By the third day, everyone had practically given up, accepted the futility of the task, and just concentrated on getting to know each other. This essentially involved winding up the other groups, producing long lists of non-essential items to be incorporated into the mission.
These included four cows, dessicated (to save weight). These would be fed pineapple on the journey, and then reconstituted on the surface of Mars for use as transport. They were also necessary to provide fresh milk throughout the three-year journey.
The Mars habitation required, for the purposes of boredom alleviation, a swimming pool, sauna, hot tub, basketball hoop and balcony. We determined that the most efficient and cost-effective way of heating the habitation was with a wood-burning stove, which, despite the habitation being only 2.5 metres tall, required a 30 metre chimney. We had to provide details of all of this to the heatproofing department, who wrote down the dimensions down without argument.
They did have issue, however, with our balcony. Not the fact that we had a balcony on a single-storey building, which, now I think about it, is an obvious flaw. No, they took issue because the dimensions specified that the balcony had 15 metre walls. When called upon to explain this, I eventually cracked, and admitted that the balcony did not actually need to be that tall.
The next question was, of course, why we needed a balcony in the first place. The explanation given was so that we could have a good view while we were smoking. I think a penny dropped for the heatproofing department here. They pointed out that we would need to carry a lot of cigarettes for the entire journey. I explained that we were only taking half the cigarettes we needed, and that we would grow the rest of the tobacco in the hydroponics facility once we were on the surface of Mars.
Another requirement we had was for a cat flap. In response to the question, "Why?", I like to imagine that someone would answer, "For the cat." In fact, there was no cat. There was, however, an autistic cheetah called Barry who had spades for hands, but who signed in on our list with his back paws. He was also, I think, writing a musical, and may have been female at one point.
So, I've met more interesting people, and I'd imagine that I may keep a few of them. I'd imagine that I said that last time, but there really are a multitude of fantastic people here.
I'm also coming to the realisation that this city is an absolutely brilliant place to live. Even without the superlambananas, it's rich in culture and history. It's also a great place to be a student, and I think that the next three years of my life are ones which I will treasure for the rest of it.
Just to give you some idea of the delights I've been sampling:
