As everyone else appears to be swanning down to London for something or other tomorrow, I thought I'd better jump on the blog train, even though I won't be making an appearance. I don't want to feel left out.

I've been into town this morning to do some last minute things like haircut and book-buying, although nothing has been particularly successful. I was intrigued to find that our HSBC appears to have turned into a "Trendy new [coffee] bar", although you can still bank there (apparently). I was slightly taken aback by the fact that there are a choice of eight coffees, but just one tea, which was just as well as the queue to see the one receptionist was a million people long and a thousand people deep. I'm all for modernisation and efficiency, but all I wanted to do was ask a question. Trying to get any service in the place is like competing in the financial equivalent of the London Marathon and they prefer it if you don't bother the staff, just ask the cash machine.

I later discovered that they have retained some cashiers, but they have hidden them under a stone and down a secret passage way that only reveals itself to mankind every six years. I swear there are about twenty or thirty pensioners orbiting the coffee machines wondering where the hell their money has gone. I don't know if I'm going to be banking with HSBC for much longer.

I've now got the eyewateringly exciting task of unpacking everything out of the boxes and bags I filled yesterday. It's all then got to be rearranged and put back into the bags in a suitable fashion for the orient and downunder. Time to get busy.

The last three years of my life have been the most enjoyable of all to date. This sounds incredibly profound and probably attributed to some emotional outpouring in that I am packing the last of possessions into bags to make the final move from Loughborough back to The 'Bridge. In fact it is a realistic assessment of a fantastic time when and where I have met my greatest friends, enjoyed ridiculous numbers of new experiences and probably done some serious damage to my internals.

I can't work out how I feel about leaving. I've found myself talking to myself in the past few days, regularly telling me that this is "the last time you'll do this", which I don't know is a unique phenomena to me, but certainly makes me think that this is a seminal point. I've certainly enjoyed more ups than downs in the past three weeks since the course finished. It is strange that even now I am making friends, mainly with coursemates who I am only just getting to know through the mass of social activity. I've often found it hard (as I did last night) to split my time fairly amongst the people I relate to. I realise there are probably folks I'm not ever likely to see again (ever) who I have already made last contact with. Very deep, but I can't help assess where I am now. How do I keep in touch with so many friends and memories?

One of the most coincidental, but brilliantly timed outcomes of the past few years is the arrival of the net as a social network, and the ability to capture all the activity of the past three years in digital photos. In three years, I have collated over 3500 photos from Lufbra, most of which are on display here. I hope this becomes the permanent record which both me and my friends can use for a long time to come.

Although this is all very philosophical, I actually am feeling little in the way of emotion. In fact, I seem more in limbo than in a state ready to accept one of the biggest changes in my life to date. This time next year I don't know what I'll be doing and where I'll be at (it's hard enough to believe that the day after tomorrow I'm going to be in Tokyo). Being an optimist, I know that this year is going to be as good as any other, but there is part of me that longs for the university experience to go on a little longer. This is, perhaps, the reason I am so keen to start up some little projects in the area next year, and continue to build relationships with some of the businesses who I have had the chance to work with in the past few years. Although my work has taken a backseat this year, I now have a drive and energy that I want to focus on my own plans; the one thing that the course never really allowed me to do (without my marks suffering).

Last night was my leaving party/housemates' 21st present to me. We went to Nottingham Dog Races, a new experience for me, and really good one. Who can complain about a four course meal for £12? Really nice too. Had a flutter on all but one of the races and although I came out down, I still had a few small victories. Jono, as ever, was his lucky money-rinsing self. Afterwards we came back to Loughborough (some interesting transportation issues arose) and ended up in Echos then Rain. The places were full with course and house-friends, so it couldn't be anything but enjoyable. I eventually ended up around at Mank Ste's at a party that eventually ended up being shut down by campus security.

The day had been spent charging around trying to sort out foreign currency and looking at the degree shows. There was some truly fantastic work, especially in textiles which really impressed me.

Today I say some goodbyes and take my stuff home, ripe and ready to fly on Thursday afternoon. It's going to be a great summer.

The last three or four days have meant to have been filled with vigorous travel-plan related activities, but so far very little has occurred on this front.

On Friday night the degree show officially opened. Jon, Lianne, Jimbo, Andy and myself had spent most of the day cruising around in Jon's car moving stuff up to Hollywell, shifting around electrical equipment and getting warm in the fantastic weather. At 6pm we headed over for the official opening and after a free beer and some gratuitous photography, I went back home and went out. FND was packed (not unexpectedly) and with the company of Swan, Sean, Devito, Butts, Flash, Tony and Broomy we whiled the night away. Butts was in a particularly good mood; we all watched in amazement as he spent the whole night not getting punched. A surprise considering how many people he tried to irritate. Sean also managed to chip my tooth by accident when one of his arms smacked my bottle into my top row of nashers.

The next morning Butts and Flash departed early, and once I had eventually surfaced, I headed over to Mike's for the England match. There were quite a few of us, and once again the heat was stifling. After the game Devito and I went over to Lynda's for her birthday/clown related BBQ. I stayed for some food before heading home, doing a stir fry, falling asleep for far too long, and eventually walking back over to Lynda's where I met the others and we wandered into town. First stop was Bar Europa; a new experience for me, considering I've been here for three years, it is one of the last two establishments I've never frequented (the other being Discoteca, no great loss apparently). After some drinking and this beautiful display of dancing by Swan and Devito on a table top [video coming soon], we moved onto Echos for a sweaty but enjoyable night's end. Happy Birthday also goes to Jojo :) Many familiar faces made it all the more bearable.

Today I'm on the door at the degree show from 3pm until 4pm, then the folks are coming over to take bits of my room home. Time to get packing...

(I've made some changes to the RSS Feed for the blog. If you have any problems let me know, if you had problems before, try it now. I've also stopped the article truncation. Bloody default settings)

Not my average day, I was pulled out of bed this morning for an unexpected, but not unappreciated massage. Jono has some kind of assessment, and despite Mike agreeing to be the subject, he never showed, so I was the new guinea pig. It's pretty cool watching the day start out the window as you get the crap pummelled out of your back, but I felt better for it after, and despite the painful bits of it, it was mostly relaxing.

Next stop was the department. Being the degree show tomorrow and all, they needed us to remove the work so the kit could be disassembled and shifted to Hollywell Park on the other side of the campus. I am required there at 8am tomorrow morning as I have been allocated as part of the 'Electricals' Team which means I get to plug things in and hide cables all morning.

After this, Jon took me back home to drop off some stuff I'd put in the boot, via Subway and some people watching through the town. The jeweller managed to rip me off by charging six quid for a battery change (I think that's pretty steep) and I headed back home. Being that Swan had just finished his final exam, Devito and myself then went back into town to meet him for a casual half at Wetherspoons. It was only after waiting for ten minutes with our drinks that we got a call from Sean, "Change of plan, we're in The Griffin, come over..."

It turns out they had already got their round in, and being in a particularly stubborn mood (we had a great table in the garden) we made them come and join us as soon as they could. Mike and Jono also turned up and we talked football and living abroad before I had to depart early to demonstrate to Rosie how to upload her website (no, no, I have no responsibility for this).

Jon had invited me, Rosie and Andy to go and watch him play chuckers in Rugby. For those people who haven't got a clue about the game of Polo (having never played it myself, and only witnessed it for the first time today, this is my somewhat potted explanation), a chucker is a quarter of a match, seven minutes long, but in the plural, is also a term used to describe a practice session. After a somewhat belated start, we watched the sun go down as the eight players knocked the ball back and forth down an enormous pitch. I used the opportunity to play with a sports scenario on the Canon (I purchased a lens hood the other day) and despite being told that polo is notoriously hard to shoot, was quite impressed with myself. That said, the fact I didn't have a telephoto did mean I could only take action shots 50% of the time, but it didn't seem to matter. A warm Bud finished the evening (I also sampled Yerba Mate, pronounced Mat-ay, an Argentine way of making a bitter tea in a wooden vessel which is sucked through a metal straw. Quite nice really) and I'm now back in Lufbra.

Yesterday evening Sean, Devito and myself went to see the Da Vinci Code. Weak in parts, the screenplay was sometimes patronising (you do not need to explain to anyone what the common usage of P.S. is etc) and Hanks' performance was tepid. For me Ian Mackellen was the most impressive and although there was some deviation from the book, it didn't ruin the film. On the whole it was still a good watch, but I would give the rating "Could do better".

I very rarely comment on news or current events, but this is odd because actually I am a news junkie, and I read the majority of the politics, tech and entertainment sections of the BBC News website two or three times a day.

The reason I have decided to mention this today is that there a few stories of recent that have directly affected, or been of interest to me. The first is the resolution of the lecturer's pay dispute. If you've been reading JBTB for a while, you might realise that my work was not being marked as members of the AUT in universities nationwide have been conducting 'action short of a strike'. In real terms this caused mass disruption as some exams were never set and those that were might not have been marked.

I don't think there was any doubt the dispute would be settled before graduation. There is no precedent in this country, therefore the lecturers could not have gone all the way (if there had been strikes in the past this would be different). Secondly, the lecturers would never have allowed it themselves, being a body that takes an interest in the development of others, they ethically would have struggled to justify it's continuation. This is not passing judgement on the lecturers, it's just an observation. I happen to believe they deserve a pay rise in line with other public sector workers, but I just opposed the strike as there should be other methods of resolution without having to use the students as pawns (a reflection on poor dispute resolution methods?). Although the damage has been 'limited', there are going to be consequences. Some students are of slightly weaker disposition than me and my blind optimism for a resolution, and it would be a fair estimate to say that the lead up to exams with the uncertainty over cancellations and marking has probably ruined some students chances of achieving a degree they deserve. The universities had put in place contingencies, choosing to base their marks on the grades that already existed for the second year and the first semester of the third year, but of course that would have been bad in itself, especially with regard to courses like mine where the major project takes up so much of the final year and it considered the true proving ground for the graduate.

Strangely, there was a distinct passiveness on campus. After several weeks of wrangling and emails shooting back and forth, we received a rally from the union president to attend a demonstration and take part in SALSA (wearing red to make a protest). It looked like I was the only person in my department doing this, and it probably reflected badly on me (once again). For those unfamiliar with the history between me and the department staff, an angry email that I sent last year turned into a petition by accident and launched a full internal enquiry which concluded categorically that the only thing wrong was that I couldn't spell properly. Ever since then I have felt relations have been somewhat sour, although I don't blame any of the staff directly.

I had wanted to attend the protest outside the AUT meeting hall, but unfortunately work was not forgiving at the time, and I couldn't spare the hour needed. A fair crowd did attend, but it was a bit pathetic in terms of numbers. Maybe it's just Lufbra, but in three years I've noticed that the student body is entirely reactive and the rest of the time is passive/apathetic. No one holds any political opinions, educates themselves in current affairs or concerns themselves with making a change. Is this a good thing? Maybe. Maybe it's just I've always been a bit pushy when it comes to making my views known. On the whole I don't encounter debates here at all. The closest I've been to having a high-brow argument was at the European elections when I angrily contested a number of my friends who said that they would be voting BNP. I find this bemusing still, as a large proportion of people who I have encountered just don't seem to understand what they actually represent. It's strange that I feel like I've turned into my own special breed of socialist in the past three years (a very strange mix, believe me) while no one else has registered any form of interest. Well, not at uni anyway.

The second piece of news is not so political. The BPI have finally recognised that me putting songs on my iPod is not a copyrighting offence. It's a silly bit of arcane law that means that if you have ever ripped an MP3 from a CD and transferred it to another device that you owned, you were in fact committing an offence. The other thing that was recently discussed is the repeal of certain parts of the 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act which prohibits the use of the iTrip because in the eyes of the law you are establishing an unlicensed radio station. As far as I am aware we are the only country affected by this, but there is clearly a need to update this outdated law.

Last night I ended up going out (again). Sean finished his exams and Duffy, Brent, The Day, Jono and Mike decided that we'd got nothing better to do so we ended up in Wild. It was a good night, not the most brilliant ever, but I still enjoyed it. Jono tried to start a fight and ended up making two new friends (possibly the most pathetic attempt at a fight since Butts broke his hand punching a bus stop).

When I arrived back in Lufbra last night, my intention was purely to chill, write some email replies and then wander off to the land of nod. Unfortunately all my plans were blown out of the water because Mike was here. According to Devito, I had "no excuse for not going out", which partly was true, and in the end I succumbed to the pressure, Absolut with lemonade and a night in VisaVersa and Rain. A good time was had by all and there were a number of familiar faces finally surfacing through the woodwork of exams.

This morning afternoon I have to design the finalists shirt. I have to say there isn't a great deal of enthusiasm on my part, but it has to be done. Sean finishes exams tonight; I have a feeling my presence is tonight going to be required once more. Time to climb into my sports science finalist t-shirt (the benefit of 'knowing people'), I hear there are perks to be had...

Today started at 12 noon when I prised myself out of bed, and wrapped myself in some smart clothes for a belated birthday meal at the Jarvis. It wasn't anything fantastically posh, and it wasn't all the family, but it was decent food although the wine sent me to sleep and I felt like I really was getting old already.

Presents were unwrapped; I got a proper watch, a voucher for doing something adventurous, Clarkson's new book, Blackadder on DVD and the list of places to go before you die, so I'm not going to be without things to do (especially reading material) in this next week.

Tomorrow I'm back to Loughborough, in the meanwhile it's mostly an existence of cake and TV. Not bad really.