The laptop has been dispatched! I repeat the laptop has been dispatched!

Thats right. The laptop I ordered over 5 weeks ago has finally been assembled and will apperently be dispatched tomorrow. That means soon I'll not have to suffer this computer which torments me with its random incredibly slow moments and blackouts (when the screen refuses to show me anything even though it says its on). Even better I won't have to endure its bouts of 'singing' (where I try to play a song on windows media player and theres a massive crackily, screechy and just plain horrible noise that reverberates from it around the house).

However I know I shouldn't get too excited. Knowing my luck it will either get lost in the post, smashed in transit or they'll have sent me the wrong thing (probably just a mouse or something, after all this time spent 'waiting for the parts and assembling them' that would really piss me off).

What next?!

I'm sitting in my dining room at the computer at 2.30 in the morning thinking about how bored I am but not feeling ready to go to sleep. It just occured to me now that I've finished school (not counting the imminent exams) that this, boredom, may be what i'll have to come to expect for part of the next year while on my gap year.

I have the first part of the gap year planned out and will be kept very busy and entertained at the same time, enjoying a sense of independance and achievement (having hopefully mastered the basics of the czech language, met and made new friends and acquired some interesting work experience). But what comes next?

I will be back in London (as I have to be to attend any interviews which I may be summoned for) but that won't be true of my friends. They'll all be going to university or residing in Israel. So there'll be no one to meet up with, no one to have a laugh with and no one to take stupid photographs with. There will no longer be frequent trips to Misato and Ryo or 4 player bongo sessions, let alone Four Swords sessions involving smashing lightbulbs.

I plan to get a job of some kind, which should keep me occupied for some of the time and I need to learn how to drive. I also may attempt to de-rustify my french skills and keep up my newly acquired ability to speak czech. Most importantly I will catch up on all the sleep I missed throughout my school time (certainly a very time consuming process). But even the sleep won't occupy me for the whole time (nor will the endless reruns of Trisha or Sally Jessie Raphael). What will I do?

Well I think I'll just see what happens. I've never been one to plan ahead, often just dealing with things as they arise. And I don't know what the circumstances will be when I get to that point next year. Things seem to have a habit of turning out ok in the end (and when it seems like they're not, in the long run the end result is even better than it would have been if things had initially gone right). So I guess I'll enjoy the coming months (well the months after the exams anyway) and who knows, next year the fun may continue. Its going to be one hell of a gap year. And there'll also be trips to Oxford, Surrey (I'll be visiting Nick and James, even if you don't want me to) and maybe even Israel.............theres no escape Josh!

Haircut

Haircuts are scary procedures. You entrust your hair to a complete stranger who, for all you know, could decide he/she doesn't like you and will therefore make you look stupid (but tell you you look fantastic and stylish). Well I have just done that and am not sure about the result. Its.........a bit 'different' to what I was expecting. I'm making it sound terrible, which it isn't. But its different enough to make me feel unsure as to whether I shall go into school tomorrow with my hair looking like this. I guess I'm just not used to it. Oh well, i'm getting more and more used to it as time goes by, its not actually that bad.

I could put a photo of it up on here............maybe later.

NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those who have mislayed their cucumber, it has been sighted on Shepherds Hill.

Those damn chocolate biscuits!!!!!!

Again I warn you of the chocolate digestives. Today they made me feel very embarrased even though they weren't present with me at the time (as is their immense evil power). In chemistry I was bored and feeling very hungry. So, as you do when you're feeling hungry, I craved chocolate biscuits (you can say you don't crave them, but I know you do). Unfortunately, whilst thinking about chocolate biscuits, I got asked the simple question, 'which type of bond holds together the secondary structure of a protein?' The answer is hydrogen bonds. My answer, on waking up from my daydream, was chocolate biscuits.

Bio coursework is finished!!!!!!!!!!!Forever!!!!!!!!!!!

Today marked a momentous occasion. I finally finished my biology coursework. It took up most of my monday (into the early hours of the morning) but it is done! finito! And I never have to do another biology coursework ever again.

But I can't say finishing it off went smoothly (as is typical when I need to meet a deadline). I needed to print it off before I could draw my diagrams but my printer decided it would be funny to only print half the page for all 26 pages. It wasn't funny. So then, after recalibrating my printer in the hope that it would stop messing around, I tried to print the coursework again. My printer hadn't learnt its lesson and proceeded to inform me that it had no more black ink. I remained calm, determined not to let the computer perceive my frustration and decided to e-mail myself the coursework which I could then print off at school the next day. I could draw the diagrams that evening, ready for sticking onto the coursework after printing it off at school. So I loaded up hotmail and attached the coursework to an e-mail. But as I tried to send the e-mail to myself the computer decided it didn't like what I was doing and refused to send it. I tried over and over again but it kept taking me to an error page. So I restarted the computer and went back on my e-mail to send it where I was greeted by at least twenty e-mails containing my coursework. To make matters worse my computer wouldn't let me off that web page, telling me whenever I clicked on anything that there was no data. Did I ask for any data?! No, I did not! My computer has a very strange sense of humour. I on the other hand at that point in time (feeling very tired) had no sense of humour and just turned my computer off, going instead to my room to draw the diagrams. The diagrams took quite a while to draw and involved me exhausting all my artistic ability..................well not really, they look a bit crap and took me about half an hour, but after finishing them I went to bed.

The next day I tried to print off the coursework at school. I was a bit worried I would cause a queue in the library with my 26 pages to print but that worry was soon replaced with the worry of how I would actually print it off at all when the library computer told me that there was already a queue for the printer (of 6 other people) who had apparently been waiting to print for hours. So my next stop was the reading room, a room well known for its printer that plays up all the time. I wasn't feeling optimistic. I was therefore shocked when it printed all 26 pages perfectly. So now all that was left was to find a pritt stick, a quest which was to last me the rest of the day.

I asked a number of people whether they had a pritt stick. No one had one. I could have sworn my pencil case had always contained one even though i'd never had to use it, but apparently it no longer did. Typical, when you need something its no longer there. I considered making a trip to the art department, a place I haven't been to for quite a while but decided against it as I didn't think they'd take kindly to me 'borrowing' a pritt stick. I've already been named Alex Miller the Serial Killer at school. I didn't feel like being branded a thief as well.

The time came for the biology lesson and my pritt stick dilemma was solved by my teacher giving me selotape to stick my diagrams down with. So it all ended well.............or so I thought. My teacher told me that my graphs weren't labelled correctly and that for the graphs everything needed to be in pen rather than pencil. So, wandering what else would prevent this coursework being finished, I slaved away at the graphs, finishing right by the end of the lesson. I handed it all to my teacher. He said I hadn't added standard deviations for my graph of rate against temperature. I was confused (and fed up). I just said untactfully, 'I can't do that'. He said, 'you're right you can't' (as the standard deviations wouldn't translate onto the rate graph) and so I handed it in and in utter relief walked off into the sunset.