Blight

Cambridge - Churchill College Freshers Week

Yesterday I had the most amazing time here at Churchill College thanks to the Beav and The Wife.

I became a "Fresher", a new student in UK parlance, and all it took was a wink and a nod, and a name-badge with my name scrawled across it. After splitting up into groups I followed our new leader "Betta", an Italian Bella studying Bio-Physics, down to our first hostel on our "Hostel Crawl".

We started by playing quarters (or 10p pieces here), launching coins into the wooden table trying to get them to bounce into a glass. The next hostel brought a new game, one where we threw bottle caps at the other person's crotch trying to knock the bottle cap off their cleverly placed beer bottle. Next we played beer pong where we tossed a dirty ping-pong ball at a group of beer glasses, forcing our opponent to drink the now soiled beer if our ball managed to find its way in. Finally we engaged in Beav's own "Beaver Game" - a game requiring all of our brain power combined, but unfortunately at that point we didn't have much of that in supply.

Sure there were rules and such but in the end it boiled down to drinking, having fun, getting to know your co-freshers, and drinking.

All the Freshers were very cool, especially my group, and I'm now painfully aware of why Beav is not itching quite so vigorously to return to Canada. Damnit, I'm considering getting a PHD in something, anything if it means I can hang out with all the cool peeps I now know.

There's Clay the cowboy, David the Guelphster, Chi the Bombayer (because he prefers that to Mumbai), Viviane the Invertibrate Paleontologist, Betta the Bella, Adam the guy that gets hammered from apple juice, Soon the Math3 guy who managed to knock my bottle cap off 3 times in only 4 throws!, and our game leaders Max, Justin, Jonathan, Rams, Rob, and Huwe (affectionately known as "not Rob") -- and that's not even mentioning Beav or The Wife, which have very thoughtfully let me stay with them this weekend.

Today I will join them for a Fresher's lunch, and ... well I'm really enjoying this weekend. It is some very much needed R&R considering how crazy this last week has been.

Having your laptop die on you while you are mid-project on-site and out of country is never good. The less said about THAT, the better.

Labels: business trip, Cambridge, UK

posted by Blight @ 2:37 AM 15 comments

From Stratford to Dick and Doms

Yesterday morning I took a bus to Stratford with Kirstin and Kathy where we explored the birthplace of William Shakespeare (or W.S. as he likes to be called by his homies), and the houses of his various relatives. Unfortunately his line has completed died out, no direct decendents exist. A shame really. We need more W.S. DNA don't you think?

After hanging out there, we took a train through Birmingham to London, and then to Cambridge. Arrived quite late to a KUI. Kevin under...

Today we'll probably "punt" around, whatever that means. I've been enjoying watching "Dick and Doms" on the Telly this morning though. That show is seriously pure comedy gold. The best part had to be where they were having a crying contest. Whoever can cry tears first wins. To help get the right crying atmosphere, they started playing some sad orchestral music. Then they brought out a little kid who looked all sad walking with his Grandma. She looked REALLY happy, and was licking a big scoop of vanilla icecream in the cone. I guess the kid was sad because she took it from him? Well anyway then she DROPPED the icecream and then she and the kid looked all sad. THEN a little dog came up and started eating the icecream and they looked even more sad. Then to top it all off, a pitifully sad looking man starts walking on stage with a big hamster cage. Sticking out of the top of the cage is a piece of paper that says "My only friend". The camera zooms in and... in the cage is a big rat, but its dead. hAHAHhahaa HIS ONLY FRIEND IS DEAD... man I was cracking up.

Why don't we have shows like that here!?

Labels: business trip, Cambridge, UK

posted by Blight @ 5:23 AM 3 comments