My Library Adventure
Well, yesterday was the day of the big library experiment to see what impact it made on my revision by working there early in the morning. And because I knew I had to wake up early, my book naturally had a ginormous chapter waiting for me when I read it before bed so I ended up putting it down mid chapter at 10 past midnight. And then for some reason I couldn’t get to sleep till about one in the morning. This is so unlike me – I usually fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow! And I found out I have some sort of weird body clock thing going on because even after that late night I woke up half an hour before my alarm, like I have been doing the last few days, even though my alarm was set for QUARTER PAST SEVEN!
That’s the strange thing about university life, your timing gets completely skewed by all the late nights and lie ins so I obviously wasn’t as tired as I thought I was. I managed to be ready for eight, which is when I was supposed to be meeting my friends, but one of them found it a little harder getting up so early than me, so we only made it to the library at about twenty to ten. While we were there (after we’d traipsed around trying to find somewhere to sit), I actually got quite a bit done. We were in the silent area which was a bit scary at first, but it definitely forces you to work because there’s just nothing else to do! We had lectures starting at twelve, so we only stayed for just over an hour and a half before we had to leave, but after the lectures we decided to go back again.
Between the lectures and the library, we went back to our own rooms for toilet breaks and a bite to eat – and this is when I managed to get trapped in the loo by a cleaner. I went to the loo and saw when I walked down the corridor that the cleaner was hoovering the floors. I went and ‘did my thing’ and just as I was washing my hands, I heard the hoover get really loud and sort of bang against the toilet door. But she continued doing this for what seemed like ages! And I was in a bit of a hurry because I was meant to be meeting my friends again and I didn’t want them to think I’d spent that long in the loo, as you can imagine! Eventually she moved away and I could escape, but I think I’ll be more wary of cleaners from now on!
We went back to the library only to find it completely different from our last visit. Early in the morning, it was busy but there were still enough spaces around that the three of us could find desks next to each other. Now though it was… well, the only way I can describe it is how you’d imagine the inside of an ants nest to be. Most of the desks were taken and just when you’d think you’d got lucky with an empty one, you’d see someone’s stuff splayed out all over it; and then there were the people like us who were wondering around trying to find places to work. This made it quite awkward in the narrow isles when you had to squeeze past each other. The library has five floors and we literally walked along every isle on every floor trying to find seats before we gave up and went back – so we gave it a good try!
(My work of art interpretation of an ant nest library).
So, things I’ve learnt about the library:
- If you’re going to go, go early.
- The silent area, although scary, does help with the concentration (note to self, don’t sit by the lifts so you don’t have to listen to the ‘Dong!’ every two seconds).
- People get angry when you sit at a desk with a plug socket and don’t have a laptop.
- It would make a great place to play hide and seek.
I think we’re going to keep going at the crack of dawn until our exams, because while I’m there I do get a lot done and it actually motivates me to work in my room afterwards as well, because I know there are all those people working in the library and it’s not just me having to do it. I will have to learn to go to bed earlier though, because after two days of getting up at 7:15, I’m knackered! It’s weird, at home, 11:00 seems late for going to bed, but here there are people running about and shouting and screaming till gone 1am, so going to bed at midnight still seems early. Now though, I am SO ready for an early night! I’m looking forward to my 11:30 bed time already.
P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures, there’s not very much to photograph when you’re staring at a book all day. I’m also sorry that I’ve just been rambling on about revising for the last few posts, it’s just taking up my life at the moment. In a few weeks, normal posts will return (and they’ll be filled with happy thoughts because I’ll have done my exams and I’ll have some free time. Yay for free time!). Anyway, I promise my next post will have absolutely NOTHING about revision in it. And I’ll do my best with some photos.
Happy Tuesday!
Early Mornings
Since I came back to uni from my weekend at home, I’ve been waking up quite early in the mornings. Now, I think I should probably clarify what I mean by quite early. I mean I’m waking up before my alarm. That’s set for 10:30. So, to most of you, that’s probably not early but it somehow makes a big difference to my day. It means I get to wake up slowly and have a few minutes just daydreaming in my bed before I fully wake up and get up. It also means I have some spare time before my lectures, so after I’ve had breakfast, trawled through Facebook and Twitter and whatever else I can find on the internet, I do a bit of sneaky, unplanned revision. I don’t usually have time to get loads done, but it really makes the workload seem less and makes me feel like I’ve accomplished a lot more than I would have done.
This week, my friends and I are trying something out. We’re going to wake up super early (like, 7:30 or 8:00) and head over to the library. We have lectures at 12:00, so we’ll only be there for a few hours, but we’re seeing if it’ll make a big difference to our revision. Personally, I’m not optimistic. I’m not very good at functioning when I’ve just woken up and I don’t think the library environment will suit my type of revision. I like to spread everything out all over the place (my bed comes in very handy for this) and I like to work for a set amount of time before having a timed break, which usually involves the internet/eating/spinning on my chair/singing to music/reading my book and I’m just not sure this behaviour is encouraged in the library. I know certain floors have different rules, so there are places where I can be slightly louder, but that just means everyone else will be equally loud. If they could provide a place where I was allowed to be as noisy as I wanted, but everyone else had to be quite, that would be perfect. I think I should present this idea to the library staff – I’m sure they’d go for it.
While we’re on the subject of waking up early, I’ll tell you about my little alarm clock drama. Because there’s no space in our rooms for a bedside table, I used to have to leave my alarm clock on the floor next to me bed. That was until I walked across the room and caught it with my foot so it shot across the room and slammed into my door. It still tells the time, but the alarm no longer works. I was quite upset about this because my friend gave it to me nearly seven years ago when she moved to New Zealand. Anyway, I use the alarm on my watch now, which is a nice beeping that’s just loud enough to wake you up without startling you. Only, it randomly decides not to go off now and then. This means I have to set two alarms – one on my watch, and one on my phone. My phone alarm always makes me jump awake, so I set it just after my watch one. I have to make sure I remember to switch it off before it starts though because otherwise I come back from going to the loo and find my whole room vibrating with the alarm!
No space for a bedside table.
My make shift bedside table.
I started writing this post as a forced break from revision due to a group of rowdy boys playing football outside my room, and they’re showing no sign of stopping (damn this beautifully gorgeous sunny weather! At least wait till I can go and play outside too!), so I think I’ll just have to take an even longer break and then maybe cook some tea.
I feel like a nosey neighbour, but at least I didn’t actually twitch the net curtains! And they are VERY loud.
I’ll report back with how the early morning ‘revising’ goes. I just hope no-one finds me slumped at a desk with me head on a keyboard dribbling and snoring away.
A Wasted Day
Man, have I had a crazy day today! I stumbled out of bed at ten to eight so I would be bright eyed and bushy tailed (as in, not wearing my pyjamas) for my nine o’ clock lecture. Only, 15 minutes into the lecture and the lecturer still wasn’t there. He just didn’t bother to turn up for some reason or other. What a waste of a lie in! After that, I had to stand next to a poster my tutor group had to make for a group project and be asked all the wrong questions by a modulator, resulting in me being humiliated by not knowing the right answers.
Next up, I had a two hour revision session for my least favourite subject. Although, I think it’s my least favourite because we have a Russian lecturer (not that I have anything against Russian lecturers!) who has a really, really thick strong accent worthy of the ‘Compare the Market’ advert and who randomly slips into Russian if he forgets the English word. I think he’s probably a nice person and a very clever one at that, he just doesn’t understand what we’re asking him and we don’t understand much of his answers. So, that was very productive as you can imagine!
Thankfully we were graced with an hour to eat some lunch and rewire our brains after the revision session (this is a very complicated procedure involving Angry Birds and some shortbread). Then we trailed off to a computer room for our lab. I bet labs sound interesting, don’t they – they did to me at first – and some of them are. But not this one. This one involved a computer simulation of some flies that you can make have lots of babies (doesn’t sound too bad yet…) and then you have to look at each baby computer fly and make a tally of whether it was normal, had weird wings or was a different colour (still not sounding too bad…). Do you know how many baby computer flies we had to categorise? 950! Nine. Hundred. And. Flipping. Fifty. This took an hour and a half and then we were done. I’m not too sure what skills we gained during that session, but they must have been pretty important to make up for the complete boredom and monotonous-ness of the lab. (I think the actual brain power is required for the question sheet we’ve got, but still – THEY COULD HAVE GIVEN US THE DAMN NUMBERS!!!!)
Sorry – do I sound angry? I’m not that angry. I’m just bored and frustrated with the way I feel I’ve wasted a lot of my time today when I have so much revision to get through before my exams.
On the plus side, I found a pack of pretty pens hidden on my desk that I though had run out but are actually new – score!
Today
Today, I…
… woke up and thought it had snowed – it turned out to be cherry blossom that had escaped the tree…
… played Jenga with my textbooks…
… tried to be healthy by snacking on cashew nuts (after eating a cheese and onion roll, crisps and a cookie, oops! I blame it on revision)…
… played with my new highlighter…
… hoped my bananas won’t get too brown by Saturday when I can get some more. I think they go brown quickly because they live next to my warm laptop charger, but I’m too lazy to think of a new place for them, so there they shall stay…
… plan on catching up with Desperate Housewives and finishing off the rest of my Easter egg.
Tonight will be a good night.
Jamie’s Awesome Potatoes
Just before I came back to university, I was really ill with a stomach bug and had to spend the whole day in bed drifting in and out of sleep. In between these naps, I did the obvious thing you do when you’re ill – I watched telly. One of the things I watched was Jamie’s Thirty Minute Meals and he cooked these amazingly delicious looking potatoes. I think it was a kind of spruced up pub lunch and he was doing these instead of chips, but they looked SO DAMN TASTY! I really wanted to try them out, but I was whisked away to uni to take a hideous exam instead.
Anyway, when I was home this weekend, I decided that I just had to try them out. The only place I could find the actual recipe was here, but I took lots of photos, so you should be able to follow it from what I did.
You will need:
- New potatoes (or any kind of small potato. The ones we had were a bit too big, but they still worked well)
- A few cloves of garlic (how many depends on how many potatoes you’ve got, but I like garlic, so I’d say the more the better!)
- Rosemary
- Sea Salt
First, chop any larger potatoes in half and give them a rinse.
Peel your garlic cloves (Jamie Oliver doesn’t do this, but I just think it’s a bit gross to leave the skins on!) and crush them a little bit to bring out the flavour.
Pop the potatoes and garlic in quite a deep frying pan (or you could use a saucepan for this first bit), cover with water and boil for about 20 minutes or until they’re cooked through.
When they’re cooked, drain them and then tip them back in the frying pan, but not before fishing out one or two cloves of garlic. Chop these up really finely so they form a sort of paste and then add that to the frying pan too. Pour a good glug of olive oil over the potatoes and put on a medium heat.
Now, the next bit works a little better if your potatoes are whole, but you grab a potato masher and gently crush the potatoes a little. The idea is to get a flat surface so they fry a little better and also to bring out a bit of their fluffiness so you get yummy crispy bits.
While they’re frying, gently toss them or give them a bit of a poke with a spatula to stop them from sticking. At some point during the frying, add in a few sprigs of rosemary – don’t think about missing this step because this is what makes them so delicious!
Also add a nice sprinkling of sea salt. I tried using normal salt at first because I didn’t see the sea salt (tongue twister or what!) and you really couldn’t taste it, so if you can, use sea salt. You get a nice crunch with it too. Keep tossing them/stirring them until they’re satisfyingly golden and crunchy-looking, then serve with whatever else you’re having. Unless you’re just having a huge plate of potatoes (which I so wouldn’t judge you for doing – they’re just that good).
They are seriously tasty. They were that good in fact, that word travelled about the awesome potatoes. I visited my Grandma and she’d already heard about how good they were and wanted the recipe. I skyped Rachel and she’d already been told about their deliciousness and said she wanted to try them next time she was home.
Although I would like to tell the world that the potatoes were so good purely because of my cooking skills, honestly, I just followed the recipe – it’s Jamie Oliver’s years of practise that allowed him to come up with such a tasty recipe that’s so easy to make yourself. I’m just glad I did try them, I think they’ll be a regular occurrence at home now, although I think I might use smaller potatoes next time. So please, for your taste buds’ sake, try this easy peasy recipe you’ll see what I’m banging on about!
Basingstoke Canoe Race
On Sunday morning, my alarm went off at the crack of dawn (7:45) to wake me in time to get to the canoe race I was competing in at Basingstoke. And before I go any further, I think I should explain how the world of marathon kayak racing works.
- There are nine divisions – 9 being the slowest, 1 being the super-duper-amazingly-fast fastest.
- Divisions 9-7 race over 4 miles, 6-4 over 8 miles and 3-1 over 12 miles.
- Divisions 6-1 must have a portage. This is where they cruelly make you jump out of your boat, run a certain distance while carrying your boat, then jump back in again. Most of the time these are around locks.
- In every division, there is a K1 (one person per boat) class, and a K2 (two person per boat) class.
- You race against people the same speed as you – age and gender don’t matter.
There, I think that’s everything you need to know to have an understanding of what I do most summer Sundays. So, for this race, I was racing in a K2 with a guy called Dave from our club, in division 4.
(Photo taken by Tamsen Flack)
It was really fun to be racing again after a whole winter of not doing very much, and we actually won our race! This is most certainly because Dave is super quick and has been doing a ton of extra training which managed to more than make up for my total lack of training while I’ve been at uni.
It’s not just the racing bit that I enjoy so much though, it’s the whole atmosphere. All the 4 mile races start in the morning before the 8 and 12 mile ones, so everyone who’s not racing while other people are will stand on the bank and cheer you on and take photos. A win in a race not only makes you a winner, but it spreads through the whole club as they feel a part of it all by watching and encouraging.
It’s not only people from your own club that congratulate you and make you feel good either – after the race, I had to walk up to where everyone was watching at the finish to get the car keys so I could get changed and a woman who I’d never met before and didn’t recognise at all stopped me and said, “You just won that race didn’t you? Well done! You looked really good out there.” That totally made my day. How nice of her to say those things when she didn’t have the foggiest idea who I was. But that’s exactly what the canoeing world is like. Everybody understands each other and encourage and congratulate people if they’ve done well, regardless of anything else. Obviously, there can be a few spats during the races, but what happens on the water stays on the water (most of the time!) and you get your own back by training even harder and flying past them at the next race.
Although I’m concentrating on trying to pass my exams at the moment, the thought that keeps me going is the hugely long summer holiday I’ll have afterwards when I’ll be free to train and race as often as I want.
AND I CAN’T FREAKING WAIT!!
Home Is Where The Mum Is
I’m back at home this weekend to compete in a canoe race tomorrow. My mum’s been visiting Heather for a few days with my grandma, which meant that when I arrived last night, I came home to an empty house as both Patch and my dad were out. It was very strange and really quiet which our house is usually anything but. I was expecting to come home to a bunch of rowdy teenagers as Padraig was meant to have friends over but a change of plan meant that he was out somewhere else instead. The weirdest thing was being in the house without my mum. She’s always there when I come back from uni – that’s just where she is!
I gave her a ring in the evening to find out that she and my grandma were having a lovely time, but that she was sorry she couldn’t be there to welcome me home. Whenever I do come home, my mum usually gets me a small bunch of flowers to put in my room just to make it seem a bit fresher, but obviously this time she couldn’t because she’d left a few days before I got home so they would have gone off. When I pulled my duvet over to get into bed though, I found another of her notes which apologised for the lack of flowers and to make up for it, she’d cut out a picture of some lilies! How thoughtful and surprising – I love it!
She needn’t have worried though, because after I’d been home for a while and made use of the free remote, my dad arrived home with a fresh bunch of flowers and a bar of chocolate which I plan to put in my Emergency Chocolate tin.
It was just a very odd evening having just two males for company – it ended up with me and Padraig showing each other music clips on YouTube trying to outdo each other with better songs, which I think was just another form of procrastination from the dreaded revision! Anyway, my mum’s back now and she bought Heather (and the bump!) with her, which is even better. Lots of poking, prodding and rubbing to be done along with imaginary baby clothes shopping I suspect.
What are you doing with your weekend?
One of Those Days
You know when you wake up only to realise that your alarm should have gone off half an hour ago and the rest of the day sort of follows suit with rubbishness? Well, yesterday was one of those days. I woke up late and only had a cereal bar for breakfast because I’d run out of apples and bananas (I’m still sticking to my meagre attempt at being healthy). Then, when I was walking up to the lecture with my friends, I find it’s not just one lecture, but a lecture, an hour talk on an integrated year and then an hour talk on how to pass (or not fail quite so miserably in my case!) our exams.
We finally reached the life sciences campus that’s slightly set away from the main campus and as I walk through the ‘automatic’ doors, they close on me. This is because of a new increase on security developed because an animal rights activist managed to follow some people in and have a snoop around before stealing a lab coat. Apparently they got stopped when a lab technician asked for I.D. and the guy ran, only to be tackled to the ground by this lab tech.! All very dramatic and now we have to have our I.D. cards on us at all times, there are random security people there all the time and, as I found out yesterday, the automatic doors don’t have sensors any more and close after a few seconds to prevent people tailgating. This resulted in me literally being thrown sideways into my friends, so now I always hold the door back with my hand before I go through it.
I went to Costcutters yesterday to top up my low stock of bananas and apples, which I’m always hesitant to do because the fruit there is usually really manky. I only wanted three bananas because I’m going home this weekend to do a canoe race, but this ended up with me having a huge wrestle in the shop trying to break off two bananas from a bunch of five. The bananas won and I just ended up going to the till all hot and sweaty with a bunch of five slightly bruised bananas. So not only have I got manky fruit to eat now, but I’ve got lots of it that needs to be eaten before Friday afternoon.
The reason I ran out of fruit was because I’ve just completely neglected all of my ‘household chores’, you know, like shopping, laundry, tidying etc. Not all of it’s my fault – all of the washing machines have been out of order since we had a power cut a little while ago, which means my bag of laundry is overflowing. Thankfully I can take it all back home to wash, but I’ve had to wear the same pair of jeans for a week!
I’ve been back for one and a half weeks now and my food stock is dangerously low. Not only that, but I defrosted one of those Jus-roll packs of puff pastry to use and because I’d already frozen it and it was going to go off, I ended up having a puff pastry feast! I had puff pastry pizza one night and made a puff pastry pasty for lunch the next day. I had to use the puff pastry and the last bits of vegetables that I had, and due to my lack of imagination, just had puff pastry pizza again for the second night in a row. I’m seriously pastried out. I think I’ll have pasta tonight – that’s about all I’ve got left!
Well, I think that’s all of my moaning down on paper. Sorry for being on the receiving end, but it feels much better now it’s all out! It’s definitely good to have a big old rant now and then to get things off your chest, don’t you think? I hope all of your days have been better than mine!
What unfortunate things have happened to you lately?
Orange Soup
The time has inevitably come where I am swamped with work and revision and the only fun in my day comes from going overboard with my highlighter. Oh, and eating Pringles. I knew this time would come and so I prepared for it by taking lots of photos when I made some soup at home with my mum. So I can now share the wonders of how to make it with you rather than trying to explain the steady-state approximation and understanding the laws of thermodynamics.
This soup is very easy to make and is known in our house as Orange Soup. Not because it has oranges in it, by the way, but because it is orange. It doesn’t really taste like carrot soup and the first time I had it, I couldn’t tell what type it was, so I just called it Orange Soup.
The great thing about this soup (and most other soups actually) is that you can basically throw whatever leftover vegetables you’ve got in it – it doesn’t need specific measurements of anything, so you can’t really go too wrong with it. These are the ingredients you’ll need – lots of carrots (however many you have), some lentils (about a bowlful), some potatoes (four large ones with the bad bits chopped off in this case), some garlic (three cloves?) and a vegetable stock cube.
The first thing to do is to get peeling – all the carrots and potatoes need to be peeled. If you don’t have guinea pigs, you’ll just have to imagine the insistent squeaking as they anticipate all of the fresh peelings they’ll be getting.
Give them a wash and then chop them up into chunks. It doesn’t really matter how big or small – they’re all going to be whizzed up anyway – but the bigger they are the longer they’ll take to cook. Next, peel the garlic and crush it up or cut it into tiny pieces. Then put everything into a big pan and add enough water to almost cover everything.
Make up the vegetable stock as the instructions say on the packet, and then add that in along with the lentils.
Pop the lid on and leave on a medium/low heat until the vegetables have softened. The time this takes will depend on how big your vegetables were chopped up, but ours took around 20 minutes. After this, leave it to cool for a bit before the fun part starts – the whizzing of the soup! Just put all the soup into a food blender bit by bit until it’s as smooth as a smooth thing.
Then put it back in the saucepan to heat up properly again and serve with home made soup-bread (which I might write a recipe of how to do someday. It’s bread specifically made to eat soup with and is all crusty with bits of melty cheese in and chilli flakes and all other good stuff like that. It’s YUM).
And there you have it – Orange Soup. Really, this is just a base, an outline, of a soup. Try it once and think how you might change it – what would you add to make it more suited to you? Some chilli flakes in the soup, maybe? Some more or different vegetables? That’s the great thing about cooking, you can take something simple from somebody and turn it into your own, original, fantastically complicated thing that’s perfectly suited to you. It just takes a bit of experimenting.
The Aftermath
On Friday, one of the girls from my block had her birthday and she decided to throw a party. A big one. Two of the floors from my block were invited (each floor has 16 people), along with all of her friends from her course and from her home. They decided that because our kitchen was the biggest (it’s on the ground floor and had an extension last year), that the pre-drinks should be held in it. It was still a squish with nearly 40 people trying to fit into a space made for 16 and, well, you can imagine the mess. They decided to make a huge batch of a drink called the ‘eliminator’ (says it all really, doesn’t it!) which, along with a LOT of alcohol, had about 24 cartons of orange juice in it.
So, the party was good, people had fun, everyone just about made it home in one piece, but then I went into the kitchen on Saturday morning (and by morning, I mean 2pm). Oh, the mess. The floor had a layer of orange on it that was so sticky, when I walked on it I nearly walked right out of my shoes. In fact, every single object was coated in this orange stickiness so I tried not to touch anything. But I was hungry. So I compromised and thought that the toaster would be the only safe bet in the kitchen. While I was making my toast, I discovered my frying pan which had been safely stored away in my cupboard underneath my saucepans and was now resting by the sink. It was clean, thank God, other than a piece of plastic bag which had been melted onto the side of it. So after eating my toast, I washed all my things up (including the frying pan) and played hop-scotch back to my cupboard, trying to avoid the stickiest bits. As there was no space on the side that wasn’t covered in empty bottles, chocolate cake or orange-ness, I had to try and hold everything and dry them at the same time. It was that moment that Rachel phoned me, so I was now standing glued to the floor, balancing a wet frying pan, a wet plate, a wet knife and a tea towel in one hand, and holding my phone to my ear with my two fingers of my other hand to try and avoid it getting too wet. That’s a lot of concentration for someone with a hangover!
As everyone else was hibernating, as they often do on weekends, I managed to sneak back in later and take some photos of the aftermath without anyone seeing me and wondering what I was doing. Brace yourself.
Because there was no space that I trusted to chop vegetables without getting ill, I did something I’d never done before. That’s right. I had a ready meal. Usually if I can’t be bothered/there’s no space to cook, I have tomato soup, but there wasn’t even anywhere clean to sit and I would definitely have spilt it if I’d tried to carry it back to my room, so I settled for vegetarian lasagne.
It was ok for what it was. It was edible and filling. Zero effort to cook and the best bit – I only had my knife and fork to wash up. I think from now on I’ll always keep one or two ready meals in my freezer just in case this happens again, but aren’t you impressed that I’ve lasted this long without having a ready meal?
The kitchen’s still a mess although people have attempted to wash some of the stickiness off the floor – quite a task when you don’t have a mop. It’ll be interesting to see if the cleaners will clean it on Monday and also interesting to see if the 40 people will all contribute to the fine if they don’t. I don’t mind people having parties in my kitchen – in fact, they’re usually really fun, but I just wish people would remember that other people actually have to live in that space afterwards and would either keep it relatively clean, or clear up the mess afterwards. Because I can’t live off ready meals for much longer!
