It is coming to the end of half term. As most of the staffs are not around, I am able to clear some of my tasks, slowly. Every now and then, I get a few requests which I try to finish them off as soon as possible. At the end of the two weeks where my manager is away, I feel that I have achieved something even though most of the tasks which he handed over to me are still pending. Well, that something is a website which allows staffs to search student information, course information and view reports. Before I was handed the task to work on it, the website was pretty standard and a lot of duplications. I managed to simplify some of the links as well as making the pages more user-friendly. In addition, the information displayed is more useful and redundancy is kept to minimum. Now, I am just waiting for my manager to come back and give his opinion.

Yesterday, I took up the courage to format my Samsung Omnia. After a few months of using it, I thought formatting will improve its performance as well as giving me the opportunity to try out some new programs. I have gone back to the combination of SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 and SU2U instead of Wisbar Advance Desktop. Wisbar Advance Desktop is just not stable enough and I hate the idea of tap and hold to modify the desktop.

The clock changes last week. Mee and I were not aware of it and I sent Mee to work an hour early on Sunday. On the way, the street was very deserted. Upon reaching Mee’s workplace, we were surprised as it was still closed. I would have imagined that there were already customers in and out of the store. In the end, Mee was told by a colleague of hers, who was also waiting, that the clock had changed.

For the last few weeks, our house phone was not working. Mee and I tried to test it with another cable or another phone and it just did not work. In the end, we had to call Virgin Media support. One week later, the service engineer came and fixed it. He claimed that it was caused by a cable not being connected properly. Before he came, he actually text me to say that if I were to cancel the appointment, reply with a word ‘cancel’. I thought that was nice compared to the previous service engineer who came to connect our phone line. That guy was not on time and did not actually fix the problem properly.

Anyway, my view on Virgin Media has changed a little bit. Virgin Media website has also introduced an online backup storage for all of its users. I did not bother to use it because I just do not trust online backup storage at the moment. Eventually, I might use it because it is free anyway.

I received an email today about the LSAT prep. I am not quite sure what it is but the email was sent to all the staffs. Apparently, students can now do exam preparations over the internet. Some more reputable websites even offer online teaching and exam and it seems that the prices are competitive too.

It is Wednesday already and the time is flying. I thought the time would be slow without my manager around but I am really busy. Just yesterday, it took me one whole day just to write a SQL script and test the results. Today, as I was about to implement the script into reports and webpages, I found out that there are more things to be added into the script. In addition, I also had a meeting about some changes of the way the system works and that means more work for me.

At last, we booked a trip to Barcelona, Spain last night. Reading the hotel reviews was not a good experience. Sometimes, it may help to make decision faster but sometimes, it just gives you more headache as to which one to choose. I do not recall choosing a hotel to stay in Italy was that difficult. Anyway, we booked it already and we are just waiting for the day to come. At the end of the booking process, there was tons of advertisement as usual. This time round, we got to see life insurance leads advertisement as well as a £15 cash back voucher. That voucher was a tricky one as below the voucher, there was a line of words with tiny little font stating that there will be a £10 monthly fee in order to enjoy the promotions and cash back voucher offered. That was the most ridiculous offer I had ever seen but it will not be the last, I believe.

Even though Mee and I have been going to the gym for like 5 months now, it seems that my skin does not improve much. Hmm… I thought that the skin will get slightly better as you sweat throughout each session of exercise. Maybe it is just some irrelevant articles that I read before or maybe it is down to the food that I eat. On the other hand, most of my meals are home-cooked and Mee and I seldom eat out. Anyway, Mee helped to cleanse my face yesterday and applied some natural acne treatment stuffs. She reckoned that she will have to do it again tonight as my face is too ‘dirty’. I will just have to endure the pain when she applies pressures on my face in order to get rid of the ‘dirt’.

Every now and then, there will be some kind of weird and funny news happening in the UK. On the newspaper today, there is somewhat bizarre news where an illegal immigrant is allowed to stay in the UK because he has a cat. It was said that parting him and the cat will be a breach of human rights and I did not bother to carry on reading the rest of the news. It is a joke.

First day without my manager, the time files. I have several requests to go through but I am still concentrating on the more important tasks. As usual, most people just think that I have nothing to do and their requests are priority.