the "h" is for "hates"

last weekend i went to cambridge (england, for those of you more familiar with massachusetts) to visit mike and company. summary: it was awesome.

amoung the many highlights of the trip was friday afternoon, the two of us walking along the river, him pointing at the crew boats and explaining some of the rules and a lot of how the specific people we were seeing's technique really sucked (we think they might have been the third-string teams). at one point, he mentioned that the team in the next boat was "jesus" (from "jesus college") and the one behind it was "christ" (from "christ college"). what made this priceless, however, was that he then chose to add: "incidentally, jesus hates christ." to which i naturally responded: "oh, so THAT's what the H stands for!" (sorry, i couldn't resist; i found it incredibly amusing.)

[[ i promise i'll fill in the rest of the weekend soon, but now i'm going to try to do some more work, since lord knows there's plenty to be done... i just really wanted to get that anecdote down before i forgot it. ]]

continuing...

so, yeah, i got there on friday around noon after taking a bus from stansted, and wandered around town a bit like he had suggested since he had class until 1:15. there was a cool little market in a square near the center, and one of the guys was selling wooden puzzles and such---naturally i couldn't help myself, and even though they weren't exactly cheap, i bought one. it's a packing box with 25 identical pieces that fit together to make a 5x5x5 cube, and it's supposed to be fiendishly hard. i haven't had time to play with it yet, so we'll see.

luckily i had been warned beforehand, but they also have this peculiar draconian rule about not walking on the grass unless you are a professor emeritus or something---backed up by a fine of something like several hundred pounds... jeepers, and i thought the catch-all "$500 fine" at oxy (their empty threat for doing anything from picking the roses to graffiti) was extreme...

eventually i found st. catharine's, where he's staying and i was supposed to meet him. this was a little tricky since there are something like 300 colleges in this little tiny town, about the size of city blocks, and this one also happens to be completely unmarked. go figure. but i did find it, and we walked around town seeing stuff and enjoying the fantastic weather, during which the aforementioned anecdote happened. there was also the stop at the "free fudge shop" on the way back, where apparently the stuff is so good that they feel secure enough in their business that they don't even care if from time to time students come in and take a sample without buying a whole slice (though it goes without saying that every so often you probably should buy a slice, and it's so damn good that i probably would seldom be able to resist buying it anyway).

that evening, we met up with the other 5 caltech students and a cambridge student who had been at caltech last term (mark) and his girlfriend who was visiting from finland (katriina), and we went to a "formal hall," which is a nice formal dinner where everyone gets dressed up for no reason and even wears their graduation robes too. they have this curious tradition of "pennying" people's drinks, which apparently means "save the queen from drowning" (effectively "drink your fucking drink..."). this was somewhat amusing, if woefully unsanitary.

after which we made a pilgrimage to the local sainsbury's (grocery store), where i picked up some pg tips (tea for dena), mcvitie's (cookies for me), and got talked (by mark) into buying some generic pop in the flavor called "dandelion and burdock." the others bought massive quantities of alcohol, and we went back to pembrooke (jason's college) and had a grande olde time for the evening.

saturday morning, kelly, janet, and wendy joined us for a trip to "bury st. edmunds," a little town about an hour's bus ride away. it was cool; some ruins, several churches, and what was supposed to be a phenomenal art museum but was closed for renovations... hahaha. the return trip was a little annoying, since it was getting really quite cold outside, and the bus we wanted to take never showed up, so we had to wait another hour for the next one.

finally returning to cambridge around 6:00ish, we hit a japanese restaurant (fabulous food, by the way; i definitely need to learn how to tempura vegetables), and then caught a play in queen's college, where they were putting on a production of agatha christie's "and then there were none." the play was great fun, and the acting showed promise, even if the directing left something to be desired (it was pretty obviously directed by a student). great play; see it if you ever get the chance.

oh, and one of the most interesting characters in the play (shame he got killed off first, he was probably the best actor of the lot), had an interesting habit of referring to everything as "wizard," in a somewhat similar manner to how we used to say things were "wicked" around about the fifth grade. i thought it was kinda cool, though i doubt i'll be able to find much opportunity to use it (or that anyone would have any idea what i meant if i did)...

later saturday night, as we sat around and talked, i was a little thirsty and a little curious, so i opened one of the cans of "dandelion and burdock" pop. jesus, was that ever a mistake. i swear to god, the stuff tasted like bright pink bubblegum. it was really quite unbelievable how awful it was. think about how some people say grape soda tastes like cough syrup, and then multiply that by about 10,000. jeepers...

[[ okay, time to take another break. more later... ]]

let's get this finished up; it's been floundering for too long now.

right, so, sunday. in the morning we tried to rent a punt to go down the river to "the orchard" for tea/scones/lunch. since we were seven, and the boats only hold 6, and it's a long way there, and we didn't have any idea what we were doing, they succeeded in talking us out of it. we walked along the river instead, which was nice (about a couple miles), had really awesome scones (gotta learn how to make those), and then came back.

on the way back, we stopped on a hillside and set up jason's camera on mikes little pocket tripod so that we could spell "CALTECH" out of people (there were seven of us, after all). he later correctly pointed out that it looks a good bit more like "/^LTF/X" but hey, it was fun to act stupid for a couple of minutes.

upon returning to cambridge, adam left to do something else, so the 6 of us rented a punt after all, and just went up the river a little ways and back for about an hour, which was pretty cool. it's surprisingly difficult, though. mainly just because the pole is damn long, and once you get it all the way out of the water, it's (obviously) really fucking top-heavy. but once you get the hang of the basic controls, it's not so bad, it just requires a significant investment of exertion. (my biceps were pretty sore afterwards.)

after that it was time to collect my things and grab a few last-minute items before heading to the bus depot. got another slice of fudge to take with me, and tried to get an "ostrich burger" (which they said was supposed to be very good, but there weren't any left by the time we got there), and stopped into a whisky store to see if i could get me a bottle of the "ledaig" that i had tasted at sara's "movienight" a couple of weeks ago. embarrassed though i was, i spelled it for the guy, and he explained to me that when properly pronounced it apparently rhymes with "electric." there's some unholy's devil's dealings in there somewhere, i'm sure; because otherwise i have no idea how that could possibly work. anyway, i scored me a bottle (i am win!), caught my bus, and waited in the airport for the plane that was an hour and a half late. which was annoying, because if i hadn't been carrying on all my luggage, i probably wouldn't have been able to sprint to catch the last train back to lausanne. have i mentioned how much i hate easyjet? they are the evil that lurks in the night. i sincerely hope that someday they get what's coming to them. fucking bastards.

well, there you have it, i arrived home at around 1:30 monday morning, and went to work seven hours later. th-th-th-th-that's all, folks.