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Freshers' Week PDF Print E-mail

It has been quite a while since my last blog entry, about getting the keys to the new house in Fallowfield. Since then I have kept on working hard on Save the student Manchester in preparation for a hopefully big Freshers' Week launch. However, as it was of course the summer holidays I had to take a break so I have been away for a week or two as well :)

But now, I really have to pull my finger out of my.. because it's not even more than half a week til the Freshers roll on into Manchester! I have fully moved and settled into our house now, since Monday (which co-incided with my 21st!). A big group of us went to the Up the Racket re-launch night at Joshua Brooks.. it was epic.
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A new student pad PDF Print E-mail

It has been a bit of a mad week. Last Saturday morning I got the keys to our new house in Fallowfield, which was quite exciting! I was the first to 'check-in', and so had to go through all of the admin and legal stuff before discovering the base of my bed was smashed up. I was staying a friend's that week, who had also just moved in (but to a 10-bedroom).

After a week of boredom at home, last night was my first night in the new house. It was quite uneventful, luckily, being alone. Though this soon changed. There's a hole in my bedroom ceiling, which I hadn't thought too much of until 6am this morning when I had a small lake in my left ear. So in today's crap weather I went down to the agency to get them to fix it. I wonder if they have, as I sit in a computer cluster working like a dog on save the student.
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Rain Biking! PDF Print E-mail

It was raining when I woke up this morning. It was also raining – very heavily – this afternoon as a storm was passing over. The last few days it's been perfect blue skies and the sun always shining. Usually I might have complained that it was miserable and I wanted the sun back, with his hat on. Today though, I had a spontaneous idea to go out in it.. just because of 'why not?'. Up to that moment I had been working on the content for Save the student, whilst watching Miami Ink. So I got quite excited about the idea of going out in monsoon rain instead of thinking it's a crap day.

I put on some swimming shorts and some old shoes and went out to get my bike. Recently I've done a lot of cycling around, I did 12 miles yesterday! It's a good way to get away and get fit I suppose. But today was different. I had my sights on the hill at the back of my garden that goes into another field and to the River. A passage in the hedgerow had been cleared whilst I was away at uni, making it much easier to get down. At the bottom of the hill is a marsh.. there's now some gravel over part of it but it's still very waterlogged. Perfect!
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I want to ride my bicycle PDF Print E-mail

The original idea for a student website was sparked back in October 2007. I was a new student at Manchester, and to give me a few more minutes in bed each morning, I was on the hunt for a cheap fifth-hand bicycle that I could pick up locally. The internet seemed like a good place to start, and it seemed obvious to search for "second hand bike manchester". A load of generic eBay ads came up, but not much else. I could not find anywhere to buy a cheap second-hand bike in Manchester. In the end I bought one off eBay, shelling out an extra £25 just to get it delivered!

Then I thought of all the other students that do have bikes at uni, and where they get them from. I'm sure most bring them up with them, or buy one in Manchester. But that begs the question how they manage to transport them back and forth. And if they do, it must be a hassle! I do have a bike at home, but it didn't really fit in the car..
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