Eugh

I hate being ill. Especially if you can't take any time off school because you need a reference that doesn't say you "skive" regularly. Even though I am genuinely not well. Eugh.

Also, is there some unwritten law that states that every subject has to set an end-of-unit test in the same week? I have a Chemistry test on Friday, a Biology test on Monday and Physics test next friday!

Anyway, apart from the griping...

Actually, there's not much else.

Though I have got a Cambridge Interview :-) 8th December. One of my interviewers is an astrophysicist - not quite sure about that. Though she is the Vice-Mistress of the college as well. And one of my other interviewers (a Vet Bye-fellow) is french. So now I'm terrified she's going to talk to me in French :-S

Whoof

It's been a long, long half term.

No wonder I've had no time to write on here - looking back,  I've been  bust virtually all the time. Getting in applications was fun, since I'm an early applicant, and that took me up til the end of september. After that, the teachers decided that we could start working "properly", so it's be extra homework and oxbridge classes in my free periods.

Still, there have been a few good things. firstly, TV always seems to improve when we go back to school, so at the moment I have Spooks (pretty good) on a monday, Extras, Mitchell and Webb and Mock The Week on thursday (Extras is still slightly naff, but Mtchell and Webb is brilliant, and Mock the Week only slightly less so), Have I Got News For You on fridays (superb as always), Robin Hood on Saturdays (Hilarious. Watch it just for the cheesyness factor) and, starting this Sunday, Torchwood (YAY!).

Wow. Because that list doesn't make me sound geeky at all.

Anyway, outside of that, I've brushed up on my HTML for Gothic Class ( website is at http://freewebs.com/gothicperse ) and am going to start learning Perl when my Dad gets back from Blakeney (he left with Mark this evening).

I'm also far too exicted about going to see Mitchell and Webb live with Tom in Coventry in November. Parents were a bit funny (they weren't terribly keen on me staying the night with Tom) but they've agreed. Nothing they can do, now, anyway - we booked tickets yesterday :-)

I'm off to babysit for the Chapmans in a bit, but before that...Chemistry revision. Joy.

More Photos

Link to previous photos

This set are all from the boat trip we went on round the San Francisco bay with the James family. I should note that all these pics are posted in exactly the same state as they were taken, though I have said beneath them if there's any tweaking I'd like to do. Enjoy!

This is the one I actually have currently set as my desktop background - for some reason, it doesn't look too bad when streched. That's the Golden Gate Bridge to the left, though the top is hidden by cloud/fog. You can also see the afternoon fog rolling in across the hills to the left (Left is out to sea) which is very dramatic to see in person. This is one of my favourite shots of the whole holiday - the bridge support is exactly in line with the side of the photo, and the bridge coming towards you is quite dramatic.This is the island/prison of Alcatraz. This is the only photo I too of it that actually came out nicely - I had some closer shots (we went right round it, staying fairly close) but the sun was coming from behind the island so the pictures were all very dark. Still, this is a nice picture, if a bit tilted (IIRC, the waves were hitting the side of the boat at this point - not hugely, but enough to rock it quite a bit)
I took these two panoramic ones with a view to using them as desktop backgrounds - they're shots of the San Francisco waterline from the boat, but especially in the second one, I left a lot of "blank" (sky) that I could easily cover with desktop icons. Unfortunatly, the smallness of my memory card means that I was only taking smaller photos (I think they're something like 800x600) and so it wouldn't really fit on my desktop.
These were some pretty zippy sailing boats that followed us out of the harbour. They're terribly cute - single-hulled, but with extended platforms on either side that you could stand up on and trapieze off. When they passed behind us, both of the people in each boat were right up on the edge - it was pretty windy that day! You can also seee San Fran in the background again, but that's less interesting.
These were some of the sealions that populate San Francisco Warf. There are loads of them - I couldn't fit in the rest off to the left. Our boat acutally moored almost beside the two you can se in the background, but I took this photo on the way back into the harbour after the trip, mostly because I was sitting in the middle of a whole pile of people on the way out.
This is my brother (Peter) wielding the communal digital camera (The one I'm using is actually mine. I won it in a competition - it's a long story). I think there's another photo somewhere which is the one Peter took while I was taking this one, but I have no clue where it is and it's probably awful anyway.
This is (from left to right) Laura James, Tom James' girlfriend (Also called Laura, somewhat confusingly) and Tom James. I took this picture from the upper balcony of the boat we were on - hence the angle!
I nabbed this one whilst the trio weren't looking - I have a feeling that Alcatraz was off to the left of the photo, so they were probably admiring that. It was pretty spectacular! I'd probably crop this if I wanted to give it to anyone (excess up top, mostly containing the feet of random other people, which I don't really want) but it's too much time and effort, and I'm feeling lazy right now.
This is a nice one of Laura (James) on her own - I think the boat trip was underway by this time, so she's probably admiring the view. Again, this one should be cropped before displaying, as there's extra seat and railing that I really don't need. Sadly, my zoom isn't great, and I didn't really want to lean over the side of the rail too far.
Another good one of Laura. I took this one at the beginning of the trip, while we were still waiting to leave - hence the other boat in the background. Acutally, I'm annoyed I didn't get a picture of a large Catamaran-Yacht thing that was moored near us, but I guess I forgot. It was pretty cool - very narrow hulls and a huge sail. I bet that went really fast.

I still have a bunch more (from Santa Cruz and elsewhere) but I'll do them later.

Grr!

I havn't been able to log on here for about a week - I think it's a problem at my end, not with this website, but it's still annoying :-(

School is as dull as ever - we had the school photograph taken today, which consisted of standing in a line for about an hour and a quarter waiting for everyone else to line up (Sixth form are first in and last out) and then spending about a minute actually taking the picture before waiting for another quarter of an hour before we could get out. Understandably, that wasn't a lot of fun.

They're being nicer to us in lessons because it's the start of term, but our new maths teacher seems slightly overenthusiastic - she's giving us homewok every night to be handed in the next day, which is tedious. I don't think anyone told her assigning homework isn't mandatory every lesson.

I've got a mostly homework-free evening tonight, so perhaps later I'll upload the other pictures from the trip to California.

Sleeeeeepy

Well, actually, I'm not. Which is the problem. Because it's 1:15AM and I can't go to sleep.

Grr.

So, Buffy-watching time. Anything out of season 6 should put me right to sleep.

Home again

After an exhausting day and a half traveling (I worked out that I'd been awake for 30 hours straight) I'm finally home to grey old England.

Yay.

I did get my AS grades, though, which were pretty good.

Physics - 94% (A)
100/100 (a)
106/110 (a)
75/90 (a)

Chemistry - 86% (A)
86/90 (a)
69/90 (b)
104/120 (a)

Biology - 91% (A)
99/105 (a)
103/105 (a)
72/90 (a)

Maths - 98% (A)
100/100 (a)
100/100 (a)
94/100 (a)

General Studies - 90% (A)
108/120 (a)

I'm a little annoyed that I didn't get a better mark in chemistry (I know I shouldn't complain, but I don't feel that's the best I could have done) but other than that, I'm very pleased. I really didn't expect to do quite that well in physics...

My birthday was interesting...techincally (according to Dad) it started when the plane detached from the boarding gate, so I only technically lost 4 hours of my birthday (by that time it was 4AM in England). I got a few small things - stationary, memory card for my camera and some money for songs off Itunes - but my main birthday present will obviously be driving lessons.

Speaking of which, I went for a drive today - just round a large carpark by the railway station. It's kinda weird trying to do all those things at once, but I guess I'll get used to it.

I just went out for the most amazing meal. The restaurant advertises itself as "Steak and Seafood" but that really doesn't even begin to cover it.

It's a japanese-style place, but most of the food is done without sauces, so it's hard to notice. You order from a selection of different combinations of meats (including steak, chicken, fish, scallop, prawn, calamari and tuna), and the rest of the meal comes included in that. One table can seat up to eight people round it - we had seven round ours (my family, and another couple). You're arranged in a semi-circle round the centre of the table, which is basically a large grill.

You start off with a soup - ours was onion and mushroom, which doesn't sound terribly appetising, but the soup was intensly flavourful. Then the chef arrives with a trolley full of interesting things. After being given an impressive display of dexterity with the chef throwing several of his implements round each other at alarming speeds, the first dish to be cooked is the fried rice, which everyone gets. It consisted of chicken, eggs (the chef obviously had a sense of humor, as he threw the eggs down onto the grill in such a way that he could draw a chicken with them), vegetables and, obviously, rice. Some soy sauce and garlic butter got thrown into the mix someplace as well.. We also got served with salads at this point, which had a very interesting (nice!) sauce on them.

After the rice was done, prawns were fried in garlic butter. We all got given a small portion as an appetiser, and then those who had ordered prawn as one of their main course meats got given a larger portion. Then, the rest of the meat and fish was cooked (in no particular order that I could see) along with some courgette and onion rings. Were were also, at some point, given two different sauces (one for seafood and vegetables, one for meat and chicken). I only tried the seafood one, but it went very well with the prawn appetisers and the scallops that I ordered.

The other meat I had was steak, and I think it's not hyperbolaic to say that it was the best steak I have ever had. It was first cooked as a whole, then it was sliced up into chunks and fried further in garlic butter. I have no idea how they did it, but it was tender, juicy, delicious...I'm drooling at the thought of it, and I ate it less than an hour ago.

We had ice-cream to finish up - I went terribly conventional and had chocolate.

As far as drinks went, we got served water (obviously!) and I had what was effectively a Pina Colada, but with mango instead of rum/vodka. More like a fruit smoothie than anything else, I guess, but it was very good, if a little over-sweet. We also got served some very good Green Tea at the end of the meal (before the icecream) but I got a mouthful of the dregs by mistake and had a bitter taste in my mouth for about ten minutes afterwards.

The other "fun" thing was Dad mentioning to the waiter that it's my birthday on friday. This resulted in me being sung "Happy Birthday" in English and Japanese, and getting a nice cheesy photo to take home with me.

Off home tomorrow...feels a bit weird. We've been here for so long it almost feels like home. And I'll have an 11-hr flight :-(