9AM - 12PM

I'll be honest, being a student, 9 AM is a bit of an unknown entity for me these days. The sound of the alarm ringing in my ear kind of threw me off, and I instantly jumped out of bed assuming I was either on fire or getting raped. Much to my dismay, neither was happening, and it was merely time to get ready for LAN.

Last time I went to an iSeries event I managed to forget all my PC peripherals, and last time I went from home to Uni I managed to forget my whole PC, so my morning checks were pretty scrutinous today, triple checking I had everything, as well as churning off my list of belongings to numerous people to see if I had forgotten anything. Just after the final check, as I was doing up my tie, I remembered my coach ticket, which had cleverly dodged my check list. After all this it was time to make my way to the station, allowing myself 45 minutes to make the 20 minute walk, purely to avoid any problems. If only life was so simple.

I arrived there 20 minutes before the coach was due, sat down, and waited. And waited. And waited. Nearly 50 minutes past of panic, assuming I was in the wrong place or had missed it, when the bus finally rolled up apologetically. After finally finding a seat next to an unconscious, but lovely, old lady, the bus continued on it's journey. However, this was only the beginning of the problems with the bus, as the driver announced "As the journey is already delayed by 30 minutes, I won't be able to make it to Birmingham within my driving hours. For this reason we're going to have to take a 45 minute break in Hilton Park, meaning we'll arrive in Birmingham 1 hour 15 minutes late". He went on to assure everyone that if you were changing in Birmingham the staff there were ensuring all the exchanges would be taken care of. This seemed to put everyone at ease except myself, who seemed to be the only person changing in Oxford rather than Birmingham. I shouted down to the driver "What about if you're changing in Oxford"?. Let's just say his reply didn't put me at the same level of ease as the other passengers, as he shouted back to me "Dunno".

So here I am, sat in Hilton Park, ideally on my way to Newbury later today, but most likely on my way to being stranded in Birmingham coach station. Living the dream.

12PM - 3PM

The rest of the coach went pretty flawlessly. At Birmingham, the old lady eventually woke up and made her way off the coach. However, this journey was never going to result in comfort, as the 10 people who got off were replaced by 30 more people, and I was forced next to an Asian women who spoke about 3 words of English. I tried to explain to her for a few minutes that I needed to sit in the aisle (I'm 6 foot 4 and physically don't fit in the window seats), but to no avail, and eventually had to physically grab her and push her to the seat, where she went "oooooooh" and nodded profusely (and admittedly apologetically).

I managed to fall asleep 3-4 times in the next half hour, everytime waking up because my head had fallen onto the Asian woman and she had kind of shaken her shoulders to notify me. Otherwise, the rest of the trip was quite eventless, and I made my way onto Oxford, where I had to change coaches.

Shockingly, the time problems seemed to rectify themselves, and we made the trip from Birmingham to Oxford in just over half the time expected, meaning there were no problems with synching up with my next coach, and I waltzed straight off one and onto the other. I am currently writing from the second one as we wait to depart, and it is the most luxurious coach I've ever been on. It's the type of coach Spinal Tap would demand on tour, with full leather seats and enough space per seat to accomodate even the most portly gentlemen. However, the spaciousness fails to surprise me, assuming Corin is the average Oxford resident.

In theory I should arrive in Newbury in 45 minutes time, where I will try and blag my way in to the event (and most likely fail) as EAS does not normally open till 6pm minimum.

3PM - 7PM

Getting off the coach was as much of a shambles as the rest of the trip, as the coach driver failed to see the kerb and drove straight into it, causing 100 people in the station to turn around shocked. As I was getting off I noticed another bloke on the coach had a PC, and offered to share a taxi. Simpler than it sounds, as the taxi rank was nowhere to be found. We wondered around for about 15 minutes until I finally asked someone, and we realised we had walked past it 3 or 4 times.

15 minutes later we found ourselves in Newbury Racecourse, and check-ins had already started. I checked in, skipping the queue with my press pass (while looking down at the minions behind me with a look of disgust) and swanned into the event. Having had slight complications about whether I was actually allowed in yet, they agreed to let me in providing I helped out with the setting up. While this avoided the wind and rain outside, it also meant I had to do some work, which I'm sure you know how much I hate. I helped DarkPassion and two others put out the place names for half hour before I got fed up and made some calls, where I found out some of the Phonetic and TLR boys were at the pub across the road. Despite my love for mind numbing manual labour, alcohol is my one true love, and I made my way over.

Boostey! Wait, what!??!?!

Just to give a shout out to everyone there so they don't moan, I met Audible, raii, CuLo, Farley, rem7, D2K, Boostey, and a few others for a few pints before check in officially started. After some lovely banter, and more rumours than InsideSource could make up in a week (love you really Rich) the evening progressed, and the real fun began. Max rang me to find out where I was, which preceeded a conversation about how shit my phone was. I won't go into details about how this situation progresed, but the end result of the scenario was my throwing my phone into CuLo's pint, which then soaked Boostey. Sincere apologies for that Dan, I did it for the lulz.

7PM - 2AM

Eventually we returned from the pub, and I made my way to the Reason Box to meet Max. Although we didn't have seats, Warclown wasn't arriving for another day so I captured his interwebs. Cadred seemed pretty stagnant in my abscence (coincidence?) so after a brief check I got to work, getting some pictures of the teams who had managed to arrive on time. Luckily, UK teams are generally alcoholics, and the best place to get hold of people was the bar, so we made our way down. The night in general involved a rotation between bar, photos, bar, speaking to people, bar, and chilling at the laptops. This went on for hours until we ended up in the bar, playing drinking games with a VERY drunk pair of aLex and Millen. Another shout out to everyone there, as the group (w1p, raii, Hostage, CuLo, Slither, xerosis, Cart, Millen, aLex, vpr, Friza, and a few others) played a simple game, which basically resulted in Millen and aLex screaming, flipping over drinks and punching tables, despite numerous warnings from security. However, even though they caused a fair amount of banter, they brought a lot of smiles along with them, and made for an entertaining evening.

However, it was cut abrupt by a call from Max, letting me know it was time to go to the hotel. MadAsABadger from Reason kindly gave us a lift (in his shiney new Lexus with full leather interior, shazam), and I am currentl lying in a double bed alongside Goodeh, delaying the inevitable eloping that will ensue, and watching a documentary about transexuals. Finally, the good life.