Today I discovered why I am studying Physics and not one of those other arty subjects. "Website design and programming" is such an innocent sounding title, isn't it? But in reality it belongs in one of those bad nightmares that only really mad people would ever consider entering.

The übungen today consisted of us (Geir and myself) along with the rest of the class, looking at two posters put up on the wall of one of the rooms in the ZDV and nodding our heads approvingly at what supposedly was a good layout plan, or shaking our heads at the so called poor thought that had gone into the navigation of them (hold on. navigation of a poster?? what are they on about?? is there some hyperlink to a fifth dimension that I missed??).
But that was not all. Oh no. The second half of the lesson consisted of us getting some cut out pictures from magazines, sticking them on a piece of paper (reminding anyone of primary school yet), showing where text should be, and calling it a masterpiece in webdesign. Then they were all put up on the wall in place of the two previous posters, and the same umming and ahhing was done all over again for 30 minutes.
Our suspicions should have first been arised when we visited the website for this course. It is an excellent example of how NOT to build a site.

Anyway, that's the reason we're not studying art design. It requires thinking !

A couple of cool new features have been added to this site.
Firstly, if you click on "Contact : Email" in the navigation bar, yuo will be taken to a page that allows you to send me an email, also allowing you to disclose your contact details.
Secondly, you can now send an email to the address cited on the "Email" page, and whatever you put in the header will be sent by SMS to my phone - ideal if you need to contact me urgently.

Well, I am coming to the end of another day at work. Slowly getting back to a normal time schedule. Should be going off to Wiesbaden (about 20kms away from here) for the first time tomorrow !!

I had another thought today. Yes, really. I have come to the conclusion that despite the amount of money every student pays to the public transport sytem here, the buses never seem to have enough room for you, especially when you are already running late for class. I hope they send round a questionnaire about the service sometime...

Anyway, I am starting to feel the effects of not sleeping now, so I will have to get back to this over the weekend, or monday.

Update ! Update !

All the photos (inclusive those from the carnival in Mainz, and the dressing up that happened around this time) are now fixed and so will enlarge when you click on them.
These photos can be found under the heading "Photos : Others" in the navigation bar to the left of the page.

As many of you might have noticed, there has been a bit of a change of my accent in spanish recently. The reason for this would be the arrival of Marilo's boyfriend from spain, calling himself july (sorry, Julio). In fact, after being here only a few weeks he's managed to become part of the family of Mainz (although, this might have been helped by his bringing of aperitives from Spain, or from his washing-up he does every night after we have all eaten).

Anyway, this Julio celebrated his birthday yesterday. And you want to know what he did? He gave up smoking. Well, nearly. He will be leaving back for spain on sunday, so we hope that he's had a good time with us all, and maybe misses us a little ???

So, I'm going to be working again tonight, which means there's got to be a party somewhere for me to miss. Who knows?

If anyone would like any changes/has any questions about this site, please send an email to the adress provided under the heading "Contact : Email" and I'll see if I can incorporate it into my site.

Signing off for now

This entry will have to be short, as I have to go and eat. However a longer one should appear later today with more of the usual.

If you didn't get an email from me telling you of the new updates to this site, it's because you're not on the list. To get on the list, send an email with the the subject line "subscribe" to the following address: marcus.lloyd@gmx.net.

The new photos can be found under the "Places" link in the bar on the left hand side of the page. There you will see my trip to spain, plus the photos of the places we've visited in germany over the last couple of weeks.

Happy hunting.

Just thought you might like to know that the tiredness is slowly catching up on me.

This hasn't stopped me managing to visit Geir's website and to find out that he now has tickets to see Rammstein in concert sometime soon.

My timetable will be put up here sometime this week, along with the other photos that I am presently in the process of scanning.

If you have any suggestions for the website, what should be included etc, don't hesitate to send me an email at marcus.lloyd@gmx.net.

Well, better get on with something else now, signing off for the weekend.

OK, now I'm getting mad. Haven't received any emails from anyone except a couple of friends back in birmingham. And to think that I'm slaving away trying to get this site up and running so you can all see the photos.

That'S it, I'm going to ignore all the people here in Mainz and see what the reaction is like. I mean, if I send an SMS, the least they can do is respond, no?

Well, how about this then - see a picture of Jordi and Luca like never before, here!!

Working again tonight, so can't go to Fatima's birthday party. Always the same - I work, everyone else parties.

Well, spanish party last night. Met up with most people that I hadn't seen since coming back this semester.

Am wondering why no-one is writing in the guestbook any more. It is working you know !!

In case you haven't noticed, some of the things on this website that I've changed are: the languages are now set up, and there are archives of all the diary entries previously written.


Bye for now.

First of all I would like to apologise to all of you who can't live without your daily intake of my babbling in this diary. I have unfortunately (and surprisingly for most of you) been very busy of late.
As I spent 4 weeks off work (on holiday) I am having to do about 4 shifts a week to catch up on the hours that I missed. Also, we've had visitors from spain coming to see Mavi, Marilo, and Jordi, so we've been going out and about showing them germany in a nutshell.

Another thing you might notice is that not all the links are working properly yet. This is currently being rectified, and should be up to it's proper standard within this week.

As for more photos, everything from my holiday in spain has been developed, it is just awaiting to be scanned in, as are any other photos taken since march. A bit of pacience and everything should be "fix und fertig" very soon.

In the meantime, I would like you to glance your eyes across Geir's site (also found in the navigation bar to the left), and read his stories and adventures. But I warn you, you have to possess a sense of humour :)

Well, off to update the site, and await the arrival of the other erasmusians (Gloria and Ethel).

Seeing as I haven't slept in about 40 hours, I'm going to keep this short.

I am at present at a stage of major renovation of this website, so it is possible that during the next couple of days not everything will work correctly (or at all).
Please be patient, as it will be worth the wait.

ml.

Sunburnt I return to Mainz to start the second semester here. How I wish I was still in Spain. As you might guess by the time of this entry, I am on another nightshift at work. However, as there is a lot of things to do to get this website spick-and-span I will cut short at this point and leave the news for another time.
Signing off for now.

Well, that's another day over with. I finished my shift at 7am and am now in the ZDV computer rooms updating my webpage whilst waiting for the personnel department to open so I can sign my new contract.

You will have noticed that the web-address has now been changed. This was due to me exceeding the permitted space on my student account, so I am now in charge of the organisation calling itself "erasmus". The old address will work, it will just forward you on to the new address, which is http://www.uni-mainz.de/Organisationen/erasmus.

Have added links to some of the photos I've put up - namely the striptease, luca's present, and birmingham.

Jordi and I fly off to Valencia this evening, so if I don't have time to write any more today it's because I still haven't started packing !!!

Best set off to sign my contract...

A very short goodbye, as no-one seems to be interested in me anymore (I haven't received an email from anyone I know for about 3 days).

I am slowly recovering (enough to be able to eat Tortilla made by Jordi) and so hope to be well again in time for the Falles.

But, as I said before, no-one cares, so I'm not going to write any more :(

A big sorry to all my readers (especially as we seem to have reached the big 500) for not being able to write over the last few days. I do have a good excuse however. I have been really ill, not being able to eat, drink, or speak (to many of my friends delight).

Taking all sort of funny coloured tablets, ones with different flavours, and all variants of the ...caine family. But to no avail. I am now consoling myself with the fact that I am stuck in bed all day with only a soft animal for company. Unfortunately it doesn't speak back to me - very often.

Also, as I have been having time for dreaming (about 10 different dreams a night), I thought I might start up a page for people to put their dreams on. I know there are lots of weird and wonderful ones that should be explained, so tell me what you think and I'll set it up if there is enough interest (ie at least one person).

Well better get off to bed, Good night.

OK, the weather changes a bit here, I admit that I forgot to tell Jordi that, but it's generally a lot better than Mainz. So all of you claiming that we're here freezing - you're wrong !

We are making tortillas for the people we are living with now, so will have to go to buy the potatoes and eggs.

Have a good holiday.

Update from good 'ol England.
Arrived here to find sandbags up against the doors of the houses nearby, to protect them from the floods. Most open land/fields/woodland are now barred from entry because of the foot and mouth disease, and the train crashes keep happening, and there was a bomb in london outside the BBC offices. So, all in all, a very good time to come back to my country.

Never mind, I'm here safe and well (except my throat sort of hurts). Am going to show Jordi the delights of Birmingham tonight (no, not "Legs-11"). However, as we are both very hungry now, and need to find some people, I will have to leave you and update tomorrow.

Hope everything's well with the rest of the Mainz crew, and keep in touch.

Well, alas, everyone is disappearing. Ethel and Gonzalo have started their interrailing (if they ever catch the train, that is), Jordi and I fly to England this afternoon (good riddence, I hear you say), on thursday Gloria, Pili, Mavi and any other people I've forgotten about are leaving as well. Only Luca will be left here in Mainz. Alone. So, if you have any spare time, and the inclination, send him some SMSs or give him a ring.

And if anyone wants me to give them a ring, send your messages, and once I've read them I will be able to phone you from England (it's a bit better than sending an email that says "I'm in England").

Well, for those of you I won't see in Spain these holidays, have fun wherever you may be, and I'll see you in April when I return. For those of you in Valencia, watch out, I'm coming to visit all of you !!!

Signing off from Mainz until April (will sign on from the UK as well, probably).

Tschüß !!!

Suddenly realised I haven't written anything in my diary throughout my time at work today.

Luca had his birthday, whereby he cooked us an excellent meal.

We are slowly getting all the photos back from the carnival time (they should be up on this site on monday).

My email message to Radio 1 was read out at 6.10 this morning (0510 GMT) by Vicky. Definitely worthwhile.

New pictures are up on the site (need shrinking a bit first, though - I'll do that later): Lad's night in, Dressup, Luca's birthday, and my haircut.

Two more days to go until I'm in my homeland once again. Yippeeeeeee !!!!!

3-0
Need I say more?

He's alive !

Well, at least someone is sending an email from his address. Yep, Geir is alive and well, apparently. However, I have yet to hear his excuse for not writing sooner or updating his website.

Nothing much to say really, so I'll leave it until tomorrow.

Short but sweet.

Now I can at last update my log. I had written a huge entry, which, even if I say so myself, was the best and funniest yet. However due to problems with the Blogger, it got deleted, never to be seen again. So I have decided I am going to go and build an anti-computer device to stop all the errors and mistakes that they bring into my life.

Still no sign of Geir yet. I have already checked that there have been no airplane crashes between Germany and Iceland, and I was going to write an email to the icelandic police, except that I don't know how to call for help in icelandic (although I hope that Geir does). Perhaps the weather is so cold there that the electrons can no longer flow through the cables to power his computer. Maybe he's using potato power, but as he hasn't managed to go shopping for a while he doesn't have enough potatoes to allow him to access the internet. Maybe I'll send him a vegetable to his address so that he can once again get online. Well, if anyone does hear from him or sees him anywhere, please tell me so that I can call off the search party. I don't know how he'll survive in Yemen if he get's lost on his way home ! As long as he doesn't swap Laurent for a camel (you should be able to get at least 4 camels and a sack of corn for a specimen like laurent...).

Helau !!!
Yes it's the time of year when people start acting like they've got mad cow's disease and dressing up funny and playing music in the streets. Yep, it's Fasching at the moment, meaning that all along the Rhine there are parties going on non-stop for about 4 days. On sunday we went into town and saw all the floats and lots of people marching through the streets in what seems to have been the prelude to "Rosenmontag". The day also happened to be the 24th birthday of Jordi, and yes, I was working again (but this time only in the afternoon). Luckily at work we've got speakers connected to the computer now, so I logged onto the BBC Radio 1 website and listened to the radio in realtime. I was in such a euphoria of being able to listen to some great music for once that I didn't bat an eyelid when I received a phonecall asking me if the three witches of Hechtsheim could dress up as little girls, neither when they suggested that I did as well. Only when I finally came home to find Luca and Jordi desperately trying to get their skirts on straight did the reality of it all hit me. Before I had time to unpack my bag I was cornered into my room where I was told what I had to wear that night. It didn't stop there. Oh no. One thing about girls, they always seem to have an excess of makeup that they are just waiting to be able to put on a guy. And now they had three locked up in a room. Needless to say, when we emerged into the street we caused quite a stir. In fact, what with the walking and swinging of handbags we became the highlight of many people's nights. When we happened across a band dressed up as mexicans, we knew what to do. As we were singing and dancing mexican songs in front of them they started to play and we ended up making a procession down the small streets with people coming out of pubs to have a look at us all. What a night. Monday saw the arrival of about 600,000 people on the streets, and the carnival was happening for real. Only one word can sufficiently describe what it was like - packed.

Due to a certain person's opinion that their country did not appear as a prominent part of the CIA factbook of Spain, I have been forced/persuaded to link to a page about Tenerife as well. I hope that keeps them happy.

I can't remember if there was anything else I wanted to say last time, but if I remember I'll try and update this site.

Speak to you soon