Preparations for the Coming (Academic) Year

Warning – Really long update post ahead. This last week has been a pivotal and successful week for me. I have been busy sorting out all the arrangements toward having a flat and a job for next year, as well as tying up loose ends from this year. In the last week I have spent about £400 on sorting out accommodation (my rent needed paying for this month and then up came the deposit for the new house) and then about £50 getting food sorted; the cupboards were bare, so I needed to stock up a little.

Not only has this been an expensive week, it has also been an athletic one. In the space of 3 days I’ve probably covered about 4-5 square miles and walked about 8. On the map below, I had to walk the black route 3 times, each yellow route once and the blue route are bus routes.

Obviously it’s not exactly correct as I have modified it for internet viewing.
Anyway, on Monday, I went in for a second interview with Appius to demonstrate my technical skills. I was told it would be a practical test, or something along those lines. Little did I know, they had assembled three website designs (in Fireworks, an Image editing tool) and told me to best recreate one of the three in CSS/XHTML. So I took a seat and got to work.

Four hours or so, and a couple of small interviews later, I had an almost finished version of the site. I was told that they were happy with the work I had done in the time I was given and would be happy to see me start as soon as possible. I was thrilled to say the least. I’ll be starting on Monday 16th – bright and early at 8.30am. *Shudder* It has been a while since I have had to be up that early!!

A bonus of finally getting a placement, is the huge relief it gives. It now meant I could get to work on getting somewhere to live – the contract for the current house ends next month, rendering me homeless. I saw an advert on Facebook a few days back for flats in Bournemouth for Students, so I returned to Facebook in an attempt to find the ad again.

Luckily, I found soon. I phoned Capital up the same day and arranged a viewing for 2pm. I’m glad I did. I strolled down to the middle of Winton and found the place. A friendly and extremely helpful lady showed me around a couple of the flats to demonstrate what was available. The flats were extremely high quality and I am glad I decided to put my name down straight after. I chose a single-bed room, as it would be adequate and also save me £25 a month. The layout of the room was better too, in my opinion. Overall cost is £420 per calendar month, however it is all inclusive, meaning that I won’t have bills to pay for electricity and gas. The flats are fully furnished to a high standard too.

Here are a few shots of my new accommodation:

The entrance leads into a small hallway kinda area, that has a door to the bedroom and a door to the bathroom. The kitchen includes a combination microwave over, kettle, toaster, 2 hobs and a fridge/freezer. The LCD tv and wardrobe are also included. As you can see, everything is to a high standard.

In other news, I spent a good few hours over the last couple of days playing Race Driver: GRID, by Codemasters, which is undeniably awesome. I have been racing on Extreme difficulty, Pro Mode (No flashbacks available) and “Locked to Head Camera” (In-Car View only) and have been doing quite well. It can be hard navigating a track of people that want to sling you off, but I’ve had a good few victories and plenty of podiums. It’s a lot of hard work, but worth it. The following is a link to a video, where I finally beat the Real Life World Record for the Spa-Francorchamps Grand Prix circuit in Belgium. The current World Record is 1.45:108 and was set in 2004 by Kimi Räikkönen. I beat that time by about half a second. Follow the link to take a look.

http://www.vimeo.com/1162846

More about GRID here: http://www.racedrivergrid.com