Dunhill Links

The Dunhill Links Golf Tournament is in town and it always creates a bit of a buzz.  Its a pro-am tournament across St Andrews, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie and it attracts a mix of some of Europe's top golfers and celeberities, the latter including Bill Murray, Hugh Grant and Shane Warne.  There are always many tales of the celebs being spotted in pubs and house parties - some time ago Bill Murray was at a house party doing the washing up whilst Sam Torrance had a putting competition with students in the living room.  I vaguely remember seeing Michael Vaughan in Ma Bells in first year on a hockey social the year they had won the ashes - he was being followed by an entourage of people congratulating him for beating the Aussies.  The golf starts on Thursday with practice rounds today and tomorrow.  I have hockey all weekend so will probably miss the exciting stuff but will no doubt pop down and try and watch some good golf.

In other news I attended my core module lecture this morning - Economic Analysis which looks like it'll be interesting, the first few weeks are going to spent on game theory so I am reasonably enthusiastic about that.  I attended environmental economics yesterday but found it a bit boring so went along to industrial economics instead today and it was far more interesting so I will probably stick with that unless the monetary policy lecture on Monday is outstandingly good.  I think this year I am going to make very rough and untidy scribbles during the lecture and then try and write up the notes formally in the time following the lecture.  This way I don't feel any pressure to make neat notes during the lecture and also I am continuously learning rather than just cramming at the end of term and for exams.  

I have 5000 pens arriving either tomorrow or Thursday from China which makes me feel rather nervous as I have no idea what to do with them and recently the eBay market for syringe pens has become a bit saturated.  I am also having some trouble with a few eBayers who have bought things but don't reply to email and are generally annoying and also have been forced to start using bubble wrap on all parcels because of some iffy feedbacks.  Apparently as a result of my 2 neutral feedbacks I am now in danger of losing my ability to sell on eBay?! A bit random and it enrages me somewhat - there was a time when negative feedback was a problem but now neutral too!  Anyhow I have sent them an email explaining I think it is ridiculous that someone with 100% feedback over 5 years with 1400+ positives and detailed seller ratings of 4.9/5.0 can be threatened with their account being suspended because Royal Mail seem intent on jumping on my items.  So thats that.

This afternoon after class I pottered down and took some photos at the West End of town around the links and also bought the fruit for the juicer that should last the week.  I am really enjoying buying fruit and veg from the local greengrocer around the corner.  The general consensus in St Andrews is that Tesco is slow, inefficient and overpriced so I am more than happy to buy the weekly juice fruit from the greengrocers.  For £9.22 we got 20 x oranges, 10 x apples, 3 x limes, pineapple, 2 x lemons and 6 x carrots which isn't too shabby.  That should last a week but will probably need to get a few more things as the week goes on.  Tonight I will either a) go to table tennis but maybe not as it will be packed b) write up the days notes c) go out or d) none of the above.  Have attached a few photos from this evening, took them around 5pm when it started to clear.  The clouds were doing some crazy things.

Monday Training

For the third year running it looks as though we will be having a hockey training session on Monday morning at 7am.  It is a mixed blessing but ultimately I think it is beneficial for many reasons as a) it forces one to go to bed early on Sunday b) it forces one to wake up on Monday morning and not sleep past lectures c) it gets you doing physical exercise when you would otherwise be sleeping d) it always a good social occasion going for breakfast afterwards.  When my alarm went off at 6am today I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to get up and play with a stick and ball in the dark but once you are at the pitch and awake you realise it is a good use of time.

The weekend was really good fun - Saturday was the sports fayre when you can sign up to sports clubs and they all have a stall.  For some reason it has been moved from its old location of the union in town to the sports centre some distance out of town.  I feel as though it is a terrible move by the powerstobe as the distance to walk out of town will mean fewer people attending the fayre and thus fewer members signing up.  Secondly there is a cash machine outside the union in town whereas the nearest cash machine to the sports centre is at least a fifteen minute walk.  Quite often people will come and sign up a club and then when asked to pay their membership ask where the nearest cash point is (fresher's usually don't know).  When the fayre was in the union a good percentage of people would go to the cash point and return with their membership.  This year that was not an option.  The effect, having talked to the hockey club and a few others was a far fewer number of both unpaid signed up members and also fully paid up members.  So I think thats a bit disappointing for the AU clubs.

We then had our first game of the season in the PM and won 4-1 which was fairly decent.  It was an amusing game with 3 yellow cards for us and none for the opposition but some good hockey and a small crowd watching which always make one play slightly better.  The evening was dinner at someones house where the general consensus was to eat some lovely lasagne and then get drunk playing some very very aggressive drinking games with playing cards and die (not the 9 VKs game).  After that everyone sort of went to various places and I vaguely remember being in a few pubs and houses before eating a pot noodle and passing out fully clothed at 3am.  Job done.  As a result Sunday was a complete write off and spent most of the morning in bed actually playing some poker as have been itching to play some headsup poker.  It was pretty boring so I gave up after a while.  Went to the Raisin for a free beer and a burger but they had none of the actual burgers there so had to have the beer, chips and empty roll which was a bit disappointing.  Proceeded to spend most of the afternoon playing Mario Kart with friends and generally feeling rough.  Went to a friends' for a brilliant Toad in the Hole and passed out in bed at 9pm.

The weekend was very slow on eBay for me which was a bit annoying, I have been spending quite a lot of time looking at my web statistics for my shop and I can't really find a pattern or any sort of correlation to explain why its fluctuating so much.  On the 23rd September I had over 200 pages views whereas yesterday (Sundays are normally the busiest day on eBay) only had 50 or so.  I have 5000 syringe pens arriving sometime this week that have just docked on a ship into Felistowe and are being cleared through customs at the moment.  I have quite a lot of money invested in them which is fairly worrying as well as a lot of money invested in cereal and other junk.  I vaguely remember in second year that the run up to Christmas is a brilliant time to be running a small eBay enterprise and I am sort of counting on selling a lot of things during October/November and will probably offer free giftwrapping on all items.

There is a shop for rent on Bell Street in St Andrews and for some time I have been talking to people about what sort of business they would open in St Andrews if they were given unlimited funds and expertise.  St Andrews seems to sort of have everything in some capacity or another.  On Saturday I spent a long time walking around town looking for somewhere to try and get a good healthy meal, i.e salad.  Whilst St Andrews has more pubs per square foot than any other town in Britain and most of these serve food, the cuisine in each of them is pretty much identical and very very mediocre (processed chicken, prebought burgers, frozen pizzas).  Putting this with the fact there is only one place in town to get a bagel (which are expensive and slow), I think I could see a gap for a healthy eatery (salads, soups, fruits) that sells good bagels too.  I am very surprised that bagels have not taken off more in St As and have thought for some time there is definitely a gap in the market for a Bagel Factory esq place somewhere.  

I have just had my first lecture of fourth year where we called "old hands" and wished "enjoy your final year" which was all rather depressing.  I am still unsure about my environmental economics module so am going to attend the lectures for 2 other modules to see what they are like - industrial economics and monetary policy.  The latter I am not too sure about as I struggled with inflation bias/discretion/policy rules during the last semester and only really managed to blag the exam question on it by doing some differentiation so not too confident about doing an entire module devoted to it.  Industrial economics sounds far more interesting as there is quite an emphasis in game theory which I really enjoy because of its application to poker and other such games.  I was also surprised to hear that we should seriously doing a dissertation as I have given it no thought and dismissed it sometime ago.  There is a talk regarding it on Wednesday morning that I will attend if I wake up in time.  

I have class from 2pm - 6pm today because of attending all the extra modules and am going to spend the next couple of hours doing some jobs and packaging cereal for despatch.  I have a few customer returns to deal with too.  There is a £1 rebuy poker tournament tonight at the Poker Society but I'm not sure if I will go because of class going on so late.  I did go to the Societies fayre yesterday which is a brilliant occasion - every year there are more and more societies which is brilliant.  Unfortunately I was too hungover to risk going up to the top floor so didn't manage to sign up to anything...

Was meaning to take some photos last night at dusk because the light was perfect but watched the British Golf Masters playoff instead.  Might try tonight as would like to put some photos of St Andrews here so can see it going through the seasons.

J

Scottish Cricket

Today saw a new event in St Andrews - 20:20 cricket tournament consisting of 8 team put on by the university cricket club.  It was a really well run and organised event with what looked a lot of hard work having been put into it over the summer.  The hockey club put in a team as they have some reasonable cricketers but got a difficult draw playing joint favourites Edinburgh University in the first round.  A middle order collapse left them with only 118 on the board to defend.  For the first few overs it looked as though they could cause an upset; Edinburgh were 37-2 or so after 8 overs but Edinburgh managed to regain some momentum after a few dropped catches and won with a few overs to spare.  I pottered down and watched after marticulation and advising and was really impressed with the standard of cricket and the event in general.  The hope is for it to become a yearly event growing each year and it would appear to have got off to an excellent start.  

Post cricket I had some lunch and my new favourite juice (generally my favourite changes each 2 days) which happens to be pineapple, orange, lime and apple.  A few friends joined us for lunch and juice and were fairly impressed with the juicer - we bought this juicer off eBay and it really is one of the greatest things I have ever bought.  Today for example we threw in 5 oranges, a pineapple, 5 apples and a lime to form about a litre of juice in approximately 1 minutes.  Some of the more healthy juices aren't as nice; celery, carrot, broccoli, beetrot etc are all ingredients in some of the Detox juices and we tend to stay clear of those for the moment.  Ginger/Lemon works wonders for hangovers however...

We had another brief hockey session today and then I packaged some cereal for despatch tomorrow.  I have been receiving a few complaints regarding my packaging as some of the cereal seems to be arriving damaged and it leaves me in a bit of a quandry.  At the moment I offer free P&P on almost all of my items and am able to offer this because I do not use too much excessive packaging like so many sellers (bubble wrap etc).  Whilst this seems hard to belive, a lot of my parcels would increase in weight if I added bubble wrap to a point whereby they would rise above the weight limit for that specific postage category.  For example I sell 6 boxes for £6.99 including free P&P.  This weighs in at about 230g with my existing packaging method of brown paper and parcel tape.  Adding bubble wrap would increase the weight >250g so P&P would rise from £1.24 to £1.68.  Only a £0.44 rise you may say but that is an extra 6% or so less profit margin.  I need to try and decide whether there is enough of a problem to warrant the introduction of bubble wrap.  It isn't feasisble to pass this higher cost onto consumers because the price of my goods would become uncompetitive - this is a very price sensitive market and small rises in prices tend to drive consumers away, i.e price elastic.  So far I have only had 2 complaints so will wait and see.

Advising and matriculation was fairly straightforward.  I am always very impressed with the efficiency of the marticulation process - it seems to improve each year.  My only slight frustration was at my matriculation card stage where it was deemed my three year old card would no longer swipe correctly.  Now this card has a lot of history.  It has been in my wallet since I first received it in September 2005 and has followed me on various journeys across countries and continents.  I was told that I would be issued with a new one but would not be allowed to keep my old one! Outrage! So I asked if they could snap in half and allow me to keep it in that state as a memento, the answer was no.  Begrudgingly they allowed me to keep one half of it but one half only.  A bit frustrating.

We have hockey tomorrow so I usually stay in the night before, something I have tended to do since I was at school.  Playing tired or hungover isn't really much fun and with it being the start of a new season it makes sense.  

I was reading an interesting article in a poker blog today about the effect that the credit crunch is having on professional poker players.  Apparently there are far fewer "fish" or softer players playing online poker such that there is less money to go around.  I suppose in some respects it is the same as the effect it is having on luxury goods such as holidays/flights.  Life as a professional poker player seems to be becoming tougher and tougher with the anti gambling legislation in the US and now the economic issues around the world.    

I noticed today that the price of my bacon roll in Janettas has risen from £1.25 ro £1.35.  It had been at £1.25 for all of 2nd and 3rd year so I suppose a rise was due.  I genuinely wonder if that increase is as a result of rising raw costs (bread/bacon/butter) or more variable costs (rent/council tax).  I'm not sure yet if the increase will force me to no longer buy one a day.  I shall pass Janettas every morning on route to lectures, just as I did in 2nd year, so it would seem probable.

The last piece of news is that St Andrews has achieved Sunday Times Good University ranking 5th which is the highest ever for a Scottish University.  In my year of entry I believe it was around 11th so it is an excellent achievement and makes me really pleased to be here and happy with my decision to come to St Andrews (it was my sixth choice on my UCAS entry).  Link to article. 

Boring entry again today.

Thursday Mornings

Had a really good two days today and yesterday. It was the fresher's hockey trials yesterday afternoon which is always quite interesting to observe. The evening was our first Wednesday night social of the year and it was fairly fantastics. Most sports teams have their main social event of the week on Wednesday nights and the first one of the year is always quite a big event. Started at our main sponsor pub, The Raisin for a few cheap 4 pint pitchers and some drinking games to introduce the Fresher's to vingt-et-un etc. From there we moved to a small place near the R&A clubhouse called Chariots which is a hotel bar with an average of about 1 customer per night. 25 of us pitched up and bought a couple of bottles of spirits (1 Gin and 1 Vodka) for about £58 I think. A bit of Gin face followed (amusing) and then we crawled to Ma Bells for strawpedos.

I spent all night trying to convince someone to play a game with me - they pick a number on the dice and if their number comes up I buy them 4 pints else they buy me 1. Only one person took the bet and then didn't buy me the pint. So anyway we decided to play another game, odds/evens, loser buys 9 strawpedos (not sure why 9). I lost, good game, there goes £15. From Ma Bells we went to Drouthy's for a cheeky pint of Addlestons Cider (cloudy and strong) and then to the union. Lots of fun.

Today brought back many happy memories of Thursday mornings for the last 3 years of my life. Typically feeling massively hungover, I will usually wake up for the first time at about 5am, fully clothed (in first year Channel 5 cartoons would still be playing) with the lights still on. I go for some water and try and get back to sleep. Then reawake at about 9am, have more water and start watching TV shows on my laptop (usually The Apprentice/Entourage/Prison Break/Anything I can find). This lasts until about midday when I begin to get hungry and will make a move into town for some sort of substance that I think I can keep down, today was a smoked salmon and scrambled egg bagel; adventurous. Packaged a few boxes of ceral (sold in the eBay shop, will discuss more at a later date) and come back home about 1pm. Back to bed for an hour or so, drank some juice/coffee and woke about 3pm. Go to Thursday evening hockey, play averagely, feel like shit but enjoy reminiscing about the night before with certain characters. During term I usually try and squeeze in a couple of lectures which I attend with excellent intentions but will sit there and doze/worry about being sick, take very few notes and set countdown timers for every five minutes so I know how long is left. But yes, Wednesday nights/Thursday mornings have been a massive and integral part of my time here.

Tomorrow I am due to advise and marticulate for my fourth and final year. I have chosen my modules for this term - two compulsory ones and my only option is Environmental Economics which I think sounds quite intersting and very current affairs. I am looking forward to getting stuck back into some economics having been in St Andrews doing very little for almost two weeks now. It will be good to get some routine back. I also have to start thinking about what I am going to do post St Andrews and at the moment it looks like a MPhil or Masters in Economics with a possibility of a PHD. I need to do some research into possible universities and also funding options but staying in education really appeals to me as a) I love economics and would like to continue studying it to a higher level b) I don't think there will be many jobs available this time next year because of the current economic climate c) I wouldn't know what jobs to apply before as have no idea what to do. Will discuss further at later date.

Now going to a friends for a cup of tea. One of the great things about St Andrews is you are usually never more than a 10 minute walk from a friends house/flat. The longest distance I could think of is probably DRA apartments to Albany Park which would probably take 25minutes at a good pace. 90% of the time it is less than 10minutes. Obviously it is a double edges sword because it means you are likely to see someone you know when you want to pop out to Tesco and are in a hurry, but to be honest it is great and people that criticise it will thoroughly miss it when they leave and then have to travel 300 miles to see their best friend.

Beginning

As I enter my fourth and final year as anUndergraduate in St Andrews, one of the goals I have set myself is to try and make the most of the place I am in and to keep track of how I spend my last months.  My first three years have flown by at an alarmingly high pace and so far I have kept little record of how that time has been spent.  

The purpose of this blog is to allow me to keep track of the ups and downs of my last year in this fantastic little university town such that I can look back on it in years to come but also to provide an insight to prospective students/existing students/ex students and anyone who may have an interest in either the University of St Andrews or the town of St Andrews.  

We are currently halfway through "pre-sessional week"/fresher's week which sees new and old students returning to university.  I am finding it fairly boring being a fourth year and am lacking the energy I once had to go and drink oneself into a whole simply for the sheer point of it.  Instead I have been pottering around town doing jobs and trying to get fit for the upcoming sporting season through a small amount of exercise and drinking plently of juice made through our Phillips Aluminium Juicer.

Yesterday I marked the beginning of the year with one of St Andrews' more unknown jems.  Traditionally a fishing town, one can still see the lobster and crab traps at the harbour and if you go down early enough can see the fishermen bringing in their catch in the morning.  For a few pounds you can buy a lobster or some crab from the fishermen and at a price that is far far cheaper than were you to buy it in restaurant/supermarket/fishmongers.  Having done this a few times last year and eaten the lobster simply boiled, I have since had the idea to try and make a Lobster Thermidor.        

So feeling bored and adventurous, I boiled the lobster, dared to slice it vertically in half and removed the meat as per Rick Steins' instructions in his brilliant seafood cookbook.  From there I made a bechamel with some spring onions and mustard powder, waited for it to thicken and added the chopped lobster meat.  Finally placed all the above into the empty shell, topped with some parmesan and some dodgy breadcrumbs and grilled for a few minutes.  Ate with a new potatoe and some almost mouldy bread.  The result was surprisingly okay and tasted very nice although the cheese/spring onion overwhelmed the lobster a bit which was slightly disappointing but nonetheless quite a fun little mission for the day!  Pictures are attached of the cooking process.

Today was a fairly boring day - stayed in waiting for packages all morning and spent the afternoon doing jobs around town.  Went for a fun along the Fife Coastal Path up towards St Andrews Bay hotel which is very impressive scenery along the cliffs on the way there and then with fantastic views on the way back to St Andrews.  Was going to take my camera but forgot - there are some great photo opportunities up along the coastal path and intend to pop up there sometime soon with my cheap camera.  

Quite a boring first day entry.