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11/30/2001 Archived Entry: "Two days"

Thursday 00:10am: Go to bed early in order to get up at 7am for a rowing race.

3:30am: Wake up. Wonder exactly what the loud blaring noise is. Realise that the fire alarm is going off. Mutter unrepeatable curses about the horrible things that will befall the porters if this indeed turns out to be a fire drill.

3:30:30am: Get dressed, grab keys, walk out of room. See Hungarian next-next door neighbour burst out of his room in dressing gown and dash into the kitchen, which is full of smoke. He shouts something about the grill being on. I shake my head sadly.

3:40am: Having gone to the Porter's Lodge to report the fire alarm, and finding no-one, I troop back to the building with a few other people to find a weary porter already investigating the problem. I get undressed, climb back into bed and the fire alarm goes off again.

3:50am: Realise that smoke from the kitchen has gotten into my room and begin to get worried about carbon monoxide poisoning.

~4:00am: Finally get to sleep

7:00am: Woken up by alarm. Mentally compute the least amount of time required for me to have a shower, get changed and meet the rowing crew. Decide that I can have at least another twenty minutes in bed, and fall asleep.

7:35am: Wake up in panic. Decide that a shower is not possible and cycle off to the meeting point.

7:45am: Loiter at meeting point. Notice that there are very few people from my crew who are there. The coach tells me, "Oh, didn't you get the notice about your race being rescheduled? You only have to meet at the boathouse at 10am." I tell the coach that, no, I did not get such a notice.

8:00am: Go to Sainsbury's, walk around a bit with fellow malcontent who also didn't get the notice.

8:20am: Go to breakfast at hall.

9:00am: Walk over to Starbucks in Borders and fall asleep on comfy couches.

10:00am: Get to boathouse, do some warming up, participate in the well-honoured and traditional procedure of roundly cursing early mornings and incompetent coaches.

11:30am: Get into boat. It is raining. It has been raining all morning. Feel a little depressed.

12:00pm: Still in boat. Have moved possibly a hundred metres or so, since we're racing at the end of our division. The good news is that we swapped divisions with the women's boat so right now we're the only men's boat among 40 women's boats (it's a timed race though, so it doesn't matter what division we're in). This proves to be of some amusement.

12:10pm: Start singing along with rest of the boat. It has stopped raining.

12:20pm: Stop singing, and start race.

12:30pm: Finish race. Look down at left hand, which doesn't seem to be moving any more, and see lots of nasty blood. Not nice - appears that the blisters have once again given up.

12:35pm: Start rowing back to the boathouse, with the crew lustily belting out renditions of 'YMCA', 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'Yellow Submarine', 'We are the Champions' and other such great hits. Catch quite a few strange looks. More than a few mothers point us out to their kids, presumably as a warning.

1:30pm: Finally get back to my room, having bought a 'comfort curry' from Sainsbury's. Eat curry, read the news on the Internet, realise that my arms are no longer able to move and then collapse onto bed.

4:00pm: Wake up. Arms still not moving. Fall asleep.

4:50pm: Wake up. Arms have regained movement. Have shower, then read up notes on consciousness and executive control for a supervision.

6:00pm: Supervision begins with Simon Baron-Cohen (aka Ali G's uncle). Extremely good and thought-provoking. Massive respect to the Psychology posse.

7:20pm: Cycle off to a Chinese Society buffet dinner. Find out that I need cash. Discover that half of Cambridge's cash machines are not working. Become extremely irritated.

Friday 00:03am: Realise that I am getting tired and bored, and stop writing this weblog entry.