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.