I’ve taken a bit of a back-seat on the blog writing this week. Only two written! The Imperial Student Blog servers are groaning a sigh of relief.

Yay, only one week of term left. Don’t get me wrong, I love being at IC, I love learning, I enjoy being a student and I’ve learnt some really interesting stuff this term. But, I’ve also had to learn to wake up at 5 am to meet coursework deadlines, how to sit through six hours of lectures a day and also how to interpret dodgy Spanish-accented English. I’m tired, I’m looking forward to going home, and it’s nearly Christmas!!

To celebrate in true Corrie “is-obsessed-with-food” style, my friend John and I decided to do a week of Christmas dinners, as most of the catering outlets on campus were providing them. We missed Monday – the decision was only made that night – and started on Tuesday in the Tower Rooms (the MDH to all you old-hats). Wednesday found us sneaking into the SCR, and Thursday was time for crowding around a Union table. Friday was celebrated in true style, in Eastside…sort of.

So, Tuesday. John, Ben, Mel, Pete and myself made our way into the TR, laden with stuff – I was tutoring both violin and viola in the afternoon, so I needed each instrument. We found ourselves a table (no mean feat – the room was packed) and I got to sit and look after everyones stuff while John bought mine for me. My instructions were ‘everything’, and I got it for £5.91 – bargain! They informed me that the layout of the canteen area was really confusing, and I felt quite glad I hadn’t gone in there.

My starter was a bean soup, I got Christmas roast food with carrots and potatoes (which John managed to correctly pick out, not knowing my preferences! Go John!) and a Christmas pudding. The food was good; my only criticisms are the turkey was a bit dry, and I got a mountain of stuffing; I’m not normally into stuffing, and it soaked up all my gravy, but I’ll get over it. Also, I couldn’t have the cream with the Christmas Pudding, so it was a bit dry, but as I’m sure Toby will point out, this is my fault for being allergic, and not theirs! We each had a cracker (Ben got a spinning top which he explained Science to me with. Amazing!), and I left feeling fat and happy, to groan over my poor stomach all afternoon.

Wednesday: SCR, with John, Nikita and Ken. I have to admit, I felt a little naughty, but there had been signs in the TR saying we could go in there! So I didn’t feel that bad. There were elves! And a Santa who was giving out chocolates! While we were waiting in the queue, the Santa came and John made me have a photo taken with him. My eyes in the picture say ‘John, I hate you for doing this to me’; to punish him afterwards, I let him have my chocolate. Not quite sure how that worked!

I had much the same as the previous day; the soup was tomato and basil, and we didn’t get a free drink with this one, so I had what they were calling ‘multi-vitamin mixed berry juice’ which was basically some dodgy squash. It was only 40 p though! John and I shared half a loaf of bread, which gave the SCR points. I have no criticism for this food, it was really good, and we also still had crackers. John got a really funny moustache thing; see the picture! £5.61 again, bargain.

I apparently had no aversion to eating the SCR food; I was the first one finished, and by quite a long way too. Two things of note happened; Nikita had her first ever Christmas pudding (which she didn’t like), and John came out with this gem: “I’ve never had grandparents with my pizza!”

So, Thursday. Union with Ben, John and Pete. We stood in the queue for ages, and they almost ran out of turkey. We didn’t get a drink, or soup, but I’ll get over it – it was only £3.50 and we got mince-pies too! Overall, however, I didn’t rate it as highly as either of the others, and we didn’t get crackers. Ben got my mince-pie (I’m only mentioning that so he remembers he owes me…kidding!). I finished really quickly again, and didn’t feel quite so full. I’m worried my stomach has expanded and I’m going to have to eat twice as much as before to be full!

Finally, on to Friday. We headed off to Eastside; I was a bit unsure where to go, having never actually been inside before, but I managed to work it out…I met Pete, Mel, Nikki, Ashton and John, and we went to the bar to order. This is where the Christmas dinner plan fell down – we were supposed to preorder! I completely blame John for this (though I was the one who looked at the advert in the JCR the day before). We had various meals instead, from scampi to sirloin steak, and I ‘scampied’ off to my last Biomaterials lecture of the year.

I rate the SCR dinner highest, with Union coming third, and Eastside failing completely. The week has made me full, exposed me to a lot of maths-talk (Mel, John, Pete and Ben all do maths – Pete has a maths bungee attached to him which always brings the convo. back to maths, particularly topography. Grr!) and been a bit more expensive than your average week.

It was totally worth it.

Other things that happened this week that I may blog about if others are interested – Tom and I met up with John and a load of other people on Tuesday for a pancake and film night, where we watched a horror film and got really freaked out; I played at the Pakistan Society event “Shaam” in a string quartet on Wednesday night; I discovered that jumping off cliffs in Malta may have disastrous consequences for your coccyx – even if it was three months ago.

First off, Chris has already given an excellent overview of the library in this post last week, so don’t expect any of that. My aim this morning is to give an idea of the library at 9 am on a Tuesday morning. I’m sitting in the group area, which is normally so packed there are groups of people sitting on the floor doing group work; at this time of day I would expect it to be positively deserted. If you don’t have early lectures, don’t come in! Sleep, I beg you!

When I came in this morning, however, there were quite a few people. This was OK, I still got my favourite computer, settled myself in, got my books out, and in true procrastinating style started eavesdropping on the conversations.

The first group I’d walked past had a huge poster out – something about animal behaviour. Bit keen to get that out so early, must have a deadline. Well, it transpires they do have a deadline – sometime today. I worked this out because I could hear them saying charming things like “Oh my God you guys, am I the only one who hasn’t showered today? I’ll do it after we’ve handed it in” and “I haven’t slept yet. Maybe I’ll go lie down on the couches in the library cafe for a minute”.

Mmm. All-nighter. I’ve never done one; I came pretty close last year just before my microstructure exam, but I got up at 3 and came into college to meet my bro and friends then, rather than staying in the library till it was too late to go home. Also last year there was a bit of coursework that needed doing in the library, but I got home at 3, so I think I’m doing pretty well. As far as I know, however, it’s quite a common occurence; my friend Greg, who was an exchange student last year, did them regularly.

As Chris has already pointed out, the library is far and away the best place to do this. It’s warm upstairs, and cool down. As long as you can bear the trek, you can sort your heating out to suit your needs. Refreshments are available, whether it’s the drinking fountains or the cafe. The other option, in comparison, would be your department. In my case, no refreshment, one stifling, poorly lit computer room, and no comfy sofas to take a short nap on. There’s no competition, really.

Back to the library at 9am on a Tuesday. The other people who were on the computers left as soon as I walked in. After wondering if I smell really bad (I did walk in this morning…..) I realised it was actually only five to nine, and these dedicated souls were having a last minute check of Facebook before lectures. That’s one of the most annoying things about this area. The people on the computers are ALWAYS on Facebook! I have the urge often to poke someone really hard in the back of the head and tell them I need the computer for work, please kindly move…so if that happens to you, it was me. Sorry.

You may wonder why I’m here so early; see my ranty blog from Friday.

To change the subject briefly again, I got a nice apology from a lady on the Reporter team, about incorrectly naming my blog excerpt. I want to point out now that I’m not that upset about it. It was Friday afternoon, I was tired, I’d had a bad day, and my friend Saj had made me crave fish and chips in my biomaterials lecture, which for reasons relating to my student loan I couldn’t satisfy. I’m sorry if it came across as angry – I wasn’t angry, merely venting.

OK, back to my reason for being here (sorry, my mind is jumping randomly from place to place today. Go with the flow, deal with it). I’ve come in to do some coursework – I’m neatly avoiding it by writing this blog, but as soon as I’m done I’ll start. I have no lectures today (an extremely rare luxury) so I expect to be in here all day (apart from work in the finance office and tutoring music). Hopefully I will have finished two out of the three pieces of coursework by 5.

Tonight we are decorating the house [read Tom's room] for Christmas. It may be early (shut up, you Scrooges) but we are only in the house for two weeks, and a festive atmosphere will lighten the January exam gloom that is beginning to settle. We’ve even got a Yule log (and you thought this post would be free of references to food…ha!)

So I’m going to slip into another Imperial student’s favourite pasttime. Complaining about how much work we have. Normally I try not to do this, but I feel it gives everyone a healthy perspective on what my life is like – it’s not all about cooking!

So, we are doing design studies. This is a group project, I’m sure I’ve introduced it before. I’ve been labouring under the illusion that the final report is 8000 words long. Well, I’ve found out it is – 8000 words each. How is that healthy?! I have to get the intro written by next Thursday, 1000 words of trouble. I don’t know anything about knee diseases, that stuff I presented at the presentation to surgeons was pot luck! I can’t write A THOUSAND WORDS!!

Also due by next Thursday: a lab report about X-Ray diffraction and Thermal Analysis. This is just plain annoying – we did XRD last year, and by some stroke of luck the TA technique that we did in the lab is one that I also happened to have done last year as part of my case study. So I’ve already written reports about both of these. I don’t want to do it again!

Finally, literature review. We get given a title and have to research it. Mine is about nanomedicines; the materials aspects are fine, but the medicine stuff not so much. I took a book out of the library about “Drug Delivery” the other day. I didn’t even know there was an issue with drug delivery, let alone a whole section of the library dedicated to the engineering of it! Stupid, stupid work.

Add to that the massive amount of lecture notes I have yet to write up, and you may wonder why I’m writing this blog and not working. I can’t really tell you; I don’t know.

Finally a complaint about the Media. Imperial College publishes Reporter, a magazine that comes out every three weeks giving an overview of ‘life on the inside’. They feature an excerpt from these Student Blogs every issue. This week, to my delight, mine was the blog featured. But, I’m the only one who knows it, cos they typed out that it was Naser! I’m now doing a very good impression of angry Naser - maybe they were a bit right when they confused us.

I’ve spent a while trying to figure this out – I even worked out that if you take my real name (Coranda) and reverse Naser’s name so it becomes Resan, they could have mistaken me for CoResanda. [I found this mistake during a lecture in which I became so lost and confused that there was no point following it because I couldn't understand anything. I decided to do something constructive instead, like work out how the other bloggers could possibly be mistaken for me. Coresanda was the best I got, however.]

Back to the point – I don’t understand. If I pin it on my wall people are going to think I lied, cos it’s not my name on it. This makes me sad. In fact, so sad that I’m going to go to the library cafe and buy myself a forbidden muffin, with DOUBLE chocolate. Take that, allergies.

This has been an entirely pointless post, and I forgot my camera cable so I can’t upload any pictures. If you come back over the weekend you’ll find a blog about a concert, more scones, and discharging capacitors explosively for fun.