Oh whaaaat, we have to do lectures here!?

It's Thursday afternoon, and we're going to be heading out soon. Lectures are done for the week, which is awesome, and all of us with the exception of Abby are now into our first four-day weekend. There's a lot planned, so I'm going to have to get my first assignment done on Monday, ready for lectures to start again Tuesday.

I really love the format of lectures we have here. We only have either one or two modules each, but as we're only here for 5 weeks, I think they'll be on an intense schedule of teaching. Because of this, each lecture is 2h45m, with a couple of 10 minute breaks, one 9:30am-12:15pm, and an afternoon lecture 2:30pm-5:15pm. Most people have lectures Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but by accident, Abby didn't realise that her lectures also included Monday and Friday, though with a couple of single lecture days. The three day week is great as it gives much more time to enjoy the activities around Hong Kong, but it does mean that we have three very full-on lecture days.

Abby's course is the extended mandarin course, so she'll be learning a lot, but if I could give any advice to a prospective ISS student, it'd be to make sure you choose one of the three-day courses. Of course the studies are important, but the amount of things that there are to do and see here, I'd say having Monday and Friday for extended weekends is near enough essential. Every Saturday includes a cultural tour, and we've been coming up with so many day activities that we couldn't possibly get through them with just the Sundays we have. Also, if you want to go away for a weekend to the Phillipines, Beijing, Singapore or any other interesting places nearby, it'd be so much more worth it to go for four days than for two!

Anyway, back to lectures! Beth, Emily and me had agreed to meet at 8:45am to go to lectures. [Incredibly,] I turned up to the 4th floor on time, and waited about for a bit. No show. They weren't in their rooms, so I walked around the building till 9:15 before deciding that I was going to be late and set off to the lecture. 

There was a little confusion as to the where our first lecture was, as one sheet of information said the William M. W. Mong Engineering building, and another said the Wu Ho Man Yuen building, which is where most of the summer school lectures are held. I decided to go to the engineering building first, purely because its half way down the campus (mountain), whereas the other is right at the bottom. If I'd got it wrong, I could come back out and walk the rest of the way down. I had a lovely casual stroll down in the sun, and arrived to the lecture theatre 4 minutes early, where some students had taken their seats, and the lecturers were stood at the front (both of them...more on that in a minute!). I explained to the lecturers why there may have only been half of the class there and enquired to make sure that noone would get late marks or anything, but the lecturers were really friendly and completely understanding. They asked their student helper to go send a message to the bottom building for anyone that may have been stood waiting, and we sat and waited. About 10 minutes late, others started arriving, including Beth and Emily, looking red-faced and out of breath after having realised they were at the wrong building and then climbing the hill and trying to find the engineering building. I'd been sat in the air conditioned lecture room with a can of coke for the last quarter of an hour having a chat with the lecturers. I can imagine the look on my face was particularly unbearably smug, but we laughed it off and settled down. 

My morning lectures are for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and are tought by Dr. Sadan Kulturel-Konak and Dr. Abdullah Konak, who are actually man and wife, and lecture at Pennsylvania State University, in the US. They're both originally from Turkey, and are two of the friendliest people you could imagine to meet. 

In our first lecture we started by going around the room one-by-one, and saying our name, what we study and where, and an interesting fact about ourselves. After introductions were made, we began speaking about what constitutes  entrepreneurial activity, working in groups and talking through the course in general.

After a quick lunch, and a walk around for a while, I went to my second lecture, Energy and Green Society. I met up with Amy, Alex and Jamie who're also taking the same module. 

The lecture started pretty much the same, with introductions from everyone, but in a little more detail; why they chose to come to Hong Kong, why they chose the module, and what they expect to gain from the ISS. Afterwards we went through the course syllabus, and began talking about why energy, green energy, and sustainability are important, along with discussions of clear definitions of each. 

After lectures we headed back up to halls and people mentioned that there was a plan to go out to a restaurant called Mr Wongs which is famous among students in Hong Kong. The place is advertised as all-you-can eat, and beer-you-can-drink , for HK$50 (about £4.25), which sounds great! Me, Abby and Emily hadn't been out yet as we arrived late, so I was keen to go out. Abby and Emily seemed less-so as they had quite a bit if work to get started with (already!?), and didn't want to feel rough the day after. 

We arranged a time and I started to get ready, and whilst doing so, a message popped up from my dad via Facebook saying Hi. I typed out a message giving a quick update of what I'd got up to so far, and that I was just rushing out. I sent it and closed my laptop and rushed out the door. 

Whilst heading down the stairs, I felt my phone buzz with a Facebook message from my dad. It began with "I need you to be brave as I have some bad news." Unfortunately, my grandad had passed away. I knew he'd been a little unwell and was having tests for cancer, but didn't realise it was anywhere near that stage.

I met up with everyone and they were all immediately leaving, so I came along too without saying much. Whilst on the bus down to the MTR station, I realised I'd forgot my Octopus card (like London's Oyster card), which made up my mind; I probably shouldn't go out. I spoke to Jamie, and told him what had happened, and that I was going to head back, and asked him to tell the others if they asked. After that, I caught the bus back up from the station, and spent a quiet night back at halls.

This morning things went a lot smoother than yesterday. We had our second lectures for both modules, although in the afternoon, I think the initial interest of the Energy and Green Society lecture had faded slightly, and the lecturer is much less engaging than Drs. Kulturel and Konak. I spent a large part of the lecture struggling to keep my eyes open, and my notes had a lot of dead-ended points, and lines where my pen was trailing off as I wrote.

After lectures, we have the option of choosing to get the bus back up to the top of the hill, but its usually full, or, walk up, which is a hell of a climb, aided by two lifts, and a lot of stairs. I think the walking is better, but that's just me. 

Anyway, I'm now going to get ready to head out for the first time here. We're going to go to the horse races at Happy Valley Racecourse, which I've heard is a great event to check out in Hong Kong. We shall see!

Settling in

Hong Kong is just amazing. It's beautiful here. Tomorrow we'll be staring lectures which I'm actually quite looking forward to, as it'll be a chance to meet lots of other people doing my modules, and lecturers from other parts of the world...it's not just the students who are international visitors!

As we arrived, we realised that the halls we stay in have an amazing view of Tolo Harbour, and at the top of the stairs from the entrance there is a shallow pond, which is like an infinity pool (no raised sides, so it looks like the water continues into the sea, even though it's a few hundred feet below). The student that showed us to our dorm rooms informed us that there was a category 1 typhoon coming in on Monday afternoon, but it would only be passing close by, rather than hitting directly. 

The infinity pool, and beyond!

At about lunchtime, and after checking out the supermarket, we were walking past the infinity pool, and out across the bay could see a dark grey creeping across the water. The first rains were rolling in, and they were going to be HEAVY! This made me and Emily very excited. The temperature was really hit, so a soaking from some tropical rain might be seriously refreshing. 

We went to get Beth and Amy up, who had been out the previous night, and whilst we waited for them to get dressed the rain came down. It was incredibly heavy and immediately the courtyard began flooding and the storm channels turned into steep torrents of water down the mountain which CUHK covers. 

However, by the time we got outside the rain was dying down. The whole thing mustn't have lasted more than 20 minutes. Abby, Emily and me ran up the stairs to the infinity pool and caught the last of the downpour, but we'll have to be much quicker next time! 

The fact that we ran UP some stairs out if the door of our halls leads to explaining about the CUHK campus. It's absolutely nothing like anywhere I've ever been before. The whole campus is based around a mountainside, on the North-East side of the New Territories of Hong Kong. At the bottom of the mountain, a highway lines the waterfront, and then the mountainside quickly rises up, interspersed with high rise buildings (tiny compared to the rest of the city but easily bigger than most buildings in Liverpool, for example) and winding roads, and then covered in thick vegetation absolutely everywhere else. The University campus takes up a large area on the side and top of the mountain, with buildings rising out of the trees all over the place, steep roads looping back and forth up the gradient, and stairways crisscrossing through the trees in between.

The view from our halls by night.

The lower side of the campus has the main lecture buildings and admin centres, and a beautiful lake/pond lined with lawns, trees and a pavilion. From here, there are bus services to get around the campus, which travel up the hill past the library, supermarket and outdoor olympic pool, to where the student halls are located. The two halls dedicated to the International Summer School students are the Xuesi Hall, which is girls only hall with up to 226 residents, and the Grace Tien hall which is co-ed and takes up to 284 students. One floor of the Grace Tien hall has girls only, and then the rest of the hall is male. Every room is a shared dormitory, and all the students are spread randomly between. The university is quite strict about the different sexes, so the visiting hours between the girls and guys floors are set to 10am-10pm.

CUHK campus looking a lot smaller than it actually is!

CUHK campus from the air

After the rain, the heat returned, and we ended up heading down to the campus swimming pool to cool off. Another spell of heavy rain rolled in whilst we were swimming, with the heavy drops bouncing off the surface making it difficult to see. The rain was cool, which made it great to get out of the pool, and then jump back in to the warm water.

As it was the first of July, the people of Hong Kong celebrate Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment day, which celebrates the transfer of Hong Kong from UK ownership, to becoming a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, in 1997. We'd been told that there would be a fireworks display at Victoria Harbour so a group of about 16 of us decided to head down to East Tsim Sha Tsui where we'd get a view across the water, with the skyscrapers offering a sublime backdrop.

The view from Tsim Sha Tsui, looking across Victoria Harbour at Hong Kong Island

The view across the harbour is simply amazing, so we made our way to the front of the crowd to get some photos. However there were significantly less people than we had expected, and no one looked to be waiting for anything in particular. We went into a store and asked what time the fireworks were supposed to start, and they told us that there had never been fireworks on this day in the past, which completely contradicted what we'd read on the internet, though would explain why it had been almost impossible to find a time! By this point, we'd all become very hungry and decided to give up on the fireworks and go in search of food. We walked into the Tsim Sha Tsui district which showed how busy the Hong Kong streets can be, with people walking in all directions, and people waving flyers at you to try entice you into their shops. Beth took a menu from one woman, and was reading through the choices when she realised it was a menu of different types of foot massage!

The restaurant made ready a huge round table for the 12 of us who stayed for the meal, and we ordered 6 different dishes and a portion of rice each. This meant all chipping HK$1000 in would easily cover it (just less than £10), and we'd actually get money back. The dishes are served out one by one, onto a large rotating glass plate filling the middle of the table, so that everyone can get to the food and pots of tea. JonJon, a Chinese-born student from Bristol University who sat next to me, told us that the Chinese tradition is to serve the tea to your neighbours before to yourself. I tried to remember to do this every time, and everyone awkwardly became acquainted with chopsticks, and we ate through pork, sweet and sour chicken, vegetables, and a few of us tried the chillies which were served with the crispy duck, quickly followed by requests for drinks as our tastebuds proceeded to scorch away.

Waiting to be seated at the restaurant. Note to self: take a photo of the meal next time!!

After the meal most of us headed back to campus via the MTR train, still rather jetlagged. Some stayed out drinking, but they were the ones who'd already been there a couple days. After my travelling the previous days, I didn't feel quite up to it! When back at campus, we finally managed to find out our exam results, after there had been a monumental cockup back at Liverpool uni, meaning the exam results were sent out 4 and a half hours late. Most of us were happy, but unfortunately I was rather disappointed, receiving the news that I'd failed my Thermodynamics exam, though, only by a few percent, so hopefully I can request to be counted as a pass. Overall, I averaged 64.5%, which is lower than my previous averages, but I was expecting much worse, considering how I've been this semester.

The following day, things were back to normal, so Abby, Emily and me had to head down at 9am and collect our student cards and orientation pack. I waited for Emily and Abby in the entrance of our halls for a good 15 minutes, then went in search of them, finding nothing, so went to the i-centre without them. It turned out they'd actually set off earlier, and ended up getting lost, walking miles out of the way on the steep roads, and not having a particularly fun time. I on the other hand met quite a few other late-arrivers, had a nice walk down and back up, getting to know two guys from North Carolina, one from Hawaii, and one from Singapore.

I met back up with the others and we got the bus back down as a group for the welcome talk at 11am. The talk gave the opportunity to see where everyone had travelled from, and introduced us to a brief history of CUHK, and the areas of research and learning in which the university excels. By the end of the talk though, we'd all realised that we'd have to bring extra layers with us to lecture theatres as the air conditioning made the room absolutely freezing, and most of us were sat in shorts and t-shirts.

After the talk, a few of us went to the campus swimming pool again, talking my GoPro along to film us messing around underwater.

Underwater generic Chinese photo pose!

In the evening we stayed on campus and got food at one of the many canteens. We took it easy (didn't go out!) and prepared for lectures in the morning. I'd like to say I got an early night, but that'd be a little white lie. I stayed up basically writing this post and surfing the web.

What. A. Journey.

So here I am, I've just arrived in Hong Kong, and it's 2:12 local time. And I AM SHATTERED.

That was an incredible journey though. It's been about 59 hours since we left L'Argentière in the French Alps, and in that time, I've covered:

768 miles by car,

90 miles on public transport,

11 miles on foot,

and 7769 miles by plane.

But, finally, I write this from the [relative] comfort of my Student Halls room for the next 5 weeks.

We left L'Argentière at just after 11:30 (French time) via the big camp cowboy on the road to Briançon, and a supermarket to get travel munch, then began the long drive back to the UK. I did the first driving stint which was a solid 6 and a half hours, covering a bit over 300 miles. Spud drove four and a bit hours to Calais, then Gareth took the helm to drive me to London. 

L.U.C.C. and the big camp cowboy striking his pose.

My visa for Hong Kong hadn't been sent out till after I left for the Alps, so I had it sent to my friends parents house in Chiswick so that I could go and collect it before my flight from Gatwick, (my flight on the same day we arrived back in the UK meant I had no time to travel all the way back up to Liverpool). 

However, Harrys parents wouldn't be up until 7:30am on the 28th, our channel crossing was meant to be at 1am, AND because we arrived early, we ended up doing the channel crossing at 11:50pm!! This meant when we arrived in London at 1:30am England time, I had six hours to kill. Harry suggested that Hammersmith bus station was open 24hours, so I got dropped off there. I waved and hugged goodbye to the kayakers who I'd had such an amazing 10 days with, and then I was on my own. 

I walked around the bus station, got my bearings, went inside, sat on the seats and read for an hour, but was falling asleep and didn't trust my bags to stay safe if I was asleep, so I got up and decided to go for a walk about. 

I found a church yard where I could brush my teeth and bandage up my toe which had become mega painful after splitting the nail somehow, then began walking towards Chisick, deciding to take a scenic route along the Thames to waste time taking photos.

Round reflective things...always a trusty wannabe photographer's best friend.

Hammersmith Bridge, at 3:07am.

I ended up walking past all the rowing club buildings I recognise from the Oxford-Cambridge Varsity boat race fotage on the telly, then found a really nice park which was pretty secluded, so decided to grab at least a tiny bit of sleep, laying on my bag and tucked into a quiet walled off garden. TOTAL SLEEP COUNTER: 1.25 HOURS. I woke up feeling pretty cold (it was to be expected!) then continued to Chiswick where I set up in a Starbucks to get organised, check into my flight and book a bus to Gatwick. It was then finally time to head over to Harrys parents (accidentally found myself having to cross the M4 in busy early morning traffic!!!), where I had a cuppa tea, a chocolate biscuit and a lovely chat with Harrys mom for a bit. 

The Boulding household.

After that I hopped on a tube to Earls court, and caught my bus to Gatwick. I had an argument with the bus driver because he wouldn't accept my ticket I was showing him on my phone (funnily enough, I wasn't carrying a printer around with me!), and I won...people on the bus cheered, I felt great haha!

My flight from Gatwick took me to Dubai, where I had a 22-hour stay over, which I chose because I wanted to have time to have a look around. I got to Dubai at half past midnight, only managing half an hours sleep before the glass of wine I dozed off with in my hand ended up in my crotch TOTAL SLEEP COUNTER: 1.25 HOURS.

Dubai airport was exactly as I expected...everything was large, brash and looked like it had money thrown at it like crazy. As I left the airport, I realised how valuable air conditioning is in a place like this. The hottest day I've ever experienced in the UK was one summer about 7 or 8 years ago, when I remember mum and dad being amazed that the temperature was 33°C. Here I was in Dubai, leaving the airport close to 2am, and I walked out to see a temperature update which said it was 32°C...at 2am...TWO O' CLOCK IN THE MORNING!!!

Flying into the sunset above Eastern Europe

Anyway, I skyped home to tell them I was alive (but melting), and eventually grabbed a taxi to the Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made structure in the world. It was about 2:30am, and I got some great photos looking up from the base of the tower, lighting up the night sky, dwarfing all the surrounding buildings. I followed the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Boulevard around the base of the tower, then stopped to sit down outside a restaurant and take a breather as it was so hot. Crime in Dubai is low, so all the restaurants generally leave their furniture out, which makes for an eerily abandoned feel to some places in the middle of the night. Something else I noticed as I walked around was that there are migrant workers EVERYWHERE, and as you walk past them, they all stop what they're doing and stare at you the whole time. It's very very intimidating, and when I asked a taxi driver on the following day, he says it's that the workers have a very low standard of living, and they earn their money purely by building these overtly luxurious buildings which Westerners come and make use of. Seeing a blonde haired, fair skinned chap from Yorkshire walking round with an expensive camera and looking all starry eyed must have been a fairly demoralising sight for them.

Anyway, I decided I'd head in the direction I thought the ocean was, thinking I'd manage to walk it. I wandered through an area which looked slightly more construction site-like, and on the back wall of one building, I noticed an open fire door onto some stairs. The building looked to be fully constructed, but as though noone had been in for a while. The security guard had followed me round the corner however, so I wandered up to him, explained that I was slightly lost, and could he point me in the right direction. Satisfied, he turned and left and I hid round the corner and waited for him to be far enough away before making a dash to the fire door. I started climbing and found a multistory car park, and then lots of sets of staircases, some of them locked, some open. I found one flight of open stairs which looked about right and I started climbing (still incredibly hot!).

Roughly 40 flights of stairs up, I was pouring with sweat and completely out of breath, especially with my bag full of camera, laptop and other stuff. The stairs stopped, and I was presented with a door. I prayed it would open and sure enough, as I passed through, I found myself on the roof of what I'd probably call a skyscraper back in the UK. Perfect.

The view from on top of my private building.

I stayed on the roof of the building until the sun came up, and took some timelapses on my GoPro, as I'd left my interval timer for the SLR in my other bag. Here's a video of the sun rising above Dubai. I'll hopefully make a better quality one when I go back through Dubai in August. 

Don't worry, there'll be a much better quality one to come.

The building seemed as though it was abandoned

I decided to make myself scarce at about 5am, as I could see workers arriving into other construction sites below, so tiptoed back down the staircase, grabbing a couple shots of the seemingly abandoned floors as I passed. I'd decided that I was close enough in my mind to the ocean to walk and get more photos of the sun coming up from ground level. Turns out I was much further away than I originally thought, and didn't have WiFi to check. Every corner I turned looked like it had the kind of buildings that'd be on the ocean front, even though each road looked like another 500m long at least, but they just kept going and going and going.

Looking back at the sun rising in Dubai

I had actually walked pretty much directly towards the sea, but by the time I'd got there, it turned out I'd actually walked about 6 miles in the increasing heat (which was f*****g hot already!). My feet were completely ruined, I'd split my little toenail, and I was struggling to walk by the time I got there, but it was so worth it when I finally got there. I dropped my stuff, stripped down to my boxers (no swimwear on me!) and walked into the sea, and it was literally perfect. The water was warmer than the air, but so incredibly refreshing that I could feel all my muscles relaxing. Easily the most amazing time I've ever swam in the sea. I got out to dry off, which didn't take long, though the sea was incredibly salty, so I was covered in white power. I was so tired I managed to have a tiny little sleep on the beach but the heat woke me up quite soon. TOTAL SLEEP COUNTER: 1.75 HOURS.

My personal perfect beach spot!

After that I started walking agin, towards the Burj Al Arab hotel, which I could see in the distance. I must have made it about 300m before I decided that it was way too hot, and headed back to the road to catch a taxi. I headed to the Mall of Dubai, which was very impressive, but after walking around once, grabbing some food and going to a few shops but buying nothing, I decided I was absolutely ruined. The decision was made to retreat to the airport, getting there at about 1:30pm. I bought some shampoo, found the showers in the departure lounge and had a brilliantly refreshing shower, then set my laptop charging, hid it under my seat in the departure lounge and sat down for a little sleep...my longest one yet; 4 and a bit hours. TOTAL SLEEP COUNTER: 6 HOURS. With just less than five hours left until my flight (sigh), I got to sorting through some of the footage from the Alps trip, and organising plans for arriving at Hong Kong. I'd originally planned to spend all day walking around Dubai, but my feet were too painful even before arriving in Dubai to manage any more walking.

The Burj Khalifa in all it's glory

My plane to Thailand went by pretty quickly. I watched a film, edited some more footage, wrote a blog post, had my meal, had few drinks, then started to nod off again, but only for about 20 minutes. Once again, I was woken by a wet sensation in my crotch. For the second time this journey, I'd fallen asleep with a glass of wine in my hand, this time pretty much the whole glass was in my lap. Safe to say I spent the rest of the journey trying to hide it!!

When I arrived in Thailand, I was pretty knackered, but had to collect my baggage and then check it in for my next flight, as it was an entirely separate flight as opposed to a transfer, as this allows me to leave a few days between flights when I come back in August. However I felt really really sick for a while, almost to a painful level and was frothing from my stomach (!!?!??!?). I decided the best option to get rid of it was to get some sleep, so once again went straight to the gate and set up for a sleep on the chairs, using my [definitely not stolen] Emirates pillow and blanket. TOTAL SLEEP COUNTER: 8 HOURS.

The flight from Thailand to Hong Kong was particularly significant to me as an Engineer as I realised that as the plane arrived in the airport, it was the new, largest passenger carrying aeroplane in the world, the Airbus A380. It was freaking huge, and made the short flight pretty exciting. 

The ginormous Airbus A380

Waiting to board, there seemed to be a lot of excitement with some of the passengers in the gate lounge, with lots of them photoing something. I went over to take a look, and there was a Russian couple who had a two or three year old daughter dressed up in adorable summer clothes, and she had a Cars 2 playset, and it had turned out that a boy Chinese toddler had joined and they were both checking out the box of the playset, and talking to each other, pointing at the box, yet both were speaking in their own language. Possibly the most adorable sight ever!

N'awwwwwwwwwwww!!

The call came to board the plane and all of a sudden there was a mad rush as everyone piled forwards. All the Hongkongians...Hongkongites...Hong........people from Hong Kong were literally MENTAL. The whole flight was like a nursery, and I felt insanely sorry for the flight attendants. They were literally rushing the WHOLE flight while most of the passengers were shouting, waving, tapping, bothering, grabbing stewardesses to take photos (!!!!) and generally being uncontrollable. It was crazy, but hilarious. 

Anyway, we arrived in Hong Kong and departed the plane (I sat and waited until the madness died down), and then as I got to Passport control, I forgot to show my visa. Big mistake...the guy (obviously) didn't check my student visa and simply gave me a temporary visa stamp. When I realised and pointed out my actual student visa, the guy paused and then let out a huge sigh of frustration. There then followed about half an hour of filling in various forms while I was made to sit on the naughty step (chairs) outside the passport control office. However, it was all pretty manageable, and I was on my way, headed to a seating area in the meeting hall, and waited for the next few hours for Emily and Abby to arrive. We ended up arriving at the university halls at about half past one in the morning and checked in. When I arrived on my floor, I was welcomed by a group of mostly mexicans drinking whiskey and eating pizza, so I introduced myself and had a drink, but soon after headed to bed to get some much needed sleep. 

Journey time since leaving L'Argentière: 58 hours, 45 minutes

Total sleep counter: 8 hours 30 minutes

Enjoyment level: 10

Energy level remaining: 1

What on EARTH happened last night?!

Wow, what a night. Met Ste, jake and Hussey for a drink, though Hussey had to shoot off for a band practice. Ste's girlfriend Veronika turned up and I got a steak (amazing) then Ste suggested we go back to his for a few drinks. I decided to stay over at Jakes house afterwards and head back in the morning.

Hussey came back to meet up with us, I got a photo with some of the cast of Coronation Street to send to my dad as he lives and breathes for that show (No, I don't know why either!!), and then we headed back to Ste's place, via the shop to buy cheap dirty wine.

After that, we all went insane.

Corrie Lads

By insane, I mean literally, insane. I've never had such a random night, but it was brilliant. We simply hung at Ste and Veronika's flat, drinking wine, and eventually came the freezing cold Jägermeister.

An update

When I decided to write this blog, I forgot to take into account I'm not very reliable at writing posts immediately, so here's an update of what I've got up to, it'll probably be a longer one as I've missed out quite a bit!!


End of second year
I finished my exams on the 28th May, and what a HUGE relief. They were bloody awful, and took it out of me in a big way. Workwise, I've hated this second semester, having had to deal with personal problems, dad having various scary complications or procedures to do with the fact he's got Leukaemia, a decrease in my interest for my course, though an increase in my interest to go kayaking, and the realisation that my best mates for the last three years will be finishing this year and going their separate ways while I stay at university for another two years.

My exams went okay on the whole, apart from one which I felt I was prepared for, but it turned out much much harder than I expected. My first four exams were my hardest four, and were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the first week. By Thursday I was a wreck, but it felt like such a relief as I left my Dynamic Systems exam, so I did what any responsible student would do...got very pissed and then went kayaking three days in a row. I was near enough ready for my last exam the following Tuesday and it went pretty smoothly.

The Mystery Machine showed up to the Tryweryn. Jinkies!

As most others still had exams, it took a couple days before Summer started taking off, but since then, it's not stopped!...


My Birthday, a wedding, and a trip to Anglesey.
My Birthday was on the 31st May, though with a weekend away to prepare for and a wedding to shoot that day, I pretty much forgot! We had a spontaneous night out on the Thursday, and on friday morning I was very much still drunk. I had a quick docs appointment, then me and Gareth went to collect the minibus and to pick up a couple of demo boats from Runcorn. We were both definitely still over the limit, but we'll not mention that. A stop at Subway (inside a Spar?!) and we came home, dropped me off at home to get suited and booted, then Gareth drove me to St Georges Hall in town.

Mark and Maria's wedding was real nice, and Mark made a moving speech about Maria's parents not being able to be there, and everyone thanked me for the amount of effort I put into my work. Here's one of my favourite pics from the day. Mark and Maria were thrilled with the pictures and enjoyed a fortunately sunny honeymoon in Cornwall.

Maria really enjoys the confetti after the ceremony. Mark slightly less-so!

After the wedding, and still in smarts, I walked up to the canoe club sheds where everyone was loading the minibus, helped load, and off we went...still in smarts! A writeup of the Anglesey trip from a club point of view is here. I took the Pyranha Jed along for the weekend, and my love continues to grow for that boat. After the summer's over, I'm pretty sure that's going to be my next [stupid] financial venture to chase!!

Games of French Cricket on the beach in Anglesey.

Post exam celebrations, Birthday celebrations and celebrations for the sake of celebrations!
The next few days we had some amazing weather, which meant pretty much every day was spent sat in Sefton Park. I spend monday BBQing with my favourites at Sefton, then ended up heading to town at 1am on my own to meet a handful of the kayakers for a really great spontaneous night at Heebies.

Tuesday was spent sunning with the kayakers from the night before playing frisbee at Sefton Park, then came back for lads curry night. Jed and Harry arranged a joint birthday night with 17 of the boys heading into town for a curry, and then while I came home to get a shower before a house party we'd arranged to go to, the others ended up at X in the City for what sounds like possibly the funniest experience ever. Harry was bought a dance by everyone which basically involved five dancing girls beating the crap out of him, tying him up, twisting his nipples (he didn't enjoy that bit), walking him like a dog, and making him do 'muff sit ups', slapping him back down every time he sat up into a facefull of gloriness. Harry described it as the most intimidating but thrilling 15 minutes of his life.

Eventually everyone came home and a handful of us went to a CRAMMED house party at "The Kennel" house on Smithdown road. It was incredible, though in the main DJ room, it was so hot you could physically touch the heat pocket bulging from the door. The floor felt like it was going to go through, there were huge queues up and down the stairs, and people struggling to perch on any flat surface possible in the chillout rooms.

The only photo I took of the Kennel Party. Quite difficult to see through the sweat, smoke, champagne and flashing lights.

The following day was another day at the park, then the main event. The guys at Arundel had arranged a huge end of uni party at theirs, with Pause DJs joining, and loads of people coming along. The party was massive, and the second time the police turned up, everyone left at 4:30am. Afterwards, the main guys all come back to ours and we ended a huge night the only way possible: by watching Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. I barely even managed to see Gandalf's arrival in Hobbiton before KO'ing, though Harry managed to watch the whole thing, and said it was the best time he's ever seen it.


Visiting Home
This weekend I decided to come home, instead of going to Parklife, as originally planned. Firstly, I can't really afford to be going to another festival with all my plans for this year, but more importantly, it was more than likely this weekend will be my last chance to see Mum and Dad before I set off on my travels. I came home on Friday evening after selling my ticket last minute to a chap off my course. Arriving home, I was picked up by Mom from the train station, and in the short journey home we'd already made arrangements to go for a meal with Karen and Laura, which ended up being a face-stuffingly good Carvery.

Drooling just looking at this photo of the carvery we had. Nom

I had spoke to Vicci Sims about maybe meeting up that night after my meal, and sure enough, I ended up at Brighouse's finest establishment, The Calder. After many many beverages and shouting over the stupidly loud music, me, Chris, Sam and Vicci headed back to hers for more drinks, and I dozed off while Sam and Vicci argued about the theory behind falling in love. I headed home at something like 5am, and went to bed.

The following day was a recovery and sorting-stuff-out-day (watching films with mom, basically), but that night I saw that West Yorkshire Canoe Club were holding a kayaking event up at the Washburn near Harrogate. I enquired and in the morning, me and mum headed over, the intention to get mum out of the house, and for me to get my whitewater fix. The weather was perfect and after finding a place to tie the dog up, me and mum went whitewater rafting.

I've never actually tried rafting, mostly because on the river they're a kayakers nemesis (other than trees, trees suck). However, I was obviously completely relaxed as I knew the course had nothing particularly dangerous on it. Mum was really nervous, so we asked to have a 'sensible' run down, with a young girl and her gran. The raft guide was clearly insane, but he agreed he'd take it easy. He spoke words of comfort to the party, mentioning that he's never known a raft to flip on the Washburn, and that he'll just blast down and not stop and play etc. We got on, and he led down, making it slightly interesting by having the raft spin quickly off the opposing banks, bumping into rocks and trees to give a little bit of excitement. We came round the corner to the main drop on the washburn and plopped down it without any fuss whatsoever, and everyone let their guard down. What the raft guide didn't really pay any attention to was the small pourover just after the main drop, which we went over sideways. Sure enough, mum and the young girl slipped down into me and the girls gran, and we were all thrown into the freezing cold water (dam release, so it's still bloody cold in winter!). We all got back on board okay eventually and chased everyones paddles down, and the only injury was a scrape on mum's knuckles, and scratch on my new helmet I'd bought just that day. We continued on, and as I kept putting in kayaking strokes, the raft guide made me swap with him and I had a go at guiding the raft down, which was pretty fun!

After the shuttle to the top, mum got changed and warmed up while I borrowed someone from WYCCs boat and paddles, and then we headed home. I think mum'll never forgive me for making her do that, but secretly I bet she actually really loved it.

Today has just been a day of being productive. I've wrote all this out for one thing, which makes me think it's way too long to add any more! I head off back to Liverpool tonight, but have arranged to make a stop at Manchester for a couple hours to go for a drink with Ste. I'm excited...it's been over a year since I saw him, and he's practically a brother of mine!!!

So, here we go...

Here's my blog. I've not done a blog before, but this summer, I feel as though I should. I've got an epic summer planned, and it'd be silly not to make some kind of diary of what I get up to. I'm pretty sure it'll be just me reading it, but that's not a worry. This blog is here to make up for my rather crap memory!

Adi