Quote #1- Paddy- “Nikki! You’re so great! You’re the girliest of the guys!”
Quote #2- Lucy- “I just ID’d a giant fork &spoon!”
Quote #3 Paddy (different Paddy) - (about me…) “And we have a seagull” (after he offered food around at half 9 during our cancelled lecture)
Lyrics #1- Wasting my time in the waiting line- Zero 7- In the waiting line.
Album#1 Garden State Soundtrack
Album #2- Belle & Sebastian- Tigermilk
So hey. Sorry I dint get this up at the weekend like I usually do, but well, I wasn’t around to be posting, and the majority of this post (I expect) actually happened at the weekend anyway… And as such this post is a LONG post people… Just so you know. And if you’re not really interested in tkd championships, then you can skip the majority of the post... though the social after the competition will be worth a read I expect. So I’ll just ~~~~ the competition itself, if you want to skip it.
Simon, my housemate, has introduced me to this really cool programme. Apparently BBC2 are getting it in the summer or so. It’s called “Heroes”, and is basically a series about the next stage of human evolution. So in a way I guess it’s a bit like X-Men… See Mark, there HAS been a reason behind all the X-Men related texts. Figured you would be the best guy to talk to about it. But anyway, Simon had downloaded the first 11 episodes or so, lent me the first 8, and now I am so hooked!! Course the states have stopped for Christmas now, so I can’t get anymore till after then. But yeah, when it comes out on the BBC, I seriously recommend it.
So. This week I have been to uni. Again. And the week started out great with a cancelled lecture. Only we didn’t know it’d been cancelled. Actually, come to think of it no-one did… the lecturer just never turned up. So that was a fun hour spent doing pretty much nothing. Actually, come to think of it, that wasn’t the first thing we had last week. We had a tutorial at 11. So you’ve got me at home writing up a lab report, glanced at the clock to see it was half 11. Oops… On the plus side I was actually doing work, so it’s not like I slept through it or nothing… Not like I've ever don’t that before… *whistles*
So yeah, cancelled lecture, followed by a lecture where we got through 2 lectures worth of stuff in 1, so I don’t have any lectures till 3 today. And we actually KNOW about it this week… So to make up for it I’m having a meeting in about an hour to go over the 3 lab reports our group has done to see if we want to change anything in them etc.
Then had immunology, where the lecturer talked so frikking fast there was no way we could get everything down, so now she has put the completed slides up on the intranet, instead of half completed slides. Still, it could be worse. We had a lecturer last year who spoke at about the same speed, but didn’t put ANYTHING on the net for us, and then when we went to ask a question, she told us we should have been paying attention in the lecture. So she now goes by “Scary DNA lady”… on account of she was teaching us about DNA…
Um yeah… slight tangent there, sorry. So that was Monday. Tuesday had some lectures. My virology lecture suddenly changed into a molecular genetics lecture so we would understand the practical on Friday. Apparently. Um, then went home, had lunch, and came back in about 2 ½ hours later for a practical. See, last week, we were growing breast cancer cells in our practical, to see how its done basically, and this week we were going to count them.
So there were 5 groups in total. 2 groups cells didn’t grow, 2 had very slight growth, and 1 group had good results, and so we were all had to use theirs, um OUR groups… Oh yeah, we’re good! So totally better than the rest of them!! Hehehe.
Um… tkd in the evening. Patterns. Grading stuff. Sparring. Usual stuff really. Didn’t go to the pub after due to fact I have NO MONEY!! Ok, so that’s not true. I worked out I can spend about £10 on me per week until the end of the year. As in 1st Jan. If I overspend by just £1, I will bounce my landlord Again. And get charged £38 in the process. Again. Isn't being a student great?!
Wednesday is rather stupid. We had a 9-10. That was it. Nothing else. And yeah, ok, so Wednesday is a short day anyway, but we could at least have had a lie in for crying out loud! So after that, went home and stated my 3000 word essay on depression. Again. Cos see, with me, I start things a fair number of times, come back to it, read through what I've done, and delete half of it and basically start again. Sorta like I've done with this post. See, I started it yesterday (Sunday) and its now Monday, and I wont be finishing it till at least tomorrow.
But I digress. Again. I seem to be doing that a lot lately (like now for instance…) My brain is working so fast my hands don’t really have a chance in hell of keeping up, so what comes out form this post may be random gibberish, unless you happen to have my brain. And if you do, could you maybe give it back to me at some point? Please? Or at least let me know that it’s safe…
Thursday was great fun. Had a single lecture (are you sensing a pattern here?), but in the afternoon, so was able to spend the morning working. Yeah… right… lol. So then had tkd in the evening. And cos we had a competition on Saturday, which I will be going into later, just so you’re warned… Neil had us practicing sparring for the majority of the lesson. I think between 8 and 9 we were working on sparring. So we all partnered up, and as it happen I got Alun… because it’s great fun to put the tallest guy on our club with the smallest girl, who cant actually see without her glasses on… still, I was sparring with Alun, so I could see him, just cos of his sheer size!! Lol.
So we started off just free sparring, and is it ironic that people kept bumping into Alun? I mean, come on, he isn't exactly hard to miss now is he?! Lol. So after sparring for about 5 mins or so (a long time for continuously sparring, let me tell you!) we all stopped and started working on individual techniques, but with the same partner. So yeah, that was fun. Then did a bit more sparring, then some more techniques, then some more sparring. The finally got to change partner, not that I have anything against Alun, it’s just nice to have a change once in a while, you know? So I had a couple minutes sparring Charlotte, then changed again, and cos someone had gone home early or something, I was left partner-less, so ended up sparring with Neil.
So in the space of an hour, I managed to get paired up with the 2 black belts at the club. Great. Lol. Actually, I don’t mind sparring with them, cos they can help point out where you’re going wrong etc. So Neil was showing me a technique I could use, and Craig (I think) crashed into him. So then Neil just turned, looked at him (and bare in mind Craig is about 6 foot or something, so about half a foot taller than Neil) and he just says “move.” In a “what the hell are you doing in my space?!” voice. Ah, sometimes sparring the instructor is great fun.
Course it has nothing on watching Alun and Neil spar. Now that’s entertainment. Spent the last half hour or so, maybe a little less, going through patterns. Again. Still, it means I know Yul-Gok quite well now. And if anyone is interested, Yul-Gok is the pseudonym of the philosopher I Yi (I think…) (1536-1585) (or so…) known as the “Confucius (whatever THAT means) of Korea. The 38 moves (38!!) represent his birthplace on the 38th latitude (why couldn’t he be born on the 10th latitude?!), and the symbol of the pattern means “scholar”. So. There you go.
Friday. Molecular genetics practical. Pretty simple. Got home, had a look at the questions from it, and it’s like a foreign language!! I'm SURE we haven't just done this… What I was doing was ENGLISH… Well, ok, Science, but you know what I mean!! Um, got in, Simon cooked me tea (isn’t he nice to me?) and finished my 3000 word essay on depression. Meaning I could stay the night in Leicester without having to feel guilty about all the work I should be doing instead. Lol.
So it got to about half 9/10ish (I think…) and I decided to get a hot chocolate. Only, I was being lazy, and couldn’t be arsed to wait for the milk to warm in a saucepan. No problem, we have a microwave, just put a mug in there and it’ll warm up no problem. See, cos my mugs are just ceramic, I've done that before. Only this time, my mugs were in the dishwasher. So I used someone else’s. And I’m guessing there must be a metallic glaze or something on this mug, cos I went to take it out and burnt my hand. Severely. After maybe a second touching it at the most. Pure reflex pulled my hand away.
Then spent a good while with my hand under the cold tap… that seemed to be running hotter than the hot tap did… don’t quite know how that came about… so yeah, developed a nice burn blister on my hand. And cos we’re doing immunology this term, I could even go through what the immune response was, ticking things off as they appeared. And, just my luck, this all happened the night before the annual university tkd championships.
Please note, if you don’t really care about tkd all that much, you can skip the majority of the next bit… but read about the social after the tournament, cos that’s just plain funny!
~~~~~
So. Saturday dawned bright an early (wait… no it didn’t… I was up at frigging 6 am… it was still fucking dark then…) start again… Saturday arrived dark and early (better) cos Simon and I had to be at the guild for 8. Meaning we had to get the half 7 train in… only there IS no half 7 train on a Saturday, so we had to get the 20 past train in, cos the 10 to train would have gotten us in too late. So, arrived nice and early at the guild, and people started turning up in dribs and drabs. And complained about how cold it was. Now, by my reckoning, it had to be a good 10’C. That’s WARM!! I mean, come on, it’s double figures! And baring in mind this is ENGLAND in WINTER at half 7 that’s pretty damn good.
Or I’m biased and its cos I'm from the North east, and normally by this time it’s a little chilly at about 7 or so at that time. So, me being me offered the guy who was complaining the most my scarf that was in my bag. But apparently complaining about the cold is manlier than wearing a purple scarf. *shrugs*
I'm quite impressed that we all managed to get in the minibus… mind you, we only just did. The minibus can seat 16 and a driver. And we had 15 and Neil driving. *counts in head* yeah, that’s right. So we’re going down to Leicester, putting up with Neil’s taste in music on the way, and having Alun (sitting shotgun) on the phone with Sophie who was in the car with Leena behind us. So actually, we didn’t all get in the minibus. M’eh. Arrived at the pace where the tournament was taking place, after only getting slightly lost once. And that was easily rectified, as all that happened was Neil missed the exit off a roundabout, so we took a tour of it. Have to say, it’s not as nice as some of the Crammy ones. Lol.
(So I wrote that on Monday, and it’s Tuesday now. Basically the longer it takes me to write this, the longer the post will be, cos I’m adding what's happened so far this week onto the end…)
So arrived at the hall, paid, and then Charlotte and I spent about 5 minutes wondering around the place trying to find the lasses changing rooms, and ended up changing in the toilets, while the guys got a nice proper changing room… Grrr…
Met up with people who I met last year, which was cool. Nice to see them again. They had had their grading for the same belt as me the night before. Actually, come to think of it, that was what had happed at the last uni championships too… So yeah, started out with patterns. Didn’t get a medal. Never mind.
Oh, the guys doing the progress sheets messed up with the guys patterns, cos it turned out there was a guy who had been knocked out at a previous round who ended up in a semi-final, cos they had written the wrong name down or something. So then they had to basically go through all that again, while we all watched on thinking “wtf are they doing?!” But once that was sorted out it was cool.
Found out that Gurps, one of the guys in my club at my belt who is like a MASTER at everything, is 17. SEVENTEEN!!! I mean, he isn't even at fucking uni! And he’s BLOODY MINT!!! Honestly, whenever we get stuck, we always look to him, cos he knows everything we ever have to do for each of our gradings. But yeah, he’s only 17… and he got Bronze in patterns. Should have been in the final, but he lost out on it by 1 vote. Stupid judges…
So after we all had our sparring, the black belts went up. And Alun had said beforehand that he wanted to come away from this tournament with 2 medals. He didn’t mind what colour they were, but he wanted two. Now last year, he won gold in both sparring and patterns, so it wasn’t like he could beat himself form last year or anything, but he still wanted something to show for himself. Which you know, is fair enough. To be honest, we all go in looking for medals. That’s the whole point of the thing!
So I felt really bad for him when he got knocked out in the 3rd round. Neil, who was on the judges’ panel, voted for him, as did another guy, but the other 3 voted for the other guy. Stupid judges… not that I’m biased at all… And according to Alun (so I don’t know how accurate this is due to him having just lost out to this guy) the pattern that the winner had done was the one pattern you can never win competitions with. But like I say, I don’t know how true that is.
Sophie did well on her pattern, she got bronze. First medal as a black belt, so she was pretty happy.
Um, then I think we had lunch. And then after lunch the black belts of De Montford (the uni who was hosting the competition) put on a demonstration for us. Only they got Neil to demonstrate a turning kick through 3 inches of wood, and he didn’t have his do-bok with him. Luckily for him, Gurps is about the same build, so he was able to borrow his. Then of course everyone asked Gurps if he was sparring in the afternoon, and he had to explain that Neil was sorta wearing his do-bok atm, and yes, he was sparring.
So. The sparring. So you know how I had to lose all of 600 grams to be “normal” according to my BMI? I apparently managed that, cos when I was weighed in for the competition, I was classed as over 60 kg by a small margin… the lass weighing me in deliberated for about 2 minutes before deciding it was just the other side of 60Kg. This makes me happy, as it means I’m no not overweight.
So yeah, the sparring. Was cool. Didn’t win a medal, but I was beaten to the Bronze by Charlotte, who wasn’t sure if she wanted to go into the sparring or not, so I'm pleased for her. Plus, Aston still got the point for the medal cos she’s in the same club. Lol.
So after my fights had finished, I was walking round, taking some pics on my phone, and one of the refs came over to me. Now, bare in mind I'm wearing my Aston TKD training top for this competition. (It has the Aston TKD badge on it…) So aye, this ref comes over to me. “You from Aston?” “Yeah.” “Great. Do you know Craig Billiard?” “Yeah” “Is he in the room? Can you spot him about?” (Now Craig is 6’3, it’s kinda hard to MISS him in a crowd… So I have a look, and spot him filming Aaron in his sparring match. So I point him out to the ref “Yeah, he’s over there with the camera” “Great. Can you go and tell him he’s on his final call for his fight? And if he doesn’t come over in the next 30 seconds he’s gonna be disqualified?” So I run over, tell Craig to get the hell onto his square, and end up with a camera in my hand and a space where he was. So I stood and filmed Aaron for him, while Craig went off and sparred.
Turned out Craig got disqualified anyway… he kept kicking guys in the namsings. And this is one of the reasons we don’t like sparring Craig in the club…
We have a guy in our club called Françoise. And I swear to god, all he ever does is sleep. He turns up to training and while we’re waiting in the foyer he’s asleep. So then we move into the do-jang, and he’s leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. Then we’ll do a warm up, and when having a 5 minute break after to catch our breath he’ll be back against the wall asleep.
And so in his fight, he was standing, waiting to go into a ready stance; and it looked like he as asleep standing up. Only his fight was fucking amazing!! He had this great technique of jumping front kick into a double punch, and it got him points basically every time! It was amazing! And the thing is, in the club Neil is always saying how you can’t just turn these responses on and off, that’s why we have to practise al the time etc. Well I’ll tell you straight, Françoise sure as hell can turn himself on and off! Cos as soon as his fight was over, he was sitting back down, head on his knees, eyes closed!
And I feel kinda sorry for him, cos he missed out on a medal by 1 point. But still. There’ll be other competitions.
So then after the lower belt sparring had finished, the black belts went up. Sophie got another bronze, so she was really happy. So she now has 2 medals as a black belt. Then we were all watching Alun and a black belt from Loughborough spar. And Alun managed to get a jumping turning kick to this other guys head, and the other guy went down, clutching at his knee. Now I thought that the reason he’d gone down as cos Alun had hit him, he’d then fallen, and hurt his knee on the way down. And indeed Alun had thought it had scored. But apparently the judges didn’t score it. Which sucks. Cos at the end of the first 90 seconds it was a draw, and at the end of the first period of extra time it was a draw, so it went down to sudden death, i.e. next point won. And you could tell the second Alun knew he had lost that point. The ironic thing? If the judges had scored the jumping turning kick to the head, he would have won in the normal time period.
~~~~~
So yeah, that was all the major events from the competition. If you really don’t care about the social, scroll down to the next ~~~~~ for events so far this week.
So after the competition, we were all standing around, waiting for Neil, who had gone to get changed. So I’m standing there with Alun (who was also getting changed after his fight) coat and scarf, and one of the bags of kit Neil brought, plus my bag, and my sparring gear feeling like a pack horse. But then Alun showed up and took his stuff, and Françoise offered to take the bag of kit, so I was less pack-horse like while we waited for Neil.
And we waited. And we waited. And we heard the 5 minute warning of the closure of the sports hall go off, and then FINALLY Neil appeared. So while all this waiting was going on, Sophie and I are joking on about what the heck is taking so long. Cos all he’d done was be either a table judge or a corner ref for the day, he hadn’t been a ring ref. And apparently he was having a shower or something. And guys complain that us Lasses take forever…
So then we all headed out to the social in the evening. Of course, cos the majority of the club (i.e. everyone not me or Leena) were being BORING SODS and planned to leave early, Neil suggested we all just get in the minibus and drive to the first part of the social. And on the way to the mini-bus there was this park with this really cool looking slide. So the big kids (Craig and Paddy) decided to go for a slide, and left me with their bags. So I’m feeling like a pack horse again…
Anyway, Craig gets to the top of the slide, goes down and about half way down yells out “I've got a wedgy!” lol. Anyway, we all then get to the minibus and head to the pub. And it turns out its run by the same chain that runs Gosta at uni, and I have a discount card for that chain. Woop. Cheap(er) booze! Course by this time most people were getting slightly hungry, and the pub had stopped serving food for the night. So about 8 of them wondered off to find some food, leaving the rest in the pub, while Neil went down to the station to pick up Elle. Which was cool cos I haven't seen her since May last year, when she got her red belt. So yeah, that was cool to see her again.
Paddy got drunk. It was so funny. He must have had about 5 double vodka and cokes and 4 Sambuca in about 45 mins or so, so is it any wonder he was drunk? But he was just sitting there, giggling, for about 10 minutes, and he couldn’t stop. Kinda like what I can sometimes get like, those that know me when I’ve had a little amount to drink. And it was nice cos I wasn’t the one that was off my face this year! Lol.
So, after about an hour or so at this pub, we all agree to move onto the next pub where they’ve hired out a room and DJ etc. So you remember how full I said the minibus was? 1 spare seat? Well now you’ve got Elle coming along, as well as Leena, and Sophie, and 2 guys from De Montford in this minibus going across town to the next social. I have never had more of a funny bus journey ever! You’ve got me, Sophie, Charlotte on the 3 seats at the back, and Elle sitting on the bag of kit where the 4th seat would be. Then Paddy (who was DRUNK by now) and Gerard in front of Sophie and me, and a couple lads in front of Charlotte. Then got Joel, with Leena on his lap and a couple other guys in front of the lads in front of charlotte, and Neil and a couple of lads sitting next to them, up front is Alun and the 2 De Montford guys… and standing up by the door to get to the seats in the back of the minibus is Richie and Simon. And Leicester love their road bumps!
The poor guys kept getting their heads bashed off the roof of the bus.
Right. I am going to sit here and finish this update, cos it’s getting stupidly long now, and I’m only up to Saturday night, and it’s Wednesday afternoon already!
So where was I? Oh yeah, just arrived at the next social part. Paddy left his coat in the van and was complaining al the way (all of 5 mins) to the place that he was cold! (This is referred to later, hence saying it now.) So we get in, and get told by the lass on the door that it’s actually cheaper to buy a bottle of wine between 2 than it is to buy 2 drinks. Which, cos it was a cocktail bar, was probably true. Only I don’t drink wine at the moment. Developed a nice intolerance to the stuff. So I was quite happy drinking spirits and mixers, or cocktails. But had to be careful on the money side of things.
So at one point I'm at the bar behind Paddy. He turns, sees me. “Nikki! I love you Nikki! I love you THIS much (shows with wide arms like you do when you’re a kid… or drunk…) you’re so mint!” Joel, standing next to me is in FITS by this point!
Found out last night he can’t actually remember after getting into the minibus… lol, not that I can blame him…
So after this, we’re all standing round, chatting with people from our club, people from other clubs etc, taking photos, and couple of videos. And all I need now is a You Tube account, put all my photos/videos of Alun being a goon, tell people about it, and hey, I might start getting even with him for putting photos of me up on the net from last year! Lol
Anyway, then it gets to the medal presentations. And I was given Richie’s digital to take photos of everyone when they got their medals. So then after all the medals were handed out, we did a point tally. See, in the competition a bronze got 1 point, silver 2 and gold 3. And then, cos Loughborough are so fucking big and brought about 75 people to the tournament and were winning medals through sheer numbers, they took an average. So for every bronze medal we got, they had to get 3 gold, or something like that.
We came 3rd by 0.1 point per member to Liverpool. You should have seen Neil’s face… it was like someone had ran over his puppy! Bless him. The ironic thing is, if we had gone by number of gold’s won etc, we would have come 2nd, cos we got more gold’s than Liverpool did. So at least we can be proud of that!
So after all the medals were handed out, and the shield given to Loughborough (AGAIN!) I was standing chatting on to Alun and one of his mates from when he was at Liverpool uni’s tkd club. Apparently Darren, the guy I was introduced to, was a yellow belt when Alun started, and is now only a red belt, whereas Alun has done his black belt. Lol.
So about 20 minutes after the medals were handed out, my club left. Cos they are all complete boring sods and wanted to go home the same night. So they all left, leaving me and Leena from Aston, and the other 3 uni’s. And then about 5 minutes later Paddy and Neil re-appeared looking for Paddy’s coat. (The one that he left in the minibus…) cos Paddy was ADAMENT he had brought it with him. SO then you’ve got me trying to point out to him he was complaining he was cold before. It was on the minibus. Neil then comes over to me to ask if I can check at the end with the bar staff to make sure that it isn't handed in, and I point out to him that Paddy was complaining about being cold. It’s on the minibus.
And would you believe it? It was on the minibus…
Why is it guys only declare their love for me when they are pissed out of their heads? After Aston had left, I was chatting on to some people from Liverpool, Darren, Helen (who let us stop the night at hers last year, so that was cool) and some other black belts. And I got about 5 offers from various members of the Liverpool club to share their coach back to Liverpool with them.
So they and Loughborough left at about midnight, and then for some reason the DJ packed up then too… I think he figured we were all leaving or something. So then the people that were left (i.e Leena, me and DE Montford) went looking for another pub to go to until a bit later. Only cos it was Saturday night, there was a strict rule on trainers. And over half the group were wearing them. So that seriously dampened where we could get in. So eventually we just gave up, and went back home… or in my case to Bryony’s, where I was stopping the night.
Have you ever had those moments when you think you should have done something but you didn’t? I thought I should have put my iPod on hold, cos I didn’t know if I was going to get a chance to listen to it or not. But I didn’t. So I was turning in for the night, and I nudged it through the bag. So pulled it out to see that the battery, which had been full in the morning, had maybe half an hour play left in it. Yeah… it ha been nudged onto play… 144 songs and 7 ½ hours before hand… when we were waiting for Neil to have his shower… Bugger…
So yeah… that was Saturday… Sunday nothing much happened… Got up, came back home, and um pretty much went to bed! Lol.
~~~~~~
Monday nothing much happened. Had some lectures. Did a food shop so I now have enough evening meal stuff to get me to the end of term. Um, yeah… that’s it…
Tuesday is usually my long day. Though to be fair it has been getting shorter. We normally lectures in the morning, then have a practical in the afternoon. Only we didn’t… we just had 2 lectures in the morning. But after it got to 9.20 and the lecturer still hadn’t shown up we got bored and went for a coffee instead. Lol.
So then after uni, came back home and made a power point presentation on the essay I wrote on depression that I have to present tomorrow. The joys.
Had a session of TKD in the evening. Sophie was doing the warm up, and Gerard, who I shall be killing next time I see him, asked her to make it hard. So normal stretches and everything went fine. Then for the cardiovascular stuff, she had us running the length of the room, stopping at a 1/3 the way down doing 5 push-ups, 2/3 way down 10 push-ups, at the end 15 push-ups, then back stopping where we had before and doing another 10 or 5… so in the end it was 45 push-ups.
And then she had us do the same with crunches.
And then the same with squat thrusts. Only after each squat thrust we had to do a star jump. And OMG did that nearly kill me! But, cos it was a relay thing, I was racing against Alun, and I beat him back everything. Oh yeah. I'm good! Lol.
Then went through grading stuff. Pretty standard stuff. Then, at the end cos we had a little bit of time to spare, Craig and I did some free sparring… which is stupid… no-one likes sparring Craig in non-contact sparring at the best of times… and we were doing it with pads, i.e. contact, and I didn’t have my glasses on… And I had a nice bruise on my shin from where I had clashed it on Saturday in a fight. And then I did the exact same thing at the exact same place with Craig. And OMG did that hurt!!
So today I had a couple of lectures. Nothing special. And I finished writing this. YAY!
