An American Astrophysicist in Glasgow

Farewell, cyber-world!

2010-07-08T10:45:00.002+01:00

Right, it's been over a year now since I started this blog. My life in Scotland has now settled down to the tedium of football games in the pub, wine nights in front of Doctor Who, drinking gin and tonics secretly in Kelvingrove Park (okay, I don't actually drink this much!), watching 30 Rock, Frasier, The Office, etc DVDs on repeat and working away in the world of Gravitational Waves.

It is with this that I feel a full year is enough time to sign off on this blog. You can always come back to this and learn what my first year was like. I simply live here now.

I also want to inform you of a new, kickass blog called Tattooed Science. The writer seems nothing short of genius in her witty insight to the scientific world!

All the best!

Erin

One Year. One. Year.

2010-06-02T17:13:00.002+01:00

A year. A year. A year. A YEAR. When did that happen? I really can't process it. I knew it was coming, but nothing could prepare me. Now I'm sitting in my office, on June 2nd, remembering sitting in my office on June 2nd, a year ago. It was a different office, I didn't know anyone, all I knew was that I was scared out of my mind. New country, new people. I had the motivation to be there, because, well, it's Scotland, but I could not help that nagging feeling that I was way in over my head. I wandered around in a daze for days and honestly, I can't remember one specific day from the first few months. I hated where I lived, I missed everyone back home and I did not know how to do my research.

Now a year later, I find these blogs really difficult to write, because my day seems so routine now, I don't have a concept of what is interesting to people. Here's what my day looks like:

06.30 - Alarm goes off...snooze button hit

06.45 - Alarm goes off... buried it under my pillow

07.00 - Forgot that alarm also vibrates...unhappily awoken to a vibrating pillow

07.15 - Open eyes

07.30 - Sit up

07.35 - Stand up

07.45 - Made it to the bathroom

08.00 - Emerge squeaky clean and dressed. Go to kitchen to turn on the kettle

08.05 - Make some tea, pack my laptop into my bag, eat some toast and jam and make a lunch with bacon, tomato chutney and lettuce

08.15 - Leave my flat, flatmate still asleep and walk to the university to some music

08.35 - Get to the office, check/respond to email, read the news. Get long email from friend in Edinburgh about coming through this weekend, write back

09.02 - print off and handed in my First Year Report. Do a happy dance down the hallway

09.05 - code isn't working. curses ensue...

10.23 - wrote a long email

11.13 - Tea time in the common room - meet a new REU summer student from America...remember how I felt coming to these coffees a year ago

11.52 - Get back to office. Friend suggests we take the new summer student out for lunch...put sandwich back for dinner tonight

12.05 - Leave for a super early lunch due to lab tour dress rehearsal at 14.30

12.20 - Enjoy a Caledonian 80/- and a scampi and chips - way more satisfying than a BLT.

13.18 - Get back to department. Lab tours postponed until 16.00... help someone with their statistics (hurray, BA in Mathematics!) and get back to simulations. Anomalies arise; rerun simulation

13.57 - Best friend gets online. Stress from simulation begins to wane.

16.01 - Weekly group telecon...cannot describe the excitement this brings

16.24 - Still discussing first thing on agenda... lightbulb in office starts freaking out

16.45 - First item finishes

17.13 - Telecon over!

Now that I am done with my workday, I can tell you what the rest will entail. I am going to go home, eat my BLT with some chips and have some of my leftover beer from the party. Then I will clean the rest of my flat from Saturday.

To update you quickly on the last, well, month, I have mostly been earning some extra money helping out with exam season, by reading and grading exams, I have been writing my first year report and basically keeping my head down, working away. There have been the occasional pub nights, the occasional concerts; nothing terribly exciting.

Last week my next-door-neighbour sent me an email saying she was in Edinburgh and I offered to come through for dinner to keep her company. I met her at Waverley Station and she showed me some quick Harry Potter sights that she saw on her walking tour the previous days. It was really cool to see the Elephant Cafe again because that is the cafe that my family always used to hang out at when we were visiting Edinburgh as it was always close to our hotel. A few years later, Harry Potter hit big and it was revealed that the same coffee house was where JK Rowling wrote the series. I had not been back to the cafe since that came out, but when I got to go there last week, it definitely was. It seemed a lot smaller (as I was a lot smaller when I was last there) but it was definitely the same place. It is so the type of coffee shop that my mum would hang out at. After that, I took her to a seafood restaurant that my friend recommended off of Princes Street. Pretty touristy (as is a lot of Edinburgh) but the food was really great. We then met up with my friend and his girlfriend for drinks at a nearby chain pub. I hung out with them until far too late and had to get the last train home to Glasgow. One of my friends referred to it as the "Wrong City Syndrome" where you get up at the end of the night and you have the "...... ..... damn." moment when you realise you have to travel to another city first. Definitely the worst train ride of my life. I should have had more to eat than 6 scallops at dinner.

On Friday night my neighbour came back through Glasgow and I took her to Mr India's and the Friday night ceilidh in the city centre. We had a fantastic time and I still have the ceilidh bruises on my arm. She left the next day as I had a party to get ready for! My friend (with a car) picked me up and we went to the big supermarket outside of Glasgow. We, of course, had to stop at B&Q (equivalent of Home Depot) as her and I both love these kind of stores. We begrudgingly left after picking out material to rebuild the seat of her dining room chairs to go and actually do some shopping. We got carried away and I spent far too much money on this party. Stupid alcohol. I made it back home, got to catch up with a friend on Skype while I prepared some food and got the place all ready to go.

The theme of the party was America and people did a pretty good job of coming through on such a vague theme. Mostly, it was a chance to buy crap, synthetic American food. One of my friends mentioned to me later how entertaining it was to see me getting so excited about seeing crappy food again. Someone managed to find a fridge-pack of Mountain Dew Code Red, which had clearly been imported from America (flavor spelled the American way) and we were pretty sure that the chemicals were actually illegal in this country. Eurovision was also that night, so people made me promise to stream the final on BBC iPlayer. I am so glad that I have such a huge flat for people to lounge around in and break up into groups. As it was meant to be a cocktail-type party, people really stocked up on the hard liquor. Though a lot of money went into this party, I am not going to have to buy booze for like a year from the party profit. We experimented making Long Island Ice Teas, which I do not recommend approaching them from an experimental standpoint, as you have to taste it every step of the way, but we made a sufficiently decent batch by the end. The last crowd left at 4:30am and I promptly crashed.

Sunday I spent the whole day in bed. The whole day. Stupid Long Islands.

Monday was a Bank Holiday here so we had the day off. I went over to my friend's house as her boyfriend had just left for America for three weeks and she wanted to work on the dining room chairs. Her and I sat in front of her flat in a grassy patch and sawed some blocks of wood, put some primer on them and drank some beer. There were some little kids running around (as it was a supremely nice day) and we must have been a sight. It was basically like, "see kids? when you're a grown-up you get to play with saws and wood and paint and beer all day!" I must say though, it was a good bank holiday to be covered in paint and sawdust, drinking cheap beer. Inevitably, there was a call for a barbeque at the University again, so we went over there and enjoyed a good barbie for the rest of the evening. It's light until almost 11 here, which is unbelievably phenomenal.

Last night I had roller derby practice again. I am getting a crazy good workout with these ladies. It is basically rebuilding all my dead muscles that I had when I was a dancer. I am not technically on the team yet, as I have to go through a few months of training before I can join them, but I really just wanted to get in shape and this is a great way to do so. It is hitting my bank account pretty good though. I hope I do not have to give it up due to finances. I love the ladies though and the workout is fantastic. Three hours on Tuesday evenings...crazy!

That's it for me now. I am off to Edinburgh on Saturday and then Hannover, Germany for a 4 day meeting with some collaborators. Like I said, I have basically hit a routine here, so my updates are going to be more infrequent, but I will keep you up to speed with all the exciting events! Cheers for now!

Croeso i Gymru!

2010-05-11T00:49:00.005+01:00

Today I was sitting at Cardiff Queen Street station with my mates, all of us looking slightly pale, wearing 4-day old clothes covered in miscellaneous stains, stinking of whisky and beer waiting for the airport train. One of them says, "Let's figure out how many alcohol units we had this weekend." Some very scientific calculations ensue, with the response "Wait, so we had at least 50 alcohol units, each, over 3 days?" We all high-five each other until it is pointed out that 50 alcohol units is what is recommended for women over the period of a month (maximum of 2 each day, which is about one drink). My friend says "It's okay, Erin, you drink like a guy anyway." and there is a brief pause before someone says, "You know... we're a government statistic."

So yes, we have made it back from our Cardiff liver-destruction holiday. We all decided to have a wee reunion of folk who had left Glasgow and visit some of them down in their new home. Of course, in case you had not been following, on Thursday we had the general election for the United Kingdom. Without trying to explain British politics, essentially no one was elected because they did not get enough constituencies, so they are trying to negotiate between parties at this point. Sadly, the party to get the most votes was the Conservatives. Anyway, this was a hot topic of conversation over the weekend.

I went over to my friend's house in Edinburgh before our afternoon flight and we caught up and made bruschetta for a nice, healthy lunch to make up for the destruction that was about to annihilate our system over the next few days. Hey, at least we had foresight, right? So we watched a video of a heavy metal concert in Greece over lunch and then went off to the airport. We met up with another friend of ours at the gate who promptly greeted me with lamentations about the election. They had the news on at the airport with the speeches from the party leaders that everyone was watching. I am impressed with the level of intelligent discourse from the general public when discussing the election.

Volcano-be-damned, we made it to Cardiff. One of our friends met us at the airport and drove us to his house. We lounged about and made tea while we figured out what people were doing and such. Finally we went out to a micro-brewery (yes! they have them here!) for some pizza and beer. A few others from the department at the university came by as well later, so we had a good group of people and discussed politics at length over pitchers and pitchers of beer. Of course, as this was the first reunion night, one of the boys who will never be forgiven for this, started ordering us shots of Jagermeister with the beer. Over the course of many hours we polished off 8 pitchers of beer (about 35 pints, us scientists figured out) and £60 worth of Jager shots, actually running the bar out of it. I will not mention how many of us were drinking as that is a bit embarrassing. After staying at the microbrew until they closed we went out to a generic chain pub and settled in for a pint. Finally we went back to one of their houses and listened to metal music and lounged about and drank more beer until we all eventually crashed around 5:30 in the morning, when it was light out. The group staying at the other friend's house went home and two of us stayed and crashed on the couches.

The next morning (okay, the next afternoon) we woke up at about 12:30. The other crowd came over bearing litres and litres of Irn Bru (hangover cure 101), morning rolls with bacon, sausage and eggs and copies of The Guardian so we could read about the election (how classy is that?). After we pontificated over protein and caffeine we wandered out to explore downtown Cardiff. It was a miserable day but we persevered. We were going to go to Caerphilly Castle that day, but we had gotten up too late. We thought about going to Cardiff Castle, but it looked like a renaissance festival-ish parody (and it was £10) so we gave it a pass and wandered around the arcades instead. There was a wee cafe that looked cute, but us looking like a bunch of metal-head miscreants earned us scorning looks from the Daily-Mail-reader-types and they did not have any seats, so it didn't matter. No one would guess that the majority present had PhDs and well-established careers in Astrophysics. We were then relegated to an outdoor cafe with crap tea for 60p while we figured out our next move. We decided to go see a film that night, so we went back to the house and settled in with some new records until the new episode of Dr Who was on (which is obligatory and watched without question every Saturday night).

After Dr Who we went to the cinema and watched Four Lions which is a new film about incompetent terrorists. It was absolutely hilarious and very sobering, so well-done to the directors for making such a thought-provoking film. Apologies, but I doubt it will be widely distributed in America; not just because of the serious terrorism stuff, but because it is very, very British with jokes that I certainly would not have understood a year ago. We all enjoyed it but did not really know what to make of it. After that we went to a Thai restaurant nearby and were again treated like miscreants. Okay, so we were not dressed very nicely, but they put us in a back room and stuck us with a really mean, scary waitress. It is totally undeserving, too, because it's not like we do not have money and do not behave ourselves. The food was awesome though and we had a good laugh about it before heading to a pub. After the pub we went over to our other friends house (it's about midnight at this point) and settled in with some beer and played the game Zombies, which was really fun to play with super-competitive people who love each other, but love screwing each other to the wall even more. It turns out I am a zombie killing machine. I left a wake of zombies in my path. Of course, this meant I was close to winning so there was an epic betrayal resulting in my death and loss of my zombie count. It was tragic. Their loss too, because we did not finish until 4:30am. Half of us wandered into the dawning sky back to the other flat to crash well and proper.

We forced ourselves up before noon the next day to make it to Caerphilly Castle (see link). Half of us drove there and the other half took a bus. This was absolutely epic and actually it is hard to describe the awesome-ness that was this castle. It was a small town, smaller than Boulder and the city park in the middle of town seemed perfectly normal. A regular sized park with a big lake in the middle. However, that lake turns out to be the moat around a 13th century castle. It seemed so normal too, it really was like walking around City Park in Fort Collins in the summer. Families out, kids fishing in the lake, ice cream vans, the works. The castle, as I said, was epic. It was only £3.60 to get in and it was almost free rein of these ruins. The main tower had been rebuilt in the 1930s but the rest was all original. There was a series of walls to get into the main castle and you could wander in and out of all the rooms and towers and grounds. They also had some replica weapons including this medieval crossbow that we could just go up and mess about with. It took about 4 men to operate and held an arrow that was 1.5 metres long. We figured it would look suspicious to leave and come back with sticks and crowbars to operate it, so we decided against it. It was aimed at the lake (and ominously at the ice cream van on the other side) as well as some other, blocked off weapons that we figured were for their festivals and such.

We wandered by ourselves a bit, exploring the nooks and crannies. It was great because you were essentially allowed to climb in and out of almost everything; you could walk along the walls, poke into the corners of rooms...there were very few places that were blocked off. We talked about how one could siege a war on the Morrison's across the road and how we could utilise the castle for a zombie attack, me being in charge of zombie annihilation. After we had satisfactorily explored every corner of the grounds we just met up in-between the walls at the base of the main castle and lay down in the grass, discussing what a bastard Oliver Cromwell was and the ponciness of Edward II and how great it would have been if the Spanish had made it to Britain to watch Elizabeth I personally take them down.

We went back to Cardiff and after lots of splitting up, getting lost, finding each other again, we settled in a beer garden to figure out what to do that evening. We decided to go back to our home base and order curry, a supply of liquor (three of us decided to split a bottle of Balvenie Double Wood, very recommended) and went back home. We called in an absurdly huge curry order, having to compensate for being in Wales by ordering almost every meal "extra hot". Two gents went out to pick it up and returned back saying with extreme glee "they gave us a crate!" Indeed, it was a crate of curry; a glorious sight. We watched the original Inglorious Bastards from the 70s while we ate. Afterwards, the whisky was poured and it was suggested to watch Yes, Minister so yes, we settled in and six guys and me in our 20s and 30s watched Yes, Minister until the wee hours. It was absolutely brilliant and totally unexpected given how that show is perceived in America. It is fantastic for explaining British politics in the same way the West Wing explains American politics. After this whole holiday, the best thing I got out of it was a giant sense of respect for how well-educated my circle of friends are and the level of intelligent discussion from politics to history to heavy metal to zombies that went on this weekend.

We got up this morning at a reasonable time and went to the airport and made it home, thought threat of the ash was imminent. Ash-be-damned, I'm home and refreshed and ready to face the push to the end of my first year here. Hwyl!

"This country hasn't treated you very well, has it?"

2010-04-25T18:51:00.008+01:00

I heard this phrase from two separate friends this past week; commenting on my string of seemingly unrelenting bad luck over the past year. And it is somewhat true, I guess; financially, romantically, culturally it has been a struggle and it does not seem to be getting any easier. Once one struggle is resolved, another arises, all more difficult than the usual life struggles that my friends here are facing. So these statements set me to thinking, why haven't I thought this? Why is it that I wake up happy and enthusiastic every single morning? Why is it that outsiders have to comment on my situation for me to notice? Am I just in another screwed up relationship, where my love for this country is blinding me to how I am being treated?

This week, I had a nieghbour from back home come to visit me. It was fantastic, because I had a chance to show her around and prove to her what a great city Glasgow really is. I believe I convinced her, at least to the concept of a single malt whisky nightcap every night and having delicious curry as regularly as a pizza. I do love this city, with all my heart. I sit in the corner of Tennent's or the Uisce Beatha and I watch the city of Glasgow live and exist around me with elation and joy. I do not know if I am truly one of them yet. It takes a long time and even though I feel that I am at home here, there is a struggle in the sense that I am still an 'outsider' with a different accent and a different culture. After a heated debate with friends in the pub this week, they did not understand my frustration with the dating culture in particular. They always thought that I was perfectly happy to throw away all aspects about America that continue to haunt me. Then one of my close friends made an astute observation. It was not until she lived in Italy for a year, did she ever understand how actually English she was, and how comforting certain cultural habits were, even if you previously wanted to reject them. This is somewhat true about me as well. I find myself longing for American culture sometimes, particularly when I feel frustrated with certain aspects of my life. I know how to handle them in America and I know how I will be received. Being me, I have spent my life studying how I am perceived by others and what is expected of me. I am starting this completely anew here, and it is not easy. So though I have wanted to live in this country my whole life (well, since about the age of 10) I still find that I am frustrated with it from time to time. I do not know if it will get any easier.

After showing my friend around the city and hearing her reaction, I thought a lot about this culture and why I am, in fact, actually happy. She left yesterday, in what happened to be a gorgeous day of sunshine. I went to the Botanic Gardens (along with seemingly every other Glaswegian from my neighbourhood) by myself and had a think. She commented on the fact that she appreciated how Glasgow was unashamed of it's love for the alcohol. The long queues in front of the cashpoints at 5:05 on a Friday, the crowded corner pub, the impossible table to find if you arrive any later than 4:45, the constant flow of the cellar-cooled ale, Glaswegians love their alcohol. But I realised that it is not only the fact that Glaswegians are unapologetic about that particular cultural aspect. They are unapologetic in every aspect of their lives. They stand by their decisions, their culture, their reputation and embrace it all, wholeheartedly. You would be a fool for even trying to mock any aspect of any Glaswegian's life. This has definitely worn off on me as well, once I think about it. I have become much more proud of who I am, and more importantly, much more defensive about my life. I feel a sense of pride, far beyond what I have ever felt before. You do not notice it, either, until your being is threatened in some way. You become more willing to stand by who you are, the people around you and any decisions you have made, to death if necessary. Not even joking. It is weird.

There is a great sense of camaraderie here as well. Sitting in the Botanics, reflecting on my life, I recall doing the exact same thing almost a full year ago, when I first moved. I went to the Botanic Gardens by myself, on a nice day in June and sat with a book, fighting back tears watching all the couples, families and friends enjoying themselves in the sun and each other's company. At that point, I did not have anyone and felt very very alone. Sitting in the same park, almost 11 months later, I was still by myself, but things had changed. Not only was I waiting for a friend to call to get together that evening, but I was not even in need of a book. I simply was happy being around the people. Maybe that is because I feel like I am one of them, or maybe it is because I have established a life here and do not feel left out. One thing I noticed this time was that there were a lot of other people by themselves, lying in the sun, reading, eating lunch, and I did not feel lonely. There was a young family next to me that started chatting to me, and a young couple on my other side who were talking about their impending exams watching the young kids play with the pigeons. The happy faces, the friendly smiles; I did not feel lonely, though I was alone.

I have a great sense of respect for immigrants now. You do not understand the frustration that comes as you start to feel part of a city and part of a culture, but the first thing people bring up when you talk to them is that you do not belong there. Nothing rude, of course, but it is a constant reminder that you are an 'other' no matter how much you feel like you belong. Not only are there more aspects of the Scottish culture that I do not understand, but I constantly have a stigma over my head as being an outsider; people are much more quickly jumping to conclusions because of their assumptions of my place of birth.

You do start over when you immigrate. Which I realise can sound like a fantastic opportunity; the whole 'clean slate' concept has always appealed to everyone at some point in their lives. But what you do not realise is that you do, in fact, start over. Completely. You are cut off from everything that was familiar and comfortable. You cannot easily go back, you cannot easily keep in touch. It is a constant struggle, but at some point, you do have to accept that you have moved on. Keeping who you once were is simply too difficult. Friends and family are moving on without you, even if they have the best intentions of not doing so. You are just simply too far away. The friendships you thought you would always have sometimes fall through the cracks, because that is simply easier to let happen. The friendships that do continue are a constant effort of scheduling, emailing, any sort of communication possible to keep all updates on each others lives so there is some possibility of recognition if and when you get the chance to see each other again.

I gave up a lot to move to this country. I really wanted it, and in fact, I really needed it. However, I have given up a lot. I have accepted the fact that I will not get to see my relative's and friend's children grow up, I will not be able to be there for every wedding, every graduation, every life experience that my friends have had and are having. This is heartbreaking in a sense, but it forces me to ask myself if it is all worth it. I now, after about a year, have close friends whose weddings I want to attend, whose kids I want to see grow up, whose housewarmings I want to attend here in Glasgow. I have a new family here who would miss me as much as I would miss them. When it seemed that, due to financial reasons, I would have to go back to Colorado, my friends here seemed devastated at the prospect, which meant a lot to me, probably more than they knew. One of my friends here also just submitted her dissertation and I was mentioned in her acknowledgements, which to her may mean little other than a drinking buddy and a neighbour, it meant a lot to me. Hopefully, one day, I will feel like I belong a little bit more, but as things stand, it is not that bad. Though it may seem to outsiders, and even to close friends like this has just been one bad experience after another, I am content in simply waking up every day to a cup of tea, rainy weather, queues outside of pubs, steak pies, scoobie snacks, ales, curry, single malt whiskies, bagpipes, highlands, cars on the other side of the road, great friends, fantastic colleagues, the list continues on and on.

I have written this over the span of about the last 24 hours, with lots of care and thought given to it. I sit here now, in my kitchen, alone on a Sunday night writing this on my laptop with a view out my back window. I can hear the neighbours upstairs, the magpies on the rubbish bins, the rain falling on the cars. I am looking out on green grass, cars, clotheslines, an old dairy building, a dilapidated park and an abandoned school building. I have only a bottle of wine, leftover curry carnage, the magpies and the rain for company, but really, I am happy. The ambiance around me almost brings tears to my eyes. This is actually what I always pictured my life to be. Through all the struggle, through all the disappointment, through all the months of being alone, I feel like I will make it; that this is in fact, now my home.

Concerts and Volcanoes

2010-04-18T17:04:00.001+01:00

Wow, what a crazy two weeks. So, what's been going on... the week before last was a little slow; catching up on work and everything. We spent most of the end of the week preparing for our National Astronomy Meeting. On Friday, after dealing with the incompetence and lack of awareness by some of the PhD students, a few of us went to go try a new bar in town. They had a decent special on wine so two girls and myself split a bottle. Then this awful band started practicing and we realised that we have reached that age where we start whining when a band starts to play. So we decided to go back to one of their houses, order Mr India and watch Star Trek. It was an awesome evening. We now have another recruit for our Star Trek nights!

On Saturday, I had a nice lie-in before finally getting up and packing to go hang out in Edinburgh for the night. I went to the Queen Street station and got the train to Edinburgh Haymarket. It was a beautiful train ride as the weather was absolutely lovely. That train journey always reminds me of Colorado on a nice day. It is a stretch of farmland with the highlands behind them, but instead of Colorado, the farmland has the quintessential 'rolling hills'. When I arrived in Haymarket I met up with my friend and his girlfriend in their flat. We had a few beers and put on some heavy metal LPs. We also watched a documentary on the heavy metal culture and his girlfriend made some bolognese. Her sister and one of his friends showed up as well before the show we were going to. We wandered into the streets of Edinburgh and decided to walk to the gig, about 20 minutes away. It was really great to walk through the city. Edinburgh has such a great cityscape with fantastic old streets and buildings. We went to a metal show in a venue down an alley with about 4 bands playing. The gig was fantastic and had some bands that completely rocked the house. After the gig ended, we went outside and hung out with one of the bands as they packed up their equipment in a hatchback. They had an inflatable football that we kicked around in the street a bit and they were playing the Star Wars soundtrack from their car. Afterwards we went to a pub called The Doctor and had some gin and tonics and ate some really good beef jerky that my friend had brought from America. He also had brought me some pickle relish and Fat Tire beer. What a great present. We then went back to the flat and crashed until the afternoon on Sunday. After a quick breakfast I caught the train back to Glasgow and on the way, I got a text about a last minute barbeque that night on the University hill. The weather was stunning that day and so I jumped right on that. It seemed that all of Glasgow was out enjoying the rare sunlight. We met at the university flagpole that overlooks all of Glasgow and the Clyde river. We had a little portable barbeque and made sausages and drank beer while lying on the grass in the sun. It was absolute bliss and super relaxing. We are now enjoying sun that stays up until 9:30 at night, so if the sun is out, it's fantastic!

I woke up early on Monday to go help out with our meeting. I was in charge of helping out the press room the whole week, which was not too terrible and I got to see a bit of the action. I wished I could have seen more talks, but they needed someone to man the press room and help if necessary. I kept track of all the news stories on the meeting as they came out all week. It was pretty interesting to see the science press working, especially against an election this month. On that note, it is really bizarre to have a one month election cycle. One month for everything. Debates, registration, adverts, all the things that us Americans were inundated with for 18 months straight condensed into 4 weeks.

Anyway, speaking of Monday, I had the most wonderful, fantastic, liberating, thrilling, exciting night that night. I finally got to go to the Barrowland Ballrooms to see a show. Not just any show, but the Dropkick Murphys. The Barrowlands is Glasgow's most famous concert venue. It used to be an old ballroom (obviously, from the name) and has low ceilings, wood floors and in a delightfully sketchy location in East Glasgow. On Saturday, it's also home to the black market, The Barras. It lived up to everything I expected from it. The floor was sticky with beer, there was no airflow and the people were going nuts. It was the first time I had seen the Dropkick Murphys live as well and they exceeded my expectations. They played all my favourite songs including ones I did not expect at all. At one point, the singer said "We never play this, but you seem the crowd to like this sort so here is FIELDS OF ATHENRY!!" The Fields of Athenry was my first favourite Dropkick Murphys song, so I went friggin nuts. They played a brilliant show. Glaswegians are just as nuts about music as I heard. It was a crazy, primal show; so much sweating and dancing and singing. Airflow would have been nice, but people were pretty good at getting their passed-out friends out of the crowd (not even kidding!). I had a few close calls after 4 of the best songs all in a row, but I managed not to pass out from the heat. It made it such a more fantastic experience. My friend who came with me really got into the show as well, which made it even better, especially as it's not her sort of thing, but she absolutely loved it. We left covered in sweat and beer (as plastic glasses of beer are constantly thrown into the crowd, it felt great!) and we could not hear or speak. It always feels great.

On Wednesday we had our conference dinner in the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery. This was an absolutely phenomenal event. They have a giant organ in the entrance hallway. As the delegates were arriving, we were lead through the gallery and up a large marble staircase to a champagne reception over-looking the dining area and amongst the art and statues. It was an elegant reception and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Thanks to the fact that Glaswegians were organising this conference dinner, you can scrap the idea that there were going to be the standard one bottle of white and one bottle of red wine for a table of ten people. No no no, this is a glaswegian event. There were four bottles of wine and five bottles of beer for a table of 10. Thankfully, this got everyone properly liquored up for the ceilidh after the meal. Most people had not been to a ceilidh before but most of the people got up to dance. We had a smashing time. After the dance, we decided to have an after-party at the Oran Mor which lasted until 2 in the morning. We filled the Oran Mor with astronomers and drank whisky all through the evening ending with the obligatory chippy at the corner of the Botanic Gardens.

Thursday morning we woke up to the most bizarre news we have ever heard. A volcano had gone off; no one could fly in, out or around the UK. My friend did not get to move to Berkeley, I have a friend stranded in Austria, my friends from America could not come visit me and our speakers could not arrive or leave from the meeting. Sadly, the sky was not as apocalyptic as we hoped and many people were in denial about not being able to fly. We are going on four days now of being completely cut off. The inconveniences I mentioned are only a small fraction of the problems that my friends are having. Though my plans for the week have been completely thrown out the window, I thankfully am not flying myself. We did however have to deal with the chaos of trying to get our delegates from the meeting home. They did a pretty good job of giving each other rides back to London and other places. It has been just such a weird experience, which is still going on.

On Friday night we finished up the meeting at around three in the afternoon and took the leftover alcohol up to the common room and drank our beer, reveling in the post-meeting enthusiasm. We had another great day in terms of weather, so we went out looking for beer gardens, but could not find a good place. We went to the chippy for dinner and then crashed the Ben Nevis for some whisky. As I was completely knackered from the past week, I went home relatively early.

Last night I went across the street to my friends' house. Him and his wife are from Mexico and made Mexican food for a few people. We had a ton of great food and drink and enjoyed good company. The best part? Living across the street from them...well, really, the posole was the best, but just walking across the street at night was really nice.

Anyway, so that has been the last two weeks for me. Since I do not have visitors the next week, it should be pretty boring, but I will still let you know if anything exciting happens! Ta for now!

California, Parties and Leaving-do's

2010-04-05T21:19:00.002+01:00

I realise it has been a month since I last updated. Do not worry, I have not forgotten about you! The biggest event that happened since the beginning of March would be the two weeks I spent in California. So I will quickly fill you in on the past events.

We left for California on Thursday morning. A bright and early cab ride to Glasgow Airport started the 24 hour travel marathon. After waiting for about 4 hours in Heathrow, then an Air New Zealand flight to LAX. Air New Zealand was amazing and really comfortable. The plane was also really empty so my office-mate and I got to share a row, and it's always nice to have space and company on a long flight like that. We got to Los Angeles in the early evening. I called some of my family to let them know that I arrived then met with people in the bar for a quick drink and some food before crashing.

The next day was our 'jet-lag recovery' day so I got together with my family. It was great to see everyone again and to relax. I went hiking with my aunt and my wee cousin after breakfast in Eton Canyon outside of Pasadena. It was so fantastic to bask in the sunlight and get some exercise after the flight.

The meeting started on Saturday morning, bright and early. The second day is always the worst when it comes to jetlag and sitting in a windowless, over-airconditioned conference room does not help the situation. Especially when it's coming on 2am my time. The weekend is simply the smaller working groups, informally discussing our current projects. I gave a presentation on my work and got to put up with some pedantic egos. Thrilling, let me tell you.

This hotel is a special place. It does free drinks for it's residence for two hours every single evening. And these are not small drinks, let me tell you. Say you ask for a vodka and cranberry juice, which is mostly what I drank to start the night after the meeting. They fill up the glass with ice and vodka and then put a splash of cranberry in there. It is just asking for alcohol poisoning. As these free drinks are timed to be post-meeting and pre-dinner, it makes for interesting evenings. The problem too is that we are relegated to a one-block radius around this hotel, which means cheap, nasty American chains. I was not able to finish a single meal any night I was there.

It was good to catch up with everyone but I get quite sick of the science chat and most of the personalities. I found a good group of people to hang out with and spent most of the time with them. The funniest bit was that during lunch and coffee breaks, the only people outdoors were the ones from the furthest north. It was so clearly a bunch of people who had not seen daylight in a very long time. Our skin glowed white like a sheet of paper.

I am pretty convinced that the rampant alcoholism that takes place at these meetings is due to the fact that we are all working towards and for something that has not been detected yet. One night I went out to this dive bar called the 'Drinkers Hall of Fame' with 4 guys. We were the only ones in the bar (as it was a weeknight) and the bartender introduced us to good tequila and let us stay until he wanted to go home. The worst night was when we started our drinks during the free drink hours and I had the experience of a Tokyo Ice Tea, which is a Long Island but with tequila as well. Death in a glass, especially on an empty stomach. After that, I missed the Glasgow people going out to dinner so I went out with the group from Australia to the Outback Steakhouse. This basically made my life complete as you all know what a garish representation of Australia that place is. The best was the 'Aussi-tizers' and the 'Steak on the Barbie'. There was about 10 of us, I was the only girl and we drank lots of Australian beer. I do not think the staff knew what was going on, but we definitely cleared out all the tables around us in a very short period of time. We finished our food and went back to the hotel to find that the Academic Advisory Council opened a tab at the hotel bar for all the students and postdocs, wearing mardi-gras necklaces. Apparently we racked up a pretty hefty tab (about $1200 from what rumor has it) and the carnage that remained was not pretty. I, personally, reached a point in the night where I had to go to bed. No questions asked. I left my purse, my camera and didn't say goodbye to anyone. Bedtime. Oh and those glass elevators are one hell of an experience with that much alcohol in your system. On my way to bed, I saw a friend and asked him to keep an eye on my stuff and he was just like, "No. Bed." and walked away. The next morning, I came down to breakfast to see everyone sitting at the tables staring at pieces of dry toast. I crawled into the back of the conference hall and about an hour later, one of the guys from Australia came in, pulled a chair against a wall, propped his feet on another chair and promptly fell asleep. Oh, and that day was St Patrick's Day, but that holiday seemed a bit lack-luster after my previous 6 days so I decided that it would be more fun to go over to my grandmother's. She got some corned beef and we watched the Lion King. It was WAY more fun than going out drinking again would have been.

Finally, the meeting was over and my parents came out and met me at the hotel. I was so sick of being confined to that block for the last six days that all I wanted to do was get very very far away. We went to Cal Tech, visited lots of family, went to Old Town Pasadena, all that fun stuff. It was fantastic to take those days off and let my brain relax. I really enjoy Pasadena, though we went shopping there and it was a harsh reminder how body type expectations are so different in California. We went shopping at my mum's favorite store which has a branch in Glasgow. Everything in the Glasgow shop looks great on me, but nothing fit me in the LA store. It was really depressing. I also got to see one of my old neighbours who lives in LA now. Him and I went to a farmer's market and ate at a Korean Barbeque. It was fantastic to catch up with him again and to see how our lives are doing. After that, my parents and I then went down to San Diego, ate seafood on a pier and sat on the beach. Paradise.

After sad goodbyes, I started my multi-plane journey back to Glasgow. Oh, and this was exciting: Princess Anne was on my flight back to London. She got to get on first and then we all waited in the plane while she exited to her convoy on the tarmac. Short woman in a white jacket, that's all I got. Still cool, though. I did not manage, again, to sleep on that flight and once I boarded the London-Glasgow flight, I passed out before we even took off and woke up when we landed, desperately needing more sleep.

I was welcomed back to pouring rain and an incredibly foul-mouthed, but really friendly, taxi driver. I called my friend and we met up in Tennants. I was walking to meet her and was walking in the rain, down the usual Byres Road, happy to be back, but then a car nailed a puddle at Mach 10 and splashed water all over me. Welcome home. Anyway, her and I caught up and then I went home and crashed. It took me quite a few days to get over the jetlag, but finally was able to.

On Thursday, I got to catch up with a friend back home, which felt really good. I have been really afraid of losing touch with some people, so it was great to reconnect again. On Friday, my friend and I planned a Star Trek night to battle homesickness, our usual cure, but the evening turned out different than expected, in a great way. Another friend came over as well and we ordered Mr India's (tried the Chicken Hot Pot, new favourite!) and sat at the dining table drinking wine and eating curry for 9 hours. Nine hours. We left at 3:30am. I do appreciate living in a city where I can walk home at 3:30 in the morning and feel safe. It was a really really fun evening. The next night I went over to another friend's house for some wine and chat. We played Perfect Dark on the xbox and complained about work.

This last week I was struggling with my code, but I think I finally have it working. We also had a visitor open day in which we have to go down and talk to prospective undergraduates about why they should study physics. My few hours down there was relatively quiet, but still fun. I always like seeing parents and their kids. The parents are so enthusiastic and the kids are so not. Ah, to be 17 again.

The next day we had a party at one of the faculty member's houses and everyone came along. There were four reasons to have the party so there was a lot of champagne and food. The quality of stories that came out of that party are endless. It was even in the middle of the week and once we ran out of port at two in the morning we all decided to go home. I made it in to the office at ten and the department was dead. We are hosting a big UK Astronomy meeting next week so we all spent the morning stuffing folders and putting name-tags together. It was good, mindless, hangover work. Of course, in the classic way of our research group, we got an email at about noon saying that there would be champagne available at 4pm in the common room to toast two people who were leaving the group. When I need a liver transplant, I am going to charge it to our group's expenses. That same day as well, one of my closest friends had her PhD defense (called a 'viva' in this country) so we all sat in the common room drinking the champagne until the text message/email flurry was sent around saying she was done. At six she was out and newly minted with 'Dr' and we went to the astronomy coffee area for some more champagne. We gave her some presents, one being a giant rock, a memory of 'thesis mountain'. We then hit the West End pubs for proper celebrations. One of the best places we went had lots of rum and good cocktails. She got a 'six rum cocktail' that had six shots of rum, a special grapefruit liquor in a beer stein with an absinthe-soaked sugar cube lit on fire on the top. Once that place closed, we went to the Oran Mor until about two in the morning at which time, Scooby-snacks were calling. We have a theory that the scooby snack is a delicate mix wherein if you're sober enough to talk yourself out of it, that is a good thing because you don't have enough alcohol in your system to absorb the whole thing. If you have enough alcohol in your system that a scooby snack sounds good, then it is the best thing for you.

She crashed on my floor that evening and we had a very slow morning the next day. Thankfully, there's a bonus to living in a religious state as we get Friday and Monday off around Easter. On Friday night, we wanted to fulfill the promise that we would go dancing before she left. A few of us all went and had a really fantastic time. It was great to be with a bunch of people who were all really happy and positive and enthusiastic. I unfortunately blew my whole budget for the week, but it was worth it as she is leaving. We started out at The Captain's Rest where two of the people we work with are in separate bands and both bands happened to be performing. Then we went to the city centre and went dancing until about three o'clock. Got some great chippy and the taxi home.

Saturday I went to the Glasgow Roller Derby fundraiser at a great underground place in the city centre. It was funny, too, because the world Irish Dancing Championships were taking place at the Concert Hall. Talk about the ultimate flashback. For Easter I went to my friend's house for dinner. It was three couples and myself, so it felt a bit like Bridget Jones, but we all had a really good time. I ended up crashing there after the Ouzo knocked us all out. Today I walked back, crawled into my pajamas and spent the day lounging around, eating and writing this!

The weirdest thing about this weekend was the fact that it was leaving parties for two of my close friends. Think about that. I have close friends here, and now some of them are leaving me. It is actually really sad and I will be missing a lot after this. It really cements my dislike in the mobile academic life. It is just too difficult and you don't feel settled. I do wish both of them luck though; life in Glasgow just will not be the same without them.

Until next time! (which will be a lot sooner than a month, I promise)

Scarpering for Skiing

2010-03-05T10:24:00.002Z

Okay, code is running, I have an hour and a half to kill and nothing to do, so here is an update! Last week was fairly eventful (per usual). My friend finally submitted her thesis last Friday to much excitement and buzzing throughout the department. We all scarpered off to the pub with a few professors and staff to mark the occasion. We sat in the pub for a few hours chatting and drinking, but everyone was pretty knackered from a busy work week. We left at about half-9 and went to her flat for some tea and chat. She is leaving for the States in a few weeks now and I will really miss having her around as she is a great friend, but also because it has been nice to have a friend on the same street as me.

The next day was a big day. Not only was it because it was nine months to the day of moving to Glasgow, but I was getting my first tattoo here to commemorate the occasion and my flatmate and I were hosting our flat-warming party. The party was great fun though we are going to have to have another one soon because some of my favourite people were not in town and could not make it. I do not know when then hell I will get the chance to do it as my weekends are quickly filling up, even as I type this (Hooray! I am going to a show in Edinburgh in April!). Anyway, the flat-warming was a success with about 50-60 people showing up. Thankfully the living room is gigantic and was fully capable of holding everyone and it did not feel too crowded. My flatmate invited some of his friends from school who were super uncomfortable with that many scientists and over-compensated by either being obnoxious, drunk or rude, or all of the above. Thankfully, everyone handled it pretty well and overall the night was a success. Not only that, but flat-warmings are very different in this country. People bring tidings of wine, champagne, port and single-malt whisky (large quantities of the latter two, bizarrely). My share of the port is sadly gone but we are saving the single-malts for later. It was nice, too, because I realised how convenient my place is for hosting parties, so this will be utilised in the future. The street I live on apparently used to have a large hub of PhD students residing there so everyone is glad to see it occupied again.

The next day I got up (very slowly) and made my way down to the West End to meet up with a friend from Edinburgh. He used to be a student here and we met through various people and got on 'like a house on fire' (his words). His girlfriend is this crazy gothic victorian artist and he is crazy into metal music, so yeah, we get on pretty well. We caught up over lunch and strategised about future escapades and carnage, including a siege of Cardiff planned for May. We also chatted a bunch about how the department has changed and how sad it is that I was not there three years prior, in it's heyday. This friend who is leaving and I were talking about the same thing recently. The regular crowd is made up of instigators and followers. Back in the day, the majority instigated adventures and since they all have left or settled down, the amount of craziness has ceased. Once she leaves, I am going to be the only true instigator left, which makes me really sad. Ergo, I am spending much more time with the older people who have hence moved around the country or instead save up the craziness for meetings and conferences, which results in some pretty shocked livers. It is fantastic, too, because though I was not around for their PhDs, they adopted me straightaway as one of the 'regulars' and now include me in any planned escapades, further proving how fun it would have been to be around during that time.

On Monday, I got together with the Leaving Friend and went out with her and a few of her friends for £2 mojitos on Ashton Lane. It was basically soda with a shot of rum, but usually a coke would be £2 so why not throw some rum in that. We chatted for a while then got the standard chips on the walk back home, you know, to keep us warm. I am telling you though, I have got to change my eating habits. I think I am only going to purchase food from the local grocer as opposed to Waitrose and buy any meat from the local butcher. I think I will eat much healthier that way, plus, it is always surprising how cheap fresh food is, so I need to take advantage of that.

Tuesday was a mental day in the department, so much so, that I ran away for the afternoon. It started with all of the computer network systems down and the wireless consequently not responding because everyone was trying to use that on their laptops instead. The biggest stressor was the fact that registration for a conference our department is hosting closed the next day and they were not able to process the flood of registrations coming in. Definitely worth running away from. I went home, Leaving Friend called for me to pick up some stuff she was getting rid of and we walked down to Cotswolds to buy some ski gear for the next day.

So, skiing in the Highlands! The previous week at our usual afternoon coffee, a bunch of us decided to go skiing at Glencoe due to the massive snowfall and fantastic weather that followed. I, always having my 'Danger, Will Robinson' radar out, was afraid of the massive avalanches that were happening on the same or adjacent mountains. However, I decided to throw caution to the wind, as well as work-responsibility-guilt and skive off for a day. Seven of us in total went, including two Swiss sisters, an Indian guy who had only been skiing once and the rest all fairly incompetent, but gutsy physicists.

We met up at seven in the morning, loaded up the cars and headed up to Glencoe, about a 2 1/2 hour drive (in America, you could push it to an hour, but these are Scottish highways and therefore take some serious navigating). It is nice to have finally become intimately familiar with the A82 route to Glencoe: the winding around Loch Lomond, the Green Welly stop in Tyndrum, the herd of stags lingering in the glen and various other homey landmarks. The day was absolutely beautiful and we finally arrived at Glencoe as one of the first people there. I went off to hire a pair of skis and boots while everyone else suited up their hired snowboards. The resort was very much an anti-Colorado resort, in good and bad ways. It was very functional by the carpark, one room for hiring equipment, one window for buying passes and a pub area inside where booze and chips and sausages could be purchased. There was a 2-person chairlift at the start that took us up and over the first hill, leading to the base of the actual ski area. Then, the dreaded tow-pommels awaited us. You know, those things that are basically a steel pole suspended from some rope with a disk attached to the bottom. You put the pole between your legs, the disk behind you and you go. There was an eastern-European working it at the beginning saying (in a thick accent) "Right, between your legs, do not sit, look where you are going, do not fall, good luck." and clicks this little wire and you take off. And I mean take. off. This thing booked it. I was a little shady at the start, but really, if you just stand up, almost lazily, it just pulls you up. Easiest skiing ever. Plus, this was to get up the beginners slope, so the incline was almost non-existent. I was a bit shaky at first, but once it came back to me, it really was like riding a bike, it was almost instinctual.

As opposed to skiing in Colorado, people who want to go skiing did not actually grow up on slopes, so we were all a bit rough to start (aside from the Swiss girls, but they don't count). We did the baby slope/tow cable for a while, getting more and more comfortable with it. After that, at the top of the baby slope, you can ski off to the side and down another route to a chairlift. This is an old-school chairlift: one person, wooden seat and a single metal pole that you just swing in front of you to hold you in. This took us to the top of some green runs, very nice, very happy. A little more of an incline, but plenty of space to slow down if needed. These slopes were also not nearly as 'manufactured' as Colorado slopes. Even for being green, they were bumpy, hilly and there were definitely places that you could fall off, well, fall off if you're green, ski down if you are on a red slope. After all, all runs point to the tow cable! That one was quite fun, especially because you did have plenty of areas where you could get some pretty good speed. We did that happily for a few more times before lunch, three hours later. Two of the people (one Swiss and one guy who I am convinced needs more excitement in his life as he has two young kids) actually skied to the carpark whereas all of us who valued life decided to take the 2-man chairlift back down for lunch.

After lunch, the Swiss girl we knew talked us in to going to the top of the mountain where the only way down was blue slopes on one side and certain death slopes on the other. "Oh, you'll be fine, the blue doesn't have any more of an incline than the green one" LIES! ALL LIES! But before we get to that adventure, we had to actually make it to the top of the mountain. At the top of the one-person chairlift and the top of the green slopes, you could walk up a bit (where other's ski down) to a T-Bar. Oh god, the T-Bar. This is basically a T suspended upside down from a wire. You share the T with another person, hoping to god you do not die. None of us knew how to do it. The poor snowboarders had to face the side and put their half of the T in between their legs and hold on to the middle pole whereas the skiers (me) had to simply rest our butt on our half of the bar and try not to slip off the side. Leaving Friend and I shared it and looked like absolute fools. She was snowboarding and was clinging to the middle pole. We were both convinced that was it, not so much because of the position, but the tow was almost straight up and if you fell off, you could not get onto the slopes and would simply slide straight down, hitting every other person in your path. Right at the start she got her foot caught and held on to me for dear life as she got her balance back. We were laughing so hard and had to try to stop laughing in order to not fall off. It finally got us to the top, which truly was phenomenal. We ditched our skis/snowboards immediately and scrambled to the summit for pictures. It was such a beautiful day as well, you could see for miles and miles in all directions. It was also very disconcerting as two days prior, there had been an avalanche right on this mountain so you were not sure how much on the top was actually supported by rock. Remember, Scotland does not have the fear-of-suing infrastructure that America has so everyone is responsible for themselves and could wander anywhere. We were exhausted anyway and therefore just collapsed on the top, a safe distance from the edge and rested a bit. We took a ton of pictures and rested there, trying to put the thought that we actually had to get off that goddamn mountain out of our mind.

Finally, we came to terms that we were going to have to make it down. We walked back down to the top of the T-bar lift and gathered our equipment. Off to the left and around the summit was a path leading to the top of the 'blue' runs down. This 'path' along which you were meant to ski was really narrow and just plummeted off the side. The two Swiss girls hopped on their boards and went right along it with the rest of us standing there, almost comedic-like, with our jaws open waiting for the first person to go. Without a word, one of the guys just takes off his snowboard again and starts walking. The other guy got onto his hands and knees on his board and scooted along like a skateboard. We followed suit and walked along to the top of the blue slope. When we reached it, panic set in; this was much steeper than the slopes we had been on previously and it was also super narrow, so you had to turn more often, meaning you gained a lot of speed. After some convincing we slowly started crawling down. I literally got on my skis and pushed myself horizontally, turned once, started gaining speed and did a controlled fall to stop myself so I could turn around and keep going. After a few grueling minutes, we all made it about halfway down where the path narrowed even more, but there was a giant rock off to the side that we all aimed for and fell down on to contemplate our existence and come to terms with our imminent death. Off to the left, you could see another blue arrow pointing to a side, with a longer route down. After the arrow however, the ground just fell away. We did not look over the edge, but we saw a lot of people ski over to it, look over, ponder for a few minutes then ski back down our way. Then it hit us, that was where the avalanche two days prior happened. Two novice skiers almost died on it. You could totally see how that would happen too, because there was so much snow and the mountain was so exposed to wind. Every time I tried to slow down, my skis would slide down a few feet before finally gripping the ground, sending a flurry of snow down in it's wake. However, I think after a few minutes of sitting on the rock (keep in mind too, we have been skiing for 4 hours that day already and our muscles were pretty exhausted) our brains finally came to terms with the fact that we had to get down the mountain and so we all started going for it. It is funny as well because your brain sees the whole way down the mountain and thinks that is what it has to do, when in reality you just have to make it to the end of the run. The path slid off to the right and there was the bottom of the lift. We made it! I think I could probably do it again now that I knew what to expect, but we were so tired by then, it was time to give up.

Skiing is a funny thing, because you do not feel as tired as you actually are. After we got to the bottom of the blue slope, we took the usual green way down and I fell about two times, nothing bad of course, but mostly just trying to take a turn and my legs not having the energy to push me around. The second time I fell, my legs could not even push me back up; that is how tired I was. We finally got to the top of the baby slope and just decided to do that a few more times before riding back down. We wanted to end on a good note after all and the baby slope was much better than ones in Colorado; it had some length to it and there were a few areas where you could actually get some speed, just very simply with plenty of space to gain control. Once we all met back at the bottom, we turned equipment in, changed into warm clothes and crawled into the car for the ride home. The ride home was really stunning because the Sun was setting and the highlands were all covered in snow. We stopped a few times to take pictures and got back to Glasgow by 6:30. Once we got back, we dropped the snowboards off in the department, trying to keep our head down so no one would see us and then ran off to Tennents for some steak pie and beer. I got back home at about eight o'clock, got into a steaming hot bath and listened to some Tom Waits. It was a brilliant end to a brilliant day.

Coming up this week, more work, some more work, some shopping for Victorian dresses, some drinking, more working and more drinking then packing to go to a meeting in California (hence all the work). So it will not be a terribly interesting blog, but always worth updating. Until next time!

Whisky, Wine and Ceilidh Bruises

2010-02-24T15:39:00.002Z

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

2010-02-17T22:29:00.004Z

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

2010-02-10T16:25:00.003Z

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!

2010-02-03T15:51:00.001Z

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!

You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!

2010-01-26T10:28:00.000Z

So the rest of last week was such a blast, I have to tell you all about it. Last Wednesday, after posting the last post, I went to go see Heidi Talbot and Tommy Sands perform at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall as part of the Celtic Connections Winter Music Festival that goes on every year in Glasgow. Both performances were fantastic. It reminded me of going to see Irish folk music with my parents in Fort Collins. I went with a couple who really wanted to see them and we were by far the youngest people in the audience. Heidi Talbot was so cute; she was 8 months pregnant and this was her last show before taking leave. At one point she finished a song and bolted off the stage to go to the bathroom and the guitarist had to take over. Tommy Sands was also brilliant. He is really famous in the Irish music as well as peace scene. He grew up near Tommy Makem and was commissioned by the BBC to write a song for him when he passed away. It was such an Irish performance though. He performed with his two kids, Moira and Fionan and you could tell that Moira loved the stage and Fionan was not pleased to be there. It was a really cute show though and the music was phenomenal.

The next day we went to go see my office-mate's band play. He's the bassist in a band called "Be a Familiar". This was their last show before they start work on their first album. It was the first time I had really experienced the Glasgow music scene and I thoroughly enjoyed it and was blown away by the talent that I saw. We also went to a great vegan restaurant in the city centre that I had never been to before. They had a fantastic Greek platter that was entirely vegan.

Friday was my first day back at teaching 2nd year Astronomy labs. It was great to see the students again and they seemed happy to see me as well. We had a few hiccups with some of the computer programs, but it all worked out in the end. I do really enjoy teaching, but it is weird to be an authority figure to university students. That night I went out clubbing for the first time with a few girls I had met through friends here at the university. One of the girls is really into metal music so we decided to go to a metal club. The doors didn't open until 11, which is so beyond anything I usually do on a Friday night, it was weird to get used to. We met up at this great bar, though, the Solid Rock Cafe. It is a big metal bar and is filled with my kind of people. It was pretty ridiculous going clubbing with a bunch of girls who are all in long-term, committed relationships. They spent the entire night trying to hook me up with people at the club, so I do not think I will be rushing out to go out with them again anytime soon. Most of it was a good time though.

Saturday was absolutely brilliant and MUCH more my style for the weekend. One of my friends splurged and bought the LEGO Millennium Falcon set. When finished, it measures about 3 feet long! We all decided to have a massive LEGO building party on Saturday night to see what we could get done. The instruction manual was 300 pages and you have never seen so many LEGO pieces in your life! I went over at about 5:30 to help sort the pieces and get everything ready to go. Most people came over around 7pm and we started building. At about 11 we were only 75 pages into it, but it was looking so cool, we knew we'd be up all night finishing. We threw on A New Hope, poured some whisky and settled in for the night. So many lines such as "These are not the pieces you are looking for" and "What a hunk of junk!" were thrown out there all night long. It got progressively worse towards the early morning. The last piece was put in just after 6:30am and we all stumbled home, with sore fingers and sore backs. It was totally worth it though and we had such an awesome time.

Most of Sunday was spent sleeping off the night before, or moving very very slowly. In the early afternoon I walked down to the row of shops just down the road from me and hung out with some people down there for a few hours. I then went into the city to do some shopping for the flat for little things we still need. (Who knew that mesh colanders were so expensive? I need to rinse my rice!) All the people from the night before then met up at the cinema to see Avatar mostly out of curiosity. If any of you are considering seeing it, then I would see it in 3D at the cinema. The story is not worth seeing it on a small screen in 2D, you might as well watch Pocahontas or Fern Gully but the visuals were quite phenomenal and it was totally worth the price.

I am now back hard at work, finishing funding applications and putting together a technical document to be published this week. Back to the grind and until next time!

Home away from Home

2010-01-20T16:59:00.002Z

Whew, okay it's been ages since I last updated this blog. Upon arrival back in Glasgow I set straight to work finding a new place to live. This consumed the first few weeks back and now I am struggling to keep up with the work I had to put off to go look at flats, sign papers, etc. I basically got back into Glasgow and though I was happy to see Scotland again (while still being torn about missing Colorado) I was not excited to get back to my flat. It just never felt like I was actually living there. I called up a fellow PhD student who mentioned that he wouldn't mind moving out of his parent's house and into the West End and thankfully he was up for it straightaway! We set to work finding places to live, running all over town and constantly keeping an eye on websites. Finally we found a place at the top end of our price range (well, my price range) in a great location. It's just a little farther from where I was living and is in a residential area next to a primary school, a church and a playground. It feels like I'm properly living in Scotland now, in a real flat, not just bunking down in a glorified hostel.

This flat is modern, totally furnished and warm...thankfully! The flatmate situation is working out well so far. A few nights ago he came back to the flat and I was like "Hi! Um...you can join me, but I'm drinking tea, knitting and watching Frasier". I do not think he knew that he was moving in with a middle-aged spinster. He laughed about it though and did actually sit down to watch Frasier, so I think we will work out fine.

The holidays were great fun. I will not go into it too much because this blog is about living in Scotland. In relation to that though, I really do miss my life in Colorado. Things would be a little better if Scotland was just a little closer to Colorado, but it's not. Ah well, I do not have to decide between the two for another two years and in the meantime, I will cherish the time I spend with people in Colorado, knowing that I will return to my life as a PhD student here in Scotland. Part of that may also be due to the fact that that was my first proper holiday I had given myself in a long time. It is a bizarre trick to play on the mind, to have two completely disparate lives, that hardly interact with each other, no evidence given in either that the other exists. Both are solid and happy, but they do not overlap and are very different. Anyway, I am back in Scotland and that is what you are here to read about!

So yes, I have moved, which was one of my New Year's Resolutions. I also finally got a proper phone with a real phone plan. I also had to buy real insurance for the first time. Trying to be an adult without a disposable income is a bit difficult, but I seem to be making it work. These two years left will be a drop in the bucket for the income that will (hopefully) follow. Speaking of which, most of my time now is also consumed with writing funding proposals. These are ultra-competitive, but I think I am in a much better place now. I am currently working on two papers for publication, struggling with collaborators, but it is a step in the right direction. My research since I have been back has been at a standstill while I write these papers and apply for funding. I am also working on my first-year report, for which a draft of the introduction was due today. Time flies; I am already writing my first year report!

Socially, getting back has been a little slow, mostly because of the money and the move. I still had plenty of opportunities to get together with people. The first Friday back was such a blast. We went to the Common Rooms for our usual Friday night outing and since there were no undergraduates back, it was pretty quiet. As the time went on, the pub actually filled with a huge variety of scientists, each group I knew someone. There were astronomers, particle physicists, PhD students, chemists... I really spent the whole night table-hopping, catching up with tons of people. It was a great first night out. The next Saturday was a flat-warming for a friend and his girlfriend who just bought their first apartment. It was such a brilliant party; most of us did not leave until 5:30am. I bought this friend a copy of the game "Set" because you cannot find it in this country and we had talked about it before. He was so happy he almost cried when I gave it to him. We had a brilliant time playing it that night as well as drinking plenty of wine and playing trivia games.

I also have joined a knitting group to keep myself knitting. I finished my first hat the other day and am finishing up a present for one of my best friends that was supposed to be a Christmas present. I also have a super long-term project going that I do not want to give up on! This is a group of women who meet on Sundays at Starbucks in the city centre. I found them on a website that I frequent and I am really glad I did, though it does make me get dressed on a Sunday, which causes much mental distress.

The next week (last week) was the big move. The whole process really filled me with such warmth and a feeling of true friendship the way people came through for me. I had a gap between the girl who was taking my old room and my new flat becoming available. One of my friends immediately stepped up and let me stay at her and her boyfriend's flat in their spare bedroom. They were so generous and happy to have me stay. While I was there, I also watched a lot of Snooker and learned most of the rules and even have my own favourite snooker player now! It was really fun staying with them and I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did. Not only did I experience their generosity, but there were some legal issues with renting the new flat that had to do with me not being a citizen and not having a proper income, but one of my friends really helped me out with that. If I were in her position, I definitely would not have gone to the lengths that she did, so I am super grateful for that. I also had people, without question, help me move, which is always such a hassle. We got all my stuff into one car-load (can I just say, that it is very bizarre to have all of your possessions fit into a single car-load?) and took it up the road to my new place. All of this help was done without me having to really ask, though it definitely took effort for these people to go out of their way for me. It was a very encouraging process, especially coming back from Colorado.

On Friday night, sore and exhausted after the big move, I could not just collapse into my new bed in a warm flat and pass out, because I was off to a friend's ceilidh for her birthday. There is a place in the city centre that has public ceilidhs every Friday night. This is the girl that I basically replaced and she is now working a swanky bank job as a programmer. A bunch of her friends from the bank were there as well, so it was nice to meet some new people. It really was reminiscent of the public dances one sees on Masterpiece Theatre. There were quite a few large groups of people celebrating various occasions and there was a variety of outfits. Most of the men were dressed in kilts, though, even if it was just a tee-shirt on top. Ceilidhs are basically the Scottish form of a square dance, if you didn't read my blog before, and all the dances are called out and taught before the music starts. Most of them are pretty simple as long as you know basic dance moves and can keep a beat. The men are very well-trained when it comes to asking girls to dance and I only once sat out. There is lots of swinging, twirling, whooping, running into each other and the occasional fall. One of the dances we did was actual chaos. There are two sets of partners facing each other, we do a few simple dance moves, then we all go into the centre, the men put their arms around our waists and the girls who are across from each other put our arms over their shoulders. We're all facing in the middle (very closely) and hold on for dear life. The men have to lift us off the ground and spin in a circle, letting the angular momentum swing our legs off the ground. We had to do this about 10 times and it was just as terrifying for the girls as it was exhausting for the guys. It all resulted in good laughs though and it was definitely memorable. I definitely plan on going back, particularly if I have people visiting. It also turned out that one of the guys in the band, his daughter lives in Denver with her husband! It's such a small world sometimes.

On Saturday night, I went over to my friend's house because she was feeling a bit homesick and we had two bottles of wine, ordered good ol' Mr India's curry and watched 8 hours of Star Trek: The Original Series. It was a fantastic night in, not much else to say, that basically describes it. Each night, may I add, it was wonderful to come back to a nice, new, proper flat; not worried if the kitchen was going to be clean, or if the rubbish had been taken out, or if there was any toilet paper...finally a good home!

Sunday I got myself out of bed and down to the centre to knit my little heart out over a cup of tea. I came back, changed back into my pajamas and started properly unpacking, most of which still is not done because I have been working every night on this introduction that was due today. Two thousand one hundred and fifty words later, one LaTeX file properly compiling and my job is done!

Tonight, I am going to Heidi Talbot (she used to play with Cherish the Ladies) as part of the Celtic Connections festival going on right now, tomorrow I am going to see my office-mate's band play in the city, Friday I am going back to the city to meet a friend there to go to a metal club and Saturday we are having a LEGO-building party to build the 5-ft model of the Millennium Falcon so there should be plenty of updates for Sunday (after knitting, of course!)

Cheers for now!

Reflections

2009-12-14T14:38:00.004Z

Alrighty folks! Thanks for sticking with me for these 6 and a bit months! This will be the last post until after the holidays.

I'll do the usual rundown of the adventures of last week. On Monday, my friend and I were volunteering to go to a secondary school to talk about careers in physics. Since she comes from an engineering background and worked in the industry before doing an instrumental PhD here, and I have stayed in academia, studying pure physics and mathematics and doing data analysis and programming, we made a good contrasting team. We went to this school in particular because we have a colleague in the solar physics group whose girlfriend teaches these classes. There were four classes total, grouped into two groups; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. These students are about 14 years old and have just chosen to take physics as their primary science. It was really funny to observe how two groups of students who are the same age can vary so drastically in maturity level. The first group were relatively quiet, but they all seemed interested in what we were saying. No one's attention seemed to wander out the window or to their notebooks and they were responsive to our stories. The next group was your stereotypical bunch of rowdy Glasgow boys. But it was not even like something we could fight. Simple rowdiness is no problem, but when you ask people if they have questions and they're asking questions indicative of a much lower maturity level, like 'how much money do you make?' or 'do you get to fly in space?' there's not much you can do in response. We didn't mind to much though, we got a day off of work and figure that if we got about 4 or 5 students to be excited about physics as a career, that's more than the usual amount who go on to study it at university. I believe we reached that goal with the first crowd. The teacher of one of the first classes had me speak to one student in a different year in particular who wanted to study astrophysics at university. He was in his sixth year and was consequently applying to programs at thsi time and wanted to know what it was like and the best way to go about it. Those are the times I really like speaking to this age group.

We were done at about 2:30 and did not really feel like going back to the department for the rest of the evening. She was planning on making this new Greek recipe that night so invited me over to help and partake in the consumption of said recipe. We went shopping at a Sainsbury's, which is more like a Safeway than any other supermarket I've been to here. Though this was a little out of the city (I miss having a car!) and so there was more space for a proper supermarket. We walked in and it turned out that the new Harry Potter film had come out on DVD (I know! I wasn't even aware of it!) and it was on sale for £7 as supplies lasted. She had to witness my sad, lingering, obsessive behaviour as without question and little regard to the fact that the £10 note in my pocket was supposed to last until Friday, I grabbed a copy off the shelf and kept on walking like it was no option. Glad I did, of course, as that was the cheapest I was going to find it and I can no longer watch US DVDs easily over here. But yeah, that's just shameful justification.
Anyway, she had this great lemon, dill, garlic marinade recipe for lamb neck. So we went back to her flat and attempted to make this marinade, with little failure, only a little. While the lamb was marinading we checked our emails to make sure we weren't missing anything important at the office then settled down to watch this British comedy, "Black Books" that I had been meaning to watch for a while with a bottle of wine. It was again, a great, fun evening.

On Wednesday I met up with this same friend, her boyfriend and another couple at The Belle, just a few doors down from my flat for some drinks. I had presented my pre-holiday work and 6 month update at our telecon that day and so was in the mood for a mild celebration. I really love The Belle, but the reason that I hardly go there is that it's so tiny that you have to have the patience to stand around for about 20 minutes stalking tables before one frees up. The entire pub is about the size of my parent's living room and it has a warm fireplace and dark stone walls. It's a brilliant environment, just very tiny.

Friday I met up with a girl I had met in Millport and a few times since at various parties we all had had. We had been meaning to get coffee together sometime and decided to go to Tchai Ovna, right by the university. I had never been to this coffee house before, but had heard great things. It was down a tiny little alley, a few streets away on the other side of the university. It was a lot like the tea house in Boulder, but more like a run-down shack. It smelled of chai tea and hookah and was filled with a hodge-podge of seats, cushions and couches. It reminded me so much of Boulder, I really loved it. And like the tea house in Boulder, it had a full binder filled with different teas you could choose from, almost like a wine list.

That day, the solar physics crowd went out for a special pre-holiday lunch and had a considerable chunk of money left over. They decided to all go to the pub at 5:30 that night and it was the first time one of my friends had been out in a few months as she's writing her thesis. Everyone took it upon themselves to make sure she had a good time. And a good time was had. We went to this shady looking pub on Old Dumbarton Road called The Rogue, you know, no windows, one working door, etc. It was fairly empty, but with a group of people, that's the idea situation as you can practically take over the whole pub. Which we did. It was a whole lot more people than usual since it was also all the solar physics students as well as all the gravitational waves people. Then (as my friend put it) the booze train left the station. Anyone who did not participate was quickly left behind in the dust, with no sympathy. It was a great time though, had by the passengers on said booze train.

The next day, she called me at 2 in the afternoon and I went up the road to her flat for a nice fried breakfast. Fried eggs, sausage, beans and tattie scones. Hit the spot. We chatted for a few hours, nursing the headaches and remembering the last night, laughing about the last night, then trying to forget it again. Then I went home to get all fancied up for going to Beauty and the Beast that night with a friend. It was at the Scottish Exhibition Centre and was the touring UK performance. It was an interesting experience going to the theatre here. This would be the equivalent of going to the Denver Performing Arts Centre and about half the people are just dressed like they would be going to the cinema. They serve crisps and Irn Bru as well as drinks and stuff that you can actually take into the auditorium and eat while you watch the show. It was a super fun performance and the funniest thing was that the only person with an American accent (which was obviously fake) was Gaston, the vain, obnoxious one. What can I say? It worked. Wild applause was given for Chip who was played by a little Glaswegian boy. But yeah, it was a great show and all the cynical Scots were enjoying it in the end.

Yesterday I went to the city centre to do some last shopping. The air is so cold here that the moisture is just freezing, leaving a thick, hovering fog. I got back, made some tea and packed for going to Colorado.

Today is my last day at work. Tomorrow is our Christmas lunch in the department. It runs all day starting with drinks at 11am in the common room then moving on to a fancy lunch, then moving on to a pub. Needless to say, I am already ready to go as my taxi is picking me up at 6:30am the next morning.

I do have to say, my life has really turned around these last few months. It is a bizarre change, and one I probably could not have anticipated, but I am lucky for it. My social life has blossomed; with people giving me Christmas cards, saying they will miss me, looking forward to the ceilidh when everyone returns. I really could not have asked for a better department to join and a better city to move to. The department is filled with good, honest, welcoming people who are down-to-earth and enjoy having a good time with each other. This city is filled with genuine, happy people who despise conformity. Even the West End, where I live which is considered the "wealthy" part of Glasgow, most of the people you would never guess could afford such a living. They are simply happy for where they are and recognise the struggles others have in life. My university is really everything I could have wished for; including the giddy child in me who gets excited every time I walk through the main building, due to it's resemblance of Hogwarts. I was thinking about this this weekend when I was shopping by myself in the city centre. I remember being there back in June, not knowing anyone, hoping that no one would think that I did not live there, worrying that someone would talk to me and I would not understand them and would look like a "typical" American. I was so filled with doubt; really hoping I would eventually fit in. Now this time, walking through the city centre, I know where I am going; I run into people I know and I am filled with warmth at the familiar site of Buchanan Street, hearing my favourite street performers playing and seeing the happy faces of all the Glaswegians.

My life now consists of such vastly different things than it used to. I now am occupied with the World Cup events, when my friend and I will get to go to a Glasgow Warriors Rugby match, which pub to go to on a Friday night, if I should go home for a quiet evening or join my friends just down the road, when I will have the £17 to go to the Highlands for some hiking one weekend, what I'm going to eat at Mr India's next week, and the list goes on. Things I never thought would be in my conscience, but had always hoped would be. If I am in my room crying over an idiot man or over a bad turn in my research, listening to Janis Joplin and drinking whisky, I am doing so in Glasgow, Scotland and things are not and can not be as bad as they seem. I am so fortunate to have tested myself in this world and succeeded with the resources I had. My success in moving overseas snuck up on me in these last few months and now I finally can call Scotland home, which is all I really wanted for Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

Feuerzangenbowle!

2009-12-06T15:41:00.001Z

The holidays are now officially upon us. Not much has happened this week, so I'm afraid this will be a rather short update. The weather is now officially freezing. We have not had any snow yet, but people are starting to wish for it as it's definitely in the air.

This week has mostly consisted of massive amounts of work, trying to get ready for the holidays. Panic has gripped the department for that reason exactly and people are scrambling to get as much done as possible before Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations commence. On Wednesday I managed to escape for some curry with folks, which was lovely. It was the usual mention of curry at coffee, leading to a massive round of sarcastic, Christmas themed emails about the curry angel leading it's people to feast. The food was fantastic (as usual) and our Mr India was happy to see us follow the star in the sky, leading us to mass amounts of Chicken Tikka and bid us tidings of spiced onions. This was, of course, followed up by some Laphroaig at the usual Tennent's.

Thursday, escape was not so lucky as I finally had to convince myself to do some real, mass amounts of work. My friend who is finishing her thesis stayed late as well and we had dinner in the common room and left to walk back together at 9:30 that night. A full 13 hour day in the office. I did get lots accomplished in the way of work. My programs are running successfully, leading to much silent cheering and happy dances at my desk. My supervisor seems pleased with my progress and applications for funding in January should be very strong. Hopefully, this will also mean that I get an internal publication done by the end of the holidays.

On Friday, we had a Feuerzangenbowle (fire-sugar-drink) party at a friend from Germany's house. Before the party, however, we rushed out of the department at 5pm sharp to watch the World Cup Draw at the Common Rooms. This was to find out who would be playing whom and when during the summer. Lot's of people were there watching it and they had it on the big screen. After they did this, a few of us headed to the party. Since it is St Nicholas/Sinter Klaus weekend, the Germans, Swedes, Dutch, etc celebrate with mulled wine and various Christmas goodies. I learned how to make proper mulled wine, by cooking wine on the stove, with apples and spices, then ladling flaming sugar and rum slowly into the mixture. It was super warm and cozy and a great party. They also had gingerbread and baked apples for everyone.

The next day, the mulled wine had left me with (surprise surprise) a massive headache. For my future reference, there actually is alcohol in mulled wine and it cannot be consumed like apple cider. Just a personal note. I was meeting a friend down in the city centre to do some Christmas shopping. We met up, went our separate ways and thankfully, since she hates shopping as much as I do, we met up two hours later and went for tapas at a Mediterranean bistro in town; mostly to pamper ourselves after spending so much money and braving the crowds. I also was calmed by the presence of Clanadonia playing on Buchanan St again. Oh, how I love watching big, hairy men in kilts bang on drums. I love it, I do. That made the shopping a little better, and I still love Glaswegians. It was very Christmassy on Buchanan St and, despite the crowds, it was still fun.
After shopping, I ran back home and dropped off everything before running out again to a friend's house for dinner and a Star Trek marathon. This girl has been a Star Trek fan for years and wanted to watch them with someone. It was fantastic. Her love for McCoy and my love for Spock led to some brilliant episodes and some really great laughs.

Today was devoted to Christmas cards and cleaning. As I am leaving in just about 9 days, I figured I really should clean up the place. Thankfully, it looks great now and I can pretty much just focus on work next week (so it will be even more boring in a week) before leaving for the good ol' US of A. Til next time! Ta ra!

Thanksgiving and 6 months down!

2009-11-29T10:51:00.001Z

I hope you all are stuffed full of happy Thanksgiving turkey and good cheer. Bring on Christmas! Before we get to my week of having the parents here, let me bring you up to speed on a few fun things that happened the week prior.

Thursday before last, I went over to dinner at my friend and her boyfriend's house. This friend and I are going to be going to schools in the area as 'ambassadors' for students who want to study physics. One of the schools we decided upon, a girlfriend of another PhD student is a teacher there. We decided to all get together, five in total (me being the obligatory fifth wheel) for dinner to discuss what to do at this school. The boyfriend made a lovely chicken and couscous dinner and we cracked open a few bottles of wine. It was a really fun night, but the weirdest part was when we were all sitting around talking about teaching and we all ended up discussing our students. The PhD students (including myself) as well as the school-teacher talking about our frustrations and stories about our students, all comfortably sitting in couches sipping on beer and wine. All very posh and grownup. Funny how that can spring up on you. Of course, then we regressed to our immature sides when the boys played video games and the girls gossiped. The early/mid-twenties is a bizarre combination of responsibility and a fight back against it. The weather outside was absolutely dreadful. I am sure that some of you have read the news about the rain here in the UK; that it has been the wettest days this country has ever seen. Needless to say, we all split a taxi home afterwards.

On Friday, my friend's boyfriend was visiting from Switzerland. Since he barely speaks the language, he's been rather hesitant to move out here. This was phase two in her scheme to get him to move here: meet the cool, amazing, friendly friends. He's in his forties and rather shy, so we all went to Roastit Bubbly Jocks for some gourmet Scottish cuisine, and hit up the Lios Mor (the whisky bar) afterwards. I was amazed at the multi-lingual abilities of people at the table. I, thankfully, was able to understand slow german, but not respond. Most of the other people knew conversational german, so that's what was spoken when talking to her boyfriend. She also brought along her sister's fiance, whom he had met before to make him more comfortable. Once we went to the whisky bar, we all had to split up because there was no room for 12 people to stand in a circle, and thankfully, the boyfriend stuck with the other group when my friend joined us. So it was a big success. We all had a super fun night and I hope he manages to summon the courage to move here.

The next day was the big day, the family was arriving! Since they had yet to decide whether to fly or take the train, I wasn't sure when they were going to arrive. Subsequently, it was an excuse for me to lounge around all day long. Despite my encouragement to fly, due to the flooding in most of the UK, they took the train and arrived at 7pm in Glasgow Central Station. My brother was a bit tired so he went to bed in the hotel, but my parents were ramped up and ready to hit the town. We went to one of my favourite pubs, Cooper's, for food and drinks and afterwards went to the Oran Mor for some whisky. Thankfully everyone in Glasgow was nice and friendly and so my parents seemed to enjoy themselves. They finally went to bed around midnight, I think.

On Sunday, I woke up bright and early, went to the coffee house to get some cappuccinos and went to their hotel to wake them up. Our plan was to get some breakfast, head to the city centre and do some shopping and tours. We had breakfast on Ashton Lane, which was super lovely and really tasty. Then we walked down to the underground station so my mum could experience the "Clockwork Orange", Glasgow's underground. I love it, it's one of the oldest undergrounds, along with London (which has since been refurbished) and Budapest (which I've also been on!). My favourite bit about this underground is the lack of technology; at each stop the conductor sticks his head out the window and visually looks down the platform to see when it's clear, then closes the doors and drives away. Once we got to the city centre, we sent my dad and my brother to do the Glasgow city tour, which shows people the east side, the Clyde and gives lots of good stories about the University. My mum and I went shopping at some of the nice places that she can't shop at in Colorado. We bought some new shoes and some shirts, then met up with the boys to decide what to do. We went to Borders then the weather hit again, so we escaped to an Irish Pub just around the corner and hunkered down for a few hours before going out to dinner at the Butterfly and the Pig. We had a great supper there and I think that everyone liked it. The plan was to walk back to the West End, stopping at the Uisce Beatha along the way for some more whisky. Since the weather was so awful, we caught a taxi back to their hotel and bought a bottle of Laphroig around the corner and sat in the hotel room, drinking our whisky.

Monday we woke up and went to a coffee shop for breakfast before heading over to the University. I took them up to meet my advisor and showed them all around my office and the common room, my home away from home. People were all really nice and excited to meet my family. I showed them all around the University and we went to the Hunterian Museum in the main building. We then walked down to the Clyde to pick up Beauty and the Beast tickets for me. My dad wanted to find out where he was going to rent the car the next day so him and my brother went to explore while my mum and me went to the Kelvingrove Museum to wait for them in the lobby. They both discovered Glasgow's propensity to create a hodge-podge of exhibits for museums, with not much flow or design, but it's endearing. Once we met up at the museum, we went to run some errands to get ready for our trip. My mum discovered the proper grocer's and fell in love. Also surprising for her was the discovery of how cheap food is in this country. I remember discovering that when I first moved here and it is indeed a bit of a shock. Once errands were run, we met in Tennent's for some ale before going to Mr India's (mmm) to discover proper Glasgow curry. It seemed to be a big success and we went to the Lios Mor afterwards for more whisky (I think they're sick of whisky now) before walking home.

The next day my dad and I went to go pick up the rental car in the city centre and got absolutely soaked the entire way. Thinking about the driving experience makes my blood-pressure spike, so I'll gloss over it and say...we didn't die. We packed up the car, my mum and I went to buy some last-minute groceries and we made our way out of town. I directed my dad up the east coast of Loch Lomond for some lovely views, but the weather was threatening to wash out the road so we didn't stay long. We made our way back to the A82 and went up the west side of the loch, on a proper highway. The drive to Glencoe was lovely, if a bit rainy, and I don't think my dad liked how curvy the supposed 'highway' was. We finally found our cabin and settled in, going to the pub for dinner. I had an amazing boar sausage pie with some excellent vegetables. The views from the cabin were breathtaking. I don't know if my awe at Glencoe is because it is actually a phenomenal setting, or if it's because I was an avid student of Scottish history and am aware of all the events that happened in this glen, particularly concerning my family. So, quick story before I continue: The name "Glencoe" means Valley of the Tears because the Macdonald family was all slaughtered there in the 17th century. They invited the Campbell clan to visit their territory, without knowing that they were in the pocket of the English and in the middle of the night, attacked their hosts. Anyway, it's an interesting valley.

On Wednesday, I woke up after a great and peaceful sleep, with only the rain banging on the window (well, it might have been ghosts, but I think it was rain...my blood is welcome in the glen). I got the family up, made some breakfast and we struck out to explore the walks around our cabin. These paths led up An Torr, a little hill and went out to Signal Rock, which used to be a meeting place for the Macdonalds and is also supposedly where the Campbells lit the fire to signal the slaughter. In my happy fictional world, it's the place in Kidnapped (one of my favourite books) where Davey Balfour and Alan Breck hide for days from the English, watching their movements below in the valley. So we went exploring, getting a little soaked, but enjoying the mystique of the surroundings. We came back and warmed our clothes by the fire, settling in and reading. There was a 1942 edition of Jane Eyre left in the cabin, so you can guess what I read. We had a little tapas meal that evening, to spare ourselves from the heavy Scottish food we had been indulging in.

Thanksgiving, we got up late, made a lovely breakfast and settled in the cabin for some cooking. As you all had similar meals, I won't go into the details, but we used the same fantastic recipes from the previous year and had a great meal with lots and lots of wine. We woke up on Friday and packed up the car and went exploring the west coast highlands. After some white-knuckle moments, we stopped in Tyndrum for some food then continued on to Glasgow. Dad and I returned the car and met my mum and brother in their new 'regular' coffee house in Glasgow. We then went to Cooper's for dinner again and went to the Oran Mor afterwards. I got a few texts from my friends at the office saying that they were in the Common Rooms (another pub, not the physics common room) and that we should come by so they could properly meet everyone. After some convincing, I got my mum and dad to agree to stop by, buy a round and meet my friends, so they can see that I'm not lonely here in Glasgow. They were all really friendly and I think my parents liked meeting all of them. Then my parents left so they could be up bright and early to catch their flight and left me with my friends in the pub to celebrate my Six Month Anniversary of moving here. It was a great vacation, that I much needed and I hope my family loves Glasgow as much as I do.

Until next time! Ta ra!

SUPA-Heros and York

2009-11-16T10:38:00.003Z

This past week left me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. So, here's the story: Just after graduating high school, one of my fellow Anglophile friends and I made a pact that by the year 2010 we would be living in the UK and would meet up for a pint. Four and a half years later, with a month and a half to go, I was on the train down to York for the much-promised pint! When we made the pact, neither of us were really sure how it would work out, given that life is so dynamic and so many goals and dreams change, but we managed to fulfil it.

I caught the 7am train from Glasgow Central (having to leave my house at the wee hour of 6am to make the walk to the city centre) and made it to York by 10:45. We went out for some breakfast and tea (mmm egg and bacon roll with Yorkshire tea and lemon). York is really a cute town. Very very English. If anyone is planning a trip over here, I would suggest making a stop in York, even for a day. We went to the Minster (my friend is Catholic) which is a giant cathedral. We paid to walk around the Minster (well, I did, he got in free) as well as climb the tallest tower. It was a super steep climb, to the point that the person in front of you, you're looking at the underside of their shoes, as well as the stairwell only barely a shoulder width wide. It was about a 10 minute climb straight up, but then we got spectacular views of York at the top. The vertigo you feel at certain points is not so much the height, but the dizziness from the circular climb.

After climbing the tower, we went to the market (since it was Saturday, they had the local farmer's market, yes, they have farmer's markets here) as well as the Shambles, which resembles Diagon Alley. It's a very narrow street with the second storey of the buildings leaning over the road; giving a cramped feeling. There were great little fudge shoppes, tea shoppes, and the like. We also found Guy Fawkes' birthplace which is now an inn. The next time I go to York, I'm going to stay there, dash the cost.

We then hit the pub (something both of us, being expats, thoroughly appreciate) and hunkered down for a few hours. This pub is known for it's pies (not dessert pies, but pies here, meat and gravy enclosed in a pastry). I had the most AMAZING pie; it was a lamb and apricot pie with mint-infused gravy. The gravy was poured all over the potatoes and veg on the plate as well...goodness! My mouth is watering at the thought of it again. The lamb was perfectly cooked as well and the gravy inside the pie was super thick and fantastic. Just oozed out of the pastry. After we left the pub, we went back to the Minster because some parts were open that weren't earlier in the day. I really do love Gothic cathedrals; this is the largest in England. It's got a great feel to it when the sun is going down.

We then went to this place that supposedly had amazing cocktails that my friend has always wanted to try. It had been so long since I had a nice, fruity cocktail. My booze intake since the end of May has primarily been beer, wine and whisky. This was one of those really fancy places, but not in the same way that it's an over-crowded, old building...not at all the ambiance of a fancy martini bar. We had a cocktail that was 7 types of rum and absinthe. It tasted fantastic. We tried a few more, woe be to my pocketbook, before we had to go back to the train station. We got to the platform early and sat on the benches and chatted some more before my 7pm train back. We are both in similar romantic situations and so grilled each other for advice as well as making another pact, since we were so successful in the last one.

The train arrived on time and I settled down with some films on my laptop and a BLT from the trolley. I got back into Glasgow at 10:45pm and since it was a Saturday night and the city was bustling, I decided to walk all the way home, mostly to placate my body for the egg and bacon roll, the lamb pie and the amount of beer I had. It was such a great time seeing my friend and he's planning on coming up to Glasgow after the holidays, though I'm sure we'll be seeing each other while both in Colorado.

In other news, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) had their AGM on Thursday at the Glasgow Science Centre. Having a full meeting in the middle of the week really threw off my productivity for Friday. They had a PhD induction thing in the morning for the new physics PhD students from around Scotland (geez, I'm almost 6 months into my PhD and I am still going to these things!) to talk about our expectations, fears, desires from the PhD process. It was nice to be referred to as 'Doctoral Candidates' though; its things like that which make it much more real. In the afternoon, the rest of the SUPA community showed up for lunch and a bunch of talks. It was filled with celebrities (in the physics world, I mean). Dame Professor Jocelyn Bell gave a talk on pulsars, which was very good. She is a hero for any female physicist. Also attending was Peter Higgs of the Higgs Boson, which anyone who has read any article on the Large Hadron Collider would recognise. The head of CERN also gave a talk on the current status of particle colliders. The talks after that were mind-numbingly dull and quite painful. There was a nice reception in the evening and then we all went home, exhausted after the full day.

That's all the new exciting things! My family is coming to visit on Saturday, so I don't know if I'll get a post up next week, but there will be an extra long, special Thanksgiving edition after they leave! Toodles!

Remember, remember...

2009-11-10T09:58:00.000Z

I know this is a little late getting out, but better late than never! It has been unbearably cold recently. I mean unbearable. You know in all those Masterpiece Theatres where people keep getting super cold at night? All those images of Edwardian England of people in nightgowns shivering wrapped in shawls? Yeah, it's kind of like that. Well, exactly like that. It must be the damp air coming off of the ocean or the fact that I'm living practically at the Arctic Circle! The nights are now properly long. It's super hard to go back to work after afternoon tea/coffee at 4:30 because it's pitch dark outside, and it will only get worse before it gets better. All that aside though, I still love living here and the vast amount of pubs make the weather a little less painful. It is very satisfying to go into a warm, loud, bustling pub filled with laughing, cheering drinking Scotsmen while it's properly freezing outside. You never want to leave.

This week, in our post-Halloween revelry, we had a Glaswegian friend visiting from his post-doc position in Germany. We all went out for...guess it, guess it...curry! There were too many of us in the tiny restaurant and so they split up our two tables and served us separately. I was on the losing side of the table with myself and another chap getting properly grumpy about our food not coming out yet. They were almost done with their meal by the time we got ours. So we started a mini-war between the two tables by putting a moat (our water glasses) and a wall of fire (the candles from the table) on the border. The whole thing started when someone put the bowl of their rice halfway over the line and it was properly sent back over. Then they had to borrow some of our rice later and so we charged an export tax. It was super immature but very entertaining. I went to the Oran Mor afterwards with my office mate and we had a great chat about the holidays and living in Glasgow, etc.

The next day was super stressful in terms of work and so this other girl, who is also a PhD student, and myself in the group decided to hit the pub afterwards. The night turned out to be a bit too much like Bridget Jones for me, but I had a great time nonetheless. We had a few pints at the corner old-man pub, Tennents. Then her boyfriend, who she's living with, called and they invited me over for dinner because he was making risotto. They live in a super cute, domestic little flat and really made me want a proper flat more. I really miss having my own fantastic little place, with a dining area, a living room, a kitchen all to myself and the like. We had a bottle of wine (the next morning it was discovered that finishing a bottle and a half on top of three pints is, in fact, a poor idea) and had a great dinner. It was weird to be the 'single person' again with a couple. But don't get me wrong, they were super friendly and I had a fantastic night.

The next night I was properly excited about; it was my first Guy Fawkes Night in the UK! I was tired from going out every night and so decided to stay in and cook myself a really nice meal (I was inspired after the home-cooked meal from the night before). When I left the office at about 7:30pm and stepped outside, the whole city smelled like gunpowder and there were constant fireworks going off in all directions. I went to the grocer's and got a bunch of vegetables and a bottle of wine before heading home. I passed the neighbourhood underground station and there was a queue all the way around the block to go to the Glasgow Green to watch the city fireworks. Since I was in the mood for a quiet night, I decided to skip this and head home. Plus, being me, lots of explosions and people make me very nervous! So I went back to an empty flat (THANKFULLY) and made my meal, which took about an hour. Then settled in my room with a makeshift table from a chair and sat on my couch and watched V for Vendetta while I ate. Aside from the fact that it's my favourite film, it was brilliant to watch with explosions going on outside my window. Particularly at the part in the film when V is addressing the (futuristic) nation, lecturing them for not celebrating Guy Fawkes Day anymore.

The next day the main guy in our department (our 'dad') got appointed to a chairmanship position, a big deal, and was giving his inaugural lecture. It was at 3pm then they had champagne in the common room starting at 4. He kept toasting to Gravitational Waves and our university and our department. We didn't leave the common room until about 6:30 after about 7-10 glasses of champagne each. It was time for the weekly pub-go and so we headed to Cooper's for a few pints. After that, it was suggested to go back to one of our flats and drink whisky. So we did. I think I got home around 1am. It was a super fun night though. The next morning, not so much.

The night before, we had all decided to head to SeeWoo which is this big Chinese food distributor for the Asian population as well as all the Asian restaurants in the city. It was like WalMart, but filled with Chinese food. Thankfully, one of my friends is Chinese and so he helped us find really good sauces and rice. It was all super cheap too, which was fantastic. Now I have food for a very very long time. Afterwards we went back to his place and watched some anime before he decided to cook us all a big roast pork meal. It was SUPER good.

Sunday was spent lounging around the flat, cleaning my room, etc. Nothing too exciting, which is how Sundays should always be. Time is flying by now; I'm going to be back in Colorado in 5 weeks, which is almost incomprehensible. Until next week!

This is Halloween!

2009-11-02T17:12:00.003Z

Oh man, do I love this holiday. My week was fairly uneventful as the majority of it was spent preparing for the joys of the weekend to come. Others share this sentiment as well. When we were chatting about our past weeks, no one really had anything to say. So, I won't bore you with the minute details of my days. Friday was my last day until after the holidays of demonstrating the Astronomy labs. It was a super fun group of students this year. They were enthusiastic and optimistic, particularly when stuff would go horribly wrong. Anyway, so I said farewell to them and now I have a giant stack of lab books to grade. We'll see how they did.

One of my friends is finishing up her PhD dissertation and is, understandably, a bit stressed out. She hasn't been out with anyone in ages and doesn't even come to coffee any more. So we decided to go out for a girl's science fiction night. The original plan was to dress up like science fiction babes and hit the town. But since we had all been pretty stressed, and poor, we decided to have a quiet night in at one of our flats. Two of us still insisted on dressing up though; me because I lost a ton of weight to fit into my costume and the other because she wanted to wear the Star Trek uniform I have. We ordered the usual curry from the usual restaurant and sure had a laugh when I had to answer the door in my costume to give him the money. Anyway, we drank some leftover bottles of wine from the flatwarming party the week before and hunkered down for some much needed chat. We ended up watching Love Actually later on in the evening, which was a lot of fun because I hadn't seen it in at least 4 years. At least. Thankfully, my diet was over, so I inhaled my Chicken Tikka Garam Masala and Naan. Inhaled it.

The next day, it was Halloween; one of my favourite holidays. I stayed in my pyjamas all day, sluggish from the curry baby in my stomach. I watched all the old Halloween classics: Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus and Rocky Horror while I worked on my Halloween costume. The theme of the party was "dead celebrities" so I was going as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, obviously, being my sexy, classy, stylish, American self. So my big project of the day was constructing a pillbox hat from an old charity shop hat I had bought. Surprisingly, it was super difficult to find sunglasses in Scotland, so I settled for an old pair of mine. My friend came over, dressed as Farrah Fawcett, to help me with my hair before the party. I have a LOT of hair, so it was pretty difficult to rat up, but I finally managed what I could and we headed out.

I had heard that Halloween was sort of a big deal in Glasgow, particularly in comparison to the rest of the UK, where it passes almost unnoticed, but nothing prepared me for stepping out of my flat at 8pm and seeing almost every person, of all ages, dressed in costume wandering the streets. Trick-or-treating obviously isn't that big of a deal in a big city with sketchy flats and even sketchier (is that a word?) people, but everyone was dressed up, going to pubs or parties. And I mean everyone was dressed up. It was excellent. So we walked the 10 minutes to the flat where the party was, me fine in my wool, 70's coat and my friend freezing in her swimsuit and tights.

We arrived to the party to find Charlie Chaplin already drinking, Keith Floyd (a famous British TV chef who just died) drinking his signature wine, Natalie Wood taping fishes to her shirt and Chairman Mao struggling with taping Chinese Flags to his uniform. More and more people arrived and everyone put in tons of effort. There were Che Guevara, Audrey Hepburn, Marie Antoinette, and so many other great costumes. Even one chap did a last minute Scotty (the deceased Star Trek actor) uniform and discovered that his camera case looked conspicuously like a Star Trek communicator and had to spend the rest of the evening convincing people that he really wasn't that into Star Trek to put together such an accurate costume. Even my friend with a giant, red beard that is actually his, came as a disturbingly convincing young Sir Alec Guinness (dressed as Obi-Wan of course).

All was fine and well until Karl Marx started making pints of white russians, which promptly put me to sleep on the couch, along with Freddie Mercury and Linda McCartney. I finally woke up, with nothing drawn on me, thankfully and walked home with a few girls. We left at about 1:30am and you still couldn't believe how many people were in costume on the streets partying.

This was the first Halloween party that I didn't have to organize and definitely the only one where everyone put in at least SOME effort. It was a fantastic time and everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves. For those of you on facebook, photos are up...so enjoy!

The next day, I finally suffered the never-ending, day-long hangover. I stayed in bed all day, watched half of the first season of the West Wing and a few films, eating nothing. Absolutely worth it though.

Sorry for the short post...see you next week!

Millport and Birthdays

2009-10-26T08:14:00.003Z

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.

The Yon Bonnie Banks and the Wee Craggy Shores...

2009-10-19T08:13:00.004+01:00

Wow, what a week what a week. I currently am lying in bed on Monday morning fighting off a particularly nasty cold that has spread around the department. It seems that once the students return, they bring with them some awful plagues.

So last Monday, I had to go to a First Aid Training Course taught by the infamous Tom. This guy is a giant, ex-army Glaswegian man with one of those inscrutable accents. I really can't even describe the hilarity of having him around, slagging off the university, first aid techniques ("aye, 'tis better en thae militairy") and such. He also warned us at the beginning that he'll "bee callen thae gar-rils [girls] 'swee'art' far 'tis a ganheratiun-ul thang an' if ye dunnae like it, I'll call ye 'sir'" because apparently a girl tried to file a sexual harrassment suit one time against him. He was completely harmless though and very nice. Lots of bizarre stories. He had one that took place on a remote roadway up in the Highlands that is supposedly nicknamed "yankee road". Now, I don't know if you know this, because I certainly didn't when I first moved here, but calling an American a "yank" is extremely derogatory. He was kind enough to apologise to me for saying it, though it doesn't really bother me too much. It just helps me know if people are being particularly unkind to me. The other great thing about him was that he constantly repeated that if you come upon a scene make sure you "look up for danger". He repeated this so many times, that some of my friends, after they took this course, later started a band called Look Up for Danger. That's how much of a legend he is. Oh and another thing, and this was really weird as I keep finding words that don't mean the same in American English: so Tom was talking about a car crash, for example, and would say "you come across the scene and there are 4 casualties" so I'm like, "great! call the mortuary and walk away". Thankfully I didn't say that out loud, but it took me half the day to realise that "casualty" here means the same thing as "victim" in America and vice-versa. So weird. Later, when I was relaying this to people at the pub their response was "is it possible that ER is a lot more grim than we previously thought?" for they didn't know the difference either. So funny.

The next day was our friend's birthday and he, unfortunately, came down with a nasty cold (the same one I've got now, I believe) and we were supposed to go out for his birthday. He canceled our nice reservations at last minute, so there was a scrambled effort for curry instead, since we had spent the day preparing for a big meal. Mmmm Lamb Saag. I also had my first Gravitational Waves SUPA course. So the Scottish University Physics Alliance offers courses around Scotland through Video Conferencing for PhD students to learn more in a certain topic they feel they should know more about. It was really nice and relaxed. Since Glasgow is the university for Gravy Waves, the lecture is held in person there, by my professors.

Wednesday was a particularly busy day. I spent the morning preparing for my presentations I had to give that evening at the TeleCon then in the afternoon went off to the Observatory to prepare the labs for this Friday. I hadn't been to the observatory before and it was a bit further than I previously had imagined. We drove, of course, myself, the professor and three guys (two PhD students and one postdoc) all went down to make sure everything was ready to go. It was a really cute observatory, pretty standard actually. Lot of classrooms, labs, offices and a few telescopes. Oh, and a little makeshift planetarium in the back. I came back from that and gave almost an hour long update to our LIGO working group at our weekly telecon. I was updating on a new code, presenting a proposal for a new project I'm going to be doing and presenting a full known pulsar list I had put together. All were well received by everyone, though it was very exhausting.

On Thursday I had to go to a Communication Workshop. Yes. Enough said. Though the one thing that was interesting/funny was that the guy running it was a lot like Mr Weasley from the Harry Potter films. He talked for a while about learning how to give and receive compliments. The receiving bit was interesting because he was talking about how the British culture is wired to bat off compliments in a defensive mode. Such as "That's a nice tie you're wearing today." "Oh this is really old." It was very much geared toward teaching us how to teach others and ask good questions and communicate to different audiences. But yeah, pretty painful.

Friday we went out for the usual pub-go and I had a lovely lovely veggie burger. A few people dribbled in and out of the pub and I left relatively early to go home and talk to a friend but also because I got a text message that evening asking if I wanted to climb Ben Lomond the next day. Ben Lomond is another munro (higher than 900 metres) and looks over Loch Lomond, the largest loch in Scotland about an hour outside of Glasgow. I was super psyched about this because we had been having fantastic weather that week and I wanted to climb a proper peak in good weather. Also, when I first moved here, my dad and I went to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs with a little tour bus. I remember seeing Ben Lomond and thinking about how I would get to climb it one day. This was also a perfect opportunity because I love the feeling of nature in the autumn and Scotland has some gorgeous season change. We met up bright and early, just three of us and drove out through the back roads into the highlands. It was some great winding roads with so many colours and the sun rising over the hills. I've said this before, but it does feel like Colorado a lot of the time, just a bit more rolly. Kind of like driving through the foothills. Anyway, it was absolutely spectacular and the mist hovering over the fields definitely added to that ambiance. We went through Drymen, which is a cute little town on the edge of the loch where apparently a lot of people get married, then up the west side of the water. We decided to take the "tourist" way up the mountain as it had been a while since I had gone hiking. This was a long, easy walk up the back of the mountain. It had it's steep bits but would then flatten for a while, repeating this the entire way. The way up the mountain took a little less than 3 hours and felt so good when we finally made it. One of the women had to turn back due to a stitch in her side, but she was a good sport about it since she's basically grown up on these mountains. But the other woman and myself sat on the top of the mountain and nibbled on the obligatory sandwiches and tea as we looked over the hills of the highlands.

We took the non-tourist side down, which especially at the beginning was a near-vertical descent, but gave some much more spectacular views of the loch. It was particularly gorgeous near the end when it went down into the trees. Looking back on the mountain, you could see a steady stream of people going up the tourist way as it was later in the day, so thankfully we didn't do that. It was super cute though, hearing all the families, as we got closer to the bottom, with the little Glaswegian kids moaning about the hike and the parents shouting "look around! you should be so lucky to see this!" ... total flashback to my childhood of hiking in the Rockies. There was a beautiful meadow area just over the trees that looked over the loch and I think it would be worth doing if there wasn't enough time/energy to hike the whole mountain, to go this way up to the meadow and have a picnic. Anyway, it was a gorgeous day.

That night we were going out again to the Butterfly and the Pig restaurant (look at the link, it's the cutest website) in the city centre to make up for the missed birthday from before. One of our friends came down from Edinburgh for it as well. After the fantastic meal (ending with Sticky Toffee Pudding, of course) we went to St George's Square which is beautiful at night and went to the old Counting House for a night-cap. Being absolutely knackered from the hike earlier (though thankfully those of us who went didn't feel as guilty about stuffing our faces) we called it an early night, but it was super fun. So that's the end of another week! Ta for now!

The Scoobie Snack

2009-10-12T17:44:00.002+01:00

Sorry for being a day late, but I was at a concert last night and didn't have time. On last Monday we went out to Mr India's with the usual crowd. I had some rather disappointing news that day and was not in the best of mood, so curry was lovely. We got the usual and lots of Lal Noofan and nan. Afterwards, I went to my friend's flat for some wine and a chat. It was lots of fun and I really enjoyed getting to know her more.

On Tuesday I had some fantastic meetings with past and present supervisors. It was a good chance to catch up and we had some great talks about what needs to get done. My current supervisor sorted out all the "new" things I have to do and was very supportive in figuring it out. My past supervisor called on a conference call and talked to me about our past research and had me start working seriously on our paper. Well, I have been writing it, but now I've got to do work for it. Not fun or okay. Still it was good talking to him and we had a game plan by the end. After all these meetings I went into the common room where they had been having a welcome event for the new physics students. Events for undergrads here tend to be filled with free booze. Great for us, because we can attend or when it's over we can go pick up the leftovers. Anyway, I went in for some beer and started chatting to another girl who is a PhD student that I haven't spent much time with. She wanted to go hang out at the pub and so we went together. It was super great just chatting with this girl about life and things. She's currently watching all of The West Wing right now (as am I) for the first time, so we had some great chat about politics and boys.

On Wednesday I had super fun. Some of my parents' friends came to visit in the afternoon. These were my first visitors since I've properly settled here. I showed them around and hopefully they enjoyed themselves. I don't really know though, since they left at 6:30 to go back to the hotel and sleep. Since I had my whole night planned out to spend with these people, I sent out a plea for some socialising and was met with spectacular return. My 2nd supervisor was taking out the guy who gave the visitor colloquium. I met him in Budapest and he's teaching at Cardiff right now. So I met him and a few others at Mr India's (of course). Adding to the drinks that I had with my visitors, we had a few more beers with curry, then went out to the Lios Mor for some whiskey. We chatted about everything under the sun (and beyond) until they closed 7 or 8 whiskeys later. As we walked back up Byres Road I branched off to go back to my flat. I got called back across the road with the declaration that we were going to a friend's flat for some more whiskey. The way up there we passed Maggie's mobile chip shop. Home of the Scoobie Snack. Now I had yet to experience this, as did the Cardiff visitor so we were pursuaded to get one. This is arguably the best thing that one can consume the way home from many many drinks. It's a burger patty, layered with a sausage patty, layered with bacon (remember, bacon here is like canadian bacon), then an egg then cheese, all on a massive roll. Again, best thing you can have at that time of night. Of course, you can feel your heart screaming out in pain as you eat it. We finally all went home after one whiskey (we decided we had tapped out at the Lios Mor) and crawled into bed. We all took the next morning off (really hoping the Cardiff guy made his 7am flight) to recover.

The next two days were relatively uninteresting at work, minus a £46 hair trim. We had a party at our flat on Friday night which was super fun (actually) and of course left everyone with many regrets the next day. I slept until 4pm the next day due to a massive headache (the vodka and the red wine punch is probably what did us in). We then had a poker night at my 2nd supervisor's flat which finally ended after 5 hours of poker playing. We ended with beer and el-cheapo sausage rolls at 2 am. I really need to stop eating crap like that in the middle of the night. We had a concert the next day with a few friends that met up at the pub then went to the concert. I must have had a rock in my shoe or something because I woke up this morning with a blood blister the size of my fist on the bottom of my shoe. Which is where you will find me now: my foot elevated and in much pain, on my back writing this in bed. Ta for now!

Being 'New'

2009-10-04T23:53:00.000+01:00

So the day after I got back from Budapest, I had to be up bright and early and down at the Glasgow Science Centre to have a booth on our Institute of Gravitational Research. I got to spend two days explaining space-time theory to 5 year old kids. Try it sometime; it's fun. I met the token precocious kids who can sit there for hours explaining to me about the atmosphere and planets and asteroids and eclipses while their overwhelmed mothers finally take a breather. I loved it. The best bit is when you get to explain something to these hugely inquisitive kids and you can see them understand something and you know that they'll spend inordinate amounts of time explaining it to their mothers that evening.

The walk down to the Science Centre was absolutely lovely. I love the fall and I walked down Kelvin Way along Kelvingrove Park. The leaves were changing and there was the necessary crispness to the air. It was a beautiful walk; particularly on Sunday where no one is around until maybe noon. I also crossed the River Clyde which I always enjoy as you can look down and see the shipping yards. The GSC's cafeteria had a beautiful veiw across the Clyde to the University tower.

Speaking of the cafeteria, one thing I hugely love about Scotland is the attitude toward haggis. It seems so exotic in the US and I remember when leaving and people were asking me to tell them the first time I had it. You remember when I had it, it was a few weeks back now. I've had it a lot since then as it's readily available and seems to be a staple of the diet. Can't really blame them, either, as it's filling and nutritious and really doesn't taste that bad. No, really. Anyway, the reason I started down this path, is that I have had haggis on multiple occasions now with no difficulty or really second thought. I got my lunch for free at the GSC and when I went to the cafeteria, the hot option for the day was haggis and chips. Great! No problem. Didn't think twice. Until I was sitting at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking over the Clyde, eating my haggis and chips with ketchup did I realise how actually surreal the whole thing was. Funny anecdote, too, the Scots always seem to be completely surprised when haggis makes it onto some 'weird foods that we dare you to try' list. The only equivalent for Americans I can think of to really drive the point home is if something like hot dogs were on that list (which, arguably, I feel safer eating haggis than hot dogs). Something that's so familiar that for whatever reason the rest of the world is terrified of.

Last week was the first week for the new PhD students and the term in general. I helped out with the new 3rd year physics labs and their 'teamworking exercises' for two days. Hey, I got paid and got free lunch. Can't complain. Though I did have to deal with a particularly arsey group of Glaswegian boys hell-bent on making trouble. All in good spirits of course, but I definitely had to keep them from cheating on a more-than-regular basis. The last bit of the last day though did end up being pretty beneficial when they brought in some professionals in the field of physics to discuss their careers. Our groups had 45 minutes to come up with questions to ask them. I managed to convince them that out of anything that week, this would be really valuable, because it's the time to start thinking post-degree. So after they came up with some questions, they started asking me about being a PhD student. I'm pretty sure that I convinced 8 boys to go into research ::pat on back::. Because, really, it is a pretty sweet life.

The main annoyance of the week was having to go to all the 'orientation' stuff for the new students. Since I came at a weird time, a few things were hastily explained to me and I was left to figure out the rest myself. Which I did. Also, just being back from Budapest, I now actually have things to do, believe it or not. Now I have to do an unbelievable amount of stupid courses and teamwork events when I could be doing real stuff. It wouldn't have been that bad my first month, when I was still sorting stuff out, but I'm to the point now that I'm working on the weekend just to get things done. Also, some of the other new PhD students (who feel like their about 5 years younger than me) are the biggest bunch of condescending, pathetic, arsey, sexist, Oxbridge boys I've ever met. Not to be a snob, but not only have I been here for four months and figured things out, I've also actually done research for two years before that. For whatever reason, they still feel the need to introduce me to professors and ask if I need help with my computer. Oh for frak's sake.
Oh well, the proof is in the publications. Ta for now!

Goulash, Scientists and Home

2009-09-27T18:07:00.008+01:00

Wow, two weeks has already past. Sorry for missing a week, but I was busy living the high-life in Budapest, Hungary. Time is really flying by; autumn is already in the air and I absolutely love the feel of it. It seems that all places feel the same during the fall. It's getting dark early now and leaves are everywhere. So to sum up the first few undocumented days: I'm pretty sure I contracted the Swine Flu and stayed home from work for two agonising days, which I don't really remember as I was lying in bed and praying for death, but it passed quickly. We went out for curry the next night and I stocked up on some Lamb Tikka Madras which satisfactorily cleared the sinuses and perked me back up, just in time to go to Budapest.

Now the bit that really matters and why you're probably reading this. On Friday morning, I met up with a few friends and one of their girlfriends drove us to the airport. I partook in my first tradition of the Glaswegian traveller, a pint before the flight. No matter what time. Including 10:30 am. For the first time (and definitely not the last) I had a pint of lager with eggs and black pudding and bacon. Oh Scotland. Little did I know this was only the beginning of my exciting discovery of how Glaswegian physicists travel. The flight was pretty simple: the regular commuter flight from Glasgow to London then a quick layover in Heathrow's Terminal 5 (which, if you've ever been, is basically an airport attached to a mall) before heading off to Budapest on British Airways. On the way, I listened to a file that I put on my iPod of Hungarian and how to say hello and thank you (those were the only ones I had any chance of remembering). Don't worry, I didn't listen to "hello" and "thank you" repeatedly on a 2 1/2 hour flight; I interspersed it with some music. We landed in Budapest in the early evening and all crammed into a taxi to the Ramada. It was an interesting drive as it felt more like the United States than anything. It was a wide motorway, we drove on the right side of the road and passed a giant strip-mall with a Tesco (sort of like Safeway). Once we got to the Ramada, we ran into some other physicists in the lobby.

Before I keep going, I should probably explain what I was attending. This was a regular meeting for the international collaboration with whom I work. Though we communicate regularly about our progress via email and weekly telephone conferences, we have meetings four (soon to be three) times a year in person to accomplish the things that are difficult to do over the phone, like discuss particularly complicated issues that require lots of input. The weekend consists of meeting in our smaller groups (I work in continuous waves, so my speciality is pulsar analysis) in conference rooms. It's two 8+ hour days of basically an extended telecon. The rest of the week feels more like a proper science conference where people give scheduled presentations. The difference lies in the fact that we know all these people and it's all within a specific field. These meetings run from Monday through Thursday and is mostly a chance to exercise our skills in multi-tasking and catching up on emails and various side-projects.

Okay, back to the Ramada. Because everyone knows each other in these meetings, we run into each other everywhere. After checking in and myself discovering that I had somehow landed a giant, king-sized suite, we met up with people in the lobby. I almost cried with happiness at my bed, but not before walking into my room with all the lights off and not turning on and the television on a blue screen that said "Wilkommen Frau Macdonald". Totally creepy; I thought I had walked into some sort of Eastern European horror film. Finally, I noticed the small box next to the door that I somehow figured needed my room card to activate. Granted, it was about 2 minutes of wandering around a semi-dark room but I eventually got there. Score so far: Erin 1 Budapest 0...haven't been defeated yet. Though the language is completely inscrutable, so I guess Budapest more has a score of 10000 but who's counting?

We got directions from the front desk to go visit Ráday utca, where there are tons and tons of restaurants, all with a good portion of tables outdoors and as you walk down the street, you actually walk in between the restaurant and the tables. It was beautiful, warm weather, far into the night. We split up and about 8 of us got a table together at a restaurant called Jaffa. Later, after we ate, some people from our group at Milwaukee came in and settled down. There was some mixing up and down the street, but I just settled with a bunch of new people at Jaffa and had some beer and chat. They were a really fun group of people and we ended up staying there until about 2am. Again, this was just the beginning of my week of socialising and partying. Everyone was welcoming and happy and pleasant company.

The next day, Saturday, was the first day of the face-to-face meeting. We met up in the lobby and wandered over to the university that was hosting the meeting. This "wandering" included crossing the Danube River which was thrilling and exciting. Though, contrary to Strauss' opinion, the Danube is much less blue as it is a browny-grey. Still lovely though and makes the Clyde River look like a creek. The meeting started at 9am and took place in a conference room with about 20 people. Everyone had their laptops out and got straight to work. Lunch was provided for us every day and was a great exploration in the culinary delights of Hungarian catering. Without going into details, I'll leave you with the following: Brilliant at meats and sauces, not so brilliant with dessert. One particular one was a chestnut puree that I still maintain tasted like cloves and pot blended with flour and water and pressed through a play-dough spagetti-maker. Another one was a dry couscous with raisins and mango chutney-like topping. I don't recommend either though it did make for some great stories.

On Saturday at lunch, we looked out the window and saw this weird spiky glass building. We decided to go for an adventure and discover what it was. Totally worth it. The regular crowd from Glasgow, the former and the present group all rallied outside for our grand hour-long adventure. Turned out it was totally worth it; turned out to look like a half-overgrown bunker, half-modern avant garde building surrounded with barbed wire. Absolutely bizarre and hilarious. The best bit was that there was a running track that led into the barbed-wire area and promptly died. Excellent discovery and led to much speculation.

Oh man, I'm only up to Saturday afternoon and I already have carpal tunnel syndrome. Okay, I'll have to speed things up a bit. Well, that night we took the Budapest trams (a totally great mode of transportation) to the city centre, called the Oktogon. We found a great restaurant just off of the square and about twelve of us sat down for dinner. Many pints and some great goulash later, we went wandering around trying to find some excitement. We found some street performers singing Evita and Monty Python songs, so, needless to say, we wandered on. We found this brilliant bar area that was all outdoors and gradually went underground. The underground area had a cracking band playing that we could just wander in and out of. After having some beers outdoors, we decided to check out the band and it turned out to be this crazy, tribal, trippy group that had 3 drummers and a singer who chanted what sounded like old Aborigine songs. It was absolutely fantastic and we all left sweaty and hoarse and sore. We don't sleep until we're dead, though, we made our way back to Ráday utca. Funny anecdote: before we decided to get more drinks, we had all intensions of going to bed. Two guys saw a rickshaw and decided to take that home. While they arranged the trip, we walked on ahead. They caught up to us and the guy asked where they were going. When they said, he said it was too far. So they got off and paid him to catch up with us in a rickshaw. Got a great picture out of it though. So we went to Ráday utca and found a bar that was still open so we went for some cocktails. They eventually got us to leave by mixing the third round poorly and putting on some really awful 80's Norwegian pop music. So we left and actually, finally went home. At 3:30am. It is a good thing most of these chaps are no longer at Glasgow or I'd never finish my PhD. Brilliant company though.

The next day was the second day of our face-to-face meetings. Rather uneventful (thankfully). We wandered to the Danube during lunch and enjoyed the sun. They had a joint meeting at 5 that ran pretty late, so we met up again on Ráday utca for dinner. We hung out at the restaurant until 11pm and went home for an "early" night. This ended up with me chatting online to a bloke who was frantically trying to finish his talk for the next morning so I stayed up as his cheerleading squad. Went to sleep at 3:30am again. Dang it.

The next day was the first with the proper meetings taking place. This was with all 180ish people there and was in a large hall filled with tables and extension cords for the generally accepted lack-of-interest in non-relavent discussions and subsequent news/email checking. Again, everyone glued to their laptops. This night was our conference dinner at the Marriott looking over the Danube in a ballroom. Amazing setting. As the Glaswegians do, we went out for a pint in the 20 free minutes we had before dinner started. The dinner was fantastic though they limited us to one bottle of red and one bottle of white wine for a table of ten Scots. We discovered that the hotel bar downstairs sold wine for half the price they were going to charge us for more bottles. So we (and by we, I mean the delegated group of large, intimidating boys who were less likely to be questioned) went downstairs and bought some drinks. We then went to the balcony and looked over the night lights of Budapest. Tired of spending too much for drinks at the fancy hotel we decided to take a large group of people to the underground/outdoors bar we had found two nights before. There ended up being about 30+ people there and this old Irish guy bought rounds and rounds of Polinka, a strong, vaporous Hungarian liquor. We left for the hotel around 3am again. Dang it.

The next day we went off in the afternoon to go see the House of Terror. It wasn't a horror house, thankfully, but rather a museum on Nazi and Communist occupation of Budapest in the headquarters that were actually used. It was super depressing but really informative. It started at the top floor and worked down. We all got rushed into a life at about 5:30, figuring we were being ushered out (again, language barrier) but the doors closed and the lights went out. Going through my (and by the faces on the others, also their) mind: this is it. do people ever come out of this museum? am I going to die? is this the "Terror" bit of this house? Then a video came on and this Hungarian guy started talking (subbed in English) about how he was forced to kill prisoners and to what extent. The lift started slowly moving down while this played. It worked well because we were all sufficiently feeling a bit uneasy when the doors opened into the basement prisons and gallows to end the tour. We did not die. We then went to the pub next to our hotel that had pints of beer for just over a pound. This successfully helped us forget the horrors we had just heard about 20th century Hungary. Again, dinner at Ráday utca for some brilliant German food. One of the blokes got a "Transylvanian Wooden Meat Platter" which was literally a pile of different meats on a slab of wood with some pickled veg on the side. Classic. We then went back to the pub by our hotel and had some "proper" Polinka (i.e. not served in bulk out of plastic shot glasses) that was quite fantastic. 2:30am this time. Doing better.

The next day, the meetings ended at 12:30 so a few of us decided to go to "Memento Park" that one person's friends told us about. We found instructions on a map to get there. It's a famous park that has old Communist statues. This park didn't really seem to be on the map, but there were the instructions. We had to take a tram to the end then catch a bus to the outskirts of Budapest. After finally deciphering the Hungarian bus stop, we realised that our stop is the 28th from where we were. So we were WAY out there. Thankfully the only people that ride that bus who don't know where they're going (and subsequently stand out) are only ever going to Memento Park so this old Hungarian counted down stops for us. We finally made it and it was absolutely amazing. It stood on the top of this hill at the literal end of Budapest. We knew this because there was a sign on one side of the road that said "Budapest" and one on the other side that said "Budapest" with an X through it. The sun was setting and illuminated all of these old, giant statues left over from communism. It's very hard to describe, but it was basically a field on top of a hill that was just littered with about 15 statues. Absolutely phenomenal. We made it back just fine. This was the last night that all of them were there before they left for Munich for Oktoberfest (something my fiscally responsible, read: poor, self had to opt out of). So we did our usual routine: pub near hotel, dinner on Ráday utca then hit the Irish Pub next to one of the hotels. Fantastic, cracking time.

The last day of the meeting was a half-day so I had a full afternoon with no delinquent Glaswegians with whom to have fun, so I was able to explore the city a bit more. Since my camera died, I finally summoned the courage to find batteries with lots of pointing. Success. I was able to walk around the Danube until my feet were bleeding taking lots of great photos. I got some take-home felafel (amazing) and went to bed at a respectable hour.

The next day was the flight home. Easy enough and uneventful. Flying into Glasgow was a revelation though, because as we came through the clouds I got that fantastic feeling that you get when you've been gone for a long time and you finally see your home. It's like the city is giving you a hug, welcoming you home. You recognise streets and buildings and a wonderful feeling of comfort comes over you. This is how I felt, which means Glasgow is my home now. Deep in my conscious I'm home. I got back to my flat, went to the research club to meet up with the Friday night drinkers, got some deep-fried black pudding and chips on the way home. Living the true Glasgow life.

Pubs, Kilts and Drums, Oh My!

2009-09-13T18:46:00.000+01:00

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.

2-0!

2009-09-07T10:59:00.000+01:00

This week was a bit difficult to maintain motivation as I had a week of being away. I continued to present my code with the group, but we're having small technical difficulties, so it's a slow, monotonous procedure. I pass my time, though, by reading review papers and going over scientific aspects of what we're doing. It does not help, either, that my supervisor is out of town.

My flat is in a bit of a state of turmoil. The floors in the bathroom and the kitchen are in a pretty poor state and so our landlord is having them replaced as well as getting us new cupboards and a refrigerator. Our shower is also broken, and my disdain for taking baths has only increased. Hopefully though it will all be finished today and we can move our kitchen out of the hallway and back where it belongs. I have a pleasant little maze leading to my bedroom door created out of piles of dishes, dried foods and a cabinet. I'm pretty sure that one of my flatmates put a perishable item in this giant mass as it is beginning to smell. Ugh. Again, it should be done today. Fingers crossed. It is pretty entertaining, though, to have a flat crawling with sweaty, giant, Glaswegian builders. They're all very nice, but definitely skivvied off a bit early on Saturday due to the Scotland vs Macedonia World Cup qualifier (Scotland won, 2-0... woo hoo!).

Due to the flat being redone, my flatmate and I went out for dinner on Thursday night at O'Couture, a little student joint in the city centre. They were having a special on, so we were able to get an extremely cheap meal. It was a lot of fun, but I felt bad for the place because it seems to be bleeding customers. It has such a nice ambiance, but nothing to really set it apart from the many many similar places all down that street.

Friday night we went out to Coopers on Great Western Road. Since many of the department play football after work on Fridays it was just myself and one other guy for a bit, but it was nice to chat with him as I didn't know him that well. The rest all showed up and we got some food and hung out there for quite some time. The next day I went and did some shopping on Byres Road though the weather has been absolute shite for the last few weeks. Only now, as I write this, can I see a glimmer of sunlight coming through the trees; the first I've seen in at least a week. Over the weekend, the clouds were so heavy, it felt like perpetual dusk.

A few of us went to go see District 9 on Saturday night. It was fantastic to see a new, well-thought-out science fiction film about which I knew nothing. There was a little too much in terms of medical procedures, but that really served to prove to me that my decision at the age of 5 or so to not go into medicine was a sound one. Other than that, I would actually recommend it. Just be prepared to close your eyes a bit. It was necessary for the story, so I can appreciate that, but it was still a lot to handle. I won't say anymore, though, in case you want to see it, because it was a great film to watch without knowing anything. It stayed true to science fiction in the purest way in the sense that it used aliens and our disattachement to a foreign species to make some serious sociological commentary. Something that could not have been accomplished with a human race.

After District 9 we went to Mr India's for curry. A place quickly becoming dear to my heart. When/if any of you come visit and you like Indian food, this will be the first stop. So, leaving you hungry for curry, I will sign off until next week. Cheerio!

Sweaty Palms and Awkward Silences

2009-08-30T18:28:00.000+01:00

Wow, what a busy week. Again, I apologise for having to post last weeks and this one at the same time, but please read both.

So Sunday night we got together for a small reception to get a chance to mingle and meet one another over drinks. The thing that's great about physicists is that we can spot each other from a mile away. It's incredibly easy to spot one another when trying to figure out where to go. Everyone was really nice in that awkward, uncomfortable sort of way. We were given name tags with the name of what university we would be going to. The academic year technically starts 1 October, so I'm the only PhD student who has already started. This was a chance to try to find people we would be working with (or alongside) for the next three years. There's only one other Glasgow student here, but he's doing experimental so we won't see much of each other. He seems nice though. Interestingly enough, it is split into about 50/50 girls and guys and there seem to be about fifty people there. We hung out in the university building for a while and then got lead by a group of former St Andrews students out to a nearby pub. The pub was quickly taken over by a horde of physicists all trying to socialise over drinks. We stopped by a chip shop on the way back and had some atrocious, greasy chips. Needless to say, everyone woke up today with bad hangovers.

We had some interesting planetary and solar system talks today. We have five lectures over the day with a break for coffee at 11 and lunch at 12:30. We're done by 4 so there's still plenty of time to go out. It's really bizarre though to be back listening to lectures, even though they are really informal. One of the lecturers told us specifically to not remember anything from this week except the people we meet; it's a pretty laid-back week. The students from St Andrews again organised a get-together. We decided to go have a bonfire on the beach of the North Sea. Seriously. It was so Scottish. We went to Tesco's to pick up some beers and then headed down to the beach. We set up at the base of the ruins of a castle and hung out until about 11. It was absolutely a fantastic, beautiful scene that took everyone's breath away. I took a few photos, but they can not even do it justice. It was pretty difficult to wake up the next morning, but I had a nice breakfast of haggis and fried eggs to wake me up. The lectures were a bit slow (it was stellar physics...no pun intended) but there was plenty of tea and coffee to keep us all (sort of) awake.

The thing I really appreciate about this conference is being able to meet (almost) all the students in the UK who, in three years, will be receiving PhDs in astrophysics. It forms a nice little club, knowing we're all in the same position. We've had some great advice and lectures from professors all over the UK who are welcoming us into the field. They have been reminding us to keep in mind that we can do our own research, to collaborate with colleagues, basically finally treating us like peers. A great thing about being in the UK is that they are easily able to bring professors who are experts in their field to give hour-long lectures; something that would be difficult to do in the US. Everyone has given us fantastic advice and information that they have learned either during their PhDs or since. I've been really pleased with the high-profile researchers they've been able to get. This has definitely been a great induction to the career.

Wednesday night was our big conference dinner with a ceilidh. The organisers put together a bulk kilt order for the boys so they could be properly dressed. It was really nice to see so many physicists get properly dressed up, even without their mothers there to keep them in line.Everyone looked really lovely and we all had a great time. We had a really fancy dinner in a beautiful hall before proceeding upstairs to the ballroom for a proper ceilidh. It's essentially a mix between a hoe-down and a formal, Edwardian dance. The band taught everyone the dance before we did it so everyone could keep up. Half the fun though was completely buggering the dance up. We had a little after-party back in a hotel room with a few students and lecturers, some beer and the Big Bang Theory. We are physicists, after all, that's how we party.

The lectures continued the next two days with little excitement. They went out to play pub golf on Thursday night, but I (thankfully) passed on that. It's where they print out score cards where each pub is a different "hole", you have a specific drink to have in that hole and your score is the number of sips it takes you to finish that drink. For example, hole number three is The Raisin, you have a pint of ale in par 3, so you have to finish it in 3 drinks or less. It was absolutely insane.

The rest of the lectures were fantastic. They focused on cosmology and observation which are my favourite topics. After the lectures, I went straight home because my 2nd supervisor was throwing a huge dinner party. I really love commuting in Scotland. You just hop on a bus, and 2 hours later, you're across the country. The countryside looks a lot like the farmlands of Colorado, just more "rolling". It really was beautiful though.

I made it back for the party and now I'm really starting to feel at home in Glasgow. It was excellent to get off the bus stop, see the royal concert hall, drop my stuff off at my flat, buy a bottle of wine and run into friends all on our way out to dinner. It's home. We had a great time with great food. We drank a lot of wine and whiskey and had some great laughs. Myself and 2 other girls left at about 1:30am while I heard later that the last to leave left around 5am.

Yesterday I woke up very late with a very bad hangover. I met up with a few people to go to the Auchentoshan Whiskey Festival. I defend my actions on Friday night of drinking half a bottle of Auchentoshan in preparation and respect for this festival. Anyway, this festival was absolutely fantastic. It was basically a little festival just outside of town at the distillery at the base of the highlands. They had booths from various farmers and butchers selling their produce and really good venison burgers. They also had a great kid's area with a bouncy castle, a creepy clown and face-painting. They premiered their new Ale and gave out lots and lots of whiskey samples along with classes on whiskey making and tasting. They also had tours of the distillery, a chainsaw sculptor and a chance to bottle your own whiskey out of the barrel (for a considerable amount of ££ of course). Oh and they also had a free dram with admission, which was only £5. It was an excellent family festival, motivated by whiskey...only in Scotland. They also had a beautiful backdrop of the highlands.

After our massive whiskey consumption, we took the train back into town and went to our favourite curry place, Mr India's. They made me a great Chicken Tikka Madras that was just at that border between spicy and tears streaming down your face. I'm eating the leftovers as I write this. Today was, of course, slow. I did my laundry, practiced some sewing and cleaned my room a bit. Here's until next week!

Curry and cigarettes

2009-08-23T18:26:00.000+01:00

First of all, I'd like to apologise for this being late, but I'm at the STFC summer school and there is a severe lack of internet access. I'm writing this on Sunday, as usual, but I do not know when I will get a chance to post it.

So my last week in Glasgow was a lot of fun. Mostly quiet, of course, but I made significant improvements at work. I've been manipulating this code for our group for some time now and this week I had to present my results to the weekly telecon. The most they've heard of me to this point was simply hearing my name when doing roll call. Now that I've begun interacting with everyone there have been onslaughts of communication, keeping me extremely busy. They are all nice and easy to work with, but there's the definite clarifications, suggestions, etc that have come non-stop since they found my email and now know who I am. I am extremely less experienced than everyone else, but they're willing to help me out and they seem pleased with my contributions. I will be meeting them all in a month in Budapest.

Aside from work, there was a flurry of curry trips this week. I did not participate in any of them, thankfully, because we were all going out for a dinner on Friday in the city centre to celebrate one of the girl's birthdays. We went to a restaurant called Stereo down a rather salubrious alleyway near Central Station. It was fantastic because they were a complete vegan place, with none of the arrogance. It was not advertised at all that they were vegan. It took us all a second as we looked over the menu and realised that there was no meat or dairy in any of the dishes. It was quite varied, too, as they served gnocchi, fajitas, paella as well as ice cream and pistachio cake. Very pleasant. The food was incredible and we all had a blast. It was a great environment that I wouldn't have known about at all. The walk home was absolutely crazy. Autumn is definitely setting in as it has been pouring rain. I mean absolutely poured. It has been really nice but even walking home, I couldn't believe how rainy it was. There are still the occasional days (hours, really) of sunshine, but I do not think the ground every properly dries out.

The next day was extremely lazy but I finally went to The Doublet which is a bar just a 10 minute walk from my flat. Lots of people from the department frequent it and it has come highly recommended. It was a bit bizarre because I walked in and it was tiny and my compatriots were nowhere to be found. I walked to the back where the toilets were and just kept going as there were stairs leading up. I thought it would be worth a shot and an adventure at the latest. Indeed, at the top of the stairs was a doorway leading to a whole other bar. Everyone was sitting there chatting it up and having some beers. One of the things I love about this group of people is that they started planning Halloween far before I did. If you have ever experienced me with costume planning, you know that they beat me to the punch by about maybe a week or two. I love the fact that not only do they plan out Halloween months ahead of time, like me, but also they actually get properly dressed up! We have decided (at least, barring any unforeseen change of plans) to go as the incredibly non-pc theme of dead celebrities. Even better, they pick costumes for each other. My classy American charms and style have landed me with the role of Jackie O. I hope that theme lasts, she would be fun. After the drinks I wandered home and in the spirit of my new life as a Glaswegian, I stopped by the curry shop, ordered far too much food, shared a cig with an old guy who was also waiting for food, had some laughs and parted ways. I am now one of them.

Today I got up, packed my clothes, cleaned the place and headed out for the summer school. Basically what it is is a full week of various Astronomy professors from around the UK presenting their fields to new UK PhD students. It's basically meant to be a bit of a networking event (as each university only has about 2-5 PhD students) and a chance to get up to speed on new advancements in the research. I only had a vague idea of where the bus station was in relation to the underground station. I basically followed busses until I found their source. It was a valid method and it (eventually) worked. I did find that it was actually a great (and cheap) way to go around the country. I got the express bus to St Andrews. It only was about a two-and-a-half journey through lots of little Scottish towns. I finally made it and again, only had a vague idea of where I was going. It was, of course, pouring rain and I wandered in the general direction of the university. I finally realised that the pile of rubble that was where I thought my building was actually the back of where I was supposed to be. I figured that, since this was part of the university, we would be staying in dorms. It turns out that this place is a university-sponsered refurbished conference hotel. I don't know if it's also dorms elsewhere in the building, but it was great to walk in to a proper room with a proper bed with towels and linens. Unfortunately, the access to internet is only through ethernet cables, which I don't have with me, so I'm writing this on Sunday, but I won't be able to post it until the end of the week. I'm off to the welcome reception and meet lots of new PhD physicists. Cheerio!

Men in Kilts

2009-08-16T15:04:00.000+01:00

Sorry to disappoint, but this week was far less eventful than the previous weeks. It has mainly been filled with lots of cleaning and working and planning for future weeks. Also, Autumn is completely on it's way. It has been cold, rainy and windy almost every day. Not that bad though, I actually quite like the cool weather and for a place with a high amount of humidity, I still feel that crispness in the air.

I was walking down the street the other day and saw a man that I see regularly walking around my neighbourhood. He walks around wearing a fishing vest, a kilt and boots with his sheepdog walking along his side. This particular day he was holding an open wine bottle at nine o' clock in the morning :) I love seeing him. He's got long hair and a beard as well and is about in his fifties. So classically Scottish. Also there's this boy at the grocery shop who I think has a crush on me. However, I can't understand a WORD he says. It's a complete foreign dialect. Absolutely crazy...I think he just rambles on about having to stock shelves and stock groceries. I basically just follow the inflection without actually knowing what he's saying. He seems satisfied with it. Slowly I'm getting used to the dialect, but I still can't passively take part in conversations. I still have the occasional conversation where I only know part of what is being said because I've missed a few words here and there. I definitely cannot just sit back in a pub and indirectly insert my opinion into the conversation because I lose it as soon as I stop actively listening. It's a bit frustrating, but there you go. One day it will click.

***Skip the following paragraph if you don't want to hear politics****
It's funny to see people get so involved with the healthcare debate. When I first came here and it wasn't really an active issue in America yet, I heard people occasionally ragging on the NHS and it's few problems. However, once America started discussing and insulting the NHS, people here jumped to it's defence. They are actually really proud of it and I think the people here realised that it is actually nice to have free/inexpensive health care, even with the private options that some take. Anyway, it's been interesting to watch and I wish all of you Americans good luck in dealing with the crazies that I've seen "bearing arms" on the streets. Also, in case you haven't been, start watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC; she's doing a great job of summarising everything
*******Done with politics*********

Yesterday I went to the Worlds Piping Championships. It was so fun to watch. It was like a giant, Scottish version of marching band competitions (obviously). Simon Fraser University in Canada won it again. It was really fun to just wander around and see all the groups there rehearsing and performing. Really amazing skill. Speaking of bagpipes, I love living next to the Oran Mor, but I've decided that it's a bit depressing sitting at home on Saturday night with a bottle of wine and Star Wars and hearing a bagpipe wedding party going on just outside my window. Ha ha.

I'm currently getting ready to do a bit of travelling now. I'm heading off to St Andrews next Sunday for a week-long "summer school" for incoming PhD Astronomy students in Scotland. I'm really curious to be going there as I also got an offer to go to that university. It seems like a nice place to visit, but from what I have heard, I made the right decision. It still should be fun to go and meet people. We have a proper ceilidh on Wednesday which I'm really looking forward to as I haven't been to a real ceilidh here yet. (ceilidh = scottish dance/party...sort of a classier hoe-down :) )

In a month I'm off to Budapest, Hungary for the LIGO/Virgo meeting. I'll be gone for a full week and I already have my room and flight set up. I'm really excited about it and should be updating more on it as the time approaches.

That's all for now, folks! Read the information on Health Care and fight for Public Option! Believe me, it's really nice to walk in and out of a clinic without paperwork or money being exchanged.
See you next week!

Scottish Cuisine and Gandalf

2009-08-09T11:11:00.000+01:00

This week started out relatively uneventful, which was good as it prepared me for the excitement of the ending. On Thursday night, eleven of us from the department went out to Roastit Bubbly Jocks and no, I didn't have a stroke, that's what it's name is. It was great walking to the restaurant as I ran into four people I knew on the street during my twenty-minute walk; I'm beginning to belong! That's also indicative of how small a little area of a big city can actually be. I may live in a city with almost 800,000 people but I feel like I'm living in a town the size of Boulder.

The restaurant is a traditional, Scottish restaurant with fancy cuisine like venison casserole (like a stew), shellfish pie and beef shin with black pudding. I chose the latter for my meal as I haven't had proper meat in a long time. Oh, did I get my fill. The shin was so well-cooked that I didn't even need a knife to eat it; it just fell apart. Now, I love black pudding. I've had it here on a number of occasions. All the times I've had it have been at relatively cheap places; chip-shops and cheap breakfasts. I had it once with a meal where it was broken into mash potatoes and was really good. But this was a slab of black pudding underneath the meat. Now if you are eating or have a weak stomach, skip the italicized sentences while I explain more. Black pudding is also known as blood pudding as it is a sausage that is made from blood. It is primarily blood with a sort of filler that allows it to congeal when cooled. Most places use oats. I have usually had no problem with black pudding except this time as it wasn't congealed/cooked completely and was not so much black as a dark red that was a bit runny. Yeah, I had a hard time finishing it...though I finally suppressed the gag reflex and finished it. We had a few bottles of wine and a three-course meal for pretty cheap, all things considered. After our meal, a few of us went for a pint at the pub Tennents, near the university then even fewer of us went to the Oran Mor for whiskey before finally going home with full, full stomachs.

The next day was Friday and unfortunately, work was required. Though I did get quite a bit done. I followed the CreoZerg online where PZ Myers took the Secular Students of America to tour the Creation "Museum"...I really appreciated their efforts as they went completely respectfully; they dressed professionally and critiqued the exhibits to themselves. If you're interested, read PZ Myers' blog, Pharyngula. It was really interesting to follow. Anyhow, after work, we met up and went to the Common Rooms, a pub on Byers Road (noticing a theme?) where I had the opportunity to experience another, almost more, famous cuisine in Scotland, HAGGIS. Haggis is basically sheep innards that are minced and mixed with lots of spices and cooked in the stomach for about 3 hours. It was served with blended turnips (neeps) and mashed potatoes (tatties). I actually thoroughly enjoyed it and plan on having it again in the future. I can imagine it would be fantastic with chicken. I've realised that for the most part, the Scottish spent the better part of the previous century perfecting really disgusting foods that were readily available in the highlands. So, as long as you are able to forget what you're eating, and as long as it's cooked well, it's actually really fantastic. I really enjoy the Common Rooms as they tend to thumb their nose at the upper-class west enders. They charge £8.95 for a latte with an exclamation of "bloody west-enders" and with all their fancy salads, they include the "Glasgow Salad" which is a large portion of chips :). I left at about 10pm and wandered home and crashed on the couch to watch a film with my chips from downstairs.

On Saturday (yesterday) I had some shopping to do (mainly for food) and so I headed out early and wandered up and down Byers Road. Then, I was walking past this coffee shop, Morton's, and I saw Sir Ian McKellen sitting out in front, chatting with someone! I was like 98% sure at the time and definitely didn't want to interrupt because I would never come back from being yelled at by Sir Gandeto (Gandalf/Magneto, for you non-nerds...though you probably don't know who those characters are. Hint: Lord of the Rings and X-Men) but he saw me staring and smiled with that look of like, Yes, I am who you think I am. I still wasn't totally sure because it was very surreal and he wasn't dressed in a wizard's robe or a helmet, but I saw a LOT of people on Byers Road who were wearing production shirts from other films (meaning, they were on the crew of various films) then one of my colleagues mentioned that there was filming at the university all day that day. So yeah, that was exciting. Also, I looked up and saw that he's filming a documentary at the moment with Jeremy Irons and Alan Cumming. I (as well as Sir Ian, Jeremy Irons and Alan Cumming) are incredibly thankful that I am no longer 15 years old as I would be out right now trying to track them down...whether they were actually here or not. Anyway, it was still really cool and exciting.

That evening I popped into the office to look up some stuff that I had been working on at home and met up with another girl who was not doing anything that night. We decided to go out for some curry and a goofy film. We tried The Curry Leaf on Byers Road which was REALLY good, but not enough food for the price :( then we walked along Woodlands Road to the City Centre. It was a really nice walk which I repeated this morning. I was able to see a lot of the pubs that people have been recommending to me, but haven't been able to find. We went to the cinema and decided to see The Hangover, which was actually really funny. I don't like those stupid comedies, but this one had some genuinely clever moments. Oh man though, you guys get frustrated with the length of previews in the States? You have nothing on the UK. Since a lot of people don't watch TV or if they do, just watch the few channels available, there's a big industry in advertising at the cinema. There's about 10 minutes of adverts then another 15 minutes of previews. It's unbearable sometimes. Aside from that, though, it was a great movie which served to simply entertain without any brain needed. I got back at about 11:30pm and went straight to bed.

Today was another slow Sunday (which I like) as I walked down Woodland's Road (again) to the City Centre and sat in bookshops all morning. I then came home via the underground, made some tea and hunkered down in my flat for the afternoon. That's where I shall leave you for now. Have a good week!

Edit: I should add that it's cold and cloudy out. Surprise, surprise.

Dabbling in Adventures

2009-08-02T18:06:00.000+01:00

So this week was a bunch more "firsts" for me. On Tuesday I spent a few hours discussing Harry Potter with people during coffee and we decided to go see it at the IMAX that evening (we were excited). One of the girls went home first so myself and one other girl decided to walk to the IMAX after work. The IMAX is at the Glasgow Science Centre on the other side of the River Clyde. This was my first time going across the big, scary river. I always knew it was a bit rougher on the other side, so I was a little hesitant...but I was more than willing, especially with other people and to go see Harry Potter. We left right at 6 and walked to the Subway (mmm meatball subs) which was on the way to the theatre and then continued on. It took us about 25 minutes and the centre was right on the other side of the river. It was a really nice stroll and we got there in plenty of time. We got great seats and watched the film. Extremely entertaining was the reactions from Glaswegians, which I adore. One of the adverts before the movie was for this bizarre soda here in Glasgow called Irn Bru (Iron Brew) which was hilarious and can be watched on this link. There's one that is absolutely wonderful that is at this link. One of the girls leaned over and was like "Do we really talk like that?" Quick tangent, there's another Irn Bru ad from Christmas that is set to Nightwish music (with the lyrics changed, obviously)...how bizarre is that (if you're familiar with the fact that Nightwish and Scotland are two of my most favourite, most discrepant things out there)?! You can watch it at this link Okay, anyway, Glaswegians crack me up. There were two guys in front of us that were pretty tough looking, blue-collar workers...you know, picture scary Scots a la Trainspotting. Yeah, they loved the film. Also, so since it was the IMAX 3D, a staff member came out beforehand to explain that we had to put on the dorky glasses to watch the previews and the first 15 minutes of the movie. He was trying to get people excited and ended with "ENJOY HARRY POTTER IN 3D!!!!" and people did the sort of sardonic, snarky, sarcastic 'yay' in response. Not 5 seconds later a preview started in 3D and everyone seriously went "oooooohh" then burst out laughing at being completely contradicted for mocking the 3D. Good times.

On Wednesday I had a crazy busy day with tons of meetings that I'd rather forget about right now, but that evening I met up with the people from work and we went to the Hetherington Research Club which is a private club for university graduate students and staff. Excellent and cheap beer...hooray! We stayed for a few hours then bolted at 9:45pm so we could make it to Marks & Spencers Food Service before it closed...though I instead went to the chip shop.

The next morning I got up and got ready for my trip to East Midlands. I got the underground at 9am and went to Glasgow Queen Street Station. I caught the train to Edinburgh and shared a table with a giant family from Canada. At Edinburgh I got the National Express East Coast train (the one that goes from Edinburgh Waverly to London Kings Cross) all the way to Doncaster. It took about 3 hours and shared a table with a great older British couple who had a daughter who lives on the same street as me (which isn't difficult because I'm on a main street). The train was (of course) delayed, but I managed to catch the commuter from Doncaster to Lincoln. In Lincoln, I met up with my friend Patricia (the reason for the trip) and met her boyfriend, Will. We went and met his family (parents and brother) for lunch/dinner. I don't exactly know how to explain what they were like except maybe like Hyacinth Bucket (Bouquet) from Keeping Up Appearances. They were quite friendly in a sort-of fake etiquette sort of way. After dinner we drove to their village, Woodhall Spa. It was a nice break as I got away from the traffic and got a home-cooked meal. Though very interesting as this was the first time I really got a taste for racism against the Scottish. I didn't feel that uncomfortable, but a few things that were just casually mentioned were really hurtful...it's a little hard to go into off-hand comments so I can just generalise. I would like to point out, however, the fact that I know tons of English people here in Glasgow. Three of my four flatmates are English, the post-doc and the advisor with whom I work are both from England, etc etc... and I have never met a Scottish person living in England so I think that says something about how the cultures allow the opposite to feel comfortable or not. Ultimately, it was just an interesting social observation. I have never been happier, though, to see the Scottish border and I don't know if it's because I've settled here or because it's just a more relaxed culture.
Anyway, in Woodhall, we went to the Kinema in the W oods which was sort of a WWII cinema with low ceilings, no incline, coat hangers on the wall and an intermission where an organ rises from the front and a man plays while people go buy ice cream. Lots of fun. We did lots of small, english village things like spending hours in the pub and when we got back to the house, the town vicar was visiting for tea. No joke. I felt like I was temporarily in a BBC Wonderland. Glad to be in Glasgow again though.

Last night, I got back from the station and my peers from the department called me. They were getting together at my secondary supervisor's house (he's really laid back) for curry and poker. He lives just up the street from me and we were there until about 1:30am playing poker and drinking immense amounts of German beer. And today I cleaned the apartment and went to the Oxfam Bookshop for a while...that's where I will leave you for now! Cheerio!

36 Hours in Glasgow

2009-08-02T17:49:00.001+01:00

The secret is out. The New York Times just released an article on Glasgow this weekend. The link can be found HERE Some highlights are:

"give Glasgow a little extra attention, and you will find that, like the famously inscrutable dialect of its residents, this understatedly stylish city is worth deciphering"

"Join strolling couples...reveling in the 40-acre grounds (of the Botanic Gardens), Victorian glass buildings and, adjacent, the River Kelvin walkway. If that doesn’t settle you, head across the street to Oran Mor...a converted church that houses a beautiful whisky bar with over 250 options, among them peaty Talisker, spicy Glenmorangie and smooth and sweet Macallan. Ahhh, doesn’t that feel better?" -- This next door to me as I, too, live across the street from the Botanic Gardens :)

"Edinburgh has a castle. Glasgow has a cathedral."

Anyway, the article is worth reading especially as it gives advice on cheap ways to get here. Glasgow really is a fantastic city and I grow to love living here every single day.

Don't you know who you are?

2009-07-25T19:56:00.001+01:00

It finally happened; I order pizza from pizzahut.co.uk for collection. I go to pick it up, 2 blocks away and there is a moment of confusion when they figure out which of the THREE "Macdonald" orders waiting to be picked up is for me. Ah, Scotland.

It's amazing how many things here so fit my personality; things that always made me stand out a bit in the US seem commonplace here. First of all, there is a large contingent of individuals who blast music from their car. This always made me stand out in the US for playing things like "Phantom of the Opera" so all the world can hear, and I know what you're thinking, There are people here who blast their music, too, right? but oh! not like this. It's not simply a round of rap music being heard throughout neighbourhoods. The best experience I had was when someone was stopped at a light and was blasting the soundtrack from Pirates of the Caribbean. I have also heard Pink, Bruce Springsteen (the night of the Boss's concert in Glasgow) and the obligatory rap music.
After the music, the tattoos are the next thing that stand out. I realise that a lot of people in the US have tattoos, but the ones here are more like mine. Let me explain: I have been berated by tattoo artists in the States for having random tattoos with no artistic flow to them. My tattoos tend to be randomly placed symbols wherever there's room. Not only do tons more people in Scotland have tattoos (much older generations) but they are similar to mine in that there is little flow and simply lots of random images. I love it.
Also, people drink a lot of cider. It's not just a girl's drink. It's readily available on tap in any pub and takes many many forms. Strongbow is still my favourite.

So, filling in on my life currently; I'm sitting in my flat on a Saturday afternoon watching the first Harry Potter film. It's brought back a lot of great memories. I'm going through a bit of a Harry Potter regression since the sixth film was released last week. It reminds me how comfortable and at home I feel when surrounded by the Hogwarts world.

A brief review of the Half-Blood Prince film (spoilers): The biggest complaint I've heard from people was the added scene of Bellatrix attacking the Burrow. I actually approve of this addition for a few reasons. Mainly, there is a psychological haunting throughout the book of HBP that is hard to convey in a film. I thought it was extremely appropriate, in lieu of this opportunity, to have a random attack during a happy time. It served to remind the viewers as well as the characters of the need for "constant vigilance" to use Mad-Eye Moody's expression. The viewers were forced to not get too comfortable in the happy world of the students. I also fully appreciate what they could do with Severus Snape. Now that the seventh book has been released, they were able to show a bit more of his allegiance. They always hinted at it (like when he instinctively protected the "Golden Trio" in the third film from Lupin) but this was pretty obvious that he was the unsung hero. Being able to show his face when he killed Dumbledore added a lot. Overall, quite pleased with the film and they have consistently improved. This was by far the best one yet.

I enjoyed being in Scotland when it was released. Not only was it a great opportunity to meet/bond with the other staff/students in the department, but it was great to finally live in that setting. Something about it just seemed so much more familiar; the various colloquialisms and habits that are now daily for me had never been in my life before. Not only that, but a few days later, we went hiking in Glencoe in the highlands, where Hogwarts is filmed.

The hiking experience made me really feel like I was settled in Scotland. We hiked through Hogwarts-territory in the pouring rain then retired to a climber's pub with a pint and a steak pie in front of the fire. So perfect...
I forget now that I'm living in a place that I dreamed of since I was a little girl. Every once in a while, it hits me, but on the whole, I have my daily routine settled in and feel quite comfortable.

I'm currently watching the first Harry Potter film while drinking a Strongbow and eating my pizza. It's been the first time I've watched this movie in about 4ish years. It's taken me back very far. I remember liking Harry Potter (particularly Snape) before this film came out. When it was released, I went to see it with my little brother and our neighbours. The introduction of Diagon Alley warmed my core. I felt like it was a happy beautiful place, mostly because it reminded me of our trips to the UK when I was little. From that point on: Harry entering the wizarding world for the first time, I have always felt at home and with a friend while reading/watching Harry Potter. Also, the kids are adorable in this film. I'm going to watch them straight through, which may be weird to watch them grow up at this point.

All I've got planned for tomorrow is to go to the city centre in the afternoon to go buy a copy of Peter Pan (for a book I'm working on) and look for some dice for someone... :-P
I'm a few chapters away from the end of the Deathly Hallows. This really is a fantastic book. That's all for now...back to my film :) Pip pip and cheerio!

Initial impressions of the United Kingdom

2009-07-25T19:45:00.000+01:00

This post is a bit outdated. I wrote it in the first week of June, 2009 and emailed it to my friends/relatives to describe my initial reactions to life here in Scotland. Enjoy...

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So I have been promising a few people emails on how life is over here in Scotland. I thought it'd be nice to sort of outline everything that's been going on and how I'm doing and give you my contact info so you know I'm alive.

First of all, it is a transition, regardless of everything I really miss just being able to call people up for a chat or coffee or a drink. That being said though, I don't think it will take too long to break into the social circle of the university. The Institute for Gravitational Research (IGR), which is the group for whom I work, all get together around 11:15 in the common room of the department for lunch/coffee everyday. It's usually about 10-20 people. It's a bit slow this week because a lot of people are at the LIGO meeting in Orsay, France. Next week, more people should be around though. The other students also were saying that the group gets together a lot on Friday nights and weekends for various events. I mean, let's be honest here, they are all physicists and therefore striking up a conversation is a bit awkward, but I'm trying to force myself to get out and actually talk to people, if not linger in the background. I share an office with three other people but we have a window that looks over the main building of the university. It's very tranquil; lots of trees and birds.

The area in which I live is very student-esque. I live near the intersection of two huge streets. My flat is above a very posh liquor store and overlooks the road, but at least that gets me up in the morning. It's only about a 5-7 minute walk in the morning to my office. I usually walk along Byres Road which has tons of cafes and pubs and various stores. It's a bit expensive though. Compare to Pearl Street. I live right next door to this building called the Oran Mor which is a famous place in Glasgow. It's a renovated gothic cathedral that has been turned into a pub, a restaurant, a music venue and many other little social areas. It's a beautiful and awesome place, if only I had the money to go there :(. That's definitely the first place I'll take anyone who comes to visit. Diagonal from the Oran Mor, across the intersection and in view from my window is the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. It's so nice to have that so close. I can literally cross the street and go sit in the rose garden in the afternoon. They have a gorgeous, giant glass house there as well. Between my flat and the university is a place called Ashton Lane. It's a little pedestrian alley that is littered with cozy places to hang out. They have lots of places to grab a bite to eat. (You should google these locations for pictures). I also went to the cinema there with my dad when he was out here getting me settled. I think the cinema was the WEIRDEST cultural difference, but I'll mention that below.

Living in the UK is interesting. The buildings have been here for YEARS and they're not really in a rush to tear them down for renovations. The floors ALL creak; I don't know if I've been somewhere that hasn't made an enormous amount of noise when I walk. I'm so used to everything being so automated, like especially going to the public bathroom where you twist on/off the faucet, use a bar of soap and flush your own toilet. No sensors anywhere. The control is kind of nice...but weird to adjust to. Of course everywhere has a boiler heating system with those big metal heaters in all the rooms and they don't work that well, but it's okay. It is pretty cold here actually...now that the sun has gone away, it feels more like October than June. Winter should be fun.

Okay, weird/interesting/bizzare things I've noticed/have to get used to:
1. Going off of the last statement, it's still light out at 11pm and starts to get light again at about 5. VERY much an adjustment
2. Grocery stores have usually just one brand for every kind of food. Not 6 shelves of different peanut butter. More like 1/4 of one shelf.
3. The lack of technology as noted above. Not to mention their electrical plugs are huge. But I do like how every outlet has a switch next to it where you can switch off the power instead of unplugging. Convenient and energy saving.
4. Ah yes, the cinema. This is fun. So you have assigned seating...seriously, and people actually comply. The screen is about 20ft by 15ft. There's only seating for about 100 people. And (This is the best) when you buy your ticket, they ask you if you would like beer or wine for the film. BRILLIANT! Just think of how many bad movie dates could have been made so much better simply by the addition of alcohol.
5. Pubs really fulfill their namesake here (public houses). There's tons of them on every block and they really are a place to sit down at any time of day. If you want food or drink, you go to the bar yourself to order. It's basically a place to walk into when you're tired or need a break and find a little corner to cozy up in or sit at the bar to meet people. The closest one to what they're like here is Conor O'Neill's in Boulder. Just take away the waiters.
6. This is ESPECIALLY weird after living in Boulder, but pedestrians do NOT have the right of way. Under any circumstance. I've seen people run back across the road when they see they're not going to make it. So not only do I have to get used to looking to the right before I cross, since cars are coming from a different direction, I have to consciously think "Okay, is this thing going to hit me? Is that car down the road turning my way? Will I die?" This also makes pedestrians really aggressive when crossing. They cross at ANY free moment.
7. No closets. We all just have wardrobes in our rooms.
8. I have to turn on the water to the shower room before turning on the shower. That was fun to figure out. I washed my hair in the sink my first day since I was the only one up and had no one to ask...not to mention that in order to turn on the water you press a big red button. I've always been taught never to press the big red button. In any circumstance. Except when evading aliens.
9. I'm slowly figuring out what all the different stores are. i.e. Scotland's versions of Target, Safeway, Wal-mart, Kinkos.
10. You can't access Pandora.com in the UK. I found a secret way to bypass the security, but it wasn't easy and I feel bad doing it. I would be very depressed otherwise.
11. You don't have to get a cell phone (mobile phone) plan. You can go into a store and just pay for a cheap phone and minutes without ever having to sign up for anything...It's really nice.
12. This was hilarious. So my first few days here was the sunniest Glasgow has been for ages. It was sunny for about 5 days. Since most people here are as white as I am, believe it or not, I finally got to see people with worse sunburns than what I've had. I now know what people were thinking when they saw me walking around with magenta skin. Every day too, the percentage of people with crippling sunburns kept increasing. It was awesome.
13. Bowling greens are actually popular...and people of all ages use it. I don't know the rules of the game. But people bowl lots of balls across a lawn. On the aforementioned sunny days, the greens were completely packed with people of all ages bowling.
14. We have our version of Pearl Street. It's called Sauchiehall Street. It's like Pearl on crack...it's twice as wide and shaped like an L and about 5 times as long. One branch of the L is all the tacky stores like the £ store and Marks&Spencers (Like Target) and the other side is all really posh shops. At the intersection there's a sort of indoor mall (which they call a gallery). There are tons of musicians and at all times, there's at least one bagpiper playing (as far as I've experienced).
15. Finally, my keyboard is really weird. I can't even describe how bizarre it is to get used to. For example, my return key is in the shape of half a "T" as opposed to a backwards "L". I keep hitting this \ when I mean to hit return. The computers are just in general more different than I would have thought.

I'm sure I will add to this list and take things away as I experience more stuff and get more used to it. Living overseas is definitely way different than traveling. I'm still alive though and I'm glad I'm here in graduate school because it seems like a good way to meet people and socialize really quickly. Since I'm coming in at a weird time, though, I am kind of like the new kid at school...but I don't think it will take too long to adjust. I miss my life in Boulder and I definitely miss everyone. Some more than others...That's been the most difficult. Especially because I have no idea when I'll see some people next...people I'm used to seeing on a daily basis.