caw blimey gov it’s gonna be one of those loooooong nights.

It’s ten to one, but I’ve still got a tonne of stuff to do for tomorrow. What’s best: late night, or up early? The danger with going to bed now is that I won’t have time tomorrow morning to prepare for the afternoon. Hmmm.

Tomorrow sees the deadline for the CILASS IBL Awards Scheme. Myself and a classmate decided to put in an entry in recognition of the work that our tutor has put in to creating our Virtual Language Lab, and embracing technology. It’s pretty amazing: 4 years ago the most hi-tech we got was a cassette tape of basic Japanese conversations – this year we’ve had classes where everyone has been equipped with brand new Sony laptops to carry out live in-class research. Quite a change.

Anyway, quite a few of my classmates have kindly submitted ‘evidence’ saying how they have benefited, and I’ve also got some photos, a video and some other documents to back up our case. Fingers crossed!

The other deadline tomorrow is for round two of the Business Creation Competition, which has a first prize of £5000. We feel pretty positive about this, having put an awful lot of work into what is now a decent 20-page business plan (even if we do say so ourselves). After classes today I had a meeting with our business advisor who absolutely loved it. Just needs a bit of tweeking…

We also finally submitted our application for Arts Council funding. We seem to fit exactly into one of their specified categories, so feel pretty good about this as well (turns out we have a connection with the person who oversees the fund too!).

When waiting in the line at the post office to send the big package that was the application form and supporting evidence, a lady walked in and started telling everyone her happy story of how she had been saved. She blessed us all, and then proceeded to tell us that God had taught her to sing and play the guitar in 15 minutes.

It was soon pretty clear why God had only spent 15 minutes trying to teach her to sing and play the guitar. Clearly, he’d given up trying, knowing a lost cause when he saw one. Her ‘singing’ and ‘playing’ were pretty atrocious, I mean, comically so. I was half expecting there to be hidden cameras recording our reaction to the ‘noise’. As it was, she caused a few chuckles, and the lady behind the counter started to sing along. When she finished, we all clapped, grinning at one another.

She thanked us, blessed us once more and left.

Walking back to the office, an unshaven man in his 60s asked if my friend James would marry him.

I also attended a Student Ambassador meeting this morning. That was fun, if somewhat surreal with a baby googling around and my carrying next year’s SEAS ambassador Ryan around in my hands. He was on Skype, so I thought I’d try and introduce him to everyone. Unfortunately neither his mic nor webcam were working, so it was a surreal one-way conversation. He said (typed) that he felt like a baby, unable to communicate (and in fact he was happiest when my macbook was just pointing at the baby in the room!)

Japan soc election is also underway, with the votes pouring in. Last time I’ll ever have to do this (although I do enjoy it!). It will soon be time to say bye bye to that baby.

Oh, sign the contract for the website tomorrow morning as well, crumbs, I’d forgotten about that. We’ll also be negotiating a contract for future upgrades to the site – although I don’t think we’ll be accepting the offer made this morning – consultation at £1250 a DAY! (that’s the business I need to be in).

Oh crap, I forgot, we’re filming that tech presentation tomorrow too and I’ve not prepared yet. Maybe I scrap the sleep thing and just work through. Not good though.

Ho hum. It’s been a good day overall. I even had time to go to the park and photograph the beautiful cherry blossom. Oh, and listened to some of CS Lewis’ Prince Caspian – the original BBC audiobook featuring those fantastic actors that we all know and love for their inability to act convincingly. (It wouldn’t be the same if they could). I still remember when Aslan visited the Blue Peter studios and pooed all over the floor – or was that an elephant?

Ok, on with the business plan.

I’ll be mightily relived when tomorrow is over. Then it’ll just be a case of writing an entire dissertation in a week.