No Hasta La Vista!

Saturday today. Decided to do some blogging before i start my work. it's important not to say hasta la vista! i thought it meant goodbye, or see you later... well i'm not wrong... but i just found out to my immense horror that it means goodbye.. forever; or see you later.. in your next life... or something like that. *gasp!* don't learn the wrong thing from me dad! hahaha. sorry teach you wrong spanish. muahaha. no wonder the governator said "hasta la vista baby" to that liquid metal guy in T2.

oh well. that's that for my mistake. haha.

now for updates! i went gliding last weekend. Being THE most expensive activity i signed up for this academic year, it's something that i had to go soon becos i wouldn't want that £35 membership to go to waste. But the bad thing about gliding is that they meet at 7.30 am near school. so i'ld hafta wake up at 6 to prepare, pack lunch and go out by 7.15am.

At 7.30 we boarded a minibus which cost £8 return! a bus trip that took an hour plus or 2. Sleeping through the 1 hour plus bus ride, we reached Lasham airfield. It was a mildly cloudy morning which was mightily cold. The temperature was alreay cold enough, but there was also a huge amount of wind, which probably brought the temperature down by another few degrees. Brr.

Gliding is basically flying without an engine. but anyway to say "All that we are just missing the engine." is like quite a big thing. What is an aircraft without a powerplant? I learnt last year that with a sufficiently powerful engine, we can make a brick fly. But to be brutally honest, we don't need an engine to see a brick fly. just piss someone off really bad. Anyway, here are some pictures...


Imperial College Gliding Club's own glider. You see that red ninja turtle thing on his back? that his parachute. i have one too! it's so amazingly advanced. if i have to bail out of the aircraft, i have to manually open the window, manually release the window, let it drop, manually release the seat beltsssssssssss, manually climb over the edge, kick away from the the glider, manually open my parachute, and pray. All these while the plane is plummetting towards the groud. and you have mabbe... 20 seconds to do it? and to round it off, my safety brief on "ejection procedures" took *drumroll* less time then i took to learn how get into the seat. great.


In the cockpit with Shaun the instructor. I had to close the cockpit cover(??) window(??) i dunno cos it was reeeeeeeeeally cold.


view on the way up with the cockpit. so pro right, so many gauges. and the best thing is i don't know how to read any of those.


high performance glider. i'm not allowed to fly this cos it's too good.


Two gliders waiting to be launched by winch. There're two ways of launching the glider. One- aerotow, where a propellor plane will pull the glider up. Two- winch. where a wire will pull you so fast you take off. takes off faster than a miltary fighter on an aircraft carrier. breathtaking. seriously.


Caught a picture of a glider just before leaving. It's a lovely day, a little cloudy at the start, but got more sunny as the day wore on. It was still really cold the whole day though, as you can probably see by the condensation on the cockpit.

The end of flying had this de-brief that we amateurs didn't need to attend. the guys entered a room to discuss whatevery they wanted to discuss for a really long time. We found out with dismay that this meeting was a big meeting that they conducted once every year. WHY WHEN I GO?! anyway they came out finally at 7 plus plus.. and we left. hungry like _____, cold as _____ (ran out of non-vulgar adjectives). yeah.

Learnt quite abit of how a glider flies, and how it stays aloft for long times, which is almost only possible in summer. It's call thermals. Thermals are a block of hot air rising, which would hit the glider and push it up. so gliding is about finding thermals and staying up. the sad truth of a lack of engine. heh.

Although it was a whole day of waiting for merely 20 plus minutes of airtime, it was an eye-opening experience. At least i made it through without puking. but i realised that my psychomotor needs work. i should play more football. my hand-eye coordination is good, but my leg-eye coordination needs work haha. further down ma, needs more time to send my nerve singnals down.

Work Work

Finally blogging again! hehe. tried doing it the other day, wanted to upload some photos but the internet refused to cooperate, loading pages up at a pathetic rate. So, i went to bed. wat a pig. in school now, just finished lab, waiting for fight mechanics lecture, and hopefully the lecturer turns up this time. cos he already flew us aeroplane on TWO 9 am lectures. so i woke up early for nothing. sigh.

long day today!!! 9-5. okok the electrical engineers will complain that they get it worse. but it's really been quite busy. 1 lab report every other week, plus that wind turbine project that we just finished yesterday... and i'm so lost in flight mechanics lectures and structures lectures. and i'm starting to get lost in spanish!!! had some listening exercises and i couldn't every hear wat movie that guy wanted to watch. sigh. even though i feel i've been working quite hard compared to last year, there's still lots of work to be done. maybe i shouldn't compare with last year, cos last year i did no work.

tmr's wednesday! wednesday = floorball!!! i'm so glad that my back is starting to get better and better. but i'm still only doing things at 30% - 50%. i don't wanna recur it again pushing myself. my priority is still to go skiing without a pain in the back. can't wait to ski either, but that would mean that i've gotta get past all the course works, lab reports, projects etc... haha. sigh. and they tell me year 2's not the worst year! it's year 3!!! save me.

not playing in notts games this year. i wanna go explore the town! even though i heard it's a big stretch of nothing. but at least it'll be better than last year. when i spent the whole day at the squash courts, eating some cold packed lunch, and only andrew and good ol' edwin to accompany me, and in the end getting nothing out of it. No visiting, no touring, missed the food fest... paying good money to win but not get anything. this time i just wanna go visit the place and enjoy myself.

oops! gtg for lecture! Hasta la vista babies.