Millport and Birthdays

I'm sitting here early on a Monday morning (the British Daylight Savings ended on Sunday) and the computer server is still down for repairs they started on Friday. So I figured I'd update this since I didn't do it last night. Well, it's definitely autumn now. It's cold and windy and rainy all day every day. Umbrellas are useless this time of year because of the gusts of wind. Sometimes, though, as long as it's not too cold or you're bundled up nicely, it can be quite refreshing to walk home through tons of rain and sleet.
Last week was one of those "wasted" weeks due to a "team-building" retreat the new PhD students in the Faculty of Physical Sciences had to attend. These are new Chemistry, Physics/Astronomy and Geology PhD students. They pick us up in a giant coach at 9am on Tuesday morning and drive us to the coast of Scotland to catch the ferry to the Isle of Cumbrae to stay at a research hostel for 3 days. It's basically meant to make us as miserable as possible so we manage to bond with each other. Which is quite effective. I mean, really, send us to a remote island off the coast of Scotland in the end of October with no escape and we will bond through our destitution. This trip is one of those legendary, awful, required experiences that has become almost a right-0f-passage for the University of Glasgow PhD scientists.
So we get to the island in time for lunch on Tuesday afternoon. When we were signing up (under threat of death if we didn't) we got dietary preferences and since I cannot eat dairy, I put that down. So we show up for lunch and it's some godawful (again, one of the legendary things is the atrocious food that is served) beige, cream pasta thing. Since I obviously cannot eat this, I ask about the non-dairy thing and they had a little plate set aside for me. My non-dairy meal was two slices of brown bread with lettuce and sprouts on top. No spreads or anything else. However, I gladly ate it instead of the alternative, though it was a bit pathetic. The others said that the pasta seemed to remove taste from their mouths. We wandered around the island for a bit to the town of Millport and popped in for tea at this tiny cafe which was your classic small village experience. Lots of old people who all know each other, but they were very friendly. We made our way back for our much-feared 'team-building' exercises. You know those stupid things you had to do at camp? Yeah, those. Crossing the 'bog' with only rope and planks of wood; wandering through the forest blindfolded following a rope; etc, etc. Thankfully it was only a few hours (with a break for tea) and that was the last time we had to do it all week.

The local pub (The Newton) advertised events in our hostel, which I'm pretty sure they organised just because we were going to be there. So the first night, they were advertising a pub quiz. We all showed up to the pub at about 7:30 and basically took over. I'm sure the town of Millport is used to that time of year where they are raided by 50 some-odd scientists for a few days. So we started drinking and chatting and watching a Rangers game on the telly until the quiz started at 9:30. We moved into the back, giant lounge and settled in for our pub quiz. The staff members were of course the winners and their prize was a bottle of vodka. Hilarious. The pub, of course, closed at 11:30 and we were promptly kicked out back to the hostel to hang out in the lounge and play poker until the wee hours of the morning.

The next day we had to give presentations that had been assigned to us before. Whoever organised the physics presentations did an awful job as we were not allowed to present on our own specific field and they were generic, boring lectures that only physicists might find interesting. Everyone else had presentations like "The Chemistry of Addiction" or "The Chemistry of Assassination" or "How can we use deep geological time to predict the future?" Our's were "The spin of a proton" and "Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry" and since they weren't our fields of expertise, we were useless when it came to questions. Not only that, but in our group of 4, only two of us actually showed up in Millport. We had slides from one of the guys but the other guy didn't even bother putting together his bit of the presentation. So ours was a bit of a sham, but it was a fairly relaxed atmosphere, so I think we did okay. They videotaped us and are going to give us copies to go over in the near future, which may be useful.

That night, the staff organised another pub quiz in the lounge of the hostel to keep us out of The Newton as long as possible. The prize for this quiz was half a bottle of vodka, to everyone's amusement. It was mostly science-related questions with a bit of Glasgow Uni history thrown in. After that, we went down to The Newton for a karaoke night. One of the guys I was hanging out with had brought a bottle of Czech rum so we took the long way to the pub, along this little, unlit trail on the coast and drank some of the rum to complete the ambiance. This pathway made it feel more like we were on an island in Scotland; and the rum didn't hurt. The karaoke was a blast because you got to see a lot of people really come out of their shells. Everyone had a good time and it ended in the most Glaswegian way possible: the organiser in the pub announced the last song and ordered everyone on the dance floor to sing along to "500 Miles" by the Proclaimers, which is an extremely Glaswegian song. So everyone was jumping on the dance floor singing along holding our pints. Brilliant. We all got kicked out, of course, straightaway at 11:30. So a few of us went to the benches on the coast and drank more of the rum (which we had stored in my bag while at the pub) and talked about politics until about 1am. It really was a great bonding night for everyone. So really, they should just stick us on a craggy island with music and booze and miserable weather and we'll all be friends by the end of it.

The next day about half of us woke up on time and we had to put together improvised talks on current issues in the science world: funding, climate change, government vs industry, etc. We were all hungover and did a mildly decent job before hopping back on the coach to take us back to Uni. On the way back we all were talking about how much work we had to get done and so would go in when we got back, at about 1:30, but as soon as we saw sight of the university, none of us could really be bothered and so went straight home.

I got back to my flat with an email notice that it was my 2nd supervisor's birthday and we were all going out at 6:30 for dinner and drinks. Of course. The fun never stops. So I met up with them and we went to this interesting Persian restaurant that had just opened up near the university. It was really great food. We went from there to the Doublet which has an upstairs bar (I know I talked about this before) and a jukebox. So we played lots of cheezy music for a few hours over some drinks. We then headed to the Uisce Beatha to settle in and top off the evening. They were playing Jaws on the telly without sound so we basically just watched that, narrating along the way. On the way home, at 1am, the dreaded Scoobie Snack was suggested, which means we have to eat one. So we did. Then went straight to bed and woke up feeling not-so-hot the next day.

Friday was a big birthday day for everyone as one of my friends was turning 30 and someone else in the department was turning 50. I took my friend out for lunch to celebrate as she's terrified of the passage of time and wasn't coping with the new decade very well. I went demonstrating at the observatory for a few hours in the afternoon then went back to her house afterwards to help her get ready for her party. We opened up a bottle of wine early and watched television for a little while. Her swiss relatives showed up at 8pm on-the-dot and everyone else trickled in later on. It was a great, relaxed little party for everyone.

Saturday I was invited to have supper at the house of the Astronomer Royal of Scotland. He invites a few new PhD students and new staff members over to his house every year from the University of Glasgow. It was a really nice house just on the other side of the Botanic Gardens. Him and his wife made some excellent food for all of us and we spent the night there having civilised chat and great curry (yes, they served curry, the delicacy of Glasgow). I left a bit early as it was my 5th night in a row of drinking. So I went home through the mist and the rain and crawled into my nice warm bed.

Sunday was a very very lazy day spent watching The West Wing and Disney movies. Can't complain. Here's to a new week! Ta ta for now.