My coldest day ever!! woke up at 7 am, for training and, very reluctantly got out of my warm bed to bike down to the sports centre-on the way I thought I was not going to get there, as it was, by my reckoning minus 10 degrees celsius, ice everywhere and I just had a fleece on and a pair of gloves. It literally felt as if the wind was like a knife, cutting away at my face! Anyway, finally got to the boat house to rig the boats up (we went to Bristol yesterday for another head race) and were told we were to do an outing! Once moving in the boat, however it warmed up and was pleased to be put in the top boat-wow, what a difference! I take quite a keen interest in the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and read that for every stroke of the 600 stroke race, 2 hours are spent training for it!! that is dedication!
Ergo tomorrow morning at 7.30am.
Sunday 23 November 2008
Wednesday 19 November 2008
November news
The last month has literall flown by, and I realised I havent written for nearly 6 weeks! Its ten in the morning, and am taking a break from my work and have decided to update my blog. Well, where do I start?
I was reading a book 'when markets collide' and came across quite an interesting idea... From the film Wall Street in 1987, a character Gekko played by Michael Douglas when addressing shareholders says ''The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed-for lack of a better work-is good. Greed is good. Greed works. Greed clarifies , cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms-greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge-has marked the upward surge of mankind''. The author was telling how the finacial industry is fuelled by this greed, but thats not the point-I feel it is what makes someone or some country great, and I am sure not everyone would agree with what he says, but if you think about it, to get somewhere you have to have this attitude-Barack Obama was greedy for the White House, as he was for money to fund his campaign, the British mens four was greedy for their olympic gold, and they got it,and Zimbabwe lacks the greed for change I think and therefore, it is not going to happen until they really want it to happen!
Enough of a lecture!!
I continue to be very busy in all aspects of life at university. I have a job 6 hours per week, working at the business school, doind course-work admin-not very stimulating, but very good pay and good hours. I will also be working at the BMW mini plant as a quality control auditor!! once or twice per month. There is a Zimbabwean friend in charge there and he let us know about the jobs, which is decent pay as well.
My work is really piling on-The last two weeks I have had many assignments to hand in, and exams in just under a month, so have to start working for that.
I have met some influential people over the past few weeks-Sir Stelios, the founder of Easyjet, David Davis, the tory MP who spoke brilliantly about Britain and the loss of freedom with respect to the detention period for terrorists which he much opposses. I have never really understood this, but... Blair wanted to pass a bill to keep terror suspects for 90 days without chrage, which is ridiculous (Austrailia is 12 days, Canada is 0 and USA of all places is 2 days. The bill failed (about a year or so ago) and the current law is 28 days which in itself is ridiculous. The government wants to take away civil freedom was the gist of his story. This was at the Oxford Union which I joined up to and is well worth the cost. The founder of Cobra beer (an Indian curry beer) Lord Billamoria spoke at the Oxford Business school which was interesting, and the winner of the British version of the apprentice Simon Ambrose spoke the other day. That is the really great thing about being in Oxford apart from anything else, is the quality of world leaders and entrepreneurs etc. that get invited to talk.
I am still rowing a great deal-about 20 hours per week and recently rowed at the London fours head which is a 7km race through the same route as the university boat race-Im sure you can imagine how hard that is!
Some of the ex-oxford brookes British olympic medallists came back to speak to us about their experience in Beijing about a month ago and that was really interesting. Steve Williams (gold), partridge, lucy and heathcote (silver) and some others came.
Internship job hunt is not going very well-no real response yet, and huge competition in a failing sector with, massive job cuts??!! Snowed the other day lightly, and gets dark at 4.30pm now, but not too bad.
I was reading a book 'when markets collide' and came across quite an interesting idea... From the film Wall Street in 1987, a character Gekko played by Michael Douglas when addressing shareholders says ''The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed-for lack of a better work-is good. Greed is good. Greed works. Greed clarifies , cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms-greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge-has marked the upward surge of mankind''. The author was telling how the finacial industry is fuelled by this greed, but thats not the point-I feel it is what makes someone or some country great, and I am sure not everyone would agree with what he says, but if you think about it, to get somewhere you have to have this attitude-Barack Obama was greedy for the White House, as he was for money to fund his campaign, the British mens four was greedy for their olympic gold, and they got it,and Zimbabwe lacks the greed for change I think and therefore, it is not going to happen until they really want it to happen!
Enough of a lecture!!
I continue to be very busy in all aspects of life at university. I have a job 6 hours per week, working at the business school, doind course-work admin-not very stimulating, but very good pay and good hours. I will also be working at the BMW mini plant as a quality control auditor!! once or twice per month. There is a Zimbabwean friend in charge there and he let us know about the jobs, which is decent pay as well.
My work is really piling on-The last two weeks I have had many assignments to hand in, and exams in just under a month, so have to start working for that.
I have met some influential people over the past few weeks-Sir Stelios, the founder of Easyjet, David Davis, the tory MP who spoke brilliantly about Britain and the loss of freedom with respect to the detention period for terrorists which he much opposses. I have never really understood this, but... Blair wanted to pass a bill to keep terror suspects for 90 days without chrage, which is ridiculous (Austrailia is 12 days, Canada is 0 and USA of all places is 2 days. The bill failed (about a year or so ago) and the current law is 28 days which in itself is ridiculous. The government wants to take away civil freedom was the gist of his story. This was at the Oxford Union which I joined up to and is well worth the cost. The founder of Cobra beer (an Indian curry beer) Lord Billamoria spoke at the Oxford Business school which was interesting, and the winner of the British version of the apprentice Simon Ambrose spoke the other day. That is the really great thing about being in Oxford apart from anything else, is the quality of world leaders and entrepreneurs etc. that get invited to talk.
I am still rowing a great deal-about 20 hours per week and recently rowed at the London fours head which is a 7km race through the same route as the university boat race-Im sure you can imagine how hard that is!
Some of the ex-oxford brookes British olympic medallists came back to speak to us about their experience in Beijing about a month ago and that was really interesting. Steve Williams (gold), partridge, lucy and heathcote (silver) and some others came.
Internship job hunt is not going very well-no real response yet, and huge competition in a failing sector with, massive job cuts??!! Snowed the other day lightly, and gets dark at 4.30pm now, but not too bad.
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