Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

I spent last weekend Up North, mostly attending the BUSA Canoe Slalom event held at the Four Seasons white water centre at the Teesside Barrage, but also visiting my friend Sarah from school.

Teesside is quite a fascinating place: there's a big dam thing making everything upriver navigable while everything below the barrage is tidal. This creates a big reservoir type thing above the barrage, about 1/3 of which is sitting above the white water section, waiting for the dam to be released so it can flood down the white water course.

Here's the barrage itself:



This is the white water course before lots of water was let down it:



You can see the fibreglass (or something) ridges in various points; these create the eddies and currents and stuff and are apparently attached to rails which makes them easy to relocate providing "an almost infinite" number of potential configurations according to the information board.

I don't really have a good photo that takes in all of the course when it's full of water, but this one gives some idea of what it was like:



You have to go downriver through the green gates and upriver through the red ones; quite tricky really.

So there now. Isn't that interesting? I liked the north generally, although it really is grim in some places, very flat and full of chimneys and train tracks. But Newcastle is lovely, so many huge bridges and lovely tall buildings. And I really enjoyed seeing Sarah and meeting her fiance Roberto, who is lovely. They're off to Peru on Friday for round one of the wedding ceremonies -- quite exciting really.

We have a new constitution!

It's like one of those chain email things: I know I could ignore it but I feel I should take on Sam's challenge. So now I have to write about my week in media:

What I read
Boy am I glad I didn't buy a crappy magazine last weekend when I was browsing in WHSmith. Instead I bought nice serious magazines that I feel proud to say I read this week: Private Eye and The Economist. I am so glad I bought such excellent magazines.

I also finished my latest detective story, Verdict of Twelve. It was okay, but it was all about the jurors and how they responded to the evidence, and what I really want is a good puzzle I can figure out from lots of clues. So I'm just going to have to read another one in my continuing quest for the perfect story.

I get in trouble sometimes, though, for reading when I'm supposed to be watching a film, so I've found a new technique: read a plot synopsis at the start of the film, then just pop in and out of the film every now and again without getting muddled and having to ask others to explain.

What I watched
Quite a lot of Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack I'm ashamed to say. It's sort of addictive. I also semi-watched 300 (this is where I discovered the plot synopsis technique), Casino Royale (Melanie had never seen a James Bond film) and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe which I enjoyed quite a lot, although there were some bits that were stupid (like the way the wardrobe was in a room on its own covered in a thingy, it should have just been an ordinary wardrobe). But it was very good, and Aslan was much more convincing as a lion than in the TV series.

Every morning before work I've been watching Wanted Down Under. It's rubbish, I don't know why I've been watching it. But, as Sam mentioned, we caught the most wonderful programme on Friday morning: KNTV. It was so very bizarre, and I felt that the moment that trumped the people dancing around covered in oil was the bit with a man sitting on a really old single-person plough smoking a pipe, being pushed by one woman and pulled by another as they ploughed what looked like a garden. It was wonderful.

What I listened to
My favourite thing I listened to this week was Jacques Loussier: Play Bach. I haven't listened to that for ages, but I fancied something nice to cook to on Sunday afternoon. I haven't listened to anything else particularly exciting this week, just a good bit of radio. And it wasn't even very good radio. I need to bring my CDs back to work.

What I surfed
Quite a lot. I've been keeping an eye on the NUS debate in Education Guardian, watching the commentary on our governance review, and trying to find the best priced place to buy printed round stickers and paper bags. I have also been researching my upcoming holiday in Croatia but the websites aren't very good so I've been mostly looking at pictures of Plitvice national park.

The most striking internet thingy this week was reading the BBC news website last night, reloading the main page and suddenly finding that Heath Ledger had died, and that we had found out about it two hours after it happened, and two minutes after the BBC had posted about it on their website. Isn't it weird that you can find out about someone you don't know who has died several thousand miles away so quickly? It felt very odd.

What I've played
Not a lot, except for a hefty amount of Minesweeper. I think I inherit my inability to just talk to people on the phone from Dad, I have to be playing a game or something at the same time. I think it might annoy people sometimes but I listen better when I'm playing a game.

So there. I don't really know who to tag since I'm really only writing for Ian these days. Ian, reply if you like, might be interesting to see what you're up to in Ghana media-wise.

Ian, don't try to smuggle drugs back from Ghana. I'm a bit appalled really that sixteen year olds would even have come into contact with hardened drug smugglers. What is the world coming to, eh?

I've just booked flights for two from Dublin to Zadar (Croatia) at the start of June. I was planning to go in May, but it turns out that it's actually cheaper to go in June (by €200 once you take accommodation into account); we may have inadvertently chosen a school holiday initially. So there now. We're hoping to stay in Zaton near Zadar. It's a cheesy campsite thing but the apartments look quite alright and are only €33 per night for a four star flat. There's a huge number of activities available at the campsite, but what I'm really looking forward to is going to Plitvice and Paklenica national parks. I'd like to rent a scooter, but sshh, don't tell Mum, she might get upset.

Oh and our new Fair Trade Society will be hosting a cocoa farmer from Ghana here on March 1st.

This week has been better so far. We had a very productive meeting with the liberation groups yesterday about the Governance Review and have come to a solution that we're all happy with. The articles have been drafted and sent for translation (any changes we come up with at the Nightline meeting on Thursday will have to be submitted as amendments as it wouldn't leave enough time for the articles to be translated) so now we're just working towards the Council and General Meeting where these articles have to be passed.

I've also been eating nice food. I spent much of Sunday cooking, which was very relaxing and has meant that we have several weeks' worth of soup in the freezer. We also have several portions of ragu for making lasagne and shepherd's pie and whatnot, and we've been eating a steak and kidney pie Frodo made over three days. I have all the ingredients to make a chicken curry too, except for the chicken, so that's a project for one of the nights this week.

And the other nice thing was that on Sunday evening I popped around to see Colleen and Sam and their new baby Jack. He is absolutely lovely, with really big dark blue eyes, and they're wonderfully smitten with him. Colleen's obviously getting used to having people come around to coo at Jack because she offered to let me hold him. He was very still and peaceful (apparently he's not normally quite so calm) and really just lovely.

And one final nice thing is that this is not happening in Bangor. Thank goodness for that.

I went to the gym yesterday after work. I gave up my membership at JJB because I couldn't really afford it and I wasn't going along enough to merit the cost. So yesterday I went to circuit training at Maes Glas instead.

It was horrible. I like athletics quite a bit and I'm a big fan of circuit training normally but otherwise I wasn't big into sport at school, and this was just like school sports (except not as nice as my school's sports). It smelt of a school sport hall, it has scarily bright changing rooms with communal showers and it's hard to find which room you're looking for.

The class itself had about sixty people at it, and it was incredibly hard to hear what the instructor was saying over the music playing in the background (she did have a microphone but it was very muffled). I missed the point where I was supposed to say if I hadn't been to the class before because I couldn't make out what she was saying, and the group of five I was in got in trouble because we were doing an exercise lying on the floor (where, obviously, the bass from the music she was playing was much louder making it even harder to hear her) so didn't hear her repeatedly telling us to get up and jog on the spot. So she told us off severely and added extra time to everyone's jogging to punish us, saying "if you're unhappy you can blame the people in group 4."

I'm not twelve! I'm not in school anymore! I'm a grown up and I have paid to attend this class, I don't want to be treated like a naughty child, dragged up and shamed in front of the whole class. What a contrast to JJB, where the changing rooms are very pleasant and clean, where it smells nice and where the light in the gym itself is gently dimmed so people don't have to feel self conscious (in Maes Glas they have a women-only gym because the men doing weight-lifting seem an awful lot more scary in bright light). Maes Glas does have good gym equipment, it just isn't a nice experience. I don't feel relaxed going there.

I wasn't really enjoying it anyway, so I pretended to go get a drink of water and just left. Frodo and I went for a jog to Menai Bridge instead. I'd already done about half an hour of exercise and I always get wheezy when I run in the cold so I wasn't much good at it, but I did manage enough running to make my legs very very sore today. It was much more fun than Maes Glas. It didn't smell, nobody was shouting at me, and it's really nice standing on the bridge at night. I'm going to do some more night-time running and then I'm going to beg JJB to let me back into their ranks.

I'm in trouble now because I haven't been blogging enough. Sorry Ian!

I've had a weird week. I've been feeling quite stressed about Grandpa which is making dealing with other things harder. Although last week was the physically tiring week this one has been more mentally taxing.

I suppose there's just certain groups of people who don't like reform, whether it's NUS reform or Bangor reform. But it isn't nice to have your work slagged off in national papers, on blogs and to NUS Wales. It upsets me when people start attacking the review before they've attended any of the meetings we worked so hard to run.

Perhaps people forget that the Students' Union is made up of real people who do actually want it to be the best it can possibly be for all students. There is no hidden agenda in our governance review -- I'm not even going to be here anymore when the proposed structures would kick in, I just think that this new system we're proposing is more efficient, more representative and easier to get involved in.

The debate is continuing nationally about NUS reform, and at every turn people slag off the 'undemocratic' review group, suggesting that because the group's members were appointed, we're all under Gemma's thumb.

Actually, I think it's a good thing that the group was appointed rather than elected. It has meant that little old me, not a member of any faction, not trying to get elected to the NEC, not profiling at every possible event, just representing a Union that felt it wasn't getting value for money from NUS, got my voice heard. Electing representatives firstly would have taken another year (because the Governance Review was voted on at Conference, so when would the next opportunity to vote have been?) and secondly would have given a group full of factions, all trying to get what's best for the faction rather than what's better for real students.

But anyway. In other news it has rained a lot this week, and apparently we're due to get a month's rain in two days this weekend, so I'll probably spend a lot of it indoors. I think I need to come into work tomorrow to get the candidates' election packs done, but otherwise things are going okay. It'll be good to be in work with no distractions or interruptions, and once I've got my work done I can enjoy the rest of the weekend without feeling guilty.

I've also been planning my holiday now my Lonely Planet Croatia guide book has arrived -- I'm thinking of heading to Zadar because there's Ryanair flights to there from Dublin, and there are stunning national parks nearby, it's on the coast and there's a cheap place to stay with a plethora of watersports available. But that's not til May.

In a few minutes I'm off to University Court which last year had the best buffet of the entire year, so I'm looking forward to my lunch. I ate a small breakfast so I'd have room for all the delights. Sam's doing a presentation which will undoubtedly be thrilling. My computer is flashing lights at me that tell me I have to go, so that's it for now, bye Ian! Oh and you should stay in Ghana for six months, we'll try to fundraise or apply to Quaker funds for concrete then you can help build too.

Did you know that 13945 people applied to the Civil Service Fast Stream programme last year? And that those people have already done an online self-assessment test to see if they have any chance of getting through, so many potential applications have already filtered themselves out? And that they accept approximately 500 of those? I'm feeling pessimistic about getting accepted. Apparently I'm in the 'amber band' and will have to wait until mid-February to hear whether I'm in or not.

This week has been jam-packed with meetings: I've been to eight so far with another nine to go before tomorrow evening. We're consulting, consulting, consulting on this governance review and it's been pretty interesting so far.

Attendance hasn't been massive but we were expecting that having spoken to other SUs about their experiences. I think what's important is that we give everyone the chance to voice their opinions; if they aren't interested or don't want to get involved that's fine as long as they don't come along afterwards complaining that they don't like what's happened.

Today will be good though: we've got AU and Societies GMs (where attendance is compulsory) so word will spread. I'm hoping they'll like the proposals but if they don't, now's the time to say.

Yesterday I caught mention of Ghana on the news: they were saying something about Accra and how they were the only journalists to witness the event. I got a bit of a fright, thinking there'd been some kind of genocide or something. Turns out it's a woman being 'expelled' from the country (apparently that's different from being deported) because she came here on a student visa, stopped studying and started working instead. She's got cancer now and is arguing that she will die if she returns to Ghana as their healthcare isn't as good as ours in Wales.

I felt a bit mean because the main emotion I felt while watching that story was excitement because they spoke to someone in Kumasi which meant I got to see what Kumasi looks like. Okay so it's not where Ian is but at least it gave me some idea of what Ghana is like. It looks lovely!

I got back to Bangor on Saturday evening. I flew to Liverpool for the bargain price of 1c (+ 9.99 in taxes), then went shopping in Cheshire Oaks for the afternoon. The flight was pretty exciting because we flew over Castleconnell, and I had to resist the urge to stand up and yell I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE. Because I could. Bangor should have been visible too but we flew through a cloud as we passed.

Frodo and I spent Saturday evening building lego models -- he got me this marvellous model train I've been harping on about for ages. It took quite a long time to build which he tells me is because I'm rubbish at Lego but I know it's actually because my model is more advanced than his Star Wars thing.

Yesterday was mostly spent tidying the house -- we'd dumped all our stuff everywhere when we got back on Saturday. I also planted the bonsai trees Sam gave us; now all I have to do is remember to water them every three days.

But now I'm back at work and am expecting to be extremely busy for the next 9 weeks doing governance and election stuff. Great.

So now that I know who I'm writing to, I have to think of something to say that I didn't say in the email to Ian I sent yesterday evening. Perhaps I should act as if his gmail account isn't working (and it might not, mine is certainly acting up) and repeat some stuff.

Yesterday evening my cousin Cara-who-lives-in-Delaware visited with her Irish boyfriend (a sound choice). Cara is actually my third cousin once removed; despite being a couple of years younger than me, she's actually the same generation as my mum. Cara's mum Patti is a day younger than my mum, and they went to school together for a year so they're very close despite being geographically quite far away. But Patti is actually my grandfather's first cousin, not my mum's. Very complicated.

Anyway, Cara visited with Kevin-from-Cork and we had a very lovely evening with long conversations on diverse topics. I've only met Cara two or three times ever but we had an awful lot to talk about.

For a start, she spent several months in Cuba so we talked about that.

And she is involved in political stuff (Democrats, thankfully) so we talked a lot about the presidential elections. Kevin has read up on this sort of stuff quite a lot so was able to help me compare the system to our own dear republic. Which led us on to talking about how funny little things can completely destroy someone's political career, like the 'Dean Scream' which everyone got terribly het up about, but people can do stuff like sexing up dodgy dossiersm, dear Tony, or accepting dodgy payments left right and centre like our own dear Bertie, or losing personal details of millions and millions of people in Britain, like Gordon, and survive just fine.

And we talked about Irish presidents and the Irish language and joining the army and all sorts of things.

Today hasn't been all that exciting, except that I have taken advantage of a verrry favourable exchange rate to exchange some money to sterling (go euro!) and have ordered a bank card with my name spelt correctly on it (I have been using the misspelt one in various guises for about ten years now).

Oh and I've been trying to do some work but not getting very far -- I can't help but feel that nobody should have to work over their holidays, but it means I'll have loads and loads to do at the weekend and on Monday.

So hi Ian, hope you're well.

I've been getting worse and worse at blogging. I think I get a bit caught up in doing other stuff, and a bit conscious of how diverse an audience could potentially read my blog, and then I'm not quite sure what to write about that will interest anyone.

But a new thing has happened: my brother has run off to Ghana for six months (probably). So I'm going to block all other potential readers out of my head and just write stuff that I think he'll find interesting. I hope other people will find it interesting too, but Ian is my new target audience. It makes things so much simpler.