Life update
Jul. 19th, 2005 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livWhat have I been up to while I was deprived of internet?
I went to a bar mitzva where I had fun seeing lots of people from shul. A particular rabbi who I've never really got on with that well greeted me like a long-lost friend. I think she recognized me from Hengrave and that connection has a good chance of making people feel well-disposed to eachother.
I saw a silly film with P'tite Soeur, Ma femme est une actrice ('My wife the actress'). It's a very silly rom-com where the husband is ludicrously jealous and controlling, and eventually his wife, the eponymous actress, forgives him for being jealous and they live happily ever after (without ever actually resolving the central problem of the relationship). But it's in French and some of the cinematography and self-referential stuff is quite cute. Eh, it was a free ticket and it was a nice evening out with my sister.
Graduation involved a really lovely trip to Dundee with my parents, and spending several days far hotter than I'm comfortable with. But hey.
The train was late (well, there's a surprise), meaning that I ended up doing the legal stuff around selling my flat in a rush at 4:30 pm, just the same as when I was buying it. But that's all sorted now, which is a great relief. Mamam had stuff to do at home, so she came up on a later train, and her train was extremely late. This meant that there weren't very many restaurants still serving, so we ended up eating at Taza, a fairly trashy Indian buffet restaurant in the really badly thought out City Quay development.
We stayed at a B&B called Cullaig, which is quite a way up the Law and has a lovely view, the more so since we were on the top floor in a room with a ducky little balcony. And it was generally pleasant and everything you could ask for in a B&B, nice proprietors and so on. For £19 ppn, at short notice and in high season, you really couldn't complain!
Graduation itself was somewhere between fun and boring, I think. On the plus side, I sat next to a friendly fellow graduand who kept me entertained through the waiting around. My degree was conferred by Sir James Black, (Chancellor of Dundee University and also the inventor of beta blockers and all-round cool biologist). The Dundee PhD robes are attractive, black with blue facing and the hood blue and light blue. On the minus side it was ridiculously too hot, and the ceremony went on for about three hours. And they did a lot of rather tacky mock-mediaeval ceremony, as I'd suspected they might (singing Gaudeamus because it's a "traditional university song", for example...). Oh, and I discovered that Scottish universities (with a few exceptions) do not believe in hats, so I shan't get to wear my mortar board again.
The main good thing was lots of nachus1 for my parents. And getting to say goodbye properly to Dundee while not in a tremendous panic over moving. I did quite a bit of walking round the city and taking photos, and the glorious sunshine didn't hurt visually even if it made things a bit uncomfortable. (It was reportedly 32° on Tuesday.) I climbed the Law with my Dad, and spent some time hanging out in the lab, and had a drink with Boss S in the evening. She tried to kiss my Dad continental fashion, to his great confusion and my amusement.
I really wanted to take my parents to The Italian, but with the graduation and the golf going on across the river, it was, exceptionally, fully booked. So we ate at Ciao Sorento, which is a more standard but not at all dreadful Italian bistro type place.
Photos to follow once I've processed them. I have rather a backlog at the moment.
Then my aunt R and cousin S turned up from Australia, and various adventures ensued, which I shall report in another post. Also, my house is currently full of film crew.
1] Nachus is a Yiddish word which means, more or less, the feeling that parents experience when their children achieve things. Which is a bit circular; if you translate it as 'parental pride' the sentence will make sense!
The train was late (well, there's a surprise), meaning that I ended up doing the legal stuff around selling my flat in a rush at 4:30 pm, just the same as when I was buying it. But that's all sorted now, which is a great relief. Mamam had stuff to do at home, so she came up on a later train, and her train was extremely late. This meant that there weren't very many restaurants still serving, so we ended up eating at Taza, a fairly trashy Indian buffet restaurant in the really badly thought out City Quay development.
We stayed at a B&B called Cullaig, which is quite a way up the Law and has a lovely view, the more so since we were on the top floor in a room with a ducky little balcony. And it was generally pleasant and everything you could ask for in a B&B, nice proprietors and so on. For £19 ppn, at short notice and in high season, you really couldn't complain!
Graduation itself was somewhere between fun and boring, I think. On the plus side, I sat next to a friendly fellow graduand who kept me entertained through the waiting around. My degree was conferred by Sir James Black, (Chancellor of Dundee University and also the inventor of beta blockers and all-round cool biologist). The Dundee PhD robes are attractive, black with blue facing and the hood blue and light blue. On the minus side it was ridiculously too hot, and the ceremony went on for about three hours. And they did a lot of rather tacky mock-mediaeval ceremony, as I'd suspected they might (singing Gaudeamus because it's a "traditional university song", for example...). Oh, and I discovered that Scottish universities (with a few exceptions) do not believe in hats, so I shan't get to wear my mortar board again.
The main good thing was lots of nachus1 for my parents. And getting to say goodbye properly to Dundee while not in a tremendous panic over moving. I did quite a bit of walking round the city and taking photos, and the glorious sunshine didn't hurt visually even if it made things a bit uncomfortable. (It was reportedly 32° on Tuesday.) I climbed the Law with my Dad, and spent some time hanging out in the lab, and had a drink with Boss S in the evening. She tried to kiss my Dad continental fashion, to his great confusion and my amusement.
I really wanted to take my parents to The Italian, but with the graduation and the golf going on across the river, it was, exceptionally, fully booked. So we ate at Ciao Sorento, which is a more standard but not at all dreadful Italian bistro type place.
Photos to follow once I've processed them. I have rather a backlog at the moment.
Then my aunt R and cousin S turned up from Australia, and various adventures ensued, which I shall report in another post. Also, my house is currently full of film crew.
1] Nachus is a Yiddish word which means, more or less, the feeling that parents experience when their children achieve things. Which is a bit circular; if you translate it as 'parental pride' the sentence will make sense!
