I know a few people are waiting for Washington DC Day 3 but it’s still in the pipeline so you’re just going to have to wait for it, and to all the comment spammers from my last post AHEM….Lloyd…..AHEM….Shane you’re attempts at spoiling the story was foiled by the simple fact that I’m better than you.

So let me move on to more pressing topics: Why I hate technology….

One thing that Kingston University seem to have communication problems at the moment, add stupid security rules and you get a mixture that makes me angry.

So here’s the scoop…

The university sends out an email notification saying that my password is about to expire, this is a good thing because it protects my account, I’m all for better security…so I login to their password manager and try to change my password, everything is good until it tells me that I need some sort of weird mutated password with one number and one uppercase letter or something, so I do this and continue my life as if nothing was wrong.

Then comes the need to get in touch with the Placement Department (AKA ‘the placement people’), I go to login and I can’t remember my password, so I try all the combinations that I could use, admittedly this is my own fault for forgetting my password but seriously does adding a number to my password make it any more secure than adding an extra letter or 2 (since the minimum password length is 6 and my normal password is 13 I would have no problem with them enforcing an 8 character rule) so now I can’t login.

I go to the IT Support site for Kingston and find out that there is no method for resetting my password nor apparently can they reset my password without me physically going to the support desk at Penrhyn Road and showing my ID card to them….

So here’s my point: Why isn’t there a mechanism for me to change my password online and why do they not understand that for people who study abroad, they are indeed actually abroad…and therefore CANNOT show their ID card and get their password changed via the normal method. It would seem that in their world everyone is actually in the vicinity of campus.

So I find myself waiting for an email from the support dept to see if they can indeed change my password (which they should be able to do since I gave them 2 people and their contact details that can and will vouch for the fact I can’t go into their office and beg for it to be changed)

ARHHHHHHH

On the bright side the New York trip is all sorted so I guess every cloud has a silver lining.

Picture the scene, we’re on the plane waiting to taxi onto the taxiways when the captain informs us that we have missed our allocated slot and will have to wait for another.

This was just one thing in a long line of delays and stressful things during our scheduled 8 hour flight.

The flight was long and boring even with the on board entertainment, maybe because at the beginning of the flight I hadn’t had sleep for over 24 hours, and there certainly wasn’t much chance of that on the plane since there was a pretty significant amount of turbulence which I don’t mind but doesn’t really mix very well with sleep.

The first night wasn’t what any of us expected, the support that you might have thought we’d get wasn’t anywhere to be seen so instead we had to go with the flow of water until we found the paddle we needed to get back upstream.

Orientation meetings are just as you’d expect, we know the drill from Kingston but it doesn’t make them any less annoying. The people who run the International Office are pretty amazing though they seem to always be happy and helpful.

Since we were up this proverbial creek without a paddle in sight we were taken to a local (at least in American terms) Buffet restaurant, the place was actually pretty nice and it was our first American dining experience.

The party of 30+ international students must have looked quite scary to the staff who you could tell were pretty bemused by the sheer amount of us.

The food was pretty good, there was a lot of stuff there that none of us knew was edible or not, and just as a future tip to everyone out there, trying to eat the streak with the 2 forks that they provide (for some reason there weren’t any knifes) just is never going to happen, despite your best efforts.

You see it in a lot of movies, after a meal in America you get a fortune cookie, although just like horoscopes I don’t really believe that they are going to actually tell me the future but on some occasions there is an uncanny resemblance to real life, however accidental it may be. So imagine my surprise when I opened mine and read the words written on the paper:

You will visit some faraway land that has long been in your waking thoughts.

You can see where this is going can’t you….

So for now we’re just going to have to wait and see, all the signs point to it being one big amazing adventure but only time will tell

As they say in France….Au revoir

And so they said “It’s the end of a short era”.

Well, even though it hasn’t really sunk in yet I’ve finished the first year of university, I don’t know how, but it’s over. It’s at this point that you sit back in your chair and contemplate the last 6 months, both the good and bad things.

This kind of thing goes on for a few hours, thinking about what might have been, what could have been and what was, and then the full extent of the train suddenly hits you, along with the knowledge that from this point on…is history.

There’s something frightening about realising that the last 6 months of your life can never be changed, that it’s etched in stone somewhere in a dark and mysterious place waiting for you to look back on it in years to come, knowing that the things you wanted to do and wanted to happen never will.

Having said that the last 6 months have been good, so good in fact that I’ve hardly had the time or the energy to blog very much, something that I know has upset quite a few people. To all of you I apologise, but really, are you all just waiting for my next blog entry?

Goodbyes are funny, some people say them, some people don’t, some people mean them while others just say them as a formality. Whatever the case they are still hard, but no matter how many times you say them, they never get easier.

6 Months seems a long time but believe me when I say sometimes 6 months can go almost as quickly as a speeding train on route to some unknown destination in a deep part of the country. One of the most well known quotes is “Time fly’s when you’re having fun”, I guess you could say this qualifies as fun, and you can certainly say the time has flown.

So as my departure is mere hours away, I’m wondering what the next few months will be like.

One thing that I don’t like (apart from packing) is filling in endless sheets of paper from official organizations. From what we were told in our America meeting the other day we will have to fill in several trees of information just to get into the country, let alone get into the university and other things while we are out there.

It wouldn’t even be so bad if it was all done in a few days, but the truth of the matter is that it is going to take weeks, and I mean WEEKS to get all of this stuff sorted out, and even then, it still won’t be 100% completed. The biggest problem is the visa application, not only do you have to provide mountains of information that can be cross referenced by immigration you also have to answer stupid questions like “Are you a Terrorist?”, while I understand the need for things like this is it really necessary?

Not only do we have to fill in endless amounts of paper but we also have to go to the American Embassy in London for about 5 hours to fill in more endless amounts of paperwork.

One thing that makes it all worth while though is when you read around the UNCC site to get more information about the campus. A few things are amazing – well the whole lot is amazing – but a few things stick out.

We will be living in Apartment Villages (with swipe card locks of course), these are exactly what they say on the probably way too oversized sign, they are actually mini villages.

The campus is 8000 square acres and from what it looks like even contains a Hilton Hotel – go figure. The place is huge, the sheer amount of things there are on campus is mind blowing, and from the videos that they have on their site I want to stay there for the rest of my life.

The meeting was interesting though, the start of it had me flashing back to a Greys Anatomy moment in the first episode.

“Today you are the doctors, the 7 years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You’ll be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you, say hello to your competition. 8 of you will switch to an easier specialty, 5 of you will crack under the pressure, 2 of you will be asked to leave, this is your starting…this is your arena, how well you play….That’s up to you.”

We were told things that made me want to go even more and things that made me not want to go at all, we were given the option to duck out and we were given information that we needed to know. It was a very weird experience.

So after weeks of waiting and endless hours of wondering the news finally came, I’ve been accepted to study in America next year

If all goes well I should be spending the second year of my university degree at the University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC).

From here on in the games begin, the planning, the wondering, the anticipation and the excitement all start from this moment.

After the first year everything was supposed to be easy, the hard decisions were supposed to have been made and all we had to do was sit back and enjoy the smell of endless assignments.

But like a lot of things that was merely a dream that was obliterated by reality. Now the only thing that faces me for this summer is endless lists, worries and thoughts about the experience – and above all – I have to pack my stuff up….again.

To be honest this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, personally I know that if I don’t take it I will regret it probably for the rest of my life. Regret is a funny thing, even though it may not hit you straight away, sooner or later it will catch up with you, somewhere, some day. Just the fact that if I don’t go I might not get another chance to or miss a chance while I’m out there pretty much tips the scales in favour of going, I mean who given the chance to go to university over in America would turn down the offer?

Well the 3 month university stint has come to an end with more than a few stories to tell.

I hate packing, I’ve never been one for packing days in advance because of 2 reasons, the first is that I might need some of the things I pack, and second I can’t be bothered to do it till the last minute…like so many things.

One of the reasons I hate packing is because I have a lot of things that have cables attached to them, after a while of getting things tangled up and just having a mess around me I tidy everything up and put all of the cables in neat and tidy places all tucked behind things and hidden from my view, this means that every time I have to go somewhere I have to derig everything, ad this is what I have to deal with…..

Not only am I going to have to decipher the mound of cables now, but I am also going to have to redo it when I get back…..and then do it again 3 weeks later when I leave for the summer….

So even thought I am going to be back home for 3 weeks it’s not all good news for me