Thursday 3rd July 2003 at 8.35am; Myself, Rob, Rawson, Ryan, Dave, Lawrence, Oz & Rusty meet at Ipswich Train Station and joined the ticket queue. Our destination is Norwich, which most people from around here will know as the arch-nemesis of our town, the enemy if you will. Of course this is just meaningless rivalry which has aroused from football matches between the two sides - especially when those bastards came to Portman Road and trashed the toilets in Churchmans. But we're not bitter. The exact destination to be precise is of course The University of East Anglia. Most people seemed to be going for the sake of going rather than being genuinely interested in what the University has to offer, but it would be interesting all the same since it was the first open day for many of the attenders.

After buying our tickets at the fairly reasonable return price of Ł9.00 and making a quick stop at the refreshments vendor we were up, over the bridge to platform 2 where our train would depart in 15 minutes time. After sitting in the waiting area for almost 10 of those minutes, Mr. Paul Hardcastle appeared on the platform looking dazed and confused. After spotting us in the waiting area, he entered before realising he hadn't bought a ticket and had to rush back off to the entrance. It wasn't a problem however and within the next few minutes we had boarded the train and were on our way to Norfolk, home of the longest building in Britain.

We arrived. It was at this point that we made 2 fatal mistakes. The first was not waiting for the coach to the University to return after leaving fully-seated as we arrived. The second was wandering off into Norwich, ignoring Hardcastle's request to get on the nearest bus and trying to walk our way through quite a big city:

From Left to Right: Dave, Ryan, Rusty, Jay & Oz

Our first stop was at the Big W, at first when Paul explained it to me on the way there I just imagined a giant W. Whilst the W on the building was quite big, the shop was actually called Big W - it was a Woolworths. After spending a while walking round and then buying some snacks we were off into the city. An hour or so, and two failed attempts at buying a map later we gave up hope and got on a bus. Luckily this bus took us right up to the university and dropped us off. Rob had an interesting conversation with a man resembling a hobo on the way, about East Anglia, Exams and Programming Languages but I was only half listening.

The first thing I noticed was the people, there were quite a few of them. We didn't know what was going on, but luckily the hobo had given Rob some directions so we kind of knew where we were headed. Helpfully the University had put up coloured posters with arrows on telling people where to go for the registration tent. After a few minutes we spotted these posters and followed them. Having decided the queue for the Campus Tour was too long, we entered the large tent in the middle of the grassy area. Inside this tent we found more people, and some people in yellow t-shirts who we had already concluded were the ones giving the tours. Hardcastle commented on how cool it would be to have our own yellow t-shirts, I can't remember why.

Anyway, in the tent we found a prospectus each, didn't fill in the registration forms to tell them we were there and then left. For reasons unknown we decided that we should go to Politics and Pilosophy, which was on the third floor of the Humanities block - I think. Nobody really had an interest in either of these subjects excluding Dave in Politics, so this was going to be interesting. The first event was spotting a sign on the elevator saying '8 Persons Maximum' - a quick count revealed 9 of us, much to everyone's delight. We piled into the lift, Rawson last and struggled to breathe as we went up in the small space, packed like sardines in a crushed tin box. As the doors opened, we burst out and they laughed at us. "They" being the three or so people sitting at a desk to greet people as they arrive.

Women 1: So what are you all interested in?
Us: Err. Politics.
Women 1: Anything else?
Us: umm... Nope.

Just politics. She proceeded to talk some rubbish about what was going on and how this little operation worked, again I wasn't really listening. We then walked right past the politics desk and talked to the guy sitting at Philosophy. He had some interesting points to make, but before he could make them my mind wandered to a soldier firing target rounds at bundles of hay and children playing hide and seek in the park.

Back to reality and I found myself and the others sitting in the Union Bar, ah yes, the bar, it was inevitable we would end up here. Drinks and lunch was bought and we sat. We sat there for approximately 2 hours watching Tennis in the corner and reading some magazines. Lawrence bought the last chicken and bacon sandwich which I wanted to have, then he had the cheek to only eat half of it and offer it to other people (this isn't relevent to the article, but I just wanted to get it down so I could remember to be pissed off at him in the future).

After wasting so much time it was decided we had to get something out of our trip down here so we split into two factions and went to check out a lecture. Group A: Rob, Dave, Rawson and Rusty went to a 1-hour computing lecture somewhere I don't know about. Group B: Myself, Hardcastle, Ryan, Lawrence and Oz went to a half-hour film lecture in lecture hall 1. This was taken by a german man with a beard who sat on a table I was praying would collapse for the entire thing. Afterwards we met back up and mentioned leaving, but first we decided we had to go on a tour of the campus and check everything out. Our guide was a strange man, he was funny and had a purple leather jacket on. He came up with such wonderful information as "This is the Careers Building, don't go in there.. it's crap".

After a long tour with many sights and stories I can't be bothered to go into, we were out of there on the next bus and back into Norwich. Oz eventually found the biggest sale in the world, ever, or not quite as it turned out. Then it was McDonalds and the walk back to the train station during which we recieved directions from yet another hobo. From this I can only conclude they are more useful than they look.

Article Written by Jay