An exciting week!

Well boys and girls, where do I start? My life has taken a sudden U-turn, and I have many exciting things to bring up in this week's instalment of my life. No, I won't have to complain about all the hours spent behind a computer (well, not much anyway), because stuff has started to happen in my life again. Hold on tight, here we go...

First off, with my dissertation so nearly complete, I had been advised to go and see a tutor about my results section. My personal dissertation tutor wasn't 100% confident with his statistics, so he said it would be prudent to get Hodgo to browse over it. I had feared that he would find a problem with my results, and then I'd have to re-write the second half of my dissertation. Of course, my luck's never that bad, especially if I'm writing about it on my blog...

Yeah right. There was a alight problem (which did in fact make my results a little stronger), and so I spent all day Wednesday re-writing the latter half of my dissertation. Oh deep joy... Never mind though, because after 7 hours of hard work, it was done! I spent three hours at work in the evening (an hour of which was spent formatting my dissertation), and then went home for a nice sleep. More dissertation adventures to come later on!

My dissertation tutor had advised me to take a night off. Watch a film, or do something that wasn't working. Okay, so I go to NTC, but let's be honest, that is work (although it's definitely less annoying than writing a dissertation). It just so happens that I get a text message Tuesday morning from one of my NTC friends in Brighton. Natalie said that she had some free tickets to a show, and asked if I'd like to go with her, and some of her other friends and family. Well, it's a night out. Here is a photo of me, standing with some of the cast...

Of course I asked what the show was before I agreed to go and see it. At the time, I'd never heard of the show, and just thought that it was some comedy thing. After some research later in the day, I found out that the 'Lady Boys of Bangkok' wasn't the comedy show that I had assumed it was. And if you hadn't already guessed, yes, the people in the photo above are actually MEN. No, really, they've all got cocks.

I have to say that the show as very funny, and there was this one Thai bloke who was definitely a Thai Graham Norton. He played the least convincing lady boy. At several points in the show, male members of the audience were set upon by the performers, with one guy even being stripped of his shirt, and his nipple poked with an umbrella. I was lucky enough to be in the middle of the audience, and in no danger of being caught (incdentally, the man did get his shirt back, after the lady boy pulled it between their thighs, and bending over in front of him...).

There was one dance that disturbed me greatly though. Towards the end of one of the acts, the performers stripped to wearing only bikinis. Trying desperatly hard to remember that these were in fact men, I didn't know where to look. They looked like attractive women that should be watched, but they were men! Very troubling. If I wasn't sexually confused before, I sure am now...

In the intermission, Natalie dragged me up on stage to have my photo taken (the one above). Other members of the NTC were there, and proceeded to pass the image around like wildfire. Comments have been made like 'Which one is Andy Clarke - I think he's the one on the left', and 'Andy Clarke was thrown out after this photo for groping one of the Lady Boys'. Sigh. But the best comment award has to go to my colleague Roz, who, when shown the picture, disdainfully replied 'they're all men aren't they?' Everyone else had at least thought for a moment that they were women, so I asked her why ashe came to this conclusion so quickly. 'Well,' she replied, 'I knew you wouldn't be standing next to that many women that looked that hot.' Oh thanks for that.

Thursday turned out to be a long day. Far from the Pavillion Green in Brighton, and the many Lady Boys (I did wonder which toilet they'd use, as I visited the facilities after the show), Ernie took four university friends and I to Dorset for the day. We started filming for our 'Adventure Sports Videography' documentary, on Sport Climbing. I cannot tell you how good it was to be outside after months of sitting in front of a computer. We were in a coastal quarry near Swanage, right on the sea. The weather wasn't brilliant, but it was fantastic to get rid of the cobwebs. Very cleansing.

For one part of the filiming, it was necessary to record a clip of the climbers driving into the car park. For production reasons, it was necessary to use a stunt vehicle. And yes, you've guessed it, Ernie the Escort was that car. In one day, Ernie added two more jobs to his CV: OB (Outside Broadcast) truck, and stunt car. Because I thought it would be funny, I had Luke drive the car (because of the two climbers, he was the one without a driving license). It was a private gravel car park, so no laws were ebing broken.

Although he didn't have a license, I know that he had ridden motorcycles, and lots of other interesting vehicles. He sounded almost excited to be driving Ernie (and well, who wouldn't!), but didn't actually tell me that he had never driven a car before. He asked Phil (the other climber) which pedal did what! To his credit, he did alright. Except for the excessive revving to find the biting point of the clutch. I've never been so worrried and felt so powerless in my entire life...

To finish then, I shall complete the miserable story of my dissertation. Because I had been filming on Thursday, I asked my poorly mum to take my printed disertations (two copies) to the Bognor Campus to be bound (they had to be handed in 24 hours in advance). Mum did this without any hassle.

So, feeling almost relaxed, I awoke Friday morning to go and collect them, and hand them in to the Chichester officer, where the deadline was 12 noon. After a short period of worry (where the reprographics office couldn't find my work), I got back in the car at 11 - leaving me a whole hour to complete the 20-minute drive to Chichester in peace, and hand in the documents. I just started to pull one copy out of the envelope to have a look, when a dark thought dawned on me. I had to hand in a CD with a copy on as well, and I hadn't even burnt the CD, let alone brought it with me. Oh dear...

So, I had to race back home (which is twenty minutes in the wrong direction, ruch upstairs, and get the computer going. Fortunately, I had bought a new laptop in January, and Vista is very quick. Less than five minutes later, I was back behind the wheel of my glorious Mark IV Escort. We raced towards Chichester, as fast as the law would allow (honest officer!). After hitting a spot of traffic in Arundel, I arrived at the University, and rushed to the PE Office (I didn't actually run, that would have made me out of breath!). I bolted up the flights of stairs to the third floor, and appeared in the PE Office. I handed my work in with just 5 minutes to spare. Well, it would have been boring, and less blogging material to hand it in with plenty of time to spare (why do I do it to myself?).

And on that note, it is time for bed boys and girls. Feel free to comment, it makes me think that spending time writing this carp is worth while...