Look what I just found!

I had a couple of friends over last night for a Girls Night In. We had wine, pizza and watched Magic Mike and needless to say we had a great time.

Also one of the girls who had come to Vietnam with me brought along a USB saying that "She had found a video of mine on it" so I took a look and I thought you'd like to see it.

(as requested by myself, here is the science behind Ha Long Bay (Courtesy of Wikipedia)):

Ha Long Bay has an area of around 1,553 km², including 1,960–2,000 islets, most of which are limestone. 

 Ha Long Bay has 14 endemic floral species and 60 endemic faunal species.

Submarine mountains formed about 420 million years ago in the deep sea where Ha Long bay is now. 340 million years ago tectonic activity brought it almost to sea level. 340-240 million years ago the limestone that now makes up the bay's formations was developing. 

The bay was again affected by tectonics which sunk it back down into a deep bay but not quite a sea, this was called the Ha Long Depression.

The mountains were eroded by the water and caves and grottos began to form.

Et voila! 

The limestone karsts (the towers and peaks) is what remains of those mountains!

You learn something new every day :)

Sod's law

I have just noticed an interesting correlation.

When I work best I am almost always "about to go do something" or thinking "should I go join in whatever-fun-thing-is-going-on-that-I'm-missing-out-on" or even when I have something else that I need to do first.
It is never when I sit down to work.

Any psychological input here Dad? Or am I just screwed?

I am the worst blogger ever

I have only blogged ONCE! I mean I have been trying to do a couple of different blog post over the last 5 WEEKS but none have them have made it to the "Publish" button.

I am suitably ashamed.

So I'm just going to attack you with random pictures and photos of my life so far in Third Year.

This was us at Alton Towers last weekend.
Obviously I didn't get the memo about the poses...
Alton Towers was actually fantastic fun. We got there at about 10.30 and stayed until 21.00 as it was open late for all sorts of Halloween Shenanigans, and we managed to do every single ride!

That's me at the front, fifth from left. This was the scariest ride for me,I don't like these sorts of ride, although it was a very cool idea.

This was us in the queue for Oblivion. We were very lucky in that just as the rain got saturatingly heavy we had managed to all cluster inside a little metal room in the queue.

A couple minutes later it was hailing and they had to shut the rides, bad times, however after about 10 minutes they reopened them! YAY! And because of the bad weather most of the queue times were really low so there was no wait for Air, a 15 minute wait for Nemesis and a 5 minute wait (plus the Hail) for Oblivion. It was great!

We did all the main rides and lots of the little ones, and when it got dark we went to the...

Which was one of things that you walk through and things happen to you, most of the things being zombies. At the time it was terrifying, immediately afterwards it was the funniest thing in the world. The zombie-dressed staff would jump out at you everywhere and sneak right up behind you and make zombie noises or right up in your face and growl. It was so scary! None of us actually believed that we were out when we finished, we were all looking around for more zombies to jump out at us. It was great fun!

And finally, we did The Smiler.

It has 14 loops.

It is meant to "mess with your mind" so they have hypnotic and annoying music on loop and TVs (that are way too bright) everywhere displaying optical illusions and brainwashing-type "programming" - flicking through news reels really quickly, showing computer programming language overlayed over pictures of peoples faces and MRIs on loop, that sort of thing. Which was really irritating because we were in the queue for more than an hour and a half. It sucked.

We didn't mind too much because we had done all the other rides in the park but it was cold and rainy and our legs were tired AND then they closed the ride for 20 minutes. In the end, however, when we got to the ride it was a fantastic rollercoaster. We just couldn't tell which way was up or down and were just spinning and looping and zooming around. It was really cool, just wish the wait had been a shorter.

So that turned into a bit of an Alton Towers blog but hey ho! Better then nothing eh? 

I don't know about you but...

I'm feeling 22!

I had a very relaxing actual birthday, the girls made pancakes and waffles for breakfast and had gotten everyone to sign a card for me, then later on we had some friends around to watch a movie, eat cake and have a couple of drinks. It was really lovely :)

My birthday party was yesterday and it was an altogether more *active* day! Mia, Amanda, Samuel and I spent all day cooking and getting the house ready for the evening's activities: dinner (for 31!) and then a Campus 14 (where you have a drink at each Hall of Residence bar on Campus, starting and finishing at the SU Bar and totaling 14 drinks).

Here are a couple of pictures from the celebrations:

My birthday bouquets from the Girls and from Samuel <3

(One of the bartenders gave us free pirates hats as it was my birthday!)