Pubs, Kilts and Drums, Oh My!

Well, here I sit, the cars rolling by, bagpipes in the distance (no joke), Frasier on the telly and I'm wrapped up in a cardigan sipping some tea as I write this. Ah to have a cold on a Sunday. The department has been absolutely beleaguered with illness. All week I've been sitting in my office hearing sniffles, hacks and coughs all down the hallway. It was inevitable and I was finally slowly overcome throughout the course of the weekend.

Aside from a horde of Visigoths storming the citadels of my immune system, I have had quite an eventful week. Tuesday night I came back to my flat after a day at work to a rather unwelcome and unpleasant set of people in my house (visitors for another flatmate, whom I believe were talking about me right before I came in). I passed around the obligatory plea for help from my coworkers for a pub outing. A suggestion came up to finally go to Crosslands, also known as the "Trainspotting pub". For those of you who have seen the brutal, disturbing, yet heartwarming film that is Trainspotting would recognise many of the places around my flat as locations from the movie. Though it is set in Edinburgh, there is only one scene, the opening one, that is filmed there, the rest was all mostly filmed around Glasgow and particularly around my flat. Anyway, if you have seen the film, you would no doubt remember the infamous scene where Bigby throws a pint off of a balcony onto a woman's head (again, heartwarming) and proceeds to threaten to find the person who did it. This is a real pub a few streets away which still has the balcony and all. It has been much renovated in the last years, but the outside still looks as shady as ever. I'm really glad we went though, I had a great time. The night was simply two others, the IT guy and my second supervisor, downing pints and discussing video games. After a few rounds we decided to go back to my supervisor's flat and open a bottle of whiskey that we had bought at the whiskey festival. Needless to say, I did learn the lesson to never, ever go out drinking with two Glaswegian men in the middle of the week.

This lesson was learned since I had to be up and at the university at 900 am to help out with our University Open Day. Yes, I spent the day greeting wide-eyed curious young'uns and their excited, proud, if somewhat overbearing parental units and explaining to them why they should go to the University of Glasgow and study physics. I was the token student as I moved overseas to attend this program and am very proud of that decision. I have done these sort of events at every university I've ever attended and I quite like trying to convince kids to go into physics. We had well over 400 students come through our department mostly asking what they would need to get in, not needing convincing to attend, which is a really great sign. I stood representing the Astronomy department as well as the Institute for Gravitational Research. IGR had some excellent visuals to explain General Relativity as well as our detectors. People were really inquisitive about it. I was helping out with a few of the Astronomy PhD students with whom I really do not connect. They are really immature and cliquey and had a difficult time actually doing their job. I much more get along with the IGR crowd who are a bit older and more responsible. In general, we had a great day which was very successful for the department.

That night was the World Cup Qualifiers for Scotland. This was an important match because we would be placed in the World Cup based on if we won or lost. This was one hell of an experience. We all met up at Cooper's just down the street from my flat at about half-five, two hours before the match started. This way, we were settled and with seats. Good thing, too, as I was completely overwhelmed by the experience. By the time we had food and pints flowing, it was nearing kickoff for the match and the place was standing room only. And I mean standing room. Like front row of a concert standing room. This place was absolutely packed. Simply one pub out of the many, many choices on every street of Glasgow. I imagine any other pub with a decent amount of television screens would be the same. People were dressed in kilts or wearing a Scottish flag as a cape. Not everyone of course, but there were enough to raise the spirits. The national anthem was sung along and the entire place was enraptured for the full two hours. It was quite a disappointing game as we lost 1-0, but there were many, many close goals that strained everyone's blood pressure in the place. It was, though disappointing, a fantastic experience of Scottish life.

Thursday we had our first Journal Club meeting of the term at the department. This was especially fun for me as I was the only one who hadn't been to one before. It's only about 8-10 people: professors, post-docs and PhD students and it's basically a book club for scientists. We read, well "read" journal articles every week and discuss them as well as keeping everyone informed on how their professional careers are going. I had some exciting news to share about the project that I worked on at Colorado, but I'm going to keep you in suspense for next week as it's still in the works! I really enjoyed the club, though, I just usually really like things like that. I like being reminded about the collaborative and dynamic field we're working in.

Friday night was a fun department outing as we were celebrating someone finishing their PhD and leaving and another person's 30th birthday. We had birthday cake at coffee at 4 before heading to the Research Club, which has been closed for the last month then heading to The Rock for the going-away party. We had some great chat about Halloween, relationships, travel, the usual. Not too exciting, just a regular Friday night out.

On Saturday, get this, no, wait, brace yourself! We had SUN!! It was a gorgeous, cloudless day in Glasgow. Though I was starting to feel under the weather, I simply could not let this beautiful day pass me by. I had a bit of clothes shopping to do down in the city center and I was dying to pick up some new books to read. This week is fresher's week (basically the UK version of orientation week) so there are lots of students and the west end was absolutely packed with people, both due to term starting and due to the weather. I made it to the city centre and did some awful clothes shopping, but once that was out of the way, and I was freshly armed with new styles of black I made my way down to Borders. I ended up buying lots of new biographies, Carrie Fisher, Dawn French and the Julie/Julia book. I went back to the Botanic Gardens across from my flat and read for the rest of the evening in the sun before heading out to the Uisce Beatha pub in Woodlands; another one I've always wanted to try. This is a place I could make my regular.

Before I went back to the Botanic Gardens, I should let you in on the awesome band I discovered on Buchanan Street. I was walking back to the underground I hear these pounding drums resonating down the street accompanied by a single bagpipe. It was so tribal and original and seemed to be right out of every Scottish cliche. I'm not going to complain. This is one of the things I wanted when I moved here. It was 7 men, aged 20-70 who were donning kilts and tattoos, channelling my beloved late Uncle Mike, pounding away at the drums. Sooooooo excellent. You can watch a video of one of their performances in the same location. If you watch until the end, you can get a semi-decent shot of a more-than-decent-looking man and down the city centre of Glasgow. Just watch the video at this link: Clanadonia For those of you who don't have the time/technology to watch the video, here's the picture of a few of the group that I'll leave you with until next week...
I. Love. Scotland.