Terrorists strike again. It seems terrorist cells have decided to become active again, possibly because Gordon Brown has just taken over as prime minister since Tony Blair has retired. Yesterday there were two car bombs found in downtown London. Luckily they were both detected and defused without any casualties. Today a jeep was set on fire and two guys tried to crash it into Glasgow airport. The jeep did not explode though, and that attempt failed as well. Still, it is a bit worrying.

The effects of the flood continue to be felt throughout the city. In the city center, most of the flood waters have dropped. But some outlying villages in South Yorkshire are having problems with dams overflowing, and have had to be evacuated.

Transportation is still spotty, with Victoria being unable to take the train to work since Monday (when she couldnt' get home by train, and the train hit a tree on the way to work). On Tuesday she took the tram and then someone picked her up, but they couldn't make it all the way to work, and then the headmaster canceled school eventually as many people couldn't make it, so she had to come home anyway. Yesterday she was getting a ride with the same person, who had a massive asthma attack while driving. So they had to pull over and phone an ambulance. That meant she spent a long time at the hospital before going to work. And today the trains are down again, so she has just given up as she doesn't have a ride now.

One of my co-workers is unable to get into work as there is no bus or train service from his town to Sheffield because of the flood. Another effect is on electricity. Apparently electricity is overtaxed because some power stations blew up in the flood. So now they are having rolling blackouts in the city. The city center will not be affected I don't think because of businesses, but many suburbs will be. Our collegiate campus is currently without power until noon today.

They said we had the equivalent of 6 weeks of rainfall in one day, which is quite amazing really. Unfortunately the forecast for this weekend is heavy rain, which is not what we need right now. I'm afraid the situation may just get worse if there is a lot of rain.

You might be curious to see some photos of where my co-worker Helen lives. She is close to the river and when it burst its banks, the building her flat is in had the ground floor flooded. She's on the top floor, so she didn't have any problem though.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8310321@N06/sets/72157600486648583/

Victoria is now a qualified teacher, having completed her course on Friday. This is great news, and she also has a job lined up for next year.

On Friday there was an end of year ball for all the trainee teachers. We got dressed up and went to the Royal Victoria Hotel, which is owned by Holiday Inn now. It has a long history, including being a train station for awhile. It was very nice on the inside, and the food was good. The "swing" band turned out to be a slow jazz band instead though which was not easy to dance to. Altogether I think everyone had fun though and it was nice to see everyone dressed up.

The photo is copyright of Mary Ormandy, Victoria's friend, who has graciously allowed me to use it. I did not bring my own camera, which turned out to be a good thing, as it seemed like someone searched the pockets of my jacket and took out all the contents during the ball. Nothing was in them luckily, but it pissed me off to say the least.

This image, courtesy of Sheffield City Council, shows one of the busiest roads in and out of Sheffield at the moment. Could be fun to swim in I guess.

Victoria said her train this morning ran over a small tree and nearly derailed. Now the trains aren't even running at all, so a co-worker is trying to get her back home. I imagine with the heavy traffic and lots of flooded roads, this may take a little while. A lot of the buses are canceled as well.

We're now having an even worse rain storm than last week. It's just dumping gallons of rain at a time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6236348.stm

Luckily our flat does not seem to be having problems yet, but there is a huge amount of rain falling. I think the article says that we may get a month's worth of rain in about a day.

Thought you might be curious as to what some of the test questions were like, so I've got some of my test questions for you to try.

This is the one I missed on my test:
Signals are normally given by direction indicators and:
a) brake lights
b) side lights
c) fog lights
d) interior lights

Not particularly tough:
Which of the following should you NOT do at the scene of an accident?
a) Warn other traffic by switching on your hazard warning lights
b) Call the emergency services immediately
c) Offer someone a cigarette to calm them down
d) Ask drivers to switch off their engines

My personal favorite:
You are following a learner driver who stalls at a junction. You should:
a) be patient as you expect them to make mistakes
b) stay very close behind and flash your headlights
c) start to rev your engine if they take too long to restart
d) immediately steer around them and drive on

I'll post the answers as a comment, including why I missed the first one.

Mission Accomplished! Today I passed the first part of the driving test in England. It was the written theory test, and the hazard perception. The theory test was not too bad as I had read the entire book of questions beforehand. I did miss one though, as the terminology sometimes throws me for a loop. The theory test is 35 multiple choice questions, and you have to score 30 to pass.

The second part was also on the computer, and it is a series of 15 1-minute video clips from the driver's perspective in a car. You are supposed to click every time you see a hazard, but you are really scored by how quickly you first notice the one hazard in the clip that turns into something serious which requires you to brake or steer. You are judged by how quickly you notice it. If you click early it is 5 points, then goes down to 0 if you miss it. The pass mark is 44 of 75. I got a 64, which I thought was really good. I got about half 5s, and only a few 3s, with nothing below that. The hardest part about it is that the video quality is pretty low. So sometimes you are supposed to notice a turn signal on a car, but you can barely see that there is one. In real life, you don't normally have that problem, so I didn't think it was a good simulation. I was more worried about this part of the test because there was only one practice test you could take for it. I took practice theory tests about 20 times, so I felt confident I could pass as I passed all the practice ones. If you fail one part, you must take the whole test again (and pay another 21 pounds). I've already paid 38 pounds for my learner permit (which you can get without taking any tests), and I will have to pay more for a go at the practical test sometime.

I can take the practical test anytime in the next two years. I hope to go down to Victoria's parents' place to practice one weekend then do it on a Monday or something. I don't really want to buy a car now, but I would like to be able to rent one sometime, especially at times when train prices can be astronomical.

It turned out it was the Gatecrasher One club, which was perhaps the most famous in Sheffield. I've never been there though, as generally techno/club music drives me insane. We have to listen to enough of it as it is since our upstairs neighbor likes to listen to it.

Read the full news story at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/6765331.stm

Sheffield is now covered in a thick layer of smoke. There's a large building not far from where I work which is gushing out smoke. I walked down the road to look at it, and the roof had caved in. The firetrucks were just dumping water on it, as I guess there was no one in it. I couldn't tell what building it was, but some people theorized it was a famous club, Gatecrasher One, which is in that area. I suppose I'll find out later what building it was. It was probably an abandoned building that someone couldn't rent.

I wish I had my camera with me, as it was a pretty impressive sight. Most of the smoke has been blown uphill into the downtown of the city, so Victoria said it was very smoky walking back from Starbucks where she was meeting her friends.

Rain, rain, and more rain. That's been the weather the last few days. There's even flooding in some parts of South Yorkshire (the county where Sheffield is). We're not at too much risk of flooding though as we are on the side of a high hill, and on the third story of the building.

At work (completely unrelated to the rain), we are on our third day of no network. Something happened with the Novell network, and we've been unable to access the network drive where most of our work is stored. This has at least given me the chance to work on some things that I had been putting off, but is quite annoying at the same time.