Clocks go flying at the speed of sound

Hi everyone!

Daylight saving time is fantastic!

British summer time started yesterday. The clocks went forward one hour.

Without the change, sunrise would be at 5:39 am and sunset at 6:30 pm
With daylight saving time, sunrise is 6:39am, and sunset 7:29pm.

So for everyone who gets up at civilised times of day, we get an extra hour of sunlight!

Anyone who moans about the loss of an hour of sleep, I think the trade off where get an hour extra sunlight a day all summer long is a fair swap. And you'll get your extra hour of sleep later on in the year.

Enjoy your busy sunny days!

AcidCat

Happy Easter!

Hi everybody!

Happy Easter to you all!

Easter - A time to celebrate rebirth, whether you believe in the resurrection, or the start of spring and the new start of growth in nature. I've finally completed my thesis, and it feels like my life is about to begin again. All the challenges and struggles of the past few years is about to come to an end and I'm going to be able to start all the new excitement of the future and a new chapter of my life.

I'm doing everything I can to forget the past so it can't hurt me any more, and look to the future as optimistically as possible.

Let's go!

AcidCat

I love my car!

Hi everybody!

I drive a brownish-purple 1999 Fiat Punto. Recently it's been living up to the old joke:

What does FIAT stand for?

Fix it again tomorrow.

(Hey, I never claimed it was a funny joke).

Anyway, in the past month and a half, I have had to replace:

• Both rear shock absorbers (so badly worn that there was a banging noise from the back of the car, and the mechanics said not to corner too quickly before I could get them replaced, or I might slide off the road backwards).
  
• Oil sump (Rusted through, mechanics didn't know how long it would hold on for).
• Mid to rear section of exhaust (Actually fell off on the motorway, and was dragging along the floor. Breakdown guy turned up, and just ripped it out, saying "that'll get you home". It did indeed work fine, but I felt a bit like a chav driving home with the noisy exhaust).

Total bill so far: about £700.

This week, it suffered a serious fault. It became really hard to start. It stalled when I stopped at traffic lights (which was pretty embarrassing with the difficulties in restarting it). The power supply was irregular, so it lurched along the road as I drove. Basically it was really dangerous, so I took it back to the dealer ASAP. After about £200 worth of diagnostic checks, they worked out it was the fuel injection, the casing had cracked, and there were problems inside. Quite a major job for fixing, so I had to leave it with them. I had to travel from near London to Loughborough by train.

I'm a bit of a tree-hugging hippie. I recycle as much as possible, bring my fruit and veg waste home from Loughborough to compost it. I do my utmost to save energy, reduce my water usage and so on.

However, two train journeys from near London to Loughborough have been enough to swear off public transport if at all possible.

Firstly the price: My Punto is pretty fuel efficient, and does the two hundred mile round trip to Loughborough and back for about £20 worth of petrol. The cheapest return ticket by train was double that, at £40, which had restrictions on when I could travel, and forbade me from going via London.

Secondly: convenience. Bringing stuff up by car is significantly easier than carrying it on the train. The train journey requires at least two changes, and takes from two and a half to four hours to make it. There was only one train per hour. Having to change so many times required the trains to actually arrive on time. One of the legs ended up being a rail replacement coach (despite my checking everything was fine just before travelling), and so it was a close run thing. By comparison, my car journey: two hours door-to-door, sticking to the speed limit, and despite the roadworks on the M1, keeping the speed down to 50 mph. I can also travel whenever I want, unlike my return train journey, trying to catch the 6:25 am train, the station was half closed, so the usual entrance was closed, so I had to find the back entrance, and I missed the train by thirty seconds, so ended up having an hour wait.

These are pretty big advantages to my car. The only advantage I could think of with the train was the ability to sleep on the journey. This was somewhat nullified when I overslept on my way home, missed my stop (arriving in London), which extended my journey by an extra hour and cost me an extra £7.50.

This is why, despite my ethical belief that we should do our utmost to save the environment, I am thrilled to have my car back. I'm just about to go to Loughborough, and am glad that I'll be able to do it in two hours with my music playing, in comfort and no stress, setting off when I can. I feel a tiny bit guilty about my carbon footprint, but when the disadvantages of train transport are so huge, I don't feel guilty for long.

I still think we should use public transport where possible, but the rail system (as it currently stands) is an expensive, inconvenient, over-priced joke. I blame privatisation (being too young to really remember the days of British Rail), and yearn for the efficient train networks of Switzerland or Germany which are amazing value for money. If the trains here were as clean, efficient, reliable and inexpensive as those in Europe, train travel would be a more tempting option, and perhaps we wouldn't have to be taxed and congestion charged out of our cars?

AcidCat

Since the last episode...

Hi everybody!

As both of my readers may have noticed, I haven't posted for ages. This has mainly been due to my starting a new job, whilst trying to finish off a PhD thesis in the evenings and weekends, and sorting out everything that applying for a place to read graduate medicine entails (such as interviews, vaccinations and volunteering at a hospice), and partly due to my not having an internet connection at home, so posting requires me doing it from work, or using the WiFi connection down the pub. I've finally got a first draft of my thesis (yay!), which I hope will be winging its way to the examiners on Monday courtesy of DHL, so hopefully I will have time to post occasionally. And maybe even have a chance to go to sleep sometimes (the past few months have been a bit tough).

Anyway, as I haven't posted for a while, here is a whistle-stop recap of what I've been up to since Xmas.

• I've started a temporary 6 month job as a process chemist at a major pharmaceutical company in Loughborough.
  

It's really good fun and I am loving it. It is a really refreshing change to my PhD, where the chemistry didn't work, and it was a real hard slog, which made me feel like I didn't know anything. By contrast, this has rebuilt my chemistry confidence as I've had a lot of stuff work, and a fair amount of that success has been due to my research. Not all of it worked, but the difference in industry is that if it really doesn't work, you abandon it and look for an alternative. Not to mention that it's really well paid (for my student-mentality standards anyway). I liked it so much that I applied for jobs doing it permanently, including one where I have the temporary contract. Sadly not long before I was due to be called for interview at my workplace, there were global layoffs of 500 research staff - net result, freeze on hiring. No jobs. Oh well. At least I'm enjoying it now, and have a few more months to try and do something good and hopefully lasting.

• I've moved into a new flat

I have a little studio flat in Loughborough. It's recently been done up, so is all shiny and lovely, with polished, laminate flooring, washer-dryer, dishwasher and a double bed that falls into the wall (just as well, because if it didn't, the room would be pretty tiny). It's gated, and even got parking. It's so lovely! It's not expensive by southern standards of anywhere in the south-east. Only downside is that it doesn't have internet or a phone line, and I was quoted £150 to get it connected. Which would be a bit steep bearing in mind I'm only there for five months (should have been six, but the credit checking people messed me around, so my contract is shifted by a month, so I'll probably end up paying rent for a month I won't be living there. Sigh).

On which note, if you're looking for a letting agent in Loughborough, Aidan J Reed were excellent (who showed me around 3 houses, including my current residence), but the other two; Belvoir and Hartley Estates were laughably bad. Belvoir showed me round two properties: one was quite nice, but still being built and very overpriced, and the other was so bad that it looked like a squat. It was embarassingly bad. The guy from Harley Estates turned up, didn't care, showed me round a tiny overpriced room and was damn rude. Rant over. Anyway, I love my flat, but hate all the admin associated with moving into a new flat. Like council tax. Don't mind paying it, just hate all the paperwork.

• I've been accepted to study medicine!

Current status: one uni - rejection without interview, one uni - interviews for 4 and 5 year courses - awaiting offer, final uni - offer conditional on my finishing my PhD before the course starts! Pleasingly, that's my first choice university anyway. As it looks like no-one in the pharmaceutical industry feels like offering me a job, it makes my decision easy. It looks like I'll be off to learn to slice'n'dice people up in September! Which is really exciting!

I think these were the major bits of update that were needed so I'll round off this post here. Hope to see you soon!

AcidCat