Two things have occurred thus far since I last posted. The first being that as I suspected, there hasn't been quite as much adventure the past few days, not in the exciting lets post on my blog about it sense anyway. The second is that time is indeed picking up and moving much quicker. I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but the first week felt like it was a month long. This week has gone by much quicker; it has still been just as great, but for different reasons.
Monday was certainly the most uneventful day. I had lecture at 9 and that was my only class for the day. I spent the majority of the day in my room skimming through scientific articles on addiction and reviewing notes from lecture. I am here to study, after all. I did purchase a man-purse. My friends have suggested that it is actually a satchel or a "carry-all", though it possibly meets the criteria of a manpurse. It's a manpurse, that's my ruling.
Things got a bit more interesting in Tuesday's lecture. Seminar was earlier in the morning and fairly uneventful. In lecture we finally began covering the specific effects of certain drugs (the first up was psychostimulants-cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine). At the end of the class he went to assign presentations for seminar, and it made me a bit ill. Not towards the professor, or the fact that I had to do extra work (I don't mind, it forces me to become even more acquainted with the material and I get more experience presenting). But towards the laziness or lack of devotion of my fellow students. It goes to show that no matter how smart you are, you can still be lazy as a sloth. What he does here is assign an article to two students (two different articles) and they make a powerpoint presentation for seminar and present it and answer questions about it. He had assigned the first one, and then for the second presentation he wanted done he actually wanted two articles presented. He asked if anyone else from group 1 had not presented (Group 1 and Group 2 were originially 15/15 students. There were course conflicts so some people had to switch from 1 to 2, and this opened the door for the particularly lazy students to switch to 2 for the safety of number and to sleep in later. Group 1 now has 8 students and Group 2 has 20 or so). There was one girl who had not presented, but she didn't speak up, so he then assigned the two papers to me. No big, whatever, I can deal, and as I said, more experience for me. He then went through three people in group two who all had excuses that for some reason he accepted. They were "It's my birthday." Then grow up. "I don't have a laptop yet so I can't make a presentation." If only they had a bank of computers where people could just go and make use of them when they needed to work. They might call it a COMPUTER LAB. "I have to work on a midterm for another class." Yeh, which is due Friday, cry me a river. Someone finally volunteered to take it. Talk about things that burn me up.
I went back to my room after grabbing a Hoi Sin Duck baguette (I usually eat some sort of baguette from the cafe for lunch--I can take it back to my room and no matter what kind I get its delicious). I set out reading my two articles. If you know anything about reading scientific articles, it can take a bit of time to truly grasp everything they are saying. I have found that the best method for really getting the articles is to make the painstaking original read of them and then come back an hour or two later and things will just fall into place. It probably took me 30-45 minutes to get a good read through both articles, and at this point after being in my room all day the day before I was ready for an adventure. I got some bearings bout where ASDA was and set off on an adventure.
The store was about 1.7 miles from where I am located. As I am not about to use a taxi or bus while my feet work, it was a bit of a walk when made roundtrip. I found my way to the store with relatively little difficult, but I did end up with a nice little cut in my left forearm about 4 inches long from where I walked too close to a pole and something protruding from it just ripped me open. I liked the area that I got into because it was out of the middle, touristy part of Cambridge. There was a lot of housing, almost suburban areas. The shopping centre with ASDA had several other shops, including a TJMaxx. The ASDA was wonderful though. You see, buying things in Cambridge is more expensive from a quantitative standpoint. That is to say, the amount you pay is more before you figure in the exchange rate. At ASDA it seemed that things were at least quantitatively the same, and in some cases a bit more like equality. It was nice. I didn't really have anything particular in mind to get, I just wanted to see how the prices were and I needed to get out. I did find some q-tip equivalents (gotta clean the ears, man) and snagged a bottle of rum. It was the first litre I've purchased here, most things at the grocery stores in town are 70cl. I actually got carded, and the lady was a bit suspicious of the ID. Go figure.
Once I got back to my housing I began work on my presentation. I was a little over halfway done when Brenden and Sean stopped by to chat for a moment. Brenden told me that he had a friend from Harvard who was staying in his room for a few days that was going around doing shows in pubs and such in England and later Scotland (If I'm up there when he is I'll have to go see him) and the was going to put on a show for friends at 9 in his room if I was interested. Live music in the room above me? Hell yeh I'm interested! I managed to get through most of the rest of the presentation in time to go up there and meet him and all before it started. His name was Dan Masterson, and I think he's got the talent to take it somewhere if he stays with it. There is a video of one song he did in the pictures in the Cambridge album. I bought an album from him, it was one of the first 100 made so it was numbered and he signed it to me. Pretty awesome I think. He mentioned that he would like to get around to Universities and play, so I plan on contacting Jeff Constant sometime soon to let him know about him and hopefully get them in contact.
Today it was really hard to get out of bed. It always is when you know you actually have to do something, like present. Luckily I've realized I need something with a little more sustenance than dry Frosties for mornings when I won't be able to eat until after 1. I acquired some sausage rolls from Sainsbury's and have been eating 3 for breakfast on such mornings. I'm still trying to cut down on my food consumption, I know I was eating too much before I came here. And with the amount of walking I've been doing, I do feel a bit better. But I digress. The presentation and all went pretty well. There was a moment at the beginning of seminar that is worth comedic note, though.
The PA had arrived a bit late to open the room and set up the projector. The projector was on, but he was having no luck in getting it to display the image from the macbook. He was getting quite irritated and hitting buttons mutliple times, and suddenly it displayed the image. "Aha!" he exclaimed with a smile. "Vhat did you do to make it verk?" Asked Zoltan. "I pressed the button 20 times." "Zo you prezzed de button twenty times and den it verked?" "Yes!" And the PA took his leave. Afterwards, someone from the group at the table said, "FR20!" (fixed ratio 20--20 lever or button presses are required for the rewarding effect). Zoltan followed up with, "And you zee how happy it made him vhen it verked? The next time he comes into this room he will immediately go to zat button and prezz it twenty times." This is probably one of the funniest things that has happened since I got here.
After seminar it was time to go punting. If you don't know what punting is, it is where you get into a punt, a fairly flat boat that holds 5 or 6 people, and someone stands on the rear of it and uses a very long pole to maneuver the boat through the water. This was quite fun, as we go to ride for a while to see the backs of several of the colleges, and then we got to try to punt ourselves. If you know me you know I can barely stand on a skateboard, so the initial balancing was not easy at all. It really wasn't bad after you got yourself balanced though. Right after I was given control though there was a huge traffic jam. Jon said I did pretty good in dealing with it, Didn't lose my cool and just kept trying to push through it. We got through it and went a little ways, and then a big punt came up from the rear and gave us quite a nudge. I saw it just as it was happening, so as I began to fall I jumped downwards into the open area below the punting platform and avoided an unintentional swim. Belinda and Jared told me later that it really looked like I was going to lose it and the save was impressive. After that I handed the punt over to Captain Watson, and later both Belinda and Jared gave it a go. It was great fun, and the punts can be rented from the university for 4 pounds an hour. If you have a group of 4 or 5, that's hardly anything. I definitely plan on doing it for fun with some other people later on, and Sean and I plan to rent a canoe at some point and make a bit more exploitative trip on the Cam.
The rest of the day was uneventful. I prepared my midterm a bit, slept, ate, and went to a plenary lecture by a retired head of Mi6 who is now the Master of Pembroke College (the college which I claim as mine). The lecture was interesting, though it just covered issues that I am not particularly familiar with or interested in. I guess that is bad as the lecture was on National Security in the 21st century. Something that I have come to realize is as being a chemistry major I just don't have many interesting things that people want to talk about. I mean I love some chemistry, but I'm one of the few. Compared to the arts students who study the classics, or the economists and social sciences that are up on current events. They do have much more interesting things to speak about or entertain a group with. I don't suppose I should feel bad about this, it is just something that I've begun to realize.
Tomorrow will be filled with mid-term paper writing and a formal hall in the evening. Don't forget to check the pictures, I added a few to Cambridge and made a new album. All albums are also now set to show the newest pictures first. Cheers!
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