Can You Guess That Phrase?

I few weeks ago I signed up to be *matched* with an alumnus from Warwick. A couple days after arriving, my contact, Andrew, emailed me to introduce himself, offer some advice, and asked if I had any questions. A week later I replied with some questions and he offered to meet up with him & his wife for eats & drinks. Last night we met up at the Burnt Post. Ordered fish & chips, of course, and had Andrew pick me out an ale (StrongHeart pale ale).

Faux pas numéro un:
What I DIDN'T KNOW, was that many restaurants here have you find your own table, order at the bar, and pay at that moment. And yes, the Burnt Post is just such an establishment. Being a good host, Andrew took our orders, left his wife and I to talk while he went and ordered. Meaning, he paid for everything, including my ale.

Faux pas numéro deux:

After dinner & conversation, Andrew suggested another round of drinks. His wife was up for it, so I said I'd go get a different beer. Andrew offered to make the selection, I agreed (always up for a surprise) and off he went. 

At about halfway through our drinks, I asked when our checks would arrive. That's when Andrew smiled and said he was waiting for me to ask, then let me know how the ordering process worked. In short, he paid for everything while I sat there ordering ales like I owned the place. There was nothing I could do, but apologize for it all. He laughed and said no worries, he wouldn't have let me pay anyway. 

The din was getting a bit much at the Burning Post, so we headed off for another pub. I wish I could remember where we ended up because it's just around the corner and one entire side of the street is a string of pubs. Nice places, small, cute, lots of local microbreweries. 

FAUX PAS NOMBRE TRIOS, CRÈME DE LA CRÈME:
I'm just going to cut to the chase on this one. Andrew's wife compiled a string of phrases I said throughout the night that created laugh out loud, spitting hilarity at the table.

I said (at various times):

"I'm going to the restroom."

"My pants are dirty."

"I need to check my fanny pack."

All together, the English (UK) translation is:

"I need to lie down somewhere,

my underwear is dirty,

and I need to check my vagina bag."

Food

It's wonderful having a working kitchen.

Made Kate some chocolate chip cookies for the weekend. I asked if she wanted me to try my family's famous chocolate chip cookies or our delicious, traditional pumpkin sweet bread. I had to chuckle a little bit when she chose the cookies because just this week I learned that the English don't eat much pumpkin, and certainly don't have sweet pumpkin breads on ready supply.

I can't say her choice was a poor one. The cookies turned out lovely :)

English Term: Biscuit
Translation: A cookie sandwich, square cookie, tea cookie
Equivalent: Oreos, traditional Mexican cookies, Sugar cookies

English Term: Cookie
Translation: Round cookie with chocolate chips
Equivalent: What I made for this weekend :)

Ingredients

Roughly 350*F. But this is a convection oven which means the heat is blown around, things cook quicker.

The most delicious REAL butter I've ever smelled.

"Caster" sugar is a grain between sugar and powedered sugar. It's specific for baking. "Demerara" is brown sugar. Here the granules are much bigger.

The eggs are ALWAYS at room temperature. The vanilla had actual bits of the pods and was the consistency of syrup.

Oatmeal and an equal mixture of dark & milk chocolate. Key note: ALWAYS add more chocolate chips than the recipe calls for.

"Bicarbonate of soda" (baking soda) has the strangest, coolest consistency! Like crushing snow without the melt. That bag of salt costs 25p!

Crushed almonds. (roasted at home)

A delicious final product :)

Recipes in the UK are traditionally done by weight (grams). But I know this by heart, so I didn't bother with weighing the ingredients. They use 3, that's right 3, methods of measurement: imperial, metric, weight.

On A Walk

It's velvet angel spanx,
Baby toes in the sun,
a soft summer romance.

Soup's envy,
Neighbourly advice,
The best kind of free(dom).

Speed daemon,

Joy, thrill, happiness,

Gimme the stick!

The Gauntlet.

Survive the crossing and you live another day,

An hommage to the children who lived,

A suggestion to ones who hope.

Prohibitions are not for the faint of heart,

They are for caballeros,

Viva revolución!

I dream of a day when two events finally come to fruition, 

One, domestic American beer dies,

Two, rubbish always and immediately finds its way to the bin.

Side streets are best for a good walk,

Side streets are best for a good run,

Side streets are best for getting lost.

Seriously, I have no memory of this place.

Running every other day,

Don't you quit on me now.

First Week-Term 1

Monday Madness:
GREAT GOBS OF GOOSE SLOO! There were a lot of students on campus Monday. I'm so glad I arrived a week early so I could get acquainted with the campus slowly and in my own time.

My first lecture was with Gordon Brown. No, not THAT Gordon Brown, but wouldn't that be a hoot. Sweet guy, super smart, didn't notice I was falling asleep. The way I see it, it could be that I was really good at covering my appearance, he wasn't as observant with me as he was with his lecture, or I didn't actually fall asleep and entered a new stage of hallucinatory-jet-laggy-crazy-fun-time. I'm OK with any possibility.

Between lectures I found a great tree to have lunch under-inside, and later, a great bench to enjoy the end of this English summer.

Tuesday Trials:
I must have made a unique impression on my professors from Monday, because the one who apologized in advance for not knowing students as quickly as he felt he should, called on me by name at our next meeting. But I couldn't help myself Monday. Professors Loomes & Read began a discussion on transitivity and preference theory. They were singing my song! In a nutshell, Loomes approached the scenario as an Economists, I countered his conclusions by approaching it as a Psychologist. Sweet, sweet music. Thank you Professor Berkich! (p.s. the pictures on this link are from his Advanced Logic course, where we learned these theories)

Also, I confirmed that there are at least 3 pubs on campus. That's right, I said pubs. Wine, beer, ale, Guinness, you name it.

Wednesday Wackout:
Started the day with Neil Stewart introducing us to the new statistics software (R) and programming language we'll be using to run our data. "R" is free software AND free-speech software. What does that mean, you say? It means A.N.Y.O.N.E. can download the software, rewrite it to suite his/her personal statistical software needs, then publish it for anyone else to use. It's also the hot-stuff right now for running large, nay ginormous data sets. I was of the minority that understood the basics behind the language, thanks to Professor Moreno.

After class all the Psychology and Economics MSc/PhD students attended a reception. Typical array of sandwiches, fruit, and muffins. Most of the sandwiches had some mysterious orange dressing on them, so of course I tried them all. The only ingredients I'm certain of are bread and cucumber. I ended up briefly talking with a first year PhD student who is investigating the victimhood of the bully/victim relationship. Her premise right now is that bullies show some sort of beneficial placement in human society, therefore she doesn't see the need to look into the making & role of bullies, just the making & role of victims and how they can cope, etc. I had to walk away before I made an enemy.

The Societies Fair was also today. What's that, you say? All the clubs come out to expose themselves to potential members. Exposures were varied. Check out the video. In fact, you're better off expanding it to full screen.

One of the dancing troupes.

One of the music groups.

Trying to navigate the labyrinthine madhouse that is Societies Fair. This clip begins with a shot of one of the campus pubs. Check out the variety of societies!

Thursday Rain:

This is the long day of the week. Economic lecture first thing in the morning, then 2 hours of hacking through learning a new computer language, followed by open research presentations (multi-discipline), then sharing sessions with psyc professors about ongoing research. In short, lots & lots of listening, lots & lots of note jotting. 

It's been super fun, though, watching the psyc grad students squirm in their seats during the economic lectures. We're supposed to be learning this term how traditional economists think. The upside for me, is that not a single psyc student agrees, so they questions and quarrel in class. I sit in the back. All I'm missing is a bucket of popcorn. Almost better than a Skyfall screening. 

My New Digs

The house.

Front garden flowers.

Front garden.

A room with a view.

Neighborhood from overhead.

Living room.

Soooo, I don't think the dishwasher's been used in a while.

Very happy she doesn't have the 2-in-1 style. Drier's tapped straight into Earth's core.

My descent every morning.

That's right, it's an old school Land Rover.