Sunday
Well today was the day for me moving into university. For those of you who don't know I'm going to university at Glamorgan (South Wales, not far from Cardiff).Not the best start to the day as I was out drinking last night so woke up around 8am with something of a hangover. Not too bad, but feeling dehydrated as fsck. I really should have finished packing my stuff up last night before I went to bed when I could still think coherently. Oh well, no big deal now. The only things I've forgotten (to the best of my knowledge as I write this on the M4 on the way...) are a backup of the MySQL database on my local server (which isn't really very local now, but still closer than the server this site or Web2Messenger are hosted on are) and cutlery. Obviously the latter is slightly more important as I can just RDC into my server to grab that database backup, but I can't do the same with cutlery, unfortunately - that'll have to be bought in Cardiff when I get there.
Back to this account being at least fairly in order, Peter - the friend who was driving me up there since he already lives close with his girlfriend - arrived around 9:40. I had done absolutely nothing but feel like shit up until that point, but willed myself into doing something useful then, so attempted to get my stuff together. It was absolutely tipping it down but luckily the rain eased up by the time we started putting stuff in the car. I had no intention of carrying my desktop to the car in rain so heavy it was painful. We just about managed to fit everything in the car, neither of us realised that I had quite so much crap.
We left home at approximately 10:10 - at least that's the time that I signed out of MSN Messenger which I did in the car just as we were about to leave. The first priority was getting some petrol so that we could actually get somewhere without running out and getting stranded. Eventually I started feeling better, though still reasonably awful. Very quickly we were stuck behind some old dude who refused to go above about 40mph. That remained our position until we were almost on the M25 - that's like 30 miles. Awful.
Once we had got onto the M25 (affectionately known by many in the UK as the world's largest car park and Terry Pratchett has mentioned it in his books - Good Omens for one, I believe, in which it's described as the work of Hell - and Usenet postings many times) we promptly took a wrong turning and ended up driving towards central London. Oops. A quick U-turn later and we were back on the M25 heading to the M4. After getting off the M25 and on to the A322 (which joins the M25 to the M4 via the M3) we decided to stop at a KFC (at 12:10) to have a bite to eat. In my case it really was just a bite. I managed 1½ pieces of chicken and a handful of chips since I was still feeling bloody awful and the more I ate the worse I felt. We left fairly sharpish since the music playing there was godawful.
And then we're up to pretty much where I am as I write this in the car on the M4. It's a fairly boring stretch of road, really. I'll write more when more happens.
... Well more has happened at last. I'm now sat in our kitchen with four of the other five residents - three girls, one guy (another guy is out getting drunk or something). We arrived at Treforest around 3pm, eventually found the university campus (the road was signposted a few miles before it actually appeared) at 3:05. It was then that we started our thoroughly enjoyable experience of waiting in the car for an entire hour in a queue while other people unloaded their stuff. This was made more exciting by the car's lack of oil, which caused a huge plume of smoke to eminate from the rear of the vehicle every time we attempted to pull away. The look on the face of the people behind us was priceless - constantly coughing on the smoke. In the end they decided to wait for the smoke to dissipate before driving up to the space that we had previously occupied. After that ever so enjoyable hour in the car we were able to unload all my stuff just as it started pouring with rain. From what I've seen of this university it's constantly raining here; my flat mates say the same. We just about got my computer equipment in before it got soaked so all's well. Ironically it had stopped raining by the time we had stopped unloading. I love this weather... For some reason unloading my stuff took yet another hour. This was not aided by the fact that my room is at the far back of the top floor of block H. Lovely. Peter and I were totally exhausted after that, unsurprisingly, so we just drove to where he's staying... I now realise that I have no idea how to refer to that place.. Peter's house? Ellie's house? WHAT?? :P
As predicted Ellie's mum cooked a very nice but equally massive dinner, which I just have to hope is not my last decent meal all year. :p We had to leave fairly soon, though, as I really didn't want to get back really late and end up not meeting my flat mates for the first time tomorrow (i.e. Monday). Therefore we left and got back to the university around 8:30. I started to unpack my stuff, noticing that I had a huge amount of junk (see pics below), and before long I heard a knock at my door. I opened it (as you do, really) and it was the others who had come to introduce themselves and meet me. Thank god that they're more sociable than me. It turns out that they're all in a similar situation to me - not knowing anyone in the area, at least a few of them aren't Welsh and our music tastes seem fairly similar. The colour of choice in the kitchen this evening was black, after all. It seems that they're nice guys (and gals..) so I'm pretty lucky there, I guess.
Together we have enough cutlery and crockery for an army. Someone brought a 16-piece cutlery set, and we have plates and bowls coming out of our ears. Better than not having enough stuff, I guess. :)
After getting all our stuff unpacked we all just sat in the kitchen and watched Liar Liar which was funny in places - like all of Jim Carey's films, really. Oh and the kitchen light died AGAIN. Apparently it was only fixed this afternoon. It's now 1am, I haven't actually even checked for Internet access yet. I spy a network socket in my room, but haven't toyed with it yet.
I now realise that I've written quite a bit for what is only my arrival day. I've spent only a handful of hours actually here. Oh well, guess I'll write more when I wake up in the morning...
Photos
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My stuff before unpacking it
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More of my unpacked stuff
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Sink
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Toilet/shower
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Partially unpacked
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My bed