Becky’s 30th

I had such a brilliant time celebrating my sister’s 30th birthday at the church this weekend.

I’m looking forward to spending Christmas at my sisters again, and having a great new year with my friends at home.

Check out the pictures from this weekend: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044410&id=1293892814&l=84de197dcb

And I’ll talk to you all soon :)

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 2 out of 5 (Had one of the best nights sleep ever!)
• Workload. 9 out of 10 (About to go to uni early to crack on!)
• Last Meal. Dry cereal (note: buy milk!)
• Song of the day. You can have two since I forgot to put one last time…
• Alanis Morissette – Ironic
• Patrick Watson – The Great Escape
• Thought for the day. “I am drunak?”
• What I’m Doing Now. About to have a very productive morning…… *fingers crossed*

Where did that go?

Another crazy week.

Lectures went well, I only fell asleep in one! As for the work, I’ve done some, but not as much as I should have and still lots to do!

MAD TV is ticking along nicely. The next episode is due out on Wednesday and I have to edit a report for it. I worked on some of the editing on Thursday, so I’ve done some of it.

On Tuesday evening I went round to Sophie’s for dinner. Very nice, always love spending time with Sophie. Wednesday evening was MAD TV. We had 2 meetings then the studio filming for the latest episode. Busy, busy…

Very much so looking forward to today and seeing my big sis :D. Love her lots and I’m so glad I get to be there to celebrate her 30th! Happy birthday!

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 4 out of 5 (Please lord let me sleep…)
• Workload. 9 out of 10 (Please lord give me less…)
• Last Meal. Spaghetti Bolognaise
• Song of the day. T2 Ft Jodie – Heartbroken (been a good song for a month or two now, just never put it on here)
• Thought for the day. The queen has an iPlayer (Alan’s infinite wisdom of all things technological, almost as good as mum :P)
• What I’m Doing Now. Wishing for sleep to take over……

PS MORE PICTURES

I Don’t Do Me Any Good

I can be up, and I can be down. At the moment, I’m both.

Work is getting me down. It’s hard, there’s a lot of it and there’s not a lot of help when I need it. I feel really lost sometimes, wondering why I’m even on this course and what the point is of all this. But then work isn’t the only reason I’m here.

University is far more than the sum of it’s parts. To tell people what university is like and what experience they can gain from it would be like taking a blind man to an art gallery – while you can appreciate the wonderful works and collect amazing inspiration, they can only imagine (and wrongly) just how special, unique and touching it all is.

I love people. People are my life. I can talk until the cows come home. And at the moment, right now, I talk to some amazing people. Have fun times just sharing ice-cream with my housemates, or revising with Josh, or talking about lecturers in a maths tutorial, or talking about life with people I couldn’t live without, or having a father-son talk in the car. All the small things really do make a big difference in my life at the moment, especially when all the big things are very stressful.

I loved going home on Sunday, it was a brilliant meal for starters, and seeing everyone again after what seems ages was so comforting.

I don’t really know what to conclude from all this, except I really should do some work…

• Happiness. 7 out of 10 (see workload)
• Tiredness. 2 out of 5 (Sleep is my new 2nd favourite thing to do)
• Workload. 9 out of 10 (I wish I could just do some of it…)
• Last Meal. Bacon & eggs in pitta bread (mmm… protein)
• Song of the day. T2 Ft Jodie – Heartbroken (been a good song for a month or two now, just never put it on here)
• Thought for the day. Time is just the time it takes for you to talk
• What I’m Doing Now. Been MAD TV-ing it up, about to go and film another report for the latest episode!

Apple Cake

Just a quick one to say that I really enjoyed working the last two days and I’m looking forward to going home tomorrow for dinner!

• Happiness. 7.5 out of 10 (see workload)
• Tiredness. 2 out of 5 (which is annoying considering the time)
• Workload. 9 out of 10 (I keep remembering things to do!)
• Last Meal. Jacket potatoes with cheesy beans!
• Song of the day. Avril Lavigne - Innocence
• Thought for the day. I wish I could play guitar…
• What I’m Doing Now. Getting an early night :S

Reading Week

I will say that this week has been a good week. The fact I haven’t had any lectures alone make it a good week, but there are other reasons too! In total there are #5 reasons this is a good week, but lets start from the beginning…

Since I wrote my last blog post lots has happened that I don’t want to talk about. Some of it was bad, and some of it was good. You can’t get more vague than that! I think my week started getting better on Monday. So lets start there…

#1 , Talking to Josh… Monday was productive in a couple of senses. Josh and I took to going to the Media Labs in the mornings to do work. Josh had some coursework to do for another module and I needed to get to grips with transistors and the like. So that worked for an hour or two. We tend to work really well together, but recently we’ve realised we do spend a lot of time talking and not getting any work done. And that’s the first thing I’ve liked about this week.

#2, Maths! Monday afternoon we did Maths work, and boy do we have a lot of maths work to do. It’s good because I feel like we’re making progress and understanding Fourier transforms more, but there are still lots of questions we can’t answer. So reason number two is that Maths is clearer (if only slightly)

#3, MAD TV social. Monday evening was wicked. The MAD TV team went to Nandos and then proceeded to several bars/clubs in Guildford. It was a fantastic night, I loved hanging out with everyone outside of a meeting or film shoot, and can’t wait for the next one!

#4, MAD TV episode. Tuesday morning was a write off. Tuesday afternoon was more Maths, and in the evening I did some more editing for the next MAD TV episode. Then there’s MAD Wednesday. Aptly named because it’s the day I try and finish the episode before the deadline of 11pm that day. I met up with Ankur, our most active editor, to look over two reports for the episode. Then I spent the afternoon frantically compiling everything into a nice, succinct episode for you to enjoy :)

So there you have it. Many more fun times to come I hope. I’m once again working at Ascot tomorrow and Saturday, which I am actually looking forward to. Shame it does take up the whole day though, because I could do with more studying time (as if a week wasn’t enough!) And then on Sunday I will be going home for the afternoon to see everyone and have a wonderful Sunday dinner cooked by the best chef in the world, mum :)

See you all soon,

Charles xxxx

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 2 out of 5
• Workload. 8.5 out of 10
• Last Meal. Just about to have pie and chips :P
• Song of the day. Avril Lavigne - These Things I’ll Never Say
• Thought for the day. “Basically” lool
• What I’m Doing Now. Smelling pie & chips, tasty time!

PS There are probably more pictures for you to see

PPS I can count!

No Warranty

I could bore you with what I’ve been up to in the last two weeks, but I'm not going to.

In the last two weeks I have been frustrated with my course slightly because of the lack of digital media related stuff I'm doing. It’s turned into an Electronic Engineering degree which is not what I wanted to do! I wanted to play with video camera, learn how to animate 3D graphics and perform complex digital processing in cool ways. All I end up doing is op-amps, transistors and Fourier series. I don’t want to protest too much because I understand that it’s all valuable to know. But I spent all of last year tolerating it in the knowledge that I would do more media topics this year. All I ask for is a balance of electronics and media. not 100% electronics.

In a couple weeks time we start a 3 week media lab on microphone response, I’m looking forward to that 6 hours a week where the title of my course may actually bear some relevance to the content...

But it’s ok, because I’ve been making my own course. Thanks to MAD TV I get my fix of filming and editing. Our 2 week schedule of news is very tight and I end up finding myself organising things on a daily basis. Editing is very time-consuming also and I'm slightly concerned I’m not spending enough time working.

The problem is I love MAD TV too much, so I end up spending my time working on that. And I don’t see it as a waste of time because it’s all things that need to be done. But I have several piles of course-related work that I should dedicate more time to, but because it doesn’t have such a strict timeframe, I end up pushing it to the back of the queue. I need to start prioritising MAD TV things less. I have a technical team of 10 or so that do a lot of work for me, but they require organising and that takes time too.

Then there is stage crew. I’ve neglected stage crew recently in favour of MAD TV because stage crew has a large enough in-take of fresher’s to handle itself and there are enough experienced crew around to take control. And also as VEO, there haven’t been any band nights for the last 2 weeks to get involved. I know I shouldn’t only do video, but I don’t want to turn up for a gig that already has enough crew when I could be spending my time more effectively elsewhere. Saying that I will be helping with laser quest on Tuesday after the fun we had last year I’m really looking forward to it again :)

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 2 out of 5
• Workload. 8.5 out of 10
• Last Meal. Cereal
• Song of the day. Linkin Park – Bleed It Out
• Thought for the day. “They’ll come in without a warranty and take it away!”
• What I’m Doing Now. Sitting my my pyjamas :P

PS: Your chances of losing the lottery are: 99.999992848876%

Thanks for stopping by…

I could give 100 reasons why it’s been a whole week since my last post, life is manic in these parts, but I haven’t forgotten about you… You can expect a post very soon, but for now check out the latest episode of MAD TV University of Surrey Student News and the out-takes!

Episode November 2009:

Out-takes from October 2009:

Stay classy,

Charles x

200

This is the 200th post on this blog. To commemorate this momentous occasion, I will share with you all a poem I wrote a few months ago now about my last year at university… enjoy :)

New Sunrise

Near a cathedral there once was a court

Where Adam stole furniture and never was caught

A chav called Lauren never ate a banana

And a Portuguese girl they called Mariana

You’d never see Chris cus he’s always out

And Sophie, the cleanest one without doubt

That just leaves Charles, you’d meet people meaner

Oh, that reminds me, there’s also the cleaner!

 

Once the year had begun, good times were ahead

There were days in the snow, and many in bed

Club nights, comedy nights, film nights and more

And nights doing nothing weren’t even a bore!

But Charles wasn’t drinking as much as he could,

And Soph took more pictures than she probably should.

Lauren certainly knew how to make a horse wriggle,

And Mariana was there to make them all giggle.

 

But with Mariana gone, they began to believe

That sooner or later they’d all have to leave

And before you knew it the days were all gone

And all who was left was Soph, Joy & Don

Then all the rooms emptied, with no-one about

There was no-one to smile, laugh, tickle or shout

The sun set on court, leaving dark cloudy skies

And the six went in search of a new sunrise...

Special Post #21: Accommodation, Part 9 – 1 Month In

So I haven’t done a special post in a while, so enjoy this one. Funnily enough this is the 10th post in this multi-part series-now-more-of-a-category set of posts about living in my first ever house!

I feel like me and my housemates have come a long way since the start of this journey. It’s a tough task just finding housemates to start with, but I can see now that it couldn’t have worked out better.

We all moved in at the start of October, give a take a day or two. And for the first week we weren't all seen in the same room at the same time. Fresher’s week was like that. So lets meet the gang:

• Anne. The resident Doctor Who fanatic. No seriously, you’d be hard pushed to find anyone as enthusiastic about Doctor Who as Anne. But to say that this tells you anything about Anne would be very wrong. Sure, she’s into comics and films a bit more than the average female, but she’s also very focused on work and very caring towards everyone. If you can’t get on with Anne then there’s something wrong with you, she really is Momma Anne…
• Viv. Completes the line-up of girls in the house. I have to be disappointingly honest when I say that I haven’t spent that much time with Viv. This isn’t by any means an active decision because Viv is a great housemate. She has an slight addiction to Mafia Wars, but she’s a great laugh all the time.
• Will. President of the Chemistry Society, which not only makes him a very busy man, but also means I get to meet lots of Chemistry people I never knew before! He loves electro-dance music and walks in the rain (I made that last part up).
• Josh. The one on my course, the one I knew before and the one I call my best friend…. whatever you want to call Josh he’s a great guy. Very active member of the Christian Union, which takes up a lot of his time, but also plays Rugby and Football in his spare time. We go to lectures together and help each other with work.

How do I get so lucky with my housemates!

As for the other things you worry about when you live in a house, they’re all happening well so far. Rent has all been paid on time using our joint bank account, and once bills start coming in we should be good to go for paying them.

We turned the heating on for the first time last week. It was me who caved, but I was really cold! It comes on in the evenings and hot water is set for the mornings and tends to stay hot for the rest of the day.

Getting to uni is great. Josh, Will and I have bikes that we use to cycle in, it takes me about 4 minutes now from door-to-bike rack. It’s good times, except when I get a puncture which has happened twice now…

It seems that we’re all quite busy so we don’t tend to all be in of an evening very often. But there are occasion when we end up sitting in the living room with our dinners and catch up with what each other has been up to.

Shall I compare thee to last year? It’s hard to because they’re very different experiences. Living in halls was very sociable because everyone was so close, and I got on so well with my housemates that we would just spend hours and hours talking (I’m largely referring to Sophie there…) I’m really enjoying this year, going to other people’s houses and meeting up with friends for lunch, it’s a very different feel to last year but in a good way. Last year was what it was and this year so far is even better!

Wedding, Labs & A First Meeting…

My first ever wedding went great! I loved it. Very personal and cosy, with only 20 or so people there it felt very intimate, which was really great. I filmed it and I’m really looking forward to editing it in the next week.

Thursday was just another one of those days where I had work to do and sleep to get.

On Friday I had labs, which actually went really well. I finished the exercise about 2 hours before the end and just sat around with the Lab demonstrator who was trying to make the last part of the tutorial work. In the end he gave up and let me go early :)

Saturday was another day working at Ascot racecourse. I took 412 sales in 1 day, which is by far the most I've ever done in 1 day. It was amazing fun and I got £7.20 in tips which isn’t bad. And I balanced. Yes, yes I rock…

Sunday was a great day, but since I haven’t been keeping the blog up-to-date with that aspect of my life recently, I don’t think now is the time to elaborate.

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 3 out of 5
• Workload. 8 out of 10
• Last Meal. Chicken & Bacon Sandwich for lunch
• Song of the day. George Michael - Faith
• Thought for the day. 10 seconds of Sunday…
• What I’m Doing Now. About to finish my CV!