Blue Chi’s

I booked my flight to travel back to Oman this upcoming Thursday. I have completed a very rough first draft for my dissertation and I decided I’ll review it and polish it up back home. I have to go back to office by the 1st of October and will be spending the whole of Ramadhan and Eid at home in Sohar. Packing was not as bad as I thought it would be, I’m carrying a whole separate suitcase just for books!

Reflecting back on my experience this year, it was surely different from the LLB, classes were so much more fun because I decided to share my opinion on every single thing we discussed the  IT law and IP law classes. I traveled to more places around the UK this year than the total of my previous four years! I also made friends with people from so many different places and did not just stick around with the Gulfies.

In preparation for my departure I printed a super awesome photo album which I’ll be taking with me home. Click on the image below to see the full version.

I’m also start playing with video. Check out the first video I made, it’s taken in the park next door:

I finished my exams last Friday, I just had two exams, my other two modules are assessed on essays only. The only remaining part of my degree is the dissertation, my topic is going to be on the impact of DRM on natural uses of copyright.

I do not have any major plans for summer, but I’m not going back home either. I will try to finish my disseration ASAP to go back home for good around the end of July/start of August. My leave from MOLA ends on the first of October, so hopefully I can spend August and September at home with my family if everything goes according to plan.

I am not doing any work at all this week though, just trying to enjoy the weather, go to the park, lay on the grass and read some fiction without worrying about anything happening the world.

I haven’t made a diary-like blog post for a very very very long time, probably because, like all other Omani English language bloggers, I’m posting all my daily updates on Twitter. I do have my twitter feed displayed on the right side of the my blog index page. Maybe I should make that larger and more emphasized the next time I update the theme of this blog.

Here are some photos of Southampton, it is a port city as some of you might already know. 

Some more pics after the jump.

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Well, that did not take too long. I am finally settled in Southampton in my room at university accommodation. The city centre is so awesome in Southampton (compared to that of Cardiff), there are several ‘real malls’ in this town like those we have in the Gulf, one with about a 100 shops. They’ve got everything from HMV, Zavvi, and Waterstone, to Forbidden Planet (Love this shop, will tell you about it in a future post), Bella Italia, and Krispy Kreme!

Unfortunately, my accommodation and the university is not in the city centre (unlike Cardiff Uni which was literally steps away from the city centre). I have to take the bus to go to town here, will take a time to get use to and it is probably better as I won’t waste time in town a lot this way.

My hall is not too bad, the furniture is a bit old, but ALL ROOMS HAVE PLUG-AND-PLAY HI-SPEED INTERNET, and when these people mean Hi-Speed internet THEY MEAN IT. My room is on the ground floor and that is not cool, because it is probably going to get noisy when school starts AND you need to close the curtains if you want to have any sort of privacy at all. Bad-Good thing about it is that I’m on one the last blocks in the back of the halls area, this is bad because it is far in the back, but it is good because it won’t be as noisy as the ones near the entrance.

It was very hard to drag my luggage around while fasting, but I did it. Today was worse that yesterday and I barely could drag myself around at iftaar time. Didn’t have the most glamorous meal for breakfast – in fact just had McDonald’s. 

Will show you some pics of Southampton tomorrow.

I previously had some issues with Southampton University because my offer had this weird condition asking me to get an original copy of my transcript. I didn’t have an original myself because I got mine by fax and that’s what I sent them. Anyway, because my offer was conditional I couldn’t be given an accommodation place even though I was guaranteed to get one, and I couldn’t enroll online because I didn’t have an accommodation.