Marge

Today I accompanied my sister to another interview (therefore it was a 6am wakeup). She seemed quite positive about it afterwards (the interviewer apparently said she'd recommend her), although she questioned whether the interviewer was actually interviewing her for the right course or even whether the interviewer thought she was someone else.

On the train back we sat in first class..................until the ticket inspector came and pointed out our tickets weren't for first class (as if we didn't know). So we got up, I pretended I hadn't realised we were sitting in first class (even though it was blatant I knew as the seats had first class printed onto them) and we moved to the 'lower class' part of the train, which happened to look exactly the same as the first class part apart from the fact we no longer had table seats.

On the tube back I saw a woman who happened to look a lot like a human Marge Simpson............apart from the fact her hair wasn't quite as big. But it was getting there, it just needed a few more months growth.

High Court, Low Day

Today I was clerking at the high court. I'd never been there before and it was pretty cool because it is the top court in the country. What wasn't so cool was that it was a long day with not much happening.

When I got to the court I went through security and, once out the other side of the 'security hut', I looked for the information desk as i'd been instructed to do by my parents. However the information desk wasn't where i'd been told it was. It turned out that was because i'd managed to go through the staff entrance rather than the entrance for the general public. I guess i'm flattered that they thought I looked professional enough to do this.

So when I worked out what court number I was meant to go to I headed into the building it was supposedly in. I quickly got lost within the labyrinthine corridors which often came to a dead end with the words 'private, no entry.' So I left that building. I then went back to the sign. On the way I noticed a side door leading to another corridor so I decided to explore, it was the right way. I soon got to the court I needed to go to. This side building just had an extremely similar name to the other building.

The day was spent waiting....................we waited for about 4 and a half hours to get a court room for the hearing. I was kept occupied by the client telling me various random things such as how different countries wear their suits when sitting down (no, unfortunately I am not joking). He happens to be the client who didn't realise you had to press a button to operate a lift (a past blog entry).

When we finally got a court room for a hearing we had a pompous old fuddy duddy judge who made it blatant he didn't want to be doing any work (constantly reminding us that he was not going to hear the case for any more than an hour and asking what we wanted from him). I also found it extremely difficult to understand him because he had such a posh, pompous accent and slurred everthing he said into one extremely long word with different intonations every now and then. Additionally it didn't help that his voice was monotonous.

After the hearing finished I made my way home by bus.

Match of the Day

I went to see my first proper football match today as my uncle and cousin had tickets but couldn't go and so they gave them to my dad. It was Tottenham vs. Wigan.

I have to say I really enjoyed it even though i'm not a big football fan. There was a really cool atmosphere in the stadium and we had seats on the first row so we were right by the pitch. It was pretty cold and started raining about half way through the match.

Unfortunately behind me there was a man who kept screaming venemous comments at the referee and players so loudly that I could feel my hair being blasted forwards with every scream. However he did provide some slightly humerous (and quite harsh) comments such as his telling the ref 'if you blow that bloody whistle again i'll stick it up you f**king ass' and randomly screaming out 'your ugly as f**k' at Wigan players when they ran past us.

I've also decided now if anyone asks what team I support I will say Tottenham seeing as i've always said it was between Arsenal and Tottenham (as I live rougly between both clubs) and Tottenhams the first club I saw play. Tottenham's also always been the team that my family (well those who follow football) have supported.

And, in case your wondering, the score was 2-2.

Epsom

The other day I accompanied Nicola to Epsom for an interview. It involved another early morning and some bad luck.

We went to catch the bus round the corner but when we got there there was a very long queue. The first bus was already pretty full so only let about 6 people on. After waiting a bit longer another bus came and it was much emptier. So we got on. But when I went to scan my oyster card into the reader it gave me the red light (again, as you may remember from a blog entry a couple of weeks ago). This didn't make sense as I knew money had just been put on the card the day before. But I was holding up a queue so I had to get off.

I went to check that there was money on it (and it had £13 on it) so we went back to the bus stop to queue. Eventually another bus came and we made it on this time. We got to the tube station and the tube journey was fine.

Once at the train station we went to buy the tickets. Having bought the tickets we went to see which platform the train was going from and, in rushing to do so, I accidentally stepped in some red sticky liquid on the floor (no it wasn't blood). Luckily I only stepped in a bit of it so my shoes weren't covered in it and I think it came off my shoes quite easily as I noticed there was no longer any trace of it when I checked my shoes later on the train.

When we made it to the train time board our train didn't yet have a platform. In fact, even when there was only 3 minutes till it was meant to depart there was no platform. Then all of a sudden it disappeared from the board. We quickly went to ask one of the staff standing around what had happened to it and what platform we should go to. She didn't have a clue, she just kept telling us we should catch another train. We kept telling her we couldn't because firstly the tickets were train specific and secondly the other trains were going much later and we wanted to get to Epsom as early as possible for my sister's interview. She didn't seem to understand this so we just went back to looking for the train time on the board. Luckily it then re-appeared. However it contained the dreaded words delayed.

We waited for a while until a platform was eventually displayed and then we ran over to the ticket barriers for the platform (because the board also said we had a minute before the train departed, aren't they nice). However for some reason our tickets didn't work with the ticket machines. So we went over to the side of the machines where a member of staff let us through.

We ran towards the train. The doors were all shut with an 'open door' button accompanying them. We pressed the first button but the door didn't open. We ran to the second door and pressed the button. The door again didn't open. This continued for a couple of doors until eventually we reached one that opened and, not long after making it onto the train, the train left the station.

The rest of the day went fine. We got to the university half an hour early and while my sister had her interview I went to explore the town. Then we returned to London (with no travel problems whatsoever).

Frankencake

I made a chocolate and almond cake the other day. Unfortunately in mine and Nicola's hurry to try a bit after it came out of the oven (I did let it cool for a little while) we tried to get the cake out of the cake tin a bit too early. The chocolate bits of it hadn't cooled enough and so bits of it sort of crumbled (i'm not really sure how to describe it). So here are a couple of pics of the slightly 'damaged' cake:



But my parents, sister and Hana said it tasted nice even if it is deformed.

Leeds

I went to Leeds this morning by train with my dad to have a look around and get my bearings before Wednesday.

Its a nice city. Loads of shops (including a comic shop which I found in a sidestreet, I can certainly see myself being happy going to university there now). It also seemed pretty vibrant, well apart from the university campus which was dead (i'm guessing it had something to do with it being the morning after the Friday night partying; the closed curtains at 1pm that I saw while walking past the student accommodation area seemed to confirm this).

I wore my hat that my sister bought me for christmas today for the first time (as, you guessed it, it was very cold) and it was nice not to have frozen ears for once. However I realised once on I couldn't take the hat off unless I was comfortable walking around with scary hair (it was damn scary, all static, parts of it were standing up and other parts were statically stuck to my head ; in addition it felt really weird). But I took it off at times anyway.

So it seems to be a nice uni and its only a couple of hours (well roughly 2 and a half) travelling by train. Hopefully i'll prove myself at the interview on Wednesday and get an offer to go there.

Happy Days

I have an interview at St Georges in March :)

The Barn On A Farm

Today was spent on a farm in a barn in Essex. I was helping my parents sort out boxes (and I emphasise the use of the plural form for boxes) of files, deciding which ones should be sent for storage and which ones could be incinerated. We spent hours there (again I emphasise the use of plural) and it was freezing cold as, unsurprisingly, the barn didn't have central heating (I feel sorry for any animals that used to be housed there before it started being used for storage purposes).

It was funny seeing the names of some of my parents clients from the past. Who would have thought my parents would have acted for 'the recently deceased son of Harold Bishop in Neighbours' David Bishop and my personal favourite, Bridget Jones. And people think they're fictional characters!

My parents also discovered one of my 'booklets' that I made when I was nine (I dated it for some reason). Don't know how it got in with their files. But its only allowed to be seen by me or Nicola apparently (those are the rules written on the book by Alex Me (for some reason I felt the need to write me straight after my name in case the reader, ie. me or Nicola, didn't realise who Alex was)), so sorry any other potential readers.

So that was my day, moving around boxes in a barn on a farm. And unfortunately we still have about a quarter of the original amount of boxes to sort through.

DX embarrassment

Well I think i've outdone myself in the embarrassment stakes today. I went to take the DX and post. When almost at the DX office I noticed some dog shit on the floor just as I walked by it. I didn't think that I had walked in it though and kept walking as I had to get the DX to the office before a certain time otherwise the 'DX man in his van' would drive off without the letters I was meant to deliver.

I got there with some time to spare and put the letters in the DX bag. Then I left. But as I shut the door I thought I should check the soles of my shoes to make sure there was nothing on them. So I went to grab the door, which i'd just shut, to keep balance while I pulled my foot up.

At that exact moment a man opened the door. Finding no door to support me I fell backwards. The man screamed in shock.

I stood up, apologised and quickly walked off, not wanting to look back and see if any passers by had observed what had just happened. But the good news was I hadn't stepped in the dog shit!

You long armed freak!

It seems I have freakishly long arms because its taken weeks of searching for a suit before I found one where the sleeves were long enough. However they still have to 'let out' the sleeves (and even then the salesman had to tell the tailor to let it out as much as possible). And i've been warned that even with the letting out it may still be ever so slightly short but not to a particularly noticeable extent.

I don't think my arms are particularly long, well at least i've never noticed it. But I now have my suit......................as soon as its back from being 'let out.'

The queue starts here!

I was asked to do another job for my parents today. It was a simple 'pick up some files and bring them back to the office job' and my destination wasn't too far away. I got on the bus with my oyster card, scanned the card in and got shown a red 'you have no money left on the card' light and told to get off the bus and buy a ticket (yeah, friendly bus driver). As soon as I got off the bus to buy a ticket the bus drove off.

Well I got the next bus and got to my destination. My mum had already phoned the sollicitors whom I was picking up the files from and told them I was coming to pick up the stuff. So when I got there I told them whom i'd been sent by and for what reason and the woman at the reception just stared at me. I told her that they'd been phoned to tell them i'd be coming but she continued to just stare at me. Luckily some man behind her realised why I was there and showed me the files. He then made some joke which I completely didn't get because it was in legal jargon. In fact I didn't actually realise he was telling a joke so that was pretty embarrasing.

I got back to the office with the files without incident (I had some horrible vision of the bag I was carrying them in braking on the bus because there were quite a few heavy files in the bag and it was just a plastic bag).

When I got back I was given quite a large pile of photocopying to do. But I quickly went to get lunch because it was well past lunch time. When i'd picked up what I wanted I went to the checkout. But there was only one person at the checkout and they seemed to be having problems. So I waited to be served but didn't bother going to the other side of the store where you're meant to go and queue because there was no one else queueing and it was far away from the one checkout that was currently operating. Some people started to queue behind me but then some smartass went and queued at the 'correct' place. So that confused everyone and they started to ask each other where the queue was. In the end everyone ended up going to the other end of the store far away from the checkout and I felt stupid for 'misleading' everyone (that and I was now at the end of the queue).

And thats been my day so far (well after the lunch I finished all that photocopying and delivered the post to the post box but theres not much to say about that).

Rejection answers

After enquiring as to why I got rejected from Manchester I got a letter this morning telling me why.

They marked my personal statement and there were 8 different topics for which they gave marks. These topics were 'reasons for choosing/changing to medicine', 'work experience and general knowledge of healthcare', 'interpretation of work experience', 'determination/conscientiousness', 'teamwork', 'interests/hobbies/sports', 'written communication skils' and 'intellectual ability'.

I was quite happy to receive a 20/20 for intellectual ability. My lowest mark was for determination and conscientiousness which did slightly surprise me because I have read my teachers' reports and almost all of them actually write that i'm conscientious and determined (I mean if I wasn't determined to do medicine would I really have gone through this whole application/interview process again to get in and done all the work experience i've done when I could have just done biomedical sciences instead).

However I realise that they have thousands of candidates and they say on the letter they get rid of over 80% of them at this stage. Its a very tough thing to have to decide just from an application who out of the thousands they should interview and I guess my application just wasn't quite good enough (in the eyes of that person who marked it). I scored 75/100 overall and the threshold for rejection was 75 and below. So I was just extremely unlucky.

It was nice of Manchester anyway to reply to my email and write to me to tell me why I was rejected.

Edit: I actually don't agree with some of the marks and am going to write an email to my housemaster to see if theres any way of getting them to reconsider my application.

Delay

I did another clerk job for my parents yesterday which meant travelling to some place i've never been to before at the far edge of the tube network. I was pre-warned that the client was mad (which was nice to know) before setting off in this freezing British weather to the station.

I had to get to Bank station which was easy before changing to the central line (which was again easy). But just as I was thinking to myself that this all felt too easy and that for once maybe I wouldn't encounter any travelling woes it all went wrong.

I got to the correct platform but found out there were severe delays on the line because someone had earlier that day jumped under a train on the platform. So the soonest train was 20 minutes and it wasn't the one I wanted. Neither was the next one nor the one after that and so it went on like this for about 45 minutes. I would have gone an alternative route but there wasn't one. The central line was the only line I could take. Finally there was a train that went the right way up to the station before my stop. So I jumped on and got to the station before where I needed to go. But there time repeated itself and all the trains were going the wrong way. I only needed to go one stop but had to wait another half an hour to do that. Damn it was cold.

Eventually I made that one stop journey and got out of the station. I had been told that the court was opposite the station. All I could see were houses. I suppose it was opposite the station...............if you ignore the existence of the houses and walk for about 10 minutes. The temperature seemed to have gotten even lower in this town and there didn't seem to be any people around, just parked cars (very much like that trip to Milton Keynes for Urban Survival).

The walk to the court took me through a nice park (with swans which was nice) and I was surprised to see that the court was actually situated in this park. It was like a stately home.

The actual time in court wasn't particularly exciting. I met the crazy clent who I didn't feel was so bad, well she wasn't yesterday anyway (i've heard some of the stories about her so I know she is pretty crazy). She does have very intense, piercing eyes and you can feel her staring at you a mile away (its a very uncomfortable thing being stared at by her). I could also tell she was an obsessive compulsive before I was actually told so when I returned home.

The return home was pretty easy (the delays weren't quite so bad by then). It was however freezing (yes I am mentioning that again)! Unfortunately I don't have a coat that goes over my suit jacket so I just didn't wear one (a coat that is). And on the tube they kept on 'testing the doors' which equates to the doors opening and shutting over and over for a number of minutes at each station stopped at.