so close to the road and I kept wanting to change gear.
After such a dedicated week of running last week I let things go a little bit over the weekend, but yesterday I drove into Reading after work to go running with Reading Athletic Club. I said before I've been thinking about joining a running club because I think it might be a good way to get some running done in Reading and to meet a few people and maybe to get some good advice on training for a marathon. I had a really good session running a fartlek programme in the local park. It's been quite a while since I've done speedwork of any kind so I found the session quite hard work, but I managed to stay with, or just behind the leading group right up until the very end. Everyone was really friendly and asked me if I would be training with them again and if I would be joining the club properly. They even tried to talk me into running a cross-country race this weekend. I had to tell them no because I'm probably going to be in Bath this weekend, but I'd like to get back into racing again so I think I'll probably pay my fees and join up.
I was feeling tired and stiff today so I decided to go for a gentle run round the village this evening to loosen up. Obviously it was pretty dark, but I took a torch with me and did some route finding and I managed to work out a nice mile and a half lap which is reasonably well lit and might become a regular running route in the weeks to come. And tomorrow after work I'm going to have a look at a gym which could serve as a warmer and drier alternative as the winter closes in.
Things have also been going well at work this week. I spent a few days setting up my reaction rig and calibrating the analytical instrumentation and loading some samples into the reactor. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the thing running and I might actually have generated some results by the end of the week. It feels good to be getting things done and I'm actually quite upbeat about the project and evern, dare I say it, quite excited about chemistry for a change.
The rest of the week is going to be quite busy at work so I'm looking forward to a lazy weekend in Bath with my girlfriend. I have one or two domestic things to attend to like getting my haircut and buying a few things for the flat, but the last few weeks have been really exhausting and I think I'm overdue for a weekend off.
Lazy Weekend.
November 14th, 2006
The lazy weekend went exactly as planned I knocked off work fairly early on Friday and managed to get to Bath in reasonable time. It was much nicer driving there in my familiar little car than the previous week in that hulking great van and I arrived a good deal less stressed out. I picked my girlfriend up at university, drove her to the supermarket and then home. We spent the rest of Friday night making pizza and drinking wine in front of the television.
We got up late on Saturday and I got my hair cut and then went for a run in the afternoon while my girlfriend did some work. Then in the evening we made lasagne and watched a movie accompanied by another bottle of wine.
On Sunday we wandered round the shops for a little while then read the newspapers and sat around for a couple of hours. We ate the rest of the lasagne in the evening and I drove back to Reading soon afterwards.
Running has been going pretty well this last week. Since going out with Reading AC last Tuesday I've been out running every day. Some days have been fairly gentle recovery runs, but I've managed to fit in a couple of harder sessions and I even managed a brisk hour and a half on Saturday. The gym I looked at last Thursday was quite good, but it's also quite expensive and if I'm going to be training with the club twice a week then I'm wondering how much I'm actually going to use it. I'm going to go along to the club again tonight and maybe again on Thursday. It feels good to be getting back into regular training again. I'm not at the level I reached earlier this year during the early days of writing up when I did very little other than run, but what I'm doing at the moment is probably more sensible and more sustainable in the long term. Hopefully I can get myself back into decent shape for a marathon sometime next year.
Next weekend I'll be in Bath again. It's my girlfriend's birthday on Saturday and her parents and visiting her during the day. We've got a restaurant booked for lunch and on Saturday evening we're having a bit of a dinner party which I'm quite looking forward to.
*
December was in incredibly busy month and I didn't really manage to get any organised entries written. Instead I've written a handful of short entries on various subjects which occupied my time during the month:
Christmas Parties.
Obviously there were a fair few parties to go to over the festive season. The first of these was the Chemistry Department Christmas meal back in Bath on the 6th December. My girlfriend is jusy finishing the final year of her PhD and I figured this would probably be my last chance to have Christmas dinner with the old crowd and to act like a student for one last night. So I booked a couple of days off work and drove over to Bath on Tuesday evening (the 5th December).
Everyone met in the restaurant, a lovely place called Woods where we've been for a formal dinner or some meal or other at some point, at around one in the afternoon for pre-dinner drinks and the traditional Christmas quiz. The food was really nice, and as an added bonus one of the people who was supposed to be sitting at our table paid for his food, but mysteriously didn't turn up so we all had plenty to eat. I ste with my girlfriend and her research group, but managed to catch up with my old group and one or two old friends as well.
After the meal we went for a few drinks in town and eventually ended up in the nightclub on campus. Unfortunately, by this point I was fading badly (I'm not as young as I used to be), I had more or less sobered up and was beginning to feel the early onset of a hangover. If I'm honest I'm never entirely happy in the campus nightclub surrounded by drunken teenagers ten years younger than me, but I was highly impressed to note that one of the lecturers had made it along and I listened with amusement to an overheard conversation between some of the drunken teenagers expressing their utter astonishment at seeing him there. No doubt since he's over thirty they expected him to be in bed with a cup of Horlicks be ten o'clock. In the end though my crushing headache got the better of me and at around one in the morinng we headed off home to bed.
Next on the calendar was "Christmas" dinner with the folks from my lab at work on the 11th December. Because we all had several traditional Christmas dinners to attend we decided to go to a Thai restaurant in Caversham for a bit of a change. This was the first time I'd been out with the folks from work so I wasn't entirely at my ease, but my girlfriend was driving that night and a couple of pints of beer soon relaxed me.
I'm afraid the food could really only be described as okay even given that they were catering for a large group and considering that we'd gone to the trouble of ordering our food in advance it took rather a long time for things to arrive. On the other hand the service was much better with respect to drinks and they made sure no one went thirsty while we were waiting. But the probable reason for this became apparant when the bill arrived and we discovered exactly how much they had been charging for all those bottles of beer.
Things weren't nearly as raucous as the nights out I've grown accoustomed to with my group at university, but considering it was a school night that probably wasn't such a bad thing. I really don't think I've been with the company long enough to turn up with a hangover, even if it was earned at a company function.
The official company Christmas lunch on the 18th December was a much less sober affair. Even though it was held in the canteen on site the wine and beer (which was all free!) flowed with reckless abandon. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately depending on your point of view) I wasn't drinking because I had to get up horribly early the following day and drive my girlfriend into Reading so that she could get a coach to Heathrow and fly to Sri Lanka for a wedding over Christmas. It was extremely foggy that morning and I was mighty glad to be completely sober (if a little tired).
Refraining from alcohol meant that I enjoyed the food, which was plentiful and something of a cut above the usual canteen fare, but that the loud carol singing and constant bombardment of food and Christmas decorations became a little annoying towards the end of the second hour and to be honest I was a little relieved when it was all over.
The final fixture of the party calendar was the Reading AC Christmas party. The organisers decided that booking a restaurant over the festive period would be too much hassle and elected to have the party at the house of a kind volunteer. I was a late addition to the guest list, but I managed to get my order in for take-away food and also gt in on the "secret santa" which one of the girls had organised. I had a pretty nice evening and met one or two new people, who haven't been to training nights because they've been injured. We played a music quiz which one of the guys had cooked up and then ended up playing Buzz on the Playstation until the small hours. Once again I wasn't drinking because I ws driving, but as I wasn't the only sober person present I didn't feel too out of place.
Christmas And New-Year.
Work finished for Christmas straight after lunch on Friday 22nd December so I headed home to pack in the afternoon and drove up to my parents' house in the evening. It had been extremely foggy all week (since the morning of Tuesday 19th when I dropped my girlfriend in town) and navigating the Oxfordshire lanes en route to the motorway was quite frightening. But luckily (and somewhat strangely) traffic was very light and I arrived safe and sound in pretty reasonable time.
As ever Christmas was a fairly relaxed occasion, but over the holidays I managed to catch up with most of the family. I took my parents to visit my grandparents on Christmas Eve and then to see my Nan on Boxing Day. Then on Wednesday 27th I drove them to Stafford to spend a few hours with my brother and his family. And I even found the time to meet a friend in town for a couple of drinks and a few games of pool before driving back to Reading on Thursday 28th.
As an extra Christmas present from my brother I got a heavy dose of flu which came on when I got back home. I spent most of Friday sleeping and being sick and then struggled into town in the evening to pick my girlfriend up from the coach station after her trip to Sri Lanka. Unfortunately she was quite ill as well so we spent the next couple of days feeling sorry for ourselves and trying to look after each other. Because we hadn't been together over Christmas we'd planned an elaborate dinner together on New Year's Eve, but unfortunately this was the worst day of illness for me. For about twelve hours I was sick every time I ate or drank anything and my girlfriend struggled to keep my hydrated by making me drink gallons of Ribena. I was beginning to feel a little better in the evening, but certainly wasn't in the mood for a big dinner and I was so tired and weak that it was all I could do to keep my eyes open long enough to see in the new year. New Year's Day was a little better, but having basically not eaten anything solid for three days I still felt tired and very weak. I ended up taking the day off work on Tuesday 2nd to sleep and recuperate a bit more and by Wednesday I was left with nothing more than a simple common or garden cold.
Graduation.
Graduation, another main eventin December, was on Wednesday 13th December and once again I booked a couple of days off work and drove over to Bath on Tuesday evening. I stayed at my girlfriend's place the night before the ceremony. We had a bit of a lie in on Wednesday morining then I went and got my hair cut while my girlfriend did some shopping and we waited for my parents to arrive. We met them at the train station around lunchtime and took them back to my girlfriend's place for a quick picnic lunch before getting dressed and heading out to the Assembly Rooms for the ceremony.
Winter Graduation is always a much more scaled down and low-key affair than the massive summer ceremonies and everything went quickly and smoothly. I remember graduating from my first degree when they read out a list of names while we jogged across the stage and someone tossed a scroll at us. By contrast, at the postgraduate ceremony there were far fewer students graduating and things were done at a somewhat more leisurely pace. Each PhD student had their own moment on stage; while our names were read out the chancellor bonked us each on the head with a plank of wood saying "I confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Philosophy," and another chap helped us into our hoods. The whole thing just seemed nicer and more intimate than the undergraduate version.
Also, it ws nice to see a few old faces at the ceremony and to find out what people had been up to since I saw them last. But in a way it was also quite sad as it made me realise how much I'm going to miss university life now that it has finally come to an end.
After the ceremony we took my parents to their hotel so they could check in and drop off their bags and then we all went out for a lovely meal at il Tocco d'Italia. As ever the food was really excellent, the staff were friendly and the ambience was unbeatable (we had a wonderful table overlooking the river). We took our time over dinner and ended up getting to bed quite late so we had a nice long lie in on Thursday morning and I drove back to Reading again in the afternoon.
Reading AC.
I've been getting back into my running again since moving to Reading and I've broken the habit of a lifetime by joing a running club. It feels good to be back in regular training again and I think that running harder speed sessions with Reading AC is beginning to benefit me as well. It's also really good to have some faster runners to chase on a Tuesday evening (some of them 1500m, 3000m and 5000m track runners). But being in a running club also means I've been racing more as well and have had the opportunity to try my hand at a bit of cross-country running for the first time.
More or less as soon as I started training with the club they began trying to talk me into racing for them and they very quickly wore me down. I made my cross-country debut at the Berkshire County Championships on Sunday 17th December, a 12km course at Burchetts Green near Maidenhead. It was a beautiful day for running, cold and sunny, but the course was quite tough; there was a bit of a hill in the second half of the lap and it was quite muddy in places. Though it was my first race in a while and my first time at a cross-country I felt confident and tried to stay with the leaders for the first lap. One guy was in a class of his own and very quickly disappeared into the distance, but I managed to keep in touch with second and third place for a lap or so. During the second lap they started to get away from me. I managed to hold onto fourth place for most of the race, but faded on the last lap and was overtaken by another Reading AC runner and I eventually finished fifth. It was a good individual result for me and a very good result for the club. Reading AC had finishers in second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth and easily won the team gold medal. And as an added bonus the top nine finishers all won entries into the Inter-Counties Championships in February.
For my next race I was back on the roads where I'm most comfotable running the Woodcote, Goring and District Lions 10K. I'd been really quite ill the previous weekend (New Year's Eve), I had only started to recover two or three days before the race and wasn't sure whether to run or not. But as I live in Woodocte about five minutes walk from the start line I felt it would probably have been rude not to run. I started well and stuck with the lead group for the first 4km or so. Then on a downhill section I tried to stretch out a bit of a lead; unfortunately the second half was a good deal more hilly than the first and I slipped back to second place after about 8km. I let the leader get too far ahead in the closing mile and couldn't get back to him and so finished second. The course was quite tough, but not the hardest I've every run and the time was therefore fairly good all things considered. I was quite pleased with the result given that I was still not one hundred percent after being ill. Above all I'm glad I made the effort to run as it was a lovely scenic route, the weather was kind to us (it started raining about five minutes after I finished) and it was especially nice to be running in my own back yard.
The following week on Saturday 13th January I raced again for the club in the Hampshire Cross-Country League, our home fixture, an 8.8km course at Prospect Park in Reading. The weather wasn't quite so perfect this time; it had been raining on and off all day, but there was a break in the clouds and the sun came out just before the start. The course was also much tougher this time, there were a couple of sharp hills in the middle of the lap and one section which was extremely muddy, but it was quite significantly shorter than the Berkshire Championships. Strangely the field was actually stronger than at the Berkshire Championships event so I was quite pleased to manage eleventh place. And it was another great result for the team; we came second on the day and also moved into second place in the overall standings.
A couple of weeks after that was the South of England Cross-Country Championships, a gruelling 15km course at Holkham Park in Norfolk. I had been quite excited about this race as it was probably the most prestigious event I'd ever competed in. Once again we were lucky with the weather, it was a lovely day for racing, the weather was dry and the sun was shining, but it was a plesasantly cool afternoon. And the venue, a beautiful old stately home, was quite simply stunning. But since the stunning venue (not exactly centrally located for the south of England) was so far away from Reading we had an early start and a very long drive to get to Norfolk. We caught some traffic on the way and arrived tired and a bit stressed out with about twenty minutes to warm up before the race started and didn't really have time to appreciate the setting. In all honesty I was a little disappointed with my performance. After just two miles I already felt tired and was really just "hanging on" for the rest of the race and trying not to let too many people get past me. In the end I managed to finish one-hundred and tenth, but was a bit annoyed to loose a place right on the line even though it was another Reading AC runner so it didn't make any difference to the team. That said, it was good to race in such a strong field. The race was won by Phil Wicks (a Great Britain athlete) from Huw Lobb (a Great Britain marathon runner and the the first man to beat the horse in the Man vs Horse cross-country race in Wales) and dominic Bannister (another talented Great Britain athlete and the son of the legendary Roger Bannister).
Another couple of weeks later on Saturday 10th February was the final fixture of the Hampshire Cross-Country League, this time at Canford Park near Poole. This course was 8.8km again, was fairly flat, but very muddy. The weather had been wet all day, but held to a light drizzle during the race. I started in the lead group again and was running in twelfth place at first, but I probably went out too quickly and tired again in the second half of the race. I was fading badly towards the end and lost quite a few places during the last lap. In the end I finished twenty-second which on reflection wasn't really a bad performance. It was a really excellent result for Reading AC though, the senior men's team managed to hold onto second place in the league and the veterans were utterly dominant, our guys finished first, second and third in the individual standings and the team were streets ahead in the overall league. I was very amused to see a couple of runners nearly come to blows at the end. I'm not entirely sure what the dispute was, but I think they may have been arguing over fiftieth place. Sometimes I think people forget it's only a bit of fun.
*
So that about sums things up for the last few months and things don't look like they're going to be any quieter over the next few weeks either. Tomorrow I'm heading into London after work because I have tickets for a Tom McRae gig. Then next weekend I'm heading home to see my parents for the weekend and to compete in the Inter-Counties Cross-Country Champiionships. And at some point I have to get around to writing my annual summary for 2006. I guess with everything going on, writing my journal isn't exactly top priority at the moment.
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Dispatches From Reading.
Posted Oct 28, 2006
It’s been as while since I’ve been able to post anything, I started my new job a couple of weeks ago and I can’t exactly while away my time typing journal entries when I’m supposed to be working. On the other hand though, I’ve been living in a bed and breakfast for the last couple of weeks and in the quiet evenings spent alone in my room I’ve had ample opportunity to scribble down my thoughts. I’m back at my parents for the weekend and find myself with an idle hour, so I decided to block post what I’ve been writing.
The Working Week.
October 20th, 2006
So that’s the first week over with and I spent most of it meeting people, filling in forms and going through the slow process of induction. I’m now able to find my way to work in the mornings and can get between my desk, the lab, the toilets and the canteen without even thinking about it, I have an email account, a phone number and access to the internet, but I still get lost looking for the IT department or the stores and I only remember the names of about 10% of the people I’ve met. In short I’m beginning to settle in, but I haven’t really had chance to get my hands dirty yet. I’m still feeling a little unsure of myself and from time to time I wonder if I’ve made the right decision. But I think it’s okay to feel that way at first. After all on a week’s notice I’ve moved to a brand new city to start a new job in a new area of chemistry for me; I’m far away from all my friends and family and everything that’s familiar to me; I honestly don’t think there’s another aspect of my life I could possibly have changed.
This weekend is going to be a quiet on in Bath relaxing with my girlfriend. Last weekend was manic and I think I’m due a bit of a rest. At the end of last week I spent a couple of days packing and I also managed to arrange to view several flats in Reading and my girlfriend and I planned a trip over there on Friday. I drove down to Bath on Thursday afternoon and went out for a curry with my girlfriend and her research group, foolishly drinking far too much beer (which is actually pathetically little these days). I woke up on Friday morning with a debilitating hangover and felt pretty sorry for myself for most of the morning. A particularly low point for me was being sick out of the window of my girlfriend’s car at 60mph somewhere near Swindon. Despite this shameful behaviour we were only five or ten minutes late for our first appointment and I managed to get my act together a bit after that. In the end I was glad we made the effort because we managed to see quite a range of properties all over the area. But more importantly I confess I kind of fell in love with a little place in a village north of Reading near JM and I actually left a holding deposit with the letting agents on Thursday.
We stayed in Reading for the evening, went to the cinema and afterwards to say thank you to my girlfriend (and also to apologise for puking on her car) I bought her dinner at a cheerful tex-mex place called Chillis. The movie we saw was the new Martin Scorcesse film, The Departed featuring everyone from Matt Damon, Leonardo Dicaprio and “Marky” Mark Wahlberg to Alec Baldwin, the mighty Ray Winstone and the legendary Jack Nicholson. I don’t really have time for an in depth review, but for such a star-laden obvious blockbuster it was actually quite a good film. Nicholson and Winstone were characteristically excellent and even Dicaprio and Wahlberg managed to make a decent showing of themselves and I have to say I was surprised to find that Damon was the weakest of the piece. I guess it wasn’t really his fault, the script was somewhat limiting for his part; maybe it’s because I have a soft spot for the bad guy, but I felt they could have done a great deal more with his character. But aside from that minor disappointment it was an excellent film.
We drove back to Bath quite late through the descending mist and slept in late on Saturday morning. We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing, watching movies and cooking ourselves elaborate meals like fondue and sausage and mash. In the end I decided not to run the Cardiff Marathon. It was a tough choice; I don’t like backing out of races, but I have to admit I haven’t been training properly for it for months now; at best it would have been extremely painful and at worst I could have seriously injured myself. A marathon has to be treated with respect no matter who you are (or who you think you are) and I think it would have been foolish to run. Call me a coward if you want, but I’ll be back. Give me a few months of uninterrupted training so I can get myself more into the sort of shape I’m used to and when I’m good and ready I’ll run a marathon I can be proud of.
On Sunday evening I drove back to Reading and miraculously managed to navigate in pitch darkness round some winding Oxfordshire country lanes to find the bed and breakfast which will be home for the next few weeks. It’s a lovely place, the landlady is really nice and very helpful, she sends me out each morning with a good breakfast inside me and always asks me how my day went when I get back in the evenings. But at the end of the day it’s still a hotel, I spend my evenings sitting in my room reading, watching television and listening to music, but I can’t really relax as much as I could in my own place. I’m really looking forward to being properly settled here.
Well in a round about sort of way that more or less brings me up to date. Keeping my journal is far from the most important thing in my life right now, but I think writing everything down is helping me get things straight in my head so I think I’ll write more whenever I can.
Old Dogs.
October 23rd, 2006
I just had a much needed weekend relaxing with my girlfriend in Bath. I imagine the next couple of weeks will be quite stressful as I continue to settle into my new job and the weekends are going to be quite busy as well as I’m likely to be moving into a flat at the beginning of November. All in all I think I may be looking back quite fondly on my weekend of idleness in the weeks to come.
The weekend was pretty lazy and I caught up on some lost sleep. But that said I’m trying to get myself back into the habit of consistent regular running again and I managed to drag myself out twice over the weekend. Aside from the usual ailments I’ve come to associate with getting back into hard training, sore feet, chaffed nipples, etc., I had an altercation with a mad spaniel on Saturday afternoon and grazed my hands. The crazy mutt ran headlong into me going along the towpath which is my traditional Bath running route. I kicked him/her very hard in the head, tripped and went flying. I landed on my hands, buried a bit of grit and dirt into my palms and winded myself, the dog barely even broke its stride and continued at top speed in pursuit of its owner who was completely oblivious to the whole incident.
Other than that the weekend followed the usual laid back pattern. We slept in late and entertained ourselves with movies and cooking and we watched the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday evening before I drove back to Reading.
I haven’t written about Formula One for a while, but this weekend was the last race of the season and perhaps more importantly it was Michael Schumacher’s swan song. Poor luck in Japan a couple of weeks ago meant that going into the final round Schumacher had only the slightest chance of winning an eighth world championship; he needed to both win the race and see his rival, Fernando Alonso, score no points. This looked all but impossible at the start of the weekend, but further bad luck in qualifying on Saturday left Schumacher 10th on the starting grid. And if the mountain still wasn’t high enough to climb, a rear puncture sustained while overtaking Giancarlo Fisichella on lap nine relegated Schumacher to the very back of the field. With Alonso comfortably in the points and cruising and his team mate Felipe Massa leading the race completely unchallenged Schumacher saw the last shreds of hope slip away. Nevertheless he drove an awesome race, fighting tooth and nail with several impressive overtaking manoeuvres to eventually finish in 4th place.
Of course it was all academic in the end. Massa drove flawlessly to win his home Grand Prix and Alonso was level headed, driving sensibly, not challenging Massa and finishing easily in 2nd place to take his second consecutive world title. But if this race proved one thing it was that Schumacher is still more than capable of mixing it with the young guns of the paddock and I’m certain that had he not chosen to retire from Formula One he would have remained competitive for years.
Like him or loathe him, Schumacher has been on of the best and most complete drivers Formula One has ever seen and personally I think he is without a doubt the greatest driver in history. There are many arguments levelled against the weight of statistics in Schumacher’s favour. Some people will say that he won championships for Ferrari in vastly superior machinery. Well so did Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and even the much lauded Saint Ayrton of Senna. Let’s not forget that Ferrari were a laughing stock, languishing at the back of the grid when Schumacher joined them, their renaissance came in the years that followed. If they gave him embarrassingly quick cars with supernatural reliability then surely it must in part have been due to Schumacher’s own commitment and input into the team. Also it’s important to remember that Schumacher won his first two championships driving for Benetton in a car well recognised to be vastly inferior to the then peerless Williams.
It is also often said that Schumacher has had no real competition during his dominance of Formula One. But in his sixteen years in the sport aside from the seven world championships he has won, he has been in close contention for a further four or five titles finishing 2nd three times (although he was disqualified from one of these in 1997) and 3rd also three times (including his second full year at Benetton in1992 and his first full year at Ferrari in 1996, both of these years he drove cars which were hugely inferior to the dominant Williams cars). Not including his first year at Benetton he has never been lower than 5th in the Drivers Championship and that 5th place was in 1999, the year he broke his leg and missed several races.
Lastly people often say that Schumacher’s tactics are sometimes unsporting and even dangerous. Most notable are the incidents where he drove Damon Hill off the track in Australia in 1994 to successfully win his first title and in Spain in 1997 where he unsuccessfully tried the same trick on Jaques Villeneuve. But again I feel we must remember that Senna wasn’t above deliberately driving into people to secure a championship. In Japan in 1990 Senna drove headlong into Prost’s car in the first corner of the first lap, taking both cars out of the race and making it mathematically impossible for Prost to overhaul him in the championship. Senna supporters may maintain that he did this with style and panache, but does that make it forgivable? I don’t think so.
When it comes down to it the only accusations which can really be levelled against Schumacher are an occasional lack of flair when executing dubious manoeuvres as supposedly demonstrated by Senna and I think worst of all is that he has perhaps been just a little bit too successful in his sport. No one really likes to see anyone else on a pedestal (or on a podium as it were) and there’s nothing we like more than running someone down when they are doing well.
Whether he’s the greatest in history or not though, I think Formula One will miss Schumacher. Sure there are plenty of quick and talented young drivers out there. I’m sure Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso will give us an exciting championship battle next year and in the years to come we can look to Nico Rosberg, Robert Kubica, Keikki Kovalainen and our own Lewis Hamilton. But Schumacher undeniably brought a great deal of drama and character to the sport, even if it was only because he was the bad guy everyone loved to hate. All sport is just drama at the end of the day and every great drama needs a great villain and in that context Schumacher was a super villain. Maybe that’s why I like him?
Well I guess that’ll do for one day. I’m looking forward to getting away from my desk and doing a bit of useful hands on work this week. And at the weekend I will be driving back to West Bromwich to visit my parents and to spend some time sorting through my possessions before moving down here properly in November.
Pay Day!!
October 26th, 2006
Things have settled down a bit this week. My boss has been away for two days and I’ve been left more or less to my own devices. I’ve tried to keep busy, but there’s only so much background reading a guy can take and I’m really itching to get my hands dirty now. Hopefully next week I will be able to get some real work done. On the plus side I got paid this week! Having started in the middle of October I only got half a month’s money this time, but when you haven’t been paid in more than a year even half a month’s money seems like a fortune and I had to stop myself from rushing out to buy a new car or spending the on CDs or something.
I’m going to need a bit of spare cash in the coming weeks because the credit references checked out with the letting agents and once I show them some proof of identity and give them a big chunk of cash I will have my own place again. And if there’s anything left over after the agency fees have been paid I’m going to have to invest in a few sticks of furniture as well. I’m not exactly living the high life just yet, but I’m happy and that’s what’s important in the end.
My resolution to get back into shape and start running regularly has been going well this week as well. I’ve been out running each day after work, doing laps round the local golf course until it gets too dark to see. Unfortunately the clocks go back this weekend meaning the evenings will be darker earlier. So unless I can find a much better lit running route I’m going to have to revise my routine and run in the mornings before work instead. I’ve also got phone numbers for a couple of running clubs in the area and might be able to train with one or the other of them a couple of evenings during the week.
This evening I treated myself to a sausage baguette and a couple of pints at one of the local village pubs near the bed and breakfast. It was simple food, but after a week of cream crackers in my room for dinner every night it felt like a gourmet feast. But the pub was so warm and cosy I had to leave before I fell asleep there.
I had to get back to the bed and breakfast to pack because, as I said, I’m spending the weekend in West Bromwich with my parents going through all the boxes of stuff I’ve got stored there and deciding what to bring with me to Reading and what to just throw away. If all goes according to plan then I’ll pick up the keys to the flat next Wednesday after work and will probably hire a van to do the main part of the moving the following weekend.
That about wraps things up for the week; I expect things are going to remain busy for the next couple of weeks, but after that I can hopefully look forward to a few stress free months finding my way around Reading.
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I managed to get an awful lot of sorting and packing done today so hopefully I can relax a bit tomorrow and have a leisurely trip back to Reading during the afternoon. As usual these days I don’t really know when I’ll be able to post again. I will probably continue to write entries in the old fashioned way with a pencil and paper and will block post them whenever the opportunity presents itself.
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Latest reply: Oct 28, 2006
The Times They Are A-Changing
Posted Oct 10, 2006
The last couple of weeks have been pretty manic. I’ve been to interviews in Reading, Middlesbrough, Southampton, Middlesbrough again, Harlow and even one in West Bromwich for the company I used to work for before I started my PhD. If you add up the approximate distances (including Dublin and Cambridge in August) I could have got to Reykjavik and back! But that’s all; hopefully I won’t have to go for any more because yesterday I accepted a job working for Johnson Matthey near Reading. In the end everything happened really quickly and they actually want me to start on Monday. I’m a bit apprehensive about moving to a new city (especially on such short notice) and the job is a bit of a new direction for me as well which is only adding to my trepidation, but I have to admit I’m very excited as well.
I’m dividing my remaining time in West Bromwich between packing things to take with me to Reading and looking for places to live when I get there. And I’m hoping to spend Friday in Reading looking around and seeing a few flats. The company have kindly offered to pay for bed and breakfast accommodation for me for up to four weeks which takes a lot of the pressure off, but I’m really looking forward to having my own space again and want to get things sorted out as soon as I can.
Meanwhile my brother got himself married on Saturday. They had a nice little registry office ceremony with all the family invited. My girlfriend and I earned some serious brownie points by driving my parents and all my grandparents to Stafford (where my brother lives) and then bringing them back again before taking my parents back again in the evening for the “reception,” which was just perfect for the happy couple being a hog roast and barn dance at the local campsite. There was loads of food, loads of drink and loads of people to eat and drink it all. My girlfriend and I had a go at barn dancing in the dance tent, which was rather complicated by muddy, sloping ground and the odd tent pole, but we had fun. I danced briefly with the mother in law, but my unfortunate dad got roped into a whole dance with her, poor soul.
Anyway I think I’ll leave it at that. I’m going to continue to be a bit busy for a couple of weeks until I’m settled in Reading and I might not get chance to write again for a while. I’m going to drive to Bath on Thursday and from there to Reading on Friday to spend the afternoon looking round. I’m still hopeful of running Cardiff Marathon on Sunday, but it depends how tiring the next few days are. Moving house and starting a new job are far from ideal preparation for a marathon and when you factor in my negligent levels of training over the last few months you can see why I’m having some serious thoughts about whether it’s a good idea to run or not. I’ll try to post a quick entry sometime next week saying what I decided to do about the race and obviously saying how my first few days in my new job are going.
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Latest reply: Oct 10, 2006
Bristol Half Marathon 2006 (Confessions of a Lapsed Distance Runner).
Posted Sep 23, 2006
Last weekend was Bristol Half Marathon. In my previous entry I confessed that I had hardly been training at all over the last couple of months and was more than a little bit nervous about running. I started out at what I thought was a sensible pace and felt alright for about seven or eight miles, but then my legs felt heavy, my pace dropped off and I even had to walk part of mile eleven and I honestly thought I was going to be sick at one point. In the end I finished 435th in a personal worst time of 92 minutes. In recent times in the aftermath of a half marathon I’ve been buoyed up with adrenaline and actually felt pretty good, but on Sunday I felt absolutely awful and was still suffering the effects a couple of days later. I’m trying to be philosophical about it; I knew a month ago that I wouldn’t be at my best for Bristol this year. Not every race can be a personal best and there will always be other races and other opportunities to improve. But most importantly I’m hoping that the memory of how much it hurts to run a half marathon when out of shape will serve to keep me motivated for years to come.
I finished my last entry off saying that after Bristol Half my diary was blank for a couple of weeks and I was looking forward to a bit of a break; I guess I must have jinxed it because things suddenly got busy almost as soon as I posted that entry. Over last week and next week I have three interviews to attend in Reading, Middlesbrough and Southampton. Other than interviews my time has been taken up with a plethora of random engagements. My girlfriend and I went to Crockadoodledo again on the Saturday before Bristol Half to do some painting. And we went to the cinema to see The Black Dahlia on Monday. Then towards the end of last week we went to a leaving party for the post-doc in my girlfriend’s research group.
I got back to West Bromwich yesterday afternoon in time for dinner and a few drinks with my parents and a couple of their friends, then today I went to see a friend of mine who has recently had a baby boy. Tomorrow I shall be spending four hours on a train to Middlesbrough and will be trying to get a decent night’s sleep in the hotel before the interview starts at 8:30 on Monday. Looking for work is actually very hard work in itself and scuttling the length and breadth of the country is really exhausting at times, but hopefully it will all be worthwhile if it gets me a good job and things will almost certainly be a bit more settled then.
But at least for the next few weeks things look like they’re going to remain pretty busy. I’m probably going to be in Bath again next weekend and then the following weekend my brother is getting married and the weekend after that is Cardiff Marathon. Honestly I’m not sure I have time to fit a full time job into my schedule just yet!
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Latest reply: Sep 23, 2006
A Couple of Movie Reviews.
Posted Sep 13, 2006
I finished off my corrections at the weekend and printed an updated copy of my thesis on Monday. Once my internal examiner has had a look at it I have to print another couple of copies and get them bound in hardcover and then I really am finished. I got back home yesterday afternoon and have now begun to turn my attention to getting a job in earnest. I had a telephone interview this afternoon which seemed to go pretty well; I have to call someone about another interview tomorrow morning; and I have applied for a handful of other jobs this morning as well.
I’m still feeling happy about passing my PhD and I really feel like the rest of my life is just around the corner waiting for me. I said at the beginning of the year that I felt as if writing a thesis and finishing my PhD was something that was getting in the way of my life and over the last few months finishing my thesis has consumed every last little space in my life leaving me little room for anything else. This was absolutely necessary, not finishing would have been a terrible waste of four years, but now that I’ve made it past that obstacle who knows what could happen next?
I promised to write a set of “New Life Resolutions” once I was done with the PhD, but I guess since it’s taken a bit longer than expected to get to this stage it won’t matter if I delay for another couple of weeks or so. In the mean time I intend to pick up the pieces a little regarding my life outside of chemistry and maybe come up with a few ideas next month.
In the short term I will be resurrecting one aspect of my life this weekend when I’ll be running Bristol Half Marathon. I haven’t been training anything like as much as I was able to last year, I haven’t raced in nearly six months and have done precious little running over that last couple of months so I honestly have no idea what sort of time I’ll be capable of, and worse still it’s Cardiff Marathon next month and I have less than no idea how that’s going to go, but there will always be other races so I’m not going to beat myself up whatever happens.
So for now I’m going to write a couple of movie reviews for a couple of films I saw over the last couple of weeks. The weekend before last my girlfriend and I went to a member’s preview of An Inconvenient Truth at The Little Theatre; essentially a film of a lecture tour in which former presidential candidate (and perhaps rightful president of the USA) Al Gore presents a slideshow on global warming. It doesn’t sound like much fun, but Gore is a very talented speaker; he presents his “inconvenient truths” in such a way that we can’t help but understand the point he is making. Moreover he is very knowledgeable about the subject on which he is speaking and has clearly done a great deal of extensive research. But most important of all, Gore so obviously cares passionately about what he is doing that he simply makes you sit up and take notice.
It’s all very much in the same vein as Michael Moore’s recent “political movies” but Gore has a great deal more credibility than Moore; he is much too eloquent to resort to silly stunts and as such I felt more respected as part of his audience. The film is billed as “one of the most frightening films you will ever see,” but this is not really the case and in my opinion the promotion people for the film shouldn’t need to resort to such obvious grandstanding and could probably take a leaf out of Gore’s book. His lecture is incredibly understated as he is often able to let his images and statistics make his point for him and the feeling of reaching one’s own conclusion makes it all the more powerful.
An Inconvenient Truth is a powerful and intelligent film. It makes you sit up and take notice and best of all it makes you think. I left the theatre promising to make an effort regarding recycling and helping the environment and I further resolved to tell everyone I know how good I thought the movie was and how much they need to see it. Furthermore I felt so guilty about all the paper I’ve used up over the last couple of months printing and reprinting my thesis that I have decided to plant a tree to atone for my sins.
The following week we saw Volver (meaning to return), a Spanish film about the complex relationships between three generations of women in the same family. Penelope Cruz plays a mother struggling to support her teenage daughter and layabout husband. The film begins with a rather gruesome murder and the repercussions of this act are woven skilfully with the film’s other main theme, the reappearance of Cruz’s mother three years after her death. It’s quite a complex plot which doesn’t lend itself well to summaries and to reveal more would be to spoil the story for anyone else, but it’s a gently told tale and didn’t seem hard work in the slightest.
Cruz is brilliantly low key as the put upon housewife and unusually plays a decidedly unsexual part. But her mother played by Carmen Maura is an even more lifelike character, playful at times, but with a serious edge to her and a dark past. Overall I thought Volver was an excellent film which I enjoyed immensely.
Well that’ll do for now I guess. I shall be heading back to Bath this weekend to hopefully get the final copies of my thesis to the print unit to be bound (which take about five days) and then running Bristol Half Marathon on the Sunday. After that my diary is actually blank for a couple of weeks which will probably be a welcome break.
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Latest reply: Sep 13, 2006
Evil_Duncan
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