Student Blogs

Yesterday I finally took the plunge and joined the gym. It isn’t as if I haven’t been exercising as I run most days, play squash at least once a week and play football (badly) on a Tuesday evening. However I haven’t really been getting the results I expected and as the mornings are getting darker and wetter I thought taking exercise to the next level might be a good idea.

My sister joined The Warwickshire Health & Racquets Club a few months ago and we were both members when we were juniors so knowing it is an excellent gym it seemed like the logical choice. Chris also joined last week which will hopefully mean I’ll go more frequently as I’ll have two gym buddies.

After joining yesterday I managed to book a gym induction for Today and I have to say - it was awesome. During the session my personal trainer put me through my paces with interval training and time really goes quickly exercising that way! Also the personal trainer told me I need to eat way more protein so now I have an excuse to eat meat with every meal! Result!

For pretty much as long as I can remember, I have always wanted a Mazda MX5. In my opinion it is an extremely good looking car and even though it has some obvious impracticalities such as having only two seats and Britain only have 2 sunny days a year, I still wanted one.

For many years it was just a dream, however last month I found myself in the position where I could afford to buy, run and maintain one. Actually it would be cheaper to buy a ‘05 MX5 than my current car, an ‘06 Ford Focus!

A couple of weeks ago I went down to my local Mazda dealer with my Dad to have a look at a couple they had for sale. The salesman was doing his normal job of talking up the cars and they did sound impressive; “rear slip diff, low profile tires, 6 speed gearbox”. However, as soon as we started looking round them faults started to emerge. The chrome had blistered on the trim and alloys, nearly all the closures were set incorrectly and generally they looked a bit warn. Even worse, when sitting inside I discovered the seat was as far back as it went and I was a little cramped, and that’s just for starters. The interior was like something out of a ’80s Maestro, just not construed so well.

So I’m sorry Mr Salesman but I’m really not interested in booking a test drive. I don’t see the point. It was a good dream but onwards and upwards, I’ll just have to find something else to aim for!

I am now into my last week living in Manchester which is a very strange feeling. I have known for just over 8 weeks that I would be moving back to Coventry, however it has come round very quickly.

The apartment has slowly emptied of my stuff over the past couple of weeks and my bedroom in particular is starting to look very bare! I’m planning to move the rest of my stuff back to Coventry on Friday which means I only have four days to get everything done at work! Fingers crossed!

I have started to realise recently how much I will miss Manchester, especially having a nice flat, lots of brilliant places to eat and drink and of course some great friends, however I can’t wait to get back to Coventry.

The main reason to move back to Coventry was to be closer to most of the family and the majority of my best friends are still in Coventry or are back frequently which will be great. It has been quite lonely in Manchester recently, but that is probably more of a reflection of how much effort I have been putting into life in Manchester; next to none!

On a blog related note, I hope to be keeping this a bit more up-to-date, so check back soon!

I know it is unprecedented that someone who has moved away from Coventry returns, however in under 8 weeks I will be doing exactly that!

It has been a difficult decision to make, moving away from Manchester and leaving a brilliant job at CAP, however I think it should have an extremely positive outcome.

I have a new job lined up at a great open source software development company in Coventry where I will be the project manager. I’m really looking to getting stuck into this role!

Also it will be great to be closer to most of the family as at the moment it takes a two hour journey just to visit. Of course it will be extremely sad moving away from Manchester where I have lived for the past four years, leaving some great friends behind but I feel it is time to do something different!

A while ago, I came up with a new idea for a website which I (obviously) thought would be quite and interesting experiment. Over the past month or so, I have been recruiting a few of my friends to get involved and now I can announce that the project is officially in the pipeline.

So what is this idea I hear you say, well the basic idea is a fictional story told from several different characters perspective written by different authors. I know this isn’t particularly groundbreaking, however where this idea differs it that everything will be written on a series of blogs.

Each blog will be a window into the private diary of one of the characters, and all the diaries will be aggregated together to create one big story! There will be global plots which run through all the diaries, however the individual authors will have the freedom to go wild with their own characters.

Hopefully I will get things going in the next month, so watch this space.