A weekend without internet

good afternoon all.... sorry I haven't been updating this a little more regularly... but it has been a hell of a week. I have spent the last week exploring around Leeds, shopping, and generally figuring out where things are. The beginning of the week was spent in lectures here about computing. Monday and Tuesday I was busy most of the day getting tours, going to talks and the like. Tuesday afternoon was spent registering.... all of it.
     The registration system here is kind of funny... before class starts you indicate online which modules you would like to take. This gives the school an idea about how many people want each course. However, this does not mean you are registered in the course. To actually become registered you have to pick up this red form from your department with all your personal details on it. Then again to your department to pick up a bubble sheet to fill out your course selections on. Now... not all departments do bubble sheets, some of them just write the courses on the back of the first form.... ugh. After you have been to talk to all the departments you are taking courses from, and gotten their sign-off... it is back to your "parent" department for a stamp. Once that is all squared away, it is off to the finances department for another stamp. Luckily since I am on exchange and still paying fees to SFU, they only had to write "fees waived" and stamp my form. This, however, did not stop me from waiting in line for 30 min for them to do so. ugh. Then... finally off to the last line... the registration line. This is where it really started to suck.... I was in that line for about an hour and 40 min.... inching forward. Now, you can't leave the line... no stretching ones legs... nothing.... just a *really* slow amble forward. You can't understand how boring it is to just stand around for that long. Anyway... finally finished registering after having stood there forever and went home and died! ugh.
     The rest of the week went alright... mostly shopping and attending seminars on how to not die here... and generally get around. Friday afternoon / evening was spent socializing with the local CompSoc (the equivalent of the CSSS) They seem like a good group of guys (and girl). They have a similar structure to us, except there are only 3 exec.. President, Secretary and Treasurer. For more information... their website is: http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/compsoc/index.html.
     The rest of the weekend was spent without Internet... The DHCP server went down some time on Saturday morning... and didn't come back up until the wee hours of Monday. So spent the weekend shopping down town, playing pool, and watching firefly. I managed to watch the whole series over the weekend. This included the last episode which I had mysteriously not seen before. I had forgotten how good a series that was, and can't wait for the movie to come out. I think that is all for now... I will blog the last 2 days soon....

Cheers,
Andy