Über extensive update
This post is destined to be a bit of an epic, so make yourself a nice cup of tea, pull up a comfy chair and prepare your mind to read about an entire week of Nurton's life in one huge article. I only had 5 hours sleep last night, so please bear with me on grammatical and spelling issues (you have been warned!).
The last time I really wrote anything here while in a semi-sane state of mind was last Sunday morning, so I will document the events of the past 6 days here for your entertainment, although not much of it is entertaining I'm afraid! There is only so much humour that one can extract from exams. It is more a case of having a record for myself, so I can look back in years to come and laugh about the worse week of my life (to date).
Sunday & Monday
These first days were spent in a state of total panic. A “total panic state” that was in excess over even my dissertation total panic. Unfortunately the Monday was a bank holiday so as per on Sunday this meant that there were no libraries open anywhere for us to revise in. So having no other option Kat and I headed up to the computer science department which has (in theory) card swipe entry that allows 24 hour access. We would arrive at 10am set up camp in the only seminar room. This room is in the centre of the building, about 5x5 metres in size and does without the necessity of windows, instead opting for the world's most complex air conditioning unit which both Kat and myself failed to program for a climate other than bloody freezing or Sahara warm. Grrrr. As everything on campus was closed for the bank holiday weekend we were forced to drive round to the local Weatherspoons and eat lunch in their beautiful beer garden. Of course we revised (DNA transcription and mRNA translation methods) while eating our grub so as not to waste precious revision minutes. In fact we were so "involved" in our revision that we both failed until it was too late to realise that we would become victims to the sun’s evil rays (Sunburn for Nurton, possible strap marks for Kat (apparently far more disastrous than my BURNT skin!)).
The afternoon session would finish for Kat around 9pm when she would toddle off to a computer room to do more on her forensic science essay that the Chemistry department had kindly set the deadline to be this Friday. There are evil people in this world such as the likes of Saddam, Tony and George but the real sadistic bastards are those who set essays due on the same day as the last of your final exams. I felt truly sorry for Kat this week (normally I just fake compassion).
I would carry on till 11 or 12pm working alone in the deserted Harrison building then walk down to the computer room wish Kat luck with her essaying, tell her not to stay up too late and tell Rich that he was no longer the coolest guy in Exeter. Then drive home, sleep, wake, pick up Kat, repeat.....
On the Monday I was literally on the verge of breakdown. The amount of knowledge I was required to memorise to be recalled in a 55 hour period later that week, along with the fact that some of the past papers were impossible even with all the recommended textbooks and resources was really starting to take its toll on poor little (in the brain capacity rather than physical sense) Nurton. When I say I was on the verge of 'breakdown', I am not kidding. If it hadn't been for the fact I was in the permanent company of a women, who at the best of times takes the mickey out of any and every man for even the slightest girly action and labels them a wimp (normally Colin or John), I would have been in floods of tears at least 3 times each day.
On Monday night I was totally about to lose it so I rang my parents:
Me: Hello
Dad: Ah, hello Paul.... I mean Noel.
Me: Hello
Dad: How are you?
Me: Not good, I think I am about to breakdown.
Dad: Oh. You'll want to speak to your mother then.
Mum: Hello
Me: Hello
Mum: I once helped one of our lodgers we had staying while I was pregnant with you, to revise for her final university exams.
Me: Oh yeah, what did you do?
Mum: I taught her the relaxing methods they had taught me in prenatal classes.
Me: Oh
Mum: Yeah I guess they won't really work for you.
Me: No.... I guess I’ll just keep trying “revising” and hope for the best
Mum: Yeah. You know it is a scientific fact that everything you read is stored somewhere in your brain.
Me: Really?!?
Mum: Yeah, but it is normally impossible to recall most of it.
Me: Oh... better get back to work.. bye....
So I thought I would try an alternative tactic. First I thought about phoning my brother but then realised that the entire conversation would have gone something like this:
Me: Hello
Nat: Oh it's the 'taxpayer supported slacker', hang on, I'll get your bro
Me: Thanks
Paul: How's it?
Me: I think I'm going to fail my exams, what should I do? Any advice?
Paul: You should have worked 50 hours a week for the last 3 years, like I did when I was at university.
Me: Bit late for that now
Paul: Yeah. Was harder in my day, let me tell you back when I was at university in 1974......
So instead I called Darth Kendrick as I knew he also had exams this week and also he had spent 2 years doing revision with me for 2 A-levels in Maths and knew that normally I was a ‘cool cat’ when it came to pre-exam worries (unlike him!) and therefore might appreciate that the state I was currently in was cause for concern.
Instead of offering some miracle alternative idea to exams (such as running away to Poland to become a cabbage salesman) he chose to just amuse me with his thoughts. I was explaining how I had been spending every waking minute in a room with no windows with Kat revising. Our conversation went something like this.....
Stu: Does she (Kat) start to smell after 11 hours in the same room?
Me: NO!, That's a bit rude!
Stu: It's just that if I was locked in a room, I would definitely start to smell pretty soon.
Me: 'tis true.
He took my mind off things by discussing tactics for the upcoming NMW competition [aside: looks like it will be sometime in the weekend 10th -13th June]. So thanks for your support Stu, it helped!
Tuesday
To be honest, I really can't remember what happened on Tuesday, other than to say it involved about 14 hours which consisted of a combination of stress and revision.
I did take a minute to check my blog and read the kind comments that some of you guys left for me. Thanks!!!
[Note (if it's not too late!): Bandick, you can stop holding your breath now (until Wednesday)]
My exams started the next day, so my timetable for the remained of the week looked something like this:
Wednesday: Morning - Exam (Information Systems), Afternoon/Evening - Revision
Thursday: Morning - Exam (Bioinformatics), Afternoon - Exam (Computational Linguistics), Evening - Revision
Friday: Morning - Revision, Afternoon - Exam (AI), Evening Drinks/sleep
I was aware that I wasn't going to be acquainting myself with my pillow for very long in the following 72 hours.
Wednesday
My first exam was a joke. A joke that was about as funny as Rachel in Friends.
Our exam structure is:
40% - Compulsory (overview short questions, the easy bit)
4 X 30% optional question from which we have to choose two. More in depth, complex questions.
I could only answer a 2 mark question in the compulsory part as the rest was all on ONE THING. On further investigation, the aforementioned "thing" was mentioned in one bullet point in about 500 lecture slides.
Due to the following combining factors:
- This was the exam I was dreading most
- My breakfast decided that it would rather reside in the department toilets than my stomach just before the exam
- I knew I had lost 40% of my marks before even putting pen to paper.
- After 15 minutes I had not written more than 100 words.
I was pretty much ready to walk out of the exam.
I decided against this and tried to compose myself. I spent about 30 minutes writing answers to the remaining hard question here and there when I actually understood what they were going on about. (Probably about 20%). I then spent one and a quarter hours writing total bullshit for all the other bits, for which I didn't have a fecking clue as to what the question was/meant/wanted.
At the end of the exam I was ready to jump off a bridge, well aware that I had failed by a large margin to get the 40% I needed to pass the module. The only things that have made me feel better about it since are:
- EVERY other computer science student I have talked to about it was also unable to do the majority of the compulsory question.
- A very large majority are sure they failed to get 40%
- The head of department sent out an email in the afternoon saying he had received a number of complaints about the exam and that it would be investigated. He also informed us that the board of examiners sometimes would ignore a module mark if our other marks were all consistently well above it so as not to affect our degree classification/degree based on one bad exam.
Thursday
I was now behind on my last minute revision, after the emotional turmoil of the spending half of the day before thinking that I would be banned from graduation for being the only person to achieve 3% on a final exam.
Up at 4:30am. Stuff I had memorised for the last week and a half had all mysteriously disappeared from my mind. It was there on Tuesday when I last checked. Just my luck. Breakfast --> Toilet bowl again.
As I was walking into the morning exam I overheard this conversation:
Clarkie: So did you have a little smoke this morning? (Suggesting comically the inhalation of contraband substances on the morning of one's final exams.)
Dave: Yeah, just a little one dude! (In a totally serious voice!)
It makes you a lot more confident in exams knowing that some of the other candidates are stoned before they even walk into the exam! The exam was actually very good for me. It was a nice exam and I think it was the module that I was best prepared for. If this had been a shit exam, I probably would have not bothered with the rest of the exams, but as it was good I suddenly felt the need to try and really pull my finger out for the remaining two exams this week. Something that proved fairly difficult as every time I blinked I would have to force my eyes open again.
My morning of happy thoughts was also soon suppressed again by sadness when I read the news that Kelly Brook is no longer going to model bikini's......'They pick a man up then hit him back down twice as hard as before', life is just not fair.....
The afternoon exam was also ok, some strange questions, but only in little bits. I didn't know the entire module in detail and was relying on certain questions coming up. They did! Another pass (I hope).
Back home for some food, back to the library for 2 hours, back home and off to bed by 8:30pm. I woke about 11 as my housemates were still up and obviously I heard them. This was not a problem as I can fall back asleep pretty much instantaneously but it did allow me an insight into my deep sleep dreams. It was a dream about talking 20ft king penguins that lived on the coast of East Anglia who played football, but didn't like to be chased by humans(me). As you can see my mind was pretty messed up by this point in the week!
Friday
Not sick today woo-hoo!
Up at 5am. Back to the grindstone for the final push. It's amazing what you can learn on the morning before exams. I got a panicked text from Kat (who had been up late the previous night finishing her essay) saying she didn't know anything. This was followed (about 20 seconds later) by an even more panicked phone call along the same lines. She met up with me in a seminar room I was working in. We had 3 hours before the exam in which time I learnt the following facts:
- She actually knew more than me about AI.
- I could remember how to teach (the last time was nearly 4 years ago in Botswana).
- I realised that teaching 12 year olds basic mathematics and teaching intelligent adults about genetic programming crossover, mutation and fitness function process models required two very different approaches. I realised I was good at the former, not so good at the later. This was probably not a good thing for Kat.
- I learnt an amazing amount from Kat about Hybrid systems that I used to score a large number of marks in the exam.
Again this was another exam that would have been a total bitch if the questions were not similar to previous years. Luckily enough of it was similar and I managed to get a whole load of marks on a question which quite bizarrely allowed me to use my A-level maths skills to solve the problem! Wonders will never cease!
- Headed off to the Vic for a celebratory pint. I had a lovely pint of Scottish ale, brewed in Perth that I had never heard of before.
- We were joined by Chris, his girlfriend and Clarkie and his girlfriend (who knew freakishly lots about my proposed geographical location circa February 2006 despite never having met me before.)
- All the others have finished all their exams and coursework but I still have another exam next Wednesday morning. But I thought it would be rude not to join in on the celebrations.
- Then it was back home for a quick improvised dinner (a banana), shower (newly mended, thanks Nick for sorting that one out!) and a shave (first for a week!). I even took 5 minutes to tidy up the TFF with Phil's borrowed hair clippers. I was looking proper dapper, although this was balance out by the bags the size of craters under my eyes.
We headed off to the timepiece bar. Got drunk. Dan and I put 50p in the Cluedo machine and won the jackpot, £20!!! It was a true team effort, each of us knowing the answer to every other question. Dan guessed that the suspect was "the bitch" (his name) and I correctly identified the murder weapon as the "the candle stick". I’ve never won any money before in my life. This had to be a sign of good luck. We bought a round of drinks with the money for everybody at our table, which as it was a rather large table meant that the round came to £19.70. We split the change 20:10 to Dan. I must chase him up on that!*
I had a fascinating drunken discussion about the pros and cons of the magic roundabout in Swindon with some random guy who was sitting next to me. I argued that the one in Hemel Hempstead was more "exciting". Then randomly Chris (who was proper pissed) spent half an hour explaining in great detail about the numerous times his girlfriend's mother had seen him butt naked and about the time both him and Dan shared a bed naked. On numerous occasions I begged him to stop the story, but he was very insistent that I should know all the details. Needless to say they were all entertaining if not slightly disturbing stories.
Saturday
Today has been a bit of a recovery day. I watched 'Johnny English' on DVD, which I actually thought was one of the funniest films I had seen in ages. I remember when it came out that it got pretty shit reviews, but I think this shows how bad normal comedic cinema has got in the last few years as most reviews I read about 'Meet the Fockers' said it was not amazing, but a good laugh. I only laughed once in the entire film(MTF), and that was not at a joke, but rather the fact that Robert De Niro's RV had 'Puff the Magic Dragon' as it's horn tune. I want that.
Anyway, the result of watching Johnny English was that I was reminded about how much I love Natalie Imbruglia. She truly does have all the attributes (there are 3) of the perfect women:
- She beautiful beyond words
- She used to be in Neighbours
- She beautiful beyond words.
So to make everybody’s day a bit better, here is a picture!
So this has definitely been the longest ever NMW post (3,103 words!). If you've made it this far then I am impressed. Have a cookie, you deserve it.
Tomorrow, I will be doing the NMW final exam analysis on how to cope with 4 exams in 55 hours. A more abstract look, rather than today's detailed entry.
I do have one more exam on Wednesday, which hopefully should be OK, it is my favourite module and I did a lot of the revision for it before starting the other modules.
So please bear with me, I will try and get back to daily blogging ASAP, but for now, this epic post will have to satisfy your Nurton Meets World hunger. Enjoy!
*Maxed out my overdraft on Friday night. Now I only have my credit card and the £20 in my wallet to live on until mid July. I begged Mum to beg Dad for money on my behalf when I last phoned! Fingers crossed!
The last time I really wrote anything here while in a semi-sane state of mind was last Sunday morning, so I will document the events of the past 6 days here for your entertainment, although not much of it is entertaining I'm afraid! There is only so much humour that one can extract from exams. It is more a case of having a record for myself, so I can look back in years to come and laugh about the worse week of my life (to date).
Sunday & Monday
These first days were spent in a state of total panic. A “total panic state” that was in excess over even my dissertation total panic. Unfortunately the Monday was a bank holiday so as per on Sunday this meant that there were no libraries open anywhere for us to revise in. So having no other option Kat and I headed up to the computer science department which has (in theory) card swipe entry that allows 24 hour access. We would arrive at 10am set up camp in the only seminar room. This room is in the centre of the building, about 5x5 metres in size and does without the necessity of windows, instead opting for the world's most complex air conditioning unit which both Kat and myself failed to program for a climate other than bloody freezing or Sahara warm. Grrrr. As everything on campus was closed for the bank holiday weekend we were forced to drive round to the local Weatherspoons and eat lunch in their beautiful beer garden. Of course we revised (DNA transcription and mRNA translation methods) while eating our grub so as not to waste precious revision minutes. In fact we were so "involved" in our revision that we both failed until it was too late to realise that we would become victims to the sun’s evil rays (Sunburn for Nurton, possible strap marks for Kat (apparently far more disastrous than my BURNT skin!)).
The afternoon session would finish for Kat around 9pm when she would toddle off to a computer room to do more on her forensic science essay that the Chemistry department had kindly set the deadline to be this Friday. There are evil people in this world such as the likes of Saddam, Tony and George but the real sadistic bastards are those who set essays due on the same day as the last of your final exams. I felt truly sorry for Kat this week (normally I just fake compassion).
I would carry on till 11 or 12pm working alone in the deserted Harrison building then walk down to the computer room wish Kat luck with her essaying, tell her not to stay up too late and tell Rich that he was no longer the coolest guy in Exeter. Then drive home, sleep, wake, pick up Kat, repeat.....
On the Monday I was literally on the verge of breakdown. The amount of knowledge I was required to memorise to be recalled in a 55 hour period later that week, along with the fact that some of the past papers were impossible even with all the recommended textbooks and resources was really starting to take its toll on poor little (in the brain capacity rather than physical sense) Nurton. When I say I was on the verge of 'breakdown', I am not kidding. If it hadn't been for the fact I was in the permanent company of a women, who at the best of times takes the mickey out of any and every man for even the slightest girly action and labels them a wimp (normally Colin or John), I would have been in floods of tears at least 3 times each day.
On Monday night I was totally about to lose it so I rang my parents:
Me: Hello
Dad: Ah, hello Paul.... I mean Noel.
Me: Hello
Dad: How are you?
Me: Not good, I think I am about to breakdown.
Dad: Oh. You'll want to speak to your mother then.
Mum: Hello
Me: Hello
Mum: I once helped one of our lodgers we had staying while I was pregnant with you, to revise for her final university exams.
Me: Oh yeah, what did you do?
Mum: I taught her the relaxing methods they had taught me in prenatal classes.
Me: Oh
Mum: Yeah I guess they won't really work for you.
Me: No.... I guess I’ll just keep trying “revising” and hope for the best
Mum: Yeah. You know it is a scientific fact that everything you read is stored somewhere in your brain.
Me: Really?!?
Mum: Yeah, but it is normally impossible to recall most of it.
Me: Oh... better get back to work.. bye....
So I thought I would try an alternative tactic. First I thought about phoning my brother but then realised that the entire conversation would have gone something like this:
Me: Hello
Nat: Oh it's the 'taxpayer supported slacker', hang on, I'll get your bro
Me: Thanks
Paul: How's it?
Me: I think I'm going to fail my exams, what should I do? Any advice?
Paul: You should have worked 50 hours a week for the last 3 years, like I did when I was at university.
Me: Bit late for that now
Paul: Yeah. Was harder in my day, let me tell you back when I was at university in 1974......
So instead I called Darth Kendrick as I knew he also had exams this week and also he had spent 2 years doing revision with me for 2 A-levels in Maths and knew that normally I was a ‘cool cat’ when it came to pre-exam worries (unlike him!) and therefore might appreciate that the state I was currently in was cause for concern.
Instead of offering some miracle alternative idea to exams (such as running away to Poland to become a cabbage salesman) he chose to just amuse me with his thoughts. I was explaining how I had been spending every waking minute in a room with no windows with Kat revising. Our conversation went something like this.....
Stu: Does she (Kat) start to smell after 11 hours in the same room?
Me: NO!, That's a bit rude!
Stu: It's just that if I was locked in a room, I would definitely start to smell pretty soon.
Me: 'tis true.
He took my mind off things by discussing tactics for the upcoming NMW competition [aside: looks like it will be sometime in the weekend 10th -13th June]. So thanks for your support Stu, it helped!
Tuesday
To be honest, I really can't remember what happened on Tuesday, other than to say it involved about 14 hours which consisted of a combination of stress and revision.
I did take a minute to check my blog and read the kind comments that some of you guys left for me. Thanks!!!
[Note (if it's not too late!): Bandick, you can stop holding your breath now (until Wednesday)]
My exams started the next day, so my timetable for the remained of the week looked something like this:
Wednesday: Morning - Exam (Information Systems), Afternoon/Evening - Revision
Thursday: Morning - Exam (Bioinformatics), Afternoon - Exam (Computational Linguistics), Evening - Revision
Friday: Morning - Revision, Afternoon - Exam (AI), Evening Drinks/sleep
I was aware that I wasn't going to be acquainting myself with my pillow for very long in the following 72 hours.
Wednesday
My first exam was a joke. A joke that was about as funny as Rachel in Friends.
Our exam structure is:
40% - Compulsory (overview short questions, the easy bit)
4 X 30% optional question from which we have to choose two. More in depth, complex questions.
I could only answer a 2 mark question in the compulsory part as the rest was all on ONE THING. On further investigation, the aforementioned "thing" was mentioned in one bullet point in about 500 lecture slides.
Due to the following combining factors:
- This was the exam I was dreading most
- My breakfast decided that it would rather reside in the department toilets than my stomach just before the exam
- I knew I had lost 40% of my marks before even putting pen to paper.
- After 15 minutes I had not written more than 100 words.
I was pretty much ready to walk out of the exam.
I decided against this and tried to compose myself. I spent about 30 minutes writing answers to the remaining hard question here and there when I actually understood what they were going on about. (Probably about 20%). I then spent one and a quarter hours writing total bullshit for all the other bits, for which I didn't have a fecking clue as to what the question was/meant/wanted.
At the end of the exam I was ready to jump off a bridge, well aware that I had failed by a large margin to get the 40% I needed to pass the module. The only things that have made me feel better about it since are:
- EVERY other computer science student I have talked to about it was also unable to do the majority of the compulsory question.
- A very large majority are sure they failed to get 40%
- The head of department sent out an email in the afternoon saying he had received a number of complaints about the exam and that it would be investigated. He also informed us that the board of examiners sometimes would ignore a module mark if our other marks were all consistently well above it so as not to affect our degree classification/degree based on one bad exam.
Thursday
I was now behind on my last minute revision, after the emotional turmoil of the spending half of the day before thinking that I would be banned from graduation for being the only person to achieve 3% on a final exam.
Up at 4:30am. Stuff I had memorised for the last week and a half had all mysteriously disappeared from my mind. It was there on Tuesday when I last checked. Just my luck. Breakfast --> Toilet bowl again.
As I was walking into the morning exam I overheard this conversation:
Clarkie: So did you have a little smoke this morning? (Suggesting comically the inhalation of contraband substances on the morning of one's final exams.)
Dave: Yeah, just a little one dude! (In a totally serious voice!)
It makes you a lot more confident in exams knowing that some of the other candidates are stoned before they even walk into the exam! The exam was actually very good for me. It was a nice exam and I think it was the module that I was best prepared for. If this had been a shit exam, I probably would have not bothered with the rest of the exams, but as it was good I suddenly felt the need to try and really pull my finger out for the remaining two exams this week. Something that proved fairly difficult as every time I blinked I would have to force my eyes open again.
My morning of happy thoughts was also soon suppressed again by sadness when I read the news that Kelly Brook is no longer going to model bikini's......'They pick a man up then hit him back down twice as hard as before', life is just not fair.....
The afternoon exam was also ok, some strange questions, but only in little bits. I didn't know the entire module in detail and was relying on certain questions coming up. They did! Another pass (I hope).
Back home for some food, back to the library for 2 hours, back home and off to bed by 8:30pm. I woke about 11 as my housemates were still up and obviously I heard them. This was not a problem as I can fall back asleep pretty much instantaneously but it did allow me an insight into my deep sleep dreams. It was a dream about talking 20ft king penguins that lived on the coast of East Anglia who played football, but didn't like to be chased by humans(me). As you can see my mind was pretty messed up by this point in the week!
Friday
Not sick today woo-hoo!
Up at 5am. Back to the grindstone for the final push. It's amazing what you can learn on the morning before exams. I got a panicked text from Kat (who had been up late the previous night finishing her essay) saying she didn't know anything. This was followed (about 20 seconds later) by an even more panicked phone call along the same lines. She met up with me in a seminar room I was working in. We had 3 hours before the exam in which time I learnt the following facts:
- She actually knew more than me about AI.
- I could remember how to teach (the last time was nearly 4 years ago in Botswana).
- I realised that teaching 12 year olds basic mathematics and teaching intelligent adults about genetic programming crossover, mutation and fitness function process models required two very different approaches. I realised I was good at the former, not so good at the later. This was probably not a good thing for Kat.
- I learnt an amazing amount from Kat about Hybrid systems that I used to score a large number of marks in the exam.
Again this was another exam that would have been a total bitch if the questions were not similar to previous years. Luckily enough of it was similar and I managed to get a whole load of marks on a question which quite bizarrely allowed me to use my A-level maths skills to solve the problem! Wonders will never cease!
- Headed off to the Vic for a celebratory pint. I had a lovely pint of Scottish ale, brewed in Perth that I had never heard of before.
- We were joined by Chris, his girlfriend and Clarkie and his girlfriend (who knew freakishly lots about my proposed geographical location circa February 2006 despite never having met me before.)
- All the others have finished all their exams and coursework but I still have another exam next Wednesday morning. But I thought it would be rude not to join in on the celebrations.
- Then it was back home for a quick improvised dinner (a banana), shower (newly mended, thanks Nick for sorting that one out!) and a shave (first for a week!). I even took 5 minutes to tidy up the TFF with Phil's borrowed hair clippers. I was looking proper dapper, although this was balance out by the bags the size of craters under my eyes.
We headed off to the timepiece bar. Got drunk. Dan and I put 50p in the Cluedo machine and won the jackpot, £20!!! It was a true team effort, each of us knowing the answer to every other question. Dan guessed that the suspect was "the bitch" (his name) and I correctly identified the murder weapon as the "the candle stick". I’ve never won any money before in my life. This had to be a sign of good luck. We bought a round of drinks with the money for everybody at our table, which as it was a rather large table meant that the round came to £19.70. We split the change 20:10 to Dan. I must chase him up on that!*
I had a fascinating drunken discussion about the pros and cons of the magic roundabout in Swindon with some random guy who was sitting next to me. I argued that the one in Hemel Hempstead was more "exciting". Then randomly Chris (who was proper pissed) spent half an hour explaining in great detail about the numerous times his girlfriend's mother had seen him butt naked and about the time both him and Dan shared a bed naked. On numerous occasions I begged him to stop the story, but he was very insistent that I should know all the details. Needless to say they were all entertaining if not slightly disturbing stories.
Saturday
Today has been a bit of a recovery day. I watched 'Johnny English' on DVD, which I actually thought was one of the funniest films I had seen in ages. I remember when it came out that it got pretty shit reviews, but I think this shows how bad normal comedic cinema has got in the last few years as most reviews I read about 'Meet the Fockers' said it was not amazing, but a good laugh. I only laughed once in the entire film(MTF), and that was not at a joke, but rather the fact that Robert De Niro's RV had 'Puff the Magic Dragon' as it's horn tune. I want that.
Anyway, the result of watching Johnny English was that I was reminded about how much I love Natalie Imbruglia. She truly does have all the attributes (there are 3) of the perfect women:
- She beautiful beyond words
- She used to be in Neighbours
- She beautiful beyond words.
So to make everybody’s day a bit better, here is a picture!
So this has definitely been the longest ever NMW post (3,103 words!). If you've made it this far then I am impressed. Have a cookie, you deserve it.
Tomorrow, I will be doing the NMW final exam analysis on how to cope with 4 exams in 55 hours. A more abstract look, rather than today's detailed entry.
I do have one more exam on Wednesday, which hopefully should be OK, it is my favourite module and I did a lot of the revision for it before starting the other modules.
So please bear with me, I will try and get back to daily blogging ASAP, but for now, this epic post will have to satisfy your Nurton Meets World hunger. Enjoy!
*Maxed out my overdraft on Friday night. Now I only have my credit card and the £20 in my wallet to live on until mid July. I begged Mum to beg Dad for money on my behalf when I last phoned! Fingers crossed!
posted by Nurton at 9:14 am
8 Comments:
Ah yes, the Imbruglia. Truly the Lord's 3rd finest work (after Philly and Kelly Brook), and friends with Liam Fox into the bargain!
Nurton, I am proud of you. You have squared up to finals like the man you are. I myself face the final hurdle on Tuesday - Roman law (the only thing I know relates to the controversy over whether conveyance by mancipatio was a sale or not - probably not enough for 4 questions over 3 hours). Prepare for an incoherent NMW post circa-3am Wednesday morning.
On the Kelly Brook front, would you agree with the Baxter-Bailey analysis that her essential genius lies in the fact she is basically Summer's friend Penny in Neighbours but also the sexiest woman on the planet (that's an FHM fact) - or, as we call it, a fit goon?
Be honest Mark, did you read the entire post (all 3000 words) or did you do a Simon Pegg; "Skip to the end", when you saw the picture!?!
Good luck with your exam on Tuesday. You'll be fine old bean.
If you are bored the following weekend (with all your new found spare time) you're very welcome to come and visit sunny Exeter and take part in the competition with Darth and I.
You should have asked me for some revision tips. I didn't get a 2:1 by looking pretty!
Classic revision "moments" include -
* Listening to Nirvana at ear-shattering volume for the entire revision session.
* Seeing how fast a 1.2 Nova Merit will go in second gear.
* Setting fire to a tree.
* Buying intriguingly flammable-looking objects and setting fire to them on a gas stove.
* Covering an A0 area of whiteboard entirely in the word "fear".
* Introducing friends to the unbounded joy that is Hawkwind.
* THE INTERNET.
And incidentally, I never revise on the morning of exams. For some reason, it's always detrimental to my ability to recall things.
Unrelated note: Why does Blogger consider the <ul> tag dangerous, illegal and wrong in a comment?
Noel, I loyally read the post in its entirety - how dare you suggest otherwise.
An incredibly generous offer, my dear boy, but that weekend will be my first chance to see Philly for two months and my parents aren't home - you do the maths. (Though, frankly, maths is probably the last thing you feel like doing right now.) Good luck with it, though - my fingers are crossed for 17.
Sorry Mark! It's just that if I was reading something with a picture of Mrs Imbruglia at the bottom, I would skip to the picture. Just me being shallow I guess.
Both you and Philly are very welcome to come and visit the land of Nurton and Norrish. Although I understand that doing maths in an empty house could be more entertaining. Say hello from me!
Matt, revision moments that I haven't mentioned on my blog include:
- Listening to that new Gorillaz song (the one with the windmills) at ear splitting volume and failing to revise
- Seeing how fast a 2.5 litre Mondeo would go in 2nd gear before hitting the rev limiter (62.5mph)
- Trying to set fire to the exam hall.
- Playing with a cigarette lighter I found in an old bag for about 2 hours, while procrastinating.
- Writing a cover sheet to each of my folders which read "I know nothing, therefore I'm screwed"
- Introducing Kat to the genius that is Spaced.
- Not using the internet for a week.
Do you think the fact that we had the same pre 18 education has something to do with the fact that our revision techniques are so similar? Or maybe it is just because we are both pyromaniac, car freaks?
Alright, there's got to be some kind of international conspiracy here.
Ford Mondeo - ~60mph in second gear
Alfa 156 - ~60mph in second gear
Ford Orion - ~60mph in second gear (just)
Vauxhall Nova - ~60mph in second gear (it's called abuse, people)
Is there some reason that these cars, with vastly different design focus and powercurves, would all hit the same terminal speed in gear?
And is the reason we're both pyromaniac car freaks something to do with our pre-18 education?
Yeah don't know why they all do 60 in 2nd, but I bet the fastest one to 60 is mine!
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