Clever Moo Cow

Today I finally received a suggested Master thesis title from my project supervisor: Synthesis and Characterisation of Nanostructured Semiconductors. For those of you who that means nothing to, I can promise you that you are missing out! I think I shall be accepting it as it is very much the topic I wanted to study: all that remains is to have a look around the lab, meet the people, see the equipment and read around the subject so that I can confirm and finally get my lazy student posterior into action.

Also I've just added a little hit counter to the sidebar in my blog that was free from www.statcounter.com so I can count how many of you people are actually reading this site and whether it is worth the effort in maintaining it.

Help! Impending Crisis

Ok there is a major problem on the horizon for me and I need some help in solving it. It is pretty serious and thus I have dreamt up the idea of a competition to persuade people to lend some assistance.


I am running out of PG Tips pyramid bags. Sound the alarm.


I only have twenty left and without them my Britishness will slowly fade into nothing and I will have lost all the qualities associated with this fabulous nationality: superb banter and general quick-wittedness, superior intelligence and strong character in the face of adversity. Don't let me become this man.

Therefore I am starting the Rescue the Moo Competition 2006! The rules are simple: the first person to visit my good self in Santander and bring with them one large quantity of premium grade PG Tips pyramid tea bags (at least 200... I will be counting) will have a grand party thrown in their honour with all sorts of sumptious food, exotic drinks and exciting people from all over the world.

The closing date for said competition is the 20th of December 2006 when I shall be coming home for Christmas. Therefore get your act together and fly out here pronto in order to claim your prize and save a Brit in need.

Rugby

¡Hola a todos!

It's been a while since my last entry as I have been quite busy. I've joined the Universidad de Cantabria Rugby team and they are a good bunch of lads. Actually only about 40% of the team are students: the rest are just blokes from throughout the region.

We had two training sessions last week which went pretty well. Then this weekend we had a training camp about 40 minutes to the east of Santander in a town bordering the Basque Country called Santoña. The training was lead by Roland Biron, coach of the French Second Division tem Tarbes and two other French gentlemen (Maurice and Pascal) who play for/coach amateur teams in that area.

The morning of the Saturday consisting of a training and gameplan theory presentation, pretty advanced and very interesting. Then we headed out to the field to do some basic skills and fitness. After dinner we then took the cars over to our home ground to watch the Cantabria youth team play a match before our own game against Gijón of the Asturias region. I came on for 15 to 20 minutes in the second half and played some as back ro, some as second row. Not very happy about second row I must say but any game time is good for me at the moment as I am rather out of shape after doing no exercise whatsoever in the summer.

We right royally stuffed them all game until the last 5 minutes when they scored two tries to take it the final score to about 56-24. We headed back to the hostel for dinner and then the inevitable celebrations after. We had a bar crawl around Santoña which was absolutely awesome. Good banter, good music (surprisingly) and I think we got home at about 8. I say I think as my memory of the last hour or so is (as usual) a tad blurred.

After two hours slept we were cruelly woken up to be put through a beastly fitness session through what I can honestly say was one of the worst hangovers I've had in a long time. I wasn't alone but that's hardly any comfort, is it? Nevertheless great weekend and thanks to Msr. Biron and Co. for all the work they put in.

The photo above is the view from outside the youth hostel with myself and my mate Hugo (the only other Erasmus student in the team) posing Sunday morning. We both have nicknames in the team: Hugo is Franchute which is like the Spanish version of "frog" and mine is Guiri which is the general slang term for foreigner as (very strangely) the Spanish don't seem to have a derogatory term for the English. I haven't told them I have relatives in Gibraltar or else they'd quickly find one!

The nicknames are obviously good-humoured and just for a laugh. But my word do they swear a lot. Fair enough, so do British lads in any sports team, but even the coaches do and in fact so to daytime TV presenters! Leads me to the conclusion that swearing out here is not as grave as in Blighty. They have a rather interesting phrase that the rugger lads say quite often, which translates literally as "I poo on God". You won't be catching me saying that as I think that's slightly over the top!

End of Summer

Ok the summer has officially ended. Last night I was woken up by the remnants of an Atlantic hurricane trying to rip the wall off my block of flats and today the weather has been average to poor. I have been reliably informed that it will rain here this winter... lots. Like with the lack of girls at Imperial College, they don't tell you that at the open day.

But the weekend was awesome, nearly did a triple backflip on Friday night as I stumbled (appropriate word) apon a club playing hard house music at 5am. I decided the acrobatics were a little over the top, so instead I settled for having a few drinks and a dance. But I was very happy about it I can tell you.

Saturday was also a good night out, found another new bar that does funky house and is therefore full of especially goodlooking girls. However, I don't have a set of earplugs here and any more than about 45 minutes of that drivel will probably kill me. So I was in there for about 30 minutes and upon leaving rushed to the nearest food shop to consume some dead animal in order to counteract the negative effects of the girly music.

Sunday was absolutely fantastic and I wish every day could be like it this year. All the Erasmus exchange students went down to the Primera Playa de Sardinero to participate in general frolics & all the fun of a group hangover. The weather was spot on and the waves were pretty awesome for the surfers. The division between the Germans and the rest was immediate as they sat down next to each other in a group that was close to but not exactly part of ours. So we played them in a big game of beach footy and (obviously) dominated them with yours truely being completely pivotal and busting out some Rio de Janeiro styles. Set up all the goals and just generally ran around being a stud. Brilliant.

Had a poker night with the lads last night which saw me come 4th out of 5 (not happy) but at least we're not playing for money yet. Did the classic bloke thing of rating all the ladies in the group, creating plans of attack, etc etc. Good banter.

And tonight I've got my first rugby session of the year so I've got to get a move on. The photo is of the beach we were at on Sunday. Beautiful eh?

MC x