014 - Immer Weiterkämpfen

- Drawing the line.. -

It's amazing how people deal with difficult situations. Resilience and determination are two characteristics I like to consider myself as having built over the years, and qualities I admire in others greatly. However there comes a point at which resilience and determination can become dangerous, and what I admire more in people is their ability to recognise when to back off. Michael Schumacher's statistical successes in Formula 1 are unrivalled in many instances (91 wins, 68 pole positions, 7 world championships..) though he has often been tarred with an apparent inability to know when to draw the line under pressure. Hungary 2010 unfortunately again bore witness to this side of the German's character.

Schumacher's 2010 F1 comeback year has been difficult to say the least. He has so far struggled to adapt to the changed regulations of the sport and has as a result despite his moments notched up just 38 points compared to team mate Nico Rosberg on 94, has struggled to make it into Q3 on occasions and has also had his driving called into question (particularly at the Canadian GP). Despite some of these difficulties being the result of a 3 year break from the sport and also the difficulties Mercedes have faced with the W01 not meeting expectations, many have speculated on the potential re-retirement of F1's most successful driver come the end of the season. Rubens Barrichello has also a large amount of history with Schumacher dating back to their years as team-mates as Ferrari, but Schumacher's defensive move on the Brazilian came incredibly close to causing a big accident. Schumacher may have received a 10 place grid penalty for Spa for his indisgressions but since Barrichello avoided the wall and no cars were exiting the pit lane he should probably thank himself lucky things weren't a whole lot worse.

Not a good weekend for Mercedes overall either. A botched pitstop resulted in Nico Rosberg's rear right wheel coming loose and narrowly missing several mechanics (already distracted by Kubica and Sutil colliding in the pitlane, which Renault and Force India mechanics were lucky to avoid), and ended with the German squad scoring 0 points for the first time this season. The two events must have left team officials wondering how they'd managed such a lucky escape twice in one weekend.

Continuing to ramble,
Sandlefish

* Pictures from http://www.autosport.com (2010 Hungarian GP and 2010 Malaysian GP Archives).
* Video taken from YouTube: Click on video while playing to access original source.

006 - Melting In The Summer Sun

Well, it's been a short while since I updated this thing so I suppose I'd better bash out a quick post before my planned larger post next week or so to celebrate finishing my PGCE. Currently I'm lounging around in 28C heat in my beautiful back garden pulling together a few loose ends work-wise before my placement time comes to an end next Friday (barring one extra revision class I've volunteered to do for the students re-sitting an exam from January). I'm not going to go into too much detail, especially since I'm going to do a full PGCE is over blog sometime over the next week or two, but suffice it to say at the moment that I'm looking forward to the Summer. For sure, I've massively enjoyed my time at my placement, but the University assessments have been hell. From my degree I'm used to big assignments which allow depth, criticality and research. My PCET assignments have been mostly 500-750 'list-based' nonsense.. anyone can write a list, surely? Anyhow before I descend into a sun-induced rant or melt into a fiery rage all over my keyboard I'm going to wrap up this section by asking the kind people who forecast our weather WHERE THE HELL THIS SUDDEN HEATWAVE CAME FROM?! As you can probably guess, summer isn't my favourite time of year. I love decent weather, but I suffer from (albeit annually improving) hayfever, as the picture to the right testifies. Nice.

Anyhow, onto a more positive note. I've been jamming recently with an old friend and bandmate while my band stuff appears to have taken a forced-hiatus. I suppose with us being at different ends of the country that's somewhat of an inevitability for the moment. It's been a while since I met and worked with this old bandmate, but suffice it to say that it's been good to re-visit old pastures and old ground and also work on some ideas vastly different to any of the styles of music that I've played before. It's all mainly acoustic based (for the moment at least, though not forgetting that's how Lake September originated..) and the songs have an unusual mixture of my usual style and some more up-beat melodies and lyrics we've come up with. Watch this space I guess.. As well as this, I've been making a real effort lately to keep up to date with friends and penpals (anyone else noticed the picture on the left a lot lately?), and learning Icelandic which I have unforgivably been neglecting because of my PGCE observations. I've also been attempting to polish up my slightly rusted German, as my girlfriend and I are at last planning a long overdue holiday costs (and volcano) permitting some time over the Summer. That is, if I've not melted by then..

Right, time to sign off I think. The laptop's burning itself into my thighs, which HAS to be a sign to stop writing.

Bis bald!
Sandlefish