In which the writer returns to the novel theme of providing A Proper And Quite Lengthy Update

Hey all.

(20/06/06)
I have a bit of spare time at the minute, due to not feeling at all sleepy - lalala, May Ball, sleep patterns completely banjaxed; slept until (only) 1pm or so but then fell asleep at about 7.30pm again for 4 hours. Soooo... probably will not sleep until about 6am again. This will be delightfully amusing since I have to get up at about 9.30am.

Part 1: On the subject of "Geekiness": a personal journey of exploration
I'm sitting in Steve's room (cursing the slow progress of this entry due to an unfamiliar keyboard) with the owner of the computer plus Azzy and CF/CF and Azzy (Azzy=Raccoon=Michael Wallace, for those struggling to keep up), all of whom are playing Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and talking about things I don't understand, or in the case of the particularly geeky things, am pretending not to understand.

I have come to the conclusion in the past few minutes that I am, unfortunately, a bit of a geek myself.

1) I know too many of the in-jokes - as I write this, I can picture a certain few people pointing at me and chanting, "one of us, one of us,"


2) I have read manga and watched anime,
3) I waste huge amounts of time on the internet, finding and trading funny links with others via MSN,
(Look at this.)
4) the guys in the room just started discussing "Metalgreymon" and I understood what they were talking about even before they checked to make sure I knew it was a Digimon character.

I make this admission on the grounds that, since reaching Cambridge, I have met a few rather nerdy people... but besides the scarier LARPers and the odd overly-strange Assassin (overly-strange in this case being quite significant, since the Guild draws all members from a place just west of normal on the personality compass as it is):

1) there isn't an automatic link here between accepting nerd/geek/etc. status and admission of retardation/degeneration of social skills,
2) being of said status does not equate with being terminally single (assuming that you don't hold the equivalent of an Orange Badge for your social skills, take care of hygiene and don't have a really bad moustache/beard or something :P) - in fact, I'd even dare to say that most of the geeks around here are quite attractive, although naturally, there are limits...
3) I'm living in Cambridge - WE ALL HAVE RESIDUAL GEEK TENDENCIES HERE - even if I am a geek I'm by no means at the polar end of the weirdo scale.

Having said that, I still refuse to add "z0r" at the end of random words. Seriously, that's just sad.

The boys have finished card games in favour of X-Box. I think I'll go off and join the Halo massacre before writing about May Ball. ;)

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Part 2: MAY BALL!
Lalala yaaaayyyyy!

Hmm... an expensive night, but definitely worth going to. The champagne was good, although, as usual, it was an arse to have to queue up for it; Steve mentioned standing in line for a while only to have a particularly annoying girl shove people out of the way to grab 2 available glasses. Honestly, as amusing as I'm sure life must be when you act like a complete arsehole, please don't get drunk on top of that.

I spent most of the night with Steve, so it was a bit different from last year's happenings - we also got there a bit late due to Steve singing in a KV concert until nearly 9pm and me being a girly girl and spending far too much time on hair and makeup. Thankfully, we got in within half an hour due to the queue moving much quicker when we got there - sadly, we missed the Chinese street fair -type entertainment that had been going on to keep the waiting masses distracted, but on the other hand, we got in within half an hour, nyehhhh. :D We got in in plenty of time for the fireworks, too.

What else?... hog roast and other free food and drink (as usual), as well as an "ice rink" (plastic with soapy stuff over it to create slippiness), a ball pool and bouncy castle, a fairground (Steve won a coconut and a fluffy blue horse, and was a bit put out later when CF removed the fur from the top of the coconut, claiming that his once-proud prize was now sad and bald and less coconutty. Or something), and of course several entertainments tents. I spent a lot of time in the jazz/chillout tent, but saw the Guillemots and the Rakes in the concert tent and have decided I want their albums. :D

We got a professional portrait photo taken - having looked at the outcome, one is really quite bad, but at least the other of the two shots is okay, so I'll have to remember to buy a copy tomorrow.

We also saw a girl get chucked into the fountain by a friend. I suspect the friend spent the rest of the night in hiding.

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(21/06/06)
Part 3: PDN projects
I've spent the non-social-life time in the past few days organising projects to do in the PDN course next year - I got official (preliminary) confirmation of having been accepted to the course on Saturday, but was told to choose a shortlist of 5 projects and discuss them with the supervisors involved by Wednesday 21st. I still have to discuss my top choice with Dr. Bainbridge tomorrow, for some reason, since he wasn't available to discuss before then. :S

My shortlist:
Did 19th C. Embryology Inspire 20th C. Genocide?
(scientific "justification" the Nazis based their race theories on - dissertation thingie)
Vertebral Patterning
(experimental messing with chick embryo spines)
Fetal programming of the insulin signalling pathway
(basically a biochemistry project with lots of Western blotting)
Function of repeats or non-coding RNAs in the regulation of gene expression
(same, really, only involves genetics as well)
Apoptosis in the syncytiotrophoblast of the human placenta
(no proper idea beyond the synopsis given, because the supervisor still hasn't replied to my bloody emails, thus why it's dropped to fifth place)

I'll know at some point soon which project I've been allocated, probably after MVST class grades are published. Unfortunately, I won't get my grade for this year until the 27th. :S

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Part 4: King's Affair
Everyone should go to this next year. Seriously.

This was very, very cool, although it didn't involve dressing up much. The tickets were also much cheaper - £55 per person still isn't my idea of a bargain night out, but all alcohol and entertainment was free, and the event ran from 9pm-4 or 5am (we didn't stay right to the end, what with Steve wanting to get up early for the reading of the Maths class lists and me having been awake since 9am-ish that morning due to meeting with PDN supervisors).

The theme was "Cirque de Lune", which meant staff dressed as Victorian/Edwardian era gentlemen, entertainers, prostitutes and urchins, circusy decorations everywhere, and a fair on the front lawn involving gymnasts, jugglers, drummers, old-fashioned games like croquet and a can alley, a Punch & Judy show (believe me, a show performed with a drunken semi-grown-up audience in mind is very amusing, and can make a person regress to shouting "Yes!" with everyone else when asked "Did Mister Punch fight the Devil, boys and girls?"), and "the Gaiety Engine" old-fashioned magic show, which was complete with an old-style circus stage wagon to perform from.

Inside, there were several dance floors with DJs playing different kinds of music, a stage with bands playing (some good, some mediocre - I leave it up to you to imagine how good or otherwise "Counterfeit Kylie" might have been), and a cabaret with different singers, dancers and a magician in the same room as the casino and chocolate fountain. Sadly, the chocolate fountain was not free, but was extremely satisfying. Chocolatey marshmallows are a bit too filling, in all honesty - between the two of us we still couldn't finish a marshmallow 'kebab' dipped in chocolate. I wish it'd been free; I'd have eaten a lot more strawberries and things. :)

The Prometheus firetroupe (the one that Greg and Saperia are members of) made a reasonably good show on the front lawn. The juggling was a bit crap, considering they dropped the clubs every four passes or so, but the fire poi were cool - it's unsurprisingly a bit hypnotic to watch several people whirling fire around their heads in synch. We unfortunately didn't stay to watch all of the act, and missed a firesword fight at the end in which Greg managed to hit Saperia in the head.

The food available wasn't free (other than some platters of sweets and some cheeseboards, so naturally I picked at those any time I felt less than full), but I still think the ostrich burgers were good value (having eaten two during the course of the night). I will also definitely buy more the next time I see the van in the market.

I may be addicted.

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(22/06/06)
Part 5: King's Affair aftermath
I slept until 5pm or so today. Steve came to tell me about his results at about 10am or so, after which I went back to bed. He tried to haul me out of bed around 4pm to get lunch, but I believe I whinged a bit and then promised to follow later (I didn't, he had to call back and scare me into proper awakeitude by lurking in the room I'd left unlocked and awaiting my return from the bathroom).

The front lawn of King's looks a bit like a bunch of territorial-but-constipated dogs were let loose on it - the grass has gone very dry and patchy and looks like it'll take a while to sort itself out.

Unsurprisingly, there are several burnt patches where the firetroupe were performing. Bloody jugglers.

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Part 6: Results
Mine aren't out until the 27th, as I said.

However, Steve now holds a 2.i degree in Maths from Cambridge.

Perhaps not enough for a mathmo, since they all want firsts and seem to act like anything less is a failure, but then, the average non-mathmo thinks this is rather stupid thinking for such an otherwise-intelligent group. In my view, it's a bloody good mark (he'll get into Part III/fourth year Maths as he wanted) and he's done well.

With all the above in mind, hopefully he won't have anything negative or self-deprecating to add when I say:

Congratulations. :)

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Part 6: stuff
In case you were wondering what else I've been up to...

Pirates on the Cam! (Saturday the 17th)
I've gone to a day of Pirate Punting with other Assassins people, in which we had a punt race while shooting at each other with CPSes and other water guns (if all in the boat or the punters/paddlers were dead the punt wasn't allowed to move until they respawned, 3 minutes after being killed).

We had a laugh at the expense of a bunch of chavs on the bank, just generally wondering why such people thought it made them important to act in a hostile way to people they didn't even know who had large plastic water guns, a wooden paddle and a large punt-pole - apparently the poles are called quants - all of which could have been used to physically beat them with, when said people hadn't actually done anything aggressive towards them. Might I also add, the group was largely composed of pre-pubescent males wearing fake gold chains.

We avoided going too far down the river, automatically losing ourselves the race, since we weren't sure we could pass another chav group fast enough to avoid the stones the kids were throwing at passing punts. I mean, seriously, wtf?? The parents were right there watching them do it, and said nothing.

In fact, the only time any of the adults in either group appeared to say anything to the children was when some of the little bas- *cough*... boys (who were in swimming) threatened to board our punts and throw us out. Was the comment along the lines of, "Don't annoy those people"? No. They said nothing while the pestering and general brattishness was going on, up until the point where Heaney raised the wooden paddle and told them he would knock them into the water with it if they tried to climb in. The kids followed along the bank, taunting, "Are you really going to hit anyone?", with the (repeated) reply being, "I will only if you make me" (or similar). At some point during all this, one of the mother chavs got the familiar belligerent look and voice tone and said - to the kids and us - something along the lines of, "Oh, 'e'd better not hit your sister, or [murflemurflefluffleblah(they were on the bank, we were on the river, you know)]" pointing to a 3-year-old toddling around near her.

W
T
F
?

Are you mentally insufficient, or were you just not paying attention? How could you miss the very obvious point that he was trying and failing to get them to stop pestering, and was not just someone out to get you and your precious little ones because he's a horrible person who, like everyone else you don't know well, doesn't understand you?

To be entirely fair, some of the madness could have been due to the fact that as we passed the group for about the fifth time, Heaney very loudly said, "You know what's funny, CF?"
I silently pleaded with him not to continue, but he did.
"Commoners!"
I don't think they got the joke, if they even heard it. It was vaguely relieving to blame Ed for the attacks, though, since we could content ourselves with that rather than get a headache from sheer disbelief at trying to understand chav nature.

Besides the incidents with the chavs, we had a good time overall - punting is fun, shooting water pistols is fun, and these things are greatly enhanced by being dressed like pirates while you do them in the middle of a tourist-punt infested river. The "Are you real pirates?" inquiries make it all worthwhile...

Later in the day, our punt collided with a non-player punt during an encounter with other 'pirates'. As I'd been one of the last people alive on our punt at the time, I misunderstood the "Watch out!" from CF, looked to the bank to see who was aiming at me, and was consequently hit quite decisively above the hip by the front of the other punt, which managed to knock me off my seat at the prow into the bottom of the punt. It didn't hurt for too long afterwards (the pain was pretty much gone by the time we disembarked for a picnic), but I got an interesting green-and-purple mosaic there the next day. As of today, 5 days later, I still have a fair bit of bruising to show for it, but nothing like as colourful as the fresh one.

On the way back, a Histonite punt appeared and soaked us all with CPSes.

Bastards. :P


The May Week Assassins game
Steve and I aren't playing, Raccoon isn't yet assured a win, and Tom hasn't backstabbed anyone (what with being the Umpire).

By all accounts, it seems to be quite an unusual game. :P

A certain Assassin is generally being a pain in the arse and bending the rules to breaking point. Hopefully he won't win an MA from this game; I don't really think it's deserved unless you play by the rules at least some of the time. Besides, one of said rules is that the point of the May Week game is to have fun. It defeats the purpose of having a game anyone can play to obsess over it that much.


Parties
I spent more social time with the other vets following the end of exams than I have pretty much for the rest of the year - a general night of drinking and visiting different bars and clubs on the day exams ended, followed by a vet curry and more sitting outside with drinks, followed by a punting trip and mass barbecue (Karmen and I took over barbecuing stuff - Simon, having organised everything else, was probably deserving of a rest, and claimed that he hadn't a clue anyway)... and more drinking.

Haven't seen a lot of them in a few days now, besides seeing Aimee and Simon at May Ball and Greg and Andrew at King's Affair, but that's probably because this is the week people start gradually disappearing (Richard and Andrew Lewis have already gone home)...

I went to formal in Fitz recently too - it is now official that Fitz do better formals than Trinity. The food was amazing, and almost all of it was stuff that Nick could eat except the dessert, which involved cream.

There was a dinner in Histon, cooked by Ana and Nick - chicken lasagne is interesting and tastes pretty good - complete with homemade truffles which involved a sinful level of chocolate... it was a bit like getting hit by a chocolate nuke. I'm probably headed for Hell just for eating one. ;)

Aaaand... there was a pizza party in my room, which started out with just four of us (James, Richard, Andrew Denner and me), but eventually we were joined by a lot of other people. Not until the initial four had finished most of the pizza, admittedly, but there were still about... um... 2 pizzas left for the other 6 or so people...


Exam stuff
Exam revision basically took over for most of the 4 weeks before exams actually started, and unsurprisingly, was almost all I did during the nearly-two weeks the exams were actually taking place.

I had a couple of extremely shitty papers, but despite that I've passed all 5 subjects, so I'm looking at a 2.ii if I've done badly and a 2.i if I've done well.

The important thing is, I've passed my exemptions so I'll be back for third year, doing the Part II subject that I wanted to do. :)

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So yeah, all in all, I've been busy. I will get back into the proper system of updating, I promise. I mean, come on, look how long it took me to finish writing this update - do you think I want to do something this length again? :P