MAIN » ARTICLES2007 in 1000 Words
Early 2007 gave little to write about. I finished the first year at the University of Dundee, which was actually my second year, and then suddenly the summer was upon us once more. The lad’s holiday to Turkey was an obvious highlight, and the first time I’ve strolled into the Asian continent, along with a family holiday to the Algarve – again, the first time I’d ever been to Portugal surprisingly – on which I got stupidly drunk on spicy Bloody Marys in an American-themed bar on the strip and was perhaps a little too impressed with the skills of the cocktail makers behind the bar. Following those two romps abroad I realised I had nothing to do for the rest of the holidays and promptly booked a two-week trip to Luxor (ancient city of Thebes) in Egypt from First Choice. It was a bargain; I went in tombs in the Valley of the Kings, bought a rug, visited some temples and got drenched with sweat in extremely high temperatures to compensate for one of the most disappointingly cool summers in British memory.
Back to Dundee in September to move in to a new flat with Walling from which we can see the highest point in the city from our third-floor windows. The postal service continually let us down, the boiler threatened to kill us with carbon monoxide emissions, much alcohol was consumed, the bottles were retained for evidence, and some university work was occasionally done when things were quiet. I listened to the Chris Moyles breakfast show on Radio1 every day after lunch (loving that listen-again feature), and tried to read the Independent as much as possible. Most of the time when I should have been working on the growing socialist movement in 19th century Germany I was actually watching American TV shows that I’d illegally downloaded on bit torrent; highlights included all of Prison Break, Oz and The Wire and curious nuggets of originality like Pushing Daisies and Flight of the Conchords. I kept them all on an external hard disk, the result of which being that I ceased buying DVDs in 2007. I also, thanks to my new inebriated flatmate, got into Major League Baseball for the first time in my life, choosing to support the New York Yankees for the simple reason that you can obtain a baseball hat with their logo on almost anywhere in the world. Flooding the market with your merchandise clearly pays off. Was let down by their post-season performance but ended the baseball year optimistic after Alex Rodriguez, a guy with far too much money, signed another disgustingly high contract to stay in NYC. Didn’t get in to NFL or ice hockey; did watch some English football, couldn’t find any beach volleyball.
I did read however, as much as I could in an attempt to achieve my new year’s resolution of one-book-for-every-week of the year. I ended up on 73, which according to my calculator means that I read a book every 5 days. I also tried to learn some more French from some 10 year old cassettes, but that only lasted a week, and realised that walking the long way to Borders in Dundee means strolling along some pretty undesirable paths. Also in Dundee I saw a guy pushing 2 sofas along the street at 3am on a Wednesday night and a collision between a car and a bus outside the flat. Not much else happened.
I re-discovered podcasts towards the end of the year when I bought an iPod for £12 (I forget what the models are called, but it’s a thin one), the best of which being Fighting Talk from Radio Five Live. That’s Colin Murray’s show for those who don’t know. The ability to synchronise my automatic downloads quickly impressed me a few years after everybody else stopped being impressed, but I still preferred my Samsung for pure music-playing ability. Community Football continued full steam in 2007 and may have racked up the most number of events since its conception all those years ago. Football also expanded thanks to Dave Randall’s efforts to organise a team for 6-a-side matches at the leisure centre down the road. I played in a couple of games at the end of the year, suffered from acute dehydration and promptly had to lie down. Concluded I must be better on grass.
Neglected both wideasleep and TON for the second year running, along with almost everybody else, saw the Wiki go down the drain with spam, yet wrote many articles which I never finished. Repeatedly decided to keep a personal diary but never got round to it, however, instead managing only to create a cheap copy of a book I read, a kind of farcical fabricated journal, which was pretty good. Achieved very little else in terms of creativity, but did add another 10+ flights to my record and spent more time than I wish to remember sitting in airport lounges. Managed to lose my wallet in November on a trip to Somerfield and had to get new bank cards, student ID and an old black wallet sent up from Ipswich. Prefer brown leather. Also lost my driving licence and neglected to apply for a replacement meaning that I couldn’t drive anymore, wasn’t insured anyway, and now had no form of ID. Subsequently I was asked for ID twice by the same guy in the off-licence downstairs despite patronising the place for the past 3 months: protested the next week by going to the rival shop next door.
Ended the year by visiting the Tutankhamen exhibition in the O2 (millennium dome) and strolling along the Strand in central London, was disrupted by the closure of Liverpool Street and then struggled to stay awake back in Ipswich to watch the fireworks on TV; wondered how much money was spent that could be better used on financing the 2012 Olympics, made the same resolution about the book-reading as last year and then went to bed. 2007: done.
Written by Jay.
Back to Dundee in September to move in to a new flat with Walling from which we can see the highest point in the city from our third-floor windows. The postal service continually let us down, the boiler threatened to kill us with carbon monoxide emissions, much alcohol was consumed, the bottles were retained for evidence, and some university work was occasionally done when things were quiet. I listened to the Chris Moyles breakfast show on Radio1 every day after lunch (loving that listen-again feature), and tried to read the Independent as much as possible. Most of the time when I should have been working on the growing socialist movement in 19th century Germany I was actually watching American TV shows that I’d illegally downloaded on bit torrent; highlights included all of Prison Break, Oz and The Wire and curious nuggets of originality like Pushing Daisies and Flight of the Conchords. I kept them all on an external hard disk, the result of which being that I ceased buying DVDs in 2007. I also, thanks to my new inebriated flatmate, got into Major League Baseball for the first time in my life, choosing to support the New York Yankees for the simple reason that you can obtain a baseball hat with their logo on almost anywhere in the world. Flooding the market with your merchandise clearly pays off. Was let down by their post-season performance but ended the baseball year optimistic after Alex Rodriguez, a guy with far too much money, signed another disgustingly high contract to stay in NYC. Didn’t get in to NFL or ice hockey; did watch some English football, couldn’t find any beach volleyball.
I did read however, as much as I could in an attempt to achieve my new year’s resolution of one-book-for-every-week of the year. I ended up on 73, which according to my calculator means that I read a book every 5 days. I also tried to learn some more French from some 10 year old cassettes, but that only lasted a week, and realised that walking the long way to Borders in Dundee means strolling along some pretty undesirable paths. Also in Dundee I saw a guy pushing 2 sofas along the street at 3am on a Wednesday night and a collision between a car and a bus outside the flat. Not much else happened.
I re-discovered podcasts towards the end of the year when I bought an iPod for £12 (I forget what the models are called, but it’s a thin one), the best of which being Fighting Talk from Radio Five Live. That’s Colin Murray’s show for those who don’t know. The ability to synchronise my automatic downloads quickly impressed me a few years after everybody else stopped being impressed, but I still preferred my Samsung for pure music-playing ability. Community Football continued full steam in 2007 and may have racked up the most number of events since its conception all those years ago. Football also expanded thanks to Dave Randall’s efforts to organise a team for 6-a-side matches at the leisure centre down the road. I played in a couple of games at the end of the year, suffered from acute dehydration and promptly had to lie down. Concluded I must be better on grass.
Neglected both wideasleep and TON for the second year running, along with almost everybody else, saw the Wiki go down the drain with spam, yet wrote many articles which I never finished. Repeatedly decided to keep a personal diary but never got round to it, however, instead managing only to create a cheap copy of a book I read, a kind of farcical fabricated journal, which was pretty good. Achieved very little else in terms of creativity, but did add another 10+ flights to my record and spent more time than I wish to remember sitting in airport lounges. Managed to lose my wallet in November on a trip to Somerfield and had to get new bank cards, student ID and an old black wallet sent up from Ipswich. Prefer brown leather. Also lost my driving licence and neglected to apply for a replacement meaning that I couldn’t drive anymore, wasn’t insured anyway, and now had no form of ID. Subsequently I was asked for ID twice by the same guy in the off-licence downstairs despite patronising the place for the past 3 months: protested the next week by going to the rival shop next door.
Ended the year by visiting the Tutankhamen exhibition in the O2 (millennium dome) and strolling along the Strand in central London, was disrupted by the closure of Liverpool Street and then struggled to stay awake back in Ipswich to watch the fireworks on TV; wondered how much money was spent that could be better used on financing the 2012 Olympics, made the same resolution about the book-reading as last year and then went to bed. 2007: done.
Written by Jay.