The Man with No Time

Warning - today is a rant day. I got home last night to find a note from the flat underneath mine - turns out he'd had a leak coming in through his bathroom ceiling, which had given him a mild electric shock from his light switch and taken out the light in his bathroom. Fortunately he was ok, but he'd had to have the emergency repairman out from Whitefriars housing to sort it out. It turns out the culprit was my toilet. When I left for work yesterday morning (about 9:30), all seemed ok. But after checking out downstairs after I got home about 22:30, I found that the valve on the pipe feeding my cistern was leaking; it was only drips, but they were pretty frequent and had clearly been going for most of the day if the dampness of that corner of my bathroom was anything to go by (not just the carpet, but the wall around the pipe too). I didn't sleep particularly well - I think it was worry that the bowl I'd put under the drip, which I'd managed to slow consi...

I really, really hope that this is the last part of this post series. At least for this particular house move. Because I'm fed up, and I'm not sure what else can go wrong. 

Well, moving still sucks. This whole process is really starting to take the mickey; I naively thought that it would be relatively simple, but I'm starting to realise how lucky I was with all of my previous moves. Each time I had people to help me, and I was moving in with other people so there were bodies around. This time it's a completely different story, and I'm starting to get a bit fed up. Admittedly it's only been a week since I got they keys, and a busy week at that. It's also been stressful.

Last week I finally decided to do something about my living arrangements for my new job, and go flat-hunting. Yay! I just love looking around for somewhere to live <\sarcasm> The first choice was whether to go for Coventry of Leamington Spa. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Warwick I stuck to Coventry, and after some deliberation and research decided to do the same this time around. I wanted to stick close enough that I could cycle to work, didn't particularly fancy dealing with the traffic getting to and from Leamington at rush-hour, and the prices in Leamington seemed to be a little higher. So Coventry it was.

The final stop on my whirlwind, action-packed UK tour was the city of Bath. I love the place; it’s a beautiful city, and really nice just to wander around, as I discovered last Easter. This time however I wasn’t there to sight see, but to run the BULSCA Student Lifesaving Championships. Way back at the start of May last year I rashly stood for the role of Championships Coordinator on the BULSCA governing committee. I had no idea what I’d let myself in for to be honest; obviously I’d experienced the Championships several times as a competitor, and had a little experience of organising smaller competitions, but this was another level. I was apprehensive, and it turned out to be both easier and harder, less work and more work, than I was expecting.

A few weeks back I talked about my apprehension over the next stage of my career, and my indecision as to whether I wanted to stay in scientific research. I also said that I was intending to spend some time over Christmas thinking about what I wanted to do, and then start applying after Christmas. Well, you know what they say about well-laid plans….. (Credit: onefootovertheline.com)