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In response to the very sad news of the deteriorating health of the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, I would like to express my hope that this great leader makes a recovery.

I would like to offer this prayer:

Almighty, Master of the Universe,
my G-d and the G-d of my forefathers:

May it be Your Will that You speedily send
a complete recovery from Heaven,
a healing of the body and a
healing of the spirit to:

Ariel Sharon
the son of
The State of Israel

amongst all of the sick of
the Children of Israel.

As many people may know, I am a big fan of quotes and proverbs. I wish I had the memory to remember them all!!

What I am planning on doing from now on, is to have a quote or proverb that reflects what I am thinking about when I am writing my latest post. I don’t know how it will pan out, but it’s certainly something different.

So, let’s start off this with the following:

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; its when you had everything to do, and you’ve done it.
- Margaret Thatcher

I was thinking today “I’m always bloody busy!!” I’m working on a project at the minute, for my Student Representative role. Last term there were severe issues with the group work that we had to do in up to four out of the six modules that we had. Both students and teaching staff have realised that there is were major short-falls in the modules that required us to work in groups. The plan is that the teachers are meeting to discuss what they think should be done to enhance the group work and they have asked me to gather student opinion and feed it back to them. I have done this in the form of a questionairre and, can honestly say that I am really happy with the reply ratio that I am getting so far. To be honest, I really didn’t have much faith that I would get many replies, but I have been proved wrong, which is great. Now, I have to collate all of the responses from a potential 60 or so students and present those results, with ideas on how everything can be improved. On the back of this, I am also organising a surgery that I will be holding to gather more opinion on group work and to offer advice to those that are struggling with it.

On top of all of this, I am also revising for my upcoming exams, organising a multi-cultural event for the Students’ Union, sorting out my publicity for the upcoming Students’ Union elections, still trying to find a job, have a social life, sleep, eat and start getting more active (going for walks, going to the gym).

My life is always jam packed and I couldn’t be happier, because at the end of each day, when I lay my head down for bed, I can say to myself “Martyn, today you’ve achieved everything that you needed to”.

So, yesterday I promised you an insight into the goings on surrounding my housemates over the Winter Vacation.

To say that I am expecting World War 3 when they all return is an understatement!!

To give a little background, on the night of Friday 9th December, my housemates put up their Chrismas decorations around the house. Now, as most of you are probablt aware, I do not celebrate Christmas, but owing to the fact that I have the utmost respect for other peoples’ religions and beliefs, I was happy to see the decorations go up and for my housemates to enjoy themselves. There was one slight problem, were the decorations going to stay up whilst everybody (bar Jon and I) had gone home? I got my answer from a certain housemate:

hi…..me, jo, ‘lots, jon n sean talked about the decorations tonight, and have decided to take down the xmas tree in the corner, the stars hanging from the ceiling, the snowflakes and clean the fake snow off the windows, but we want the paper chains and lights left up at least until zoes party when everyone gets back…..does that sound reasonable?

Yes, that sounded reasonable, so that was the end to it……or so I thought.

Everybody then left to go home for Christmas, they went to places afar. There was one slight problem, nothing had been done that was promised. Not one thing. Now, seeing as it would upset many people and we all wanted to give Zoe a nice party, I decided to not take anything down even if, in my opinion, I was well within my rights to. So off I toddled to be with my Dad for a couple of days (see last post) and, on my return found that all of the decorations had been taken down. “Damn”, I thought “they’ll all think that it was me.” I promptly got to the bottom of it and found out that it was Jon that had done the deed. You can read about the whole escapade in Jon’s blog where you will also see a few more issues that have arrisen such as bottles being taken away by the two of us. Also, not mentioned is that some chalk grafitti has been cleaned off of a notice board by another housemate.

Silly situation, I know. It has now culminated in a certain housemate getting all angry over it and acting like a murder has been commited. She spoke with me briefly on MSN and was far too impatient to await a response so just blocked me. I sent her an e-mail, breaking down all her comments and giving her a feasible argument for each one, but finished the e-mail defemating her character and asking her to reflect on everything that had been said. The e-mail was sent to five other members of the house.

Last I heard, she had been crying all day after reading it and has not replied to me. I look forward to her replying so that we can get this silly situation behind us.

On a closing note, I went to the gym this evening with another housemate. I had a great time and it felt really good to get my body moving again after years of being stagnant.