Filed under: Uncategorized — David @ 1:53 pm Comments 5
It is common knowledge to all grad students that free food always tastes better.
POST GRAD DEFN: free food : Food that was purchased/provided by someone other than yourself.
OED DEFN: free food : food imported free of tax or duty.
this is also this related, funny word:
free fooder :a politician who opposes taxes on food;
Anyways…. there is something about food that you do not have to pay for which makes it so appealing. At the start of the year, the department purchased a new coffee machine in which they were going to sell cups of coffee for 20p a cup. Well, to attract people they offered it free for the first 2 weeks. Now, you may know where this is heading; I had about 3-4 cups of coffee a day during those two weeks and I cannot stand coffee. Because it was free it made it taste acceptable.
There are several sources of free food at University during the week. Most involve going to a colloquium and getting rewarded with cookies or some other type of sweet. There is one colloquium we always attend. It is the physics general interest seminar. They give away yummy donuts. Well last week the talk was not very interesting, but we went anyways to get the before hand donuts. Well, we waited around till everyone went into the lecture hall, and I said to Richard, “I don’t really want to attend this talk”. (we had both had 2 donuts). So we decided not to go. I looked at the table where the donuts were and noted that there were still plenty to go around. Well, we did the only thing obvious to a post graduate student. And Look what we liberated from physics,
We saved the donuts for the next day and sent out an email to all the Maths PHD students offering free stolen donuts.
POST GRAD DEFN: free stolen food : the best tasting food there is.
It was commented, that post grads have a built in ability to sense and seek out free food. But free stolen food….?? well, I was surprised by how many post grads did not show up to take advantage of our quick thinking and the physics depart. But that may have been because we advertised it for 4pm on a friday (they probably had already left the building).
Filed under: Neyir's Posts — Neyir @ 7:16 pm Comments 6
We are boring! That’s right, I can think of absolutely nothing interesting to say or anything of import that has happend to us in the last week. David continues to work on his PhD and for our church. I continue to (mostly) get up in the morning and go to work and also balance singing and my own business. Other than that as previously mentioned - we are boring.
The one thing we did do this week is visit the Polish restaurant on Leith Walk. In 2004 eight nations, including Poland, joined the EU and since then roughtly 600,000 people from Poland have come to work in the UK. Happily for us a number of Polish folks are now living in our neighbourhood. In fact in the last six months, 3 delis and the restaurant have opened, all on Leith Walk. So Friday night we headed out for some Perogies - David was very anxious to sample these in comparison to his mother’s fabulous Slovak perogies. As expected they were excellent and incomparable to Inie’s as they were quite different, doughier in fact. For a starter we had potato pancake with chili, yummy and the dessert - home-made Polish cheesecake, light but excellent. On the recommendation of Melissa we have now purchased 2 varieties of perogies from the closest deli (Russian cheese and meat) as she claims these are even better than the restaurant’s! Lest we perform an unreliable taste-test we thought we had better try the deli’s as soon as possible and plan to this evening once David gets back from church.
Bonus points for naming the other 7 nations who joined the EU in 2004!
Filed under: Uncategorized — Neyir @ 7:11 pm Comments 4
Seriously, at this stage I cannot believe that anyone is checking this blog at all. Clearly we need to do a much better job at posting! I suppose I could make the arguement that as of late our lives have just not been interesting enough to warrant posting about - but then that never really stopped up before!
So here we go, what we have been up to;
As the previously posted pictures illustrated we spent a fantastic 5 days in Paris at the beginning of December. We visited all the things you would expect (many of which I had already done but were specifically demanded my Mr U.) - the Louvre and Mrs Lisa (aka La Giaconda or Mona), the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, the aforementioned Arc de Triomphe, walked along the Seine, Les Invalides (site of Napoleon’s massive tomb), and Printemps & Galleris Lafayette (perennial Parisian department stores). We also visited other places that were crucial for us (me) but are perhaps less typical; Laduree (patisserie visited no fewer than 3 times), Rodin museum, Le Pompidou (modern art museum), walked the Tulierries (the garden outside of the Louvre), and Montmartre for both shopping, wandering and watching ‘les artistes’ at work.
When we got back we were delighted to meet the baby of our good friends Melissa and Allan, who is absolutely delightful and not surprisingly darn good looking. We then started getting ready for Christmas. We had an open house Christmas Eve and at one point had 7 children under the age of seven wandering about our flat which was the point at which David’s thankfully good-humoured advisor and his wife arrived! We had about 30 folks over the course of the day and then David and I headed back to church for the watchnight service. The service was lovely but I do so miss the candlelighting at the end which these Presbyterians don’t seem to do :-(. After church we were given a ride by our friends Judith and Craig and then had them in for drinks and stayed up until 4am - was it 4am guys or am I thinking of New Years??? Christmas day was spent with Melissa, Allan, baby and other Canadian friends Lisa and JP. JP just happens to be a chef so with a little help from David and I JP created a spectacular meal! We rested the 26th and then headed off to York for our anniversary on the 27th.
We had a great time in York, very low key, with lots of cafe visits and sitting! We visited the famous Minster, walked up the tower, walked the walls of the city (as in on the walls), toured the museum, followed a few historical walks, had coffee at the legendary Bettys and were overjoyed to meet up with David’s colleague and friend Richard Hepworth and of course managed a lovely meal on the 28th.
We wandered back to Edinburgh late on the 29th and then rested (aka cleaned) on the 30th. New Year’s eve we had Judith and Craig over for a low key evening of Pizza, cake and wine and lots of good chat and we stayed up good and late. I think we were all feeling pretty smug that we had planned an indoor activity as the gale force winds outside caused the cancellation of the world famous Edinburgh Hogmanay street party. On the first J&C hosted a lovely lunch afterwhich we first-footed M&A (without the whiskey and coal)then came home to sleep. On the second we hung out, did a little work, caught a movie and I prepared to go back to work on the 3rd.
And that my friends is what we have been up to for the last month. I am sure January will be just as busy but hopefully less eventful ;-). We pray you all had a wonderful Christmas and wish everyone a joyous and blessed New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!!
