What a day...oh, what a day!

The day starts as usual. Drop Hannah off, drive into Uni and so on. All pretty much standard apart from one small event.
I had parked the car and was making the 10 minute trek to the Portland building. My route takes me from Gunwharf quays, east along Park road then, at the crossroads between Park road and burnaby road, I turn left and follow it to the Portland building. As I said it was a normal day and my mind was wandering (as I was up the road). I heard a noise like a car skidding and I looked up just at the moment when a car collided with a cyclist! The cyclist hit the bonnet and rolled up against the windscreen, the bicycle sliding a good 20 feet! I automatically reached for my phone, dialled 999 and requested an ambulance. The cyclist who turned out to be a young female, was sitting in the road clearly in shock.
I'm not the type to interfere, I can imagine how annoying it must be to have all these people crowding around you. As soon as the accident had happened there were people everywhere, surrounding the scene so it's not like I was just being horrid by standing further away. I tried telling the female an ambulance was on its way but as you can imagine, it fell on deaf ears.
Anyway, a few members of the public walked her to the pavement and moved the bicycle and car and she sat down there. Rather than interrupt the constant "are you ok?" questions, I casually walked up to the group and said "there's an ambulance on its way, if she deteriorates dial 999". I then continued my walk (Fortunately, with no more disasters or accidents!).

BUT

I have a couple of things/problems/queries with this whole scenario:

Firstly, I'd like to tell you all what exactly I was thinking when the accident took place (prepare for tangent). I had just walked past a guy who was sweeping the leaves up on the pavement. As I passed him, he stopped sweeping to let me past so I thanked him. He just kept his head down, didn't respond and carried on with his grumpy sweeping. I instantly thought; rude b*st*rd but then my thoughts changed. Maybe he wasn't grumpy, maybe he was ashamed, he could be an ex-con serving his time for some terrible crime he had commited and thats when I heard the skidding of the car.
Its a strange thought but one that I have pondered, intermittently all day.

Second thing:

As soon as the accident had happened I checked the scene surrounding the crossroads to try and gauge what, why and how. The traffic lights that govern the crossroads showed green for the direction that the car involved was travelling. The direction that the girl had been cycling in had a red light signalling for ALL traffic to stop.
I knew exactly what had happened, the female cyclist thought the same as many cyclists in Britain: 'I dont have to stop at red lights, they're for cars only.' Now, I could be wrong, I'm just describing what I saw and it really bothers me. This girl was now in a potentially critical state all because of her own ignorance to the laws of the road!
I would say it serves her right but at this present moment and also at the time, that would have been a bit harsh.
Whatever happened, she's going to have a few aches in the morning..at least!

Right, I think that will do for the blog today. Thanks for letting me moan!

Over and out..

Rowing = Unsucessful!

I have had a crazy few days so I haven't posted recently.

Basically, we've been assigned a new project. This project involves working with a partner and researching & analysing a house, then building a 1:50 scale model of the house. The problem's I have so far go like this; -I have been partnered with a FOOL who doesn't turn up to class!
-If I built the house I've been assigned at 1:50 it would measure over
a metre in length!

There are some more problems but I cant be bothered to go into detail, it makes me depressed!
So,as you can probably tell I've been trying to work on this project whilst also keep up with the usual large pile of work I have to do anyway. Great!

Jamie and I went to training at the boat-house last night, I got there at 5:30 ish and Jamie turned up shortly after. I was pleased with our training yesterday. I've dropped my 2k time to 8:50 and if I hadn't done the 100m before hand I probably would have been quicker. My 100m time was 19.6 and I still think I've got more for it. Jamie passed a 2k at 8:25, he's a strong endurance rower. I think if we keep training together we'll see our times going down quite regularly.
So I think that might be it for now. If I manage to get some of this work out of the way soon..I'll post some shizzle on here regarding projects etc

First post - Does rowing involve boats?

I'll start with just a general outline of what I did today and go into more detail as I write.
Today is Saturday, I genuinely woke up excited about posting my first little bit on the blog (apart from my introduction bit yesterday).
I really want to fill this thing out, write loads, get pictures, photos etc.

Anyway, I didn't have anything planned for today apart from rowing training this morning at 10:00am. So the day starts with me being excited! I got up, got dressed, made tea and dropped Hannah at work. I then made my way down to the boat house at Southsea seafront, parked the car and entered the building. I was really looking forward to being able to go out on the water today, last week we had land-based training which was murder..fun but murder!
I dropped my kit off in the changing rooms and bounded up the stairs looking for official types who could set me up with a boat. Jamie arrived shortly after me and we both wandered about for 10 minutes before seeing anyone who could send us out. Eventually, we stumbled across the club president with whom we had a rather unexpected conversation;

President - "Oh, you do know its only us going out on the boats today, not you guy..right?".

Us - "Oh really? What shall we do then? Land based again?"

President - Yeah, I'll find someone to help you out

Great, another run no doubt, that's why I woke up excited this morning! (sarcasm)

And that's exactly what happened, we did 10 minutes on the ergos (rowing machines) and then we opted to go for a run with James, a regular at the club. The run wasn't as bad as last week, I've decided to take shorter breaks more regularly, as opposed to killing myself and having to stop from cardiac seizures! When we reached our finish line (the boat house), we decided to get back on the ergos for a bit and then go home. I had noticed earlier in the day that there was a record of people's times for the 100 metre Dash, written down on the white board and I wanted to have a go so I knew what I had to work towards. I managed a relatively respectable 20 second run which seemed OK, some people's times were slower and a few more faster but overall, I was happy with it. Jamie suggested we tried doing a 2000 metre stretch which although long, would have made a nice end to a training session, nine minutes and twenty nine seconds later, I finished with Jamie just ahead of me.

All in all a really nice training session. I dropped Jamie home, drove back to mine and messed around with my notes. Some friends came over and said hi, we chatted for an hour or so and now I'm sitting here writing this blog. I really don't have the drive today to do my work, I'm hoping to have a productive day tomorrow but first I think its essential to get an early night and catch up on some sleep.

I am planning to post later with an outline of the last project we were given and some images of what we did etc.
Sorry if I have made any spelling or grammar mistakes but I'm quite weak today and I cant stop yawning which has thrown my writing a bit!
Thanks for reading!

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog!

I am writing this blog to create a clear, permanent memory of my life as a first year architecture student. I am likely to use this blog for moaning, an account of events, and also as a place to exhibit my ideas and projects.
I would like to thank Jamie Henderson (fellow student and friend) for instigating this; after reading his blog I believe it is a great idea and have jumped on the band-wagon whole-heartedly!
Check out his blog at: http://www.jamie-henderson.blogspot.com/

Well here we go...enjoy!