I cannot believe I have spent £303 in the last few days – all in the name of sunshiny weather. Shocking behaviour but somehow quite satisfying. Board shorts, rash vest, new shoes, cool hoody. You really can never have enough pairs of board shorts. It is new CSN money soon right?
I like the way everyone seems a few orders of magnitude happier recently. It can only be because the days are getting longer and brighter, and soon the flipflops can come out of the cupboard. We tried to have a barbeque a few days ago but unfortunately sainsbury’s were not expecting sunshine and were not stocking coal. Good fun anyway. I ditched the boots and gloves for kitesurfing yesterday as well. That is definitely another promising sign.
It is good that it is the easter holiday because bristol is absolutely empty without the students. There is no need to weave and dodge going up Park Street and there is noticeably less car noise. Uni is empty and I can get the whole library to myself =)
What am I up to at the moment? Lots of climbing, lots of socialising, not much work or a lot of work depending on whether we are being relative or absolute…
It is fun =)
And I can’t wait till kitesurfing in Tarifa next week and I bet Dave can’t either!
I went to a lecture yesterday in Bath about how Flexifoil design their kitesurfing kites. The speaker was a Dr Henry Something-Or-Other who had PHD in boundary layer theory from the University of Cambridge. Unfortunately it was one of the most annoying yet enthusing talks I have ever been to.
I know kitesurfing is a new sport and I knew many of the manufacturers have a trial and error approach to designing their products but Flexifoil have always advertised their ‘custom cad software’ and ‘research projects at Cambridge’. Turns out they do practically nothing with any scientific founding when designing their kites either. The constant excuse the speaker gave was money and personnel - deep down he did seem to want to do some proper theory though. But why oh why don’t they just dish this stuff out to universities to do as projects? 80% of our kitesurfing society are engineers and we would all kill for the possibility of doing a projects together with the kitesurfing industry. The company that first does some proper aerodynamic analysis will surely be able to develop noticeably higher performance products. I think we are going to have to do some of the work off our own backs and then approach Flexifoil to show them what they are missing…
Went kitesurfing in a 35mph hail storm yesterday and still had a great time. Come on summer, I can’t wait!!
I’ve not been writing much because I have not been doing much. The dance season is finally over with the nationals up in blackpool last weekend – good fun, a bit mental, average results, much tiredness and a fair amount of relief. I have also been stressing about my time management and whether I can really do dancing and running the kite society next year along with being a fifth year. Everything indicates that it will be far more work than this year and I have really not been coping and am still so far behind.
But I also don’t reckon I can give it up, and have already promised to train until the end of term and enter some open comps. So maybe the kitesurfing has to give? But I love the society and have worked hard for it for four years. There really doesn’t seem to be anyone that can take over. But I have to do well in my degree aswell. And it would be nice to fit in more of a social life. No idea how to sort this out…
I have taken to blagging work recently. Preparing for presentations at 1am is hardly clever and I am not good at working late at night. Of the three pieces of coursework I have handed in this term I have been extremely ashamed of two of them. I have asked for extensions for two more pieces of work.
I guess it always fixes itself in the end
