Herby goodness

I know I haven't blogged in a while but between being sick, working, watching Ugly Betty, and just being a general lazy ass, I didn't have the time. :P Also, I didn't blog about our weekend away to Oxford and Bath and I think that sort of snowballed into general unblogginess. Basically, I've come to far to turn back now. :P If you want t know what happened in Oxford and Bath, you can take a look at Celiwe's blog, which has all the details and a bunch of pictures.

I wanted to blog about our trip to Jekka's Herb Farm near Bristol on Monday, coz Celiwe wasn't there and if I don't do it, it'll probably get lost in the annals of time, and I'll forget, like I forgot about Becky and I jumping up and down to catch a glimpse of Orlando Bloom at the Pirates of the Caribbean premier in Leicester Square back in 2003.

The farm is run by a woman called Jekka McVicar and she's been growing herbs for about 25 years. She's won something like 17 gold medals from the Royal Horticultural Society and won an award at the Chelsea Garden Show last year as well, which is quite an achievement considering she won for a herb garden!

Sameer's colleague Mpumi is planning on starting a herb farm with his wife. They're hoping to preserve some of the indigenous plants that are used for medicinal purposes and at the same time, transfer skills to people in the Eastern Cape, and also help boost the economy in the area as well.

So we went to see Jekka,who Mpumpi met at Kirstenbosch last year when she was doing a lecture tour. Her farm is just outside Bristol so it was a three hour drive from here but I didn't really feel it, I slept the whole way there.

We got there and went in to the little pre-fab building next to the stone cottage and chatted to Jekka about herb farming. Well, lets just say I don't know anything about it! Respect to Jekka! There's so much you have to consider when sourcing your plants, propagating them, gathering and cleaning seeds, tending seedlings, controlling the environment for optimum sun, optimum light, optimum water and having integrated pest management so you don't have to use pesticides and deciding what kind of soil, what kind of compost, what kind of nutrients you want to use and on and on. And on!

So, I'll skip the rest and just post pictures. Coz really, it was teh pretties! Too bad I didn't get a picture of Jekka's dog, Hampton. He was soooo big and sooo gentle. Really adorable. Made me want to get a dog.

Oh, other than these two, there are a couple more pics on my Flickr site if anyone's interested.

Weekend, do what you wanna do, weekend!

Oi! Going back to work after two month's of nothing but lazing about and reading really helps you appreciate a day off!

I think I may have failed to mention it directly but I actually worked this week. :P Five days of data entry out in Waterbeach. Ye gads! Not even Waterbeach - the frikkin Research Park!

In the words of Inigo Montoya "Lemme 'splain. No, it take too long. Lemme sum up".

The Cambridge Research Park is over half an hour away from Cambridge proper by bus. The bus departs from the Drummer Street bus station once every hour. The Drummer Street bus station is a 10 minute cycle from Wolfson, 15 minutes if you're a sick duck, which I am. So I've been up after six each day this week to get dressed in the dark, so as not to wake sensitive, light-sleeping eat cereal alone in the servery, cycle to the bus station, and then catch the bus to the Research Park by 8.

Hey, this short story is turning into quite a long one. Ignore the Inigo Montoya quote above, I was just trying to get a Princess Bride reference in somewhere.

So, firstly, cold much. And secondly, being sick and cycling in the cold is also not so good but I didn't want to turn down the first substantial job I got offered, especially when it's something as simple as data entry, which I can pretty much do in my sleep. Easy money, and most pathetically, on an hour by hour basis, it pays about the same as my job at Laragh. Freaky and slightly depressing.

So anyway, the place was interesting enough. It was called Elecheck which I, thinking logically, pronounced Ele-check. I get there, and people are answering phones saying "Good morning, Elec Check, how may I help you?" And I was like, huh? Did I miss a C or a squared sign?

So what they do is send "engineers" out to test portable equipment for faults and electrical problems. Well, being married to an engineer, I know that this is not what engineers actually do. These people are actually electricians with delusions of grandeur. I mean, Sameer is a proper engineer. His job at Koeberg was to go out each morning and check that all the batteries were working but that's different. Those were bigger batteries, house sized ones, hence there was actual grandeur, not imaginary ones.

Anyway, lets move on. My job was to type of the job sheets, which are written out by the engineers. Some have lovely handwriting, and some, well oi. Indeciferable much. So, it was alright. Lots of the old "typety-type" ala HomeChoice and also, since I had my iPod playing all the music I used to work at Laragh, there were some nostalgic moments too. I especially realized how much I missed the quirky people at Laragh, and the laid back attitude. You know, the one we had back in 2006. ;)

It had a very HomeChoicy atmosphere with a few odd quirks, such as:
1. The Sales Director, Marco, would come in each morning and, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, call out "Good morning people, remember - Don't just check it. Elec-check it!"
2. The women in admin would react to this with varying degrees of amusement and irritation.
3. They had a "Banana Bread Challenge" on Friday. Someone had challenged someone else concerning the quality of their banana bread. So they both baked, cut the cake, put it on separate platters labelled A and B, then offered everyone a piece of each. They also gave us color-printed ballot forms that said "Banana Bread Challenge Voting Form" and had two check boxes - A and B. We had to tick one and place it in the ballot box by end of day.
4. The ladies bathroom had intimate wipes. Nifty. I've never seen that before in a bathroom but I'm all in favour of it catching on. :P
5. Their server only backs things up at the end of the day. By G_d that is a recipe for disaster! I accidentally deleted a spreadsheet that listed 1050 items on it and found that it wasn't in my Recycle Bin coz everything runs off remote servers! They had to call their IT people to retrieve it for me, which thankfully they were able to do but come on - asking for trouble much?
6. It turned out that the woman who was overseeing us temps used to be married to a South African, lived there for about 15 years, and both her kids still live there. Not only that but her son, Shane, converted to Islam and married a Muslim girl named Tasneem, from some place north of Durban! Small world and weird co-incidences! Through my woefully inadequate iPod headphones, I heard her scolding some of the girls in Zulu at one point. It was so strange and interesting.

So anyway, being me, instead of getting better and better, I just got sicker and sicker. Feeling phlegmy and cycling to work at a leasurely clip, not bad. Running from the office at 17:00 to make your 17:05 bus, not so much fun. (The bus stops quite a distance from the office.) I was in some serious pain each afternoon, knife in the chest like pain, and that one simple factor was what put me off the whole thing. (For some obscure reason they are not very pro letting you leave early at this place.)

Anyway, it's over now. Except that I may be asked to go back in the week again. :P I'm a sucker for money so I might actually say yes but it all depends on how I feel. Or on how badly I want the complete Angel DVD boxed set... Gotto say, right now I want it pretty bad. I have absolutely no resistance to temptation. It's a failing. Thank G_d I don't drink or do drugs. I would be such an addict.

I think I'd be a terrible druggy. I'd wander around in a stupor, all red eyed, with Shreddies crumbs down my shirt, shouting at random passerbys in off kilter gam. "Jou ma! Verby vannie yaad af! Haal uit en wys, wat kine?"

Yes, it is late now. And it being weekend, I can sleep in and have brunch that does not consist of Frosted Shreddies and reconstituted milk.

[There needs to be a whole 'nother post about the glory of Shreddies. But 'tis for another day.]

In lieu of pictures (coz I haven't taken any since last week), I leave you with this strange but amusing YouTube video - the Obama/Guiliani dancing girl face off - hi-larious!

A moment lost in time

I finally decided to drop in to the Tai Chi class that they have here at Wolfson. I've been meaning to go since I first saw the posters in the corridors at Bredon House but I was also apprehensive because I know that there are many different forms of Tai Chi and many different styles. I knew there was slim chance that they'd be doing Yang Style Tai Chi that looked anything like what I'd been taught.

Tonight we meant to go to the little TV room to watch the Arsenal/Milan match but when I got there it was already crowded with people and smelling strongly of sweat and dinner breath. So I thought, well, the Lee Seng Tee hall is just around here and the Tai Chi class must just have started, so I might as well drop in and see what it's like.

When I got there, there were two guys doing some co-operative movements together. I'd seen this in books and on TV before but we'd never actually done it in our class. The teacher, a man called Dan, came over to speak to me and told me about his teacher who was from Venezuela, and who had learned from a Tai Chi master who's name I can't remember. He explained that following the paired exercise, they'd be doing a short 36 step form and then a longer 124 form. Well, we did a 24 and a 48 form for starters so I knew there was going to be some new stuff here.

After a brief tea break (with little handle-less Chinese cups) they started the 36 form. The movements looked familiar and I recognized the names that Dan was calling out - Single Whip, Part the Horses Mane, Wave Hands Like Cloud. All of this was familiar and yet put together in combinations that I had never seen. I found myself taking note of the way they held their bodies, the fluidity of their hand movements, checking to see if their heads moved in the same direction as their bodies.

I realize that I was being critical, perhaps too harshly. But my Sifu, Xia Ke Hxiong, was a hard act to follow. You'd have to be, to become Jet Li's stunt double. He'd been training since he was a small child, done all sorts of marshall arts, and he moved with such grace. We would sometimes ask him to do Chen Style moves for us and he would smile and start the slow, liquid moves that exploded into kicks, punches. It was like watching a movie. We were sometimes frustrated with his lack of English but after watching this class I realized there's only so much instruction anyone can really give on how to do what needs to be done. Even Dan here, who is British, went about saying things like "Slowly", "Prepare for the Whip", and "Guard your neck". Sifu was the same, except for every form he named, he said "Slow" five times.

I also realized that there was something more to the way I was feeling. Even if I took this class, it would never give me what I got from my Saturday morning classes at St Joseph's. I felt a great sadness for the Saturday mornings that I used to have, driving to St Joseph's alone, waiting outside the hall for the rest of the class to arrive, the yellow, morning light filtering in through the high windows at the hall, with it's dusty and worn wooden floors. I remember the music from Sifu's cassette player coming through softly, calming us all, setting the tempo of our movements, the way we would all move together concentrating on our movements and positioning, the shifting of our weight, yet at the same time feeling our minds relax and wander. You would notice a movement to one side and realize that yes, you were centered within yourself but were also surrounded by others. I always left Tai Chi with a great sense of peace. And that is something that I can never have again. Any other class and I would probably criticize their lack of style and grace, the music (if there even is music), or if not that, find that there are too few people or too many, it's too cold, it's not bright enough, it's at the wrong time of day. Really what I want is to return to that moment in time, which was always perfect. The classes at St Joseph's stopped running before I even left Cape Town cause it had too few students, but there are still classes in Athlone, Sea Point, and Durbanville. But this is moot, since I'm now moving to Johannesburg. So those lovely, peaceful Saturday mornings are something that will be consigned to memory, lost in time forever.

My kingdom for a kitchen

I had to go to the dining hall tonight to get dinner. Sameer went to Enterprise Tuesday so he at least was saved.

You know, I've gotten over my initial reactions to Wolfson food. First it was alright, then it was bad, then - surpisingly - it actually got to be pretty good. For the past two weeks or so it's been generally alright. Downright tasty at times. I just figure, well you know - every cook has their ups and downs. It's no reflection on the overall quality of the food. But today. People, today was just scraping the bottom of the barrel.

My favourite (that was my sarcastic voice) Spaghetti Vegenaise. The other option was Thai Pork Curry so there wasn't really an alternative. Now, as anyone who's randomly dropped into our house may know, I make Spaghetti Blogonaise at least once a week. This is because you can cook it in 15 minutes flat and its really, really hard to screw up. All you need is tin of tomato and onion mix, a bit of fresh garlic, some coriander, and chillies. All other spices, strictly optional. And it always satisfies.

So I get my Venegaise and sit down. It looks alright, nice red color. I won't deny it, I was fooled by the color. You see lovely rich colors and you think "Hmmm, spicey!" Well...

The Vegenaise consists of tomato and (I presume) onion but the bulk of it is made up by red lentils and soya mince. No train smash there. I myself have cooked tomato based vegetarian pasta with red lentils before. It does serve to bulk up your sauce.

But people, there is simply no excuse for the sheer lack of flavour that I encountered. I sat down and tasted - nothing. Well, salt tends to bring out the flavour in food, so I sprinkled on some salt. Nothing. More salt. Still nothing. Well, then I went the whole hog and sprinkled liberally with salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce. Of course, that just made it taste like salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce.

Mystified, I bent my head down to the plate to inhale the food smell, try to get the aroma. Aroma is the litmus test of food. Food - good or bad - can be tasted simply by leaning forward and taking a good, long sniff through the nostrils. I know this is a horrible thing to say but when I was working at HomeChoice on a Saturday morning, fasting, and everyone around me was eating McDonalds, people would say "Aren't you getting lus?" and I'd say "No, I'm tasting it right now." You know it's true! How many of you have come home from work or campus during Ramadaan, gone into the kitchen, opened up the pots, leaned forward and ..... inhaled the food. It's either just enough to satisfy you or to drive you absolutely mad.

When I leaned over my plate of food at dinner tonight I smelled absolutely nothing. Nothing!

"How?" I ask you. How on earth do you cook a meal that smells like nothing, tastes like nothing?!

I was sitting there, pushing bits of lentils and soy around thinking "By G_D I bet I can cook a Vegenaise better than this!"

Some braised onions, green peppers, mushrooms and the secret ingredient GARLIC!!! It is not so hard! What do people here have against garlic? Some fresh, crushed garlic would breath life into that food.

Oh Lord! I'm on a mission. It has never occurred to me to cook a vegetarian bolognese. I like my beef mince. I enjoy it so much I cook it every week! But now I have to do it. I have to cook a meatless bolognese because I have to prove that it can be done! Prove that there is nothing inherently tasteless about Vegenaise, about red lentils and soya. It is not impossible!

I'm too sick to blog

*cough cough wheeze*

And I had to walk home from the bus stop today in the cold. Took me the better part of an hour - noooo!!! I woke up this morning thinking "I should call in sick, and then just lie here all day in my warm bed, drifting in and out of sleep, all nuzzly and warm."

And while I tried to write that, I kept thinking "Lay down? Lie down? What the heck is it?"

Well for all you grammarly sticklers out there, here it is:

usage lay has been used intransitively in the sense of “lie” since the 14th century. The practice was unremarked until around 1770; attempts to correct it have been a fixture of schoolbooks ever since. Generations of teachers and critics have succeeded in taming most literary and learned writing, but intransitive lay persists in familiar speech and is a bit more common in general prose than one might suspect. Much of the problem lies in the confusing similarity of the principal parts of the two words. Another influence may be a folk belief that lie is for people and lay is for things. Some commentators are ready to abandon the distinction, suggesting that lay is on the rise socially. But if it does rise to respectability, it is sure to do so slowly: many people have invested effort in learning to keep lie and lay distinct. Remember that even though many people do use lay for lie, others will judge you unfavorably if you do.

Lifted direct from the Merriam Webster online dictionary. So while you ponder the transitional nature of grammatical superiority, I'll go lay down and get some shuteye before tomorrow, which will surely bring more cycling, walking, and yes, even running.

My kind and generous nature insists that I leave you with this image. Sweet dreams.

Blast from the past - can you dig it?

Lazy blog post

Herewith enclosed, the lazy blogger's blog post.

I'm reading: Atonement. I know there's badness coming somewhere down the line but right now it's just really funny and really well written. Very good!
I'm listening to: Bear McCreary's Battlestar themes (Yes, I know, still...) You can listen to samples on the Amazon page.
I'm playing: Burnout Revenge when we can get access to the TV room
I'm watching: 30 Rock - Liz Lemon, you're my hero!!!
I'm shopping at: Next Just, you know, without actually buying anything. I just go in to look at and touch all the clothes.
In other news: We're doing a road trip to Oxford and Bath this weekend. I will be snapping away and blogging it soon after.

Walking tour of Cambridge

On Monday afternoon, the Sainsbury peeps (and I) got taken on a short walking tour of Cambridge by Roger Morgan, their supervisor at the Institute for Manufacturing. I was just too lazy to blog about it until now. :P Here are some highlights from the tour.


We started off at Queen's College, which is just opposite the Institute. Here's Roger pointing out an interesting sundial in one of the court's.

Here's the sundial. Also note how the bricks in the wall are really thin compared to modern bricks. This was how they used to make bricks in the mid-1400s, when the college was founded.


One of the court's in Queen's contains this interesting gallery, which used to be the Master's Lodge. It was built for the Master of the college and he used to live their with his family. Apparently, it's a good indication of what a rich, manor house would have looked like in the late 1400s and it's still standing and in use today. The heavy wooden beams that you see also date from that time. If you look at the bottom where those arches are, there are covered corridors that you can walk through, and there are doors at random intervals that lead to rooms for the professors.


Here's an example of a more modern building in Queen's. This is where the students stay these days. It has central heating. Tee-hee. They say the long, narrow windows on the building on the left are supposed to look like tree trunks when viewed from across the river, through a stand of trees but if you ask me, they still look like glass bits in a brick wall on an ugly 90s building. :P I think the architect dropped the ball a bit on this one.


And, here's a picture taken from the Mathematical Bridge, which is part of Queen's. (Remember that picture I took of it from my first day at Cambridge?) This is the view to the right, looking up the Cam to the next college over.


Then we crossed the Cam, and walked along the Backs, and came across this idyllic scene.


Then we went to St John's and Trinity but I think I will leave that for another post!

I has a Flickr account -- w00t!

I take a lot more pics than I post. I just put the nicest ones on here. But now I've started a Flickr site where I can upload everything, even the slightly crappy ones. :P The URL for my Flickr site is http://www.flickr.com/photos/faranaaz in case you just want to type it in, in future. Here's a shortcut in the meanwhile. So far I've just put up the pics I took on Monday afternoon. I haven't posted any of them here because I've been lazy but maybe I'll blog about it later today.

In unrelated news, I got another few days work lined up for next week. Datacapturing at an engineering company outside Cambridge. I can take a bus but to get there in time, I have to leave the college at about 6:25 for the latest, cycle to the bus stand in town, catch the 6:40 bus, arrive there at 7:01 and then hang around until 8 when I start! Bummer...

Look Out, Look Out, Jack Frost is about

Across the grass
He'll merrily pass,
And change all its greenness to white;
Then home he will go,
And laugh, "Ho-ho-ho!
What fun I have had in the night!"

Noticed that there was frost on the grass as I scurried off to breakfast this morning and decided to come back for a closer look. Frost makes the grass look grey and dull when you look at it at first. But when the light catches it, you can see the sun glinting off the crystals on blades of grass. It is beautiful.

By the time I managed to get back with my camera most of it had already thawed. But I spotted a patch that hadn't yet warmed sufficiently, interestingly because it was in the shadow of the pillar that holds up the main gate at Wolfson. Got down on my knees, face to the grass, and managed to get this shot. (Someone walked by and politely passed around me, probably thinking I was a bit daft.) It's not great but if you enlarge it (click it) and look properly, you can see all the lovely, frosty flakes on each blade of grass. It's beautiful. I could have knelt there until it melted, except for the crick in my back.

So I suppose I could leave it there because the only other thing I did today was answer email and chat to friends. Oh, I did look over Celiwe's literature review so that at least was one constructive thing. Kudos to myself. ;)

Oh wait, nearly forgot! I met Naseema's friend Ihsan very briefly. Alas, Intrepid Hubby was not comfortable meeting total strangers from the internet (fancy that Rabia) and managed to cut our visit short. But he was very warm and friendly, and really interesting and I do hope we get to meet up again.

On a final note, here's a picture of a little statue I stumbled upon today. I don't know what it is or where it's from but it was standing underneath a little bush in a dark corner off one of the squares I was walking through on my way to the Lee Library, and I thought I'd take a picture of it. It really is quite beautiful.

Omnia illa et ante fiebant, omnia illa et rursus fient

So say we all.

Spent the entire day walking around London. Ironically, not my favourite thing in the world to do. But anyway. So we went to Forbidden Planet, which was cool. Didn't manage to get the Serenity replica I wanted but at least got the first graphic novel of Buffy Season 8: The Shape of Things to Come and also 1602 by Neil Gaiman. Well, at least we got them the second time round when we came back with Sharon and Byron.

Oh, we met up with Sharon and Byron today. Highlight of the day muchly. :) We had quite a bit of catching up to do so it was great to get mochas from Cafe Nero and just chill and chat about stuff. Hopefully, they will come to Cambridge in the week.

Oh, and Sharon took this picture of me and Sameer in Picadilly Square.


Lamiese and Hooman met up with us in Leicester Square after their course. Then we popped into a place called Waxy O'Connor's (virtual tour via the link) which is just off Leicester Square and is apparently very famous. It's an enormous bar - huge. About four stories high and G-d knows how far across. All heavy wooden beams, brass studded wooden floors, and dark corners. The place was so packed you couldn't move and it was crawling with Londoners and antipodeans, apparently, a good place to watch a rugby match. The music was extremely loud but the crowd was older and people were generally just milling about, having a drink and talking (loudly over the music). We didn't stay very long, just enough to get the vibe and to see the enormous carved wooden tree in one area. It's very much a sort of fantasy inspired place I think but not very much me or Sameer. Perhaps it would look different during the daytime.

I have to say I much preferred the Coat and Badge in Putney, where Sameer's MBA peep's met up today for lunch. Here are some pics. Not sure if you exactly get the vibe but it very much had the feel of being in someone's study or parlour which I liked. More my style. I know - I'm a boring, uncool, geek-person but I can't help it, that's just who I am. :P These are only some of the pics, there are more on Sameer's Facebook.




Hmmmm. What else did we do? Oh, the walk from Putney Bridge, across the Thames and through Putney High Street was lovely. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures but I would love to go back at some point so maybe I will in future. I much preferred walking around there than walking around central London. What can I say, I am just not a city slicker.

Oh, we also went into Borders and got another Neil Gaiman book, titled Neverwhere. So I'm quite keen to read that.

Oh, and almost forgot to mention that when we went back to King's Cross to get the train home, we stopped at Platform 9 and 3/4s. Here I am, making my way towards the Hogwarts Express.


By the way, none of this is in chronological order. I'm just too tired and frazzled and engrossed in my Bear McCreary to be thorough and orderly. :P

Workaday-Naaz

Here's just a quick quick post for the day, since I haven't had lunch yet and I'm starving.

I worked at the Legal Services Office today. I don't know if it was just that department or if all of the university runs this way but it was fantastic. I think Laragh, Eskom, and a host of companies could take a leaf out of their book.

I was temping - for FIVE hours - and I got the person who's post I was filling take me on a tour of the building and give me a detailed booklet on exactly what I was supposed to do. It was a handover document that had been compiled by previous temps in the position. It was about 12 pages long and separated into headings like "Communication", "Ordering Office Supplies" and "Filing". It told me exactly what to do. Like answering the phone, it said "Press this button, then punch in this extension, then press this button." It told you where to save your documents and exactly how to navigate there. It was so useful and I know it would be indispensable to anyone filling a post for short periods of time.

Then the Health and Safety Officer for the building came to introduce herself and she took me around the building to show me the main exits, the emergency exits, the muster point in case of a fire, the best route to it, and the locations of the First Aid kits. Then she gave me a sheet with a list of emergency numbers, including hers, the numbers of the Safety Officers in the surrounding buildings, and the details of each of the First Aid providers in the building. (Sharon, Ethne, you're probably both shaking your heads and making tsk-tsk sounds at this point, I know!) They were so organized!

Anyway, then I signed a confidentiality form and the IT Help desk sent me my username and password. Sorted! Sharon, the woman I was filling in for, even showed me how to use the fancy coffee machine. Let me reiterate people - five hours!

For those five hours my main responsibility was answering the phones and taking messages, which I did. I kept having this panicky moment because everyone's phone sounds the same but not everyone was in, and not all the workstations where in line of site, so I kept having to think "Who's phone is it? Should I pick up the call?" and then I just felt silly for letting it ring while I was thinking this. Six phone calls later, my supervisor signed my timesheet and I left.

I cannot stress enough how great everyone was. They all smiled, said hello, and made me feel welcome. (five hours) They set me up with a computer, access to the network, and detailed instructions on what to do. (five hours) They gave me a full tour concerning the safety procedures for the building. (five hours) Did I mention that they did all this for someone who came in to fill in for only five hours? It was phenomenally professional.

Also, can I just say that it was the least work for the most work I ever did? Okay, I was slightly bored and would have liked to have done more but I figure that the lawyers who worked there wouldn't have wanted someone who just came in to file their important documents and such. They mainly wanted to ensure that they didn't have phones ringing on end or miss any important calls.

Anyway, so yes. I hope I get more work soon. And that's about it for me. Now I must have food. Oh, I have a few pictures.



These pictures were taken Wolfson College. The first is taken from a path that leads to the Lee Library and the second is just standing at the beginning of that path looking out towards the garden, where there are a number of benches in shady spots. It's very pretty, even in the winter! I can only imagine what it must look like in spring, when the flowers start to come up. (The groundsmen have been busy planting and pruning and doing all sorts of creative things.)

Then a picture of the Round Church, actually the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was really pretty. I didn't go in coz I was supposed to be meeting Sameer soonish but I was wandering around the town and came across it so I took this picture. I'm hoping to go back for a closer look.

And then I went further down that road and the street looks like this, which was quite pretty. I think it's the bottom end of Sidney Street, though I'm not sure. Anyway, I hadn't been there before and it had a couple of interesting looking food places that I'd like to visit again. You know, try to escape the monotony of college food. :P Speaking of college food, I must have some asap! Laterz people!

Jobs and Books

Well, unfortunately I don't have any pictures to share today. I took a few of the gardens here at Wolfson but they were a bit tame and I haven't got them off the camera yet.

Today, as I was preparing to leave for town, I got a phone call from the Temporary Employment Service. They had a sit in job to offer me and I said yes. So it's five hours of office admin, between 12 and 5 on Wednesday at the University's Legal Services office. The pay is £9.80 per hour which is pretty nifty I think! So obviously, I jumped at the opportunity. Then I headed off to town to spend money that I hadn't earned yet. Of course, at the time I didn't realise that that's what I was doing. But in retrospect, it's pretty clear.

It felt as if I was cycling for the first time in days but actually the last time I cycled was Saturday when we went to the Grafton Centre. Anyway, off I went. Although it had rained earlier in the morning, the sky was clear and the sun was putting a golden glow on all the roads and pavements. It was lovely. There was barely a breeze and so it felt quite exhilirating to be out and speeding along on my bike with it's rattling front basket. (It is so irritating - I must make a plan to get some cable ties for it.)

As usual, I parked my bike at St Mary's and made my way to the market. It took me a long while to find something worth buying. For a moment there I thought I was going to end up getting Cold Mountain or something by Kazui Ishiguro, books that know you really should read but can't actually be bothered with. I was saved by Ian McEwan's Atonement, brand new and only £3. And around the corner, in the Speculative Fiction/Horror section (because I know I will 'hit a wall' with Atonement at some point) I got a collection of short stories called The Mammoth Book of Monsters for only £4, again brand new. Be still my heart. It has contributions from authors such as Joe R. Lansdale and Clive Barker. On the whole, I was quite happy with my purchases.

After browsing through Next and wanting to buy absolutely everything and then Marks & Spencers and wanting to buy pretty much nothing, I was saved by the bell. The hubby called to ask where we were meeting for lunch. Cafe Indigo was the answer.

Now, I really wanted to take pictures of Cafe Indigo but firstly the place is so small, you could back all the way up to the wall and still not get everything in. And secondly, well it just didn't feel right to so obviously take pictures of random people. So you'll have to use your imaginations and picture the Coffee Bean, before it moved and upgraded. But with creaky wooden doors and floors, and walls that are a lot more colorful, purple, blue, and orange.

So we sat there on a couch and spent way too much money on sandwiches and coffee. They were good though. And we chatted for a bit about this and that. Okay, it was about our hopes and fears for work and living in the UK but it sounds cheesy when you say it that way. Then Sameer had to go back to the institute and I decided to leave town before I spent any more money. Well, I almost succeeded.

The little road that you take to get from the Indigo to Kings Way opens out right next to a books and art supply shop. Originally, I just meant to go in and look. Well, I almost ended up buying an entire pack of oil paints, brushes, linseed oil, turpentine, and pallette knives (trowels). Then I came back to my senses and decided to get a set of charcoal pencils. Then I put it down and stepped away slowly. I was almost out of the shop when I saw an inconspicuous staircase and a sign that said "Sale". I gave in to temptation.

Downstairs everything was on sale for less than half price. Sameer's lucky I got out with just one book - The Complete Book of Drawing Skills, £4. After that, I left, walking quickly with my eyes downcast lest I be drawn in by any other Sale signs. I unlocked my bike and cycled home without further event. And here I am.

Formal Hall at New Hall

Yo ho, me hearties, you ho!

It's Saturday evening. Sameer is off to the big TV room/combination room thingy (I must take pics) and I am here in W105 updating my blog after having a 47 minute video chat with my parents over Skype. I think it totally blew their cap but maybe, just maybe it was worth it. Kudos to Razia for letting me have that light bulb moment, and to the Magic Peeps for giving me incentive to get it sooner rather than later. Not that we ended up using the webcam to chat to them, since we unexpectedly ended up going to formal hall with Janine at her college. Also, I hear there was that pesky blackout in Cape Town as well.

Oh, so about my parents and the Skype video call. I smsed them and told them to log on to Skype but I didn't tell them that I had a webcam, then they called and I started the video stream and they were SO shocked! It took about five minutes to calm my dad down. You should have heard them. They were going "I can see you! I can see you jaan! I can see Sameer too! What's this? What's going on? I can see you!!!" :D It was so great. They were SO happy. They couldn't get over it. My dad kept saying that it was such a miraculous thing and he couldn't believe it, it was as if I was there with them. So yes. I like technology. :)

Anyway, formal hall. Right, it's a tradition here at Cambridge and at Oxford and some other older universities in the UK as well. Wolfson has it twice a week - on Tuesdays and Thursdays - but we haven't gone yet, although Dianne Quarrie (Sameer's liaison person) has really encouraged us to go. They say its formal so I was always worried about what to wear. And at Wolfson, they are quite traditional and wear robes to formal hall, so it's been quite daunting. We've just opted for the usual dinner in the clubroom on those nights.

So Janine asked us to go to her college's formal dinner last week already and we said yes but then she got ill and we forgot. Well, she forgot too but anyway, she remembered on Friday afternoon and called us up. We did a hurried dress up - Sameer in his suit and me in my black pants and top - and got a taxi for New Hall. (Ferzana, you'll be happy to know, I wore both the taupe pumps and the foetsek earings as well.)

When we got there, we were sort of milling around the New Hall entrance hall, near the porters' desk, and saw lots of young people who looked like they were going out to party. The girls were wearing short, shiny dresses and high heals, and the boys were all in dark suits. Janine and Mervin arrived and she whisked us off to one of the rooms. I think it's the grad room or something. Think of a parlor, with carpets and chairs upholstered in floral prints, dark, heavy furniture and low lighting. There was a waiter looking guy offering people juice, wine, port, and sherry. People were standing around and chatting for a long time. Janine introduced us to more of her MBA friends. Then the waiter guy knocked on the door to get everyone's attention and made an announcement. "Ladies and Gentlemen, dinner is served".

We were lead to the dining hall, a large round room with artwork hung at intervals, a brightly lit dome of enormous proportions, six long tables laid with silverware. Someone rang a gong and everyone stood, then they said a short prayer in Latin, and we sat down. People started pouring wine from special bottles labeled New Hall and chatting. After a while, the waiters came out to serve us.

Like wow! Okay. It was totally different from anything I've been to before. I so wish I had taken a camera with but I'd read that it's not allowed at formal hall so I didn't take it with. I was so upset afterwards because there were loads of people taking pictures there. Of course, nobody was wearing robes and there was no "high table" (reserved for senior academics) either so I guess New Hall has a very informal formal hall and that's why they let you take pictures. *sigh* Oh the regret.

Oh, and the food - fantastic. Well, I'm sure my mum, Nadia or any one of my aunts and cousins could have cooked the same but it was such a sight better than the Wolfson food!

The more mature tables - like ours with all it's MBA people - were fairly subdued in our conversation. We talked and laughed quietly. But there were tables with younger students, and lets just say, they were smashed. I think the 30 people at our table drank about six bottles of wine between them. At the next table over, a group of ten girls polished off the same amount. Towards the end, the lights dimmed, and people started catcalling. Then the waiters came out with a birthday cake that had a huge sparkler burning in the middle. Everyone cheered, and then a slightly drunk woman got up on her chair, tapped a knife against her wineglass and gave an incoherent speech. People laughed and clapped. It was funny but it also gave you this feeling that everyone there knew each other and that there was a sense of community among the students.

When dinner was over, we retired to the Middle Common Room, that being the common room reserved for post grad students. (It's all about the hierarchy here.) We had to walk through the building to get there and again, there was just more and more art everywhere. Janine said yes, New Hall has a really impressive art collection and they're really proud of it.

The Middle Common Room is like the big TV room here at Wolfson, just a lot more modern. Leather couches everywhere, wooden coffee tables, a TV, and a kitchenette with posh, silver appliances. Everyone mingled and chatted. Sameer and I felt a bit odd because we didn't know the people that well but they were all really nice and good spirited. Though maybe that had to do with all the port they were drinking.

Apparently what usually happens after formal hall at New Hall, is that everyone drinks copious amounts of port and then they play Sing Star. (Yes, there's a PlayStation attached to that TV and all - I mean all - of the Sing Star editions.) Well, Sameer and I had coffee and for some reason Sing Star didn't happen (awwww) and then they ran out of port and decided to go to the New Hall bar to find more alcohol. So, facing the prospect of standing around and watching people get more drunk, we said our goodbyes early and called a cab for home.

Well, I must say all the traditions surrounding formal hall are very impressive. It's almost like being in a movie or a fantasy novel, I tell you. What was also nice about it was that we got to see more of another college other than Wolfson and got to see what the traditions at New Hall were like. But I also think we got kind of a one-sided view of it. There really were very many young people there and most of them were there to party. From what I've seen of people coming out of Wolfson's formal halls, there's less drink and more talk.

Mpumi, one of Sameer's classmates who did his Masters at Cambridge, says that formal hall isn't actually about the food (or drink) but about the company - you get to meet the fellows of the college and all the serious academics. I'm told that if you sit next to people you don't know, you'll get to meet and engage with some very interesting people that you wouldn't normally talk to. I guess like most things here at Cambridge, it's all about networking with the right people. So, in light of that, we're quite excited about going to formal hall at Wolfson.

Kitty missage

I miss this one a lot. Can picture her sitting on the window seat here, giving us that "Cuddle me" look. :(