Dub?! Sub?!

My order from Amazon has arrived today, yay! Well, half of them anyway. I’m still waiting for the box set of His Dark Materials trilogy, but the rest are here, safe and sound. I probably won’t be reading them for a while, though, since I started Winter’s Heart yesterday.

Day Watch and Twilight Watch is the second and third book from a tetralogy, the first and fourth book being Night Watch and Last Watch respectively. I recently watched Night Watch (a film adaptation) and enjoyed it, even though there are some significant deviations from the book. Wanted to watch Day Watch but restrained myself, since I haven’t read the book yet. I think that since the plot can be quite complex, reading the books are actually useful in order to better understand what’s going on.

Now, I’m a firm believer of watching something in its original language. Dubbed version just pisses me off. In the case of films, you get to hear the actor’s real voice. If it is some voiceover instead, the whole film will feel fake to me. The character's voice will not match the lip movement and in some cases, the way they say things are completely different. In the case of anime, the argument gets quite complicated since the characters are, well... animated so the lip movements will not be exact anyway. But, I suppose most anime production companies in Japan will collaborate to a certain extent with the manga authors, so the Japanese character voices will be closest to what the original manga author intended them to be. Anyway, it’s certainly not that hard to use a few spare brain cells and read subtitles.

So, I was extremely aggravated when I found a few comments on the web about Night Watch:

“Hopefully the second one will get dubbed someday so I can watch it also.”

“Now I will be able to understand this.” – referring to the dubbed version.

“I went and saw this at the movies, and walked out cause I couldnt be f*cked reading the subtitles.”

Okay, is it so hard to read subtitles? Do you actually go to the extent of not watching it if the dubbed version is not available? Are you kidding me? Lots of foreign films are not (nor would I hope that they will be) dubbed, so if you can’t be bothered to read subs you’re actually missing out. Which is a shame really, since there are many good ones that deserve people’s attention.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I just get annoyed sometimes, because not making an effort to read subs just seems like being lazy to me.

Yaz.

Starting of Term, and Refilling the Bookshelf

Okay, a few things happened between my last post and now. I’ve chosen my room for next year and it’s in Bridge Street, which is a place that I’ve never actually considered living for my final year in Cambridge. Oh, it’s a nice place and is not dilapidated or anything. It’s just that I can’t get over the fact that to enter the building you have to use your swipe card and pass through a small old-looking blue door with non-functioning doorbells, unlike this year in which if somebody wanted to visit me they can go straight up to my room and knock, no swipe card nor old doors required. But apart from that, the inside of Bridge Street is quite modern and nice. I actually chose the most expensive room there: a set (separate sections of living room and bedroom) with en-suite bathroom and a kitchen next to it. Still, an eleven-week term costs about £1000, so it’s not like it’s pricey compared to London or some other places.

Start of term was the 17^th January, which was last Thursday. My new year/term resolution is to study hard, and I thought if I put it here it’ll motivate me more since now you guys know about it.

Oh, and stop pestering me about the study hard/smart thing: about how you’re supposed to study smart instead of hard and all that jazz. It’s rubbish anyway.

I realised that I haven’t been reading a lot of books for a while, and felt guilty about it since there are books that have sat on my bookshelf for ages without me touching them. So my second resolution is to read more, and in keeping with this spirit I also bought some more books from Amazon today. The second and third book of the Night Watch series, Mark Haddon’s second novel, and the His Dark Materials Trilogy (which lots of people in Cambridge say is good; and the first book, Northern Lights was made into a film called The Golden Compass, though I have no idea why they change the name). I bought them in bulk to take advantage of the Amazon’s free delivery for above $15 purchases.

Here’s my current bookshelf which I intend to fill. Don’t comment on how few books are there, since I brought home a lot of the books during my last flight to Malaysia.

Finally, I forgot to collect Nectar points on my Amazon purchases. This always happens! Drat!

Yaz.

A Layman’s Guide

I watched An Inconvenient Truth a few days ago. I know, I know, as a chemical engineer, I should have watched it ages ago, but then again, I’ve always been aware of the detrimental impacts of global warming, so it’s not like the film’s bringing me a shift of perspective or anything. Still, I did gain a few pieces of information that I didn’t know beforehand. Actually, make that a lot of information. I think before, I was just aware. Now, though, I am informed and aware, which makes a huge difference.

If you haven’t watched it, then I suggest that you do, if only to gain a better understanding of the current issue. I would describe An Inconvenient Truth as a layman’s guide to understanding global warming, so even if you don’t have a deep enough scientific knowledge, you can still follow the arguments. That is to be expected though, since the film is mostly directed towards American viewers, of which (unlike the rest of the world), there still exist a fraction of them that actually denies or are sceptical about global warming, and most of these people don’t have deep scientific knowledge.

Of course, being a documentary film that tries to present a point of view, I noticed that there are parts here and there in the film that are susceptible to embellishments and exaggerations. Plus the fact that Gore actually pours a lot of his emotions throughout the film. However, overall, it’s a well balanced and quite accurate depiction of the issue of global warming and unlike a dry science presentation, the fact that the film is interlaced with emotions actually keeps us interested to watch the film until the end, thus making it effective. So go and watch it, if you haven’t. It’s good for you.

Yaz.

The Day I Restarted Everything

Okay, as you guys can tell from my previous blog post, I was having troubles with my laptop when it suddenly crashes and gives me the blue screen of death while I was consolidating my music files. I then restarted everything and while no files are lost, the computer became very sluggish and jerky. I tried defragmenting it the next morning but it gave me the blue screen of death again, which is really annoying. Sensing an impending doom, I quickly backed up all my media and important files onto my external hard drive.

Right, there wasn’t anything much that I could do at that moment. The computer was slow but even with several restarts, I can’t fix it. During breakfast a friend of mine said (probably joking in an evil way) that three or four years sounds about right for the lifetime of a computer. I was like... nooooo! I am planning to buy a brand new laptop before I graduate, now that I have a credit card and all, but certainly not this soon. And to top it all, this is my first computer! I bought it using my own money. Well, computer allowance money actually, but it’s still my own.

Still, since nothing is working (the computer’s operational, it can surf the internet and everything, I just don’t know how to get rid of the lags) I considered wiping the hard drive clean. Erase everything and just start all over again. Of course, the problem with this is that I don’t have any Windows XP installation disks. Somehow, when I bought the computer, they never gave me one. Therefore, if something goes wrong during my hard drive reformatting, I’ll be stuck.

Of course, there’s the wonder of the internet (and Lifehacker). I searched their site and found that somebody has posted a comment on an article about hard drive reformatting: Dell computers (some of them anyway) have a PC Restore function. Basically, they have a hidden partition in the hard drive that contains an image of the drive when they first shipped it to you. This can be accessed by pressing CTRL+F11 during start-up and it will erase everything on your hard drive and restore it to the original condition like when you first take it out of the box.

So, I spent the whole of today’s morning thinking about it. Should I, or shouldn’t I? It’s irreversible, so if something goes awry I can’t really do anything at all. But then I’ve backed up most of my data anyway. So my fingers hover on the figurative big red button until...

... I pressed it.

I restarted the computer, waited until the big Dell with the white bar came up, and pressed CTRL+F11.

The PC Restore thingy came up. It asked me if I want to restore or reboot (normal start-up). I clicked restore, confirmed it and...

This is it, then. No turning back.

Finally, after about five minutes, it’s over. And no, I’m not kidding, getting rid of everything takes just five minutes.

Rebooted again, and I was greeted by the computer thanking me for purchasing Dell. Yay!

What do you know, I have a spanking new computer! Well, new in terms of the ... things inside it anyway. So, after the initial fill this and that, getting rid of the crap software that Dell bundled into my computer, and downloading 86 Windows automatic updates, my computer's ready to be used! Of course, I then have to install all the necessary programs again (McAfee, Firefox, WinRar, iTunes etc) and copy all my pics and music back into the computer but they’re not too bad. So now (since it’s ‘new’) it’s going really fast again.

Well, that’s all that I did today. It’s a good thing, the PC Restore feature. Next time something goes terribly wrong and I can’t be bothered to figure out what’s going on, I’ll know what to do.

Yaz.

A bit of trouble

I have quite a haphazard way of organising my music, remnants from the day when I first bought my laptop and didn't know any better. The files are sorted in random folders and some of them are all over the place. Never got round to actually organising it properly, until today.

So I opened iTunes and pressed the consolidate library button to copy all my music under the iTunes folder and I was planning to delete the redundant haphazardly-organised original music files afterwards. But then suddenly everything went into slow motion and my computer presented me with the Blue Screen of Death!!

I managed to get everything under control now (well, barely) but my computer is currently being very sluggish and so it seems like I will have my hands full trying to fix this. Sigh... this might take all night.

Yaz.

After the first week

Hi guys! How were you finding the first week of the new year? Anything interesting happening? Well, my lectures start in eleven days so there isn’t much going on, yet. So far, I’ve only noticed one person among my friends who is back in Trinity from the holidays and it made me realise how much I’ve missed the human presence here. Oh, there are other people near where I live, but they mostly spend their days watching anime/playing video games (though there’s nothing wrong with that; it is, after all, a holiday). It’s just that the presence of human activity makes the place a bit more… well, lively.

Just received some letters from the bank. Apparently they increased my overdraft limit by £500 to £1750, which is very nice of them though I doubt I will be reaching the limit anytime soon, if such a time exists. Unfortunately, they didn’t do anything to my credit card limit. A friend told me that maybe that’s due to the fact that I never use it, so I guess I’ll use that more often instead of my debit card.

Just watched a pretty amazing film this afternoon. Unfortunately I can’t put it down here since it might tell a bit too much (or maybe too little) about myself, so I’ll leave it at that. Heh heh heh.

Sorry for being so cryptic =)

Yaz.

Less Than Ideal

The thing is that you’d expect the New Year to start in a grandiose kind of way: with sparkling and dazzling fireworks which made a spectacular view along the Thames and the London Eye, all those people in the crowd cheering and shouting as soon as the countdown ends, together with the chimes of the Big Ben. Oh, the fireworks were sparkly all right… but only if you could see it.

I walked with a friend from Trafalgar Square towards the Thames but every way which we tried was blocked. We ended up in an area with a big screen instead, with the consolation view of the top bit of the London Eye. Imagine that, the TOP bit. Only. Which means that we also saw just a fraction of the fireworks too. Plus, it was raining to boot, albeit short and not heavy. Still, not the experience that I expected.

Oh well. To be fair, I know a certain someone who got this most excellent view of the whole New Year celebration from the Millennium Bridge but he got there at seven, so there’s a certain trade-off between the best view and the time needed to arrive there. I guess I’m just grumpy because I went to see the fireworks at around the same time last year (31 December 2006, that is) that I did this year and I still managed to get to the riverbank and have a full view of the London Eye. So when things didn’t turn out the way I expected I guess I got a little sulky.

In any case, it doesn’t really do to start the year with a negative note, so we’ll stop talking about it and move on to the next topic. Term is about to start (January 15, to be exact) and I’ve got an e-mail about next year’s room ballot. So now I’m thinking about what kinds of room should I live in next year. Two candidate places, really. The place that I live now, which is called the Blue Boar’s Court that has nice modern en-suite rooms; or the ever famous Great Court.

Now, for you who don’t know, rooms in Great Court are prized possessions. They are MASSIVE, and the people who tend to live there are scholars like me since we are placed on top of the ballot. Scholars can retain their room every year, but Great Court rooms are the exceptions. A Trinity College student can only live there for one year maximum of their studies*. That should give you an idea of how sought after it is. Apart from them being huge, the Great Court itself is a place that you can show to people with pride since it looks magnificent. However, most of the rooms don’t have en-suite bathrooms, which is a really important factor to me. Hence, I will most probably choose one of the Blue Boar rooms. But I really haven’t decided yet. And my ballot is number 21 out of 41 people, smack in the middle, so there’s a good chance the people above me will take the two Great Court rooms with showers that I wanted, but we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, happy New Year and have a good start to term!

Yaz

* Edit: Apparently the rulebook says that you can live in Great Court once throughout your scholarship. This means that if you chose a Great Court Room as a Junior Scholar, you can choose it again the year afterwards if you become a Senior Scholar, since those two count as different scholarships.

My Trip: Part 3

Right, this is long overdue but I’ll try to finish it. On the fourth day we were in Vienna but (and this is a last minute thing that we did on a whim) we decided to ride a bus to Bratislava in Slovakia, which is quite near to Vienna. This is because some of us felt that one day is enough to visit Vienna, and anyway, it would be nice to add another country to the list of those that we’ve visited so why not?

Bratislava isn’t really tourist friendly and it’s hard to find people who speak English, but one thing I noticed is that stuff are really cheap here (and it says that in the guidebook as well). We found a Tesco, but there’s no sign of my favourite tea so I bought a Lipton Orange Jaipur instead, which was recommended to me by my friend. Afterwards, we visited a castle and paid a visit to the river Danube.

On the last day, we walked around Vienna. Unfortunately at the time I was freezing cold and couldn’t be bothered to figure out the names of the places that we visited so I’m afraid I won’t be able to tell you much about them. Anyway, here are some pictures:

Like Germany, Christmas markets are everywhere here too

Right, so now I've seen the river Danube in three different countries: Hungary, Slovakia and Austria. Guess it must be huge.



Guess that's all. Have a Happy New Year!

Yaz.

My Trip: Part 2

Okay, so it’s Christmas day today and I’m spending it with my beloved friend Equilibrium Thermodynamics. We ate together, we surfed the net together, and we even read Harry Potter 7 together. How nice. Oh, and instead of a white Christmas, we get a drizzly Christmas in Cambridge this year. Not that I really mind.

Right, let’s continue our story about my trip. We’ll start with… tea! I might have mentioned this somewhere in the blog but my favourite tea is the rooibos vanilla tea that I first encountered in Hungary while I was visiting my friend. I bought two packs for myself at that time and I remembered being sad when I ran out of them. I tried looking for the particular tea in the UK but to no avail. It seems that they only have vanilla with camomile or vanilla with ginseng and things like that, which I’m not really fond of. So, imagine my delight when I found some tea of the flavour I’m looking for in Berlin. In fact it was the exact same brand. Yippee!

Since we’re on the subject of food I’d like to mention that due to the large Turkish population, finding something to eat for us is not a problem at all in Berlin. Kebab shops are everywhere. And not that I’m an expert but I’m pretty sure that they taste better than the ones we have here too, not to mention cheaper.

So on the third day we rented a car (a Ford Mondeo, by the way... we were sort of expecting a German car but... oh well) and drove to Stuttgart, which is basically at the other end of Germany. Going across Germany is not really a big problem though since we rode the car at around 200 km/h. Not all the time, of course, but quite a big portion of the way. I guess there’s no way in hell you can do that back in Malaysia so we might as well savour the experience.

Isn't that amazing?

We saw lots of wind turbines along the way

The reason we went to Stuttgart is to see the Mercedes Benz museum. I personally don’t know much about cars, but what I saw was pretty impressive.

There was one incident when the car sort of broke down after we left the Museum to go to the airport. It was when we were going up a slope, of all places. Smoke was coming out of the front bit. Fortunately, the car started working again after ten minutes or so, otherwise, we would have missed our flight.

Guess that’s it for now, I’ll cover the last stretch of our trip on the next part. See ya!

Yaz.

This Place Makes Me Sad

Day before yesterday I cooked a meal consisting of rice and chicken and I put them in tupperwares and I placed them in the kitchen fridge so that I can eat it for lunch the next day. But when I looked the day after they’re gone. As a note, to eat the meal you have to put them in a microwave for a few minutes and then serve them on a plate; it’s not something that you can take a quick bite of. So I ended up hungry and I had to cook again.

Today I went to the laundrette to get the clothes that I left there to dry (since I can’t put them in the tumble dryer) but when I checked one of them is gone. It’s something that I just bought and it costs me £25. The clothes, the food… they all cost money. They don’t just appear out of thin air.

Honestly, I thought the stealing days are over when I left boarding school. Apparently not. Right now I’m feeling depressed because there’s no one that I can get mad at, which might be a good thing for the guilty persons, coz if I can get my hands on them…

Yaz.

My Trip: part 1

Hey there! Did you miss me? I arrived in Cambridge early Friday morning and it took me a bit more than a day to recuperate and blog about it. Right, where do I start? The trip was five days and we departed from Heathrow on the first day to Berlin.

The airport

Unfortunately I still haven’t got all the pictures that my friends took during the trip so I can only show you the ones I have. We arrived at the airport in Berlin, checked in to our hotel and went sightseeing afterwards. On the first day, we saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Television Tower (which we didn’t climb because most of us deemed it too expensive), the Reichstag (which is an awesome sight – modern meets historical, you’ll know what I mean when you see it), and a lot of Christmas fairs and markets.

A christmas market

The TV Tower

Brandenburg Gate

The front of the Reichstag, where the parliament meets

The inside of the Reichstag

Sony Centre

On the second day, we went to see the Berlin Wall, or whatever remains of it. We also visited Checkpoint Charlie, and entered the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. It's one of the best museums I've ever been. The first bit of it was sad because they displayed the horrible fate that befell the people during the era after the war. But then the later bit shows how people came up with all kinds of clever and ingenious inventions and tactics to escape from East Berlin to West and it's really amazing seeing all the ways that they employed.

We also went to see the Charlottenburg Palace but it was closed since it was a Monday. Then we went to the Jewish Museum which is honestly the most interactive non-scientific museum I've ever been too.

A wish that was written on the Tree of Life. Awwwww...

There's an installation that I really like. When you walk on this face-shaped metal plates, your footsteps will make a really melancholic sound. Best if only one person walks on it at a time.

We went to the Sony Centre to visit the Legoland but it was closed too because we arrived too late. Oh well...

I guess that's about it for part 1. The trip chronicles will continue in part 2 (and maybe 3?) when i have some more time to write. See ya!

Yaz.

I’m in the news!

Ha ha, well… not exactly the newspaper kind of news. It’s just that the people in the department have found out that Cambridge won the L’Oreal Ingenius competition, so they put the news on the departmental website, together with a picture of the team. Guess that’s sort of my fifteen minutes (or however long they put it up there) of fame. I think people from outside the department can see it too. Oh gosh!

Went to London for a day trip today. I was there last Sunday as well because I felt like shopping but there were tons of people (it being a Sunday and all) so I got a bit claustrophobic and I went out of the shop without buying anything at all. Instead, I visited some of my friends in London including the new AC students. Got to be nice to them, just in case I plan to visit Atlantic College again and needed someplace to stay. Ha ha ha.

Just kidding. I’m nice to them regardless.

Today I went to see my sponsor to give them a bad news, a neutral news and a good news. The bad news is that Trinity doesn’t want to give my college bill straight to them but it has to go through me first, which to be honest, I don’t really mind since even though this will make the payment process slower, I have overdraft facility available if I’m short on money anyway. The neutral news is that I’m changing to Gmail, which I should have done ages ago. The good news you already know. My student advisor said I really should write a short report about it so that it can be put up on the Intranet and people in the company can read it. Errr… okay. I’m going to go to Berlin on Sunday so I’ll see what I can whip up within these two days.

I sometimes go to the river Cam if I just want to chill out and relax, so in London it’s only natural that I gravitated to the larger and grander version of the Cam: the Thames. Here are some photos that I took with my phone.

There was an open stall selling books under the bridge at the Thames. Unfortunately, when I arrived, there was only one row of books. I remembered the last time I went here there were three rows and tons of books. Oh well.

Also visited the comic book store of a friend of mine in Central London. It's called Gosh! and is situated near the British Museum. Unfortunately, my friend wasn't there (I expected him to be travelling at this time of the year anyway) so I just left.

Well, that sums up my day. I'll be back in the UK and Cambridge again next Friday. Until then, happy holidays!

Yaz.

This Week

Okay, so the holiday has officially started on the 1^st (though I was only free from the 6^th) and now Cambridge is partially devoid of students and the people who are left don’t really have anything to do, which is good. As you might know, I’ll be going to Germany & Austria next week, so now I’m dedicating this week to studying. Otherwise, I’ll feel guilty for not doing anything beneficial during the holidays and it will spoil my trip. This way, the trip will also feel more like a reward after working hard.

Holidays are also ideal to do things that you don’t have time to accomplish during term, such as this:

A friend lent it to me before he left for home. Finally! Now I’ll be able to actually understand what people are babbling about.

Yaz.

My Little Trip to Wales

Hi there! It’s been awhile. I came back from Wales last Wednesday night but I guess I needed to recharge my batteries and take care of some other things, so I’m only able to write about it now. The whole thing was, literally, unbelievable.

We departed from Cambridge on Monday morning by train. This was my firsthand experience on seeing how people who live in Cambridge but work in London travel. The train was packed and we had to stand for 45 minutes. I’m used to having a relaxed breakfast every morning and then ambling slowly to the department, sometimes taking the longer way just because I felt like it. Those walks really help me to look forward to the day. I guess if you have to commute in a packed train for about an hour every day to get to work, that can be very stressful. Though I suppose they’re probably used to it.

Oh yeah, I guess I haven’t told you properly. The competition that I was entering was the L’Oreal Ingenius 2008 and the UK Finals was held last Monday till Wednesday in Cardiff. The winning team will advance to the International Finals which will be held in Paris next March. There were six teams in total from universities in the UK.

I personally think the whole trip was amazing. L’Oreal paid for our transportation, they booked us on a nice hotel in Cardiff and they even took us out to dinner. On Monday it was this Spanish/Mexican restaurant and on Tuesday was an Italian one overlooking the Cardiff bay. The days were spent visiting the L’Oreal plant and thinking of ways to increase its efficiency. A sad thing is that everybody was busy doing the assigned tasks that we don’t really have time to look at Cardiff in details or even socialise much with other teams. We did talk to each other a bit during lunch, dinner, and while we’re taking a break in the hotel lounge.

There is something vitally important that I learnt from this trip. Before this, I (and probably a lot of other students I know)… we were kind of detached from our lecture materials. That is to say, sometimes, we just view them as something that you need to study to pass the exams. But in this competition, I realised that I was drawing knowledge from my lectures. Thermo, separations, even biotechnology… they weren’t just stuff you learnt, but they were actually very useful and they helped our team to come up with a solution. This really made me appreciate lectures more.

All the teams did a PowerPoint presentation in front of a panel of ten juries on the last day, all of whom are engineering staff of the plant. After they heard from all of us, they discussed it amongst themselves to decide a winner. I think our team did well in presenting our ideas, and my two team members were really nervous and anxious and I can tell that they really wanted to win. I, on the hand, don’t really mind since I’ve already gotten a precious experience and a valuable lesson but I refrained from saying anything since it’ll sound too pessimistic.

After half an hour or so, we were invited back into the presentation room. The results were announced and guess what…

… we won!

I really can’t believe it. My team members and I will be representing the UK in the International Finals in Paris in March. To be honest, I never expected myself to go this far. The whole thing didn’t really sink in… not on the taxi ride to the station, not when we wandered along the streets of Cardiff afterwards, and not on the train ride back to Cambridge. My team members were feeling the same; we caught each other’s eyes and just spontaneously laugh. It was surreal for them too.

So yeah, that’s basically it. There weren’t any grand prizes or anything, those are for the International Finals. But we did get a gift box containing a belt and a perfume.

Me? Representing the UK? Hahahhahahahahahaha!

Yup, still can’t believe it.

Yaz.

I’m free!

Finally, no more coursework! My lectures all ended last Wednesday but we the chemical engineers still have to finish two coursework (we call them exercises, which often cause confusion for non chem-engers since the term makes people think they’re not that significant). Handed them both early this afternoon, well before the 4:30 p.m. deadline.

I guess students are pretty much the same everywhere. Even in Cambridge, I saw people queuing up at the department’s reception at 4:30 handing their work in, still warm from the printer. I mean, really… if you can start doing your work just two days before and hand them in during the deadline, then why wouldn’t you just finish them in the first two days after they’re issued and get it all over with? Surely it’ll be less stressful that way.

On another note, I’m going to Wales next Monday until Wednesday for this engineering competition. I somehow got dragged into participating by a friend. Still, they pay for the hotel accommodation, and I got the chance to visit Wales again… sounds good to me.

Yaz.

Skating Rink

There’s a new temporary ice skating rink open in Cambridge at Parker’s Piece, a grassy field area near the town centre. I’ve seen it since two weeks ago but at that time I just wondered what the white-roofed construction was. The rink just started operating for the past few days and I guess I’m not the only one being excited by it. More like the whole of Cambridge population, judging by the number of people there.

Now, I know that ice skating rinks are no big deal in places like, say… London, but we never had one for the past two years that I live here, so I have a valid reason to be excited. What I need to do now is to find a few people to go skating together. Preferably those who don’t know how, so at least I won’t be embarrassing myself alone by falling down all over the place.

Yaz.

It’s Christmas, well… sort of

The thing about Cambridge is that it’s essentially a university town (or city, if you prefer). Which means that come December this picturesque place will be reduced to something resembling a ghost town since everybody will be gone. I’ve lived through this twice already so take my word for it. What this means is that it will be pointless to decorate the city in December for there’ll be nobody to appreciate it. Hence, events that are related to Christmas are happening now: Christmas lights on the street (even though they’re still not switched on), Christmas dinners and formals etc. etc.

We had the chemical engineering Christmas dinner last Tuesday. Last year it was held in Teri-Aki, a sushi restaurant which, even though the food was okay, doesn’t have the Christmassy feel to it. As a result, this year it’s held in a more appropriate English pub called The Anchor. Nice enough place. It’s next to the river, which is always a plus. To be honest, I’ve never been inside a pub in Cambridge to eat before, so it was quite an experience.

Just to note, I’ve been in a pub in Cambridge before. There was this young lady who played a game with her friends in which they have to bring a person they don’t know with them so she just grabbed me while I was walking along King’s Parade. Went to the pub, sat for like 30 seconds and left. Pretty hilarious though.

And the best pub food experience for me was when me and my dorm mates ate at the Olde Swan Inn in Llantwit Major, Wales. We were quite an international bunch: a Malaysian, a Ugandan, a Londoner with a Maori heritage and a Pakistani/American. I still remember that I ordered quesadillas, and that we all shared a humongous plate of nachos. An amazing gastronomical delight, that’s what it was.

Anyway, back to the present (or more precisely, the very recent past), the Christmas dinner was good. Had to choose the wild mushroom soup and stuffed trout instead of turkey or steak due to my dietary requirements, but that was good too (I’ve never actually tasted turkey, wonder what it’s like). Ended the meal with ruffled by chocolate (essentially a chocolate cake with cream and raspberries and a mint leaf; Christmas colours, see?). Many went to a pub afterwards, though I don’t see the point of paying to get into a bar when you don’t drink and will probably not dance but instead having to see other people get drunk and listen to some music blaring in your ears. So I went with some friends to one of our rooms and just chilled out and talked about guitars, Mike Tyson, interesting suicide attempts, St John’s porcelain cups, German punks, accordions and some other random bits and pieces.

Lectures end next Friday, so a lot of other people (me included) are waiting in anticipation and counting the days for December to arrive. In the meantime, there’s another Christmas dinner on Tuesday, so that ought to get me through the week.

Season’s greetings everyone.

Yaz.