Waiting

Please tell me the waiting is crippling everyone else?

I seem to have spent every moment that I've been within 5 metres of the internet flicking between the Portal (of Doom), thestudentroom, other 'snitch seekers' blogs and my email.

Thoroughly unproductive.

On another note, does anyone know whether there has been a 'freeze' on the portal (so that even if it were updated, no information would come through to the candidate until 31 July - like UCAS at results day) or whether it is 'live' but chambers are under threat of death should they update.

Basically, the question comes down to the time that it is acceptable to ring chambers in a quiet room to burst into tears over the phone at them. I'm guessing 8:30 am might be a little early, but if I didn't hear one way another by the end of the day, by the end of the weekend I might well just be a little bundle of nerves with a sign above my head reading 'here lyeth the remains of a failed barrister'.

Nightmare.

Google Stats

The lazy option for any blog post! This month's top key words, by order of number of hits:

1.	olpas 2009
2.	site:thissideofthehouse.blogspot.com marc_newcomb
3.	fat people
4.	this side of the house
5.	yakka recipe
6.	gdl league table
7.	superfreakonomics
8.	lpc league table
9.	miss middle of manchester
10.	"how i learned to despise christians"

Interestingly, or not, I usually sort my stats by time spent on page rather than hits. Is that merely vanity?

By time on site:

1.	"home education review" panel graham badman			00:23:26
2.	bvc provider statistics			00:18:30
3.	bvc at bpp or city icsl			00:18:08
4.	nmc, pupillage, london			00:15:56
5.	i want a pupillage			00:11:21
6.	marriage benefits men more than it benefits women			00:07:35
7.	bvc results 2008			00:06:49
8.	south africa vodka yakka			00:06:24
9.	bvc league table			00:05:57
10.	scholarship bvc 2008 times			00:05:57

Free Pizza

Two-for-one voucher for pizza at pizza express valid until end of February from the Times website.

Scrabulous

Scrabulous is back on Facebook, though it's renamed to Lexilous (or similar) and has 8 letters.

I'll admit to being a little OCD on scrabble, I like it and I'm good at it - not the least because I learned the two letter word list a loooong time ago.

It's quite amazing how much harder the game is when you have one extra letter. All the bingos which usually fall into place fail me utterly.

Nevertheless, I battle on. Mr Zero, it's your go.

Riding out a recession? Training contract

Well, it seems the best way to ride out the recession is to be a trainee in a law firm as they are almost completely unsackable - even for gross misconduct, let alone minor details like profit margins.

In order to sack a trainee, you need the permission of the SRA....

More here.

Sponsorship

Hello!

I'm asking people for sponsorship for a legal walk in Manchester which raises funds for legal advice charities, so I thought, who better to ask than you, my wonderful blog-readers!

If you would like to be a good and wonderful person, please go to: http://www.justgiving.com/fieldfisherwaterhousemanchester to sign up and for more information about the charities which we are supporting.

Thank you lots and lots in advance!

Miss Middle

Foreign aid

I especially like the (self-confessed cynical) quote at the beginning of this article on foreign aid:

Foreign aid is where we tax the poor of rich countries to fund the rich of poor ones.

That aside, it is a really interesting article on where our foreign aid money goes (most of it doesn't even leave the UK).

Well worth a read.

The Merciful, the Compassionate

Thank God - or Allah - that the Iranians are finally seeing sense and remembering one of the names for God is 'the Merciful' as they have now stopped stoning people.

Here.

Free Rice

I quite like word games.

In free rice, you're given a word, a choice of four definitions and you must choose the correct one.

If you get it right, you get to feel smug and sanctimonious. Smug because you're obviously intelligent, sanctimonious because you've just helped donate rice for UNICEF.

Have fun, give money to charity, get better at scrabbulous and word-twist. Where's the down side?

My top score so far is 41. You know you're competitive, give in to the urge...