Congratulations Vicky!
Well done to Vicky for getting an Unconditional Offer for her Ph.D.!
Good Hunting
Lunch with a starling and the wandering Cafe Vert sign
After Vicky and me had lunch today we sat outside Cafe Vert on Campus (For all those who know), as we were sitting there discussing amongst other things the wind and how campus had been specifically designed to create wind tunnels a starling decided to drop by! He sat on the free chair at our table and then hopped about for abit before deciding the weather had improved and flying away.
We also watched as the Cafe Vert sign gradually wandered across square 3, we were then distracted by our conversation and when we looked it had dissapeared! Vicky sent me a text later to tell me that it had made it to the LTB, no mean feat for a three foot high inanimate sign.
It’s been windy all day so I guess it’s no suprise that it was windy on Campus but I think that the weirdest things happen there. I also saw a guy leaning into the wind at about an angle of about 30-40 degrees, impressive, until the wind stopped and he almost fell over…
Good Hunting
Round Up
Since I’ve been insanely busy this week I haven’t made a huge effort to keep up to date with my blogging. The reason I’ve been busy is that I’ve been trying to write my Supervisory Board Meeting report & presentation as well as finishing all those bits of work I said that I’d have done by now!
Board Report
Every six months I have to submit a report, a filled out form and a presentation to my supervisory board that consists of My Supervisor, an academic in the field (who chairs the meeting) and a academic not in the field. Now seeing as this should be my penultimate board meeting, I’m meant to have a lot to show for my two and a bit years work. I have got a lot to show but unfourtunately not a huge amount of results, so I’ve been trying to get some decent results to show at the meeting but my Neural Network is not playing ball - and I’ve been getting cross.
Fencing
Thankfully when I get cross I can go fencing and stab people with swords, which I’m getting better at again now. Tuesday practice was good - three challengers and three victorys although one guy has only been doing fencing for a term so it was a bit of a hollow victory (I don’t believe in not performing to the best of your ability to make people feel better by the way). Wednesday was our last match of the term, against the First Team, overall we lost as we should really, but in Foil I got my five points off of all the first team - albeit with Rossen attempting to take the match into the final two seconds. I didn’t do so well in Epee but by then our Captain had buggered off and somehow that seemed to leave me in charge - I’m still not sure how that was decided.
I have my beautiful foil to thank for some of my performance though as I finally converted my french grip into a pistol grip and it’s soooo much better. I had to cut and thread the tang but it all works fine now. I might have a play with how the blade is set soon, but I’m not sure that it will be as much of an advantage as in Epee.
Other Things
I’ve also been trying to keep upto date with other stuff to like Christmas presents, birthday presents and finding out all those bits of information that people want to know…
Here’s hoping for an easier week next week.
Good Hunting
Losing at Fencing
On Wednesday we, the Essex Mens Second Team, had our first match of the season in which we were beaten quite badly by St. George Medical…
In foil we lost 16/45 which was not that great but 7 of those points were mine and I should have beaten the first guy I was so cross with myself for not doing so >:). We fared even worse in Epee at 11/45 but our only result was in sabre where we edged a marginal victory at 45/43. Overall that’s 72/133 for our first match, Drew [the captain] was pleased though so we all got our chocolate rewards :).
The best thing about this match was that as the First team are in the same league as us they have got to fence St. George next week and if we can do that against them our first team will give them a good beating! (It’s the first team vs second team match that I’m looking forward to… …I wonder if it’s going to be at home or away…)
Good Hunting
University Cheques
Now for any of you who have had to get cheques from a university I’m sure you’ll understand…
I’ve been at Essex for six years now, I’m used to having to pay a cheque in to get my money from the University. I am however pissed off with the fact that it takes soooooo long to actually get the cheques off of the university, not to mention that I still have to cash them before I have access to the money. Now I have two cheques due at the start of every three months and by the end of a three month period I need the money ASAP, I’m sure that you can appreciate the fact that trying to manage income over three months is quite a challenge. It’s now the 9th of the month, I have just managed to get my hands on the smaller cheque and have been told that the other one will be along by the end of the week, that’s the 13th, that’s two weeks late! That is not good enough, if they can’t manage to sort out the cheques on time then pay me by bank transfer. I think that I should suggest the finance department gets paid their wages two weeks late - I’m sure that’d ‘acceptable’. This is ridiculous - they can pay the f*cking bank charges if I get any.
Good Hunting