In case you get bored enough:

http://www.gone2thedogs.com/

Click on "Game" on the left edge of the screen.

I'm a bulldog. Somehow that doesn't seem right.

I don't expect it's unique...but people love answering questions about themselves. Hence that other great work-avoidande tactic, the MSN questionaire ("Thin Eater or Fat Eater", "What Kind of Dog Are You", and so forth).

I like this thread. Can we expand it to become a general question and answer thread? If so, who can tell me the precise difference between a tangerine, satsuma and a mandarin?

My computer keeps reverting to American English, no matter how often I set it to UK English. Hence lots of "colors" and "programs".

I hate people who don't know how to use commas .

Scotch eggs - a great British contribution to world cuisine.

Interesting. Maybe when everyone's replied the forum geeks (that's me, at least) can do some number crunching.

From extensive mirror-looking, I can tell you that that theory is crap

Mind you three students/postdocs in my group have green eyes; so much for them being rare. I'm brown haired, one's blonde and one's a redhead. We're very representative.

What's everyone's eye colour, then? Since we're nearly all dark-haired, maybe eye colur will give us more variation.

Mine are green.

Brown hair is by far the most common hair colour globally, so statistically a PhD student is more likely to be dark-haired.

Brown hair and definitely an introvert

(quaking at thought of department christmas dinner tonight )

No, but I am now convinced that stress is the biggest trigger of a cold or flu attack. Try to keep cool

Yes to everything on here...

glad I'm not alone. I'm actually dreaming about my transfer report (but not in a good way).

"I simply have a keen desire to study them further."

In my opinion that's the most importat factor. You can make up for disappointing grades, but you can't fake motivation (at least, not for long). You seem to have the right attitude.

I got a 2.2 (so did others on this forum; do a search and you'll see). Your experience and enthusiam should get you there. Not sure about your masters query: some did it and some didn't. Depends on the institution. I didn't have to, because my instituion accepted equivalant industrial experience.

Not sure I can advise, but I'm in the same boat. Trying to do my transfer report and although I feel like I'm developing a lot of mini-hypotheses, I don't seem to be able to link them all into a whole structure. There's always something missing which sends me on a wild goose chase through the literature when I need to be writing

It's harder than I expected, I'll say that.