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The most epic event in your life you’d think? The day you graduate, sadly it didn’t feel like it for me. I was to engrossed with working that uni stuff felt like “meh”. I suppose you need the studies to get the job and all but yeah, just weird that graduation would be blasé due to the fact that you feel like work makes more sense. Anyway, a graduation is a graduation and I decided to invite Alice as my guest and all. It was held at the Barbican Hall on a Friday so I booked myself a lovely holiday (as well as Alice) for the day. It also meant I got a weekend with Alice too in London.
The graduation itself was pretty boring, it was fun wearing the fancy graduation robe, but my part went quite quickly… a bit too quickly one might say, I was literally the SECOND person to receive my certificate. First class students get to go on stage first ;). But yeah the rest of the event was spent listening to a bunch of imbeciles hoot their fellow students when they received their awards, I mean, it’s a formal event, we’re at the Barbican, dressed up in robes and hooting? wtf? Ah well. The highlight of the graduation event (me picking up my award aside) was the fact that Mark Shuttleworth (founder of ubuntu) was there to make a speech! That was pretty epic. I spoke to a few students but kept it simple.
We went to hardwok cafe afterwards, Alice had never tried it and it was lunchtime so it made sense hehe. We managed to get the last of the yummy hardwok food, I had a Thai Red Curry (per usual) and Alice had a chicken in black bean sauce. We ate outside the place and had Krispy Kremes for dessert. Alice finally understood why I kept raving about hardwok cafe (if only the rest got it). Later on that evening we met up with Jason and Rachel for ANOTHER Royal China. We went to a Caffe Nero beforehand since it was a wee bit early and there we talked about how “judge judy” was the ONLY famous judge. Rachel said that there was another famous judge called “judge brown”. It was hard trying to make her crack that it was a lie since she kept building up a more and more elaborate lie about who judge brown was and what he did that made him so famous, it got to a point where Rachel said she was in contact with him and that he was her father. After a the battle of judge brown we headed to Royal China for our grub. This time we ordered a half duck to feast on as well as some dim sum dishes and awesome seafood noodles / ho fun. The meal was epic as ever (especially when we got ourselves some scallops action too) and though it was about £20 odd per head, it was a yummy meal! Afterwards we settled in the Natural Cafe and had a lovely chat like before.
The next day we had a meal at Wagamamma and spent the rest of the day at Central London, I took Alice to loads of places including Cyber Candy at Covent Garden and the Apple Store (beautiful landmark). It was disturbing how we managed to get a lot of things done, we also went to china town and got ourselves… ANOTHER duck haha, this time I went into a restaurant and ordered one cut up for din dins, it came to £14 which was amazing! We went to picadilly circus to so Alice could take the ubiquitous shot of the lights (not as epic as times square though).
Sunday we had a lovely meal with my dad and then spent the rest of the day watching Harry Potter (we managed to watch Sliding doors at one of the days too, it was a must!). We also watched Kill Bill and had a lovely meal at home. The next day Alice went back up north and I went to work again, it was a lovely day but it was always a bummer going to work and ONLY just departing with Alice. Ah well ![]()
This is where it all comes down to, a piece of paper with the classification you are awarded. 3 Years of coursework, exams, random lecturers and seminars and it all comes down to this one piece of paper. The entire morning was a complete panic as to whether or not I’ll be getting the results I deserve but here it is…
I’ve said this many times but…OH YEAH!!! haha. I was jumping in joy about my results. Made a little scene at uni for cheering too loudly haha but they didn’t care, I was all pumped up from my results. I was suppose to get 3 A’s out of the 5 i was doing for my second semester to get a first and I managed to get 5! I could of relaxed with two of the modules and still got a first hehe. Will be celebrating mucho this week as I go up north and party it up with Alice (and the rest of the gang haha)
Yes, you’ve heard it, last ever exam. And strangely things get biblical.
Anyway lets set the scene, wake up per usual. I actually haven’t revised much, I did print stuff out but nothing really went in. But instead of moping around I just started attempting the past papers and sample questions. It gave me an idea of how the questions were going to be and all. Initially I was a bit overwhelmed with the stuff I dont know how to answer, but gradually with alot of googling I managed to find all the answers I needed. I slowly did this from 8-9. I also had my last bowl of lucky charms (don’t worry, one more bag left haha), saved it for today for good luck. Not to mention my lucky duck hehe.
Anyway enough of the revision. I start heading off to uni at the same time I left for Advanced Databases, weird thing was how the buses arrived bang on when I was at the bus stop so I got to uni pretty swiftly. I was a bit early so I decided to do some shopping and bought Jason his birthday present in advance. I then went to uni and revised a bit more in the staff canteen. Thing were starting to make sense (just a tad to be honest) most of the questions were answered at home so I was just reading stuff at the canteen, like always nothing really got in haha.
Decided to just head to the venue and do the exam… and yeah.. guess where I’m doing the exam? HERE!
Thats right, the exam gets biblical, a really nice end to uni haha. The final judgement! (I actually could go on!) But yeah, it was pretty weird doing the exam there, there was a different woman leading the exam, she was just as evil as the other one (whats with the evil old ladies haha), she actually reported a kid for leaving their revision notes on the floor (regardless of reading it). Hope he doesnt get a fail for that. But yeah, the exam itself was REALLY easy, the lecturer was lazy and simply pasted the old exam questions in the paper! Just slightly tweaked in some areas, it was godly to answer, all I had to do was write the stuff I only just answered this morning. It still involved 2 hours worth of pen scribbling but nonetheless, its a good thing when you can use up 2 hours and just constantly write.
One of the best moments is when a light started to shine on my desk, oh yeah, was quite surreal, most people experienced the light shining onto their desk, it almost felt like god going “you are the chosen one! now start coding your xhtml semantics and make sure its web accessible” haha. But yeah, I even starting assuming the praying position just to sort of thank the lord for such an easy exam haha.
Afterwards I went out with Alex to buy a Krispy Kreme to celebrate, it was all a bit of an anticlimax to be honest, didn’t feel like it ended right, but nonetheless we ate our Krispy Kremes, had a game of DS Lite and went our ways. Quite alot of silly girls kept trying to talk to us, chances are if we had replied we would have got some, what with their “easy virtue” haha. Kingston was filled with chavs, the emo kids hanged around the basement of the shopping centre (typical) and sat near the Krispy Kremes store (trying to get nice and fat?)

But yeah… feels weird and all but its allllll over.. now I can official start lounging about! Leeds tomorrow woo!
Eurgh databases, I do enjoy them but these lectures and theory work rips the fun out of them! Most of the time I’m more concerned about just making the database. But yeah, this is probably the hardest exam out of the 3 I have, I’ve been “revising” hard for it haha. Taking notes and everything, with other modules I’m able to just take a few ganders at the lecture notes and be fully prepared for the exam (since most of the stuff is already embedded into my brain haha) but this one includes 6 topics (some of which I didn’t have time to attend to since I was either skipping lectures or better yet, I was at them but I was just phasing out during them, thinking about really obscure stuff instead of focusing on what the lecturers saying)
Had my lucky charms today, once again I will be bringing my duck to the exam too! Hopefully not much luck will be used and I can just answer the questions based on what I know rather than lucking it out and writing waffle haha. Once this exam is over I can safely say that my days of university are well and truely over(ish) haha, I do have one more exam left but I’m quite sure I’ll do alright on it. Anyway, less banter, better revise a bit more
Update:Exam went pretty well I must say, I was able to answer all the questions confidently and I feel like I’ve done pretty well and all, lots of people finished their course after this exam so they all went to the pub to party (I suggested they’d all head to the job centre and start racking in the dole money haha) but yeah, I still have one more exam to go (not to mention a demonstration to present to my project supervisor) so I’m still a long way to go :(. But yeah, exam = Muy easy.
I got to take the duck into the exam hall and everything too, shame one of the examiners told me off and put my duck on the floor *grr*. I understand no mascots or religious items (actually, I think the rule was, religious items are allowed) but it also says, no mascots that are distracting, I dont think a duck is distracting others, some of the examiners *shakes head* nobody liked her anyway, she kept threatening people who kept talking by writing their name on a report :O haha.
Handed in the final two reports now! Was quite an anticlimax but nonetheless, I have completed all my reports for the year and will never have to do them again! Feels pretty weird I must say, but definitely in a good way. Anyway, I sorted of celebrated the day by running through some crazy fountain! It was pumping water at a crazy rate and I was crazy enough to run right through all 5 of them!
Needless to say I was drenched silly, I got loads of dirty looks from everyone afterwards since it wasn’t raining and I was dripping wet haha. It was a very fun experience though so it was all good, I just wished it had been a bit more sunny so I could have dried off from the sun and all, but yeah, took a bath immediately so its all good in the end. Hope I dont get a cold :(.
Got 2 more exams left and afterwards I’m immediately going up north to celebrate and all. Woo!


