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Personal: Happy New Year!

[London New Year]Happy New Year everyone! Just before the stroke of midnight I called my Mum to wish her Happy New Year (the rest of my family were either out or in bed asleep) – and, whilst doing so, I tried to send an SMS/text message to my GESF.

Silly me! I’ve been taught about the mobile phone/cellphone network system and its operation over many years (I think my first lecture about how the UK mobile phone network operates was given to me over 10 years ago) and my knowledge about the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network: i.e. the “normal landline” system) should have reminded me of something. From 11.45pm to approximately 1.30am on New Years Eve/Day is one of the busiest times for the networks (“Mothers Day” is one of the other ‘big’ days when telephone network congestion is usually at the highest). If you think that the whole network of transceivers that the mobile phone network uses has been based on the assumption that no more than X number of phones will be using each one at any time – and then you get a whole load of people trying to send messages/make calls at the same time period, then the system begins to fail. If I remember correctly during Christmas/New Year 1998 one British mobile phone network nearly completely failed and engineers had to be called out to a few transmitter points to manually bring them up. 2000 resulted in the networks being practically unusable for around 3 hours.

Anyway, after finishing on the phone to my Mum and still being unable to send a “Happy New Years” message to my GESF (“Message not sent this time!” reports from my phone umpteen times), I gave her a call. The reason she hasn’t called me is because they’ve got a friend staying over there, she’s been busy (been shopping quite a bit in the sales) and she hasn’t had much to say. We had a little chat and hopefully she’ll give me another call soon 🙂 It did brighten up my year 🙂

Why did I spend the New Year on my own instead of going out? Well, until around 6pm I was still in my nightclothes and wanted a long hot bath before I made a decision, then I got peckish so I had some dinner – so it was around 8pm before I was in a position to even make a decision. Obviously a bit too late to go to my parents, but I know there are a number of night clubs around Leicester I could have gone to (one I know of is operating a ‘lock-in’ from around midnight to gone 4am) – but taking into account the bad rainy cold weather, I decided to stay in, drink cider and munch on white chocolate cookies. Plus I don’t really want a repeat of last year when, as I was walking home and got within a quarter of a mile of my house, I encountered a lot of ice. So much ice that I slipt and fell over around half-a-dozen times 🙁 Not good. I suppose it doesn’t help with me living on a steep hill.

Anyway, happy New Year! I can’t think of any resolutions I want to make at the moment (apart from getting a job and spending more time with close friends – in, particular, I hope my GESF), but if I think of any, I might just post them here 🙂

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