Whisky, Wine and Ceilidh Bruises

Another successful week has come and gone. I still cannot believe how quickly time is flying by. Nine months down...that's 1/4 of my time here. How insane is that?

On Thursday, upon arrival back from Barony Castle, I had a whole stack of grading to do. Oh the joys of teaching. It did actually take me all day to do, which is good because I got paid for the whole day to do it.

We also had a colloquium that afternoon in the Astronomy department. It was the first time in a colloquium with a visiting professor that I ended up really getting involved in the conversation. See, he was doing a blind optical survey looking for bursts in the data. As I have done research in blind line searches before I started asking him about his data techniques. Turns out it was atrocious, visual inspection with no signal-to-noise assessment or template. It felt pretty good to point that out and have the other professors in the department back me up. I was finally able to cogently lead an argumentative discussion and hold my ground. Anyway, I was right and had professors commending my techniques and actually asking me about it as it is a different field and they were not familiar with my analysis. It is always nice to feel professional.

The next day was pretty short, all things considered. I came in and did some quick coding in the morning before our Friday doughnuts during tea break. After that I ran down to the city centre to pick up my friend from the rail station. This is the friend from high school that is now living in York whom I visited a few months ago. It was really great to have someone visit who was really easy to please and excited to see the city, despite colleagues ragging on it back in York.

I picked him up and we went to the West End to drop stuff off at my flat before getting dressed to go out. We went to the good ol' Mr India's for some proper Glasgow curry: the #13 wine, spiced onions and poppadoms, chicken tikka garam masala and lamb saag. It's the way life should always be.

After that we went to the city centre and met up with a few of my friends from the office to go to the public ceilidh at Sloan's. It still amazes me that they can hold this ceilidh every single Friday night and still have it be super popular (there were over 100 people). Of course, about half the men were donned in kilts of various formality (some with t-shirts, others with the full get-up) and the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. This culture does not put the same stigma on dancing that America does. The men are fully capable of dancing and it is actually more common to dance with different people throughout the night. No matter how shy they are, they are confident in their dancing ability which is very different from America. There is also a lack of competition or the need to be great. Given the self-depricating tendencies of the Scots, it is fully acceptable to screw up and laugh it off. I really like that atmosphere a lot better. We had quite a few people there, perfectly split boys and girls so it was a great time. We went back, had some tea, fought with my IKEA couch to try to make it sort of like a bed for him and crashed, ceilidh bruises and all.

The next day we got up and had a nice fry with bacon and egg rolls and tea. Great way to start the day. We then wandered our way down to the city centre and sat in the bar by the train station, which I love because it is super confusing, like an MC Escher house and is decorated like a pub one would find in Rohan. We went through a few whiskies before seeing him off. The ScotRail guards are on strike, so the police were doing their best, but the station was a bit chaotic. He got on fine though and I went back to my flat.

That night, my friend and I were getting together to have another Star Trek/curry/wine night. As she is from Switzerland she asked if we could watch the ski-jumping for Simon Ammann (I think that's how you spell it). It was super fun to watch with a Swiss, booing the Austrians, accepting a good Polish jump and pulling out the nice Swiss liqueur when he got the gold. It was great to get so involved and see it from another countries perspective. It is also great to be in the UK where they only have one advertisement each break on BBC Sport. Since that particular advertisement had Sean Connery in it, we were not arguing every time they cut to it. The NBC Olympics are insane with commercials. I do not envy American television watching. We still got our fill of Spock and McCoy that night, so it was all right in the end.

Sunday I woke up not feeling very well, so I slept in as I had not had a free Sunday in about 4 weeks. The day was filled with lots of knitting and TV-watching and catching up with friends on Skype. It was also Alan Rickman's birthday so the obligatory Galaxy Quest had to be watched as well as Die Hard. Hey, I am not going to turn down an excuse to watch his films all day.

Monday I hit the ground running on a simulation I had been asked to perform by the group. By the end of the day, I had it working and cranking away, so that felt pretty good. Of course, by now we have discovered that the code I was referring to at one point was flawed, so we have had to go back and re-run some things, but nothing that I cannot handle. Today we had one of our journal clubs and called in a few ex-Glaswegians to discuss a new paper on probability analysis, questioning whether a gaussian was the optimal noise distribution for simulation. It turned out to be a great discussion though the connection to the others was more like tin cans and string. For next time we are thinking that short wave radios or gravitational wave antennae would be the best mode of communication.

On that note, I better get ready for my meeting in a few minutes. Up for this weekend, flatwarming party, meeting up with a friend from Edinburgh on Sunday and of course, more world-class research. Ta for now!

The Burn and the BBC

Again, mental week. I'm waiting for the train to depart Edinburgh Waverly station back to Glasgow so I can enjoy some leftover Valentine's curry and catch up on some much needed sleep. As I am sure you all remember me mentioning, I have had a crazy week of travelling all over Scotland fulfilling various extra-PhD commitments.

First of all, last Wednesday, after I wrote to you, I went off to my Gaelic class. The university is offering conversational Gaelic free in the evenings to anyone who is interested. It is coming along nicely and I sadly have to miss class this week due to my travels. I now know how to say my name, say how are you and say where I am from in a full conversation. I also know some basic adjectives and sentence structure but not to any comprehensible degree. I still enjoy it though and it is definitely worth going to.

On Friday, I got up bright and early and frantically packed for the weekend. We were going away with the second year Astronomy students for a dark-sky weekend to try to get them excited and hopefully sign up for Honours Astronomy. My friend was leaving for a month, so it was a pretty relaxed day of getting in, having group Friday doughnuts then going out to lunch at Tennent's with her to fill the steak-pie shaped hole in my soul. I made it back to the department just in time to grab my bags and meet the students in the foyer of the Kelvin Building. It was a group of 35 total people heading out and we all left the department at 1:30. A coach arrived at the university to take us all the way across Scotland, through Dundee and to Glenesk, home of The Burn House (link provided here).

The Burn was built in the 18th century as one of these mansion, manor houses for a fairly wealthy family. More like Netherfield then Pemberly, but still completely acceptable. It was a family house for years until World War II when the son of the family who lived there was killed in battle. The family could not bear to live in the house any longer and donated the house in their son's name to a trust. This trust donated the house to the universities of Scotland that it would be used primarily for educational purposes. Since then, it has been used for universities to take students up for weekends and retreats. It is still decorated as a family home and has that feel to it.

We drove through the tiny gates with the label of "The Burn House" and up a drive that took two minutes to reach the top. The property is 190 acres and the house looks over a large beautiful field. It definitely has the feel of a manor from the old regency era. I spent the entire three days half expecting Mr Darcy to walk over the hilltops and out of the fog. One of my favourite ambiances that the staff of the house ensured was the face that they rang us all for dinner. In keeping the familial atmosphere, they require that everyone eat in the dining hall at the same time. The staff were great at ensuring first-name basis and approachability. Since I cannot eat dairy, the chef made me a separate meal every day. He would pull me into the kitchen to discuss his menu and to check that I was okay with it. But getting back to the meals, they still had a large dining room and let one of the students ring the gong on the hour for each meal. Like I said, it added a lot to the atmosphere.

Upon arrival, the head of the household met us in the drawing room with a roaring fire and introduced us to the staff, explained the rules of the house and allocated us all to specific rooms. Being the only female "in charge" aside from the main professor who was their with her husband, I got my own room. Consulting old floorplans for the house, turns out I was sleeping in the "dairymaid's room" which was very very pink. A nice single bed, though, and a television that did not work as well as a lovely tea tray for my use.

We had a lovely supper before heading out to the grounds to star-gaze. Oh! And I forgot to include the fact that we had a 'bar' which was essentially a really old guy, in his last year of servicing the house who we could summon between the hours of 6:30 and 10:00 at night by ringing the bell to his room (a la Cinderella) and he would come out and sell us booze. Anyway, they had fairly decent whisky so we stocked up on that and headed outside into the freezing cold. Now this is what I always wanted as a career as an astronomer: bundled up outside at night, in Scotland, in front of a mansion, holding a single malt whisky and trying to identify constellations. We brought lots of telescopes from the observatory so the fact that I at least knew where the Andromeda Galaxy was as well as the Orion Nebula, I was able to help provide some nice experiences for the students. In all honesty, I have never seen skies that dark since I was camping in the Kakadu National Park in the outback in the Northern Territories of Australia.

Once the clouds inevitably came in (to be fair, we got clearer skies than I thought we would) we retired to the library to indulge in the original Star Wars films projected on a screen. There were some students in the drawing room playing rummy and playing the antique piano, but I settled for the 'less classy' approach of curling up with chocolate Hob Nobs, some Australian Shiraz and the Empire Strikes Back. I think I made the right decision, regrets the next day aside.

The next day we woke up bright and early to be summoned for the 9:00am breakfast. Now, I despise the sausages here. Jimmy Deans they be not. They are bland and without any flavour whatsoever. However, the sausages at The Burn, recommended by the professor herself, were homemade from the local butcher and absolutely phenomenal. I would have had a plateful of handmade sausage links if I had no self-respecting bones in my body.

We basically had the entire day off (this is an Astronomy trip, after all; implying nighttime work...brilliant!) so after breakfast I decided to take some photos and head out on some of the country paths around the estate. The Esk river ran through the property and there was a lovely walk both up and down it. As I walked away from the manor, I really got the Jane Austen chills, which of course was sort of life-fulfilling (as mature as I may pretend to be). Mr Darcy was about to walk out of that river, dripping wet. I saw some amazing ruins from the Jacobite era which though no longer stood were adorned with the Scottish flag, oh bless.

In the afternoon, after lunch, we organised a few interested students and went on another country walk all the way to the local village a few miles away and a good 45-60 minute walk. This walk was not exactly well-worn and we all saw more carnage than was ever comfortable, even for home-grown Glaswegians. We saw a deceased goat in the river in a position that made it look like it was some sort of pagan sacrifice. We also saw a dead cow that most of us thought was a rock at first. Oh, the scenery of the countryside of Scotland; there is nothing like it. We finally made our way to the local pub (where else would you expect), feeling like the local hoodlums in the town of approximately ten people. The Six Nations rugby was on, which I care not to mention and if any of you have any sense, do not ask a Scotsman about the Scotland/Wales Six Nations game. In a word, Hari-Kari was committed, quite brutally and successfully.

We made it back to the manor for dinner and went out again to enjoy a full clear night. Eventually it clouded over and we all went inside for a competition on 'the best thing of Astronomy' contributed by the students (resulting in the most popular professor winning the prize) and an Astronomy quiz that all the "supervisors" entered but did not complete as we wiped the floor with them. Turns out we actually know a thing or two about astronomy; who knew? Overall, I really enjoyed getting to know the students better and it was nice to see them get to know each other as well and form some pretty great friendships.

Oh and the best thing about this trip (James, you'll appreciate this...) is that one of the students came up to me and said, 'Do you ever watch Mythbusters? Because you remind me so much of Kari. When you first walked into our classroom, I thought to myself, Oh my god, that's Kari. Especially when you started speaking with your American accent. I hope you're not offended!' It is funny how the older I get and the more into science I get, the more I get compared with that girl. Anyway, funny anecdote. But I honestly really enjoyed the students and everyone really seemed to get a lot out of the trip.

On Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year (my Chinese-background supervisor taught us how to play Mah Jong the previous night) we piled into the coach after lunch to head back home. My supervisor and myself decided to finally attend our 'local' since I am now living in North Kelvinside and we had not been to the Crosslands yet. We actually sat on the infamous balcony where Bigby throws the pint (there is actually a photo of the Trainspotting cast on that balcony) and enjoyed a pint or three Belhaven Best. I went home and indulged in my standard Valentine's tradition of curry, a chardonnay and Bridget Jones's Diary.

The next day, I had to be up bright and early to catch up on some immediate work before running off to Pacific Quay (pronounced 'key') BBC studios on the Clyde. See, I had signed up for this 'Researchers, research and the media' course that the BBC was offering to 'professional' scientists to learn how to communicate with the general public. Since this is something I would like to do, I jumped at the offer. The people involved got put into groups of 9 a few weeks ago and were charged with producing a 20-minute science radio program. Since all the radio experience I had was in front of the microphone, I opted for the producer role. So for the last few weeks we have been coordinating over Google Docs a radio program. Not having met these people before, I was a bit hesitant, but everyone pulled their weight and seemed happy with me being in charge (which is always nice).

We met at Pacific Quay studios at 11:30 and were issued passes to the whole building (free reign in BBC is pretty fun; I am not going to lie). We were shown to our studio, our green room and the restaurant. We had a few hours to prepare in person then one hour in the studio to get the cues and the music and the microphones all up and running as well as actually recording the show itself. We inevitably ran into a few problems, mostly the fact that one of the presenters talked overly fast due to nerves so we had to pad the ending a bit as we ended early. I have never been that obsessed with the second hand in my entire life. It was great to work with BBC staff who all were professional and extremely helpful. The bloke running this program is the person in charge of the MSci degree in Science Communication at Imperial College London; a degree I actually seriously looked into a while back. Having these connections, in themselves, is extremely beneficial.

After the radio shows were all recorded and we were all in desperate need of a pint, we piled on to a coach and headed off towards Edinburgh to Barony Castle (link provided here). By the by, should any opportunity arise, take a course with the BBC as they tend to put you up in 5-star hotels for a few days. We had the evening to enjoy dinner and get to know one another. This was extremely helpful as the next day we were put with our radio groups again and assigned a recent scientific breakthrough. Our group was charged with the breakthroughs in sequencing the genomic mutations in lung and skin cancer. Between the nine of us, we had to have three experts, three radio people and three television people. We all worked together but we all had our own projects to put together. The experts (of which I was one) had to conduct a press conference with a press release, a opening statement as well as answering any questions to 'reporters' for the television and radio pieces. After the press conference, we (myself and the two other 'experts') were subject to the people running the television and radio segments for interviews. We spent the rest of the day filming and recording discussions on a topic about which none of us knew until a few hours previous. I was 'head of the International Consortium' and on a geeky sidenote, it was the first time I was referred to (goofily) as Dr Erin Macdonald and it certainly motivated me to continue on with my PhD to be addressed in such a way in two-and-a-half years.

After an exhausting day, and believe me, it flew by, we went off for dinner before going through our videos. Oh! And I forgot to tell the best story! Barony Castle is also used for ambulance and paramedic training in Scotland so there were lots of paramedics-in-training milling about. For the television piece, we decided that it would be entertaining to rope a few of them into hovering over a cancer patient. Two of them were so up for it, even though our 'set' was in a hotel room and looked more like a setting for a sketchy pornography film, they were good sports. I had to be the cancer patient and since I was also in the film later we had to hide my face. One of the paramedics just stood there taking my pulse, acting all professional. I was boiling hot under the bed, with an attractive Scottish man holding my arm as well as trying not to laugh and I think he was actually getting concerned at how high my pulse was. He kept trying to give me tips to lower my pulse though it was a futile effort. Anyway, this sequence made it into the final video, thank god, and I will send you all the link once it is given to us so you can at least enjoy the Scottish paramedics.

The last day was all frantic editing and believe me, three hours for video and radio editing was definitely not enough. We were all super happy with how the radio news segment turned out. When we were reviewing them in the afternoon, the rest of the groups were really impressed with ours and how professional it sounded as opposed to the documentary style that the other two groups chose. Our television segment turned out to be a bit of a laugh but that was mostly because we did not know the techniques of filming interviews, but once trying to edit them we got a pretty good sense for it. Given a second chance we could have done a much better job since the concept and the structure was pretty solid.

Anyway after review, feedback and networking, the coach took us back to Edinburgh and back to reality. I am really glad I was one of the few people chosen to take this course. Though I have always been comfortable in front of the television and the microphone, it taught me a lot of techniques useful for my scientific career, such as how to relate to the public, write press releases and such. Definitely a great experience and hopefully these connections and this experience will actually get me into this field. After the last few days, it really solidified that science communication and reporting is my forte and I need to take responsibility as a female, fairly well-spoken physicist to be a strong face for science. Good week all around.

Until next time!

++Age

Well, once again, I had a crazy crazy week. I finally booked everything to go to California one month from tomorrow, about which I'm super excited. Not only do I love these meetings, but I get to see my family and stay in a posh hotel with a room all to myself for a week. Anyway, that's all taken care of. Thanks to British Airways threatening to strike, I am relegated to Air New Zealand from London to Los Angeles and get no frequent flyers out of it. So sad. I really could have used those extra few thousand miles.

On Friday I had a really busy day. I went to the observatory to teach classes after lunch. It was the last day for this round of labs, so there was lots of panic setting in for the students who frittered away the last few weeks. Once we got rid of all the students, my friend's group of boy scouts was coming to visit to complete their Astronomy Badge. 18 8-10 year old boys were let loose on us on a Friday evening. It was utter chaos. Utter chaos. My friend said at least they were standing on the tables shouting things like 'Mars! Space! Stars! Planets!' as opposed to just punching each other in the kidneys which apparently is most Fridays. It is true; at least they were completely wired about science and not just being completely belligerent. Since I had never done a public show at the observatory I had to be partnered up, which is fine...I don't think I could have handled those boys by myself anyways. We split them up into two groups and one of my friends took the first bunch to show them a scale model of the solar system, give a talk on eclipses and meteors and show them the telescope. My partner and I took the other half to the planetarium first to give them a planetarium show, which always goes over well. Then we swapped with the other guy, who was looking completely ragged as we passed each other. I gave the talk to the boys and they were alright; I have definitely seen worse, but it was pretty stressful to be doing for two hours on a Friday night.

After we got all of them out of the observatory, I went straight to the pub to meet up with everyone else. Of course it was 9pm by now so the pub had stopped serving food. I did get a great surge of friendship and loyalty though when we saw a guy who had dumped me in the pub hitting on another girl. Grand conspiracies started to develop that included spilling beers, kicks to the groin, elbows to the face and all other manner of terrible things. None of this happened of course, but it was nice to have so many people on my side. Once we finished our third round we stopped by the chippies on the way to my supervisors house for some fine whisky tasting. He had just picked up the new year of Port Charlotte whisky, the PC8. He still had half a bottle of PC7 so we got to do a nice little taste comparison. I greatly favoured the PC8 over the PC7. It was a little smoother and a little woodier. Of course, at £70 per bottle, I am not going to be rushing out any time soon for my own.

On Saturday, my friend who lives in Lincoln came up to visit for the night. This is the girl I visited over the summer and we knew each other from the University of New Mexico. She has since gotten engaged so there was a lot to talk about. She asked me to be her maid of honour, which was really generous of her. She is having a Victorian-themed wedding so I am charged with finding my own dress for it. Right now I am looking at Winona Ryder's dress from Bram Stoker's Dracula, the one with Gary Oldman, yes, that one.

I took her to Cooper's for dinner and to watch the England-Wales 6 Nations Rugby game. She was really afraid to support England, and to be fair, most of the pub was going for Wales, but I hope she noticed that there were the odd England supporters throughout the pub who were not getting stabbed or kicked out. England won, of course, so there was much subsequent drinking in the pub.

The next day, she was meant to catch the 2 o' clock train to Edinburgh, but since Scotland was playing France in the 6 Nations Rugby at 3 o' clock, I suggested it would be a better idea if I went to Edinburgh with her in the morning so we wouldn't have to worry about the commute, which was insane anyway. I love the Scotland spirit. She seemed a little freaked out about it and was still nervous to be English in that crowd, but I was having a blast. There was another group of guys next to us on the train and one of them said to his friend 'Man, you must be the only English person on this train. I bet you don't know who you want to lose more, Scotland or France!' I hope she overheard that to know that we do not take this stuff so seriously... well, we take it seriously, but we are used to losing so it's all in good spirits. It was fun queuing for the train as well because there were tons of men (large, scary looking men) in their rugby shirts and kilts. Hurray. I enjoyed being in Edinburgh as well since it had been a long time since I had been. It is such a tourist town, but it is nice to visit and it was a lot of fun since the rugby game was there.

I saw her off and caught a train back to Glasgow, running back to meet people since it was my birthday(!) and we were going to a pub. Usually in the department, we all go out for a nice dinner, but lots of people were at the rugby game so we pushed the dinner to last night. As a preventative measure to me ending up on my couch cuddling an empty bottle of Malbec and watching Frasier, the few people who were here insisted on going out to a pub, thankfully. We were going to go to Tennents and I was about to hit a 3 year streak of shrimp-and-chips birthday dinner, but unfortunately we forgot that after the rugby, there was a Chelsea Football game so there was no chance of getting a table. We went instead to a poncy little place on Ashton Lane...not really my style, but we got a nice table and one of my friends and I got into a tennis round of French Martinis (she bought, then I bought, then she bought, etc...) Then one of the people who was at the game showed up when he got back from Edinburgh, and there was only a few of us left, but we got a nice round of gin and tonics and played the arcade pub-quiz in the pub. We ended up winning a pound, so it was okay. Overall it was a nice birthday. My flatmate even surprised me when I got home with a Bill Bailey DVD. I was super happy! (Bill Bailey, here, is a musical comedian who starred in the show Black Books, which is where I first saw him).

Last night, like I said, we all went out to dinner at the Velvet Elvis, a place WAY down in Partick that a few had wanted to try for a while. It was pretty funky and their menus were all printed on LP covers with the records inside with a note saying 'Well, what did you expect?'. One of my friends ended up with a Green Onion LP in fairly decent shape and they let her take it when we left. The food was your general nice Scottish fair. I got a decent burger and a starter of Chicken Liver Pate, for which I had been jonesing for ages. Overall it was a nice place and they all generously paid for my meal. The night came to an early close, which was kind of disappointing, but it was a Tuesday, so we were all able to make it bright and early into work today.

Two big things going on next week, so there will be plenty to update next Wednesday! Until then...signing off.

Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware that jaups in luggies; But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer, Gie her a Haggis!

If there was any doubt in my mind as to what country I am living in, that question was definitely answered on Friday night. Okay, first, Wednesday I went to a free Gaelic class that the university is offering. It's free for all students and staff and is an introduction to conversational gaelic. Another woman from the department and I went together. This is a trial program and I'm convinced this department will be able to continue this as the room was completely packed with people from all ages who were really enthusiastic. Gaelic is REALLY difficult. You can't phonetically write down what she's saying, so you just have to remember what certain letter combinations sort of sound like.

On Thursday I worked...surprise surprise. I did get to finally talk to my mom though since we have internet now, which was really nice since we hadn't spoken since the holidays.

Okay, so, Friday. I taught classes, which again was a blast. Afterwards I went home to get all poshed up to go to the Astronomy Society Burns Supper. So, Burns Suppers...they're this big Scottish (and world-wide for ex-Scots) tradition around Robert Burns' birthday at the end of January; no fixed date. They consist of a traditional Scottish meal (tradition of not having food in the middle of winter, so treating to a big meal, kind of like our Thanksgiving), reading Burns poetry, giving toasts and followed up with a ceilidh. Ours was held at the Glasgow University Union building, which is a huge complicated old building on the other side of campus, complete with an entryway, a giant fireplace, debating chambers, reading rooms, libraries, etc. As we were all walking up to the building, lots of students and professors were all dressed up in kilts and fancy dresses and a bagpiper was standing at the entrance to the building, playing us in. You've got to hand it to this culture, they know how to dress up for a formal occasion.

So we go in, we got a great table with 7 of my closer friends, fellow PhDs as well as postdocs and faculty, and promptly started drinking and laughing. The boy in charge of the Astronomy Society, an undergrad, stood up and gave the Selkirk Grace (you can read more about Burns Suppers for all this detail on Wikipedia) and they brought in Scotch Broth. After we had that, you could hear bagpipes out in the hall and everyone grabbed their glasses and stood up. The double doors opened to allow in the piper, leading in a man carrying the haggis...yes, the haggis, a big, beige stomach tied together with twine. They circled the room and placed it on a table in the front of the room. One of the professors stood up with a knife to give the 'Toast to the Haggis' (you can't make this up). She seemed that she had a bit to drink already and had memorised the entire poem, shouting in a heavy Scottish accent and brandishing the knife wildly before plunging it into the haggis, sacrificial style and split it open. Everyone shouted "To the haggis!" and took a drink before sitting down. They dished out the haggis to everyone, followed shortly by a steak pie. After the main courses, the toasts took place. There is a toast to the lassies (again, you can read all about it) and a response from the lassies, which was really sweet. An undergraduate girl gave it and toasted to physics boys, the sweetest, shyest boys we'll ever meet.

They then handed out the whisky and a particularly famous, old, egocentric professor stood up to give a toast to the non-Scots. Given this man's reputation, we decided it would be entertaining to have a drinking game for his speech based on his vernacular habits. We had to give up by the end of the talk as we ran out of whisky and wine and barely had enough for the rest of the toasts. A french professor gave the response from the non-Scots which was hilarious and exactly what it was supposed to be. They then passed around the Cranachan for dessert which is a chocolate pot with raspberries and cream mixed with oats and whisky. Finally a professor gave up to give the "Immortal Memory" toast to Robert Burns. He talked about his life and why we have Burns Suppers all over the world and not things like "Shakespeare Suppers"...all for the love of the women, the food and the whisky, as well as friendship and good times. Very heartwarming. Then we all read Burns poems before running downstairs for the ceilidh.

As we were all liquored up and full and jovial, as well as having all of our friends, bosses and students present, the ceilidh was a blast. At this point, I know most of the dances and again, for the non-regular readers of this blog, a ceilidh is basically a square dance. And man! Are Scottish boys well trained! They might be the shyest boys in the world, but there is never a girl standing alone for a dance when there are extra boys around. They are just taught how to dance from an early age and they all know how to waltz, polka and everything else that is required in ceilidh dances. I am very impressed! We danced for ages and again, finished off the night with EVERYONE on the floor in one big circle, holding hands and singing Auld Lang Syne, speeding up and running into the middle and back out again, chaos reigning supreme.

After the ceilidh we went to the research club for drinks and stayed there until 2:30am, finally stumbling home, covered in ceilidh bruises (which are a thing to behold, let me tell you...as most of the dances include linking arms and violently swinging around, you leave with raw and black...not even joking...inner arms...it feels great!)

Saturday was spent mostly recovering, buying food, etc...fairly quiet and pathetic. Pathetic being the date that I had that evening, yuch. Not going to dwell on that. Sunday I got up and went to my knitting group that now meets in a small, local cafe in the city center in the basement of some bank. It was really lovely and I really enjoyed talking to everyone. They very much admired the hat I finished last week, so that felt good! My friend who lives only two streets away from me now gave me a call and I went over to her house for tea and chat, which is always fun. She's moving to Berkeley next month and my life will be a little lonely without her around.

On Monday I asked my other close friend if she wanted to come over to make some curry and have some gin and tonics as we are paying for our drinking habits, calorie and price-wise, so we thought that drinking gin instead of beer and drinking at home would help solve these problems. Which it sort of did; we just should not do that in the middle of the week. It was such a fun night though. My flatmate came back to us well into a litre of gin and listening to Tom Waits. He sat down and joined us and a little while later in the night her boyfriend came by as well so it turned into a little mini-party. We were *this* close to convincing ourselves to drive to Stoke and get some famous oat-cakes and be back in time for work. Thankfully we quickly saw that was a bad idea, but it was a great night.

Well, I think that's it for now! Exciting things that are coming up include going to the Burn (a big country house) for an astronomy retreat, teaching some cubs at the planetarium, going to a BBC Research and the Media retreat at Barony Castle, going to California for a meeting over St Patrick's Day and seeing the Dropkick Murphys at the Barrowland Ballrooms, a super famous venue in Glasgow; kind of Glasgow's version of Red Rocks. It's going to be a busy few months! Stay tuned!