Freshers week

Today is the last day of freshers week for me. I've been at uni for two weeks now and been loving every second of it (except the hangovers!)
I've done a fair bit in those two weeks, most of which has been drink..in large excess. I suppose it's not the best idea, but hey, it's one of those things you don't get another chance to do for a long while, if ever again (unless you go to uni early for freshers in the second & third year).
I've kept a list of what i've consumed over the last two weeks or so, and surprisingly i'm fairly certain it's close to 100% accurate, despite how shitfaced i've got some nights.

My substance abuse diary:

Nights drunk: 8 
Times chundered: 1

Captain Morgans: 1L 1 shot 
Desperadoes: 13
Thatchers: 5
Jäger bombs: 10
Diserrano: 500ml
Double Gin and tonic: 5
Double Malibu & coke: 1
Crabbies: 1
Doombar: 3 
Strongbow: 1
Vodka shots: 8
Hooch: 4
Beer: 1
Sourz: 2


Funnily enough, that one time I threw up was after a free bar at a gig venue where first year music students were playing and hanging out, and I had proceeded to head back to the flat after that and continue to drink copious amounts. The next day unsurprisingly I wasn't feeling too great, but well enough to attend class. Mid lecture I found that suddenly I was sweating heavily, and my vision was going a little, then I felt a bit of bile build up. Something was wrong, but I hoped it would pass, however soon enough I threw up in my mouth and made my way out of the room as fast as possible, however as I reached the second door into the corridor, seconds came up, so I had no choice but to spew.
What a way to end the first week of lectures! I'm certainly thinking of reining my reckless drinking in now that proper lessons are starting.

Drinking & partying aside, these two weeks of uni have been incredible so far. My flat is pretty nice, plenty of space in my own room to store my things, a reasonable bathroom and the communal kitchen is sweet enough, although if we all decide we want to cook at once, if we're lucky two of us can cook at the same time, though partially I blame that on my cooking sometimes, i've found I sometimes make quite complex meals.

I share the flat with four other people, one third year German exchange student, a girl from Ireland, a girl from Woking and a Welsh guy, who lives about a 20 minute train journey from Cardiff, who funnily enough is the most homesick of all of us. They are all a really nice bunch, and I find that we all gel so well together despite not so many shared interests. It's quite cool having such a diverse culture difference between only five people, which has already had an effect on us, with us picking up little parts of each others accents.
So far i've met some nice people outside of the flat too and our flat seems to have build up a group of friends with a couple of others in the building which is nice. 

My course so far seems pretty awesome, the content that we will be studying is looking good, and there are plenty of different people that I will be studying with. It's great to be able to meet many different types of people interested in sound, gear, alternative music and all sorts of things that I wouldn't usually find others interested in. Aside from their interests, there are so many types of people studying, ranging from people that have come from college like me, up to a 31 year old who grew tired of working an IT job and scraping time together to work in his studio.

So all in all, things can't be better right now, I am loving life. That said, i've been a little emotionally unstable at times, but it's hard to get used to being away from home and away from my friends, despite them being only a text or facebook message away. Either way, in time I guess us as a flat will feel much more comfortable around each other when it comes to more sensitive things.

One of the main different things i've noticed about being here compared to home is time management. Even without much work to be done yet, i've already been so busy and including a bit of time to chill out and have lie ins..i've had much less time to doss about and waste time on things such as computer gaming.
Speaking of being busy, right now I should probably help my flatmates prepare things for fajitas that we are making tonight!

Summertime pub work & the future

Picture a hot sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky, bees buzzing and people with hay fever cursing the days existence.

Think of what you could be doing on such a day, going for a walk, heading off to the coast, relaxing in your garden with a cold drink..endless ways of spending a glorious day.

Instead, I've been spending the best part of my summer holidays working at a local pub. Not the most exciting activity for most of my days. I finished working there about two weeks ago, giving me about two weeks to prepare for uni.
Looking back upon the job, it hasn't actually been too bad. I won't deny that some days after a late finish from a stressful shift i've hated my job, but in the end, those times are only temporary and the next day you've already half forgotten about it.

One of the positive things about that job was that it was so dynamic. On any day I could come into work and see things in the sink that need washing, and five minutes after starting that, I could either be called to prepare vegetables and other ingredients, tidy up some parts of the restaurant, start making starters (Sandwiches, Baked potatoes etc.) ..there is always a job of some kind that needs doing. I liked this as often you'd never be stuck doing a certain task for hours on end, which helped prevent work from becoming tedious..however the downside of this is on a busy day, I would be taking food out to many customers, and at times being asked to do tasks multiple people which would occasionally mean that I temporarily forgot what I was helping a customer with. Towards the end of my time at the pub, this drove me up the wall at some points, because the mistakes I made due to having so many things that needed urgently doing, including customer service, it just made me feel like I was being shit at my job.
On this subject, working at the pub was at times a real exercise in stress management, with situations like that popping up occasionally, maintaining a good face for customers and keeping yourself from lashing out at co-workers. That said, almost all of the people working there, me including had times where we just lost it and went a little bit stir crazy. Any time that would happen, we all understood it wasn't out of aggression, just stress and it didn't change our social standing with the person (not including a few twats that worked there for a while).
Aside from working with stress, the job was also good for learning to prioritize tasks and multitask, which will always be an occurrence in almost any job.

In the end, whether I enjoyed the job or not is kind of irrelevant..I means it's called work for a reason isn't it? I earned a fair bit of money over the summer (I worked hard for it!) and it was just a good experience to have had.

But enough about the summer..that's over and so is my holiday very soon. I will be moving to university of South Wales (Cardiff) tomorrow, to study Audio Engineering. The holiday has passed so quickly, and now i'm half rushing to get everything packed to move out of home. I've had a reasonable clue of what to sort out, but I haven't really sorted that much till about a week ago, with some help from my dad when it came to things I didn't think to sort out.
Aside from my large bedroom and my local friends, one of the main things i'll be missing is going to be my car. It's expensive to keep my car at uni and frankly i'm not really going to have much use for it, aside from the occasional gig in Bristol and getting back and forth from home.

I can't really say anything else other than bring on the future and the next chapter!